Editorials: Online Voting Is the Future — And It Could Lead to Absolute Disaster | Jack Smith IV/Mic

This year, we’re going to choose a new president. We’ll debate with disgruntled friends on Facebook, monitor every debate on Twitter and use Google to find polling places. And then, those of us who are willing to make the trek will drive, walk, carpool or take trains to small outposts in order to vote. It’s 2016. Why don’t we have an app on our smartphones that allows us to vote remotely and instantly? … What’s holding back online voting? In short, security risks. If we’ve learned anything from the past few years of cybersecurity scandals — like the Office of Personnel Management hack, the Sony Pictures Entertainment fiascoor the Ashley Madison breach — it’s that no digital system can be proven to be totally safe. There’s a common refrain that digital voting experts are tired of hearing: “If I can bank online, why can’t I vote online?” If the internet is safe enough to store our money, shop, file our taxes and perform other sensitive tasks, why can’t it be used to vote? The truth is, we don’t bank or shop safely online. Major retailers and banking systems deal with hacking, fraudulent charges and identity theft every day. Companies like Amazon are used to a small percentage of transactions being fraudulent. And when fraud occurs in a financial transaction, those problems can be fixed after the fact.

Editorials: Jolly’s smart shot at campaign finance reform | Tampa Bay Times

U.S. Rep. David Jolly has a big idea in a little four-page bill. The Indian Shores Republican wants to ban federal officeholders from directly seeking campaign contributions. It’s a long shot in an election-year Congress whose members are obsessed with raising money and self-preservation, but it is a serious proposal from a serious lawmaker that deserves careful consideration. Jolly takes a targeted, straightforward approach in the legislation he plans to roll out today. He argues that members of Congress spend far too much time raising money when they should be focused on governing, and there are plenty of statistics and examples that illustrate those skewed priorities. Incumbents from both parties calculate how many hours they have to spend on the phone raising money to keep their jobs, while this Congress has been one of the least productive in modern history.

Alabama: Lawmakers to push for ex-felon voting rights | The Anniston Star

A small group of Alabama officials is pushing for a clearer legal definition of “moral turpitude,” a change that could restore voting rights to some ex-felons. “When they’ve paid their fees and served their time, they ought to be integrated back into society,” said Secretary of State John Merrill. “Voting ought to be part of that.” Merrill on Wednesday will convene the last meeting of a task force he appointed to study voting rights of ex-felons, and the group is expected to vote on its recommendations for restoring the vote to some former prison inmates. Merrill can’t set the voting rules by himself, but he said he expects them to be filed as bills before the Alabama Legislature convenes next month.

District of Columbia: Old machines and missing dollars. Is D.C. ready for an election? | The Washington Post

Elections in the District have been handicapped by faulty voting machines, inadequate polling staff, inaccessible polling stations and delays in vote tallying. And yet it is unclear whether any of those problems will have been remedied by the time the District holds its next major election in six months. These are the concerns held by D.C. Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie and a handful of other close observers of the city’s election process who say the D.C. Board of Elections appears to have made no clear progress toward fixing its long-standing problems ahead of the June ­primary contests or addressed how the board has managed millions of dollars in federal funds. As of last week, a full month after board members testified before the D.C. Council that they were unaware of how much new voting machines would cost, the board still had not determined whether it can afford to purchase new ones or whether it will lease them. The potential lengthiness of the city’s procurement process also raises the question of ­whether the board will have enough time to test the machines and train election workers, if it does acquire new ones.

Illinois: Push on for automatic voter registration | Bloomington Pantagraph

A state lawmaker is renewing his push for automatic voter registration for eligible citizens when they obtain or renew a driver’s license or state ID. State Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, said the measure would remove barriers to the ballot box while saving money for state and local government. “€œThere are many, many reasons to implement this in Illinois,”€ Manar said at a Statehouse news conference this week.

