National: New Law Brings Major Changes to the FEC’s Administrative Fine Program – and New Challenges for Independent Expenditures | In the Arena

On December 26, President Obama signed into law a bill to extend the Federal Election Commission’s administrative fine program.  The new law broadens the program significantly, in ways that will especially affect those who make independent expenditures. The administrative fine program allows the FEC to collect fines on a streamlined basis, and on fixed schedules, when political committees fail timely to file their regular periodic reports, or when candidate committees fail timely to file their last-minute contribution (or “48-hour”) reports.  While the program places strict limits on when a respondent can challenge a fine, it has generally been regarded as successful, and has largely avoided partisan or ideological controversy.

National: Federal Election Commission Faces Serious Security Failings, with Few Plans to Remedy | Infosecurity

Just weeks after the US Department of Energy was shown to have disregarded proper cybersecurity measures, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is facing what an independent auditor calls “significant deficiencies” when it comes to its cybersecurity posture. The FEC in fact remained at “high risk for future network intrusions”. However, the electoral watchdog said that it has little interest in implementing even minimum IT security controls. The audit firm, Leon Snead & Co., said in the audit that the FEC’s IT security program does not meet government-wide best practice minimum requirements in many areas. That includes carrying out due diligence information as part of an organization-wide risk management program, using the risk management tools and techniques to implement and maintain modern safeguards and countermeasures, and ensuring the necessary resilience to support ongoing federal responsibilities, critical infrastructure applications and continuity of government in the event of an attack.

National: Power to the people? Remembering the year in recalls. | The Week

After recalls suddenly grabbed hold of the nation's attention in 2012, anyone could have been excused for thinking they might have gone back to being little used, frequently ignored weapons this year. But 2013 proved such expectations wrong. Despite a sharp drop in their total number, recall elections once again managed to place themselves on centerstage in American politics. Unlike in Wisconsin in 2012, the most prominent recalls of 2013 did not appear to be stark Democrat versus Republican fights. Instead, it was a hot button political issue — the fight over gun control — that allowed recalls to push their way into the spotlight. Colorado, for instance, saw some of its most expensive state legislative elections in history: Two Democratic state senators — including the State Senate president — were kicked out and a third resigned, over the state's new gun control laws.

National: Key fights ahead for right to vote | MSNBC

Voting rights advocates are girding for a series of crucial battles that will play out over the next twelve months in Congress, in the courts, and in state legislatures. Victories could go a long way to reversing the setbacks of the last year. Defeats could help cement a new era in which voting is more difficult, especially for racial minorities, students, and the poor. Despite some scattered efforts by states to improve voting access, the right to vote took a big step backwards last year. Republican legislatures in states across the country continued to advance restrictive voting laws, while a major Supreme Court ruling, Shelby County v. Holder, badly weakened the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Wendy Weiser, who runs the Democracy program at the Brenan Center for Justice, called Shelby “the single biggest blow to voting rights in decades.”

National: The futility of the Federal Election Commission | Dallas Morning News

A six-month study by the watchdog Center for Public Integrity has reached sobering, even depressing, conclusions about an agency that should be one of the bulwarks of our democracy. Among the findings:

*The FEC has “reached a paralyzing all-time low in its ability to reach consensus.” The six-member commission operates with three Republicans and three Democrats. And often over the past several years, there have only been four or five commissions. Because four votes are required to take any action, and we live in highly-polarized times, there’s…wait for the shock…gridlock.

National: Federal Election Commission still in ‘significant’ danger of hacking | Center for Public Integrity

The Federal Election Commission's computer and IT security continues to suffer from "significant deficiencies," and the agency remains at "high risk," according to a new audit of the agency's operations. "FEC’s information and information systems have serious internal control vulnerabilities and have been penetrated at the highest levels of the agency, while FEC continues to remain at high risk for future network intrusions," independent auditor Leon Snead & Company of Rockville, Md., writes. The audit, released today, comes less than two weeks after a Center for Public Integrity investigation that revealed Chinese hackers infiltrated the FEC's IT systems during the initial days of October's government shutdown — an incursion that the agency's new leadership has vowed to swiftly address. The Chinese hacking attack is believed by FEC leaders and Department of Homeland Security officials to be the most serious act of sabotage in the agency's 38-year history.

