National: America’s Elections Won’t Be the Same After 2020 | Russell Berman and Elaine Godfrey/The Atlantic

This year’s democratic presidential primary was tumultuous from beginning to end—starting with a record field of two dozen major candidates and ending in the middle of a pandemic. But its lasting legacy could be far more fundamental: The chaos of the 2020 election season could radically, even permanently, change how Americans vote. By November, a majority of the country—and possibly the overwhelming majority—could cast their ballot by mail for the first time. In the years to come, more and more voters will pick their candidates not by selecting one favorite, but by ranking several under a system designed to give people more choices and less chance for regret. And by 2024, the final vestiges of a 200-year-old tradition—caucuses—could be gone, buried for good by the debacle in Iowa that launched this year’s nominating process. “I have this very sinking feeling that life in America will never again quite be the same,” says Phil Keisling, the former Oregon secretary of state who oversaw elections when the state switched to a vote-by-mail system in 1998. “Election systems have to evolve too.”

Missouri: Civil rights groups sue Missouri in effort to expand absentee voting amid pandemic | Austin Huguelet/Springfield News-Leader

Civil rights groups sued state and local election authorities Friday in an effort to ensure people can vote by mail if they’re staying home amid the coronavirus pandemic. In a lawsuit filed Friday, plaintiffs led by the ACLU of Missouri asked a judge to declare that state law allowing someone to vote absentee due to “incapacity or confinement due to illness” applies to people sheltering in place. Currently, it’s not clear that’s the case, creating confusion with municipal contests all over the state set for June 2. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican and the state’s top elections official, has declined to clarify the issue, saying it’s not his place.

Editorials: Why the Supreme Court made Wisconsin vote during the coronavirus crisis | Austin Sarat/The Conversation

When Wisconsin voters had to brave the coronavirus pandemic to vote in their state’s April 7 election, it was the latest phase of a nearly 60-year legal and political fight over who can vote in the U.S. Wearing masks and gloves, Wisconsin residents who voted in person were met by election officials in similar attire. That was new. But it wasn’t new that voters found hundreds of polling places closed and therefore had to wait in line for hours. A U.S. Supreme Court decision just the day before had ordered Wisconsin to hold its in-person election without delay, not allowing extra time for voters to cast their ballots by mail. Critics called the decision one of “raw partisanship,” “an ominous harbinger for what the Court might allow in November in the general election” – and even a “death threat” aimed at voters. As someone who has long studied the complex intersections of law and politics, I saw the ruling as the latest episode in the fight over the franchise and one of a series of decisions under Chief Justice John Roberts that have rejected efforts to protect or extend voting rights.

National: The Massive Obstacles in Front of National Mail-In Voting | Lisa Hagen/US News

Wisconsin’s primary last week was the first real-time example of the challenges of conducting in-person voting in the middle of a full-blown pandemic: long lines that complicated social distancing procedures and severe staffing shortages that led to a low number of operating polling sites. And now the aftermath has amplified calls for greatly expanding vote-by-mail across the country. But the implementation of more mail and absentee ballots is facing an array of hurdles – political, logistical and legal – as nearly two dozen states and territories prepare for the remaining primaries over the next three months and gear up for a general election that some believe will yield massive turnout. “What I think Wisconsin has now demonstrated is the canary in the coal mine if we don’t have emergency procedures to have in place” says Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who specializes in elections. “The good news is we still have some opportunities to do preparations for next elections, and the next hurdles are these primary elections coming up.”

National: How a Supreme Court Decision Curtailed the Right to Vote in Wisconsin | Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

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

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

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

West Virginia: Primary rescheduled over fears of virus spread | Anthony Izaguirre/Associated Press

Gov. Jim Justice rescheduled West Virginia’s May 12 primary election to June 9 on Wednesday, citing fears about the coronavirus spreading at polling places. Justice said medical experts told him that having the primary on its originally scheduled date would be unsafe for voters and poll workers, since health officials have warned of a surge in the coming weeks. “There is no question moving this date is the right thing to do,” said Justice, a Republican. Justice said he had wanted to preserve the May primary date, but he has been “bombarded” with requests to postpone the election. He said the new June date will result in fewer people at polling places since it falls after the school year. Secretary of State Mac Warner has said he mailed absentee ballot applications to registered voters in a bid to encourage mail-in voting. The applications should arrive during the first week of April, according to Warner. He said deadlines on those applications, as well as the early voting period, will be extended.

