National: Russia Sees Midterm Elections as Chance to Sow Fresh Discord, Intelligence Chiefs Warn | The New York Times

Russia is already meddling in the midterm elections this year, the top American intelligence officials said on Tuesday, warning that Moscow is using a digital strategy to worsen the country’s political and social divisions. Russia is using fake accounts on social media — many of them bots — to spread disinformation, the officials said. European elections are being targeted, too, and the attacks were not likely to end this year, they warned. “We expect Russia to continue using propaganda, social media, false-flag personas, sympathetic spokespeople and other means of influence to try to exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States,” Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee at its annual hearing on worldwide threats.

National: Judges Say Throw Out the Map. Lawmakers Say Throw Out the Judges. | The New York Times

In Pennsylvania, a Republican lawmaker unhappy with a State Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering wants to impeach the Democratic justices who authored it. In Iowa, a running dispute over allowing firearms in courthouses has prompted bills by Republican sponsors to slash judges’ pay and require them to personally pay rent for courtrooms that are gun-free. In North Carolina, the Republican Party is working on sweeping changes to rein in state courts that have repeatedly undercut or blocked laws passed by the legislature. Rather than simply fighting judicial rulings, elected officials in some states across the country — largely Republicans, but Democrats as well — are increasingly seeking to punish or restrain judges who hand down unfavorable decisions, accusing them of making law instead of interpreting it.

National: Can The U.S. Combat Election Interference If Some Don’t Believe It’s Happening? | NPR

America’s adversaries are circling like coyotes just beyond the light from the campfire, top intelligence officials warn — but that’s not the scariest thing to some members of the Senate intelligence committee. What bothers them is the need to convince people the coyotes are there. “My problem is, I talk to people in Maine who say, ‘the whole thing is a witch hunt and it’s a hoax,’ because that’s what the president told me,” said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine. The leaders of the U.S. intelligence community gave bleak evidence on Tuesday about the ongoing threat Russia poses to Western democracies — among many other threats around the world. King contrasted that with the frequent denials and equivocations about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election by President Trump and the White House, which King said have led to a major disparity in belief around the country. 

Editorials: Why Does Trump Ignore Top Officials’ Warnings on Russia? | The New York Times

The phalanx of intelligence chiefs who testified on Capitol Hill delivered a chilling message: Not only did Russia interfere in the 2016 election, it is already meddling in the 2018 election by using a digital strategy to exacerbate the country’s political and social divisions. No one knows more about the threats to the United States than these six officials, so when they all agree, it would be derelict to ignore their concerns. Yet President Trump continues to refuse to even acknowledge the malevolent Russian role. It’s particularly striking that four of the men who gave this warning to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday — the C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo; the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats; the F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray; and the Defense Intelligence Agency director, Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley — were all appointed by Mr. Trump. They testified that the president has never asked them to take measures to combat Russian interference and protect democratic processes.

Kansas: House panel prepares for votes on precinct results, candidate advertising | Topeka Capital Journal

The House Elections Committee is scheduled to vote Monday on legislation mandating precinct election results be posted online and clarifying sponsorship of candidate advertisements. The Kansas secretary of state’s office stopped publishing precinct level voting data on their website in 2014. The data remains accessible through the Kansas Open Records Act, but only by request. Bryan Caskey, director of elections for Secretary of State Kris Kobach, cited formatting and privacy concerns for the lack of online reporting of that precinct voting. Much of the data comes to the office in a non-user-friendly format. “Votes cast are a public record,” Caskey said. “However, if a person obtains the list of registered voters, which has the precinct that they’re in, and obtains precinct-level results, pretty quickly you can determine how people cast in small precincts.”

