National: RSA Cryptographer Ronald Rivest Seeks Secure Elections the Low-Tech Way | Susan D’Agostino/Quanta Magazine

onald Rivest sports a white beard, smiles with his eyes and bestows his tech gifts on the people of the world. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor is the “R” in RSA, which means that he, along with Adi Shamir (the “S”) and Leonard Adleman (the “A”), gave us one of the first public key cryptosystems. It’s still common today: Nearly all internet-based commercial transactions rely on this algorithm, for which the trio was awarded the 2002 A.M. Turing Award, essentially the Nobel Prize of computing. In recent decades, Rivest has continued to work on making it computationally hard for adversaries to break a system, though he now focuses on ensuring that votes in democratic elections are cast as intended, collected as cast and tallied as collected. Elections, he has discovered, have stricter requirements than nearly any other security application, including internet-based commerce. Unlike online bank accounts and the customer names with which they are affiliated, ballots in an election must be stripped of voters’ names because of voting’s secrecy requirement. But the ballot box’s anonymity sets conditions for real or perceived tampering, which makes proving the accuracy of tallies important to voters, election officials and candidates. Another requirement is that voters can’t receive receipts verifying their candidate selections, lest the practice encourage vote selling or coercion. But without a receipt, voters might wonder if their votes were faithfully and accurately counted. It’s a tough problem to crack, and Rivest thinks the solution lies not with fancier computers, but with pen, paper and mathematics. “I mainly argue for some process by which we have confidence in our election results,” he said. “No one should say, ‘It’s right because the computer said so.’”

National: How 4 Big States Are Preparing to Vote as the Coronavirus Spreads | Nick Corasaniti and Patricia Mazzei/The New York Times

Elections officials in the next four Democratic primary states are taking extra precautions before voters head to the polls on Tuesday, as the coronavirus upends the 2020 race and people worry about gatherings and places where they might become infected. There are no plans to cancel primaries in the four states — Ohio, Florida, Illinois and Arizona — and officials are expressing confidence that ballots can be safely cast. Each secretary of state has sent out regular updates, reiterating recommendations from federal officials about preventive measures to stop the spread of the virus, and encouraging voting by mail or early voting. In all four states, the counties run the elections, but state officials have been trying to underscore the new basics of voting, like keeping hand sanitizer at polling locations and making sure local officials properly clean machines. At this point, none of the states are considering expanding polling hours or mail-in-ballot deadlines. The preparations for voting in the age of a pandemic have not led to far-reaching changes. Perhaps the most significant shift for Tuesday’s elections will be the relocation of polling stations away from areas where older people live, like assisted living facilities.

National: Coronavirus forcing changes in campaigning and voting | The Boston Globe

The coronavirus outbreak is colliding with the presidential election and the ramifications are being felt on the campaign trail and at polling places. “Campaigning and conventions could change,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine’s law school, raising the possibility of virtual nominating conventions this summer if the outbreak continues. The effects were clear Tuesday night, when former vice president Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders both canceled election night rallies in Cleveland after Ohio’s governor discouraged large gatherings. On Wednesday, Biden’s campaign said it had formed a six-person public health advisory committee to provide “expert advice regarding steps the campaign should take to minimize health risks for the candidate, staff, and supporters.” After consulting with those experts and at the request of local officials, the Biden campaign announced it was shifting “large crowd” events scheduled for Friday in Chicago and Monday in Miami to “virtual events.” And after initially resisting changing Trump’s schedule, the White House and his campaign on Wednesday night cancelled or postponed three upcoming events. At the same time, state election officials are taking steps to adjust voting procedures to keep the virus from spreading. Washington state told voters not to lick the envelopes of their absentee ballots, Ohio is moving polling places for next Tuesday’s primary from senior centers to avoid infecting older people, and Chicago will make paper ballots available for voters who don’t want to use touch screen machines in the Illinois primary, also next week.

