National

The calls started flooding in from hundreds of irate North Carolina voters just after 7 a.m. on Election Day last November. Dozens were told they were ineligible to vote and were turned away at the polls, even when they displayed current registration cards. Others were sent from one polling place to another, only to be rejected. Scores of voters were incorrectly told they had cast ballots days earlier. In one precinct, voting halted for two hours. Susan Greenhalgh, a troubleshooter at a nonpartisan election monitoring group, was alarmed. Most of the complaints came from Durham, a blue-leaning county in a swing state. The problems involved electronic poll books — tablets and laptops, loaded with check-in software, that have increasingly replaced the thick binders of paper used to verify voters’ identities and registration status. She knew that the company that provided Durham’s software, VR Systems, had been penetrated by Russian hackers months before. “It felt like tampering, or some kind of cyberattack,” Ms. Greenhalgh said about the voting troubles in Durham.

National: Electronic voting systems in the U.S. need post-election audits | TechTarget

The state of Colorado has taken a step toward rebuilding public trust in the election system in the United States.

Beginning in November 2017, Colorado will require risk-limiting audits, or RLAs, in elections statewide. The state has always required traditional post-election audits, but in 2009, a law passed requiring RLAs throughout Colorado. According to the statute, an RLA is “an audit protocol that makes use of statistical methods and is designed to limit acceptable levels of risk of certifying a preliminary election outcome that constitutes an incorrect outcome.” This means that all post-election audits in the state of Colorado compare a random sample of paper ballots to their digital counterparts. Colorado’s law is, in large part, a reaction to recent events in the U.S. and across the globe that have called the security of electronic voting systems into question and emphasized the importance of election audits for all levels of elections.

National: Adam Schiff pushes to defund Trump’s voter fraud commission | The Hill

A Democratic lawmaker has introduced an amendment to an upcoming government spending bill that would defund President Trump’s controversial commission on voter fraud. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) announced the amendment in a press release this week that accuses the panel co-chaired by Vice President Pence of “appearing to lay the groundwork for a push to place new restrictions on voting that disproportionately disadvantages minority voters.” “This commission is an effort to validate the President’s repeated and baseless claim that millions of fraudulent ballots were cast in the 2016 election, and I fear it lays the groundwork for new efforts to make it more difficult to vote across the country,” Schiff said in the statement.

National: Judge Nails Trump’s Fraud Commission on Records Handling | Courthouse News

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to show more evidence that a new commission tasked with investigating election fraud is complying with public-disclosure laws. The order this morning came as part of a demand by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law for limited discovery after the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity failed to release all of the materials it used during its first meeting on July 19. Despite having promised to release all materials before the meeting even occurred, the commission explained in a July 31 opposition brief that it could not do so because certain commission members did not submit their materials in advance.

National: Patent suit pits top two players in U.S. electronic voting machines against each other | IPWatchdog

August 31, 2017

On Monday, August 21st, Omaha, NE-based voting machine firm Election Systems & Software filed a patent infringement suit against election product company Dominion Voting Systems of Toronto, Ontario. Election Systems is asserting a patent on an electronic voting machine technology that provides multiple methods by which a user may cast a vote in an effort to improve accessibility. The suit has been filed in the District of Delaware. Election Systems is asserting a single patent in the case: U.S. Patent No. 8991701, titled Integrated Voting System and Method for Accommodating Paper Ballots and Audio Ballots and issued to the firm in March 2015. It claims an accessible voting station for use during an election having a voting console to present an audio ballot to a voter and receive voting selections from the voter, a printer to print a ballot including the selections and a reader that scans a portion of the printed ballot to determine voting selections.

National: Trump fraud panel apologizes after judge calls failure to disclose information ‘incredible’ | The Washington Post

August 31, 2017

A federal judge on Wednesday tore into President Trump’s voter commission for reneging on a promise to fully disclose public documents before a July 19 meeting, ordering the government to meet new transparency requirements and eliciting an apology from administration lawyers. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Washington said the Election Integrity Commission released only an agenda and proposed bylaws before its first meeting at the White House complex last month. But once gathered, commissioners had thick binders that included documents the public had not seen, including a specially prepared report and a 381-page “database” purporting to show 1,100 cases of voter fraud, both from the think tank Heritage Foundation. The group also received a typed list of possible topics to address from the panel vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach.

