Monthly Archives: May 2018

Iraq’s parliament successfully held its fourth emergency session to discuss election results on Monday, pushing the session until late afternoon while waiting for holding quorum. At least 165 lawmakers need to be attending for a parliamentary session to kick off legitimately. More so, the Iraqi parliament approved manual recounting of 10 percent of votes in the May 12 parliamentary election amid allegations of fraud, forgery and irregularities. If there is 25 percent difference between the results of the manual and electronic count, then all Iraqi provinces are to undergo a full manual recount.

Latvia: Latvia probes whether Russian money flows used to meddle in Europe | Reuters

Latvia is investigating whether its banks acted as conduits for Russian funds used to interfere in elections and politics elsewhere, after it received a warning from the United States, officials have told Reuters. The allegations, which highlight the country’s role as a stepping stone for Russian money on its way to the west, come after Latvia’s third largest bank was shut in February after being accused by the United States of money laundering. Foreign affairs minister Edgars Rinkevics told Reuters that citizens from Russia and former Soviet states, including people subject to U.S. sanctions, had put money in Latvian banks and some of it may have been used for political manipulation.

Libya: Rivals agree December elections despite continuing violence | Middle East Eye

Libyan rival factions agreed on Tuesday to hold elections on 10 December. The agreement was made at a Paris meeting called by the French president Emmanuel Macron. An adviser to UN-recognised Libyan prime minister Fayez al-Serraj said the agreement included the finalisation of a constitution by 16 September. Serraj, eastern-based military commander Khalifa Haftar and the heads of two parliamentary assemblies attended the talks. “The parties have committed to set the constitutional basis for elections and adopt the necessary electoral laws by 16 September and hold parliamentary and presidential elections on 10 December,” an eight-point joint statement read.

Mexico: Electoral campaign flush with illegal funding | Associated Press

For every peso declared to Mexican electoral authorities by political parties and candidates, 15 more are moving under the table, according to a report Tuesday on the problem of illegal campaign finance. The nonprofit Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity published the report after months of investigation, concluding that Mexico’s public campaign finance system has failed to keep illegal money from influencing elections. The report says that the cash moving around electoral campaigns is such that Mexico’s central bank has documented inexplicable increases in the amount of cash circulating in the economy in the five months before elections. The money comes from both public and private sources. Money is siphoned from public programs and local governments to fund campaigns and is funneled to candidates by businesses interested in winning public contracts and having access to elected officials.

South Korea: Foreign voters still get little attention | The Korea Times

With the June 13 local elections about two weeks away, some foreign residents with voting rights are still having difficulty getting information about candidates because of the language barrier. The National Election Commission (NEC) has been running an official foreign language website, but they are poorly managed with few updates; they are virtually useless for foreign voters who cannot speak Korean. From May 27 to 29, foreign residents with suffrage need to visit their local community center or government website for their city, county or district, to confirm whether they are listed as eligible voters and how to find their polling station. Foreigners who find their names missing should ask the center to include them during this period. Otherwise, they might lose the chance to vote.

National: First Line of Defense in U.S. Elections Has Critical Weaknesses | Bloomberg

A software sensor with a knack for detecting intrusions like those from Russian hackers is being embraced by U.S. states determined to protect their election systems, though cybersecurity experts warn of the tool’s limits. The Department of Homeland Security is working with a growing number of state election officials to install “Albert sensors,” which detect traffic coming into and out of a computer network. The system can’t block a suspected attack, but it funnels suspicious information to a federal-state information-sharing center near Albany, New York, that’s intended to help identify malign behavior and alert states quickly. “Every sensor we’re able to add is another in what was previously a dark spot” that federal authorities “couldn’t see into,” said Brian Calkin, vice president of operations for the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, the Homeland Security-funded group that created the sensor in 2010 and upgraded it in 2014.

