National

The Wisconsin spring elections were less than a week away, and with the state’s coronavirus death toll mounting, Democrats were challenging Republican plans to hold the vote as scheduled. In an emergency hearing, held via videoconference, John Devaney, a lawyer for the Democrats, proposed a simple compromise: Extend the deadline for mail ballots by six days past Election Day, to April 13, to ensure that more people could vote, and vote safely. “That’s going to be much more enfranchising,” said Mr. Devaney, arguing one of the most politically freighted voting-rights cases since Bush v. Gore from his bedroom in South Carolina as his black lab, Gus, repeatedly interrupted at the door. The presiding federal judge, William M. Conley, agreed, pointing out that clerks were facing severe backlogs and delays as they struggled to meet surging demand for mail-in ballots. Yet with hours to go before Election Day, the Supreme Court reversed that decision along strict ideological lines, a decision based in large part on the majority’s assertion that the Democrats had never asked for the very extension Mr. Devaney requested in court. It was the first major voting-rights decision led by the court’s conservative newest member, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, and it was in keeping with a broader Republican approach that puts more weight on protecting against potential fraud — vanishingly rare in American elections — than the right to vote, with limited regard for the added burdens of the pandemic.

National: Internet Voting Is ‘Not Secure’ and Blockchain Won’t Help, Warns Scientific Body | Yael Grauer/CoinDesk

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to roil elections and voting officials look for solutions, scientific experts are warning against the dangers of voting online. The American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Center for Scientific Evidence in Public Issues has written an open letter to U.S. governors, secretaries of state and state election directors to express concern about the security of voting via the internet or mobile apps. The AAAS letter has been signed by renowned cybersecurity and computing experts and organizations. It reflects research from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and other organizations. “At this time, internet voting is not a secure solution for voting in the United States, nor will it be in the foreseeable future,” the letter reads, pointing to undetected manipulation of votes, privacy violations, malware intrusions, and the potential for denial-of-service attacks and other vulnerabilities. Internet voting, which includes voting via email, fax, web and mobile app, has no meaningful voter-verified paper record, the letter states, which makes it impossible to conduct a valid audit of the results.

National: State election officials scramble to ‘not become Wisconsin’ amid coronavirus fears | Abby Phillip/CNN

President Donald Trump has drawn a line in the sand, opposing efforts to expand mail-in voting across the country in response to the threat of the novel coronavirus. But state election officials — including many Republicans — are already preparing to make stark changes to voting procedures anyway, in some cases dramatically expanding the availability of voting by mail amid the threat of Covid-19. Their objective is simple: avoid the chaos and confusion that unfolded in Wisconsin last week by radically changing the way many Americans vote. “I want to try to avoid circumstance of long waits and poll workers in hazmat suits. I want to relieve some of the pressure on the poll workers,” said Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican. “The solution is to expand absentee voting.” Trump’s false claims that mail ballots are “very dangerous” and “fraudulent in many cases” have not stopped efforts, even in red states, to expand access to mail-in voting.

National: As Pandemic Imperils Elections, Democrats Clash With Trump on Voting Changes | Carl Hulse/The New York Times

A showdown is taking shape in Congress over how far Washington should go in expanding voting access to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, with Democrats pressing to add new options for voters and President Trump and Republicans resisting changes they say could harm their election prospects in November. Democrats are determined to add new voting requirements for November’s general election to the next stage of coronavirus relief legislation, a move that Mr. Trump and Republican leaders have vowed to oppose. But it is one that Democrats believe is necessary and all the more urgent in light of the confusion and court fights surrounding Wisconsin’s elections on Tuesday. With public health officials encouraging social distancing and staying at home to slow the spread of the virus, the prospect of millions of voters congregating at polling places around the country to cast their ballots this fall appears increasingly untenable and dangerous. But the fight over whether the federal government should require states to offer other options — by allowing voting by mail, extending early voting and instituting other changes to protect voters and voting rights — is emerging as a major sticking point as lawmakers look to pass a fourth emergency aid measure in the next few weeks.

National: Pandemic spurs court fights over mail-in voting | John Kruzel/The Hill

Election officials are scrambling ahead of the November vote to ramp up alternative methods like mail-in voting as the coronavirus pandemic raises concerns about the safety of in-person voting. That dash to expand polling options could bring a new wave of court fights around the 2020 election, legal experts say. As states move to bolster balloting options — or face challenges to such plans — both sides in the debate are likely to take those decisions to court. And when Election Day arrives, questions over the handling of mail-in ballots could lead to more court fights. “We do not want the election resolved in the courts and so I hope it does not come to that,” said Richard Pildes, a law professor at New York University. Legal experts say the nightmare scenario would be a situation resembling the Supreme Court’s decision on Bush v. Gore, which was seen as an ideological one that undermined both the legitimacy of the court and the 2000 presidential election results among critics of the decision.

