Hawaii: Lawmakers say mail-in voting could bolster Hawaii’s abysmal vote | Hawaii News Now

Hawaii has the lowest voter turnout rate in the nation, according to a recent study released by Nonprofit VOTE and the U.S. Elections Project. And that’s not a new distinction. The 2016 “America Goes to the Polls” report reveals this is the fifth presidential election in a row in which the state has ranked dead last for voter participation. According to the study, approximately 3 out of 5 eligible voters in Hawaii did not cast a ballot during the last presidential election. The voter turnout rate for the 2016 presidential election was 43 percent. How does that compare to other states or the rest of the country as a whole?

Missouri: Voter ID rollout begins amid questions about money and necessity | St. Louis Post-Dispatch

After more than a decade of trying, Republicans resurrected last year a measure to require photo IDs for Missouri voters. The Missouri Supreme Court had struck down the first attempt in 2006, finding the law abridged a fundamental right to vote for thousands without government-issued photo IDs. But before putting a new measure on the ballot last year, GOP supermajorities made some changes. Not only will non-driver license ID cards be free, the documents necessary to apply for them — such as birth certificates or marriage licenses — will be, too. And anyone who can’t get either can still vote with a utility bill, a paycheck or other form of ID accepted previously by signing a statement swearing they are who they say they are.

North Carolina: Local voters falsely accused of fraud seek changes in election protest process | News & Record

A group of residents have filed a letter with the State Board of Elections asking to change a process that’s used to dispute the validity of someone’s vote. Dozens of people in North Carolina were accused of illegally voting in the 2016 election — either by being a convicted felon who shouldn’t have voted, by voting in multiple states or by another means. Called an election protest, it can be filed by any registered voter or candidate, and simply must be done in writing with the accuser’s name, address, phone number and signature. It also must state the basis for the challenge. Guilford County had nine allegations of people voting in other states, said Charlie Collicutt, Guilford County Board of Elections director. Those protests were dismissed due to lack of evidence. Another eight protests involved allegations of convicted felons who voted, Collicutt said. Four were found to be valid. The other four were not; they involved people convicted of misdemeanors or who had served their sentences and re-registered to vote.

North Dakota: Lawmakers considering changes to the state’s voter ID laws | KFYR

North Dakota is the only state in the country without voter registration, which makes voting easier in theory. The American Civil Liberties Union, however, calls the state’s voter identification laws the most restrictive in the nation. The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians are suing the state over voter identification laws. In response, a federal judge told the state it must allow voters to fill out an affidavit to vote in the 2016 general election. Lawmakers argue these affidavits allow people to vote illegally by claiming they live where they don’t.

Texas: A backstory on the Texas redistricting ruling | San Antonio Express-News

Last week’s ruling by a three-judge panel in San Antonio that the Texas Legislature racially discriminated in drawing three congressional districts is being hailed as a major civil rights triumph in some legal quarters. “This is a huge victory for voting rights plaintiffs,” wrote nationally recognized elections law expert Richard Hasen in his Election Law blog. He predicted the 2-1 decision was unlikely to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court because “it closely tracks Justice (Anthony) Kennedy’s views of the issues in this area.”
Kennedy is often the swing vote on the closely divided court. Hasen said the ruling was especially important because it could lead to Texas once again being required to preclear redistricting and other election matters with the Justice Department, as it was before the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. This is because Judges Xavier Rodriguez and Orlando Garcia found intentional discrimination in the case.

Editorials: Texas Needs a Remedial Lesson on Voting Rights | The New York Times

In Texas, which has for decades made an art of violating the voting rights of minorities, officials and lawmakers can’t seem to keep their hands clean. Now, the state may become the first to have its voting practices placed under federal oversight since the Supreme Court struck down a central part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. A Federal District Court in San Antonio ruled on March 10 that the state’s Republican-led Legislature redrew congressional district lines in 2011 with the intent to dilute the voting power of Latino and black citizens, who tend to vote Democratic. In two districts — one encompassing parts of South and West Texas, and the other in the Dallas-Fort Worth area — the court found that mapmakers used various methods that violated the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act. In the former, a Latino-majority district, they broke up cohesive Latino areas, pulled in Latino voters with lower turnout rates while excluding those with higher turnout rates, and included more high-turnout white voters.

