International: As Strongmen Steamroll Their Opponents, U.S. Is Silent | The New York Times

When it comes to securing a second term in power, Egypt’s president is leaving little to chance. Potential rivals in the March election have been sidelined, jailed or threatened with prosecution. The news media is largely in his pocket. On polling day, Egyptians will have a choice between President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and one of his most ardent supporters — an obscure politician drafted at the 11th hour to avoid the embarrassment of a one-horse race. As he cruises toward victory, Mr. Sisi need not worry either about foreign censure: President Trump has hailed the Egyptian leader as a “fantastic guy,” and most other Western leaders have been largely silent. Across the world, autocratic leaders are engaging in increasingly brazen behavior — rigging votes, muzzling the press and persecuting opponents — as they dispense with even a fig leaf of democratic practice once offered to placate the United States or gain international legitimacy. The global tide is driven by a bewildering range of factors, including the surge of populism in Europe, waves of migration, and economic inequality. And leaders of countries like Egypt, which had long been sensitive to Washington’s influence, know they run little risk of rebuke from an American president who has largely abandoned the promotion of human rights and democracy in favor of his narrow “America First” agenda.

International: Russian meddling: are free and fair elections impossible? | The Week UK

Russia is being accused of orchestrating a sophisticated campaign to influence the presidential election in Mexico – the latest smear against Moscow following allegations involving the US presidential vote, the UK Brexit referendum, elections in France and Kenya, and Catalonia’s secession vote. US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster claims there is evidence of “Russian meddling” in Mexican elections set for July, according to a video obtained by Mexican newspaper Reforma. Although Russia denies the allegation, the claims illustrate the increasing fears about Russia’s use of advanced cyber tools to spread disinformation.

International: E-Government Sounds Great Until the First Hack | Bloomberg

A group of Czech security researchers earlier this year discovered a way to steal identities from electronic ID cards used in a number of countries, known in the cryptography industry as a ROCA vulnerability. So far, the vulnerability has caused problems in Estonia — the country with perhaps the most comprehensive e-identification and e-government system in the world — and in Spain. Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a tireless promoter of his country’s e-democracy, has said that other countries and institutions have the same problem, too; they’re just not talking openly about it. He’s very likely right. The discovery poses an important question: Could we perhaps be overeager to adopt technological solutions to problems that don’t necessarily require them?

International: Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky wants to run your next election | VICE

Kaspersky, the Russian cybersecurity company accused of helping the Kremlin spy on the U.S. intelligence agencies as part of its 2016 election meddling, has launched a new product aimed at helping secure online voting and make elections more transparent and open. Polys, an online voting platform built using the same blockchain technology that underpins bitcoin, allows anyone to conduct “secure, anonymous, and scalable online voting with results that cannot be altered by participants or organizers,” the company said. Kaspersky is already speaking to a number of “politicians and political organizations in Europe” about using the system, and it says that countries in western Europe, Scandinavia and Asia are technologically and mentally ready to make the change to online voting. But one place Kaspersky will not be hawking Polys is Washington.

International: Fake News Found in 16 Countries’ Elections | Associated Press

A new international report has revealed more than a dozen nations fell prey to online manipulation and disinformation tactics during election cycles in the last year, risking internet freedom across the globe. The annual Freedom House “Freedom of the Net” report released on Tuesday found that at least 16 countries sustained attacks similar to Russian online meddling efforts reported during the U.S. 2016 presidential election. Overall, the study of 65 nations found internet freedoms have widely declined since last year’s report. Those 16 nations – Angola, Armenia, Colombia, Ecuador, France, The Gambia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Rwanda, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Zambia – had election campaigns that were touched by fake news reports and had websites and social media accounts vandalized, according to the findings. In some instances, political bots and hijacked accounts were also reported. 

International: Making voting both simple and secure is a challenge for democracies | The Conversation

Recent elections around the world have raised concerns about the procedures used for voter registration and their potential consequences. The effects include disenfranchisement (voters being prevented from casting a ballot) and voter rights, fraud and security, and mismanagement and accuracy. It’s critical to strike the right trade-off between making registration accessible and making it secure. But how many countries are affected by these sorts of issues? And which is more problematic – lack of security or lack of inclusion? Our Perceptions of Electoral Integrity survey asked experts for their assessments of electoral integrity in 161 countries that held 260 national elections from January 1 to June 30, 2017. The study used three criteria to monitor the quality of the voter registration process: inclusion, accuracy, and security.

