Virginia: ‘Why don’t they want us to vote?’ Felons cope with losing voting rights twice in Virginia | The Washington Post

Louise Benjamin, 48, looked forward to casting her first ever ballot in Virginia this November, after Gov. Terry McAuliffe restored her voting rights and those of more than 200,000 other convicted felons who had also completed their sentences. She saw voting as a chance for redemption after serving time for assault charges. Then, last week, the state Supreme Court decided she couldn’t vote after all. “I was so hurt. I couldn’t even believe it,” said Benjamin, after the state’s highest court ruled that McAuliffe had overstepped his authority by restoring voting rights en masse instead of on a case by case basis. “Why they don’t want us to vote?” Across the state, more than 13,000 ex-offenders who had registered to vote after McAuliffe signed his wholesale clemency order in April have been thrust into a kind of voting limbo. “They have felt like they just had their rights restored and before they could even savor that for long, here comes the court just swooping in and taking it all away again,” said Tram Nguyen, co-executive of New Virginia Majority which has been registering ex-offenders including Benjamin. “A lot of them are hearing the message that they don’t belong, they don’t deserve a voice.” The court directed the state elections commissioner, Edgardo Cortés, to cancel the registrations by Aug. 25 of the 13,000 felons and add their names to a list of prohibited voters.

Wisconsin: Judge strikes down voter ID, early voting laws | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Finding that Republican lawmakers had discriminated against minorities, a federal judge Friday struck down parts of Wisconsin’s voter ID law, limits on early voting and prohibitions on allowing people to vote early at multiple sites. With the presidential election less than four months away, GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel said he plans to appeal the sweeping decision by U.S. District Court Judge James Peterson. Peterson also turned back other election laws Republicans have put in place in recent years. “The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities,” U.S. District Judge James Peterson wrote. “To put it bluntly, Wisconsin’s strict version of voter ID law is a cure worse than the disease.”

Russia: Why would Russia interfere in the U.S. election? Because it sometimes works. | The Washington Post

Late last week, WikiLeaks released private emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. Experts suspect the documents were obtained by hackers affiliated with the Russian government. Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager has even charged that the Russians are trying to use the emails to help elect Donald Trump. Since then, people on the left and right have expressed outrage that a foreign government would seek to influence American politics. That furor is naive. Foreign governments have sought to shape other country’s politics before. The United States has honed interventions in other countries’ elections to something of an art form. They (we) do it because such interventions can succeed, especially if they find willing accomplices in the targeted country.

Venezuela: Government stalling recall vote to keep power, opposition claims | The Guardian

Venezuela’s opposition has demanded authorities move forward on a a referendum to force Nicolás Maduro from office, amid complaints that the government is digging in its heels to delay the process. Groups of opposition members attempted to march to the headquarters of the National Electoral Council (CNE) in Caracas to demand it set a date by which they would have to collect signatures of nearly 4 million voters to trigger a presidential recall. Police and national guard barricades blocked the way, leading marchers to retreat. “We did not come to confront the police, just to demand a date for the 20%,” said Henrique Capriles, a leading opposition figure and former presidential candidate, referring the percentage of the electorate they would have. The CNE had been expected to announce on Tuesday whether referendum organizers had managed to collect enough valid signatures – 1% of the electorate – to put a process in motion to force a recall vote on Maduro. But late on Tuesday, officials said they would meet on 1 August to further discuss the issue.

National: Hackers are putting U.S. election at risk | Bruce Schneier/CNN

Russia has attacked the U.S. in cyberspace in an attempt to influence our national election, many experts have concluded. We need to take this national security threat seriously and both respond and defend, despite the partisan nature of this particular attack. There is virtually no debate about that, either from the technical experts who analyzed the attack last month or the FBI which is analyzing it now. The hackers have already released DNC emails and voicemails, and promise more data dumps. While their motivation remains unclear, they could continue to attack our election from now to November — and beyond. Like everything else in society, elections have gone digital. And just as we’ve seen cyberattacks affecting all aspects of society, we’re going to see them affecting elections as well. What happened to the DNC is an example of organizational doxing — the publishing of private information — an increasingly popular tactic against both government and private organizations. There are other ways to influence elections: denial-of-service attacks against candidate and party networks and websites, attacks against campaign workers and donors, attacks against voter rolls or election agencies, hacks of the candidate websites and social media accounts, and — the one that scares me the most — manipulation of our highly insecure but increasingly popular electronic voting machines.

