National: With big field, unsettled primary calendar adds complexity to GOP race | Los Angeles Times

As the number of candidates seeking the Republican nomination nears a dozen, with more to come, the calendar of primaries has drawn increased attention, with party strategists trying to determine which contests will begin to winnow the field. Though the calendar remains unsettled, several Southern states, including Alabama and Arkansas, are looking to have an effect on the race by holding contests on the same date – creating a so-called SEC primary, named after the college sports Southeastern Conference. In Florida, Republicans have rallied around a winner-take-all primary that could be a jackpot in the race for delegates and potentially determine the electoral fate of the state’s former governor, Jeb Bush and its current Republican senator, Marco Rubio.

National: For millennials, Facebook is poised to dominate politics (also everything else) | The Washington Post

The odds are good that you are reading this article because you clicked through a link on Facebook. On Sunday, for example, a day you should be spending time with family/reading Post articles, a third of all traffic to The Fix’s top five posts came through the social networking site. The odds of your having gotten to this article from Facebook are much better the younger you are, given that this article deals with politics. “Among Millennials,” a new report from Pew Research reads, referring to people born between 1981 and 1996, “Facebook is far and away the most common source for news about government and politics.” Far and away meaning that 61 percent of that group got news about politics or government from the site — about the same percentage as that of baby boomers (1946-1964) got from their local news. And vice-versa: Only 37 percent of millennials got political information from local news, compared to 60 percent of boomers.

National: The next political battleground: Your phone | CNN

There’s a new political battleground in 2016: your phone. Next year’s election presents a new opportunity for politicians to harness a slew of technologies — from video to demographic data — that will help them reach voters. The drive toward connecting with potential voters on their smartphones is playing out, in part, because so many people have one this election cycle. About two-thirds of Americans own a smartphone today, compared with just 35% in the spring of 2011, according to the Pew Research Center. For about 10% of Americans, their smartphone is the only form of high-speed Internet they have access to at home.

National: New FCC robocall rules concern pollsters | Politico

For many Americans, the idea of technology that can block automated telephone calls sounds like a solution to all those annoying “robocalls” and interrupted family dinners. But to the nation’s pollsters and campaign professionals, many of whom are gearing up for the 2016 election cycle, a federal government proposal circulated Wednesday to encourage phone companies to embrace the technology feels like an existential threat. As a result, they say, Americans might soon know much less about what they think about everything from which candidates are gaining or losing ground to what issues voters care about most. And political campaigns might be forced to abandon tools they currently use to reach large numbers of voters in a short period of time.

National: Elections Technology: Nine Things Legislators May Want to Know | The Canvass

What makes you lose sleep?” That’s what NCSL staff asked members of the National Association of State Election Directors back in September 2012. The answer wasn’t voter ID, or early voting, or turnout, as we expected. Instead, it was this: “Our equipment is aging, and we aren’t sure we’ll have workable equipment for our citizens to vote on beyond 2016.”That was NCSL’s wake-up call to get busy and learn how elections and technology work together. We’ve spent much of the last two years focusing on that through the Elections Technology Project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation. One thing we learned is that virtually all election policy choices have a technology component. Just two examples: vote centers and all-mail elections. While both can be debated based on such values as their effect on voters, election officials and budgets, neither can be decided without considering technology. Vote centers rely on e-poll books, and all-mail elections depend on optical scan equipment to handle volumes of paper ballots.Below are nine more takeaways we’ve learned recently and that legislators might like to know too.

National: The ‘One Person, One Vote’ Case Relies On Statistics That Nobody Has | FiveThirtyEight

“One person, one vote” is a deceptively simple promise, but a Texas woman wants to clarify which persons count. On Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Evenwel v. Abbott, a suit that challenges exactly who should be counted as a person when states draw their district boundaries in pursuit of proportional representation.The plaintiffs are challenging the usual method (counting total number of people living in a district) and are asking that states use the total number of eligible voters instead. The trouble is, we don’t have robust statistics on the number of eligible voters. If the Supreme Court were to set new standards for districting, we would need to overhaul the nation’s statistics and surveys.

