The Voting News Daily

The Voting News Daily: Americans Elect Internet Vote for President? Consider how it worked in DC 2010, Voter ID at the DMV in Wisconsin (and what it could mean in South Carolina)

Blogs: Americans Elect Internet Vote for President? Consider how it worked in DC 2010 | Irregular Times

Apart from the various considerations of political ideology, influence and process regarding Americans Elect, there’s the simple matter of technology. Americans Elect plans to use all-internet-voting to nominate a presidential candidate and to broker the selection of the actual president in an Electoral College showdown. Will a binding internet vote be pulled off with accuracy and without getting hacked? Or is online voting subject to tampering?

Internet votes can be pulled off. The city of Honolulu managed an internet election for neighborhood councils in 2009. Estonia is often mentioned by internet-voting advocates, although more than 98% of votes cast in Estonia’s 2005 e-vote were old-fashioned paper ballots, and Estonia is a small country that had 9,681 electronic votes to verify that year. Read More

South Carolina, Wisconsin: Voter ID at the DMV in Wisconsin (and what it could mean in South Carolina) | Examiner.com

A brave Wisconsin woman videotaped the ordeal of getting her son a Voter ID, which is now a minimum requirement for non-drivers in the state to participate in elections.

She and her son succeeded, but only after a long process that included need to show banking statements (which at first were rejected because they didn’t show enough activity). And after finally completing the endeavor, they were told to pay $28 (a poll tax?) even though the Voter ID’s are supposed to be completely free. Read More

The Voting News Daily: Banned voting options popular with Ohio voters, North Carolina House to test Perdue on vetoes, repeatedly

Ohio: Banned voting options popular with voters | The Columbus Dispatch

Four in 10 Franklin County voters would have to find a new time, place or way to cast their ballots under election-rules championed by Ohio Republicans in a new law. Experts and the people who run local elections fear lower turnout or longer lines on Election Day as a result.

“If we put 140,000 people back on Election Day, you have to wonder,” said William A. Anthony Jr., director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, citing the approximate number of people who took advantage of the conveniences the county offered in 2010 that allowed them to vote without going to the polls. “That’s a whole lot of people,” Anthony said. “Even 60,000 is a lot.”

Or 234,000. That’s the number of Franklin County voters who cast ballots during the 2008 presidential election on dates, at times or in locations that would be shut down if the GOP election changes – which have been signed into law but are the target of a referendum campaign – are implemented. Read More

North Carolina: House to test Perdue on vetoes, repeatedly | The Daily Reflector

As North Carolina House leaders try this week to override Gov. Beverly Perdue’s veto of voter ID legislation, they’re ready to risk defeat on one of the most politically divisive issues raised by the General Assembly’s new GOP majority.

House Speaker Thom Tillis has committed the House to attempt that override and several others during this week’s brief legislative session focused on redistricting. An override vote that fails to get a three-fifths majority means the legislation dies until after the 2012 elections. Still, Republicans appear ready to lose some votes to stake out a position for next year’s campaigns.

“You’d rather never lose on a veto override. There are some that you are more willing to take that risk than others, because you know it’s the right thing to do and the public will know that you did the right thing,” said Rep. Ruth Samuelson, who counts votes for House Republicans. “There are some vetoes that are more political than others.” Read More

The Voting News Daily: Youth Vote Faces Challenges With Voter ID Legislation, Florida Governor Rick Scott wants his name off bad election law

National: Youth Vote Faces Challenges With Voter ID Legislation | The Nation

Voter fraud is an “epidemic.” It abounds, stealing elections from rightful candidates and places losers into unearned elected office. Republican dominated statehouses across the country are “combating” this problem through strict voter ID legislation, where a government-issued photo identification is required in order to vote. Seven states have already enacted legislation requiring state-issued photo ID at the polls and many more are pending.

One of the states, Wisconsin, enacted what Milwaukee Common Council Alderwoman Milele Coggs accurately called “the most restrictive voter ID legislation in the country.” It requires photo IDs issued by the state or federal government and only allows a forgetful voter’s provisional ballot to count if they return within three days with a proper ID.

College students are some of the unintended—or intended—citizens affected by the law. They broke for Barack Obama in 2008 by an astonishing 38 points and remained loyal to Democrats in 2010 by wide margins. Read More

Editorials, Florida: Governor Rick Scott wants his name off bad election law | St. Petersburg Times

So the governor wants his name off a lawsuit filed over Florida’s cynical new elections law. Can you blame him?

Gov. Rick Scott — already sued more times than your average crooked contractor — is named in a suit contesting a new law that brings controversial changes in how we vote. How controversial? His office got thousands of e-mails while the bill awaited his signature, most urging him to reject something so fundamentally wrong.

The bill’s supporters kept saying, honest, it’s all about stopping our terrible problem of voter fraud. Except we don’t have a terrible problem of voter fraud. And their specifics were beyond scarce. What the new law will do is make it harder for some citizens — minorities in particular — to vote. How many years would that set Florida back? Read More

The Voting News Daily: Tallinn Calls in Expert to Denounce E-Voting, Cherokee Nation Supreme Court throws out election for chief

Estonia: Tallinn Calls in Expert to Denounce E-Voting | ERR

Yesterday, July 20, the City of Tallinn bolstered its drive to bar the nation’s much-touted e-voting system from local elections, holding a press conference where prominent US computer scientist Barbara Simons said that such systems are inherently vulnerable.

