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.

Cambodia: Security forces overstep neutrality rules in election campaign, rights group says | Reuters

Cambodia’s security forces are “actively campaigning” for the ruling party of Prime Minister Hun Sen ahead of a general election on July 29, in violation of a law requiring political neutrality, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday. Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia for 33 years, wants to ensure victory after two close elections in 2013 and 2017 with a crackdown on his critics, spurring many rights groups and the main opposition to call the vote a sham. He is widely expected to win the election after the Supreme Court dissolved the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) last year, leaving no significant competitor for Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).

National: Here’s an early look at how states are spending federal election security cash | The Washington Post

Nearly four months have passed since Congress set aside $380 million for states to upgrade their election systems, and we’re just now seeing concrete details about how states plan to spend that money. California will immediately make more than $3 million available to county officials to help them protect voter rolls from cyberthreats and improve accessibility at polling places, according to figures provided to The Cybersecurity 202. And Hawaii will spend more than $400,000 ahead of the November midterms to upgrade computers, hire staff and conduct cybersecurity training, the secretary of state’s office says.  California and Hawaii are among 13 states that, as of Monday, have submitted their detailed plans to the Election Assistance Commission about how they intend to spend their share of the federal cash ahead of the July 16 deadline. Their plans offer an early indication that states are taking recommendations from federal officials and election security experts seriously as the midterms approach and intelligence officials warn of a new wave of election interference from the Russian government. 

National: Expert: Putin can hack our midterms | Yahoo News

Russian President Vladimir Putin is poised once again to meddle in an American election, and there’s little the U.S can do to stop him, an expert says. “The midterm is vulnerable to attack. There’s nothing we can do about it. It’s too late — if Putin wants to attack our midterm, he will.” Barbara Simons, a former IBM researcher and the co-author of “Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?” told Grant Burningham, host of the Yahoo News podcast “Bots & Ballots.” Having spent the last decade trying to warn politicians of the vulnerabilities of computerized voting systems, Simons, who received a PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, says that states like Georgia, New Jersey, Delaware, Louisiana and South Carolina that have switched to paperless elections are especially ripe targets.

National: DEF CON Voting Village grows this year | POLITICO

Black Hat and DEF CON are just around the corner, and one of the biggest headlines from last year’s conferences was the Voting Village where hackers broke into voting machines en masse. This year’s Voting Village at DEF CON will be three times the size of last year’s event to accommodate the massive demand from 2017, event organizer Harri Hursti told Tim. But it wasn’t easy to get to that point: Hursti said voting machine vendors unhappy with the publicity about hacked equipment threw up hurdles that forced them to get creative, like visiting government auctions to buy equipment to probe.

Editorials: Kavanaugh’s Record Doesn’t Bode Well for Voting Rights | Ari Berman/Mother Jones

Donald Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, could determine how the court rules on cases that shape the future of voting rights in the United States. And if his track record is any indication, many Americans could be disenfranchised as a result. As a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, Kavanaugh voted in 2012 to uphold a South Carolina voter ID law that the Obama administration said would disenfranchise tens of thousands of minority citizens. The Justice Department blocked the law, which required government-issued photo identification to vote, in late 2011 for violating the Voting Rights Act. “The absolute number of minority citizens whose exercise of the franchise could be adversely affected by the proposed requirements runs into the tens of thousands,” wrote Tom Perez, who was then assistant attorney general for civil rights and now leads the Democratic National Committee. The Justice Department found that more than 80,000 minority registered voters in South Carolina did not have DMV-issued identification, with African Americans 20 percent more likely than whites to lack such ID.

Florida: Local Election Supervisors Feeling The Squeeze Of Deadlines For Federal Cybersecurity Funding | WJCT

Florida’s election supervisors are feeling the squeeze of a short deadline to submit an application for $19 million in federal cybersecurity funding. The applications are due to the Department of State by next Wednesday. Leon County’s supervisor Mark Earley remembers the 2004 rush to buy electronic voting machines – which have mostly been phased out. He says this time around the scenario is different. Earley believes threats to cybersecurity are “very real.” But, he sees some similarities in the way spending is being rushed along. “The rush to spend the money back then caused some poor decisions,” Earley said. “We are somewhat faced with a rush to spend the money currently.” And, Earley says, if the money isn’t fully spent by the general election, it’s not clear if it will be available going forward.

