National: Manafort sues Mueller, challenging scope of Russia investigation | The Hill

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is suing the Department of Justice and special counsel Robert Mueller in an attempt to kneecap the federal probe into alleged coordination between the campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. In a court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for Manafort argue that the order establishing Mueller's investigation is overly broad and not permitted under Justice Department regulations. Mueller should be ordered to stop investigating any of Manafort’s conduct that doesn’t relate to his time as campaign chair, the suit says, and the appointment itself should be declared invalid.

National: Election Assistance Commission announces meeting next week on securing mid-terms | InsideCyberSecurity

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has announced that it will be holding a public meeting on Jan. 10 to review steps for securing the nation's election system in advance of mid-term voting this fall. “Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission will host an all day summit to highlight a spectrum of issues that state and local election officials will face as they work to administer a secure, accessible and efficient 2018 Election,” according to a Federal Register notice issued today. The congressionally mandated commission will hear from witness on “topics such as election security, voting accessibility, and how to use election data to improve the voter experience,” according to the announcement.

National: Critics Say Questions About Citizenship Could Wreck Chances for an Accurate Census | The New York Times

A request by the Justice Department to ask people about their citizenship status in the 2020 census is stirring a broad backlash from census experts and others who say the move could wreck chances for an accurate count of the population — and, by extension, a fair redistricting of the House and state legislatures next decade. Their fear, echoed by experts in the Census Bureau itself, is that the Trump administration’s hard-line stance on immigration, and especially on undocumented migrants, will lead Latinos and other minorities, fearing prosecution, to ignore a census that tracks citizenship status. Their failure to participate would affect population counts needed not only to apportion legislative seats, but to distribute hundreds of billions of dollars in federal money to areas that most need it.

National: Pressure builds to improve election cybersecurity | The Hill

Congressional efforts to secure election systems from cyberattacks are picking up steam with lawmakers under pressure to prevent hacks in the 2018 midterms. After the revelation that Russia tried to probe election systems in 21 states in the 2016 election, security experts, state officials and others demanded federal action to help states upgrade outdated voting machines and bolster security around voter registration databases. Last week, a bipartisan coalition of six senators introduced the Secure Elections Act, which includes a measure authorizing grants for states to upgrade outdated voting technology and shore up their digital security. “It is imperative that we strengthen our election systems and give the states the tools they need to protect themselves and the integrity of voters against the possibility of foreign interference,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a Senate Intelligence Committee member, said when unveiling the bill.

National: Kobach fraud commission, stalled by lawsuits, will meet in January | The Topeka Capital-Journal

President Donald Trump’s controversial commission on election integrity should meet again in January after being delayed for months because of eight lawsuits demanding its staff’s time, the group’s de facto leader, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, said this week. … Eight lawsuits sit in federal court opposing the commission from plaintiffs including one of the commission’s own members and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “I’m not aware of any presidential commission that has encountered so much litigation from special interest groups,” Kobach said. Kobach said his commission hasn’t met since September, largely because of that litigation.

National: The latest 2018 election-hacking threat: A 9-month wait for government help | Politico

States rushing to guard their 2018 elections against hackers may be on a waiting list for up to nine months for the Department of Homeland Security’s most exhaustive security screening, according to government officials familiar with the situation. That means some states might not get the service until weeks before the November midterms and may remain unaware of flaws that could allow homegrown cyber vandals or foreign intelligence agencies to target voter registration databases and election offices’ computer networks, the officials said. Russian hackers targeted election systems in at least 21 states in 2016, according to DHS. The scanning, known as a “risk and vulnerability assessment,” is the crème de la crème of security exams: DHS personnel come in person to do an intensive, multiweek probing of the entire system required to run an election. But department officials acknowledge that it’s of limited use if it doesn’t come soon enough for states to correct their flaws before voters go to the polls. The nine-month wait is “not a good metric” for states hoping to boost their security, admitted Christopher Krebs, one of the DHS officials leading election security efforts. ”We are working to prioritize.”