The University of California, Berkeley PhD and former Association for Computing Machinery president spoke about risks such as malware, attacks on the server managing the election, insider threats and false websites.

Speaking in general terms, not about Estonia’s system in particular, she said that the nature of e-voting makes it impossible to audit or recount the votes. She also warned of the possibility of software viruses or worms that could infect a computer, casting votes without the user’s knowledge. Read More

Oklahoma: Cherokee Nation Supreme Court throws out election for chief of Oklahoma’s largest Indian tribe | The Washington Post

The Cherokee Nation’s Supreme Court on Thursday threw out the results of a disputed election to determine the chief of Oklahoma’s largest Native American tribe following weeks of legal wrangling and multiple vote tallies that each came out with a different number.

The court’s ruling means a new election will be held in Tahlequah, although a date was not set by the five-justice court. At stake is the leadership of 300,000 Cherokees, one of the largest tribes in the U.S. Uncertainty about the accuracy of the results of the June 25 election and repeated flip-flopping in terms of the declared winner has eroded confidence among Cherokee voters. Read More

The Voting News Daily: States Dispute Criticism of New Voter Laws, California says it won’t pay, and counties don’t have to distribute mail-in ballots

Editorials, National: States Dispute Criticism of New Voter Laws, Move to Offer Photo ID Free of Charge | FoxNews.com

Election officers in states with newly approved voter ID laws are trying to make sure voters can meet the new requirements without much hassle, pushing back on complaints that the laws are tantamount to a “poll tax.”

Seven states this year have approved new laws requiring or urging voters to show photo ID before casting their ballots. Critics have assailed these measures as a partisan Republican scheme to skew elections by disenfranchising voters who might be inclined to vote for Democrats but lack the proper identification.

But officials in those states say the criticism is unfair. All seven states are moving to offer residents at least one version of a photo ID card free of charge. Local agencies are planning various outreach efforts to get the word out about the new requirements, and the new laws generally allow voters without photo ID to fill out a provisional ballot under certain circumstances. Read More

California: State says it won’t pay, and counties don’t have to distribute mail-in ballots | Contra Costa Times

The state will not reimburse Butte County and other county election offices to send out vote-by-mail ballots for the next year, a service half the county’s registered voters use rather than lining up at the polls.

Butte County Registrar of Voters Candace Grubbs plans to report the issue to the Board of Supervisors and its effects at their Tuesday meeting. Of 116,493 registered voters in Butte County as of Friday, 58,048 checked the box to receive ballots in the mail, according to the Butte County Registrar of Voters Office.

“County elections officials have the option of providing vote-by-mail ballots to any voter who requests one for any reason, but if they do, they will not be reimbursed for the cost of doing so in the 2011-12 fiscal year,” wrote Lowell Finley, deputy secretary of state, in a memo to all county registrar of voters. Read More

The Voting News Daily: House Dems say state voter-ID laws a GOP plan to suppress minority votes, Cherokee challenger asks for ballots to be thrown out or new election

National: House Dems say state voter-ID laws a GOP plan to suppress minority votes | The Hill

Several House Democrats argued on the floor Tuesday morning that the rise of voter-identification laws across many states is a coordinated attempt by Republicans to suppress minority and elderly votes.

“These new policies are a clear attempt to prevent certain pre-determined segments of the population from exercising their right to vote,” said Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio). “To be frank, Mr. Speaker, these efforts have an all-too familiar stench of the Jim Crow era.”

Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) said the voter-ID laws are a Republican response to President Obama’s election. Read More

Oklahoma: Cherokee challenger asks for ballots to be thrown out or new election | Tulsa World

Cherokee Nation Chief candidate Bill John Baker has asked the tribe’s Supreme Court to either set aside questionable ballots or order a new election, filings in the case show. The Supreme Court issued an order Monday afternoon requiring all motions, pleadings and briefs be turned in by noon Tuesday for the 6 p.m. hearing.

Baker’s camp has filed three motions with the court, two concerning the ballots and one requesting the justices call for a new election within 30 days.

In one of the filings, Baker and his attorneys ask that the court set aside all ballots that have been erased for one candidate and remarked for another candidate. These ballots were unable to be read by machines due to erasures, white-out markings, smudges or other alterations on the ballot and had to be hand-tallied. Read More

The Voting News Daily: E-voting is not safe, Cherokee Nation Chief Still Undecided After Weekend Recount

Estonia: Expert from USA: e-voting is not safe | bbn.ee

Barbara Simons, a reputable expert on IT-safety, who is visiting Tallinn, claims that as internet becomes more and more dangerous, most of the internet experts are certain that e-voting is everything but safe, writes Raepress.

Simons said that cyber criminals are able to gather all kinds of information and even attack different governments – as Russian hackers did with Estonian internet systems. Simons added that allegedly, the computer virus that attacked Iran was released by specialists from Israel and USA.

Simons was in Tallinn Town Hall yesterday, taking part in a forum dedicated to e-voting and today will hold a public lecture titled “Time is not ripe for e-voting”. On Wednesday Simons will give a press conference as well. Read More

Oklahoma: Cherokee Nation Chief Still Undecided After Weekend Recount | KOTV.com

After two days recounting the recount, there’s a new vote tally, but not a new Chief of the Cherokee Nation. In a hand recount of votes over the weekend, Chad Smith won by a narrow five votes but that may not mean he gets to keep his job.

