Arkansas: Ballots mixed in few state elections; some voters hit ID snags at polls | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Phillips County voters said they cast the wrong ballots in the Marvell mayoral election Tuesday because ballots for people inside and outside the city limits were mixed up. In the highly contested race for Marvell mayor, rural voters received city ballots and city voters got county ballots. The county ballots did not include candidates for mayor. Amanda Moody, who lives in the city, said she went to vote about 8 a.m. and realized after voting that she hadn’t been able to vote for mayor. There are three candidates in this year’s election. “I just hope something gets rectified,” Moody said.

California: California doesn’t need better voting machines — it needs better audits, experts say | The Peninsula Press

When voters in Alameda and Santa Clara County head to the polls on Nov. 6, about one percent will cast their ballots on electronic voting machines that have known security vulnerabilities. California has safeguards in place. In addition to requiring paper records for votes cast on electronic machines, California also manually audits one percent of all ballots cast, to make sure there’s no discrepancy in the numbers. Now, experts like David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford and founder of Verified Voting, are saying that isn’t enough, and are pushing states like California to implement more rigorous auditing methods. “The problem of protecting machines is pretty unmanageable, even with the best and most modern hardware … so what you need to do is select a bunch of ballots at random and hand count them in order to make sure the electronic counts are accurate,” says Dill.

Florida: Recount possible in Scott-Nelson race for Senate seat | Miami Herald

Nothing comes easy in Florida elections. The tightest U.S. Senate race since at least the 1970s was too close to call on election night and now appears headed for a recount. Republican Gov. Rick Scott was clinging to a 25,920-vote advantage over Democratic incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson as of Wednesday evening — or just 0.32 percent of the 8.1 million ballots cast by Floridians. State law allows for a machine recount of the results if the two candidates are separated by one-half of a percentage point or less. The race is well within that margin. “We are proceeding to a recount,” Nelson said in his only public remarks since results started coming in Tuesday.

Florida: Facing national microscope again, Florida braces for several recounts | Tampa Bay Times

Florida’s chief legal officer, Secretary of State Ken Detzner, told county election supervisors Thursday to plan for statewide recounts and for extraordinary public and media scrutiny in the state with the singular status of unusually close elections. “The recounts will be nationally watched … (we’re) under a microscope,” Detzner said on a conference call with counties. Detzner did not specify a number of races. Statewide races for U.S. Senate and commissioner of agriculture are within the machine recount window of half of 1 percent, according to incomplete and unofficial statewide returns. A third race, for governor, is at present slightly outside that threshold. Detzner’s boss, Gov. Rick Scott, is at the center of one of those possible recounts. Scott declared victory over Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson late on Tuesday in the Senate race, but the two men were separated on Thursday morning by .26 percent of more than 8 million votes.

Florida: In Broward County, fewer votes in Senate race raise recount questions | Miami Herald

As Florida’s bitterly narrow race for U.S. Senate appears it will meet the threshold for a lengthy manual recount, all eyes in the state are turning — yet again — to Broward County. Numbers being reported from one of the state’s bluest bastions are raising questions about why so many fewer voters appeared to choose a candidate in the U.S. Senate race, Florida’s most nationally prominent office on this year’s ballot. As of Thursday evening, 676,706 votes had been counted in Broward in the U.S. Senate race, according to the Broward Supervisor of Elections website, overwhelmingly for Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson over Republican Rick Scott. But nearly every other statewide office garnered more votes in Broward than the Senate race, particularly the contest for governor, with 24,763 more voters — 701,469 in all — weighing in.

Georgia: Kemp resigns as secretary of state, Abrams readies legal action | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Republican Brian Kemp on Thursday resigned as Georgia’s secretary of state as he sought to position himself as the “clear and convincing” winner of the race for governor. But Democrat Stacey Abrams is not conceding anything yet, hopeful that a trove of provisional ballots and other votes not yet recorded could be enough to force the tight race into a runoff.  Her campaign unveiled a litigation team poised to take the fight to the courts as it continues a hunt for an additional 25,632 Abrams votes that will push the race into runoff territory. Kemp’s office has said there are roughly 25,000 outstanding provisional and absentee ballots — making his lead virtually insurmountable — and on Thursday he released for the first time a detailed accounting of where each was cast. “The votes are not there for her,” Kemp said. “I respect the hard-fought race she ran. But we won the race, and we’re moving forward.”

