Ohio: Dennis Kucinich finds Cuyahoga County Board of Elections building unlocked, no one in building | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich found a public back door to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections building unlocked Saturday afternoon. Kucinich said he was on his way to vote around 2:15 p.m. since the Board of Elections, which is at Euclid Avenue and East 30th Street, is typically open on a Saturday, he said. “I went to the back entrance and I entered and then the alarm went off and I said, ‘That’s odd,'” Kucinich said. He took the elevators up to the second floor and then to the third floor to tell someone that the alarm was going off, he said. “There was no one in the building,” Kucinich said. “The rear door of the Board of Elections was unlocked.”

Texas: Trump’s Justice Department wants Texas to keep invalidated voter ID law | The Texas Tribune

Continuing a dramatic reversal on voting rights under President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Justice is asking a federal appeals court to allow Texas to enforce a photo voter identification law that a lower court found discriminatory. In a filing Thursday, the Justice Department asked the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to block a lower court ruling that the state’s new voter identification law — Senate Bill 5, enacted this year — failed to fix intentional discrimination against minority voters found in a previous strict ID law, enacted in 2011. Last week, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos tossed SB 5, which in some ways softened the previous requirements that Texans present one of seven forms of photo ID at the polls. The new law “does not meaningfully expand the types of photo IDs that can qualify, even though the Court was clearly critical of Texas having the most restrictive list in the country,” she wrote. “Not one of the discriminatory features of [the old law] is fully ameliorated by the terms of SB 5.” The Corpus Christi judge also completely struck elements of the 2011 ID law, which SB 5 was based upon.

Vermont: Meet the 13-year-old running for Vermont governor | Burlington Free Press

Whether by design or accident, Vermont’s founders imposed no age requirement on those who could run for governor of this state. Town officials in Vermont must be legal voters, meaning they have taken the voter’s oath and are at least 18 years old. No such requirement exists for Vermont’s highest office. The constitutional quirk paved the way for Ethan Sonneborn, 13, of Bristol, to announce this summer that he’s running for governor. Eligible candidates must have simply lived in Vermont for four years before the election — “which I’ve tripled, and then some,” said Sonneborn, a 13-year resident of Vermont. The youngest governor to lead Vermont was F. Ray Keyser, Jr., who was 34 years old when he took office in 1961, according to the state Archives and Records Administration. Sonneborn, who is starting eighth grade this fall at Mount Abraham Union Middle/High School, hopes to beat that record by a good 20 years. 

Wisconsin: Voter hopes SCOTUS will revamp map drawing | CNN

Wisconsin voter Helen Harris says she hopes an upcoming Supreme Court case will revolutionize the way state and county legislators draw district maps and bring an end to a political practice she believes has gone amok. At issue is partisan gerrymandering — or the length to which legislators go when they manipulate district lines for partisan advantage.
Harris, a plaintiff in the case, has studied tortured district maps, she’s pored over legal briefs replete with raw data and mathematical calculations and she believes it all boils down to one thing: an individual’s right to vote. “I feel like I’m no longer represented,” she said in an interview.

Angola: Opposition parties call for election recount | AFP

Four opposition parties in Angola on Sunday called for a recount in last month’s general election, alleging “irregularities” during the vote that kept the ruling party in power. The MPLA party of outgoing President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos won just over 61 percent of the votes cast on 23 August and an absolute majority with 150 of the 220 seats in parliament, according to a provisional vote count. The commission is due to release the official results on Wednesday. Isaias Samakuva, head of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), read a statement to reporters saying the process to determine definitive election results “was not conducted, in a large number of cases, in accordance with the law”. The statement was signed by three other leaders of Angola’s main opposition parties.

Germany: CDU politician accuses Russia of hacking website | Politico.eu

A senior politician of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) lashed out at Russia after her website appeared to be hacked Sunday. Julia Klöckner, the leader of the CDU in the state of Rhineland Palatinate, said on Twitter: “Today a massive hacker attack on my homepage – with greetings from Russia. [As] if this has something to do with the election.”

Kenya: As fresh vote approaches, Kenya faces ethnic tensions | Associated Press

As gunfire and screams rang out in her Nairobi neighborhood after last month’s disputed presidential election, Lucy Anyango stepped outdoors and across a tense ethnic divide. The member of Kenya’s Luo minority went to her friend Sheila Kariuki, an ethnic Kikuyu, and walked Kariuki’s two daughters to the safety of her own home amid threats of rape and violence. Angry Luo were rampaging in the streets in protest over the loss of their opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, to President Uhuru Kenyatta, a Kikuyu. As calm began to return the next day, Kariuki thanked her friend in a heartfelt Facebook post. “I will forever be grateful,” she wrote. “As I write this my eyes are full of tears. Dear God, when will this madness ever stop?”

