National: Justice Department plans to alert public to foreign operations targeting U.S. democracy | The Washington Post

he Justice Department plans to alert the public to foreign operations targeting U.S. democracy under a new policy designed to counter hacking and disinformation campaigns such as the one Russia undertook in 2016 to disrupt the presidential election. The government will inform American companies, private organizations and individuals that they are being covertly attacked by foreign actors attempting to affect elections or the political process. “Exposing schemes to the public is an important way to neutralize them,” said Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who announced the policy at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. Rosenstein, who has drawn President Trump’s ire for appointing a special counsel to probe Russian election interference, got a standing ovation.“The American people have a right to know if foreign governments are targeting them with propaganda,” he said.

Voting Blogs: Purges: A Growing Threat to the Right to Vote | Brennan Center for Justice

On April 19, 2016, thousands of eligible Brooklyn voters dutifully showed up to cast their ballots in the presidential primary, only to find their names missing from the voter lists. An investigation by the New York state attorney general found that New York City’s Board of Elections had improperly deleted more than 200,000 names from the voter rolls. In June 2016, the Arkansas secretary of state provided a list to the state’s 75 county clerks suggesting that more than 7,700 names be removed from the rolls because of supposed felony convictions. That roster was highly inaccurate; it included people who had never been convicted of a felony, as well as persons with past convictions whose voting rights had been restored. And in Virginia in 2013, nearly 39,000 voters were removed from the rolls when the state relied on a faulty database to delete voters who allegedly had moved out of the commonwealth. Error rates in some counties ran as high as 17 percent.

Florida: House races moved to November after write-in withdraws | Florida Politics

A Republican primary for an open state House seat has been moved to the November general election after a write-in candidate who had closed the primary withdrew from the contest. Secretary of State Ken Detzner declared the Republican House District 56 primary a universal election, based on a state law, and moved the contest to the No. 6 general election. The decision came after David Joseph Patzer of Mulberry submitted a handwritten note Wednesday to the state Division of Elections stating his withdrawal from the contest.

Kansas: Appeal in ACLU-Kobach fight says federal voter law doesn’t pre-empt state law | The Topeka Capital-Journal

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach filed a statement this week contending a federal judge erred in deciding the state’s voter registration law is unconstitutional in requiring new voters to prove their citizenship. The statement was filed Tuesday with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. It is an initial step in an attempt by Kobach to overturn the June 18 decision of U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson. The statement lists two claims as a basis for Kobach’s appeal and says other issues may be raised later for appellate judges to consider. It was filed on Kobach’s behalf by Kansas solicitor general Toby Crouse, an official in the state attorney general’s office. The 2011 voter registration law requires that people registering to vote for the first time provide documents proving U.S. citizenship. The American Civil Liberties Union challenged the law in a 2016 lawsuit.

Maryland: Following Maryland revelation, bills would ban election vendors from foreign control | Baltimore Sun

Maryland lawmakers have introduced two U.S. House bills seeking to better safeguard election systems following the disclosure that a state election software vendor had ties to a Russian investor. A measure by Democratic Rep. John Delaney and Republican Rep. Andy Harris would mandate that vendors associated with federal elections be owned and controlled by U.S. companies. The legislation follows last week’s disclosure by state legislative leaders in Annapolis that, without the state’s knowledge, a Russian investor had bought a local software vendor that maintains part of the State Board of Elections’ voter registration system.

Editorials: Maryland can’t protect its elections | Mary Kiraly/The Washington Post

It was heartening to learn that Maryland’s leaders raised alarmover a recent warning from the FBI that an election contractor with financial ties to a Russian oligarch and with tentacles into most of the major components of the Maryland voting system has been unmasked. The historical context for the current situation should be understood. In 2007, after years of citizen advocacy, the General Assembly passed legislation that would move the state to paper-ballot/optical-scan voting. During that process, cybersecurity and computer experts from major institutions, including Princeton University and the Brennan Center for Justice, testified about the urgent need to abandon paperless touch-screen voting and to secure computerized election tabulation systems with a paper ballot. A talented and prescient computer scientist at Johns Hopkins University had his career savaged in this process, as the full displeasure of a voting system vendor was directed at this research.

New Hampshire: State makes it tougher for students to vote. Democrats call it ‘devious’ suppression. | NBC

New Hampshire Democrats are hoping to turn the November midterm elections into a referendum on a new law barring part-time residents from voting in the state. Last week, Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, signed into law House Bill 1264, requiring students and other part-time residents to become permanent residents of the state if they want to vote. Currently, students must show they are “domiciled” in the state when they register to vote. The new law will force permanent residents to comply with laws such as state motor vehicle registration. Students with cars, for example, would have to pay for a new, in-state driver’s license and register their cars in the state, a cost critics argue could deter the historically Democratic voting bloc from the ballot box. “It’s a poll tax,” said Garrett Muscatel, a Dartmouth College student and candidate for state representative. 