National: Supreme Court Agrees to Settle Meaning of ‘One Person One Vote’ | New York Times

The Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear a case that will answer a long-contested question about a bedrock principle of the American political system: the meaning of “one person one vote.” The court’s ruling, expected in 2016, could be immensely consequential. Should the court agree with the two Texas voters who brought the case, its ruling would shift political power from cities to rural areas, a move that would benefit Republicans. The court has never resolved whether voting districts should have the same number of people, or the same number of eligible voters. Counting all people amplifies the voting power of places with large numbers of residents who cannot vote legally, including immigrants who are here legally but are not citizens, illegal immigrants, children and prisoners. Those places tend to be urban and to vote Democratic.

National: Supreme Court to Consider How to Calculate Size of Voting Districts | Wall Street Journal

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether the Constitution requires only eligible voters be counted when forming legislative districts, taking up a lawsuit that could shift political power to less populous rural areas from urban centers. If successful, the challenge to the state Senate map the Texas Legislature drew in 2013 could reshape the political dynamic in states with large Hispanic populations. The lawsuit offers the high court a chance to clarify the one-person, one-vote doctrine it established in the 1960s, when the justices swept away legislative maps that gave rural voters disproportionate power over urban areas. Since then, the near-universal practice has been to draw maps based on total population without regard to legal status. Subsequent electoral disputes centered on whether the racial composition of resulting districts complies with the Voting Rights Act.

National: Supreme Court to consider redefining ‘one-person, one-vote’ principle | USAToday

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to define what it meant by “one person, one vote” a half century ago. The justices will consider a challenge brought by two rural voters in Texas who claim their state Senate ballots carry less weight than those cast in urban areas with large numbers of non-citizens ineligible to vote. Under the current system in nearly all states, state legislative districts are drawn with roughly equal populations. The standard dates back to decisions made by the Supreme Court in the early 1960s.

National: Cheap And Fast, Online Voter Registration Catches On | NPR

Voters in more than half the states will soon be able to register online, rather than filling out a paper form and sending it in. Twenty states have implemented online voter registration so far, almost all in the past few years. Seven other states and the District of Columbia are now in the process of doing so. That includes Florida, where Republican Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill last Friday requiring the state to allow online voter registration by 2017. Online voter registration has become so popular because election officials say it’s more efficient than a paper-based system, and cheaper. Voters like it because they can register any time of day from home, said David Becker, director of election initiatives for the Pew Charitable Trusts. “What election officials are finding, is they’re saving a ton of money, because they’re having to process a lot fewer pieces of paper by hand, right before an election, and get that into the system,” he said.

National: ‘Campaigns’ Aren’t Necessarily Campaigns in the Age of ‘Super PACs’ | New York Times

As the 2016 campaign unfolds, Hillary Rodham Clinton will benefit from one rapid-response team working out of a war room in her Brooklyn headquarters — and another one working out of a “super PAC” in Washington. Jeb Bush has hired a campaign manager, press aides and fund-raisers — yet insists he is not running for president, just exploring the possibility of maybe running. And Senator Marco Rubio’s chance of winning his party’s nomination may hinge on the support of an “independent” group financed by a billionaire who has bankrolled Mr. Rubio’s past campaigns, paid his salary teaching at a university and employed his wife. With striking speed, the 2016 contenders are exploiting loopholes and regulatory gray areas to transform the way presidential campaigns are organized and paid for. Their “campaigns” are in practice intricate constellations of political committees, super PACs and tax-exempt groups, engineered to avoid fund-raising restrictions imposed on candidates and their parties after the Watergate scandal.

