The Voting News Weekly

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for February 27 – March 5 2017

Following reports in The Washington Post that he had twice met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign, contradicting testimony at his conformation hearing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that he will recuse himself from investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign. The Post article came a day after The New York Times reported that In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government.

Proposals to require photo identification for voting advanced in Arkansas, Iowa and Nebraska., facing opposition in each state. The Michigan Secretary of State’s office finalized a contract to replace the state’s ailing voting machines with new equipment in time for the August 2018 primaries that could grant vendors up to $82.1 million over the next 10 years.

North Carolina Senate leader Phil Berger said that a recent Court of Appeals order means that the state doesn’t have a board that oversees elections and ethics laws, Asked how any elections or ethics matter would be decided now, Berger responded “those are questions that will need to be answered. There could be some questions as to the legal effect of any decisions they make during that period of time that they are nonexistent.”

Following the Justice Department’s withdrewal from the case, lawyers for the state of Texas argued that the Legislature did not act with discriminatory intent when it passed a voter ID law that has since been struck down, but they also told a judge that lawmakers will make fixes to it in the current Legislative session. The U.S. Supreme Court instructed a lower court to re-examine whether the Virginia General Assembly unconstitutionally stuffed African-American voters into certain districts, opening the door to a new political map that could reshape the Republican-controlled state legislature.

There are indications that a software error may have caused thousands of names to disappear from voter rolls in legislative elections in India and Sinn Féin has emerged as the biggest winner in Northern Ireland’s Assembly election after the party came to within one seat of matching the Democratic Unionist return of 28 seats.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for February 13-19 2017

The New York Times reported that NSA investigations of phone records and intercepted calls show that members of the Trump campaign had repeated contact with Russian intelligence operatives prior to the election contradicting the campaign’s claims. The calls between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russians were initially captured as part of routine foreign surveillance, but subsequently the NSA was asked by the FBI to collect as much information as possible about the Russian operatives on the phone calls, and to search through troves of previous intercepted communications that had not been analyzed.

The Atlantic posted an extensive piece on efforts by House Administration Committee chairman Gregg Harper (R-MS) to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission. On a party-line vote, his bill to terminate the agency was the first piece of legislation approved by the Committee in the new Congress. Voting rights advocates worry that this version of the bill may actually get a floor vote. Supporters of the EAC argue that it would be especially foolhardy to get rid of it at a time of heightened concerns about the integrity of U.S. elections. “This is the time when we should be focusing on strengthening the only federal agency charged with making elections work for all Americans, not trying to eliminate it,” said Representative Robert Brady of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the committee.

Stanford computer scientist and Verified Voting founder David Dill wrote about the potential of foreign powers hacking American computerized voting systems and the importance of post-election audits in protecting the integrity of our elections. “We need to audit computers by manually examining randomly selected paper ballots and comparing the results with machine results. Audits require a voter-verified paper ballot, which the voter inspects to confirm that his or her selections have been correctly and indelibly recorded.”

As he blatantly lied on a series of talk shows last Sunday about the extent to which illegal voting occurs in American elections, White House aide Stephen Miller told George Stephanopoulos to “invite Kris Kobach onto your show, and he can walk you through some of the evidence of voter fraud in greater detail.” On Monday, three separate networks gave Kobach the chance to do just that. It did not go well for him. Leaders from both parties are defending New Hampshire’s electoral system in the wake of another unsubstantiated Trump claim that there’s massive voter fraud happening in the state. Republican strategist and former New Hampshire Attorney General Tom Rath wrote “Let me be as unequivocal as possible: allegations of voter fraud in NH are baseless, without any merit-it’s shameful to spread these fantasies.”

A pair of bills aimed at tightening Maine’s voter identification requirements were broadly panned as unconstitutional and unneeded Wednesday during daylong public hearings before the Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee. Massachusetts Auditor Susan Bump has determined that early voting in last year’s presidential election constituted a state mandate on cities and towns, and the state should pay for it and the North Carolina Supreme Court has restored a block on the legislature’s overhaul of the state elections board and ethics commission while Gov. Roy Cooper’s lawsuit awaits resolution.

The Dutch government will allow municipalities to use computers to tabulate the votes cast in upcoming elections, provided that they are not connected to the Internet. The voting itself is done on paper in pencil and the contents of the ballot boxes are counted by hand. The head of front-running French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s independent Onwards Party has said that they have been the target of hundreds if not thousands of Russian hacks and a fake news smear campaign.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for February 6-12 2017

As they have in the last three Congresses Republicans on the House Administration Committee voted in favor of legislation that would shut down the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency set up in 2002 to help states improve their election systems. This legislation is considerably stronger than previous versions in that rather than transferring responsibilities for voting system testing and certification to other Federal agencies, this bill would simply eliminate federal involvement in voting systems entirely. Previous versions of this legislation have not been brought to the floor, in part because they faced a certain veto, but this time, who knows? Speaker Paul Ryan has given no indication of whether or when the bill may come to the House floor.

In response to the House Committee action, Matthew Weil of the Bipartisan Policy Center noted that “If this seems like a strange response to an election marked by allegations of voter fraud, voter suppression, and election rigging—from both sides of the political aisle—you’re not wrong.” Weil joined the many voices raised in support of the EAC, noting, among other significant factors, the role of the EAC in gathering election data through it’s Election Administration and Voting Survey, an important resource for researchers and advocates and, not incidentally Verified Voting in maintaining the Verifier.

