The Voting News Daily: Cyber Attacks Hit South Korean Election Commission, Candidate, Tennessee veteran had to pay for voter photo ID

South Korea: Cyber Attacks Hit South Korean Election Commission, Candidate | The Chosun Ilbo The websites of the National Election Commission and the pan-opposition candidate for Seoul mayoral by-election, Park Won-soon, were paralyzed by cyber attacks on Wednesday morning as voters went to the polls. The onslaught was a so-called distributed denial-of-service attack whereby hackers effectively…

National: Congressional Black Caucus targets state voter laws as hostile | MiamiHerald.com

Minority voters have long had problems simply exercising their right to vote in certain parts of the country – and minority lawmakers fear the situation will become worse in 2012. Their worries are heightened by new laws in 13 states that they say will restrict access to the ballot box. Some of the changes would require voters to show government-approved identification, restrict voter registration drives by third-party groups, curtail early voting, do away with same-day registration, and reverse rules allowing convicted felons who’ve served their time the right to vote.

In addition to the states that have passed such laws, 24 other states are weighing similar measures, according to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.

Proponents of the measures say they are needed to protect the integrity of the vote, prevent illegal immigrants from casting ballots, and clamp down on voter fraud, although several studies indicate that voter fraud is negligible.

Voting Blogs: Badger Ballot Blues: Early Issues with Wisconsin’s Voter ID Law | State of Elections

Could Wisconsin soon be the center of another political controversy?  A test run of the state’s new voter identification law on Oct. 11 led to long lines and frustrated voters, which could cause state Democrats to amplify their attacks on a law they already claim is costly and intended only to suppress voter turnout. State Republicans have expressed strong support for the law since its passage in May, and have expressed no desire to make any changes before it takes full effect before February’s primary elections.

Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl called for the mock election after noticing irregularities during July’s State Senate recall elections. Poll workers in those elections were instructed to request voters’ identification even though it was not yet required.  Witzel-Behl indicated that the workers were inconsistently following this instruction.  Following Tuesday’s mock election, Witzel-Behl estimated that it took each voter two minutes to present identification and sign the poll book, a standard she found “very alarming.” She also noted that several people left the line due to the long wait.

Florida: Nelson urges Scott to revamp elections law after teacher draws warning | Post on Politics

Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson has sent a critical letter to Republican Gov. Rick Scott and plans to meet Wednesday with a Volusia County high school teacher whose student voter registration drive could violate Florida’s tough, new elections law.

The law is already being challenged in court by the ACLU and allied organizations. But Nelson is calling on Scott to push for revamping or repealing the measure following the case of Jill Cicciarelli, a New Smyrna Beach teacher and adviser to a local high school’s student government association.

Cicciarelli was registering students to vote since the beginning of the school year. But county Elections Supervisor Ann McFall said she was required to report Cicciarelli to the Florida Department of State apparently for violating the new  standard for those acting as third-party registration organizations.

Michigan: State Considers Major New Restrictions On Voting Rights | ThinkProgress

Michigan may soon join states like Florida and Tennessee in implementing major new voting rights restrictions.

A new bill designed to make registering voters more difficult is currently working its way through the Republican-controlled legislature. As Project Vote details, SB 754 would put new regulations in place to require photo ID in order to register, create new restrictions on nonprofit organizations who register voters, and undercut voter registration drives by requiring completed registration forms to be submitted with 24 hours when the election is nearing.

New Hampshire: New Hampshire secretary of state to set primary date next week | BostonHerald.com

New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner said Tuesday he will hold off making a final decision on the state’s presidential primary until next week. Gardner’s office had been working toward announcing the date as soon as Tuesday, but ultimately changed course and decided to wait until after the close of the two-week period when candidates can qualify for the state ballot.

Through Monday, 17 candidates — 15 Republicans and two Democrats — had done so by submitting a one-page declaration of candidacy and a $1,000 filing fee.

Gardner, empowered by state law to call what traditionally has been the nation’s first primary at the time of his choosing, is widely expected to set the contest for Jan. 10.

New Jersey: Bergen County clerk candidates clash over ballot printing costs | NorthJersey.com

The two candidates for Bergen County clerk sparred Tuesday over how much the county spends to print ballots. Democratic challenger John Hogan of Northvale contends the clerk’s office could trim about $200,000 from its printing bill by putting the work, which cost $2.4 million last year, up for a competitive bid.

GOP incumbent Elizabeth Randall of Westwood countered that election-related printing is a specialized line of work that only a few New Jersey companies do. That’s why the state Legislature exempted such work from competitive bidding, Randall said.