National: US Justice Department eyes voting rights changes for American Indians, Alaska Natives | Associated Press

The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking legislation that would require state and local election officials to work with American Indian tribes to locate at least one polling place on or near each tribe’s land. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the changes are needed because “significant and unnecessary barriers” exist for American Indians and Alaska Natives who want to cast ballots. American Indians sometimes have to travel great distances to vote, face language barriers and, in places like Alaska, do not have the same amount of time to vote as others. The Justice Department outlined its proposal in letters Thursday to House Speaker John Boehner and Vice President Joe Biden, after a year of consultation with tribes on voting access.

National: F.E.C. Member Says System Tilts Against Conservative Groups | New York Times

Political tensions intensified on Thursday at the Federal Election Commission, as a Republican commissioner charged that conservative groups were the focus of agency reviews into possible impropriety far more than liberal ones. On a commission deeply divided already along party lines, Democrats quickly dismissed the charge as baseless. Lee E. Goodman, one of three Republican commissioners, said at a public meeting that he tallied up the political leanings of groups investigated by the agency for possible campaign violations and found what he said was a system tilted to inquiries of conservative groups.

National: Partisanship stalemates Federal Election Commission, says report | TheHill

Partisanship at the Federal Election Commission has hamstrung the agency, as deadlocked investigations have skyrocketed since 2008, according to a new report. Before 2008, the FEC only deadlocked on 1 percent of its votes to trigger punishments for allegations of election law violations, according to the report released Wednesday by the Public Citizen Foundation. Since then, the agency has hit a stalemate on 15 percent. The FEC is made up of three Democratic and three Republican commissioners, and action can only be triggered with a majority vote, which means at least one commissioner must cross party lines before the agency can authorize punishment.

National: Super PACs’ Next Target: Local Elections | National Journal

When Philadelphia’s next mayor delivers his victory speech Tuesday night, he should take a moment to praise a most important ally: his super PAC. Before long, it could become a regular part of any winning mayor’s speech. In this open-seat race in the nation’s fifth-largest city, the disparity in spending between super PACs and the official campaigns has been considerable. Heading into the weekend, the race’s three highest-spending groups on TV all were super PACs, according to a Democratic source tracking the buys. One outside group, funded by out-of-town charter-school advocates, had invested more on TV ads than the other campaigns combined.

National: When is a campaign not a campaign? When it’s a Super Pac | The Guardian

These days, presidential candidates are not just raising money for their own campaigns. They are also raising money for outside groups with generic sounding names like Priorities USA, Right to Rise and Our American Renewal. These are Super Pacs (political action committees), affiliated with each outside campaign but nominally independent. In 2012, they were helpful appendages. This year, heading into 2016, they are becoming fully fledged substitutes for campaigns, taking over functions including opposition research, polling and even knocking on doors. Super Pacs are just five years old. Like most developments in modern campaign finance law, they were created by accident through judicial decisions, not by legislation.

National: How a super PAC plans to coordinate directly with Hillary Clinton’s campaign | The Washington Post

Hillary Clinton’s campaign plans to work in tight conjunction with an independent rapid-response group financed by unlimited donations, another novel form of political outsourcing that has emerged as a dominant practice in the 2016 presidential race. On Tuesday, Correct the Record, a pro-Clinton rapid-response operation, announced it was splitting off from its parent American Bridge and will work in coordination with the Clinton campaign as a stand-alone super PAC. The group’s move was first reported by the New York Times.

National: The White House Names Princeton University Professor Ed Felten as Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer | Planet Princeton

Edward Felten, a Princeton University computer scientist who is a leading expert on computer security, has been named deputy chief technology officer in the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. The White House announced the appointment this afternoon. Felten has been teaching at Princeton University since 1993. In 2005, he was named director of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. His research interests include public policy issues related to information technology, including electronic voting, cybersecurity policy, technology for government transparency, and Internet policy.

National: Democrats Eased Way for GOP Mega-Donors | Bloomberg

More than half of Senate Democrats voted with Republicans in December to increase fundraising limits for the political parties. The change was tucked in the 1,599th page of a 1,603-page budget deal. Given how aggressively Republicans are taking advantage of the new rules, and how little they seem to be benefiting Democrats, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid may regret his support. The Republican National Committee raised almost $26 million in the first quarter of 2015, $10 million more than the Democratic National Committee — even though the DNC has President Barack Obama headlining fundraising events. The RNC owes its advantage to huge donations, which were formally prohibited.

