Nevada: ‘A complete disaster’: Fears grow over potential Nevada caucus malfunction | Laura Barrón-López

The process will break down like this: On caucus day, each precinct chair will be given a party-purchased iPad that will have a link to a Google form — dubbed a “caucus calculator” — saved on it. Pre-loaded on the form will be the early vote total from that precinct. The precinct chair will then input vote totals after the first and second votes. Under caucus rules, voters choose their preferred candidate at the outset, known as the first alignment. But if their candidate fails to reach 15 percent, they can switch to a different candidate, or seek to persuade supporters of another candidate who fails to reach 15 percent to help their candidate clear that threshold during the second alignment. The prompts on the Google form are expected to look similar to how they appear on the physical caucus reporting sheet. When the first and second alignments are completed, the totals will be relayed over the cloud to the Nevada Democratic Party via the Google form, which on the back end appears as a Google spreadsheet. Separately, the precinct chair or site lead will take the printed caucus reporting sheets — each campaign must sign off on them first — and call the Nevada Democratic Party boiler room via a secure hotline. (Site leads oversee multiple precinct chairs in caucusing at a single large location.)

National: ElectionGuard could be Microsoft’s most important product in 2020. If it works | Alfred Ng/CNET

Building 83 doesn’t stand out on Microsoft’s massive Redmond, Washington, headquarters. But last week, the nameless structure hosted what might be the software giant’s most important product of 2020. Tucked away in the corner of a meeting room, a sign reading “ElectionGuard” identifies a touchscreen that asks people to cast their votes. An Xbox adaptive controller is connected to it, as are an all-white printer and a white ballot box for paper votes. If you didn’t look carefully, you might have mistaken all that for an array of office supplies. ElectionGuard is open-source voting-machine software that Microsoft announced in May 2019. In Microsoft’s demo, voters make their choices by touchscreen before printing out two copies. A voter is supposed to double-check one copy before placing it into a ballot box to be counted by election workers. The other is a backup record with a QR code the voter can use to check that the vote was counted after polls close. With ElectionGuard, Microsoft isn’t setting out to create an unhackable vote — no one thinks that’s possible — but rather a vote in which hacks would be quickly noticed. The product demo was far quieter than the typical big tech launch. No flashy lights or hordes of company employees cheering their own product, like Microsoft’s dual screen phone, its highly anticipated dual-screen laptop or its new Xbox Series X. And yet, if everything goes right, ElectionGuard could have an impact that lasts well beyond the flashy products in Microsoft’s pipeline.

Editorials: There’s always a threat to voting online | Huntingdon Herald-Dispatch

It shouldn’t take an MIT genius to figure out that any internet-based voting system can be hacked, but apparently it did. Last week researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said the Voatz app, which has been used in West Virginia and elsewhere by absentee voters and military personnel, has vulnerabilities that could allow hackers to change a person’s vote without detection. The Voatz developer said the analysts used an older version of the app. It accused them of acting in “bad faith.” So far the app has been used by fewer than 600 voters in nine pilot elections. Voatz was used in West Virginia’s elections in 2018 by fewer than 200 voters. No problems were reported. Last month, the Legislature approved a bill that would allow voters with physical disabilities to use the Voatz app in this year’s election. The bill awaits the governor’s signature or veto.

Florida: Experts Reiterate Cybersecurity Warnings for 2020 Election | Sarah Nelson/The Gainesville Sun

Cybersecurity experts warned in late 2019 that internet hacking has climbed to crisis level. And based on what they’ve seen in early 2020, a similar warning has now been issued: that hackers show no signs of letting up and will likely focus on the 2020 election. “What’s more likely is that these cybercriminals will cause disruption,” said Brett Callow, Emsisoft spokesman. “Because most elections operate at the county level, local governments need to prepare.” But because of this year’s tense political climate, and overall spike in cyberattacks, Callow predicts cybercriminals will zero in on the election. Kim Barton, supervisor of the Alachua County, Fla., Elections Office, says the department began to look at cybersecurity preventive security measures years ago, and officials work to keep up with the latest internet security updates. “Cybersecurity is an always evolving field, so our office expects that we will continually be updating our training, procedures, and systems to keep ourselves as protected as possible,” she said.

