National: As Trump and Biden battle, election officials are running out of time, money for November | Pat Beall, Catharina Felke and Elizabeth Mulvey/USA Today

Heading into Georgia’s primary June 9, McDuffie County Elections Director Phyllis Brooks had no choice but to assemble a last-minute crew to count votes. Two of her three staffers were out with COVID-19. She had more than 2,500 absentee ballots to tally by hand. Brooks brought in a handful of county employees and hired teenagers to do the counting. There’s no money left in her election office budget. Not for poll workers. Not for extra hands to count what is likely to be a record number of mail-in ballots. Not even for stamps to send out the absentee ballots they expect to need. Sixteen weeks before the presidential election, Brooks and hundreds of other cash-strapped elections supervisors across the nation are waiting to see how much state and federal money will come their way. Experts said the coronavirus pandemic tacked on hundreds of millions of dollars in unexpected costs to this year’s election, and there are clear signs that an emergency federal infusion of $400 million made in March will fall far short of what’s needed.

National: Scattered problems with mail-in ballots this year signal potential November challenges for Postal Service | Michelle Ye Hee Lee/The Washington Post

Postal workers found three tubs of uncounted absentee ballots the day after the Wisconsin primary. Some Ohioans did not receive their ballots in time for the election because of mail delays. And in Dallas, absentee ballots some voters sent to the county were returned just days before Election Day, with no explanation. Problems caused by a spike in absentee voting during this year’s primaries are serving as potential warning signs for the U.S. Postal Service, which is bracing for an expected onslaught of mail-in ballots this fall as states and cities push alternatives to in-person voting because of the pandemic. The concern extends to local elections offices that may be unaccustomed to aspects of the mail, such as the time it takes for parcels to reach their destinations and how to design their ballots to meet postal standards. So the Postal Service is regularly sending advice and checklists to thousands of elections officials. Local elections offices are hiring temporary workers to process absentee ballots, and some local elections boards are adding options for voters to do curbside drop-offs of their mail ballots on Election Day. The Postal Service is also recommending that voters request their ballots at least 15 days before Election Day and mail their completed ballots at least one week before the due date.

National: Coronavirus Election Funding Could Increase After Primaries | Miles Parks/NPR

Ever since the pandemic struck, state and local election officials across the country have made it clear: To avoid an election disaster in November, they need more money now. Congressional Republicans are now signalling a new willingness to provide that, after initial fears from voting rights advocates that the federal government would provide no more support than the $400 million that came as part of a March relief package. Experts expect as many as 70% of all ballots cast in November’s presidential election will be cast through the mail, a quick and radical shift that will require equipment upgrades and greatly increase costs for cash-strapped states and counties. During the 2018 midterms, about a quarter of ballots were cast by mail. Officials across the country, like Lynn Bailey, who is the board of elections executive director of Augusta, Ga., are looking ahead to November and wondering how they will pay for it. Bailey testified Wednesday as part of an Election Assistance Commission hearing about the 2020 primaries. She said Georgia’s June 9 primary cost about 60 percent more than a normal election would have in her jurisdiction, due to adjustments made as a result of the pandemic. “We had about a 35 percent turnout rate in our jurisdiction in this past election, and we know that in November that number will likely double,” Bailey said. “We can only expect therefore that our budget will likely double over what we spent this time, if not more.”

National: These are the top things officials say they need to run November’s elections | oseph Marks/The Washington Post

More money, better and earlier planning by political leaders – and a big dose of bipartisan cooperation. Those are some of the top-line items state and local election officials are seeking as they scramble to prepare for November’s general election. The officials were summoned by the Election Assistance Commission, a federal body that helps guide best practices for elections, to pore over the good, the bad and the ugly from more than three months of primaries since the coronavirus pandemic struck in March. They described elections that were completely revamped in a matter of weeks and massive shortages of poll workers, since many were not willing or able to risk their health by showing up on Election Day. The percentage of absentee voters climbed to 10 and even 20 times their typical levels in many states. The public hearing was among just a handful of instances when election officials from different states will gather before November, in hopes the lessons learned will help the general election run more smoothly. “It’s difficult to plan for this election [because] we always look back on history,” Sherry L. Poland, director of elections for Hamilton County, Ohio, told commissioners. “For presidential elections, you look back on past presidential elections …We have no history to go back to of conducting an election during a pandemic.”

