National

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia authorized extensive efforts to hurt the candidacy of Joseph R. Biden Jr. during the election last year, including by mounting covert operations to influence people close to President Donald J. Trump, according to a declassified intelligence report released on Tuesday. The report did not name those people but seemed to refer to the work of Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who relentlessly pushed accusations of corruption about Mr. Biden and his family involving Ukraine. “Russian state and proxy actors who all serve the Kremlin’s interests worked to affect U.S. public perceptions,” the report said. The declassified report represented the most comprehensive intelligence assessment of foreign efforts to influence the 2020 vote. Besides Russia, Iran and other countries also sought to sway the election, the report said. China considered its own efforts but ultimately concluded that they would fail and most likely backfire, intelligence officials concluded. A companion report by the Justice and Homeland Security Departments also rejected false accusations promoted by Mr. Trump’s allies in the weeks after the vote that Venezuela or other countries had defrauded the election.

Full Article: Putin Authorized Russian Interference in 2020 Election, Report Says – The New York Times

National: Foreign Meddling Flooded the 2020 Election—but Not by Hackers | Andy Greenberg/WIRED

After the pro-Trump hack-and-leak operations and disinformation campaigns that roiled the 2016 US election, the country braced for a second round of no-holds-barred foreign interference last year. But US intelligence agencies have now confirmed that didn’t entirely come to pass. The 2020 election was hit with meddling, trolling, and disinformation operations like those of 2016—but not the outright efforts to hack election infrastructure or political campaigns themselves. On Tuesday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified report that outlines findings from US intelligence agencies including the CIA, NSA, FBI, and DHS on the overall picture of election interference by foreign actors in 2020. Those agencies agree that while more foreign powers than ever before attempted to influence the outcome of the election—using everything from disinformation to voter intimidation emails to social media campaigns—none actually seems to have used hackers to attempt to disrupt the election or access election infrastructure as they did in 2016. “In 2020, the IC tracked a broader array of foreign actors taking steps to influence US elections than in past election cycles,” the report reads, naming Russia, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and even Lebanon’s Hizbollah Islamic extremist group as actors that sought to influence the election’s outcome. Russia in particular sought to support Trump’s reelection bid with everything from troll-farm social media postings to active smear operations that provided information directly to “Trump administration-linked persons.” Iran, meanwhile, worked against Trump’s reelection with social media campaigns and even fake, threatening emails designed to frame the Trump-supporting white nationalist group the Proud Boys—while not directly supporting Biden or any of Trump’s other political opponents.

Source: Foreign Meddling Flooded the 2020 Election—but Not by Hackers | WIRED

National: After 2020 loss, GOP targets voting restrictions | Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann/NBC

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try — to change how the contest is conducted. That’s the backdrop for all of the legislation across the country that would restrict voting access in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential loss back in November. Republicans hold legislative majorities and governorships in 24 states — including battlegrounds…

National: Spy Agencies Reject Trump Claim of China Election Meddling | Chris Strohm and Alyza Sebenius/Bloomberg

The U.S. intelligence community concluded with “high confidence” that China didn’t attempt to change the outcome of the 2020 election, an assessment that contradicts repeated assertions by former President Donald Trump and his allies. “We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the U.S. Presidential Election,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence wrote in an unclassified report released on Tuesday. “China sought stability in its relationship with the United States” and “did not view either election outcome as being advantageous enough for China to risk getting caught meddling.” The agencies also found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered influence operations to hurt President Joe Biden’s candidacy, favoring Trump just as the intelligence community says he did in 2016 against then Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the U.S.,” the report found. Russia has long denied meddling in U.S. elections.

Full Article: Spy Agencies Reject Trump Claim of China Election Meddling – Bloomberg

National: After Trump’s loss and false fraud claims, GOP eyes voter restrictions across nation | Nolan D. McCaskill/Politico

