National

States holding primaries Tuesday are facing scrutiny after some voters raised concerns about delays in receiving absentee ballots in New York and voting-rights groups criticized a reduction in the number of in-person voting sites in Kentucky. The contests come after a string of chaotic voting days—including mail-voting snafus and long lines in Georgia and elsewhere—have raised concerns about the country’s preparedness to run a smooth election if the coronavirus pandemic continues through November. Kentucky and New York have presidential primaries on the ballot, along with some tightly contested Senate and House primaries, and they are dealing with challenges that contributed to voting problems in other states, including many more requests for absentee ballots than in previous elections and difficulty finding poll workers to staff in-person voting stations because of coronavirus fears. Virginia is also holding primaries Tuesday for U.S. Senate and House races, and North Carolina, South Carolina and Mississippi have primary runoff elections. In Louisville, Ky., voting-rights groups criticized the decision by officials in Jefferson County—the state’s most populous county with a large population of African-American voters—to open only one in-person polling location Tuesday, compared with the usual 231 voting sites.

National: ‘Nonsense’: Election experts reject Trump’s claim that foreign countries could counterfeit millions of mail-in ballots | Joey Garrison/USA Today

President Donald Trump delivered a new line of attack Monday in his crusade against expanded mail-in voting during the November election, warning that it could lead to "foreign countries" printing ballots to undermine results. Voting experts and election officials swiftly disputed the claim, characterizing the warning as a bogus conspiracy and pointing to safeguards that states use to protect the authenticity of absentee ballots and envelopes. Trump tweeted: “RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!” Trump echoed a claim that Attorney General Bill Barr made during an interview on Fox News on Sunday when he said vote-by-mail "absolutely opens the floodgates to fraud." Barr said: "Right now, a foreign country could print up tens of thousands of counterfeit ballots, and it'd be very hard for us to detect which was the right and which was the wrong ballot. So, I think it can – it can upset and undercut the confidence in the integrity of our elections." Lawrence Norden, director of the Election Reform Program for the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York School of Law, called the Trump administration's assertion "nonsense." "It doesn't make any sense as an attack against our election system," he said. "It would be too easy to catch. You just wouldn't be able to do it. There's obviously other ways – cyber warfare – of attacking election infrastructure. I think we have to be worried about them. But forging mail ballots is not a serious threat."

National: With unsubstantiated claim, Trump sows doubt on US election | Eric Tucker/Associated Press

President Donald Trump opened a new front Monday in his fight against mail-in voting, making unsubstantiated assertions that foreign countries will print up millions of bogus ballots to rig the results and create what he called the “scandal of our times.” The claims not only ignore safeguards that states have implemented to prevent against widespread fraud but they also risk undermining Americans’ faith in the election, spreading the very kind of disinformation U.S. authorities have warned foreign adversaries could exploit to foment doubt in the voting process. Trump accelerated his attacks following a bruising weekend for his reelection campaign, when a lower-than-expected turnout at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, left him seething, and as he fights for a second term during the worst unemployment since the Great Depression. The rhetoric, coming as states scramble to adjust voting processes because of the coronavirus pandemic, represents a two-track approach of trying to both block mail-in balloting in advance and setting the stage for challenging the results once it’s over. “It’s a way of trying to turn the foreign interference claims that have been made on their head,” said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine. “Typically we’ve heard that the Russian government and others were working to help elect Trump, and here is Trump using fears of foreign interference as a way of bolstering his own side.” “This potentially lays the groundwork,” he added, “for him contesting election results.”

National: Trump spreads new lies about voter fraud, stoking fears of a ‘rigged election’ | Marshall Cohen/CNN

Reeling after a weekend campaign rally with lower-than-expected turnout, President Donald Trump changed the subject Monday morning with a series of widely debunked lies about alleged voter fraud in US elections, stoking fears of a "rigged election" this November. Trump tweeted an article highlighting Attorney General William Barr's recent comment that expanding mail-in voting "absolutely opens the floodgates to fraud." (This specific claim has been debunked many times.) Trump added his own commentary to the article, tweeting, "This will be the Election disaster of our time. Mail-In Ballots will lead to a RIGGED ELECTION!" Trump then tweeted an all-caps missive with many of the debunked claims he's been pushing all year: "RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!" In a third tweet Monday morning, Trump said "Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history - unless this stupidity is ended," and accused his political opponents of "using Covid in order to cheat by using Mail-Ins," without providing proof.