In spite of hyperventilating in some quarters about a “federal takeover of elections”, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has confirmed that he supports the Obama administration’s decision to designate elections systems as critical infrastructure. While not accepting the merits of the plaintiff’s arguments, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp has settled a federal lawsuit that accused him of disenfranchising minority voters through a requirement on registration forms “to avoid the expense of further litigation.” The advocacy groups that filed the suit in September, maintained that the “exact match” language followed by the Secretary of State disproportionately affected black, Latino and Asian-American voters across the state and violated the Voting Rights Act.

The Iowa ACLU legal director argued that House Study Bill 93, labeled the “Election Integrity Act,” would not only make voting more difficult and more confusing for voters, but it would also be more expensive for taxpayers. The contentious legislation, sponsored by Republican Secretary of State Pete Pate, was promoted as an effort to “enhance integrity and boosting Iowans’ confidence in the process” though the state already enjoys some of the highest rates of voter participation and no indication of any voter impersonation fraud.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach continued his push for a two ballot system for state and federal voting in the face of impassioned opposition from civic groups and advocates. The prospect for new state legislative districts this spring and elections this fall in North Carolina are looking slim despite a court order. A Texas mother of four has sentenced to eight years in prison – and almost certainly deportation later — after she voted illegally in elections in 2012 and 2014.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has accused the Kremlin of trying to block him from running in next year’s presidential election after a court found him guilty of embezzlement and celebrations erupted on the streets of Somalia after the election of Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, a 55-year-old former prime minister and dual US-Somali national with a reputation for independence and competence.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for January 30 – February 5 2017

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Sunday said he doesn’t want to spend federal funds to investigate what President Trump claimed was massive voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election. President Trump may want to “move on” from Russia’s attempted interference in last fall’s presidential election, but two senators announced Thursday that they are launching a bipartisan investigation of Russia’s efforts to influence the U.S. election and democratic elections in other nations. Doug Chapin blogged about the importance of the work of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, now that the commission’s report and the rest of its work is no longer available online after the new Administration decided to remove it from its home at supportthevoter.gov. Arkansas counties say they need a major upgrade to voting equipment to prevent system failures in the next election. New voter identification requirements that would do away with an affidavit option that was available during November’s election passed the North Dakota House. South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed a bill that effectively repealed a voter-approved campaign finance and ethics law. A federal appeals court ruled that the Pasadena Texas election system that a judge ruled violated the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against Hispanics cannot be used in the upcoming May council elections. The Public Council to Bulgaria’s electoral body, the Central Electoral Commission said the future of electronic voting in Bulgaria must be determined after thorough analyses and public debate. Claiming no consensus has been found on an alternative system, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau abandoned his promise to reform Canada’s electoral system and Dutch authorities will count by hand all the votes cast in next month’s general elections, ditching “vulnerable” computer software to thwart any cyber hacking bid.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for January 23-29 2017

President Donald Trump said he would seek an investigation into what he believes was voter fraud in last November’s election, drawing rebukes from both Republicans and Democrats who said the unsubstantiated claims of large-scale fraud could undermine voting rights efforts as well as confidence in the new U.S. chief executive. Less than a week into Donald Trump’s presidency, both chambers of Congress have launched probes into alleged hacking by Russia that spy chiefs believe was designed to help him win. The New York Times considered the motives behind Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud. An Arkansas House panel has backed a proposal to reinstate the state’s voter ID law that was struck down more than two years ago, The Michigan Administrative Board unanimously approved up to $82.1 million in spending over the next 10 years under contracts with three vendors who will supply new tabulator machines, election-management software and maintenance agreements. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Texas seeking to revive the state’s strict Republican-backed voter-identification requirements that a lower court found had a discriminatory effect on black and Hispanic people. Bulgaria’s new president called an early national election for 26 March and appointed a former parliamentary speaker as caretaker prime minister and a report on the Canadian government’s online survey about electoral reform suggest that about two-thirds of Canadians are generally satisfied with the country’s democracy, but just as many think parties should make decisions collaboratively.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for January 16-22 2017

The FBI and five other law enforcement and intelligence agencies have collaborated for months in an investigation into Russian attempts to influence the November election, including whether money from the Kremlin covertly aided President-elect Donald Trump. As the nation marked the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., USA Today considered the future of civil rights in this country will soon rest in the hands of a new president and in large part his attorney general, who must champion the rights of all Americans. A three-judge federal court panel has blocked Alabama from using in next year’s elections 12 legislative districts challenged as unconstitutional by black political groups. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach asked for a bill to be introduced Tuesday that would give him authority to hold “bifurcated” elections so that potentially tens of thousands of registered voters could not vote in state or local elections. The U.S. Supreme Court justices offered no clue Thursday as to whether special elections ordered for North Carolina in 2017 will move ahead. Within hours of Donald Trump being sworn in as president Friday, a federal court in Corpus Christi postponed a scheduled hearing in the Texas voter ID case until next month at the request of the Justice Department. Yahya Jammeh, the former Gambian president, has left the country after he finally agreed to step down following 22 years of rule and with eight months until Germans go to the polls, the country’s intelligence agencies believe foreign actors – namely Russia – may use similar tactics to those allegedly deployed during the US presidential election to divide public opinion and boost the fortunes of non-mainstream parties.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for January 9-15 2017

