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The U.S. Supreme Court will meet privately in conference Friday to consider whether to grant review of Segovia v. United States, a voting rights lawsuit that seeks to expand voting rights in the U.S. territories. Neil Weare, president and founder of Equally American, a nonprofit that advocates for equality and civil rights for Americans living in the territories, said in a Monday press release that the news is “momentous.” “The federal government’s response to hurricanes Maria and Irma has demonstrated just how important it is that Americans living in U.S. territories enjoy the same right to vote as their fellow citizens,” said Weare in the press release. “We hope the Supreme Court will take the opportunity to consider whether voting rights can be arbitrarily protected or denied based on where one happens to live outside the 50 states.”

Australia: E-voting systems are still too vulnerable to be feasible for Australia | Tech Wire Asia

Voting in Australia has long followed the same formula – use pencils to mark on a piece of paper behind a cardboard booth, then folding said paper and slotting it into a box. For years, having humans manually count paper ballots have created an electoral system that is deemed highly secure and tamper-resistant. Compulsory voting in the country has helped secure against suppression tactics that have affected elections in the US and the UK. In the digital age, it is tempting to move voting online; the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) tried dabbling in e-voting in 2013. However, experts warned that e-voting brings more harm than good. The trouble of electronic voting has been in the spotlight for the past few years at DefCon, the world’s largest hacker conference taking place annually in the US, where hackers have been showcasing vulnerabilities to the US election equipment, databases, and infrastructure. In fact, this year an 11-year-old managed to hack into replica websites to manipulate vote tallies in just 10 minutes.

Canada: New cybersecurity centre to look at election interference threats | Associated Press

A fresh look at Canada’s ability to defend against possible online threats to the next national election will be one of a new federal cybersecurity centre’s first tasks. An updated version of a groundbreaking report on lurking dangers to electoral integrity will be issued in the new year, said Scott Jones, head of the fledgling Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. The new federal body aims to be a clearinghouse of information, advice and guidance on threats for the public, Canadian businesses, and owners and operators of critical infrastructure, such as power grids and banking systems. “We want to be that trusted source of information for Canadians,” Jones said in an interview.

Finland: ‘We are constantly one step behind’: Finland worries about cyber warfare in shadow of Russia | The Independent

Finland, on the northern edge of Europe and with a population of fewer than 5.5 million, may not seem an obvious player in struggles of geopolitics. But being situated in the shadow of its giant neighbour, Russia, has meant that the country has been inevitably drawn into the world of hybrid warfare. Helsinki was the focus of global attention as the venue of the summit between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, with questions inevitably raised over claims that the Russian president had placed his man in the White House through manipulation of the US election. Away for the limelight Helsinki has become the base for a major cyber-defence programme for the west with the establishment of the Nato-backed European Centre for Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threat, which has received funding and resources from the US, Britain, France and Nordic states.

Macedonia: A referendum on Macedonia’s new name fails to settle anything – One step forward, two steps back in Skopje | The Economist

IT HAD been billed as the most important vote in the region’s recent history, a referendum in favour of settling a long-standing dispute between Greece and Macedonia. Instead, voters have opened the door to instability and uncertainty. The vote, held on September 30th in Macedonia, which aimed to endorse an historic compromise agreement between the two countries over Macedonia’s name, has instead thrown the deal into question. It is on life support. But Ana Petruseva, director of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Macedonia, says “it is not dead yet.”

Spain: Tensions flare at Barcelona protests on anniversary of independence vote | The Guardian

Tens of thousands of Catalans congregated in Barcelona on Monday to mark the first anniversary of the region’s unilateral and illegal independence referendum as groups of pro-independence activists blocked roads, motorways and a high-speed rail line and surrounded the Catalan parliament. Police in the city estimated that about 180,000 people took part in a rally in the city on Monday evening. Tensions flared between police and protesters as some hardline demonstrators jumped over barriers at the entrance to the parliament. There were similar scenes outside the Barcelona headquarters of Spain’s national police. Crowds of students filled the city’s central square on Monday afternoon, waving yellow, red and blue separatist flags and chanting “1 October, no forgiving, no forgetting”. Nearby, others let off smoke bombs and fireworks.

