National: States Toughen ID Rules for Voters | Wall Street Journal

More states will require voters to show photo identification at the polls next year, as part of a wave of laws that will increase scrutiny of voters in next year’s elections.

Stricter voter-ID measures are moving forward in at least half a dozen states after Republicans gained control of many statehouses and governors’ mansions in November. The push is part of a long-running debate between those who argue U.S. voting systems are subject to voter abuse and those who say imposing tighter restrictions will disenfranchise legitimate voters.

National: Gingrich Calls For Young Americans To Pass Test Before They Can Vote | Hispanically Speaking News

Last week, former GOP House Speaker and current presidential candidate Newt Gingrich suggested that American citizens should have to pass a test in American history before they could earn the right to vote. Despite rampant criticism from both sides of the aisle, Gingrich reiterated his support for poll tests yesterday at a town hall meeting in Marshalltown, IA.

Speaking in front of a crowd made up largely of senior citizens, Gingrich reiterated his argument that since immigrants need to pass a test to become American citizens, “young Americans” should be forced to do the same “before they start voting.” A majority of the crowd seemed to approve, giving Gingrich resounding applause.

National: Gingrich Walks Back Support For Poll Tests Just A Day After Reiterating Support For Them | ThinkProgress

Former GOP House Speaker and current presidential candidate Newt Gingrich walked back his support for poll tests Friday, just a day after reiterating support for making young Americans pass an American history test in order to gain voting rights.

In a brief interview at a campaign stop, ThinkProgress asked Gingrich about his comments the day before when he said, “it wouldn’t be bad to have a test for young Americans before they can vote.”

Editorials: Kitty Kent: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Make Sure They Can’t Vote | Associated Content

In state after Republican-controlled state (now more than two-thirds of all states), there’s a tactical imperative high on the legislative agenda. No, it’s not job creation; it is, in fact, more

along the lines of empire creation. That lofty ideal of the “permanent Republican majority” is again enjoying a chilling resurgence. Under the guise of prevention of “voter fraud,” onerous and costly “voter ID” bills are in various stages of life in state houses across the country, reports the New York Times. In a few states, bills have already passed and are law.

Editorials: Carl Bialik: The Mathematical Debate Over Instant Runoff and Other Alternative Voting Systems | Wall Street Journal

My print column this week examines the debate over voting systems that theorists and reformers have backed to replace the system prevalent in the U.S. and many other places, in which each voter gets one vote and the candidate with the most votes wins. Among possible alternative systems include some where voters rank candidates and others where they assign candidates scores.

Instant runoff, the focus of my column, has gotten the most traction so far. But some mathematicians point out that the system could give rise to various troubling results. Two significant ones: Voters who decide to shift their support from one candidate to a second can hurt that second candidate; and voters can get a worse outcome if they choose to show up to the polls, inadvertently helping their least-favorite candidate (the no-show paradox). Robert Z. Norman, Dartmouth College professor emeritus of mathematics, has simulated three-candidate elections in which each candidate has at least 25% of support and finds that each of these apparent paradoxes occur about one in five times.

National: Congressman Gregg Harper seeks to eliminate Election Assitance Commission | The Daily Caller

With America facing a debt crisis, legislatures have gone spelunking for areas of government to cut. Mississippi Republican Rep. Gregg Harper has surfaced with a proposal to eliminate what Ronald Reagan once quipped was the nearest thing to eternal life: a government agency.

Harper’s bill would terminate the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which Congress created in 2002 to implement the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). The act was passed primarily to distribute funds to update equipment, a job which Harper says is essentially complete. He is not the only one that believes that. Last year, the National Association of Secretaries of State reaffirmed a 2005 resolution requesting that Congress eliminate the EAC since the body had “served its purpose.”

National: U.S. Supreme Court Advances one Election Law Case that has Long been Stalled | Ballot Access News

On May 11, the U.S. Supreme Court revealed that it has placed Dallas County v Texas Democratic Party, 10-755, on its May 26 conference. The conference will probably decide whether to hear the case.