National: 16 States Restrict Access to Voting by Mail – How That Could Change 2020 Presidential Election During the Coronavirus Pandemic | Ashley Stockler/Newsweek

As the coronavirus pandemic heightens concerns about participation in November’s general election, advocates are calling on officials in the over one dozen states where voting by mail is heavily restricted to expand access to absentee ballots. According to research compiled by the National Vote at Home Institute, 16 states limit the distribution of absentee ballots—which can be mailed or otherwise delivered to the voter’s home—to residents who present a lawful excuse for avoiding in-person voting, such as planned travel or a disability. Of those states, five—West Virginia, Alabama, Indiana, Delaware and Massachusetts—have already waived these limitations for voters in upcoming primary and statewide elections because of public health concerns over the virus’ spread. The abilities of these and other states to expand vote-by-mail options come November are alternately limited by political will, state law or the state constitution.

National: Coronavirus ‘worst-case scenario’: Could the presidential vote be done by mail? | Alex Seitz-Wald/NBC

If the coronavirus pandemic continues to make in-person voting virtually impossible by November, conducting the 2020 presidential election largely by mail isn’t out of the question. Advocates say a massive expansion of vote-by-mail is technically feasible, but may require more time, money and political willpower than is available, with the $400 million included in Congress’ new stimulus bill just the beginning of the need. “In my view, with the right leadership and with the right amount of funding by the federal government, most states would be able to go to a vote-by-mail system for November — if we begin planning now,” said Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state in Michigan, where vote-by-mail has exploded in popularity since voters there approved a referendum in 2018 to allow anyone to request a mail-in absentee ballot. “In this extraordinary, unprecedented moment, there is an opportunity,” Benson added.An American presidential election has never been postponed or canceled, but a majority of poll workers are over the age of 60, a group at heightened risk for COVID-19, and health officials have discouraged crowds like the kind that are generally unavoidable at polling places. “It’s either going to be vote-by-mail or nothing if we have to deal with a worst-case scenario,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who is sponsoring an emergency bill to expand vote-by-mail, told reporters on a conference call.

National: Stimulus Money to Protect Elections Falls Short, Critics Say | Michael Wines/The New York Times

The $2 trillion stimulus package that appeared likely to be approved by the Senate on Wednesday contains $400 million to address one of the most uncertain impacts of the coronavirus outbreak — its potential to wreak havoc with voting, including the presidential election in November. The figure falls far short of what state officials and voting rights experts have said is needed to ensure a safe and accurate count if the virus keeps millions of people away from polling places in primary elections and on Election Day. The $400 million in the stimulus package is one-fifth of the $2 billion that voting experts said was needed and that some Democrats had sought. The money could only be used to help states create and staff new polling places to reduce crowding, or to increase opportunities to register online and vote by mail, according to a Senate official who declined to be named because he was not authorized to talk about specifics of the legislation. Voting-rights advocates said the money was a shadow of the amount needed to ensure that the November general election goes smoothly if the pandemic has not ebbed. “It’s a start, but inadequate to the crisis,” Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said of the proposal. “If Congress doesn’t provide full funding, we could have a fiasco in November.”

National: Senate stimulus package includes $400 million to help run elections amid the pandemic | Amy Gardner and Mike DeBonis /The Washington Post

A $2 trillion stimulus deal reached in the Senate on Wednesday includes $400 million of election assistance for states now racing to protect voting from possible disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic — far less than Democrats said would be necessary to prepare for November’s elections. The money will be distributed through the federal Election Assistance Commission, and states will be required to report back to the EAC on how they plan to spend the money “to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus.” The Senate language, which faces a vote in the House as early as Thursday, does not include any of the mandates that Democrats had hoped to impose on states as a condition of receiving the money. Those include requiring them to make mail-in voting available to everyone and, if an election is held during a national emergency, sending a mail-in ballot to every registered voter. Senate Republicans had balked at those requirements, saying that elections should be administered by state and local governments. A GOP summary of the bill said that Senate Democrats were seeking to “override state control of elections and create a federal mandate for early and mail-in-voting.”

