Alabama: ‘No logic’ to Alabama’s special elections, which may be outlawed anyway | AL.com

Call it a political paradise if you live in certain places in Alabama and don’t miss an opportunity to cast a vote. The practicality of it all, however, remains questionable. Simply put, there are three special election cycles ongoing right now to fill vacancies in the Alabama legislature. But the winners of those races will not be elected until after the ongoing legislative session ends. And unless they are re-elected in the state’s regular 2018 election cycle, which begins with the June 5 Democratic and Republican primaries, they will leave office without ever casting a single vote as a state lawmaker. “There’s no logic to it but it doesn’t have anything to do with logic,” said John Merrill, the state’s top elections official as Secretary of State.

Georgia: Voter registration will be changed after ACLU complaint | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia election officials have agreed to change voter registration forms in response to a complaint that they misrepresented ID requirements for first-time voters. The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia sought the change because the registration form says new voters must provide documentation of their name and address with their mailed applications. But federal election law only requires identification from first-time voters at some point before they cast a ballot, not at the time they register to vote.

Kansas: County officials and Kobach at war over elections | The Wichita Eagle

A battle raging from Wichita to Topeka could change how you vote — and how long you stand in line to do it. On one side are the county commissions of the state’s four largest counties, including Sedgwick, who seek more control over the costs of elections. On the other are Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and his election commissioners, including Tabitha Lehman in Sedgwick County. They say the system isn’t broken and doesn’t need to be fixed. So far, the county commissions are winning. The Kansas House recently passed House Bill 2509, which would give counties control over election budgets. It now advances to the Senate.

North Carolina: GOP defendants protest $124K bill from election map special master | Greensboro News and Record

Republican legislative defendants in North Carolina’s racial gerrymandering case say state taxpayers should not have to pay the full $124,125 bill from a special master in the federal lawsuit. A lawyer for state Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Eden), state House Speaker Tim Moore (R-Kings Mountain) and other current and former GOP officeholders contends Stanford law professor Nathaniel Persily’s services were never really needed as special master. “The taxpayers of North Carolina should not be responsible for the fees and expenses incurred by the special master in this matter because it was not necessary for the court to employ a special master to fix the constitutional deficiencies,” attorney Phillip Strach of Raleigh said in his written objection to the bill Persily submitted recently.

Ohio: Bill providing election equipment funding updated | News-Herald

State Sen. Frank LaRose, R-Hudson, has updated his legislation that would provide funding to replace Ohio’s aging voting equipment. Under LaRose’s proposal, counties will be given a fixed amount of funding based on the number of registered voters to help with the startup costs associated with buying new machines.

The funding breakdown would be:

• Counties with zero to 19,000 registered voters will be given a base amount of $205,000

• Counties with 20,000 to 99,999 registered voters will be given a base amount of $250,000

• Counties with 100,000-plus registered voters will be given $406,000

• Remaining funds will then be distributed on a per registered voter basis.

Of the $114.5 million allocation, $10 million would be general revenue funding reimbursement for counties that have already purchased new machines.

Voting Blogs: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Ohio’s State Redistricting Commission | State of Elections

In 2015, Ohio voters approved a state constitutional amendment that reformed the process for drawing district lines for the state legislature. Previously, state legislative redistricting had been managed by a five-member Apportionment Board, consisting of the governor, the secretary of state, the state auditor, and one member of the state legislature from both parties. New district lines only required a simple majority vote to enter into effect. The amendment, Issue 1 on the 2015 ballot, enlarged (and renamed the board to the Ohio Redistricting Commission) the Apportionment Board by two members by adding a member of each party from the state legislature. Issue 1 also reformed the procedures of the board, particularly how it approves district maps. The Commission must now have votes in favor of a map by at least two members of the minority party for the district maps to be in force for a full ten years. However, if this requirement is not met, then the district maps will be in force for only four years and new maps will be drawn at the end of that time period.

South Dakota: ‘Top two’ primary backers fail to gather enough support | The Argus-Press

A group trying to bring a “top two” primary system to South Dakota didn’t collect enough valid signatures to get the issue onto the November ballot, the state’s chief elections official said Friday. Secretary of State Shantel Krebs’ office said in a statement that a random sampling of signatures collected by Open Primaries South Dakota found that the campaign submitted about 25,500 valid signatures, not the nearly 28,000 needed for the proposed constitutional amendment to go to voters. The rejection could be challenged in court. The group’s treasurer, De Knudson, said she’s contacted the group’s attorney but that a decision hasn’t been made on whether to challenge the decision.