Editorials: Kenya’s Giant Step for Fair Elections | The New York Times

The Kenyan Supreme Court’s courageous decision to nullify the re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta is a critical first for Kenya and Africa, demonstrating that democratic institutions are capable of acting independently and resolving disputes that in the past have often spilled over into violence. The ruling was also a rebuke to international monitors and diplomats — and to this page — who were too quick to dismiss charges of irregularities, largely out of relief that the Aug. 8 voting had been mainly peaceful and in the hope that disappointment with the results would not lead to the sort of violence that erupted after the disputed 2007 election, in which hundreds of people were killed.

Norway: Election security may delay results | News from Norway

As Norwegian voters head into election booths to cast their ballots, state officials have already been working for months to ensure the highest possible security around their choices for Parliament. Some of the security measures now in place may cause some delays in election results early next week, but that’s a risk the officials are willing to take. “We’ll just have to use the time it takes to count up all the ballots,” one local official told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) just after being told on Friday that all municipalities must conduct at least one manual count of all absentee and early voting and those ballots cast on Election Day next Monday. Instead of simply feeding ballots into scanners attached to the Internet, people will also count the votes.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for August 28 – September 3 2017

The New York Times published an extensive article focusing on problems on Election Day 2016 in Durham County North Carolina, a blue-leaning county in a swing state. The problems involved electronic poll books — tablets and laptops, loaded with check-in software, that have increasingly replaced the thick binders of paper used to verify voters’ identities and registration status. She knew that the company that provided Durham’s software, VR Systems, had been penetrated by Russian hackers months before. “It felt like tampering, or some kind of cyberattack,”Verified Voting Election Specialist Susan Greenhalgh said about the voting troubles in Durham.

In a Times companion story, researcher Nicole Perlroth describes how she and her colleaguesMichael Wines, Matthew Rosenberg attempted to find out how government officials so quickly determined that, while attempts had been made to penetrate US elections systems, no actual vote totals were affected and all hacking attempts failed to influence the results. Typically a significant breach like those experienced in 2016 would be followed by deep and lengthy digital forensics analysis before any conclusions would be accepted but in this case, almost immediately, “government officials, the Clinton campaign, intelligence analysts, and civic and legal groups all appeared to calmly accept claims that votes had not been hacked.” However, as the researchers dug more deeply they discovered that “[t[he more places we looked, the worse things looked.”

In South Carolina, state officials assurance that despite millions of cyber attempts to gain access to the state voter registration system in the past year, none has succeeded has faced challenges from experts. University of South Carolina computer science professor and elections analyst Duncan Buell is not convinced by the highly-redacted report released by the state election commission. An earlier assessment revealed that every county regularly transfers election data without using secure communications channels, not encrypting information or reusing flash drives. “That’s the most damaging,” Buell said. “That’s the software that actually counts the votes at the end of the day.”

Taking Colorado’s plan for risk-limiting audits as a starting point, Madelyn Bacon at TechTarget made the case for universal routine post-election audits as essential to confidence in the accuracy of election results. She reviews some historical elections that have relied on recounts to confirm outcomes and emphasizes the importance of voter-marked paper ballots as a fundamental requirement for trustworthy elections.

Facing aging Diebold voting equipment and budget deficits, Alaska is weighing options for future elections in the State. In addition to considering various options for replacement equipment, election officials are also discussing the possibility of all mail ballot elections like those in Colorado, Oregon and Washington. Georgia is also considering new voting equipment after security breaches led to lawsuits challenging the result of a closely-watched special election. Polling places in the state have exclusively used Diebold touchscreen DREs since 2002, but election officials are considering the ES&S ExpressVote/DS200 paper ballot system for the future.

The North Carolina General Assembly approved new House and Senate maps for review by the judges who struck down the current maps. With little incentive to diminish their hols on legislative power, the Republican-led effort has faced sustained criticism for voting advocates and Democrats. Rep. Deb Butler, a Democrat from Wilmington, said the new maps are so unfair to Democrats that it would be as if a baseball team had to start every game down 6-0 and forced to bat with their non-dominant hands. Meanwhile, responding to an appeal from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the US Supreme Court put a temporary hold on a unanimous lower court ruling that nine Texas legislative districts needed to be redrawn because lawmakers intentionally discriminated against minorities in drawing them.

