Tag Archives: tvnw

“They’re coming after America,” former FBI director James B. Comey told the Senate intelligence committee this month. “They will be back.” In a highly politicized hearing, this bold statement drew strikingly little partisan disagreement. Senators on both sides of the aisle have seemingly reached consensus that foreign agents did try to tamper with the 2016 election and that they are extremely likely to do so again. The question is: What do we do about it? While the ongoing Russia investigation has, understandably, received massive attention, there’s so far been scant public focus on the question of how we safeguard our electoral systems from outside interference in the future. Responding to the threat of election hacking isn’t exclusively a matter of diplomatic intrigue or international sanctions. It’s fundamentally a matter of computer science: how we harden our election technology through cybersecurity standards.

Georgia: No paper trail: Georgia’s antiquated voting system prevents an audit for hacks | Raw Story

The polls are closing in Georgia following the most expensive congressional election in American history. As results are announced, there’s significant controversy over the credibility of those results. “Georgia’s voting issues aren’t rooted in any specific hacking threat,” reports Wired. “The problem instead lies in the state’s inability to prove if fraud or tampering happened in the first place.” The state of Georgia has 27,000 voting machines from the now-defunct Premier Election Systems (formerly known as Diebold) and 6,000 ExpressPoll machines — also made by Diebold. None of the machines have a paper trail. “You have an un-provable system,” says Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting told Wired. “It might be right, it might not be right, and that absence of authoritative confirmation is the biggest problem. It’s corrosive.”

Maine: Senate sets aside legislation to repeal ranked-choice voting law | Portland Press Herald

The Maine Senate tabled a bill Wednesday that would have repealed a citizens initiative passed in November that made Maine the first state in the nation to adopt a statewide ranked-choice voting system. Senators then voted unanimously, without a roll call tally, to give initial approval to a bill that would amend the Maine Constitution – if approved by two-thirds of the Legislature and by voters – to resolve issues with the new law identified by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. Its advisory opinion in May found that parts of the new law violated the state constitution, which calls for candidates in races for the Legislature and the governor’s office to be elected by a plurality of voters – the most votes – and not necessarily a majority of voters – at least 50 percent – as they would be under a ranked-choice system. But the opinion did not address ranked-choice voting in Maine’s federal elections or party primary elections, and supporters have argued the law should stand for those races while the Legislature and then voters decide if the constitution should be amended.

Ohio: U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear Ohio voting rights appeal | Columbus Dispatch

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday declined to take up a voting rights case on a technical challenge to the state’s right to reject a voter registration application on the basis of an error or omission unrelated to the voter’s qualifications. The justices refused to hear an appeal by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, which challenged Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted about whether private parties can appeal an Ohio voter-roll purge under the Voting Rights Act. The provisions effectively keep voters from registering if they have made a small error in their registration or voter forms, such as writing a name in legible cursive rather than in print, omitting a zip code, or missing a digit from a Social Security number, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which supported the claimants in this case.

Texas: Judge looks to resolve Texas voter ID case before 2018 elections | Austin American-Statesman

With the next election season looming, a federal judge has set a fast-paced schedule for determining whether Texas should be penalized for a voter ID law found to have been written to intentionally discriminate against minority voters. Saying no additional hearings will be needed in her Corpus Christi courtroom, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos gave lawyers two weeks to file legal briefs on the matter, with a final round of response briefs due July 17. Ramos also said she wants to receive arguments about whether Texas should be placed under preclearance — meaning the U.S. Justice Department would have to approve changes to voting laws or practices in the state to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act. Lawyers for Texas have told Ramos that state election officials need a decision by Aug. 10, when voter certificates are finalized and sent to each county for printing. The officials want the certificates to include information on what form of identification voters need to take to the polls in 2018.