Virginia: Redistricting Reformers Push for End to Gerrymandering | Public News Service

The borders of certain voting districts in Virginia could be changed more than state lawmakers may have expected. A group known as OneVirginia2021 is spearheading the charge for redistricting, convinced that 11 of the 100 districts in the House of Delegates are unconstitutionally drawn in favor of one political party. This process, known as gerrymandering, ignores the size and shape requirements of the districts, and the group says both major parties are to blame. Brian Cannon, executive director of OneVirginia2021, said the current lines are a way for politicians to create an advantage rather than playing fair.

Editorials: Putin and Sissi are putting on elections. Why bother? | Jackson Diehl/The Washington Post

With Western democracy on the defensive, China’s Xi Jinping is aggressively advancing a new model for human governance in the 21st century: personal dictatorship backed by nationalism, state-directed capitalism and a security apparatus empowered by cutting-edge technologies. There’s no pretense of evolution toward democracy or even the rule of law. On the contrary, Xi explicitly casts his regime as an alternative that “offers a new option for other countries.” Among the world leaders seemingly most likely to embrace this neo-totalitarianism are Russia’s Vladi­mir Putin and Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, both of whom have consolidated personal power on a platform of nationalism. So it’s interesting that both Putin and Sissi are putting on presidential elections this month. Sure, these are not real elections. They are Potemkin pageants that will award the two strongmen overwhelming victories, thanks in part to the exclusion of all serious opponents. The only suspense about the March 18 vote in Russia, or the ballot in Egypt concluding 10 days later, will be about the abstention rate, because opposition leaders in both countries are calling for boycotts.

Canada: Ex-CIA director says Canada should be concerned about election interference | CTV

The former director of the CIA says Canada should be concerned about potential interference, Russian or otherwise, in the fast-approaching 2019 federal election. “I think any democracy these days needs to be concerned about foreign interference in their elections,” said John Brennan in an exclusive interview with Evan Solomon on CTV’s Question Period. “Canada, like other countries in Europe and throughout the world, need to be mindful that there are individuals in countries out there that are going to try to do them harm, including in their electoral systems,” he said.

China: Trump praises Chinese president extending tenure ‘for life’ | Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping Saturday after the ruling Communist party announced it was eliminating the two-term limit for the presidency, paving the way for Xi to serve indefinitely, according to audio aired by CNN. “He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,” Trump said, according to audio of excerpts of Trump’s remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida aired by CNN.“And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters. It is not clear if Trump, 71, was making the comment about extending presidential service in jest. The White House did not respond to a request for comment late Saturday.

El Salvador: Salvadorans vote in key legislative and municipal elections | AFP

Salvadorans cast ballots yesterday in legislative and municipal elections that will serve as a test of strength of leftist President Salvador Sanchez Ceren in his final year of office. Police and army troops were deployed across the country to provide security for the elections, the ninth since a 1992 peace accord ended a bloody 12-year civil war. “The elections are taking place peacefully across the country,” but “there have been some difficulties” in staffing voting stations in some areas, Sanchez Ceren said after voting at a school in San Salvador. “The process is a little complex and there won’t be very quick results,” he said.

Italy: Election Gives Big Lift to Far Right and Populists | The New York Times

Italians registered their dismay with the European political establishment on Sunday, handing a majority of votes in a national election to hard-right and populist forces that ran a campaign fueled by anti-immigrant anger. The election, the first in five years, was widely seen as a bellwether of the strength of populists on the continent and how far they might advance into the mainstream. The answer was far, very far. After Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France beat back populist and far-right insurgencies in the past year, Europe had seemed to be enjoying a reprieve from the forces threatening its unity and values. That turned out to be short lived.

Serbia: Ruling populists sweep election in capital Belgrade | Associated Press

Serbia’s ruling populists of President Aleksandar Vucic swept the municipal election in the capital of Belgrade Sunday, further cementing an already tight grip on power in the country. Preliminary results by the Ipsos polling agency and carried by Serbian state TV, projected that Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party won around 45 percent of the votes, while the main opponents — groups behind former Belgrade mayor Dragan Djilas — trailed with some 19 percent. “This is the best result ever in Belgrade,” Vucic told supporters. “This victory wasn’t easy to achieve!”

