Texas: Testimony ends in trial to determine if Dallas County discriminates against white voters | Dallas Morning News

Testimony ended Thursday in the landmark redistricting case over whether Dallas County discriminates against white voters. The four-day trial — Ann Harding vs. Dallas County — featured analysis by local and national redistricting experts and video of two raucous county Commissioners Court meetings. U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater will wade through the evidence and issue a ruling. That could take months because the judge will receive 50-page closing arguments from lawyers on both sides and hear final oral arguments in late May or early June.

Kentucky: Election Officials Given Cybersecurity Training | Associated Press

Kentucky’s front-line elections officials received cybersecurity training Thursday in another preventive step against hacking, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes said. County clerks statewide attended training by the federal Department of Homeland Security on preventing and detecting cyberattacks, Grimes said. The session comes a few weeks before the state’s May 22 primary election. Kentuckians will have a long ballot this year with races for county positions, the legislature and Congress.

National: Election security bill still needs work in some areas, state officials tell Senate sponsors | CyberScoop

Several secretaries of state are telling the main backers of a Senate election security bill that the legislation might need tweaks to how it addresses information sharing, state-federal communication channels, funding mechanisms and post-election audits, among other things. The secretaries, who are the top election officials in their states, met with bill sponsors James Lankford, R-Okla., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., in person and via phone Monday to discuss the Secure Elections Act. The legislation is intended to bolster election security by smoothing out coordination between the state and federal levels and providing states financial support for operations and equipment upgrades. State secretaries from Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado and New Mexico participated in the meeting.

National: Timing remains unclear for election-security legislative effort in Senate | InsideCyberSecurity.com

The Senate Rules Committee has yet to set timing for a hearing on election security legislation based on recommendations emanating from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe, but plans to do so, according to new Rules Chairman Roy Blunt (R-MO). Blunt, who was elected as chairman last week, told Inside Cybersecurity Tuesday that “there will be a hearing at some point” on election security, although Blunt said “it is not scheduled yet.” Rule Committee ranking member Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who is a co-sponsor on the Secure Elections Act, told Inside Cybersecurity that she “hopes” the election security hearing will take place “soon.” Klobuchar also said that she’s “really glad” that $380 million for the Election Assistance Commission to help states improve election systems was included in the recently passed $1.3 trillion fiscal 2018 omnibus spending bill. “It does take that immediate pressure off, but now we want to kind of use this momentum to get this done,” Klobuchar said.

Arizona: GOP Appears To Back Off Attempt To Rig Rules For McCain’s Senate Seat | TPM

Arizona Republicans appeared to back off their efforts Wednesday to rig the rules to keep Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) seat in their column, pulling from the state Senate floor a proposed change in state law that would have guaranteed a lengthy appointment from the GOP governor should the ailing senator leave office in the coming weeks. Statehouse Republicans seemingly tried to pull a fast one on their Democratic counterparts, quietly adding an emergency clause to a bipartisan bill to clean up special election laws in the state that would have handed Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) assurance that he’d get to appoint a replacement for McCain through 2020.

Kansas: Judge: Kansas secretary of state in contempt in voting case | The Washington Post

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach violated a court order that required his office to inform certain people that they were eligible to cast a ballot while a lawsuit challenging a state law requiring proof of U.S. citizenship worked its way through the courts, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson found Kobach, a conservative Republican running for Kansas governor, in contempt of court. She did not fine Kobach but ordered him to pay court costs, including attorney fees for the American Civil Liberties Union, which sought the contempt ruling. Moriah Day, a spokeswoman for Kobach’s campaign for governor, said the secretary of state’s office would appeal the decision and would have no other comment.

New Hampshire: Judge orders Secretary of State Gardner to release voter data | Union Leader

A superior court judge has ordered Secretary of State Bill Gardner’s office to turn over the state’s electronic voter database to parties who have charged a 2017 voter registration law restricts the right to vote and is unconstitutional. Hillsborough County Superior Court Judge Charles Temple further ordered state prosecutors and Gardner’s office to turn over email and other communication state officials had with lawmakers during and after they crafted the so-called SB 3 that’s under review. Lawyers for the state maintained the voter database had an “absolute statutory privilege” and could not be disclosed to third parties. But Temple said that while the database is exempt from the Right-to-Know Law that “does not create a statutory privilege against nondisclosure in the course of civil litigation.”

New York: Voters File Lawsuit To Force Special Election | Spectrum News

Seven voters in New York’s 25th Congressional District have filed a lawsuit against Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-NY, for failing, so far, to call a special election. The seat has been vacant since long-serving Democratic Congresswoman Louise Slaughter died on March 16. The plaintiffs said because the governor has not issued a Proclamation of Election in a “reasonably timely manner,” they have been denied their constitutionally-protected rights to vote and to representation. The suit claimed Cuomo is required to call the election and should have been prepared to do so promptly after Slaughter died.