National: Election Meddling Drives DHS to Seek Help Tracking Social Media | Shaun Courtney/Bloomberg

The Homeland Security Department has posted a help-wanted ad to track and analyze social media disinformation campaigns by Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea targeting the U.S. 2020 election. “There is a significant amount of foreign influence activity targeting U.S. 2020 elections on social media platforms,” the DHS said in its June 30 solicitation. The intelligence community’s “lack of capability and resources in this area result in this activity being left largely untracked.” The “foreign influence collection and analysis will result in raw and finished intelligence products that support election security and countering foreign influence efforts,” it said. The DHS said it wants access to software tools and training for social media monitoring by agency personnel, though the contractor would also engage in monitoring and analysis. The solicitation’s open warning of foreign efforts, including from Russia, to interfere in U.S. domestic politics marks a call for help, just four months before the November elections, to counter a threat that’s been long known. “They’ve had four years of runway to get prepared for the 2020 election and to stop foreign interference, let alone internal interference from other extremist groups from within the United States,” Sam Woolley, author of “The Reality Game” and a University of Texas at Austin professor, said in an interview. “This move by DHS shows that the current administration hasn’t taken this issue seriously.”

National: State and local officials beg Congress to send more election funds ahead of November | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Top state and local election officials on Wednesday begged Congress to appropriate more election funding ahead of November to address COVID-19 challenges. Congress sent $400 million to states to address COVID-19 election concerns as part of the stimulus package signed into law by President Trump in March, called the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Election officials testified during an Election Assistance Commission (EAC) summit on Wednesday that those funds were running out. “It’s looking like I spent close to 60 percent of my CARES Act funding on the primary election,” Jared Dearing, the executive director of the Kentucky State Board of Elections, testified. “To put that in context, we are expecting turnout to go from 30 percent, which was a record high for a primary election, to as much as 70 percent.” Dearing noted that only around 2 percent of ballots in Kentucky are typically cast through mail-in voting, but that number increased to 75 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic, a change he said would require further funds to address. “Where we procure these funds and how much this is going to cost is incredibly concerning,” Dearing said. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate (R) also testified in favor of the federal government sending more funds, but argued the funds should be sent with fewer strings attached. “Clearly we welcome more resources, the goal here is we want more stable and consistent funding, because we have COVID, we may be facing COVID in the next elections,” Pate said.

National: Prospect of chaos in November grows as coronavirus cases rise and Trump escalates attacks on voting | Abby Phillip/CNN

The rickety, decentralized election system that has been a hallmark of American life is facing its most significant test yet under the combined pressure of a worsening coronavirus pandemic and President Donald Trump’s determination to undermine faith in the voting system. In November, this year’s presidential election could be unlike anything the country has seen in at least 20 years, when the results of the 2000 election hinged on paper ballots and hanging chads. As Trump’s poll numbers have flagged this summer, he has increasingly resorted to baseless allegations of widespread cheating and claims that Democrats will corrupt the result of the election through mail-in voting. And as coronavirus cases continue to rise across the country, the need for alternatives to in-person voting is becoming more urgent by the day. Republicans and Democrats are now preparing for a pitched legal battle over which votes will count and when they should be counted. States are struggling to retrofit their voting process to meet the needs of voters concerned about risking their lives to cast their ballot. And primary elections held so far this summer indicate that November could bring historic turnout, albeit via mail-in ballots — and correspondingly, a lengthy wait for election results.