Former President Donald Trump’s debunked claims of widespread voter fraud and a stolen election galvanized his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in January. Now, his rhetoric is turning into policies that are moving through GOP-dominated state legislatures: a rollback of voting access. In statehouses around the country — most notably, in Georgia — lawmakers are rolling out legislation that would make it a lot harder to vote. They’re considering dozens of restrictive bills to purge voters from rolls, limit early and absentee voting, add voter ID requirements and eliminate automatic and same-day voter registration. In short, bills are being introduced to prevent something that didn’t happen in 2020 — widespread voter fraud — from recurring in 2022, 2024 and beyond. “They’re all predicated on the ‘big lie,’ the idea that Trump won the election, that there was widespread voter fraud,” said Nsé Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project. “The ‘big lie’ is the engine or the fuel that powered in a lot of ways the Jan. 6 insurrection. It’s also the fuel that’s powering these anti-voting bills that we are seeing across the country.” If passed, critics warn, the policies would disproportionately affect Democratic constituencies such as young voters, poor voters and voters of color, erecting barriers to the ballot box after a historic turnout last fall. “There’s absolutely no coincidence in terms of the people who are gonna be impacted and the timing of this,” said Nancy Abudu, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund, an arm of the SPLC, which prioritizes impact litigation on issues such as voting rights and criminal justice reform.

Full Article: After Trump’s loss and false fraud claims, GOP eyes voter restrictions across nation – POLITICO

National: The Misinformation Campaign Was Distinctly One-Sided | Renée DiResta/The Atlantic

On the morning of September 21, 2020, three trays of United States mail were discovered in a ditch in Greenville, Wisconsin. The local sheriff’s office reported that the mail dump included several absentee ballots. When a U.S. Postal Service spokesperson made a similar assertion two days later, a local Fox affiliate, WLUK, reported the statement on its website. And then a national network of conservative commentators and influencers did something that happened again and again last fall: They picked up a bare-bones news story and made it sound nefarious. Within hours, Jim Hoft, the combative founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, a conservative media outlet, came across the story. A consortium of researchers working together on an effort called the Election Integrity Partnership (which included my team at the Stanford Internet Observatory) had by this point begun to track false and misleading voting-related information, particularly claims about ballot and mail fraud, as it moved across the social-media ecosystem. Our partnership began 100 days before the election and continued for a few weeks following Election Day. In that time, The Gateway Pundit would become a primary driver in dozens of instances in which false information or misleading narratives went viral. “We report the truth,” a banner on the site noted, as its pages regaled readers with stories of malfunctioning voting machines in Michigan, ballot boxes stuffed into cars, and “miraculous” fake ballots marked for Joe Biden. In our data set tracking the spread of misleading claims, The Gateway Pundit’s stories racked up more than 800,000 retweets on Twitter and at least 4 million views on YouTube over a four-month period. The process of producing viral misinformation hits followed a familiar pattern throughout the 2020 campaign: Prominent pro–Donald Trump influencers or hyper-partisan conservative outlets would pick up a real-world event—in many cases an isolated incident that bubbled into the national conversation via social media—and shoehorn it into a far broader narrative. Many of the narratives involved hints of conspiracy.

Full Article: Right-Wing Propagandists Were Doing Something Unique – The Atlantic

National: Senators introduce bill to fund election official cybersecurity training | Maggie Miller/The Hill

e: Senators introduce bill to fund election official cybersecurity training | TheHill

ArticlSenate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Wednesday reintroduced legislation to designate funding to provide cybersecurity training to election officials. The Invest in Our Democracy Act would establish a $1 million grant program to cover up to 75 percent of the costs of tuition for cybersecurity or election administration training for state and local election officials, along with their employees. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) would oversee the grant program, with EAC employees also eligible to receive funding for training. The bill was originally introduced in 2019 by Klobuchar and Collins but did not advance in the Senate. Klobuchar has been a key senator involved in spearheading election security legislation over the past several years, and before becoming chairwoman she served as the ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal elections and other related issues. “Our intelligence officials have made clear that our election systems continue to be a target for foreign adversaries,” Klobuchar said in a statement on Wednesday. “While federal and state officials have agreed that the 2020 election was ‘the most secure in American history,’ we must continue to do everything in our power to protect our democracy from the ongoing threat of foreign interference.”

National: As GOP makes it harder to vote, few Republicans dissent | Steve Peoples, Jonathan J. Cooper and Ben Nadler/Associated Press

In Arizona, a Republican state senator worried aloud that his party’s proposed voter identification requirements might be too “cumbersome.” But he voted for the bill anyway. In Iowa, the state’s Republican elections chief put out a carefully worded statement that didn’t say whether he backs his own party’s legislation making it more difficult to vote early. And in Georgia, Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan left the room as Senate Republicans approved a bill to block early voting for all but the GOP’s most reliable voting bloc. Duncan instead watched Monday’s proceedings from a television in his office to protest. This is what amounts to dissent as Republican lawmakers push a wave of legislation through statehouses across the nation to make voting more difficult. The bills are fueled by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud and many are sponsored by his most loyal allies. But support for the effort is much broader than just Trump’s hard-right base, and objections from GOP policymakers are so quiet they can be easy to miss. “It’s appalling what’s happening,” said former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, who condemned the silence of the GOP’s elected officials. “There have been no provable, obvious, systemwide failures or fraud that would require the kind of ‘legislative remedies’ that Republican legislatures are embarking on. What the hell are you so afraid of? Black people voting?” Experts note that most changes up for debate would disproportionately affect voters of color, younger people and the poor — all groups that historically vote for Democrats. But Republicans are also pushing restrictions with the potential to place new burdens on GOP-leaning groups.