Kansas: Judge rules Kris Kobach can’t operate two-tier election system in Kansas | The Kansas City Star

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach can’t operate a two-tier voting system that allows him to count only votes cast in federal races for voters who registered using a federal form, a state judge ruled Friday. “There’s just no authority for the way the secretary of state has handled federal form registrants,” said Doug Bonney of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, which represented plaintiffs in the case. Kobach championed a 2013 Kansas law that requires those registering to vote to provide proof-of-citizenship documents, typically a birth certificate or passport. But the federal registration form only requires a sworn statement from the voter as proof of citizenship.

Maine: Municipal clerks’ offices swamped under flood of referendum petitions | The Portland Press Herald

Maine’s town clerks are keeping busy verifying signatures for petitions aimed at getting referendum proposals onto the November ballot. And soon state election officials will kick into high gear, as well, to validate the petitions. The campaigns have until Friday to get signatures delivered to local clerks. Then the petitions must be delivered to state election officials by Feb. 1. Signature-gathering has been taking place for a number of proposals, including for marijuana legalization, background checks for firearm purchases, ranked-choice voting, higher minimum wage, school funding and a GOP income tax cut/welfare reform proposal. Each proposal needs to have 61,123 valid signatures of registered voters to advance.

Maryland: Veto-override battle begins Wednesday in Annapolis | The Washington Post

Maryland’s majority-Democrat House of Delegates will vote Wednesday on whether to overturn at least two of Gov. Larry Hogan’s vetoes, marking the first direct showdown between lawmakers and the Republican governor of the 2016 legislative session. The state Senate has delayed its override votes until Thursday, because two senators will be absent on Wednesday. Each chamber needs a three-fifths majority to override a veto. The House will decide whether to reinstate a bill that would require online hotel booking companies to collect sales tax for the entire cost of a hotel room in Howard County and give that full amount to the state, rather than keeping part of it as a service fee. It will also try to resurrect a measure that would provide $2 million for capital improvements to a performing arts hall in Annapolis.

Mississippi: Hosemann proposes ‘complete revision’ of election laws | Jackson Clarion-Ledger

Mississippians could register to vote online and begin voting 21 days before an election without an absentee excuse under a “complete revision” of election laws Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann is proposing to the Legislature. “It is time to address outdated and inefficient election laws which have, in some cases, been on the books for decades,” Hosemann said on Tuesday, releasing his proposals with a Capitol press conference. “These proposals make it easier to cast your ballot, harder for someone to cheat the electorate and provide severe penalties for those who do.” Hosemann recommends tougher, consolidated penalties for election-law crimes, which he noted are almost never prosecuted in part because they are not clearly defined or understood. His proposal would consolidate all election crimes and penalties, making them either misdemeanors with a maximum fine of $1,000 and a year in jail, or felonies with maximum $3,000 fines and up to two years in jail.

Missouri: Voter ID plan could be among most restrictive in the country | St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A Senate panel on Tuesday heard testimony on a proposal that would require voters to show a photo ID at the polls. The measure is similar to a proposal passed out of committee in the House. The bill and a separate resolution, if passed, would pose the question to voters this year in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment. In 2006, the state Supreme Court struck down a photo voter ID law, saying it infringed on the rights of voters. Sen. Will Kraus, R-Lee’s Summit, is sponsoring the bill and accompanying resolution in the Senate. Kraus is running for secretary of state.

Ohio: Will your mail-in vote count in the presidential primary? | Cleveland Plain Dealer

With presidential primary elections two months away, the U.S. Postal Service has yet to explain why nearly 9 percent of Summit County mail-in ballots were missing postmarks and had to be thrown out. And no one has come up with a solution for the future. The unusually high number of botched ballots led the Summit Board of Elections to subpoena postmasters to a hearing last month. While postal officials skipped the hearing, Ohio Secretary of State John Husted’s office has since taken up the issue statewide. During the last presidential election in 2012, more than one-third of Ohio voters mailed their ballots.

Bulgaria: Parliament to Debate Online Voting | Novinite

Bulgarian MPs are set to hold a debate on the introduction of online voting after a referendum in October showed strong support for the step. On Tuesday the Legal Affairs Committee with the Parliament backed a draft resolution according to which e-voting should only be enabled if vote secrecy, civic control on the electoral process and security of information systems are guaranteed under the law. Its decision leaves up to Parliament to discuss and decide on the introduction of online voting.

