National: Nation’s top voting equipment vendors grilled by Senate on election security | Washington Times

The Senate’s leading election security advocates blasted the country’s top voting equipment vendors on Wednesday for potentially failing to shore up ballot boxes despite November’s midterm elections already being underway with primaries. Mark Warner, also the top Democrat in the Senate’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, scolded Texas-based Hart InterCivic for failing to cooperate with a security review in his home state of Virginia after that contest. “I am very concerned that there is a lot of chest thumping about how well we did in 2016,” Mr. Warner said during a Senate Rules and Administration Committee’s hearing on election safety — the second on the subject in less than a month. Peter Lichtenheld, vice president of operations for Hart InterCivic, had earlier told lawmakers of the firm’s “strong working relationships” with federal, state and local election officials.

National: Elections officials have a lot of security work to do before November, state and federal officials tell Congress | StateScoop

Russian hackers might not be as active in interfering with U.S. voting systems this year as they were in 2016, but that doesn’t mean states don’t have plenty of work to do to secure future elections, state and federal officials told members of the House of Representatives Wednesday. “Many elections across our country are being run on equipment that is either obsolete or near the end of its useful life,” Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea told the House Homeland Security Committee. But Gorbea, who said her state started buying new paper-ballot optical scanning machines to count votes in 2015, said replacing hardware is only one part of making the elections she oversees less vulnerable. In her experience, she said, the state-, county- and city-level officials who actually manage elections are “ill-prepared” to deal with cyberthreats.

National: Senators push for increased elections security | GCN

To help protect the nation’s voting infrastructure, the Elections Assistance Commission is distributing $380 million in funding to states, while the Department of Homeland Security is conducting  vulnerability scans on election equipment in at least 17 states. But some senators believe there’s much more that could be done to help secure elections. “We want to put some processes in place to make sure that we’ve not forgotten the lessons from 2016,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said in his testimony at a July 11 Senate rules committee hearing. “There are some basic things that could be done while still allowing the states to control their election structures and have flexibility on the type of election machines that they want to have.”

National: The 5 States Most Vulnerable to a 2018 Election Hack | U.S. News & World Report

Around one year ago, Liz Howard, the deputy commissioner of elections in Virginia had felt good about being prepared for the fall’s approaching voting. Localities looked ready and the state legislature had just passed mandatory post-election audits. “And then,” she recalled. “DEFCON happened.” At an annual worldwide hacking convention in Las Vegas – scheduled this year during the second week in August – intruders in a simulation made their way into the commonwealth’s electronic touch-screen voting machines used in roughly two dozen jurisdictions.  … Some swing states, like Pennsylvania, are racing to upgrade all of their equipment in time for 2020. But that leaves the commonwealth – host of a U.S. Senate and gubernatorial contest – vulnerable in 2018. In Georgia, a commission is still studying a replacement for its touch-screen voting machines and hasn’t yet decided how to precisely spend its $10 million federal grant, according to McClatchy.

Kansas: Appellate court rejects Kobach’s request to block Douglas County grand jury probe | Lawrence Journal-World

The Kansas Court of Appeals on Wednesday rejected Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s request for a new hearing to decide whether a grand jury should be called to investigate his office for allegedly mishandling voter registrations. But Kobach’s office has already asked the Kansas Supreme Court to review the matter, a motion that could postpone any action in the matter until after the Aug. 7 primary election, in which Kobach is seeking the Republican nomination for governor. Steven X. Davis, a Democratic candidate running for the 45th District House seat in Douglas County, filed petitions last year seeking to call a citizen-initiated grand jury, which is allowed under Kansas law. Davis has alleged that Kobach, or others in the office, engaged in “destroying, obstructing, or failing to deliver online voter registration,” as well as possessing falsely made or altered registration books, preventing qualified electors from voting and “being grossly neglectful with respect to their election duties.”

Michigan: National group says Michigan needs early voting opportunity | WZZM

We’re about to have a gubernatorial election in the state of Michigan. But do many people care enough to go out and vote? The truth is many people won’t go vote. History tells us only about four to maybe five out of ten people have voted in the state’s gubernatorial election since 1962. Now, a nationwide report on voter turnout is criticizing Michigan’s leaders for not making enough changes to entice voters to come to the polls on a regular basis. The report from the Center for American Progress found that Michigan could boost voter turnout by more than 235,000 “if the state adopted new policies to reduce barriers and make voting more convenient”. “92 million eligible Americans did not vote in 2016 and 143 million didn’t vote in 2014,” Center for American Progress Voting Rights Manager Danielle Root said. “That is a problem and that includes Democrats, Republicans, Independents and everybody in-between. We all need to come together to fix that.”

