National: Voting rights rulings could deal blow to Republicans in 2016 elections | The Guardian

Shortly after Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election, the former chair of the North Carolina Republican party wrote an anxious postmortem saying something had to be done about the students and black voters whose unprecedented turnout had turned the state blue for the first time in 32 years. The alternative, the former state chair Jack Hawke wrote, was that the country would “continue to slide toward socialism”. That “something” turned out to be a notorious omnibus law – better known to its detractors as the “monster law” – passed by a Republican-majority state legislature in 2013. The legislation gutted many of the progressive voting rules that had contributed to Obama’s razor-thin margin in the state: same-day registration, a lengthy early voting period and out-of-precinct voting by provisional ballot – all favored disproportionately by African American voters and students. The law also introduced a strict voter ID requirement, with the anticipated effect of suppressing Democratic votes even further.

National: Trump, Putin and the hacking of an American election | The Boston Globe

Did Republican nominee Donald Trump just ask Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to cast the deciding vote in the US presidential election? On Wednesday morning, Trump said he hoped Russia would find and publish 30,000 e-mail messages deleted by his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, from the personal server she used as secretary of state. It was a startling spectacle: a presidential candidate urging a foreign government to play a role in America’s game of thrones. But there’s a chance Putin is already a player. The trove of embarrassing e-mails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, which were leaked to the press just in time for this week’s party convention in Philadelphia, were probably swiped by Russian hackers, according to US intelligence officials and independent cybersecurity companies. Russia’s apparent election tampering — and Trump’s call for the Russians to expose Clinton’s deleted e-mails — shows that the insecurity of America’s data networks could undermine our ability to hold free and fair elections. But if the Russian president would go this far to pick our next president, why not take the direct approach? Why not tamper with the computers that manage the nation’s voting systems? Maybe that has already happened. Those voting systems are certainly vulnerable.

National: Hackers are putting U.S. election at risk | Bruce Schneier/CNN

Russia has attacked the U.S. in cyberspace in an attempt to influence our national election, many experts have concluded. We need to take this national security threat seriously and both respond and defend, despite the partisan nature of this particular attack. There is virtually no debate about that, either from the technical experts who analyzed the attack last month or the FBI which is analyzing it now. The hackers have already released DNC emails and voicemails, and promise more data dumps. While their motivation remains unclear, they could continue to attack our election from now to November — and beyond. Like everything else in society, elections have gone digital. And just as we’ve seen cyberattacks affecting all aspects of society, we’re going to see them affecting elections as well. What happened to the DNC is an example of organizational doxing — the publishing of private information — an increasingly popular tactic against both government and private organizations. There are other ways to influence elections: denial-of-service attacks against candidate and party networks and websites, attacks against campaign workers and donors, attacks against voter rolls or election agencies, hacks of the candidate websites and social media accounts, and — the one that scares me the most — manipulation of our highly insecure but increasingly popular electronic voting machines.

National: Cutbacks to Poll Monitor Program Raise Voter Intimidation Fears | NBC

Thanks to Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act, a slew of restrictive voting laws will be in force this fall for the first time in a presidential election. But now the Shelby ruling is putting voting rights at risk in a whole new way: Citing the ruling, the Justice Department recently announced that it would significantly reduce the number of federal observers that it deploys at polling places to guard against voter suppression and intimidation. The impact of the cutbacks could be particularly severe this year, when several states will be asking poll workers to implement new voter ID laws, upping the chances that on-the-ground errors or other problems keep voters from the polls. Meanwhile, some voting rights advocates are critical of the Justice Department’s decision to reduce the number of monitors, saying it relies on an overly conservative reading of the Shelby decision.

National: FBI probes hacking of Democratic congressional group – sources | Reuters

The FBI is investigating a cyber attack against another U.S. Democratic Party group, which may be related to an earlier hack against the Democratic National Committee, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The previously unreported incident at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, and its potential ties to Russian hackers are likely to heighten accusations, so far unproven, that Moscow is trying to meddle in the U.S. presidential election campaign to help Republican nominee Donald Trump. Hacking of the party’s emails caused discord among Democrats at the party’s convention in Philadelphia to nominate Hillary Clinton as its presidential candidate. The newly disclosed breach at the DCCC may have been intended to gather information about donors, rather than to steal money, the sources said on Thursday.