Florida: Florida’s best election security measure? Paper ballots. Nationally? It’s more complicated. | Christopher Heath/WFTV

Lessons learned from the 2016 election and the 2020 caucus in Iowa show it doesn’t take much to disrupt the ballot counting process. But in Florida, the best protection offered against election issues is simple, Orange County Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles said. “Every voter in Florida votes on paper,” Cowles said. For voters, that paper trail provides a sense of security. “(In) 2016 we all learned about elections and hacking,” Cowles said. Since then, Florida’s elections offices have been working overtime to protect the process by placing the voter registration database and ballot tabulation systems on separate servers.

Georgia: Election Security Scandals in Georgia Heighten 2020 Concerns | Lucas Ropek/Government Technology

In 2016, a vulnerability was discovered in Georgia’s election system that exposed the information of some 6.7 million voters and would’ve given a hacker the ability to manipulate or delete any information within voting machines across the state, according to people familiar with the discovery. While the state has since taken steps to patch the holes, activists are still concerned that the state’s subpar election security practices will endanger the results of the 2020 presidential race. Marilyn Marks, executive director of the advocacy group Coalition for Good Governance, said that while Georgia has corrected some mistakes, it still hasn’t addressed its fundamental weaknesses. The group, which is currently engaged in one of several election-related lawsuits against the state, released a statement this week alleging that the state’s presidential primary was “at risk of failure.” With a highly contentious election looming and heightened concerns about foreign interference, the question remains: has Georgia done what it takes to protect voters and the democratic process?  

Iowa: Caucus app chaos shows why American elections should stay analog for now | Brinkwire

Like everything created by humans, code has flaws. One major way to defend against potential problems brought on by the flaws is testing an app before you use it. Unfortunately, it seems like the Iowa Democratic Party did little in the way of testing the app it used to track results from the Iowa caucuses, wreaking havoc on the tenuous Democratic presidential-nominating process. “The situation in Iowa makes the average voter’s confidence in the election process worse than before,” said Ron Gula, a former National Security Agency (NSA) white hat hacker who now invests in startup cybersecurity firms. “Whether or not they might believe the Russians hacked the election before, this is another thing that will make them go ‘wow, we really don’t trust this.’ It’s not a great situation for voter confidence in general.” This was a screw up on a state level, a state that happens to hold a lot of significance for U.S. democracy. “The situation with Iowa’s caucus reveals the risks associated with technology, in this case with a mobile app, but more importantly that there needs to be a low-tech solution in order to recover from technological failures — no matter the cause,” said Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting, in a statement to Digital Trends. Verified Voting is a voting accuracy nonprofit that works to eliminate or reduce the use of systems that “cannot be audited or secured, such as internet voting.” Schneider noted it was lucky that Iowa kept paper records of the vote. “It’s clear that mobile apps are not ready for prime time,” she said.

Kansas: Elections chief’s security plan causes local unease | John Hanna/Associated Press

Kansas’ elections chief is pushing to make the state’s central voter registration database more secure by changing how counties tap into it, but some officials are nervous about what they see as a big project in a busy election year. Secretary of State Scott Schwab has told county election officials that he wants them to use dedicated tablets, laptops or computers not linked to their counties’ networks to access the state’s voter registration database. He says Kansas is getting $8 million in federal election security funds that could be used to cover the costs. Schwab, a Republican and former Kansas House member from the Kansas City area who became the state’s top elections official last year, contends such a setup will decrease the likelihood of foreign nationals, foreign governments or domestic hackers gaining access to voter registration records. His idea has bipartisan support. In September 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told officials in 21 states that their election systems had been targeted by hackers before the 2016 presidential election. Kansas wasn’t on the list, but Schwab said in an interview last week that “every area of government gets pinged thousands of times.”