Indiana: FBI asked to investigate Porter County’s trouble with counting votes | Indianapolis Star

The commissioners in a northwestern Indiana county plagued by a mix of Election Day problems asked the FBI on Wednesday to investigate what they called “scores of alleged violations of Indiana Election Law” reported following Tuesday’s election. Porter County has released no election results, and officials did not begin counting votes until Wednesday morning, more than 15 hours after the first polling places closed. The delay was holding up final election results in three state legislative races, those for House districts 4 and 19 and Senate District 7. The commissioners’ office said in a statement late Wednesday afternoon that the commissioners had asked the FBI to investigate the alleged election violations reported “by poll workers, voters and the public.” The commissioners’ statement did not specify what those alleged violations involved.

South Carolina: Voting snafus renew calls for new voting machines in South Carolina | The Greenville News

Following an election highlighted by long lines at the polls and reports of broken voting machines, programming errors and machines that switched votes for some candidates, voting rights advocates have renewed calls for the state Legislature to replace South Carolina’s aging voting machines. The state’s 13,000 voting machines have been in use since 2004 and use pre-2004 technology. South Carolina is one of five states that still uses machines that directly record votes without providing a paper trail to follow in the case of disputed elections or investigations of vote tampering. And in an election in which voters in Richland and York counties reported their votes being switched after they’d made a selection, the ACLU of South Carolina and the South Carolina Progressive Network have once again called on lawmakers to upgrade the system.

South Carolina: USC professor raises concerns over South Carolina voting equipment | WLTX

WLTX has done several stories in recent weeks about voting equipment issues in Richland county and concern over the state’s aging voting equipment. A USC computer science professor, known for critiquing the state’s aging voting equipment, is another voice calling for change before 2020. “I think in order to restore trust in elections, we need to get as much technology out of this process as possible,” Duncan Buell said in his faculty office on Thursday. Buell, a USC computer science professor with a doctorate in mathematics, has been auditing state election results independently for years. He and the South Carolina State Election Commission started separate audits in 2010. “We have seen a significant improvement, I think, in the quality of the process since 2010,” Buell added in his office. Buell said a 2010 Democratic senate primary caused concern due to issues with vote counts in some counties. Together with others, like the League of Women Voters, Buell started individual audits. In 2016, Buell said the data was, “really very very clean.”

Bahrain: Election condemned after opposition ban | The Guardian

Upcoming parliamentary elections in Bahrain have been deprived of any legitimacy by a ban on opposition parties, legislators in the US, UK, Ireland and the European parliament have declared in four separate letters calling on the country to end the repression. Bahrain, a former British colony ruled by the Sunni al-Khalifa royal family, is due to hold elections on 24 November for the Council of Representatives of Bahrain’s national assembly, one of the Gulf’s few democratic institutions. Bahrain’s assembly consists of an upper house appointed directly by King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa called the Shura or consultative council, and an elected council of representatives, the main lawmaking body, each with 40 seats. Nearly 366,000 citizens have been declared eligible to vote. Separately, members of the royal family hold 12 of the 26 posts in the cabinet. The other 14 posts are held by political appointees that are not members of the royal family.

Bangladesh: General election on December 23 despite Zia’s arrest | Al Jazeera

Authorities in Bangladesh have said they will hold a “free and fair” national election on December 23 despite bitter wrangling between the government and the opposition. Bangladesh’s Election Commission announced on Thursday that the election will take place despite the imprisonment of the leader of the main opposition party and the banning of its chief partner, Jamaat-e-Islami. “A favourable situation prevails in the country to hold a free and fair election,” Chief Election Commissioner Nurul Huda said in an address aired by state-run television and radio stations. Huda said he hoped all parties will participate in the election, in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is seeking re-election.

