National: McConnell says bill that would make Election Day a federal holiday is a ‘power grab’ by Democrats | The Washington Post

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday that a Democratic bill that would make Election Day a federal holiday is a “power grab,” sparking a fierce backlash online. McConnell was speaking about H.R. 1, legislation that Democrats have made a centerpiece of their agenda since retaking the House earlier this month. In remarks on the Senate floor, McConnell (R-Ky.) said Democrats “want taxpayers on the hook for generous new benefits for federal bureaucrats and government employees,” including making Election Day a “new paid holiday for government workers.” “So this is the Democrats’ plan to ‘restore democracy,’” McConnell said, describing the legislation as “a political power grab that’s smelling more and more like what it is.”

Editorials: Voter suppression carries slavery’s three-fifths clause into the present | Imani Perry/The Guardian

Two decades ago, while a law student, I took a class titled The Federalist Papers. Our small group sat in a small seminar room off of the library, a collection of nerds – most, I gathered, aspiring to be judges or academics rather than following the tide of corporate practice. I was one of two women, and the only Black student in the room: an experience of oddity I had grown used to. As I recall, we spent the most time poring over Federalist 51, the paper that outlines the fundamentals of what we now term Madisonian democracy. But the part I personally sat with, long after the class was over, was Federalist 54, mostly likely also authored by Madison. Like many African Americans, I had come of age hearing about how the three-fifths clause – which proposed that three out of every five slaves be counted to determine a state’s population – was a mark of how we Black people were not deemed fully human when the constitution was first ratified. Here, fully elaborated, was an earnest, though tortured, justification for the enshrinement of indecency. That classic essay remains key to understanding race in the United States.

California: Election officials said DMV wasn’t ready to launch Motor Voter. California went ahead anyway | The Sacramento Bee

As California prepared to launch its new Motor Voter program last year, top elections officials say they asked Secretary of State Alex Padilla to hold off on the roll-out. The plan called for the Department of Motor Vehicles to automatically register people who came into its offices, one of several efforts by Democrats controlling California politics to make it easier for more people to vote. With the June 2018 primary approaching, election officials said they warned that the department that manages car registration and boat licenses was not yet prepared to register voters. “There wasn’t the appropriate readiness to go forward in April, and that was brought to the Secretary of State,” said Dean Logan, registrar for Los Angeles County, adding that he “definitely expressed concern” to the Secretary of State’s Office, as well as Padilla himself.

Georgia: State Election Officials Defends Use of Hack-Prone Voting Machines at 11th Circuit | Courthouse News

The battle over how Georgia voters cast their ballots continued Wednesday in the 11th Circuit as attorneys for state election officials asked a three-judge panel to reject a lawsuit claiming the integrity of state elections is compromised by electronic voting machines. Last September, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg denied the Coalition for Good Governance’s request for an emergency preliminary injunction which would have forced Georgia voters to switch to paper ballots, ruling that the state could use its direct-recording electronic voting machines in the November midterm election. Totenberg acknowledged that the state’s 27,000 DRE voting machines are susceptible to “malicious intrusion,” but found that there were significant “fiscal, organizational and practical impediments” associated with orchestrating a large-scale change to the state’s voting systems just weeks before early voting was scheduled to begin. In the ruling, Totenberg advised state election officials to be prepared to switch to a more secure system by 2020, acknowledging warnings from cyber security experts who say that Georgia’s DRE machines are particularly vulnerable to hacking because they lack a physical paper-trail backup.

Illinois: Audit: Chicago Elections Board Not Ready for a Cyberattack | Governing

The Chicago elections board can’t guarantee the integrity of voting results in the event of a natural disaster or cyberattack, the city’s watchdog warned Tuesday in a highly critical report of the agency’s operations. The wide-ranging audit by Inspector General Joseph Ferguson also concluded that the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners does not post many job openings and has not conducted employee performance reviews in a at least 10 years. Ferguson said the board was warned a decade ago about many of the financial problems he’s uncovered and failed to correct them. It’s the technological vulnerabilities, however, that the inspector general’s office found that could attract the most public attention. Governments have become increasingly concerned about computer hacks and the possibility of meddling in elections.