National: Democrats fear for November after Wisconsin voting spectacle | Natasha Krecki and Christopher Cadelago/Politico

Democrats looked on in horror last week as thousands of voters in Wisconsin trekked to polling places and waited in lines for hours to cast ballots in the midst of a pandemic. Now national Democratic Party leaders are scrambling to head off a similar spectacle in November, in what promises to be the most consequential partisan struggle between now and Election Day. They are seeking billions of federal dollars to prepare for an election in which voters can’t safely go to the polls in person. The party is combing through voting rules, state by state, with an eye toward expanding early voting and vote-by-mail. The Democratic National Committee has deployed “voter protection directors” in 17 states to defend against what they view as moves to block access to the polls. And the DNC is partnering with state Democratic parties to help voters navigate the process of obtaining mail-in ballots and combating what the DNC characterizes as “misinformation” from President Donald Trump. With Republicans mounting a multimillion-dollar legal campaign to combat Democratic lawsuits to expand voter access — and Trump asserting without evidence that mail-in voting is ripe for fraud — the situation in Wisconsin has set off alarm bells among Democrats about their readiness for a battle that could determine whether Trump wins a second term.

National: Why you can’t trust your vote to the internet | Brett Winterford/CyberScoop

A common adage in information security is that most startups don’t hire their first full-time security engineer until they’ve got around 300 employees. If an app only stores public data and has no need to authenticate users, that might not present much of a problem. But when an app needs to be trusted to protect the confidentiality of a person’s political preference, it’s something else entirely. It’s why Tusk Philanthropies — an organization devoted to bringing mobile voting to the masses — is playing matchmaker between a half-dozen mobile voting startups and the security experts that can help bring them up to snuff. The team at Trail of Bits — a boutique software security firm based in New York — was commissioned by Tusk in late 2019 to conduct a thorough ‘white box’ security test of mobile voting app Voatz, an app used in five states. The testers would have full access to all the source code and documentation they required to discover security gaps and recommend fixes. The code looked sound, as it was clearly written by highly competent engineers. But after waiting over a week for technical documentation they requested from the startup, the Trail of Bits team had nothing to work off beyond a single page that amounted to a security policy.

National: Senators, bipartisan state officials press Congress for more election funds | Maggie Miller/The Hill

A group of Democratic senators and bipartisan secretaries of state from across the nation piled on the pressure Thursday for Congress to include funding to help states grapple with holding elections in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. In a phone call with the press, Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), and Chris Coons (Del.) stressed the need to send states at least $2 billion to implement increased mail-in voting, expand early voting and hire and train younger poll workers less vulnerable to the virus. They argued this was particularly important following the Wisconsin primary this week, during which voters were forced to vote in-person following a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court that the state would not be allowed to count absentee ballots mailed in after Election Day. The decision led to long lines and confusion at some polling places in the state. “Our goal today is to finally generate real, bipartisan support in the Congress for safe voting so our country does not see another grotesque spectacle like we did this week in Wisconsin,” Wyden said.

National: Trump: GOP should fight mail-in voting because it ‘doesn’t work out well for Republicans’ | Quint Forgey/Politico

President Donald Trump on Wednesday directed Republicans to “fight very hard” against efforts to expand mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting that such a shift in ballot-casting practices would yield unfavorable electoral results for the GOP. “Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to statewide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.” The president fiercely criticized mail-in voting as “horrible” and “corrupt” during the White House coronavirus task force’s daily news conference Tuesday, but also conceded that he voted by mail in Florida’s primary last month. Trump offered no legitimate explanation for the discrepancy between his position on mail-in voting and his personal voting habits, but insisted “there’s a big difference between somebody that’s out of state and does a ballot, and everything’s sealed, certified and everything else.” In other instances of mail-in voting, however, “you get thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody’s living room, signing ballots all over the place,” Trump claimed.