Kosovo: Diaspora voting: infusing democracy in Kosovo | Prishtina Insight

While the economic, social and cultural contributions made by the Kosovo diaspora for their home country is well-recognized, their contribution to the direct democratic process – namely, elections – has been met with continuous obstacles. Kosovo citizens that live abroad are entitled to voting rights as per the country’s constitution. However, experience so far has shown that the voting process for diaspora members is complicated and riddled with technical, administrative and legal snags. In the best case scenario, diaspora members from Kosovo faced many difficulties while participating in the voting process. Worst case scenario, it can be said that they were denied a right guaranteed by the constitution and laws in force. Yet, these problems have had no proper resolution, because voting from abroad is seen as a secondary issue in the debate for electoral reform in Kosovo.

Madagascar: Former president alleges fraud in Madagascar vote | AFP

Former Madagascan president Hery Rajaonarimampianina on Thursday alleged that “many voting irregularities” pointed to fraud in this week’s election, heightening fears of protests and a disputed result. Early counting from a small number of polling stations put Rajaonarimampianina in a distant third place behind leading contenders Andry Rajoelina and Marc Ravalomanana, both also former presidents of the Indian Ocean island. “Many voting irregularities and technical anomalies have been detected including an invalid electoral register… intimidation (and) the presence of pre-ticked ballots,” said Rajaonarimampianina, who ruled from 2014 to September 2018.

Ukraine: Three Things Ukraine Must Do Now If It Wants Clean Elections Next Year | Atlantic Council

The parliament renewed Ukraine’s highest election body, the Central Election Commission, ahead of the crucial 2019 general elections. On September 20, the parliament replaced all 13 CEC members who were serving on expired terms. In a swift decision—too swift in the opinion of the opposition—the Rada expanded the membership of the CEC from 15 to 17. Parliament appointed fourteen presidential nominees, two members were carried over from the old CEC, and one seat was left vacant. Rada Speaker Andriy Parubiy and BPP representative Iryna Lutsenko both promised that a nominee from the Opposition Bloc will soon join. Thus, all parliamentary factions will be represented on the renewed CEC. This move can’t come soon enough. The country will hold its presidential election in March and parliamentary polls in October.

National: Broken machines, rejected ballots and long lines: voting problems emerge as Americans go to the polls. | The Washington Post

Civil rights groups and election officials fielded thousands of reports of voting irregularities across the country Tuesday, with voters complaining of broken machines, long lines and untrained poll workers improperly challenging Americans’ right to vote. The loudest of those complaints came from Georgia, where issues of race, ballot access and election fairness have fueled an acrimonious governor’s contest between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp. Abrams, a former state lawmaker, would be the nation’s first black female governor, while Kemp, the secretary of state, who oversees elections, has faced accusations of trying to suppress the minority vote. In one downtown Atlanta precinct, voters waited three hours to cast ballots after local election officials initially sent only three voting machines to serve more than 3,000 registered voters. In suburban Gwinnett County, the wait surpassed four hours as election officials opened the polls only to discover that their voting machines were not working at all, voters said.

New York: Citywide Technical Difficulties Deter Some from Voting | CityLab

When Rebekah Burgess Abromovich got in line to vote at the North Henry Street polling center in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at 9:15 a.m. Tuesday morning, only two electronic voting scanners were working. After an hour of voting, the working machines were down to one. When she finally submitted her ballot more than three hours after arriving, volunteers had begun handing out emergency ballot boxes, which few understood how to use. “I was lucky because I was given the day off to vote,” she said. But other people were bailing. “I was standing next to a teacher who waited for two and a half hours, and then had to leave to teach a class. She said she had to come back.” In polling places in New York City’s five boroughs, similar stories of out-of-commission voting machines echoed: At different points on Tuesday, only one scanner worked at Harry S. Truman High School in the Bronx, Erasmus High School in Brooklyn, and the Brooklyn Public Library polling station, according to NBC New York. At PS 22 in Prospect Heights, all four scanners broke for much of the morning, before getting fixed at 10 am. Elsewhere, ballot sleeves were missing. Lines stretched blocks and hours long.