National: Judge: First Amendment Protects Political Robocalls | Wall Street Journal

Political robocalls may be an irritating feature of modern campaigning, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve protection under the First Amendment, a federal judge ruled. A decision handed down Wednesday in Arkansas federal court struck down a state law passed 35 years ago that banned political robocalls. The statute restricted commercial robocalling and also made it unlawful to solicit information “in connection with a political campaign” using an automated phone system for dialing numbers and playing recorded messages. The restriction was challenged by a Virginia-based communications firm, Conquest Communications Group, which sought “to conduct automated telephone calls in the state, including surveys, messages concerning voting, express advocacy calls, and a variety of other calls made in connection with political campaigns.”

National: Trump Asks Russia to Dig Up Hillary’s Emails in Unprecedented Remarks | Wired

Donald Trump’s Schadenfreude in the DNC’s embarrassing email leak is standard practice in America’s messy electoral politics. Today, though, his casual request that Russian hackers dig up Hillary Clinton’s emails—sent while she was U.S. Secretary of State—for his own political gain has sparked a new level of outrage among cybersecurity experts. As the controversy continues to swirl around a likely-Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee, Trump responded to a reporter’s question at a press conference Wednesday by inviting Russia to do him another favor: collect and leak the emails that Clinton deleted from the private server she ran during her time as Secretary of State. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you’ll be rewarded mightily by our press,” he said. He later circled back to the same theme, telling reporters that “If Russia or China or any other country has those emails, to be honest with you, I’d love to see them.” Some have dismissed the comment as a joke, though his repetition of the request seemed sincere. Either way, Trump’s comments represent a dangerous first, according to amazed members of the cybersecurity community: A politician actively soliciting political help from foreign government hackers.

National: Why millions of American voters have been wiped off the electoral roll | Telegraph

There is a scene in the most recent series of Veep – an American spin off from The Thick of It – where the Republicans and Democrats are haggling in court over whether to carry on counting presidential election votes in Nevada. Of course this is pretty much what happened in 2000 when the world waited for the United States to decide who actually won the election after the hanging chads fiasco. Even ahead of a vote being cast in November, there are signs that the election will not just be fought in the court of pubic opinion, but ordinary law courts as well. If 2000 was messy, it was but an amuse bouche for what is happening at the moment. The seeds were sown by the Supreme Court in 2013 when it effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act, regarded by many as the crowning achievement of LBJ. Prior to the ruling, states deemed to have a history of voter discrimination – a polite way of saying stopping blacks from voting in the deep South up to the 1960s – had to get federal clearance before changing electoral laws. This was swept away by the Supreme Court and a number of states are tightening up their legislation.

National: Spy Agency Consensus Grows That Russia Hacked D.N.C. | The New York Times

American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence. But intelligence officials have cautioned that they are uncertain whether the electronic break-in at the committee’s computer systems was intended as fairly routine cyberespionage — of the kind the United States also conducts around the world — or as part of an effort to manipulate the 2016 presidential election. The emails were released by WikiLeaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, has made it clear that he hoped to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency. It is unclear how the documents made their way to the group. But a large sampling was published before the WikiLeaks release by several news organizations and someone who called himself “Guccifer 2.0,” who investigators now believe was an agent of the G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence service.

National: The Ghosts of Shelby County: Despite some recent wins, voting rights are still under siege | Slate

During his “I’m With Her (More or Less)” speech at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders made a vitally important argument about the 2016 campaign: That it’s about more than who the president for the next four years will be; it’s about who will be on the Supreme Court for years to come. “This election is about overturning Citizens United, one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in the history of our country,” he said. He added that Hillary Clinton’s future justices “will also defend a woman’s right to choose, workers’ rights, the rights of the LGBT community, the needs of minorities and immigrants, and the government’s ability to protect the environment.” Every last one of those promises is very serious business. But Sanders neglected to mention one of the other worst Supreme Court decisions in the history of the country—one with tangible implications for the November elections and one that has gotten far less attention than his much-loathed Citizens United. It has had as much to do with disenfranchising America’s have-nots as the campaign finance case. It’s the case that made voting an uphill battle again.

National: DNC Seeks Dismissal of Lawsuit Alleging Donor Deception | Wall Street Journal

Claims that Democratic Party leaders conspired to squash the presidential primary campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders have not only led to a party shake-up but have sparked class-action litigation. A trove of hacked party emails posted by WikiLeaks show that Democratic National Committee officials had worked to undermine the underdog campaign of Mr. Sanders. Weeks before the firestorm erupted, culminating in the resignation of party chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a group of plaintiffs brought a lawsuit in federal court alleging that DNC “actively concealed its bias” from its donors and Democrats backing Mr. Sanders. The plaintiffs, about 150 of whom are identified in the lawsuit, are mostly Sanders supporters and include a number of DNC donors.