Editorials: The threat to our democracy? Our indifference to fixing our voting machines. | Philadelphia Inquirer

Not that anyone living in the reality-based world needed more convincing, but the recent indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officials charged with interfering in the 2016 election, and President Trump’s apparent alliance with Russian President Vladimir Putin in denying the hacks, underscores the seriousness of this attack on the United States’ democracy. Prior to the indictment, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee said in May that the Russian government “conducted an unprecedented, coordinated cyber campaign against state election infrastructure.” Trump’s willful blindness to the Russian cyberattacks means the U.S. remains vulnerable to interference in future elections.   All the more reason why states, including Pennsylvania, must move to protect our voting system from such attacks.

Wisconsin: Residents testify on voter suppression at Milwaukee hearing | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

For Helen Harris, voting is a family tradition. She was born in Louisiana when Jim Crow ruled the day and her parents weren’t legally allowed to vote. Later in life, after her parents moved to Milwaukee, that right was something they treasured.  Her mother cast her last vote in the 2012 presidential election at the age of 95. Harris continued her parent’s tradition, voting in every election from school board to governor. But in 2011, a redistricting of Wisconsin’s assembly district lines left her stranded in an affluent, primarily Republican district far removed from her formerly majority Democrat one. “I just don’t feel that the things that I care about and the things that I value are being represented by the people that we have in office now in our district,” she said. 

Cambodia: UN Expert Decries Voter Intimidation in Lead-up to Cambodia Election | RFA

The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur to Cambodia Rhona Smith on Friday expressed concern over reports of voter intimidation in the lead up to a general election this month that has been widely derided as unfree and unfair amid an ongoing political crackdown in the country. In a statement posted to the Facebook page of the U.N’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Cambodia, Smith highlighted reports of government representatives stating that abstaining from voting was illegal and that fines would be imposed on people messaging about a boycott of the July 29 election. She also pointed to reports that local authorities have threatened to withhold public services from those who do not vote for Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). “This only creates a climate of fear and confusion,” Smith said.

Luxembourg: Postal voting gains more ground in Luxembourg | Luxembourg Times

A growing number of Luxembourg nationals are choosing to cast their votes by post. If at the previous elections, nearly 30.000 individuals decided to elect their representatives by post, authorities expect postal voting to gain even more ground at the upcoming national elections on 14 October. Based on current predictions, nearly 50.000 individuals are set to send their votes by mail. If the estimate turns out to be true, the figure would mark a new record for Luxembourg. Voting is compulsory in the Grand Duchy and one’s failure to exercise this right may be subject to a fine.

Maldives: Election body makes second voting U-turn | Maldives Independent

The Maldives elections body will allow voters with disabilities to choose their own helpers for polling day, its second U-turn and major misstep in four days. Updated electoral regulations published Sunday say voters who require assistance will be allowed to choose a helper of their choice. The helper can assist the voter with the permission of the chief electoral official at the ballot centre. The Elections Commission initially said only electoral officials would help voters who were unable to tick the ballot paper on their own. The original announcement was met with anger from political parties and a threat of legal action by a former attorney general.

Mali: Opposition frontrunner warns of potential fraud in presidential vote | AFP

The team of the leading opposition candidate in Mali’s upcoming presidential election claimed Friday that there were “substantial anomalies” in the electoral register and warned of a possible “massive attempt at fraud” in the 29 July vote. Speaking at a news conference in Bamako, the campaign manager of opposition frontrunner, Soumaila Cisse, said the electoral register published online on 4 July was “totally different” from the one audited by the International Organisation of Francophonie on 27 April. The number of names on the online register totalled 8,105,154 voters, more than the 8,000,462 counted by the IOF, campaign manager Tiebile Drame said.

Pakistan: Pakistan gives army broad election powers at polling stations | Reuters

Pakistan’s election authorities have granted broad judicial powers to the powerful military at polling stations during next week’s general election, a rare move that has fanned concern among political parties and human rights groups. The July 25 election is seen as a two-way race between parties led by former cricket star Imran Khan and now-jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who has accused the army of working behind the scenes to favor Khan, which it denies. About 371,000 troops will spread out across Pakistan to guard the election, about three times the number during the last election in 2013. In a notice this month, the Election Commission gave soldiers the authority of a “magistrate”, to hold on-the-spot trials of anyone breaking election laws and sentence them.