Responding to the DHS decision to add voting systems to the list of critical infrastructure Pamela Smith of Verified Voting commented “Voting systems should receive at least as much attention and care as other critical infrastructure systems do. The fact that all or nearly all of the 50 states as well as more than 30 local jurisdictions availed themselves of support from Department of Homeland Security this year in the run-up to the election makes it clear that cyber-security considerations in elections are serious.” Voting rights featured prominently in the confirmation hearings for Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions. Green Party candidate Jill Stein wrote about election reform in The Guardian. San Francisco extended a voting machine contract with Dominion Voting Systems for two years, in spite of plans to switch over to an open source system. The Justice Department is suing the city of Eastpointe, Michigan, alleging that it violates the Voting Rights Act by denying black residents an equal opportunity to elect city council members of their choice. The Justice Department also joined a lawsuit against the New York City Board of Elections, alleging that the board’s Brooklyn office violated federal voter registration law by purging more than 117,000 inactive Brooklyn voters. The U.S. Supreme Court blocked a court-ordered legislative redistricting and 2017 special election in North Carolina while it reviews Republican legislators’ appeal in an ongoing lawsuit. Wisconsin election officials are hoping to improve election administration based on lessons learned from the Presidential recount. The political party of Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh, who lost an election last month but has refused to accept his defeat, filed a request for an injunction with the Supreme Court on Thursday aimed at blocking the swearing in of his rival and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta approved a law requiring back up plans for an August election if electronic voting systems fail, despite fierce opposition from rivals who say any manual arrangements will open the ballot to rigging.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for January 2-8 2017

In a remarkably blunt assessment released Friday, the CIA, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded with “high confidence” that Russia carried out a comprehensive cyber campaign to sabotage the U.S. presidential election, an operation that was ordered by Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and ultimately sought to help elect Donald Trump. Also on Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced Friday that he’s designating U.S. election systems critical infrastructure, a move that provides more federal help for state and local governments to keep their election systems safe from tampering. At the New York Review of Books, Eric Maskin and Amartya Sen considered alternatives to the electoral college. A stedfast champion for voters, election integrity advocate, and inspirational defender of democracy Ion Sancho has retired from his position as Leon County Florida Supervisor of Elections after 28 years. Iowa Secretary of State Pete Pate has announced proposed legislation that would require a photo id for voting. A three-judge panel upheld North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s request to block a revamp of the state elections board while his lawsuit makes its way through the courts. In a ruling that could provide a key test of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2013 that gutted portions of the Voting Rights Act, a federal judge ruled that officials in the City of Pasadena Texas deliberately diluted the clout of Hispanic voters by revising the system for electing City Council members. The final cost of Wisconsin’s presidential recount will likely be about half of the estimated $3.8 million that the state had required Green Party candidate Jill Stein pay before the recount began. In a reversal of his previous pledge, The Gambia’s army chief pledged his loyalty to President Yahya Jammeh, who has refused to accept defeat in last month’s election and a former head of MI6 has warned against switching elections to electronic voting because of the risk of hacking and cyber attacks.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for January 1 2017

President Obama struck back at Russia for its efforts to influence the 2016 election, ejecting 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and imposing sanctions on Russia’s two leading intelligence services. A widely distributed AP article noted that Pennsylvania is one of 11 states where the majority of voters use antiquated machines that store votes electronically, without printed ballots or other paper-based backups that could be used to double-check the balloting. While they didn’t affect the outcome, the partial recounts of November’s election highlighted the unprecedented extent to which the American political system is vulnerable to cyberattack, according to two computer scientists who helped the effort to audit the vote. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein said Wednesday her abbreviated recount effort showed the vote “was not carefully guarded” in Michigan and should spur legislative action to require automatic post-election audits. In a US News editorial, Robert Schlesinger observed that the Electoral College doesn’t function today the way the Founding Fathers planned. U.S. Department of Transportation officials said that Alabama has agreed to expand driver’s license office hours after determining that black residents in the state were disproportionately hurt by a slate of closures and reductions in 2015. North Carolina Governor-elect Roy Cooper’s attorneys persuaded a Wake County Superior Court judge to block enactment of a law revamping the state elections board until further court proceedings could take place. Plaintiffs in an ongoing court battle over Texas’ 2011 district maps have filed a joint motion calling for the federal judges considering the case to issue a ruling by next month. The Gambia’s electoral commission building  reopened, though defeated incumbent President Yahya Jammeh continues to demand a new election and the British government announced that it would begin rolling out mandatory identity checks for voters, prompting a backlash from those who say the move could effectively disenfranchise millions.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for December 12-18 2016

FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. are in agreement with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the White House, officials disclosed Friday, as President Obama issued a public warning to Moscow that it could face retaliation.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the agency charged with ensuring that voting machines meet security standards was itself penetrated by a hacker after the November elections, according to a security firm working with law enforcement on the matter.

Forty members of the Electoral College on Tuesday signed a letter demanding an intelligence briefing on Russian interference in the election ahead of their Dec. 19 vote. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president, conceded Tuesday that her three-state vote recount drive was “stopped in its tracks,” but said she’d illuminated the need to shore up the security of balloting nationwide. The Detroit News observed that Stein’s recount effort revealed that election administration in many places in Michigan is “rife with incompetence that results in the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters who cast ballots that don’t get counted”.

The North Carolina Governor has signed a bill passed in special session that creates a single board to oversee the state’s ethics, lobbying and elections administration. Computer hackers attempted to hold Henry County Ohio’s voter database for ransom just days before the Nov. 8 general election. A federal judge rejected a Green Party-backed request to recount paper ballots in Pennsylvania’s presidential election  and scan some counties’ election systems for signs of hacking.

Dan Lopresti wrote about security issues in the voting machines used in Philadelphia and elsewhere in the country. A federal appeals court upheld a Virginia law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, rejecting a challenge from Democrats who argued that it suppressed voting by minorities and young people. European governments are bracing for cyber-meddling by Moscow in upcoming national elections in France, the Netherlands and Germany and Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has moved to resist his presidential election defeat, sending armed soldiers to take control of the electoral commission headquarters and filing a petition to the supreme court as a delegation of African leaders urged him to stand down.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for December 5-11 2016

In an interview, Green Presidential candidate Stein bemoaned the now court-aborted Michigan recount process as a “political horror show,” saying, “the recount itself is not accurate, secure, and just, and it reflects that we have a voting system that is seriously flawed.”  The Detroit Free News observed that stopping the recount prematurely leaves Michiganders in limbo, noting that “in three days, the recount revealed imperfections in the voting system beyond the concerns that saw it launched.”