National: States urge alternative voting methods ahead of Tuesday primaries | Kevin Collier/NBC

As coronavirus continues to spread, election officials in the four states holding presidential primaries next Tuesday are encouraging Americans to vote by unconventional means to avoid crowds. That usually means voting by mail or voting early to avoid large crowds in states where those things are an option — as is the case in those holding primaries March 17. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared the coronavirus a pandemic Wednesday, and has recommended that election officials“[e]ncourage voters to use voting methods that minimize direct contact with other people and reduce crowd size at polling stations.” “We have really been pushing as much as we can for voters who are concerned by polling places to take advantage of voting by mail,” Matt Dietrich, public affairs officer at the Illinois State Board of Elections, told NBC News. “That’s obviously the easiest way to avoid any kind of exposure to crowds, or lines or other people.” Thursday is the deadline for Illinois voters to apply to vote by mail, he said. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said that it was still safe to vote in person, although voters who were nervous still had time to register to vote by mail or could vote early to avoid crowds.

National: From handshakes to kissing babies, virus upends campaigning | Alexandra Jaffe/Associated Press

Podiums get sanitized before the candidate steps up to speak. Fist or elbow bumps take the place of handshakes, and kissing babies is out of the question. Rallies are canceled, leaving candidates speaking to a handful of journalists and staffers instead of cheering crowds of thousands. This is campaigning in the age of the coronavirus, when fears of the new pandemic’s rapid spread are upending Joe Biden’s and Bernie Sanders’ campaigns. The urgency of the issue comes at a pivotal time in the Democratic presidential primary, as Biden is beginning to pull ahead as a front-runner for the nomination and as Sanders is scrambling to catch up. “If coronavirus has the lasting impact that we all fear it will, it will also dramatically reshape the way a presidential campaign unfolds,” said Jesse Ferguson, a veteran Democratic strategist and former spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “Politics is fundamentally about leaders interacting with the people who they represent, and if a pandemic forecloses that ability, it changes everything — how you campaign, how you knock doors, how you do events and how you do the retail part of politics.”

Editorials: How to Protect the Election From Coronavirus: Let everyone vote by mail | Dale Ho/The New York Times

As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about during this election season — from Russian interference to meltdown scenarios like blackouts — the coronavirus pandemic has come along to threaten the administration of the presidential vote. We are already witnessing significant disruptions to the campaign, with rallies canceled, audiences banned from the next presidential debate and suggestions to call off the parties’ nominating conventions. And even the traditional model of in-person voting may be at risk. Assisted living facilities are often used as polling sites, but states including Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Illinois and Florida have already made last-minute relocations. Since a majority of poll workers in the 2016 election were over the age of 60, it seems plausible that polling locations could face severe staffing shortages. In a worst-case scenario, many voters may be unable to vote in person because of illness or even government-imposed travel restrictions like those in Italy. Given these possibilities, we have to make it as easy as possible for Americans to vote by mail in 2020, and to prepare for a likely surge in absentee ballots.

Editorials: Coronavirus could normalize voting by mail. That will create other problems. | David Daley/The Washington Post

The worrisome split screen told the story: On one side, college campuses shut down for the semester, the National Guard deployed to create a “containment zone” in New York, and major employers instructed their workforce to telecommute. On the other, massive lines wound through precincts across Michigan and North Dakota, with Democratic voters standing nearly on top of each other, often for hours, before approaching volunteer poll workers protected only by Purell. At the same time that large gatherings were canceled, states of emergency were declared, and public institutions were dusting off catastrophe plans, the queues stretched through community centers, campuses and town halls — and 30 more primaries have yet to be conducted. The coronavirus pandemic presents an entirely new challenge for America’s electoral system: how to ensure that all citizens can exercise their right to vote without jeopardizing public health in the process. One common-sense measure would be to dramatically expand vote-by-mail options, allowing citizens to cast their ballots from a safe distance. (While every state allows voting by mail under some conditions, only five states conduct all of their statewide elections in this manner.) On Wednesday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), whose state pioneered vote by mail in the 1990s, introduced legislation that would provide $500 million for states to begin making contingency plans for November’s election. If a state hard hit by coronavirus does need to transfer to a large-scale vote-by-mail operation, it would take months to buy optical scanners, put them in place and retrain poll workers. The transition requires a lot of extra preparation: The long delays counting the primary vote in California and Michigan, which have recently expanded early and absentee voting, have already shown that the system is often unprepared for tallying large numbers of pre-Election Day ballots.