National: Why Republicans Are So Afraid of Vote-by-Mail | Jim Rutenberg, Maggie Haberman and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

President Trump and his Republican allies are launching an aggressive strategy to fight what many of the administration’s own health officials view as one of the most effective ways to make voting safer amid the deadly spread of Covid-19: the expanded use of mail-in ballots. The scene Tuesday of Wisconsinites in masks and gloves gathering in long lines to vote, after Republicans sued to defeat extended, mail-in ballot deadlines, did not deter the president and top officials in his party. Republican leaders said they were pushing ahead to fight state-level statutes that could expand absentee balloting in Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona and elsewhere. In New Mexico, Republicans are battling an effort to go to a mail-in-only primary, and they vowed on Wednesday to fight a new move to expand postal balloting in Minnesota. The new political effort is clearly aimed at helping the president’s re-election prospects, as well as bolstering Republicans running further down the ballot. While his advisers tend to see the issue in more nuanced terms, Mr. Trump obviously views the issue in a stark, partisan way: He has complained that under Democratic plans for national expansion of early voting and voting by mail, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

National: After chaos in Wisconsin, fight intensifies over how to carry out presidential election amid pandemic | Evan Halper and Janet Hook/Los Angeles Times

The political and legal chaos that engulfed Wisconsin’s primary Tuesday marked the beginning of a national battle over how democracy will function in the middle of a pandemic — a months-long struggle that could tip the balance of power between the major political parties. At stake is the most basic function of a democracy — the ability to hold elections that partisans on both sides regard as valid. That consensus, already eroded in the Trump era, is now being further undermined. Prompted by Republicans’ refusal to postpone the state’s primary, the Wisconsin meltdown whipsawed voters with on-again, off-again election plans, polling locations drastically reduced, and makeshift protections against contagion. It provided the most public view so far of partisan tension over election rules and how they threaten to sow chaos in upcoming primaries and the general election. Republicans for years have viewed measures to expand access to the ballot as attempts by Democrats to gain an advantage. In the current crisis, they have launched a coordinated national effort to limit the ramp-up of absentee and mail-in voting, which have been urged by independent election-integrity experts in the face of the coronavirus. If the pandemic continues into the fall — or if the virus recedes during the summer and then returns, as many experts expect — that could force millions of voters to choose between casting their ballots and safeguarding their health. The battle is playing out now because states that don’t currently allow widespread mail-in balloting would have to begin changing their systems soon to have any hope of pulling off a mail-in election in the fall.

National: Experts: Internet voting isn’t ready for COVID-19 crisis | Brett Winterford/CyberScoop

Internet technologies are set to play a critical role in the 2020 presidential election, but precisely which voting alternatives will be pursued – and whether they can adequately be secured – is now a $400 million question. COVID-19 doesn’t – at this point – present an excuse to postpone the general election in November. Chris Krebs, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told a recent Axios forum that 42 U.S. states have mechanisms in place that allow for alternatives to in-person voting, and the other eight have break-glass provisions for doing the same when emergencies require it. A global pandemic would most certainly meet that threshold. The $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill (CARES Act) signed into law last week included $400 million of grants the Election Assistance Commission can give to states to help them “prevent, prepare for and respond to Coronavirus.” Earlier versions of the bill stipulated that the grants were conditional on states spending it on election security, but these provisions were later stripped out. States retain the autonomy to make the preparations they each deem necessary, as officials face the daunting task of upholding the most essential function of democracy in the midst of a health pandemic that constrains the movement and assembly of people in public spaces.

National: States plan to expand mobile voting amid coronavirus pandemic, despite security concerns | oseph Marks/The Washington Post

Some states are planning to dramatically expand their use of mobile voting in response to the coronavirus pandemic – even as cybersecurity experts warn such systems are unproven and too vulnerable to hacking. Two states will soon announce that they’ll offer voters who have disabilities the option to cast ballots using mobile phones in upcoming primary elections so they don’t have to risk going into polling places, said Sheila Nix, president of Tusk Philanthropies, which is funding the efforts. The option will extend to voters in the military or state residents who are based overseas. “With coronavirus and the uncertainty about what the situation will be in November, a lot of states and jurisdictions are looking for a solution,” Nix told me, but declined to name the states or the mobile voting vendor they’ll be using, because memorandums of understanding aren’t complete yet. Those states will join West Virginia, which became the first to try statewide mobile voting for military and overseas voters in 2018 and has already announced it will expand to voters with disabilities during its upcoming primary June 9. Nix said she’s also talking with about half a dozen other states about potentially using mobile voting for some residents, which would be a significant expansion for a system that has otherwise been tried for just a handful of counties since 2018 and typically just for military and overseas voters.

