Editorials: Prevent the reckless restructuring of the FEC | Brad Smith/Columbus Dispatch

Imagine you are a Republican. Would you agree to let the rules of political campaigns be written by a partisan committee selected by Barack Obama? Or if you’re a Democrat, do you think Donald Trump should be able to appoint a partisan majority to determine the rules? Of course not. That’s why for more than 40 years, Republicans and Democrats have agreed that campaign regulations should be enforced by an independent, bipartisan agency. The Watergate scandal that forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency showed the dangers of allowing one party to use the power of government against the other. In the aftermath, the Federal Election Commission was created to make sure future administrations could not abuse campaign regulations to bludgeon their opponents.

Editorials: Meddling in the French Election | The New York Times

There may be some question whether Russia was behind the hacking attacks on one candidate’s computers or is covertly meddling in some other way in France’s politics. But Senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was most likely on target when he said that the Russians are “actively involved in the French elections.” Whether Russia’s efforts are effective is another question; yet another is how to counter them. Moscow’s interest in the election is not hard to understand. France has been a pillar of the European Union, an important member of NATO and pivotal on maintaining sanctions on Russia.

Editorials: Why won’t Congress really investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia? | Douglas L. Kriner and Eric Schickler/The Washington Post

Politicians, pundits, and scholars alike routinely call Congress the “broken branch.” Most often, they note its abysmally low level of legislative productivity recently, a trend that even the return of unified Republican control of government has failed to reverse. But Congress’s feeble efforts to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election may be an even more startling and serious institutional failure. The House inquiry has been plagued by infighting and missteps. The most notable so far was the clandestine meeting to share intelligence between chief investigator, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and the White House he was charged with investigating. While the Senate investigative committee has pledged a thorough probe, it’s done little so far. It has held no high-profile hearings. Until very recently, it had no full-time staff, and its few part-time staffers have no investigative experience or expertise with Russia.

Editorials: Purging voter rolls doesn’t weed out fraud — it weeds out voters | Frederick News Post

Maryland has found itself in the crosshairs of the conservative activist group Judicial Watch, which has thereatened to sue the state if a better effort isn’t made to clean up its voter rolls. Earlier this month, the group sent a letter to the Maryland State Board of Elections to complain that there are more registered voters in Montgomery County than there are voting-age residents. Judicial Watch argues the overage demonstrates that there is “strong circumstantial evidence” that non-citizens may be registered to vote in heavily-Democratic Montgomery County, which is also Maryland’s most populous jurisdiction.

Editorials: Texas’ redistricting methods discriminate against minorities while politicians shrug | Dallas Morning News

Three times in a matter of weeks, federal courts have found that Texas is intentionally discriminating against minority voters. Yet fixing problems with its voter identification law and its congressional and statehouse district maps isn't on the Legislature's front burner. In fact, it isn't anywhere near the stove. This could come back to burn Texas. In the absence of legislative courage, the state could face a court-ordered redistricting or even a return to a requirement that it gain federal approval before changing any voting regulations.

Editorials: Time is running out to explain Missouri’s new voter ID rules | The Kansas City Star

Missouri is heading toward a slow-motion pile-up in about six weeks, when the state’s new voter ID law kicks in. State officials, including Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, must speed up efforts to educate Missourians about coming changes to their fundamental right to vote. After June 1, barring legal intervention, Missouri law will require voters to present an acceptable form of photographic identification to cast a ballot. Alternatively, those without a photo ID will be required to sign a statement, under penalty of perjury, attesting to their name and address. Election authorities will be allowed to take a picture of the voter. Those provisions are onerous enough in a state where turnout is typically, and depressingly, low. But it will scare some voters, particularly the poor and elderly, who may be reluctant to sign a legal document they don’t fully understand in order to cast a ballot.

Editorials: Now we know how bad voter fraud is in North Carolina | Charlotte Observer

At last, we know how badly photo voter ID is needed in North Carolina. For years, Republicans in North Carolina have alleged that in-person fraudulent voting is widespread while Democrats have said it is non-existent. But no one knew for sure, leaving the two sides talking past each other on voter ID. On Friday, the State Board of Elections released the results of an extensive, objective audit of the 2016 election. It found that 4,769,640 votes were cast in November and that one (1) would probably have been avoided with a voter ID law. One out of nearly 4.8 million.