A Cherokee Nation lawyer compares it to the Bush-Gore race in Florida. It was unchartered territory for America. Now, Smith-Baker is testing the laws of the Cherokee Nation. After a painstaking two days of counting more than 15,000 ballots, this announcement from Chief Chad Smith:

“I’ve come out ahead,” Chief Chad Smith said. But his challenger, Bill John Baker, says not so fast. Read More

The Voting News Daily: Many face fight to prove ID, Second recount goes to Smith — Final say still lies with Cherokee Supreme Court

South Carolina: Many face fight to prove ID | TheState.com

Ruth Johnson remembers being sent to the pay phone in the middle of the night to call the midwife when her mother’s labor pains started.

“I called the midwife. She said she was coming. She never did show up,”

Johnson said, thinking back to life as a 12-year-old in Barnwell County in the late 1950s. Before long, Ruth’s mother sent her back to the pay phone at the Hilda grocery store. The second time, the midwife admitted she had no intention of coming to help with the birth. “She said, ‘Your mama, she owes me $25 for the last baby.’” Read More

Oklahoma: Second recount goes to Smith — Final say still lies with Cherokee Supreme Court | MuskogeePhoenix.com

Which man will be the Cherokee Nation’s principal chief will not be officially determined until tribal court justices consider challenged votes. Unofficial results of the second recount in the race give incumbent Principal Chief Chad Smith the edge with five votes.

However, the numbers aren’t yet certified, and officials did not release the number of challenged votes. The court reconvenes at 6 p.m. Tuesday. Officials spent more than 20 hours counting ballots on Saturday and Sunday — the second recount since the June 25 election.

Smith made a brief announcement once the recount was complete, thanking his supporters first, then announcing his five-vote lead. “After a long effort and a long day, we are pleased with this result,” Smith said. “This shows that every Cherokee vote was counted.” Read More

The Voting News Daily: GOP To Push Stronger Voter I.D. Laws, 24,000 Pentagon files stolen in major cyber breach

National: GOP To Push Stronger Voter I.D. Laws, Says ‘Voter Fraud Is Real’ | CNSnews.com

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus repeated his party’s commitment to stronger voter identification laws, saying that the GOP would not give up the fight against voter fraud.

“I think that we need to make it easy to vote, hard to cheat, and I think that that’s a mantra that we ought to shout from the rooftops all over the country as a Party,” Priebus told conservative bloggers on a conference call on Thursday.

Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) Chairman David Norcross said that voter fraud issues were very real, despite complaints from liberals that it is largely a phantom problem. Cross cited several cases where states had found thousands of ineligible votes after elections were already over. Read More

National: 24,000 Pentagon files stolen in major cyber breach, official says | The Washington Post

The Defense Department lost 24,000 files to “foreign intruders” in the spring in what appears to be one of the most damaging cyberattacks to date on the U.S. military, a top Pentagon official acknowledged Thursday.

Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III, who disclosed the March breach during a speech to roll out the Pentagon’s new cyber strategy, said the files were taken from a defense contractor. He did not say who was believed to be behind the attack or describe the nature of the files that were stolen.

But Lynn said that, over the past few years, all manner of data has been stolen, some of it mundane, some of it concerning “our most sensitive systems, including aircraft avionics, surveillance technologies, satellite communications systems, and network security protocols.” Read More

The Voting News Daily: Payment to ES&S delayed over New Jersey vote count bug, Egypt hit by new wave of protests as military postpones election

Sussex County freeholders are withholding payment to the company that provides and services the county’s election computers until the board can get a face-to-face meeting with company representatives.

“Just like there’s no crying in baseball, there’s no bugs in election software,” Freeholder Philip Crabb said during Wednesday’s meeting. “It just can’t happen.”

Crabb was the one who suggested pulling Elections Systems and Software from the list of bills for the freeholders to authorize payment. The amount of the bill was about $31,760 and is a regular payment under a maintenance and service agreement. Read More

Egypt’s first democratic parliamentary elections look set to be postponed until November, amid a growing standoff between the ruling military council and protesters who believe their revolution is being betrayed.

The vote was initially scheduled to take place in September, causing concern among many nascent political parties who claim they have not had enough time to prepare since the fall of the former president Hosni Mubarak in February, which ended more than half a century of one-party rule.

Many activists argue that an early poll would only benefit those forces which already boast a strong organisational capacity – namely the Muslim Brotherhood and local remnants of Mubarak’s NDP party – and some have called for a new constitution to be written before any parliamentary ballot takes place. Read More

The Voting News Daily: Congressional Leaders Speak Out Against Voter ID Laws, Flaws seen in absentee ballot program for military voters

Congresswoman Marcia Fudge (D-OH) held a press conference on Capitol Hill today in opposition to the voter ID laws sweeping states across the country. The event featured statements from Reverend Jesse Jackson, the ACLU, the National Action Network, and other civil rights leaders, along with a host of congressional representatives.

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), Rep. Corinne Brown (D-FL), Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI), and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) were among the leaders who spoke out in strong opposition to photo ID requirements at the polls, emphasizing the laws’ disproportionate effect on the elderly, students, low-income communities, and people of color. This week, Rep. Fudge and twenty congressional representatives signed on to a letter addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder, requesting that the Department of Justice investigate the constitutionality of voter ID requirements, which could possibly violate the Voter Rights Act of 1965. As Campus Progress previously reported, on June 29 Senator Michael Bennett (D-CO) circulated a similar letter to AG Holder which was signed by 15 Senators. Read More

The Justice Department’s program for handling military absentee ballots suffers from major flaws, and a survey revealed low turnout among military voters in the 2010 mid-term elections, according to a report by a private group made public on Tuesday.

