National

In a remarkable statement that seemed to cast doubt on American democracy, Donald J. Trump said Wednesday that he might not accept the results of next month’s election if he felt it was rigged against him — a stand that Hillary Clinton blasted as “horrifying” at their final and caustic debate on Wednesday. Mr. Trump, under enormous pressure to halt Mrs. Clinton’s steady rise in opinion polls, came across as repeatedly frustrated as he tried to rally conservative voters with hard-line stands on illegal immigration and abortion rights. But he kept finding himself drawn onto perilous political territory by Mrs. Clinton and the debate’s moderator, Chris Wallace. … Mr. Trump insisted, without offering evidence, that the general election has been rigged against him, and he twice refused to say that he would accept its result. “I will look at it at the time,” Mr. Trump said. “I will keep you in suspense.”

National: Donald Trump declines to say he’d accept the results of the election, but voter fraud almost never happens | Los Angeles Times

Donald Trump doubled down on his allegations of a “rigged election” during Wednesday’s debate, declining in a major breach of democratic protocol to say he’d accept the results of the election. His reasoning included an implication of widespread voter fraud, asserting that there are “millions of people that are registered to vote that shouldn’t be registered to vote.” But Trump is vastly overstating how common voter fraud is, according to election experts. Voter fraud — in which a person casts a ballot despite knowingly being ineligible to vote — is “extraordinarily rare,” according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School. The 2007 study examined elections where wrongdoing was alleged and found the rate of substantiated instances of fraud ranged between 0.00004% and 0.0009%. Another study by a Loyola law professor found just 31 instances of in-person voter fraud (in which one person pretended to be someone else) out of more than 1 billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014.

National: Trump Refuses to Say He’ll Accept Election Results If He Loses | Bloomberg

Donald Trump refused to say he’d accept the election’s results if he loses, an extraordinary statement on one of the underpinnings of U.S. democracy, as one of the most unconventional U.S. presidential campaigns entered its final stretch. Hillary Clinton called the Republican nominee’s remark “horrifying” in what was one of the most dramatic moments Wednesday night in Las Vegas during their final debate before the Nov. 8 election. “I will look at it, at the time,” Trump said, as he accused the media of dishonesty and being part of rigging the election against him. “They’ve poisoned the minds of the voters, but unfortunately for them I think the voters are seeing through it.” Always the showman, Trump said he’d let Americans know his decision about accepting the results after the election. “I will tell you at the time,” he said. “I’ll keep you in suspense.” Clinton expressed shock, echoing comments made earlier this week by President Barack Obama on the importance of a peaceful transfer of power in the U.S.

National: This Is Why We Still Can’t Vote Online | Motherboard

Online voting sounds like a dream: the 64 percent of citizens who own smartphones and the 84 percent of American adults with access to the internet would simply have to pull out their devices to cast a ballot. And Estonia—a northern European country bordering the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland—has been voting online since 2005. But ask cybersecurity experts and they’ll tell you it’s really a nightmare. We are nowhere close to having an online voting system that is as secure as it needs to be. Ron Rivest, a professor at MIT with a background in computer security and a board member of Verified Voting, said it is a “naive expectation” to even think online voting is on the horizon. One of the most compelling arguments made in favor for online voting is that it could potentially increase voter turnout. Which is a problem in the US: In 2012, 61.6 percent of those eligible to vote turned out to cast a ballot as opposed to the 58.2 percent that came out in 2008—a 3.4 percentage point decrease. According to the Pew Research Center, the American voter turnout in 2012 was low in comparison to elections in other nations, too. But Rivest said there’s no “hard evidence” to prove that making the process more accessible via the Internet will result in increased voter turnout. And even if one were to accept the unverified assumption that online voting would boost the number of people who vote, a larger dilemma still exists.