National: Cyber experts were blocked in their push to patch voting systems in 2016 | McClatchy

August 30, 2017

They knew Russian operatives might try to tamper with the nation’s electronic voting systems. Many people inside the U.S. government and the Obama White House knew. In the summer of 2016, a cluster of volunteers on a federally supervised cybersecurity team crafting 2018 election guidelines felt compelled to do something sooner. Chatting online, they scrambled to draw up ways for state and local officials to patch the most obvious cyber vulnerabilities before Election Day 2016. Their five-page list of recommendations focused on two gaping holes in the U.S. election system. It warned that internet voting by at least some citizens in 32 states was not secure and should be avoided. And, critically, it advised how to guard voting and ballot-counting machines that the experts knew could be penetrated even when disconnected from the internet. But the list was stopped in its tracks. A year later, even as U.S. intelligence agencies warn that Russian operatives have their eyes on 2018 and beyond, America’s more than 7,000 election jurisdictions nationwide still do not have access to those guidelines for shielding the voting process.

National: President Trump’s cybersecurity advisers resign with dire warning | Metro US

August 30, 2017

Eight advisers on President Trump’s cybersecurity team have resigned, leaving behind a scathing message for him: He has “given insufficient attention to the growing threats” facing the United States, and his inaction has “threatened the security of the homeland.” The advisers comprised more than one-quarter of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC). The 28-member panel, established in 2001 and drawn from the private sector, government and academia, advises the Department of Homeland Security on cybersecurity and infrastructure protection. They excoriated Trump on those fronts, saying he has failed to be “adequately attentive to the pressing national security matters” or “responsive to sound advice received from experts.” Those departing experts cited the president’s response to the violence in Charlottesville, in which he defended white supremacists, his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change and his inaction on safeguarding the U.S. election system after the Russian attacks on the 2016 election.

National: In one corner of the Internet, the 2016 Democratic primary never ended | The Washington Post

August 30, 2017

On Friday afternoon, a judge in South Florida dismissed a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee, brought by people who accused it of committing fraud during the 2016 primary to the detriment of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt). Neither the DNC nor ousted chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) responded to the dismissal when asked to comment. Within hours, the attorneys who bought the suit, Jared and Elizabeth Beck, were providing updates on the case to the blogger and fantasy author H.A. Goodman. Calling out the people and outlets who they believe had covered them unfairly, the Becks described a legal system so corrupt that there could be no fair accounting for what the DNC did. It would be up to alternative media to get the truth out. “This population has been battered by propaganda, and misinformation, and corrupt politicians for so long,” Jared Beck said. “If you go into court, and you represent anyone but a rich person or a powerful corporation, the chances of you having a fair day in court are slim to none.”

National: Kobach Swipes at Schumer Over Charlottesville | Roll Call

August 29, 2017

The vice chair of a presidential commission charged with investigating voting fraud swung back at the Democratic leader of the Senate Friday, saying it was “pathetic” that Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer equated the panel with white supremacists and a deadly rally earlier this month in Charlottesville, Virginia. “It’s a pathetic, partisan attempt to wrap Charlottesville around every issue he can think of,” said Kris Kobach, the vice chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. “It’s complete nonsense.” On Thursday, Schumer, a Democrat from New York, posted a piece on Medium.com calling for President Donald Trump to disband the commission. He also said if Trump failed to do so, Congress should consider attaching riders to “must-pass” legislation in September that would prohibit the panel’s operation.

National: How secure are America’s voting machines? | PRI

At a recent DefCon security conference, organizers wanted to test how voting machines could be hacked. The result? It took just 90 minutes for the hackers to get into the machines. Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, in Washington, DC, says the hack took that long only because the individual had to leave the facility to go buy a USB keyboard. “When he came back, there were two open USB ports on the back of this machine, which was a decertified AVS WINVote,” Hall explains. “He did the ‘three-fingered salute’— the Windows control-alt-delete — and it dropped to Task Manager. Then he could load whatever he wanted. They installed Winamp and played the now-famous Rick Astley song, ‘Never Gonna Give You Up.’” Some of the machines the hackers “attacked” are still in use, but for the most part, they were purchased on eBay or GovDeals (the government version of eBay), Hall says. Most were two or three years old and not running the most current software. Nevertheless, the experiment exposed serious flaws in virtually every type of machine.

National: U.S. state election officials still in the dark on Russian hacking | Reuters

The federal government has not notified U.S. state election officials if their voting systems were targeted by suspected Russian hackers during the 2016 presidential campaign, and the information will likely never be made public, a top state election chief told Reuters. “You’re absolutely never going to learn it, because we don’t even know it,” Judd Choate, state election director for Colorado and president of the National Association of State Election Directors, said in an interview on Thursday during the group’s summer conference. Nearly 10 months after Republican Donald Trump’s upset presidential victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, Choate said he had not spoken to a single state election director who had been told by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security if their state was among those attacked. The lack of information-sharing on the election breaches reflects the difficulty state and federal officials have had in working together to protect U.S. voting from cyber threats. All U.S. elections are run by state and local governments, which have varying degrees of technical competence.