Ecuador: Right-Wing Banker Under Legal Investigation | teleSUR

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa announced Friday that right-wing presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso is under legal investigation by the country’s Internal Revenue Service, SRI, for illegal activities involving his offshore companies. On Thursday, Argentine investigative news agency Pagina 12 released an in-depth report revealing Lasso’s connection to 49 companies in offshore tax havens. The companies, based in Panama, the Cayman Islands and Delaware, have diverse names that hide Lasso’s identity.

East Timor: Long queues as East Timorese choose to have a say in future of Asia’s newest democracy | Sydney Morning Herald

They rode ponies, steered boats and walked for kilometres along cloud-shrouded mountain paths to vote in East Timor’s presidential election on Monday. The vote will be a key to the future of Asia’s newest democracy amid concerns the half-island nation’s oil and gas revenues are rapidly running dry. “I’m really happy … most of the eight candidates are good men who could help my country,” said Mateus Lucas, a 49-year-old father of three, who voted at a school in Dili. “I voted amid fear in 1999 but now I am free to vote for whoever I like,” he said, referring to a violence-hit United Nations referendum where Timorese voted to break away from Indonesia. The election is the first that East Timor has organised without the help from the UN.

India: Letters for 2 years, SOS to PM, Election Commission still awaits paper trail funds | The Indian Express

In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi four months ago, the Election Commission sought urgent release of funds to procure enough Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines to cover all polling stations ahead of the next Lok Sabha elections in 2019. The EC has sent over 10 reminders to the government on the matter, since June 2014, and the letter to Modi by Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi, on October 25, 2016, was an SOS of sorts. The CEC very rarely writes directly to the PM, with its communication to the government on electoral matters normally limited to Law and Home ministries. Several parties, including the BSP, Samajwadi Party and Aam Aadmi Party, have raised doubts about tampering of EVMs following the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand results. Before the 2014 general elections, the BJP had talked of EVM tampering on many occasions.

Indonesia: Visiting Indonesian lawmakers find Germany no longer implementing e-voting | The Jakarta Post

During its working visit to Germany, the special committee tasked with deliberating the election bill found that the country was no longer implementing e-voting because it was prone to hacking. The committee was on a controversial working visit to Germany and Mexico, from March 11 to 16. “We confirmed in Germany that e -voting is just as problematic. There is no supporting data and its prone to hacking,” committee member Johnny G. Plate said at the legislative complex in Senayan, as quoted by kompas.com on Monday.

Editorials: The great electronic voting machine debate: Convincing the losers that they lost | Poorvi L Vora/Scroll.in

Accusations about the tampering of Electronic Voting Machines continue to be in news. India’s EVMs have been carefully designed to avoid some of the well-known security problems with electronic voting machines in the West. But it is difficult to agree with Former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi’s assertion that all the Election Commission needs to do is double down and more forcefully insist that the EVMs are secure because that is what they believe. It is not about what insiders trust to be true about voting technology, but about what has been demonstrated to be true to the public about a particular election. Besides, no EVM, including the Indian ones, can be assumed to be invulnerable to a determined attacker. While India’s EVM design makes it harder to implement large-scale attacks, all EVMs do not have to be rigged. Machines judiciously chosen in constituencies that are more favorable to rigging, with the collusion of local individuals, after the random allocation described by Quraishi, could be sufficient. Additionally, in a country with a very efficient counterfeit mafia, we cannot expect that printed paper seals will always expose tampering efforts, because they can be replaced with counterfeit ones.

National: States scramble to replace aging machines | Associated Press

At least once a year, staffers in one of Texas’ largest election offices scour the web for a relic from a bygone technology era: Zip disks. The advanced version of the floppy disk that was cutting edge in the mid-1990s plays a vital role in tallying votes in Bexar County, where like other places around the U.S., money to replace antiquated voting equipment is scarce. “I’d be dead in the water without our technical support people looking online to buy the pieces and parts to keep us going,” said Jacque Callanen, elections administrator in the county that includes San Antonio and had 1 million-plus registered voters in the 2016 election. Purchased in 2002, Bexar County’s voting equipment is among the oldest in Texas. The Zip disks the county uses to help merge results and allow paper ballots to be tallied with final election totals are no longer manufactured, so staff members snap them up by the dozens off of eBay and Amazon.

