National

The hackers settled in, arranged their laptops on a small table and got right to work. The clock was ticking. They began by carefully combing through the online voting system’s code, rapping at their keyboards and exchanging a pitter-patter of techie jargon. They toggled between screens. One displayed the unblemished interface that prospective voters would see. The other was black, threaded with lines of code: a sketch of their half-drafted attack. The first few hours were full of dead ends: a rejected ballot; an unexpected security fix, made in real time by election officials to thwart their efforts. Had they been found out? Suddenly, one of the four hackers paused midscroll. He’d found a seemingly trivial mistake, the code equivalent of an unlocked window. “Let’s steal things! Yes, let’s steal,” one of them said, tugging at his mop of dark hair. “Let’s get their ballot public key – GPG export or Base64 out to a file.” University of Michigan computer science professor Alex Halderman and his team of graduate students demonstrated in 2010 that it’s possible for a few hackers to quickly manipulate online voting systems. This was not a war room in Russia, where hackers allegedly have worked to infiltrate email servers to disrupt this year’s election. It was the office of Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan. The hackers were graduate students, proving a point about Washington, D.C.’s fledgling voting system: that internet voting is vulnerable, a hunk of cybersecurity Swiss cheese. It was Sept. 29, 2010, just a few weeks before the city’s system was to be launched.

National: The Security Challenges of Online Voting Have Not Gone Away | IEEE Spectrum

Online voting is sometimes heralded as a solution to all our election headaches. Proponents claim it eliminates hassle, provides better verification for voters and auditors, and may even increase voter turnout. In reality, it’s not a panacea, and certainly not ready for use in U.S. elections. Recent events have illustrated the complex problem of voting in the presence of a state-level attacker, and online voting will make U.S. elections more vulnerable to foreign interference. In just the past year, we have seen Russian hackers exfiltrate information from the Democratic National Committee and probe voter databases for vulnerabilities, prompting the U.S. government to formally accuse Russia of hacking. In light of those events, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security may soon classify voting systems as critical infrastructure, underscoring the significant cybersecurity risks facing American elections. Internet voting would paint an even more attractive target on the ballot box for Russian adversaries with a record of attempting to disrupt elections through online attacks.

National: White nationalists plot Election Day show of force | Politico

Neo-Nazi leader Andrew Anglin plans to muster thousands of poll watchers across all 50 states. His partners at the alt-right website “the Right Stuff” are touting plans to set up hidden cameras at polling places in Philadelphia and hand out liquor and marijuana in the city’s “ghetto” on Election Day to induce residents to stay home. The National Socialist Movement, various factions of the Ku Klux Klan and the white nationalist American Freedom Party all are deploying members to watch polls, either “informally” or, they say, through the Trump campaign. The Oath Keepers, a group of former law enforcement and military members that often shows up in public heavily armed, is advising members to go undercover and conduct “intelligence-gathering” at polling places, and Donald Trump ally Roger Stone is organizing his own exit polling, aiming to monitor thousands of precincts across the country.

National: Judge wants GOP to hand over info on poll watchers | CNN

For Donald Trump, questioning whether the campaign will be “rigged” has become a campaign stump mantra. For Republican National Committee lawyers, it’s become a different kind of worry. Trump has repeatedly invited his followers to watch polling areas. “Go down to certain areas and watch and study and make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times,” he said at a rally in Pennsylvania this summer. Now, a federal judge wants to hear more. A hearing is scheduled for Friday in New Jersey, and the RNC has been directed to provide information detailing “any efforts regarding poll watching or poll observation.” The RNC is forbidden from engaging in any ballot security activities that might deter qualified voters from voting because of a decades old consent decree that has been modified over the years and is set to expire at the end of 2017.