Meanwhile, a group of voters requested a recount in Florida and Nevada completed a partial recount. In Wisconsin, a federal judge rejected a request by President-elect Donald Trump supporters to stop a recount of election votes and a Philadelphia judge said he will rule Monday on the Green Party-backed petition for a statewide Pennsylvania recount.

After initially accepting defeat incumbent Gambian President Yahya Jammeh is now rejecting the results and calling for a new election and in Ghana an otherwise smooth election was marred by a hack of the Election Commission website raising questions about the accuracy of the results.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for November 28 – December 4 2016

A full statewide recount is underway in Wisconsin and one is about to begin in Michigan in spite of concerted Republican legal efforts to stop them.  Legal challenges to recount efforts in three states have been filed by allies of President-elect Donald J. Trump. While none of the challenges immediately derailed the recounts in those states, they…

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for November 15-27 2016

Green Party candidate Jill Stein announced her intention to call for recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Michigan. The Clinton campaign has indicated that they will support the Green effort and Clinton campaign lawyer Mark Elias explained their rationale at Medium.com.

University of Michigan computer scientist Alex Halderman made the case for recounts observing that “the only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence — paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, nobody is ever going to examine that evidence unless candidates in those states act now, in the next several days, to petition for recounts.”

Michigan state election director Chris Thomas expressed confidence in the state’s ability to conduct a recount under the tight deadline imposed by the Electoral College. “Our plans are being drafted,” Thomas said. “We’re on top of it. We’ve got some blueprints on how it will be done.” Just under 4.8 million votes were cast for president in Michigan and all would be counted by hand under the state election code and the recount would need to be completed before the 16 members of Michigan’s electoral college meet on Dec. 19 to cast their votes for the winner of the presidential race.

Election officials in Wisconsin acknowledged the challenges with Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Michael Haas estimating that the cost and complexity of the recount would be in excess of the state’s last recount in 2011, which carried a price tag of more than $520,000. In that recount over a state Supreme Court seat, the commission had to recount 1.5 million votes — about half the 2.975 million ballot votes that were cast during the 2016 presidential election.

Meanwhile, incumbent Governor Pat McCrory has requested a statewide recount of the gubernatorial race in North Carolina. Legislators in Virginia have proposed restrictions on third party voter registration drives.

Election tensions spilled onto Haiti’s streets with shots fired outside the presidential palace as various candidates claimed victory in a re-run vote and Malians burned ballot boxes and one candidate was kidnapped during local elections meant to fill posts left vacant in the north since Islamist militants hijacked a 2012 Tuareg rebellion and ousted the government.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for November 14-20 2016

Amid the ruins of the ugliest presidential campaign in modern history, Democrats are bemoaning an election apparatus so balky and politically malleable that throngs of would-be voters either gave up trying to cast ballots or cast ones that were never counted.the first presidential election in a half century that was held without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, so few Americans cast ballots that a new president was elected by barely a quarter of Americans eligible to vote. Civil rights groups say that Republican-backed “voter suppression” laws enacted since 2010 probably helped tip the scale for Republican nominee Donald Trump in some closely contested states on election night. In a USA Today Ron Rivest and Philip Stark advocated “risk-limiting” audits of election results, an audit that manually examines a random sample of the ballots in a way that has a large chance of detecting and correcting incorrect results. The Illinois Senate has voted to override Governor Rauner’s veto of automatic voter registration legislation. Opponents of ballot initiatives in Maine that would legalize recreational marijuana and tax the state’s highest earners to help fund public schools have submitted requests for recounts. A statewide recount is also possible in the North Carolina gubernatorial contest. The ultimate of Texas’ voter id requirement remains up in the air. Voters went the polls in China, while hurricane-ravaged Haiti holds elections today.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for November 7-13 2016

As voters flooded polling places across the country on Election Day, some reported problems such as broken machines, long lines and voter intimidation in states ranging from Texas to Pennsylvania. Despite concerns about possible attempts to hack or otherwise tamper with the US election, voting appears to have gone smoothly, with the Department of Homeland Security saying it had no reports of election-related cyber breaches. Bruce Schneier shared his concerns about the potential for election cyber attacks and Candace Hoke outlined measures needed to ensure the integrity of elections in the future. Technical problems in the debut of Connecticut’s election results website resulted in the deletion of tallies from Tuesday’s presidential election and the system to be temporarily shut down. Voters in Missouri overwhelmingly voted to reinstate campaign donation limits and to require photo identification for future elections. A recount of the North Carolina Governor’s race is likely to extend well past the Thanksgiving holidays. Milwaukee’s elections chief said that Wisconsin’s voter ID law caused problems at the polls in the city and likely contributed to lower voter turnout. Austria’s Interior Minister said there was no reason to delay again its presidential election due on Dec. 4 after newspapers reported it was possible to order postal ballots online using fake passport numbers and German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that Russia could try to influence next year’s German national elections through cyber warfare and disinformation.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for October 31 – November 6 2016

Days before Election Day, warnings of a rigged vote have led to anxiety across the country about the integrity of the electoral process, leaving election officials and local authorities scrambling to verify claims of mischief and, often, to offer reality checks. The New York Times reports of stories of Trump supporters in Ohio sending wild dogs to scare off black voters, possessed voting machines flipping votes Donald J. Trump to Hillary Clinton, and an amateur genealogist said to be committing voter fraud by jotting down names found on gravestones.