National: Behind Democrats’ email leak, U.S. experts see a Russian subplot | Reuters

If the Russian government is behind the theft and release of embarrassing emails from the Democratic Party, as U.S. officials have suggested, it may reflect less a love of Donald Trump or enmity for Hillary Clinton than a desire to discredit the U.S. political system. A U.S. official who is taking part in the investigation said that intelligence collected on the hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails released by Wikileaks on Friday “indicates beyond a reasonable doubt that it originated in Russia.” The timing on the eve of Clinton’s formal nomination this week for the Nov. 8 presidential election has raised questions about whether Russia may have been trying to hurt her, to help Trump, her Republican rival, or to fan populist sentiment against establishment politicians as it has sought to do across Europe in recent years.

National: Voter ID lawsuits sowing confusion | The Hill

Just 15 weeks before Election Day, lawsuits in nine states are raising the possibility that voters in crucial battlegrounds will face confusion over how and when to cast their ballots. The lawsuits, mostly brought by civil rights groups, take aim at the flurry of election laws recently put in place by states, including requirements that voters provide photo identification or proof of citizenship. In recent weeks, several courts have issued rulings blocking or upholding the laws, but those rulings have at times been contradictory, sowing even more confusion. The suits, which have spent years in a maze of federal courts, focus mainly on laws passed by Republican-led legislatures after the 2010 midterm elections. Those laws, voting rights advocates say, are part of a determined strategy to restrict access to the ballot box. “There is no question that a series of legislative actions by Republican legislatures have made it harder for some people to register and vote in the upcoming elections,” said Richard Hasen, a voting rights expert at University of California-Irvine School of Law.

National: Database Of All US Voters Available For Sale At $7,800 On The Dark Web | TechWorm

In recent times, all data breaches that are taking place are finding its way to the principal black market known as ‘Dark Web’. One can easily find any kind of data that they are looking for here. It is now learnt that a hacker is trying to sell a database that supposedly contains registration records for voters in all 50 US states, Tech Insider reported. A seller using the pseudonym of ‘DataDirect’ is offering US voters’ registration records on the dark net marketplace “The Real Deal.” The Real Deal, a popular site many cyber criminals use for buying and selling everything from illegal drugs to zero-day software exploits. The seller is offering US voters’ records for each state at 0.5 BTC (around USD 340). The seller is also ready to offer the records at a “bulk rate” of 12 Bitcoin, or about $7,800. “US voter registration records. Selling the DB on a State-by-State basis. 0.5 BTC per state (you must tell me which State you want. Some people think it’s unfair to make each State cost the same amount because some States are much bigger than others. I think it’s just easier this way.” states the item description.

National: Courts strike down unfair voting laws | The Economist

Though the presidential race is tightening, few observers are forecasting a replay of the 2000 election—when the vote was so close that it took 35 days and a Supreme Court decision to name a winner. But if predictions about what will transpire on November 8th are as reliable as last year’s dismissals of Donald Trump’s prospects in the primaries, the Trump-Clinton outcome may end up resting on a few thousand votes in a handful of states. In that event, three recent court rulings against Republican efforts to stack the electoral deck in their favour may play a role in staving off a President Trump. In Michigan, where Mrs Clinton’s lead over Mr Trump is narrowing by the day, a federal judge on July 21st ruled against a Republican Party-sponsored law meddling with the contours of the election ballot. For 125 years, Michigan voters have had the option of straight-ticket voting, where filling in a single bubble registers one’s preference for every candidate from a given party. Banning this practice, said Judge Gershwin Drain, disproportionately impacts black voters who use the straight-party option in high numbers. Since “African-Americans in Michigan, as in the rest of the country, tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats”, and since filling in a bubble for each candidate takes much longer, the law will increase “voter wait times…greatly in African-American communities”, endangering their right to vote and dimming Democrats’ chances for electoral success. In a remarkable series of references, Judge Drain cited Mr Trump’s “ethnocentric” speeches, situating the Michigan law in the context of the “racially charged rhetoric” of the presidential campaign.

