Arkansas: 3 judge panel assigned to redistricting suit | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A three-judge panel was appointed last week in the Eastern District of Arkansas to preside over a lawsuit challenging the way Arkansas lawmakers enacted a legislative redistricting plan in 2011. In the suit, Julius J. Larry III, a retired civil-rights attorney in Houston, Texas, who became the publisher of the weekly Little Rock Sun black newspaper in 2013, contends that the boundaries of the 1st Congressional District were set to intentionally dilute black voting strength, in violation of the Voting Rights Act. U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker, to whom the case was assigned, on April 23 dismissed a second claim in which Larry said the state gerrymandered the boundaries in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, saying that because he lives in Little Rock, in the 2nd Congressional District, he lacked standing to pursue that claim.

Colorado: Anti-Gerrymandering Effort Sails Through The Colorado Capitol On Its Way To The Ballot | CPR

In an otherwise divisive close to the 2018 legislative session, Colorado lawmakers have found broad agreement on at least one issue. They want out of the redistricting business. A bipartisan reform effort is flying through the assembly to ask voters to overhaul how the state decides legislative and congressional boundaries. The package would also outlaw gerrymandering in the state constitution and give new power to unaffiliated voters. The plan has already won unanimous approval in the state Senate and in two House committees. If it passes the full House, as expected, two initiatives would be added to this November’s statewide ballot.

Georgia: National, Local Legal Eagles Face Off in Electronic Voting Lawsuit | Daily Report

Some big legal guns are squaring off in a federal lawsuit challenging Georgia’s use of all-electronic voting systems. A major national law firm has deployed attorneys to represent plaintiffs in the suit on a pro bono basis, going up against a more locally based defense team that includes Georgia’s former governor. John Carlin, former assistant U.S. attorney general in charge of the National Security Division, and his partner in the Washington, D.C., office of AmLaw 35 national law firm Morrison & Foerster, David Cross, are representing three Georgia voters who claim their fundamental constitutional right to vote is endangered by the systems. On the other side, representing the State Election Board, its members and Secretary of State Brian Kemp are John Frank Salter Jr. and former Gov. Roy Barnes of the Barnes Law Group. Prior to serving as DOJ’s highest-ranking national security lawyer, MoFo’s Carlin served as chief of staff and senior counsel to former FBI director Robert Mueller III. In that role, he helped lead the agency’s evolution to meet growing and changing national security threats, including cyber threats, according to his firm bio.

Iowa: Secretary of State Launches Voting Cybersecurity Working Group | The Gazette

Iowa’s top elections official will form a new working group with the goal of bolstering the cybersecurity around Iowa voting. “With the past presidential election, with the dialogue that came out of that, we’ve had to be much more aggressive (on cybersecurity), but also to share more with you of what we’re doing so the voters have the full confidence in our elections system,” Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate said during a Friday news conference during a training session for county auditors at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids. Concern about the security of the nation’s elections has hit a peak since 2016 due to investigations into Russian attempts to affect the 2016 presidential election.

Kansas: ACLU seeks $51K for fight with Kobach that led to contempt finding | Topeka Capital-Journal

The American Civil Liberties Union is asking for more than $50,000 in compensation for hours spent fighting Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach over issues that led to his contempt of court finding. U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson ordered Kobach’s office to pay for attorney fees and expenses when she ruled last month that Kobach ignored her orders after she blocked enforcement of the state’s voter registration law. Kobach has filed a notice with the court saying he intends to appeal her decision. Kobach failed to follow through on a promise to Robinson that counties would send postcards notifying people they could vote, even if they failed to show proof of citizenship when they registered. He continued to fight the notion that postcards were necessary until the day of his contempt hearing, which followed a trial in which he struggled to prove claims of widespread voter fraud.

Louisiana: Appellate court asked to reconsider legality of 1976 Louisiana felon voting law | The Advocate

A state appeals court in Baton Rouge is being asked to reconsider the constitutionality of a more than four-decade-old Louisiana law that prohibits felons on probation and parole from voting. State District Judge Tim Kelley, of Baton Rouge, upheld the 1976 law in March of last year, saying he agreed with the plaintiffs who challenged its legality but could not bend the law. The plaintiffs — a group called Voice of the Experienced, or VOTE, and several felons — say the law prevents more than 70,000 felons on probation and parole in Louisiana from voting.