The U.S. government believes hackers from Russia or elsewhere may try to undermine next week’s presidential election and is mounting an unprecedented effort to counter their cyber meddling. “The Russians are in an offensive mode and [the U.S. is] working on strategies to respond to that, and at the highest levels,” said Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014.

Politico wrote about concens raised by incresing reliance on the internet for election administration and even voted ballot delivery. Tens of thousands of military and overseas Americans casting ballots online this fall face a high risk of being hacked, threatening to cause chaos around Election Day if their votes get manipulated or they transmit viruses to state and local election offices. As the article notes, internet voting also can leave the state and local government networks susceptible to hard-to-detect cyberattacks once election officials in the U.S. open up the ballot via email or click on what looks like a seemingly legitimate document.

Larry Greenemeier at Scientific American also wrote about the security concerns surrounding internet voting.  At least 31 states and the District of Columbia do let military and expatriate voters use the internet to submit marked ballots via e-mailed attachments, fax software or a Web portal.

Philip Stark and Poorvi Vora point out the inadequacy of Maryland’s automated post election audit. While acknowledging that some sort of audit is btter than none and applauds the decision to review all votes in all races and counties, they warn that relying on the scans — which are as vulnerable as any other computer data — limits the kinds of problems the reviews can detect. As they note, “the scans aren’t like photographs; they can differ due to machine error, tampering or human error (for instance leaving out a batch of ballots or scanning the same batch twice).”

A federal appeals court panel rejected a challenge to an Arizona election law that throws out ballots cast by voters who go to the wrong precinct. Lawyers representing the state and national Democratic parties said Arizona throws out more out-of-precinct ballots than any other state and that minorities are more likely to be affected. A federal judge in Phoenix rejected the challenge last month, ruling that the state has a valid reason not to count such votes because different races are on ballots in different precincts.

In response to a lawsuit filed by the North Carolina NAACP seeking an emergency halt to voter roll purges, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that four counties must restore names to voter rolls that were part of a recent mass purge. The US Supreme Court denied an emergency request from the Ohio Democratic Party to put on hold provisions of two election laws concerning absentee and provisional ballots in the state.

Voters in Ivory Coast’s referendum were asked to approve a draft constitution containing provisions that the opposition contended will significantly strengthen the power of the presidency and in Nicaragua Daniel Ortega is seeking his second consecutive re-election, with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as the vice-presidential candidate.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for October 24-30 2016

Election officials are struggling to reassure voters in an election one side claims is “rigged” as the other was apparently targeted by Russian hackers and Wikileaks. Federal and state law enforcement officials say they are concerned about violence in the final two weeks of the long and bitter Presidential campaign, and well beyond that if Donald Trump loses and refuses to accept the vote as legitimate.  It’s election time, so there are reports of “vote-flipping“, in which voters pressing one candidate’s name on a touch-screen machine, only to have the opponent’s name light up instead. Are the machines rigged? No, says just about every voting technology expert. “If you were actually trying to rig an election, it would be a very stupid thing to do, to let the voter know that you were doing it,” says Larry Norden, with the Brennan Center for Justice in New York. A federal appeals court is deciding whether to force the state of Arizona to count provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct. TPM looked into the Indiana State Police investigation that stymied the efforts of an organization’s effort to register African American voters. The New York Times examined claims of voter fraud on Philadelphia. Legal wrangling over Texas’ voter identification law is stirring confusion at the polls, with civil rights groups and some voters questioning how some county election officials are portraying the state’s ID requirement. Elections officials in all mail ballot states say that service changes at the US Postal Service have the potential to disrupt voting-by-mail in the first presidential election since the changes took effect last year. Initial counting after polls closed in Iceland’s election put neither the ruling Independence party’s centre-right coalition nor the Pirate party’s leftist alliance in a position to secure outright victory and voters in Moldova go to the polls to choose their president for the first time in 20 years.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for October 17-23 2016

Donald Trump used the final presidential debate with Hillary Clinton to declare he would keep the country “in suspense” over whether he would accept the outcome of November’s election. The Washington post noted that “when we hold elections, the losing party acknowledges the legitimacy of the winner, and the winner allows the loser to survive to fight another day. Now, for the first time in modern history, a major-party candidate rejects both sides of that equation.” In an oped that appeared in The Hill, Verified Voting President Pamela Smith observed “Trump has supplied no evidence our voting systems are “rigged”—and to make such a claim in advance of most polls even opening is corrosive to our democratic system and the peaceful transference of power that we have exercised for centuries.” Federal appellate judges questioned assertions by state attorneys and their Republican Party allies that a new Arizona law outlawing “ballot harvesting” does not target minorities. A federal judge in Tallahassee declared that Florida must provide a method for voters to fix signature problems that might arise when they vote by mail in the presidential election.Indiana State Police Supt. Douglas Carter suggested that investigators had uncovered several instances of voter fraud in the state, an allegation that adds fuel to a fiery debate over whether elections are “rigged” and subject to abuse. A federal appeals court laid out the legal reasoning behind its decision earlier this month that allowed thousands of Kansas residents to register to vote without providing documents proving their U.S. citizenship. As a result of a court ruling, Ohio voters who were improperly removed from the rolls after not casting a ballot for several years will be allowed to vote in the November general election. In November, Pennsylvania will once again use voting technology from the ’80s made by the companies that don’t exist anymore. A federal judge extended the voter registration period in Virginia, after the state’s online system crashed, preventing an unknown number of voters from getting on the rolls. A ruling by the Democratic Republic of Congo’s top court approving an electoral commission request to postpone the country’s presidential election by 18 months has compounded fears President Joseph Kabila may try to extend his rule for a third term and leaders of Venezuela’s opposition called on citizens to take to the streets after the country’s electoral commission suspended a drive for a referendum to remove President Nicolás Maduro.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for October 10-16 2016