National: New voter ID rules, other election changes could cause confusion | PBS

Less than three weeks before Election Day, new voter ID requirements, early voting schedules and voter registration rules in more than a dozen states are creating uncertainty that could dampen turnout. In some states, courts are still hashing out new rules. Fourteen states have election laws that are more restrictive than they were during the last presidential election in 2012. Most of them require voters to show a photo ID before casting their ballots. Some of those ID laws have been scaled back or overturned by judges citing racial discrimination, but legal battles have continued in several states because voting rights advocates say state officials haven’t fully complied with court orders. There is confusion stemming from other court cases as well. Kansas’ attempt to require proof of citizenship from voters is still tied up in court. In Ohio, the battle is over people the state purged from the voter rolls because they hadn’t voted in six years.

National: Southern states see efforts to delay vote-related deadlines | Associated Press

Some North Carolina voters who want to expand early in-person voting in the presidential battleground state lost their case before a federal appeals court Wednesday, and in Georgia a federal judge refused to extend the voter registration deadline again for counties stricken by Hurricane Matthew. But a voters’ group in Virginia still held out hope of extending that state’s registration deadlines. A three-judge panel on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the emergency motion focused on five North Carolina counties that include cities such as Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Wilmington. A trial court judge refused the same request last week. The voters’ lawyers argued the counties weren’t complying with the 4th Circuit’s ruling in July striking down portions of a 2013 law that reduced the early-voting period by seven days. The period now covers 17 days, beginning Thursday. The voters said election officials should have allowed additional early voting on Sunday, during the first seven days of the period, or on the Saturday afternoon before Election Day.

National: Will The New Era Of Limited Federal Monitoring Still Protect Voter Rights? | NPR

This year’s presidential election will be the first in a half-century without the significant presence of federal observers at polling places. That’s because in 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, and when the court wiped out that section, the statute that provided for election observers went, too. The landmark decision in Shelby County v. Holder doesn’t mean civil rights officials are totally disarmed. The Justice Department will still send out “hundreds” of “monitors” to oversee Election Day compliance. But the number is smaller than it was before, and monitors can only enter the polling place if local officials agree. Observers, by contrast, had a statutory right to be inside polling places. They were trained specifically for the task. There also were many more of them, and they had far more authority than monitors.

National: Voter fraud and dead people: How tech sets things right | CNET

Four years ago, David Becker and John Lindback helped lead a study about voter registration in the US. The results were alarming. More than 1.8 million dead people were still registered to vote. That’s because systems designed to remove them were flawed, according to their study, conducted by the Pew Center on the States. A total of 24 million voter records — one out of every eight — were “significantly inaccurate or no longer valid.” After the study, the Pew Charitable Trusts worked with several states to form the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, to clean up voter registration rolls, which get out of whack when we move, change names or die. Today, 21 states and the District of Columbia work with ERIC to compare and analyze data across each other’s voter and motor vehicle registrations, US Postal Service addresses and Social Security death records. States also apply sophisticated cybersecurity tools to fend off hackers. But the fixes take time.

National: Why Worries About Paperless Voting Loom Larger This Year | KUNC

On Election Day this November, about 1 in 4 Americans will vote using a device that never lets the voter see a copy of his or her vote on paper. The idea of relying on such machines has troubled some security experts for years. And this year the stakes may be even higher, because one candidate is charging that the election is rigged, and government officials have warned that state election systems have been targeted by foreign hackers with ties to Russia. Five states exclusively use voting machines that lack the kind of independent paper trail needed to do a convincing recount, according to a nonprofit, nonpartisan group called Verified Voting. Those states are New Jersey, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina. “And then there are another nine states that have paperless voting machines in some jurisdictions,” says Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting. In Pennsylvania, considered a battleground state, those machines are used in a majority of counties. “On a scale of all of the states, I would say that Pennsylvania would be my biggest concern,” says Smith.