National: Study: Voter Fraud Non-Existent, Partisanship at Heart of Voter Laws | Houston Press

The George W. Bush DOJ went after voter fraud hard. It became a mantra in right-wing talking circles that voter fraud was rampant, perhaps swinging elections. The problem with this narrative was that there simply wasn't much evidence to support it. Undeterred by the lack of evidence, right-wing activists, led by Hans von Spakovsky, a Republican lawyer who served in the Bush Administration, kept pushing the idea in state legislatures. And while many laws restricting voting rights were proposed, a number were passed especially after the Tea Party got a hold of some state legislatures in 2010. Those on the left always suspected that there was something else going on behind these types of laws: requiring photo identification, proof of citizenship, regulation of groups who attempt to register new voters, shortened early voting periods, banning same-day voter registration and increased restrictions on voting by felons. That is, these restrictions seemed designed to suppress the votes of voters more likely to vote Democratic: poor and Black. Well, now two researchers have added some empirical rigor to the debate: what is going on with these spate of voting restrictions?

National: Weird Loophole Allows Corporations to Incentivize Employee Contributions to Corporate PACs | Nonprofit Quarterly

U.S. corporations cannot give money directly to political action committees, but individuals can. Can corporations find a way around the prohibition? Of course they can! That’s what loopholes are for. Bloomberg News reports that corporations are getting their employees to donate to PACs in return for the corporations making matching contributions to the employees’ choices of charities. Among the corporations doing this according to Bloomberg are Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Boeing, and Hewlett-Packard. The loophole isn’t just a recent discovery. The practice was specifically approved by the Federal Election Commission in the late 1980s and has been reviewed and approved by the FEC seven times between 1994 and 2009. It is also a practice that is reprehensible, clearly intended to skirt the intention of the law. Election law prohibits corporations from reimbursing employees for their PAC donations, either directly or indirectly, but the corporations are making the case that making donations to charities is different than offering employees reimbursement, bonuses, or other compensation.

National: Chinese hackers attacked Federal Election Commission website | CNN

Chinese hackers tapped into the Federal Election Commission's website during the federal government shutdown in October, a report released Tuesday by an investigative news organization says. The report from the Center for Public Integrity, one of the country's oldest and largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organizations, indicates that hackers crashed the FEC's computer systems, which compiles federal election campaign finance information like contributions to parties and candidates, and how those billions of dollars are spent in each election by candidates, political parties, and independent groups such as political action committees. The attack came as nearly all of the FEC's employees, except for the presidential-appointed commissioners, were furloughed due to the government shutdown, with not even one staffer being deemed "necessary to the prevention of imminent threats" to federal property. And it came a few months after an independent auditor hired by the government warned that the FEC's computer systems were at "high risk" to infiltration, a charge the commission disputed.

National: Did 17 illegal voters in Ohio steal the 2012 election? | Slate

The headline from Fox News is chilling, especially at this moment when most Americans regret putting Barack Obama back in the Oval Office. "Non-citizens caught voting in 2012 presidential election in key swing state," reports Eric Shawn. What are the gruesome details? Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced Wednesday that his office found 17 non-citizens illegally cast ballots in the 2012 presidential election -- and has referred the case for possible prosecution... Husted also found that 274 non-citizens remain on the voting rolls. President Obama beat Mitt Romney in Ohio by just 2 percentage points in November 2012. Did you catch that, how Shawn pivoted from the number of total votes to the percentage of votes? Why would he do that? Without reading his mind, I'd guess it's because the actual Ohio margin between Obama and Romney last year was 166,272 votes, and Shawn wants to keep his readers as ignorant as posssible. Seventeen votes represents 0.0003 percent of the total of ballots cast for either Obama or Romney in the state, and 0.01 percent of the margin.