National: Trump’s voting by mail assaults could cost him the election | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

President Trump’s assaults against voting by mail may backfire and sink his own reelection chances in November. Republicans have voted by mail in far lower numbers than Democrats in a string of primaries since Trump began falsely claiming the process would lead to widespread fraud, Amy Gardner and Josh Dawsey report. That could be an electoral disaster for the president, who’s locked in a difficult reelection race — especially if the coronavirus pandemic makes it difficult or risky for many of his supporters to vote in person. The issue was already dividing Trump from Republican election officials who have generally joined Democrats in trying to vastly expand mail voting during the pandemic so people don’t have to risk their health to cast ballots. Now it’s splitting him from his own party’s strategists. The president’s criticism of mail voting “does reduce the likelihood of Republicans embracing this process,” a senior GOP strategist told my colleagues. “Especially for older, more rural voters, that could be important for Republicans getting out the vote in 2020. I don’t want ‘I will not vote by mail’ to become a political statement. But it may be too late.” The rift is especially noteworthy because voting by mail has not historically been a partisan issue. Many right-leaning states, such as Utah and Arizona, have embraced the process with large percentages of their populations casting mail ballots. Many left-leaning states, including Massachusetts and New York, have shied away from it.

National: House Democrats include $500M for election security in annual appropriations bill | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Democrats on a House Appropriations Committee panel included $500 million to boost election security as part of their version of an annual funding bill introduced Tuesday. The version of the fiscal 2021 Financial Services and General Government spending bill rolled out by the House Appropriations subcommittee on financial services and general government would appropriate half a billion dollars to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to “enhance election technology and make election security improvements.” The bill, which will be debated by the subcommittee Wednesday, specifies that states may only use the election security funds to replace “direct-recording electronic” voting equipment with voting systems that use some form of paper ballots. States would only be allowed to use any remaining funds once they have certified to the EAC that all direct-recording election equipment has been replaced. Experts have strongly advised against the use of direct-recording electronic voting equipment, which has no backup paper record of how an individual voted.

National: ‘It’s egregious’: thousands of mail-in ballots could be rejected over small errors | Sam Levine/The Guardian

Rosalie Weisfeld doesn’t skip elections – she just doesn’t. The 64-year-old lives in McAllen, near the Texas-Mexico border, and she votes in the contests that a lot of people sit out – races for school board, water district and local runoffs. In the more than 40 years she’s been registered to vote, Weisfeld only remembers missing one election. But last year, her nearly-perfect record was broken. Weisfeld voted by mail in a local race, signed her ballot and mailed it in well ahead of election day. More than a month later, Weisfeld got a letter back saying election officials had rejected her ballot. They examined the signature Weisfeld put on the ballot, compared it to one they had on file, and determined they weren’t from the same person. By then, she had no recourse. The election was over. “I was shocked, I was sad, I was upset. I became mad and angry that my right to vote was taken away from me without any kind of consultation,” said Weisfeld, now a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the way Texas rejects absentee ballots. “No one called me, no one sent me a letter. No one sent me an email to ask me ‘is this your signature?’” As more Americans vote by mail this year amid the Covid-19 pandemic, there’s concern that thousands of eligible voters like Weisfeld could have their ballots rejected for small errors without a chance to fix them. Mail-in ballots were more likely to be rejected in the 2016 election than ones cast in person. In a typical election only a small percentage of mail-in ballots get rejected (318,728 ballots, around 1% of those returned, were uncounted in the 2016 general election), according to data compiled by the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC). That could rise starkly during the presidential election when an unprecedented number of people are expected to vote by mail.

National: Election Experts Warn of November Disaster | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

After a presidential primary season plagued by long lines, confusion over mail-in voting and malfunctioning equipment, election experts are increasingly concerned about the resiliency of American democracy in the face of a global pandemic. With four months until the presidential election, the litany of unresolved issues could block some voters from casting ballots and lead many citizens to distrust the outcome of one of the most pivotal races of their lifetimes. There is widespread concern among voting activists, experts and elections officials that it will take further federal investment in local election systems, massive voter education campaigns and election administrators’ ingenuity to prevent a disaster come November. “The coronavirus has really laid bare the cracks in our system,” said Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program. Even before the pandemic, Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, said he was worried about the state of U.S. elections. He warned in his recent book Election Meltdown about the effects that misinformation, administrative incompetence and voter suppression efforts would have on the 2020 presidential election.