Editorials: Voter ID bills across the nation undermine faith in our democracy | Danielle Lang/The Hill

The Iowa legislature sent a strict voter ID bill to the governor’s desk last week. If the governor signs the bill, which he is widely expected to do, Iowa will be the first state in 2017 to pass a new law that burdens the right to vote. But it likely won’t be the last. Thus far, 29 states have introduced 87 bills that would restrict access to the ballot. These bills align with a troubling trend toward state laws that make it harder rather than easier to vote. But while the restrictions are familiar, the rationale employed is new and startlingly cynical. Lawmakers for years have tried and failed to prove in court that these laws can be justified by the need to prevent nearly non-existent in-person impersonation voter fraud. Now, they argue that this strict voter ID law is necessary to address the “perception” of fraud. Iowa state representative Ken Rizer told the New York Times, “It is true that there isn’t widespread voter fraud … but there is a perception that the system can be cheated. That’s one of the reasons for doing this.”

Editorials: The Indian Election Commission’s challenge to show hacking of electronic voting machines needs to be backed with an action plan | Poorvi L Vora/Scroll.in

The controversy over electronic voting machines refuses to die down. There continue to be allegations, claims and counter claims about election rigging. Some of the claims, we read, were due to misreporting or do not stand up to scrutiny. Every time a claim about malfunctioning EVMs is found to be false, it hurts public understanding of the real issue: elections that use EVMs are anything but transparent. Sixteen opposition parties have written to the Election Commission asking to revert to the use of paper ballots, In turn, the Election Commission is said to have issued a challenge to political parties, scientists and technical experts to prove that EVMs could be tampered with. This could be a step in the right direction. But it cannot be all.

Let’s not forget that such a so-called challenge was also given in 2009. The examination of EVMs should be treated as an opportunity to make the process more transparent and open. In 2009, however, when the Election Commission allowed the public to examine EVMs, the examination was hugely circumscribed so as to prevent anyone from carrying out any substantive – albeit practical – attack.

Editorials: Kris Kobach’s hollow victory | The Topeka Capital-Journal

It has been almost two years since the Legislature gave Secretary of State Kris Kobach the power to prosecute voter fraud in Kansas, and he just secured his first conviction of a former non-citizen who voted in the state. Although Victor David Garcia Bebek became a naturalized U.S. citizen two months ago, he voted twice in 2012 and once in 2014. After his office announced Bebek’s guilty plea, a triumphant Kobach immediately started attacking his political rivals: “No matter how many cases we prosecute the political left will always whine that there’s not enough cases to justify protecting our elections in this way. That’s absurd.” Kobach makes it sound as if the “political left” is ignoring the overwhelming preponderance of evidence that non-citizen voting is a rampant crisis in our state. But the record doesn’t agree with this assertion – between 1995 and 2013, there were only three documented cases of non-citizens voting in federal elections in Kansas. While Kobach argues that county prosecutors haven’t been pursuing voter fraud cases vigorously enough (one of his reasons for demanding prosecutorial authority in the first place), his single non-citizen conviction in 22 months doesn’t provide much support for that claim.

Editorials: Kobach finally convicts an immigrant, but Kansas is paying a price | The Kansas City Star

Hand out the celebratory cigars. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach finally nabbed himself an immigrant. Pardon if we don’t order the band to play. Kobach announced Wednesday that he’d achieved an elusive goal — catching an immigrant who voted illegally in a Kansas election. Victor David Garcia Bebek of Wichita pleaded guilty to voter fraud. The Peruvian native’s voting record was uncovered after he registered to vote and it was discovered that he’d already voted three times in past elections. It’s a misdemeanor. A cautionary note for those tempted to crow that the case confirms the nonsense about undocumented immigrants committing widespread voter fraud: Bebek was discovered after he gained U.S. citizenship this year. He was legally present in the country when he cast previous votes.

Editorials: Can the Kremlin Influence the French Election? | Cécile Vaissié/The New York Times

Never, it is being said, has a presidential election in France seemed so uncertain. And never has there been so much concern about possible attempts by the Russian leadership to shape — perhaps even interfere with — the outcome. Last month, President François Hollande of France denounced the Kremlin’s efforts to “influence public opinion” through “ideological operations” and its “strategy of influence, of networks” in France. His comments followed another accusation, by Richard Ferrand, the national secretary of the En Marche! (Onward!) movement, who claimed that the Kremlin was responsible for a series of cyberattacks against the party’s website and that it was seeking to undermine Emmanuel Macron, En Marche!’s presidential candidate, for being, among other things, too pro-European Union. The Kremlin has denied this.