National: Mail-in election mandates from Congress could be ‘recipe for disaster,’ says top state official | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

State and local officials are warning that congressional efforts to prepare states for a possible national surge in mail-in voting in November may result in chaos instead of smoother balloting. They say more federal funding for such an effort, currently being debated as part of the $1.8 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill stuck in Congress, could overwhelm election officials with just seven months left to prepare for a presidential and congressional elections. Federal mandates for a largely mail-in election could well be a “recipe for disaster,” Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate (R), president of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), told me. Pate worries there may inadequate machinery to process ballots, poorly trained poll workers and a confused voting public. “You have 50 states with different levels of resources and history of how they do voting,” he said. “I want to caution Congress that there is no one-size plan that fits all of us.” The problem is symptomatic of the divide between Washington, where efforts to protect elections against myriad threats tend to happen in last minute compromises, compared with states and localities where it’s common to spend years developing new voting procedures and to lock them in place many months before elections. “Congress always seems to operate on a crisis basis, and sometimes that doesn’t work in reality,” Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos, who served as NASS president until 2019, told me.

National: Election officials in both parties call for emergency funding to expand voting by mail before November | Amy Gardner, Elise Viebeck and Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

A bipartisan push to expand mail-in voting is underway across the country as election officials brace for a spike in demand from voters spooked by the coronavirus pandemic — despite Republican reluctance in Washington to help pay for it. House Democrats have asked for as much as $2 billion in emergency funding to distribute to election officials who are scrambling to expand absentee balloting and take other steps to avoid pandemic-related chaos on Election Day in November. Dozens of state and local election officials, both Republican and Democratic, have signaled their desire for the funding — a sign of how the crisis is altering the usually sharply divided politics around voting measures. Still, Republicans in Washington say they are inclined to oppose an effort to include the funding along with new rules on how states run their elections in a $2 trillion coronavirus response package, with some casting the effort as part of a Democratic strategy to try to load up the bill with unrelated pet priorities.

Nebraska: State Officials Say Nebraska Primary Will Not Be Delayed, Encourage Voting By Mail | Becca Costello/NET News

Nebraskans can already vote by mail in every county across the state – they just have to apply for the ballot ahead of time. Six counties are sending every registered voter an application for a mail-in ballot: Douglas, Lancaster, Cass, Gage, Buffalo, and Sarpy. Gage County Clerk and Election Commissioner Dawn Hill says her concerns about COVID-19’s impact on voting were growing in early March. “I had a little trouble sleeping one night and I thought maybe this is the answer — I’m going to send out applications for every active voter in my system to give everyone the possibility or the option to be able to vote,” Hill said. “I knew it was kind of a large task. But I felt that that was the right thing to do.” Hill says as long as in-person voting in May is still on the calendar, she has other concerns — like some of her usual poll worker volunteers who are worried about possible exposure. And one of the polling sites was supposed to be in an assisted living facility, so Hill is looking for a replacement site.

Nevada: Election officials plan mail-only primary election, no in-person voting amid coronavirus fears | Riley Snyder and Jackie Valley/Nevada Independent

Nevada election officials are planning to effectively cancel in-person voting and move the state’s primary election on June 9 to mail ballots only in the wake of the coronavirus crisis gripping the nation, two knowledgeable sources confirmed. An official announcement is expected today. It’s the latest activity facing a logistical change as officials try to prevent the spread of the upper-respiratory disease. Questions have surfaced regarding the safety of in-person voting, a process that can trigger lines of people and multiple surface touch points as voters make their selections. A recent legislative change allows any voter to request a ballot by mail, but must make the request by no later than the 14th calendar day preceding the election — May 26 for this election cycle. Delivery of mail ballots begins no later than 20 days before Election Day.

