Yearly Archives: 2017

It’s a fact few people, even politicians know: Every jurisdiction, whether it be a city, town, fire district, school district or water district, must pay its county’s election department to get their races and measures on a ballot. There’s one exception- the State of Washington. State laws says the state is exempt from reimbursing counties the costs of putting state and federal races on ballots during years ending in an even number. State auditors and election officials say those costs are being place on the backs of counties and jurisdictions — some that can barely afford to put on an election. “The state is getting a free ride in even years when it’s the most expensive,” says Julie Anderson, Pierce County Auditor who is heading up a legislative effort of state auditors to change the law.

Germany: Russian Hackers Can’t Beat German Democracy | Foreign Policy

Less than two months remain before Germans go to the polls in a general election. On the surface, this has been as regular an election season as can be: Parties have assembled their programs and teams, candidates have been out campaigning, and politics have mostly revolved around the classic issues: taxes, social benefits, public investment. Yet hanging over this appearance of normalcy is the question of when and how Russia will inject itself into the upcoming ballot. After apparent interference in the U.S. and French elections, there can be little doubt that the Kremlin will also attempt to sway the vote in Germany. Indeed, the German interior minister recently issued a public warning about potential Russian cyberattacks and disinformation ahead of the elections. While it remains unclear what the Kremlin has in store, chances are that it will try — and that German democracy will weather the onslaught.

India: Poll panel’s plan to use VVPATs in 2019 elections on track | The Economic Times

EC’s bid to conduct the 2019 general elections using an entirely new set of electronic voting machines with Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is running four weeks behind schedule. While the general elections are scheduled to be held in May 2019, the 16-lakh VVPAT machines to be used in the polls were to be received by September 2018. According to EC officials, who are closely monitoring the procurement of the machines, the delay has been caused by minor ‘slippages’ related to security of EVMs. EC officials, however, said the plan to use VVPAT machines in 2019 was still on track and such machines would be used across all booths for the first time. ET has learnt that in a review meeting on Wednesday, there were discussions around the security of EVMs which has led to the delay. “Even though we are looking at using new EVMs for the election, it is important that all loose ends related to security are cleared,” a highly placed official said.

Kenya: Threat of another violent vote looms after a decade of injustice | The Independent

Jane keeps the well-worn sarong wrap neatly folded in her home in a Nairobi slum, a memento of a life-altering event a decade ago. She was draped with it after two policemen raped her and left her to rioters the officers had been deployed to stop during deadly post-election violence. “I lost consciousness after the first two civilians raped me. After that, I don’t know how many people did it,” she said. “All this while my 5-year-old daughter was hiding in an empty water container. She hid there when the policemen started breaking into houses and looting.” The 38-year-old tailor says she regained consciousness, with a broken hip and knee, when an elderly neighbour gently dressed her in the sarong. The neighbour “had also been raped by the police as her grown-up son watched and then they ordered him to clean his mother,” Jane said. “I can never forget her compassion.” Kenyans again face the threat of violence as the 8 August presidential election approaches, even as many who survived the deadliest period in the East African country’s history 10 years ago say they still haven’t found justice.

New Zealand: How Motherhood Became an Election Issue in New Zealand | The Atlantic

A television host’s question on motherhood to the new leader of New Zealand’s opposition Labour Party has prompted a row over gender roles in the country that was the first to give women the right to vote. Jacinda Ardern was elected head of Labour on Tuesday, and at 37 she is the youngest person, and second woman (Helen Clark, the first, was also a prime minister), to lead the party. The headlines about her so far have been enthusiastic. She’s being portrayed as “authentic,” “powerful, composed, and eloquent”—all traits she’ll need when New Zealand votes next month in parliamentary elections. Her party’s poor performance in the polls prompted Andrew Little, its leader, to step down. Ardern, who had been spoken of as a future party leader, ascended to the post almost immediately. But if persuading the electorate that Labour is worth voting for is one battle for Ardern, her other battle was persuading television panelists that her future plans for motherhood was irrelevant to her potential leadership of New Zealand. She and her partner, Clarke Gayford, don’t have children, and Ardern has previously discussed how wanting children has made her think about her professional choices. But the questions about parenthood began a few hours after her election Tuesday as Labour’s leader.