National: Voting by mail: Why states will have a hard time setting it up | Amber Phillips /The Washington Post

The safest way to hold an election during the coronavirus pandemic is to not. But canceling elections, especially in a presidential year, isn’t an option. So 15 states have moved their primaries back to the summer, and nearly every state is considering how it can have more people vote in November by mail instead of in person. That means they could either expand absentee balloting while keeping fewer polling places open, or they could mail ballots to all voters. But easier said than done. Only five states have the ability to hold a statewide by-mail election, and it took them years to set it up and work out the kinks. The states considering it now have months, if that, which means they need to decide in the next few weeks whether to push for all-mail elections for November and hope it can be done. Here are the biggest hurdles to having more people vote by mail in November. The equipment that states have to conduct in-person elections won’t work for mail-in elections. The scanners many states have to count ballots in each polling places can’t handle counting ballots en masse from the whole county or state. The kind of scanner that can do that heavy work costs $500,000 to $1 million, said Wendy Underhill, an elections expert with the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.

National: The new coronavirus funding battle over the November election | Marianne Levine and Burgess Everett/Politico

Consensus is growing that Democrats and Republicans will soon hash out a new coronavirus emergency package in the coming weeks. But a major obstacle is emerging: the November election. Democrats are making a push to expand funding for vote-by-mail efforts in a fourth emergency rescue package, citing the need to help states prepare to hold elections during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s a public health issue, Democrats argue: That elections carried out as usual could spread the virus this fall. But new vote-by-mail funding is facing stern resistance from Senate Republicans and the Trump administration, who argue against imposing federal guidelines on states. The issue may be a sticking point to any relief package as the U.S. faces mass unemployment and a plummeting economy. “We are getting more and more bipartisan support from secretaries of states across the country,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in an interview, who is leading a bill with Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) to expand early voting as well as vote-by-mail. “In a worst case scenario communities may be facing the choice of either voting by mail or not voting at all,” added Wyden. “We’re already going in this direction and now we’re in the middle of a pandemic and I think this is a very different time.”

National: Trump, GOP challenge efforts to make voting easier amid coronavirus pandemic | Elise Viebeck, Amy Gardner and Michael Scherer/The Washington Post

President Trump and a growing number of Republican leaders are aggressively challenging efforts to make voting easier as the coronavirus pandemic disrupts elections, accusing Democrats of opening the door to fraud — and, in some cases, admitting fears that expanded voting access could politically devastate the GOP. Around the country, election officials trying to ensure ballot access and protect public health in upcoming contests face an increasingly coordinated backlash from the right. Much of the onslaught of litigation has been funded by the Republican National Committee, which has sought to block emergency measures related to covid-19, such as proactively mailing ballots to voters sheltering at home. “I think a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting,” Trump, who voted absentee in New York in 2018, said at a news conference Friday, offering no examples. “I think people should vote [in person] with voter ID. I think voter ID is very important, and the reason they don’t want voter ID is because they intend to cheat.” Democrats and their allies in the civil rights community are also seizing the moment, arguing that the current crisis has created an urgent need for many of the voting policies they have pushed for years, including mass expansion of mail balloting and relaxation of voter ID, signature and witness requirements.

National: Trump campaign declares war on Democrats over voting rules for November | Alex Isenstadt/Pölitico

“This is about making sure that we’re able to conduct our democracy while we’re dealing with a pandemic. We can do both,” Biden said. “There’s a lot of ways to do it, but we should be talking about it now.” Trump advisers say they are open to certain changes, such as automatically sending absentee ballot applications to voters over age 65. But they’re opposed to other moves Democrats are pushing, such as sending every voter a ballot regardless of whether they ask for one, which Republicans argue would open the door to fraud. Trump has long been fixated on voter fraud. He has repeatedly claimed without evidence that he lost New Hampshire in 2016 because out-of-staters cast ballots, and after the election the president set up a since-disbanded voter fraud commission. Following the disastrous 2018 midterms, Trump said that after voting, some people “go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again.” During an appearance on Fox News this week, Trump pushed back against an effort by House Democrats to secure billions of dollars for election assistance in the coronavirus relief package. The bill Trump ultimately signed included $400 million, a fraction of what Democrats had been seeking.

National: Some cash-strapped states turn to election security funds to fight COVID-19 | Matthew Vann/ABC

With the country in crisis mode responding to the coronavirus, several states are now turning to their election security funds from the massive stimulus package signed by President Trump amid plans to cover unanticipated costs stemming from the virus. ABC News has confirmed that several states— including the political battleground states of Pennsylvania and Ohio as well as Rhode Island, Connecticut, Tennessee, and Alabama—are either now using or intend to use election security funds, including coronavirus stimulus money designated to protect the 2020 elections from malicious cyber activity, to fight their own statewide battles against COVID-19. “We are assessing all election security and administration needs and will allocate accordingly,” said Wanda Murren, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State. The National Association of Secretaries of State issued guidance to states on how best to prepare for the elections amid concerns about the virus, but says decisions about how to spend election security money in a time of national crisis is up to each state.