Editorials: The Right Way to Investigate Russia’s Election Meddling | Carl Levin & John Warner/Politico

As Congress gears up to investigate Russia’s reported interference in American elections, precisely what form that inquiry will take is up for debate. But even at this early stage, one thing is clear: Whether it is done by the Intelligence Committees, a joint or select committee, or some other congressionally created framework, a vital goal of any such investigation must be bipartisanship. It’s not simply that an investigation must be conducted—from start to finish—in a bipartisan manner; it’s that history confirms that an investigation will be of value only if the American public perceives it as bipartisan. Indeed, some of the most important investigations Congress has ever conducted—the hearings on Watergate, Iran-Contra and the joint inquiry into the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001—made a real difference precisely because their bipartisan nature enabled them to get at the truth and gain the trust of the American people. Unfortunately, such bipartisanship will now pose a challenge.

Arizona: Judge throws out final challenge in 2012 Arizona redistricting case | Associated Press

A judge on Thursday dismissed the final challenge to Arizona’s congressional and legislative district maps drawn by an independent commission in 2012. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Roger Brodman dismissed the challenge to the congressional map brought by a group of voters following the adoption of the maps. The U.S. Supreme Court has previously upheld the legality of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission itself and the legislative district maps. Brodman rejected arguments that commissioners used improper procedures and illegally made decisions behind closed doors. He noted that it was important for him to rule because the appeals will likely take years and there are only two more general elections before the next mapmaking effort by a new commission.

Georgia: Advocates Call for Paper Ballots in Georgia Amid FBI Review | Associated Press

A group of technology experts said Tuesday that Georgia’s top elections officials should stop using electronic voting machines as the FBI reviews a suspected data breach. Secretary of State Brian Kemp and Kennesaw State University this month confirmed a federal investigation focused on the school’s Center for Election Systems. The center tests and certifies Georgia’s voting machines and electronic polling books used to check in voters at polling locations. Employees also format ballots for every election held in the state. The center isn’t part of Kemp’s office or connected to its networks, including Georgia’s database of registered voters maintained by the secretary of state’s office. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported the investigation into the suspected cyberattack. In a letter to Kemp on Tuesday, 20 technology experts and computer science professors affiliated with the national Verified Voting organization said paper ballots will preserve voters’ confidence in the results of an upcoming special election to fill Georgia’s 6th District congressional seat. The letter said using equipment maintained by the center while it is the focus of a criminal investigation “can raise deep concerns.”

Nevada: Democrats are trying to restore the voting rights of ex-felons | Reno Gazette-Journal

In November, more than 1.1 million people voted in Nevada for a turnout percentage of around 77 percent, but one group was barred from participating from the beginning. Voter disenfranchisement has been a hot topic in recent years, especially as more reports show certain laws affect minorities and low-income people disproportionately. Washoe County faced a voter disenfranchisement lawsuit in 2016 when the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe successfully sued for access to polling places. Now the discussion at the Legislature has shifted to making it easier for ex-felons to vote after serving their sentences. Current Nevada law allows first-time nonviolent ex-felons to have their voting rights restored after they serve their sentence or been discharged from parole or probation. A multiple offender must go through the judicial process to have their rights restored.

New Jersey: Lawmakers want to require ‘paper trail’ for voting machines | NJ.com

A group of state lawmakers wants to re-enforce an old requirement that voting machines in New Jersey produce a paper trail. A bill introduced in the state Assembly would require new voting machines purchased or leased after its passage to produce a paper record of each vote cast. A law passed more than a decade ago requiring hard copies of vote tallies was later suspended for lack of funding. The bill’s sponsors said in a statement that electronic machines that produce a paper record are now more widely commercially available.

North Carolina: Revamp of election board and ethics commission unconstitutional, judges rule | News & Observer

The N.C. General Assembly’s attempt to revamp the state elections board and ethics commission weeks before Democrat Roy Cooper was sworn in as the new governor violates the state Constitution, a three-judge panel ruled on Friday. The judges also found unconstitutional the legislature’s shift of managerial and policy-making employees from former Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration to positions where it’s more difficult to replace them. But the Republican-controlled General Assembly’s attempt to have a say in who joins Cooper’s Cabinet was not found to be a violation of the separation of powers clause in the state Constitution. To date, the state Senate has approved three of the appointments Cooper has made with hearings for others set for next week. The rulings from Superior Court Judges Jesse Caldwell, Todd Burke and Jeff Foster come nearly two weeks after a daylong hearing inside a Campbell University law school courtroom.

