National: Voting Rights Hang in the Balance This November | NBC

Wednesday’s Supreme Court deadlock ensured that North Carolina’s restrictive voting law won’t be in force for the November election. But it also underlined that the court’s four conservatives appear wedded to a strikingly limited approach to protecting access to the ballot. And it made clearer than ever that the future of voting rights in America will likely be determined by the court’s ninth justice—and therefore by the winner of the presidential election. In a 4-4 ruling that included no explanation, the high court rejected North Carolina’s bid to reinstate its photo ID requirement, its cuts to early voting, and its elimination of a popular pre-registration program for high-school students. All those provisions of the state’s voting law, and others, were blocked by a federal appeals court panel in July. The decision wasn’t a surprise. More notable was that three of the court’s conservatives—Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito—would have granted North Carolina’s request to put the ID requirement and the early voting cuts back into effect. The fourth conservative, Justice Clarence Thomas, would have done so for all three provisions at issue.

National: FEC Asks God and Satan to Prove They Exist | The Atlantic

The Federal Election Commission has a few questions for God, Satan, and the Ghost of Ronald Reagan, all of whom have filed paperwork to run for office this election cycle. This implausible scenario is part of a policy aimed at dealing with an influx of suspicious-sounding presidential candidate names. It’s relatively easy to register as a presidential candidate, and during the 2016 election plenty of people seem to be taking advantage of that. As a result, the federal agency is now asking whoever filed paperwork to run for president under the names “God,” “Satan,” and “Ronald Reagan’s Ghost” to prove they actually exist. “It has come to the attention of the Federal Election Commission that you may have failed to include an accurate candidate name,” a letter sent by the commission to “H. Majesty Satan Lord of Underworld Prince of Darkness!” in College Station, Texas dated August 31, 2016 reads. “The Commission requires the filing to be true, correct and complete,” the letter warns, adding that “knowingly and willfully making any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation to a federal government agency, including the Federal Election Commission, is punishable.”

National: Want to dial for Donald Trump? First, sign this legal form | Cincinnati Enquirer

Online volunteers seeking to help Donald Trump by making phone calls might be signing up for more than they bargained for. To sign up on Trump’s website, potential volunteers must agree to a 2,271-word non-disclosure agreement in which they also promise they won’t compete against or say anything bad about Trump, his company, his family members or products – now and forever. The agreement is a required part of the sign-up process for Trump Red Dialer, an online call system that connects volunteers for the Republican presidential candidate with potential voters. Earlier this year, volunteers for Trump in New York had to sign non-disclosure agreements in person before making phone calls at Trump Tower. But the website requirement is the first indication that online volunteers must also sign the form, even if they’ll never meet a Trump family member, attend a Trump rally, meet a campaign staffer in person or step inside a Trump campaign office.

National: Controversial anti-voter fraud program risks disenfranchising voters through racial bias, report finds | Facing South

Back in 2005, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — who as chair of his state’s Republican Party championed an illegal voter suppression technique called “caging” — launched a program called Interstate Crosscheck to compare voter registration data across states and ferret out evidence of double voting. The program has since expanded to 30 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), but it’s been controversial from the start. For one thing, it’s resulted in very few actual cases of fraud being referred for prosecution, as alleged cases of double voting in multiple states turned out to be clerical and other errors. One tally found that while the program has flagged 7.2 million possible double registrants, no more than four have actually been charged with deliberate double registration or double voting. Meanwhile, some states including Florida dropped out of the program due to doubts about the reliability of its data — though others, including the swing state of North Carolina, joined despite those issues.

Kansas: Courts Will Rule Whether Thousands of Kansas Residents Can Vote | News21

For years, Kris Kobach has fought against illegal immigration. He helped write two of the nation’s most strict immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama and helped develop a now-defunct national immigration security system. Now Kobach, the Republican secretary of state for Kansas, is embroiled in court fights over his repeated attempts to require Kansans to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote. Although he has repeatedly lost in court, one case that remains open will determine whether thousands of Kansans will be able to vote in November’s local and state elections. The saga began in 2011 when Kansas passed the Secure and Fair Elections Act. The law, written by Kobach, requires those registering to vote after Jan. 1, 2013, to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a birth certificate or a passport. … In September 2013, the ACLU sued Kobach, contending that the proof of citizenship requirement split Kansas voters into two “separate and unequal classes.” In June 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not require proof of citizenship for people who register using the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s national mail voter registration form. Kobach was allowing those who registered in Kansas with proof of citizenship to vote in all elections, but prohibited those who registered with the EAC form – without proof of citizenship – from voting in state and local elections in Kansas.