Wisconsin: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Wisconsin’s redistricting case but blocks redrawing of maps | Milwaukee Journal Sentinal

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a case that found Wisconsin Republicans overreached in 2011 by drawing legislative districts that were so favorable to them that they violated the U.S. Constitution. In a related ruling Monday, the high court handed Republicans a victory by blocking a lower court ruling that the state develop new maps by Nov. 1. Democrats and those aligned with them took that order as a sign they could lose the case. The case is being watched nationally because it will likely resolve whether maps of lawmakers’ districts can be so one-sided that they violate the constitutional rights of voters. The question has eluded courts for decades. The court’s ultimate ruling could shift how legislative and congressional lines are drawn — and thus who controls statehouses and Congress. “This is a blockbuster. This could become the most important election law case in years if not decades,” said Joshua Douglas, a University of Kentucky College of Law professor and co-editor of the book “Election Law Stories.”

Canada: Despite risk of cyber attacks, political parties still handle Canadians’ data with no rules in place | Toronto Star

Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould says it’s not the time to implement basic privacy and security rules for political parties’ collection of Canadians’ personal data, despite warning that those parties are vulnerable to cyber attacks. Speaking with the Star on Friday, Gould said she decided on a voluntary approach for parties to meet and discuss vulnerabilities with the Communications Security Establishment, Canada’s electronic spying and cyber defence agency. “I think it’s important that we respect the independence of political parties, and we ensure that they are able to make those decisions (around cyber security),” Gould said in an interview.

Papua New Guinea: PNG set for costly, unpredictable poll | Nikkei Asian Review

Papua New Guinea is about to start its ninth general election, with voting taking place between June 24 and July 8, followed by counting over subsequent weeks. The coalition government led by Prime Minister Peter O’Neill enters the election under siege, facing battles on political, legal and economic fronts. From the outside, O’Neill looks to be in a strong position. His government holds a significant majority in parliament, and the opposition is fractured. However, alliances in Papua New Guinea are often unstable, and the result of the election is far from certain. O’Neill, then treasurer, wrested power in 2011 from long-serving Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare, widely known as Papua New Guinea’s “Grand Chief.” The country was starting the construction of its largest natural resource project, a $19 billion liquefied natural gas project that was expected to transform the nation’s economy.

National: If Voting Machines Were Hacked, Would Anyone Know? | NPR

As new reports emerge about Russian-backed attempts to hack state and local election systems, U.S. officials are increasingly worried about how vulnerable American elections really are. While the officials say they see no evidence that any votes were tampered with, no one knows for sure. Voters were assured repeatedly last year that foreign hackers couldn’t manipulate votes because, with few exceptions, voting machines are not connected to the Internet. “So how do you hack something in cyberspace, when it’s not in cyberspace?” Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler said shortly before the 2016 election. But even if most voting machines aren’t connected to the Internet, says cybersecurity expert Jeremy Epstein, “they are connected to something that’s connected to something that’s connected to the Internet.” … While it’s unclear if any of the recipients took the bait in the email attack, University of Michigan computer scientist Alex Halderman says it’s just the kind of phishing campaign someone would launch if they wanted to manipulate votes.

National: Russian Cyber Hacks on U.S. Electoral System Far Wider Than Previously Known | Bloomberg

Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump’s election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported. In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said.

Editorials: The Invisibles: The cruel Catch-22 of being poor with no ID | Patrick Marion Bradley/The Washington Post

Patricia Brown couldn’t prove her identity. On a Saturday morning in May last year, she rushed into the basement of Washington’s Foundry United Methodist Church, frantic that she would miss its I.D. Ministry hours. She took deep breaths as she reached the bright-yellow room crowded with narrow tables, where people sat poring over papers. Without valid identification, she couldn’t get housing or work, her food stamps or medication. She sat in a metal chair beside me, wiping away sweat from her forehead. The volunteer across from us looked concerned as Brown reviewed an intake checklist: Social Security card? No. Birth certificate? No. ID? Expired. “So, we don’t have anything?” the volunteer asked. No. Nothing. I’d seen situations like Brown’s many times. I volunteered at the I.D. Ministry from January 2015 to March 2016. Two Saturday mornings a month, I would help the ministry’s poor or homeless clients navigate the bureaucracy of acquiring government identification. For most people, replacing a lost driver’s license or other ID is an inconvenience but not an ordeal. For Foundry’s clients, however, the path to an ID is more like a high-stakes test of endurance and resourcefulness.