National: Democrats Sue Trump for Voter Intimidation in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Ohio, and Arizona | The Atlantic

The lawsuits are piling up. Over the last two weeks, the Democratic and Republican parties have filed half a dozen warring complaints about poll monitoring. Democrats allege Republicans are coordinating widespread voter-intimidation efforts. Republicans in at least one state have argued that poll watching should be expanded, not limited. All sides are seeking emergency relief, calling on judges to consider their cases in the next seven days before the election. While both parties fight for their lives life in states like New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, they’re now having to battle each other in court as well. On their face, these cases may seem like a form of legal subterfuge—attempts to distract the other party and float damaging allegations days before the election. The cases focus on just a few hundred volunteers in a handful of states: The Arizona Democratic Party said 93 people are signed up to conduct “exit polling” with Stop the Steal, a voter-fraud-related super PAC, and the Ohio Democratic Party said “dozens” have volunteered for the same effort in their state.

National: RNC’s Lawyers Try To Distance Themselves From Trump’s “Rigged Election” Claims | BuzzFeed

At the end of 2017, the Republican National Committee is slated to be freed from decades-old federal court oversight that limits the party’s activities when it comes to “ballot security.” In other words, after nine presidential elections, the national Republican Party is set to have more freedom to engage in poll monitoring activities without an automatic court bar on any voter fraud-related efforts at polling places. But Democrats are now arguing in federal court that Donald Trump’s “rigged election” claims and his efforts to send “watchers” to polling places mean the Republican National Committee can’t be trusted with that power. The Republican Party’s lawyers responded on Monday by attempting to distance the party from Trump’s campaign. On Friday, a federal judge in New Jersey will hold a hearing on the request by the Democratic National Committee to hold the RNC in contempt and extend the order that restrict’s the party’s activities — for the next two presidential elections.

National: Clinton, Trump Prepare for Possibility of Election Overtime | Bloomberg

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are arming up for a possible post-Election Day battle. Clinton is assembling a voter protection program that has drawn thousands of lawyers agreeing to lend their time and expertise in battleground states, though the campaign isn’t saying exactly how many or where. It is readying election observers in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada and Arizona to assess any concerns — including the potential for voter intimidation — and to verify normal procedures. The Republican National Lawyers Association, which trains attorneys in battleground states and in local jurisdictions where races are expected to be close, aims to assemble 1,000 lawyers ready to monitor polls and possibly challenge election results across the country. Hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, one of Trump’s biggest backers, has sunk $500,000 into the group, its biggest donation in at least four presidential elections, Internal Revenue Service filings show. “We are fighting for open, fair and honest elections,” the association’s executive director, Michael Thielen, said in an e-mail.

National: US election: Where you can ‘write in’ a name on ballot | BBC

Imagine an election when you could vote for anyone you wanted. In parts of America, you can – simply by writing a name on the ballot paper. But if millions of disillusioned people voted for someone like Donald Trump’s running mate Mike Pence, could he actually become president? It’s a quirk of the American election system. Voters are allowed to “write in” candidates who aren’t officially running for the top job when they go to the polls. They simply write the name on the ballot. Mickey Mouse is a US favourite. Donald Duck often pops up in Scandinavia. God and Me are other perennial picks. Every year there are more serious protest votes. The name of a vice-presidential nominee, or an independent, for example. But it’s rare for senators or congressmen to shun their party’s presidential nominee and write in a totally different candidate. The 1932 New York mayoral race was perhaps the first election where Mickey Mouse appeared This year, at least three Republicans have said they will write in the name of Mr Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, after a 2005 video tape in which the Republican candidate made obscene remarks about women emerged.

National: Will a major cyberattack strike the internet on US election day? | International Business Times

As the US presidential election approaches, and in the wake of numerous leaks and hacks this year, many people are openly talking about the likelihood of the process being disrupted by a major cyberattack that could influence the results – Silicon Valley included. Adam D’Angelo, former chief technology officer at Facebook and founder of Quora, took to social media to voice his concerns. “Good chance of major internet attack 8 Nov,” he tweeted. “Many groups have the ability and incentive. [Google] Maps outage alone could easily skew the election.” Referencing the massive US internet outages caused by the internet of things (IoT) enhanced Mirai botnet that recently took down a slew of websites via a DNS cyberattack, D’Angelo added: “Last Friday’s attack should be enough evidence.” In response to the tweet, which was circulated hundreds of times, Dustin Moskovitz, the co-founder of Facebook who has donated millions of dollars to the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, said: “Is there anything to be done about it?”