National: Can Our Ballots Be Both Secret and Secure? | Sue Halpern/The New Yorker

Near the end of last year, I met Josh Benaloh, a senior cryptographer at Microsoft, in a conference room in Building 99 on the company’s sprawling campus, in Redmond, Washington, to talk about a fundamental problem with American elections. When we vote, we take it on faith that our ballots have been recorded—and recorded correctly. This is not always the case. In 2015, in Shelby County, Tennessee, hundreds of votes that were cast in predominantly African-American precincts disappeared somewhere between the polling place and the final tally. Where they had gone, and why, remains a mystery, because the ballots were cast on a touch-screen voting machine that did not provide a paper record. In 2018, three thousand votes went missing during a Florida recount. The next year, eight hundred uncounted ballots were found in a storage closet in Midland, Texas, after a hotly contested school-bond vote. To prevent these types of errors, Benaloh said, “You could, in theory, sign your name on your ballot and watch it go through the system.” In actual elections, however, that is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Our ballots are secret; after we drop them in the ballot box, they are, literally, out of our hands.

National: Voting rules changed quickly for the primaries. But the battle over how Americans will cast ballots in the fall is just heating up. | Elise Viebeck/The Washington Post

When the novel coronavirus pandemic collided with this year’s primaries, states across the country raced to temporarily adjust voting procedures to make it safer for people to cast their ballots. But efforts to set rules for the general election are now locked in more intractable fights, fueled by deepening polarization around voting practices and a torrent of litigation aimed at shaping how ballots are cast and counted. While the vast majority of voters were permitted to cast absentee ballots during the primaries, only about 10 states so far have announced that they will make voting by mail easier for November, raising fears that Election Day could be marked by long lines and unsafe conditions at polling locations if the health crisis persists. With Republican governors under pressure from President Trump not to expand voting by mail and many legislatures adjourned for the year or deadlocked along party lines, changes in the coming months are likely to come through court decisions. Legal battles in about two dozen states are now poised to shape the details of how roughly 130 million registered voters are able to cast ballots in upcoming contests, with more than 60 lawsuits related to absentee voting and other rules wending their way through the courts, according to a tally by The Washington Post.

National: In new guidance, CDC recommends alternatives in addition to in-person voting to avoid spreading coronavirus | Michelle Ye Hee Lee/The Washington Post

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that voters consider alternatives to casting their ballots in person during upcoming elections, as states expand absentee and early voting options for November amid fears of spreading the coronavirus. The guidance was issued with little fanfare on June 22 and suggested that state and local election officials take steps to minimize crowds at voting locations, including offering “alternative voting methods.” President Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that one popular alternative — mail-in ballots — promotes widespread voter fraud. Voters who want to cast ballots in person should consider showing up at off-peak times, bringing their own black ink pens or touch-screen pens for voting machines, and washing their hands before entering and after leaving the polling location, the guidance said. Workers and voters alike, it said, should wear face coverings. The guidance aims to help voters, poll workers and election officials take precautions to minimize the spread of the virus, which has already disrupted some primary elections this year and could be a source of turmoil in the upcoming presidential election. The guidance is now being circulated by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), an independent federal agency, and congressional leaders. Senate Democrats on Tuesday drew attention to the guidelines, noting that they had been requesting such a resource since May.

