National

Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who had incriminating information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton that could help his father’s presidential campaign could lead investigators to probe whether he violated U.S. election law, experts said. Trump Jr. met the woman, lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, on June 9, 2016, after an email exchange with an intermediary. The emails, tweeted by Trump Jr. on Tuesday, could provide material for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election. In one of the emails dated June 3, 2016, Trump Jr. wrote: “If it’s what you say I love it.” He released the tweets after the New York Times said it planned to write about their contents and sought his comment.

National: Trump’s Election Commission Plans to Abandon Insecure Voter Data Collection Methods | Gizmodo

Since the president’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity requested voter rolls from state election officials—allegedly for the purpose of investigating Trump’s unproven claims about widespread voter fraud—45 states and the District of Columbia have either partially or wholly declined to share their data, and security experts have raised concerns about whether the commission has the technical capabilities to keep the data secure. A federal judge raised questions last week about the security of voter data transferred to the commission. Sources tell Gizmodo that the White House is backing down from its initial requests for state election officials to send the data through a file transfer website created by the Army and not intended for civilian use. The commission plans to propose another option for states to submit data, the sources said. … Kris Kobach, the vice chairman of the commission, initially provided two ways for officials to send in their voter data: The first is an email address that, as Gizmodo reported, does not support basic encryption protocols. Voter data sent to the address would be transmitted over an unencrypted connection, leaving it vulnerable to interception or manipulation.

National: While Kobach Commission Bumbles, DOJ Sends Its Own Voter Suppression Signals | TPM

The voting rights community isn’t holding its breath for a “report” expected out of President Trump’s sham election commission that advocates predict will be used as a cudgel for restrictive voting laws. They already have a good idea of how the Trump administration, led by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, will seek to scale back access to the ballot with an approach that has its antecedent in the scandal-plagued Justice Department of George W. Bush. It was signaled clearly in a under-the-radar letter sent by the DOJ to most states late last month. The letter did not get as much as attention as the wide-reaching data request from the Trump election commission—which is being led by Vice President Mike Pence and hard-right Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R)—but voting rights advocates told TPM they find it just as concerning, if not more so.

National: Some voters un-registering following Trump administration’s data requests | ABC

Following the Trump administration’s request for voter registration data as part of the newly established Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, some U.S. states have seen an uptick in citizens moving to keep their information out of the federal government’s hands. Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and vice chairman of the commission, sent a letter asking officials in each state to provide personal records of voters — including name, birthdate, last four digits of Social Security numbers, party affiliation and felony convictions. A total of 16 secretaries of state and Elections Board members spoke with ABC News about constituents’ responses to the request. Ten states noted at least a slight increase in citizen calls and emails, and some citizens inquired about the process to unregister to vote, or how to secure their personal information.

National: Big Data and the Voting Booth | Electronic Design

Wired magazine had it right with its headline “Trump Wants All Your Voter Data. What Could Go Wrong?” As the article notes, “The private ballot is tradition in the United States. Now, President Trump’s voter fraud commission wants to collect every American’s voting history and make it available to the public—all in the name of ‘election integrity.’” Forty-four states have already said they will not comply for a variety of reasons. Other sites can discuss the merits of the request or rejection of the requests. Here we want to examine the implications of big data and why arbitrary collection of this information may not be a great idea. For this particular request, states were asked to provide quite a bit of information about voters and their voting history. This included details like a voter’s political party affiliation, address, voting history, felony history, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. Some of this is disturbing in its own right like the last four digits of Social Security numbers. This information is often used in conjunction with other details like an email address to set up accounts on websites. These are often financial sites.

National: Trump voting panel tells states to hold off sending data while court weighs privacy impact | The Washington Post

President Trump’s voting commission on Monday asked states and the District to hold off submitting the sweeping voter data the panel had requested until a federal judge in Washington decides whether the White House has done enough to protect Americans’ privacy. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a watchdog group, has asked U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to block the commission’s data request, arguing that the panel had not conducted the full privacy impact statement required by federal law for new government electronic data-collection systems. Separately Monday, two civil liberties groups filed lawsuits to prevent the commission from holding its first scheduled meeting next week, alleging that the panel had been working in secret and in violation of government regulations on public transparency.

