Monthly Archives: July 2018

State Rep. John Knight, D-Montgomery, got a surprise when he went to vote in the Democratic runoff at Alabama State University today. Knight, who is in a runoff with Sen. David Burkette for the Democratic nomination in Senate District 26, was told he could not vote in the Democratic runoff because he had voted in the Republican primary on June 5. “Which is crazy,” Knight said. “I was a candidate.” Knight said the chief inspector at the ASU polling place said other voters had experienced the same mixup.

Arizona: Prosecutors say Russian hackers leased servers in Arizona, Illinois | Associated Press

Exactly seven months before the 2016 presidential election, Russian government hackers made it onto a Democratic committee’s network. One of their carefully crafted fraudulent emails had hit pay dirt, enticing an employee to click a link and enter her password. That breach of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was the first significant step in gaining access to the Democratic National Committee network. To steal politically sensitive information, prosecutors say, the hackers exploited some of the United States’ own computer infrastructure against it, using servers they leased in Arizona and Illinois. The details were included in an indictment released Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller, who accused the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, of taking part in a wide-ranging conspiracy to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. The companies operating the servers were not identified in the court papers.

Illinois: Hacked Voter Records in Illinois Soar to Half a Million | Government Technology

Last week, Department of Justice Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced that a dozen Russians were indicted for hacking offenses tied to the 2016 presidential elections. In addition to the indictments, Rosenstein asserted that Russian intelligence officers stole information on approximately 500,000 voters from a hacked state election board website. Illinois previously disclosed that it notified 76,000 residents that they may have had their voter registration data viewed by the attackers. And although the Illinois State Board of Elections is not specifically mentioned in Rosenstein’s speech nor in the grand jury indictment issued by the DOJ, the Illinois State Board of Elections believes the reference relates to it. “As far as we know, we are the only state that experienced an actual breach, which is why we stated that we believe we are the ‘SBOE 1’ referred to in Count 11, paragraph 72 [of the indictment],” Matt Dietrich, public information officer for the Illinois State Board of Elections, told Government Technology.

Michigan: Republican Attorney General set to fight redistricting proposal at Michigan Supreme Court | The Detroit News

Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette’s office will argue against a proposal for an independent redistricting commission Wednesday and ask the Michigan Supreme Court to keep the measure off the November ballot. The state’s highest court on Monday granted Schuette’s request for Solicitor General Aaron Lindstrom to participate in the high-stakes arguments over the Voters Not Politicians proposal. Lindstrom will get to use five minutes of the 30-minute bloc that had been reserved for attorneys from Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution, the opposition group that first asked the Supreme Court to kill the initiative that would redefine the way political boundaries are drawn in the state.

Minnesota: Legal dispute over Minnesota voting records will head to higher court | KARE

A legal battle over Minnesota voting records will head to higher court. Ramsey County District Judge Jennifer Frisch, who previously ordered Secretary of State Steve Simon to turn over the voter records to a nonprofit political group, agreed to stay her own ruling to give Simon a chance to appeal it. The Minnesota Voters Alliance asked for the voting records, in hopes of proving a theory that thousands of ineligible voters register on Election Day and then vote before their identity and eligibility is verified. If their eligibility is challenged after the fact, their vote has already counted.

New Hampshire: City, town election officials sued for secretly throwing out absentee ballots if signature didn’t ‘match’ | Union Leader

Mary Saucedo was surprised to learn in 2017 that the ballot she cast in the 2016 presidential election didn’t count. The 94-year-old Manchester woman, who spent her career working for the Department of Veterans Affairs, is legally blind and for the past 12 years has voted by absentee ballot with the help of her husband. Her 2016 ballot was tossed by Saucedo’s ward moderator, who concluded that the signature on the absentee ballot application did not match the signature on the affidavit filed with the completed ballot. On Monday, Saucedo and her husband, Gus, were in U.S. District Court in Concord as attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union argued the state law allowing for ballots to be discarded under such circumstances is unconstitutional.

US Virgin Islands: Voting machines under-perform on under-voting | Virgin Islands Daily News

Early voting will be slightly later today than anticipated. V.I. Elections Board Chairman Arturo Watlington Jr. said voting could not start until after noon today after testing the machines revealed an inconsistency in how the devices read the ballots. The machines were reading and reporting under-voting for the offices of governor and senator-at-large, but for the main legislative race, in which voters can choose up to seven senators, no under-voting was being reported. Under-voting is the process of selecting fewer candidates for some offices while selecting the maximum number in other races — for example, choosing three senators instead of seven, or voting for seven district senators and withholding a vote in the governor’s race.