National: Trump’s attacks on mail voting are turning Republicans off absentee ballots | Amy Gardner and Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

President Trump’s relentless attacks on the security of mail voting are driving suspicion among GOP voters toward absentee ballots — a dynamic alarming Republican strategists, who say it could undercut their own candidates, including Trump himself. In several primaries this spring, Democratic voters have embraced mail ballots in far larger numbers than Republicans during a campaign season defined by the coronavirus pandemic. And when they urge their supporters to vote by mail, GOP campaigns around the country are hearing from more and more Republican voters who say they do not trust absentee ballots, according to multiple strategists. In one particularly vivid example, a group of Michigan voters held a public burning of their absentee ballot applications last month. The growing Republican antagonism toward voting by mail comes even as the Trump campaign is launching a major absentee-ballot program in every competitive state, according to multiple campaign advisers — a delicate balancing act, considering what one strategist described as the president’s “imprecision” on the subject. “It’s very concerning for Republicans,” said a top party operative, who like several others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid drawing Trump’s ire. “I guarantee our Republican Senate candidates are having it drilled into them that they cannot accept this. They have to have sophisticated mail programs. If we don’t adapt, we won’t win.”

National: As November Looms, So Does the Most Litigious Election Ever | Michael Wines/The New York Times

Four months before Election Day, a barrage of court rulings and lawsuits has turned one of the most divisive elections in memory into one that is on track to be the most litigated ever. With voting amid a pandemic as the backdrop, at stake are dozens of lawsuits around the country that will determine how easy — or hard — it will be to cast a ballot. Justin Levitt, an election scholar and associate dean at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, is tracking nearly 130 pandemic-related election lawsuits. The firm of Marc Elias, a lawyer who frequently represents the Democratic Party, is pursuing more than 35 voting rights cases, a number he calls an order of magnitude greater than in the past. The Republican National Committee, which pledged this spring to spend at least $20 million fighting attempts to loosen voting rules, boasts of filing or intervening in 19 suits to date. In his book “Election Meltdown,” Richard L. Hasen, a legal scholar at the University of California-Irvine, calculated that election-related litigation nearly tripled on average between 1996 and 2018. In an interview, Mr. Hasen said 2020 is on track to become the most litigated election season ever. Perhaps the most sweeping ruling occurred on Wednesday, when a federal appeals court blocked a lower-court ruling that would have restored voting rights to about 774,000 impoverished Floridians with felony records. On Thursday, the Supreme Court voted along ideological lines to block, at least for now, a loosening of Alabama’s strict absentee ballot requirements in a runoff election on July 14.

National: Supreme Court says states may require presidential electors to support popular-vote winner | Robert Barnes/The Washington Post

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that states may require presidential electors to support the winner of the popular vote and punish or replace those who don’t, settling a disputed issue in advance of this fall’s election. Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court, and settled the disputed “faithless elector” issue before it affected the coming presidential contest. The Washington state law at issue “reflects a tradition more than two centuries old,” she wrote. “In that practice, electors are not free agents; they are to vote for the candidate whom the state’s voters have chosen.” Lower courts had split on the issue, with one saying the Constitution forbids dictating how such officials cast their ballots. Both red and blue states urged the justices to settle the matter in advance of the “white hot” glare of the 2020 election. They said they feared a handful of independent-minded members of the electoral college deciding the next president. The court considered cases from the state of Washington and Colorado. Washington moved to fine Peter Bret Chiafalo and two others $1,000 after they voted for Colin Powell when the electoral college convened after the 2016 election. They had pledged to vote for Hillary Clinton, who won the state’s popular vote.

National: Younger Americans embrace mail-in voting, if they can figure out how | Amanda Golden/NBC

Engagement among young voters is higher this year than it was in the 2016 and 2018 elections, and they’re enthusiastic about voting by mail in November, but access to information about registration and how to vote during the coronavirus pandemic could be an issue, a new poll shows. The poll by the nonpartisan Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement, or CIRCLE, found that 83 percent of young voters said they believe young people have the power to change the country, with 60 percent feeling they’re part of a movement that will vote to express its views and 79 percent saying the pandemic has helped them realize that politics affect their lives. But the survey also highlighted the challenges to participating in the election because it’s being held during a national health crisis and young voters aren’t getting clear and accurate information about online registration and mail-in voting. A third said they didn’t know whether they could register to vote online in their states. Among those who said they did know, 25 percent were incorrect. In addition, only 24 percent of those polled had voted by mail before.