Rwanda: Rwanda prepares for general and presidential polls | Al Jazeera

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has campaigned in Gasabo, a suburb of the capital Kigali, in the run-up to the August 4 general and presidential elections. Tens of thousands of his supporters had to be beaten back by police brandishing baton sticks and fenced in on Wednesday as they fought to catch one last glimpse of their leader. Some claim the rally is evidence of the depth of Kagame’s support Kagame in the lead-up to Friday’s poll. “It’s because the people love him. He’s our hero, through him we built this country from scratch. Rwanda was dead before and now we are alive,” said Solange Mubaraki, the founder of Defence Spouses Alliance Cyuzuzo, a local support group of more than 250 wives of those serving in Rwanda’s security services. “Everyone can see Rwanda is not about genocide, but development and peace because of the leadership of Kagame,” he said.

National: Hacking voting machines takes center stage at DEFCON | Tech Target

“Anyone who says they’re un-hackable is either a fool or a liar.” Jake Braun, CEO of Cambridge Global Advisors and one of the main organizers of the DEFCON Voting Village, said the U.S. election industry has an attitude similar to what had been seen with the air and space industry and financial sectors. Companies in those sectors, Braun said, would often say they were un-hackable their machines didn’t touch the internet and their databases were air-gapped — until they were attacked by nation-states with unlimited resources and organized cybercrime syndicates and they realized they were “sitting ducks.” … Candice Hoke, law professor and co-director of the Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection, said in a DEFCON talk the laws surrounding investigations of potential election hacking were troublesome. “In some states, you need evidence of election hacking in order to begin an investigation. This is an invitation to hackers,” Hoke said. “We all know in the security world that you can’t run a secure system if no one is looking.”

National: New website aims to track Russian-backed propaganda on Twitter | Reuters

A website launched on Wednesday seeks to track Russian-supported propaganda and disinformation on Twitter, part of a growing non-governmental effort to diminish Moscow’s ability to meddle in future elections in the United States and Europe. The “Hamilton 68” dashboard (here) was built by researchers working with the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan, transatlantic project set up last month to counter Russian disinformation campaigns. The website, supported by the German Marshall Fund, displays a “near real-time” analysis of English-language tweets from a pool of 600 Twitter accounts that analysts identified as users that spread Russian propaganda.

National: Voting machines and election systems – a quick look | Associated Press

Digital voting machines are in the spotlight in Venezuela, where the head of Smartmatic, a maker of election systems used in the country’s tumultuous constituent-assembly election, said Wednesday that the official turnout figure had been “tampered with .” The company’s CEO said the count was off by at least 1 million votes — possibly in either direction. Tibisay Lucena, head of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, dismissed that allegation as an “irresponsible declaration” that might lead to legal action. The government-stacked electoral council claims more than 8 million people voted in the election for a nearly all-powerful constituent assembly. Independent analysts have expressed doubts at that number. Here’s a look at the technology and politics of voting machines and election systems. The voting-machine market is a speck in the prodigious tech sector. Iowa University computer scientist Douglas Jones estimates its annual revenues in the United States at less than $200 million — roughly what Google pulls in every day. It’s much harder to get reliable information about the fragmented global market for election systems.

Editorials: Republicans Want To Defund The Commission That Fights Voting Machine Hacking | Steny Hoyer/HuffPost

This past weekend, hackers gathered in Las Vegas with a simple mission: break into America’s electronic voting machines and take control. Within minutes, some had already succeeded – but that’s a good thing. These hackers were part of a workshop held to identify vulnerabilities so they can be fixed well before any Americans cast actual votes next election. This exercise underscores the very real danger posed by outdated and insecure voting-machine software – as well as the important mission our government must continue undertaking to close these vulnerabilities and safeguard our elections. However, in their FY2018 funding proposal, Republicans are going after the small but highly successful agency that protects the integrity of our voting systems: the Election Assistance Commission. In June, House Republicans included a provision in their Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill that would abolish the Election Assistance Commission.

Florida: Is Trump’s Fraud Commission to Blame for Rise in Florida Voter Cancellations? | Tampa Bay Times

During a recent 20-day period, 1,715 Florida voters took themselves off the registration rolls. The 117 percent spike in cancellations over the same period last year came as news spread of President Donald Trump’s fraud commission and its request for voter data from all 50 states. Did the request for voter information trigger the cancellations? While the increase suggests a correlation, regular maintenance of the voting rolls, a routine required by state law and unrelated to the federal commission, might also explain the increase. Here’s what we do know: On June 28, Trump’s official request for voter information, made by the commission’s vice chairman, Kris Kobach, sought the names, addresses, birth dates, political parties, electoral participation histories and last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number of every registered voter in the country.

