The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for August 29 – September 4 2016

An FBI nationwide alert about the hacking of state election offices after breaches in Illinois and Arizona as raised concerns about voting technology, focused on the security of voting systems and the ability to audit the results produced by those systems. A North Carolina Republican official, in defending the state’s restrictive voting law passed in 2013 against charges of racism, admitted that the restriction were politically motivated and had nothing to do with combating election fraud. The Ohio Democratic Party will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the so-called ‘Golden Week‘, in which voters can register and vote at the same time. Texas is spending $2.5 million to spread the word about changes to its voter ID law before the November election but will not release details about how the money is being used. Virginia Republican legislative leaders said they will take Gov. Terry McAuliffe to court once again over his efforts to restore voting rights to felons. Wisconsin election officials raised concerns that some voters won’t be able to get IDs in time to vote in the Nov. 8 presidential election — potentially violating a court order. Hong Kong voted today in its first major election since pro-democracy protests in 2014 and one of its most contentious ever, with a push for independence among disaffected younger voters stoking tension with China’s government. Post-election violence in Gabon left one person dead on Thursday after officials declared the incumbent president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, the winner in a race that the opposition said had been marked by fraud and tens of thousands of chanting protesters marched in a major demonstration in the Venezuelan capital aimed at forcing a vote on recalling socialist President Nicolás Maduro.