Virginia: McAuliffe vetoes bills he says could restrict voting rights | CNS

Gov. Terry McAuliffe on Wednesday vetoed a bill that he said could disenfranchise qualified voters but Republican legislators said could reduce voter fraud. HB 2343, sponsored by Del. Robert Bell, R-Charlottesville, would have required the state Department of Elections to provide local registrars with a list of voters who, according to data-matching systems, have been found to be registered in another state. … In a statement explaining his veto, McAuliffe said he believed the bill would have endangered the voting rights of some Virginians and increased the administrative burden on local governments. “This bill would invite confusion and increase the possibility of violating federal law,” McAuliffe said. “Moreover, it would expose eligible and properly registered Virginians to the risk of improper disenfranchisement.”

France: Election under high cyber threat | EUObserver

French authorities are on high alert to head off a cyber-attack that could affect the result of the upcoming presidential election.
Prime targets could be candidates’ websites and government networks. The threat was publicly recognised by president Francois Hollande, who accused Russia of trying to interfere in the campaign, ahead of the first round on 23 April and a run-off on 7 May. “Russia is using all of its means to influence public opinion,” he said in a recent interview to several European newspapers. “It is not the same ideology as in the time of the USSR, [but] it is sometimes the same methods, with more technology,” he said, adding that Russia had “a strategy of influence, of networks, with very conservative moral views”. … In early March, the government decided to ban electronic voting in June’s legislative elections for French voters abroad. Electronic voting was not planned for the presidential election itself.

India: Is banning electronic voting machines the solution? Should India follow The West? | Businessworld

Political leaders who lost the recent state elections – Mayawati and Harish Rawat among them have alleged the electronic voting machines were tampered with. Arvind Kejriwal too questioned the use of the electronic method of gathering votes. Now, Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi also seem to be indulging in the theory. Is there a possibility of rigging electoral outcomes in a general election to the Lok Sabha? This question has arisen not only because of the unexpected number of seats won or lost by some parties in the recent contest. It is accentuated by the recent news from many western nations doubting the integrity of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and bringing back the ‘old-fashioned ballot system’. Let’s look at the situation from a different angle. What is our idea of democracy based on? (1) Free and fair elections (2) Equal voting rights (3) Right to represent ourselves. Well, these and others would only stand straight if the vote gathering process is transparent enough for the citizens to believe in it.

Netherlands: Populists Appear to Fall Short in Dutch Election, Amid High Turnout | The New York Times

European populism faced its first big electoral test since last year’s “Brexit” referendum and Donald J. Trump’s election. Turnout was the highest in decades. The main exit poll indicated that the largest party in Parliament will remain the center-right party of Mark Rutte, the prime minister, with 31 of 150 seats. He has moved rightward in recent months, making tougher pronouncements on immigration but steering clear of the xenophobic and borderline racist statements of other parties. The far-right populist party of Geert Wilders gained seats, but did not perform as strongly as expected. Exit polls suggested that it was tied for second place with the conservative party Christian Democratic Appeal and the center-left pro-European party Democrats 66 — each with 19 seats. Also making a relatively strong showing were the left-leaning Greens, with 16 seats. The leftist, euroskeptic Socialist Party is projected to have 14 seats.

National: Trump, Sessions, Gorsuch and the New Battle Over Voting Rights | US News & World Report

When the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act four years ago, it gave the green light to state lawmakers eager to restrict access to the polls and eliminated the Justice Department’s role as traffic cop on whether those laws were necessary or appropriate. Activists then turned to the courts, with some success: Last year, federal judges struck down a North Carolina law mandating voters present a valid, government-issued photo ID at the polls, along with cutbacks on early voting, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the state’s appeal. While lawyers and civil rights leaders have won some big battles in fights over voter ID laws, diminished early voting and reductions in polling places, experts say the future of voting rights remains uncertain – due to changes in the political and legal landscape that swept in with President Donald Trump.