Editorials: Why It Is so Hard to Vote If You’re Black, Poor or Elderly in America | Mirren Gidda/Newsweek

The U.S. prides itself on being the world’s greatest democracy, but across the country, millions of people are denied the right to vote. More than half of all states require voters to show ID when they cast a ballot, yanking the most vulnerable in U.S. society from the electoral process. On Monday, a federal judge ruled that Texas’ electoral law, which requires voters to show photo ID before casting a ballot, intentionally discriminates against black and Hispanic voters. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, ethnic minorities, along with low-income, disabled and elderly voters, are less likely to have government-issued identification.

Editorials: Using randomness to protect election integrity | Eugene Vorobeychik/The Conversation

Democratic societies depend on trust in elections and their results. Throughout the 2016 presidential election, and since President Trump’s inauguration, allegations of Russian involvement in the U.S. presidential campaign have raised concerns about how vulnerable American elections are to hacking or other types of interference. Various investigations – involving congressional committees, the FBI and the intelligence community – are underway, seeking to understand what happened and how. There are many potential problems with elections: Voters can be individually coerced or bribed into changing their votes; the public can be misled about important facts, causing them to draw inaccurate conclusions that affect their votes; and the physical – and electronic – process of voting can itself be hacked. Without conducting a full, vote-by-vote manual recount, which is impossible because many voting machines leave no paper trail, how can we be sure an election was conducted fairly and not interfered with?

Editorials: A Serbian Election Erodes Democracy | The New York Times

With Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s decisive victory in the presidential election on April 2, Serbia has edged closer to autocracy. Though the presidency is largely ceremonial, Mr. Vucic can now handpick his successor as prime minister and consolidate his power, since Parliament and the judiciary are all but locked up by Mr. Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party. Having severely curtailed press freedom and marginalized political opposition, his concentration of power bodes ill for Serbian democracy. Though Mr. Vucic won more than 50 percent of the vote, far surpassing the second-place candidate, Sasa Jankovic, who won a little over 16 percent, the election was marred by accusations of voter intimidation and a near total domination of Serbia’s media by Mr. Vucic and his party.

Editorials: GOP is trying to shape elections by reshaping North Carolina’s election boards | News & Observer

A three-judge panel issued a clear ruling last month that Republican shenanigans trying to change the makeup of local elections boards and the structure of the state Board of Elections and the state ethics board were illegal and unconstitutional. The reason was simple enough: Authority to appoint local elections boards — with three members of the governor’s party and two of the other party, and the separate State Elections Board and the ethics panel fall under the authority of the executive branch. Despite being repudiated by judges, Republicans in the state House are continuing to monkey with the elections board setup to weaken the governor’s authority, so they’re again wasting the public’s time and money with a new bill to allow the governor to appoint all eight members of a new elections and ethics board — but membership would be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. The governor would name four members, and four names would be submitted from lists provided by the state’s largest political parties.

Editorials: There’s no guarantee of a credible investigation into Trump’s Russia ties, but Nunes’ departure is a start | Los Angeles Times

It’s still not a sure thing that the House Intelligence Committee will conduct a credible bipartisan investigation of whether Russia interfered in last year’s presidential campaign with the intention of helping Donald Trump and whether any members of the Trump campaign colluded in that effort. But Thursday’s announcement by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), that he is stepping down from the investigation removes a compromising cloud from the inquiry. Nunes said he was withdrawing temporarily while the House Ethics Committee probed a complaint by outside groups — a complaint he called “false and politically motivated” — that he had improperly disclosed classified information. The complaint apparently refers to Nunes’ statements last month that U.S. surveillance operations aimed at foreign targets had incidentally collected communications involving members of President-elect Trump's transition team, and that some of the U.S. citizens had been identified or "unmasked." He also claimed that details about people associated with the incoming administration "with little apparent foreign intelligence value” were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.

Editorials: Voting rights restored to a very few Kentucky felons | Lexington Herald-Leader

Gov. Matt Bevin this week restored the voting rights of 24 Kentuckians who had felony convictions and had completed their sentences. Good for them. Unfortunately, Bevin’s action, the first felon voting restorations since he took office in December 2015, leaves about 1,100 who have petitioned him still disenfranchised. It also leaves out about 180,000 former felons, most of whose rights would have been restored under an executive order filed by former Gov. Steve Beshear shortly before he left office that was overturned by Bevin. … Oddly, despite the very long waiting list that includes some who have been waiting for years, most of Bevin’s two dozen are people who only very recently finished their sentences.