Georgia: Will the Georgia Special Election Get Hacked? | Politico

Last August, when the FBI reported that hackers were probing voter registration databases in more than a dozen states, prompting concerns about the integrity of the looming presidential election, Logan Lamb decided he wanted to get his hands on a voting machine. A 29-year-old former cybersecurity researcher with the federal government’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, Lamb, who now works for a private internet security firm in Georgia, wanted to assess the security of the state’s voting systems. When he learned that Kennesaw State University’s Center for Election Systems tests and programs voting machines for the entire state of Georgia, he searched the center’s website. “I was just looking for PDFs or documents,” he recalls, hoping to find anything that might give him a little more sense of the center’s work. But his curiosity turned to alarm when he encountered a number of files, arranged by county, that looked like they could be used to hacked an election. Lamb wrote an automated script to scrape the site and see what was there, then went off to lunch while the program did its work. When he returned, he discovered that the script had downloaded 15 gigabytes of data.

Maryland: Elections board says it detected suspicious activity last fall | Baltimore Sun

Maryland’s State Board of Elections detected “suspicious activity” on the computer system it uses for online voter registration before last fall’s election and called in cybersecurity experts to evaluate it, administrator Linda H. Lamone said Wednesday. Lamone’s disclosure came in response to an inquiry by The Baltimore Sun amid reports that Russian cyberattacks had breached election systems in 39 states. Lamone said the system was not penetrated. She said the activity did not compromise vote tabulation.

Pennsylvania: Lawsuit Says House Redistricting Is Partisan Gerrymander | The New York Times

Voting-rights advocates in Pennsylvania filed suit on Thursday to nullify the state’s congressional-district map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, joining other court battles over the role of politics in redistricting already being waged in three other states. It is the latest major legal effort arguing that gerrymanders have become so egregious they are subverting democracy and creating legislative races with predetermined results. In a tactical twist, however, the Pennsylvania lawsuit was filed in a state court, which means that if the plaintiffs prevail, the ruling would set no precedent for challenges in other states. The three other lawsuits, in Maryland, North Carolina and Wisconsin, were filed in federal court and argue that the maps of congressional or state legislative districts violate the federal Constitution.

Puerto Rico: Governor pushes statehood after boycott-plagued vote | Politico

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló on Thursday demanded that the U.S. government recognize his commonwealth as the 51st state, citing the island’s overwhelming vote for statehood four days ago. He faces long odds. “The U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico have taken a stand and have pleaded a choice,” said Rossello, speaking in a small, half-empty room occupied by reporters and his own staff at the National Press Club in Washington. Yet while 97 percent of those who participated backed statehood in the June 11 vote, the nonbinding referendum was boycotted by opposition parties, who either support the current commonwealth status or independence. As a result, less than a quarter of eligible voters cast ballots. Héctor Ferrer, the head of the opposition Popular Democratic Party, called the referendum “a rigged process,” in an interview with POLITICO this month.

Texas: Could Travis County Have The Best Bet Against Election Hacking? | Texas Monthly

Revelations that Russian hackers tried to break into Dallas County’s web servers, likely with the intention of accessing voter registration files, in the lead up to last November’s election renewed concerns about Texas election security. Both Wednesday night’s news out of Dallas and a Bloomberg report on Monday—which said that the Russian hacking attempts affected 39 states—are forcing states to look inward and re-examine the security of their local and state-level electoral technologies. The particular targets of Russian hackers were the accounts of elections officials and voter registration rolls, which are connected to the internet and are unlike the voting systems that actually do the recording and vote tallying. But a possible security breach of one area of electoral technologies has the potential to ripple out and affect the integrity of other ones. “The reason why this whole Russian hacking thing is a wake-up call is because we’ve been caught not paying as much attention as we should have in an area that all of us didn’t think was that vulnerable,” Dana DeBeauvoir, the Travis County clerk since 1987, says. “And yet it has turned out to be extremely vulnerable in ways we did not expect.”

Canada: Expats fret bill allowing them to vote is dying, despite Liberal promises | Canadian Press

Disenfranchised expat Canadians are questioning whether the Liberal government is deliberately allowing legislation aimed at restoring their voting rights to wither on the vine. The concern comes as the country’s top court set a new date for hearing their constitutional battle against provisions that strip Canadians abroad for more than five years from voting in federal elections. The Supreme Court of Canada agreed just ahead of a scheduled hearing in February to a government request for an adjournment given the introduction of Bill C-33 in late November.