Sierra Leone: Sierra Leone heads into hotly contested elections | Deutsche Welle

Sixteen candidates are campaigning to become Sierra Leone’s next president. It’s the first time more than two candidates have real chances of winning and a chance for a more diversified parliament. On Wednesday  March 7, Sierra Leone is heading to the polls as the second of President Ernest Bai Koroma’s constitutionally mandated two terms comes to an end. The ruling All People’s Congress (APC) party and the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) have always dominated politics since Sierra Leone gained independence from Britain in 1961. But two new political parties upset the political dynamics and support bases of the SLPP and APC when they joined the 2018 presidential race.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for February 26 – March 4 2018

An NBC report asserting that the U.S. intelligence community developed substantial evidence that state websites or voter registration systems in seven states were compromised by Russian-backed covert operatives prior to the 2016 election was disputed by the Department of Homeland Security, saying NBC’s story was “factually inaccurate and misleading” and stood by its previous assessment, that just one state, Illinois, had its system breached. NBC stood by their reporting. Among the question that reman unanswered is whether in fact anyone can actually know with certainty if the systems were compromised.

Adm Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency and chief of US Cyber Command told lawmakers that he had not been directed by Donald Trump to disrupt Russian efforts to meddle in US elections, and that Vladimir Putin had come to the conclusion there was “little price to pay” for such actions. “I haven’t been granted any additional authorities, capacity, capability” Rogers said, “I need a policy decision that indicates there is specific direction to do that,” Rogers said.

In a lawsuit scheduled to begin on Tuesday, ACLU and the League of Women Voters will argue that between 2013 to 2016, more than 35,000 Kansans were blocked from registering because of Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s documentary proof-of-citizenship law. Courts have temporarily blocked Kobach from fully enforcing the Kansas law, with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver calling it “a mass denial of a fundamental constitutional right.”

Ohio counties would get nearly $115 million in state money to replace aging voting machines in time for the 2019 election under a bill expected to pass the legislature this spring. Counties will be given a fixed amount of funding based on the number of registered voters to help with the startup costs associated with buying new machines.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. has given participants until Monday to file responses to a request by Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers to stay a state court ruling overturning the current congressional map and imposing a new one. Aside from the merits of the legal arguments, a key factor the U.S. Supreme Court and a panel of three district judges will have to take into account is if the attempt to block the new map comes too close to the May 15 primary election, or if the Pennsylvania Supreme Court produced the map too late to be used this year.

TheVirginia Supreme Court heard arguments in a case alleging that state lawmakers placed partisan politics over constitutional requirements in drawing 11 of the 100 districts for the House of Delegates. According to lawyers for the voters, the state legislature failed to keep compactness in mind when they drew the maps seven years ago as required by the state’s constitution.

The National Redistricting Foundation, which is led by former attorney general Eric Holder, sued Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to require to hold special elections in two vacant legislative districts. Last December, two Republican lawmakers stepped down from the legislature to join Walker’s administration and in a remarkable break from precedent, Walker announced at the time that he would not hold special elections in those districts, leaving 229,904 Wisconsinites without representation for almost a year.

Security concerns have once again forced the Finnish government to suspend plans to launch an internet voting system. A Ministry of Justice report identified certain problem areas, including difficulties in the reconciliation of verifiability and election secrecy. As regards verifiability, the eVWG said full confidence in a future system must be based on voters being able to ensure that ballots are counted as cast. Also, the voter should receive “proof” of the ballot cast.

New anti-electoral fraud procedures caused delays at some polling stations, as Italians headed to the polls today to vote in one of the most uncertain elections in years. At least one polling station in Rome voting had to be suspended due to the discovery of voting cards with the wrong candidates’ names printed on them and some polling stations remained closed in Palermo two hours into election day because the wrong ballots were delivered and 200,000 new ones had to be reprinted overnight.

Legislation: Local lawmaker encourages more spending to safeguard Ohio elections | Beacon Journal

Ohio Sen. Frank LaRose, R-Hudson, is asking for more money to upgrade Ohio voting machines than he had originally proposed nearly a year ago. The push for better elections equipment comes as national elections officials and experts caution that outdated systems may be compromised by cyber attackers who may find weak points to enter local and state systems, though they are disconnected from each other. Originally introduced in April, LaRose has increased from $89 million to $114.5 million the amount Senate Bill 135 would provide counties that buy new voting equipment. About $10 million would be drawn from the general revenue fund and the rest financed through borrowing via bond sales.