National: As Democrats Gather, a Russian Subplot Raises Intrigue | The New York Times

An unusual question is capturing the attention of cyberspecialists, Russia experts and Democratic Party leaders in Philadelphia: Is Vladimir V. Putin trying to meddle in the American presidential election? Until Friday, that charge, with its eerie suggestion of a Kremlin conspiracy to aid Donald J. Trump, has been only whispered. But the release on Friday of some 20,000 stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee’s computer servers, many of them embarrassing to Democratic leaders, has intensified discussion of the role of Russian intelligence agencies in disrupting the 2016 campaign. The emails, released first by a supposed hacker and later by WikiLeaks, exposed the degree to which the Democratic apparatus favored Hillary Clinton over her primary rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and triggered the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the party chairwoman, on the eve of the convention’s first day. Proving the source of a cyberattack is notoriously difficult. But researchers have concluded that the national committee was breached by two Russian intelligence agencies, which were the same attackers behind previous Russian cyberoperations at the White House, the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year. And metadata from the released emails suggests that the documents passed through Russian computers. Though a hacker claimed responsibility for giving the emails to WikiLeaks, the same agencies are the prime suspects. Whether the thefts were ordered by Mr. Putin, or just carried out by apparatchiks who thought they might please him, is anyone’s guess.

National: Clinton campaign — and some cyber experts — say Russia is behind email release | The Washington Post

A top official with Hillary Clinton’s campaign on Sunday accused the Russian government of orchestrating the release of damaging Democratic Party records in order to help the campaign of Republican Donald Trump — and some cyber security experts in the U.S. and overseas agree. The extraordinary charge came as some national security officials have been growing increasingly concerned about possible efforts by Russia to meddle in the election, according to several individuals familiar with the situation. Late last week, hours before the records were released by the website Wikileaks, the White House convened a high-level security meeting to discuss reports that Russia had hacked into systems at the Democratic National Committee.

National: Under pressure from Bernie Sanders, Democrats poised to change how they pick nominees | Los Angeles Times

Democrats reached an agreement on Saturday that could sharply reduce the influence of superdelegates in the next presidential election, resolving an emotionally charged issue that threatened to boil over this week. The deal represents another way Bernie Sanders has left his mark on the Democratic Party despite being defeated by Hillary Clinton in the primary. The party’s policy platform has already been modified to reflect some of the Vermont senator’s goals, including a $15-per-hour federal minimum wage and free tuition for many college students. Superdelegates, who are elected officials and party leaders who can throw their support to a presidential candidate independent of state primary results, have been a fault line this year. They overwhelmingly backed Clinton, sometimes even pledging their support before the first primary vote was cast. Although superdelegates didn’t deliver Clinton her victory — she also won the popular vote and a greater number of pledged delegates — Sanders has argued that they play an undemocratic role in the nominating process. The final deal approved by the rules committee on Saturday will create a commission that will draft changes to the superdelegate system. Only elected officials would be allowed to be superdelegates, reducing their numbers by two-thirds.

National: Rulings May Make Voter ID Laws Presidential Race Nonfactors | Associated Press

Federal courts have reined in strict voter ID laws in Texas and Wisconsin, while a legal battle continues to rage over North Carolina’s rules mandating showing identification at the polls — even after lawmakers there took pre-emptive steps to soften them. The court ruling almost certainly won’t be enough for Democrat Hillary Clinton to win fiercely conservative Texas in November, and Wisconsin has been reliably blue enough in recent presidential cycles that the legal setback for its voter ID law may not prove decisive, either. North Carolina could be enough of a swing state that the fate of its election rules may have an impact — but exactly where its voter ID requirements will stand by Election Day on Nov. 8 remains to be seen. What is coming into clearer focus is just how hard it could be for Republican-controlled states to enforce tougher ballot box restrictions that energized conservative activists when they were approved in statehouses around the country in recent years. That means an issue that looked to be a slam dunk for the right following the rise of the tea party in 2010 may actually be little more than an afterthought during this year’s make-or-break presidential election.

National: A hackable election: 5 things you need to know about e-voting machines | PCWorld

As the U.S. heads toward an especially contentious national election in November, 15 states are still clinging to outdated electronic voting machines that don’t support paper printouts used to audit their internal vote counts. E-voting machines without attached printers are still being used in a handful of presidential swing states, leading some voting security advocates to worry about the potential of a hacked election. Some makers of e-voting machines, often called direct-recording electronic machines or DREs, are now focusing on other sorts of voting technology, including optical scanners. They seem reluctant to talk about DREs; three major DRE vendors didn’t respond to questions about security. … While a hacked election may be unlikely, it’s not impossible, said Joe Kiniry, a long-time election security researcher. Researchers have found many security holes in DREs, and many states don’t conduct comprehensive election audits, said Kiniry, now CEO and chief scientist at Free and Fair, an open-source election technology vendor. “I would say that a determined adversary, with the standard skill that people like me have, would be able to hack an election nationally,” he said. “With enough money and resources, I don’t think that’s actually a technical challenge.” Voting results are “ripe for manipulation,” Kiniry added. Hacking an election would be more of a social and political challenge than a technical one, he said. “You’d have a medium-sized conspiracy in order to achieve such a goal.”