Officials are more concerned by the discovery in recent weeks that hackers, including ones believed to be working for the Russian government, are trying to access voter registration files, perhaps to alter or delete them, in more than 20 states. Signal Magazine published a four part series on election cybersecurity focusing in turn on: voting lists, voting equipment, voter databases, and efforts to secure elections. MIT Technology Review considered ways in which the November election maybe the most secure yet, in spite of concerns about cyber-hacking. In separate legal actions, an appeals court panel refused to block a new Arizona law prohibiting get-out-the-vote groups from collecting early ballots and a U.S. District Court judge declined to order the state to count votes cast in the wrong precinct. A federal judge issued a scathing rebuke to Florida’s top election official in an order cancelling a hearing on a lawsuit over vote-by-mail ballots. Democratic legal teams successfully extended voter registration deadlines in Georgia, Florida and North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. A progressive advocacy group is launching an advertising campaign accusing Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who also is the Republican vice-presidential nominee, of allowing voter suppression after state police raided the offices of a voter registration program aimed at signing up African Americans. A federal judge ordered Wisconsin to provide more information to the public about how they could easily get voting credentials even if they don’t have birth certificates, but declined to suspend the voter ID law. In Bosnia, as a vote recount for the disputed mayoralty of Srebrenica began in Sarajevo, the Bosniak-led Party of Democratic Action, SDA called for a complete annulment of the local polls and voters go to the polls today in Montenegro in what analysts view as a choice between Russia and the West.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for October 3-9 2016

The US government has formally accused Russia of hacking the Democratic party’s computer networks and said that Moscow was attempting to “interfere” with the US presidential election. PCWorld asked several computer security experts and voting advocates to propose steps that could improve the security of American elections. Stanford computer science professor David Dill discussed security concerns presented by internet voting with KQED Radio. Democrats filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the Florida Secretary of State to stop the practice of election officials tossing vote by mail ballots if the signature on the ballot envelope does not match the one on file. Indiana State Police said on Thursday that they have expanded an investigation of possible voter registration fraud to 57 of the state’s 92 counties. A new online ballot system and marking tool could weaken Maryland’s voting security and make it the most vulnerable state in the nation, according to some cybersecurity experts. A federal judge on Friday found partially in favor of two Native American tribes in their lawsuit against the Secretary of State’s Office and two Nevada counties in a voter disenfranchisement case. Voting rights advocates are concerned about the impact the elimination of straight party voting will have on November’s election. Thousands of mailed absentee ballots in Wisconsin could be thrown out because witnesses for the voters did not provide their full addresses. Colombians narrowly rejected a peace deal with Marxist guerrillas in a referendum on Sunday, plunging the nation into uncertainty and dashing President Juan Manuel Santos’ painstakingly negotiated plan to end the 52-year war. Suffering from the impact of Hurricane Matthew, Haiti has postponed Presidential elections for the fourth time and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s referendum against EU refugee quotas suffered a stinging domestic rebuke drawing just 40 percent of eligible voters, rendering the plebiscite invalid.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for September 26 – October 2 2016

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, FBI Director James B. Comey said that the bureau had detected scanning activities — essentially hackers scoping out a potential attack — as well as some actual attempted intrusions into voter registration databases in as many as 20 states. Bloomberg has posted an extensive article surveying the state of computerized voting in the Unites States. A U.S. appeals court panel that barred Kansas, Alabama and Georgia from adding a proof-of-citizenship requirement to a federal voter registration form wrote that federal law leaves it to the Election Assistance Commission — not the states — to determine whether such a change is ­necessary. A lawsuit was filed in federal court in Alabama, claiming that the state law stripping the vote from any person “convicted of a felony involving moral turpitude” — a law that has left more than 250,000 adults in the state ineligible to vote — is racially discriminatory, indefensibly vague and flagrantly unconstitutional. Georgia has agreed to temporarily suspend a requirement that has prevented tens of thousands of residents from registering to vote as it works toward a possible settlement in a federal lawsuit that accused Secretary of State Brian Kemp of disenfranchising minorities ahead of the presidential election. Thousands of prospective voters in Kansas who did not provide citizenship documents will be able to vote in the November election under a federal appeals court ruling late Friday that upheld a judge’s order. Cybersecurity experts are warning that Maryland’s online absentee-ballot system is dangerously vulnerable to tampering and privacy invasions, both growing concerns in a year when hackers have breached the Democratic National Committee and attempted to access boards of elections in at least two states. An emergency motion was filed asking a federal judge to require the N.C. State Board of Elections to comply with a previous decision addressing early voting in North Carolina. Advocates for the homeless and the Ohio Democratic Party are appealing a federal court ruling that upheld rules for handling thousands of absentee and provisional ballots in the presidential battleground state. A federal judge ordered the state of Wisconsin to investigate reports that Division of Motor Vehicles employees gave incorrect information to a person seeking a voter identification card before the Nov. 8 election. Hungarians vote today in a referendum over quotas for the settlement of refugees and British Prime Minister Theresa May has confirmed she will restore the right to vote to long-term expatriate citizens in time for the expected 2020 poll.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for September 19-25 2016