Michigan: Straight-ticket voting likely after court loss | The Detroit News

Michigan voters would continue to have the option to cast a straight-ticket ballot this fall under a Thursday ruling from the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The federal appeals court denied Secretary of State Ruth Johnson’s request for an “en banc” hearing over a suspended state law that would eliminate straight-ticket voting, saying a majority of judges had not voted to reconsider a recent panel decision. The decision was bemoaned by Republican legislators, who approved the law on the grounds it would encourage a more informed electorate, but celebrated as a voting rights victory by Democrats who predicted the straight-ticket ban would have led to longer lines on Election Day. Detroit U.S. District Judge Gershwin A. Drain first struck down the straight-ticket ban in July, ruling it would reduce African-Americans’ opportunity to participate in the political process and put a disproportionate burden on African-Americans’ right to vote.

Rhode Island: Board of Elections fires embattled executive director Robert Kando | Providence Journal

With the primary election less than two weeks away, the state Board of Elections on Wednesday voted 4-to-2 to fire its controversy-prone — and twice suspended — executive director Robert Kando. After the vote, the chairman, Richard R. Dubois, told reporters: “There’s a history, but we’re moving because we want someone who is a little more innovative.” Effective immediately, he said, Bob Rapoza, the director of elections who took then-suspended Kando’s place during the presidential primary in April, would take charge as the acting executive director. “We just have to move on,” said Dubois, whose elevation to the chairmanship in June, along with the appointment by Governor Raimondo of two new members to the board broke the long-running stalemate over Kando’s future as the $145,994 a year head of the state board that presides over campaign-finance reporting, ballot counts and many other election-related activities.

South Carolina: Computer science professor says South Carolina voting machines vulnerable | WSPA

A USC Computer Science professor says South Carolina’s voter registration system and voting machines are vulnerable to hackers. Dr. Duncan Buell says South Carolina’s registration system is a possible target since it’s online. The FBI recently announced that Russian hackers had targeted the voter registration systems in Illinois and Arizona, with a hacker actually stealing the personal information of up to 200,000 voters in Illinois. The South Carolina State Election Commission says the voter registration system could be hacked, since it is online and anything online is vulnerable, but it has its own in-house computer security experts and works with vendors and the state’s computer security agency to protect the system. The Election Commission says the actual voting machines are much less vulnerable because they’re never connected to the internet or to each other. That doesn’t make them 100 percent safe, but it does lessen the chances of being hacked.

Virginia: Republican leader of Virginia Senate advances felon voting plan of his own | The Washington Post

A Republican state senator who sued Gov. Terry McAuliffe over the governor’s efforts to restore voting rights to felons filed legislation Thursday to automatically grant political rights to certain nonviolent criminals. Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City) filed the proposed constitutional amendment one day after he and other Republicans announced that they were taking McAuliffe (D) back to court over his latest attempt at rights restoration. Norment’s move seemed intended to push back against McAuliffe’s claim that Republicans had racist motives for opposing his voting-rights actions. But his plan triggered a fierce backlash from McAuliffe and other Democrats, who said it would close off any avenue for violent felons to vote ever again short of a gubernatorial pardon. GOP legislative leaders have said they objected to McAuliffe’s methods, which they and the state’s Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional.

China: Hong Kong election ballot papers at risk of tampering in the homes of officers | South China Morning Post

Critics have urged the government to improve the handling of ballot papers after it emerged that the documents were being stored in the homes of polling station officers prior to the election. News agency FactWire reported on Thursday that, according to a handbook issued by the Registration and Electoral Office, officers were allowed to take ballot papers back to their homes a week before the Legislative Council election on Sunday. The news report said the ballot papers were sealed in plastic bags after being counted and would only be opened on the day of the election.

Romania: Government calls general elections on Dec 11 | See News

Romania’s government said on Wednesday it decided to move forward to December 11 the date for regular parliamentary elections, fearing low turnout. The elections were initially to be held either on November 27 or December 4, a few days before or after the country’s national day, December 1, prompting concerns that many Romanians would be away on vacation. The government has allocated a total of 227.7 million lei ($57 million/51 million euro) to the organisation of the elections, it said in a statement. The pre-election campaign will run from November 11 to December 10.

National: FBI Chief Responds to Concern Over Cyberthreats to US Election System | ABC

The FBI has responded to recent concerns about U.S. voting systems being targeted for cyberattacks as Election Day approaches, saying the agency takes the threat “very, very seriously” and is working to “equip the rest of our government with options.” FBI Director James Comey addressed the issue while speaking to government and private-industry experts attending the Symantec Government Symposium in Washington, D.C. “We take very seriously any effort by any actor,” he said, “to influence the conduct of affairs in our country, whether that’s an election or something else.” His comments come one day after news surfaced about FBI warnings to the states that hackers had infiltrated one state board of election and targeted another.