Zimbabwe: Report hints at 900 000 ghost-voters in Zimbabwe election | AFP

With less than two weeks to go until Zimbabweans head to the polls, a further analysis of the voter’s roll has shown that as many as 900 000 records may have been tampered with, to influence the results, according to a report by TeamPachedu. This includes duplicating voters with a different date of birth, assigning and creating new identity numbers for some voters and introducing minor changes to the identity numbers that cannot be ascribed to human error. The Zimbabwean Electoral Commission (ZEC) compiled the roll using its much-vaunted biometric identification system to authenticate the records, presumably ensuring only one voter can be assigned to each record.

National: Microsoft discloses first known hacking attempts in midterm elections | The Hill

Microsoft disclosed Thursday that it identified and helped thwart hacking attempts on three congressional candidates earlier this year, marking the first publicly known hacking efforts targeting candidates in the 2018 midterm elections. “Earlier this year, we did discover that a fake Microsoft domain had been established as the landing page for phishing attacks,” Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president for security and trust, said at the Aspen Security Forum. “And we saw metadata that suggested those phishing attacks were being directed at three candidates who are all standing for election in the midterm elections,” he added. Burt said that Microsoft and the government were able to take the domain down and block the phishing messages.

National: Justice Department unveils strategy to fight election meddling, cybercrime | Politico

The Justice Department on Thursday issued a wide-ranging report describing the cyber threats facing the United States and the department’s tactics for investigating, disrupting and deterring those risks. Most significantly, the report contains the first public description of how the DOJ will assess and respond to foreign influence operations like Russia’s 2016 election meddling. “That policy reflects an effort to articulate neutral principles so that when the issue that the government confronted in 2016 arises again — as it surely will — there will be a framework to address it,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in unveiling the report at the Aspen Security Forum.

National: How is it even possible that most state election offices are still security nightmares? | BGR

Well, this is reassuring. The midterms are almost upon us, the country is still reeling from the revelations associated with hackers meddling in the 2016 presidential election. And, somehow, most states still have glaring security holes in their election offices that will probably stay that way through the midterms. That’s according to a new report from Politico, which found via a survey of all 50 states that few are planning to shore up their systems before November. Even after getting their share of $380 million in funding Congress appropriated for election security in March. “Only 13 states said they intend to use the federal dollars to buy new voting machines,” Politico reports. “At least 22 said they have no plans to replace their machines before the election — including all five states that rely solely on paperless electronic voting devices, which cybersecurity experts consider a top vulnerability.

National: Why security company Cloudflare is protecting U.S. election sites for free | Fast Company

Whatever President Trump says or un-says, it’s clear that election authorities in the U.S. and around the world have faced and will continue to face an onslaught of hacking attacks. While it’s unclear if hackers have been able to actually manipulate vote tallies, anyone from a Russian agent to a “400-pound” hacker sitting on his bed can easily seed mayhem and doubt by knocking voter registration sites offline or posting forged announcements of election results. Now San Francisco-based cloud security provider Cloudflare is offering a free service, called the Athenian Project, to any U.S. election authority for the 2018 polls. About 70 agencies, including 10 state election authorities as well as county- and city- level bodies have signed up, the company announced today. (If other companies are also providing pro-bono election security services, please let me know!) Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince acknowledges that these are just a “drop in the bucket” out of the over 8,500 election authorities in the US, and he said that any other ones are welcome to join.

National: “Don’t count Russia out,” experts warn on election hacking amid relative calm | Fast Company

As the 2018 midterm election season heats up across the country, U.S. government officials say they’ve yet to see digital attacks by Russia on the scale of the 2016 presidential election–but cybersecurity experts warn that it’s too early to tell, noting that it’s still early in the election cycle. “Right now, there are no indications that Russia is targeting the 2018 U.S. midterms at a scale or scope to match their activities in 2016,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told the National Association of Secretaries of State on Saturday.

National: New voting machines are important, but here are three other ways states are investing in election security | StateScoop

In the past eight days, federal officials — including Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence; Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary; and Christopher Krebs, the homeland security undersecretary for cybersecurity — have warned that the Russian hackers who attempted to meddle in the 2016 election are on the prowl again. Depending on who you ask, state election officials are either implementing sweeping new security measures or making minimal progress in safeguarding voters ahead of this November’s general election. Every state has claimed its piece of the $380 million the federal Election Assistance Commission offered for new security measures, and several states’ top election officials have told Congress they’re using the money to harden the firewalls around their voter registration files and to replace antiquated ballot equipment with new machines that offer paper records.

National: Who Should Foot the Bill for a Secure Election System? | The Fiscal Times

In a party-line vote, House Republicans on Thursday blocked a Democratic effort to boost election security funding. The vote was on a procedural motion by Democrats intended to add $380 million for state election security grants in 2019 to a larger spending package. That spending legislation, which includes nearly $59 billion for the Interior Department, Environmental Protection Agency and Treasury Department, was approved, 217-199. Democratic lawmakers chanted “USA! USA!” on the House floor as they sought to support the bill, but Republicans insisted that those grants do not need additional funding given that as states have not yet used up all the money previously allocated to the program. “Over the past decade you’ve seen billions of dollars funded, by Republicans and Democrats, in our bipartisan appropriations each year to do exactly that, secure elections here at home,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) said, according to The Washington Post.

