Kansas: Lawyers clash over adding second Dodge City voting site | The Wichita Eagle

Opening a second Election Day polling place in Dodge City is impossible, an attorney for the county clerk at the center of a growing Kansas controversy over voting rights said Monday. An 18-year-old Dodge City resident and a Latino civil rights group are suing Ford County Clerk Debbie Cox in an effort to force her to reopen the polling location used by Dodge City’s 13,000 registered voters before Cox moved voting to a site a half mile outside the city limits. Attorneys for the resident, Alejandro Rangel-Lopez, and the League of United Latin American Citizens clashed with attorneys for Cox during a conference call in the case. With the Nov. 6 election approaching, Judge Daniel Crabtree decided to give both sides until 5 p.m. Tuesday to file written arguments.

Louisiana: State Supreme Court chief justice says new law on felons voting doesn’t go far enough | The Advocate

A Louisiana law that takes effect in March and will allow felons who have been out of prison for five years to register to vote — despite remaining on probation or parole — doesn’t go far enough to address state laws that “unconstitutionally disenfranchise” its citizens, Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Bernette Johnson says. Johnson’s written comments came in a dissent Monday as the state high court denied an appeal filed by a group of felons who challenged a 1976 Louisiana law that barred felons on probation or parole from voting. While that case was on appeal, Gov. John Bel Edwards signed into law on May 31 a measure allowing felons who’ve been out of prison for five years, but remain on probation or parole, to register to vote.

Maryland: Voters to decide whether to adopt Election Day registration | The Washington Post

Amid heightened conversation across the country about voting rights and who has access to the ballot, Maryland voters are deciding whether to amend the state constitution to allow people to register on Election Day. The Democratic-backed initiative, which was opposed by most Republican lawmakers and has not been endorsed by Gov. Larry Hogan (R), is one of two statewide questions on the ballot for the midterm elections. … Maryland already allows residents to register during early voting, which this year ends Thursday, but they cannot do it on Election Day.

Missouri: Appeals judges OK lawsuit on voter photo ID funding | Associated Press

Appeals court judges on Tuesday said a lawsuit can move forward that alleges Missouri lawmakers didn’t spend enough money on implementation of a new voter photo identification law and it consequently should not be enforced. The decision by the Western District Court of Appeals panel reversed a circuit court judge’s January ruling to dismiss the case , meaning the legal challenge can continue. The American Civil Liberties Union, Advancement Project, Missouri NAACP and League of Women Voters filed the lawsuit last year, alleging that state lawmakers didn’t budget enough money for the state to properly educate voters on the changes, provide free IDs and birth certificates, and train poll workers. As a result, the groups argued that the heart of the law should not be carried out.

North Dakota: Native Americans Try to Turn an ID Law to Their Advantage | The New York Times

Nobody in the squat yellow house serving as the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s get-out-the-vote headquarters knew its address. It was on Red Tail Hawk Avenue; they knew that much. But the number was anyone’s guess. Phyllis Young, a longtime tribal activist leading the voter-outreach effort, said it had fallen off the side of the house at some point. Her own home has a number only because she added one with permanent marker. This is normal on Native American reservations. Buildings lack numbers; streets lack signs. Even when a house has an address in official records, residents don’t necessarily know what it is. “We know our communities based off our communities,” said Danielle Ta’Sheena Finn, a Standing Rock spokeswoman and tribal judge. “We know, ‘Hey, that’s so-and-so’s house; you go two houses down and that’s the correct place you need to be.’”

Ohio: Court orders boards of election to count provisional ballots in midterms for certain voters purged from rolls | Cleveland Plain Dealer

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered boards of election in Ohio to count provisional election ballots for the 2018 midterm elections that are cast by certain people previously purged from the state’s voter rolls. A three-judge panel from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that votes cast by people purged from the rolls between 2011 and 2015 must be counted if they still live in the same county of their last registration and if they are not disqualified from voting because of a felony conviction, mental incapacity or death. The panel’s injunction comes as progressive advocacy groups appeal Senior U.S. District Judge George Smith’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit against Secretary of State Jon Husted that said notices the state sent to inactive voters were inadequate under federal law. Should the groups be successful on appeal, some voters may be wrongly denied the ability to vote unless the injunction is in place, the panel wrote.