National: Congress falls flat on election security as midterms near | The Hill

Congress has failed to pass any legislation to secure U.S. voting systems in the two years since Russia interfered in the 2016 election, a troubling setback with the midterms less than six weeks away. Lawmakers have repeatedly demanded agencies step up their efforts to prevent election meddling but in the end struggled to act themselves, raising questions about whether the U.S. has done enough to protect future elections. A key GOP senator predicted to The Hill last week that a bipartisan election security bill, seen as Congress’s best chance of passing legislation on the issue, wouldn’t pass before the midterms. And on Friday, House lawmakers left town for the campaign trail, ending any chance of clearing the legislation ahead of November. Lawmakers have openly expressed frustration they were not able to act before the 2018 elections.

National: Election Security Remains Just as Vulnerable as in 2016 | Electronic Frontier Foundation

The ability to vote for local, state, and federal representatives is the cornerstone of democracy in America. With mid-term congressional elections looming in early November, many voices have raised concerns that the voting infrastructure used by states across the Union might be suspect, unreliable, or potentially vulnerable to attacks. As Congress considers measures critical to consumer rights and the functioning of technology (net neutrality, data privacy, biometric identification, and surveillance), ensuring the integrity of elections has emerged as a matter of crucial importance. On the one hand, the right to vote may not be guaranteed for many people across the country. Historically, access to the ballot has been hard fought, from the Revolution and the Civil War to the movement for civil rights that compelled the Voting Rights Act (VRA). But recent restrictions on voting rights that have proliferated since the Supreme Court struck down the VRA’s pre-clearance provisions in 2013. Coupled with procedural impediments to voting, unresolved problems continue to plague the security of the technology that many voting precincts use in elections. With mid-term elections in just two months, Secretaries of State should be pressed to do their jobs and increase security before voters cast their ballots.

National: Def Con researchers came to Washington to poke holes in voting machine security | The Washington Post

Not long ago, lawmakers might have been wary about showcasing the work of hackers who specialize in penetrating voting equipment. But on Thursday, organizers from the Def Con Voting Village — a collection of security researchers who hack election systems in hopes of making them more secure — received a warm welcome on Capitol Hill. The organizers were in town to unveil a new report identifying vulnerabilities in several widely used voting machines they tested during the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas over the summer, including a flaw in a vote tabulator that could allow a malicious actor to hack it remotely. They presented their findings in a meeting hosted by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) and attended by staffers from the offices of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who is sponsoring an election security bill, and several other Democrats. The event highlights how the cybersecurity experts behind the Voting Village, which is only in its second year, are reaching beyond the niche and often apolitical community of Def Con in hopes of influencing the debate over how to secure the country’s election systems. The issue has received a wave of new attention since the 2016 election, when Russian hackers probed election administration systems in 21 states.

National: Voting Machines Are Still Absurdly At Risk | WIRED

While Russian interference operations in the 2016 US presidential elections focused on misinformation and targeted hacking, officials have scrambled ever since to shore up the nation’s vulnerable election infrastructure. New research, though, shows they haven’t done nearly enough, particularly when it comes to voting machines. The report details vulnerabilities in seven models of voting machines and vote counters, found during the DefCon security conference’s Voting Village event. All of the models are in active use around the US, and the vulnerabilities—from weak password protections to elaborate avenues for remote access—number in the dozens. The findings also connect to larger efforts to safeguard US elections, including initiatives to expand oversight of voting machine vendors and efforts to fund state and local election security upgrades.

National: After election hacking presentation, Katko pushes bill to boost security | Auburn Citizen

Dr. J. Alex Halderman inserted a memory card infected with malicious software into an electronic voting machine. It wasn’t an actual case of election hacking, but Halderman’s demonstration served a purpose: To show two members of Congress, including U.S. Rep. John Katko, what can happen if hackers gain access to voting machines. Halderman, director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Computer Security and Society, invited Katko, R-Camillus, and U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, to cast votes using the Diebold AccuVote TS voting machine. Halderman programmed a mock election: A presidential race between George Washington and Benedict Arnold. There were two votes cast for Washington and one for Arnold. But the receipt printed from the voting machine revealed the effect of the malicious software. The paper showed Arnold received two votes and Washington netted one.