National: Lack of cybersecurity standards leaves election process vulnerable | TechTarget

The 2016 election season has been unique for reasons beyond the U.S. presidential candidates: For the first time, widespread reports of cyberattacks on voting systems and hacks of political organizations’ correspondence are disrupting — and influencing — the U.S. election process. … The problem is compounded by another sobering fact: The current U.S. voting infrastructure is a compilation of older, unsophisticated technology blended with newer digital electronics that often don’t work well together. This system requires patching — much like an operating system that constantly needs updating to prevent newly discovered vulnerabilities from being exploited. As a result, cybersecurity for our political process is not just about protecting our political representatives’ emails, but also about protecting the methods and machines we use to count the votes. The older the computer and operating system, the more vulnerable it is, and the same applies to voting machines. For instance, there is a voting machine in use in Louisiana, New Jersey, Virginia and Pennsylvania that has been in use since 1990 and hacked by a college professor — to draw attention to the device’s high vulnerability level — in seven minutes.

National: Was a server registered to the Trump Organization communicating with Russia’s Alfa Bank? | Slate

The greatest miracle of the internet is that it exists—the second greatest is that it persists. Every so often we’re reminded that bad actors wield great skill and have little conscience about the harm they inflict on the world’s digital nervous system. They invent viruses, botnets, and sundry species of malware. There’s good money to be made deflecting these incursions. But a small, tightly knit community of computer scientists who pursue such work—some at cybersecurity firms, some in academia, some with close ties to three-letter federal agencies—is also spurred by a sense of shared idealism and considers itself the benevolent posse that chases off the rogues and rogue states that try to purloin sensitive data and infect the internet with their bugs. “We’re the Union of Concerned Nerds,” in the wry formulation of the Indiana University computer scientist L. Jean Camp. In late spring, this community of malware hunters placed itself in a high state of alarm. Word arrived that Russian hackers had infiltrated the servers of the Democratic National Committee, an attack persuasively detailed by the respected cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The computer scientists posited a logical hypothesis, which they set out to rigorously test: If the Russians were worming their way into the DNC, they might very well be attacking other entities central to the presidential campaign, including Donald Trump’s many servers. “We wanted to help defend both campaigns, because we wanted to preserve the integrity of the election,” says one of the academics, who works at a university that asked him not to speak with reporters because of the sensitive nature of his work.

National: Getting It Over With, Americans Are Voting Early This Year | VoA News

Joe Brookreson stands at the table, pensive, reading a cookbook, his wife looking over his shoulder. “I’m looking in that container?” asks Susan Brookreson. A ball of dough is rising in a bowl on the counter beside them. Joe is sharing the instructions for how to prepare wheat bread with his wife. “Oh, there are two rises,” Joe realizes. This means he may not be able to return home after casting his vote for president – his early vote, that is – in time to supervise the baking. “Doggone it.” Joe had planned to drive 15 minutes to Martinsburg, West Virginia, for early voting and then return home to bake the bread, but the extra leavening time is complicating his schedule. Susan reassures him: “Go. Your voting is more important.” November 8 is more than a week away, but around the United States, many people like Joe Brookreson are running to the polls to vote. Voting started as early as September 23 in some places, and is now permitted in 37 states and the District of Columbia. Each state establishes its own procedures and dates.

National: Plans To Watch Polls For Fraud Raise Fears Of Intimidation | NPR

One question on many people’s minds is whether polling places will be disrupted on Election Day. There are concerns that vigilantes, armed with cameras and notebooks, will intimidate voters they suspect of committing fraud. Such groups insist they’ll follow the law, but civil rights groups are on alert just in case. There have already been some disturbing incidents. In Durham, N.C., a voter reported someone videotaping license plates outside an early-polling site. In West Palm Beach, Fla., a voter complained of being intimidated by a rowdy group of electioneers. A right-wing group called Oath Keepers has appealed to its members, mostly former military and police, to go undercover at polling sites and collect intelligence about possible fraud. In an online video, the group’s president, Stewart Rhodes, asked supporters “to go out as part of our call to action, to go and hunt down, look for vote fraud and voter intimidation and document it, to do the best we can to stop it this election.” There are other efforts as well. A Texas-based group called True the Vote has a smartphone app for people to document any incidents of voter fraud they see at the polls.