Oregon: Phishing attempts on Oregon election officials increase | Associated Press

Oregon’s paper-ballot voting system in the state has never been more accurate or secure, though the number of phishing attempts targeting election officials has increased, the state’s elections director said. Oregon Elections Director Steve Trout said he himself has been hit by a dozen phishing attempts since July. In all of 2017, he had only one or two. Phishing is an attempt to trick people into sharing sensitive information such as passwords and usernames, often by inducing them to click on a bogus link or by pretending to be an entity. The FBI and U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials advised Trout and others attending a security summit this week that there has been a huge increase in phishing attempts in the nation, targeting elections officials and other critical infrastructure such as energy and banking sectors, Trout told journalists Tuesday.

Texas: Software bugs could compromise midterm votes in Texas | CNET

A software flaw can be just as damaging to the voting process as a hacker. That much is clear in Texas, where some early voters have claimed that machines are changing their votes in the midterm election. Keith Ingram, the Texas Director of Elections, said in an advisory that the problem is happening because voters are jumping the gun. The issue crops up if a voter selects the “straight party ticket” option, and then keeps pressing buttons before the page finishes loading on the screen, he said. “As a reminder, voters should always carefully check their review screen before casting their ballots,” Ingram said. … Electronic voting machine experts should expand their focus beyond looking for the kinds of flaws a hacker could exploit, and start looking for flaws that just make machines malfunction, said voting machine security expert Dan Wallach, a computer science professor at Rice University. “I would say that a decade ago we put a lot of focus on security bugs” he said. “Glitches have never received the same degree of attention.”

Canada: End online voting — it’s not worth the risk | Kitchener Post

Online voting has been used in Canada for about 15 years, but you’d never know it judging by the most recent municipal election. That looked like our first swing at cyber voting, as if we were still trying to iron out the wrinkles. But those were no mere wrinkles. Those weren’t glitches, or hiccups. That was an absolute meltdown, an unmitigated disaster for which inexperience is not an excuse. Though the meltdown affected more municipalities than our own, nowhere was the impact greater or more embarrassing than in Waterloo Region, where an entire community was left in limbo for almost 48 hours as it waited for the winner of the top political job to be announced. Yes, it’s easy to second guess in the aftermath of such a massive malfunction and the enormity of the disaster leaves plenty to criticize. But with the credibility of an election at stake, the scrutiny is warranted and analysis is necessary.

Georgia (Sakartvelo): Election Commission: Georgia presidential vote goes to second round runoff | GDN

Georgia’s presidential election will go to a second round runoff between two of the country’s former foreign ministers after no single candidate won outright in the first round of voting, the country’s Central Election Commission (CEC) said on Monday. After all the votes from Sunday’s first round of voting had been counted French-born former diplomat and foreign minister Salome Zurabishvili had secured 38.7 percent of the vote, while Grigol Vashadze, also a former foreign minister, had won 37.7 percent of the vote, the CEC said. With neither managing to get more than 50 percent of the vote necessary to win outright, a runoff between Zurabishvili and Vashadze will now be held sometime between now and Dec. 2.

Madagascar: Presidential poll embitters poor Madagascans | AFP

“If I was to vote, I would definitely vote for the rubbish bins because at least they feed us,” scoffed Claudine Rajaonarison. She had been scouring the streets of Antananarivo since 04:00 for plastic to sell. Rajaonarison, a 35-year-old mother of three, said she will not be voting for Madagascar’s next president in the November 7 poll. Not one of the 36 candidates has impressed her. “The candidates are vying for power for themselves – not the wellbeing of the country,” she said, a large sack of rice on her shoulders as she struggled to sift through piles of rubbish with her children alongside a railway line. She then washed her haul of two dozen plastic bottles to be sold for 1 000 ariary ($0.30), enough for 400 grams of rice for her family who sleep outside surrounded by rats.

Portugal: Election commission develops action plan against ‘fake news’ in 2019 | MNA

Speaking to Lusa on Friday, João Tiago Machado, a CNE spokesman, said the first meetings took place this week, and entities will be selected to work on these initiatives, which are expected to invoilve a drill in early 2019. The aim, he added, is to “take precautionary measures to avoid these issues,” in the election year, at a time when cases of ‘fake news’ are the focus of passionate political debate in the presidential elections in Brazil. The CNE currently has no record of any complaint filed by parties or candidates related to fake news, he added.