Download the Report

International: Around the World in Election Interference | The Atlantic

All politics may be local, but foreigners still like to have their say in their friends’ and adversaries’ elections. Russia’s interference in the U.S. presidential election is the most famous case, but it’s long been popular for countries to put their thumbs on the scale of others’ votes—and for politicians to make strawmen out of the specters of foreign meddling. In several major elections coming up in the next two months, the power of outside parties is playing a big role. Here are four stories of the foreign mixing with the domestic.

International: Will Hackers Continue To Run Wild In 2017? | Wisconsin Public Radio

Hackers seemed to be running wild in 2016, from the leaking of the Panama Papers to the compromising of more than 1 billion Yahoo accounts, it wasn’t a good year for digital security. But, of course, the biggest cybersecurity story of the year very well may be the influence of Russian hacking on the United States presidential election – which U.S. intelligence agencies concluded were aimed at helping Donald Trump win – and its threat to undermine the foundations of American democracy. Lily Hay Newman, a security writer for WIRED, said Russia’s success in hacking the Democratic National Committee – which she described as a highly unsophisticated hack – and proliferating fake news to misinform voters may embolden its cadre of digital intruders to expand their reach. “Expect them to replicate their influence operations ahead of elections next year in Germany, the Netherlands and France, and potentially to even try new tricks like data sabotage or attacks on physical infrastructure,” Newman wrote.

International: Millennials across the rich world are failing to vote | The Economist

The life story of Alex Orlyuk does not seem destined to lead to political apathy. Born in the Soviet Union to a family scarred by the Holocaust, he moved at the age of six to Tel Aviv, where he finished school and military service. He follows politics and prizes democracy. He thinks his government should do more to make peace with Palestinians, separate religion and state, and cut inequality. And yet, now 28 and eligible to vote in the past four general elections, he has never cast a ballot. His abstention, he says, is “a political statement” on the sorry state of Israel’s politics. He does not think any of its myriad parties is likely to bring about the change he wants. Many other young Israelis share his disaffection. Just 58% of under-35s, and just 41% of under-25s, voted in the general election of 2013, compared with 88% of over-55s. No other rich country has a bigger gap in turnout between under-25s and over-55s.

International: How Election Monitors Are Failing | Foreign Policy

In Uganda, heated controversy still surrounds President Museveni’s re-election with just over 60 percent of the vote two months ago. At a press conference on February 20, the European Union election observation mission presented its preliminary report on how the election had been conducted. The controversy surrounding the race, and the claim by the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) that the polls had been rigged, ensured a charged atmosphere. But despite finding that the number of votes it counted did not correspond to the official results in 20 percent of observed polling stations, the mission refused to answer a question about whether the elections were “free and fair.” Instead, they pulled their punches, directing the audience to read the report “and draw their own conclusions.” International election observation missions — when small teams of foreign nationals are sent to watch over elections under the auspices of groups such as the European Union, African Union and the Carter Center — are intended to deter foul play and ensure free and fair polls. In practice, these monitors are not generally known for toughness or frank criticism.

International: Are Teenagers Mature Enough to Vote? | VoA News

In Ohio’s presidential primary recently, 17-year-olds were permitted to vote. That’s unusual because the voting age in the United States is 18. But during this election campaign, some people want to change the voting rules. In Ohio, a judge ruled that 17-year-olds who turn 18 before the November 8 general election can vote. Several groups, including Generation Citizen, want local governments to permit all 16- and 17-year-olds to vote. Generation Citizen argues that lowering the voting age will increase interest in government and politics. “A lower voting age would involve parents, teachers, and community members in the process of learning to vote, and ultimately voting themselves, raising adult voter turnout,” said Oliver York, age 16. He is a junior at a San Francisco high school and working with Generation Citizen’s “Vote 16 USA Campaign.”

International: US Caracas Embassy: ‘Smartmatic is a riddle’ | The Manila Times

The Commission on Elections in 2010 and 2013 trusted Smartmatic, a purportedly Venezuelan firm, that its counting of votes in those election years would be completely aboveboard. The Comelec will again give its full trust to Smartmatic in the national election next year as the Filipino people decide who will run this country in the next six years. For such a crucial role in our democratic process, the Comelec knows exactly what it is dealing with, and who the owners of Smartmatic are. Right? Amazingly, no. Neither the Comelec nor Smartmatic has disclosed the full details of the firm’s ownership. What’s worrying is that a detailed investigation by the US Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela (which, one would presume, had inputs from its intelligence services), where the firm is purportedly based, concluded:

“Smartmatic is a riddle. The company came out of nowhere to snatch a multi-million dollar contract in an electoral process that ultimately reaffirmed Chavez’s mandate and all but destroyed his political opposition. The perspective we have here, after several discussions with Smartmatic, is that the company is de facto Venezuelan and operated by Venezuelans. The identity of Smartmatic’s true owners remains a mystery. Our best guess is that there are probably several well-known Venezuelan businessmen backing the company and who prefer anonymity either because of their political affiliation, or perhaps, because they manage the interests of senior Venezuelan government officials.”