Cambodia: Election commission calls campaign to boycott election a ‘crime’ | AFP

Cambodia’s election commission on Tuesday (Jul 17) described calls to boycott a controversial election on Jul 29 as a “crime” and said authorities were already pursuing charges against those who criticised the vote. Strongman leader Hun Sen is set to extend his 33-year grip on power in the upcoming election after supporting the dissolution of the main opposition group last year and turning up the heat on civil society and the media. In recent weeks, however, opposition figures – mostly those who left the country in the wake of a sweeping crackdown – have pushed back and called on voters to skip the poll in protest.

Mali: U.N. says killings of almost 300 Malians this year could undermine July 29 poll | Africanews

With less than two weeks to the presidential polls in Mali, the U.N. human rights office says killings of almost 300 Malian civilians in fighting between rival militias this year, could threaten the outcome of the election. Malians head to the polls on July 29 for a vote meant to draw a line under six years of political unrest, jihadist attacks and ethnic clashes. But the situation has degenerated in recent months and spilled over into neighbouring countries. Mali’s government has repeatedly said the polls, in which incumbent President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita is seeking re-election, will go ahead as planned, but the relentless violence threatens to significantly depress turnout.

United Kingdom: Vote Leave broke electoral law and British democracy is shaken | The Guardian

Vote Leave has been fined £61,000 after being found guilty of breaking electoral law during the Brexit campaign. Two people have been referred to the police. But with this initial investigation concluded, Britain faces a difficult period of soul searching over what to do about this evidence of extensive wrongdoing. A democracy is only as strong as the elections that set its course. If they can be bought or subverted, then confidence in democracy and the legitimacy of the governments it installs, seeps away. But astonishingly, the details that have been gradually revealed, of illegal activity by both the official Vote Leave and the unofficial Leave.EU campaigns in the run-up to the Brexit vote, appear to have no immediate consequences. Most British elections are guaranteed by law. If evidence of serious cheating is uncovered they can be scrutinised and overturned in an “election court”, overseen by high court judges.

Zimbabwe: Electoral Commision Chairperson Claims Their Website Was Cloned: Does That Statement Really Mean Anything? | Techzim

Priscilla Chigumba the chairperson of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commision has claimed that their website was cloned and it seems there has been a lot of confusion because of the statement. Chigumba was being interviewed at Capitalk FM when she was asked about the privacy concerns that come with a detailed voters’ roll being online and easily accessible. In response to the question “…and what of the voters’ roll published that has peoples private information, the one that’s available on the internet… That is a cyber-security breach on every level ”, Chigumba said:

That’s a cyber-security breach. They cloned our site and we are in the process of doing something about it and we should have that site taken down in… during the course of the next ( get’s cut by presenter asking “It’s not yet down?”) Uhmm as of 12 midday today it wasn’t yet down.

National: Russian bots, trolls test waters ahead of US midterms | Associated Press

The sponsors of the Russian “troll factory” that meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign have launched a new American website ahead of the U.S. midterm election in November. A Russian oligarch has links to Maryland’s election services. Russian bots and trolls are deploying increasingly sophisticated, targeted tools. And a new indictment suggests the Kremlin itself was behind previous hacking efforts in support of Donald Trump. As the U.S. leader prepares to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday, many Americans are wondering: Is the Kremlin trying yet again to derail a U.S. election? While U.S. intelligence officials call it a top concern, they haven’t uncovered a clear, coordinated Russian plot to mess with the campaign. At least so far. It could be that Russian disruptors are waiting until the primaries are over in September and the races become more straightforward – or it could be they are waiting until the U.S. presidential vote in 2020, which matters more for U.S. foreign policy. In the meantime, an array of bots, trolls and sites like USAReally appear to be testing the waters.