National: Election chaos renews focus on gutted Voting Rights Act | Bill Barrow/Associated Press

When some Georgia voters endured a pandemic, pouring rain and massive waits earlier this month to cast their ballot, President Donald Trump and other Republicans blamed local Democrats for presiding over chaos. “Make no mistake, the reduction in polling places is a result of a concerted effort by Democrats to push vote-by-mail at the expense of in-person voting,” said Justin Clark, the Trump campaign’s senior counsel. “Nothing more and nothing less.” But the meltdown was also a manifestation of a landmark Supreme Court case that gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The 2013 decision — Shelby County v. Holder — was heralded by conservatives at the time for invalidating a longstanding “preclearance” process that required certain states and jurisdictions with high minority populations and a history of discrimination to get federal approval for any changes to voting procedures. Seven years later, the fallout from that decision is colliding with unprecedented changes to the way elections are being conducted. In response to the coronavirus, many states are encouraging mail-in voting. That — combined with a reduction in poll workers — has prompted the consolidation of polling places.

National: Congress must act now to help states with vote-by-mail in November, experts say | Gopal Ratnam/Roll Call

The November presidential and congressional elections are a little more than four months away, and Congress must act now to help states prepare for a surge in Americans seeking to vote by mail because of pandemic-driven fears that are likely to keep them from voting in person, according to election experts, advocates and lawmakers. As many as 30 states have already lowered barriers for voters seeking to mail in their ballots because of COVID-19. Some, like Nevada, have gone as far as sending pre-printed mail-in ballots to all registered voters in some counties. But states scrambling to scale up voting by mail also need to be prepared for voters to show up in person at regular polling places because of glitches in the mailing process or a failure to receive mail-in ballots in advance. That could increase costs not only for new equipment but for staffing to handle both ways to vote, experts say. Several states that postponed their primaries from March to late May and early June saw voters turn to voting by mail in large numbers, said Edgardo Cortés, an election security adviser at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It doesn’t matter whether you encourage it or not, that’s what voters want,” he said about voters’ preference for mailed ballots. “So you have to be ready for it, and state officials need to be ready to handle that influx.”

National: Voter Fraud and Fake Ballots in Mail Elections, Explained | Mike Baker/The New York Times

As states grapple with how to safely carry out elections during a pandemic, President Trump has made an escalating series of fantastical — and false — accusations about the risks of embracing mail voting. Without evidence, the president has warned that mail elections would involve robbed mailboxes, forged signatures and illegally printed ballots. In a tweet on Monday, this one in all-caps, Mr. Trump warned of a “rigged 2020 election” and claimed: “Ballots will be printed by foreign countries, and others. It will be the scandal of our times!” That claim about foreign-made ballots was the latest misleading statement from Mr. Trump: He offered no evidence, and the tampering of ballots is widely seen as a nearly impossible scenario because they are printed on very specific stock and often have specific tracking systems like bar codes. Mr. Trump himself has voted by mail, yet at the same time he has claimed in the past that mail-in voting could mean “thousands of people sitting in somebody’s living room, signing ballots all over the place.” “Kids go and they raid the mailboxes and they hand them to people signing the ballots down at the end of the street,” Mr. Trump said in May. Officials in 11 of the 16 states that limit who can vote absentee have eased their election rules this spring to let anyone cast an absentee ballot in primary elections — and in some cases, in November as well.

National: Why You Can’t Just Vote on Your Phone During the Pandemic | Sue Halpern/The New Yorker

When Alex Howard, a resident of Washington, D.C., failed to receive an absentee ballot for the city’s June 2nd primary, he assumed that he would have to vote in person. Then, by chance, on the day of the election, he saw a Twitter post alerting voters of the option to vote remotely over the Internet. Howard, a digital-governance expert at Demand Progress, an advocacy group for good governance, decided to give it a try. “I’m a poker and a prodder and a professional evaluator of government I.T. programs,” he told me. “I like to see how things work.” He was directed to a Web site typically reserved for members of the military, which sent him to a site where he confirmed his date of birth and address. He then logged on to another site to vote. A few minutes later, he e-mailed his completed ballot to the Board of Elections. “There were people who stood in line for hours and hours to vote, and here I was, voting at home on my laptop,” he said. “It was really good for my family from a health standpoint, but whether it’s a good idea at scale—I don’t think so.” He is still waiting to hear if his ballot was received.