Source: As GOP makes it harder to vote, few Republicans dissent

National: Democrats rethink the U.S. voting system. What’s in the massive HR 1. | Jane C. Timm/NBC

House Democrats’ top legislative priority — the H.R. 1 For the People Act of 2021 — is 791 pages of big election changes. The legislation — a wish list of policies voting rights advocates have urged lawmakers to adopt for years — rethinks the entire voting process: how people register to vote, how ballots are cast and how states conduct elections. The goal is to improve access, particularly for voters of color. The bill would also create public financing systems for campaigns and ethics rules for candidates. “This is the next great civil rights bill,” said Elizabeth Hira, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, who helped craft the bill in her previous job with the House of Representatives. Voting rights advocates say the legislation could help prevent gerrymandering and restrictive voting laws. Wendy Weiser, vice president of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center, said H.R. 1 would “thwart” nearly all of the more than 200 restrictive voting proposals her group has identified in 43 states.

Full Article: Democrats rethink the U.S. voting system. What’s in the massive H.R. 1.

National: The Latest Strategy Against Viral Election Misinformation: The Courtroom | Bente Birkeland/Colorado Public Radio

Voting technology companies, like Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, are using billion-dollar defamation lawsuits to try to repair damage to their brands and bottom lines from conspiracy theories that alleged they were involved in stealing the 2020 election for President Joe Biden. Some see these legal fights as another way to take on viral misinformation, one that’s already starting to show some results. “This goes beyond hoping to stop the disinformation,” said attorney Steve Skarnulis. “The goal that we have is to hold people accountable.” Skarnulis represents Dominion employee Eric Coomer, who remains in hiding after being threatened and falsely accused of manipulating election results. Coomer filed the first defamation lawsuit related to the 2020 election. Skarnulis hopes that in addition to helping Coomer clear his name and return to a normal life, the suits will also serve as a warning. “I hope that it will shock media and other personalities who have the platforms they do, enough that they will be much more cautious about spreading disinformation.”

Full Article: The Latest Strategy Against Viral Election Misinformation: The Courtroom | Colorado Public Radio

National: How GOP-backed voting measures could create hurdles for tens of millions of voters | Amy Gardner, Kate Rabinowitz and Harry Stevens/Washington Post

The GOP’s national push to enact hundreds of new election restrictions could strain every available method of voting for tens of millions of Americans, potentially amounting to the most sweeping contraction of ballot access in the United States since the end of Reconstruction, when Southern states curtailed the voting rights of formerly enslaved Black men, a Washington Post analysis has found. In 43 states across the country, Republican lawmakers have proposed at least 250 laws that would limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting with such constraints as stricter ID requirements, limited hours or narrower eligibility to vote absentee, according to data compiled as of Feb. 19 by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. Even more proposals have been introduced since then. Proponents say the provisions are necessary to shore up public confidence in the integrity of elections after the 2020 presidential contest, when then-President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud convinced millions of his supporters that the results were rigged against him. But in most cases, Republicans are proposing solutions in states where elections ran smoothly, including in many with results that Trump and his allies did not contest or allege to be tainted by fraud. The measures are likely to disproportionately affect those in cities and Black voters in particular, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic — laying bare, critics say, the GOP’s true intent: gaining electoral advantage.