New York: Election commissioners want primary date changed | Stephen Williams/The Daily Gazette

Saying they face critical shortages of poll workers and places to vote that aren’t off-limits, the state’s county elections commissioners want the upcoming April 28 Democratic presidential primary delayed because of the spreading novel coronavirus. On Tuesday, the state Election Commissioners’ Association urged Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the state Legislature to take action as soon as possible to postpone the vote, saying deadlines for training personnel and testing voting machines ahead of the primary are approaching, and the pandemic is making it difficult to recruit poll workers. “Election boards throughout the state are risking personnel safety and health to prepare for impending elections on April 28,” the group said in a statement. “We are facing critical shortages of inspectors and polling places due to the ongoing public health crisis.” Schenectady County’s elections commissioners are having trouble getting permission to use some of the polling places they normally use, which include senior citizen centers, schools and other buildings that have been emptied as people are told to stay away to prevent virus transmission. “A lot of the locations we use say they wouldn’t be able to give us access,” said Amy Hild, Schenectady County’s Democratic election commissioner. ‘We’re having an issue with locations, and difficulty in recruiting staff to work.”

National: States Begin Prep for Mail-In Voting in Presidential Election | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

States have begun reshaping election policies to expand access to mail-in voting. Election officials in states with restrictive absentee requirements are looking for ways to allow as many voters as possible to use absentee ballots, a safer alternative to in-person voting in a global pandemic. If this crisis continues into November, however, some experts warn that a pivot to voting by mail could strain state resources and disenfranchise certain voters if not handled properly. U.S. elections have been in flux since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland and Ohio all delayed their Democratic primaries. New York officials also are considering delaying that state’s April 28 primary. But many states are taking their responses to COVID-19 further. Voting by mail looks different in each state. While most states allow all voters to cast a mail-in ballot, 17 states restrict absentee voting to people who have disabilities, who are ill or who would be out of town on Election Day.

National: There Is Shockingly Little Oversight of Private Companies That Create Voting Technologies | Alan Beard and Lawrence Norden/Slate

The Iowa caucuses debacle was a reminder of some of the most important principles in election security, among them that transparency in elections is important, paper ballot backups are crucial to ensuring an accurate count, voting should not take place on smartphone apps, and running elections should be left to professionals. But missing from the round-the-clock media coverage was another valuable lesson from Iowa: Private tech companies are central to our elections, and our failure to engage in real oversight of their practices leaves our elections vulnerable to breakdown and attack. The reporting in the aftermath of Iowa identified a 6-month-old private tech company called Shadow as the supplier of the failed app at the root of the mess. In an attempt to help precinct captains report out three separate sets of results, the Iowa Democratic Party had paid Shadow $60,000 to develop an app to convey the vote totals. Precincts would take and upload pictures of results, which would go to party headquarters. But on caucus day, the app failed, as did backup phone lines. This prompted many to ask how something as important as reporting vote totals in a presidential election could be left in the hands of a shoestring tech company. The follow-up question should have been: What are the controls on private vendors that sell the equipment and technology that run our elections?

South Carolina: Doublecheck that ballot: Controversial voting machines make their primary debut in South Carolina | Eric Geller/Politico

While the paper-based machines are supposed to make the vote more resistant to digital tampering, they also introduce new uncertainty into an election already marked by widespread warnings that Russia is determined to interfere in yet another U.S. presidential race. Many South Carolina voters and precinct workers will be encountering the new machines for the first time — less than four weeks after the Democrats’ bungled Iowa caucus showed the pitfalls of introducing new technology into a high-stakes election. The technology behind the ballot-printing touchscreen machines has also raised hackles among cyber researchers, election security advocates and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. They say the machines may be more secure than the totally paperless systems still used in 11 states — but they’re not as safe as paper ballots that voters mark by hand. South Carolina lawmakers decided in June to buy a model called ExpressVote from the country’s largest election technology company, Election Systems & Software. Counties in at least seven states — Florida, Indiana, Kansas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas — have also replaced their paperless machines with the ExpressVote since 2018, according to a POLITICO survey. Delaware bought another model from ES&S, called the ExpressVote XL, and Georgia has purchased similar machines from another manufacturer.

National: Reliability of pricey new ballot marking devices questioned | Frank Bajak/Associated Press

In the rush to replace insecure, unreliable electronic voting machines after Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential race, state and local officials have scrambled to acquire more trustworthy equipment for this year’s election, when U.S. intelligence agencies fear even worse problems. But instead of choosing simple, hand-marked paper ballots that are most resistant to tampering because paper cannot be hacked, many are opting for pricier technology that computer security experts consider almost as risky as earlier discredited electronic systems. Called ballot-marking devices, the machines have touchscreens for registering voter choice. Unlike touchscreen-only machines, they print out paper records that are scanned by optical readers. South Carolina voters will use them in Saturday’s primary. The most pricey solution available, they are at least twice as expensive as the hand-marked paper ballot option. They have been vigorously promoted by the three voting equipment vendors that control 88 percent of the U.S. market.