New Hampshire: Alternative voting, math oversight of redistricting shot down by House committee | Concord Monitor

Amid all the high-profile discussion of possible changes to New Hampshire election laws and processes, a trio of less-mainstream proposals were shot down Tuesday. One of them would have used mathematics to draw legislative districts, and the other two would allow people to vote for more than one candidate, showing their ballot preference by systems other than the traditional process. All three were marked as inexpedient to legislate by sweeping votes in the House Election Law Committee, which makes their demise in the full House likely. Under one bill, House Bill 1666, a calculation known as efficiency gap analysis would have been applied to statewide districts in New Hampshire after the next redistricting in 2021. If the analysis found problems, “the redistricting for that elected body shall be deemed to be gerrymandered and therefore not valid” and the districts redrawn before the next election. It was unanimously voted as ITL by the 20-person committee.

Pennsylvania: The governor of Pennsylvania rejects Republicans’ new map | The Economist

The best thing that can be said about a new Republican-drawn congressional map for Pennsylvania is that none of the districts resembles a cartoon character. But erasing the lines of a comically gerrymandered district dubbed “Goofy kicking Donald Duck” was not enough to satisfy an order from Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, said Tom Wolf, the state’s Democratic governor, on February 13th. When the court ruled on January 22nd that the map in use since 2011 was an extreme partisan gerrymander that violates Pennsylvania’s constitution, it gave legislators until February 9th to send Mr Wolf a fairer map. The redrawn districts, the court advised, should be “composed of compact and contiguous territory” and should not gratuitously divide cities and counties. Curiously, the initial order said nothing about fixing the map’s skew toward Republican candidates, which has afforded their party a reliable 13-to-5 advantage in a state with more registered Democrats than Republicans.

Editorials: With Russia set to attack our elections again, Pennsylvania needs to replace aging voting machines so people can have faith in the vote | LNP

Last week, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf ordered counties planning to replace their electronic voting systems to purchase machines that provide a paper trail. Paper trails serve as a safeguard against hacking and make audits of the vote easier. But as The Associated Press noted, the governor’s “budget doesn’t include any money to fund the replacement of the state’s aging, increasingly vulnerable fleet” of voting machines. The AP reported that the Wolf administration “said in a statement later Friday that it’s working on a comprehensive overhaul of Pennsylvania’s election apparatus, including its voter registration database.” Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential elections, and it will try to do so again in this year’s congressional elections. That was the unanimous assessment delivered by our nation’s intelligence chiefs to a U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday. So Gov. Wolf is absolutely correct in seeking to protect our voting systems. Pennsylvania — the birthplace of American democracy — should lead the way in protecting the vote.

Virginia: Confusion reigned ahead of Virginia’s dramatic 2017 election | WTOP

Several officials at the Virginia Department of Elections and in the City of Fredericksburg were confused about how Virginia’s district lines were defined in the years leading up to the 2017 election, according to documents obtained by WTOP through the Freedom of Information Act. That confusion likely contributed to 147 people voting in the wrong House of Delegates races Nov. 7. One of those races, along with control of the House, was decided by just 73 votes. The process is complicated, and the lines are not defined on a map but are based on the voting precincts that were in place during the most recent census. Those precinct lines immediately become out of date after any General Assembly redistricting process, since local governments are similarly required to redraw lines based on the new population information.

West Virginia: Redistricting bill sent to House floor without independent commission | Charleston Gazette-Mail

A House of Delegates committee sent a bill to the floor Wednesday that would change the factors legislators use when drawing political district lines after each decennial census. The bill does not, however, create an independent commission to handle the redistricting process, as had been the original reason for drafting the updated House Bill 2383. Delegate Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, introduced an amendment to the bill that would have formed an independent commission. His amendment was essentially a reincarnation of a draft that a subcommittee killed last week. His amendment failed on a party-line vote.

Australia: Parliamentary inquiry finds Western Australia’s electoral system ‘stuck in the past’ | Perth Now

Western Australia’s electoral system has become “stuck in the past” amid outdated legislation and a lack of funding, a parliamentary inquiry into the 2017 state election has found. The final report from the standing committee inquiry highlighted several problems with the security of internet voting, poor transparency for political donations and the state’s ageing Electoral Act. Inquiry chair Peter Katsambanis says the state’s 111-year old electoral legislation is a “hodgepodge of contradictory provisions that make no sense“, which prevented the use of electronic voting systems.