National: Voting Machine Meltdowns Are Normal—That’s the Problem | WIRED

David Weiner counts himself lucky. Sure, he waited an hour to vote at the Brooklyn Public Library along with, he estimates, several hundred other New Yorkers Tuesday afternoon. But, hey, at least he arrived when the last ballot scanner officially broke. That meant he could just fill out his ballot and shove it in a box. The people in line in front of him, the ones who’d been waiting to use that last ballot scanner, said they’d been in line for twice as long. “The line snaked all the way around the lobby of the public library, which is extremely unusual,” says Weiner, a Brooklyn resident who runs a cannabis media company and has been voting at the same location for three years. “I took that as enthusiasm for voting, but I was sorely mistaken.” Instead, Weiner was just one of a still-unknown number of Americans who watched their country’s voting technology break down right in front of their eyes on Tuesday. Machine malfunctions caused hours-long lines and reports of voters giving up and going home at polling stations across the country. On an already tense Election Day, these technical issues exacerbated voters’ anxieties and concerns about voter suppression. And it’s true that in past election cycles, long lines have disproportionately impacted communities of color.

National: Voting Problems Surface as Americans Go to the Polls | The New York Times

From closed polling sites to malfunctioning machines, Election Day brought frustration for some voters in contests shadowed by questions about the security and fairness of the electoral system. In Gwinnett County, Ga., four precincts — out of 156 — suffered prolonged technical delays, while some voting machines in South Carolina lacked power or the devices needed to activate them. There was also some confusion in Allegheny County, Pa., which includes Pittsburgh, where at least four polling places were changed in the last two days. Voters who went to a polling place in Chandler, Ariz., a Phoenix suburb, found the doors locked and a legal notice announcing that the building had been closed overnight for failure to pay rent. (Officials later reopened the location.) In Houston, a worker was removed from a polling site and faced an assault charge amid a racially charged dispute with a voter, The Houston Chronicle reported.

National: Broken machines and user error are leading to hour-long lines at polling booths | Quartz

Texas resident Brianna Smith, who lives in Katy, a Houston suburb, turned up 15 minutes before the polls opened at 7 am to vote this morning (Nov. 6). She wasn’t able to do so for nearly two hours, because of problems with the machine that gives voters their tickets. The lines were “wrapped around the block,” she told Quartz, with some voters forced to leave to go to work or school. Across the country, ballot scanners on the blink and broken voting machines are contributing to massive lines. Experts say that these errors are normal, but the long waits might ultimately prevent some from casting their votes. The problems are being reported across the country, with many tips sent through to the ElectionLand project and verified by Quartz and other news outlets. In New York City, high voter turn-out combined with broken scanners caused mayhem throughout the city at dozens of polling places. At one station in Flatbush, Brooklyn, two of the four voting machines were broken, resulting in a backlog of well over 100 people. A mechanic was later dispatched to repair them, according to a Quartz reporter there.

National: The US midterms feature a major standoff between voting machines and the weather | Quartz

Americans voting in this year’s midterm elections face a range of obstacles, from long lines to concerns over voter suppression. Some US citizens are also dealing with more unexpected challenges around exercising their right to vote—for instance, the weather. Across Georgia, heavy rain is an added hurdle for voters, though it’s not altogether deterring them. And humidity—a far less visible weather issue—is having an even larger impact. North Carolina’s State Board of Election (SBOE) reports that some precincts in Wake County are having trouble feeding ballots through the voting machines. “Initial reports from county elections offices indicate this issue is caused by high humidity levels,” North Carolina’s SBOE said in a release. Why is a little extra water vapor in the air making such a big difference? Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist with the Washington, DC-based nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and an election technology and cybersecurity expert, explains that ballots are made of a thick stock paper, the specifics of which are determined by voting machine vendors. There are three main makers of voting machines in the US. Local election officials have to work with paper vendors to get paper supplies that will function correctly with the machines and have safety requirements such as watermarks.