Maine: GOP Brings Federal Challenge to Ranked-Choice Voting | Courthouse News

A month after Maine’s highest court upheld the election-law shift, state Republicans brought a federal complaint Friday that casts the country’s first ranked-choice voting system as unconstitutional. Also known as instant-runoff voting, the system by which voters rank candidates by preference, rather than casting a ballot for them, was voted into law via ballot initiative in November 2016. Maine’s Republican Party tapped attorneys at Pierce Atwood for their court challenge to the so-called RCV Act on Friday. With election primaries scheduled for June 12, the party says it has a constitutional right to determine how nominees are selected, and that instant-runoff voting would frustrate this aim.

New Hampshire: Attorney General: Send voter suit over Election Day registration to state Supreme Court | Union Leader

The attorney general wants the state Supreme Court to take over the lawsuit filed by the state Democratic Party and the N.H. League of Women Voters over a new election law, Senate Bill 3, which establishes requirements for Election Day voter registration. The key issue is an April decision by Superior Court Judge Charles Temple ordering the state to turn over its voter registration database to the plaintiffs, who say they need the data to make their case. “The court exceeded its authority in ordering the release of the (database), and has put in jeopardy the privacy rights of over a million active and inactive New Hampshire registered voters,” according to the motion filed by Associate Attorney General Anne Edwards, representing the state in support of the law.

West Virginia: How West Virginia Is Trying to Build Hacker-Proof Voting | The New York Times

The next election in the Mountaineer State was still weeks away. But 5,000 miles from West Virginia’s capital city, in a suburb northwest of Moscow, someone was already scouting for ways to get into the state’s election computer network this spring. That someone’s IP address, a designation as a “malicious host,” even a tiny Russian flag — it was all there on a computer display in an office just across the Kanawha River from the state’s gold-domed capitol. And he had company. “See, right here, a Canadian IP address is trying to go into online voter registration,” said the West Virginia Air National Guard sergeant who was tracking the would-be intruders, pointing at the screen. “Here’s someone from Great Britain trying to do the same. China is trying to get into the home page — trying to, but they’re getting blocked.”

Canada: British Columbia’s Chief Electoral Officer suggests pre-registering 16-year-olds | Vancouver Sun

A report from the province’s Chief Electoral Officer is calling for 16- and 17-year-olds to be given the right to pre-register to vote, while also pitching a digitization of the voting process. The teens still wouldn’t be eligible to vote until they are 18, but they would be allowed to have their names added automatically to the voters list when they turn 18. Creating a system where voters can vote at any polling station and all votes are counted on election night is also proposed (PDF). The report suggests service to voters would be improved while making for more efficient staffing and close to real-time disclosure of voter participation data.

Lebanon: Hezbollah, Amal and allies claim Lebanon election sweep | Al Jazeera

Hezbollah and its political allies are the biggest winners in Lebanon’s first general election in nine years, an analysis of the preliminary results show. Hezbollah and Amal – dubbed the “Shia duo” by local news media – are predicted to have won 29 seats in Lebanon’s 128-seat parliament during Sunday’s vote, according to unofficial tallies cited by politicians and local media reports. More than 11 seats are predicted to have been won by other political parties aligned with the duo. The long-awaited elections were marked by a voter turnout of just under 50 percent, down from 54 percent in the last legislative election in 2009, Nouhad Machnouk, Lebanon’s interior minister, said on Monday.