National: ACLU sues Trump over fraud commission | The Hill

The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging President Trump’s voter fraud commission. In a lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, the ACLU says the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity violated federal public access requirements by holding its first meeting in private, without public notice. Trump formed the 15-member commission with an executive order in May to investigate his claims of voter fraud in last year’s presidential election. The group is expected to hold its first public meeting on July 19, according to a notice published in the Federal Register last week. … The Federal Advisory Committee Act also requires the membership of the advisory committee to be fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented, the suit says, and ensures that “appropriate provisions” be made “to assure that the advice and recommendations of the advisory committee will not be inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority or by any special interest, but will instead be the result of the advisory committee’s independent judgment.”

National: Lawmakers blast Trump’s plan to work with Russia on cybersecurity | The Washington Post

On Sunday morning, President Trump spoke of his new alliance with Russian President Vladimir Putin to erect an “impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.” This, the president tweeted at 7:31 a.m., came after Putin “vehemently denied” interfering with the 2016 U.S. election. The tweet’s timing could not have been more perfect — for congressional critics of Trump’s new plan. It gave them just enough of a head start to workshop one-liners and practice their comedic timing before the Sunday morning political talk shows. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) quipped on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump’s plan was “not the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, but it’s pretty close.” Graham called Trump “literally the only person I know of who doesn’t believe Russia attacked our election in 2016″ and said he was “dumbfounded.” Graham said Trump is “hurting his presidency by not embracing the fact that Putin is the bad guy.”

National: States Push New Voter Requirements, Fueled by Trump | NBC

Paul Gieringer let Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft talk for half an hour, explaining the state’s complicated new voter ID law to a crowd of two dozen at the local community center, before raising his hand. “How many cases of voter fraud have there ever been in Missouri?” Gieringer, 61, asked. “We know it’s happened,” said Ashcroft, 44, noting that he didn’t have any hard numbers, although he cited a 2010 incident in which a couple claimed a false address on their voter registration forms to vote in a primary election. “How many are an OK number? Is it OK to have one or two?” The Republican secretary of state didn’t mention that the new law he’s traveling the state to promote — aimed at combating voter impersonation — wouldn’t have stopped the couple, a fact his office later confirmed. “He brought up the red herring of voter fraud,” Gieringer later told NBC News.

National: Secretaries of State pass resolution supporting state rights to oversee elections | WDRB

The nation’s Secretaries of State sent a clear message to the White House. Members of the National Association of Secretaries of State meeting in Indianapolis unanimously passed a bipartisan resolution underscoring the Constitutional rights of of states to administer local, state and federal elections. The resolution is in response to a letter from the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity, which requested secretaries turn over sensitive information about every voter including including party affiliation, voting history and Social Security numbers.

National: Millions of American adults are not allowed to vote — and they could change history | Business Insider

An estimated 6.1 million American adults were not allowed to vote in the 2016 election because they had a felony conviction on their record. Most had already served their sentences and returned to their communities. The majority of US states take away felons’ voting rights, occasionally for life. This disenfranchisement affects an estimated one in 40 adult Americans, or 2.5% of the total US voting-age population, according to The Sentencing Project, a group that advocates criminal-justice reform. That number is greater than the entire population of Missouri, and it’s the largest single group of American citizens who are barred by law from participating in elections.

National: Trump fraud commission halts data collection amid lawsuits | Slate

On Monday, Donald Trump’s election integrity commission paused its collection of voter data in response to the latest in a series of lawsuits and complaints alleging the controversial task force is breaking the law. The commission, which is led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, recently asked every state for an immense amount of sensitive voter information. In its rush to get the data, it seems, the commission has ignored any number of statutes and agency rules, an oversight that could ultimately prevent the group from getting its hands on any of the information it wants. Monday’s abrupt halt in data collection is a direct response to a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. EPIC alleges that the commission is violating the E-Government Act of 2002, which requires federal agencies to establish adequate data protections before collecting personal information using information technology. Specifically, an agency must prepare and publish a Privacy Impact Assessment that explains its methodology, outline how it would secure its data, and state whether the data would be disclosed to others. EPIC claims the Pence-Kobach commission has ignored this safeguard while storing voter records on an unsecure system that is not designed to protect personal data. By doing so, EPIC insists, the commission has run afoul of federal law.