Less than 5 percent of 2 million military personnel in states that are home to 80 percent of U.S. troops voted last year, the report by the Military Voter Protection Project (MVP) said. The low numbers were in part the result of complicated and mishandled federal enforcement, said Eric Loveland, MVP founder and author of the report.

“We’re 10 years into conflict now, and we still can’t seem to get the absentee voting things right,” Mr. Eversole said. “This needs to be a priority now. We can’t let our servicemen suffer another election.” Read More

The Voting News Daily: 6 fake Democrats fall, setting stage for GOP recalls in Wisconsin, Cherokee Nation Orders Second Recount In Chief Election

Six fake Democratic candidates put up by the Republican Party to buy time for Republican state senators subject to recalls accomplished that job Tuesday, but none of them did the unexpected and knocked off a real Democrat.

Candidates backed by the Democratic Party won all six Senate primary elections, all but one of them by substantial amounts. They’ll all go on to face the Republican incumbents on Aug. 9, in an attempt by Democrats to regain control of the state Senate and put the brakes on Gov. Scott Walker’s agenda. That the primaries were held at all is a function of the twists and turns of political strategy played out in recent months as the state broke into warring camps over Walker’s attempt to restrict collective bargaining for public employees.

The Republican Party forced the primaries to give its six senators facing recall another four weeks before facing a Democratic challenger, in order to allow them to take their case to the voters and argue that their work on the budget was good for the state. Read More

The Cherokee Nation Supreme Court ordered another recount Tuesday in the election for Principal Chief. The second recount will be done by hand and will start at 8:30 a.m. this Saturday, July 16, 2011.

The race has been the center of controversy since the election on June 25, 2011. Chief Chad Smith was initially declared the winner by just seven votes over challenger Bill John Baker. Baker ordered a recount and was declared the winner by 266 votes last week.

But over the weekend, the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court counted absentee ballots. Their count showed more than 200 of those ballots were not included in the recount that reversed the election results. Read More

As voters headed to the polls Tuesday to decide a hard-fought special congressional election in the South Bay area, attorneys for Democrat Janice Hahn filed complaints alleging that supporters of her opponent, Republican Craig Huey, were trying to suppress turnout of her voters.

In a letter sent Tuesday to the Los Angeles County district attorney, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles and the California attorney general, Hahn lawyers Stephen J. Kaufman and Steven J. Reyes asked for immediate investigations into “voter suppression actitivies” in the 36th Congressional District race.

The attorneys said several voters reported receiving telephone calls Monday night telling them the election had been postponed to Wednesday at Hahn’s request ,and others were given wrong polling place addresses. Read More

This was inevitable: An early complaint of voter suppression in California’s special House election. Janice Hahn’s campaign has filed a complaint with the state Attorney General to investigate “several reports” of calls to voters that Tuesday’s election had been moved to Wednesday.

The Voting News Daily: Wisconsin recall primaries: Real vs. ‘fake’ Democrats will cost taxpayers more than $475,000, New Jersey judge wants expert witness, voting machine docs in Fairfield case

Wisconsin: Wisconsin recall votes: Real vs. ‘fake’ Dems — will cost taxpayers more than $475,000 | UPI.com

Wisconsin’s divisive law ending most public-sector collective bargaining set in motion the biggest lawmaker-recall vote in state history, officials said.

Nine recall elections — beginning Tuesday with primaries in six state Senate districts — is “nothing like anyone in Wisconsin or, for that matter, the nation, has seen,” state Government Accountability Board spokesman Reid Magney told The Wall Street Journal.

And unlike in most states, Democratic challengers to six targeted Republican lawmakers are opposed by six Republicans running as Democrats — under Wisconsin’s open-primary system, which lets anyone of any party run in any primary. Read More

On its face, the voting irregularities stemming from Primary Election day in Fairfield Township looked like a simple switch-up. Democratic Executive Committee candidates Ernest and Cynthia Zirkle questioned the total votes they received. Upon research, it became clear they weren’t alone in doubting touch-screen Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines.

Superior Court Judge David E. Krell ruled Monday the Cumberland County Board of Elections must make available a number of documents tied to the voting machine used on June 7.

“The voting machine isn’t going to tell you anything,” said Krell of inspecting the Sequoia machine used at the polling place. However, the associated documentation produced by the machine during the programming process was of interest to him. Read More

The Voting News Daily: ‘Madness Abounds’ as Fake Candidates Confuse Wisconsin Recalls, New Jersey vote count bug found; county blames software – ES&S iVotronic

Wisconsin voters will choose among real and fake Democrats this week to challenge six Republican senators in recall elections that may derail the agenda of Governor Scott Walker. The primaries are the opening skirmish in a state at political war. The six districts in tomorrow’s races have Republicans running as Democrats, hoping to win the nomination and effectively render the Aug. 9 recall votes meaningless.

At a time when politics usually takes a break, voters will select candidates to run against Republicans who supported Walker’s efforts to curb collective-bargaining rights for most public employees. On July 19, there will be two primaries and a full-fledged recall aimed at Democratic senators who fled the state in February in hopes of blocking the measure, which touched off weeks of protests across the nation.