Malaysia: Malaysia’s election is a strange brew of ‘fake news,’ Cambridge Analytica and a 92-year-old autocrat-turned-reformer | Los Angeles Times

With police investigating him under Malaysia’s new anti-“fake news” law, Mahathir Mohamad, the nearly 93-year-old former prime minister turned opposition frontman, says his country faces its dirtiest election on Wednesday. The governing coalition “will cheat like mad, they will steal votes, but still I think we can win,” Mahathir said in an interview with The Times, stepping off a makeshift stage and into a nearby BMW waiting to take him to yet another campaign rally. Defying his age, Mahathir had just wrapped up a half-hour stump speech in this farming area about a 20-mile drive from Aloh Setar, the capital of Kedah state, his home base. Kedah has typically been a government stronghold, although the green flags of Malaysia’s Islamist party also flutter along its roadsides. Mahathir wants to swing the state, and enough rural Muslim Malays across the country, to his four-party opposition grouping known as the Alliance of Hope.

Tunisia: Ennahda claims victory in landmark local elections | Reuters

Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda party claimed victory late on Sunday in the country’s first free municipal elections, a key step in a democratic transition marred by economic disappointment. After polling stations closed at 6 p.m., top Ennahda official Lotfi Zitoun told Reuters the party was more than 5 percent ahead of its secularist rival, Nidaa Tounes, citing vote counts observed by the party. Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes are also coalition partners in the national government. They were expected to dominate the long-delayed polls, which will see officials elected in 350 municipalities for the first time since a 2011 uprising ended decades of authoritarian rule.

Venezuela: Soldiers Desert in Droves With Presidential Election Ahead | Bloomberg

Military officers are joining the exodus of Venezuelans to Colombia and Brazil, fleeing barracks and forcing President Nicolas Maduro’s government to call upon retirees and militia to fill the void. High desertion rates at bases in Caracas and the countryside are complicating security plans for the presidential election in 13 days, which by law require military custody of electoral materials and machinery at voting centers. “The number is unknown because it used to be published in the Official Gazette. Now, it is not,” said Rocio San Miguel, director of Control Ciudadano, a military watchdog group in Caracas. She said soldiers are fleeing for the same reason citizens are: “Wages are low, the quality of food and clothing isn’t good.”

Tennessee: A cyberattack knocked a Tennessee county’s election website offline during voting | TechCrunch

After a distributed denial-of-service attack knocked some servers offline during a local election in Tennessee this week, Knox County is working with an outside security contractor to investigate the cause. The attack took the Knox County Election Commission site displaying results of the county mayoral primary offline during Tuesday night voting. The county resorted to distributing printed results during the outage. “Tonight, Our web servers suffered a successful denial of service attack,” Knox County wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night. “Election results were not affected, as our election machines are never connected to the Internet.” The day after the incident, Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett reassured voters that the attack did not compromise the vote. Election systems that can go online are far less secure than systems that are not able to connect to the internet.

National: How U.S. Election Officials Are Trying To Head Off The Hackers | Fast Company

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials now say it’s likely that in 2016, Russian hackers at least attempted to break into election systems in all 50 states. So far this year, there’s been no evidence of attempts of hacking election systems before the midterm congressional races, but federal, state, and local officials are still taking steps to keep any intruders at bay. Congress in March appropriated $380 million to help states beef up election security, and the DHS has been working with states to help them test and improve the security of their election systems. “The president has been clear, and the DHS and our interagency partners have been clear: We will not allow any foreign adversary to change the outcome of our elections,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen said at April’s RSA security conference in San Francisco. Hackers digitally flipping votes is the worst-case scenario, and it’s one that experts take seriously. Thirteen states use at least some voting machines that only record votes electronically with no paper backups, meaning a hack or even a malfunction could mean votes permanently altered or lost.

National: Trump meets with Cabinet officials on election security | The Hill

President Trump met with members of his administration, including leaders of the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, on Thursday to discuss election security, the White House said Friday. The meeting comes amid widespread concerns over the possibility of foreign interference in future elections, including this year’s midterms, following Russia’s hacking and disinformation effort against the 2016 vote. The Russian effort included the targeting of digital state election systems. Trump met Thursday with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and FBI Director Christopher Wray to discuss election security, “including enhanced protections against malign foreign influence,” the White House said in a statement early Friday.