Florida: Coronavirus fears cause poll worker dropouts, safety concerns ahead of Florida primary | Brandon G. Jones/ABC

Election officials across the nation are going to make past-moment modifications to how and where voters will forged their ballots in the remaining most important elections as the U.S. grapples with the widening coronavirus outbreak. The states voting in next Tuesday’s primary – Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio – are all using further precautions to secure each voters and poll personnel from COVID-19, such as moving polling spots, recruiting reserve poll workers and encouraging populations most at danger from the virus to vote early or send in an absentee ballot. Perhaps nowhere is taking the safety measures much more severely than in Florida, where by citizens – together with the state’s far more than 4.3 million people today more than the age of 65, or about 20 per cent of the state’s inhabitants – will head to the polls next Tuesday. The aged and all those with fundamental overall health disorders are most at hazard of developing critical problems if they deal the coronavirus. The Facilities for Disorder Handle and Avoidance has stated that nursing properties are at the best threat of getting influenced by the virus – specified the age of residents and the close quarters in which persons reside – but nursing households are also well-known areas for polling internet sites.

Georgia: State orders Athens-Clarke County to resume use of new voting machines | Tim Bryant/WGAU

The Secretary of State orders Athens to resume the use of electronic voting machines, overturning last week’s order from the Athens-Clarke County Elections Board. That means no more hand-marked paper ballots for the duration of the early voting period that extends through March 20. Voters in Athens and around the state have been casting ballots since March 2 for the March 24 presidential preference primaries. Georgia’s State Election Board voted on Wednesday to punish election officials in one county for their decision not to use the state’s new voting machines for the presidential primary, and it ordered them to immediately start using the machines again. The Athens-Clarke County Board of Elections voted 3-2 last week to sideline the new machines in favor of hand-marked paper ballots, citing concerns over protecting ballot secrecy when using the machines with large, bright touchscreens that sit upright. Board Chairman Jesse Evans said it was “impracticable” when using the new machines to protect ballot secrecy and allow sufficient monitoring to prevent tampering as required by state law. The State Election Board, chaired by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, unanimously ordered the county to cease and desist and to pay a fine of $2,500 for investigative costs, plus $5,000 a day until the machines are back in place.

Illinois: How Election Day in Illinois is adjusting to the coronavirus: fewer polling places, more hand sanitizer | Patrick M. O’Connell and Sophie Sherry/Chicago Tribune

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Thursday evening the primary election in Illinois will be held as planned despite a wave of other closures and cancellations caused by the coronavirus pandemic. “I want to make clear the election will proceed forward on Tuesday,” Pritzker said during a news conference at the Thompson Center in downtown Chicago. The governor said in-person voting will continue as scheduled, though some polling places previously slated to be hosted by nursing homes may be relocated for the safety of residents. Officials said early voting has been extended by one hour this weekend to 6 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. Pritzker also announced an extension for vote by mail. The deadline for submitting an application online for vote by mail was extended to midnight Thursday, and the governor said voters can apply for a mail ballot in person at their local clerk’s office or any early voting location. Vote-by-mail ballots still need to be returned by Election Day. The governor urged local election officials to extend and expand early voting hours. Concerns about coronavirus have contributed to a surge in vote-by-mail applications and the closure of polling places in the city of Chicago. It also has led to a shortage of poll workers, as hundreds of election judges and poll workers have canceled their assignments. The pandemic also had led election officials to plan extra precautions at polling places throughout northeast Illinois, including deep cleanings and plentiful supplies of hand sanitizer.

Iowa: $1 million available to Iowa county auditors for cybersecurity | James Q. Lynch/Sioux City Journal

Secretary of State Paul Pate is asking Iowa county auditors to do a “walk-through” of their systems to make sure they are secure ahead of the 2020 elections. Pate is telling auditors that his office will provide $1 million to assist them with cybersecurity resources ahead of the elections. “It’s like we are asking them to walk through their house to see if any windows or doors have been left open,” Pate said Thursday before meeting with the auditors who were in Des Moines. During the next few weeks, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the state Office of the Chief Information Officer will conduct scans of all 99 counties’ websites and internal systems to look for vulnerabilities. That could be outdated equipment and software, for example, said Jeff Franklin, Pate’s chief cybersecurity officer. Solutions may include replacing equipment and software, and separating critical infrastructure from non-critical systems, he said. Following the scans, the Secretary of State’s Office will make an initial investment of $1 million to help cover the expenses of recommended upgrades.