Italy: ‘Whoever Wins Won’t Govern’ | The New York Review of Books

“This is a non-election,” a professor of philosophy tells me in a bar in Milan. “I will not vote.” “Meaning?” “Whoever wins, they will not govern. All will go on just the same. Most key policies will be decided outside Italy.” The Italians go to the polls on March 4, and from outside, it might look as though there are major, exciting, and, above all, dangerous developments in the offing: the return of the octogenarian Silvio Berlusconi, the rapid rise of anti-establishment Five Star Movement, the ever more aggressive rhetoric of the xenophobic Northern League. Yet the perception among most Italians is that the political system is simply too dysfunctional and blocked for much to happen at all.

Venezuela: Electoral Council Confirms Election Dates, Plans | teleSUR

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council highlights 15 audits have been planned to guarantee the process’ transparency. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) has confirmed the date for the next presidential elections will be April 22 and provided details on the dates for voter and candidate registration. The announcement was made by Sandra Oblitas, CNE’s Vice-president, who added that 531 locations would be open throughout the country for voters to register and to change where they vote. Venezuelans will have until Feb. 20 to register to vote in the presidential elections.

Pennsylvania: Governor rejects proposed redistricting map from GOP lawmakers | The Hill

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) on Tuesday rejected a new district map drawn by GOP lawmakers, bringing the state closer to handing its redistricting process over to a court. The GOP map was drawn after the state Supreme Court struck down the state’s current congressional map in a gerrymandering case. Wolf’s press office confirmed that the governor told Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court that he won’t approve the new congressional lines on the grounds that it’s a “partisan gerrymander that does not comply with the court’s order” or state constitution. “Partisan gerrymandering weakens citizen power, promotes gridlock and stifles meaningful reform,” Wolf said in a statement. “As non-partisan analysts have already said, their map maintains a similar partisan advantage by employing many of the same unconstitutional tactics present in their 2011 map.”

National: Federal vote-protection efforts lag ahead of first primaries | Associated Press

With the first primaries of the 2018 elections less than a month away, you might expect federal officials to be wrapping up efforts to safeguard the vote against expected Russian interference. You’d be wrong. Federal efforts to help states button down elections systems have crawled, hamstrung in part by wariness of federal meddling. Just 14 states and three local election agencies have so far asked for detailed vulnerability assessments offered by the Department of Homeland Security — and only five of the two-week examinations are complete. Illinois, for instance —one of two states where voter registration databases were breached in 2016 — requested an assessment in January and is still waiting. Primary voters go to the polls there March 20; state officials can’t say whether the assessment will happen beforehand. DHS says the assessments should be finished by mid-April.

National: As foreign hackers plot next attack, Washington struggles to shore up voting systems | Tribune News Service

Even as it is consumed by political fallout from Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, Washington is still struggling to respond to what many officials see as an imminent national security threat: a network of voting systems alarmingly vulnerable to foreign attack. As hackers abroad plot increasingly brazen and sophisticated assaults, the United States’ creaky polling stations and outdated voter registration technology are not up to the task of fighting them off, according to elections officials and independent experts. Senior national security officials have repeatedly said that the U.S. should prepare for more foreign efforts to interfere with elections. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s top intelligence adviser warned a Senate committee that Russia is moving to build on its earlier efforts to interfere with U.S. elections, which included a sustained campaign of propaganda and the unleashing of cyberoperatives.

National: US intel officials say Russia targeting midterms | Associated Press

Three of the nation’s top intelligence officials said Tuesday that the U.S. has seen Russian activity aimed at meddling in the upcoming midterm elections. “We have seen Russian activity and intentions to have an impact on the next election cycle,” CIA Director Mike Pompeo told the Senate intelligence committee. National Intelligence Director Dan Coats and Adm. Mike Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency, agreed. They didn’t describe the activity, other than to say it was related to information warfare. They told Congress that they would provide more details in a classified session later in the day. The intelligence officials said the information will be shared with state and local governments and state election officials.