Florida: The Voting Security Issues Florida Is Facing This Election Season | WLRN

Two years ago, “spearphishing attacks” -emails targeted towards specific individuals with the intent to steal data for malicious purposes- flooded the inboxes of election officials in several Florida counties. This year, as Florida prepares for the general elections in November, issues around voting security have been front and center. In August, Sen. Bill Nelson claimed Russian hackers had gained access to valuable data on state voters. There has been no evidence found that Florida’s voting system was compromised in 2016, but the attempts to breach systems have led to the state receiving $19 million in federal money for election security.

North Dakota: Plaintiffs in Native American voter ID case seek Supreme Court appeal | INFORUM

Attorneys representing a group of Native Americans challenging North Dakota’s voter identification laws filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday, Sept. 27. This week, a federal appeals court halted part of a lower court ruling that said the state must accept IDs and supplemental documentation with a current mailing address. The appellate court said that could lead to voters casting a ballot in the wrong precinct if they use a post office box as a mailing address. The Native American Rights Fund, which represents the tribal members, said in a news release the ruling means “several thousand” qualified North Dakota voters “will be unable to vote in this year’s election simply because they do not have a residential address or because they lack the documentation and/or funds to obtain the required voter identification.”

Texas: Paper Ballots Could Ease Election-Hacking Fears, But Computers Will Always Be Part Of Counting Votes | Texas Standard

There’s a question that moves in parallel with the increased use of computerized voting machines – can your vote be hacked? It’s a question that was put to the test in the 2016 presidential election cycle, when Russia was found to be influencing voters in the election, but not the voting machines themselves. Some say the risk of vote-hacking could be reduced by using paper ballots in addition to electronic vote-counters. Hovav Shacham is a professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin. He has specialized in computer security and the voter security for over a decade. “I think the question we need to ask is not just how vulnerable the actual systems are, but how much confidence can voters have that their vote really is recorded and counted just as they cast it,” Shacham says.

Texas: Crystal Mason begins prison sentence in Texas for crime of voting | The Guardian

Crystal Mason, the woman who became the poster child for voter suppression when she was sentenced to five years for casting a ballot in Texas, has gone into federal prison at the start of her ordeal. Mason, 43, surrendered voluntarily on Thursday to authorities and was taken into federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas. She left her three children behind. In her final Facebook post before she went inside, she wrote: “This fight is not over, I’m glad God choose me for this journey. I’m walking in there no tears and head hung high …” Mason’s crime was to cast a ballot in the 2016 presidential election. An African American woman, she had been encouraged by her mother to do her civic duty and vote, in her case on behalf of Hillary Clinton. When she turned up to the polling station her name was not on the register, so she cast a provisional ballot that was never counted. She did not read the small print of the form that said that anyone who has been convicted of a felony – as she had, having previously been convicted of tax fraud – was prohibited from voting under Texas law.

Verified Voting in the News: State expands use of post-election audits | StateScoop

Wisconsin officials were praised Friday by election-security advocates for expanding the state’s use of post-election audits. The Wisconsin Elections Commission announced that it voted unanimously Tuesday to require audits in 5 percent of precincts throughout the state after every vote, beginning with the Nov. 6 general election. The decision is evidence that the clock has not run out yet on states seeking to improve their ballot-security procedures before Election Day, said representatives of Verified Voting, which advocates for paper-based voting systems and Public Citizen, a consumers’ rights group. Under Wisconsin’s new system, election officials will randomly select at least 183, or 5 percent, of the state’s 3,660 precincts to review voting equipment. The audit sample will include at least one precinct from each of the state’s 72 counties, but no more than two precincts from any single municipality.

Afghanistan: Concern about voting system ahead of Afghanistan election | Al Jazeera

Campaigning has started in Afghanistan for next month’s parliamentary elections amid concerns that the much-delayed vote could be postponed again due to the uncertainty over new technology. The vote for the lower house of parliament has been scheduled for October 20 – delayed by more than three years – and is seen as a test for the presidential elections that will take place in April. New government measures hope to put an end to the previous issues they have faced. With election fraud now being a criminal offence, voting stations will be placed in public buildings and monitored. Additionally, a new advanced voting system will be used.