Wisconsin: Elections Commission mulls using $7 million to stop hackers | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The state Elections Commission outlined initial plans Wednesday to use $7 million in federal funds to thwart hackers and boost election security by hiring workers, training clerks and upgrading software. The commissioners unanimously signed off on the framework of the plan and asked Gov. Scott Walker’s administration to approve it. Department of Administration spokesman Steven Michels said the administration is inclined to grant permission to accept the federal cash. The move to tighten election security comes almost two years after Russian agents targeted election systems around the country, according to federal officials. In the summer of 2016, Russian government actors tried unsuccessfully to gain access to a Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development system as they scanned for vulnerabilities they could exploit at the Elections Commission, according to those officials.

India: Experts in US expose electronic voting machine vote theft techniques | National Herald

Electronic voting machines (EVMs) can indeed be rigged. Contrary to the Election Commission of India’s stonewalling and denials, new research and experiments by American computer scientists have established that electronic voting systems can be manipulated in a variety of ways. Some of the new evidence has been published in a New York Times article ‘The Myth of the Hacker-Proof Voting Machine’, which provides startling details backed by technical findings and expert interviews. The intense research being conducted in America is due to domestic controversies about whether the 2016 presidential election was free and fair. However, the insights into EVM vulnerability are both relevant and timely for India.

Ireland: Canadian group seeks to monitor referendum campaign | The Irish Times

A Canadian organisation is seeking to fundraise 7,000 Canadian dollars (€4,500) to send up to 24 independent electoral observers to Ireland for the referendum campaign to assess whether both sides “play fair” in the process. Non-governmental organisation SDAI-ADID says it is interested in “supporting and strengthening democracy through election observation” and that it wants to observe whether the electoral process adheres to “international standards of free, fair and transparent elections”.

Italy: President likely to ask mediator to tackle post-vote stalemate | Reuters

Italy’s president is likely on Wednesday to appoint a mediator to try to break a deadlock that has prevented the formation of a government since inconclusive elections six weeks ago, a source said, although no quick breakthrough is expected. President Sergio Mattarella will probably ask Maria Casellati, the speaker of the Senate, to hold more flexible, less formal talks than those he has already led, a source close to the president told Reuters. The European Union’s third-largest economy has been under a caretaker government since the March 4 polls, when anti-establishment and far-right parties were the big winners at the expense of more mainstream groups.

Netherlands: Dutch municipalities call for a more efficient election process | NL Times

The Netherlands’ current election process – with manual voting, polling stations that stay open for long hours, and manual vote counting – is no longer feasible and can give rise to doubts about results’ reliability. The association of Dutch municipalities VNG and the Dutch association of civil affairs NVVB therefore composed an ‘Election Agenda 2021’ with several proposals for making this process more efficient, NOS reports. The Agenda is focused on 2021, because that’s when the next parliamentary election is scheduled. The agenda will be presented at a NVVB conference on Wednesday and Thursday.

National: Here’s how hackers could cause chaos in this year’s US midterm election | MIT Technology Review

On November 6, Americans will head to the polls to vote in the congressional midterm election. In the months before the contest, hordes of foreign hackers will head to their keyboards in a bid to influence its outcome. Their efforts will include trying to get inside the digital infrastructure that supports the electoral process. There’s a worrying precedent here. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security notified 21 states that Russian actors had targeted their election systems in the months leading up to the 2016 US presidential election. DHS officials said the Russians were mainly scanning computers and networks for security holes rather than taking advantage of any flaws that were discovered. Still, that’s no cause for complacency. Intelligence officials are already warning that Russia is intent on meddling in this year’s election too, and hackers from other countries hostile to the US could join in. This week, both DHS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Russia is laying the groundwork for broad cyberattacks against critical US infrastructure. Last year, the DHS designated voting technology as part of that vital framework.

National: DHS chief issues stern warning to Russia, others on election meddling, cyberattacks | The Hill

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen issued a stern warning to Russia and other countries looking to meddle in future U.S. elections, saying that the U.S. government will consider all options “seen and unseen” for responding to malicious attacks in cyberspace. “The United States, as you know, possesses a spectrum of response options both seen and unseen, and we will use them to call out malign behavior, punish it and deter future cyber hostility,” Nielsen said in keynote remarks at the RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. “Our cyber defenses help guard our very democracy and all we hold dear. To those who would try to attack our democracy to affect our elections, to affect the elections of our allies, to undermine our national sovereignty, I have a simple word of warning: Don’t,” Nielsen said.