Georgia: State seeks federal grant to upgrade election system | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Georgia election officials are taking steps to secure a $10.3 million federal grant to upgrade the state’s voting system. Georgia Elections Director Chris Harvey sent a letter to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on Tuesday requesting the grant to “improve the administration of elections for federal office, including to enhance election technology and make election security improvements.” The request comes after an announcement this spring from the independent federal agency that it planned to award Georgia the grant. The grant calls for $515,000 in matching funds from the state. Georgia’s total budget for administering elections in fiscal 2019 is about $5.8 million.

Kansas: With Elections Looming, ACLU Scrambles To Check If Kobach Registered Voters | KMUW

With less than a month until the 2018 primaries, the question of whether Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is in compliance with a federal court order to fix its voter registration practices is still up for debate. Kansas can no longer ask would-be voters to dig up documents like passports or birth certificates after a court ruled that unconstitutional and in violation of federal election law last month. Judge Julie Robinson ordered Kobach’s office to make sure that tens of thousands of previously blocked voters are now on the active voter rolls.

South Carolina: State’s 13,000 voting machines unreliable, vulnerable to hackers, lawsuit alleges | The State

Your right to vote is threatened in South Carolina. That’s the message of a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Columbia against the S.C. Election Commission, its members and Marci Andino, the commission’s executive director. South Carolina’s thousands of digital voting machines are antiquated, break down, leave no paper trail of votes that can be audited, and have “deep security flaws” that make them vulnerable to hacking by Russians and others, the 45-page lawsuit alleges. “By failing to provide S.C. voters with a system that can record their votes reliably,” the Election Commission has deprived South Carolinians of their constitutional right to vote, the lawsuit says.

Texas: Legal political maps — except for those minority voters in Fort Worth | The Texas Tribune

In the eyes of the federal courts, it probably doesn’t matter — for electoral purposes — that the political lines in Fort Worth’s 90th Texas House District are discriminatory. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled almost entirely in favor of the state of Texas in a challenge to the political maps drawn for congressional and state House seats, with one exception, saying HD-90 is the one district where racial discrimination via redistricting crossed the legal lines. They sent the case back to lower federal judges for whatever nips and tucks their ruling requires. In turn, that lower court — three judges working out of San Antonio — last week asked the horde of redistricting lawyers to say by next month how each would make repairs.

Australia: Political parties to get cyber subsidy for electoral databases | iTnews

Australia’s four major political parties have been granted $300,000 to shore-up their systems following Russia’s alleged cyber interference in the 2016 US election. The funding will be made available to the parties in the form of voter information protection grants that will be administered by the Department of Finance over the second half of 2018. The Liberal, Nationals, Labor and Greens parties will use the grants to “improve security of their constituent management systems and associated data, including information pertaining to the electoral rolls and voter information”. The funding follows a series of briefings on the security threat to Australia’s elections between Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and party leaders in early 2017.

Cambodia: China Accused of Hacking Cambodian Government Institutions | VoA News

Cyberattackers have been caught hacking key Cambodian government institutions in what is strongly believed to be a coordinated Chinese government attack ahead of elections set for this month, a U.S. cybersecurity firm has alleged. Cambodia’s National Election Committee, Senate, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Interior, and Ministry of Economy and Finance have all been breached, along with computer systems of foreign diplomats, media institutions and opposition figures, an investigation by FireEye Inc. concluded. “We expect this activity to provide the Chinese government with widespread visibility into Cambodian elections and government operations,” the firm said in a report issued Tuesday. “Additionally, this group is clearly able to run several large-scale intrusions concurrently across a wide range of victim types.”

Mali: Background to a critical election in an increasingly insecure country | Africanews

Malians are due to vote on July 29 in a presidential election that many hope will chart a way out of six years of political unrest and jihadist violence. Mali has been in turmoil since Tuareg rebels and loosely allied jihadists seized its desert north in 2012, prompting French forces to intervene to push them back the following year. Those groups have since regained a foothold in the north and centre, using the sparsely-populated Sahel as a launchpad for attacks across the region. Mali’s incumbent president Ibrahima Boubacar Keita, who took office in 2013, and opposition frontrunner Soumaila Cisse are expected to be the two main candidates in the July 29 polls out of a field of 24 hopefuls.