National: The Unprecedented Effort to Secure Election Day | WIRED

After Russia’s misinformation campaign rattled the 2016 United States election season, scrutiny over this year’s midterms has been intense. And while foreign cybersecurity threats have so far been relatively muted, an unclassified government report obtained by The Boston Globe this week indicates more than 160 suspected election-related incidents since the beginning of August, ranging from suspicious login attempts to compromised municipal networks. Officials haven’t attributed most of it to an actor yet, but the situations include suspicious attempted logins on election systems like voter databases and municipal network compromises. Even in July, Microsoft said it had spotted four incidents of attempted campaign phishing. … The government won’t go it alone. Verified Voting, a group that promotes election system best practices, is part of the nonpartisan Election Protection coalition, which offers a hotline for voter information and issues. Verified Voting particularly specializes in fielding questions about technology issues related to voting. Some of those have already come up; in Texas and Georgia, outdated software and poor design features on paperless voting machines have caused a small but jarring number of incidents in which votes appear to be switched from a voter’s selection.

National: Vulnerable Voting Infrastructure and the Future of Election Security | Security Boulevard

It’s been two years since international interference sabotaged the United States’ election security, and still the vulnerability of our voting infrastructure remains a major problem. This past May, during Tennessee’s primary election, the Knox County election website fell prey to a DDoS attack. And just days ago, Texas voters experienced “ominous irregularities” from voting machines. In the lead up to the midterm elections, Radware surveyed Facebook users on the safety of U.S. elections, and the results paint a gloomy picture. The overwhelming majority (93.4 percent) of respondents believe that our election system is vulnerable to targeting and hacking—and they’re correct. What’s more, respondents were unable to suggest long-term tenable solutions when asked how the U.S. can improve its election safety (which is understandable, given the complexity of the issue). It is alarmingly quick and easy to hack into U.S. voting systems; just ask the 11-year-old boy who earlier this year demonstrated how he could hack into a replica of the Florida state election website and change voting results in under 10 minutes.

National: A dozen U.S. states see problems with voting machines: rights groups | Reuters

Voting rights activists successfully sued Georgia and Texas asking them to extend voting hours in some counties after problems with voting machines led to delays and long lines thanks to a big turnout in U.S. elections on Tuesday. A suit by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Arizona failed, the group said. But it won an extension in Fulton County, Georgia, one county in about a dozen U.S. states that experienced delays, largely in sites still using aging voting machines overwhelmed by the volume of voters, according to officials and rights groups. Other Georgia polling places extended hours without facing lawsuits. Two Texas civil rights groups won a lawsuit to secure longer voting hours in Harris County, Texas, after polling locations in the Houston area opened late due to equipment glitches and other issues. In Ohio, a court ordered the state to provide ballots to voters who were being held in pretrial detention in county jails, following a lawsuit filed the same day by two public interest groups.

National: Why America is using glitchy electronic voting machines | Mashable

It’s been 18 years and several thousand lifetimes since the contested Bush-Gore presidential elections of 2000. Yet “hanging chads” are still haunting us — but not in the way you might think. Since states began introducing electronic voting machines and other technology in the voting process, digitizing various aspects of voting has been a boon for democracy in many ways. Online voter registration has supercharged get-out-the-vote efforts. ID scanning at check-ins helps reduce lines. And, of course, ballots submitted digitally allow for near instantaneous returns. But on Tuesday, there were reports in states across the country that problems with electronic voting machines were causing massive delays. “There are about a dozen states in which problems have been reported, specifically with electronic voting systems,” said Marian Schneider, president of the elections integrity organization Verified Voting. “The problems we’re seeing are diffuse. They don’t seem to be systemic. But in the localities that they’re happening, they’re impactful.” … “Our election administration is woefully underfunded,” said Schneider. “When we have problems on election day, you can trace it right back to resources.”

