National: Seeking High Tech and Low Tech Solutions to Low Voter Turnout | Silicon Hills

Why don’t more people vote? Only about 36 percent of the voting population turned out for the 2014 midterm elections, the lowest turnout election since 1942, according to stats from the United States Election Project. That’s a big problem and a group of experts in technology, journalism, civics and elections met at the Belo Center for New Media at the University of Texas at Austin campus last week to discuss how to get more people civically engaged. They participated in an invitation-only daylong conference hosted by the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life focused on increasing civic engagement before, during and after elections. The conference featured speakers from Google, Microsoft, Code for America, Rock the Vote, Vox Media, Texas Tribune, the clerk of Travis County and many more.

National: The television election | Politico

This was supposed to be the presidential campaign that ends the dominance of TV ads — the Snapchat election, the live streaming election. “If 2004 was about Meetup [and] 2008 was about Facebook, 2016 is going to be about Meerkat (or something just like it),” vowed President Barack Obama’s ex-communications guru Dan Pfeiffer. Not yet. It’s increasingly clear, as two dozen campaigns and their super PACs plot their strategies, that 2016, will be, once again, about television. Between campaigns and independent groups, television ad spending during the 2016 elections is projected to top $4.4 billion. That’s over a half-billion more than in 2012. And it’s at least four times what campaigns and groups are preparing to spend on their online strategies.

National: Presidential Race Just Started? Not According to the Spending | The New York Times

Since late last year, presidential hopefuls have been romancing donors, hiring staff and haunting the diners and senior centers of Manchester and Dubuque. But on paper, most of the candidates spent virtually no money exploring a presidential bid until very recently. According to campaign disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission last week, the much-promoted campaign staff they hired had other jobs. And their many, many trips to New Hampshire and Iowa had nothing to do with running for president. Such accounting — which the campaigns defended as perfectly appropriate but some election lawyers said violated the law — has allowed would-be candidates to spend months testing the presidential waters while saving cash to use later in the primaries.

National: Where Candidates Stash Their Cash | Bloomberg

Chain Bridge Bank’s single ­location is next to a wine store and a café on the ground floor of a luxury condo building in suburban McLean, Va., about a half-hour outside downtown Washington. It looks like any small-town bank. Tellers keep bowls of candy at their windows, and staff members talk to customers about no-fee checking accounts. But right now, Chain Bridge, which has about 40 employees, is responsible for more of the hundreds of millions of dollars flooding into the 2016 presidential race than any other bank in the country. According to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings, Chain Bridge is the sole bank serving Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, which reported raising $11.4 million as of June 30, and his allied super-PAC, Right to Rise, which says it’s raised $103 million so far. Donald Trump’s campaign banks at Chain Bridge, and it’s listed as the primary financial institution for the campaigns of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and former Texas Governor Rick Perry. It’s also the only bank used by super-PACs supporting neurosurgeon and author Ben Carson, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, former technology executive Carly Fiorina, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, all Republicans.

National: McCarthy Cracks Door, Slightly, on Voting Rights Act | Roll Call

Last year, House Democrats saw ex-Majority Leader Eric Cantor as a possible (if ultimately disappointing) ally in the fight to rewrite the Voting Rights Act for the 21st century. On Tuesday, Cantor’s leadership successor, Kevin McCarthy, might have revealed himself as another important potential friend to the effort. The California Republican echoed at a pen-and-pad briefing what fellow GOP lawmakers have said before: Any revision of the landmark 1965 law has to start in the Judiciary Committee — a disappointing answer for advocates who know Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte, R-Va., is disinclined to tackle the matter. But McCarthy later said he thinks the time has come for an “overall review.” “On a personal level, I’d like to see the debate go forward,” he said. “I’d like to see [us] have the debate in committee. I think everything, when it’s first written and where the world is today, has changed. So just as most of our bills, how do you modernize? An overall review, I think, it’s the right time to do it,” McCarthy continued. “What the outcome can be, I don’t prejudge.”

National: How the Never-Ending Battle of Redistricting Will Impact 2016 | Governing

In both Virginia and Florida, legislators will meet in special sessions next month to deal with an issue they thought they'd settled years ago -- redistricting. Congressional maps in both states have been ruled invalid by the courts. The reasons were different in each case, but each speaks to a trend that is keeping redistricting very much a live issue midway through the decade. Political lines have to be redrawn once every 10 years, following the census. But the fight over them never really stops.