National: FBI chief: Trump hasn’t directed me to stop Russian meddling in midterms | The Hill

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday said President Trump hasn’t directed him to stop Russian efforts to interfere in this year’s midterm elections. “We’re taking a lot of specific efforts to blunt Russian efforts,” Wray said when Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) asked if he’d been directed by Trump to do so. “As directed by the president?” Reed interjected. “Not as specifically directed by the president,” Wray responded.

National: A Citizenship Question on the Census May Be Bad for Your Health | The New York Times

As the Census Bureau finalizes the questions for the 2020 census, key voices in the Trump administration are pressing for surveyors to ask one critical question: Are you a United States citizen? Advocates of the so-called citizenship question say it is merely clerical, an effort to ascertain how many noncitizens reside in the United States. But the question would have broad ramifications, not only for the politics of redistricting that will emerge from the census but for an issue that goes beyond partisanship: public health. The fear is that immigrants — even ones in the country legally — will not participate in any government-sponsored questionnaire that could expose them, their family members or friends to deportation. But low response rates from any demographic group would undermine the validity of the next decade of health statistics and programs, health experts warn. Scientists use census data to understand the distribution of health conditions across the United States population. In turn, officials use the data to target interventions and distribute federal funding.

Editorials: Russians hacked the 2016 election. Looks like Republicans will let them do it again | Robin Kelly/Miami Herald

For more than a year, Americans, Congress and the world have discussed Russia’s attempts to influence our elections. However, some of their most dangerous and well-documented attacks against state-level voting systems have been a mere footnote. That needs to change, and change fast. Let’s start with the facts and when we learned them. In the summer of 2016, the FBI disclosed that Arizona’s and Illinois’ online voter registration databases had been successfully breached. Come September 2016, we learned that at least 20 states had been attacked. We now know that 21 states were attacked and/or breached: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Iowa: Bipartisan Bill Would Restore Voting Rights for Iowa Felons | Iowa Public Radio

A bipartisan bill that would restore voting rights to Iowa felons who have completed their criminal sentences moved forward Monday in the Iowa House. Rep. Greg Heartsill, R-Chariton, co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Mary Wolfe, D-Clinton. They both agreed to move the bill to the full House Judiciary Committee. “I agree there should be a process as far as for allowing folks who have served their time, who have paid their restitution, for nonviolent felons to be reintegrated back into society, to give them a second chance, to reenfranchise them as far as their voice at the voting booth,” Heartsill says.

Kansas: Senate bill would remove Kris Kobach’s authority to appoint elections commissioners | Topeka Capital Journal

A dispute over Shawnee County’s election budget spurred lawmakers to weigh a bill Tuesday stripping Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s authority to appoint elections commissioners in Kansas’ four largest counties. Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, brought the bill, which would give county commissions the authority to appoint their own election officers to administer local and statewide races. Kobach currently appoints elections commissioners in Shawnee, Sedgwick, Johnson and Wyandotte counties, which collectively spend between $5 and $7 million during an even-numbered year to administer elections, according to Kansas Elections Director Bryan Caskey.

North Carolina: Federal judges: No primaries for appeals court seats | Associated Press

Primaries for North Carolina state appellate court seats won’t happen this year if a federal appeals court decision stands. A panel of judges Friday reversed a lower court decision that would have required the primaries, giving a victory to Republican state lawmakers. The GOP-controlled General Assembly voted last October to cancel the 2018 primaries for both trial court and appellate court seats. GOP lawmakers argued it made sense to hold only one general election for each seat this year because the House and Senate were debating changes to election districts for the trial court seats. They said they didn’t want to create confusion if new districts were approved after candidate filing was completed under previous boundaries.