National: New team seeks to take online voting from fantasy to reality | California Forward

You can do almost anything online; your banking, shop on Amazon, pay your bills. And yet one thing that forever evaded Californians is the opportunity to vote online, due to the myriad of security and privacy issues. But a new project from the Overseas Vote Foundation is putting a team together that could be the catalyst toward bringing democracy to your DSL connection. The project is called End-to-End Verifiable Internet Voting: Specification and Feasibility Assessment Study, aka E2E VIV Project. It brings together experts in computer science, usability, and auditing and adds in the expertise of local election officials from counties throughout the U.S. to examine potential solutions to the current roadblocks toward online voting. The main challenge? How to maintain the anonymity of your vote while making sure it’s secure and stays the same from sender to recipient.

National: Massive Chinese Hacking Attack on FEC Computers Exposes Deep Agency Dysfunction | AllGov

Few Americans would argue that the “D” in Washington, DC, might well stand for “dysfunction”—but it’s especially true when it comes to one government agency in particular: the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The FEC has been something of a mess for quite some time, due to partisan infighting among its commissioners and lack of help from Congress or the White House. There are six commissioners and no more than three can be from the same party. But things took a turn for the truly ugly during the government shutdown in October, when Chinese hackers took advantage of federal employees being furloughed, leaving no one around at the FEC to mind its computer network. Indeed, every one of its 339 employees had been sent home. The cyber-attack—possibly the worst act of sabotage in its four-decade history—reportedly crippled the commission’s systems that inform the public about the billions of dollars raised and spent each election cycle by candidates, parties and political action committees.

National: Federal Election Commission attacked by Chinese hackers during government shutdown | ITProPortal.com

The Federal Election Commission was hit by a massive cyberattack hours after the government shutdown began, according to a report from the Center for Public Integrity. The CPI report claimed the Chinese were behind "the worst act of sabotage" in the agency's 38-year history. Three government officials involved in the investigation confirmed the attack to CPI, and the FEC acknowledged the incident in a statement. However, the CPI report did not explain why the officials believed China was involved, or provide any details of the network intrusion beyond the fact that attackers crashed several FEC computer systems. When asked for a statement, FEC referred Security Watch to the Department of Homeland Security and did not provide any information. The fact that an attack during the 16-day shutdown occurred should not be a big surprise, since many security experts had warned that attackers might take advantage of IT personnel being furloughed to launch an attack. With less people watching the networks, there was a lot of opportunity for attackers. In fact, the FEC had furloughed all 339 agency employees as none of its staff had been considered "necessary to the prevention of imminent threats" to federal property, according to CPI.

National: There’s No Way to Follow the Money | The Atlantic

Christmas comes early for campaign watchdogs—or late, depending on your perspective. Thanks to a lag in IRS reporting rules, the tax returns of independent groups that spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2012 election are just now coming due. Considered together with a recent campaign-finance investigation in California, these filings hint at an orgy of self-dealing and “dark money” shenanigans unprecedented in American politics. The first presidential election since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision spawned what Bloomberg Businessweek called “a Cayman Islands-style web of nonprofit front groups and shell companies.” These not only shielded donors’ identities but also obscured the huge profits of political operatives who moved nimbly between the candidates, the super PACs, and the vendors that get their business. The so-called “independent expenditure” groups have been “transforming the business of running a political campaign and changing the pecking order of the most coveted jobs,” Businessweek noted. “With a super-PAC, the opportunity to make money is soaring while the job is getting easier to do.” Is it any wonder then that many of the biggest players from past elections jumped to the other side of the game in 2012? Or that they imported two money-making techniques perfected in campaign work: shell corporations that put fees and commissions beyond the reach of federal disclosure rules, and “integrated businesses,” set up by staff and advisers to do nuts-and-bolts electioneering?

