National: Vote Fraud Crusader J. Christian Adams Sparks Outrage | NBC

J. Christian Adams claims there’s an “alien invasion” at the voting booth. Adams, a member of President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission, is dedicating his life to cleaning up registration rolls around the country and trying to prevent non-citizens from casting ballots. To do so, he’s spent years suing counties to force them to purge their rolls and he’s published personal information online about thousands of registered voters he believes could have committed fraud. Adams has turned allegations of sweeping, illegal voting into a career marked by frequent litigation and a bombastic media presence — calling critics who say that there’s no widespread proof of voter fraud “flat-earthers.”

National: Kander says courts can’t be counted on to save voting rights in Trump era | The Kansas City Star

Former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander told a crowd of people at a progressive event in Parkville Saturday that they can’t just rely on the courts to protect voting rights under President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Kander, a Democrat, said that with Trump appointing judges and Sessions running the U.S. Department of Justice, voting rights cases will become tougher to win. Legal challenges have to be paired with political activism. “I believe there should be political consequences for politicians who commit voter suppression,” Kander said. “I believe that if you make it harder to vote, then we should make it harder for you to get reelected.” Kander, who started a political action committee this year called Let America Vote, spoke at a “voting rights festival” hosted at English Landing Park by Northland Progress. The festival is part of the group’s “In for 10” campaign, in which volunteers pledge to help at least 10 Missouri citizens register to vote.

National: Florida judge dismisses fraud lawsuit against DNC | The Washington Post

A year-long legal battle over the Democratic National Committee’s handling of the 2016 presidential primary came to an end Friday, with a federal judge in Florida dismissing a class-action suit brought by supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “To the extent Plaintiffs wish to air their general grievances with the DNC or its candidate selection process, their redress is through the ballot box, the DNC’s internal workings, or their right of free speech — not through the judiciary,” Judge William Zloch, a Reagan appointee, wrote in his dismissal. “To the extent Plaintiffs have asserted specific causes of action grounded in specific factual allegations, it is this Court’s emphatic duty to measure Plaintiffs’ pleadings against existing legal standards. Having done so . . . the Court finds that the named Plaintiffs have not presented a case that is cognizable in federal court.”

Editorials: What I Learned at Gerrymandering Summer Camp | Issie Lapowsky/WIRED

At 6’5″, Aaron Dennis towers over the whiteboard beside him. Blue marker in hand, the 22-year-old hunches slightly to jot down suggestions being shouted by a group of people deep into a brainstorming session. Dressed mostly in nerdy T-shirts (one reads Science! with a test tube in place of the letter i), they’re trying to come up with names for a tech tool they plan to build during a two-day hackathon at Tufts University’s data lab. The group includes computer science PhD candidates, mathematicians, political operatives, and experts in so-called geographic information systems, or GIS. That’s the mapping technology that underlies many apps and software tools that run our lives, from Google Maps to logistics software. It also comes in handy when you’re carving the American electorate into voting districts that favor your political party, a time-honored—and reviled—tradition known as gerrymandering.

Editorials: President Trump’s ‘election integrity’ panel is a sham | USA Today

As the 2018 and 2020 elections approach, federal and state officials ought to be scrambling for ways to prevent a repeat of Russian interference or other meddling in American democracy. Instead, many are on an obsessive hunt to eradicate phantom problems, such as supposedly massive fraud by non-citizens and people voting in two states. The upshot is that 54 years after Martin Luther King Jr. appealed for voting rights in his “I Have a Dream” speech, those rights remain under a double-barreled assault.

California: There’s a simple reason some say it’s time for a larger California Legislature | Los Angeles Times

When the California Legislature reconvenes this week for its final month of work for the year, its members will likely do what they believe is in their constituents’ best interests. And yet, Californians have less representation than citizens of states such as Georgia and Minnesota. A single state senator in Sacramento represents roughly 988,000 people — more than the populations of six states. Each Assembly member now represents nearly half a million people, about 45 times more Californians than each lawmaker represented in the years following the historic Gold Rush. In short, California’s representative democracy is a far cry from the days when politicians could easily connect with their constituents. “That whole concept has gotten totally lost in California,” said Mark Paul, a journalist and historian who co-wrote a book on improving the Golden State’s system of governance.

Editorials: Here’s how to fix Indiana’s rigged voting system | Indianpolis Star

Let’s be honest: Republicans have gamed Indiana’s voting system to their advantage. They gerrymandered congressional and legislative districts in their favor after the 2010 Census, helping the party gain supermajorities in the Indiana House and Senate. They’ve also suppressed the number of early voting sites in Democratic areas while encouraging their expansion in counties where Republicans dominate. Consider that in Marion County, population 939,000, voters can cast early ballots at only one location, at the City-County Building in congested Downtown. Republicans repeatedly have blocked proposals to open more voting centers in Indy.