“It feels like madness abounds in our state, like Wisconsin is 65,000 square miles surrounded by sanity,” said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonprofit that advocates openness in government. “We’re just living in a really weird time,” McCabe added in a telephone interview from Madison, the capital. Read More

Primary Day problems in Sussex County were not a matter of the votes counting, but of counting the votes. Computer experts have traced the problem with Sussex County’s election results on Primary Day to a bug in the software used to tabulate votes.

Marge McCabe, administrator for the county Board of Elections, said Friday that she received a verbal report from Elections Systems and Software that the problem had been traced to programming. “I’m relieved there was no problem with the voting machines nor our procedures,” she said. “The problem was not in voting, but in tabulating.” A full written report on what the ES&S experts found is expected soon. Read More

The Voting News Daily: An election that isn’t about the candidates, primary signals strange times, Cherokee Election Commissioners testify that recount is wrong

Wisconsin: An election that isn’t about the candidates, primary signals strange times | LaCrosse Tribune

James Smith thinks Wisconsin law makes it too easy to recall a sitting legislator. And he’s willing to spend taxpayer dollars to protest it.

Smith, a self-described libertarian Republican and former officer of the La Crosse County GOP, will be on the ballot Tuesday alongside Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Shilling in a bid to challenge Sen. Dan Kapanke. He is one of six fake Democrats across the state running as part of a GOP strategy to delay recalls until August.

County clerks estimate the partisan primary will cost taxpayers in the 32nd Senate district about $117,000, the same as the Aug. 9 recall election. Smith hopes his candidacy draws attention to Wisconsin’s laws. Read More

Oklahoma: Election Commissioners testify that recount is wrong | Cherokee Phoenix

Four Cherokee Nation Election Commissioners testified in front of the tribe’s Supreme Court today that they believe the recount numbers in the disputed principal chief’s race are wrong.

During a hearing regarding Principal Chief Chad Smith’s appeal of the election, EC Vice-Chairwoman Brenda J. Walker, Secretary Martha Callico and Commissioners Patsy Eads-Morton and Curtis L. Rohr told Supreme Court justices that they believe the recount numbers that they, along with former Chairman Roger L. Johnson, certified on June 30 are inaccurate. Read More

The Voting News Daily: New voter ID legislation sparks debate among younger voters, Yet again, why banking online .NE. voting online

National: New voter ID legislation sparks debate among younger voters | MiamiHerald.com

A series of laws and proposals popping up across the country this year to strengthen voter identification requirements is part of an effort to discourage voting by students, who turned out in large numbers for Barack Obama in 2008, the head of Rock the Vote told a conference of young liberals on Thursday.

“Under the radar, there are a set of people trying to make it harder for students to vote,” said Rock the Vote president Heather Smith at the Campus Progress National Conference, just one day after Rhode Island announced a new voter identification law requiring photo IDs.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Rhode Island became the seventh state to have new or strengthened voter identification policies signed into law this year; several dozen more are considering or have considered similar proposals. Read More

One of the most common questions I get is “if I can bank online, why can’t I vote online”.

A recently released (but undated) document ”Supplement to Authentication in an Internet Banking Environment” from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Counciladdresses some of the risks of online banking. Read More

The Voting News Daily: Rhode Island embraces voter ID, Cherokee Elections Continue in Tribal Court

Rhode Island: Rhode Island embraces voter ID | stateline.org

The Rhode Island Tea Party is praising the Democratic-led General Assembly and Governor Lincoln Chafee, an independent, for requiring voters in future elections to show identification at the polls. While many states have passed similar legislation this year, Rhode Island is notable because it was Democrats — and not Republicans — who led the controversial effort.

… While the political lines over voter ID were drawn long ago, the decision by Rhode Island Democrats to press forward with their own legislation shows that the debate is not always a purely partisan one. The Providence Journal notes that Democrats teamed up with Republicans in Rhode Island’s House of Representatives before eventually sending the legislation to an independent governor for approval. Read More

Oklahoma: Cherokee Elections Continue in Tribal Court | Indian Country Today

The June 25 election for Cherokee Nation Chief between incumbent Chad “Corntassel” Smith and challenger Bill John Baker is now heading into its second week, with a storyline that has seen the numbers of unofficial, certified and recounted votes change at least three times. At press time, this election has also seen injunctions and appeals filed in the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court by both sides.

Smith was first elected to the office of Chief in 1999 and has served three previous terms. His opponent, Baker, is a three-term member of the Cherokee Nation tribal council. The Cherokee Nation has approximately 300,000 members, whose jurisdiction encompasses 14 counties in eastern Oklahoma.

Unofficial results for this election on June 26 showed Baker in the lead with 11 votes out of 14,000 cast. Upon certification of the votes by the Cherokee Nation Election Commission, Smith was officially the winner by 7 votes—7,609 for Smith and 7,602 for Baker. Read More

The Voting News Daily: Need a free photo ID to vote? Be prepared to wait, Texas Supreme Court says no e-voting paper trail required

Wisconsin: Need a free photo ID to vote? Be prepared to wait | madison.com

JoAnne Balthazor can’t remember ever not voting in an election — it’s that serious of a civic duty to her. That’s why Balthazor, 69, a retired postal clerk from Madison, was getting a state-issued photo identification card Friday at the Division of Motor Vehicles Center on the city’s Far East Side.

A new state law requires residents to show photo identification to vote. Balthazor does not have a driver’s license — a physical disability prevents her from driving — and so needed to find another way to prove her identity.