National: Guccifer 2.0: What Could Happen Next? | Information Security Buzz

We described the current state of the Guccifer 2.0 purported disclosures as leaking documents of minimal intelligence value for possible political points in the U.S. and reinforcing Kremlin themes to a Russian audience about the failings of democracy and the West. Here, we outline a couple of different trajectories for the Guccifer 2.0 persona and identify some of the indicators that would help us determine which path we’re on. … To have a substantial impact on the U.S. media, we assess Guccifer 2.0 would have to release documents that otherwise would have been used for higher priority intelligence objectives. If a release like this were to happen, it would be closer to the election as a final coup de grâce to push late media coverage in a way that benefits Russia’s desired outcome. If this scenario is part of a plan, we would expect to see efforts to make Guccifer 2.0 a more trusted interlocutor over the next few months by releasing higher quality documents or verifiable claims that establish his bona fides. However, if some external shock changes the Russian calculus, we might not see that on-ramp. In other words, the on-ramp would be indicative, but a lack of on-ramp does not necessarily preclude this outcome.

National: There Won’t Be Any Election Monitors in the Most Vulnerable States This Election: What Could Go Wrong? | Yahoo News

In a contentious election year with voter suppression on the rise, the list of possible catastrophes is pretty long. The Department of Justice has just dealt a major blow to voting rights in the United States with the news that it won’t be dispatching election monitors to some of the most vulnerable states in November. In a contentious election year where voter suppression is likely to be a recurring theme across the country, this is extremely bad news — because instead of relying on federal observers, we’re going to be forced to count on voters themselves enforcing their rights. If election monitors sound like something the UN dispatches to developing democracies, it’s not just nations like Iraq that need monitoring to ensure that everyone has a fair chance at the vote. Systemic inequality and a repeated pattern of voter suppression in the United States demonstrates that we can’t get it together when it comes to protecting the “one person, one vote” principle that’s supposed to be a cornerstone of American life.

National: Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Uses Pokémon Go to Register Voters | Wall Street Journal

Hillary Clinton is hoping to use Pokémon Go to catch voters. At a rally on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton talked about the game phenomenon, saying “I don’t know who created ‘Pokemon Go,’ but I’ve tried to figure out how we get them to have Pokémon go to the polls.” The game, created by Niantic Labs in a partnership with Nintendo and Pokémon Co., is causing people to flock to public places as they search for Pokémon, which virtually pop up in the real world. The mobile game has been cited for traffic accidents, injuries and for giving its users unexpected exercise as they walk around trying to find “pocket monsters.”

National: How Technology Is Shaping Voter Registration and the Election Process for States and Localities | StateTech Magazine

As Hennepin County, Minn., prepares to implement its new electronic poll book system in August, one of election officials’ main concerns has been how to train poll workers. The workers are wonderful, says Hennepin County Elections Manager Ginny Gelms, but many are older and not very comfortable using technology. Those worries proved unfounded when the poll workers in a neighboring county’s pilot project said they would return only if they could use the electronic poll books again. “That was a real eye-opener for me,” Gelms says. “It just makes their jobs so much easier that they love it.” This year’s presidential race has been unprecedented in many regards, but it’s not just the candidates who are making history. From registering voters online and nominating candidates during the conventions to casting ballots at the polls, new advances in technology continue to transform the election process. Jurisdictions throughout the country are hard at work modernizing outdated election systems, with new technologies that cut the time and cost of inputting registration data, reduce data entry errors, ensure citizens can’t vote more than once and make voting faster, easier and more convenient.

National: GOP platform calls for tough voter ID laws | The Hill

The Republican Party’s platform formally endorses laws requiring voters to show identification when they cast ballots. The new provision inserts the national party into a contentious debate over voter access at a time when several states are tightening identification requirements.The party platform, adopted unanimously by delegates in Cleveland on Monday, goes farther than language that had been included in earlier years. The party “support[s] legislation to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote and secure photo ID when voting,” the document reads. Four years ago, the GOP platform “applaud[ed] legislation to require photo identification for voting and to prevent election fraud.” The stronger language comes ahead of a presidential election in which 12 states — including swing states like Wisconsin, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia — will enforce voter identification laws for the first time.