National: 1 State? 7 States? Uncertainty Persists About Russian Cyberattacks On U.S. Election | NPR

Even as Americans begin voting in the earliest 2018 midterm primaries, the public still doesn’t have solid answers about what happened to its election systems in 2016. Instead it has conflicting accounts and official denials. The latest example this week came from the Department of Homeland Security, which slammed a report by NBC News that said the intelligence community had evidence in early 2017 to believe Russian operatives compromised more state voter systems in 2016 than previously known. DHS said NBC’s story was “factually inaccurate and misleading” and stood by its previous assessment, that just one state, Illinois, had its system breached. NBC then slammed that response in a subsequent defense of its story, which quoted a former cyber-expert from the Obama administration, Michael Daniel, who said that when he was in the White House, it believed seven states had been compromised. What’s the real story? How serious were the Russian cyberattacks across the United States?

National: White House Has Given No Orders to Counter Russian Meddling, N.S.A. Chief Says | The New York Times

Faced with unrelenting interference in its election systems, the United States has not forced Russia to pay enough of a price to persuade President Vladimir V. Putin to stop meddling, a senior American intelligence official said on Tuesday. Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the departing head of the National Security Agency and the military’s Cyber Command, said that he was using the authorities he had to combat the Russian attacks. But under questioning during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he acknowledged that the White House had not asked his agencies — the main American spy and defense arms charged with conducting cyberoperations — to find ways to counter Moscow, or granted them new authorities to do so. “President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that there’s little price to pay and that therefore ‘I can continue this activity,’” said Admiral Rogers, who is set to retire in April. “Clearly what we have done hasn’t been enough.”

Georgia: Senate votes to switch elections to paper ballots | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Georgia Senate on Wednesday voted to approve a measure that would move the state from using digital to paper ballots during the state’s elections. The measure, Senate Bill 403, calls for the state to scrap its 16-year-old touch-screen voting system and replace it with a paper-based system. “This looks at replacing voting machines so that every single voter in our state’s vote that’s cast will be preserved,” said state Sen. Bruce Thompson, R-White, the bill’s sponsor. Currently, Georgia’s 27,000 touch screens leave no paper record of how people voted, making it impossible to audit elections for accuracy or to conduct verifiable recounts, lawmakers said. Legislators lately have begun to favor paper ballots because they can’t be hacked. 

Kansas: Kobach voting rights trial has national implications | Associated Press

A conservative Republican who has supported President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that millions of illegal votes cost Trump the popular vote in 2016 will have to prove Kansas has a problem with voter fraud if he’s to win a legal challenge to voter registration requirements he’s championed. The case headed to trial starting Tuesday has national implications for voting rights as Republicans pursue laws they say are aimed at preventing voter fraud but that critics contend disenfranchise minorities and college students who tend to vote Democratic and who may not have such documentation readily available. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is running for governor and was part of Trump’s now-disbanded commission on voter fraud , has long championed such laws and is defending a Kansas requirement that people present documentary proof of citizenship — such as a birth certificate, naturalization papers or a passport — when they register to vote.

Legislation: Lawmakers offer counties $114.5 million for voting machines | The Columbus Dispatch

Counties would get nearly $115 million in state money to replace aging voting machines in time for the 2019 election under a bill expected to pass the legislature this spring. Total funding largely matches the estimate of what it would cost to replace all voting machines in Ohio with the lowest cost paper-ballot machines known as optical scan. However, the bill by Sen. Frank LaRose, R-Hudson, allows counties to choose their own machines, whether they involve paper, more-expensive touch-screen machines known as DREs, or hybrid models. Franklin County could receive up to $13 million from the bill. The county Board of Elections plans to pick new voting machines by August, said spokesman Aaron Sellers. The board has estimated that new machines would cost $16 million to $30 million, depending on the type chosen. Franklin County has 4,735 voting machines now, and the board estimates it would purchase close to 5,000 if it goes with a similar system, Sellers said.

Pennsylvania: U.S. Supreme Court asks for responses to GOP bid to block new congressional map | Philadelphia Inquirer

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on Wednesday asked participants in a key Pennsylvania gerrymandering case to respond to a request from top Republican lawmakers that the nation’s highest court step in and block the new congressional map. State Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson) and House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the previous congressional map and imposing a new one. Alito gave participants in the case until 3 p.m. Monday to file responses to that request. He made a similar move a few weeks ago after Scarnati and Turzai filed essentially the same request to step in and stop the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from overturning the state’s congressional map drawn in 2011. In that first request, Alito also sought responses from the parties in the case before ultimately denying the request without comment and without referring it to the whole court.