National: Why the Democratic path to a House majority may run through a courtroom | The Washington Post

Many Democrats are bullish on their chances of winning back the Senate next year, and most sound confident they can hold on to the White House. Few think they have a prayer of taking back the House of Representatives. So now they’re playing the long game – turning to the courts to help deliver what the ballot box won’t. Top Democratic attorneys are arguing before state and federal courts that district maps drawn in a handful of states violate the Voting Rights Act by improperly packing African American voters into a small number of districts, limiting their influence.

National: The FEC’s ‘non-partisan’ whistleblower | Politico

Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ann Ravel, an outspoken advocate of tougher campaign finance laws who has been criticized as too partisan by some Republicans, says she’s open to a GOP idea of increasing campaign contribution limits as a way to stem the flow of money to super PACs and other outside groups. “I wouldn’t object to the raising of contribution limits,” the Democratic appointee told POLITICO in an interview. “But I wouldn’t want to totally eliminate contribution limits because what would worry me about that is that the candidates would then become like the super PACs, and it would drown out small donors.”

National: An online voting lobbyist’s misleading testimony | McClatchy

Introducing himself as a former Oregon state elections official, online voting industry lobbyist Donald DeFord vouched authoritatively to a Washington state legislative panel in late January as to the merits of statewide internet voting. Oregon, he testified, ultimately came to the “same solution” offered by a bill before the Washington state House that would allow everybody to cast their election ballots by email or fax – an option that top cyber security experts warn would expose elections to hackers. “First in a special congressional election and then statewide, we made our accessible online ballot delivery and return system available to any voter who was not able to use a paper ballot,” DeFord, a regional sales director for San Diego-based Everyone Counts, told the committee. There was a big problem with that testimony. Oregon doesn’t allow voters to send in marked ballots electronically, except for troops and citizens living abroad who have been prevented from mailing their absentee ballots due to an emergency or other extenuating circumstances. DeFord now says he “misspoke.”

National: F.E.C. Can’t Curb 2016 Election Abuse, Commission Chief Says | New York Times

The leader of the Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and spent, says she has largely given up hope of reining in abuses in the 2016 presidential campaign, which could generate a record $10 billion in spending. “The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim,” Ann M. Ravel, the chairwoman, said in an interview. “I never want to give up, but I’m not under any illusions. People think the F.E.C. is dysfunctional. It’s worse than dysfunctional.” Her unusually frank assessment reflects a worsening stalemate among the agency’s six commissioners. They are perpetually locked in 3-to-3 ties along party lines on key votes because of a fundamental disagreement over the mandate of the commission, which was created 40 years ago in response to the political corruption of Watergate.

National: Secure e-voting: 20 to 30 years away | Computer Weekly

Jeremy Epstein, senior computer scientist at non-profit research institute SRI International spoke to the Computer Weekly Developer Network blog this week to share his views on the possibility of electronic voting security. Epstein says that although some e-voting is happening in the US, Estonia and other countries — this is not *secure* e-voting, it’s just e-voting. Every system developed so far has been found to be insecure. “From a technical perspective, we’re at least 10 years away from secure e-voting, and many experts think we’re 20 or 30 years away,” he said.

National: The Supreme Court said judges can’t solicit campaign contributions. This probably won’t matter. | The Washington Post

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Williams-Yulee v. State Bar of Florida, ruling that judicial candidates could not directly solicit campaign contributions. This marked the first time that the Roberts Court has ruled in favor of a 1st Amendment regulation in an elections case. At least some reporting about the case suggested it was a big deal, as seen in headlines like “Campaign finance reformers just won a massive victory at the Supreme Court.” In reality, the decision is likely to have very little impact on the actual conduct of judicial elections, or on how the public views those elections. Here is why. First, it is not clear that a judicial candidate’s personally soliciting campaign contributions necessarily makes that individual less impartial than a judge who does not personally solicit contributions.