National: Conservative groups sue to make pandemic voting even harder | Nicholas Stephanopoulos/Slate

Until recently, litigation about voting during the COVID-19 crisis followed a predictable pattern. Voters would complain about states’ restrictive regulations, conservatives would rush to the laws’ defense, and courts would referee the disputes. Powerhouse right-wing lawyers, however, have now opened a troubling new front in the voting wars. They now claim that it’s unconstitutional for states to make it easier to vote while the pandemic rages. Relaxations of voting rules supposedly give rise to fraudulent votes that impermissibly dilute the ballots cast by law-abiding citizens. This novel argument should—but probably won’t—be laughed out of court. As it spreads across the country, it threatens to put states in an impossible position: exposed to liability not just if they ignore, but also if they try to alleviate, the pandemic’s effects on the electoral process. Before this new breed of cases began appearing, most suits about voting during the pandemic had the same setup. Some existing electoral regulation—an eligibility limit for voting absentee, say, or a requirement that mail-in ballots be notarized—would prevent certain people from voting. So they would go to court alleging an excessive burden on their constitutionally protected right to vote. In response, some state official would argue that the policy served an important interest, most often the prevention of fraud. In April, the Supreme Court decided one of the many such cases, involving the rules for absentee voting in Wisconsin’s primary election.

National: Senate Democrats urge Pompeo to ensure Americans living overseas can vote in November | Maggie Miller/The Hill

A group of Senate Democrats led by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), and Bob Menendez (N.J.) are urging the State Department to take steps to ensure military personnel and other Americans living overseas are able to vote in the November general election. In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent last week, the group of more than a dozen senators asked for details on the agency’s plan to ensure all Americans living overseas were able to receive and send back absentee ballots in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The pandemic continues to restrict travel and mail service in many countries around the world,” the senators wrote. “Without proper planning, this could jeopardize the ability for Americans overseas, including U.S. service members and diplomats, to vote in the November election.” They pointed to concerns around U.S. embassies and consulates, normally responsible for assisting with the voting process for those living overseas, not being fully staffed during the pandemic. The senators also questioned whether embassies were planning voting information campaigns, and what the process was for those living near embassies and consulates to drop off their ballots. “We recognize that there may be conditions in individual countries that are beyond the control of U.S. officials that could make voting more difficult, but we must take steps now to attempt to overcome those challenges,” the Democrats wrote.

National: Virus vs. voting: Behind the high-risk presidential primary elections | Katie Pyzyk/Smart Cities Dive

Milwaukee voters stood just inches apart in lines that stretched for blocks outside of voting centers on April 7, all waiting to cast ballots in the state’s presidential primary. On a typical Election Day, passersby wouldn’t bat an eye at this scene. But on this Election Day — and every that has passed since early March — the prevalence of COVID-19 has raised health and safety concerns that leave some voters weighing the value of health versus that of participating in the democratic process. The proximity of Milwaukee’s voters followed Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ last-minute attempt to postpone the primary, as other states had done. The effort was blocked by the state Supreme Court, and as a result, only 3% of Milwaukee’s polling sites opened to serve a population of nearly 600,000. Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the think tank American Enterprise Institute, told Smart Cities Dive there are many states with leaders who are “either ignoring the risks or deliberately trying to tilt the balance to suppress voters.” “We’ve seen that in Wisconsin, and I think we’re going to see it in other places as well,” he said.

National: Trump suggests delaying presidential election as dire economic data released | Ed Pilkington, Joanna Walters, Julian Borger and David Smith/The Guardian

Donald Trump has floated the idea of delaying November’s presidential election, repeating his false claim that widespread voting by mail from home would result in a “fraudulent” result. Trump made the incendiary proposal, which is not within his power to order, in a Thursday morning tweet that came as the country reeled from disastrous economic news and a coronavirus death toll that now exceeds 150,000 people. The suggestion prompted swift and fervent rejections from experts and critics, as well as high-profile members of his own party. Trump claimed without evidence that “universal mail-in voting” would lead to “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT election in history”. The president also claimed the result would be a “great embarrassment to the USA”, and raised the prospect of a postponement. “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” he tweeted. But the US constitution grants the power to set an election date to Congress, not the president. “No, Mr. President. No. You don’t have the power to move the election. Nor should it be moved,” Ellen Weintraub, a commissioner with the US Federal Election Commission, tweeted. “States and localities are asking you and Congress for funds so they can properly run the safe and secure elections all Americans want. Why don’t you work on that?”