Opposition parties in Angola have rejected provisional results from an Aug. 23 election that gave the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola a majority of votes. The official results of the election, which International observers described the election as reasonably free and fair the ruling MPLA party won just over 61 percent of the votes cast. But the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) has accused the government of manipulating the vote, for example by depriving opposition groups of media access.

After a stunning decision that found that last month’s re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta was tainted by irregularities, the Kenyan Supreme Court nullified the election and ordered a new vote to be held within 60 days. The judges said: “[The election commission] failed, neglected or refused to conduct the presidential election in a manner consistent with the dictates of the constitution.” They did not place blame on Kenyatta or his party.

National: Russian Election Hacking Efforts, Wider Than Previously Known, Draw Little Scrutiny | The New York Times

The calls started flooding in from hundreds of irate North Carolina voters just after 7 a.m. on Election Day last November. Dozens were told they were ineligible to vote and were turned away at the polls, even when they displayed current registration cards. Others were sent from one polling place to another, only to be rejected. Scores of voters were incorrectly told they had cast ballots days earlier. In one precinct, voting halted for two hours. Susan Greenhalgh, a troubleshooter at a nonpartisan election monitoring group, was alarmed. Most of the complaints came from Durham, a blue-leaning county in a swing state. The problems involved electronic poll books — tablets and laptops, loaded with check-in software, that have increasingly replaced the thick binders of paper used to verify voters’ identities and registration status. She knew that the company that provided Durham’s software, VR Systems, had been penetrated by Russian hackers months before. “It felt like tampering, or some kind of cyberattack,” Ms. Greenhalgh said about the voting troubles in Durham.

National: Electronic voting systems in the U.S. need post-election audits | TechTarget

The state of Colorado has taken a step toward rebuilding public trust in the election system in the United States.

Beginning in November 2017, Colorado will require risk-limiting audits, or RLAs, in elections statewide. The state has always required traditional post-election audits, but in 2009, a law passed requiring RLAs throughout Colorado. According to the statute, an RLA is “an audit protocol that makes use of statistical methods and is designed to limit acceptable levels of risk of certifying a preliminary election outcome that constitutes an incorrect outcome.” This means that all post-election audits in the state of Colorado compare a random sample of paper ballots to their digital counterparts. Colorado’s law is, in large part, a reaction to recent events in the U.S. and across the globe that have called the security of electronic voting systems into question and emphasized the importance of election audits for all levels of elections.

Alaska: State weighing options for conducting elections | Associated Press

The state of Alaska is exploring options for conducting elections after 2018, as it is faced with an aging voting system and financial pressures amid an ongoing state budget deficit. A bipartisan working group established by Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott is examining the issue. Josie Bahnke, director of the state Division of Elections, said one option that has gotten attention is a hybrid system would include allowing for early, in-person voting and voting by mail. But she said discussions are preliminary and more research must be done to see if this approach would work in Alaska, a vast state with far-flung communities. In certain parts of Alaska, the state must provide language assistance, including for a number of Alaska Native languages and dialects.

Georgia: New voting machines could change how your vote is cast | CBS46

Georgia is getting voting machines that could change how your vote is cast and counted. A spokesman for the Secretary of State’s Office would not confirm the details for this story, but we learned there’s about to be a big development that could signal a shift in election equipment. Express Vote machines will get a trial run in the Conyers mayoral race this November. “The pilot program in November addresses some concerns that have been raised about the state’s machines,” says Dr. William Boone, a political science professor at Clark Atlanta University. Rockdale County Elections Director Cynthia Welch told CBS46, “If all goes well, the state will probably ask for legislation where we can test the system statewide.”

North Carolina: It’s back to court for proposed new redistricting maps | News & Observer

New maps for electing members of the North Carolina House and Senate are ready for review by the judges who struck down the current maps. The General Assembly approved the maps Wednesday. Politicians from all corners of the state took advantage of their last chance to weigh in on the maps before final House and Senate votes, with Democrats taking up most of the speaking time to lodge a few final complaints to no avail. Rep. Deb Butler, a Democrat from Wilmington, acknowledged the Little League World Series team from Greenville who had spent the morning being applauded by legislators in between redistricting debates. She said the new maps are so unfair to Democrats that it would be as if the baseball team had to start every game down 6-0 and forced to bat with their non-dominant hands. She asked her Republican colleagues, who mostly supported the new maps, to reconsider their support. “The public, like those boys, expect nothing less than a level playing field,” Butler said. But in the end the maps passed both the House and Senate. Next stop: The judicial branch.