National: A Secretaries of State Meeting Used to Be Friendly. Then the White House Asked for Voter Data. | The New York Times

In the partisan battlefield of elective office, the National Association of Secretaries of State has always been a DMZ of sorts, an alliance of obscure officials who would rather talk charity regulations than politics, a conclave so committed to comity that it alternates its chair between Democrats (“a nonpartisan organization,” said Denise Merrell, the outgoing president) and Republicans (“we stand together,” said Connie Lawson, the incoming one). But as the group held its semiannual meeting here this weekend, a whiff of gunpowder wafted through the air. The secretaries had the bad timing to gather the week after the Presidential Advisory Commission on El ction Integrity asked them for reams of data on the nation’s 200 million registered voters, a request that might as well have been a political call to arms. News reports from Florida and Colorado stated that voters were asking to be removed from the rolls, fearing that their personal data would wind up in the wrong hands.

National: State election officials complain feds keep them in the dark on possible voting breaches | Associated Press

State election officials gathering this weekend amid an uproar over a White House commission investigating allegations of voter fraud and heightened concern about Russian attempts to interfere in U.S. elections say a lack of information from federal intelligence officials about attempts to breach voting systems across the country is a major concern. Both Republicans and Democrats gathered in Indianapolis for a meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State say they are frustrated because they have been largely kept in the dark by federal officials. “The chief election official in each state should be told if there are potential breaches of that state’s data or potential intrusions,” said Republican Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams.

National: Trump’s plan to create a cybersecurity partnership with Putin draws ridicule from within his own party | Los Angeles Times

President Trump’s touting of a proposed partnership with Russia on cybersecurity drew withering reviews Sunday from lawmakers, including several from his own party, while the president’s aides were left struggling to answer questions about just how hard Trump pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin on Moscow’s meddling in last year’s U.S. presidential election. Late Sunday, Trump appeared to back away from the cyber-partnership idea. Trump’s encounter with Putin on the sidelines of the Group of 20 economic summit in Hamburg, Germany, on Friday was his first meeting as president with the Russian leader. It came after months of controversy over Russian meddling and whether anyone close to Trump’s campaign had colluded in it.

National: Advocates Worry Trump Administration Wants To Revamp Motor Voter Law | NPR

Lost in the uproar last week over a written request by a White House commission for state voter registration lists was another letter sent that same day. It came from the civil rights division of the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ), and asked states for details on how they’re complying with a requirement in the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) — also known as the motor-voter law — that election officials keep their voting lists accurate and up to date. The timing and focus of the two letters — one from the commission and the other from DOJ — has made some voter advocacy groups nervous about what the Trump administration is up to, and whether its ultimate goal is to weaken or revamp the motor voter law. “It’s very concerning,” said Brenda Wright, vice president of policy and legal strategies at Demos, a liberal advocacy group that’s been fighting state efforts to purge voters from the rolls. Wright notes that the main purpose of the motor voter law is to expand opportunities to register to vote, but that millions of eligible Americans are still unregistered.

National: Trump’s Fraud Commission Is Facing A Tough Data Challenge | FiveThirtyEight

Every state in the union was sent a letter last week seeking data from its voter rolls — including names, addresses, dates of birth, political party affiliation and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers. The request came from Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. States have responded in a variety of ways: About 20 have agreed to send publicly available data, including Kansas, where Kobach is secretary of state. Other states have said the commission can only have that data if they buy it. A few — including California and Mississippi — have said they won’t be complying with the request at all. The commission was created by President Trump to investigate improper and fraudulent voting — an issue the president has said he believes is widespread (most experts disagree). The states’ arguments against compliance with its request have centered on skepticism of the commission’s intentions, as well as issues of privacy and political autonomy. But experts who have worked with voter data said the letter raised some other red flags for them. They said that although the idea of compiling and analyzing voter data makes sense — states and academics have been working on it for years — they’re concerned that the commission may not be adequately prepared to do the data analysis work it seems to want to take on.