National: F.E.C. Data Shows Campaign Fines Hit Record Low in 2014 | New York Times

Penalties levied by the Federal Election Commission for campaign finance violations have plummeted to record lows even as political spending has soared, according to newly released data from the agency. The statistics underscore the sharp decline in enforcement at the commission, which has come under fresh scrutiny because of partisan gridlock. By law, each party has three commissioners, resulting in recent years in a 3-to-3 vote on virtually any significant issue. Republicans on the commission say they believe the drop in fines shows that campaigns are generally following the law as a result of better training and compliance programs. Democrats say it is a troubling sign of lax enforcement.

National: Huckabee’s Pitch, Whether Joke or Not, At Odds With Federal Election Law | Wall Street Journal

In his presidential campaign announcement on Tuesday, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee emphasized his status as a Washington outsider who would not be “funded and fueled” by billionaires. But as he decried wealthy donors’ influence in the political system, he also ran afoul of federal election law. Mr. Huckabee said his campaign would be funded by “working people who will find out that $15 and $25 a month contributions can take us from Hope to higher ground,” he said, a reference to Hope, Ark., where he was speaking. But, he cracked: “Rest assured, if you want to give a million dollars, please do it.” Not so fast. Individuals are only permitted to give up to $2,700 per election to a candidate, according to Federal Election Commission rules. Though in a joking manner, Mr. Huckabee was likely making a pitch to the audience on behalf of a super PAC, Pursuing America’s Greatness, that he formed last month to back his campaign. Super PACs can accept unlimited donations from individuals but are not allowed to coordinate with campaigns.

National: Get ready for a lot more ‘dark money’ in politics | The Washington Post

Over the weekend, the New York Times published a sobering interview with the head of the Federal Election Commission, who confirmed that she had largely given up on the agency playing a meaningful role in restraining fundraising and spending abuses in the 2016 campaign. The commissioners are deadlocked, FEC chair Ann Ravel said, because Republican members of the commission think the FEC should exercise less robust oversight, meaning the agency has become “worse than dysfunctional” at a time when outside money is poised to play an even larger role than it did in the last two cycles.

National: How Google Could Give 2016 Hopefuls an Edge | Wall Street Journal

Iowans can expect to see a lot more of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker popping up in their Google browsers, if he decides to run for president later this year. That’s because the Walker team advertised aggressively on the popular search engine during his 2014 re-election and will likely do so again, should he pursue a White House bid. They spent heavily on Google ads to raise money and target voters. The Walker campaign was so aggressive in 2014 that Google highlighted its efforts in a just-released case study about the midterm campaigns. Among the findings: Mr. Walker’s re-election team raised more money from ads pegged to Google searches than it spent to buy space above those search results, an unusually high return-on-investment for political campaigns; his team also worked with the company to reach more than 5 million targeted voters in key ZIP codes through YouTube ads in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

National: Supreme Court upholds ban on judicial candidates soliciting campaign contributions — even via mass mailings – The Washington Post

In 39 states, judges are popularly elected (or at least voters must decide whether to retain them). This means that judicial candidates — especially ones who aren’t incumbents — have to campaign for office, and those campaigns cost money. Campaigns thus have to raise that money, in contributions from the public. This raises an obvious danger: Judges may well be influenced to rule in favor of those lawyers or litigants who contributed to their campaigns. Even if the judges are trying hard to be honest, and to ignore who helped them and who didn’t, thinking better of your political friends is human nature, and hard to avoid. Such favoritism is even more harmful for judges, who are supposed to be impartial, than for elected officials. And the possibility of such favoritism undermines “public confidence in the fairness and integrity of the nation’s elected judges” (to quote today’s Court decision). Nor does capping the size of contributions (as states may do for all candidates, legislative, executive, or judicial) solve the problem.