The issue is whether Dallas County’s new rules concerning its vote-counting machines should have been submitted to the Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department. The Texas Democratic Party doesn’t like the Dallas County vote-counting machines, because the machines have a tendency to trick some voters into voting just for a single candidate, even though the voter believes he or she has activated the straight-ticket device and has voted for all partisan office.

Editorials: Chris Kromm: The new war on voting rights | Facing South

Last November, the big themes of the 2010 elections were jobs and the economy. But in states across the South and country, many of the most pitched legislative battles have focused on another issue entirely: voting rights.

With Republicans taking power or strengthening their hand in many state legislatures — and the 2012 elections looming on the horizon — GOP leaders are seizing the opportunity to push a raft of measures they claim will restore integrity to the voting process.

But the new voting bills share some important features: They all work to restrict the franchise and shrink the electorate — in most cases, in ways that would decrease Democratic votes.

National: Omaha World-Herald sells interest in Election Systems and Software (ES&S) | Omaha.com

The Omaha World-Herald Co. has sold its minority interest in Election Systems & Software Inc., an Omaha company that is the world’s largest election technology company, to McCarthy Group of Omaha and the election company’s management.

Terms of the private sale were not disclosed. McCarthy Capital, a private equity investment company, already was a minority stockholder of Election Systems’ stock and is now the majority stockholder, said Michael McCarthy, chairman of McCarthy Group. Election Systems’ management and another independent investor are minority stockholders.

National: ES&S and Scytl Announce Strategic Alliance to Provide a Military and Overseas Electronic Voting Solution (ES&S Press Release) | MarketWatch

Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) and Scytl today announced a strategic alliance that will provide for BALLOTsafe, a fully integrated online ballot delivery and marking system that will afford military, overseas, absentee and disabled voters the opportunity to cast ballots in a timely, secure and reliable manner.

By combining the market proven election leadership of ES&S with the secure cryptographic online platform pioneered by Scytl, this alliance allows states and local jurisdictions the ability to seamlessly and effortlessly integrate the ballot creation process with the ballot delivery process making BALLOTsafe the leader in voting technology for military, overseas, absentee and disabled voters.

Editorials: Thomas Bates: Why Photo ID Laws Are Not the Answer | Huffington Post

We hear it all the time: How can you be against making voters show a photo ID when they vote? You need an ID to do almost anything in today’s society — buying beer, driving a car, getting on an airplane, going to an R-rated movie — so why shouldn’t you have to show a government-issued photo ID to vote?

It sure sounds like common sense, and it is a sentiment, coupled with the specter of voter fraud, that has driven more than 30 state legislatures this year to consider requiring limited forms of government-issued photo ID at the polls, prompting the Washington Post and New York Times to question why the country is fighting what is essentially a war on voting.

The rub: Strict photo ID laws result in disenfranchisement, unnecessary costs, and unequal treatment of voters and simply are not a proportionate response to any legitimate concerns about potential voter fraud. What may seem like common sense is actually a real barrier for those who want to participate, and a significant expense to all of us.

Editorials: GOP legislatures legalize voting barriers to Democrats | Idaho Mountain Express

Today’s Republicans would never try to reinvent something so crude as the outlawed “poll tax,” which mostly Southern states used, along with literacy tests, well into the 20th century to block voting by blacks, poor whites and Native Americans. Removal of these barriers firmly established every citizen’s right under the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause and the beginning of widespread elections of minorities.

But wait. The modern GOP has come up with a new artifice: voter IDs to prevent citizens’ showing up at the polls to commit fraud, even though voter fraud has never been a significant U.S. problem. The most widespread fraud has been by election officials’ rigging ballots and voting machines and denying voters a chance to exercise their rights by moving polling places unannounced or closing them early.

Editorials: New York Times: Do You Think It’s Because They Liked Florida’s Election?

House Republicans are seeking to abolish the federal Election Assistance Commission — as if the nation is fully recovered from the hanging-chad nightmare of 2000. The 9-year-old commission was created in bipartisan Congressional resolve to repair the nation’s crazy quilt of tattered election standards and faltering machinery.