National: Verified Voting Comments On VVSG 2.0 v3

Download the letter here

June 22, 2020

TO: The United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC)

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the proposed Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0. Verified Voting’s mission is to strengthen democracy for all voters by promoting the responsible use of technology in elections.

Verified Voting applauds the diligent work that has occurred over the past several years to get to the final stages of VVSG 2.0 and agrees with Chairman Hovland that this is an important step toward improving election security.

Verified Voting has contributed to the development of prior versions of the VVSG since its inception in 2004. We appreciate the EAC’s invitation for public comments and that the EAC has incorporated a number of our suggestions throughout the years. Several of Verified Voting’s Board and Advisory Board members have participated in the development of earlier versions of the VVSG 2.0 as well as on several NIST-EAC Working Groups that helped develop the Requirements for the latest proposed VVSG 2.0.

The EAC should adopt the VVSG 2.0 as soon as possible and enforce the expiration of VVSG 1.0 and 1.1 in order to ensure that systems fulfill the most recent standards, rather than grandfathering election systems that continue to evolve.

National: How secure are electronic pollbooks and vote reporting tools? This new program aims to find out | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Voting machines get most of the attention when it comes to election security. But officials are now trying to tackle myriad ways adversaries could undermine U.S. elections aside from directly rigging ballots. A new pilot project run by a top cybersecurity nonprofit group and the Election Assistance Commission aims to look for bugs in the many other machines that hackers could exploit to throw an election into chaos, such as electronic poll books and systems for reporting unofficial election night results. Most states currently don’t have a formal process for ensuring they're secure. “Most of our adversaries aren’t looking to affect the outcome of an election as much as they want to affect our confidence in that outcome,” Aaron Wilson, senior director of election security at the Center for Internet Security, which is running the project, told me. “All of these technologies could have a really big impact on voter confidence and in some cases on the vote itself.” A cyberattack that modified voter information in e-poll books, for example, could make it difficult or impossible for many people to cast ballots. An attack that changed election night results could create confusion about the winner and degrade faith in the real result.

National: “Catastrophe:” Elections experts fear what primary mayhem may mean for November | Melissa Quinn/CBS

With five months to go before tens of millions of Americans head to the polls, voting rights groups and elections experts who watched chaos unfold in states that recently held their primaries are sounding the alarm about what Election Day in November may hold, amid the coronavirus pandemic. "I'm concerned that if we're already seeing failures happening during these lower-turnout primary elections, come November when turnout will be two to three times what it was, the problems will still persist and we'll have catastrophic failure," Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida and expert on elections, told CBS News. While some states have been able to navigate the uncertain landscape brought by the coronavirus, others have seen their primaries plagued by long lines, technical snags and widespread confusion. In Georgia and Nevada, voters waited in line for hours to cast their ballots because of the consolidation of polling locations and a shortage of poll workers, who are typically older and who opted to stay home to protect themselves and their health.

National: States failed to get absentee ballots to thousands of voters in recent primary elections, signaling problems for November | Marshall Cohen and Kelly Mena/CNN

As Washington, DC's June 2 primary approached, Matthew Miller and Nima Sheth, married professors who live in the District, decided to vote absentee. With elderly, immunocompromised parents at home, plus a 1-year-old baby, it felt like the safest choice in the age of coronavirus. So, they submitted requests for absentee ballots on the last day of eligibility, a week before the primary. They got a confirmation email from the DC Board of Elections. But Miller's ballot never arrived, and Sheth's ballot was sent to the wrong address. Neither ended up voting. "It wasn't a risk we were willing to take, at least for the primary," Miller said, "Though November might be a different story. You just don't think something like this could happen in a country like America, where, if you follow the rules, you should be able to vote." Miller and Sheth are among tens of thousands of voters who didn't get their requested absentee ballots in recent primaries, including in the battleground states of Georgia and Wisconsin. In Maryland, where all registered voters were automatically supposed to get ballots in the mail, about 160,000 ballots, roughly 5% of those sent out, weren't delivered, officials say.

National: Georgia shows why November’s election could be chaos | Timothy B. Lee/Ars Technica

There's broad agreement that last week's primary election in Georgia was a fiasco, with voters reportedly waiting as long as five hours to cast a ballot. Democrats accused Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of bungling the statewide rollout of new election technology. Some went further, suggesting that the problems—which were most severe in Democratic areas—were a deliberate Republican strategy. "What happened in Georgia yesterday was by design," former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tweeted last Wednesday. "Voter suppression is a threat to our democracy." Republicans have responded by blaming officials in Democratic-leaning urban counties where the problems were the worst. County officials in Georgia are responsible for many day-to-day details of an election, including selecting polling places and recruiting poll workers. Raffensperger singled out officials in Fulton and DeKalb Counties—liberal jurisdictions in the heart of the Atlanta metro area. "Every other county faced these same issues and were significantly better prepared to respond so that voters had every opportunity to vote," Raffensperger wrote in an election-day statement.