Haiti: Protesters vow to derail presidential vote; election offices burned | Reuters

Stone-throwing protesters took to the streets of Haiti’s capital on Monday to demand the suspension of a Jan. 24 presidential election over alleged irregularities, while in provincial areas unknown attackers burned several electoral offices. Haiti is due to hold a run-off vote backed by international donors on Sunday, but tensions have risen since opposition candidate Jude Celestin said last week he would withdraw, on grounds that electoral authorities favored the ruling party. Swiss-trained engineer Celestin, 53, came second in an October first round in the poor Caribbean nation, beaten by banana exporter Jovenel Moise, 47, the ruling party candidate.

Serbia: Vučić to resign, Serbia heads for early elections | New Europe

The Prime Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, announced on Sunday evening that he would be calling early elections in Serbia, B92 reports. That is only two years since the last legislative elections in March 2014. Following a meeting with his party’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) executive committee, Vučić argued that elections were necessary to resolve the current impasse of reforms. In fighting against a political-criminal power conglomerate, Vučić argued, his administration needs a new mandate that is resisting change for over a decade. He vowed to turn Serbia into an EU member state in which rule of law prevails by 2020. In the current parliament, SNS holds 158 seats in Serbia’s 250-seat parliament. SNS began as a junior coalition partner of the Socialist Party, before withdrawing their support and heading for the polls. Since, they have dominated the Serbian political landscape, which was traditionally fragmented.

Vanuatu: New voters to miss out in snap election | AFP

The Pacific island nation of Vanuatu goes to the polls Friday despite thousands of newly eligible voters being unable to cast a ballot in the snap election called after a corruption scandal rocked the government. A lack of time since the vote was called in late November meant the electoral rolls could not be updated, Electoral Commission chairman John Killion Taleo, told AFP Wednesday. Radio New Zealand reported Wednesday more than 3,000 young people were not on the electoral roll. Only the 200,159 people on the electoral roll last July will be allowed to cast a ballot. The 52-member parliament was dissolved in late November by President Baldwin Lonsdale after 14 lawmakers were jailed for bribery in the impoverished Pacific archipelago.

National: Hackers Are Sharing Reams of US Voter Data on the Dark Web | Motherboard

Alleged voting records of millions of American citizens have been uploaded to the dark web on a site affiliated with a well-known cybercrime forum. Although the information is not particularly sensitive in its own right, its presence on the site shows that even easily obtainable personal data can be of interest to hackers. The datasets appear to include voters’ full names, dates of birth, the date they registered to vote, addresses, local school districts, and several other pieces of information. The dumps also include voting records from previous elections and political affiliations. The two largest files are 1.2 GB and 1 GB, respectively, and each contain at least a million entries. The folder containing the files is called “US_Voter_DB,” though Motherboard could not independently verify the contents’ legitimacy. It’s not entirely clear where the data was sourced from. On December 28 last year, news site CSO Online reported that a database configuration issue had left 191 million voter records exposed to the open internet. That data was discovered by security researcher Christopher Vickery, who found his own personal information within the dump.

National: It May Be Time to Resolve the Meaning of ‘Natural Born’ | The New York Times

After he left Wall Street to enter politics eight years ago, Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, began fielding the occasional question of when he intended to run for president. “It has come up in jest any number of times,” said Mr. Himes, who always has his answer ready. “There could be constitutional questions.” Mr. Himes, you see, was born in Peru in 1966 while his father worked for the Ford Foundation. That makes him one of at least 17 current members of Congress who, because of their birth outside the United States, could run afoul of the Constitution’s “natural born citizen” presidential requirement should they try to relocate down Pennsylvania Avenue.

National: Unlikely Advocates Push To Give 16-Year-Olds A Vote | NPR

Turning 16 is considered a milestone. In many states, it means being able to drive, pay taxes and work like an adult. In Washington, D.C., 16-year-olds could soon take on another responsibility: the right to vote in a presidential election. Michelle Blackwell is helping lead the effort to enfranchise teenagers in the nation’s capital. But she’s not your typical Washington politico. In D.C., the 44-year-old is better known as one of the top go-go singers around. “Go-go is one of the indigenous genres of music — born right in this city,” says Blackwell of the percussive brand of funk music that originated in Washington in the late 1960s. But off stage, she’s now helping lead the effort to make D.C. the first jurisdiction to let 16-year-olds vote in federal elections.