The candidates clashed on the printing issue twice this week, first at a forum sponsored by the Korean-American community in Fort Lee on Monday and again at a forum hosted Tuesday by the Bergen County League of Women voters at Bergen County Community College in Paramus.

After the League debate, Hogan called Randall’s argument “ridiculous.”

New York: Off-Year Election Still Costs NYC $17 Million | NY1.com

Next month’s general election will cost the city $17 million, even though the so-called “off-year election” has almost no contests. NY1’s Courtney Gross filed the following report. There might be something missing from the ballot next month — an actual race. The thousands of voters that could head to the polls next month might be even more disappointed than typical off-year elections.

Citywide, only three of the 12 judicial contests are contested. Of the three district attorney races, only one incumbent, Dan Donovan on Staten Island, is seeing a challenge.

Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson and Queens District Attorney Richard Brown have secured every party line.

Nonetheless, every polling place will be open for business.

Ohio: Board of Elections must hire 8,000 temporary Election Day employees | newsnet5.com

In order for Election Day to run smoothly in Cuyahoga County, the Board of Elections must hire more than 8,000 temporary employees to work the polls. The Board of Elections is currently looking to hire temporary scanner operators and supply bag handlers.

Temporary scanner operators are paired with another employee and serve as a work team responsible for scanning vote-by-mail ballots. Each team consists of an input operator and output operator who must stand next to a high-speed scanner for the majority of the workday. Together they are responsible for loading vote-by-mail ballots into a high-speed scanner and collecting the scanned ballots and placing them into location specific files. The scanner operator must monitor the high-speed scanner for jamming and any other equipment issues. This position also requires individuals to assist with the preparation of equipment and materials to be scanned and the subsequent storage of the scanned materials. The scanner operator is also required to perform all other duties assigned, delegated or required of management as well as those prescribed by law.

South Carolina: Counting the Vote – Some Say South Carolina’s Outdated Machines Cause for Concern | Free Times

Barbara Zia has seen enough miscounts. As the president of the state chapter of the League of Women Voters, Zia is fighting for the state to replace its outdated voting machines in hopes of preserving another layer of security for democracy in South Carolina.

The league, praised for its nonpartisan concern for voting rights and access, recently commissioned an independent study of the state’s voting technology after snafus in the 2010 elections. According to Zia, the report found three basic problems with the current system.

One, the iVotronic machines were aging and replacement parts were no longer being manufactured. Two, the machines were too complicated for the committed poll managers to use, workers whom Zia said were basically volunteers working from before dawn to after daylight in some cases. And three, the electronic touch-screen machines do not provide enough of a paper trail to ensure truly correct elections.

South Dakota: National Popular Vote movement fails in South Dakota | aberdeennews.com

Remember the talk a few months ago about asking South Dakota voters whether they want to join the winner-take-all movement for electing U.S. presidents? That issue won’t be on the November 2012 statewide ballot after all.

“We haven’t circulated any petitions and we haven’t collected any signatures,” state Sen. Craig Tieszen, R-Rapid City, said. Tieszen and three other legislators — Senate Democratic leader Jason Frerichs of Wilmot; Rep. Tad Perry, R-Fort Pierre; and Rep. Peggy Gibson, D-Huron — were going to be the official sponsors for the petition drive. They would have needed to file valid signatures of at least 15,855 South Dakota registered voters with Secretary of State Jason Gant no later than 5 p.m. Nov. 1.

Tennessee: Veteran had to pay for voter photo ID | The Daily News Journal

World War II veteran Darwin Spinks is wondering why he had to pay $8 to get a voter photo ID that should have been free when he recently went to the driver’s license testing center here. The state Legislature passed a law this spring requiring voters to show a photo ID in order to cast a ballot. It included the requirement that any Tennessee resident who didn’t have a photo ID could get one free of charge.

But when the 86-year-old Spinks visited the testing center about a month ago on Samsonite Boulevard to get a photo ID for voting purposes, he said he had to pay.

Spinks said Tuesday he needed the photo because when his driver’s license with a photo expired the last time, the driver testing center issued him a new license without a photo on it. State law allows people over 60 to get a non-photo driver’s license.

Tennessee: Voting law impacts seniors | The Tennessean

Robertson County seniors who don’t have a picture on their government-issued ID cards will have to obtain new cards if they want to vote next year. A new law which requires all voters to present government-issued photo ID at the polls was created to put an end to voter fraud, but one group that will be affected by this change will be seniors, who have the option not to use a photo on their driver’s licenses or state-issued ID cards.