Full Article: Voting laws proposed by Republicans in 43 states would limit voter access – Washington Post

National: Postal Service Delivered Vast Majority Of Mail Ballots On Time, Report Finds | Brian Naylor/NPR

As Americans continue to complain of late-arriving bills, birthday cards and other deliveries, there has been one bright spot in the U.S. Postal Service’s performance in recent months: the 2020 election. The vast majority of mail-in ballots sent during the election arrived on time, according to a report by the Postal Service’s inspector general. The report says the Postal Service processed almost 134 million pieces of election mail — ballots and voter registration materials — sent to and by voters from Sept. 1 through Nov. 3. Of that, 93.8% was delivered on time to meet the agency’s service standard for first class mail of two to five days. That’s an increase of 11% from the 2018 midterm elections. It’s also, the inspector general noted, 5.6% better than on-time delivery rates for all first class mail, a standard the Postal Service has not met for five years. The Post Office’s goal for on-time delivery of first class mail is 96%. Mail advertisements for candidates and issues fared slightly worse, being delivered on time 91.9% of the time, a decrease of 3% from 2018.

Full Article: Majority Of Mail Ballots Delivered On Time By Postal Service : NPR

National: Biden signs executive order promoting voting rights on 56th anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ | Felicia Sonmez and Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

President Biden on Sunday signed an executive order aimed at promoting voting rights amid a push by Republican-led state legislatures to roll back voting access in the wake of former president Donald Trump’s 2020 loss and his baseless effort to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections. The order comes on the 56th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the day that state troopers violently beat hundreds of marchers, including John Lewis, the late civil rights icon who served as a Democratic congressman from Georgia, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. “Today, on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, I am signing an executive order to make it easier for eligible voters to register to vote and improve access to voting,” Biden said Sunday in a videotaped address to the Martin and Coretta Scott King Unity Breakfast. “Every eligible voter should be able to vote and have that vote counted. If you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let the people vote.” The order directs federal agencies to develop a strategic plan for promoting voter registration and participation, including potentially applying to be a state-designated voter registration agency and providing recommendations on leave for federal employees to vote or to serve as poll workers.

Full Article: Biden signs executive order promoting voting rights on 56th anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ – The Washington Post

Voting Machine Hashcode Testing: Unsurprisingly insecure, and surprisingly insecure | Andrew Appel and Susan Greenhalgh/Freedom to Tinker

The accuracy of a voting machine is dependent on the software that runs it. If that software is corrupted or hacked, it can misreport the votes. There is a common assumption that we can check the legitimacy of the software that is installed by checking a “hash code” and comparing it to the hash code of the authorized software. In practice the scheme is supposed to work like this: Software provided by the voting-machine vendor examines all the installed software in the voting machine, to make sure it’s the right stuff. There are some flaws in this concept: it’s hard to find “all the installed software in the voting machine,” because modern computers have many layers underneath what you examine. But mainly, if a hacker can corrupt the vote-tallying software, perhaps they can corrupt the hash-generating function as well, so that whenever you ask the checker “does the voting machine have the right software installed,” it will say, “Yes, boss.” Or, if the hasher is designed not to say “yes” or “no,” but to report the hash of what’s installed, it can simply report the hash of what’s supposed to be there, not what’s actually there. For that reason, election security experts never put much reliance in this hash-code idea; instead they insist that you can’t fully trust what software is installed, so you must achieve election integrity by doing recounts or risk-limiting audits of the paper ballots. But you might have thought that the hash-code could at least help protect against accidental, nonmalicious errors in configuration. You would be wrong. It turns out that ES&S has bugs in their hash-code checker: if the “reference hashcode” is completely missing, then it’ll say “yes, boss, everything is fine” instead of reporting an error. It’s simultaneously shocking and unsurprising that ES&S’s hashcode checker could contain such a blunder and that it would go unnoticed by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s federal certification process. It’s unsurprising because testing naturally tends to focus on “does the system work right when used as intended?” Using the system in unintended ways (which is what hackers would do) is not something anyone will notice.

Full Article: Voting Machine Hashcode Testing: Unsurprisingly insecure, and surprisingly insecure

National: Voting Rights or the Filibuster? | David Leonhardt/The New York Times

It’s shaping up to be the most significant question about the new Democratic Senate: If forced to choose between the protection of voting rights and the protection of the filibuster, what will Democrats do? They are now almost certain to face that decision. Republican legislators in dozens of states are trying to make voting more difficult, mostly because they believe that lower voter turnout helps their party win elections. (They say it’s to stop voter fraud, but widespread fraud doesn’t exist.) The Supreme Court, with six Republican appointees among the nine justices, has generally allowed those restrictions to stand. “I don’t say this lightly,” Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida, recently wrote. “We are witnessing the greatest roll back of voting rights in this country since the Jim Crow era.” The only meaningful way for Democrats to respond is through federal legislation, like the voting-rights bill that the House passed on Wednesday. Among other things, it would require states to register many eligible voters automatically; allow others to register on Election Day; hold at least 15 days of early voting; expand voting by mail; and allow people with completed criminal sentences to vote. The bill also requires more disclosure of campaign donations and restricts partisan gerrymandering. But the bill seems to have no chance of winning the 60 votes in the Senate needed to overcome a filibuster. The Senate is divided 50-50 between the two parties (including two independents, who usually vote with Democrats). The bill will pass only if all 50 Senate Democrats agree to scrap or alter the filibuster, as they have the power to do.