National: American Elections Remain Unprotected | The Atlantic

Two weeks before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, the U.S. intelligence community released a declassified version of its report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. It detailed the activities of  a network of hackers who infiltrated voting systems and stole documents from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. It also issued a stark warning: “Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies and their election processes.” Since then, current and former officials, including former Pentagon official Michael Vickers and former CIA deputy director Michael Morell have said that the Russians will interfere in U.S. elections again, in potentially new and sophisticated ways.

National: Why the 2018 Midterms Are So Vulnerable to Hackers | The New Yorker

The first primary of the 2018 midterm elections, in Texas, is barely eight weeks away. It’s time to ask: Will the Russian government deploy “active measures” of the kind it used in 2016? Is it possible that a wave of disinformation on Facebook and Twitter could nudge the results of a tight congressional race in, say, Virginia or Nevada? Will hackers infiltrate low-budget campaigns in Pennsylvania and Nebraska, and leak their e-mails to the public? Will the news media and voters take the bait? By most accounts, the answer is likely to be yes—and, for several reasons, the election may prove to be as vulnerable, or more so, than the 2016 race that brought Donald Trump to the White House. Part of the explanation is political: the 2018 midterms are shaping up to be extraordinarily competitive. Consider the spectacle currently unfolding in Virginia. Before the most recent election, on November 7th, Republicans controlled Virginia’s House of Delegates by a comfortable sixteen-seat majority. In a wave of Democratic wins, propelled by the state’s highest turnout in twenty years, the Republican majority nearly evaporated. Final control of the House now rests on the results of the 94th District, which is deadlocked at 11,608 votes apiece. The Virginia Board of Elections planned to draw the name of a winner out of a pitcher, a tactic unused in Virginia in more than four decades, but, on December 26th, the state postponed the plan, because of pending court challenges. If the Republican incumbent David Yancey loses to the Democrat Shelly Simonds, the House will be tied fifty-fifty, and the two parties will share power.

National: Luck Of The Draw? Games Of Chance Not Uncommon In Deciding Tied Elections | NPR

A pivotal Virginia legislative race — and control of the entire House of Delegates — almost came down to the luck of the draw this week. Initially, it seemed as though Democrat Shelly Simonds had won last month's election by just one vote. Then Republican incumbent David Yancey successfully challenged one ballot, which led to an exact tie. The Virginia State Board of Elections had planned a drawing Wednesday to pick the winner, but Simonds filed a legal challenge against the ballot that had deadlocked the contest. If a court decides to include the ballot in question toward Yancey's total, the race would remain tied and a drawing would take place after all to determine who wins the Newport News seat. If it's Simonds, the Virginia House of Delegates would be split 50-50 and Democrats and Republicans would have to share power.

National: Can Facebook win its battle against election interference in 2018? | The Guardian

Social networks spent much of 2017 slowly coming to terms with the extent to which their platforms had been exploited to spread political misinformation. But the narrow focus of investigations over the last year is likely to cause further pain in 2018, as the US midterm elections create a new urgency for the problem to be solved. At the beginning of this year, Facebook was hostile to the suggestion that it may have played an unwitting part in a foreign influence campaign. After the election of Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, described the suggestion that his site may have swayed voters as a “crazy idea”, despite evidence that hoaxes and lies had been spread on the social network during the campaign. (He later apologised for the comment, saying it was “dismissive and I regret it”. By April the company had changed its tune, publishing the findings of a lengthy investigation into “information operations and Facebook” that described all the “subtle and insidious forms of misuse” that could occur on the site, “including attempts to manipulate civic discourse and deceive people”.

National: Bipartisan Senate bill would boost election security aid to states | FCW

A new bipartisan Senate bill seeks to boost the level of federal support to state local officials in order to protect the nation's election infrastructure from foreign cyber interference. The Secure Elections Act would authorize block grants for states to upgrade their voting machines, direct the Department of Homeland Security to "promptly" share election cybersecurity threat information with state and local governments and empower state and local election officials with the necessary security clearances to review classified threat information. The bill is sponsored by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.).