Kentucky: Despite Security Push, Kentucky Struggles To Update Voting Machines | Ryland Barton/WFPL

Despite worries from election security experts, Kentucky will be one of only a few states in 2020 that’s still using some voting machines that don’t produce a paper trail — an industry standard to verify election results. The reason is one that Kentuckians have heard often: there isn’t enough money, especially in a state that places much of the burden of election administration on local governments. And despite recent transfusions of cash from the federal government for states to improve election security, the amount allocated to Kentucky in the most recent disbursement only represents about 10 percent of the overall need. But state election officials say that voters have nothing to worry about. The outdated electronic-only voting machines used in the vast majority of Kentucky counties aren’t connected to the internet and there’s no evidence that they’ve been hacked before.

Minnesota: Key GOP senator revives fight over election security money | Steve Karnowski/Associated Press

An influential Senate Republican who held up federal election security funding for most of the 2019 legislative session moved Tuesday to tie approval of a new round of money to passing her proposal for a provisional balloting system that Democrats warn could suppress turnout. Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer, of Big Lake, who chairs the Senate’s elections committee, wants to require that the ballots of citizens who register at the polls on election day be designated as provisional ballots that aren’t counted until their eligibility can be verified. Currently, ballots of Minnesotans who register at the polls are counted along with all the other votes. The committee approved her bill on a 6-3 party-line vote and sent it to its next committee stop. At a news conference ahead of the hearing, Kiffmeyer, a former secretary of state, framed the issue as one of equal treatment of voters. She pointed out that applications from residents who pre-register undergo more verification before voting than people who register at the polls. Minnesotans who register at the polls need only to present identification, such as a driver’s license, and their information is verified later.

Nevada: Democrats scramble to avoid Iowa-like chaos as Democratic caucuses approach | Kari Paul/The Guardian

Democratic party officials in Nevada are rushing to avoid the fate of Iowa, where technological and organizational failure left the first caucus in the 2020 presidential race without a clear winner. Nevada Democratic party officials had initially planned to rely on the same app that caused chaos in Iowa to transfer results from local precincts during the caucus on 22 February. But during the Iowa vote, a “coding issue” caused the app, developed haphazardly and on a low budget by the tech firm Shadow, to report only partial data from the state’s 1,700 caucus sites. Spotty cellphone coverage in some voting locations, poor training of some caucus volunteers and troubles with a backup phone line to report results compounded the chaos. Following the Iowa caucus, Nevada officials said they were determined to avoid similar problems. “NV Dems can confidently say that what happened in the Iowa caucus last night will not happen in Nevada,” the state Democratic party chair, William McCurdy II, said in a statement at the time. Since then, it has been difficult to pin down the Nevada Democratic party regarding what process it will use instead. It did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment and its website includes no information on the topic.

Pennsylvania: State officials unclear on backup plan if federal courts decertify voting machine | Emily Previti/PA Post

Pennsylvania doesn’t appear to have a backup plan if a federal lawsuit succeeds in getting at least one voting system banned before the presidential election. U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond pressed Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar Tuesday on what might happen if he orders her to decertify the ExpressVote XL – the machine used by nearly 2 million voters in Philadelphia, Northampton and Cumberland counties – and if he applies his order to other devices. “I can’t overstate how much chaos would ensue, frankly,” Boockvar said. County election directors already are dealing with the state’s first major election law changes in decades amid the higher turnout that comes during a presidential election, she said. And when Diamond asked Boockvar how counties would proceed if he barred them from using the ExpressVote XL, she didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know how that would work,” she said. “But there would have to be some ability for voters to vote.”

Pennsylvania: Judge hears arguments over Philadelphia’s voting machines | Marc Levy/Associated Press

Pennsylvania’s top elections official spent hours in federal court Tuesday, defending the certification of voting machines being used by Philadelphia and two other Pennsylvania counties, including one where problems led to undercounted returns in a race in November. The hearing in federal court could help determine how 17% of Pennsylvania’s registered voters cast ballots in the April 28 primary election, as well as in November, when the state is expected to be one of the nation’s premier presidential battlegrounds. It comes after a two-year push by Gov. Tom Wolf to get counties to switch to paper-based voting systems ahead of this year’s presidential election, a move he frames as a crucial election security bulwark against hacking. For part of her three-plus hours on the stand, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar sought to show that no element of a federal court agreement in 2018 specifically outlawed certification of the machine in question, the ExpressVote XL touchscreen system. She also testified that certification of the ExpressVote XL touchscreen system had been well underway during talks to settle the lawsuit.