National: Federal judge sends voter citizenship lawsuit filed by Kansas, Arizona, back to EAC | Associated Press

A federal judge sent back to federal elections officials Friday a request by Kansas and Arizona to force modifications in a national voter registration form so the states can fully enforce proof-of-citizenship requirements for their residents. U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren gave the U.S. Election Assistance Commission until Jan. 17 to make a final agency decision on the requests by the two states, but kept control of the lawsuit in anticipation of further court proceedings. The commission has told the states it has deferred acting on the request until it has a quorum of commissioners. The panel has been without a quorum since about 2010 and has been without any commissioners since 2011, the judge noted in his order. Melgren found there has been no final agency decision, essentially making a jurisdictional ruling in the case. But he noted that the Justice Department has argued that even without commissioners the agency can act upon the states' requests.

National: Kill the Election Assistance Commission? Two commissioner nominees languish as Congress mulls axing bedraggled body | Center for Public Integrity

Myrna Perez and Thomas Hicks again sat before a pair of U.S. senators Wednesday for a hearing on their presidential nominations to the Election Assistance Commission. Their session, however, morphed into a debate on whether this little-known and decidedly bedraggled commission — created by Congress in 2002 to help prevent voting meltdowns like those experienced during the 2000 presidential election — should exist at all. “The Election Assistance Commission has fulfilled its purpose and should be eliminated,” declared Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, the ranking member of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which conducted the hearing. He quickly added: “None of my comments are a reflection of the nominees.” Reflection or not, the nominees find themselves in a political purgatory and legislative limbo soupy as any Congress is stirring.

National: Republicans moving to overhaul 2016 primary process | CNN

A handful of Republican Party officials is quietly advancing a new batch of rules aimed at streamlining a chaotic presidential nominating process that many party insiders viewed as damaging to the their campaign for the White House in 2012, multiple GOP sources told CNN. In a series of closed-door meetings since August, handpicked members of the Republican National Committee have been meeting with party Chairman Reince Priebus in Washington to hash out details of a sweeping plan to condense the nominating calendar, severely punish primary and caucus states that upend the agreed-upon voting order and potentially move the party's national convention to earlier in the summer, with late June emerging as the ideal target date. No party convention has been held that early since the steamy summer of 1948, when Republicans nominated Thomas Dewey as their standard bearer in Philadelphia.

National: Justice Dept. Fights $2M Fee Request in Voting Rights Case | The Blog of Legal Times

The U.S. Department of Justice is fighting a request from the lawyers for Shelby Co., Ala., for more than $2 million in legal fees and costs tied to their challenge of the constitutionality of a provision of the Voting Rights Act. The government on Nov. 26 in Washington federal district court filed its opposition to the attorney fees and litigation expenses that Shelby County's lawyers—led by Bert Rein of Wiley Rein—contend they should receive for their work. The U.S. Supreme Court in June, in a 5-4 decision, struck down the provision of the Voting Rights Act that established the formula for determining which jurisdictions were required to give the Justice Department or a federal court the authority to review certain electoral changes before they were implemented.

National: Fix to Voting Rights Act stalled in Congress | Dallas Morning News

When the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act in June, Democrats and civil rights activists vowed to breathe new life into the landmark law. Six months later, they haven’t gotten very far. Efforts in Congress to restore preclearance, the process by which the Justice Department reviews state election law changes for their effect on minorities, have stalled. And though a lawsuit aims to restore review of Texas based on allegations of recent discrimination, it’s months away from a hearing. A Congressional Black Caucus task force crafted a set of recommendations that would reinstate the formula for preclearance and sent it to Democratic leaders in August, but no legislation has come of it. If the recommendation became law, Texas could be back under preclearance, needing federal approval on every change, including tweaking districts, moving polling locations and changing voter ID laws. The recommendations would require federal oversight for any district where a law or change to voting procedure has been found by the court to be discriminatory since 2000. In August, a federal court found Texas’ voter ID law to be unconstitutional, and an appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected after its June ruling. But it could be awhile before Congress considers the matter. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a North Carolina Democrat who helped lead the task force, said that the plan would have majority support in the House, but not from most Republicans who control the chamber — and it’s rare for the House to vote on a bill that most Republicans oppose.