The law includes a clause that allows residents to get a state photo ID card for free if they need it to vote. The cost is $28 otherwise. Friday was the first day the cards were available for free. Balthazor, who waited an hour and 51 minutes to get to a window, was not pleased with the process or the law.

“This is what people are going to have to go through,” she said. “I think a lot of people are just going to say the heck with it and leave.” Read More

Texas: State Supreme Court: no e-voting paper trail required | Ars Technica

A group of Texas voters seeking to stop the use of paperless electronic voting machines reached a dead end on Friday; the Texas Supreme Court ruled that their suits could not proceed without evidence that they have been personally harmed.

Texas has been using direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines for more than a decade. In 2006, a coalition of voters led by the Austin NAACP sued to stop Travis County from using the eSlate, a DRE machine made by Austin-based Hart InterCivic. (Hart does offer a printer as an optional component of its system.) The voters claimed the machines were insecure and did not allow meaningful recounts.

Travis County disagreed. In a FAQ on the county’s voting website, officials answered questions about paper trails and security. Read More

The Voting News Daily: Hacker allegedly breaches Florida voting database, 37 million ‘bogus votes’ removed from voter lists in Pakistan

Florida: Hacker allegedly breaches Florida voting database | The Raw Story

Voters concerned about the reliability of electronic voting may now have another reason to worry. A hacker known as Abhaxas claimed Saturday to have released data from one of Florida’s internal voting databases.

“Who believes voting isn’t tampered with?” Abhaxas asked Twitter followers.

Data in the file uploaded to Pastbin is dated between 2003 and 2010. One section seems to list candidates from the 2004 Democratic presidential primary. Another section contains the file names of ballots from various years. Read More

Pakistan: Whopping 37 million ‘bogus votes’ removed from voter lists in Pakistan | Daily India

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has been informed that 37 million bogus votes have been excluded from voter lists.

Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) Secretary Ishtiaq Ahmed Khan also informed the court that 36 million new voters would be included with the assistance of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA).

Earlier, ECP Joint Secretary Sher Afgan had said that 37 million votes in the electoral lists were not bogus, but unverified votes, and could not be removed until next year. Read More

The Voting News Daily: Happy 26th Amendment Day!, Egypt looking at e-voting

July 1, 1971 saw the 26th amendment, which reduced the minimum voting age from 21 to 18, and millions of college-age Americans were given the right to vote.

40 years later, lawmakers are attacking this Constitutional right by introducing so-called voter ID bills. These bills require voters to show specific types of photo identification at the polls, a requirement that 18 percent of young people in the United States currently do not meet.

Many laws also limit the use of student ID cards as acceptable forms of identification. The student activism that led to the passage of the 26th Amendment should inspire and direct student activism today to protect our rights. Read More

Information technology in Egypt is on the rise and at a conference on Wednesday run by Intel’s “Egypt Tomorrow – IT Vision for a Brighter Future” experts and leaders pushed for the idea of e-voting to become a reality in the new Egypt.

The conference was promoted as an open discussion on the first steps toward how ICT can be a stepping-stone for democracy and freedom in future Egyptian elections.

Wednesday’s session looked at how e-platforms can help improve democratic institutions in Egypt to create a more open voting and educational platform for the country’s citizens. The speakers looked at how technology can play a vital part in achieving democracy. Read More

The Voting News Daily: US Senators concerned by photo ID requirement to vote, In conservative New England state, voter ID vetoed

Sixteen Democratic senators want the Justice Department to look into whether voting rights are being jeopardized in states that require photo identification in order for people to vote.

The lawmakers wrote Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday to express concern that millions of voters do not have a government-issued ID — particularly older people, racial minorities, low-income voters and students. The senators say the photo ID requirements have the potential to block millions of eligible people from exercising their right to vote.

Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said the department is monitoring, as it routinely does, this type of legislative activity in the states. Read More

New Hampshire might be the most conservative state in New England, but John Lynch, the Democratic governor, isn’t following the tea-party crowd. He vetoed June 27 a bill that would require all residents to present photo identification before voting.

“There is no voter fraud problem in New Hampshire,” Lynch said upon vetoing the bill. “We already have strong elections laws that are effective in regulating our elections.”

Stricter voting laws have been pushed in New Hampshire and in states across the country by the Republican Party and its tea-party allies. They argue that civic groups like ACORN have manipulated the voting process. Opponents point out that no significant cases of voter fraud have actually been uncovered. Read More

The Voting News Daily: Indiana Secretary of State White can stay in office, Bill passes requiring ID at Pennsylvania voting booths

The Indiana Recount Commission voted 3-0 this morning that Secretary of State Charlie White can remain in office. The panel of two Republicans and one Democrat turned down Democrats’ complaint that White was illegally registered to vote when he declared his candidacy last year.

The ruling came as a relief to White, who smiled and took his wife’s hand as they exited the hearing this morning. He said his feelings today reminded him of his elation after he handily defeated Democrat Vop Osili in last November’s election.

“I’m very humbled,” White said after hearing the commission’s ruling. “Obviously, our family is very happy that we’ve been able to at least put the recount commission phase of this is behind us.” Read More

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives approved a bill late Thursday night that would require all Pennsylvanians to show an official photo identification card every time they vote at the polls.