Florida: Trial over Broward County’s disputed voting lists ends | Sun Sentinel

Broward County is not doing enough to remove ineligible voters from its lists, it was claimed at a federal trial that wrapped Wednesday. The argument came from the conservative American Civil Rights Union, which has been pursuing similar claims nationwide. … The defense said the data provided was misleading. Some voters, such as boat dwellers and homeless people, don’t have residential addresses. The dead people who were found on the rolls in 2012 were removed after the elections office verified the information it was given.

Georgia: Elections watchdog group seeks answers after Georgia drops 590,000 from voter rolls | Mic

A watchdog group is pushing the state of Georgia to explain why more than 591,000 people were struck from the voter rolls. “Each of the 591,548 voters affected by the move had already been on the state’s ‘inactive’ registration list,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported this week. That means those voters had not cast a ballot, updated their registration or address or responded to efforts to contact them for at least three years. Let America Vote, an advocacy group run by former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, wrote in a Wednesday letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp that federal law doesn’t permit the purge of voters simply for not voting.

Massachusetts: States with Election Day registration see bonus for democracy | The Boston Globe

Voting on Election Day usually entails some pre-planning, with registration required several days, if not weeks, ahead of time in most places. But now, following a court decision last week, Massachusetts is under pressure to join more than a dozen other states — including Connecticut, Maine, and Vermont — in allowing residents to register or reregister on Election day, and vote moments later. While the state’s top election official is raising concerns about costs, research shows that allowing same-day, or election-day, registration can bolster democracy by motivating voters to go to the polls. “While most other election reforms show pretty mixed effects, Election Day registration . . . has produced a wide consensus that in pretty much every study you find positive and increased voter turnout,” said Professor Barry C. Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Michigan: New voting machines coming to Michigan: Here’s how they’re different | Detroit Free Press

Cities across Michigan will be breaking in new voting equipment for Tuesday’s primary, following the discovery of irregularities during last year’s presidential election recount and as a commission appointed by the president looks into questions of voter integrity across the country. Detroit, which experienced numerous problems during the November 2016 election, will be the biggest of the 60 cities that will switch to the new voting machines next week. Some 45 counties will have the equipment on board by the November election. All municipalities in the state will be hooked up by the August 2018 primary election. “We knew it was time to get new equipment,” Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said during a demonstration Wednesday of the new equipment in Rochester Hills. “Our equipment was at least 10 years old and nearing the end of its life. Elections are too important to rely on old voting machines.” “They’ve made a lot of changes. We have high hopes for them,” said Sally Williams, the state’s newly appointed elections director.

North Carolina: Opponents expect new voter suppression bill | Winston Salem Chronicle

With the Republican-led legislature reconvening today, Aug. 3, for the first of two special sessions, there are concerns that part of the agenda beyond overriding Gov. Cooper’s vetoes, redrawing legislative voting maps and tinkering with judicial districts will be to pass another law designed to restrict voter access to the polls. “A new voter suppression bill is coming soon,” warned Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy N.C., a nonpartisan public policy advocacy group, in a mass email to supporters last week. “They’ve also been threatening for months to revive provisions of the 2013 Monster Voting Law, including a new photo ID bill that will target certain North Carolinians, harm eligible voters and trigger more costly litigation.”

Utah: Security on mind as state auditions new voting machines, software | Deseret News

Just last weekend, a long-running hackers convention in Las Vegas lined up a dozen U.S. electronic voting machines, many of which were obtained from government auctions and second-hand sources like eBay, and unleashed attendees on them. By the end of the weekend, all of the machines had been breached in one form or another. And while most of the equipment was somewhat out of date in terms of technology, a few of the models are still in use. DefCon 25 organizers said the exercise was about illustrating and helping address security vulnerabilities in the U.S. election system, a popular national conversation topic following allegations that are still under investigation of outside meddling in the 2016 election cycle. On Wednesday, another lineup of voting machines popped up at the Utah Capitol. This time, however, the event was aimed at giving members of the public an opportunity to audition some of the latest in voting technology as part of a state process to choose a new provider of voting equipment for county officials who operate Utah elections.