National: States Step Up Cybersecurity Efforts Ahead of the 2020 Election | Adam Stone/StateTech Magazine

In the Buckeye State, officials are doing more than just keeping an eye on the upcoming national election. As the threat of cyber tampering looms large, state and local leaders are working diligently to ensure voting is secure. “We want to set the tone for the rest of the nation,” says Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who last year issued a 34-point directive to guide state, county and local efforts on election cyber strategies. It calls for the use of event logging and intrusion detection tools, along with segmentation — disconnecting voting apparatus from external networks. “We want to make sure our boards of elections aren’t leaving a door open by being attached to other, less secure assets,” LaRose says. Ohio may be out in front, but it is hardly alone. Authorities in all 50 states are taking steps not only to secure the vote but also to ensure that the public perceives that vote as valid. They are getting help from the federal government, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an operational component under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Experts say the aggressive action is justified, given the high likelihood that adversarial nations and other bad actors could try to tamper with the ­general election.

National: Hackers Say Voting Machines are Vulnerable. But That’s Not the Real Problem | Maya Shwayder/Digital Trends

The U.S. is in no way ready to move any of its election processes online, white hat hackers told Digital Trends. But while a lot of attention has been focused on the vulnerability of new voting machines, the more imminent danger is the electronic infrastructure around elections, experts said. The new voting machines that have attracted a lot of attention during the primaries aren’t even the biggest concern, said Jack Cable, a famed hacker and software expert now focused on the U.S. elections. Voter registration system and election night reporting systems are far more vulnerable — and easy — to attack, he said. While trying to register to vote, Cable found massive vulnerabilities in the Illinois voter registration system that could have allowed hackers to see and potentially alter voter data. If a database of voters is easily accessed and corrupted, election results could be unverifiable. Hackers could, theoretically, wipe or change voter registration, which could cause widespread voter disenfranchisement. A bad actor could even change the results or wipe people’s votes completely through an unsecured back-end. “There is so much more work that needs to be done” before elections can be really secure, Cable told Digital Trends. And it will take a lot longer than the five months left until the 2020 U.S. presidential election to get those theoretical elections systems properly in place.

National: Senate Republicans remove measure demanding campaigns report foreign election help | Savannah Behrmann/USA Today

A measure requiring presidential campaigns to report any attempts by foreign entities interfering in U.S. elections was stripped by Senate Republicans as a condition of passing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in a “backroom deal” Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA., said Tuesday.The NDAA, which is being debated on the Senate floor this week, will include the Intelligence Authorization Act but not the amendment requiring campaigns to report foreign help to the proper authorities after that provision was stripped from the bipartisan defense bill. The NDAA, which is being debated on the Senate floor this week, will include the Intelligence Authorization Act but not the amendment requiring campaigns to report foreign help to the proper authorities after that provision was stripped from the bipartisan defense bill. Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that his Republican colleagues had forced the deletion of the foreign assistance reporting provision as part of a condition to combine the intelligence legislation with the annual defense policy bill. “I fear the Senate is about to fail once again to protect our elections from foreign interference,” Warner said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

National: GOP support for mail voting is growing, despite Trump | Eliza Newlin Carney/The Fulcrum