National: DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen Talks Russia Hacks, Upcoming Elections | Fortune

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen promised that the federal government would do all it could to prevent Russians from hacking future elections, but stopped short of guaranteeing that those measures would be effective. “I feel secure that we are and will continue to do everything we can to help state and locals secure their election infrastructure,” Nielsen said on Tuesday, avoiding answering a question about whether the U.S. voting system is hacker proof. The DHS secretary’s comments at the annual RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco come after members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee urged Nielsen and the DHS to speed up efforts to secure the nation’s elections, according to the New York Times. In September, the DHS notified 21 U.S. states that Russia had attempted to hack their voting systems prior to the last presidential election.

National: Flurry of lawsuits filed over citizenship question on census | The Hill

Lawsuits are piling up against the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The nonpartisan Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, along with the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the citizenship question on behalf of the City of San Jose and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. The suit was filed against the Commerce Department in the Northern District of California. The lawsuit is the fourth legal challenge that’s been brought since Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross agreed in March to grant a request from the Department of Justice to reinstate the citizenship question on the 2020 census.

National: US and UK Warn of Cybersecurity Threat From Russia | The New York Times

The United States and Britain on Monday issued a first-of-its-kind joint warning about Russian cyberattacks against government and private organizations as well as individual homes and offices in both countries, a milestone in the escalating use of cyberweaponry between major powers. Although Washington and London have known for decades that the Kremlin was trying to penetrate their computer networks, the joint warning appeared to represent an effort to deter future attacks by calling attention to existing vulnerabilities, prodding individuals to mitigate them and threatening retaliation against Moscow if damage was done. “When we see malicious cyberattacks, whether from the Kremlin or other nation-state actors, we are going to push back,” Rob Joyce, a special assistant to the president and the cybersecurity coordinator for the National Security Council, said in joint conference call with journalists by senior officials in Washington and London. That would include “all elements of U.S. power available to push back against these kinds of intrusions,” he added, including “our capabilities in the physical world.”

Editorials: NRA Proves the Need for Campaign-Finance Reform | Bloomberg

The National Rifle Association is finished answering questions. That’s what the organization told Senator Ron Wyden last week in a letter complaining about Wyden’s “time-consuming and burdensome” inquiries into the NRA’s ties to Russians. That answer isn’t good enough. The NRA’s relationship with Alexander Torshin, a Russian politician and deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who has been linked both to Vladimir Putin and to Russian organized crime, is too troubling to ignore. And the group’s dismissive response to Wyden has a larger significance: It underlines the need for full disclosure of sources of political funding. The Treasury Department recently put Torshin on a list of sanctioned Russians. He has been an NRA member since 2012 — tweeting (in Russian) repeatedly about his affiliation with the group and attending multiple NRA functions where he socialized with the group’s top leaders. At one such meeting in 2016, he’s reported to have spoken with Donald Trump, Jr.

Florida: NAACP wants ‘tone deaf’ Scott to end ‘posturing’ on voting rights | Tampa Bay Times

The Florida state conference of the NAACP wants Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet to drop their appeal of a court decision that struck down the 150-year old system for restoring voting rights to convicted felons. The four Republican state officials filed a motion Monday with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, asking for that court to put on hold the March 27 order by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker until the state’s appeal runs its course. “The appeal shows the Governor and Florida Cabinet are tone deaf,” NAACP President Adora Obi Mweze said in a statement. “The continued posturing by our state officials shows the importance of Floridians supporting Amendment 4 this fall.”

Missouri: State sued for alleged violation of voter laws | Associated Press

Advocacy groups on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Missouri for not following federal voter laws. The lawsuit accuses the state of not automatically updating voter registration after address changes and not providing required registration information to some voters. The lawsuit lays blame on the Department of Revenue for its role in registration tied to driver’s license services, as well as the secretary of state for not ensuring voter laws are followed.

New Jersey: State Adopts Automatic Voter Registration | Bloomberg

Democratic Governor Phil Murphy made New Jersey the latest U.S. state with automatic voter registration at motor-vehicle agencies as mid-term elections loom in November. The legislation was sponsored by Democrats and backed by civic groups that said it would ease a paperwork burden and increase election participation. Republicans in New Jersey, like some elsewhere in the country, said it was a gateway to fraud, with the potential to allow undocumented immigrants to vote. New Jersey’s bill passed both legislative houses along party lines on April 13. Murphy’s predecessor, Republican Chris Christie, vetoed versions in 2016 and 2015, saying the Democratic-led legislature was attempting to increase voter rolls in its favor.

Pennsylvania: Secretary of State plots strategy for election security funds | GCN

Pennsylvania’s Acting Secretary of State Robert Torres has set an aggressive timeline for the improving the security of the state’s voting machines and processes.  By the end of December 2019, all Pennsylvania counties must have voter-verifiable, paper-record voting systems in place. Pennsylvania’s ability to invest in elections infrastructure comes from its $13.5 million share  of $380 million in funds included in the omnibus spending law passed in March to help states secure elections infrastructure. The funding is an extension of the 2002 Help America Vote Act. To take advantage of the funds, each state is also required to contribute a 5 percent match to the HAVA funds, which brings the total amount to be distributed to Pennsylvania counties to $14.2 million. 