Idaho: New bill would move up Idaho’s party affiliation deadline | Associated Press

Idaho voters seeking to change their political party affiliation before this year’s presidential primary election would be up against a tight deadline under new legislation introduced Monday. The bill, approved by the Senate State Affairs Committee through a voice vote, would cut off party affiliation changes on the second Friday of February. That would be Feb. 12 this year. The current deadline is March 12. Chief Deputy Secretary of State Tim Hurst says current law allows people to register as Republican during Idaho’s new March 8 presidential primary election and then switch to another party to vote under different affiliation in the May 17 primary for state and local offices.

Indiana: No more straight party ticket voting? | 21Alive

A proposal has resurfaced in the statehouse that could change the way you vote. This is the second year for the measure that would eliminate straight ticket voting. Straight ticket voting happens when you go to cast your ballot and push one button that allows you to vote for all the Republican, Democrat or Libertarian candidates in that election. Indiana is one of nine states to still allow straight ticket voting. Several state legislatures have eliminated the practice over the past few years.

Iowa: Presidential election ad wars: candidates flood $6.5m into Iowa TV market | The Guardian

Presidential candidates have spent $6.5m flooding just one small television market alone with more than 10,000 political commercials in the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses, the first votes of the 2016 election, according to a Guardian study. The exclusive analysis of regulatory filings by the four main commercial TV stations in Des Moines, Iowa, also reveals a sharp increase in the influence of rich donors on the race, with spending by Super Pacs – organizations independent of the candidates’ campaigns which, unlike the campaigns, may raise unlimited amounts of money from individual donors – now outstripping candidate expenditure by at least a third.

Maryland: Voting rights for felons spurs impassioned debate | Baltimore Sun

Robinette Barmer woke up in Baltimore last week with paralyzing arthritis, but she crawled out of bed anyway and kept moving until she was on the steps of the Maryland State House in Annapolis, shouting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at Maryland’s governor. Barmer, 60, and the crowd around her hoped to persuade the legislature to override what’s become the most contentious veto issued by Gov. Larry Hogan, one that canceled a law granting voting rights to felons more quickly. Currently, they have to first finish their probation or parole. Of the six bills Hogan, a Republican, vetoed last year, none faces tougher odds for an override than two that would give 40,000 felons the right to vote before their sentences are complete.

New York: Concerns of ‘Voter Fatigue’ as New York Schedules Four 2016 Election Days | Gotham Gazette

As New Yorkers begin a year of many voting opportunities, there are important questions that elections will help answer – like who the next U.S. President will be and which party will control the state Senate – but also concern about voter fatigue and thus, turnout. There will be at least four chances for New Yorkers to cast votes in 2016, with three different primary election days leading up to November’s general election. There will be a presidential primary vote in April; congressional primaries in June; and state legislative primaries in September. There will also be special elections sprinkled in to fill empty seats in the state Assembly and Senate.

Afghanistan: Panel Sets Election Date, Drawing Government Criticism | The New York Times

The Afghan election commission said Monday that it had set an Oct. 15 date for long-delayed parliamentary and district council elections. But the announcement immediately raised fears of new political deadlock after the country’s power-sharing government denounced the plan as illegitimate. In announcing the date, Ahmad Yousuf Nuristani, the chief of Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission, evidently did not coordinate with the government. And a spokesman for Abdullah Abdullah, the government’s chief executive, criticized the scheduling because the electoral reform he had demanded had not gone through. “The current election commission has no legitimacy because it was their weak management of the previous election that brought us on the brink of chaos,” said Javid Faisal, a spokesman for Mr. Abdullah. “Reforming the election process is a precondition to any election, and a part of the larger reform is the changing of current commission officials.”