National: My Conversation With a Leading Election Technology Researcher Should Terrify You | Patriot NOT Partisan

Def Con is a 25 year old hacking convention where the worlds best hackers come together often highlighting security vulnerabilities in technology. This year, Def Con made news by raising awareness of our voting machine insecurities by challenging hackers to hack into the voting machines commonly used in this country for elections. These Def Con hacks took place in the “Voting Village”. I spoke with Voting Village organizer and leading election technology researcher, Harri Hursti, about the results of the experiment and the challenges we face in securing our elections in the future.

AM: Tell me about Def Con and the “Voting Village” and the role you played in the experiment.

HH: I was the co-organizer of the Village along with professor Matt Blaze.

AM: What was the main purpose of this exhibition?

HH: Education. We wanted to let the security community learn more about the machines and the designs. So far, only a very small group of people have been allowed to study and research these machines. As a result there was a lot of misinformation, rumors and false claims, and finding proven facts was difficult. The broader community which has 1st hand experience can help the public and the policy makers to get the facts known and drive better policies and practices to secure the elections.

National: Vote Fraud Crusader J. Christian Adams Sparks Outrage | NBC

J. Christian Adams claims there’s an “alien invasion” at the voting booth. Adams, a member of President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission, is dedicating his life to cleaning up registration rolls around the country and trying to prevent non-citizens from casting ballots. To do so, he’s spent years suing counties to force them to purge their rolls and he’s published personal information online about thousands of registered voters he believes could have committed fraud. Adams has turned allegations of sweeping, illegal voting into a career marked by frequent litigation and a bombastic media presence — calling critics who say that there’s no widespread proof of voter fraud “flat-earthers.”

National: Kander says courts can’t be counted on to save voting rights in Trump era | The Kansas City Star

Former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander told a crowd of people at a progressive event in Parkville Saturday that they can’t just rely on the courts to protect voting rights under President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Kander, a Democrat, said that with Trump appointing judges and Sessions running the U.S. Department of Justice, voting rights cases will become tougher to win. Legal challenges have to be paired with political activism. “I believe there should be political consequences for politicians who commit voter suppression,” Kander said. “I believe that if you make it harder to vote, then we should make it harder for you to get reelected.” Kander, who started a political action committee this year called Let America Vote, spoke at a “voting rights festival” hosted at English Landing Park by Northland Progress. The festival is part of the group’s “In for 10” campaign, in which volunteers pledge to help at least 10 Missouri citizens register to vote.

National: Florida judge dismisses fraud lawsuit against DNC | The Washington Post

A year-long legal battle over the Democratic National Committee’s handling of the 2016 presidential primary came to an end Friday, with a federal judge in Florida dismissing a class-action suit brought by supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “To the extent Plaintiffs wish to air their general grievances with the DNC or its candidate selection process, their redress is through the ballot box, the DNC’s internal workings, or their right of free speech — not through the judiciary,” Judge William Zloch, a Reagan appointee, wrote in his dismissal. “To the extent Plaintiffs have asserted specific causes of action grounded in specific factual allegations, it is this Court’s emphatic duty to measure Plaintiffs’ pleadings against existing legal standards. Having done so . . . the Court finds that the named Plaintiffs have not presented a case that is cognizable in federal court.”

National: Many County Election Officials Still Lack Cybersecurity Training | NBC

August 25, 2017

Despite Russia’s attempt to hack the 2016 U.S. election and the voter registration systems of 21 states, an NBC News investigation reveals that election officials in the most heavily populated counties of three crucial swing states still haven’t received formal training on how to detect and fight attacks. Election officials in three of Pennsylvania’s four biggest counties — Philadelphia, Allegheny and Bucks, which together account for nearly a third of the state’s voters — told NBC News they never received cybersecurity training, which experts say is crucial for officials to identify risks. NBC reached out to election officials in every county in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan and got responses from 60 percent of the counties. Officials from all 15 Arizona counties responded, but only five said their officials had received cybersecurity training. In Pennsylvania, where 42 of 67 counties responded, eight counties said their workers had training. In Michigan, 40 of the state’s 83 counties responded, and only 12 indicated receiving formal training.