International: Voting From the Privacy of Your Couch | Bloomberg

Electoral fraud has been pervasive in Nigeria since it returned to civilian rule in 1999. This year, to prevent tampering with ballots on the way to the capital, poll workers nationwide used technology from a Spanish software maker called Scytl to scan the tallies and transmit them electronically. Despite predictions of violence, voters elected an opposition candidate—removing an incumbent from office for the first time—in a process Human Rights Watch described as “mostly peaceful.” Governments in 42 countries are using software from Scytl (rhymes with “title”) to bring elements of their elections online, from registering voters to consolidating results. “If you look at the way elections are being run in most countries, it’s still the same way they used to be run 50 years ago,” says Chief Executive Officer Pere Vallès. Using Scytl’s technology, he says, a country can more easily stop fraud and announce winners “in a few hours instead of a few days.” … Many election watchdogs say software isn’t yet secure enough to be trusted, and they’re concerned that Scytl and its competitors haven’t developed a way for third parties to independently verify results. “Murphy’s Law says something is going to go wrong in pretty much every election,” says Pamela Smith, the president of election watchdog Verified Voting in Carlsbad, Calif. “Transmitting actual votes is too high-risk for using online technology.” No current online system has “the level of security and transparency needed for mainstream elections,” according to a July report prepared for the U.S. Vote Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for expanded absentee voting.

International: From the U.S. to Saudi Arabia, Women Had to Fight to Vote | National Geographic

Wednesday marks the 95th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States. At the same time, one of the last countries to deny women the vote is preparing to open its polls: this December, women will vote in Saudi Arabia for the first time. This achievement, like the ones that came before it, wasn’t handed to Saudi women, who have been pressuring their government for years. Around the world, women have only won suffrage because they’ve demanded it. “There’s no other movement for women’s rights that’s as international as votes for women,” says Ellen DuBois, distinguished professor of history and gender studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. A century ago, American women were deep into their own chapter of the movement—and closing in on victory. The first international votes for women came sporadically during the 19th century. Women in Sweden and Scotland won some local voting rights, and Great Britain opened local elections—but only to unmarried women who also owned property. Then, in 1893, women in New Zealand won the full right to vote.

International: Voting Rights Expansion Pressed Across Globe | VoA News

The United States’ landmark Voting Rights Act, despite what many see as its recent weakening, is a global rarity in terms of legislation that explicitly safeguards minorities’ access to the ballot. Its 50th anniversary on Thursday comes amid international efforts to expand voting opportunities to those who’ve had little voice in government. “Across the world, to the best of my knowledge, there’s no law as specific in its protections as the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965,” said Pat Merloe, who, as electoral programs director for the nonpartisan NGO National Democratic Institute in Washington, has visited 65 countries. Referencing a 2013 Supreme Court ruling, he added that, “While the protection of that act has been curtailed … across the world, there’s a general trend to make the vote ever more available – to minority populations, indigenous peoples, peoples with disabilities, those who have been convicted of crimes.”

International: Pirate party founder: ‘Online voting? Would you want 4chan to decide your government?’ | The Guardian

In 2012, a contest for US schools to win a gig by Taylor Swift was hijacked by members of the 4chan website, who piled ​on its online vote in an attempt to send the pop star to a school for deaf children. Now, imagine a similar stunt being pulled for a general election, if voting could be done online. Far-fetched? Not according to Rick Falkvinge, founder of Sweden’s Pirate ​party. “Voting over the internet? Would you really want 4chan to decide your next government?” he said, during a debate about democracy and technology in London, organised by the BBC as part of its Democracy Day event. Falkvinge was responding to a question about whether online voting – or even voting from smartphones – would encourage more people to vote. Besides online pranksters, his reservations included the potential ability of governments and security agencies to snoop on people’s online votes.