India: Government clears proxy vote move for Non-Resident Indians | The Indian Express

The Government on Wednesday approved changes in electoral laws to permit Non-Resident Indians to cast their vote in assembly and Lok Sabha elections from overseas. If the proposal passes political muster in Parliament, NRIs will be able to exercise their voting rights through “proxy”. Currently, only service personnel are permitted to vote through proxy. However, the facility for NRIs will not be the same as that enjoyed by service personnel. For instance, voters in the armed forces can nominate their relatives as permanent proxy to vote on their behalf. But the Union Cabinet’s approval for proxy voting by NRIs carries a caveat: they cannot nominate one proxy for all polls.

Kenya: Activists demand justice for murdered election official | Deutsche Welle

Rights activists marched through the streets of Nairobi to protest against the murder of election commission official Christopher Msando just days ahead of the polls. Dozens of Kenyans came together on Tuesday to protest the murder of Christopher Msando, a top election official who was tasked with overseeing the country’s crucial electronic voting system. He was found dead with signs of torture in a forest on the outskirts of Nairobi over the weekend. “We want to ensure that all Kenyans will be able to feel they are secure. Come election day, Kenyans have to be confident when they are going out there to cast their ballot,” said one protester in Nairobi. “As a democratic nation we want to ensure that everyone exercises their civic duty to go out there and vote,” she added. “The foul murder of Chris Msando is politically instigated,” said another protester marching along the streets of Nairobi.

Rwanda: Police Reassure of Security During Elections | allAfrica.com

The Inspector General of Police, Emmanuel Gasana, yesterday received a team of African Union observers currently in the country for the presidential election. The IGP briefed the delegation, led by the former Interim President of Mali, Dioncounda Traore, on the security situation in the country and reassured them of “peaceful, safe, and smooth elections.” Gasana underscored that the police established a security campaign plan for the entire electoral period – before, during, and shortly after the elections. He informed the observers that the campaign period has been incident-free and reassured them that the elections will be conducted in a secure environment.

Venezuela: Election results ‘manipulated’ by at least 1 million votes, polling company says | The Washington Post

Election results decried by government opponents as a brazen power grab were manipulated by at least 1 million votes, the company that provided Venezuela with its voting system said Wednesday. Antonio Mugica, chief executive of London-based Smartmatic, which has provided technology for Venezuelan elections since 2004, said it detected an inflated turnout figure Sunday through the nation’s automated balloting system. “With the deepest regret, we have to say that the turnout data presented on Sunday, July 30 for the constituent election was manipulated,” Mugica said at a news conference in London. His company’s analysis of the data, Mugica said, suggested an inflated number of “at least 1 million” — a potentially important difference that would allow the government to claim a higher turnout than an opposition-held unofficial ballot last month.

Venezuela: Election turnout figures manipulated by one million votes: election company | Reuters

Turnout figures in Venezuela’s Constitutional Assembly election were manipulated up by least 1 million votes, Smartmatic, a company which has worked with Venezuela since 2004 on its voting system, said on Wednesday. “We know, without any doubt, that the turnout of the recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated,” Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said at a news briefing in London. Mugica said Smartmatic, which has provided electronic voting technology for elections around the world, was able to detect the overstated officially announced turnout because of Venezuela’s automated election system. “We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least 1 million votes,” he said.

National: Hackers Eviscerate Election Tech Security…Who’s Surprised? | WhoWhatWhy

Over the past two days, all major US news outlets breathlessly reported that hackers in Las Vegas needed little time to expose the security flaws of several types of voting machines this weekend. While it is certainly nice to see the mainstream media cover election integrity issues more than once every four years, anybody following the topic, as WhoWhatWhy routinely does, was hardly surprised that the hackers were so successful. How do we know? Because, in anticipation of what happened at the DEF CON hacking conference, WhoWhatWhy spoke to many of the leading election integrity experts to get their thoughts on the event. Most of them expressed hope that the hackers would raise much-needed awareness of the vulnerabilities of US voting machines. Some of the experts we spoke to ahead of the event expressed concerns that, should the hackers fail to breach the machines, it would give people a false sense of security. It turns out that they did not have to worry about that — at all.