National: COVID endangers the volunteers who make your vote count | Pat Beall and John Moritz/USA Today

Lost in the broader chaos of Georgia's recent statewide election was a previously unreported incident that highlights a concern for every state planning for the November general election: Just 48 hours before Georgia's June 9 election, a poll worker in Jackson County tested positive for COVID-19. Emails obtained by USA TODAY show Jackson County elections supervisor Jennifer Logan told election board members that, on the advice of an election official in Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office, they were not required to tell the public anything. The official's argument was that "due to the continuing health crisis, everyone knows the risk that they take when they go out in public...and they are making that choice," the email states. Logan did not respond to written requests for comment, and it's unclear whether other Jackson County poll workers were notified that one of their colleagues had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. In a statement, a Raffsenberger spokesman said counties had been advised only to make their own decisions after talking to health officials and their own legal counsel.

National: House Elections Subcommittee examines voting during the COVID-19 pandemic | Sabrina Eaton/Cleveland Plain Dealer

To Warrensville Heights Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge, who chairs a House of Representative subcommittee on elections, it’s obvious that election procedures around the nation must change to safely conduct November’s general election during a global pandemic. On Thursday, Fudge’s subcommittee held a hearing to examine how states conducted primary elections during the spread of the COVID-19 virus, and how the federal government can ensure it doesn’t hinder voting in November. “It has become clear that access to the ballot in November is in jeopardy if we do not make substantial investments in our election infrastructure and remove the long standing barriers that continue to keep far too many from exercising their right to vote,” said Fudge. “We must assure every eligible American can access the ballot box, without endangering their health and with steadfast faith in our democratic process.” Witnesses at the hearing described how the virus derailed primaries in states including Wisconsin and Georgia, where mail-in ballots that many voters requested never arrived, and a reduction of in-person polling places resulted in hours-long lines in some areas.

National: Two positions filled at federal election agency | Bill Theobald/The Fulcrum

After staying vacant almost a year, the top two jobs have been filled at the Election Assistance Commission, the principal federal agency overseeing how states conduct voting. The commissioners formally made the hires on Wednesday. The moves could help stabilize the EAC after years of turnover, controversy and inconsistent funding. The appointments come just five months before the presidential election, and in the middle of a primary season when the coronavirus pandemic has created delays and chaos across the country, most recently this week in Georgia. The EAC is a small agency that plays a large role in the execution of the democratic process. It is charged with coordinating the government's limited supervision of how states and thousands of localities conduct elections. It certifies the reliability of the voting machines and has been at the center of efforts to protect election systems from being hacked by foreign adversaries.

National: Election Assistance Commission Regains Permanent Leaders In Top Positions | Courtney Bublé/Government Executive

With election season well underway, the federal agency responsible for election administration finally has filled its two most senior positions. The Election Assistance Commission announced on Wednesday that the commissioners approved by unanimous consent Mona Harrington as executive director (who was previously serving in an acting capacity) and Kevin Rayburn as general counsel (formerly a top election official in Georgia). The posts had been without permanent leadership since early September, when the commissioners voted not to reappoint then Executive Director Brian Newby and General Counsel Cliff Tatum. “This unanimous vote of the commission shows the confidence we have in these great candidates to lead the EAC into its next chapter,” said Chairman Ben Hovland. “Ensuring elections are secure, accessible, accurate and safe is critical for every election, and 2020 has presented unique challenges. With Ms. Harrington and Mr. Rayburn leading our staff, the EAC is better positioned to add value to the elections community and help election officials in the lead up to November and for years to come.”