National: New election security funds won’t come easy for hard-hit states | Paul M. Krawzak/Roll Call

Cash-strapped states, which Congress just pumped $150 billion into, will nonetheless have to pony up in order to access new election security grants in the massive new coronavirus aid package signed by President Donald Trump last week. The $2.3 trillion aid bill contains $400 million to “prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally, for the 2020 Federal election cycle.” The Election Assistance Commission, an independent, bipartisan commission established in 2002, will administer the grants. But consistent with past practice, and EAC guidelines, the money comes with strings attached: States need to put up matching funds equal to 20 percent of their federal aid. Previous election security grants required a state match, most recently the 20 percent state match required for $425 million provided in regular fiscal 2020 appropriations last December. But some election security experts were taken aback that the matching funds requirement wasn’t waived in the latest round of aid, and House Democrats are already planning to include a fix in the “phase four” COVID-19 bill they are prepping.

National: Democrats press Trump, GOP for funding for mail-in ballots | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Democrats and voting rights groups on Thursday pressed President Trump and Republicans to support more funding for elections this year, saying it was crucial to include money ensuring people could cast ballots as part of the next coronavirus stimulus package. Lawmakers and voting advocacy groups took part in what amounted to a sustained campaign calling for the country to ensure people could cast votes either in person or by mail despite the coronavirus crisis. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) argued on one press call Thursday that at least $1.6 billion more was needed to guarantee Americans could vote in November. “This next month is critical for our democracy, I can’t think of another time when we faced something quite like this in terms of our limitations,” Klobuchar told reporters. “I think we can do this, I really do, we simply must make sure that people have the right to vote.”

National: Pelosi wants ‘vote by mail’ provisions in next U.S. coronavirus bill | Susan Cornwell/Reuters

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday she wants to virus-proof the November election by including funding to boost voting by mail in the next pandemic response plan being put together by Democrats in the House of Representatives. Pelosi said at least $2 billion, and ideally $4 billion, was needed to enable voting by mail, to give citizens a safe way to vote during the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 4,300 people across the United States. She noted Democrats got just $400 million for that purpose in the $2.3 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill President Donald Trump signed into law on Friday. “Vote by mail is so important to … our democracy so that people have access to voting and not be deterred, especially at this time, by the admonition to stay home,” Pelosi told reporters. Trump told Fox News on Monday that voting by mail would hurt the Republican Party. Pelosi rejected that argument.

National: 15 States Have Postponed Their Primaries Because of Coronavirus. Here’s a List. | Nick Corasaniti and Stephanie Saul/The New York Times

As the coronavirus pandemic upends the presidential campaign, states across the country are postponing primary elections and expanding vote by mail options, citing the difficulty of holding elections during the outbreak. Fifteen states and one territory — Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Wyoming and Puerto Rico — have either pushed back their presidential primaries or switched to voting by mail with extended deadlines. Six of those states have moved their primaries to June 2, which has unexpectedly become a major date on the Democratic primary calendar. It is among the last dates available before the June 9 deadline set by the Democratic National Committee for states to hold their nominating contests. In New York, officials delayed the presidential primary even further, to June 23. Wisconsin is holding firm to the April 7 date for its primary, but the governor wants to send every voter an absentee ballot. Tom Perez, the D.N.C. chairman, has urged states with upcoming contests to expand their use of voting by mail, no-excuse absentee voting, curbside ballot drop-offs and early voting.

National: Democrats Push for Voting by Mail Amid Coronavirus Pandemic | Lindsay Wise and Natalie Andrews/Wall Street Journal

Democrats are pushing for billions of dollars in federal funds to pay for expanded voting by mail this November, as presidential and congressional election deadlines approach and concerns heighten for the health of workers and voters at traditional polling places. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said Wednesday that she wants money for voting by mail to be included in the next stimulus package designed to combat the novel coronavirus, which the House might consider by the end of April. Dozens of states have issued stay-at-home orders, and while a number of health experts expect Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, to peak in the next several months, it is still expected to be a threat in the fall. “Vote by mail is so important to our democracy so that people have access to voting and not be deterred, especially by the admonition to stay home,” said Mrs. Pelosi. The $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill passed by Congress last week included $400 million for state and local election officials to address complications created by the virus. It didn’t mandate specific reforms or requirements for how that money can be spent. The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates it will cost at least $2 billion for states to implement voting by mail and take other steps to ensure “free and fair” elections can go ahead.

National: Election chaos: Coronavirus fear of voting could keep people from the polls | Pete Williams/NBC