Editorials: North Carolina’s Voter ID amendment isn’t about fraud | Earl C. Johnson/News & Observer

In May of last year the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that struck down the North Carolina’s voter ID law as an unconstitutional effort to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.” As a result, the argument that a voter ID law was necessary to eliminate voting fraud was soundly defeated. There was a conclusion that if this law passed, it would cause irreparable damage black voters. The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear an appeal on this far-reaching, mean spirited and misguided attempt by the extreme members of the Republican Party had finally buried this ghost once and for all. As Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said at the time, “An ugly chapter in voter suppression is finally closing.”

South Carolina: Federal push to update voting machines like South Carolina’s is heating up | McClatchy

Federal efforts to fund new voting machines in states including South Carolina are gathering steam, but some advocates say state officials should be doing more. Several U.S. senators voiced support for the Secure Elections Act, which would allocate more money to states looking to increase the security of their elections systems, which help South Carolina. The Secure Elections Act has five co-sponsors, including U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-Seneca. A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-Charleston, said Wednesday he supports the push as well, calling it a “positive step forward.” “As we continue to learn lessons from the 2016 election, Senator Scott believes it is critical we move forward with efforts to secure voting systems across the country and fight intrusion attempts by bad actors from around the globe,” Ken Farnaso, Scott’s press secretary, said in an email.

Texas: Democrats Take On Partisan Voting Maps, After Supreme Court Punts The Issue | KUT

Texas Democrats are campaigning on the issue of how lawmakers draw political maps ahead of the 2018 elections. They say partisan gerrymandering is solely a state issue right now, because the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule this term on whether the practice is legal. Partisan gerrymandering is when lawmakers draw up political districts to favor one party over the other. In Texas, Democrats have spent the last several years in court fighting maps they say overtly hurt Democratic voters. The Supreme Court, however, decided not to hear the state’s gerrymandering case. Justin Nelson, the Democratic candidate for Texas attorney general, is making it a big part of his campaign. He highlighted gerrymandered districts in Austin during a bar crawl last week.

Cambodia: Chinese hackers breach Cambodian government ahead of country’s general election | CyberScoop

In the run-up to Cambodia’s general election on July 29, a hacking group tied to China has been breaking into multiple organizations that share a connection to either the country’s main opposition party, voting process or human rights movement, according to new research and additional analysis provided by U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye. The findings — made possible through a glaring operational security mistake where hackers left their attack servers exposed on the open internet — help illustrate how governments are leaning on cyber-espionage capabilities to learn about foreign elections. FireEye collected this intelligence by directly accessing the attack servers, which weren’t protected with a password. The firm was able to identify breaches through established lines of communication that existed between the servers and victims.

Pakistan: At least 21 dead in huge bombing targeting politicians who dared to stand up to Taliban | The Independent

The Pakistani Taliban has claimed it was behind a suicide bombing at a rally that killed a secular politician and 20 others two weeks before nationwide elections. Mohammad Khurasani, a spokesman for the militant group, said they targeted the Awami National Party rally in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing Haroon Ahmed Bilour, a candidate for a seat in the provincial legislature. Another 65 people were wounded. Islamic extremists grew to despise the ANP when it ruled the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, of which Peshawar is the capital, from 2008 to 2013.

United Kingdom: Watchdog investigates links between Canadian data firm and Vote Leave | The Guardian

The Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating the relationship between the Canadian data firm AggregateIQ, Vote Leave and a number of other leave campaigns, the body has said in a report published on Wednesday. The investigation is one of the many started by the ICO in response to reporting by the Observer and Guardian suggesting that widespread data misuse may have occurred during the EU referendum period. The ICO report, citing data handed over by Facebook in May, says: “AIQ created and, in some cases, placed advertisements on behalf of the DUP Vote to Leave campaign, Vote Leave, BeLeave, and Veterans for Britain.

Zimbabwe: Opposition Protests Elections Commission | VoA News

Zimbabwe’s opposition parties took to the streets Wednesday, demanding the country’s election regulators release voter rolls to be used in the July 30 general election. Thousands joined Nelson Chamisa, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change-MDC-Alliance and marched to the offices of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission. They held placards denouncing the commission and accusing it of rigging for the ruling ZANU-PF party to win. After a meeting with the commission, Chamisa explained the opposition’s demands. “The ballot paper has to be done in a transparent manner. We must agree, we must observe. We must be accountable and open. The issue of the voters’ roll in terms of the law. We must have a biometric voters’ roll with pictures with everything as per the law,” he said.