Full Article: Voting Rights or the Filibuster? – The New York Times

National: Taking names: Rep. Lofgren catalogs GOP colleagues’ election claims with a view toward discipline | Dareh Gregorian, Haley Talbot and Alex Moe/NBC

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., has released a detailed examination of the social media accounts of Republican House members who voted to overturn the 2020 election results to analyze what role they might have played in inciting the deadly violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. “Like former President [Donald] Trump, any elected member of Congress who aided and abetted the insurrection or incited the attack seriously threatened our democratic government,” Lofgren wrote in the prologue to her 1,939 page “social media review.” “They would have betrayed their oath of office and would be implicated in the same constitutional provision cited in the article of impeachment” against Trump following the Capitol riot, she continued. The congresswoman, who was one of the House managers in Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial last year, suggested that Congress could act against such members. That Constitution “prohibits any person who has previously taken an oath as a member of Congress to support the Constitution but subsequently engaged in insurrection or rebellion from serving in Congress,” she wrote, referring to a section of the 14th Amendment.

Full Article: Taking names: Dem Rep. Lofgren catalogs GOP colleagues’ election claims with a view toward discipline

National: More hackers jump to take advantage of a widespread Microsoft security flaw | Tonya Riley/The Washington Post

Government officials and cybersecurity experts are scrambling to stem the damage from a security flaw in Microsoft Exchange that has allowed hackers to infiltrate the servers of at least 30,000 U.S. organizations. The growing number of hackers taking advantage has just made that task much more difficult. Since Microsoft and cybersecurity firm Volexity first attributed the breach to Halfnium, a group of hackers they tied to China, cybersecurity researchers say there are more groups getting in on the action. “It’s a frenzy,” says Steven Adair, president of Volexity, which first discovered the problem. Adair described the race to take advantage of the tens of thousands of servers that have not yet been secured as “a golden opportunity.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: More hackers jump to take advantage of a widespread Microsoft security flaw – The Washington Post

National: America’s Patchwork of Election Laws Under Scrutiny | Rob Garver/VoA News

The Democrat-led U.S. House of Representatives this week passed a bill that would greatly expand access to voting in federal elections. Even though Senate passage is highly unlikely, Democrats are underscoring their commitment to making voting easier at a time when Republicans seek to limit voting access in many states. The bill was labeled House Resolution 1 in order to signal its importance to Democrats’ agenda, and it passed with no Republican support. Also known as the For the People Act, it would force sweeping changes to state election laws, with the aim of making it easier for eligible voters to cast a ballot. Among other things, H.R. 1 would create an automatic voter registration system and limit the ability of state officials to purge voters from the system. It would also require states to make early voting available and block limits on mail-in voting. In addition, it would require that congressional districts be drawn by non-partisan commissions to prevent state legislatures from drawing districts that unfairly disadvantage one party, a practice known as gerrymandering. Beyond measures aimed specifically at access to the ballot, the bill would attempt to reduce the power of big-money donors to influence elections by requiring politically active organizations to disclose the sources of their funding and by creating a federal system of matching grants that would allow lawmakers to campaign without relying on high-dollar donations. It would also strengthen ethics enforcement and election oversight.

Full Article: America’s Patchwork of Election Laws Under Scrutiny | Voice of America – English

National: Federal officials scramble to assess widening Microsoft Exchange Server fallout | Sean Lyngaas/CyberScoop

The fallout from critical Microsoft software bugs exploited by suspected Chinese hackers deepened on Saturday as incident responders warned that state and local organizations across the U.S. could be exposed to the vulnerabilities. Federal officials rushed to get a better sense of the potential impact of the hacking amid multiple media reports that tens of thousands of organizations could be affected by vulnerabilities as other hacking groups, in addition to the alleged Chinese, moved to exploit bugs in widely used Microsoft technology. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency held phone briefings with state and local officials Friday and Saturday to assess the scope of the compromises, and the White House National Security Council urged vulnerable organizations to “take immediate measures” to determine if they were affected. Two DHS officials said the agency was still gathering data on how many organizations might be breached. The malicious activity amounts to the second major set of cyber incidents facing the Biden administration, which is already coping with a suspected Russian hacking campaign that has exploited software made by federal contractor SolarWinds and other vendors.