National: Modern technology’s effect on voting | UHCL The Signal

Advancements in technology have already impacted the U.S. voting system, taking it from all paper to electronic ballots. Now that we live in a digital age, how close are we to online voting? There are currently four ways to vote in a U.S. election: paper ballots in person or by mail, direct recording electronic systems (DRE), ballot marking devices, and punch cards. Various companies have created phone apps and services to make it easy for people to register to vote, but actual voting in national elections cannot be done online. “Right now, any computer system on the planet can be hacked,” said Holmes Wilson, co-founder and co-director of Fight For The Future (FFTF). … In 1974, the first form of electronic voting, the Video Voter, was used in a U.S. government election and, although that method ended in 1980, its successor, the DRE voting machine, is used in many states, and it is the main method used in Texas. “The problem with these machines is that, to trust them, you had to believe that it was possible to build error-proof, tamper-proof computerized equipment, and as a computer scientist, I know that’s not possible,” said David Dill, professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University and founder of Verified Voting. “We need to get rid of all paperless DRE’s in the U.S., and have improved auditing laws and procedures everywhere.”

National: Claim that George Soros owns U.S. voting machines is Pants on Fire! | PolitiFact

How do you spread a rumor without taking responsibility for spreading it? By saying you don’t vouch for its accuracy — yet. That’s what Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., did on CNN on the topic of vote rigging. In an interview on the Situation Room, Duffy said he didn’t have evidence of “widespread problems across the country,” but he went out of his way to relay some troubling reports. “Articles that I have read, I haven’t verified them,” Duffy told host Wolf Blitzer on Oct. 27, 2016. … The claim about billionaire Soros emerged on several conservative websites. One Daily Caller report said, “Smartmatic, a U.K.-based voting technology company with deep ties to George Soros, has provided voting technology in 16 states including battleground zones like Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia.” The article noted that Smartmatic stated on its website that it “will not be deploying its technology in any U.S. county for the upcoming 2016 U.S. presidential elections.” That nuance was lost on many people. More than 125,000 signed a petition posted Oct. 21, 2016, on the White House website that said, “We the people ask Congress to meet in emergency session about removing George Soros-owned voting machines from 16 states.” To be clear, abundant evidence shows that Soros owns no voting machines in the United States.

National: Web-Based Overseas Ballots May Be Most Vulnerable to Tampering | Wall Street Journal

If there is a weak spot in the voting process, it could be the practice followed in more than half the states of allowing overseas voters, including members of the U.S. military, to return their ballots online, experts say. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia permit some registered voters living outside of the U.S. to cast their pick for president by email, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Another 30 states permit the return of some ballots by fax, while five states allow ballots to be uploaded through a web portal. The changes were implemented to make voting easier, but, with polls showing increasing concerns about rigging and hacking of the system, the one area with the most vulnerability may be this relatively small cache of ballots, the experts said. Most U.S. voting electronic machines aren’t internet-enabled, meaning that they would have to be physically accessed to tamper with the results. The few that do have wireless or other network capabilities generally are paper-ballot scanners that leave a physical trail that can be checked in a recount or audit.

National: As Americans vote, will hackers pounce? | Harvard Gazette

In late April, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) suspected that something was wrong with their network and called in the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to investigate. A few weeks later, after routine testing, the suspicions were confirmed: The committee had been hacked by the Russians. … As DNC documents were leaked throughout the summer and into the fall, the episode put the United States on notice that Vladimir Putin’s government is intent on influencing the 2016 election, Alperovitch said during a panel discussion at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). That could mean a couple of things, he said. Russia might try to hack voting machines or it could mount a disinformation campaign to discredit the eventual results. “The fundamental objective here by the Russians is not necessarily to get one person or another elected as president,” said Alperovitch. “The fundamental objective is actually much more nefarious, which is to undermine the very idea of a free and fair election — the cornerstone of our democracy.” The decentralized nature of the U.S. vote should protect against a widespread intrusion, said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan advocacy group. Each of the 9,000 election jurisdictions across the country has its own systems and procedures, meaning no single point of failure could disrupt the tally nationwide.