Iraq: Both Major Parties Cry Fraud in Iraqi Kurdish Election | VoA News

The two major political parties in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region are crying fraud after Sunday’s parliamentary election, with one saying it will refuse to accept the results. Nearly 800 candidates were vying for 111 seats. Turnout is reported to have been modest even as Iraqi Kurds try to reassert their autonomy after a crackdown from Baghdad. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the major political parties, tells VOA it will not accept the results of Sunday’s vote. PUK spokesman Saadi Ahmed Pira charges the party’s chief political rival, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), of election fraud in two provinces under KDP control. Pira did not give specifics but said the PUK is demanding an investigation.

Macedonia: Referendum approves name change, but turnout low | Associated Press

A referendum on changing Macedonia’s name as part of a deal that would pave the way for NATO membership won overwhelming support Sunday, but low voter turnout highlighted the hurdles that still remain for the Balkan country to join the alliance. Prime Minister Zoran Zaev had hoped for a strong show of support in the referendum on whether to accept a June deal with Greece changing the country’s name to North Macedonia. That would help him with the next step of winning parliamentary support for the required constitutional amendments.

Maldives: Election commission confirms Solih′s victory despite threats | Deutsche Welle

The Maldives’ election commission on Saturday officially endorsed thevictory of the opposition candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in last week’s presidential polls amid concerns that Maldives outgoing President Abdulla Yameen is trying to hold on to power. Salah Rasheed, the election commission’s secretary general, said Solih’s Maldivian Democratic Party won the polls with 58.4 percent of the ballot. Although election monitors had warned of rigging by the incumbent, Yameen could secure only 41.6 percent. Solih was backed by four opposition parties, three of which supported Yameen in a controversial 2013 runoff that the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, lost narrowly. Solih is expected to be sworn in on November 17 when Yameen’s term comes to a close.

New Zealand: Councils warned electronic voting will not be secure | Stuff.co.nz

Plans to allow online voting in next year’s councils elections have run into a wall of opposition from technology experts, who say internet voting can’t be secure. Local Government New Zealand will issue a tender for an online system that would be used in nine council elections, including in Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington, alongside postal voting. The decision to shop for an online voting system comes amid growing international concern about election interference by foreign powers in the wake of the United States 2016 presidential election and Britain’s Brexit vote. … James Valentine, chief technology officer of Wellington IT company Fronde, was among dozens of technologists who took to social media to oppose the local government plan, tweeting there were “lots of concerns” including security and ballot secrecy.

National: Defcon Voting Village report: bug in one system could “flip Electoral College” | Ars Technica

Today, six prominent information-security experts who took part in DEF CON’s Voting Village in Las Vegas last month issued a report on vulnerabilities they had discovered in voting equipment and related computer systems. One vulnerability they discovered—in a high-speed vote-tabulating system used to count votes for entire counties in 23 states—could allow an attacker to remotely hijack the system over a network and alter the vote count, changing results for large blocks of voters. “Hacking just one of these machines could enable an attacker to flip the Electoral College and determine the outcome of a presidential election,” the authors of the report warned.

Iraq: Voting begins to elect new parliament in Iraq’s Kurdistan | AFP

Iraqi Kurds voted on Sunday for a new parliament in their autonomous region, which is mired in an economic crisis a year after an independence referendum that infuriated Baghdad. Almost 3.1 million voters were eligible to cast ballots across three provinces in the northern region, where 673 candidates from 29 political movements contested seats in the 111-member parliament. Polling closed as scheduled at 1500 GMT and the results are expected within 72 hours. The vote passed off with only minor incidents such as gunmen trying to vote without the necessary papers. The electoral commission gave an official turnout of 58 percent of registered voters in Arbil, the regional capital and one of the three provinces which make up Iraqi Kurdistan.