National: Proposed legislation discourages Russia-U.S. cyber pact, while prioritizing election security | SC Magazine

August 25, 2017

A U.S. intelligence bill that recently passed committee in the Senate contains key provisions designed to defend the electoral process from Russian meddling and other foreign interference, as well as curtail any possible White House effort to form a joint cybersecurity unit with the Kremlin. Passed in the Senate Intelligence Committee by a 14-1 margin this past July and made public just days ago, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal year 2018 explicitly forbids the U.S. government from using federal resources to form a cyber partnership with Russia, unless the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) first submits a report that congressional intelligence committee members can review 30 days in advance of such an agreement. This key clause is a blatant rebuke of President Donald Trump, who fleetingly announced a U.S.-Russian cyber unit in July before backing off the idea amidst backlash.

National: The Trump administration isn’t ready for the 2020 Census | The Washington Post

August 25, 2017

The census, one of the most important activities our government undertakes, is under threat by uncertain funding and a leadership vacuum at a crucial moment. As former directors of the U.S. Census Bureau, serving in both Republican and Democratic administrations, we urge President Trump to act swiftly and the Senate to cooperate in naming a new director as the 2020 Census nears. The immediate task is to nominate someone who can provide stability through the final years of the decade, explain the importance of the agency’s mission compellingly, address Congress’s fiscal concerns and be ready for full immersion in the important tasks at hand.

National: Could Offering Spy Secrets To State Officials Help Safeguard Future Elections? | NPR

August 24, 2017

Congress could authorize top-secret security clearances for each state’s chief election official to help protect voting systems from cyberattacks and other potential meddling. That provision, which was part of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2018 policy bill for U.S. spy agencies, is one of the first concrete steps that lawmakers have taken to try to defend future elections from the sort of foreign interference that plagued the 2016 presidential race. The Senate panel is one of two congressional committees investigating what the American intelligence community says was a Russian government campaign to undermine the U.S. democratic system, discredit Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump win. The Senate Intelligence panel included language that would require Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to set up the clearances for state leaders in its annual bill setting policy for the intelligence community.

National: Top Trump aide’s email draws new scrutiny in Russia inquiry | CNN

August 24, 2017

Congressional investigators have unearthed an email from a top Trump aide that referenced a previously unreported effort to arrange a meeting last year between Trump campaign officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter. The aide, Rick Dearborn, who is now President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, sent a brief email to campaign officials last year relaying information about an individual who was seeking to connect top Trump officials with Putin, the sources said. The person was only identified in the email as being from “WV,” which one source said was a reference to West Virginia. It’s unclear who the individual is, what he or she was seeking, or whether Dearborn even acted on the request. One source said that the individual was believed to have had political connections in West Virginia, but details about the request and who initiated it remain vague. The same source said Dearborn in the email appeared skeptical of the requested meeting.

National: Senate bill bans joint cyber initiative with Russia | FCW

An authorization bill introduced Aug. 18 by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) pushes back against a proposal floated by the Trump administration to set up a joint cyber initiative with Russia. The bill also establishes a strategy to protect U.S. election systems and pushes for increased pay rates for federal cyber professionals. It is not the first bill to call for a prohibition on potential U.S.-Russia cyber cooperation. Following President Donald Trump’s tweet on July 9 stating that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had “discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit” in the future to guard against election hacking, a bipartisan group of legislators expressed alarm at the idea. Although Trump later backtracked, Senate Democrats introduced a standalone bill three days later to deny funding for any such plan.

National: Lawsuit: Trump’s Election Commission Is Hiding Public Information | Rewire

President Donald Trump’s election commission led by voter suppression advocates won’t be able to operate in the dark if a new lawsuit is successful. Trump in May signed an executive order creating the “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity,” led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kris Kobach, who as Kansas’ secretary of state was routinely accused of advancing voter suppression efforts. The commission’s stated purpose is to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the 2016 election. The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School and the Protect Democracy Project filed a lawsuit Monday in federal court in New York to compel the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of Management and Budget to answer requests and disclose public information related to the commission.

National: Servicemembers turned out in smaller numbers for 2016 presidential vote | Stars & Stripes

The 2016 U.S. presidential election failed to interest many military voters, a recently released federal study has found. Voting rates dropped from 58 percent in 2012 to just 46 percent in 2016 among servicemembers, says the Federal Voting Assistance Program report, released earlier this month. “A striking finding from our analyses is the reported drop in participation rate among military personnel in the 2016 election as compared to the general population,” FVAP program director David Beirne said in a report to Congress. “The data shows that more military members cited motivation-related reasons for not voting and were less interested in the election in 2016 than in 2012,” he added.

National: Trump-Russia dossier owner faces senators, Donald Jr still a no-show | The Guardian