President Trump’s increasingly hyperbolic attacks on voting by mail, amplified by Attorney General William Barr and the Republican National Committee, have triggered alarms that the country is heading toward another contested election. Trump appears to be gearing up to cast doubt on an outcome that doesn’t go his way. Primaries marred by hours-long lines, voting machine malfunctions and controversies over absentee ballots have many bracing for a meltdown starting Election Day. A much bigger surge of mailed-in votes in November virtually guarantees the results won’t be known for days, setting the stage for a crisis in voter confidence if the results are close enough to be challenged, as happened in 2000. Yet for all that, voting rights advocates mobilizing to secure the election and neutralize Trump’s divisive voting rhetoric have surprising and influential allies in their corner: many leading Republicans. GOP governors, Republican election officials and prominent conservatives are increasingly pushing to expand voting by mail. They’re also forcefully rejecting Trump’s baseless claims the practice is “corrupt” because it invites fraud and foreign tampering — and helps Democrats, to boot.

National: DHS Looks to Expand Tracking of Election Interference Through Social Media | Brandi Vincent/Nextgov

The Homeland Security Department intends to tap into custom-created algorithms, analytics and commercially-offered services to trace and capture deliberate efforts by foreign state and non-state actors to sway Americans’ views via social media leading up to the 2020 election. Four months before voters head to the polls, the agency—through its Office of Intelligence and Analysis Cyber Mission Center—released a solicitation asking contractors to speedily weigh in on services they can provide to collect and analyze potential foreign influence using online posts, and ultimately produce social media-centered intelligence products to enhance election security. “Currently, there is a significant amount of foreign influence activity targeting U.S. 2020 elections on social media platforms, and the [intelligence community’s] lack of capability and resources in this area result in this activity being left largely untracked. Agencies with the requisite expertise and tradecraft to do this work are building the capability but those efforts will not be operational in time to help defend the 2020 general election,” officials wrote in a request for quotations published Tuesday evening. “An urgent and compelling need exists to build the capacity to detect and mitigate foreign influence operations conducted against the U.S. using social media in time for the 2020 U.S. elections.”

National: Barbara Simons honored as leading voice in technology policy arena | James M. Patterson/Tunis Daily News

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today named Barbara Simons the recipient of the 2019 ACM Policy Award for long-standing, high-impact leadership as ACM President and founding Chair of ACM’s US Public Policy Committee (USACM), while making influential contributions to improve the reliability of and public confidence in election technology. Over several decades, Simons has advanced technology policy by founding and leading organizations, authoring influential publications, and effecting change through lobbying and public education. Twenty-six years ago, Barbara Simons founded USACM to address emerging public policy issues around technology, and led the committee for nine years. She worked to build ACM’s policy activities and pioneered bridging the technical expertise of computer scientists with the policymaking of the US government. Simons recruited an interdisciplinary team for USACM, the forerunner of today’s US Technology Policy Committee (USTPC), ranging from computer scientists and industry leaders to lawyers and experts in public policy. Now part of ACM’s Technology Policy Council (TPC), which serves global regions, the TPC groups have continued Simons’ original vision for ACM: to provide cogent advice and analysis to legislators and policymakers about a wide range of issues including cryptography, computer security, privacy, and intellectual property.

National: America is woefully unprepared for mail-in voting. The result will be messy and divisive. | Michael Fraiman/Macleans

Allen Straith has never voted by mail before. But when the 32-year-old customer service agent learned his wife was pregnant with their third child and realized COVID-19 would mean unsanitary voting booths and massive queues, Straith decided it would be better to play it safe, avoid the crowds and register for an absentee ballot. It wasn’t easy. He searched online for the application, but couldn’t find it. He shrugged it off for a few weeks, until he noticed a Facebook post by the chair of a neighbouring county’s Democratic group. The post warned that the deadline to register for an absentee ballot in Tennessee’s congressional election was fast approaching. Straith downloaded the application, assuming it was the same for November’s general election. It wasn’t—different application, different deadline. Now, even with the right paperwork, Straith is still worried. Not about fraud, or whether his ballot will arrive on time, or even whether his vote will count—Jefferson County, where he lives, is so deep-red, they haven’t elected a Democrat since the Civil War era. Instead, Straith believes this year’s election will further divide the nation.