Full Article: Federal officials scramble to assess widening Microsoft Exchange Server fallout

National: Supreme Court delivers final blow to Trump’s last election challenge | Chris Riotta/The Independent

The Supreme Court has tossed out former President Donald Trump’s last remaining challenge to the 2020 election after he lied about the results of the nationwide vote and urged states to wipe out thousands of ballots while promoting false claims of fraud. The court without comment rejected Mr Trump’s appeal, which challenged thousands of absentee ballots filed in Wisconsin, an election battleground that the former president lost by more than 20,000 votes.´It was the last of three petitions filed at the Supreme Court near the end of his presidency that the justices declined to take up. The court turned away Mr Trump’s other two appeals, including a second Wisconsin challenge and one relating to voting in Pennsylvania, another pivotal state he lost, last week. Lower courts previously had ruled against Mr Trump in those three cases. It already was clear that the high court, which includes three justices appointed by Mr Trump, had no intention to intervene in the cases and others filed by his allies because it did not act before Congress certified Mr Biden’s victory on January 6.

Full Article: Supreme Court delivers final blow to Trump’s last election challenge | The Independent

National: New Executive Order Requires Pentagon to Track Military Absentee Ballots | Patricia Kime/Military.com

A new executive order signed by President Joe Biden and designed to expand voting rights requires the Pentagon to better track absentee and military ballots from overseas. Biden’s order, issued Sunday, comes as a voter rights and campaign finance bill passed the House last week in a 220-210 vote, with no support from Republicans. The legislation, H.R. 1, the “For The People Act,” faces obstacles in the Senate, where Republicans must join Democrats for legislation to be approved. Biden has urged the Senate to approve the legislation but used his authority as president to direct federal agencies to create strategies for promoting voter participation, including encouraging — via the agencies’ websites and social media accounts — people to register to vote. The order also calls for revamping the government’s voting information website, Vote.gov, within 200 days. For military personnel stationed around the world, the Defense Department will be required to work with the State Department, Military Postal Service Agency and the U.S. Postal Service to establish an “end-to-end tracking system” for all absentee ballots cast by military personnel and Americans living overseas.

Full Article: New Executive Order Requires Pentagon to Track Military Absentee Ballots | Military.com

National: Targeting State Restrictions, House Passes Landmark Voting Rights Expansion | Nicholas Fandos/The New York Times

House Democrats pushed through a sweeping expansion of federal voting rights on Wednesday over unified Republican opposition, opening a new front in a raging national debate about elections aimed at countering G.O.P. attempts to clamp down on ballot access. The bill, adopted 220 to 210 mostly along party lines, would constitute the most significant enhancement of federal voting protections since the 1960s if it became law. It aims to impose new national requirements weakening restrictive state voter ID laws, mandate automatic voter registration, expand early and mail-in voting, make it harder to purge voter rolls and restore voting rights to former felons — changes that studies suggest would increase voter participation, especially by racial minorities. The vote was the latest bid by Democrats to beat back Republican efforts in statehouses across the country to enact new barriers to voting that would consolidate power for the Republican Party amid false claims of rampant election fraud heralded by former President Donald J. Trump and many of his allies in Congress. But the measure, which is supported by President Biden, appears to be doomed for now in the Senate, where Republican opposition would make it all but impossible to draw the 60 votes needed to advance. Democratic leaders have vowed to put it up for a vote anyway, and progressives were already plotting to use Republican obstruction of the bill to build their case for jettisoning the legislative filibuster in the months ahead. “Everything is at stake. We must win this race, this fight,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said as Democrats rallied on the Capitol steps before the vote. “At the same time as we are gathering here to honor our democracy, across the country over 200 bills are being put together, provisions are being put forward to suppress the vote.”