Editorials: Why did Kansas discard nearly 14,000 ballots in the 2016 election? | The Kansas City Star

On Thursday, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York urged the White House to disband its misnamed Election Integrity Commission, whose vice chairman is Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Otherwise, Schumer said, he’ll try to block the commission by forcing its demise in an amendment to must-pass legislation, such as an increase in the debt ceiling or a government funding bill. We’re not big fans of using must-pass bills as trees on which to hang unrelated legislative ornaments. But the senator is right to call for the dismantling of the already-discredited commission. The effort to verify President Donald Trump’s claim that millions of Americans voted illegally is a waste of time and money. Instead, Americans should support Schumer’s alternative: public hearings on the status of voting rights.

Michigan: Complaint claims state elections bureau illegally assisted redistricting group | MLive

A Republican strategist has filed a complaint against Michigan’s Bureau of Elections alleging state officials acted improperly when advising the group pushing for an independent redistricting commission on the 2018 ballot. Robert LaBrant, who currently serves as counsel for the Lansing-based Sterling Corporation, submitted the complaint Thursday. He wrote the bureau’s review of the petition language submitted by the group Voters Not Politicians was a “misplaced, over-zealous attempt at being customer friendly even though the service the bureau provided VNP is illegal.” 

New Hampshire: Gardner invites Schumer to fraud commission meeting | Union Leader

Secretary of State Bill Gardner has invited Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York to address President Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity when it meets in New Hampshire next month. The invitation comes days after Schumer, in a national opinion column, called on Trump to disband the commission saying it was critical in the wake of the racist march on Charlottesville that turned deadly this month. “We need more than just words – we also need action,” Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote in an opinion piece first published at Medium. “And I believe that one important way that Congress can begin to heal this painful divide in our country when we return in September is by showing that we can come together to stop the systemic disenfranchisement of American voters.”

North Carolina: State Supreme Court hears bellwether redistricting and voting rights cases | News & Observer

The state Supreme Court will hear two cases on Monday that could determine how much power North Carolina lawmakers have as the 2018 elections approach. Gov. Roy Cooper has asked the seven justices to review a three-judge panel’s decision that upheld the merger this year of the state elections board and ethics commission, a case that could determine whether Republicans will have leadership on elections boards at the state and county level during presidential election years when North Carolina voters also elect their governor. Another case that will go before the state’s highest court on Monday is a redistricting challenge sent back to the justices earlier this year after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed federal court rulings finding unconstitutional racial gerrymandering in 28 state legislative districts and two unconstitutional gerrymanders in place from 2011 to 2016.

Oregon: Legality of Oregon Secretary of State Richardson’s election rule change questioned | The Register-Guard

A change in the rules for collecting initiative petition signatures in Oregon, proposed by Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, may be on shaky legal ground, according to a preliminary analysis by the Legislature’s lawyers. Richardson, a Republican, wants to let the backers of initiative petitions start gathering signatures before their ballot title — the neutral, summarized descriptor of what the measure would do — is finalized. Under current practice, backers must wait until their ballot title is approved by either the Oregon attorney general or the state Supreme Court, a process that can be lengthy due to legal disputes about what wording is the most accurate and fair.

Texas: After losses on voting laws and districting, Texas turns to Supreme Court | The Washington Post

The state of Texas is in the midst of an extraordinary losing streak in federal courts over the way it conducts elections. It is hoping the Supreme Court will come to the rescue. In the past couple of weeks, federal judges in four separate cases ruled that the Texas Legislature discriminated against minorities in drawing congressional and legislative districts, setting ID requirements for voters and even regulating who can assist voters for whom English is not their first language. Two courts are considering whether the actions intended to discourage African American and Hispanic voters. If the courts find that the efforts were intentional, it could return Texas to the kind of federal oversight from which the Supreme Court freed it and other mostly Southern states in the landmark 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder.

Editorials: A judge ruled Texas’s second try at voter ID laws is illegal. She’s right. | The Washington Post

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Texas’s voter identification law is illegal. Again. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos had previously repudiated the state legislature’s toughest-in-the-nation ballot ID law, and the appeals court above her largely agreed. Now she has found that the state’s second try at imposing voter ID rules is not good enough, either. She is right. Ms. Ramos found previously that the forms of ID the state would accept made things disproportionately more difficult for minority voters. Polling workers would accept gun licenses, which white people are more likely to carry. But they would not accept other forms of state-issued ID that minority voters might have in greater proportion. In fact, the list of acceptable ID was exceptionally narrow, especially compared with other states. After negative court rulings, the state expanded the list slightly — but not “meaningfully,” Ms. Ramos found. The discriminatory effect still existed.