National: Can you rig a U.S. presidential election? Experts say it’s basically impossible. | The Washington Post

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, behind in the polls, has started claiming that the election will be stolen from him because it is “rigged.” When Trump talks about the election being stolen from him, he seems to be referring to a range of issues, from voter fraud to the media being allied against him. He also said this week that he expects more than a million “deceased individuals” to vote against him. These claims have the potential to resonate with many Americans who already question the integrity of this country’s elections. A September Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 46 percent of registered voters believe that electoral fraud happens at least somewhat often. But stealing an election in this country isn’t easy. In fact, experts say it’s nearly impossible given how voting works. And documented instances of voter fraud are actually very rare. Wendy R. Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the rate of fraud is smaller than the rate of Americans being struck by lightning.

National: Small-Donor Contributions Can’t Compete With Those Allowed by Citizens United | The Atlantic

Small-dollar donors have been celebrated in this election. Senator Bernie Sanders mounted a surprisingly competitive primary campaign fueled by their contributions and promoted his reliance on their dollars as a signature campaign issue. Donald Trump, too, has attracted legions of small-dollar contributors: Although major Republican donors appear divided over Trump, he has had more success with small donors than any prior Republican nominee, raising as much as $100 million from individuals giving less than $200 each. But with Sanders’ campaign having ended in defeat, and Trump’s nearing its conclusion, does 2016 really herald a new age of small-donor influence in politics? Pundits have argued that the possibility of using the internet to rely on millions of small donors means that campaign donation limits are irrelevant—that candidates’ ability to depend on readily available small-donor money means we don’t need to cap the biggest donations to restore balance to our political system. But a historical review of data describing all the money individuals have put into the campaign-finance system—whether to candidates, parties, or other political committees like super PACs—suggests this analysis is wrong. Despite growth in the number of small donors over time, the money they give has made up a smaller and smaller share of total individual contributions over the last two decades. The power of the internet is no match for the unlimited giving allowed by today’s lax campaign-finance rules.

National: Democrats use loophole to pump millions into fight for the House | Politico

The Democratic Party is directing millions of extra dollars to its House candidates this fall by way of a legal loophole that has helped them bypass the typical limits on coordinated spending between parties and candidates — all while linking some vulnerable Republicans to Donald Trump. Typically, Federal Election Commission regulations limit parties to just $48,100 of spending in direct coordination with most House candidates. But under a decade-old FEC precedent, candidates who word their TV ads a certain way — including references to generic “Democrats” and “Republicans” as well as specific candidates — can split the cost of those ads with their party, even if that means blowing past the normal coordinated spending caps. To date, more than a dozen Democratic challengers are benefiting from such “hybrid” advertising, getting extra hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The technique has been a small but consistent part of Democratic strategy in recent years, but new legal guidance has also allowed Democrats to share costs on ads linking their opponents to Trump on policy.

National: Controversial Republican Mike Roman to run Donald Trump’s ‘election protection’ | The Guardian

Donald Trump’s “election protection” effort will be run by Mike Roman, a Republican operative best known for promoting a video of apparent voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers outside a polling place in 2008. Roman is to oversee poll-watching efforts as Trump undertakes an unprecedented effort by a major party nominee by calling into question the legitimacy of the popular vote weeks before election day. The Republican nominee has insisted, without evidence, that dead people and undocumented immigrants are voting in the United States. Trump has long claimed that the 2016 election is rigged but has amplified his claims of voter fraud in recent days. On Monday he tweeted: “Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!” In particular Trump claimed in an interview with Fox News that voter fraud was rampant in cities including Philadelphia, St Louis and Chicago after long warning vaguely about fraud in “certain communities”.

National: Aging Voting Machines Cost Local, State Governments | Stateline

This year, as Americans select the next president, the entire U.S. House of Representatives and a third of the Senate, as well as an array of state and local officials, many voters will cast ballots on a generation of electronic voting machines that is nearing extinction. Most of the machines, adopted by local governments after “hanging chads” left the 2000 presidential election in the balance for weeks, are at least a decade old. And they create a perilous situation: an equipment breakdown on Election Day could mean long lines, potentially leaving some people unable to vote. But replacing the old machines with newer models is costly. The latest computerized machines typically cost between $2,500 and $3,000 each, and election boards should budget for one machine per 250 to 300 registered voters, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). That high cost is just one reason the computerized machines, which record ballots via a touch-screen, push-button or dial mechanism, have been falling out of favor with cash-strapped local governments. Some elections officials and lawmakers also worry the machines could be hacked and lead to voter fraud.