National: As Election Nears, House Democrats Push Harder for Vote-by-Mail | Brandi Buchman(Courthouse News

Americans are caught in a conundrum: a pandemic is raging but it is also an election year, and lawmakers are feeling pressure to find the right solutions with just 145 days until the presidential election and a possible surge in coronavirus cases looming. A House Administration subcommittee on elections met Thursday for a remote hearing to consider these challenges and weigh the merits of mail-in and absentee voting in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic ,which has infected over 2 million Americans and killed over 113,000, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker. Though mail-in voting has been an American staple since the Civil War, for President Donald Trump and many other Republicans the concept has fast become unwelcome and is often the subject of intense criticism underpinned by unproven allegations of rampant fraud or abuse. During Thursday’s hearing, the sole Republican and ranking member of the subcommittee, Congressman Rodney Davis of Illinois, balked at the notion of widespread absentee voting. He argued the call by Democrats to drastically ramp up federal assistance that would make mail-in voting more accessible is overreach, but also is not feasible. “I support states increasing capacity for mail-in voting but to suggest every state can dramatically increase that capacity is ridiculous,” Davis said.

National: ‘It’s broken’: Fears grow about patchwork US election system | Steve Peoples and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

The chaos that plagued Georgia’s primary this week is raising concerns about a potential broader failure of the nation’s patchwork election system that could undermine the November presidential contest, political leaders and elections experts say. With less than five months to go, fears are mounting that several battleground states are not prepared to administer problem-free elections during the pandemic. The increasingly urgent concerns are both complex and simple: long lines disproportionately affecting voters of color in places like Atlanta with a history of voter suppression; a severe shortage of poll workers scared away by coronavirus concerns; and an emerging consensus that it could take several days after polls close on Election Day to determine a winner as battleground states struggle with an explosion of mail voting. “We want a democracy in the United States we can showcase for the world, and right now it’s broken and on full display,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

National: Suit seeks immediate citizenship for those waiting on oath | Associated Press

Scores of people waiting to recite the oath of citizenship — the final step in the citizenship process — should be naturalized immediately so that they have time to register to vote this fall, immigrant rights groups argued in a lawsuit filed in Philadelphia federal court this week. The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and other groups filed the suit Wednesday on behalf of legal permanent residents whose applications for naturalization have already been approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ field office in Philadelphia. The organizations say their clients are among thousands nationwide who have had their oath ceremony cancelled or not scheduled due to the pandemic. They argue that federal law allows the courts to expedite the naturalization process during special circumstances. The organizations say the courts should authorize “judicial oath ceremonies or immediate administrative naturalization by USCIS” to assure that all approved candidates for naturalization are sworn in by late September.

National: US voter registration plummets during coronavirus pandemic, challenging both parties | Joey Garrison/USA Today

The registration of new voters dropped dramatically in the USA amid the coronavirus pandemic, challenging efforts of both major political parties to enlist supporters in battleground states before the 2020 election. The number of new voters registered across 11 states in April 2020 decreased by 70% compared with April 2016, according to a report from the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research released Thursday. Voter registration was well ahead of the 2016 pace in most states through February. It started to decline in March, when states began enforcing stay-at-home orders and social distancing requirements to fight the spread of the COVID-19 virus. By April, registration plummeted as the two most popular methods of signing up voters – third-party at schools and other public venues and "motor voter registration" – virtually halted. The latter refers to a federal law that requires states to give individuals the opportunity to register to vote when they apply for or renew a driver's license.

National: Beyond Georgia: A Warning for November as States Scramble to Expand Vote-by-Mail | Nick Corasaniti and Michael Wines/The New York Times

The 16 statewide primary elections held during the pandemic reached a glaring nadir on Tuesday as Georgia saw a full-scale meltdown of new voting systems compounded by the state’s rapid expansion of vote-by-mail. But around the country, elections that have been held over the past two months reveal a wildly mixed picture, dominated by different states’ experiences with a huge increase in voting by mail. Over all, turnout in the 15 states and Washington, D.C., which rapidly expanded vote-by-mail over the past few months, remained high, sometimes at near record levels, even as the Democratic presidential primary was all but wrapped. The good news was millions were able to vote safely, without risking their health. The bad news was a host of infrastructure and logistical issues that could have cost thousands their opportunity to vote: ballots lost in the mail; some printed on the wrong paper, with the wrong date or the wrong language; others arriving weeks after they were requested or never arriving at all. But the most definitive lesson for November may be what many have already begun to accept — that there’s an enormous chance many states, including key battlegrounds, will not finish counting on election night. The implications are worrisome in a bitterly divided nation facing what many consider the most consequential election in memory with the loudest voice belonging to an incumbent president who is prone to promoting falsehoods about the electoral system.