Editorials: How the Midterm Elections May Be Compromised | Myrna Pérez/The New York Times

This fall, millions of Americans may head to the polls only to find their names aren’t on voter registration lists anymore. These voters may have to cast provisional ballots. Or worse, they could be turned away from the polls altogether. The cause? Voter purges — an often-flawed method of cleaning up voter registration lists by deleting names from voter rolls. Purges, of course, aren’t necessarily a bad thing. State and local election officials have a real need to ensure voting lists are accurate and up-to-date. During the course of a lifetime, people move. Sometimes people change their names. And inevitably, people die. Voter rolls should reflect those changes. But purges are a growing threat that we’ve found may imperil the right to vote for millions of Americans in the midterm elections in November.

California: State Supreme Court Squashes Bid To Split State Into Three | NPR

California will be staying in one piece, at least for now, after the state’s supreme court ruled that a proposal to divide California into three cannot be placed on the ballot in November. Tim Draper, a wealthy venture capitalist, has spent years arguing that the Golden State would be better off as several smaller states. He says California is too large to be governed effectively and that splitting up would result in “better decision making and real solutions closer to home.” This year, he got enough signatures to put it before voters — although experts said that even if the proposal passed, it would face a range of daunting legal and political hurdles. Then the Planning and Conservation League (PCL), a nonprofit environmental group in California, filed a lawsuit to block the measure from getting to a vote.

Florida: Judge Hears Arguments In College Early Voting Sites Case | WUSF

Florida elections officials were wrong to block on-campus early voting sites in Gainesville and Tallahassee, lawyers for the League of Women Voters of Florida told a federal judge Monday.
But attorneys representing the state argued there was no indication that college students — or anyone else — would have voting rights abridged due to an advisory opinion under scrutiny in the federal lawsuit filed this year by the League of Women Voters and other plaintiffs. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker gave no indication how he would rule after hearing nearly three hours of arguments Monday in the case, which involves the state’s position about early voting locations at the University of Florida and Florida State University.

Illinois: Despite Hacking Concerns, Governor Won’t Pull Illinois From Voter Database | Governing

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner said Monday that he doesn’t see “any reason” for Illinois to end its participation in a controversial multistate voter registration system, which critics have called inaccurate and vulnerable to hackers. Rauner’s remarks came one day before he faces a deadline to act on a bill that would withdraw Illinois from the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program. The database is run through the Kansas secretary of state’s office and is aimed at flagging duplicate voter registrations across state lines. “I don’t see any reason why we should get out of that as a state,” the governor said at an unrelated appearance about gun control.

Michigan: High court hears challenge to redistricting measure | Associated Press

The Michigan Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments about whether voters in November should be able to pass a constitutional amendment that would change how the state’s voting maps are drawn or whether such changes could only be adopted at a rarely held constitutional convention. The proposed ballot measure would empower an independent commission to draw congressional and legislative districts every decade instead of the Legislature, which is now controlled by the Republicans. It is a bid to stop partisan gerrymandering, which critics say hurts democracy and denies citizens fair representation.

Virginia: Campaign’s Election Data Exposed in Virginia | Infosecurity Magazine

A Virginia-based political campaign and robocalling company Robocent left hundreds of thousands of voter records on a public, exposed and unprotected Amazon S3 bucket. This year has already seen a lineup of attempted attacks on local elections and campaigns, but this news comes less than a week after the indictment of 12 Russian officials for meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. According to an 18 July blog post by Bob Diachenko, head of communications at Kromtech Security, Robocent’s self-titled bucket was reportedly “indexed by GrayhatWarfare, a searchable database where a current list of 48,623 open S3 buckets can be found. Repository contained both audio files, with pre-recorded political messages for robocalls dials (*.mp3, *.wav), and voter data (*.csv, *.xls files).”

Cambodia: Election monitoring groups in Cambodia headed by Prime Minister’s son, ‘ambassador’ | Reuters

Three of the groups approved to monitor Cambodia’s election have close ties to Prime Minister Hun Sen, one headed by his son and the other two led by a man who was appointed by the Southeast Asian country’s strongman ruler as a “goodwill ambassador”. Cambodia heads to the polls on July 29 for an election criticized by the United Nations and Western countries as fundamentally flawed after the dissolution of the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) and imprisonment of its leader, Kem Sokha, last year. The United States and the European Union responded to the crackdown by withdrawing financial support and monitors from the election, a step followed by independent local and international NGOs that had overseen previous elections.