National: The gerrymandering jig should be up | The Washington Post

The 3rd congressional districts in Maryland and Virginia are roughly 200 miles apart — depending on which part of their ungainly boundaries one takes as a starting point — and, on the surface, seem to have little in common. Virginia’s 3rd stretches from Norfolk to Richmond. Maryland’s 3rd, with contours often likened to a blood spatter, incorporates parts of Baltimore City, as well as parts of Anne Arundel (including Annapolis), Baltimore, Howard and Montgomery counties. What they share is a genesis in bald-faced gerrymandering contrived by politicians intent on manipulating electoral maps to their advantage by hand-picking their own voters. Democrats are the culprits in Maryland’s case; Republicans did the deed in Virginia. Encouragingly, there are signs that the jig may be up, or that at least it is facing more pressure than ever before.

National: Voter ID, registration and early voting laws vary widely across America | Winston-Salem Journal

Across the United States, eligible residents have the opportunity to join voter rolls and vote, but they don’t all have the same options or ease of access. Voting laws vary widely from state to state. “There are certain federal requirements that limit state discretion,” said John Dinan, a political science professor at Wake Forest University. “For instance, states cannot set a registration closing deadline of greater than 30 days before an election. But for the most part, states have significant discretion in how they provide for voting to take place.” For example, about two-thirds of the states allow in-person early voting, but the early voting periods range anywhere from four to 45 days. About two-thirds of states currently require voters to present identification of some kind at the polls, but they vary greatly in what kind of documents they require and what they do if a person doesn’t provide it. “Some states have certainly made it easier than others,” said Jason Husser, assistant professor of political science at Elon University.

National: The 2020 redistricting war is (already) on | The Washington Post

There's a hundred-million-dollar battle brewing for control of Congress, but it's not going to be resolved for seven more years, and the battles will take place in lands far away from Washington. Both Democrats and Republicans think controlling state legislatures in 2020 is one of the most important political battles to fight, mostly for one reason: The power of the pen -- the kind that draws district lines, that is. Five years out, both sides are in a fundraising battle to build war chests of $70 million to $125 million to swing state legislatures their way by 2020, when new electoral maps will get drawn across the country. The Republican State Leadership Committee announced Thursday it's launching RedMap 2020 and aiming to invest $125 million to expand their majority in the statehouses and redraw the nation's electoral lines.

National: Democrats float compromise linking Confederate flag to voting rights | The Hill

House Democrats are floating a legislative deal linking the thorny Confederate flag debate with expanded voting rights. Republican leaders last week were forced to scrap a vote on an Interior Department spending bill — and suspend their appropriations schedule indefinitely — over a partisan disagreement about displaying the Confederate flag in national cemeteries. Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.), the third-ranking House Democrat, said Thursday that Democratic leaders will drop their push to attach flag-related amendments to appropriations bills, freeing Republicans to pursue their spending agenda, if GOP leaders will agree to consider an update to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a central part of which was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013.

National: States Rethink Laws Denying the Vote to Felons | Stateline

When Republican Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed a Maryland bill that expanded voting rights, he angered a group of people who were never able to vote for him in the first place: felons still serving prison time, probation or parole. Maryland — like every state but Maine and Vermont — restricts the voting rights of felons. Some states bar felony inmates from voting, others extend the prohibition to offenders who are on parole or probation. Several states withhold voting rights from people who have been out of the criminal justice system for years. More states are considering restoring the right to vote to felons, with supporters saying that once their debt to society is paid they should be allowed to exercise a fundamental right. This year, 18 states considered legislation to ease voting restrictions on felons; Wyoming was the only state to pass such a bill. That’s up from 13 states that considered bills last year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

National: What Campaign Filings Won’t Show: Super PACs’ Growing Sway | The New York Times

Presidential contenders provided a glimpse inside their campaign war chests on Wednesday, releasing financial statements that offered the first detailed accounting of how the candidates were raising and spending hundreds of millions of dollars in pursuit of elected office. The reports showed, for instance, that Jeb Bush has relied largely on wealthy donors giving the maximum contribution — attracting far less financial support from more modest donors — and that Rick Perry, Ben Carson and Rick Santorum are burning through the money they have raised much more quickly than most of their opponents. Hillary Rodham Clinton raised the most money for the primary of any candidate, $46.7 million, while Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, running against Mrs. Clinton for the Democratic nomination, brought in $15 million, the vast majority of it from donors giving $200 or less.