House Bill 934 – known as the Pennsylvania Voter Identification Protection Act – was introduced by state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, earlier this year. Metcalfe said his bill would prevent voter fraud, including impersonation at the polls, fictitious registrations, double-voting, and voting by illegal immigrants.

… Critics of the bill, including state Rep. Margo Davidson, D-164, of Upper Darby, have argued it wastes taxpayer money and makes it more difficult for senior citizens and people with disabilities to vote. Read More

The Voting News Daily: Governor vetoes New Hampshire voter ID bill, Election expert team to follow internet voting in Norway

Gov. John Lynch vetoed a Senate bill that would have required voters to flash a photo ID before being allowed to enter the polls. The plan, Senate Bill 129, meant voters who couldn’t provide ID would get a provisional ballot that would be counted if they later presented identification to a city or town clerk, according to the bill.

Lynch said the plan risks denying residents their right to vote if they can’t get an ID or get back to the city or town clerk within three days, as the law would have required. “Voter turnout in New Hampshire is among the highest in the nation, election after election. There is no voter fraud problem in New Hampshire,” Lynch said in a statement. “We already have strong election laws that are effective in regulating our elections.” Read More

The OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) deployed an election expert team to Norway on 27 June 2011 to follow a pilot project on new voting technologies (NVT) that was put in place for the forthcoming 12 September municipal elections.

Norway intends to use NVT in 10 municipalities, where voters will be able to vote remotely or via the Internet. Voters will also be given the option of voting using traditional ballots. Read More

The Voting News Daily: Ohio Secretary of State Husted draws line against party over photo IDs at voting booths, Elections Officials Prepare For Work, Costs Of Wisconsin Recalls

Secretary of State Jon Husted, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, was front and center this week in a dispute over photo IDs at voting booths – and his tiff was not with Democrats. Husted drew a line in the sand against his own party by publicly objecting to Republican-backed legislation that would require voters to present a photo identification at the polls.

“I stand for what I believe in,” Husted said in a phone interview with The Dispatch yesterday. “You go out, and you campaign and talk about being fair. If you want to have any credibility, you’ve got to do what you said you would do. I said I’d be fair and even-handed.” Read More

This summer’s planned recall elections for state senators will likely cost counties and municipalities thousands of dollars. The unprecedented elections, prompted by the collective bargaining legislation and accompanying protests, are putting local clerks to work in their off-season and leading to unexpected costs. Many workers are now scrambling on a short timetable to get things ready for the elections.

Columbia County Clerk Sue Moll was testing recall primary ballots for the 14th state Senate district on Friday as part of preparations for the recall election. She said that the summer is typically a time of planned vacations and a catch-up season for elections workers.

“It’s time here, normally, I would have a staff person doing this. She’s not available. Her last day was Monday so we normally have three staff. We’re down to two,” she said. Read More

The Voting News Daily: Voter ID bill is praised, panned in Pennsylvania, In work on recalls, elections chief Kevin Kennedy battles charges of partisanship

The Voting News Daily: North Carolina Governor Perdue Vetoes GOP Voter-ID Bill, House Votes Not to Confer More Power on Feckless FEC

North Carolina: Governor Perdue Vetoes GOP Voter-ID Bill | TPM

North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue (D) has vetoed a Voter-ID bill passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature. The proposed law was part of a wave of similar bills that have been pushed by Republican-led legislatures in the wake of the 2010 elections. Like those, it would have required voters to show certain approved forms of photo identification at their polling places, or else cast provisional ballots and then have to prove their eligibility later.

“This bill, as written, will unnecessarily and unfairly disenfranchise many eligible and legitimate voters,” Perdue wrote in her veto announcement. Read More

Blogs, National: House Votes Not to Confer More Power on Feckless FEC | Campaign Legal Center

Yesterday afternoon, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on H.R. 672, a bill rather inappropriately named the “Election Support Consolidation and Efficiency Act.”  The legislation would dismantle the Election Assistance Commission and transfer some of its most important functions to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) – an agency hardly known for its efficiency (or effectiveness).  Fortunately, enough Representatives saw past the name to the damage it would have done to the administration of our elections, and the bill failed to receive the votes needed to pass.

But H.R. 672’s consideration by the House — and the gnashing of teeth over its defeat that will surely follow in the coming days– should not pass by without pausing to examine the folly of putting even more responsibility on the shoulders of the FEC at a time when it is incapable of carrying out its most basic functions. Read More

The Voting News Daily: House rejects GOP bill to terminate Election Assistance Commission, Recall elections surge in state and local governments

National: House rejects GOP bill to terminate Election Assistance Commission | The Hill

Members of the House on Wednesday rejected a bill to end the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which Republicans said would save $33 million over five years by eliminating a commission who’s primary purpose has been achieved.

Members voted 235-187 in favor of the bill, which was not enough to ensure passage under a suspension of House rules. Suspension votes require the support of two-thirds of all voting members. Every voting Republican supported it, and every voting Democrat opposed it.

The House debated the bill, H.R. 672, Tuesday night. Republicans said the vote would test the willingness of Democrats to support cuts to federal spending, while Democrats argued that the EAC still serves a useful purpose in helping states establish voting standards and test voting equipment. Read More

National: Recall elections surge in state and local governments | latimes.com

The new president of Arizona’s state Senate, Russell Pearce, had only 21 days to enjoy that position before opponents began circulating petitions in January to recall the freshly reelected conservative.