Ohio: Elections boards frantically seeking poll workers due to coronavirus outbreak | Rick Rouan/The Columbus Dispatch

Ohio elections officials are rushing to recruit additional poll workers ahead of Tuesday primary as concerns about the spread of COVID-19 have led hundreds to drop out before Election Day. Desperate county elections boards are pleading with friends and family members for help. Some are even talking about instantly recruiting voters walking in to cast ballots Tuesday to help work the polls the remainder of the day. “We’re getting into the threshold of scary,” said Brian Sleeth, deputy elections director in Warren County, just north of Cincinnati. “We’re not panicking yet. We’re actively recruiting.” So far, 100 poll workers have canceled, including 50 in the past 24 hours. The county has 800 poll workers still signed up but is now 100 short. “People are concerned and we are losing poll workers at a pretty rapid rate,” said Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Election Officials. Ockerman said boards are seeing seasonal workers dropping out who had been hired to help process ballots as they are returned to boards after the polls close Tuesday as well. Franklin County has lost 223 poll workers in the past two days, and it is losing three poll workers for every one it gains, said Aaron Sellers, board spokesman. The board needs 291 more to have a full staff of 3,200.

Pennsylvania: Coronavirus could wreak havoc on 2020 Pennsylvania primary election | Chris Brennan and Julia Terruso/Philadelphia Inquirer

Pennsylvania’s primary election is seven weeks away. The coronavirus pandemic is uncomfortably closer than that. With schools and universities sending students home, the state Capitol in Harrisburg closing its doors to visitors, and professional sports seasons coming to a snap ending, what are elections officials to do about the April 28 primary? State Rep. Kevin Boyle, a Northeast Philadelphia Democrat, wants to require the state to mail a ballot to every eligible voter, moving the primary and general elections out of polling places as much as possible. His proposed legislation would set aside $40 million for ballots to be sent in “postage prepaid, pre-addressed return envelopes.” Voters would still have the option to cast a ballot at a polling place. “I think this is, unfortunately, a once-in-a-lifetime crisis that we’re facing,” Boyle said Thursday, citing projections from medical professionals on how the virus might spread. “If that were to unfold, you’re talking about a situation where I think it would be unrealistic to have in-person voting on April 28.”

Canada: Canada at risk from Russian, Chinese interference – security committee | David Ljunggren/Reuters

Canada’s democracy is at risk from interference by China and Russia, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government must do more to build up its defenses, a special security body said on Thursday. The national security and intelligence committee of Canadian parliamentarians, which was granted access to classified materials, said elected and public officials at all levels were being targeted. “The (main) perpetrators of foreign interference in Canada are the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation,” the committee said in an annual report. “States that conduct foreign interference activities pose a threat to Canada and predominantly threaten the fundamental building blocks of Canada’s democracy.” Canada has poor relations with both Moscow and Beijing. Ottawa imposed sanctions on many senior Russian officials after the annexation of Crimea and is entangled in a diplomatic and trade dispute with China. The report, parts of which were redacted for security reasons, said some countries targeted ethnic communities, sought to corrupt the political process and manipulate news media.

Russia: How Russian election meddling is back before 2020 vote — via Ghana and Nigeria — and in your feeds | CNN

The Russian trolls are back — and once again trying to poison the political atmosphere in the United States ahead of this year’s elections. But this time they are better disguised and more targeted, harder to identify and track. And they have found an unlikely home, far from Russia itself. In 2016, much of the trolling aimed at the US election operated from an office block in St. Petersburg, Russia. A months-long CNN investigation has discovered that, in this election cycle, at least part of the campaign has been outsourced — to trolls in the west African nations of Ghana and Nigeria. They have focused almost exclusively on racial issues in the US, promoting black empowerment and often displaying anger towards white Americans. The goal, according to experts who follow Russian disinformation campaigns, is to inflame divisions among Americans and provoke social unrest. The language and images used in the posts — on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram — are sometimes graphic. One of the Ghanaian trolls — @africamustwake — linked to a story from a left-wing conspiracy website and commented on Facebook: “America’s descent into a fascist police state continues.”