Georgia: Panel backs new voting machines over hand-marked paper ballots | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A panel formed by Gov.-elect Brian Kemp voted Thursday to replace Georgia’s electronic voting machines with a computerized system that prints paper ballots, despite opposition from a crowd of voters who said paper ballots filled out by hand are more secure and less expensive. The endorsement of ballot printers over hand-marked paper ballots will carry weight with the Georgia General Assembly when it considers buying a new statewide voting system during this year’s legislative session, which begins Monday. The Secure, Accessible & Fair Elections (SAFE) Commission voted 13-3 to recommend a voting system with touchscreens and printers, called ballot-marking devices, that would cost taxpayers well over $100 million. A system using paper ballots bubbled in with a pen would cost around $30 million. The vote came the same week Kemp announced he was hiring former state Rep. Chuck Harper, a lobbyist for the state’s current election vendor, Election Systems & Software, as his deputy chief of staff. The company sells the same kind of voting system that the commission recommended. … Except for election officials and lobbyists, every voter who made public comments Thursday supported hand-marked paper ballots. County election supervisors backed ballot-marking devices, saying they’re similar to the touchscreens that voters are accustomed to.

National: Here are the big election security measures in the House Democrats’ massive new bill | CyberScoop

A giant bill House Democrats proposed on Friday includes a number of measures aimed at improving election security and voter confidence. The measures in H.R. 1 draw on provisions from several bills that were proposed but failed since the 2016 election, which experts and officials concluded was targeted by a Russian-led influence operation. Key features include a requirement that federal elections be conducted with paper ballots that can be counted by hand or optical scanners, new grants that states and municipalities can use to improve and upgrade equipment, an incident reporting requirement for election system vendors and a number of other measures meant to keep election systems’ security up-to-date. Election security experts have criticized paperless voting machines because of their vulnerability to tampering with little recourse, since they produce no auditable paper trail of each vote. Such machines were used to some extent in more than a dozen states in the recent midterm elections, according to Verified Voting. In South Carolina and Georgia, voters sued the government under the premise that their votes aren’t being properly counted with paperless machines. The bill, also called the “For the People Act,” would statutorily do away with these machines for federal elections by 2022.

National: Trump Campaign in Legal Jeopardy Over Manafort’s Sharing Data with Russian Agent | Just Security

According to a court filing earlier this week, former 2016 Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared presidential campaign polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian citizen with ties to Russian intelligence. If the data Manafort shared with Kilimnik was used to materially guide spending by Russian nationals to influence the 2016 presidential election, then the Trump campaign seemingly received an “in-kind contribution” from the Russian nationals in the form of “coordinated expenditures” in violation of multiple federal campaign finance laws. A key link in the “coordination” here is the revelation of Manafort’s actions. U.S. campaign finance law for decades has provided that any expenditure “made by any person in cooperation, consultation, or concert, with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, his authorized political committees, or their agents” is considered a contribution to such candidate subject to contribution limits. … Early in 2017, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that the Russian government had conducted an influence campaign in the U.S. 2016 presidential election, including through “overt propaganda.”

National: Democrats are more concerned about election security than Republicans, survey finds | The Washington Post

Democrats are far more concerned than Republicans that a foreign power will tamper with U.S. elections and they’re more cynical about the government’s ability to respond to a major cyberattack, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday. That partisan divide on basic cybersecurity questions is a troubling signal that government’s handling of an issue officials have called a greater threat than terrorism will be hampered by the sort of partisan bickering that has bedeviled health care, immigration and other topics, experts said. A whopping 87 percent of Democrats believe a hostile power will tamper with U.S. elections compared with 66 percent of Republicans. And just 47 percent of Democrats believe the U.S. government is prepared to deal with a major cyberattack according to Pew, compared with 61 percent of Republicans.

National: Gerrymandering lawsuits linger as next redistricting nears | Associated Press

As the 2019 state legislative sessions get underway, a busy year of legal battles also is beginning over lingering allegations that hundreds of electoral districts across the country were illegally drawn to the disadvantage of particular voters or political parties. First up was a court hearing Thursday in Virginia, where a federal judicial panel reviewed several proposals from an outside expert to redraw some state House districts. The court had previously determined that those districts were racially gerrymandered. The expert, University of California, Irvine political science professor Bernard Grofman, answered questions about his revisions. “My focus was on remedying constitutional infirmities,” he said.