National: States Move to Protect Their Voting Systems | Wall Street Journal

The test began at 8 a.m. last Tuesday. Secretary of State Michele Reagan, four staffers and a freelance Spanish-language interpreter cast 138 votes on 40 ballots using seven touch-screen machines. The mood was jovial—until a printout showed the numbers on one machine didn’t line up with the master list of votes. Janine Petty, Arizona’s deputy state election director, scanned the printout and quickly discovered another of Ms. Reagan’s staffers had voted for two of the wrong candidates. The machine had worked perfectly, after all. Ms. Reagan jokingly admonished the sheepish staffer, telling him he should go on their fictional “Wall of Shame.” Across the country, state election officials are carrying out final tests on tens of thousands of voting machines that are part of a multistep process that delivers results in local, state and federal contests. Next week, the last of more than 120 million ballots are expected to be cast in a watershed election to determine who controls the White House, Congress and the direction of the Supreme Court.

National: States unprepared for Election Day cyber attack | Politico

State election officials around the country are woefully unprepared for a cyber disruption around Election Day. While states have spent years thinking about and planning for other types of crisis that can mess with voting — from hurricanes to power blackouts and terrorist attacks — they’ve been slow and ill staffed to develop contingency plans responsive to a hack attack that would adequately protect their systems in time for the 2016 presidential election. “They’re waking up to it, but they largely don’t know what questions to ask,” said Jeremy Epstein, a senior computer scientist at the nonprofit research center SRI International and an expert on voting mechanics. A dozen battleground state officials surveyed by POLITICO insist the voting systems themselves are safe, as nearly all parts of the balloting process take place in a secure, offline environment. But they also repeatedly acknowledged there are limits to what they can control, and they recognize they face legitimate challenges from cyber intrusions to the myriad adjacent parts that go into an election, including online registration records and publicizing vote tallies. While any manipulation of a state’s official election results is seen as unlikely, there’s little denying that an Internet disruption or hack could cause significant confusion and chaos on Election Day, a dark conclusion to an ugly election plagued by accusations of Russian cyber espionage and evidence-less allegations of vote tampering and rigging. Just last week, hackers temporarily froze a sizable chunk of the internet, a worst-case scenario that would cause serious problems around the country if duplicated on Nov. 8 — the day more than 100 million Americans are going to the polls.

National: Voting rights group ramping up election protection efforts | USA Today

National and local voting rights activists, worried about threats to casting ballots nationwide, are setting up command centers, staffing hotlines and deploying thousands of monitors to polling sites across the country to ensure voters can get to the polls. “Folks are pretty much on high alert,’’ said Scott Simpson, director of media and campaigns for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of 200 groups. “There is no election like this in modern history and we are taking every precaution that we can, within our means, to prevent intimidation and to make sure that folks know that they will be able to cast their ballots free from intimidation.’’ With talk about “rigged’’ elections in the presidential campaign and the Supreme Court’s rejection of a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, civil rights and voting rights activists say they’re concerned about possible shenanigans and roadblocks at the polls. Voting rights advocates are particularly worried about potential problems in states, mostly in the South, that used to be required to get approval or “pre-clearance” from the Justice Department before making any changes in election procedures because they had a history of discrimination at the polls. A 2013 Supreme Court decision — Shelby County v. Holder — threw out that provision. This will be the first presidential election since pre-clearance was eliminated in those states.