Editorials: Armenia’s election: The status quo wins at the expense of democracy | Armine Ishkanian/EUROPP

After a quarter of a century of ‘transitioning’ to democracy, Armenia remains at best a partly free ‘managed’ democracy and at worst a semi-consolidated authoritarian regime. The country has high levels of poverty and inequality (over 30% of Armenians live under the poverty line, with 47% of those aged 15 and above being unemployed) and the discontent with the status quo has led to continual emigration since the early 1990s and mass protests over recent years. In the immediate aftermath of the election on 2 April, in which the ruling Republican (Hanrapetakan) Party of Armenia, received nearly 50% of the vote, questions have been raised as to why, despite growing discontent with the political and socio-economic status quo, including the unresolved conflict in Nagorno Karabakh, so many Armenian citizens appear to have given their support to the ruling party?

Editorials: What a ballot-rigging conspiracy theory says about India’s toxic political climate | Nayanika Mathur/The Conversation

The headline story from India’s recent provincial elections was the staggering victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state of Uttar Pradesh. But a range of politicians and observers, however, have claimed it wasn’t Modi’s charisma that won it for the BJP, but rigged voting machines. Normally, such claims – currently unproven – would be laughed off as nothing but sour grapes. But in this case, the conspiracy theory appears to have taken root. And that it has done so illuminates some deeper concerns with the state of Indian democracy. In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP annihilated all political opposition including the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP), led by the Dalit icon Mayawati. Another surprise came in the state of Punjab, with a surprisingly poor performance by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), led by the current chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal. It was widely expected to do better, having dramatically halted Modi’s momentum in the Delhi elections of February 2015.

Editorials: Turkey is about to use democracy to end its democracy | Tezcan Gumus/The Conversation

The Turkish people will vote in a momentous constitutional referendum on April 16. If adopted, the proposals would drastically alter the country’s political system. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) introduced the 18 proposed changes to the constitution, with the support of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Together they secured the minimum 330 parliamentary votes required to launch a public referendum. Though constitutional referendums are not uncommon in Turkey’s political history, this particular one is extremely important in terms of the very nature of the country’s political regime. The proposed amendments would take Turkey away from its current parliamentary system. In its place, the country would have an executive presidency “a la Turka.” Despite the arguments of the AKP government, the amendments will not strengthen democracy—quite the opposite.

Editorials: How to Quantify (and Fight) Gerrymandering | Erica Klarreich/Quanta Magazine

Partisan gerrymandering — the practice of drawing voting districts to give one political party an unfair edge — is one of the few political issues that voters of all stripes find common cause in condemning. Voters should choose their elected officials, the thinking goes, rather than elected officials choosing their voters. The Supreme Court agrees, at least in theory: In 1986 it ruled that partisan gerrymandering, if extreme enough, is unconstitutional. Yet in that same ruling, the court declined to strike down two Indiana maps under consideration, even though both “used every trick in the book,” according to a paper in the University of Chicago Law Review. And in the decades since then, the court has failed to throw out a single map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. “If you’re never going to declare a partisan gerrymander, what is it that’s unconstitutional?” said Wendy K. Tam Cho, a political scientist and statistician at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Editorials: Dwindling Odds of Coincidence | Charles M. Blow/The New York Times

We are still not conclusively able to connect the dots on the question of whether there was any coordination or collusion between members of Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russians who interfered in our election to benefit him, but those dots do continue to multiply at an alarming rate. First, and we have to keep saying this because this fact keeps getting obscured in the subterfuge of deflection, misdirection and ideological finger-pointing about what has yet to be proven: It is absolutely clear that the Russians did interfere in our election. This is not a debatable issue. This is not fake news. This is not a witch hunt. This happened. The investigations, rightly, are seeking to figure out exactly how and to what degree, and those questions obviously depend on knowing more about campaign contacts with Russian meddlers.

Editorials: Web-Based Voting Isn’t Plausible—At Least Not Yet | Stan Hanks/Newsweek

Could we create an app for people to use for voting in national elections? I did some work on electronic voting systems problems with Ed Gerck in the early 2000s. It was hard then, it’s arguably harder now. This gets back to what some people have lobbied for since the early days of the Internet: the "Internet driver's license." In the U.S., to get a voter’s registration card, you have to prove you are who you say you are, that you live where you say you live, and that you’re a U.S. citizen. That entitles you to be enrolled as a registered voter, which means that for any election in your jurisdiction, you can show up and cast your vote (or as is more commonly the case, to mail your ballot in or drop it off at a collection point).