Germany: Germany Builds an Election Firewall to Fight Russian Hackers | Bloomberg

In March and April hackers tried to infiltrate computers of think tanks associated with Germany’s top two political parties. A year earlier, scammers set up a fake server in Latvia to flood German lawmakers with phishing emails. And in 2015 criminals breached the network of the German Parliament, stealing 16 gigabytes of data. Although there’s no definitive proof, the attacks have been linked to Pawn Storm, a shadowy group with ties to Russian intelligence agencies—raising the possibility that the Kremlin might disrupt a September vote in which Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strongest critic in Europe, is seeking a fourth term. “There’s increasing evidence of attempts to influence the election” by Russia, says Hans-Georg Maassen, head of BfV, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. “We expect another jump in cyberattacks ahead of the vote.” While polls show Merkel is likely to defeat the left-leaning Social Democratic Party (SPD), the concern is that the Kremlin will try to strengthen the far-right Alternative for Germany and turn the estimated 2.5 million voters who speak Russian against her. “Cybersecurity is a top priority, and Chancellor Merkel is taking it very seriously,” says Arne Schönbohm, president of the BSI, the country’s top technology security agency.

National: Top-Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election | The Intercept

Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept. The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light. While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying “raw” intelligence on which the analysis is based. A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.

National: Comey Says Russian Hackers Targeted ‘Hundreds’ of Election-Related Entities, and the Real Number ‘Could Be More Than 1,000’ | Nextgov

At the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday, committee Chairman Richard Burr asked James Comey to describe the scope of Russian-led “cyber intrusions” that took place during the 2016 election season. There was “a massive effort to target government and non-governmental—near governmental—agencies like nonprofits,” said Comey, the former FBI director. “What would be the estimate of how many entities out there the Russians specifically targeted in that time frame?” Burr asked. “It’s hundreds,” Comey said. “I suppose it could be more than 1,000, but it’s at least hundreds.”

Editorials: Russia’s attempt to hack voting systems shows that our elections need better security | Bruce Schneier/The Washington Post

This week brought new public evidence about Russian interference in the 2016 election. On Monday, the Intercept published a top-secret National Security Agency document describing Russian hacking attempts against the U.S. election system. While the attacks seem more exploratory than operational — and there’s no evidence that they had any actual effect — they further illustrate the real threats and vulnerabilities facing our elections, and they point to solutions. The document describes how the Russian GRU attacked a company called VR Systems that, according to its website, provides software to manage voter rolls in eight states. The August 2016 attack was successful, and the attackers used the information they stole from the company’s network to launch targeted attacks against 122 local election officials on Oct. 27, 12 days before the election. … This hack will certainly come up at the Senate hearing where former FBI director James B. Comey is scheduled to testify Thursday. Last year, there were several stories about voter databases being targeted by Russia. Last August, the FBI confirmed that the Russians successfully hacked voter databases in Illinois and Arizona. And a month later, an unnamed Department of Homeland Security official said that the Russians targeted voter databases in 20 states. Again, we don’t know of anything that came of these hacks, but expect Comey to be asked about them. Unfortunately, any details he does know are almost certainly classified, and won’t be revealed in open testimony.

Georgia: Ruling on paper-ballot suit in Georgia’s 6th District coming soon | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Voters in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District will likely know by week’s end whether they can continue using electronic machines or will have to cast ballots on paper. A decision to go with paper ballots would all but void the state’s current voting system with less than two weeks to go before a key election. A Fulton County judge heard eight hours of testimony and arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit calling for paper ballots in the hotly contested June 20 runoff between Republican Karen Handel and Democrat Jon Ossoff.

Maine: Ranked-choice voting bills go to full Legislature for debate | Portland Press Herald

A committee of lawmakers was unable to reach a consensus recommendation Thursday on two ranked-choice voting bills submitted in response to legal questions about the first-in-the-nation system approved by voters in November. In an often confusing work session, the Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee voted 6-6-1 on the bills. One sought to send a constitutional amendment to voters, and one proposed an outright repeal of the measure. The division means the full Legislature will have to decide which of five different options it likes best.