Haiti: Several election offices attacked in Haiti as runoff nears | Associated Press

Stone-throwing demonstrators on Monday smashed car windows and set at least two vehicles ablaze in Haiti’s capital, hours after several electoral offices were attacked in northern towns as the country prepares for a Jan. 24 presidential and legislative runoff. Roughly 2,000 protesters took to the streets in downtown Port-au-Prince calling for new elections and the immediate removal of outgoing President Michel Martelly, among other grievances. Roads were blocked with flaming tire barricades and more than a dozen motorists had their cars pelted with rocks. A truck and an SUV were torched by young men near a police station. Police dispersed opposition protesters and cleared most roadblocks by late afternoon. Officers scattered some demonstrators with tear gas in the downtown slum of Bel Air, one of many impoverished areas where young people who’ve never held any kind of steady job are easy pickings for political actors looking for protesters for hire.

Macedonia: Parliament moves for April election that opposition says will boycott | Reuters

Macedonia’s parliament voted on Monday to dissolve itself as of Feb. 24, clearing the way to an early parliamentary election two months later that the opposition says it will boycott. The ruling VMRO-DPMNE moved ahead with plans to hold the poll on April 24, in line with a deal brokered by the European Union mid-last year to end a bitter standoff over allegations against the conservative government of illegal phone-tapping and widespread abuse of office. But the Social Democrats, the biggest opposition party, said they would not take part, effectively prolonging a political crisis that erupted in January 2015 when party leader Zoran Zaev began releasing a slew of damaging wire-taps.

Vanuatu: Thousands of Vanuatu youth denied chance to vote | Radio New Zealand

The president of the organisation Vanuatu Youth Against Corruption, Priscilla Meto, says more than 70 percent of people who turned 18 after the last election in 2012 will be unable to vote on Friday. She says this is because the nature of the snap election means the Electoral Commission has been unable to issue new electoral cards to many of those people. Ms Meto says this is unfair as it means more than 3,000 young people will not be able to exercise their right to vote, and will have to wait until 2020 to be heard. “It will be very unfair because most of the youth will not be casting their vote to participate in this election to show what they want during this snap election.”

Editorials: It’s up to voters to end gerrymandering | The Washington Post

“If we want a better politics, it’s not enough just to change a congressman or change a senator or even change a president,” President Obama said in Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Instead of electing a few well-meaning people, the president insisted, “we have to change the system to reflect our better selves,” altering “not just who gets elected, but how they get elected.” Mr. Obama speaks from experience: He promised to be a political change agent in the Oval Office, and, seven years later, the country’s politics are more fractured than when he started. The truth is, as the president also acknowledged Tuesday, “our brand of democracy is hard,” with a certain amount of gridlock built into its system of checks and balances. No magic solution can bridge ideological and cultural rifts. But there are reforms that could help.

Editorials: Can statistics save us from gerrymandering? | Stats.org

The Supreme Court is weighing the question of whether voting districts can be drawn in ways that give an advantage to one party, thereby violating the principle of one person, one vote. In Harris v Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, a group of Republican voters argue that the districting commission redrew the boundaries in 2011 such that, as the Tucson Sentinel put it, “almost all of Arizona’s Republican-leaning districts are overpopulated, and almost all of the state’s Democratic-leaning districts are underpopulated.” The US constitution requires every state to reevaluate the boundaries of voting districts after each national census, taken every ten years, and to redraw those boundaries to take into account changes in population. But did Arizona’s redrawing amount to gerrymandering—the deliberate manipulation of voting district boundaries to give Democrats an advantage? Or was the commission simply trying to comply with the Voting Rights Act amendments requiring that districts should be drawn so as to maximize minority voters?

California: Patterson wants politicians who quit mid-term to pay for special elections | Fresno Bee

Assemblyman Jim Patterson is drafting legislation that, had it been law last month, would have required fellow Assemblyman Henry T. Perea to pay Fresno County for the special election to fill his seat. Under the Fresno Republican’s proposal, if an elected official quits during a term to take a private sector job, that politician would be required to use any leftover campaign funds to pay for the special election to fill the seat. Patterson’s bill would also force those politicians to donate any leftover cash, after paying for a special election, to charity – and not to fellow politicians or political causes. “If you are sitting on cash you have raised, I can’t think of a better way to use it than for an election you’ve triggered,” Patterson said.