Full Article: House Passes Landmark Voting Rights Bill – The New York Times

National: House passes sweeping voting rights bill over GOP opposition | Brian Slodysko/Associated Press

House Democrats passed sweeping voting and ethics legislation Wednesday over unanimous Republican opposition, advancing to the Senate what would be the largest overhaul of the U.S. election law in at least a generation. House Resolution 1, which touches on virtually every aspect of the electoral process, was approved on a near party-line 220-210 vote. It would restrict partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, strike down hurdles to voting and bring transparency to a murky campaign finance system that allows wealthy donors to anonymously bankroll political causes. The bill is a powerful counterweight to voting rights restrictions advancing in Republican-controlled statehouses across the country in the wake of Donald Trump’s repeated false claims of a stolen 2020 election. Yet it faces an uncertain fate in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it has little chance of passing without changes to procedural rules that currently allow Republicans to block it. The stakes in the outcome are monumental, cutting to the foundational idea that one person equals one vote, and carrying with it the potential to shape election outcomes for years to come. It also offers a test of how hard President Joe Biden and his party are willing to fight for their priorities, as well as those of their voters. This bill “will put a stop at the voter suppression that we’re seeing debated right now,” said Rep. Nikema Williams, a new congresswoman who represents the Georgia district that deceased voting rights champion John Lewis held for years. “This bill is the ‘Good Trouble’ he fought for his entire life.”

Full Article: House passes sweeping voting rights bill over GOP opposition

National: House-passed election bill takes aim at foreign interference | Maggie Miller/The Hill

A sweeping elections bill passed by the House on Wednesday night would boost cybersecurity measures and focus on countering foreign interference efforts like the kind that affected the 2016 and 2018 elections. The bill, which the House passed on a mostly party-line vote of 220-210, marks a major effort by Democrats to tackle both voting reforms, such as increasing access to the polls through use of mail-in ballots, and cybersecurity upgrades. Among issues included in H.R. 1 is a requirement that states use voter-verified paper ballots as part of the election process, a move supporters have pointed to as a vital safety net to check votes in the event of election tampering. It also allocates funding to enable the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to give grants to states to replace outdated and potentially insecure voting machines, along with authorizing funds for states to carry out election audits. Further, states would be required to take steps to strengthen the security of voter registration databases against cyberattacks, test voting systems nine months before each federal general election, and mandate the director of national intelligence to submit a report to both Congress and each chief state election official detailing cybersecurity threats prior to federal elections. The White House would also be pulled into the effort to defend against threats to elections, with the president required to produce a national strategy to defend democratic institutions, and produce an implementation plan for this strategy, within 90 days of the bill becoming law.

Full Article: House-passed election bill takes aim at foreign interference | TheHill

National: Voting machines using wireless technology increase fears over hacking | Ryan Lovelace/The Washington Times

A federal elections panel recently adopted new voting equipment standards despite an outcry from cybersecurity professionals who warned that the changes will leave America’s digitized ballot boxes more vulnerable to hacks. The new standards from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which lawmakers also protested, did not prohibit embedding wireless communications hardware into voting machines as long as it is turned off. The prospect of a flip of a switch opening wireless access to the ballot box exacerbates widespread fears that the U.S. voting system is not safe or reliable. Two dozen cybersecurity, computer science and election integrity professionals organized by the nonprofit Free Speech for People wrote to the commission to warn that the public’s faith in voting would crater further if the commission allows the wireless technology, such as wireless radios, chips and modems, which are more capable of connecting to the internet. “Public concerns about the security of our election infrastructure are higher than ever before. It is crucial that our election systems be secure and that our citizens trust that election systems are secure,” the cybersecurity professionals wrote to the commission. “Permitting the inclusion of wireless radios will both increase the vulnerabilities of the voting system and diminish voter confidence in the security of our election systems. Neither is acceptable.”

Full Article: Voting machines using wireless technology increase fears over hacking – Washington Times

National: Republicans Move to Control Voting After Record 2020 Turnout | Kane Farabaugh/VoA News

Months after record-high U.S. voter turnout propelled Democrats to victory in the 2020 elections, giving them control of the White House and both houses of Congress, Republicans are attempting to reshape election laws in state legislatures across the nation. In state after state, Republicans seek to limit opportunities for early and absentee balloting that Americans flocked to last year — Democratic voters in particular. In America’s heartland, Iowa is among the first examples of the trend. More than 2 million Iowans were registered to vote in the 2020 general election, a record in a state with a population of just over 3.1 million. Of 1.7 million ballots ultimately cast in Iowa last November, more than 1 million were submitted through the mail as absentee ballots — also a record — as many voters shunned the polls during a pandemic. Former President Donald Trump, a Republican, won Iowa but lost the national election to Democrat Joe Biden. Now Republicans, who control Iowa’s state legislature, have passed a bill limiting early, in-person voting and shortening the time allotted for absentee ballot submissions. Republicans argue that expanded use of both could invite fraudulent balloting even if no evidence of widespread fraud emerged from the 2020 elections.