National: 2016 Presidential Race Unfolds On Twitter, Facebook As New Social Media Trends Shape White House Campaigns | International Business Times

Social media may prove to be more crucial to the 2016 presidential race than past election cycles as voters increasingly rely on various networking platforms to keep informed. A new study released Tuesday reveals that the majority of Facebook and Twitter users consume their news on those sites. The report, which was conducted by the Pew Research Center in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, found that 63 percent of users on each of the social media platforms visit the site for news updates. These numbers are on the rise from 2013, when 52 percent of Twitter users and 47 percent of Facebook users reported finding their news on the sites. The increase was seen across all age groups. “There are many elements that can be at play with users of Facebook and Twitter when they are on these platforms,” said Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at the Pew Research Center. “It may be that they are on the platform and news ends up being something they do or the degree to which both Facebook and Twitter have put increased emphasis on news engagement and accessibility.”

National: Groups backed by secret donors take the lead in shaping 2016 elections | The Washington Post

The latest television ad touting GOP presidential contender Marco Rubio proclaims that he is “leading the fight” to stop President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. “Lessons of history are that evil is either confronted and defeated, or it grows,” Rubio says sternly, standing in front of a giant American flag. But the new spot, which hits the airwaves Wednesday, is not the work of his official campaign or even his allied super PAC. It was paid for by the Conservative Solutions Project, part of a crop of politically active nonprofit groups that are taking on new prominence in the 2016 elections.

National: How Court Rulings Could Kickstart Redistricting Reform Efforts | Wall Street Journal

It’s a good bet that recent court rulings on redistricting will embolden residents in other states to emulate Florida, Arizona, and California in adopting oversight measures and rules for redistricting or creating independent commissions to oversee the process. A Florida Supreme Court ruling last week ordering parts of the state’s congressional map to be redrawn affirmed the idea that, left unchecked, state legislatures will create uncompetitive districts and need oversight if the job is not to be taken away. The 5-2 ruling said that the state’s congressional map violates anti-gerrymandering provisions in Florida’s constitution by unfairly favoring Republicans and incumbent lawmakers. Not two weeks earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of an independent redistricting commission, established by Arizona voters in 2000 through the ballot-initiative process.

National: US Vote Foundation releases new system requirements for Internet voting | Financial News

With the release of The Future of Voting: End-to-End Verifiable Internet Voting Specification and Feasibility Assessment Study by US Vote Foundation, a new reference has been established for the security, usability and transparency requirements essential to the US in any consideration of Internet voting for public elections. Developed by a team of the nation´s leading experts in election integrity, election administration, high-assurance systems engineering, and cryptography, the report starts from the premise that public elections in the US are a matter of national security. The authors assert that Internet voting systems must be transparent and designed to run in a manner that embraces the constructs of end-to-end verifiability — a property missing from existing Internet voting systems.

National: Voting by phone, computer: Not coming to you soon | CNN

Voting from a phone, tablet or desktop computer is probably still years away, according to a report on online voting released Friday. While some voting technology is already in use -- such as electronic voting machines, apps to register to vote and online information to find polling places -- voting itself requires developing a system that can't be hacked. "Every day, we are dealing with thousands of security breaches in this country," said Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president and chief executive of the U.S. Vote Foundation, which compiled the report. "To think that voting could be better or more secure is a little bit pie in the sky."

National: The Battle to Keep the Vote: State by State | Newsweek

Republicans—with a helping nudge from the United States Supreme Court’s conservative majority (of which more below)—are passing restrictive voting laws in states where they control both branches of government. Meanwhile, Democrats are expanding voting rights in states where they dominate the governing process. Two Democrats, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Representative John Lewis of Georgia, also introduced a bill in Congress at the end of June that would require states (mostly in the South) to get federal approval for any changes in any statewide voting laws or procedures. This battle is especially important for a presidential election year, when voter turnout is significantly higher than in midterm elections. Much of the difference in the turnout is made up of prime Democratic constituencies—the young and minorities—which explains why Democrats are so set on increasing turnout and Republicans would prefer to restrict it.