Kansas: State drops Kris Kobach’s appeal of contempt ruling, ACLU accepts $20,000 for legal fees | The Topeka Capital-Journal

The Kansas attorney general said Tuesday the state agreed to drop former Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s appeal of a federal court judge’s contempt order in exchange for the American Civil Liberties Union accepting only $20,000 for attorney fees and expenses. Attorney General Derek Schmidt said the negotiated deal reduced from $26,200 the state’s obligation to the ACLU. U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson had found Kobach in contempt of court while he was serving as secretary of state in Kansas. Robinson sanctioned Kobach for failure to comply with her instructions. Mediation involving ACLU lawyers and the attorney general’s office Jan. 25 also led to dismissal of Kobach’s appeal of the contempt ruling. It didn’t alter status of the state’s appeal of Robinson’s underlying election law decision, which found Kansas’ proof-of-citizenship statute unconstitutional.

Minnesota: House panel advances automatic voter registration bill | MPR

Legislation creating what supporters call an automatic voter registration process in Minnesota passed its first test Wednesday in the House. The House subcommittee on elections advanced the measure on voice vote, sending it to the government operations committee. Under the bill, applicants for a state driver’s license, identification or learner’s permit would be put into the voter registration system unless they opted out. Current law allows people to opt in to voter registration during those transactions. Rep. Jennifer Schultz, DFL-Duluth, said her bill would make voting more efficient.

New Mexico: Election Day voter registration clears first committee | The NM Political Report

A bill to allow voters to register on the same day they vote cleared its first House committee Wednesday. The House, State Government, Elections & Indian Affairs Committee advanced the proposal on a party-line vote. The bill aims to let voters register or update their voter registration during early voting or on Election Day, and vote on the same day. Currently, voters must register four weeks before the election to be eligible to vote. One of the bill’s Democratic co-sponsors, Patricia Roybal Caballero of Albuquerque, said the legislation “is the ultimate access bill to allow voters to access the electoral process as openly as possible.”

North Carolina: With deadline looming, effort to name new state elections board hits a snag | Charlotte Observer

The effort to find members for a new North Carolina state elections board has hit a snag, just before a deadline for a new board to be named. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s office on Tuesday found two of the four Democrats nominated to the board ineligible. A new board is scheduled to be appointed by Thursday. The new board will oversee the investigation into alleged election fraud in the 9th District, a probe that has put into question the results of last November’s election. Republican Mark Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in unofficial results. But the old elections board twice declined to certify his victory because of alleged irregularities with absentee ballots in Bladen County. The old board was dissolved by court order Dec. 28 as part of a separate case.

Pennsylvania: State’s voting machines pose ‘clear and present danger,’ warns election security commission | StateScoop

A 21-member panel of elected officials, former U.S. Justice department officers and nonprofit leaders convened last year by a University of Pittsburgh research institute to review Pennsylvania’s election systems released its final report Tuesday, recommending the state move as quickly as possible to replace its touchscreen voting machines and implement stronger cybersecurity procedures to protect the statewide voter registration database. Pennsylvania and the federal government, the report reads, should help the state’s 67 counties purchase new voting systems before the 2020 presidential election, if not before elections for local offices later this year. “Given the clear and present danger that these paperless machines pose, replacing the systems with those that employ voter-marked paper ballots should be the most pressing priority for Pennsylvania officials to secure the Commonwealth’s elections,” the report reads.

Texas: Officials Begin Walking Back Allegations About Noncitizen Voters | NPR

Texas officials are taking a step back on their claim they found 95,000 possible noncitizens in the state’s voter rolls. They say it is possible many of the people on their list should not be there. In a statement Tuesday, the Texas Secretary of State’s office said they “are continuing to provide information to the counties to assist them in verifying eligibility of Texas voters.” Last Friday, Texas Secretary of State David Whitley sent an advisory to local registrars asking them to look at their voter rolls. Whitley said his office flagged the names of 95,000 people who at one point in the past 22 years had identified as noncitizens with the Texas Department of Public Safety. In that timespan, officials said, they also registered to vote. Voting rights groups have said the state’s list is likely a list of naturalized citizens who recently got the right to vote. 

Wisconsin: Review of Wisconsin voting machines could be made public | Associated Press

Election security experts are watching a Wisconsin court case stemming from the 2016 presidential recount that could result in the first public conclusions on whether closely guarded ballot-counting machines were hacked or failed to perform. The key question at the heart of the case is whether former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein will be allowed to comment publicly on what her auditors find in a review of Wisconsin voting machines’ computer code. Stein’s request for a recount of the presidential election results in Wisconsin gives her the right to review the code under state law. All the parties involved must sign an agreement to keep propriety information confidential. The voting machines’ manufacturers argue that agreement should bar Stein’s group from making any conclusions or opinions about the machines’ performance public.