International: Twitter to take India election innovations global | Business Insider

U.S. social networking company Twitter is planning to replicate parts of its India election strategy across countries that go to polls this year, after it emerged as a key tool for politicians and media companies during the world’s largest democratic exercise. In India, Twitter Inc worked closely with politicians including the victor Narendra Modi who used the platform for election campaigning, and also partnered with mobile and media firms to distribute tweets online and offline. Now, with polling due in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and the United States later this year, the San Francisco-based company plans to take its India lessons abroad to expand its foothold in the political arena and increase its user base.

International: Research in India suggests Google search results can influence an election | Washington Post

Google long ago went from being a mere directory of the Internet to a shaper of online reality, helping determine what we see and how. But what power does Google have over the “real” world – and especially the volatile one of closely contested elections? Psychologist Robert Epstein has been researching this question and says he is alarmed at what he has discovered. His most recent experiment, whose findings were released Monday, found that search engines have the potential to profoundly influence voters without them noticing the impact. Epstein has coined a term for this power: Search Engine Manipulation Effect, with the acronym SEME. Epstein, former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today and a vocal critic of Google, has not produced evidence that this or any other search engine has intentionally deployed this power. But the new experiment builds on his earlier work by measuring SEME in the concrete setting of India’s national election, whose voting concludes Monday.

International: Is it easier to vote in the United States or Ukraine? | Washington Post

States around the country have been in the news quite a bit the past few years for passing new voting laws. The supporters of these laws contend they will stop fraud, while opponents say charges of voter fraud are overblown and that the laws will instead disenfranchise voters. It’s an ongoing battle that’s only going to grow more contentious as the November election nears, but it got us wondering. How do the United States’ voting regulations compare to other countries? Thankfully, a team at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists — a project of the Center for Public Integrity — has made a handy map. You can look at voter restrictions, voter ID requirements and different voter registration practices across the world (click here.)  The more red a country on the map, the more restrictive its voting practices. A deep hue of green equals an A+. According to ICIJ’s metrics, the United States gets good marks on having few specific voter restrictions, bad marks on voter ID, and is a wash when it comes to voter registration, since voters need to take the initiative, but are actively encouraged.

International: One billion voters go to polls in most democratic month world has ever seen | The Guardian

April may traditionally be the cruellest month, but in 2014 it will also be the most democratic the world has ever seen. More than a billion people are eligible to vote in a sudden flurry of national elections in some of the world’s largest – and newest democracies. As well as the 800 million eligible to casts their ballot in India from 7 April, another 190 million have the right to vote in Indonesian elections on 9 April. In terms of size of electorate, India and Indonesia are the world’s first and third largest democracies. The US is second.

International: Where are the flawed elections? | Washington Post

In many countries, polling day ends with disputes about ballot-box fraud, corruption and flawed registers. In countries such as Cambodia, Thailand and Maylasia, for example, recent elections ended in mass protests, opposition complaints and political stalemate. The consequences undermine regime legitimacy and public trust and confidence in electoral authorities. Where there are disputes, however, which claims are accurate? And which are false complaints from sore losers? The Electoral Integrity Project has just released new evidence, which compares the risks of flawed and failed elections, and how far countries around the world meet international standards. The EIP is an independent research project based at the University of Sydney and Harvard University, funded mainly by the Australian Research Council, under the direction of Prof. Pippa Norris.

International: Election Year: More Than 44 Percent Of The World’s Population Will Have The Chance To Vote In 2014 | International Business News

The first democratically held election of this year, in Bangladesh, didn’t go so well. Only 22 percent of the voting-age population cast a vote, a steep decline from the last election’s voter turnout of 87 percent. Animosity between Bangladesh’s two primary political parties reached a peak, and one of the them, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, boycotted the vote as their demand for a nonpartisan government overseer was not met. Voting is under way in the second election of the year — a referendum in Egypt that will approve (or not) a revised constitution proposed by military chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, as part of his bid for the presidency.

International: 2014: A year of electoral fireworks | Global Post

Some of the largest nations on Earth — along with some of the most violent — will hold important elections in the coming year, any of which could affect the global political landscape profoundly. The United States has entered a midterm election year, with all the sound and fury (and distortion) that brings. But in a world now dotted with democracies, that’s only the start. National votes in Indonesia, Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Colombia and Brazil should command significant attention as all have the ability to improve or set back global growth and stability. In the huge democracies of India, Brazil and Indonesia, corruption and lowered growth expectations will dominate political debate. Brazil’s opposition parties seem weak so far, but voters in the two Asian giants look likely to spark a power change after more than a decade of consistent rule by one party.