National: DEF CON hackers’ dossier on US voting machine security is just as grim as feared | The Register

Hackers probing America’s electronic voting systems have painted an astonishing picture of the state of US election security, less than six weeks before the November midterms. The full 50-page report [PDF], released Thursday during a presentation in Washington DC, was put together by the organizers of the DEF CON hacking conference’s Voting Village. It recaps the findings of that village, during which attendees uncovered ways resourceful miscreants could compromise electoral computer systems and change vote tallies. In short, the dossier outlines shortcomings in the electronic voting systems many US districts will use later this year for the midterm elections. The report focuses on vulnerabilities exploitable by scumbags with physical access to the hardware. “The problems outlined in this report are not simply election administration flaws that need to be fixed for efficiency’s sake, but rather serious risks to our critical infrastructure and thus national security,” the report stated. “As our nation’s security is the responsibility of the federal government, Congress needs to codify basic security standards like those developed by local election officials.”

National: Hackers warn about election security ahead of midterms | CNN

The vulnerabilities in America’s voting systems are “staggering,” a group representing hackers warned lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Thursday — just over a month before the midterm elections. The findings are based on a project at the Voting Village at the Def Con hacking conference held in Las Vegas last month, where hackers were invited to attempt to break into voting machines and other equipment used in elections across the country. The hacking group claims they were able to break into some voting machines in two minutes and that they had the ability to wirelessly reprogram an electronic card used by millions of Americans to activate a voting terminal to cast their ballot. “This vulnerability could be exploited to take over the voting machine on which they vote and cast as many votes as the voter wanted,” the group claims in the report.

National: Questions on Pompeo’s certainty about secure midterms | Politico

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday said there was “no question” the U.S. midterm elections would be safe from foreign interference, a level of certitude that is … shall we say, not widely shared? “That’s a dangerous level of confidence for someone in that position to have,” Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer science professor at the forefront of the election security debate, told MC. Halderman said that perhaps intelligence sources might not see any indications of foreign planning to further disrupt elections, but “frankly, you don’t know what you don’t know.” Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley said this about Pompeo: “I wish I could be so confident.” Robert Johnston, credited with discovering the DNC hack while working at CrowdStrike and now CEO of Adlumin, told MC there are already signs Russia has interfered in the 2018 races. Some of the suspect incidents have surfaced in California’s congressional races and the U.S. Senate.

California: Los Angeles County Supervisors Approve Investigation For Voter Registration ‘Errors’ | KHTS

The board unanimously approved a motion by Supervisor Kathryn Barger calling for an investigation into voter registration errors as a result of the new “motor voter” program managed by the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Created by the Motor Voter Act of 2015 and implemented in April 2018, the program automatically registers any eligible voters who apply for a driver’s license or identification card and transmits this data to the county where that person lives unless the individual specifically declines to participate. The state reported that 23,000 instances of voter registration errors occurred between mid-April and early August. The “motor voter” program has experienced other implementation issues as well, with 77,000 voter records allegedly being misreported in May by the DMV, according to officials.

Mississippi: Hackers attempt cyber attacks on state voting system | WMC

How safe is the ballot you will be casting during the November 6 election? Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann maintains that your ballot will be safe from hackers, but he reveals that there are thousands of attempts each month to try to penetrate the Statewide Election Management System. In the past few weeks, the agency that oversees elections reports that hackers have attempted to get into the systems of circuit clerks and election commissioners. “They are sending out emails to my circuit clerks and my election commissioners telling them to open this invoice from a former employee who’s no longer employed here,” said Hosemann. “So I will tell you that’s the level of attempts we have going on.”

Missouri: Testimony ends in voter ID lawsuit | New Tribune

Closing arguments will be Monday in the lawsuit challenging Missouri’s current voter ID law, after the state presented its final witness Wednesday. Cole County Senior Judge Richard Callahan is being asked to rule on the plaintiffs’ claim that Missouri’s new voter ID law conflicts with existing constitutional language that says people who are properly registered to vote “are entitled” to vote at all elections. The new law went into effect July 1, 2017, after voters in November 2016 added language to the state Constitution saying lawmakers could pass a law specifying the kinds of identification a voter would need to show at the polls before casting a vote.

Virginia: House panel backs GOP redistricting bill on party-line vote | Richmond Times-Dispatch