National: With 2020 general election approaching, voting security under growing scrutiny | Maya Rodriguez/Scripps Media

It’s the foundation of American democracy: voting. Depending on where you are in the U.S., though, your election experience could look very different from that in your neighboring state or even just your neighbor. “It really does depend on where you are in the country,” said Marian Schneider, who heads up Verified Voting, a non-profit, non-partisan group that advocates for better election security. In particular, the group takes a closer look at when it comes to the use of computers in elections. “We use computers in every aspect of election administration in this country,” Schneider said. “We have also historically underfunded our elections and not put the money into them that we need in order to run a computerized operation.”

National: The Simple Lessons from a Complicated Iowa Caucus | Gowri Ramachandran and Susannah Goodman/Just Security

The very high-profile failure of a new app that was supposed to help report Iowa Caucus results has generated some important lessons. Even though the New Hampshire primary was not plagued by the same kinds of gross technical failures, it would be a mistake to just quickly move on and forget the lessons of the first debacle. As the Nevada Caucus approaches, it’s clear some lessons have been learned, but not all. As is widely known now, the Iowa app technology was designed to help record results from rounds of caucusing and pull together the results from across the state. But the app didn’t work, and results were not delivered, raising questions about not just the technology but the implementation process for the system. Massive frustration and even conspiracy theories ensued. Fortunately, Iowa had paper records and was able to turn to those in the face of the tech failure to help confirm the results. The media, candidates, and the public had to be patient, but without the paper records, results wouldn’t have been just delayed; they would have been impossible to obtain. The first lesson is clear: Anything computerized can fail for a slew of reasons, from hacking to software defects to inadequate training of election workers. This includes tablets, voting machines, ballot scanners, electronic poll books, and apps on phones and tablets.

National: How Can State and Local Agencies Better Collaborate on Cybersecurity? | Phil Goldstein/StateTech Magazine

Some state governments, such as Massachusetts, have established formal plans to work with localities within their states on cybersecurity. However, as ransomware attacks proliferate across the country and strike big cities and small towns alike, state-level organizations say there needs to be greater IT security coordination between states and municipalities. Last month, the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers released a report, “Stronger Together: State and Local Cybersecurity Collaboration,” designed to showcase best practices for such collaboration. “State governments are increasingly providing services to county and municipal governments, including endpoint protection, shared service agreements for cyber defensive tools, incident response and statewide cybersecurity awareness and training,” the report notes. At a minimum, the report says, increased engagement can provide government agencies with “a more accurate threat picture to enhance state and local governments’ cyber posture.” Yet agencies need to move beyond mere information sharing to “leverage limited resources for enhanced cyber capabilities,” the report notes.

Louisiana: How Louisiana ended up this year’s election security outlier | David Hawkings/The Fulcrum

The moment of truth for voting system reliability remains nearly nine months off, but already Louisiana has earned itself a troublesome and unique footnote in the story of the 2020 presidential election. It will surely be the only state running totally afoul of the new world of balloting best practices, which says creating and keeping a paper record is the only way to assure every vote is counted accurately (and recounted if need be) and properly reflects the will of the voter. There won’t be a single sheet of paper involved in tabulating the results in Louisiana on Election Day — unlike any of the other 49 states, according to a comprehensive study by Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that promotes the integrity of elections. All 3,934 polling places will use entirely electronic voting machines that are at least 15 years old, and which do not generate printouts of anything as a fail-safe if something goes wrong.

Iowa: Democrats to undergo independent review of caucus chaos | Thomas Beaumont and Seth Borenstein/Associated Press

Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price, under immense pressure following the state’s presidential caucus debacle, said Friday that an independent review will determine what caused the problems that led to a dayslong delay in reporting the results, inconsistencies in the numbers and no clear winner. “We will be undergoing an independent, forensic review,” Price told reporters Friday in Des Moines. “What went right? What went wrong? Start to finish.” But almost nothing went right Monday night, first when an app local Democratic volunteers were to use to report the results from almost 1,700 precincts failed, and then when a massive backlog of phone reports and inquiries followed. It brought the reporting of the results of the leadoff presidential nominating contest to a standstill. It took until Thursday for the state party, which operates the series of statewide political meetings, to issue what it said are complete results.