International: Cyber-stability wonks add election-ware to ‘civilised nations won’t hack this’ standard | The Register

The Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (GCSC) has called for an end to cyber-attacks on electoral infrastructure. The GCSC works to develop “norms” of behaviour it hopes governments and others will adopt in order to leave internet infrastructure untouched during conflict. The body believes that as the internet is now critical to civil society, international agreements should protect its operation so that bystanders to conflicts aren’t harmed by disruptions to online services. Microsoft, the Internet Society and the governments of The Netherlands, France and Singapore have all funded the group. The Commission met last week and resolved that “State and non-state actors should not pursue, support or allow cyber operations intended to disrupt the technical infrastructure essential to elections, referenda or plebiscites.”

National: Goofy, Elephant, Squid: How Political Gamesmanship Distorts Voters’ Power | The New York Times

They sound like possible program titles for the Cartoon Network: Goofy Kicking Donald Duck, The Earmuffs, The Broken-Winged Pterodactyl, The Upside-Down Elephant, The Fat Squid, A Steamed Crab Hit by a Mallet. Actually, they were the shapes some people saw when looking at federal and state legislative districts that had been gerrymandered to within an inch of their lives. For the record, Goofy was in Pennsylvania, the earmuffs in Illinois, the pterodactyl in Maryland, the elephant in Texas, and the squid and steamed crab in North Carolina. About all they had in common with cartoons was that critics dismissed these squiggly and lumpy legislative lines as loony tunes, and courts rejected some of them as unconstitutional. Gerrymandering — the manipulation of political boundaries by the party in office in hopes of ensuring its enduring primacy — is almost as old as the republic.

National: Supreme Court to rule soon on partisan gerrymander cases: Last, best chance for fair elections? | Salon

It’s almost decision day for partisan gerrymandering. Fewer than four weeks remain in this U.S. Supreme Court session, so rulings in two crucial cases from Maryland and Wisconsin will arrive sometime between this Tuesday and mid-June. There’s national momentum towards fair districts. Judges and citizens have been slowly fighting back against the most extreme partisan manipulations of the system. Rigged maps in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have been struck down. A bipartisan commission won an overwhelming victory in Ohio this month, and an even stronger commission seems likely to be on the ballot in Michigan this fall. Ballot initiatives have also advanced in Colorado, Utah, Missouri and Arkansas. Nevertheless, no one should expect a grand democracy-saving gesture from the Supreme Court. Yes, justices from across the court’s ideological spectrum have agreed that partisan gerrymandering is “distasteful.” They have expressed revulsion over naked power grabs, entrenched majorities insulated from the ballot box, and real fear that new technology and Big Data could make everything even worse when the next redistricting occurs after the 2020 census.

National: F.B.I.’s Urgent Request: Reboot Your Router to Stop Russia-Linked Malware | The New York Times

Hoping to thwart a sophisticated malware system linked to Russia that has infected hundreds of thousands of internet routers, the F.B.I. has made an urgent request to anybody with one of the devices: Turn it off, and then turn it back on. The malware is capable of blocking web traffic, collecting information that passes through home and office routers, and disabling the devices entirely, the bureau announced on Friday. A global network of hundreds of thousands of routers is already under the control of the Sofacy Group, the Justice Department said last week. That group, which is also known as A.P.T. 28 and Fancy Bear and believed to be directed by Russia’s military intelligence agency, hacked the Democratic National Committee ahead of the 2016 presidential election, according to American and European intelligence agencies. The F.B.I. has several recommendations for any owner of a small office or home office router. The simplest thing to do is reboot the device, which will temporarily disrupt the malware if it is present. Users are also advised to upgrade the device’s firmware and to select a new secure password. If any remote-management settings are in place, the F.B.I. suggests disabling them.

California: Fate of Judge Persky, symbol within #MeToo movement, heads to voters | San Francisco Chronicle

No California judge has been recalled from office since 1932, when Los Angeles voters removed three Superior Court judges accused of taking kickbacks. None has been recalled because of an unpopular ruling since 1913, when San Franciscans ousted a judge who had set a low bail for a man charged with sexual assault. But history may not provide much shelter for Aaron Persky, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge who faces a June 5 recall vote primarily because of a single decision: the six-month sentence he issued two years ago to former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner, convicted of attempted rape and two other felonies for sexually penetrating a drunk and unconscious woman outside a fraternity party in January 2015. Furor over the sentencing spread nationwide, fueled by a heart-wrenching courtroom statement from Turner’s victim and the widespread view that Persky, swayed by his own background as a former Stanford athlete, had let Turner off far too lightly.