National: Cutbacks to Poll Monitor Program Raise Voter Intimidation Fears | NBC

Thanks to Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act, a slew of restrictive voting laws will be in force this fall for the first time in a presidential election. But now the Shelby ruling is putting voting rights at risk in a whole new way: Citing the ruling, the Justice Department recently announced that it would significantly reduce the number of federal observers that it deploys at polling places to guard against voter suppression and intimidation. The impact of the cutbacks could be particularly severe this year, when several states will be asking poll workers to implement new voter ID laws, upping the chances that on-the-ground errors or other problems keep voters from the polls. Meanwhile, some voting rights advocates are critical of the Justice Department’s decision to reduce the number of monitors, saying it relies on an overly conservative reading of the Shelby decision.

National: FBI probes hacking of Democratic congressional group – sources | Reuters

The FBI is investigating a cyber attack against another U.S. Democratic Party group, which may be related to an earlier hack against the Democratic National Committee, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The previously unreported incident at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, and its potential ties to Russian hackers are likely to heighten accusations, so far unproven, that Moscow is trying to meddle in the U.S. presidential election campaign to help Republican nominee Donald Trump. Hacking of the party’s emails caused discord among Democrats at the party’s convention in Philadelphia to nominate Hillary Clinton as its presidential candidate. The newly disclosed breach at the DCCC may have been intended to gather information about donors, rather than to steal money, the sources said on Thursday.

National: Judge: First Amendment Protects Political Robocalls | Wall Street Journal

Political robocalls may be an irritating feature of modern campaigning, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve protection under the First Amendment, a federal judge ruled. A decision handed down Wednesday in Arkansas federal court struck down a state law passed 35 years ago that banned political robocalls. The statute restricted commercial robocalling and also made it unlawful to solicit information “in connection with a political campaign” using an automated phone system for dialing numbers and playing recorded messages. The restriction was challenged by a Virginia-based communications firm, Conquest Communications Group, which sought “to conduct automated telephone calls in the state, including surveys, messages concerning voting, express advocacy calls, and a variety of other calls made in connection with political campaigns.”

Editorials: After DNC hack, the case for paper ballots | Glenn Reynolds/USA Today

Somebody — probably, though not certainly, Vladimir Putin’s intelligence apparatus — has hacked the Democratic Committee’s email servers and released some of what it found via the Wikileaks site. As Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith notes, this is something new: Although meddling in foreign elections is old stuff for intelligence agencies (including our own), this sort of email release is unprecedented. As disruptive as the DNC email release has been, there’s room for something much worse: A foreign government could hack voting machines, shut down election computers, or delete or alter voter registration information, turning Election Day into a snarled mess and calling the results into question regardless of who wins. Worse yet, hackers are already working on this. Voting systems rely on trust. Voters have to trust that their own vote is recorded and counted accurately; they also have to trust that the overall count is accurate, and that only eligible voters are allowed to vote. (When an ineligible voter casts a vote, it cancels out the vote of a legitimate voter every bit as much as if his or her ballot had simply been shredded.) The problem is that electronic systems — much less the Internet-based systems that some people are talking about moving to — can’t possibly provide that degree of reliability. They’re too easy to hack, and alterations are too easy to conceal. If the powers-that-be can’t protect confidential emails, or government employees’ security information, then they can’t guarantee the sanctity of voting systems.