Canada: Canada unveils plan to warn of potential election meddling | The Guardian

Canada will set up a special panel to warn voters of any attempts by foreign actors to interfere with a federal election set for October, senior government officials have said. The Democratic institutions minister, Karina Gould, said Ottawa expects social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google to help safeguard the vote by promoting transparency, authenticity and integrity on their platforms. The announcement comes amid an investigation by US officials into connections between Donald Trump’s 2016 election win and Russian efforts to influence the vote. Canada’s response was also influenced by the fact that Britain, France and Germany had also experienced foreign interference in recent elections, Gould said. An impartial group of senior bureaucrats would monitor possible interference during the Canadian campaign and sound the alarm if they felt the vote could be compromised, Gould said.

El Salvador: Fraud, the Justification of the Bad Loser Wanders Around El Salvador | Prensa Latina

The unfounded rumors of electoral fraud launched by the right-wing Great Alliance for National Unity (GANA) embody Tuesday what in El Salvador they call ‘killing the pooch in time.’ In El Salvador, this expression means ‘to prepare a good excuse to defend yourself from a problem,’ and describes precisely the tactic of the party that mutated from orange to blue while remaining a right-wing party. With more paranoia than certainties, the party separated from the far-right Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) speaks in networks of collusion between its rivals, without presenting evidence to support its fear. For the deputy Nidia Diaz, head of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), everything responds to a strategy of candidate Nayib Bukele to justify an eventual setback. ‘It is part of his victimization, he wants to be president at any cost and he will disqualify any result that does not favor him and call it a fraud,’ said the parliamentarian at the close of the Front’s campaign.

Estonia: Russia unlikely to meddle with upcoming general election, expert thinks | ERR

Communications expert Ilmar Raag thinks that Russian meddling in the upcoming general election on 3 March is unlikely, not least because the situation in Estonia is stable, and even a large-scale disinformation effort wouldn’t change much. In a piece for weekly Eesti Ekspress (link in Estonian), Mr Raag writes that given the current political situation and support of political parties in Estonia, Russia is unlikely to make an attempt at influencing the outcome of the 3 March general election—simply because it doesn’t stand to gain much. For a serious attempt at influencing political opinion in Estonia, the main means at the disposal of the Russian state services is the repetition of whatever story they carry. In practice, this would mean at least five major stories about Estonia on Russian state TV, which at the moment isn’t happening.

Israel: Twitter suspends accounts spreading fake news to Israelis ahead of election | Haaretz

Twitter suspended 61 accounts linked to foreign fake news manipulation campaigns aimed at the Israeli public, ahead of the April 9 election. The move brings to 343 the number of accounts suspended by Twitter since election was announced last month, Elad Ratson of Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry tweeted on Monday. Ratson is the ministry’s director of research and development. The new group of 61 accounts had a total of more than 28,000 followers, and most of them were in English. Meanwhile, Facebook announced in a statement on Monday that it would launch in various countries, including Israel, “additional tools to help prevent foreign interference and make political and issue advertising on Facebook more transparent.” Advertisers will need to be authorized to purchase political ads; Facebook will give people more information about ads related to politics and issues; and it will create a publicly searchable library of these ads for up to seven years, the statement said.

Pennsylvania: Commission recommends Pennsylvania security measures for elections | Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Pennsylvania lawmakers and county leaders must move quickly to secure the state’s election infrastructure in advance of the 2020 presidential election, an independent bipartisan commission said Tuesday. The Blue Ribbon Commission on Pennsylvania’s Election Security recommended that the state and federal government provide money to help underwrite the costs for counties facing a major investment to replace electronic voting machines with machines that incorporate voter-verified paper ballots. Although they found no evidence that Pennsylvania elections had been hacked, commission co-chairmen David Hickton, a former U.S. attorney who founded the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security, and Grove City College President Paul McNulty, a former deputy U.S. attorney general, said the threats to election security are great. “We have little doubt that foreign adversaries will increase their efforts in the lead-up to the presidential election in 2020. The persistence and sophistication of these actors are only increasing.