National: Did Russia really hack U.S. election systems? | Foreign Policy

When an FBI alert to state election authorities warning them of hacking leaked to the media this week, the result was one of studied panic. Two voter registration databases in Arizona and Illinois had been penetrated, and some experts saw it as confirmation that Russia had escalated its campaign of hacking U.S. political organizations. Russian President Vladimir Putin just “unleashed the hounds” on the U.S. election system, one industry executive declared. So far, there is scant evidence that hackers working on behalf of Russian intelligence penetrated two fairly inconsequential voter databases in Arizona and Illinois. The FBI told election authorities in Arizona that Russian hackers were responsible for stealing a set of user credentials but provided no details about whether it was a criminal or state-sponsored group. In a letter to the FBI on Monday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid asked the bureau to investigate whether Russia is attempting to manipulate results of November’s elections. Russian efforts to do so are “more extensive than is widely known and may include the intent to falsify official election results,” he wrote.

National: White House Asks ‘Deception Committee’ to Study Russian Hacks | NBC

The committee traditionally has advised the DNI on foreign attempts to thwart U.S. intelligence through trickery. But in the cyber era, the committee has increasingly looked at how nation states use computer attacks to conduct espionage and spread propaganda. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran are primary subjects, the officials said. The consensus among U.S. intelligence analysts is that Russia is seeking to undermine confidence in the U.S. system, using the hacks into the Democratic National Committee, state election systems and other targets that have yet to be made public, as part of a larger campaign. Whether Russia can directly manipulate voting machines or “hack” into election systems, they say, is not clear and is mainly outside the jurisdiction of U.S. intelligence. Intelligence analysts are uncertain about the Russian government’s intentions relating to U.S. politics, but they don’t believe Russia is actively trying to favor Republican Donald Trump, as some have suggested. Instead, Russia may be trying to foment chaos. “Let’s just throw some spaghetti on the wall, and whatever sticks, sticks,” said one senior Congressional aide briefed on intelligence, describing a likely scenario.

Editorials: Ballot Measures: American Direct Democracy at Work | Josh Altic & Geoff Palay/The New York Times

Throughout our nation’s history, citizens and legislators alike have used ballot measures to shape public policy and public opinion in the states. This process of direct democracy has often proved more effective than the customary actions of a party, politician, interest group or deep-pocketed donor at addressing some of the most divisive topics in our history: including suffrage, prohibition, gay rights, the death penalty and marijuana. Despite their significant and lasting impact, ballot measures and the varied laws governing how they work can be daunting and complex. Which states allow the ballot initiative process? Not all do. Why are initiatives so popular in California, yet unavailable in New York? How do voters get measures placed on the ballot? None of this is simple or straightforward; in fact, many people now find the language used in these measures so confusing that they abstain from voting on them entirely. The origins of direct democracy in the United States date from the 1600s, when New England colonists debated and voted on ordinances and other issues during town hall meetings. This set the stage for legislative referrals, which, as their name implies, are measures referred to the ballot by a state legislature.

Editorials: A vote for low-tech elections | Washington Times

Someone has been hacking into voter registration databases and the FBI is on it. After James Comey’s blowing off the evidence collected by his agents of Hillary Clinton’s email crimes, however, there’s considerable cause to be afraid, very afraid, for the legitimacy of the November elections. With the push to make elections more convenient at the price of security, penetration by outside actors has become nearly inevitable. That means one key part of the election process, the actual casting of votes, should be kept offline. If marked electronic ballots can be hacked, Americans can’t help wondering whether an election can be stolen. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Arizona: Rollout of Arizona’s new election results website flops | Arizona Daily Sun

The Arizona secretary of state’s website repeatedly froze and crashed during the Tuesday primary, renewing criticism of the office over its struggles in running state elections. The website crash prevented the public from easily accessing primary election results and led to a host of comments blasting the office on Twitter. The new site was touted by Secretary of State Michele Reagan as a replacement for a glitch-prone website that also led to reporting delays in the 2012 and 2014 election cycles. Reagan spokesman Matt Roberts said early Tuesday evening that the office was prepared and had backup plans in place for the new system. A chagrined Roberts said late Tuesday that “we’re not completely sure as to what’s causing some of the slowness in the reporting.”