Editorials: With elections looming, Canada cannot be complacent on policing social media | Tim Harper/The Toronto Star

Starting in Ontario, followed by Quebec, Alberta and the country as a whole, voters will go to the polls. New Brunswick also votes this year and another vote in British Columbia cannot be ruled out. But with these key contests looming, there has been very little serious discussion in this country about how voters will receive information they need to cast informed ballots, and the overall security of our democratic process. It’s time for a serious look at how our votes can be manipulated by “bots” and fake news, and whether the electoral process itself is safe from meddling by internal or external sources.

Ireland: Facebook to trial ads tool in Ireland ahead of abortion referendum | Reuters

Ireland will become the second country to trial a new tool that Facebook hopes will ensure greater transparency in political advertising, when it holds a referendum on abortion next month, the company’s vice president for global policy said on Tuesday. Facebook introduced the tool this month as part of steps to deter the kind of election meddling and online information warfare that U.S. authorities have accused Russia of pursuing, although Moscow has denied the allegations. The ‘view ads’ tool, which allows users to view all the ads a particular advertiser is running in that jurisdiction, has been successfully tested in Canada, Joel Kaplan said.

Mexico: ‘We are watching you’: Political killings shake Mexico election | Reuters

Magda Rubio had just launched her campaign for mayor of a small city in northern Mexico, when a chilling voice came through her cell phone. “Drop out,” the caller warned, “or be killed.” It was the first of four death threats Rubio said she has received since January from the same well-spoken, anonymous man. She has stayed in the race in Guachochi, located in a mountainous region of Chihuahua state that is a key route for heroin trafficking. But two armed body guards now follow her round the clock. “At 2 a.m., you start to get scared, and you say, ‘something bad is going on here’,” she said. An explosion of political assassinations in Mexico has cast a pall over nationwide elections slated for July 1, when voters will choose their next president and fill a slew of down-ballot posts.

Pakistan: In a first, watermarked ballot papers to be used in 2018 general elections | The Express Tribune

The ballot papers in the upcoming general elections will bear a watermark on them which is unprecedented in Pakistan’s electoral history, Express News reported. According to reports, preparations for the general elections are in full swing with ballot papers to be used for voting to have an exclusive watermark for which paper is being purchased from France. The special paper will be provided in June 2018 after which the printing process shall begin.

National: Senators, state officials to meet on election cybersecurity bill | The Hill

Two senators sponsoring legislation to secure digital election systems from cyberattacks are meeting Monday with state officials on the details of their proposal. Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) are scheduled to meet with secretaries of state to discuss the Secure Elections Act, a spokesman for Lankford confirmed. The bipartisan bill, originally introduced last December, is designed to help and incentivize state officials to make cybersecurity upgrades to their election infrastructure following Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The senators rolled out a revised version of the proposal in March, after some state officials, who are responsible for administering federal elections, expressed concerns with the effort. 

National: How Russian Facebook Ads Divided and Targeted US Voters Before the 2016 Election | WIRED

When Young Mie Kim began studying political ads on Facebook in August of 2016—while Hillary Clinton was still leading the polls— few people had ever heard of the Russian propaganda group, Internet Research Agency. Not even Facebook itself understood how the group was manipulating the platform’s users to influence the election. For Kim, a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the goal was to document the way the usual dark money groups target divisive election ads online, the kind that would be more strictly regulated if they appeared on TV. She never knew then she was walking into a crime scene. Over the last year and a half, mounting revelations about Russian trolls’ influence campaign on Facebook have dramatically altered the scope and focus of Kim’s work. In the course of her six-week study in 2016, Kim collected mounds of evidence about how the IRA and other suspicious groups sought to divide and target the US electorate in the days leading up to the election. Now, Kim is detailing those findings in a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Political Communication.

National: Congress, states don’t seem inclined to incorporate biometrics in new voting technologies | BiometricUpdate

While other nations are rapidly incorporating biometrics into their voting technologies, the US Congress and states – and local jurisdictions – don’t seem to be all that concerned about utilizing biometrics to verify the identities of individuals voting in America, despite the concerns over election machine cyber-tampering that’s continued to mount since the 2016 elections. In its report, Observations on Voting Equipment Use and Replacement (PDF), which was requested by lawmakers, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) — Congress’ investigative arm — “did not consider the issue of biometrics as part of our work,” Biometric Update was told by Rebecca Gambler, Director, Homeland Security & Justice issues at GAO. In fact, Gambler said, “GAO’s prior work on elections issues also has not addressed biometrics, and thus, we don’t have background or insights to share in this area.”