“I just don’t think it’s right,” said Frances Swearingen, 86. “I’ve worked at the polls, and if you hand me your voter registration and your ID, there’s not going to be any fraud.”

Swearingen has not had her photo on her identification since she turned 65.

Washington: Ballots’ journey juggles security, transparency | The Issaquah Press

King County Elections places a huge mail order each year. Officials must secure enough ballots for more than 1 million voters spread across a county larger than Rhode Island. Then, the elections office is responsible for ensuring a secure — and hassle-free — process to distribute, authenticate and tally ballots on a strict deadline.

The complicated process starts on a printing press in Everett and ends in a tabulation machine in Renton. The voter is situated in the middle, black ink pen at the ready. The job to print almost 1.1 million ballots is delegated to a commercial printer. The elections office oversees the process as Everett-based K&H Election Services prints and inserts ballots into envelopes. The printer creates ballots for King County and jurisdictions across the United States. Then, ballots stacked on pallets await shipment to voters.

India: Security fears put spanner in Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation e-voting plan | Indian Express

The plan to introduce e-voting and increase voter participation in next year’s BMC elections is expected to be shelved due to delays and security fears.
E-voting was considered as an option to facilitate voting for the urban middle class and increase their share in the overall voting percentage that was a dismal 47 per cent in 2007. The BMC and the State Election Commission were to jointly develop a system of online voting for the elections due in February.

But the BMC’s election department has received more than 30 objections from individuals and organisations against the implementation of e-voting, citing security concerns. An official from the election department said the system is not robust and can lead to rigging. “The plan was announced in February this year, but authorities sat on it for many months. Now, there is hardly any time left now and the demo trial is yet to take place. We have inspected the existing system and have observed a number of potential security breaches,” he said. The estimated cost of implementing e-voting is Rs 35 crore.

Philippines: Former presidential couple gets subpoenas for poll fraud | Asia News Network

“The process of accountability has formally begun,” Philippine Justice Secretary Leila de Lima on Tuesday told reporters shortly after Department of Justice (DOJ) personnel started serving subpoenas on former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her husband, Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo.

The joint investigating panel of the DOJ and the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has formally summoned the Arroyos and close to 40 others to appear at its first hearing on November 3 into the purported fraud in the 2007 midterm elections in Mindanao. “We’re definitely serious in this undertaking,” De Lima said.

 

South Korea: Cyber Attacks Hit South Korean Election Commission, Candidate | The Chosun Ilbo

The websites of the National Election Commission and the pan-opposition candidate for Seoul mayoral by-election, Park Won-soon, were paralyzed by cyber attacks on Wednesday morning as voters went to the polls. The onslaught was a so-called distributed denial-of-service attack whereby hackers effectively overload certain websites by activating masses of zombie computers that have been infected with a virus.

“A DDoS attack interrupted access to the commission’s website from 6:15 a.m. to 8:32 a.m.,” an official with the election watchdog said. “We took an emergency measure with a DDoS defense system, but to no avail. So we diverted web traffic to a cybershelter provided by KT.”

South Korea: Election watchdog’s website attacked by DDoS | Korea Herald

Police are investigating what and who caused the state election watchdog’s website to crash for about two hours on Wednesday morning, keeping in mind the possibility of a so-called “distributed-denial-of-service” attack, officials said. The website of the National Election Commission crashed between 6:15 a.m. and 8:50 a.m. when many voters visited it to locate polling stations where they could cast their ballots for the by-elections for Seoul mayor.

Investigators suspect that the website crashed due to a “DDoS” cyber attack. The attacks swamp selected websites with massive traffic, using virus-infected “zombie computers” to launch simultaneous access to them. “Due to what appears to be a DDoS attack, problems intermittently occurred on the website. We are now trying to verify where the attack originated,” a government official said, declining to be named.

Tunisia: Election feat sets high bar for Arab Spring nations lacking its rigor and enthusiasm | The Washington Post

No matter what the results, Tunisia’s landmark election was a monumental achievement in democracy that will be a tough act to follow in elections next month in Egypt and Morocco — and later, in Libya. In just five months, an independent Tunisian commission organized the first free elections in this North African nation’s history. The ballot attracted 80 parties offering candidates, drew a massive turnout by impassioned voters and was effusively praised by international observers.

“I have observed 59 elections in the last 15 years, many of them in old democracies … and never have I seen a country able to realize such an election in a fair, free and dignified way,” said Andreas Gross, a Swiss parliamentarian and the head of the observer delegation for the Council of Europe. “I was elected in Switzerland on the same day in elections that were not much better than here.”