National: Corporate campaign contributions issue falls off SEC regulatory agenda | Al Jazeera

Advocates for more transparency in the political system were dealt another blow this week as the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a potential rule on the disclosure of corporate campaign contributions from its 2014 agenda. The regulatory agency, which is mandated to protect investors, is required by law to submit its agenda for the next year to the Office of Management and Budget. A conspicuous absence this time was consideration of a rule that would require publicly traded companies to disclose the specifics of their political spending to shareholders — an item that was included in the SEC’s 2013 agenda but was never acted upon. Individuals, interest groups, and corporations can write to the SEC to show they are in favor or opposed to proposed regulations. This particular provision garnered more than 600,000 public comments, more than any other rule in the SEC’s history, mostly written in favor of more disclosure. That fact alone makes the SEC’s decision all the more disappointing to those agitating for reform.

National: Nearly Half Of Americans Live In Places Where Election Officials Admit Long Lines Are A Problem | Huffington Post

Nearly half of Americans live in precincts where long lines at the voting booth were a problem in the 2012 election cycle, according to a survey conducted by President Barack Obama's Presidential Commission on Election Administration. The survey of over 3,000 local elections officials also found that on average, poll workers received far less training than the eight hours most elections experts recommend. First-time workers in smaller jurisdictions received an average of just 2.5 hours of training, while workers in larger jurisdictions received an average of 3.6 hours of training, according to the survey. "It looks like there's not a whole lot of training going on, and my question is, what is the quality of that training?" said Charles Stewart, a professor at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology who presented the results of the survey during the commission's final public hearing on Tuesday.

National: Obama sees bipartisan voter access proposal next year | Reuters

President Barack Obama said on Thursday he expects a blue-ribbon panel to soon propose reforms that both parties can back to address concerns over the long waiting times some American voters experienced at the polls in 2012. "Early next year, we're going to put forward what we know will be a bipartisan effort or a bipartisan proposal to encourage people to vote," he said in an interview on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews." "You can't say you take pride in American democracy, American constitutionalism, American exceptionalism, and then you're doing everything you can to make it harder for people to vote as opposed to easier for people to vote."

National: State lawmakers mull expanding ballot access | Gannett

States are gearing up for another battle over ballot access, and Florida, a key swing state, could again find itself in the middle. Florida’s next legislative session could be marked by fights over absentee ballots, online registration and early voting sites. Earlier this year, state lawmakers eased some voting restrictions enacted in 2011. Those restrictions, including a reduction in early voting days, had helped snuff out voter registration drives and contributed to lines as long as seven hours on Election Day in 2012. Now, a key Democrat in Florida’s House of Representatives wants the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to go further by making it easier for residents to register and vote.

National: The downside of clear election laws | Washington Post

State lawmakers have introduced at least 2,328 bills this year that would change the way elections are run at the local level. Some passed, some stalled. Some are mundane tweaks, others are controversial overhauls. But if election reformers want to prevent their laws from being held up by lawsuits, they would be wise to pay attention to how they’re written, says Ned Foley, an Ohio State University professor and election law expert. “Put clarity at the top of the list of things to achieve, maybe before fairness or integrity or access or whatever, because litigators can’t fight over things that are clear,” he said, speaking on an election law panel during a multi-day conference hosted by the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures in Washington, D.C. “It’s amazing how much ambiguity kind of seeps into laws that is unintended.” But while clear regulations are important, too much can backfire, said Alysoun McLaughlin, deputy director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections in Maryland.

National: Democratic state lawmakers push for ballot access | USAToday

States are gearing up for another battle over ballot access, and Florida, a key swing state, could again find itself in the middle. Florida's next legislative session could be marked by fights over absentee ballots, online registration and early voting sites. Earlier this year, state lawmakers eased some voting restrictions enacted in 2011. Those restrictions, including a reduction in early voting days, had helped snuff out voter registration drives and contributed to lines as long as seven hours on Election Day in 2012. Now, a key Democrat in Florida's House of Representatives wants the state's Republican-controlled Legislature to go further by making it easier for residents to register and vote.