National: Why Can’t People Vote Online? Election Security Analysts Weigh In | Chris Iovenko/Observer

The coronavirus pandemic has radically changed the way we live; it is also upending the way we vote. Traditional polling stations, which often have long lines and use crowded indoor spaces and shared voting equipment, pose substantial risks for spreading the disease. Unless there is a massive switch to remote voting, the predicted second wave of COVID-19 this fall could be catastrophically escalated by large in-person turnouts at polling stations. And in turn, efforts to prevent increased infections can be used as an excuse for targeted, discriminatory curtailment of in-person voting, with the outrageous events in Georgia’s primary election on Tuesday a clear example of the potential derailment of democracy. Currently, the most common way to vote remotely is by mail. It’s a proven, convenient, and safe technique; in the 2016 election, 1 in 4 Americans voted by mail. However, President Donald Trump (who himself votes by mail) and his allies have falsely attacked vote-by-mail as wide-open to fraud and an attempt by Democrats to steal the election. The Republican National Committee has launched a lawsuit in California contesting expansion of vote-by-mail and in states controlled by Republicans obstacles to voting by mail will likely be greater than those faced by voters in other states.

National: Georgia’s primary debacle should sound alarm bells for November | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Multiple problems plagued voters as they went to the polls yesterday in Georgia's primary, from hours-long lines, technical disasters and absentee ballots that never arrived, They're another ominous sign for states and the general election officials trying to run a safe and trustworthy elections this year, though Georgia's issues were known for some time and are more unique. In fact, the problems in Georgia were especially galling because the seeds of the failure were evident for months to technologists — since long before the novel coronavirus pandemic arrived and multiplied the obstacles facing election officials. They included an overly complex voting system designed to improve security but may have compromised it, a rushed time frame to implement that system and a training program for poll workers that wasn’t up to the task, especially after a slew of new workers replaced elderly people more vulnerable to covid-19. The long lines were exacerbated because election officials failed to send mail-in ballots to many people who requested them during the pandemic and who then showed up to vote in person. There may also have been a surge in voters driven by anger over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the nationwide protests that have followed.

National: Georgia Was A Mess. Here’s What Else We Know About The June 9 Elections. | Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Skelley/FiveThirtyEight

Tuesday’s primary elections were once again marred by serious problems at the polls, especially in Georgia. However, in this case, the issues probably had less to do with the COVID-19 pandemic and more to do with the state’s own ineptitude. Almost 90 percent of Georgia’s polling places were open on Tuesday, which is far more than in many other states that have held primaries recently. Only one problem: Georgia’s new voting machines, which were put in place after claims of voter suppression in 2018, didn’t work as well as hoped. There’s no evidence of foul play, but the state was clearly not prepared to hold an election with the new equipment. The state apparently passed on what it deemed the best voting machines available, opting for a cheaper vendor that had never installed so much equipment in such a short period of time. And some polling places in Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties opened late because of problems booting up the machines; some didn’t even receive the necessary equipment until after polls were supposed to open. Poll workers in Columbus also had trouble setting up the ballot printers, which they blamed on lack of training due to the coronavirus. And at one precinct, workers spent an hour trying to figure out how to insert the cards that record votes into the new machines — before figuring out they were putting them in upside-down. There were also numerous reports of voting machines simply not working, which led to some of the longest lines. The problems seemed to be most acute in metro Atlanta, raising fears of problems assuring equal voting access in the general election.

National: Cybersecurity Concerns with Online Voting for 2020 Presidential Election | 2020-06-11 | Security Magazine

A new report by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of Michigan discusses the cybersecurity vulnerabilities associated with OmniBallot, a we-based system for blank ballot delivery, ballot marking and (optionally) online voting. Three states - Delaware, West Virginia and New Jersey - recently announced they would allow certain voters to cast votes using OmniBallot. Researcher Michael A. Specter at MIT and J. Alex Halderman at the University of Michigan reverse engineered the client-side e portion of OmniBallot, as used in Delaware, in order to detail the system’s operation and analyze its security. "We find that OmniBallot uses a simplistic approach to Internet voting that is vulnerable to vote manipulation by malware on the voter’s device and by insiders or other attackers who can compromise Democracy Live, Amazon, Google, or Cloudflare," the researchers explain. In addition, Democracy Live, which appears to have no privacy policy, receives sensitive personally identifiable information— including the voter’s identity, ballot selections, and browser fingerprint— that could be used to target political ads or disinformation campaigns, the report says.

National: Researchers say online voting tech used in 5 states is fatally flawed | Timothy B. Lee/Ars Technica