National: Blockchain voting too risky, cybersecurity expert says | Yahoo

 The future of voting should not involve your cellphone, according to a leading cybersecurity expert. In a first-of-its-kind pilot program, West Virginia will test blockchain encrypted mobile phone voting for members of the U.S. military. But Joe Hall, chief technologist and director of internet architecture at the Center for Democracy & Technology, warned that the plan presents a host of risks. “West Virginia has taken the ridiculous step of deciding that they’re going to not only vote on a mobile device, which in and of itself is just a bad idea, but use a blockchain mechanism, something associated with crypto-currency or bitcoin,” Hall told Grant Burningham, host of the Yahoo News podcast “Bots & Ballots.” In a September interview with Burningham, venture capitalist Bradley Tusk argued that his foundation’s plan to test cellphone voting was a way to boost voter participation in the U.S. However, Hall believes the risks outweigh the possible benefits.

National: Cyber Interference in Elections and Federal Agency Action | Harvard Law Review

Pop quiz: which part of the federal government is tasked with preventing cyber interference in our elections? Congress has refused to say. We have reached a point of a significant gap between an important federal need and existing federal power. And in the absence of that federal power, federal agencies have stepped into the gap and extended their authority into domains unanticipated by Congress. Of course, there is clear statutory guidance for some aspects of protecting election integrity. We can think about preventing campaign interference in our elections. Portions of that job fall squarely within the domain of the Federal Elections Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws. We can also think about prosecution or punishment of those who engage in either foreign campaign interference, like the Justice Department’s recent criminal indictment of a Russian woman with interference in the 2018 midterm elections, or foreign cyber interference, like actions from the Obama and Trump administrations to sanction those who interfere with election systems in the United States. But that’s focused on punishing election interference that has already occurred.

National: Paper Is Big Again, at Least for Elections. These States Don’t Have It | Roll Call

Just days before a pivotal midterm congressional election, dozens of jurisdictions around the country go to polls without a paper backup for electronic voting systems. The shortfall comes despite nearly two years of warnings from cybersecurity experts that in the absence of a paper backup system, voters’ intentions cannot be verified in case of a cyberattack that alters election databases. Fourteen states will conduct the midterm elections where voters will register their choices in an electronic form but will not leave behind any paper trail that could be used to audit and verify the outcome. Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina have no paper backup systems anywhere in the state. Nine other states have several jurisdictions without a physical alternative to electronic records — Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas.

National: Risk-Limiting Audits Can Support an Election’s Legitimacy | StateTech

The National Academy of Sciences report is blunt: “There is no realistic mechanism to fully secure vote casting and tabulation computer systems from cyber threats.” But election officials can and should audit votes — rather than performing time-consuming full recounts — before election results are certified to confirm their legitimacy, the report states. Risk-limiting audits are a relatively new way to double-check the results of an election after the fact. First implemented in Colorado in 2017, the audits examine a randomly chosen, statistically significant number of paper ballots and compare the results in those ballots to the actual result.  They’re done no matter the margin of victory; suspicious results may trigger a full recount. “It’s an abbreviated recount, in a sense,” said Ronald Rivest, one of the inventors of the RSA public-key cryptosystem and a member of the NAS panel that wrote the report. 

National: Security researchers, voting vendors clash anew | Politico

A group of security researchers and voting technology vendors trying to hash out cybersecurity requirements for voting systems once again butted heads over whether to require vendors to let anyone test their products. The subject arose during a teleconference late last week of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines cyber working group. When election security consultant Neal McBurnett suggested that the new guidelines require vendors to make products available for open-ended vulnerability testing, Joel Franklin of voting giant Election Systems & Software shot back with a question: “Is there other software tied to critical infrastructure software that’s open to public OEVT?” Franklin said he wasn’t dismissing the value of OEVT. “I’m just wondering if we’re putting an undue burden on voting systems when there are computers in nuclear security and every other critical infrastructure industry” that aren’t available for OEVT.

National: DHS: Election officials inundated, confused by free cyber-security offerings | ZDNet

lection officials across the US are inundated and confused by the plethora of free cyber-security offerings that the private sector has made available in the past months, a Department of Homeland Security official said last week. … But while the actions of these companies were driven by a desire to help, a DHS official says these free offerings have managed to create confusion with some election officials. “So what we’ve seen is a lot of the cyber-security companies and the IT companies offering free services, which I think is a great move forward,” said Christopher Krebs, Under Secretary for National Protection and Programs Directorate at the DHS, in an interview on the Cyberlaw Podcast, last week.