National: Judiciary Hearing on Democrats’ Election Bill Turns Into Partisan Brawl | The New York Times

House Democrats faced sustained partisan fire on Tuesday over their ambitious elections overhaul bill, a top priority for the new Democratic leaders who must answer charges that their efforts to counter partisan gerrymandering and ease access to the polls strain the constitutional reach of Congress. The House Judiciary Committee’s inaugural hearing of the 116th Congress was dedicated to the voting and ethics rules overhaul, known as the For the People Act, which Democratic representatives have trumpeted as their signature legislative priority. But its reception underscored the challenges the bill will face in a divided Capitol. The bill would turn the drawing of congressional boundaries over to nonpartisan commissions, promote more transparency in campaign contributions and expand the public financing system for House and presidential candidates. “The broader issue is what kind of country America is and should be,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the chairman of the committee.

National: The government’s cyber workers are back in action. First task: Checking for hacks | The Washington Post

Thousands of federal cyber workers are returning to their posts after more than a month on furlough today. And they have a big to-do list. The first priority: Looking for evidence of any major hacks that wormed through government defenses the past 35 days while agencies were working with a skeleton crew of security pros. It will take them days or weeks to pore through security logs to assess how much damage the shutdown did to the security of government computer networks and the sensitive data they hold. The attacks did not abate because the government was closed: One cyber manager who worked without pay during the shutdown described an uptick in attacks on his agency — including phishing emails containing malware, attempts to reset employee passwords and attempts to trick users into downloading malicious software cloaked as a legitimate update. Also on the docket: Figuring out how to adjust the multimillion-dollar contracts to upgrade and secure federal IT systems that have spent more than a month on ice.

National: Intelligence heads warn of more aggressive election meddling in 2020 | Politico

Foreign adversaries are likely already planning to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election, the nation’s top intelligence official warned on Tuesday. In a worldwide threat assessment to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats wrote that competitors such as Russia, China and Iran “probably already are looking to the 2020 U.S. elections as an opportunity to advance their interests.” In his statement, he predicted that these countries “will use online influence operations to try to weaken democratic institutions, undermine U.S. alliances and partnerships and shape policy outcomes in the United States and elsewhere.” Furthermore, he said, they’ll “refine their capabilities and add new tactics as they learn from each other’s experiences, suggesting the threat landscape could look very different in 2020 and future elections.”

California: Bill Would Give Voting Rights to Parolees | Courthouse News

Nearly 50,000 Californians currently on parole could regain the right to vote under a voting rights bill introduced on Monday. A group of Democratic lawmakers are pushing for a state constitutional amendment already coined the Free the Vote Act and are hoping to restore parolees’ voting rights in an effort to cut down statewide recidivism rates. Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, wants California to build on momentum gained last November in Florida where voters overwhelmingly passed a measure that restored voting rights to most felons who have completed sentences.  He said that “roughly half of the states in the country are more progressive” than California in allowing felons and parolees the chance to vote, including Republican-led states like Maine, North Dakota and Utah. 

Georgia: Election officials asks judge to toss suit challenging election system | Associated Press

Georgia election officials on Monday asked a judge to toss out a lawsuit filed by an organization backed by unsuccessful Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams that challenges the way the state’s elections are run. Lawyers for recently sworn-in Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is the state’s top elections official, and election board members said in a motion to dismiss that the lawsuit fails to bring valid claims. They also argue that state officials are not responsible for any of the harm alleged and are immune from such suits. The lawsuit was filed by Fair Fight Action, a group associated with Abrams and staffed by some of her former campaign workers. In a speech ending her bid for governor 10 days after the November midterm election, Abrams promised a lawsuit against the state “for the gross mismanagement of this election and to protect future elections from unconstitutional actions.”

New Hampshire: Bills would make it easier for older residents to vote | Associated Press

While much of the focus has been on young voters, New Hampshire lawmakers also are considering changes to make it easier for older residents to cast their ballots. The House Election Law Committee will hold public hearings Tuesday on two bills related to older voters. One would allow unrelated caregivers to deliver absentee ballots on behalf of voters who live in nursing homes or assisted living facilities. The other would allow anyone age 60 or older to vote up to five weeks before an election. Rep. Richard Komi, a Democrat from Manchester, is the sponsor of the second bill, which he said is partly inspired by his 75-year-old mother. He wants to help elderly residents who are in poor health or who worry about inclement weather to vote when it is most convenient for them.