Missouri: Civil rights groups sue to block Missouri’s new voter ID law | St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The American Civil Liberties Union and another civil rights group filed suit Thursday seeking to stop implementation of Missouri’s new photo ID voting law in advance of a July 11 St. Louis special election, claiming the law is an attempt to disenfranchise voters. The suit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court in Jefferson City, alleges the state has failed to provide adequate public education about the new requirements. “Voters were promised that this law was not about disenfranchising the most vulnerable in our state,” Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU of Missouri, said in a written statement. “The state’s lack of funding and implementation of this law tells another story.”

North Carolina: US Supreme Court affirms North Carolina legislative districts as racial gerrymanders | News & Observer

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday affirmed a lower court ruling that found 28 North Carolina legislative districts to be illegal racial gerrymanders that diluted the overall impact of black voters. But the justices did not agree with the panel of three federal judges who decided that new maps should be drawn and special elections should be held in 2017 to correct the district lines approved by the Republican-led General Assembly in 2011. The Supreme Court order states the panel had not provided a strong enough basis for why it took the extraordinary step of calling for special elections this year. The order sends the case back to the lower court for reconsideration.

Puerto Rico: Puerto Rico votes again on statehood but US not ready to put 51st star on the flag | The Guardian

The hall is a sea of pink and white. About 350 Puerto Ricans, mostly women, have come to hear their First Lady speak in what they hope will be the final push towards a new relationship between their island and the United States. When Beatriz Rosselló, the 32-year-old wife of the governor of Puerto Rico, finally appears at the rally outside the capital San Juan, the room erupts into a frenzy of flag-waving. The American Stars and Stripes with its 50 stars, and the Puerto Rican emblem, with its single one, intertwine amid the flurry, giving the illusion that they have fused: 51 stars in a single banner of red, white and blue. … Rosselló and her supporters of the governing Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) hope to take that spirit of unification to the polling stations on Sunday when Puerto Rico holds its fifth plebiscite on statehood in 50 years. The ambition is to deliver such a resounding cry from the island’s 3.4 million citizens that Washington will be forced to take Puerto Rico on board as the 51st state of the United States.

Texas: Scrap new Texas voter ID law, plaintiffs tell federal judge | The Texas Tribune

A new law softening Texas’ strict voter identification requirements doesn’t absolve the lawmakers from intentionally discriminating against minority voters in 2011 — nor would it properly accommodate those voters going forward, the state’s opponents in a long-running lawsuit argued Wednesday. “Unfortunately, what the court is in the midst of is a larceny in progress,” Chad Dunn, a lawyer representing some of the challengers, told U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, accusing the Texas Legislature of trying to skirt responsibility for its sins of discrimination — reminiscent of state actions in the 1950s and 1960s. “It is a litigation strategy masquerading as a legislative function.”

Italy: Pressure builds for early Italy vote after electoral reform deal unravels | Reuters

A deal between Italy’s main political parties on electoral reform unraveled on Thursday, leading to calls for a snap election that could usher in more instability in the euro zone’s third largest economy. Two major opposition parties, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and the right-wing Northern League called for an immediate vote, and the ruling Democratic Party (PD) said it now seemed hard for the government to carry on. An accord in favor of a proportional representation voting system based on the German model collapsed after the PD lost a parliamentary vote on a minor, proposed amendment.

United Kingdom: Theresa May Loses Overall Majority in U.K. Parliament | The New York Times

Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain suffered a major setback in a tumultuous election on Thursday, losing her overall majority in Parliament and throwing her government into uncertainty less than two weeks before it is scheduled to begin negotiations over withdrawing from the European Union. Mrs. May, the Conservative leader, called the snap election three years early, expecting to cruise to a smashing victory that would win her a mandate to see Britain through the long and difficult negotiations with European leaders over the terms of leaving the union. But according to results reported early Friday morning, the extraordinary gamble Mrs. May made in calling the election backfired. She could no longer command enough seats to avoid a hung Parliament, meaning that no party has enough lawmakers to establish outright control.

Venezuela: Maduro pushes new Venezuela vote, opposition calls for massive sit-in | AFP