National: Closed polling places hit minority counties harder | USA Today

Election officials across the country have closed thousands of polling places and reduced the number of workers staffing them in recent years, citing cost savings and other new realities like increased early and absentee balloting. However, days from what many expect will be one of the busiest midterm elections in decades, the burden of Americans’ shrinking access to in-person voting options is falling more heavily on urban areas and minority voters, a USA TODAY analysis of national and state data shows. Voting rights advocates say the disappearance of polling sites could create confusion about where to vote, and thinner staffing of remaining sites could mean longer lines. Those problems, they fear, could shrink voter turnout in some neighborhoods.

National: Experts assess voting security as midterm elections approach | Princeton University

Since the adoption of electronic voting machines in the 1990s, election experts have argued that paper records are critical for auditing elections and detecting potential tampering with vote tallies. The issue gained new prominence following the 2016 elections, which spurred multiple investigations into allegations of Russian interference in the electoral process. In a panel discussion hosted by Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP), experts examined the state of U.S. election security. The moderator Ed Felten, the Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs and director of CITP, opened the discussion by noting that “Princeton has quite a bit of expertise in this area.” He cited two faculty members working in election technology and policy, Andrew Appel and Jonathan Mayer. Appel, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Computer Science, recently served as a member of the National Academies’ Committee on the Future of Voting, while Mayer, assistant professor of computer science and public affairs, recently developed bipartisan election security legislation as a staffer in the United States Senate. Also on the panel was Marian Schneider, a former Pennsylvania elections official and the president of Verified Voting, a nonprofit organization that aims to improve election security practices.

National: Think you’ll know who won on Election Night? Not so fast … | The Washington Post

Sometimes, it’s the scale. Hundreds of thousands of votes take longer to tally than just a few, so huge urban areas often lag behind smaller places. Other times, it’s the mail. California, for instance, where there are seven tight House races, is notoriously slow, in part because more than half of voters opt to use vote-by-mail ballots (a.k.a. “absentee” ballots in some places). California ballots postmarked on Election Day have three days to show up at county elections offices. A few other states allow a week or 10 days; Alaska will accept ballots from abroad up to 15 days later. “I’ve always speculated about a worst-case scenario where an Alaska Senate seat could determine control of the U.S. Senate, and there may still be ballots sitting at local ‘post offices,’” said Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College, in an email. “Post office,” he said, could actually mean a remote bait shop or grocery store from which ballots would need to be airlifted, validated and counted.

Georgia: Judge considers new citizens held up from voting in Georgia | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A federal judge is considering ordering Georgia election officials to ensure that hundreds of new U.S. citizens can vote in next week’s election. U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross heard testimony Monday from voting rights groups who say many newly naturalized Americans have registered to vote but are being turned away at early-voting locations because their citizenship status hasn’t been updated in government computers. Ross said she’ll rule quickly before Election Day on Nov. 6. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit asked Ross to order county election workers to put voters who have proved their citizenship on the state’s list of active registered voters. At least 3,667 voter registration applications are on hold in Georgia because their citizenship couldn’t be verified by state driver’s license records. But those records aren’t often updated until Georgians renew their licenses, so those who became citizens after receiving their licenses are being flagged by the state until they show naturalization papers or a U.S. passport.

Iowa: State’s shield against election cyberattacks: paper ballots | The Gazette

Iowa officials say they are using old-school technology — namely paper ballots — to thwart cyberterrorists employing sophisticated methods from trying to hack into the state’s voting systems. Iowa officials held a Statehouse news conference Monday to assure voters who already are casting early ballots in the run-up to the Nov. 6 general election that steps are being taken to ensure the integrity of the process and trust in the final outcome. “We vote on paper ballots,” said Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, who is on that ballot because he faces a challenge from Democrat Deidre DeJear. “This a crucial security measure. You can’t hack a paper ballot.” The state of Iowa’s computer systems face thousands of attacks on a daily basis, said Jeff Franklin of the Iowa Office of the Chief Information Officer. However, there is no evidence of any unauthorized intrusions into the election system, he noted, mainly because outside of voter registration very little of Iowa’s process or voting equipment is web-based.

Kansas: Dodge City polling place debacle: voter suppression or incompetence? | The Guardian

It’s true that if Alejandro Rangel wants to vote on election day, he has to get out of Dodge. But that is not the whole story. Befitting its status as an iconic city of the American West with a reputation built around legendary outlaws and mythical lawmen, Dodge City is now caught in the middle of a political gunfight that has swiftly generated its own half-truths and spiraled into a national controversy. The Democrats drew first, pointing out that the only place to vote in Dodge City on election day is being moved two and a half miles from the city center to an exhibition hall in what amounts to an urban wilderness. The move, they said, will further disenfranchise Latinos who make up a majority of the city’s residents but turn out to vote in very low numbers and have no one from their community elected to the city or county commissions.