National: Trump Doesn’t Have the Ground Game to Intimidate Voters | WIRED

October 30, 2016

Donald Trump doesn’t want you to vote. At least, his lack of faith in a US electoral system he calls “rigged” suggests he thinks your vote won’t count. So why bother, right? His allegations of widespread voter fraud are baseless. But that hasn’t stopped him from calling on his supporters to monitor polling places in communities he has deems suspect. That call has led to fears of violence and voter intimidation on Election Day. Trump is none-too-subtle in describing where he thinks election fraud will go down. He told his supporters at a rally in Pennsylvania to go watch voters in “certain places” outside of their own communities, a piercing dog-whistle call to descend on non-white areas that vote heavily Democratic. And some backers have heard the summons. … These promised armies of aggro poll protectors will almost certainly amount to nothing more than a fear-inducing fantasy come Election Day, not least because strict federal and state laws protect voters from intimidation. What is likelier (and scarier) is that a fantasy is all the threat needs to be to hurt voter turnout.

National: ‘We don’t want voters to be terrified’: Officials seek to allay fears of a ‘rigged’ election | The Washington Post

In an election one side claims is “rigged” as the other was apparently targeted by Russian hackers and Wikileaks, voters may be concerned that some entity will alter the results on Nov. 8. It’s possible, according to some experts, although the likelihood of a significant attack on ballot boxes is exceedingly low. “Everything is hackable,” said Jeremy Epstein, a senior computer scientist at SRI International, a nonprofit California-based think tank. “Everything could have bugs in it.” … The District, Maryland and many counties in Virginia use paper ballots — a gold standard for election-watchers. These ballots are scanned and counted electronically, leaving behind a hard copy of each voter’s preferences. “It seems old-school, but if you have good security practices and a good ballot chain of custody . . . it’s more indelible than bits and bytes in the ether,” said Pamela Smith, president of the nonpartisan Verified Voting, a nonprofit that works for fair elections.

National: Federal and state law enforcement officials concerned About Risk of Violence as Election Day Nears | NBC

Trump supporters held up Clinton “target practice” posters at a rally in Florida Monday, with a bulls-eye framing her face. Two days earlier in Virginia Beach, one Trump backer hoisted a plastic Hillary Clinton head on a stick, while others waved target signs. And several weeks ago, two armed Trump supporters protested outside the congressional campaign office of a rural Virginia Democrat, in what they said was a gesture of solidarity with closet supporters of Trump. Federal and state law enforcement officials say such incidents have heightened their concerns about violence in the final two weeks of the long and bitter Presidential campaign, and well beyond that if Donald Trump loses and refuses to accept the vote as legitimate. “There is a motivated army of ‘fingers in their ears’ supporters of his who believe he’s giving them license to behave badly, and license not to except the findings of the 9,000 bipartisan polling jurisdictions around the country,” one senior federal law enforcement official told NBC News.

National: Some Voting Machines Are Flipping Votes But That Doesn’t Mean The Election Is ‘Rigged’ | NPR

Vote flipping. The stories and conspiracy theories have begun. In every recent election, there have been reports of voters pressing one candidate’s name on a touch-screen machine, only to have the opponent’s name light up instead. It can be unnerving for voters and often leads to allegations that the machines have been “rigged” to favor one candidate over another. Enter election 2016, when the word “rigged” is more politically charged than ever. In the first few days of early voting, there are already scattered reports of vote-flipping machines in North Carolina, Texas and Nevada. … So what’s going on? Are the machines rigged? No, says just about every voting technology expert. “If you were actually trying to rig an election, it would be a very stupid thing to do, to let the voter know that you were doing it,” says Larry Norden, with the Brennan Center for Justice in New York.

National: Cybersecurity Experts Discuss Hacking Election Technology | The Harvard Crimson

Panelists at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum discussed the vulnerability of U.S. election systems to cyber threats Thursday. … Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a non-partisan NGO that promotes the transparency and accuracy of elections, opened the forum with an overview of technology in U.S. elections. According to Smith, technology used in elections, such as voting machines or electronic paper ballot scanners, is vulnerable to hackers. … Smith also described two hacker breaches in the voter registration systems in Arizona and Illinois, which showed that the attacks were not limited to foreign countries. According to Smith, while a foreign power altering vote counts to the point of changing the winner remains improbable, the vote count could still be altered. “This is not so much theoretical at this point. This is happening,” Smith said.