That’s more time than Jim Suttle had. The night the Democrat was elected mayor of Omaha in 2009, backers of his rivals began to talk online about trying to remove him from office. Suttle barely survived a recall election in January. Once a political rarity, recall elections are surging in local and state governments.

The number of mayors who faced recalls doubled in 2010 from the previous year, the U.S. Conference of Mayors said. Anti-tax activists even tried to recall two Democratic U.S. senators last year, only to be shot down by courts, which noted that there are no provisions for recalls in federal law. Read More

The Voting News Daily: Fate of Election Assistance Commission to be decided in Wednesday vote, Email Voting — A National Security Threat in Government Elections

National: Fate of Election Assistance Commission to be decided in Wednesday vote, Email Voting — A National Security Threat in Government Elections to be decided in Wednesday vote | The Hill

Tuesday night debate on a bill to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) resolved nothing, and if anything made it more clear that the bill runs the risk of failing on Wednesday, as all Democratic speakers spoke out against it.

The bill, H.R. 672, is up Wednesday on the suspension calendar, which means two-thirds of all voting members to support it for passage. Republicans would likely need more than 40 Democrats to support the bill for passage, but Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas), one of the three Democratic members of the House Committee on Administration, predicted that Democrats would defeat the bill Wednesday. Read More

From the Verified Voting Blog, National: David Jefferson: Email Voting — A National Security Threat in Government Elections

I am very con­cerned about the wide­spread push toward Inter­net vot­ing in the U.S., of which email vot­ing is just one kind.  Nei­ther the Inter­net itself, nor vot­ers’ com­put­ers, nor the email vote col­lec­tion servers are secure against any of a hun­dred dif­fer­ent cyber attacks that might be launched by any­one in the world from a self-aggrandizing loner to a for­eign intel­li­gence agency. Such an attack might allow auto­mated and unde­tectable mod­i­fi­ca­tion or loss of any or all of the votes transmitted.

While all Inter­net vot­ing sys­tems are vul­ner­a­ble to such attacks and thus should be unac­cept­able to any­one, email vot­ing is by far the worst Inter­net vot­ing choice from a national secu­rity point of view since it is the eas­i­est to attack in the largest num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways.

The tech­ni­cal points I am about to state are not my opin­ions alone. The com­puter secu­rity research com­mu­nity in the U.S. is essen­tially unan­i­mous in its con­dem­na­tion of any cur­rently fea­si­ble form of Inter­net vot­ing, but most espe­cially of email voting. I strongly urge leg­is­la­tors in states con­sid­er­ing e-mail vot­ing to request tes­ti­mony from other inde­pen­dent com­puter net­work secu­rity experts who are not affil­i­ated with or paid by any vot­ing sys­tem ven­dor.  Email vot­ing is extremely dan­ger­ous in ways that peo­ple with­out strong tech­ni­cal back­ground are not likely to anticipate. Read More

The Voting News Daily: House to vote on repealing Election Assistance Commission set up after Bush-Gore, White Again Denied Immunity for Recount Commission Testimony

The House is scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to repeal an election commission set up after the controversial 2000 presidential election. Members plan to vote on H.R. 672, which would repeal the Election Assistance Commission. That commission was established in 2002 after confusion and controversy over ballots in Florida for presidential election between then-Vice President Al Gore and then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

The commission was set up under the Help America Vote Act approved in 2002. That law created the commission, which set voting guidelines for states, and to distribute funds to states that could be used to update voting equipment.

Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.), the sponsor of H.R. 672, says repealing the commission would save $14 million a year and that it can safely be repealed because the commission’s work has been completed. He said that in 2010, the National Association of Secretaries of State renewed their request to repeal the EAC, which has “served its purpose.”

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Secretary of State Charlie White has lost another preliminary round ahead of a Tuesday hearing on whether he can stay in office. Marion Circuit Judge Louis Rosenberg has rejected White’s request for immunity for his testimony at a Recount Commission hearing.

White’s facing a criminal trial in August on related charges, accusing him of voting from an address he’d already moved away from. Attorney Jim Bopp says allowing prosecutors to scour his testimony before the commission leaves him with “an unconscionable choice” between mounting his best defense in the criminal case or the election case.

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The Voting News Daily: How states are rigging the 2012 election, Chinese Activists harness Twitter to campaign in elections

Editorials, National: How states are rigging the 2012 election | The Washington Post

An attack on the right to vote is underway across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging. But it’s happening here, so there’s barely a whimper.

The laws are being passed in the name of preventing “voter fraud.” But study after study has shown that fraud by voters is not a major problem — and is less of a problem than how hard many states make it for people to vote in the first place. Some of the new laws, notably those limiting the number of days for early voting, have little plausible connection to battling fraud.

These statutes are not neutral. Their greatest impact will be to reduce turnout among African Americans, Latinos and the young. It is no accident that these groups were key to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 — or that the laws in question are being enacted in states where Republicans control state governments. Read More

China: Activists harness Twitter to campaign in elections | Telegraph

Grassroots democracy activists in China are challenging the ruling Communist Party in unprecedented numbers by harnessing Twitter and other online social media tools to campaign in elections.

More than 100 “independent” candidates including farmers, factory workers, university professors, students, journalist and writers have announced their intention to stand for election, rattling senior Party officials.

China’s network of district assemblies have traditionally been stuffed with candidates “elected” from a carefully preselected list of mostly Communist Party members, although according to the law anyone can stand if they have the support of 10 local voters. Read More