Wisconsin: Microsoft to deploy ElectionGuard voting software for the first time tomorrow | Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet

Tomorrow, on February 18, residents of Fulton, Wisconsin will elect representatives for the Wisconsin Supreme Court via voting machines that will be running Microsoft’s ElectionGuard software. These will be the first voting machines deployed in any US election that will be running Microsoft’s new voting software, which will face it’s first real-world test since being announced last year. ElectionGuard is a software development kit (SDK) that Microsoft made available for free on GitHub. The project’s goal was to create the voting software that uses strong encryption, was built by some of the world’s brightest cryptographers, and was extensively audited for bugs. Microsoft created ElectionGuard after numerous media reports over the past years about critical vulnerabilities being discovered in the (closed-source) software of multiple voting machine vendors. The OS maker purposely released ElectionGuard as open-source in an attempt to convince voting machine vendors to adopt it instead of their older obsolete and insecure systems. The project, which is viewed with optimism by US election officials, moved lightning-fast, going from a simple idea to an actual US election pilot program in only nine months.

Wisconsin: Microsoft tests new voting technology in a small Wisconsin town | Bill Glauber/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Voters in the Town of Fulton, which is 8 miles north of Janesville in Rock County, gave Microsoft’s ElectionGuard software a tryout. ElectionGuard enables voters to verify that their ballot was counted through generating a ballot tracking code. The software also provides encrypted results. VotingWorks, a nonprofit voting software company, supplied the voting equipment, which consisted of card readers, tablets, ballot marking devices and printers. The process appeared seamless. After checking in, voters received a key card to insert into a tablet. They then selected candidates on a touch screen. They printed the ballot and placed it in the ballot box. They received a second printed piece of paper that provided a tracking code that they could use later to verify that their vote was counted, by logging into a Microsoft website.  The verification system does not allow the voter, or anyone else for that matter, to see who they voted for. Although it was the first time the software was used in an election, this was just a test. All of the paper ballots voters cast were to be hand-counted by local election officials.

Canada: 2019 election wasn’t without hitches, but no cyber disruptions: report | Rachel Aiello/CTV News

Election Canada’s delivery of the 2019 federal election wasn’t without some hitches, but the integrity of the vote was maintained from a cybersecurity perspective, according to Elections Canada’s first report into the fall campaign. The report, tabled in the House of Commons on Tuesday, provides a general overview of how the election was delivered by the federal elections agency, and identified issues that will require further analysis in the coming months. Among the issues highlighted: the timing of the vote; the impact of weather in some ridings; and the staffing of polling places. Topline numbers show that, while turnout was slightly down, the 40-day campaign saw an increase in the number of candidates, registered third parties, participants in advance polls, and the overall price tag. Some 18.3 million Canadians cast ballots. That’s 67 per cent of registered voters, which was down marginally from the 68 per cent turnout in 2015. A total of 2,146 candidates ran for 21 different political parties, up from 1,792 MP-hopefuls in 2015; and the number of registered third parties increased from 115 to 147.

Dominican Republic: Electronic glitch triggers Dominican Republic vote suspension | Ezequiel Abiu Lopez/Reuters

Dominican Republic’s nationwide municipal elections were suspended only four hours after voting began on Sunday due to a glitch in the electronic voting system, officials said. More than 7.4 million voters were due to vote to elect 3,849 positions in 158 municipalities across the Caribbean nation. The failure of the system is likely to raise concerns ahead of the May 17 presidential elections. Julio Cesar Castanos, president of Dominican Republic’s electoral body, said nearly half of the electronic devices did not work properly and many virtual ballot papers did not load, leaving citizens unable to cast their votes. “We are going to initiate a thorough investigation of what happened and why those ballot papers did not load correctly,” Castanos said in a press conference. The electronic system was used in 18 of the 158 municipalities and focused on cities and regions with high population density, accounting for 62.4% of the electorate. Paper ballots were due to be used elsewhere.