National: Kremlin trolls burned across the Internet as Washington debated options | The Washington Post

The first email arrived in the inbox of CounterPunch, a left-leaning American news and opinion website, at 3:26 a.m. — the middle of the day in Moscow. “Hello, my name is Alice Donovan and I’m a beginner freelance journalist,” read the Feb. 26, 2016, message. The FBI was tracking Donovan as part of a months-long counterintelligence operation code-named “NorthernNight.” Internal bureau reports described her as a pseudonymous foot soldier in an army of Kremlin-led trolls seeking to undermine America’s democratic institutions. Her first articles as a freelancer for CounterPunch and at least 10 other online publications weren’t especially political. As the 2016 presidential election heated up, Donovan’s message shifted. Increasingly, she seemed to be doing the Kremlin’s bidding by stoking discontent toward Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and touting WikiLeaks, which U.S. officials say was a tool of Russia’s broad influence operation to affect the presidential race.

National: Jailed Russian says Russia’s FSB ordered him to hack DNC in 2016 | The Kansas City Star

A jailed Russian who says he hacked into the Democratic National Committee computers on the Kremlin’s orders to steal emails released during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign now claims he left behind a data signature to prove his assertion. In an interview with Russia’s RAIN television channel made public Wednesday, Konstantin Kozlovsky provided further details about what he said was a hacking operation led by the Russian intelligence agency known by its initials FSB. Among them, Kozlovsky said he worked with the FSB to develop computer viruses that were first tested on large, unsuspecting Russian companies, such as the oil giant Rosneft, later turning them loose on multinational corporations.

National: Appeals court rejects challenge to Trump fraud panel | Reuters

A U.S. appeals court in Washington on Tuesday upheld a lower court’s decision to allow President Donald Trump’s commission investigating voter fraud to request data on voter rolls from U.S. states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) watchdog group, which filed the lawsuit, did not have legal standing to seek to force the presidential commission to review privacy concerns before collecting individuals’ voter data. EPIC had argued that under federal law, the commission was required to conduct a privacy-impact assessment before gathering personal data. But the three-judge appeals court panel ruled unanimously that the privacy law at issue was intended to protect individuals, not groups like EPIC. “EPIC is not a voter,” Judge Karen Henderson wrote in the ruling.

National: A Democrat on Trump’s voter fraud commission asked for more transparency. Here’s what happened next | Los Angeles Times

The request from Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap seemed to be a given for any member of President Trump's voter fraud commission: He wanted transparency. But Dunlap, among a handful of Democrats on the panel launched by executive order in May with the stated goal of restoring confidence and integrity in the electoral process, said he was denied full access to internal information. So he sued the commission he sits on. On Friday, a federal judge ruled the panel must give Dunlap access to relevant documents in order to allow him to fully participate in the commission's work. "He has a right to access documents that the commission is considering relying on in the course of developing its final recommendations," U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a lengthy opinion.

National: Black Turnout in Alabama Complicates Debate on Voting Laws | The New York Times

Even before a defiant Roy S. Moore stood at a lectern this month and refused to concede the Alabama Senate race, one political reality was clear: An extraordinary turnout among black voters had helped push Doug Jones to a rare Democratic victory in this state. That turnout, in which registered black voters appeared to cast ballots at a higher rate than white ones, has become the most recent reference point in the complicated picture about race and elections laws. At issue, at a time when minorities are becoming an increasingly powerful slice of the electorate, is how much rules like Alabama’s voter ID law serve as a brake on that happening. The turnout by black voters in Alabama raises a question: Did it come about because voting restrictions were not as powerful as critics claim or because voters showed up in spite of them?

National: In an election, tie goes to … | Daily Press

When Athenians came up with the idea of democracy 2,500 years ago, they figured the best way to be sure that the people, and not a tyrant, ruled was to pick their Council of 500 by lot — basically, the way the next member of the House of Delegates the 94th district could be selected. And the way control of the nation’s oldest legislature, the Virginia House of Delegates, will be decided. While Americans don’t normally chose officials this way, it’s not unknown when an election ends in a tie. As it did in six races — school boards, county commissioners and city councils — in Colorado this year. The winners in those cases were drawn by lot, as Colorado law dictates — pretty much echoing Virginia’s with pretty much the same lack of detail about the method.