South Carolina: Watchdogs want full report cards on election weaknesses | The State

State election officials say that despite millions of cyber attempts to gain access to South Carolina’s voter registration system in the past year, no one has succeeded. But two election watchdogs complain that problems have been discovered and they want to be shown evidence of their severity. … Initial assessments by the S.C. National Guard’s Military Department Defense Cyber Operations and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security done in the wake of the Russian hacking of the presidential election found weaknesses in all county offices and at the state elections agency. The elections agency later hired the Charleston-based cybersecurity firm Soteria to plug the holes. But a USC computer science professor and a Lowcountry elections watchdog want to see the full assessments for themselves. “Every single county has at least a critical or high vulnerability,” said University of South Carolina computer science professor and elections analyst Duncan Buell. “They were not doing the no-brainer things for election security.” The Homeland Security assessment found the same level of vulnerability in servers used by the state agency, he said.

Texas: U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocks ruling against Texas House map | The Texas Tribune

A lower court ruling that invalidated parts of the Texas House state map has been temporarily blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court. Responding swiftly to an appeal by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Justice Samuel Alito on Thursday signed an order to put on hold a three-judge panel’s unanimous ruling that nine Texas legislative districts needed to be redrawn because lawmakers intentionally discriminated against minorities in crafting them. Alito directed the minority rights groups suing the state to file a response to the state’s appeal by Sept. 7. The lower court’s ruling could affect nine House districts across Dallas, Nueces, Bell and Tarrant counties. But adjusting those boundaries could have a ripple effect on neighboring districts.

Angola: Two Main Opposition Parties Reject Election Results | Bloomberg

Angola’s two biggest opposition parties rejected provisional results from an Aug. 23 election that gave the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola a majority of votes. The southern African nation’s second-biggest opposition party, the Broad Consensus for Angola Salvation – Electoral Coalition, known as Casa-Ce, said in an emailed statement that the vote count lacked transparency and wasn’t based on reliable information. Its refusal to accept the outcome came after the biggest opposition party, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or Unita, said Aug. 26 that it didn’t consider the provisional results valid.

Kenya: Supreme Court annuls Uhuru Kenyatta election victory | The Guardian

Kenya’s supreme court has declared Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory in the presidential election last month invalid and ordered a new vote to be held within 60 days.The decision to nullify the result, a first in Kenya, sets up a new race for the presidency between Kenyatta and the veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga. Analysts said it marked a watershed in the east African nation and set a unique precedent for the continent. Kenyatta accepted the court decision on Friday afternoon, calling for “peace, peace, peace” in a televised address. The six-judge bench ruled 4-2 in favour of a petition filed by Odinga, who claimed the electronic voting results were hacked and manipulated in favour of the incumbent. Kenyatta was declared the election winner with 54% of the vote.

National: Adam Schiff pushes to defund Trump’s voter fraud commission | The Hill

A Democratic lawmaker has introduced an amendment to an upcoming government spending bill that would defund President Trump’s controversial commission on voter fraud. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) announced the amendment in a press release this week that accuses the panel co-chaired by Vice President Pence of “appearing to lay the groundwork for a push to place new restrictions on voting that disproportionately disadvantages minority voters.” “This commission is an effort to validate the President’s repeated and baseless claim that millions of fraudulent ballots were cast in the 2016 election, and I fear it lays the groundwork for new efforts to make it more difficult to vote across the country,” Schiff said in the statement.

National: Judge Nails Trump’s Fraud Commission on Records Handling | Courthouse News

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to show more evidence that a new commission tasked with investigating election fraud is complying with public-disclosure laws. The order this morning came as part of a demand by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law for limited discovery after the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity failed to release all of the materials it used during its first meeting on July 19. Despite having promised to release all materials before the meeting even occurred, the commission explained in a July 31 opposition brief that it could not do so because certain commission members did not submit their materials in advance.

Editorials: What’s ‘Proportional Voting,’ and Why Is It Making a Comeback? | Alan Greenblatt/Governing

It’s a sign of popular disillusionment with the current course of American democracy that the past couple of years have produced a flurry of reform ideas aimed at changing the way elections are conducted. The newer proposals allow voters to rank several candidates in order of preference, or create nonpartisan primaries in which the top-two finishers are nominated, regardless of party. One older idea that’s being talked about again is proportional voting. Proportional elections are conducted in other countries, and in many of those places, the rules are pretty simple. If a party wins 30 percent of the national vote, it wins 30 percent of the legislative seats. That’s not the way it’s generally been tried in the United States.