Full Article: Republicans Move to Control Voting After Record 2020 Turnout | Voice of America – English

National: A new government watchdog report highlights urgent federal cybersecurity risks | Tonya Riley/The Washington Post

Government agencies could have caught a massive Russian hacking campaign sooner if they had implemented urgent cybersecurity recommendations from the federal government’s top watchdog. That’s the message the Government Accountability Office gave the House’s top oversight committee yesterday following the release of its biennial report listing government programs at highest risk of mismanagement and abuse. “It certainly would have led to an earlier discovery of the attack,” U.S. Comptroller General Eugene L. Dodaro told House Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) when asked about the GAO findings. “It’s hard to say … but we would have been better postured to detect the attack ourselves and to take quicker action,” he said, referring to the fact the campaign was uncovered by private cybersecurity firm FireEye months after Russian hackers accessed government systems. The GAO report provides an early blueprint for how Congress and federal agencies can work to address the significant cybersecurity issues raised by the hack of SolarWinds software, which led to the compromise of at least nine federal agencies. “[A]nother silent battle is being fought in our IT networks by cyber attackers intent on stealing our intellectual property and undermining our national security,” Maloney said during her opening statement. “The SolarWinds breach that came to light last December, as well as escalating and targeted cyberattacks that have drained millions of dollars from struggling hospitals, are just two examples of the threats we know about.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: A new government watchdog report highlights urgent federal cybersecurity risks – The Washington Post

National: American City & County’s 2020 Exemplary Public Servant of the Year Award | Derek Prall/American City and County

Every year, American City & County selects an outstanding public servant to honor as a recipient of our annual Exemplary Public Servant of the Year award. In the past, this award has been given to leaders who showed courage in the face of adversity, who made tough decisions to better their communities, or whose innovative solutions averted disasters. However, this year, we’re doing something a little different. Instead of profiling one specific leader, this year’s Exemplary Public Servant of the Year award is going to the country’s county clerks and election officials for their work in preserving American democracy during what was one of the most challenging elections in our nation’s history. Not only was there a global pandemic to contend with, but trust in our election processes were severely eroded. Poll workers and officials were required to make critical last-minute decisions on how to best hold an election during the worst health crisis this country has seen in over a century, all the while being demeaned and undermined from all angles. It’s for this fortitude, perseverance and sacrifice that has made the decision to honor and uplift these individuals. You quite literally pulled democracy back from the precipice, and for that we all owe you a debt of gratitude. Ricky Hatch, the clerk and auditor for Weber County, Utah, says that every year, year after year, election officials work tirelessly to ensure American democratic processes are perceived, but this year was entirely different. “We face enormous pressure from multiple sources, but the biggest pressure is what we put on ourselves to do things right,” Hatch says. “In 2020, people questioned our competency, our intelligence, our morals, and sometimes our parentage. We faced unsubstantiated allegations, protests and threats of violence. My car was vandalized twice. We worked 18-hour days for weeks and months.”

Full Article: American City & County’s 2020 Exemplary Public Servant of the Year Award – American City and County

National: How Trump’s stolen election lies are shaping the future of US voting | Alex Woodward/The Independent

“We are legislating on lies.” On the floor of Georgia’s House of Representatives on 1 March, state Democratic Rep Bee Nguyen warned her colleagues that the bill in front of them – a 66-page, Republican-backed proposal to drastically roll back voting access across the state – followed a months-long campaign from Donald Trump and his GOP allies to undermine millions of voters with baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and a “stolen” election. “Lies, misinformation and conspiracy theories that have gone unchecked by many members of this body who stayed silent,” she said. “Members of this body aided and abetted a deliberate misinformation campaign to sow seeds of doubt among Georgia voters with absolutely no facts or evidence.” The bill would, among other things, cut mail-in voting and early voting access, strip elections oversight from the state’s Secretary of State, and limit voting access that would disproportionately target Black voters. After a massive voter registration and enfranchisement effort among voting rights groups in the state, Joe Biden defeated the incumbent, and voters elected two Democratic senators, shifting the balance of power in Congress and affirming Mr Trump’s ejection from the White House.

Full Article: How Trump’s stolen election lies are shaping the future of US voting | The Independent

Arizona: Supreme Court Seems Ready to Sustain Voting Limits | Adam Liptak/The New York Times