National: Bipartisan group of lawmakers backs new election security bill | The Hill

A bipartisan coalition of Senate lawmakers introduced legislation on Thursday meant to strengthen U.S. election cybersecurity following Russian election interference. The bill would authorize block grants for states to upgrade outdated voting technology. It would also create a program for an independent panel of experts to develop cybersecurity guidelines for election systems that states can implement if they choose, and offer states resources to implement the recommendations. In addition, the legislation aims to expedite the process by which state officials receive security clearances necessary to review sensitive threat information and instructs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal entities to more quickly share this information with relevant state officials. The “Secure Elections Act” was introduced Thursday morning by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).

National: In Tied U.S. Elections, Chance, Not Voters, Often Decides Final Outcome | Reuters

After months of campaigning, Melissa Trenary's election last month to the city council in Colorado's historic mining town of Cripple Creek came down to the luck of the draw – literally. Trenary and her opponent, Jeff Regester, were deadlocked at 63 votes apiece after a recount, leaving officials to determine the race randomly "by lot" under state law. Each candidate drew one playing card from a freshly shuffled deck, with Trenary pulling the 10 of diamonds and Regester the seven of clubs – giving Trenary the high card and the victory. "I just about fainted," said Trenary, 50, who works at a local casino. "I started shaking and I started crying – I was just so happy."

National: Court: Trump fraud commission must give Democrat member more access | Politico

President Donald Trump's commission investigating voter fraud must give one of its Democratic members access to more of the panel's records, a federal judge ruled Friday night. U.S. District Court Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap appeared to have been denied documents needed to be an active player in the deliberations of what is formally known as the President's Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. "Plaintiff has a right, as a commissioner, to 'fully participate' in the proceedings of the Commission. In the Court’s view, his assertion that he will be unable to fully participate without the information contained in relevant documents that the Commission has not shared with the public has merit," wrote Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.

National: New hope, new problem: Will Federal Election Commission shut down? | Center for Public Integrity

Caroline Hunter and Ellen Weintraub share a relationship that’s sometimes icy, occasionally testy and rarely dull. Their public disagreements as Federal Election Commission commissioners have spanned a decade across myriad matters material and trivial — political ads, memory skills, breakfast food. But the dynastic duo, who on Thursday became FEC chairwoman and vice chairwoman for 2018 — both have served years in these capacities before — are forging a detente. Hunter, a Republican, recently sought out Weintraub, a Democrat, to privately discuss FEC issues, from improving agency efficiency to more tightly regulating internet-based political communications, on which they might actually agree. In separate interviews, both commissioners said they’re focusing not on their differences, but commonalities — a marked change of tone from two strong personalities who’ve gone stretches without speaking to one another.

National: NASS calls on Congress to modernize state election systems | Homeland Preparedness News

The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) recently joined the Congressional Task Force on Election Security in calling on Congress to direct $396 million in existing funds to modernize aging election systems across the country. Congress authorized nearly $3.9 billion to help states replace and modernize election systems under the Helping America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. Today, nearly $396 million in HAVA funding remains unused. Citing reports that Russian actors had targeted 21 states voting systems, compromising voting machines and voter registration databases, the Congressional Task Force on Election Security previously called on Congress to apply the HAVA balance to election security.

National: Senators ready to introduce bipartisan bill funding election cybersecurity efforts | InsideCyberSecurity

A bipartisan group of senators is set to introduce a bill this week that would increase assistance to states for cybersecurity during U.S. elections, in response to attempted interference by foreign state actors during the 2016 election. The bill is sponsored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), James Lankford (R-OK) and Kamala Harris (D-CA). Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) will offer a companion bill in the House, though this will not see action before the end of the year. “You can’t get more bipartisan than that,” Klobuchar said, noting the broad ideological diversity of the sponsors. “When you look at the fact that 21 states were hacked into, attempts were made to steal information, voters’ information, we can’t wait, and so that’s why we are working very hard to get it done at the end of the year,” Klobuchar told Inside Cybersecurity.

National: Are We About to Lose Our Unbiased Census? | History News Network

The foundational principle of American government is popular sovereignty, as in “We, the People.” Through a system of “successive filtrations,” James Madison said at the Federal Convention, a “great fabric” of government could be raised—but it needed to “rest on the solid foundation of the people themselves,” who would elect representatives to serve in Congress. It was a grand idea, but only an “actual Enumeration” could determine how many representatives each state was entitled to. Without a fair, accurate, and periodic census, Madison’s “great fabric” would lose its underpinnings. Other ruling bodies had counted heads before, but none had made a point to count all of the people (rather, say, than males eligible for military service) to determine political representation. It took a census to empower the people.