California: After recent national attacks, is California’s election system hacker-proof? | Press Enterprise

California elections officials are confident that the state’s voter data and election technology is secure enough to withstand cyber attacks such as those Russian hackers recently carried out against Arizona and Illinois. “We are agile and always evaluating and adapting our security posture to protect the confidentiality of voter data and to protect the integrity of our elections,” said Sam Mahood, a spokesman for California Secretary of State Alex Padilla. Mahood declined to provide specifics, but said there is no evidence of a successful hack of the state’s systems. “In California, voting systems – the equipment that you’ll see at polling places – cannot be connected to the Internet at any time,” Mahood said in an emailed statement. “All electronic voting systems must have a paper trail that can be audited.”

Florida: Broward state attorney reviewing how elections office posted results before polls closed | Miami Herald

When Broward County posted election results online before the polls closed Tuesday night, it was the election night screw-up seen around Florida. It is a felony to release results while voters are still casting ballots. Within a couple of hours, a vendor took full responsibility, but a chain of events was already in motion: On Tuesday night, the state elections chief, Ken Detzner, criticized the slip-up as “unacceptable” and called for an investigation — prompting the Broward state attorney to launch a review Wednesday. As the drama was unfolding in a warehouse at the Lauderhill Mall where Broward tabulates results, Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes coasted to a landslide victory over her Democratic primary opponent and deferred to the vendor to explain what went down. Despite the election website problems, experts say it’s unlikely that anyone will get charged with a crime.

Illinois: Quinn’s redistricting reform has own legal issues | Chicago Tribune

Former Gov. Pat Quinn thinks he knows how to get a redistricting ballot question past the Illinois Supreme Court. The Democrat, who lost his 2014 re-election bid to Republican Bruce Rauner, has been on a bit of a petition drive since becoming a private citizen. Until Tuesday, his focus had been local — he spent the summer soliciting Chicagoans for signatures to get mayoral term limits on a future ballot. Last week’s state Supreme Court decision to keep the Independent Maps group’s redistricting question off the Nov. 8 ballot created an opening for Quinn to again remind people that he led the only successful citizen-driven petition to change the state constitution — in 1980.

New Jersey: Are New Jersey Voting Machines Vulnerable to Hacking? | NJTV

“New Jersey’s definitely vulnerable,” said former FBI agent Manny Gomez. He means the statewide system of 11,000 computerized voting machines, where New Jerseyans will close the curtains and pick a president this November. It’s a network that hackers could break into, without even breaking a sweat, because these systems were designed for efficiency, not security, according to Gomez. “Jersey’s very vulnerable from foreign attacks or just some goofball sitting in his basement that has the skill set. It’s not that complicated to hack into a government entity these days,” he said. … “Election results can be altered through a hack and they can also be altered through human error. The problem with New Jersey’s voting machines is, there’s no way to check,” said RutgersProfessor Penny Venetis. Venetis says the AVCs contain no paper backup to verify votes cast, although that’s required by New Jersey law. She sued the state — which refused to replace the machines — but agreed not to connect them to the internet.

North Carolina: Supreme Court denies North Carolina appeal to enforce its voter ID rules | Los Angeles Times

The Supreme Court on Wednesday turned away an emergency appeal from North Carolina’s Republican leaders who were hoping to reinstate new voting rules that were struck down in July as racially biased. The justices said they were deadlocked 4-4 and would not intervene, leaving in place the state’s rules for casting ballots and early voting that were used before 2013. The vote split on ideological lines. The court’s decision is a victory for civil rights advocates and Obama administration lawyers who had challenged North Carolina’s rules as violating the Voting Rights Act. The outcome also may give a slight boost to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, who will need strong support from minority voters to prevail in November.

North Carolina: Supreme Court Blocks North Carolina From Restoring Strict Voting Law | The New York Times

A deadlocked Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to revive parts of a restrictive North Carolina voting law that a federal appeals court had struck down as an unconstitutional effort to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” The court was divided 4 to 4, with the court’s more conservative members voting to revive parts of the law. The court’s brief order included no reasoning. North Carolina’s law, which imposed an array of voting restrictions, including new voter identification requirements, was enacted by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature in 2013. It was part of a wave of voting restrictions enacted after a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision that effectively struck down a central part of the federal Voting Rights Act, weakening federal oversight of voting rights. Challenges to the laws have met with considerable success in recent months, and Wednesday’s development suggested that the current eight-member Supreme Court is not likely to undo those victories.

Texas: State Launches Voter Education Campaign Amid Scrutiny of Voter ID Law | The Texas Tribune

Texas on Wednesday kicked off a voter education campaign ahead of the November elections amid heightened scrutiny of the state’s voter ID law. Under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice and minority rights groups, the state is required to spend $2.5 million to educate voters about its voter ID requirements. Registered voters will be able to cast a ballot Nov. 8 without a photo ID under the agreement, which came weeks after a federal appeals court ruled that Texas’ 2011 voter identification law was discriminatory. The inaugural Vote Texas event on Wednesday, at which Secretary of State Carlos Cascos told students at the University of Texas at Austin to get into the habit of voting at a young age, was planned before the agreement, Cascos said.