Angola: Opposition to contest election loss in court | AFP

One of Angola’s main opposition parties plans to contest the results of last week’s general election, alleging unfair conduct during the vote that kept the ruling party of former president Jose Eduardo Dos Santos in power. The ruling MPLA party won just over 61 percent of the votes cast on Wednesday and about 150 of the 220 seats in Parliament, according to election commission officials, which would put a Dos Santos loyalist, Joao Lourenco, in the presidency. 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.

Germany: CDU, SPD and Greens use big data to target Bundestag voters | Deutsche Welle

The Christian Democrats and Social Democrats are going door-to-door collecting voter information. They are hoping to gain access to the electorate in a way that was once unthinkable under Germany’s strict privacy laws. Cornelius Golembiewski takes an iPad and a smartphone with him when he goes door-to-door for the Christian Democrats (CDU). On the iPad, he sees a map of his hometown, Jena, covered in green spots. The green indicates clusters of houses where potential CDU voters are likely to live.

Kenya: Court orders scrutiny of electronic vote-count systems | Reuters

Kenya’s Supreme Court ordered the elections commission on Monday to allow the opposition, which is disputing the results of this month’s presidential vote, have access to its computer servers and electronic devices used in the vote-count. Election authorities say President Uhuru Kenyatta easily won a second term in the Aug. 8 polls by 1.4 million votes. A parallel tally by independent monitors based on a sample of around 2,000 polling stations produced a similar result. But opposition leader Raila Odinga is disputing these results, which sparked scattered protests in parts of Kenya. The protests, which dissipated within days, had raised fears that political violence could again destabilize the region’s biggest economy, as it did following a disputed election in 2007.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for August 21-27 2017

An NBC News investigation revealed that election officials in the most heavily populated counties of three crucial swing states – Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan – still haven’t received formal training on how to detect and fight attacks. Election security experts stress the importance of training local election officials on how to avoid cybersecurity risks noting…

National: Many County Election Officials Still Lack Cybersecurity Training | NBC

Despite Russia’s attempt to hack the 2016 U.S. election and the voter registration systems of 21 states, an NBC News investigation reveals that election officials in the most heavily populated counties of three crucial swing states still haven’t received formal training on how to detect and fight attacks. Election officials in three of Pennsylvania’s four biggest counties — Philadelphia, Allegheny and Bucks, which together account for nearly a third of the state’s voters — told NBC News they never received cybersecurity training, which experts say is crucial for officials to identify risks. NBC reached out to election officials in every county in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan and got responses from 60 percent of the counties. Officials from all 15 Arizona counties responded, but only five said their officials had received cybersecurity training. In Pennsylvania, where 42 of 67 counties responded, eight counties said their workers had training. In Michigan, 40 of the state’s 83 counties responded, and only 12 indicated receiving formal training.

National: Proposed legislation discourages Russia-U.S. cyber pact, while prioritizing election security | SC Magazine

A U.S. intelligence bill that recently passed committee in the Senate contains key provisions designed to defend the electoral process from Russian meddling and other foreign interference, as well as curtail any possible White House effort to form a joint cybersecurity unit with the Kremlin. Passed in the Senate Intelligence Committee by a 14-1 margin this past July and made public just days ago, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal year 2018 explicitly forbids the U.S. government from using federal resources to form a cyber partnership with Russia, unless the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) first submits a report that congressional intelligence committee members can review 30 days in advance of such an agreement. This key clause is a blatant rebuke of President Donald Trump, who fleetingly announced a U.S.-Russian cyber unit in July before backing off the idea amidst backlash.

Editorials: Open-Source Software Won’t Ensure Election Security | Lawfare

The technology behind elections is hard to get right. Elections require security. They also require transparency: anyone should be able to observe enough of the election process, from distribution of ballots, to the counting and canvassing of votes, to verify that the reported winners really won. But if people vote on computers or votes are tallied by computers, key steps of the election are not transparent and additional measures are needed to confirm the results. In a New York Times op-ed a couple weeks ago, James Woolsey and Brian Fox proposed using “open-source systems that can guard our votes against manipulation.” Their hypothesis is that “open-source software is less vulnerable to hacking” than proprietary voting software because “anyone can see how open-source systems operate. Bugs can be spotted and remedied, deterring those who would attempt attacks. This makes them much more secure than closed-source models.” This sounds reasonable, but in fact, open-source systems are only one step towards guarding our votes against manipulation—and the hypothesis that using open source software will by itself improve security is questionable at best.