India: What India can learn from the clamour for paper ballots in the US | Mala Jay/National Herald

The United States, the world’s most developed nation, is having serious problems with its electronic voting system that India cannot afford to ignore. The last few days have been so traumatic in the state of Iowa that it has triggered demands for a total manual recount and for a return to the “good old paper ballot”. Just three headlines in influential newspapers convey the message.  One says: “Don’t entrust Democracy to the Techies”. The other says: “The Iowa election fiasco proved one thing:  over-reliance on electronic machines in the election process makes Democracy more opaque”. The third was a plaintive cry:  “Please let’s go back to paper voting”. What happened during counting of votes in Iowa on Monday can be summed up in three words – Spectacular Software Glitch. Just like what the Election Commission of India keeps repeating, those in charge of the primary election in the State of Iowa had claimed that the electronic voting system was “fail-safe” and “tamper-proof”. But some of America’s leading politicians – like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, all of whom are feverishly trying to win the nomination to become the Democratic Party candidate against Donald Trump in the US presidential election in November – were stunned when the results of Monday’s election caucus were withheld because a computer application crashed.

New Jersey: ExpressVote XL Will Make Debut in Middlesex Count on March 10 | Charlie Kratovil/New Brunswick Today

On March 10, the citizens of Edison and Woodbridge will be casting ballots on new electronic voting machines for the first time in over two decades. While some of the Middlesex County’s new “ExpressVote XL” machines have already arrived at the Board of Elections warehouse in Edison, the bulk of the $7.6 million equipment purchase is set to arrive in the coming weeks. The former voting machines have been stripped down and will soon be on their way to a local landfill, according to elections officials. The county’s Board of Chosen Freeholders approved the purchase in February 2019, but it’s taken a long time for the transition to finally move ahead, under the leadership of new Elections Administrator Thomas Lynch. The 720 new machines include “touchscreens” and produce a paper record for every vote. That’s more than enough for each of the county’s voting districts to have its own machine in use on the same day. The county also purchased 720 “electronic poll books” and two “high speed image scanners” from the same vendor that is providing the machines: Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software (ES&S).

Editorials: Connecticut needs to share election security test results | David Levine/Connecticut Post

As the 2016 presidential election demonstrates, U.S. election systems — from the voting machines themselves to internet-connected electronic pollbooks (e-pollbooks) — are vulnerable to cyberattacks, including from foreign governments seeking to undermine the integrity of our democracy. Connecticut recently found that e-pollbooks are not completely secure and could be vulnerable to cyberattacks that disenfranchise voters. Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, it is essential that Connecticut make these results widely known, so other state and local governments can take necessary precautions. Earlier this year, Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill chose not to give funding she already had received for e-pollbooks to local jurisdictions after the University of Connecticut’s Center for Voting Technology Research (VoTeR Center) reviewed proposals from three vendors and found that none of them was sufficiently secure. This development is remarkable not only in light of the nationwide trend towards adopting e-pollbooks, but it also reflects a complete reversal by Merrill, who secured funding for the e-pollbooks in 2015 because she initially thought they would be more accurate and less work than paper pollbooks. Merrill is now concerned that election officials have acquired the technology too quickly and that there has not been a sufficient consideration of the risks and benefits of e-pollbooks.

National: Paperless voting machines pose risk to US’s election infrastructure | Ash-har Quraishi/Scripps Media

Could foreign parts in voting machines be putting the U.S. election at risk for hacking? It’s a question that lawmakers have been exploring as they seek answers from top bosses at three major voting manufacturers. Tom Burt, the President and CEO OF Election Systems & Software, appeared confident as he testified before the House Administration Committee last week. “We’ve seen no evidence that our voting systems have been tampered with in any way,” said Burt. The companies that make vote tabulation systems say they welcome federal oversight of election infrastructure and need help securing their supply chains, especially for voting machine parts made in foreign countries. “Several of those components, to our knowledge, there is no option for manufacturing those in the United States,” explained Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos. Cyber and national security experts say antiquated and paperless voting machines pose the most significant risk to the U.S.’s election infrastructure.