New Hampshire: State Supreme Court Says SB3 Can Stay In Place, Reversing Lower Court Order | NHPR

The voter registration law known as Senate Bill 3 will stay in place through the upcoming midterms, after the New Hampshire Supreme Court on Friday overruled a lower court’s order that would have put the law on hold. The decision from the high court capped off a rollercoaster week for election officials in New Hampshire. On Monday, Hillsborough County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Brown ordered them to stop using Senate Bill 3 (or “SB3”) in the upcoming midterms. By Wednesday, the state said, essentially, “Not so fast.” Arguing that it was too late to make any substantial changes to the registration process and that Brown’s instructions would burden pollworkers, state election officials asked both Brown and the New Hampshire Supreme Court for permission to keep the law in place. (The opposing attorneys challenging SB3, meanwhile, called this “a thinly-veiled attempt to create a record of difficulty and confusion where there really is none” so the state could avoid compliance with Brown’s order.)

New Jersey: Legislation improving voter security clears committee | Monroe Now

In an effort to secure elections and voting in New Jersey, three bills sponsored by Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo and Assemblyman Roy Freiman were advanced by the Assembly State and Local Government Committee on Oct. 18. The first bill (A-3991) sponsored by Mazzeo establishes the “New Jersey Elections Security Act,” which would allow New Jersey to transition to a paper ballot voting system. “New Jersey is only one of a handful of states that uses voting machines and does not provide a paper record, which makes it difficult to detect hacking,” said Mazzeo, D-Atlantic. Since it is evident in the current climate we live in that no federal action will be taken to protect our voters, we must take it upon ourselves to preserve democracy by ensuring safety for voters and allowing them to fairly have a say in their representatives.”

North Dakota: Voter ID Law Could Stop Native Americans From Voting in Key Senate Race | Newsweek

Native American residents of North Dakota have been left scrambling to meet a controversial voter ID requirement that could render many ineligible to vote in the upcoming November mid-term elections. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court declined to overturn the GOP-backed voter law, which requires North Dakotans to show identification with their current street address. As many Native American reservations do not use physical street addresses, the law makes it difficult for thousands of people to cast their ballots. While Native American residents do often use PO boxes as mailing addresses, PO boxes do not qualify as proof of residency under the voter ID law. As a result, many voters will have to make the effort to obtain identification or documents, such as a tribal voting letter issued by tribal officials, that provide proof of a residential address.

Texas: Texans say glitchy voting machines are changing their ballots. The state blames user error. | The Washington Post

“Make sure to confirm that your summary page accurately reflects your choices BEFORE casting your ballot!” reads a flier distributed by the Texas secretary of state’s election division to state polling locations. The notice was the agency’s quick fix for a glitch in its widely used Hart eSlate voting machines. Texas native Peter Martin, 69, was one of many who missed the message. “I’ve always voted. It’s the only opportunity that I have to make any sort of difference in terms of politics,” he said. When the registered independent went to a recreational center in Grapevine, Tex., last week, he planned to vote for Senate hopeful Beto O’Rourke. The Hart machine offered a fast-tracked option for straight-ticket voters. Martin selected it, expecting the machine to populate an all-Democrat ballot.

Texas: Here’s how to avoid problems with straight-ticket voting in Texas | The Texas Tribune

Voters from around the state have reported a curious thing happening at the polls this week: They meant to vote straight-ticket but when they reviewed their final list of selected candidates, someone from an opposing party was picked instead. Some people wondered if there was malfeasance. Others blamed malfunctioning voting machines. And both Democrats and Republicans have tried to warn voters in their respective parties. But according to the Texas secretary of state’s office, the voting machines are not at fault. Rather, the problems reported are the result of “voters hitting a button or using the selection wheel before the screen is finished rendering,” which de-selects the pre-filled candidate selection. “The issue is occurring primarily with the U.S. Senate race selections, because it is at the top of the ballot,” said Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the secretary of state. On Saturday, that office said that it has only been notified of fewer than 20 related issues. “In each case, these voters were able to properly review and cast a ballot that accurately reflected the choices they made,” the office said in a statement.