National: Trump’s meeting with Putin a pivotal moment for effort to deter Russian cyberattacks | The Washington Post

President Trump’s meeting today with Russian President Vladimir Putin is a pivotal moment for his administration’s efforts to deter future election interference efforts by Moscow and other sophisticated actors. Trump entered his meeting with Putin in Helsinki armed with the sweeping indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers in connection with the hack on the Democratic Party in 2016, which drew the clearest connection to date between the election cyberattacks and the Kremlin. The intelligence community’s attribution of the attack to Russia — and now, the indictments of specific individuals involved — can be powerful parts of a country’s deterrence strategy. But experts say they could be far less effective if the president doesn’t back up their conclusions. “Trump’s reluctance to admit that the Russians did wrong tends to put a top limit on the kind of retaliation that Russia can expect from a repeat of 2016,” said Martin Libicki, chair of cybersecurity studies at the U.S. Naval Academy. Anything less than a strong demand that Putin back off will likely dull the effects of not just the “naming and shaming” approach the intelligence community has taken but also sanctions, indictments and other punitive measures the administration and Congress have levied.

National: Dominion Voting Systems Acquired by its Management Team and Staple Street Capital

Dominion Voting Systems (“Dominion Voting”) announces that it has been acquired by its management team and Staple Street Capital, a leading New York-based, middle-market private equity firm. Dominion Voting is a top provider of election tabulation solutions to government customers. The company’s scalable and customizable platform holds industry-leading certifications and provides accessibility and efficiency at the state and local levels. Dominion Voting CEO and President John Poulos said, “Our senior management team is extremely pleased to partner with Staple Street Capital, which has a proven track record of successfully investing in growing mid-size businesses. Given the opportunities on our horizon, this is the ideal time for us to add financial resources and an experienced strategic partner to help us meet market demand, better serve customers and invest in evolving security initiatives.”

Editorials: Russia election hacking: Mueller’s latest indictment suggests it could be even more damaging next time. | Lawrence Norden/Slate

Much of the analysis following special counsel Robert Mueller’s Friday indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers has focused on their alleged conspiracy to hack into Clinton campaign and Democratic Party computers and email systems during the 2016 election, and on questions about coordination between then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian infiltrators. But the indictment also included new revelations about the extent of Russia’s attacks on our election systems in 2016—and those details provide a warning that we need to get serious about preparing for even more damaging attacks in this year’s midterms. The latest indictment alleges that Russian intelligence officers hacked into the website of a yet-unidentified state board of elections. Among other new information, it alleges Russia used that hack to steal information related to 500,000 voters.

Editorials: Brett Kavanaugh, Who Has Ruled Against Campaign Finance Regulations, Could Bring an Avalanche of Big Money to Elections | Lee Fang/The Intercept

The elevation of D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court could have a profound impact on the rules governing the American democratic system. In recent years, the Supreme Court has swiftly remade the landscape of American politics, gutting 1960s-era civil rights laws restricting voter suppression, sharply weakening labor unions, and deregulating the campaign finance system to allow for wealthy individuals and corporations to exercise greater influence over elected representatives. With President Donald Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, that influence is poised to grow. Kavanaugh’s appellate court decisions and public comments suggest that he will accelerate the trend toward a political system dominated by wealthy elites — often operating in the shadows, without any form of disclosure.

California: New law requires voter data breach reporting | Associated Press

Journalists, researchers and political campaigns that receive voter data must tell California officials if it may have been stolen under a new law Gov. Jerry Brown announced he signed Monday. It requires people and organizations that have California voter registration data to report security breaches affecting the storage of that information, which can include names, birth dates and addresses. Counties and the secretary of state’s office provide voter registration information to people and organizations who agree to use the data only for journalistic, scholarly, political or government purposes. The new law directs the secretary of state to develop guidelines for how such information should be securely stored. Additionally, it makes intentionally misinforming a voter about voting locations, eligibility or times a misdemeanor.

Massachusetts: Automatic Voter Registration Approved by Massachusetts Legislature | Stateline

Both chambers of the Massachusetts Legislature have passed a bill that would automatically register voters when they interact with a state office. Those who visit the Department of Motor Vehicles, for example, will be automatically registered to vote and later sent a letter allowing them to choose a political party or opt out of the registration. For voters who are already registered, their information will be automatically updated if they change their address with another state office.

Missouri: Groups clash over proposed redistricting plan | Associated Press

A proposed ballot initiative aims to replace Missouri’s system for drawing state legislative districts with a model designed to have the number of seats won by each party more closely reflect its statewide vote. If election officials validate enough signatures collected by Clean Missouri, the group sponsoring the proposal, voters will have the final say Nov. 6. The stakes are high: Another round of redistricting begins after the 2020 census. More than $2 million has flowed into Clean Missouri’s coffers, including at least a quarter-of-a-million dollars that originated from the lobbying arm of billionaire George Soros’ philanthropic network. Soros’ financial support of liberal and progressive causes around the country has made him a frequent target of conservatives. That, and support from groups representing labor, teachers, abortion-rights and other left-leaning causes has led some Republicans to cast Clean Missouri as a partisan effort to help Democrats gain ground against GOP supermajorities in the House and Senate.