Gabon: President Bongo re-elected, parliament set on fire | Reuters

Demonstrators in Gabon clashed with police and set part of the parliament building on fire on Wednesday amid anger among opposition supporters over President Ali Bongo’s re-election in polls that his main rival, Jean Ping, claimed to have won. Opposition members of the Central African oil producer’s electoral commission rejected Saturday’s first-past-the-post election result, which would see the Bongo family’s nearly half-century in power extended another seven years. France, the United States, and the European Union all urged calm on Wednesday and called upon Gabonese authorities to release the results of individual polling stations for greater transparency. Bongo won 49.80 percent of votes, compared to 48.23 percent for Ping, with a turnout of 59.46 percent, according to results announced region by region by Interior Minister Pacome Moubelet Boubeya.

Moldova: Seven candidates line up for Moldova’s presidential elections | BNE

Seven candidates had already been announced for the Moldovan presidential elections by August 31, the first day of the registration period. They include candidates from most of the main political groupings, and include four pro-EU candidates. There were no surprises, except maybe for the pro-EU parties’ failure to agree on a joint candidate for the October 30 election, giving an advantage to rivals like Socialist leader Igor Dodon and Dumitru Ciubasenco of Partidul Nostru. Six of the seven are already registered, and more may step forward by the end of the period, but none that will significantly change the overall picture.

Spain: Socialists to Vote Against Government, Raising Risk of New Election | Reuters

Spain’s Socialists will vote against the government of acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in a confidence vote on Wednesday, party leader Pedro Sanchez told parliament, potentially triggering the countdown to a third national election in a year. Spain has been without a functioning government since inconclusive elections in June and December and parties are under pressure to end a political deadlock which has stalled investment and cast a pall over an economic recovery. But, on Wednesday, Pedro Sanchez, the leader of the opposition Socialists, which trailed Rajoy’s centre-right People’s Party (PP) in both elections, has steadfastly refused to back Rajoy who needs his party’s support to form a coalition. “I will be very clear, the Socialist party will vote against your candidacy to the government for coherence and for the good of Spain,” Sanchez told the parliament on Wednesday.

National: Analysis: Could hackers tip an American election? You bet | Chicago Tribune

Reports this week of Russian intrusions into U.S. election systems have startled many voters, but computer experts are not surprised. They have long warned that Americans vote in a way that’s so insecure that hackers could change the outcome of races at the local, state and even national level. Multibillion-dollar investments in better election technology after the troubled 2000 presidential election count prompted widespread abandonment of flawed paper-based systems, such as punch ballots. But the rush to embrace electronic voting technology – and leave old-fashioned paper tallies behind – created new sets of vulnerabilities that have taken years to fix. “There are computers used in all points of the election process, and they can all be hacked,” said Princeton computer scientist Andrew Appel, an expert in voting technologies. “So we should work at all points in that system to see how we make them trustworthy even if they do get hacked.”

National: Democrats ask FBI: Did Donald Trump aides’ Russia connections lead to cyberattacks? | CBS

Top House Democrats are asking the FBI to investigate whether connections between Donald Trump’s campaign aides and Russian interests led to the cyberattacks at the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “We are writing to request that the FBI assess whether connections between Trump campaign officials and Russian interests may have contributed to these attacks in order to interfere with the U.S. presidential election,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter sent to FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday. The letter was signed by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee; Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee; Rep. Eliot Engel, D-New York, ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee.

National: Russia-Backed DNC Hackers Strike Washington Think Tanks | Defense One

Last week, one of the Russia-backed hacker groups that attacked Democratic computer networks also attacked several Russia-focused think tanks in Washington, D.C., Defense One has learned. The perpetrator is the group called COZY BEAR, or APT29, one of the two groups that cybersecurity company CrowdStrike blamed for the DNC hack, according to founder Dmitri Alperovitch. CrowdStrike discovered the attack on the DNC and provides security for the think tanks. Alperovitch said fewer than five organizations and 10 staffers researching Russia were hit by the “highly targeted operation.” He declined to detail which think tanks and researchers were hit, out of concern for his clients’ interests and to avoid revealing tools and techniques or other data to hackers. CrowdStrike alerted the organizations immediately after the company detected the breaches and intruders were unable to exfiltrate any information, Alperovitch said.