Florida: Rick Scott, Cabinet defend felons’ rights restoration system in court | Tampa Bay Times

Gov. Rick Scott and Florida’s three elected Cabinet members Friday mounted a new legal defense of the state’s 150-year-old system for restoring the voting rights of convicted felons. In a filing with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, the four Republican state officials said U.S. District Judge Mark Walker repeatedly “erred” and abused the court’s discretion when he struck down the system as unconstitutional in March. Walker had ordered the state to create a new clemency system for felons within 30 days, but on the night before the deadline, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit stayed Walker’s order, which criticized the existing system for being arbitrary and for giving the governor too much power over every case.

Maryland: Gubernatorial candidate threatens legal action if new ballots not printed | WTOP

Maryland gubernatorial candidate Valerie Ervin is threatening legal action after state election officials announced they would not print new ballots reflecting her recent candidacy following the sudden death of her running mate. The state board of elections announced that it would not reprint ballots for the June 26 primary to reflect Ervin as a Democratic candidate for governor. She was previously running as lieutenant governor on the ticket with former gubernatorial candidate and Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, who died of a heart attack on May 10. Ervin’s campaign said in a news release Monday night that it had sent a letter to State Board of Elections Administrator Linda Lamone, threatening legal action if ballots are not reprinted, along with other suggestions on what election officials could do to better address the change in candidates.

New Jersey: Lawmakers Consider Switch To Paper Ballot System | WBGO

New Jersey lawmakers are considering whether the voting machines now used in the state should be replaced by a paper ballot system using electronic scanners. Princeton University computer science professor Andrew Appel says the voting machines are vulnerable to hacking. “So we should run our elections in a way that can detect and correct for computer hacking without having to put all our trust in computers. Therefore, we cannot use paperless touchscreen voting computers. They’re a fatally flawed technology.”

Ohio: Voting Equipment Money Inches Through Ohio Legislature | GovTech

A bill that would provide nearly $115 million to counties to help upgrade aging voting equipment, reimburse election boards for more recent machine purchases and set up a unified purchasing and leasing program through the Ohio Secretary of State passed a statehouse panel Wednesday. The measure approved by the House Finance Committee already passed the Ohio Senate. It is in limbo for when the full House will take up the issue. House members must first elect a new speaker for legislation to move forward. The Butler County Board of Elections has about 1,600 voting machines, but there are about 150 that are unusable, according to the elections office, and on average 50 voting machines need repairs after each election.

U.S. Territories: Appeal in voting rights case gets boost | Saipan Tribune

A petition to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking expanded voting rights in U.S. territories has received an important boost. Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands Bar Association, and leading voting rights scholars have each filed amicus briefs in support of Supreme Court review in Segovia v. United States. Last month, Luis Segovia, a veteran living in Guam, along with other former state residents living in Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, petitioned the Supreme Court to answer whether it is constitutional to deny absentee voting rights in these territories while allowing citizens living in other U.S. territories or even a foreign country to continue being able to vote for President and voting representation in Congress.

West Virginia: Dark money tactics used in West Virginia’s primary could spread as midterm season heats up | CNN

A pair of mysterious pop-up super PACs, one with Republican roots and another tied to Democrats, spent more than $3 million in hopes of swaying West Virginia’s GOP Senate primary while keeping their donor lists hidden from voters until after the election. The groups arrived on the scene with blurry names, like “Mountain Families PAC,” but blunt intentions: to quietly use truckloads of outside money to feather their political beds ahead of the November general election. By the time their donors were revealed a few days ago, the primary felt like a distant memory. To do this, the PACs used legal tactics that were nonetheless designed to defy the spirit of current campaign finance law, campaign finance experts say.