New Hampshire: Ground Zero in the War on Voting Rights | Slate

On Friday, New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu transformed his state into ground zero in the assault on voting rights. By signing HB 1264 into law, Sununu effectively imposed a poll tax on college students, compelling many of them to pay hundreds of dollars in fees to establish residence in the state before they’re permitted to vote in New Hampshire. Once it takes effect, the law is almost certain to chill the franchise of younger Democratic-leaning voters—to an extent that could swing the state’s famously close elections. But the measure’s stringent new requirements do not kick in until July 2019, giving Democrats a single opportunity to repeal it before it disenfranchises a key portion of their base. In New Hampshire, the November midterm elections won’t just determine control of the state government. It will decide whether Republicans will be successful in their years-long quest to suppress the college vote, a move that would help them further entrench their own political power. HB 1264 is the latest and most sweeping voter suppression bill passed by New Hampshire Republicans in the wake of the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton carried the state by a slim margin, as did Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, who defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte by about 1,000 votes. At the same time, Republicans retook the governorship and maintained control of the Legislature, giving them total control of the state government. They used that power to begin restricting access to the ballot under the pretext of preventing voter fraud.

Verified Voting in the News: West Virginia may offer blockchain-based ballots to all of its overseas voters this November | StateScoop

Two months after West Virginia allowed a small group of overseas voters to participate in the May 8 primary election using online ballots powered by blockchain technology, one of the state’s top election’s officials said on Sunday it could be implemented statewide in time for the general election in November. If the results of a post-election audit are favorable toward the new technology, which was offered to voters from two counties during the primary, West Virginia will offer all 55 of its counties to participate in blockchain-powered voting, Donald “Deak” Kersey, the state’s elections director, said at the National Association of Secretaries of State conference in Philadelphia. … Not everyone who watched Kersey’s presentation was convinced that mobile voting is the way to go. “Oh, my god,” said J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan who is serving as a technology fellow to Verified Voting, which advocates for ballot security. “Voting over the internet creates extra-difficult problems. Securing servers? Protecting devices? Assuring votes have been recorded while protecting the secret ballot?” Halderman said that no voting technology developed is as secure as in-person paper ballots. He’s testified before Congress on the subject, and has conducted demonstrations in which he hacked electronic voting machines to change tabulations and, in one case, reprogram a machine to play Pac-Man.

Cameroon: In Troubled Cameroon, U.S. Envoy Is Accused of Election Meddling | The New York Times

When the American ambassador took up his post in Cameroon late last year, he stepped into an increasingly troubled nation, locked in battle against Islamist militants in one part of the country and armed separatists in another. And then there is the matter of its leader. Cameroon has not had a new president since Michael Jackson released “Thriller” in 1982. Under the 36-year leadership of President Paul Biya, the nation has been accused of numerous human rights abuses, including killing unarmed protesters, torturing detainees, shutting off the internet and locking up journalists. Last month, Washington’s ambassador, Peter Henry Barlerin, met with the 85-year-old president, who has taken initial steps to seek re-election in October. He told Mr. Biya that he “should be thinking about his legacy and how he wants to be remembered in the history books,” saying that George Washington and Nelson Mandela were excellent role models.

Pakistan: Pakistan Holds Day Of Mourning After Bloody Week Of Election-Related Violence | RFE/RL

Pakistan observed a day of mourning for the dozens of people killed and injured during a series of terror attacks targeting political rallies as the country gears up for the July 25 national elections. Officials on July 15 said that more than 160 people were killed, including political candidates, and at least 230 wounded in three separate election-related bombings over the past week in and around the cities of Peshawar, Mastung, and Bannu. The attacks only served to ratchet up political tensions in the country ahead of the upcoming vote. Adding to the strains was the arrest of ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who returned from London to face corruption charges. Officials said the deadliest of three attacks came on July 13, when at least 140 were killed by a suicide bomber at a political rally in the Mastung district of Balochistan Province.