Alaska: State considers measures to switch to mail voting | Peninsula Clarion

Alaska is looking into conducting more of its elections by mail, though it may not completely convert right away. Interest at the state and local government levels increased after the Municipality of Anchorage saw a massive jump in its voter turnout during its April 3 election, which was conducted entirely by mail. However, the cost also reportedly increased, in part due to the printing and mailing of ballots. The Alaska Division of Elections and the Election Policy Work Group plan to meet May 8 and 9 in Anchorage to discuss four possible new vendors for the state’s ballot systems, all of which would involve a hybrid vote-by-mail system, according to a press release issued Thursday.

Arkansas: Vote changes keeping Northwest Arkansas election officials on their toes | Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Unopposed candidates won’t appear on the ballot for the first time, but school board candidates will join primary and judicial ones when voters head to the polls beginning Monday. And this time, voters need to bring a photo ID. Election officials do what they can to inform the electorate and keep the process simple. Washington County’s election commissioners sat around a table Wednesday trying to figure out which set of documents they would post at poll sites on Monday. Each set outlined different protocols for poll workers and voters depending on what happened with a lawsuit challenging the state’s voter ID law. The law was in limbo after a circuit judge deemed it unconstitutional April 26. The state wanted the Arkansas Supreme Court to halt the judge’s order blocking the law’s enforcement.

Delaware: Democrats push same-day voter registration | Delaware State News

Democratic lawmakers last week introduced legislation that would make Delaware the 19th state with same-day voter registration. Under the bill, Delawareans could sign up to vote and cast a ballot on the same day. “Our goal as a society should be to encourage more people to be part of the electoral process, not less,” main sponsor House Majority Whip John Viola, D-Newark, said in a statement. “Right now, we have an arbitrary deadline to register to vote of three weeks before an election. “Some people, often young people or those who just moved to the state, don’t think to register to vote until it’s right before the election, and by then it’s too late. Election Day registration has been around for decades and is proven to safely and effectively increase voter turnout, so it’s time for Delaware to take this step forward.”

Indiana: Lawsuit challenging Indiana law that forces voting precinct consolidation in Lake County could soon be dismissed | Post-Tribune

A lawsuit over a state law forcing the consolidation of small voting precincts in Lake County could soon be dismissed, an official said Friday. Lawyers representing the Indiana State Conference of the NAACP and a group of Lake County voters asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit that said the forced consolidation of voting precincts could hamper Lake County residents’ rights. Jim Wieser, chairman of the Lake Democratic Central Committee, said there is no plan showing how precincts would be consolidated, so attorneys thought it would be best to dismiss the litigation until a proposal is put together. “Without a plan, it’s hard to argue in a court of law,” Wieser said.

Iowa: Secretary of State Launches Cybersecurity Partnership | Iowa Public Radio

The state’s top elections official says the state’s voting systems are buffeted by cyber attacks. Now Iowa’s secretary of state is launching a new partnership to try and insulate the department. According to Secretary of State Paul Pate, Iowa’s elections website and voter databases are hit by hundreds of thousands of threats on a daily basis. He said the majority of attacks are U.S.-based bots trying to steal personal information for financial gain. But so far Iowa’s voting systems have not been compromised, Pate said. “I’ve assured Iowans and I’ll assure them again today that our system is intact, that it has not been hacked. There are no foreign countries manipulating your votes or accessing your voting information,” he said.

Maine: Republican Leaders Challenge Ranked Voting at Convention | Associated Press

Maine Republicans on Friday mounted the latest legal challenge against a new ranked voting method set for the June primary. The lawsuit targeting ranked-choice voting in federal court presented another 11th-hour legal challenge to the voting system. The lawsuit is against Democratic Secretary of State Matt Dunlap and asks a federal judge to prevent the use of ranked choice voting to decide Republican winners in the June primary. The party argues that requiring ranked-choice voting for Republican candidates violates the party’s First Amendment rights. “Because parties are collections of individuals, parties have rights,” said lawyer Josh Dunlap, who is representing the GOP. He is no relation to the secretary of state.