Georgia: Commission recommends machine-marked ballots for Georgia | Associated Press

After Georgia’s 2018 elections focused stinging criticism on the state’s outdated election system, a study commission voted Thursday to recommend the use of machines that record votes and print a record. Members of the panel tasked with considering a potential replacement chose that option over hand-marked paper ballots favored by cybersecurity experts. The Secure, Accessible and Fair Elections, or SAFE, Commission voted 13-3 for a draft of a report to be sent to lawmakers, who are expected to decide on criteria for a new system during the legislative session that begins Monday. The commission includes lawmakers, political party representatives, voters and election officials. … Verified Voting, a nonprofit group that advocates ensuring the accuracy of elections, last week urged the commission to recommend hand-marked paper ballots. “A paper ballot that is indelibly marked by hand and physically secured from the moment of casting is the most reliable record of voter intent,” president Marian Schneider wrote in a Jan. 4 letter. “A hand-marked paper ballot is the only kind of record not vulnerable to software errors, configuration errors, or hacking.”

Georgia: Hearing set in challenge to lieutenant governor’s election | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A Cobb County judge will hold a hearing Thursday in a lawsuit challenging the election of Lt. Gov.-elect Geoff Duncan. The case alleges that a drop-off in votes for lieutenant governor indicates the election between Duncan, a Republican, and Democrat Sarah Riggs Amico was flawed and should be redone. Duncan won by more than 123,000 votes. While it’s not unusual for voters to skip down-ballot races, the lawsuit raises suspicions about potential irregularities in the lieutenant governor’s election. The suit, filed Nov. 23 by an election integrity advocacy group and three voters, blames the state’s 16-year-old direct-recording electronic voting system. About 80,000 fewer votes were counted in the lieutenant governor’s race than the average of ballots recorded in 10 statewide contests in the Nov. 6 election.

Kentucky: Federal lawsuit fights Kentucky’s felon voter ban | Louisville Courier Journal

Kentucky has some of the nation’s highest rates of residents who can’t vote because of felony convictions — but a recent federal lawsuit is seeking to change that. The same national civil rights group that got a judge to declare Florida’s practices for restoring voting rights unconstitutional is targeting Kentucky’s restoration procedures. The suit, initially filed last year in U.S. District Court in Louisville by a single felon, was joined last week by the Fair Elections Center and the Kentucky Equal Justice Center. It was amended to add three more plaintiffs who argue Kentucky’s procedures for restoring voting rights are arbitrary and unconstitutional.

New Hampshire: Lawmakers hear bills to repeal GOP-led voter registration laws | inDepthNH

The first public hearings on two bills that would effectively repeal two controversial laws that many Democrats view as voter suppression measures filled a double committee room at the Legislative Office Building on Thursday. Outside the packed third-floor room, supporters waved signs saying, “Restore Voting Rights” and “Granite Stater, Granite Voter” as elected officials, citizens and lobbyists took turns telling members of the House Election Law Committee why they should either back House Bills 105 and 106 or deep six them both. Rep. Timothy Horrigan, D-Durham, who co-sponsored both bills, said they are important to his constituents because of the University of New Hampshire where he believes students will be unduly impacted by having to pay fees for licenses and car registrations to prove residency.

New York: Early Voting and Other Election Reforms Coming to New York | The New York Times

For years, the ways in which voters in New York have been stymied by the state’s antiquated voting laws have stood in stark contrast to the state’s liberal reputation. During last year’s contentious midterm elections, New York was the only state in the nation that held separate state and federal primary elections, a bifurcation that almost seemed designed to suppress voter turnout — which is generally thought to favor incumbents. Early voting? Voting by mail? Same-day voter registration? All are fairly basic voting reforms now found in many states, but not in New York.