North Carolina: New election board could steer the 9th District to resolution – or stalemate | Charlotte Observer

A new state elections board expected to be named this week could finally resolve North Carolina’s disputed 9th District congressional election — or push it even deeper into uncharted territory. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is scheduled to appoint the new, 5-member State Board of Elections by Thursday. It’s expected to schedule a hearing into allegations of election fraud in the 9th District. But from there the bipartisan board could deadlock, refusing to either certify the election of Republican Mark Harris or order a new election. That would further delay resolution of a situation that already has left 733,000 North Carolinians without representation in Congress. “This situation is unprecedented,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who chairs of the House Administration Committee, told Politico this month. Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in unofficial returns. But in late November the previous state board twice declined to certify the election, citing reports of absentee ballot irregularities centered in Bladen County. The board launched an investigation, which has continued even after a court dissolved the board on Dec. 28 over a separate dispute.

Editorials: A call for action: Now is the time to secure Pennsylvania’s elections | David Hickton and Paul McNulty/Penn Live

Pennsylvania’s democracy is at a critical juncture. Weaknesses in the security of our elections present a threat both to our electoral outcomes and to public faith and trust in government of, by, and for the people. We have been fortunate thus far to avoid such an assault on our democracy. Recognizing the gravity of what is at stake, The Blue Ribbon Commission on Pennsylvania’s Election Security (which we co-chair) endeavored to research and analyze the security of the Commonwealth’s election architecture. The commission’s just-released report, which documents those efforts and offers actionable and achievable solutions, provides a blueprint for how Pennsylvania’s leaders can do what is needed to protect our elections.

South Carolina: Election director’s ties to voting company creates ‘conflict’ concerns | Post and Courier

The relationship between South Carolina’s director of elections and the country’s largest voting equipment company has caught the attention of lawmakers as the state prepares to spend a proposed $60 million to replace  13,000 voting machines. For more than a decade, Marci Andino, executive director of the S.C. Election Commission, served on an advisory board formed by Elections Systems and Software, known commonly as ES&S. Andino received more than $19,000 worth of flights, hotels and meals from ES&S since 2009 to attend regular conferences at the company’s headquarters in Nebraska and other cities across the country, according to records with the South Carolina Ethics Commission. Andino was offered a spot on that private panel in 2005, according to other documents provided to The Post and Courier. It was a year after ES&S won a contract to supply new voting equipment to the Palmetto State and two years after Andino became executive director of the election commission.

Texas: Voter citizenship review list has problems, state tells counties | The Texas Tribune

After flagging tens of thousands of registered voters for citizenship reviews, the Texas secretary of state’s office is now telling counties that some of those voters don’t belong on the lists it sent out. Officials in five large counties — Harris, Travis, Fort Bend, Collin and Williamson — told The Texas Tribune they had received calls Tuesday from the secretary of state’s office indicating that some of the voters whose citizenship status the state said counties should consider checking should not actually be on those lists. The secretary of state’s office incorrectly included some voters who had submitted their voting registration applications at Texas Department of Public Safety offices, according to county officials. Now, the secretary of state is instructing counties to remove them from the list of flagged voters. “We’re going to proceed very carefully,” said Douglas Ray, a special assistant county attorney in Harris County, where 29,822 voters were initially flagged by the state. A “substantial number” of them are now being marked as citizens, Ray said.

Texas: Specter of illegal Texas voters draws skepticism | Austin American-Statesman

For some Republicans, including President Donald Trump, Friday’s announcement that state officials had identified 95,000 registered voters as possible non-U.S. citizens provided all the proof they needed to confirm suspicions that illegal voting is pervasive. Democrats and civil rights activists greeted the news skeptically, arguing that the scenario described by Texas Secretary of State David Whitley mirrored the GOP playbook under Trump by using inflated accusations to justify cracking down on voting rights, particularly for minority voters. “Make no mistake,” said Beth Stevens, the voting rights legal director of the Texas Civil Rights Project. “The state is going to use this highly suspect ‘investigation’ to try to pass laws that will make it harder for eligible Texas voters to cast a ballot that counts.”

Verified Voting in the News: Electronic return of ballots worries aired | Daily Press

One of the toughest things for the digital world to manage is keeping a transaction private while at the same time assuring everyone it has accurately recorded the deal. That’s what Virginia Wesleyan University mathematician Audrey Malagon, an adviser to the non-profit group Verified Voting, has been telling legislators. Her concern is with a particular transaction: voting when voters far from their polling place return their ballots electronically. Del. Nick Rush, R-Christiansburg, wants to launch a pilot program to allow military personnel serving overseas to do just that. He’s hoping the same kind of blockchain technology used in cybercurrency dealings will make it easier for them to vote. But the problem, Malagon told legislators, is preserving the anonymity of the voting booth or absentee ballot while letting both voter and vote-counter know that a vote was accurately recorded.