National: Election officials brace for fallout from Trump’s claims of a ‘rigged’ vote | The Washington Post

Donald Trump’s escalating effort to undermine the presidential election as “rigged” has alarmed government officials administering the vote as well as Democratic and Republican leaders, who are anxiously preparing for the possibility of unrest or even violence on Election Day and for an extended battle over the integrity of the outcome. Hillary Clinton’s advisers are privately worried that Trump’s calls for his supporters to stand watch at polling places in cities such as Philadelphia for any hint of fraud will result in intimidation tactics that might threaten her supporters and suppress the votes of African Americans and other minorities. The Democratic nominee’s campaign is recruiting and training hundreds of lawyers to fan out across the country, protecting people’s right to vote and documenting any signs of foul play, according to several people with knowledge of the plans. “I’m very concerned about this rhetoric,” said former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter (D), a Clinton supporter. “All Donald Trump is doing with these outrageous, false scare tactics is to try to diminish voter interest and suppress voter turnout.”

National: Donald Trump’s ‘Rigged Election’ Claims Raise Historical Alarms | NBC

As Donald Trump’s campaign falters, his warnings that the presidential contest will be rigged have become a focus of his pitch to voters. Historians say Trump’s sustained effort to call the process into question has no close parallel in past elections. And some are increasingly worried that his claims — for which he’s offered no real evidence — could leave many of his supporters unwilling to accept the election results, potentially triggering violence and dangerously undermining faith in American democracy. Day after day — at rallies, in interviews and on Twitter — Trump and several top backers have hammered the message that a victory for Hillary Clinton would be illegitimate. Trump has frequently suggested that widespread voter fraud will swing the election, and he has urged his supporters to closely monitor the voting process. In a tweet Monday, he declared that there’s “large-scale voter fraud happening on and before election day.” In fact, numerous studies have shown that in-person voter fraud is vanishingly rare.

National: Donald Trump is warning of election fraud, but GOP officials oversee process in most battleground states | Los Angeles Times

Donald Trump on Monday continued a potentially dangerous drumbeat — questioning the integrity of the American election system. These warnings are not new and not supported by evidence; they defy numerous studies that have found that voter fraud is minimal. They also invite a question: If the election is rigged, who is doing the rigging? Presidential elections are conducted on a state-by-state basis, not nationally. And in most of the states seen as presidential battlegrounds, the chief elections officers are Republicans — most directly accountable to their state’s voters.

National: Obama, Holder to lead post-Trump redistricting campaign | Politico

As Democrats aim to capitalize on this year’s Republican turmoil and start building back their own decimated bench, former Attorney General Eric Holder will chair a new umbrella group focused on redistricting reform — with the aim of taking on the gerrymandering that’s left the party behind in statehouses and made winning a House majority far more difficult. The new group, called the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, was developed in close consultation with the White House. President Barack Obama himself has now identified the group — which will coordinate campaign strategy, direct fundraising, organize ballot initiatives and put together legal challenges to state redistricting maps — as the main focus of his political activity once he leaves office. Though initial plans to be active in this year’s elections fell short, the group has been incorporated as a 527, with Democratic Governors Association executive director Elisabeth Pearson as its president and House Majority PAC executive director Ali Lapp as its vice president. They’ve been pitching donors and aiming to put together its first phase action plan for December, moving first in the Virginia and New Jersey state elections next year and with an eye toward coordination across gubernatorial, state legislative and House races going into the 2018 midterms.

National: Officials Fight Donald Trump’s Claims of a Rigged Vote | The New York Times

Republican leaders and election officials from both parties on Sunday sought to combat claims by Donald J. Trump that the election is rigged against him, amid signs that Mr. Trump’s contention is eroding confidence in the vote and setting off talk of rebellion among his supporters. In a vivid illustration of how Mr. Trump is shattering American political norms, the Republican nominee is alleging that a conspiracy is underway between the news media and the Democratic Party to commit vast election fraud. He has offered no evidence to support his claim. “The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places — SAD,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday. Mr. Trump made the incendiary assertion hours after his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, tried to play down Mr. Trump’s questioning of the fairness of the election. Mr. Pence said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he and Mr. Trump “will absolutely accept the result of the election.”

National: Hacking Threats, Voting Restrictions, and Trump’s Call for Poll Monitors Generate Election Day Concerns | Associated Press

New ID requirements. Unfamiliar or distant polling places. Names missing from the voter rolls. Those are just some of the challenges that could disrupt voting across the country through Election Day. While most elections have their share of glitches, experts worry conditions are ripe this year for trouble at the nation’s polling places. This is the first presidential election year without a key enforcement provision of the federal Voting Rights Act, and 14 states have enacted new registration or voting restrictions. Adding to the uncertainty is a call by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for supporters to monitor the polls for voter fraud and concerns by the federal government that hackers could try to disrupt the voting process. All this has civil rights advocates on guard. “There is going to be a lot going on in this election that we are going to have to watch out for,” said Penda Hair, a civil rights lawyer who represented the North Carolina NAACP in its bid to overturn that state’s voter ID law.

National: Elections at Risk in Cyberspace, Part IV: Securing the Vote | Signal Magazine

Standardizing voter registration processes, voting machines and vote tabulation is the key to eliminating most vulnerabilities plaguing U.S. elections, according to several cybersecurity experts. These standardizations would embed security, enable backups and eliminate many backdoors through which hackers and vote fraudsters currently can warp the results of an election. While voting is administered at the state and local levels, these remedies would need to be applied nationwide. The current web of diverse processes may increase the difficulty for wide-scale election tampering, but they also ensure that achieving security is too broad a challenge for any single remedy to be applied. This diversity also virtually ensures that some location will have a vulnerability that, if exploited effectively, could cast doubt on a nationwide election result. … Auditing capabilities are important, says Ron Bandes, network security analyst in the CERT division of the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. He also is president of VoteAllegheny, a nonpartisan election integrity organization.

National: Analysis: Rigged Election Claims May Leave Lasting Damage | Associated Press

Donald Trump keeps peddling the notion the vote may be rigged. It’s not clear if he does not understand the potential damage of his words — or he simply does not care. Trump’s claim — made without evidence — undercuts the essence of American democracy, the idea that U.S. elections are both free and fair, with the vanquished peacefully stepping aside for the victor. His repeated assertions are sowing suspicion among his most ardent supporters, raising the possibility that millions of people may not accept the results on Nov. 8 if Trump does not win. The responsibilities for the New York billionaire in such a scenario are minimal. Trump holds no public office and has said he’ll simply go back to his “very good way of life” if he loses. Instead, it would be Democrat Hillary Clinton and congressional Republicans, should they win, who would be left trying to govern in a country divided not just by ideology, but also the legitimacy of the presidency. … The majority of Trump’s supporters are Republicans. If he loses, party leaders will have to reckon with how much credence they give to claims the election was rigged and how closely they can work with a president who at least some of their backers will likely view as illegitimate.

National: Meet Fancy Bear, The Russian Group Hacking The US Election | BuzzFeed

On the morning of March 10, nine days after Hillary Clinton had won big on Super Tuesday and all but clinched the Democratic nomination, a series of emails were sent to the most senior members of her campaign. At a glance, they looked like a standard message from Google, asking that users click a link to review recent suspicious activity on their Gmail accounts. Clicking on them would lead to a page that looked nearly identical to Gmail’s password reset page with a prompt to sign in. Unless they were looking closely at the URL in their address bar, there was very little to set off alarm bells. From the moment those emails were opened, senior members in Clinton’s campaign were falling into a trap set by one of the most aggressive and notorious groups of hackers working on behalf of the Russian state. The same group would shortly target the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). It was an orchestrated attack that — in the midst of one of the most surreal US presidential races in recent memory — sought to influence and sow chaos on Election Day.

National: Election Hackers Could Erase You | The Daily Beast

With 23 days until Election Day, state and local election officials, as well as the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, are on their highest-ever level of alert for hackers trying to meddle with the vote. But it’s not vote rigging or the takeover of electronic voting booths that has officials most concerned. … Rather, officials are more concerned by the discovery in recent weeks that hackers, including ones believed to be working for the Russian government, are trying to access voter registration files, perhaps to alter or delete them, inmore than 20 states. … This unprecedented focus on election security was prompted both by a suspected Russian campaign to hack emails and documents from U.S. political organizations, as well as the news that, last summer, election systems were compromised by hackers in Arizona and Illinois, where the perpetrators are believed to have absconded with files on 200,000 voters. “When you suddenly had two states with reports of registration breaches, regardless of the effect or the impact, which appear to have been minor, it gave everybody a sense that this isn’t necessarily theoretical anymore,” Pam Smith, the president of Verified Voting, a nonprofit group that advocates transparency and security in U.S. elections, told The Daily Beast.

National: Despite Fears, This Election Could Be More Secure Than Ever | MIT Technology Review

Fear that hackers could exploit vulnerabilities in our voting systems could undermine voter confidence this November, especially if the vote ends up being close. The good news is that it is also helping fuel an important discussion about how the U.S. should secure its elections. Recent hacks on the Democratic National Committee, for which the White House has officially blamed Russia, along with reports that hackers have targeted online voter registration databases in more than 20 states, have made it clear that adversaries are inclined to disrupt the American political system using cybercrime. The attacks prompted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to begin assisting state and local election boards on cybersecurity matters. Congress has held multiple hearings to assess the national election system’s technical weaknesses and explore ways to account for them. And there have been countless media reports (including some from MIT Technology Review) cataloguing vulnerabilities like Internet-connected voting registration databases and absentee ballot-return systems, as well as electronic voting machines that don’t produce paper audit trails.

National: Elections at Risk in Cyberspace, Part I: Voting Lists | Signal Magazine

As U.S. elections increasingly are digitized, the same threats faced by other users of cyberspace loom as potential vulnerabilities to voting and ballot tallies. Candidates and interest groups have expressed concern about the validity of the upcoming election based on real and perceived cyber threats. Voting systems connected to the Internet as well as those that are isolated are susceptible to intrusions that could shake up an election. The threat to an election can take two forms. One is an attack that actually changes the outcome by altering the vote count to favor one candidate over another. The other threat is tampering that may not clearly change the outcome but sows doubt among the electorate and reduces public trust about the validity of an election and the sanctity of the democratic system. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a joint statement on October 7 expressing confidence that the Russian government “directed the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations. … These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”

National: Elections at Risk in Cyberspace, Part III: Vote Database Security Ultimately Could Determine an Election Result | SIGNAL Magazine

Any attempts to sabotage an election through cyber attacks ultimately would be geared to affecting the vote count, either to change the outcome of the race or to sow doubt on the validity of the election itself. Just as banks strive to secure their depositors’ assets, governments also work to ensure the fidelity of their election returns. But, as bank accounts are vulnerable to cyber attacks, so are vote totals—to varying degrees. While most tabulation databases are safe from everyday hacker threats, nation-states with highly advanced cyber operations theoretically might be able to mount an effective cyber attack on a U.S. national election by bringing their best offensive cyber capabilities to bear. State governments, which are responsible for the voting process, pay close attention to tabulation security. Ron Bandes is a network security analyst in the CERT division of the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. He also is president of VoteAllegheny, a nonpartisan election integrity organization. Bandes points out that in many states, two tallies occur. One is done at the local level, usually by the county. The other is a statewide count comprising all the county totals. These counts are cross-validated. “The outputs from the voting machines have to match the inputs to the tally system,” Bandes points out.

National: Intelligence Analyst: Russian Cyberattacks Could Roil US Elections | VoA News