National: Group plans voting rights push | Politico

A group of state lawmakers on Wednesday met to develop policy proposals they say will promote voting rights as part of a 50-state effort aimed at enacting laws that expand voting and push back against laws the say restrict access to the polls. The Washington meeting of the left group American Values First’s Voting Rights Project was the first gathering of the task force that launched this summer. On Wednesday, the group identified areas it says states can improve on voting rights and that it will advocate for, including allowing registration on Election Day, online and pre-registering students, expanding early voting, distributing locations of polling places, including on college campuses, and reducing long lines at them, offering voting by mail and expanding absentee voting. The idea, the group says, is to create strategies that can be deployed in each state.

National: No political ads on public radio and TV, 9th Circuit Court rules | Los Angeles Times

A divided federal appeals court upheld a federal ban Monday on paid commercial, political and issue advertising on public broadcast radio and television stations. Rejecting a free-speech challenge to the ban, an 11-member en banc panel of the U.S. 9thCircuit Court of Appeals ruled that Congress was entitled to establish regulations to ensure that public broadcasting would be educational and noncommercial. Monday’s ruling overturned a smaller panel’s decision last year that would have permitted paid political and issue advertising. That ruling opened the door to hundreds of millions of dollars in ads for struggling public stations -- and could have caused economic headaches for radio and TV stations who depend on political ad spending.

National: Expanding high-tech voting for ’14 | Politico.com

It may be a while before Americans can tweet their ballot or text their vote, but states are making strides to move elections from the voting booth into the hands — and even mobile devices — of voters. Across the country, states are gearing up to implement new voter technologies for 2014, as they attempt to advance the ballot-casting experience to catch up with the Facebook generation. The efforts range from bringing tablets to disabled voters to providing ballots through email and secure online systems to allowing voters to register online. One of the most significant recent leaps forward came in Pima County, Ariz., where voters for the first time used tablets (the Sony Tap 20 Windows 8), to mark their ballots at polling locations last November. … Although voters in places like Oregon and Pima County are using tablets, it’s not considered “online voting,” because the ballot is still printed out on paper to be counted just like those cast in machines. Online voting would mean the ballot is cast and counted solely online without a physical ballot ever being recorded. No state has yet gone as far as full online voting.

National: New IRS rules add both clarity and confusion about the role of advocacy groups in politics | The Washington Post

For the first time since 1959, nonprofit advocacy groups face new Internal Revenue Service rules governing their political activities, an area of the tax code that has been crying out for greater clarity. A proposed regulation unveiled Tuesday by the Treasury Department draws the boundaries more clearly — but instantly kicked off intense debate about whether the lines are in the right place. One phrase in the official notice summed up the imperfect nature of the exercise. The new rules, the department said, “may be both more restrictive and more permissive than the current approach.” That seemingly contradictory statement reflects the muddy zone now occupied by “social welfare” organizations set up under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code. Originally a designation used by civic leagues and homeowner associations, social welfare groups emerged in the past decade as the go-to vehicles for political operatives seeking to influence campaigns without revealing their donors.

National: Blue-ribbon group pushes for 2016 debate changes | Politico

Top officials from past presidential campaigns have quietly formed a group to push for major changes in the general election debates, with recommendations expected by late spring. The working group is questioning the debates’ format, moderator-selection process and location: Might a TV studio make more sense than a college town? Members said a major goal is to make more allowance for changing technology and the rise of social media. A likely recommendation is an earlier start for the debates, in response to the increase in absentee voting. Members include the longtime lead debate negotiator for each party: Bob Bauer for Democratic nominees and Ben Ginsberg for the Republicans. So the Annenberg Working Group on Presidential General Election Debates could have a profound effect on the signature fall events of the race for the White House. The group’s co-chairs were top debate-prep advisers to each of the 2012 nominees: Anita Dunn for President Obama, and Beth Myers for Mitt Romney.