National: Redistricting Reformers Are Having a Good Summer | Morning Consult

Opponents of partisan gerrymandering have scored a series of legal victories in recent weeks as courts rule in favor of reforms aimed at making congressional elections more competitive. On Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the Republican-led legislature violated the state constitution when it drew congressional district lines that intentionally favored one party. That decision came after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that an independent redistricting commission in Arizona did not violate the U.S. Constitution. Also in June, a three-member panel of federal judges ordered Virginia’s General Assembly to redraw some congressional district lines after finding legislators packed too many African-American voters into Rep. Bobby Scott’s (D) district.

National: Internet voting isn’t ready yet, but it can be made more secure | Computerworld

A push to allow Internet voting in elections is growing stronger along with advances in the underlying technology, but systems are not yet secure enough to use with relative certainty that the vote counts will be accurate, according to a new report. Still, while "no existing system guarantees voter privacy or the correct election outcomes," election officials could take several steps to significantly improve the security and transparency of Internet voting systems, said the report, commissioned by the U.S. Vote Foundation, an organization that helps U.S. residents vote. Election officials considering Internet voting must embrace an end-to-end verifiable Internet voting system, or E2E-VIV, said the report, released Friday. An E2E-VIV would be difficult to build, but it would allow voters to check that the system recorded their votes correctly, to check that it included their votes in the final tally and to double-check the announced outcome of the election, the report said. An Internet voting system must be transparent, useable and secure, said the report, echoing some recommendations security groups have made about other electronic voting systems. "An Internet voting system must guarantee the integrity of election data and keep voters' personal information safe," the report said. "The system must resist large-scale coordinated attacks, both on its own infrastructure and on individual voters' computers. It must also guarantee vote privacy and allow only eligible voters to vote."

National: U.S. court upholds federal contractor campaign finance ban | Reuters

A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to a long-standing ban on U.S. government contractors making campaign contributions in federal elections, emphasizing that the policy was put in place to prevent corruption. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against three individual contractors who contended that the ban violated their constitutional rights to free speech and equal protection under the law. Writing on behalf of an 11-judge panel, Chief Judge Merrick Garland wrote that "the concerns that spurred the original bar remain as important today as when the statute was enacted" in 1940.

National: Reality of redistricting in a post-Arizona world | The Hill

On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the will of the voters with its ruling in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. The Court’s ruling was not a resounding victory in the battle against GOP gerrymandering; rather, it simply confirms the rights of voters in states like Arizona and California to create nonpartisan commissions to conduct congressional redistricting. In most other states, redistricting authority remains in the hands of state legislatures, where Republican lawmakers have employed aggressive gerrymandering to distort Congress and further their partisan agenda. The Arizona ruling is a positive development for those who value meaningful democratic representation in Congress. But Democrats and our allies must not allow this decision to divert us from the most effective strategy to fight GOP gerrymandering: electing more Democratic lawmakers to draw the maps. While the establishment of redistricting commissions by voters will remain an available remedy in a few of the most egregiously gerrymandered states, the work of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) and Advantage 2020 to elect more Democratic state legislators remains the most crucial weapon in the fight for fairer districts.

National: Bush Outstrips Rivals in Fund-Raising as ‘Super PACs’ Swell Candidates’ Coffers | The New York Times

Jeb Bush and his allies announced on Thursday that they had amassed more than $114 million in campaign cash over the last six months, dwarfing the combined fund-raising of his Republican rivals for the party’s presidential nomination. The announcements, made as many of his donors were gathering at his family’s compound here to celebrate their success, established Mr. Bush as his party’s financial powerhouse. They also underscored how the Supreme Court’s five-year-old Citizens United decision continues to remake the way presidential campaigns are waged. Almost all of the money was raised before Mr. Bush formally declared his candidacy last month, collected by a “super PAC” that Mr. Bush’s aides helped set up.

National: D.C. ranks high in ‘health of state democracies’ list. Virginia does not. | The Washington Post

The District government can lay claim to being the fourth-healthiest democracy in the country, according to a new report from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a left-leaning policy institute and advocacy organization. Still, the report notes, while the city government has laudable laws encouraging participation and equality in local government, it’s impossible for it to have a truly healthy democracy without having representation in Congress and full control over its local budget. The study evaluated the District’s and each state’s government in three different categories: Accessibility in the ballot, representation in state government and influence in the political system.