Colombia: Rightwinger and former guerrilla head for presidential runoff | The Guardian

Colombians have failed to elect a president outright, setting the stage for a bitter runoff between two frontrunners from opposite ends of the political spectrum, while a peace process with leftist rebels hangs in the balance. Iván Duque, a hardline conservative who viscerally opposes the peace accord, took the largest share of the vote on Sunday with 39%, though fell short of the 50% required to win at the first round. Instead, he will face Gustavo Petro – a leftwinger and former mayor of Bogotá, who came second with 25% – in the second round on 17 June. Petro, himself once a guerrilla, was Colombia’s first progressive candidate in generations and had been expected to gain a larger share. But a third candidate, the more moderate Sergio Fajardo, appeared to siphon off Petro’s support, receiving 23%. It remains to be seen if Fajardo, a reformer and former mayor of Medellín, will back Petro in the second round.

India: Massive EVM Failure Affects Voting in Kairana, Leaders Demand Repolls | NewsClick

As Kairana Lok Sabha Constituency went to bypolls on Monday, the malfunctioning of the EVMs and VVPAT emerged to be the biggest story from the polling ground. The extent of EVMs malfunctioning grew severe as the day progressed. More than 200 EVMs and VVPATs from the polling booths of all the five assembly segments of the Lok Sabha were reportedly malfunctioning, which led to the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) to raise allegations of “scientific rigging” in the byelection. Interestingly, even the BJP leadership raised the issue of EVM malfunctioning and urged the EC to conduct repolls at some booths. The RLD’s candidate in Kairana Tabassum Hasan, who got the support of Opposition parties, wrote to the chief election commissioner complaining about malfunctioning EVM and VVPATs in her constituency. She alleged that despite raising the issue at the state and national level, the local administration was not dealing with the issue. The voters were being deprived of their right and hence the Election Commission must urgently send engineers and technicians to repair the machines, she wrote.

Iraq: MPs demand partial recount of election results | The National

The Iraqi parliament has urged an investigation into allegations of vote fraud in this month’s general election, passing a resolution seeking a partial recount. The non-binding resolution seeks to cancel ballots cast from overseas and within displacement camps inside the country and would require 10 per cent of all votes to be manually recounted. If cheating were discovered it could lead to a recount of all ballots nationwide. The move by MPs follows protests over alleged vote rigging on May 12. The proposed recount would be compared to electronic tallies, to address concerns that electronic voting machines had been hacked. “In case of discovery of fraud, then a recount would be carried out for all votes across the country,” Abdel Malik Al Husseini, spokesman for the speaker of parliament, told The National.

Italy: New elections loom in Italy amid calls for Mattarella to be impeached | The Guardian

A standoff over Italy’s future in the eurozone has forced the resignation of the populist prime minister-in-waiting, Giuseppe Conte, after the country’s president refused to accept Conte’s controversial choice for finance minister. Sergio Mattarella, the Italian president who was installed by a previous pro-EU government, refused to accept the nomination for finance minister of Paolo Savona, an 81-year-old former industry minister who has called Italy’s entry into the euro a “historic mistake”. “I have given up my mandate to form the government of change,” Conte told reporters after leaving failed talks with Mattarella. Italy has been without a government since elections on 4 March ended in a hung parliament.

Paraguay: President leaves post early to take seat in Senate | Associated Press

Horacio Cartes resigned from the presidency of Paraguay on Monday — a long-expected step that paves the way for him to take a Senate seat. The recently approved Vice President Alicia Pucheta will take over as leader. The Senate now must vote on whether to accept the resignation, but approval seems likely. Cartes’ five-year term ends in August and Paraguay’s constitution says former presidents automatically become senators for life, with a voice but without a vote. But Cartes, 61, won a full Senate seat during last month’s elections, a post that would help him extend his political influence into the future, and the Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional. He has to resign before his term ends so that he can be sworn in as senator for the coming sessions.