Editorials: The False Promise of Voter ID | Joshua Douglas/Governing

Many states have adopted or are considering enacting strict photo identification requirements for voting. But doing so is a waste of time and money: The laws will not prevent election fraud, and these states will surely face protracted litigation with an uncertain outcome. Voter ID advocates claim that the requirement is a common-sense tool to make our elections more secure. Yet that assertion is fundamentally flawed. A fraudster truly intent on perpetrating this kind of electoral shenanigans would likely have no qualms about stealing someone's identity or otherwise obtaining a fake ID to satisfy the requirement.

Editorials: How States Could Force Trump to Release His Tax Returns | Richard Hasen/Politico

For the past two years, the search for Donald Trump’s unseen tax returns has been something of a quest for the Holy Grail, an elusive trophy that could unlock the mysteries of our political universe. Lacking real proof as to what the president’s tax documents might show, the imagination swells with possibility: Russia ties? Massive personal debts? A wealth substantially lower than his self-reported $10 billion fortune? Something nefarious? The best efforts of Trump’s political opponents have turned up little by way of tax returns. Ditto the intrepid work of a nation of journalists; despite reporters obtaining a few different pieces of paperwork—as in the New York Times’ report last fall, or Rachel Maddow’s glimpse at two pages of Trump’s 2005 returns two weeks ago—the knowledge gained by any of these leaks has been dwarfed by the new questions raised. Trump keeps insisting that because his returns are under audit, he can’t possibly release them. And the Republican-led Congress, save a few renegades like South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford, evince little interest in compelling the president to disclose them.

Editorials: The voting rights issue no one talks about: Ending the disenfranchisement of felons will strengthen democracy | Sean McElwee/Salon.com

Elections are decided by who votes — and increasingly, in America, by who cannot. Barriers to voting participation skew policy outcomes and elections to the right in the United States. One of the most racially discriminatory of these barriers is felon disenfranchisement. Nearly 6 million Americans are disenfranchised due to felonies. This may seem like a small share of the population, but the concentration of disenfranchisement in some states makes it enough to shift elections. In six Southern states — Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia — more than 7 percent of the adult population is disenfranchised. Unsurprisingly, given the racial biases in the criminal justice system, the burden does not fall equally across racial groups. In the most definitive research, Christopher Uggen, Sarah Shannon and Jeff Manza find that “one of every 13 African-Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate more than four times greater than non-African Americans.” New research suggests this is skewing democracy.

Editorials: How the White House and Republicans Blew Up the House Russia Investigation | Ryan Lizza/The New Yorker

The evidence is now clear that the White House and Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have worked together to halt what was previously billed as a sweeping investigation of Russian interference in last year’s election. “We’ve been frozen,” Jim Himes, a Democratic representative from Connecticut who is a member of the Committee, said. The freeze started after last Monday’s hearing, where James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, revealed that the F.B.I. has been investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia since last July. Comey also said that there was no evidence to support Trump’s tweets about being wiretapped. Today, the House panel was scheduled to hear from three top officials who had served under the Obama Administration: Sally Yates, the former Deputy Attorney General, who briefly served as acting Attorney General, before being fired by President Trump; John Brennan, the former head of the C.I.A.; and James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence. But last week Nunes cancelled today’s hearing.

Editorials: Floridians can put a stop to denying ex-felons the vote | Frank Askin/Miami Herald

Can Florida claim to be a democracy when one out of every 10 of adult citizens in the state are denied the right to vote because some time in their lives they were convicted of a felony? And 75 percent of those people are out of prison and otherwise living as free members of the community? Florida is one of a handful of states that impose a lifetime voting ban on convicted felons. Their right to vote can only be restored on a case-by-case basis with the approval of the governor and two members of the Board of Executive Clemency — the cabinet — on a petition filed five years after release from prison. Since Scott’s election in 2010, only 2,487 petitions have been granted. Only a few other states come even close to disenfranchising so many ex-felons.

Editorials: Lessons learned from the Russian hacking scandal and our “cyber” election | Joel Wallenstrom/TechCrunch

Information security — or what is commonly referred to as ‘cyber’ — has dominated the narrative in this week’s hearings on Capitol Hill about the Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Despite the political noise, a fact-based public debate on how to deal with strategic and targeted attacks is what’s needed now to develop better defenses for all – businesses or government organizations. There is a universal agreement that a highly-motivated and unapologetic entity has conducted an advanced and persistent campaign to disrupt, undermine and gain power over its strategic adversary. The questions become – what have we learned from the 2016 campaign and how are we going to adapt to prevent similar cyber campaigns in the future? The alleged attempt by Russia to influence the outcome of the US elections is today’s news. Yet this has not been and will not be the last time such operations have been conducted by nation-states, including our own.