Editorials: Did Putin Try to Steal an American Election? | Nicholas Kristof/The New York Times

Some foreign leaders settle for stealing billions of dollars. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, may have wanted to steal something even more valuable: an American presidential election. As our election takes a turn that could be drawn from a Cold War spy novel (except it would be too implausible), Putin has an obvious favorite in the race: Donald Trump. “It’s crystal clear to me” that Putin favors Trump, says Michael McFaul, a Stanford professor who was ambassador to Russia until 2014. “If I were Putin, I would rather deal with Trump, too, given the things he has said about foreign policy.” Look, Democratic Party leaders exchanged inappropriate emails showing bias for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, and a hacker’s disclosure has properly triggered a ruckus. But that scandal pales beside an effort apparently by a foreign dictatorship to disrupt an American presidential election. It also seems scandalous to me that Trump on Wednesday effectively invited Russia to hack into Clinton’s computers for deleted emails from when she was secretary of state, saying at a press conference, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” Yes, Trump is entertaining. But increasingly, the antonym of “gravitas” is “Trump.” Clinton could have responded by inviting Russia to hack into Trump’s computers and release his tax returns; she didn’t because the hack would be illegal and her plea would be unpresidential.

Voting Blogs: With clock ticking elections officials faced with known unknowns | electionlineWeekly

With legal action pending or recently decided, but certainly not settled and with the clock ticking until the November 8 general election — and some primaries yet to happen — elections officials in several states are faced with some looming known unknowns. For example, in Texas and Wisconsin, it’s voter ID. In Virginia it’s voting rights restoration. In Ohio it’s voter purges. In Kansas it’s a dual-system for voters with proof-of-citizenship and those without. And in North Carolina, it’s a bit of everything — ID, same-day registration, early voting. “The nature of our job is to adapt to constant change,” said Sharon Wolters, Smith County, Kansas clerk and current president of the Kansas County Clerks and Elections Officials Association. “We expect it and work together to give ideas that will facilitate the changes in the most efficient way possible.”

Japan: Tokyo turmoil: race to rule world’s largest city mired in sex scandal and misogyny | The Guardian

It is a race to take charge of the world’s largest city – a metropolis with a population more than half the size of the United Kingdom and with a GDP greater than all but 10 countries. But the election for the post of governor of Tokyo has piqued interest not only because of the size of the task which falls to its victor, but also for the mud slinging and misogyny which has characterised the fight between the candidates. Voters in Tokyo will go to the polls on Sunday amid a campaign marred by events that some say highlights the worst of Japan’s male-dominated politics. The winner will take over after the two previous incumbents resigned in disgrace, and is tasked with overseeing the 2020 Olympics, coming up with ways to offset problems caused by the capital’s rapidly ageing population, and providing better child care services. It is a weighty job serving approximately 37 million people in the Tokyo metro area and a record 21 candidates are running.

Alabama: Merrill initiates program to increase voter registration | Alabama Today

More Alabamians will be voting in the upcoming municipal elections and the general election in November if Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill has anything to do with it. Merrill announced Thursday approximately 1.2 million eligible Alabamians who either are not registered to vote or in need of updating voter registration information will receive a Mail-In Voter Registration Application thanks to the state’s new partnership with the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). ERIC — whose sole mission is assisting states to improve the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increase access to voter registration for all eligible citizens — will identify eligible citizens who are not yet registered to vote using a combination of public and private data to more accurately identify voters who have moved or died allowing voter rolls to be appropriately updated. Current, unregistered Alabama residents will receive a voter registration application in the mail from the secretary of state’s office following identification by ERIC.

Kansas: Court case could open primary elections to thousands of new voters | The Wichita Eagle

A Shawnee County judge will decide whether thousands can vote in state and local elections when Kansas holds its primaries next week. Judge Larry Hendricks will review Friday whether Secretary of State Kris Kobach has the authority to set up a dual voting system. A state board approved a new rule earlier this month to allow people who registered at DMV offices to vote in federal elections even if they failed to provide proof of citizenship as required by Kansas law. The rule is meant to put the state in compliance with a recent ruling by a federal judge to let these voters vote under the federal “motor-voter” law.