Arizona: Republican Party wants votes at emergency vote centers to be re-verified | ABC15

The Arizona Republican Party has sent a letter to all county recorders alleging that some of them misused emergency early voting. It is unclear how many counties set-up emergency voting locations. At least five “emergency” voting centers were opened in Maricopa County for Saturday, Sunday and Monday voting. Both in person and turning in early ballots. In their letter, the GOP wrote that, “The Legislature has directed in no uncertain terms that in-person early voting must terminate ‘no later than 5 p.m. on the Friday preceding the election.” It goes on to say that an “emergency” consists of “any unforeseen circumstances that would prevent the elector from voting at the polls…In other words mere inconvenience is not permissible.”

Florida: A month later, hurricane trips up Florida Panhandle voters | Reuters

Christy Todd said she is a regular voter in Mexico Beach, the oceanfront Florida Panhandle community nearly obliterated by Hurricane Michael less than a month ago. But she sat out Tuesday’s elections. “There’s so much going on, I just couldn’t make time for it,” Todd, 40, said, donning a dust mask as she made her way into the remains of the small house she had rented for the past five years. Todd, who sells apparel on eBay, said she probably would have voted Republican in Tuesday’s elections, which will decide if U.S. President Donald Trump’s party maintains control in both houses of Congress. But Todd said she did not know where to vote and had no time to find out. Having lost most of her roof in the hurricane, she has been living out of her car and sleeping at the homes of relatives since the storm struck.

Florida: Voters approve Amendment 4 on restoring felons’ voting rights | Miami Herald

About 1.2 million convicted felons in Florida will automatically have their right to vote restored, thanks to a ballot measure that received about 65 percent of the vote Tuesday. At least 60 percent of voters had to approve it for Amendment 4 to become law. For the past seven years, felons have had to wait five years after completing their sentence to even apply to have their voting rights restored. The movement to reform the state’s notoriously strict restoration process was championed by the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, a bipartisan group led by convicted felons. The group collected more than 800,000 signatures to qualify Amendment 4 for the 2018 ballot.

Georgia: Voters Ask a Federal Judge to Bar Brian Kemp from Counting Ballots in Georgia | The New Yorker

Just after five o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, five Georgia voters, represented by the D.C.-based, nonprofit, nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, filed an injunction in a U.S. district court in Atlanta, attempting to prevent Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp “from exercising any further powers of the Secretary of State’s Office in presiding over the 2018 general election, in which he himself is a candidate.” So far, Kemp has resisted numerous calls for his resignation as secretary of state, including, predictably, from Stacey Abrams, his Democrat opponent, and also the former President and Georgia resident Jimmy Carter.

Idaho: Signs at polls warning college students about voting draw legal complaint | Magic Valley

Signs at the polls in Rexburg warning students in the college town, home of BYU-Idaho, against voting there “simply because you failed to register and vote at your true domicile” were taken down Tuesday afternoon, after the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho charged that they violated the federal Voting Rights Act. Chief Deputy Idaho Secretary of State Tim Hurst said, “They never turned anybody away. I talked to the county clerk over there today.” Nevertheless, the signs, which were headed in big letters at the top, “STUDENTS,” were taken down mid-afternoon. Hurst said the signs originated with the Secretary of State’s office a decade or more ago, but he wasn’t aware of any other counties that were still posting them. “They were displayed just about everywhere a number of years ago,” he said. Hurst maintained the signs accurately reflect Idaho law about establishing residency. However, he said, “If you’ve been a resident for 30 days, you’re entitled to vote.”

Michigan: Problems at polls persist as voter turnout ramps up | Detroit Free Press

On a potentially record-setting Election Day in Michigan, problems at the polls in metro Detroit popped up sporadically, leaving some voters waiting in line for more than an hour while others left altogether. Several would-be voters in Redford Township did not stay Tuesday morning while the lone voting machine at Pierce Middle School was being fixed, voter Rex Nagy said. “It stinks, it really does. So many people were upset,” Nagy said. In Detroit, voting equipment was not ready when the polls opened at Martin Luther King Jr. High School because a custodian did not know where the equipment was located, city elections director Daniel Baxter confirmed in a text message.