National: Voting challenges head toward the Supreme Court: 4 cases to watch | CNN

The looming election and the Supreme Court will converge in the coming months as voting rights challenges on issues such as Voter ID, early vote cutbacks and same-day registration make their way to the high court. Challenges during an election year are always fraught, but this cycle things could grow even more complicated because the court only has eight members to review the cases, and there’s a good chance that it could split 4-4. In the recent past, the Supreme Court has signaled that it does not like courts to disrupt rules and regulations too close to an election out of the fear that it could cause confusion to voters. As such, there might be a sentiment on the court — when it rules on one of the emergency motions it is certain to get — to vote to preserve the status quo until after the election and then agree to take up one or two cases and settle the big issues concerning the meaning of the Voting Rights Act and how the Constitution applies to current laws regulating the voting process.

National: There Won’t Be Any Election Monitors in the Most Vulnerable States This Election: What Could Go Wrong?

In a contentious election year with voter suppression on the rise, the list of possible catastrophes is pretty long. The Department of Justice has just dealt a major blow to voting rights in the United States with the news that it won’t be dispatching election monitors to some of the most vulnerable states in November. In a contentious election year where voter suppression is likely to be a recurring theme across the country, this is extremely bad news — because instead of relying on federal observers, we’re going to be forced to count on voters themselves enforcing their rights. If election monitors sound like something the UN dispatches to developing democracies, it’s not just nations like Iraq that need monitoring to ensure that everyone has a fair chance at the vote. Systemic inequality and a repeated pattern of voter suppression in the United States demonstrates that we can’t get it together when it comes to protecting the “one person, one vote” principle that’s supposed to be a cornerstone of American life. We can blame 2013’s Shelby County v Holder for this particular DOJ decision. The agency believes that the Supreme Court’s move, which invalidated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, limits the amount of oversight it can conduct during elections. Historically, the agency could send federal election observers to any states that it felt merited closer monitoring as a result of concerns about restrictions on voting rights. Now, it can only dispatch them in the event of a federal court ruling, and just five states have such rulings outstanding: California, Alabama, Louisiana, Alaska, and New York.

National: Could ‘Pokemon Go’ Break Election Laws? | US News & World Report

“Pokemon Go,” the augmented reality app that recently became the biggest mobile game in U.S. history, has businesses and advertisers working feverishly to capitalize on its enormous popularity. And while election campaigns are already taking advantage of the game’s mechanics to incentivize players to visit political rallies and registration drives, the possible use of “lures” to attract gamers to polling places – and even to influence their vote – is proving to be an unimagined area of election law. Hillary Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign, for example, has organized a “Pokemon Go” event in Lakewood, Ohio, where people can play the game and register to vote. Organizers held the event at what the game calls a “Poke Stop,” a public place at which the game’s programmers put items useful in the digital scavenger hunt. Organizers also promised what’s called a “Lure Module” – a facet of the game designed to attract the wild Pokemon whose capture is the object, and thereby avid “Pokemon Go” players, to a particular location.

National: Voting Rights Advocates Concerned As Election Observers Dwindle | Huffington Post

Federal election observers can only be sent to five states in this year’s U.S. presidential election, among the smallest deployments since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 to end racial discrimination at the ballot box. The plan, confirmed in a U.S. Department of Justice fact sheet seen by Reuters, reflects changes brought about by the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to strike down parts of the Act, a signature legislative achievement of the 1960s civil rights movement. Voting rights advocates told Reuters they were concerned that the scaling-back of observers would make it harder to detect and counter efforts to intimidate or hinder voters, especially in southern states with a history of racial discrimination at the ballot box.

National: Citizens United Muddles What Is Legal In Trump’s Foreign Money Case | NPR

Foreign money in American politics. The phrase suggests secret payments, maybe briefcases stuffed with cash, or dinners of fine food and oblique conversation. Or spam. “Mr. Speaker, members of Parliament are being bombarded with electronic communications from Team Trump, on behalf of somebody called Donald Trump.” Sir Roger Gale, MP, was among the hundreds of legislators, from the United Kingdom to Iceland to Australia, whose inboxes had received unwanted fundraising emails from the Trump campaign. Gale continued: “Mr. Speaker, I’m all in favor of free speech, but I don’t see why colleagues on either side of the house should be subjected to intemperate spam.” He asked if the House of Commons IT staff could please make it stop. Speaker John Bercow sympathized, saying he didn’t consider it acceptable for members to be getting “emails of which the content is offensive.”