Nevada: State takes measures to ensure election security | Las Vegas Review-Journal

Allegations that Russian hacking, fake news and voter fraud influenced the 2016 election have made election security and integrity a paramount national issue. And with early voting for Nevada’s midterm primary kicking off in less than three weeks, that issue hasn’t been lost on election officials. “Voters should absolutely have confidence in the system in place,” said Wayne Thorley, deputy secretary of state for elections in Nevada. “They should have confidence that when they go and cast a ballot that it will be recorded correctly and that their vote counts.”

North Carolina: As a guard against hackers, Wake County will stop using modems to transmit election results | News & Observer

Waiting is agony on election nights for voters eager to see who won, and now people in Wake and a few other counties who are used to speedy reporting of local results are going to have to sit longer in suspense. The State Board of Elections told Wake, Harnett and three small elections offices in western North Carolina to stop using modems to transmit vote totals from their tabulators into the state system after the polls close. In an a atmosphere of heightened election security, modems have been identified as potential hacker targets.

Pennsylvania: Election Cybersecurity Commission Takes Shape | GovTech

A newly formed commission convened to study Pennsylvania’s election cyber­security aims to reduce vulnerability of the state’s polls in time for the next presidential contest. David Hickton, a former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania and the head of University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security, and Grove City College President Paul McNulty will lead the Blue Ribbon Commission on Pennsylvania’s Election Security. “Every part of our government and every part of what we stand for is premised upon free and fair elections and the public’s belief and confidence in our electoral system,” Hickton said. “Our systems are vulnerable.” … McNulty said the commission will focus attention on the security of the state’s vote and the recommendations could serve as models for other states.

Pennsylvania: New voting machines will be costly, but necessary | TribLIVE

There’s no doubt there will be howls of discontent when Westmoreland County has to pay for new voting machines. Especially seeing that about one in five eligible adults aren’t registered to vote, and it’s a big turnout when 60 percent of those registered voters show up on Election Day. But it’s a move that,expensive or not, must be done. Ensuring fair elections is the cornerstone of American democracy — something that citizens of many parts of the world yearn for. State election officials have ordered every county to start using voting machines that provide a verifiable paper trail of the votes cast by the 2020 elections.

Puerto Rico: U.S. House committee chair supports Puerto Rico statehood | Reuters

U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop said on Friday he supports the government of Puerto Rico’s efforts to introduce bipartisan legislation in Congress to grant full statehood to the U.S. commonwealth territory. “I am supportive of statehood. I think it is a solution that is long overdue,” Bishop, a Republican from Utah, said during a visit to the island that was broadcast over the internet. Puerto Rico is still in the throes of recovering from September’s devastating spate of hurricanes that killed dozens and completely knocked out power, deepening the economic woes for the island’s 3.4 million U.S. citizens. Many of them have decamped for the mainland United States in search of jobs and social services.

Cambodia: Prime Minister Threatens Legal Action Over Call For Election Boycott | RFA

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday slammed a call by a former leader of the now-dissolved opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) for voters to boycott the country’s upcoming general ballot, saying that it was a violation of electoral law. Earlier, former CNRP President Sam Rainsy, who is living in self-imposed exile to avoid a string of convictions widely seen as politically motivated, reiterated a call he made last week, urging Cambodia’s voters to boycott the July 29 elections if the party is not allowed to participate. In a four-minute video posted on his Facebook page on Friday, Sam Rainsy said that the CNRP, which was dissolved by the Supreme Court in November for its alleged role in a plot to topple Hun Sen’s government, is the only party fighting for democratic change in Cambodia, and that CNRP supporters and activists should stay away from the polls to refrain from legitimizing the election.

Lebanon: Low turnout worries politicians as Lebanon voting ends | The Guardian

Lebanon’s first national elections in nine years were marked by a tepid turnout Sunday, reflecting voter frustration over endemic corruption and a stagnant economy. Politicians had urged citizens to vote, and security forces struggled to maintain order as fights broke out in and around polling stations. President Michel Aoun broadcast an appeal to voters to participate in a televised address an hour before polls closed in the evening. “If you want change, you should exercise your right” to vote, he said in a message published on Twitter at the same time.