International: Where is it compulsory to vote? | The Economist

Voter turnout has declined over the past few decades in many western countries. In America it has been below 60% in every presidential election since 1968. In Britain turnout reached 65% in the 2010 general election, down from 84% in 1950. But there are no such worries in Australia, where Tony Abbott was sworn in as prime minister on September 18th. According to Australia’s electoral commission, turnout in the election on September 7th was 91%. This was no one-off: nine out of ten Australian voters have trudged to the polls (or voted by post) in every federal election since 1925. The reason Australians vote so faithfully is simple: they have to, because failing to vote is illegal. Where else is democracy an obligation rather than a right? Plenty of countries have flirted with compulsory voting. IDEA, an international organisation that promotes democracy, lists 38 countries that have mandatory voting in place or have done so in the past. They include America: the state of Georgia made voting compulsory in its 1777 constitution, subject to a fine, unless the person could provide a “reasonable excuse” (see Article 12). In many countries voting is compulsory in theory, but seldom or never enforced. Voting is obligatory in most of Latin America, for instance. But in Mexico, which is among the countries where abstaining is illegal, turnout in last year’s presidential election was only 63%.

International: Electronic voting is failing the developing world while the US and Europe abandon it | Quartz

It was supposed to be the most modern election in Africa. Kenyan authorities, hoping to avoid the chaos of the 2007 election, decided that this time the country would use a tamper-proof, state-of-the-art electronic voting system where voter IDs would be checked on hand-held devices and results transmitted to Nairobi through text messages. But everything that could go wrong did. The biometric identification kits to scan people’s thumbs broke down; a server meant to take in results from 33,400 voting centers sent via SMS became overloaded; and some election operators forgot the passwords and PIN numbers for the software. Polling centers went back to hand counting ballots and results were delayed almost a week, until March 9 when Uhuru Kenyatta’s win was announced. And every day before that people feared a repeat of 2007 when results were delayed and violence erupted, killing 1,200 people. Kenya’s troubled electronic voting experiment is part of a strange dichotomy where electronic voting is on the way out in most Western countries, but taking hold in emerging economies, possibly to their detriment. In the US and Western Europe, more states have been opting out of electronic voting systems and returning to paper out of worries over the number of glitches and, as we’ve reported before, the inability to verify that electronic votes or the software on machines have not been manipulated.

Georgia (Sakartvelo): Georgian president concedes but democracy rules | The Associated Press

Defying expectations, President Mikhail Saakashvili conceded Tuesday that his party had lost Georgia’s parliamentary election and his opponent had the right to become prime minister, setting the stage for political turmoil in the final year of his presidency.
The new Georgian government will be led by billionaire businessman and philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia and until recently was little known to the 4.5 million people in his homeland on the Black Sea. In one notable accomplishment, it was the first time in Georgia’s post-Soviet history that the government changed by the ballot box rather than through revolution. Saakashvili came to power through the peaceful Rose Revolution after a rigged parliamentary vote in 2003. By conceding defeat even before the results of Monday’s election were released, the 44-year-old Saakashvili defied the opposition’s expectations that he would cling to power at all costs and preserved his legacy as a pro-Western leader who brought democracy to the former Soviet republic. He also prevented potential violence on the emotionally charged streets of the capital, Tbilisi, where support for the opposition Georgian Dream coalition is strongest. Opposition supporters began celebrating as soon as the polls closed, and the mood could have turned ugly very quickly if they thought they were being deprived of a victory.

International: From Prisoner to Parliament in Myanmar: Party Claims Victory for Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar | NYTimes.com

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy advocate silenced for two decades by Myanmar’s generals with house arrests and overturned elections, assumed a new role in her country’s political transition on Sunday, apparently winning a seat in Parliament to make the remarkable shift from dissident to lawmaker. The main opposition party announced her victory on Sunday; if the result is confirmed, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a 1991 Nobel Peace laureate and the face of Myanmar’s democracy movement, will hold a public office for the first time. But despite her global prominence, she will be joining a Parliament that is still overwhelmingly controlled by the military-backed ruling party. A nominally civilian government took power one year ago after years of oppressive military rule and introduced political changes it hoped would persuade Western nations to end economic sanctions. Sunday’s elections were seen as a barometer for the government’s commitment to change. To many here they represented a sea change; for the first time in two decades people in 44 districts across Myanmar had the chance to vote for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy.