National: How Congress members opened door to bigger checks for their parties | Miami Herald

During the 2012 presidential campaign, hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin famously complained that the wealthy have “insufficient influence” in politics, which is kind of like saying that a crocodile needs even more teeth, when the 24 it has do just fine, thank you very much. But as money pours into the 2016 campaign – where the issue of income inequality has been a powerful touchstone –the wealthy might be feeling a bit more empowered. No longer are donors bound by the strict contribution limits of just two years ago, when a mere $32,400 was the maximum amount you could annually contribute to either the Democratic or Republican national committee. Under new rules, that amount, which inflation pushed to $33,400, has increased tenfold: to $334,000. But wait. Among all the party outlets now available for contributions, a single donor over the course of the two-year election cycle can actually give more than $1.6 million. A couple, should they be feeling similarly generous, could write checks totaling more than $3 million.

National: Election fraud feared as hackers target voter records | The Hill

A series of data breaches overseas are spurring concerns that hackers could manipulate elections in the United States.Since December, hundreds of millions of voters in the U.S., the Philippines, Turkey and Mexico have had their data discovered on the web in unprotected form. In some instances, legitimate security researchers found the information, but in others, malicious hackers are suspected of pilfering the data for criminal purposes.The data breaches are raising questions as the U.S. considers whether to move toward electronic balloting. More people than ever are using the internet to register to vote and to request mail-in ballots. Some states have even become vote-by-mail only in recent years. “If you can’t keep the voter registration records safe, what makes you think you can keep the votes safe?” asked Pamela Smith, president of election watchdog Verified Voting.For a politically inclined hacker, insecure voter data could “very easily” create a pathway to “massive” voter fraud, said Joseph Kiniry, CEO of Free & Fair, which advocates for secure digital election systems. “If you can go in there and delete rows based on someone’s name or political affiliation, we will have a massively screwed up election process on the day,” he said.

National: Election Assistance Commission Advisory Board Disagrees With Director Over Citizenship Rule | NPR

It looks like more bad news for the new executive director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Brian Newby is already being sued by the League of Women Voters for his decision earlier this year to allow Kansas and two other states to require residents to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote using a federal form. The move effectively reversed a long-standing EAC policy. Now, the EAC’s advisory board — composed of election officials from around the country — has approved a resolution saying that such changes should be made by the commissioners themselves. The resolution, passed by a 13-7 vote during a two-day board meeting in Chicago, is only advisory, but clearly shows dissatisfaction with Newby’s actions. Commission Chairman Thomas Hicks says it’s now up to the commission to take the recommendation “under advisement” and decide what to do.

National: Future of online voting | WLFI

As voting wrapped up Tuesday on one of the most significant primaries in Indiana history, some people walked away after standing in line for a few minutes but other places had long delays. That in turn, had some people asking: why online voting isn’t an option? … Eugene Spafford is a computer science professor at…

National: Petition urges investigation into EAC Executive Director | Associated Press

More than 116,000 people have signed an online petition urging the inspector general to investigate what it calls voter suppression at a federal government agency entrusted with making voting more accessible. The progressive advocacy group CREDO Action said it planned to deliver petition signatures Wednesday to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Inspector General Patricia Layfield.

National: Voter ID Laws May Have Actually Increased The Likelihood Of Voter Fraud—By Hackers | Fast Company

Over the past 16 years, only 10 cases of voter impersonation—out of 146 million registered voters—have ever been identified. And yet each election, a vocal political contingent made up primarily of Republicans complains about an alleged epidemic of voter fraud and impersonation. To combat it, they propose—and in many cases successfully pass—laws requiring voters to provide verification of their identity with an ID card, along with verbal confirmation of various pieces of personal data, before they are permitted to vote. As election officials become more reliant on electronic databases, the potential for hackers to commit voter manipulation and election fraud has gone way up. But it’s these very voter ID laws that are partly to blame, despite legislators’ claims that they would make elections safer, according to Joseph Kiniry, CEO of Free and Fair, a provider of secure election services and systems. “The best thing [hackers] could do is to screw up that data prior to the election,” says Kiniry.

National: 15 States Wielding New or Stricter Voter ID Laws in Run-Up to Presidential Election | AllGov

In a state where everything is big, the 23rd Congressional District that hugs the border with Mexico is a monster: 8 1/2 hours by car across a stretch of land bigger than any state east of the Mississippi. In 2014, Rep. Pete Gallego logged more than 70,000 miles there in his white Chevy Tahoe, campaigning for re-election to the House — and lost by a bare 2,422 votes. So in his bid this year to retake the seat, Gallego, a Democrat, has made a crucial adjustment to his strategy. “We’re asking people if they have a driver’s license,” he said. “We’re having those basic conversations about IDs at the front end, right at our first meeting with voters.” Since their inception a decade ago, voter identification laws have been the focus of fierce political and social debate. Proponents, largely Republican, argue that the regulations are essential tools to combat election fraud, while critics contend that they are mainly intended to suppress turnout of Democratic-leaning constituencies like minorities and students.

National: Should Selfies Be Allowed in US Voting Booths? | VoA News

The state of New Hampshire is appealing a decision that allows voters to take pictures inside voting booths. It would like to join other U.S. states that have banned any voting booth documentation in the form of digital images or photography being shared on social media or otherwise. In other words: No selfies with your ballot. “It’s natural that people — particularly young people who are participating in the democratic process —want to make a record of their specific act of casting a ballot,” John Hardin Young, Chair of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law, told VOA. “That can include taking a photograph with their phone of the actual ballot face as it’s marked. In a way, we are really at loggerheads. On the one hand, we want everyone to participate. On the other, we do want to make sure that the ballot box remains secret.”

National: What’s the Goal of Voter-ID Laws? | The Atlantic

As states around the country enact or consider voter-ID laws, the battle formations are well-rehearsed. Conservatives who back the laws say that there’s a danger of fraudulent votes, which pollute the democratic process at best and swing elections at worst. Liberals who oppose them counter that there’s next to no evidence of actual voting fraud; that voter-ID laws wouldn’t stop that fraud anyway; and that the laws are actually intended to depress voter-turnout among the populations that are least likely to hold state-issued photo ID—students, the poor, minorities, and the elderly who are most likely to vote Democratic—and improve conservative prospects in elections, despite demographic changes that favor liberal candidates. The pro-voter-ID side has two big problems. First, they’ve been unable to produce proof of the widespread voter fraud they believe exists. Second, people who agree with them—and in some cases the proponents themselves—keep slipping up and saying the point is to help conservative candidates. Last week, Jim DeMint, the president of the Heritage Foundation and former senator from South Carolina, spoke on St. Louis-area talk radio. Legislators in Missouri are trying to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would mandate that voters show voter ID. (I explained why they’re using that path last week.) Host Jamie Allman asked DeMint about Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe’s move to re-enfranchise former felons.

National: Judiciary Democrats seek hearing on voting rights | The Hill

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are pressing GOP leaders for a hearing to address their growing concerns over the erosion of voting rights. Behind Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking member of the panel, the lawmakers are warning top Republicans that the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision dismantling part of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) threatens a wave of discrimination at the polls in November. In a letter sent Friday to Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), head of the committee’s Constitution subpanel, the Democrats called for a hearing “without further delay” to study the potential roadblocks facing voters this year, particularly in states that have enacted tougher voting laws since the Supreme Court ruling. Some of those new laws, the Democrats contend, “disproportionately prevent or discourage minorities from voting.”

National: Stricter Rules for Voter IDs Reshape Races | The New York Times

In a state where everything is big, the 23rd Congressional District that hugs the border with Mexico is a monster: eight and a half hours by car across a stretch of land bigger than any state east of the Mississippi. In 2014, Representative Pete Gallego logged more than 70,000 miles there in his white Chevy Tahoe, campaigning for re-election to the House — and lost by a bare 2,422 votes. So in his bid this year to retake the seat, Mr. Gallego, a Democrat, has made a crucial adjustment to his strategy. “We’re asking people if they have a driver’s license,” he said. “We’re having those basic conversations about IDs at the front end, right at our first meeting with voters.” Since their inception a decade ago, voter identification laws have been the focus of fierce political and social debate. Proponents, largely Republican, argue that the regulations are essential tools to combat election fraud, while critics contend that they are mainly intended to suppress turnout of Democratic-leaning constituencies like minorities and students.

National: The state of election technology is… improving | Joe Kiniry & Daniel Zimmerman/TechCrunch

With the U.S. knee-deep in what has been an unusual presidential primary season, to say the least, many eligible voters are highly engaged in the process, passionate about their preferred candidates. But when it comes to voting trends, a reality check is in order: Voter turnout in the U.S. during the last midterm election hit the lowest point since the 1940s. In fact, the number of Americans heading to the polls each election has been declining for the last 50 years, which helps explain a concerted push by election officials to deploy technology that simplifies the process of, and increases participation in, elections. Before delving into the current and future state of election technology, let’s summarize how we arrived at this point. Most jurisdictions today are using election technology developed in the 1990s, and the typical voting system is running an operating system that is no longer vendor-supported, no longer has security updates (which couldn’t be applied anyway because of certification requirements) and relies on technology that wasn’t considered “cutting edge” even when it was purchased. All of which begs the question: Why are these outdated systems still in use?

National: GOP shuns electronic ballots at open convention | POLITICO

The 2016 Republican presidential campaign has been the definition of an instantaneous digital race, complete with micro-targeted Facebook ads, Twitter tirades and ephemeral Snapchat videos. But the biggest moment of the entire GOP contest, at the party’s national convention in Cleveland, is shaping up to be a decidedly low-tech affair. Senior party officials — worried…

National: Senate Judiciary Democrats Demand Hearing On Voting Rights | TPM

The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have a message for their Republican counterparts, who are leading the blockade on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee: If you care so much about giving America a voice, give us a hearing on voting rights! The nine Democrats on the committee sent a letter Friday to its Republicans leaders — Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the chair of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), chair of its subcommittee on the Constitution — demanding a hearing on voting rights, which the committee has not hosted since the GOP took over the Senate. They pointed to the 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act and the electoral and legal chaos that has ensued since. But they also used the letter to call out the same Republicans for refusing to grant Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland a hearing.

National: How the U.S. Ended Up With Today’s Paper Ballots | TIME

We send emails instead of hand-written letters, we buy Kindles instead of books, we use iPads instead of pen and paper—and yet, voting is still mostly left to good old-fashioned paper. Voting technology has essentially remained at a standstill for decades. Still, some things have stayed the same even longer: the same concerns for security and secrecy that have kept paper dominant were also the driving forces behind voting policy in the early years of the United States. … Most states use a combination of electronic and paper technology. Only five states (Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey, South Carolina) have paper-free voting and some states (Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) send all constituents a paper ballot in the mail. Even more states use a combination of electronic and paper at polling places. Given how much technology has advanced in recent years, it’s fair to wonder why we continue to vote with paper. However, there are good reasons why the U.S. is hanging on to paper ballots.

National: Former Nevada Treasurer nominated for federal election panel | Las Vegas Review-Journal

President Barack Obama on Thursday nominated former Nevada Treasurer Kate Marshall as a member of the Election Assistance Commission. Marshall, who has been a principal with her firm, Marshall Legal Consulting, since 2015 served as state treasurer from 2007 to 2014. She was a senior deputy attorney general in the Nevada attorney general’s office from 1997 to 2000. From 2015 to 2016, she was the executive director of Opportunity Alliance Nevada.

National: Wyden proposes nationwide vote-by-mail | KTVZ

As a new tide of voter disenfranchisement rises across the country, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., announced a new campaign Thursday to expand an Oregon-style vote-by-mail program nationwide and tear down barriers to voting. “My home state of Oregon has led the nation in making voting more accessible. No one has to take time off work just to exercise his or her constitutional rights,” Wyden said. “My proposition is the rest of our country should follow Oregon’s lead and offer all voters a chance to vote by mail.” Voters across the country have faced unreasonable delays and new obstacles to voting, the senator said. This year alone: some voters in Arizona waited in line for up to 5 hours, New York is investigating why 126,000 voters were purged from voting rolls, Rhode Island slashed the number of polling places by two-thirds and 17 states have added new voting restrictions.

National: Why We Still Use Paper Ballots on Election Day | MeriTalk

The vast majority of tech-savvy voters heading to the polls today across Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, are in for the shock of their lives: paper ballots. They’re not the kind of paper ballot that you fold in half and slip through a hole in a ballot box, but a semi-high-tech optical scan ballot that is first marked by the voter and then processed by the optical scanner to tabulate the votes. All of the states holding primaries Tuesday, with the exception of Delaware, use paper ballots or a combination of paper and electronic systems. This is the new reality facing elections in the United States. The most connected country in the world has connected so many devices that securing all of them—including the once highly touted electronic voting machine—is a near impossibility. Add to the security concerns real questions about transparency, reliability, and the ability to conduct fair and accurate recounts, and you have the makings for a mass move back to paper ballots. “Based on what I’m seeing and how slowly technology evolves in the elections world, we will still be on paper over the next five to 10 years,” said Matthew Davis, the chief information officer for the Virginia Department of Elections. Davis spoke to MeriTalk at the 2016 Akamai Government Forum in Washington, D.C.

National: Selfies in the Voting Booth? Snapchat Fights for the Right. | The New York Times

Step 1: Participate in the political process, choose your future leaders, live out your democratic right as an American that countless men and women have literally died for. Step 2: Selfie. To many, there’s no better celebration of democracy than a voting booth photograph. It’s the moment political talk turns to political action, one younger voters are especially eager to record and share with friends. But in several states, the right of free speech has clashed with the question of whether allowing photographs in the voting booth, a typically private space, could compromise elections. Some states, like Pennsylvania, have banned the practice. Last year, a federal court in New Hampshire overturned a ban on such photos, a decision still being appealed.

National: Post Election Audits Help States Confirm Election Results | The Canvass

If the term “audit” either makes you shudder or makes you want to snooze, you’re not alone. But a post-election audit can be an integral step in ensuring the integrity of the election process. Voting machines go through lots of pre-election testing. They are tested against federal guidelines and state requirements, and then election officials do trial runs called “logic and accuracy testing” before each election to ensure they are working as they should (see NCSL’s webpage on Voting System Standards, Testing and Certification). But the pre-election testing doesn’t tell you whether or not the machine actually functioned correctly during the election. To do that, many states do additional testing after the election—a post-election audit. As explained by Pam Smith from the Verified Voting Foundation, “A post-election audit is a tool that election officials can use to prove that their voting systems are working properly and a tool that the public can use to have confidence that the outcome of the election was correct.”

National: In This Snapchat Campaign, Election News Is Big and Then It’s Gone | The New York Times

Every modern presidential election is at least in part defined by the cool new media breakthrough of its moment. In 2000, there was email, and by golly was that a big change from the fax. The campaigns could get their messages in front of print and cable news reporters — who could still dominate the campaign narrative — at will, reducing what had been a 24-hour news cycle to an hourly one. The 2004 campaign was the year of the “Web log,” or blog, when mainstream reporters and campaigns officially began losing any control they may have had over political news. Anyone with a computer could weigh in with commentary, news and, often, searing criticism of mainstream reporters and politicians — “Media Gatekeepers be damned!” Then 2008: Facebook made it that much easier for campaigns to reach millions of people directly, further reducing the influence of newspaper, magazine and television journalists. In 2012, Twitter shrank the political news cycle to minutes if not seconds, exponentially adding to the churn of campaign news.

National: Republican says delegate vote-buying and gifts are part of ‘the free market of politics’ | ABC

“Cash is on the table,” veteran Republican Marti Halverson says. “I don’t know why you’re so shocked.” This is not the response I was expecting — my mouth gaping. I had just finished asking Wyoming National committeewoman Mrs Halverson about the “wooing” of delegates to switch their vote in this very-likely-to-be-contested upcoming Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. Ms Halverson is also opposed to any rule that would stop delegates accepting gifts. “This is a great country,” she said. “We give presents to our friends. No, I would not vote for a rule that said candidates cannot ‘woo’ delegates. I wouldn’t do that. It’s not the American way.” But what is the difference between wooing someone and buying their vote without cash? “Cash is on the table,” she replied. “Absolutely. It is going around that delegates are going to be offered free trips to Cleveland. Not Wyoming delegates, we haven’t heard that. But it is on the table. It is not illegal.”

National: Republicans Reject Effort to Alter Rules on Allowing New Candidate at Convention | The New York Times

A Republican National Committee panel on Thursday overwhelmingly rejected an effort to make preliminary changes to the rules governing the party’s convention this summer, batting away a move to make it more difficult for party leaders to draft a “white knight” candidate into the race. On a voice vote, the R.N.C.’s rules committee turned back a bid to switch the rules of the convention from those used by the House of Representatives to Robert’s Rules of Order. The committee member who proposed the change, Solomon Yue of Oregon, said in the days leading up to the party’s spring meeting here that he wanted to alter the rules to prevent the establishment-aligned Republicans running the convention from being able to place in nomination the name of a candidate not already in the race. The House Rules can be interpreted as allowing the chairman of the convention, Speaker Paul D. Ryan, to reopen presidential nominations, while Robert’s Rule would require a majority vote of the conservative-leaning delegates to do so.

National: Is Electronic Voting Coming to the GOP Convention? | Roll Call

Recognizing the possibility of a contested convention in Cleveland this summer, Republicans are considering an electronic system to capture votes on what could be a contentious set of procedural motions leading up to nominating a presidential candidate. The Republican National Committee agreed Thursday not to change the rules of the convention at this point, but is exploring changes to the way that delegate votes are recorded. The idea of electronic voting is gaining steam now because in a disputed floor fight, voice votes may not cut it. “With advancements in technology, we are taking steps to see if electronic voting can be successfully implemented for procedural votes at the convention,” a spokeswoman, Kirsten Kukowski, said in a statement provided to CQ Roll Call on Thursday. “If we can answer several questions ranging from the technology itself to security and be sure application will be successful, we will consider using electronic voting for procedural votes.”

National: Why Voters Could Be Removed From The Rolls | NPR

It certainly looks suspicious that more than 125,000 Democrats were dropped from Brooklyn’s voter rolls between last November and Tuesday’s primary. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said that the Board of Elections confirmed the voters were removed and that his office would conduct an audit to see if anything improper was done. In a statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio called on the New York City Board of Elections to “reverse that purge,” adding that “the perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed.” And it was an unusually high number of names to be dropped all at once. But Michael Ryan, executive director of the elections board, denied anyone was disenfranchised. While more than 100,000 voters were taken off the rolls, he told the New York Times,63,000 were added and the decline did not “shock his conscience.” He told WNYC that “people die every day and they come off the list,” and New Yorkers move a lot — another reason they might be taken off the rolls. Indeed, there might very well be a good — and legitimate — explanation for why all those names were removed.

National: 1,240 arrested in past week as “Democracy Spring” movement against money in politics spreads throughout U.S. | Salon

It was one of the most massive acts of civil disobedience in recent U.S. history. Over the past week, well over 1,000 people were arrested in an enormous sit-in protest at the U.S. Capitol. The demonstration is part of a new movement that calls itself “Democracy Spring.” Activists are calling for ending the chokehold money has on U.S. politics, overturning Citizens United and restoring voting rights. On April 2, activists launched a colossal 10-day, 140-mile march from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. This was the preface to the mass arrests. At least 1,240 protesters were arrested in the week from Monday, April 11 to Monday, April 18, according to police, on charges of crowding, obstructing or incommoding. Some activists even tied themselves to scaffolding in the Capitol rotunda.

National: Thousands gather at U.S. Capitol for ‘Democracy Awakening’ rally, march | USA TODAY

Thousands gathered at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Sunday to rally and march in protest of voting laws they consider discriminatory and the role money plays in the country’s political system. A group called “Democracy Awakening” — a coalition of dozens of groups ranging from the National Organization for Women to the NAACP — coordinated Sunday’s effort, not to be confused with the like-named group called “Democracy Spring” that made headlines this week for a series of mass demonstrations that ended with more than 900 people arrested for civil disobedience. The assembled protesters called for Congress to confirm President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination as well as restore and update the powers of the Voting Rights Act, according to USA TODAY.

National: How Facebook Could Tilt the 2016 Election | The Atlantic

It’s November 6, 2016. The world is not in good shape. After years of historic lows, oil prices have rebounded—in fact, they have rebounded too well. Gas is now fast approaching $4 per gallon. High energy costs have kicked the Chinese economy into a depression, and the United States begins hemorrhaging workers. With fear spreading, the South China Sea is getting testier. What’s more, it’s been a terrible tropical-cyclone season, and southern cities are ailing. Miami and its suburbs, specifically, might take a decade to recover from Hurricane Paula. Amid this unease, some moderate, middle-aged white voters have started taking renewed interest in Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for president. To them, his once-ludicrous rhetoric is sounding more and more accurate. Their support still wouldn’t give him the popular vote, but it might let him take Ohio, Florida, and the electoral college. With the election two days away, younger and urban Americans are terrified. Some are arranging ways for their Muslim friends to leave the country. That’s the atmosphere in which two senior Facebook engineers approach Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO, and tell him that this whole mess can be stopped right now. Could this happen? Would Facebook be able to single-handedly stop Donald Trump—or any other presidential candidate? It’s a question that some at Facebook appear to be asking.

National: G.O.P. Chief Discourages Rule Changes That Seem to Block Donald Trump | The New York Times

The chairman of the Republican National Committee has privately urged members of the party’s rules committee not to make changes to the guidelines governing the presidential nominating process, an effort to avoid the appearance that the party is seeking to block Donald J. Trump from becoming its nominee. The chairman, Reince Priebus, whom associates describe as increasingly frustrated by Mr. Trump’s criticism of the delegate-selection process, sent a text message last week to multiple rules committee members strongly suggesting that they not alter the convention rules when the party convenes next week for its spring meeting in Florida, according to two who received the message. Separately, a group of influential rules committee members held a conference call Thursday to prepare for the meeting and reached a consensus that they would derail any attempt at the gathering to make changes to the how the convention is conducted, according to a committee member on the call. “We’re not going to do anything with the rules next week,” said Rob Gleason, chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party and a longtime member of the rules committee. “There’s no point because new rules will be written at the convention.”

National: Election year brings new focus to voter rights in courts, legislatures | The Kansas City Star

Eric and Ivanka Trump learned this week they won’t be able to vote for their dad, Donald, in New York’s primary Tuesday. They didn’t register as Republicans in time. Trump was philosophical. “They were, you know, unaware of the rules,” he ruefully told Fox News. The story prompted chuckles in some political and media circles. But it also helped illustrate an ongoing truth: In 2016, America’s state-based election laws can confuse even the most interested voters. From a federal courthouse in Kansas City, Kan., Thursday, to Arizona and beyond, lawyers are arguing over how and when we vote. Voting rules are a confusing, contradictory hodgepodge from state to state and sometimes county to county, many experts say, often based more on perceived political advantage than fair exercise of the franchise. Consider: You can cast an early ballot in Kansas, but not in Missouri. You need a picture ID to vote in Texas, but not in California. In Colorado you can register on Election Day; in Arkansas, you must be on the registrar’s books 30 days before going to the polls.