After multiple hacks of Democratic Party e-mail systems and fears of Russian cyber attacks on the U.S. election, paper ballots have taken on an unexpected appeal as voter advocates, election officials and others have raised concerns about the risks involved in conducting elections over the all-too-vulnerable internet. Election officials are still looking for last-minute fixes to ensure that the patchwork of voting technology used around the country can fend off the increasingly troubling prospect of hacker attacks and, in the latest of those efforts, Georgia representative Hank Johnson is set to introduce two bills today designed to shore up that fragile system’s security. The New York Times examined the enduring fear of voter fraud in spite of overwhelming evidence of the rarity voter impersonation. Verified Voting’s Pamela Smith wrote about the importance of post-election audits in this month’s edition of NCSL’s The Canvass. North Dakota will offer an affidavit to voters who don’t bring an identification to the polls, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. U.S. District Court. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted in a case involving removal of names from voter registration rolls. Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton will ask the Supreme Court to determine whether the state’s voter id laws are legal. Opposition leader Jean Ping criticized a decision by Gabon’s top court to validate President Ali Bongo’s re-election, as police and troops patrolled the deserted streets of Libreville to prevent a new flareup of violence. Inflated turnout figures, ballot-stuffing and people voting more than once with reported after United Russia’s landslide victory in parliamentary elections while election officials in Venezuela blocked the opposition’s hope of holding a recall referendum that could wrest the presidency from the ruling socialist party.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for September 12-18 2016

While intelligence and law enforcement officials have assured Congress and the White House that it is unlikely Russian hackers would not be able to change the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, disrupting it – causing doubts in battleground states, prompting challenges to results and creating chaos could make Florida’s hanging chads seem like a quaint problem from the analog age. Computer scientists and security experts have warned that centralized database could be vulnerable to manipulation before – and after the vote. A coalition of voting advocates filed suit Wednesday accusing Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp of disenfranchising thousands of residents by blocking their access to vote. Missouri Republicans may have muscled through a voter ID law on Wednesday, but their veto session victory could be relatively short-lived, if court rulings in other states are any indication. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to restore a period of early voting in Ohio during which people could register and vote on the same day. Documents revealed by the Guardian show that Republican insiders discussed “ginning up concerns over voter fraud” in the days after then-Supreme Court Justice David Prosser narrowly defeated challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg in April 2011. Austria’s rerun presidential election, scheduled for 2 October, will be postponed on technical grounds because of problems with glue on postal votes coming unstuck. The opposition has few options to challenge the re-election of President Ali Bongo and, with memories 2011 demonstrations still fresh, Russians vote today for new Parliament.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for September 5-11 2016

In a victory for voting rights groups, federal appeals court blocked Kansas, Georgia and Alabama from requiring residents to prove they are U.S. citizens when registering to vote using a national form. This November, voters in four contested swing states – Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia – will cast ballots on equipment that does not provide a software-independent record for use in an audit or recount. Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post about systematic attempts to disenfranchise African-Americans and other minorities with voter ID laws and other restrictions at the polls. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to allow Michigan to ban voters from casting straight-ticket ballots in the coming election after lower courts found the prohibition was likely to discriminate against African Americans and result in long lines at the polls. North Carolina’s state elections board settled a deeply partisan battle over this fall’s election rules, largely rejecting a Republican-led effort to write local voting guidelines that would limit Democratic turnout in a political battleground state. Ohio faces pending court challenges to laws cut to early voting, its ballot procedures, and its process for removing voters from its registration rolls. The U.S. Department of Justice accused Texas officials of waging a misleading voter education campaign and squandering money the state was ordered to spend on clarifying the voting process for those without certain forms of government-issued ID. Thanks to the candidate challenging incumbent Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman, a back-end pathway into the state’s voter registration database, through which private information could have been accessed, has been closed. Gabon’s opposition leader took his bid to have a narrow presidential election loss overturned to the country’s top court and Vladimir Putin’s Ministry of Justice classified the independent polling agency Levada Center a “foreign agent,” citing its foreign ties with Columbia, George Washington, and Columbia Universities and with polling organizations such as Gallup, MORI, and Ipsos.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for August 29 – September 4 2016

An FBI nationwide alert about the hacking of state election offices after breaches in Illinois and Arizona as raised concerns about voting technology, focused on the security of voting systems and the ability to audit the results produced by those systems. A North Carolina Republican official, in defending the state’s restrictive voting law passed in 2013 against charges of racism, admitted that the restriction were politically motivated and had nothing to do with combating election fraud. The Ohio Democratic Party will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the so-called ‘Golden Week‘, in which voters can register and vote at the same time. Texas is spending $2.5 million to spread the word about changes to its voter ID law before the November election but will not release details about how the money is being used. Virginia Republican legislative leaders said they will take Gov. Terry McAuliffe to court once again over his efforts to restore voting rights to felons. Wisconsin election officials raised concerns that some voters won’t be able to get IDs in time to vote in the Nov. 8 presidential election — potentially violating a court order. Hong Kong voted today in its first major election since pro-democracy protests in 2014 and one of its most contentious ever, with a push for independence among disaffected younger voters stoking tension with China’s government. Post-election violence in Gabon left one person dead on Thursday after officials declared the incumbent president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, the winner in a race that the opposition said had been marked by fraud and tens of thousands of chanting protesters marched in a major demonstration in the Venezuelan capital aimed at forcing a vote on recalling socialist President Nicolás Maduro.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for August 22-28 2016

Some key swing states, notably Georgia and Pennsylvania, have declined an offer from the Homeland Security Department to scan voting systems for hackers ahead of the presidential elections. Richard Clarke, former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism under Reagan, Clinton and Bush, wrote an oped that examines the security threats to our election infrastructure. A legal battle to gain equal voting rights for residents of the U.S. territories was dealt a setback after a federal judge ruled that former Illinois residents who live in the territories, including Guam, do not have the right to cast absentee ballots in Illinois. The Illinois Supreme Court  blocked from the fall ballot a proposal that would have asked voters whether to change the state constitution to take much of the politics out of the redrawing of state legislative boundaries. A federal appeals court will decide whether Kansas has the right to ask people who register to vote when they get their driver’s licenses for proof that they’re citizens. A three-judge federal panel ruled that a lawsuit challenging Maryland’s contorted congressional district map on First Amendment grounds has merit and should go forward. Ohio Democrats will appeal a split decision by a panel from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that eliminated the so-called “Golden Week“,a week during which Ohioans can both register to vote and cast an early ballot in one stop and a federal appeals court declined to soften Wisconsin’s strict voter ID law. The Toronto Star called on the government of Justin Trudeau to extend voting rights to expatriate Canadians and incumbent President Ali Bongo looked to extend his family’s fifty year rule in elections yesterday in Gabon.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for August 15-21 2016