National: Even Some Republicans Balk at Trump’s Voter Data Request. Why the Uproar? | The New York Times

The political uproar over a White House commission’s request to state election officials for a trove of personal data on the nation’s voters continued as secretaries of state gathered for their annual meeting on Friday in Indianapolis. The panel was set up to investigate claims of voter fraud, which experts generally agree is rare, after President Trump claimed illegal voting had cost him the popular vote in November’s election, and it has come under attack by election officials from both parties. As of Thursday evening, 20 states and the District of Columbia had outright rejected the request by Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and vice chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, which works to promote expanded access to the ballot. Most of the remaining states either said they were studying the request or agreed to provide only public information like lists of voters who are registered.

National: Voting Rights Battle Just Getting Underway | Roll Call

Even before the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity raised alarms with its sweeping requests for state voter data, House Democrats rolled out legislation they hope will ensure the voting process is fair. One measure, introduced at a news conference on Capitol Hill on June 22, would restore voter protections across 13 mostly Southern states. Sponsored by Alabama’s Terri A. Sewell and Georgia’s John Lewis, a civil rights icon, the measure is a response to the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision. That ruling struck down provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that required those states to seek federal approval before changing voter laws and also set a formula for determining which states would be subject to the law. …Another measure, introduced by Virginia Rep. Donald S. Beyer Jr., aims to end gerrymandering of House districts by using ranked-choice voting — where voters get to rank candidates rather than just pick one — and creating districts where more than one member represents a diverse group of constituents.

National: Privacy Rights Group Sues Trump’s Election Integrity Panel | Bloomberg

A privacy advocacy group sued to block President Donald Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity from collecting voter information across the U.S. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — the commission’s vice chairman and most public face — has asked all 50 states to submit data on all their registered voters, including names, addresses, birth dates, political party affiliations if available, records of elections in which they’ve participated, plus the last four digits of their social security numbers. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, in a complaint filed Monday at a U.S. court in Washington, said the commission failed to first conduct a mandatory privacy impact assessment, without which its actions are unlawful and unconstitutional.

National: Trump fraud commission to store data on White House computers under Pence staff direction | The Washington Post

The Trump administration announced plans to keep voter roll data it has requested from all 50 states and the District on White House computers under the direction of a member of Vice President Pence’s staff, it told a federal judge Thursday. The disclosure of the White House role came in a government filing required in a lawsuit by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a watchdog organization that has asked a federal judge in Washington to block the requests for voter data until the impact on Americans’ privacy can be fully assessed. A decision on the request for a temporary restraining order by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is expected as early as Friday afternoon. The commission’s request for voting information has caused a nationwide uproar.

National: The Republican Backlash Against Trump’s Vote-Fraud Commission | The Atlantic

Republicans officials and officeholders were, for the most part, not pleased about the rise of Donald Trump as their party’s candidate, but they found themselves powerless to stop his winning the nomination and then the presidency. Since Trump became president, however, Republicans have become some of his most effective antagonists, stymieing a range of efforts. House members defeated a first attempt at repealing Obamacare; a Senate bill to do the same is looking precarious. (Democrats, although unified in opposition, have played no real role.) Congress has pursued an investigation into Russian interference Trump dislikes, and may strengthen sanctions he wants to lift. And now Republicans are posing a serious challenge to Trump’s ballyhooed election-fraud commission. But first, let’s back up a step. The board has always looked like a cynical ploy. Stung by his failure to win the popular vote, even as the electoral college gave him the presidency, Trump has insisted that there were 3 to 5 million votes cast by ineligible voters during the presidential election. This number seems to be based on wildly speculative figures produced by an activist named Gregg Phillips.

National: What the federal government can get from voter files | CNN

President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission won’t have access to all of the information it would like because of state laws that map out what is and what is not publicly available — triggering a national conversation on the privacy of voters’ information. At the heart of the issue is a letter sent last week by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach in his capacity as vice chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In that letter, Kobach asked for all “publicly available” data, but the long list of pieces of information sought, including the last the four digits of Social Security numbers, included several elements that very few states, if any, say they can legally comply with.