California: Senate passes bill to change San Diego elections | The San Diego Union-Tribune

legislation that could clear the way for major changes in San Diego County elections passed the state Senate Thursday and is headed to the governor for consideration. The bill by Assemblyman Todd Gloria, D-San Diego, would allow for a charter amendment that would require races for county offices to be determined in the November general election, regardless of the results in the June primary. The bill only applies to San Diego County. It passed the Senate by 23-14.

Indiana: Study Committee Considers Automatic Voter Registration | WBAA

Members of a legislative study committee Wednesday debated the merits of automatic voter registration. The discussion was part of an examination of election laws’ impact on voter participation. Ten states in the country have some form of automatic voter registration. In most of them, citizens are registered to vote while doing other business at the BMV. Advocates say the system could increase voter turnout.

Iowa: Cybersecurity firm to review Linn County election system | The Gazette

The Linn County election commissioner has retained a Corridor-based cybersecurity firm to review the county’s voter registration and election system. Linn County Auditor Joel Miller said the review of the system by ProCircular will support the countywide school board elections Sept. 12. “This is a continuation of our efforts to improve the integrity of the voting process to ensure that our systems and records are secure, and that every vote is accurately counted,” Miller said. He also cited a “sense of urgency” because of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s recent declaration that voting systems are considered “critical infrastructure.”

Kansas: Kobach’s office files 2 new election fraud cases in Kansas | Lawrence Journal World

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office has filed two new criminal election fraud cases, including one alleging that a non-U.S. citizen illegally attempted to vote last year. The three felony charges filed earlier this month in Johnson County against Sergio Salgado-Juarez marked the second time in two years that Kobach’s office has prosecuted a noncitizen for voting or attempting to vote. Legislators gave his office the authority to prosecute election fraud cases in 2015, making him the only top state elections official in the nation with that power. Ten of the 12 cases filed by Kobach’s office have charged people with voting illegally in Kansas while voting in the same elections in other states. His office filed four felony charges earlier this month in Franklin County against David E. Haddock, alleging he voted there last year while also voting in Colorado.

Maine: House Speaker Wants To Add Ranked-Choice Voting To Legislature’s Special Session | MPR

Maine Gov. Paul LePage is expected to call the Legislature into special session sometime this fall to take up several unresolved issues. But Maine’s speaker of the house expects that the session will also deal with other matters as well, including ranked-choice voting. House Speaker Sara Gideon says she wants to meet with LePage next week to nail down a time for the special session he plans to call. She says the Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee will be asked to shape a proposal to address the constitutional problems with the voter-passed measure establishing ranked-choice voting in the state.

Michigan: ‘Nonpartisan’ redistricting board has partisan ties | The Detroit News

A majority of leaders behind a “nonpartisan” plan to reform the Michigan redistricting process have supported partisan Democrats in the past, fueling criticism from a conservative group opposing the effort. Seven of 10 board members of the Voters Not Politicians petition committee have given at least a combined $5,649 to Democratic candidates and causes since 2005, according state and federal campaign finance records compiled by the Michigan Freedom Fund. None have given to Republicans or third-party candidates. The group’s “anti-gerrymandering” petition proposes amending the Michigan Constitution to create an independent citizen redistricting commission that would redraw legislative and congressional boundaries every 10 years.

New Hampshire: Secretary of State’s Office Examines Processes After Disclosure of Nonpublic Info on Voter Checklists | NHPR

Deputy Secretary of State Dave Scanlan says the office is reevaluating its guidance to cities and towns after “handwritten confidential, non-public information” was found in the public voter checklists of more than 40 New Hampshire communities. Scanlan said his office conducts regular training with local pollworkers covering all kinds of angles of the state’s election laws, but they could do a better job explaining what information should and should not appear on those documents when training local election workers. “We talk to them about the proper way to mark a checklist,” Scanlan said. “In the past, though, I don’t think we have been specific saying that you should not put extraneous stuff on the checklist, because it’s a public document.”

New Hampshire: Why Is Bill Gardner Giving Cover To Trump’s Bogus Voter Fraud Panel? | TPM

For four decades, New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner (D) has earned bipartisan reverence for keeping his state’s primaries first in the nation. So why is he spending that hard-earned capital giving bipartisan cover to President Trump’s controversial voter fraud panel? … “I personally wish that he had declined to be involved,” Fergus Cullen, the former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party and a frequent Trump critic, told TPM. “It gives this farce a sense of legitimacy.” … Gardner has said he joined the Trump commission to prove whether or not there’s widespread voter fraud — something he’s much more skeptical of than others on the commission. But many argue that his mere presence fuels the insanity he’s trying to knock down, giving Trump and Kobach bipartisan cover.