National: We’re Not Ready for Online Voting | Gizmodo

As we move forward, online voting seems shimmeringly imminent, particularly because virtually everything we do, we already do online. But voting is far different than banking, shopping, and communicating. It’s trickier and more complex. However precariously, voting in the United States is hoisted up as an essential part of the political system. In theory, casting ballots gives ordinary citizens a means of control—change is always just one election away. It’s crucial for voters to believe that the mechanisms through which their views are delivered are legitimate, and if those mechanisms are tinkered with or updated, that trust should be preserved. As it stands, there are legitimate concerns involved with current and near-future voting technology. There’s still a long way to go, and with something as vital as voting, there is an infinitely small margin for error. … “You need physical security for your ballots,” Pamela Smith, Verified Voting’s president, says. “Let’s say you return a ballot by email. You’ll have a printed record, but it might not match, if something happened with it in transit.”

National: Entangled in the rigging: Do Trump’s calls for poll watchers constitute incitement? | The Economist

When Donald Trump recently asked his supporters in Ohio to keep an eye out for voter fraud on election day, his plea came with a knowing suggestion: “When [I] say ‘watch,’ you know what I’m talking about, right?” Mr Trump’s worry that the election will be “rigged” has inspired repeated calls for volunteers to serve as poll watchers in cities including Philadelphia, Chicago and St Louis. At a recent rally in Pennsylvania, he had this to say: “You’ve got to go out, and you’ve got to get your friends, and you’ve got to get everybody you know, and you gotta watch the polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania, certain areas”. It would be a shame, Mr Trump said, to lose the White House “because of you know what I’m talking about.” What Mr Trump seems to be talking about is scores of black and Latino voters who are unfriendly to his candidacy and—purportedly—not eligible to vote. With little more than a hunch that “of course…large scale voter fraud” prevails in “certain communities”, Mr Trump ignores studies belying the claim. A review of 12 years of allegations turned up just 10 cases of confirmed fraud. Another study found 31 cases of voter impersonation out of a billion votes cast from 2000 to 2014. There are no signs that Democrats are coordinating a national strategy to harness voter fraud to steal the election.

National: At ‘Poll Watcher Training’ Class, Republicans Trade Rumors, Fears of Fraud | Wall Street Journal

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been raising hackles for weeks about a “stolen” election, and on Wednesday morning, in a suburban public library in northern Virginia, more than two dozen Republicans heeded his call. The group had signed up for a “poll watcher training” class through the local Republican Party. They were mostly retirees, all white, except for one woman from India. Many said they appreciated Mr. Trump’s dire predictions of election fraud in defiance of a number of GOP leaders and elected officials who say he is undermining voter confidence. Experts say fraud, particularly impersonating voters, is scarce, and Mr. Trump has offered no evidence for his claims. “Very clearly there is going to be massive voter fraud, and it will definitely be to ensure Hillary Clinton wins,” said Penny Hendrix, a 52-year-old stay-at-home mom in Fairfax Station. “I’ve been concerned about this for some time, and Trump bringing it up is raising awareness.”

National: Winning in court, losing on the ground: uncertainty clouds U.S. voting rights | Reuters

U.S. voting rights advocates scored a string of courtroom victories this year that rolled back some of the nation’s most restrictive voting laws. Now they face another challenge: making sure those rulings are not undermined by officials who oversee elections at the local level. With early voting already under way ahead of the Nov. 8 election, local officials in several states are trying to enforce restrictions that have been suspended or struck down in court, civil rights advocates say. In some cases, the action appears to be the result of bureaucratic confusion. In other cases, they appear to be actively resisting the law. “There are still too many places where voting is going to be difficult and confusing, not easy and straightforward,” said Leah Aden, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The foot-dragging by local officials adds another element of uncertainty to what already promises to be a volatile election.

National: Voting Rights Groups Brace for Election Day ‘Chaos‘ | Roll Call