The commission was charged with upgrading the mechanics of voting by certifying electoral equipment, channeling needed federal aid and guidance to states, and developing a national mail-in voter registration system. After a slow start, it has made progress as the 2012 elections loom. But there is still a lot more that needs repairing.

National: House committee aims to step up election oversight | The Hill’s Ballot Box

The House Administration Committee will step up election oversight, as it increases hearings to twice a month and sets its sights on terminating the Election Assistance Commission.

“There are a number of things that need to be addressed in the coming months,” said Elections subcommittee Chairman Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.). “Oversight certainly has been lacking in a number of areas.”

Among the issues the subcommittee plans to examine are the EAC, the Federal Election Commission, overseas voting and cleaning up state voter roles.

National: Voters’ guides go digital…sometimes | Electionline Weekly

Across the nation, elections offices are moving further and further away from a paper society and allowing residents to do everything electronically, whether it’s registering to vote, requesting an absentee ballot, or in some recent experiments, even voting online. One stronghold remains though: the printed and mailed voters’ guide.

Moving to online-only voter guides is seen by many as the obvious response to budget cuts for an electorate living with 21stcentury technologies. Printed voter guides are a tradition that voters across the nation have come to expect in the weeks leading up to an election, yet they are costly to compile, print, and mail, and their information is often duplicated online at lower costs.

National: Newly empowered GOP pushes voter ID | stateline.org

Fresh off commanding electoral victories in November, Republican majorities in many state legislatures want to require voters to show photo identification at the polls, a move Democrats say is cynically designed to help the GOP during the next election cycle.

Voter identification laws have been a demarcation line between Democrats and Republicans for years. Democrats claim the measures disenfranchise poor, elderly and minority voters who tend to vote Democratic but may not have appropriate photo ID. Republicans say the laws are necessary to prevent fraud, particularly when important statewide contests — such as the 2008 election for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota — can be decided by just hundreds of votes.

National: Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer to Testify Before House Administration Election Subcommittee | Committee on House Administration

On Thursday, April 14th, at 10:30am, the Elections Subcommittee of the Committee on House Administration will hold a hearing on H.R. 672, proposed legislation to abolish the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).  Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, one of the main architects of the Help America Vote Act which created the EAC, is scheduled to testify about the ongoing importance of the EAC.

“The EAC arose out of the fiasco we witnessed during the 2000 federal election,” said Subcommittee Ranking Member Robert A. Brady. “The legislation currently being considered to terminate the EAC has been developed with minimal stakeholder involvement and with no real foundation in the historical context within which the agency was founded. I look forward to Mr. Hoyer’s expert testimony on why the support and resources of the EAC are more important than ever,” Brady added.

National: Election Assistance Commission May Be Closing | Roll Call Politics

Rep. Gregg Harper is proposing legislation to shut down the Election Assistance

House Republicans may have found a way to trim $14 million from the federal budget: eliminate the Election Assistance Commission. The House Administration Committee is holding a hearing today to discuss closing the agency that is charged with administering federal election requirements and testing voting equipment. A corresponding Republican bill that would transfer most of the agency’s responsibilities to the Federal Election Commission may run into strong Democratic opposition.

Getting rid of the EAC would save millions and reduce government redundancy, according the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Gregg Harper. The EAC has “clearly served its purpose and is no longer essential to the administration of our elections,” the Mississippi Republican, chairman of the Subcommittee on Elections, said in a statement. “This is why I have introduced legislation to eliminate the Commission and transfer its remaining responsibilities and its authority to more appropriate and competent entities.”

National: Mayoral recall drives go viral | USATODAY.com

The urge to oust city leaders has intensified in the struggling economy as more mayors raise taxes and cut services to close budget shortfalls.

Fifty-seven mayors faced recall attempts last year, up from 23 in 2009, according to Ballotpedia, a non-profit that tracks recall elections. So far this year: 15. Almost all have failed. Recalls are so frequent that the U.S. Conference of Mayors today launches a campaign warning mayors to brace for recalls.