United Kingdom: Vote Leave: Pro-Brexit group fined by electoral commission | CNN

The official pro-Brexit campaign group has been fined and referred to the police after the UK’s elections watchdog found it had broken Britain’s strict electoral laws. The Electoral Commission fined Vote Leave £61,000 ($81,000) for coordinating with another campaign group — called BeLeave — and exceeding spending limits during the 2016 referendum campaign. In a damning ruling, the commission said it had imposed a punitive fine on Vote Leave, and accused it of frustrating the watchdog’s investigation. “We found substantial evidence that the two groups (Vote Leave and BeLeave) worked to a common plan, did not declare their joint working and did not adhere to the legal spending limits,” said Bob Posner, Electoral Commission director of political finance and regulation and legal counsel, in a statement.

Zimbabwe: Voter roll haunted by doppelgangers, ghosts | AFP

A report compiled on the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission (ZEC) voters’ roll for 2018 exposes major flaws in the current voters’ roll. This comes only weeks before Zimbabweans head to the polls for its national elections on July 30, 2018. The report, compiled by a group of experts called Team Pachudu, cites Zimbabwe’s history of shaky election results as the main reason for its analysis of the voters’ roll. The report highlights more than 250 000 records on the voters’ roll that are either duplicated, invalid, statistically improbable or incorrect. This includes more than 8 000 men registered as women, scores of voters registered to an empty field in Harare and at least two Zimbabwean voters who would qualify as the two oldest living people on earth. The discrepancies bring into question the integrity of the voters’ roll for the upcoming elections later this month. The elections are the first after former president Robert Mugabe’s controversial “step down” in November 2017.

National: Mueller reveals depth of states’ election vulnerabilities | Poitico

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s latest indictment offers new details of just how deeply Russian operatives have infiltrated state and local election agencies across the U.S. — adding to years of warnings about the technologies that underpin American democracy. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Friday that hackers within Russia’s GRU military intelligence service targeted state and local election boards, infiltrated a Florida-based company that supplies software for voting machines across the country, and broke into a state election website to steal sensitive information on about 500,000 American voters. While the FBI had issued warnings in 2016 about hackers breaching state election websites in Illinois and Arizona, the latest indictments in Mueller’s ongoing Russia probe surfaced the most granular account yet on foreign operatives’ efforts to tamper with U.S. election systems. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said the charges outline a Russian “attack on our democracy.”

National: Mueller Indictment Adds Urgency to Securing 2018 Midterm Elections | Wall Street Journal

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s latest move briefly hijacked a closed-door meeting of state election officials and federal cybersecurity personnel here last Friday, as phones buzzed with news alerts about his indictment against Russians allegedly behind a spree of hacks before the 2016 election. The interruption, described by several people in attendance, caught the room off guard. Some of the details in the indictment, describing the persistent efforts to compromise both Democratic Party and state election networks, were new to the officials present. That added urgency to the gathering’s mission—protecting the nation’s election machinery in November. It also reflected how tightly the secrets unearthed by Mueller’s investigators are held, even from the officials responsible for preventing a repeat in 2018.

National: States with ‘most vulnerable’ voting systems named in congressional report | StateScoop

Eighteen states made a list of the “most vulnerable” election systems in the country in a report published Thursday by the U.S. House Administration Committee. The states included in the report were faulted for lacking several of the things voting-security advocates frequently call for, including paper records of ballots and post-election audits. The report also states that the $380 million in funds currently being distributed to states by the federal Election Assistance Commission isn’t nearly enough, and that it could cost another $1.4 billion over the next decade for every state to properly secure its election systems. All 50 states plus the District of Columbia have now requested their share of the EAC’s grant money, but the report claims that much more will be needed to upgrade election officials’ information technology, implement cybersecurity training and swap out paper-free Direct Recording Electronic ballot machines, known as DREs.

National: State election officials in US meet amid security concerns | Associated Press

The top state election officials from throughout the U.S. are gathering this weekend in Philadelphia amid fresh revelations of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and just before President Donald Trump holds one-on-one talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The annual gathering has typically been a low-key affair highlighting such things as voter registration and balloting devices. This year’s meetings of the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors are generating far greater interest. The conference is sandwiched between Friday’s indictments of 12 Russian military intelligence officers alleged to have hacked into Democratic party and campaign accounts, and Trump’s long-awaited meeting with Putin.

National: Secretaries of State gavel in at annual conference | Politico