Venezuela: EU wants new Venezuela election, prepares more sanctions | Associated Press

European leaders on Monday called for a new presidential election in Venezuela, saying they will “swiftly” levy a new round of sanctions targeting those close to President Nicolas Maduro. Despite widespread calls for a return to democratic rule, Venezuela’s election showed the country was further straying from constitutional order, the European Union’s foreign ministers said. The threat from the EU’s foreign ministers drew backlash from Maduro, who said that and any more sanctions will only further hurt Venezuelans. “This is the European Union that arrogantly wants to put its nose in Venezuela’s business,” Maduro said. “Enough of this old colonialism.”

National: Election officials need more than just paper-based ballots to secure votes | StateScoop

Many experts on election security say the key to more secure ballots is to move away from electronic voting machines toward models that produce paper records of votes. But it takes more than just that, a former federal cybersecurity strategist said Wednesday at a conference for city and county officials. Mike Garcia, now a consultant with the Center for Internet Security, told the group of about 40 that attempts to undermine the U.S. electoral process are going to target more than just ballot boxes. “Voting machines aren’t the only place you can undermine the election process,” Garcia said at the Public Technology Institute event in Washington. “Adversaries are going to find weaknesses anywhere.”

National: Federal Election Commission Can’t Decide If Russian Interference Violated Law | NPR

As tech companies and government agencies prepare to defend against possible Russian interference in the midterm elections, the Federal Election Commission has a different response: too soon. The four commissioners on Thursday deadlocked, again, on proposals to consider new rules, for example, for foreign-influenced U.S. corporations and for politically active entities that don’t disclose their donors. “We have reason to think there are foreign actors who are looking for every single avenue to try and influence our elections,” said Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat who offered two proposals for new regulations. Both proposals failed on partisan 2-2 votes.

National: The FBI is trying to thwart a massive Russia-linked hacking campaign | The Washington Post

U.S. law enforcement is trying to seize control of a network of hundreds of thousands of wireless routers and other devices infected by malicious software and under the control of a Russian hacking group that typically targets government, military and security organizations. In a statement issued late Wednesday, the Justice Department said the FBI had received a court order to seize a domain at the core of the massive botnet, which would allow the government to protect victims by redirecting the malware to an FBI-controlled server. The DOJ attributed the hacking campaign to the group known as Sofacy, also known as Fancy Bear. While the statement did not explicitly name Russia, Fancy Bear is the Russian military-linked group that breached the Democratic National Committee in the presidential election.

Editorials: Russia will try again this fall. Congress doesn’t seem to care. | Karen Tumulty/The Washington Post

When top intelligence officials went to Capitol Hill one morning this week to give House members a classified briefing on the security of the upcoming elections, only 40 or so bothered to show up. In other words, 9 out of 10 lawmakers thought they had better things to do than listen to an assessment of threats to the integrity of a closely contested midterm that is less than six months away. “Well, it was at 8 o’clock,” Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) said.

Florida: Is Florida’s elections system safe from a cyber-attack? | Tampa Bay Times

The people who run Florida’s elections used to fret about having enough poll workers and voting machines. Now they talk about incident response teams and threat detectors. They buy expensive sensors that can detect malicious intruders bent on creating havoc. They field sales pitches from election vendors selling cyber-insurance. It may be a matter of time before elections workers have to pass a Level 2 criminal background check — just to be on the safe side. Absentee ballots are important, but so are “hacktivists,” computer hackers on a social or political mission. “A cyber attack is like a hurricane,” said Klint Walker, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security cyber expert. “It’s always brewing out there.”

Florida: Sixteen states apply for election security money. Florida? Not yet. | Tampa Bay Times

Sixteen states have formally applied for federal money to improve their election security in advance of the 2018 vote. Florida is not yet one of them. The state’s chief elections officer, Secretary of State Ken Detzner, says: “We’ve been working on it daily.” The state hasn’t specifically said why up until this week it hasn’t sought the money. Gov. Rick Scott on Wednesday ordered Detzner to seek Florida’s $19 million share of a $380 million fund, part of a spending bill that President Donald J. Trump signed in March. Scott also directed Detzner to hire five cyber-security experts.

Michigan: Redistricting group has signatures, still fighting to make ballot | The Detroit News