The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for October 3-9 2016

The US government has formally accused Russia of hacking the Democratic party’s computer networks and said that Moscow was attempting to “interfere” with the US presidential election. PCWorld asked several computer security experts and voting advocates to propose steps that could improve the security of American elections. Stanford computer science professor David Dill discussed security concerns presented by internet voting with KQED Radio. Democrats filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the Florida Secretary of State to stop the practice of election officials tossing vote by mail ballots if the signature on the ballot envelope does not match the one on file. Indiana State Police said on Thursday that they have expanded an investigation of possible voter registration fraud to 57 of the state’s 92 counties. A new online ballot system and marking tool could weaken Maryland’s voting security and make it the most vulnerable state in the nation, according to some cybersecurity experts. A federal judge on Friday found partially in favor of two Native American tribes in their lawsuit against the Secretary of State’s Office and two Nevada counties in a voter disenfranchisement case. Voting rights advocates are concerned about the impact the elimination of straight party voting will have on November’s election. Thousands of mailed absentee ballots in Wisconsin could be thrown out because witnesses for the voters did not provide their full addresses. Colombians narrowly rejected a peace deal with Marxist guerrillas in a referendum on Sunday, plunging the nation into uncertainty and dashing President Juan Manuel Santos’ painstakingly negotiated plan to end the 52-year war. Suffering from the impact of Hurricane Matthew, Haiti has postponed Presidential elections for the fourth time and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s referendum against EU refugee quotas suffered a stinging domestic rebuke drawing just 40 percent of eligible voters, rendering the plebiscite invalid.