Montana: State Supreme Court asked to remove Montana ballot issue | Billings Gazette

Montana’s Supreme Court is being asked to strike a ballot issue that commits Montanans to spending $200 million on medical research. The Montana Taxpayers Association and others say Initiative I-181 is unconstitutional because it commits public money to a private group not under control of the state. Slated for the November ballot, the initiative would commit Montanans to providing $20 million in bonds each year for 10 years for medical research. A research board would determine who received the money. The state would not have a return on investment for any successful research. “This method is bad public policy, bonding for programs,” said Bob Story of MonTax. “If you want to bond to build assets, that’s one thing, but if you want to bond for basically a spending program.”

Editorials: Why Make It So Hard to Vote, New York? | The New York Times

In the last few years, many states have tried to make it easier for people to vote. New York is not one of them. As a result, millions of New Yorkers fail to make it to the polls on Election Day. In 2014, barely more than one in four eligible voters actually voted — the fourth-lowest rate in the country. Voters did a little better in this year’s presidential primary, but the numbers were still abysmal. Here are some of the ways New York’s lawmakers make it harder than necessary to cast a ballot. In New York, there is no early voting in person — elections are held on one workday, usually a Tuesday, and that’s it. Absentee ballots are a pain — voters have to claim they will be out of town or unable to appear “because of illness or physical disability.” The boards that run elections have barely acknowledged the arrival of the computer, let alone the internet. Anyone who votes in New York City, for example, must first sign a large paper ledger that looks like something from the Smithsonian archives. Attempts to move to computerized voting lists — like other efforts to modernize the system — have too often stalled in Albany because incumbents want to preserve the system that got them elected.

Ohio: Are you still registered to vote? A court fight might decide | Cincinnati Enquirer

Ohio voters who haven’t cast a ballot in the past six years could be out of luck if they go back to the polls in November. The state is preparing to purge voter registration rolls of everyone who hasn’t voted since 2010, unless they’ve updated their registration or responded to queries seeking to confirm their address. Opponents of the annual purge went to court Wednesday in Cincinnati to stop it, arguing it could violate the rights of tens of thousands of Ohioans who should be eligible to vote. As always in an election year, the stakes are especially high in Ohio. The swing state could be crucial in a close presidential election this fall, and partisans on both sides are closely watching the case. Adding to the drama is uncertainty over the fate of voters who already have been purged from the rolls, including those who last voted in 2008, the year Barack Obama first won the presidency.

Botswana: Indian company may grab electronic voting tender | Mmegi Online

Various stakeholders, including political parties, analysts and the media, joined Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) officials to sample the stand-alone electronic vote machine, which is expected to be debuted at the 2019 general elections. To avoid disruptions during the power cuts, the machines use batteries, and are not connected to a data network. The portable and light machine allows a voter to first check if they have voted for a party of their choice before selecting a candidate by pressing a button. While several companies were invited to demonstrate their own voting machines yesterday, only Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) turned up, with analysts saying this placed the Indian company in poll position for the tender to supply the machines. BEL machines are already in use in Namibia, one of the few African countries using electronic voting.

Sao Tome and Principe: Runoff vote confirmed for August 7 despite row | Daily Mail Online

The government of Sao Tome and Principe on Thursday fixed the second round of a presidential election for August 7 despite unrest after a challenge to the first-round result. The ruling party candidate and former prime minister Evaristo Carvalho appeared to have scraped past the required 50-percent mark needed for an outright win in the July 17 poll. But incumbent Manuel Pinto da Costa challenged the outcome and election officials in Africa’s second smallest state called a second round after revising Carvalho’s tally to 49.8 percent and 24.83 for Da Costa, the candidate of Prime Minister Patrice Trovoada. Carvalho, standing for the Independent Democratic Action party, had initially been credited with a 50.2 percent score.