National: New report finds that voter turnout in 2016 topped 2012 | The Hill

More voters cast ballots in November’s elections than when President Obama won reelection in 2012, though the number of Americans who showed up to vote remains well below all-time highs set half a century ago. About 139 million Americans, or 60.2 percent of the voting-eligible population, cast a ballot in November’s elections, according to data compiled by the U.S. Elections Project. That compares with 58.6 percent of eligible voters who turned out in 2012, but it’s below the 62.2 percent who turned out to help elect Obama for the first time in 2008. Last year, President Trump won just shy of 63 million votes — enough to secure a majority of the Electoral College, even though he fell almost 3 million votes shy of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The states where Trump and Clinton battled most fiercely also tended to be those where voter turnout was highest. Nine of the 13 states where voter turnout was highest were battleground states.

Arizona: Senate Panel OKs Bill Targeting Voter Initiatives | Associated Press

An Arizona Senate panel dominated by Republicans rejected concerns from voting rights activists Thursday and advanced legislation that opponents say will make it harder to get citizen initiatives on the ballot. Proponents say the changes are needed to eliminate fraud in the signature gathering process required to qualify measures for the ballot. The bill makes it easier to challenge signatures and bars petition circulators from being paid per signature collected. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee approved House Bill 2404 on a 4-3 party-line vote. It has already passed the House, so approval by the full Senate would send it to Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s desk.

California: State’s electoral future is rooted in the old-fashioned absentee ballot | Los Angeles Times

For all of the intriguing ideas about improving California elections, there was one undeniable truth at a gathering last week of county officials and activists: The state’s 21st century voting will lean heavily on its greatest electoral innovation of 1864. That would be the absentee ballot. Call it reliable or anachronistic, but the do-it-yourself ballot is the foundation of voting reform in a state now on the cusp of 20 million registered voters. That revamping of elections begins next year in a handful of California counties, closing polling places in garages and schools while asking voters, like soldiers during the Civil War, to vote somewhere else. “Voters are looking for a choice,” said Neal Kelly, Orange County’s registrar at the event sponsored by the Future of California Elections, a nonprofit organization. “And they are looking for voting on their own terms.”

Georgia: Election officials reject advocacy groups’ call for paper ballots | Marietta Daily Journal

Georgia and Cobb election officials are rejecting calls from advocacy groups for voters to use paper ballots while the FBI investigates a data breach at Kennesaw State University. Voters will continue to use electronic voting machines during upcoming elections, said Candice Broce, spokesperson for Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp. The use of paper ballots is reserved as a backup system in case there is a problem with the voting machines, she said. Cobb voters will also use the voting machines in next week’s special elections for the 1 percent special purpose local option sales tax for education and the vacant Marietta school board Ward 6 seat, said Janine Eveler, director of Cobb elections. Earlier this month, KSU announced a federal investigation at the Center for Elections Systems located on the Kennesaw campus to determine if there was a data breach that might have affected the center’s records, according to Tammy DeMel, spokesperson for the university.

Georgia: Democrats turn to KSU for answers on voter data hack | Atlanta Journal Constitution

The Democratic Party of Georgia appealed to Kennesaw State University for details about an alleged breach of confidential data that could affect millions of Georgia voter records, after the state’s top elections official rebuffed a similar request. Party chair DuBose Porter demanded Thursday that KSU president Sam Olens reveal data about the extent of the attack, and urged him to accept help from the Department of Homeland Security to secure the elections infrastructure. The FBI launched an inquiry into the suspected cyberattack this month at the request of state officials after they received notice that records kept by the Center for Election Systems at KSU may have been compromised. State officials have released few details amid the pending investigation, and KSU didn’t immediately respond to Porter’s request.

Georgia: Senate Backs Voter-Registration Changes Opposed by Advocates | Associated Press

Information on voter-registration applications would have to exactly match state or federal databases to cast a ballot, under legislation backed by the Georgia Senate on Thursday. Advocacy groups and Democrats slammed the change, warning it will disproportionately affect minority voters and could be subject to legal challenges. Under the bill , people couldn’t be added to the voting rolls unless information on their application exactly matches records tied to their Georgia driver’s license or identification card or the last four digits of a Social Security Number. Without an exact match, people could only cast a provisional ballot and their application could be rejected after 26 months if they’re unable to resolve the conflict.