This year 32 states will allow voting by email, fax and internet portals – mostly for overseas and military voters. In most states, voters using Internet voting must waive their right to a secret ballot according a new report coauthored by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Verified Voting and Common Cause. In addition to concerns about voter privacy, security researchers also warn that online voting could be vulnerable to hackers who could digitally hijack elections. Department of Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson held a call with state election officials to outline the kind of assistance that DHS will provide to help prevent cyber attacks in this fall’s elections. In a New York Times editorial, Deuel Ross warns that recent major victories for voting-rights advocates may obscure a more pernicious problem: In towns, cities and counties across the country — particularly throughout the Deep South — many discriminatory voting changes have been made at more local levels. A federal appeals court rejected efforts by Michigan officials to preserve a ban on straight-party voting through the coming elections. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed a bill that would have established a system for automatic voter registration. Emails revealed that the North Carolina Republican Party encouraged GOP appointees to county elections boards to “make party line changes to early voting” by limiting the number of hours and keeping polling sites closed on Sundays. Bucking a nationwide trend, an Oklahoma judge upheld the constitutionality of the state’s voter id requirement. Russian opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov said that parliamentary elections next month were being rigged against his party, meaning it would have to win up to three times more votes than legally necessary to get into parliament and Zambia’s opposition leader challenged the results of last week’s presidential election citing widespread irregularities.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for August 8-14 2016

For years, computer security experts have warned that electronic voting is vulnerable to hacking that could alter vote tallies and theoretically swing an election. The intrusions that compromised the Democratic National Committee and the House Democrats’ fundraising campaigns’ systems have only heightened those concerns. The MIT Technology Review identified the states and counties most vulnerable to digital election manipulation and Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center called for actions to enhance voting system security. In a move criticized by voting rights advocates Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner vetoed a bill aimed at making voter registration automatic. Michigan’s attorney general has asked a federal appeals court to reinstate a law banning straight-ticket voting. Federal judges struck down nearly 30 North Carolina House and Senate districts as illegal racial gerrymanders, but will allow General Assembly elections to be held using them this fall. In Texas, a federal judge approved a plan that says it won’t be mandatory for voters to present an ID in order to vote in the November general election while a federal appeals panel blocked a lower court ruling that would have allowed Wisconsin voters without photo IDs to sign an affidavit and cast a ballot. Moves to introduce online voting in Australian elections has been dealt a “massive blow by the disastrous stuff-up” of the country’s online Census, with some commentators saying it is dead in the water and Zambian President Edgar Lungu was ahead of his main rival in early vote counting, but the main opposition said its count showed their candidate ahead and the vote may have been rigged.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for August 1-7 2016

The Obama administration is weighing new steps to bolster the security of the United States’ voting process against cyberthreats, including whether to designate the electronic ballot-casting system for November’s elections as “critical infrastructure.” Wired considered the security threats posed by direct recording electronic voting machines. Writing in the New York Times Rick Hasen considered whether the tide against restrictive voting laws has turned on the same day that a federal judge blocked North Dakota’s strict voter-ID law unfair to Native Americans, continuing a series of recent victories against restrictions imposed by state legislatures in Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Kansas. In response to those rulings Texas agreed to weaken its voter ID law while Wisconsin is seeking an emergency stay in a federal court ruling in a case challenging a range of voting policies signed into law between 2011 and 2015. The state of Ohio has racked up more than $2.7 million in legal fees it will likely have to pay to attorneys who have engaged in a decade’s worth of litigation over voting laws passed by the state’s legislature. The Wall Street Journal profiled Billy Lawless an expatriate member of the Irish Senate even though he is not allowed to vote in Irish elections. Thailand’s military junta holds a national referendum on a new constitution, while blocking opposition campaigning and Venezuela’s National Electoral Council said the opposition had collected nearly double the requirement of 200,000 valid signatures on a petition demanding that President Nicolas Maduro face a recall referendum.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for July 25-31 2016

Russian involvement in hacking the Democratic National Committee computer network in an apparent attempt to influence the American election has heightened concerns about vulnerabilities in voting technology. The Illinois’ Voter Registration System, IVRS, is still down after officials discovered a security breach earlier this month. A Shawnee County judge has ruled that 17,500 voters can have their votes counted in state and local races as well as federal ones in Tuesday’s Kansas primary election. Federal appellate judges on Friday struck down North Carolina’s law limiting voting options and requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls, declaring in an unsparing opinion that the restrictions “target African Americans with almost surgical precision,” and a federal judge struck down parts of Wisconsin’s voter ID law, limits on early voting and prohibitions on allowing people to vote early at multiple sites. After a similar ruling last week that Texas’ voter ID law was unconstitutional and that the state must develop new rules before the November election, election officials are unclear on what the replacement rules will look like. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe vowed to sign about 206,000 individual executive orders restoring voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences and are no longer on probation after the state Supreme Court struck down a sweeping executive order he signed in April. And Venezuela’s opposition has demanded authorities move forward on a referendum to force Nicolás Maduro from office, amid complaints that the government is digging in its heels to delay the process.