Pakistan: More than 370,000 troops to guard Pakistan election as army denies meddling | Telegraph

Pakistan’s military said it would deploy more than 370,000 troops to guard the general election later this month, but said it was not meddling in the democratic process. Major General Asif Ghafoor told a news conference that more than three times as many troops would be deployed than in the 2013 elections, and they would be stationed inside and outside polling stations. Campaigning has so far been dominated by allegations the military has run a multi-pronged campaign to undermine the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) party of ousted former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, and muzzled the media. Sharif, who last week was sentenced to 10 years for corruption offences, says the army is trying tip the balance in favour of Imran Khan’s PTI party.

United Kingdom: Facebook to be fined £500,000 in Cambridge Analytica data scandal | Politico

It’s more bad news for Facebook. The social networking giant faces a fine of a half a million pounds in Britain for failing to protect people’s online data connected to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to a report published by the country’s privacy watchdog on Wednesday. The financial penalty would represent the first levy worldwide against the tech giant for its role in the alleged abuse. As part of an ongoing investigation into the use of data by political groups, Elizabeth Denham, the U.K.’s Information Commissioner, or ICO, said Facebook broke the country’s data protection rules by making users’ information available to a third-party app linked to Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm. Facebook also was not transparent about how people’s digital information would then be used by these companies, particularly in relation to political campaigns.

Zimbabwe: The Voters’ Roll Is Now Available Online And This Could Seriously Endanger Citizens | Techzim

ZANU-PF’s recent violation of privacy has been grabbing all the headlines. The political party sent out some unsolicited and scarily specific SMSs to some Econet subscribers. This has resulted in a lot of heated debate with people questioning where the party got these numbers and the specific constituency of subcribers. As we were taking a closer look at this situation we stumbled upon a website containing the voters’ roll for 30 July’s election. We downloaded the voters’ roll for the Harare Metropolitan and quickly we realised that the voters’ roll may be too detailed and this may leave citizens exposed to all kinds of risks for a long time.

National: Why Was a Citizenship Question Put on the Census? ‘Bad Faith,’ a Judge Suggests | The New York Times

From the moment it was announced in March, the decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census was described by critics as a ploy to discourage immigrants from filling out the form and improve Republican political fortunes. The Commerce Department, which made the decision, insisted that sound policy, not politics, was its sole motivation. Now a federal lawsuit seeking to block the question has cast doubt on the department’s explanation and the veracity of the man who offered it, Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr. And it has given the plaintiffs in the suit — attorneys general for 17 states, the District of Columbia and a host of cities and counties — broad leeway to search for evidence that the critics are correct. In a hearing last week in the United States District Court in Manhattan, Judge Jesse M. Furman gave the plaintiffs permission to search government files and take sworn testimony from up to 10 administration officials in an effort to discover how and why the citizenship decision was made.

Editorials: Russian bots are back: #WalkAway attack on Democrats is a likely Kremlin operation | Bob Cesca/Salon

little more than a year ago, I posted and pinned the following predictive tweet: “Get ready. A year from right now we’ll be up to our asses in Russian fake news, malware, hacks, mayhem aimed at the midterms. Pinning this.” Granted, it wasn’t a difficult forecast knowing what we knew at the time. Today, in addition to prior intelligence community assessments indicating that Russia attacked the presidential election with the intention of helping Donald Trump win, the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee has released its own verification of the intelligence community’s conclusions: “The Committee believes the conclusions of the [intelligence community assessment] are sound, and notes that collection and analysis subsequent to the ICA’s publication continue to reinforce its assessments.” The committee will continue its probe from this position. It’s also worth noting that the committee’s chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said publicly that the committee has “been incredibly enlightened at our ability to rebuild backwards the Steele dossier up to a certain date.” Burr and company reportedly continue to communicate with Christopher Steele’s legal representation to corroborate the remainder of the document.

California: With Russian meddling in mind, California invests $134 million to safeguard election systems | The Sacramento Bee

Alex Padilla says California’s voting system wasn’t compromised by Russia’s attempt to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election. But the issue is in the back of his mind as he looks to safeguard the integrity of the vote. With increased attention to cybersecurity lately, California is making a sizable investment in its election infrastructure. This year’s state budget provides $134 million for counties to modernize voting systems. It also provides $3 million for the creation of the Office of Elections Cybersecurity and the Office of Enterprise Risk Management. Because the budget was signed so recently, there hasn’t been enough time for counties to request funding and have contracts generated. Even so, the budget allows counties that recently bought new systems to request reimbursement.