Rhode Island: Secretary of state pushes for early in-person voting | Associated Press

Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea says it’s time for Rhode Island to allow early in-person voting. The Democrat is proposing to allow people to vote during normal business hours for a 20-day period before primary and general elections, and on the weekend prior to each election. It’s one of a handful of election-related bills submitted at Gorbea’s request. She is also proposing moving the state primary to August instead of September. Most states allow qualified voters to cast a ballot in person during a designated period prior to Election Day. In Rhode Island, some people vote early and in-person now by going to their town halls and applying for an emergency mail ballot, which is a paperwork intensive process, Gorbea said.

Bulgaria: Electoral authority to ask MPs to defer introduction of electronic voting | The Sofia Globe

Bulgaria’s Central Election Commission (CEC) tabled a report to the country’s National Assembly recommending that MPs postpone the introduction of electronic voting, which currently is slated to be used for the first time in the European Parliament elections in May 2019. Although CEC did not make its report public, several media reports said that CEC made its recommendation based on several simulations of electronic voting.

Congo: No December election without voting machines: DR Congo poll chief  | AFP

DR Congo’s long-delayed election due on December 23 to choose a successor to long-serving ruler Joseph Kabila will not take place without electronic voting machines, the poll chief said Tuesday. “Without voting machines, there will be no elections on December 23, 2018,” election commission head Corneille Nangaa told AFP, speaking on phone from New York. The threat came a day after the United States, France, Britain and four other UN Security Council members called on Kabila to publicly declare that he will not run for election this year.

Editorials: Ireland was ahead of the curve on hacking | Kathy Sheridan/The Irish Times

Opinion writers stand accused of undue negativity, so make way for a few heart-lifting positives. Well-thumbed physical election registers. Paper ballots. Stubby pencils. Interminable counts surveyed by gimlet-eyed tallymen and women. That’s our fabulously antiquated voting system and it stands up well. Last week, by contrast, Americans learned that the electronic voting systems of 21 states were targeted by Russian hackers in 2016 and some had been “actually successfully penetrated”, in the words of the US head of cybersecurity. The targeting may have been exploratory probes for system vulnerabilities to be exploited later, say experts, pointing to the crumbling US digital voting apparatus. In other words, the 2016 hackers could look like plankton compared with the shark attacks expected around the forthcoming mid-term elections, with their potential to rebalance power in America.

Malaysia: Opposition objects to EC’s new vote boundaries | Malay Mail

Malaysia’s Opposition and an election watchdog submitted objections today to the redrawing of some constituency boundaries, which they said would favour Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in a general election due by August. The Election Commission is reviewing electoral boundaries for more than half of Malaysia’s 222 parliamentary seats. Opponents of the redrafting say it is unconstitutional and could skew voting in favour of Najib’s ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional (BN). The government denies the accusation.

National: State Voting Systems Remain Vulnerable to Hackers Ahead of Midterm Elections, Report Reveals | Associated Press

With less than nine months until midterm elections, states still have a long way to go to protect their voting systems from security threats, according to a new report released Monday by the Center for American Progress. Following the nation’s 2016 elections, in which hackers targeted 21 states and breached Illinois’ voter registration system, states are racing against the clock to improve their election infrastructure. In 2017, Colorado became the first state to require risk-limiting post-election audits. Weeks ahead of its November elections, Virginia quickly switched from electronic voting machines to a paper ballot voting system. And many states are working hand in hand on the issue with the Department of Homeland Security or the National Guard. Still, no state received an A in Monday’s report, which evaluates how efficiently states (and D.C.) are protecting their elections from hacking and machine malfunction. Eleven states – including Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and New York– received a B, 23 states received a C and 17 states received a D or an F.

National: Homeland Security calls NBC report on election hacking ‘false’ | The Hill

The Department of Homeland Security on Monday pushed back against a recent NBC News report claiming that Russian hackers “successfully penetrated” U.S. voter roles before the 2016 elections, calling it misleading. “Recent NBC reporting has misrepresented facts and confused the public with regard to Department of Homeland Security and state and local government efforts to combat election hacking,” Jeanette Manfra, the department’s chief cybersecurity official, said in a statement. The article published by NBC last week drew on an exclusive interview with Manfra, during which she told the publication that U.S. officials observed “a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated.”