Georgia: Election hacking suit over Georgia race could be sign of what’s to come | USA Today

First elections, then probes into hacking. Now, the lawsuits over election hacking. A group of Democrat and Republican voters in Georgia is suing the state to overturn its fiercely fought June special election, saying evidence the state’s voter database was exposed to potential hackers for at least eight months invalidates the results. The lawsuit, which went to pre-trial conferences this week, could be a sign of disputes to come as revelations mount about the vulnerability of the U.S. election system and Russian attempts to infiltrate it. “As public attention finally starts to focus on the cybersecurity of election systems, we will see more suits like this one, and eventually, a woke judge will invalidate an election,” said Bruce McConnell, vice president of the EastWest Institute and former Department of Homeland Security deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity during the Obama administration. Plaintiffs argue the disclosure in August 2016 by Logan Lamb, a Georgia-based computer security expert, that much of Georgia’s voting system was inadvertently left out in the open on the Internet without password protection from August 2016 to March 2017 should make the results moot. What’s more, Georgia’s use of what the plaintiffs say are insecure touch-screen voting computers, which they claim don’t comply with Georgia state requirements for security testing, means the election results couldn’t legally be certified, they say.

Kansas: Uncounted ballots fuel fears about Kobach’s proposals | Associated Press

A conservative firebrand promoting President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud oversees a Kansas election system that threw out at least three times as many ballots as any similarly sized state did, fueling concerns about massive voter suppression should its practices become the national standard. Only six states – all among the top 10 in population – discarded more votes during the 2016 election than the 33rd-largest state of Kansas, according to data collected by the bipartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency that certifies voting systems. Kansas’ 13,717 rejected ballots even topped the 13,461 from Florida, which has about seven times as many residents. Critics of Kansas’ election system argue its unusually high number of discarded ballots reflects policies shaped over several elections that have resulted in many legitimate voters being kept off voter rolls in an effort to crack down on a few illegitimate ones.

Maryland: Federal court knocks down redistricting case as plaintiffs vow to appeal to Supreme Court | Baltimore Sun

A federal district court rejected a claim Thursday by seven Maryland Republicans that the state’s 2011 redistricting violated their First Amendment rights, setting up another Supreme Court fight over the heavily litigated maps. In a case closely watched by state political leaders, the court found the plaintiffs failed to meet the standard required to order an immediate redrawing of the boundaries. In a 2-1 decision, the court said it wanted to see the outcome of a separate gerrymandering claim from Wisconsin pending before the Supreme Court before deciding the Maryland lawsuit. “The time and resources necessary to implement a new map would surely have the effect of scuttling other legislative priorities in advance of the 2018 [legislative] session,” the court wrote. “The remedy would be highly consequential.”

Texas: House map must be redrawn, federal court says | The Texas Tribune

Parts of the Texas House map must be redrawn ahead of the 2018 elections because lawmakers intentionally discriminated against minorities in crafting several legislative districts, federal judges ruled on Thursday. A three-judge panel in San Antonio unanimously ruled that Texas must address violations that could affect the configuration of House districts in four counties, where lawmakers diluted the strength of voters of color.  In some cases, the court found mapdrawers intentionally undercut minority voting power “to ensure Anglo control” of legislative districts. Adjusting those boundaries could have a ripple effect on other races.

Texas: Federal judge tosses new Texas voter ID law; state plans to appeal | The Texas Tribune

A federal judge has tossed out a new law softening Texas’ strict voter identification requirements. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos on Wednesday ruled that Senate Bill 5, signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in June, doesn’t absolve Texas lawmakers from responsibility for discriminating against Latino and black voters when they crafted one of the nation’s strictest voter ID laws in 2011. The judge also ruled that the state failed to prove that the new law would accommodate such voters going forward. The Corpus Christi judge’s ruling is the latest twist in a six-year battle over Texas’ laws restricting what forms of identification are accepted at the polls, and it sets up a round of squabbling over whether the federal government should once again pre-approve the state’s election laws. SB 5 was the Legislature’s attempt to wriggle free of consequences after courts found fault with its 2011 ID law.

Angola: Ruling party claims election victory | The Guardian

The ruling party in Angola has claimed a widely expected election victory, setting the stage for a change of leadership after decades of authoritarian rule by the cold war veteran José Eduardo dos Santos. Though final results from Wednesday’s voting were still being counted, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) said it was on track to win a two-thirds parliamentary majority, based on its calculations. In Angola, political parties are allowed to observe the elections by posting party members at every polling station and by assimilating results, the parties attempt to predict the election outcome. Though the MPLA has yet to lose an electoral contest since a return to multiparty democracy 25 years ago, the real significance of the poll was that 74-year-old Dos Santos, who has ruled Angola for 38 years, did not stand as a presidential candidate.

Kenya: Opposition to tell court that technology enabled election fraud | Reuters

Kenya’s opposition will argue before the Supreme Court that technology enabled rather than curbed election fraud, as it seeks to overturn a vote this month won by President Uhuru Kenyatta. Opposition leader Raila Odinga’s National Super Alliance (NASA) said in a petition filed on Friday that results from more than a third of polling stations were “fatally flawed”, in some cases because of irregularities in electronic transmission of paper results forms. The documents suggest the opposition will link alleged irregularities to the murder of Chris Msando, the election official overseeing information technology, days before the Aug. 8 election.