Pennsylvania: Philadelphia officials look to make changes to county voting system | KYW

Philadelphia needs new voting machines, and they need them fast. But before officials settle on a new device, they are asking for the public’s input. Gov. Tom Wolf wants every county throughout the state to purchase a voting system with a verifiable paper trail, and officials in Philadelphia want their system to be in place by year’s end. “Security experts say that the best kind of machine is something that is air gapped from the Internet. They found that hand marked paper ballots are the best and that’s because there’s very little technology between the voter and the actual vote,” said Tim Brown, who joined a dozen other Philadelphians Thursday to give their suggestions on what they want from a new voting system at a Philadelphia City Commissioners’ comment session. 

Virginia: Amendment to restore Virginia felons’ voting rights dies along party lines | WTKR

For now, Virginia will remain among a trio of states — joining only Kentucky and Iowa — with a lifetime ban on voting rights for people convicted of a felony. On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections killed an attempt to allow Virginians who have been convicted of a felony to vote. Currently, the Virginia Constitution says felons cannot vote unless their civil rights have been restored by the governor or other authorities. Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, proposed a resolution — SJ 261 — to delete that passage from the state Constitution. On an 8-6 vote at the committee’s meeting on Wednesday, Locke’s proposed constitutional amendment was “passed by indefinitely,” meaning that it likely is dead for this legislative session. The vote was split down party lines on the 14-member committee, with all eight Republicans voting to kill the measure.

Canada: Supreme Court set to rule on voting rights for long-term expat Canadians | National Post

Long-term Canadian expats are set to find out on Friday whether a now-repealed 25-year-old law barring them from voting in federal elections was constitutional. The pending decision by the Supreme Court of Canada should settle a legal battle begun in earnest during the former Conservative government of then-prime minister Stephen Harper, and which gained prominence in the election that brought the Liberals under Justin Trudeau to office. Observers said they would be watching to see whether the country’s top court might justify limits on a constitutionally guaranteed right that potentially affects more than one-million Canadians who live abroad.

Congo: Election Officials Say Felix Tshisekedi Won Election, Rebuffing Independent Review | The New York Times

Congolese election officials, rejecting independent assessments that a prominent opposition figure was the runaway winner of the recent presidential election, on Thursday bestowed victory on a candidate considered more acceptable to the departing President Joseph Kabila. The decision dashed hopes that the Democratic Republic of Congo might experience its first undisputed transfer of power by…

Germany: Officials seek to bolster cyber defences ahead of European Parliament election | Reuters

German officials are racing to bolster cyber security after a far-reaching data breach carried out by a 20-year-old student laid bare the vulnerability of Europe’s largest economy ahead of a critical European Parliament election in May. Officials say they are anxious to close security gaps and raise awareness ahead of the upcoming election, where voters from across the European Union will choose lawmakers for the parliament, amid concerns that foreign powers or right-wing forces could seek to manipulate the election. “We have to think about preventive measures,” Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told Reuters.

Israel: Tel Aviv Spy Agency Claims Russia Trying To Interfere In Coming Israeli Elections | Eurasia Review

Despite Russia’s denial of any involvement in the upcoming Israeli elections, with a senior Moscow official saying that people should not read the Israeli media, intelligence sources in Tel Aviv announced there were several indications for such intervention, adding that Israel’s cyber army fended off several attacks. Director of the Shin Bet domestic security service Nadav Argaman discussed the issue, saying security forces were concerned about foreign interference that could affect the Knesset elections’ outcome. Speaking at a Friends of Tel Aviv University conference, Argaman said that a foreign country intended to launch cyber attacks in order to influence Israel’s general elections. The issue is considered an internal matter, however, several journalists attending the conference reported the news, which prompted the military censorship to issue an order banning the publication of Argaman’s statement. The military gag was later lifted when reporters threatened of filing a lawsuit, though the naming of the country in question is still prohibited.

Sweden: Snap election could be held on April 7th | The Local

Swedish election authorities have proposed that a potential snap election if the country fails to form a government be held on April 7th at an expected cost of 346 million kronor. The Election Authority’s administrative head Anna Nyqvist met parliamentary speaker Andreas Norlén on Thursday to discuss the practical details of a new election – if one goes ahead. “It is my hope that we will soon have a new government in place, but if the parties do not act in a way that allows for a prime minister to be elected, it is important to me to be prepared to set a date for an extra election,” said speaker Norlén in a written statement.