Spain: Separatist movement in Catalonia steps up battle with Madrid | The Guardian

The separatist movement in Catalonia’s parliament has escalated its battle with Madrid after it defied Spain’s constitutional court by debating a controversial pro-independence roadmap, and the region’s president announced a confidence vote to consolidate the move towards sovereignty. The angry, last-minute debate – in which the pro-independence Together for Yes coalition and the smaller, far-left Popular Unity Candidacy secured approval for the unilateral disconnection plan by 72 votes to 11 – represents another open challenge to the Spanish judiciary and to Spain’s acting prime minister, Mariano Rajoy. It also provoked a furious reaction in the Catalan parliament from Ciudadanos and Popular party MPs who left the chamber rather than take part in a vote they described as “illegal” and flagrantly undemocratic. One Ciudadanos MP accused the separatist faction of “wanting to take us not only out of Spain and the EU, but out of the 21st century and modern democracy”. However, the president of the Catalan parliament, Together for Yes’s Carme Forcadell, insisted the parliament was exercising its sovereign rights.

Thailand: Future Hinges on a Controversial Political Referendum | Time Magazine

Thais head to the polls next week to vote in a referendum designed to breathe life into what has become a stagnant democratic process. An affirmative vote on Aug. 7 will see Thailand adopt a new constitution — its twentieth since 1932. Junta leader Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, who seized power in 2014, has promised general elections next year — but not before a fresh constitution is adopted. But that next step is by no means a fait accompli for, once again, Thailand is polarized as many fear that Prayuth and his cadres are getting a little too comfortable in the government’s shoes. While there are undoubtedly some who approve of the substance of the draft charter, which was painstakingly drawn up by a military-appointed committee, millions of disillusioned Thai citizens just want to see the wheels of democracy moving again.

National: Trump Asks Russia to Dig Up Hillary’s Emails in Unprecedented Remarks | Wired

Donald Trump’s Schadenfreude in the DNC’s embarrassing email leak is standard practice in America’s messy electoral politics. Today, though, his casual request that Russian hackers dig up Hillary Clinton’s emails—sent while she was U.S. Secretary of State—for his own political gain has sparked a new level of outrage among cybersecurity experts. As the controversy continues to swirl around a likely-Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee, Trump responded to a reporter’s question at a press conference Wednesday by inviting Russia to do him another favor: collect and leak the emails that Clinton deleted from the private server she ran during her time as Secretary of State. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you’ll be rewarded mightily by our press,” he said. He later circled back to the same theme, telling reporters that “If Russia or China or any other country has those emails, to be honest with you, I’d love to see them.” Some have dismissed the comment as a joke, though his repetition of the request seemed sincere. Either way, Trump’s comments represent a dangerous first, according to amazed members of the cybersecurity community: A politician actively soliciting political help from foreign government hackers.

National: Why millions of American voters have been wiped off the electoral roll | Telegraph

There is a scene in the most recent series of Veep – an American spin off from The Thick of It – where the Republicans and Democrats are haggling in court over whether to carry on counting presidential election votes in Nevada. Of course this is pretty much what happened in 2000 when the world waited for the United States to decide who actually won the election after the hanging chads fiasco. Even ahead of a vote being cast in November, there are signs that the election will not just be fought in the court of pubic opinion, but ordinary law courts as well. If 2000 was messy, it was but an amuse bouche for what is happening at the moment. The seeds were sown by the Supreme Court in 2013 when it effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act, regarded by many as the crowning achievement of LBJ. Prior to the ruling, states deemed to have a history of voter discrimination – a polite way of saying stopping blacks from voting in the deep South up to the 1960s – had to get federal clearance before changing electoral laws. This was swept away by the Supreme Court and a number of states are tightening up their legislation.