National: What Hath HAVA Wrought? Consequences, Intended and Not, of the Post-Bush v. Gore Reforms | Charles Stewart, MIT

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA)1 is the most important direct federal response to the 2000 electoral fiasco in Florida. HAVA had many provisions, some directly inspired by the controversy, others that came along for the ride.

In addition to mandating certain changes in how states conducted federal elections, HAVA appropriated $3b for the improvement of voting systems, most of which went to purchase new voting machines.

National: 100+ Diebold voting machines available now on EBay | Los Angeles Times

VotingmachineYou really can get anything on EBay, even electronic voting machines proved to be easy to corrupt for purposes of voting fraud. Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog first noticed that “more than 10” AccuVote-TS voting machines, built by Diebold, were being sold on the online auction site for the buy-it-now price of $1,200 (plus $50 shipping and handling).

The machines are used and don’t come with user’s manuals, power supplies, batteries or memory cards, which may explain their discounted price. However, for those who wish to rig elections, machines like these are priceless. Friedman was contacted by the seller, who told him that he had more than 100 of the electronic voting machines that were originally used in Van Wert County, Ohio.

National: EAC Certifies ES&S Unity 3.2.1.0 Voting System | Election Assistance Commission

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has certified the Unity 3.2.1.0 voting system by Election Systems and Software (ES&S) to the 2002 Voting System Standards. It is the fifth voting system to achieve federal certification under EAC’s Voting System Testing and Certification Program.

The Unity 3.2.1.0 comprises two precinct-based optical scanners—the M100 and the DS200—and one central-count scanner, the M650. The accessible voting device for this system is the AutoMark. EAC issued federal certification for the Unity 3.2.1.0 system after ES&S demonstrated compliance with the following final certification requirements, which complete EAC’s comprehensive testing process: rebuild the voting system in a trusted environment, known as a “trusted build” (an act performed by an EAC-accredited test lab), provide software identification tools to EAC so that whomever purchases the system can verify its authenticity, provide voting system software for the EAC repository, and agree in writing to comply with all EAC certification conditions and program requirements.

Source: http://www.eac.gov/eac_certifies_ess_unity_3.2.1.0_voting_system/?idevd=4CB7A2A040BA11DFAA6B8BAF55D89593&idevm=ff7112ff248643b79aa443fe72159501&idevmid=334899

Editorials: The GOP’s Voter ID gambit | The Washington Post

As Republican governors and legislators across the country push forward with ambitious and sometimes controversial budget-cutting agendas, the GOP in many states is also quietly encouraging another controversial measure: Voter ID.

The Associated Press reported this weekend that Republicans are moving forward with such measures – which can require people to show identification or swear an oath of their identity when they vote – in about half of the 50 states. And in many of them, the bills have a better chance of becoming law than in a long time.

National: DOJ probe says Panthers case handled appropriately | Associated Press

In a case that has drawn strong criticism from Republican conservatives, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility has found no evidence that politics played a role when department attorneys dismissed three defendants from a voting rights lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party.

OPR, which investigates allegations of attorney misconduct, concluded that the government lawyers’ work on the lawsuit in 2009 was based on a good-faith assessment of the law and the facts and had a reasonable basis.

National: Across country, GOP pushes photo ID at the polls | The Associated Press

Empowered by last year’s elections, Republican leaders in about half the states are pushing to require voters to show photo ID at the polls despite little evidence of fraud and already-substantial punishments for those who vote illegally.

Democrats claim the moves will disenfranchise poor and minority voters — many of whom traditionally vote for their candidates. The measures will also increase spending and oversight in some states even as Republicans are focused on cutting budgets and decreasing regulations.

National: In states, parties clash over voting laws that would affect college students, others | Washington Post

New Hampshire’s new Republican state House speaker is pretty clear about what he thinks of college kids and how they vote. They’re “foolish,” Speaker William O’Brien said in a recent speech to a tea party group. “Voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do,” he added, his comments taped by a state Democratic Party staffer and posted on YouTube.

Students lack “life experience,” and “they just vote their feelings.” New Hampshire House Republicans are pushing for new laws that would prohibit many college students from voting in the state – and effectively keep some from voting at all.