National: Congressmen at DefCon: Please help us, hackers! | The Parallax

For the first time in the 25 years of the world’s largest hacker convention, DefCon, two sitting U.S. Congressmen trekked here from Washington, D.C., to discuss their cybersecurity expertise on stage. Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican, and Rep. Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat, visited hacking villages investigating vulnerabilities in cars, medical devices, and voting machines; learned about how security researchers plan to defend quantum computers from hacks; and met children learning how to hack for good. … Hurd said security researchers could play an important role in addressing increasingly alarming vulnerabilities in the nation’s voting apparatus. DefCon’s first voting machine-hacking village this weekend hosted a voting machine from Shelby County, Tenn., that unexpectedly contained personal information related to more than 600,000 voters. Village visitors managed to hack the machine, along with 29 others.

National: Kobach appeals order to answer questions under oath | The Kansas City Star

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is seeking to avoid answering questions under oath about two documents containing plans for changes to U.S. election law. Kobach, who also is vice chairman of President Donald Trump’s commission on election integrity, filed a notice late Monday saying he is appealing to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals an order to submit to a deposition by the American Civil Liberties Union in a voting rights case. The closed deposition is scheduled for Thursday. The ACLU said Tuesday that Kobach’s appeal of the deposition order to the 10th Circuit is “bizarre.”Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is seeking to avoid answering questions under oath about two documents containing plans for changes to U.S. election law. Kobach, who also is vice chairman of President Donald Trump’s commission on election integrity, filed a notice late Monday saying he is appealing to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals an order to submit to a deposition by the American Civil Liberties Union in a voting rights case. The closed deposition is scheduled for Thursday. The ACLU said Tuesday that Kobach’s appeal of the deposition order to the 10th Circuit is “bizarre.”

National: Hackers at a cybersecurity conference breached dozens of voting machines | Business Insider

Professional hackers were invited to break into dozens of voting machines and election software at this year’s annual DEFCON cybersecurity conference. And they successfully hacked every single one of the 30 machines acquired by the conference. The challenge was held at DEF CON’s “Voting Village,” where hackers took turns breaching ten sample voting machines and voter registration systems, Politico reported. … “Follow the money,” Harri Hursti, the cofounder of Nordic Innovation Labs, which helped organize DEF CON, told The Hill. “On the other end of the ballot, that’s where the money is — banks and roads.” Hodge said that if officials take care to “store machines, set them up, [and] always have someone keeping an eye on machines,” that could go a long way in ensuring the safety of the electoral process.

National: To make our voting tech more secure, policymakers may need to work with the people who can break in them | KPCC

After acquiring a decommissioned voting machine, Anne-Marie “Punky” Chun and her colleagues at Synack set out to hack it. It took them only a matter of hours. “Just looking at the security hygiene, it wasn’t very strong,” Chun told Take Two host A Martinez in an interview. “The encryption password, for example, was hard-coded as ‘ABCD.’ And it was used on the whole machine.” Chun and her team test cyber security in, arguably, the most effective way: by breaking in themselves. So when they though about the best way to check the security of election data, they knew they had to find a voting machine, and preferably an older one.

Colorado: State sends voter roll information over to Trump fraud commission | The Denver Channel

Colorado finally sent its voter roll information over to President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission on Tuesday, a day after the transfer was delayed due to “user error” in the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. The office had been set to send the information over to the controversial commission on Monday, but a spokeswoman for the office said a system lockout stopped the transfer. Deputy Secretary of State Suzanne Staiert told the Denver Post Monday night it was due to “user error.” The sending of the information had already been delayed while a lawsuit over the commission and its request was cleared up in federal court.

Kansas: Kobach had duty to publicize new voting schedule; it appears that he didn’t | Lawrence Journal World

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach does not appear to have conducted any public information campaign, as required by law, to publicize the fact that the state recently shifted the election cycle for municipal elections from the spring to the fall of odd-numbered years. Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew cited that as one possible explanation for why voter turnout in the county was lower than expected on Tuesday, when the first municipal elections took place in Kansas under the new cycle. “We tried to get what word out that we could,” he said during a phone interview Tuesday. “I think there was an anticipation that there would be kind of a statewide push getting information out. We’ll kind of evaluate it for us, how we increase that push locally.”

Editorials: Separate facts, myths on voter fraud in Kentucky | Joshua A. Douglas/Lexington Herald Leader