Arkansas: Officials Attempt To Verify Voting Status Of Thousands Marked As Felons | KUAR

County clerks around Arkansas are working to determine exactly how many registered voters may have been incorrectly flagged as felons after the state Secretary of State’s office updated a computerized record-keeping system. Pulaski County Clerk Larry Crane says about half of nearly 2,000 registered voters in the county who were recently flagged under the new system either should be allowed to vote or have an indeterminate status. The number will vary by county, he says, and each county may have to take a different approach to correct the problem. “Some [county clerks] will be more effective than others. Some will have better records than others on what has been done with the people in their county before. Some will choose simply to send a letter to everyone on their list and say you’ve been identified as a felon and if you’re not, you’ve got to find the information to prove that you’re not,” he says.

California: San Francisco counters Trump rhetoric with move for non-citizen local voting | The Guardian

Politicians in San Francisco are hoping that a backlash to Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric will motivate local voters to move in the opposite direction and grant non-citizens the right to vote. An amendment to the city charter will be placed on the ballot in November to allow the parents and guardians of schoolchildren – citizen or non, documented or undocumented – to vote in school board elections, following a 10-1 vote by the board of supervisors on Tuesday. “San Francisco always goes against the grain when there are assaults on people’s liberties,” said supervisor Eric Mar, who sponsored the proposal. “This is about fairness and equity, providing an opportunity for all parents to have a voice.” This will be San Francisco voters’ third chance to approve such a measure, after unsuccessful efforts in 2004 and 2010.

District of Columbia: D.C. mayor pushes statehood issue at Democratic National Convention | The Washington Post

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, speaking Tuesday at the Democratic National Convention, confidently predicted victory — and soon — in the District’s four-decade fight for statehood. Bowser used the few moments she was allotted to address the convention to publicly demand greater support for the cause from fellow Democrats. The mayor also made clear that she expects Hillary Clinton to fulfill her pledge to be a vocal advocate for D.C. statehood if she wins the presidency in November. Taking the microphone to announce D.C. Democrats’ overwhelming vote for Clinton to be the party’s nominee, Bowser introduced herself as mayor of “the best city in the world, and soon to be the 51st state of our great union.”

Kansas: House candidate seeks grand jury investigation into Kobach | The Wichita Eagle

A candidate for the Kansas House wants to convene a grand jury to investigate Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Steven X. Davis, a Democratic candidate for the Kansas House from Lawrence, filed a petition with the Douglas Country District Court to summon a grand jury to investigate whether the secretary of state’s office committed election fraud in 2014. Davis, who is challenging incumbent Rep. Barbara Ballard, D-Lawrence, in House District 44, said the secretary of state’s office may have intentionally failed to register voters who had tried to register through the state’s online system during the last election, even if they provided proof of citizenship documents as required by Kansas law.

Ohio: Justice Department Join Suit Over Ohio Voter Registration Purge | Cleveland Scene

The groups trying to undo the state’s purge of tens of thousands of Ohioans from voter rolls because of failing to vote or confirm home addresses have a powerful new ally in their court fight — the U.S. Justice Department. The legal battle erupted in April when the Ohio A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless filed suit in federal court in Columbus. It challenged Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s move to revoke the registrations of an unspecified number of residents because they didn’t respond to address verification requests or hadn’t voted in four years. U.S. District Judge George Smith upheld Husted’s actions on June 29. The plaintiffs, who are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio and the public policy group Demos, appealed to the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

Canada: Studies show few differences among voting systems | iPolitics

Though the special committee on electoral reform will make recommendations on a number of subjects — online and mandatory voting among them — it’s the decision on whether to switch to a proportional voting system that’s paramount, Université de Montréal political science professor André Blais told the committee Wednesday. “I will argue that the most important decision you have to make is whether to adopt some form of PR or not,” Blais told members. Reluctant to state his personal preference, Blais instead used his committee appearance to present the results of his extensive empirical research comparing outcomes under proportional and majoritarian systems, such as single member plurality or first-past-the-post system currently used in Canada. More specifically, he described the results of four studies he did with other researchers and gave the committee five conclusions they could apply in their deliberations. The studies controlled for a number of factors, but Blais stressed there’s no causal certainty and that that they didn’t look at specific systems.