National: Russia steps up spying efforts after election | CNN

Russian spies are ramping up their intelligence-gathering efforts in the US, according to current and former US intelligence officials who say they have noticed an increase since the election. The officials say they believe one of the biggest US adversaries feels emboldened by the lack of a significant retaliatory response from both the Trump and Obama administrations. “Russians have maintained an aggressive collection posture in the US, and their success in election meddling has not deterred them,” said a former senior intelligence official familiar with Trump administration efforts.
Russians could also be seeking more information on Trump’s administration, which is new and still unpredictable to Moscow, according to Steve Hall, retired CIA chief of operations.

National: Ex-intel chief: ‘No evidence whatsoever’ anyone but Russia interfered in election | The Hill

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Thursday that he saw no evidence that anyone besides Russia attempted to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, despite President Trump’s comments. “As far as others doing this, well that’s new to me,” Clapper, who served under former President Barack Obama, said during an interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “We saw no evidence whatsoever that [there] was anyone involved in this other than the Russians,” he said. Clapper’s comments draw a contrast from Trump, who declined earlier Thursday to single out Russia for interference in the 2016 White House race. Trump asserted in Poland that other countries besides Russia likely meddled in the U.S. election and that “nobody really knows.”

National: Supreme Court’s big gerrymandering decision | The Sacramento Bee

Now that the 2017-18 U.S. Supreme Court term has sputtered to a stop, let’s reflect on the justices’ most important decision of the year. It’s not a case in which the court issued an opinion, but rather one in which it has merely agreed to hear arguments. The most consequential decision the court made this last term was to hear arguments in a case involving the drawing of legislative district lines. Please don’t yawn. This process of drawing district lines, called redistricting, dictates who our state and federal representatives will be. Decisions regarding how we draw district lines implicate every important policy issue, from health care and immigration, to the environment and criminal justice. Because of partisan gerrymandering, many Americans don’t chose their lawmakers. Their lawmakers chose them.

National: Voter Data Request Is Illegal, Not Just Controversial | The Regulatory Review

Recently, the newly created Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity sent a letter to all fifty states asking them to submit extensive information about registered voters. The letter has created an uproar among state officials, and many have announced their intention to refuse the request. President Donald Trump has tweeted his disapproval of these state refusals. Overlooked in the controversy has been the rather obvious conclusion that, because the Commission on Election Integrity appears to have ignored the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), its request is simply illegal.

National: Why almost every state is partially or fully rebuffing Trump’s election commission | The Washington Post

Officials in nearly every state say they cannot or will not turn over all of the voter data President Trump’s voting commission is seeking, dealing what could be a serious blow to Trump’s attempts to bolster his claims that widespread fraud cost him the popular vote in November. The commission’s request for a massive amount of state-level data last week included asking for all publicly available information about voter rolls in the states, such as names of all registrants, addresses, dates of birth, partial Social Security numbers and other data. It immediately encountered criticism and opposition, with some saying it could lead to an invasion of privacy and others worrying about voter suppression. The states that won’t provide all of their voter data grew to a group of at least 44 by Wednesday, including some, such as California and Virginia, that said they would provide nothing to the commission. Others said they are hindered by state laws governing what voter information can be made public but will provide what they can.

National: Justice Department Request For State Voter Information Follows Similar Kobach Query | KCUR

Officials with the U.S. Department of Justice are asking states including Kansas for information related to the National Voter Registration Act — a move made the same day that the president’s commission on voter fraud sent a request for “publicly available voter roll data.” In a letter sent June 28, Justice Department officials requested data on how states purge registrations of people who have died or moved. The letter seeks information to confirm that states are complying with federal law and keeping voting lists updated. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach on the same day sent requests for voter registration information to all states in his role as vice chairman of President Donald Trump’s commission on voter fraud. Numerous states have said they will not provide some or all of the information that Kobach requested.

National: This DOJ Letter May Be More Alarming Than Trump Commission’s Request For Voter Data | HuffPost