The Voting News Daily: Emanuel Cleaver, Artur Davis Spar Over Voter ID Laws, The Internet can’t fix democracy—only citizens can

National: Emanuel Cleaver, Artur Davis Spar Over Voter ID Laws | Roll Call Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) criticized former Rep. Artur Davis today for his recent support of voter ID laws, saying that his changed stance has led to speculation that the Alabama Democrat is considering becoming a Republican. “I don’t know…

National: Emanuel Cleaver, Artur Davis Spar Over Voter ID Laws | Roll Call

Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) criticized former Rep. Artur Davis today for his recent support of voter ID laws, saying that his changed stance has led to speculation that the Alabama Democrat is considering becoming a Republican.

“I don’t know why Artur Davis … wrote what he did,” Cleaver said about an opinion column by Davis that appeared last week in the Montgomery Advertiser. Davis wrote in support of voter ID laws like the one in his native Alabama and alleged that voter fraud is widespread in parts of the black community.

“I saw it and was frustrated by it,” Cleaver said. “I don’t know what that’s all about. There are some people [who] believe he’s getting ready to switch parties. I have no idea. Needless to say, he doesn’t confide in the CBC.”

Editorials: The Internet can’t fix democracy—only citizens can | Macleans.ca

The technology of voting has changed substantially since ancient Athenians tossed coloured stones in jars and scratched names on pottery shards. Today it’s paper ballots that seem ancient and outdated.

Poor turnout by voters in Manitoba and Ontario this month has prompted renewed calls for online voting. “We have to do something,” vowed Greg Selinger, recently elected premier of Manitoba, referring to his province’s depressing turnout numbers. “We’re going to take a look at e-voting.” Elections Canada plans to test electronic balloting in a federal by-election by 2013 sometime after 2013. Many municipalities across the country are already using the new technology.

The appeal of online voting is obvious. Voter turnout is poor across the board, but particularly dismal among the youngest cohort of voters. Since this generation has grown up immersed in online communications, its members might be enticed to vote in greater numbers if the ballot was in a format familiar and convenient to them. Voting at home via a smartphone certainly seems more attractive than walking down the street to a public school or community hall, standing behind a cardboard screen and putting an X on a piece of paper.

And yet it is not clear online voting actually has the power to draw more people to the polls, whatever their age. From the municipal election evidence in Canada, it appears online voting may boost the number of people who vote in advance polls, but does little to change overall voter turnout. A large-scale experiment in Britain was abandoned in 2007 after numerous technical glitches and no appreciable improvement in turnout. All of which suggests online voting provides already-committed voters with a more convenient means of voting, but fails to address the underlying apathy of those who don’t.

Voting Blogs: L.A.’s Elections Overhaul Could Provide a New Model | governing.org

Dean Logan, the registrar-recorder/county clerk in Los Angeles County (the largest voting district in the country), is currently facing a daunting goal that will affect over 4 million voters: completely overhauling its dated election system over the next five years. Recognizing that it’s time for a change, Logan and his office are now trying to determine what, exactly, should they replace their election system with. They might wind up with something truly unique, something of the people.

The current system, Logan says, lacks the flexibility to suit the county’s increasingly diverse population. The county currently uses something like a punchcard voting system adapted from technology developed more than 40 years ago. Voters slide a paper ballot into a template with candidate names and mark it with ink. The ballots can be tabulated quickly, are easy to store, and provide a physical record of each vote. But they don’t list candidate names on the actual paper — those appear on the template — so it’s difficult for those who use the increasingly popular mail-in option to case their votes. The system also offers little in the way of of sophisticated language assistance or help for disabled voters.

“It’s old technology,” Logan says. “It’s not going to sustain a whole lot longer.”
None of the system’s original developers are employed by the county, and it’s become increasingly difficult to find people “with requisite skills in obsolete mainframe technologies” to replace retiring staff, according to a county report. Purchasing a new system don’t fit well with L.A. County’s operations: direct-recording electronic (DRE or touchscreen) machines are too expensive to be rolled out and maintained across 5,000 polling locations. A low-tech system — such as one that relies on hand-counting — could yield inaccuracies in a county as large as Los Angeles.

California: Voter Fraud Allegations Hit San Francisco Mayor’s Race | Fox News

Shocking voter fraud allegations are rocking the mayor’s race in San Francisco. District Attorney George Gascon has launched an investigation and demands are growing for federal authorities to move in.  One campaign official fears the election could be stolen if nothing is done. Supporters of incumbent Mayor Ed Lee, who is running for a full four-year term next month, are accused of illegally handling vote-by-mail ballots.