National: EAC Initiates Formal Investigation Into ES&S Unity 3.2.0.0 Voting System | Election Assistance Commission

As part of its Quality Monitoring Program, EAC will investigate the EAC-certified ES&S DS200 Precinct Count Optical Scanner (Firmware Version 1.3.10.0) contained in the ES&S Unity 3.2.0.0 for possible non-conformities with the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. Download correspondence related to the investigation and a timeline of activities leading up to it. Learn more about EAC’s Quality Monitoring Program.

Editorials: Is Anyone Watching? | NYTimes.com

Two years ago, the Supreme Court looked over a cliff and decided not to jump. The question was whether a core section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as renewed by Congress in 2006 for another 25 years, was constitutional. A majority opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. strongly suggested that it wasn’t. The section’s provisions “raise serious constitutional questions,” the chief justice said. He suggested that the administrative burdens the law places on the states where black citizens once faced nearly insurmountable obstacles to voting were no longer justified: “Things have changed in the South.”

During the April 2009 argument in the case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District v. Holder, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, in particular, appeared exasperated by the failure of Congress to take those changes into account when it renewed the law in the same format as the previous renewal in 1982. An iconic achievement of the civil rights era seemed headed for history’s dustbin, most likely by a vote of 5 to 4, and an anticipatory outcry began to build. But then either the chief justice or Justice Kennedy, or maybe both, blinked.

National: Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS) Introduces Bill to Terminate EAC | Yall Politics

Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Elections Chairman Rep. Gregg Harper, R-Miss., introduced legislation to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and save taxpayers approximately $14 million dollars a year.

“The Election Assistance Commission is a prime example of an unnecessary government organization developed with good intentions that has outlived its usefulness. By eliminating the EAC, we are furthering our commitment to eradicate wasteful spending and inefficiencies in government operations.”

National: Vote Flipping and Touch Screen Calibration

Again this election cycle, stories have emerged about “vote flipping”, most notably in Texas, where a video of erratic touchscreen behavior was posted on several sites, and in several North Carolina counties. (link, link, link, link) As voting technology expert Douglas Jones wrote several years ago, it seems unlikely that vote flipping is evidence of intentional hacking. However, these incidents do highlight the lack of transparency of software-generated election results and undermine confidence in elections generally. Vote flipping can be caused by a voter touching the screen in two places, for example resting one hand on the machine while making selections with the other (see pp. 20-22 here), but the most likely cause of "vote-flipping" is miscalibration. As Rice University computer scientist Dan Wallach explains in a post at ACCURATE:

The screen shows pictures of buttons with labels for the various candidates, which the voter selects by touching the screen with their finger. Some voters using these machines have reported problems where they pressed the button for one candidate and a different candidate was selected. These issues are most likely the result of poor touchscreen calibration rather than any security problems with the voting machines’ software.

The clear, touch-sensitive layer is separate from the part of the screen that displays the buttons. The thickness of the touch-sensitive layer directly implies that when different voters are looking at the screen from different angles, they will naturally want to touch the screen at different locations. This can be partly addressed by “calibrating” the touchscreen in advance. The calibration process, familiar to anyone who owns a PDA, involves the machine displaying a series of cross-hairs and asking the user to press on the center of each cross-hair. The machine then computes a correction to ensure that selections are mapped to the correct part of the screen below. Of course, if the calibration was done incorrectly, or even if the voter is notably taller or shorter than the person who did the calibration, then presses on the screen might still be misinterpreted. Furthermore, different voters may use different parts of their finger (ranging from the fingernail to the whole finger), which may differ from how the system was calibrated. (See also "Touch Screen Usability: Election Edition!" and "Vote Flipping and Touchscreens") Vote flipping was investigated in several articles during the 2008 election cycle. Computerworld interviewed both voting machine vendor and election integrity activists for “Are design issues to blame for vote 'flipping' in touch-screen machines?” and Wired magazine posted an article about the potential for maliscious calibration as detailed in the Ohio EVEREST report.