National: Voting rights become a proxy war in the 2016 presidential election | The Conversation

Republicans - with a helping nudge from the United States Supreme Court’s conservative majority (of which more below) - are passing restrictive voting laws in states where they control both branches of government. Meanwhile, Democrats are expanding voting rights in states where they dominate the governing process. Democrats Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Representative John Lewis of Georgia also introduced a bill in Congress at the end of June that would require states (mostly in the South) to get federal approval for any changes in any statewide voting laws or procedures. This battle is especially important for a presidential election year, when voter turnout is significantly higher than in midterm elections. Much of the difference in the turnout is made up of prime Democratic constituencies – the young and minorities – which explains why Democrats are so set on increasing turnout and Republicans would prefer to restrict it.

National: Court upholds political contribution ban for federal contractors | The Hill

A federal court on Tuesday upheld a longstanding prohibition on federal contractors making political contributions, handing a rare win to proponents of stronger campaign finance restrictions in an era of relaxed regulations. The 75-year-old ban applies to individuals, corporations and firms that are negotiating or working under federal contracts. While doing so, they cannot give money to federal candidates, parties or committees. The rule is predicated on the idea that such donations could be a corrupting influence. In his decision, Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, wrote that the contribution ban did not constitute a violation of free speech or the plaintiffs’ equal protection rights “because the concerns that spurred the original bar remain as important today as when the statute was enacted.”

National: Voting Rights Group Pushes Automatic Registration As 2016 Issue | Huffington Post

Automatic voter registration has become a zeitgeisty election reform for Democrats, since Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) signed the state's first-in-the-nation measure into law and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton advocated for the method. Now, a voting rights group is making the proposal the centerpiece of its 2016 effort. The group, called iVote, will announce Monday that it will focus its efforts on creating campaigns to enact automatic voter registration laws in multiple states across the country, including swing states crucial to next year's presidential election. The group plans to spend six to seven figures on the campaign. “We should be looking for ways to make it easier to vote and increase participation, not more burdensome to vote and suppress participation," said Ellen Kurz, iVote’s founder and president. "Automatic voter registration will be a monumental step in guaranteeing more voters have their voices heard on Election Day."

National: Here are the secret ways super PACs and campaigns can work together | The Washington Post

The 2016 presidential contenders are stretching the latitude they have to work with their independent allies more than candidates in recent elections ever dared, taking advantage of a narrowly drawn rule that separates campaigns from outside groups. For the first time, nearly every top presidential hopeful has a personalized super PAC that can raise unlimited sums and is run by close associates or former aides. Many also are being boosted by non­profits, which do not have to disclose their donors. The boldness of the candidates has elevated the importance of wealthy donors to even greater heights than in the last White House contest, when super PACs and nonprofits reported spending more than $1 billion on federal races. Although they are not supposed to coordinate directly with their independent allies, candidates are finding creative ways to work in concert with them.

National: States are ignoring federal law about voter registration. Here’s why. | The Washington Post

What federal voting rights law, according to the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration, is the election statute most often ignored? It’s the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), a law that each year helps millions of citizens with either updating their voter registration records or applying to vote for the first time. Below I explain what the NVRA is, its impact and the challenges it has faced in being put into practice. The NVRA is often referred to as “Motor Voter,” but it is more complex than this implies. The NVRA requires states, among other things, to accept voter registration applications by mail and to offer voter registration services at government offices providing state identification and drivers’ licenses (hence “motor”), armed forces recruitment centers, and government offices providing services to people with low incomes or disabilities. This post focuses on the requirement to register voters at health and social services agencies (or, simply “agencies” in this post). This is a requirement that many states are ignoring or implementing poorly.

National: I.R.S. Expected to Stand Aside as Nonprofits Increase Role in 2016 Race | The New York Times

As presidential candidates find new ways to exploit secret donations from tax-exempt groups, hobbled regulators at the Internal Revenue Service appear certain to delay trying to curb widespread abuses at nonprofits until after the 2016 election. In a shift from past elections, at least eight Republican presidential candidates, including leading contenders like Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, have aligned with nonprofit groups set up to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s supporters are considering a similar tactic. Some of these so-called social welfare nonprofit groups are already planning political initiatives, including a $1 million advertising campaign about Iran by a tax-exempt group supporting Mr. Rubio.