Virginia: State Supreme Court Weighs ‘Compactness’ of Election Districts | Courthouse News

Lawyers for the Commonwealth of Virginia appeared before the state Supreme Court Thursday arguing that legislators are legally allowed to create electoral district maps — even if the districts are not as compact as critics would hope. The case originated with a challenge to state House and Senate district maps that were drawn in 2011 and 2012. The focus in the underlying lawsuit was on 11 districts that One Virginia 2021, a bipartisan fair elections group, claims are unwieldy and fail to comport with the notion of compactness enshrined in the state constitution.

Wisconsin: Governor Scott Walker sued for not calling special elections | Reuters

An pro-Democratic redistricting group headed by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sued Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, on Monday for declining to hold special elections for two vacant seats in the state legislature. The National Democratic Redistricting Committee alleged in the lawsuit filed in Dane County Circuit Court that Walker was violating the law and denying Wisconsin voters representation by leaving the elected offices unfilled until 2019. The seats, one in the state Assembly and the other in the state Senate, became vacant in December when two Republican lawmakers resigned to accept jobs in Walker’s administration.

Finland: Security fears delay roll-out of national e-voting system in Finland | Computer Weekly

Security concerns have re-emerged to further frustrate the Finnish government’s plans to launch a national e-voting system. But the country’s Ministry of Justice (MoJ) working group, which is leading the project, insists the venture is delayed rather than mothballed. Finland’s online e-voting project will now enter a problem-solving phase to identify advanced, effective and best practice solutions to protect a future e-voting system. … The MoJ estimates that the cost of launching and operating an e-voting system, based on a 15-year timespan, will be about €32m. But the risks attached to launching online voting in Finland currently outweigh its benefits, said Johanna Suurpää, chair of the MoJ’s e-voting working group (eVWG). “Our present position is that online voting should not be introduced in general elections as the risks are greater than the benefits,” said Suurpää. In its project feasibility report presented to the MoJ, the eVWG conceded that although a Finnish online e-voting system is technically possible, the technology available is not yet at a “sufficiently high level to meet all the requirements”.

Italy: Italy Is Having an Election. Most Italians Are Too Depressed to Care. | The New York Times

Like millions of young Italians, Elio Vagali confronts career options that range from minimal to nonexistent. At 29, he has cleaned homes, picked tangerines and lifted rocks — nearly always off the books, without the protections of a full-time contract. In a measure of his desperation, his dream employer is the dilapidated steel mill that dominates life in this fading city on the Ionian Sea. The complex has been blamed for a cancer cluster in the surrounding community. Yet to Mr. Vagali, it beckons like a portal to another life, one that means moving out of his parents’ apartment. Except the plant isn’t hiring. “You either know somebody, or you don’t get in,” he said bitterly. “There’s nothing here for me.” All of which helps explain why Mr. Vagali and much of the Italian electorate is either indifferent or contemptuous of the national election campaign that, on March 4, will determine who runs Europe’s fourth-largest economy.

National: Trump NSA pick says response to Russian election interference has fallen short | The Hill

President Trump’s choice to lead the National Security Agency (NSA) said Thursday that the United States’ response to Russian election interference has not been sufficient enough to change Moscow’s behavior. Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, nominated to lead both NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, was asked at his confirmation hearing whether he agreed with outgoing NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers’s statement that the response to Russian meddling in the 2016 election has not been strong enough. “It has not changed their behavior,” Nakasone told Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who asked the question.  Nakasone appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee two days after Rogers, who faced tough questions over the Trump administration’s response to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election during a hearing on the 2019 budget request for U.S. Cyber Command. Rogers heads that command in addition to the NSA.

National: The surprising consequence of lowering the voting age | The Washington Post

In November 2013, voters in Takoma Park, Md., made history. The city became the first place in the United States to grant 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in local elections. Since then at least one other community — neighboring Hyattsville, another suburb of Washington, D.C. — has followed that example. Activists have been campaigning for that right in communities across the country, from Memphis to Fresno, Calif. Fifteen states now allow 17-year-olds to vote in primaries for elections that will be held after they turn 18. There are two good reasons to reduce the voting age. First, it is likely to help young people establish the habit of voting lifelong. Second, as my recently published research shows, it makes their parents more likely to vote as well.

National: Mueller preparing charges against Russians who hacked Dem emails: report | The Hill

Special counsel Robert Mueller is preparing charges against Russians who hacked and leaked information designed to hurt Democrats in the 2016 presidential election, NBC News reported Thursday. The charges would center around Russian hackers who leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, according to NBC. Sources told NBC that the charges could be filed in the coming weeks or months, and could involve conspiracy statute and election law violations.