National: Democrats push for Homeland Security, FBI briefing on Russian attacks on voting systems | The Hill

A group of nearly two-dozen Democratic lawmakers wants the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FBI to brief the entire Congress on Russia’s efforts to target state voter systems ahead of the 2016 election. The Democratic lawmakers asked House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to arrange such a briefing in a letter sent Tuesday, labeling Moscow’s efforts to target election-related systems an “attack.” The letter was signed by House Democrats representing 18 of the 21 states identified by Homeland Security earlier this year as Russian targets before the 2016 election.

National: This Is How Gerrymandering Works | The New York Review of Books

I first got interested in gerrymandering on that long-ago night in 2012 when President Obama was re-elected. By 10 PM, it was clear that Obama had won. The next morning, I took a closer look at the returns. I grew up, and currently live, in Harris County, Texas, which includes much of the Houston metropolitan area. After Los Angeles County, California, and Cook County, Illinois, ours is the third-most populous county in the nation. Its population, close to 4.6 million, is greater than the populations of twenty-seven states. So I was stunned to see that Obama was ahead of Romney by two. Not 2 percent. Not 0.2 percent. Not 2,000. Two votes: 579,070 to 579,068. I looked for the fine print. But with nearly 99.2 percent of precincts reporting, these were the numbers. (That last 0.8 percent turned out more heavily for Obama. He won by 971 votes, out of 1,188,585 cast.) That made Harris County, by far, the most closely divided large population center in the country. Under a truly representative system, a county this large and this evenly divided would hold the key to the House of Representatives, and thus open one of the doors to national power. You would expect every race to be hotly contested, wildly expensive, and closely watched. They almost never are. 

National: Trump received FBI warning that Russians would try to infiltrate campaign: report | The Hill

The FBI reportedly warned then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the months before the election that Russia and other foreign adversaries would probably try to infiltrate his presidential campaign. Multiple government officials told NBC News that senior FBI officials briefed both Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton about the threats, which it said are commonly offered to major party nominees for the White House. The briefings, the officials told NBC, are used to alert candidates and their teams about such threats. They are generally given around the point at which candidates begin receiving classified information, and campaigns are told to alert any suspicious activity to authorities.

National: Senate intel committee investigating Jill Stein campaign for possible collusion with the Russians | The Washington Post

The Senate Intelligence Committee is looking at the presidential campaign of the Green Party’s Jill Stein for potential “collusion with the Russians,” a sign that the panel’s probe is far from over, even as allegations swirl that the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation is racing to a close. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told reporters Monday that the Senate Intelligence Committee has “two other campaigns that we’re just starting on,” in addition to the panel’s ongoing probe of alleged ties between the Trump administration and Kremlin officials. One of those he identified as Stein’s; Burr has indicated previously that the committee is also looking into reports that the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign paid for research that went into a dossier detailing allegations of Donald Trump’s 2013 exploits in Moscow.

National: Senators to introduce bipartisan bill to prevent foreign cyber interference in elections | CBS

A bipartisan group of senators are introducing a bill early next week to improve and streamline information about cyber threats between state and federal entities, in the wake of Russia's believed interference during the 2016 election, according to a top aide to one of the senators involved. The bill, spearheaded by Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, and also sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, is intended to better the communication between the Department of Homeland Security, the intelligence community and state election offices, in efforts to thwart future interference in U.S. elections by foreign actors. The bill, which will include resources for states, is also intended to help states identify and prepare against cyber attacks.

National: Homeland Security, private sector launch election security group | The Hill

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Election Assistance Commission and a bevy of voting equipment industry and nonprofit groups met to launch an election security Sector Coordinating Council (SCC) on Thursday. The meeting further solidifies their decision last year to treat elections as critical infrastructure. The SCC will represent the private sector as Homeland Security deliberates strategies and policies to protect critical infrastructure. “No one entity — whether private or public — can manage the risk to our critical election infrastructure on its own," said David Wulf, acting deputy assistant secretary for the DHS Office of Infrastructure Protection in a statement announcing the election SCC.