Witnesses say workers for the group, SF Neighbor Alliance, set up a makeshift sidewalk voting site in the city’s Chinatown and accuse it of illegally casting absentee ballots for elderly Chinese voters. The witnesses claim cell-phone videos show workers telling voters to vote for Lee, filling out ballots for the voters and even using a stencil to hide the names of rival candidates so the voters could only chose one — Lee. They also say that the completed ballots were stuffed in plastic bags, which is prohibited by state election law.

Florida: Legislator to Scott: Stop fighting Voting Rights Act | Florida Independent

State Rep. Perry Thurston, D-Plantation, the House Democratic Leader-designate, has written an open letter to Gov. Rick Scott criticizing the state’s latest effort to undermine the Voting Rights Act.

Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning recently filed a complaint in court claiming that the Voting Rights Act’s federal preclearance provision is “unconstitutional.” Five counties in Florida fall under the preclearance rules; the state must receive approval from the federal government in order to implement the new voting laws in those areas. The other 62 counties have already implemented the new elections regulations.

The state is currently awaiting a D.C. court’s approval of controversial parts of the new election laws limiting third-party voter registration drives, shortening the “shelf life” for signatures collected for ballot initiatives, adding new restrictions on voters changing their registered addresses on election day, and reducing the number of early voting days in the state.

 

Georgia: State seeks to strike down Voting Rights Act  | ajc.com

The state of Georgia wants three federal judges in Washington to declare a portion of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. Georgia filed suit earlier this month asking that the court approve Republican-backed plans to redraw the state’s legislative and congressional districts. But in that filing, the state asks that if the court rejects its redistricting plans, that it also rule the law that requires that approval to be unconstitutional.

Georgia is one of nine states that must get any change in election law, including district maps, pre-approved by either the Justice Department or the federal court in Washington. That preclearance is required by Section V of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1964 law passed in the wake of Jim Crow and voting laws aimed at limiting the ability of African-Americans to vote.

“The state of Georgia and its voters are being subjected to the continued extraordinary intrusion into its constitutional sovereignty through Section 5 and its outdated preclearance formula based upon discriminatory conditions that existed more than 47 years ago but have long since been remedied,” the state says in its filing.

Louisiana: Secretary of State’s website crashes during election | WVLA

Secretary of State Tom Schedler says he and his staff are looking into what crashed their website, which slowed results on election night. If you were paying attention to the races this past weekend, you probably noticed when the Secretary of State’s website shut down. Everyone, including the news media, couldn’t get the numbers they needed.

Schedler says it had to do with the amount of people accessing the website with smartphones. He says with people checking on the elections inside and outside the state, the website was bound to crash.

Mississippi: Ballot snafu discovered by happenstance | gulflive.com

An assistant district attorney from Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood’s office was reviewing another matter a few weeks ago when the assistant DA discovered that Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann’s office had failed to place the fiscal analysis on the three ballot initiatives as is required by the state Constitution, according to Hood.

The snafu is going to end up costing the Secretary of State’s office, since most counties had already ordered their ballots and had to have them reprinted with the fiscal information — most notably involving the voter ID initiative which is estimated to cost taxpayers $1.49 million.

South Carolina: Minority Precincts Hit Hardest by Voter ID Laws, AP Analysis Shows | Campus Progress

Voter ID laws have been called the modern-era Jim Crow—and evidence keeps piling up to support that notion. A new analysis by the Associated Press reveals that South Carolina’s Voter ID law is hitting precincts with a large amount of black voters the hardest—including some colleges.

More than 200,000 active, registered voters in South Carolina lack satisfactory IDs under the state’s law, which would be a sobering number even without racial inequality. Statewide in South Carolina, 66 percent of voters without proper ID are white and 34 percent are non-white, fairly close to the ratio of all registered voters—70 percent white, 30 percent non-white. But at the precinct level, the numbers tell a different story.

South Carolina: The Maddening Effect of South Carolina’s Proposed Voter ID Law | COLORLINES

he voter ID laws that are sweeping the country could possibly keep five million people away from the polls in next year’s election. And voting rights advocates in South Carolina think the situation in that state could be especially dire.

The state just passed a new measure that requires voters to show a government-issued photo ID at the polls. Advocates say the requirement will be a big burden for some, especially the elderly and the poor, who may not have transportation, money, or the required paperwork to obtain the IDs.