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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, two people familiar with the matter said. The agencies involved in the inquiry are the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and representatives of the director of national intelligence, the sources said. Investigators are examining how money may have moved from the Kremlin to covertly help Trump win, the two sources said. One of the allegations involves whether a system for routinely paying thousands of Russian-American pensioners may have been used to pay some email hackers in the United States or to supply money to intermediaries who would then pay the hackers, the two sources said. The informal, inter-agency working group began to explore possible Russian interference last spring, long before the FBI received information from a former British spy hired to develop politically damaging and unverified research about Trump, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the inquiry.

Editorials: Jeff Sessions and Martin Luther King | USA Today

As the nation marks the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, 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. President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for that job, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is a troubling one on that score. While Sessions’ confirmation seems almost inevitable after a polished performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, the nominee’s encouraging promises cannot erase his often hostile record on civil rights, nor grave concerns about whether he will rise to the toughest challenges of the job. At times in the recent past, Sessions’ initial instincts have been the opposite of what one would seek in the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Asked in October about Trump’s remarks that he could grab women by their genitals, Sessions said it would be “a stretch” to “characterize that as sexual assault.” In 2015, he decried the Supreme Court ruling granting same-sex couples the right to marry, while two years earlier he celebrated the Supreme Court ruling obliterating the central enforcement tool in the Voting Rights Act.

Alabama: Federal judges rule Alabama must redraw legislative districts | AL.com

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. The districts are part of the district map drawn and approved by the Republican-led Alabama Legislature after the 2010 Census and were used in the 2014 election. The judges ruled for the plaintiffs on 12 of the 36 districts in dispute and enjoined the state from using those district lines again. The court ruled in favor of the state on the other 24 districts that were challenged. All 140 seats in the Alabama Legislature will be up for election next year. One of the three judges, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, issued a separate order dissenting, in part, from the other two judges, Circuit Judge Bill Pryor and Chief District Judge Keith Watkins.

Kansas: Kobach seeks authority for bifurcated elections; downplays issue of missing registrations | Lawrence Journal World

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. It would apply to people who register to vote using a federal process that does not require people to show proof of citizenship, ensuring that they could only vote in federal elections, not state or local elections. “It’s sort of an interim bill during litigation to keep the integrity of the (proof of citizenship) law while it’s being litigated,” Kobach told the Senate Committee on Ethics, Elections and Local Government. The bill comes in response to a string of state and federal court rulings leading up to the 2016 elections that all but nullified the proof of citizenship law that he championed in 2011.

North Carolina: US Supreme Court makes no decision on redistricting case requiring 2017 elections | News & Observer

The U.S. Supreme Court justices offered no clue Thursday as to whether special elections ordered for North Carolina in 2017 will move ahead. The justices went behind closed doors together in the morning. Materials had been distributed to the eight Supreme Court members on the North Carolina redistricting case in which a federal three-judge panel found 28 state House and Senate districts to be unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. The justices issued no order – leaving uncertainty about whether the high court would take up the case, and if so how quickly it would be heard and decided. The three-judge panel issued its ruling in August. In November, after voters went to the polls to elect candidates in the districts that had been declared unconstitutional, the judges ordered new maps to be drawn for the 28 flawed districts by March and elections held in any of the altered districts this year.

Texas: Court grants request to delay Texas voter ID hearing | San Antonio Express-News

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. Lawyers for the department asked for a delay in the hearing scheduled for Tuesday, citing the change in presidential administrations.“Because of the change in administration, the Department of Justice also experienced a transition in leadership,” the department’s petition states. “The United States requires additional time to brief the new leadership of the department on this case and the issues to be addressed at that hearing before making any representations to the court.”In the past, the agency has asked that hearings in the case be expedited because of the issues involved.

The Gambia: Yahya Jammeh leaves the Gambia after 22 years of rule | The Guardian

Yahya Jammeh, the former Gambian president, has left the country after he finally agreed to step down following 22 years of rule. Jammeh and his family headed into political exile on Saturday night, ending a 22-year reign of fear and a post-election political standoff that threatened to provoke a regional military intervention when he clung to power. As he mounted the stairs to the plane, he turned to the crowd, kissed his Qur’an and waved one last time to supporters, including soldiers who cried at his departure. The flight came almost 24 hours after Jammeh announced on state television he was ceding power to the newly inaugurated Adama Barrow, in response to mounting international pressure calling for his departure. Though tens of thousands of Gambians had fled the country during his rule, Jammeh supporters flocked to the airport to see him walk the red carpet to his plane. Jammeh landed in Guinea an hour later and members of his family emerged from the plane, though the country might not be his final destination.

Germany: How to influence voters and tamper with the German election | Deutsche Welle

With eight months until Germans go to the polls, it seems not only politicians will be vying for voters’ attention. 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. In a report late last year, the Atlantic Council think-tank warned that Moscow viewed what it said were “the West’s best virtues – pluralism and openness – as vulnerabilities to be exploited.” It detailed a Kremlin “toolkit of influence,” which sought to undermine healthy democracies in Europe and elsewhere, by using information warfare to undermine the public’s trust in the political system. DW spoke to Dr. Stefan Meister, a Russian foreign policy analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations, and learned of six main tactics that the Kremlin appears to have already put in place.

National: DHS Adds Elections Machines, Systems to Critical Infrastructure List | eWeek

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security designated the nation’s election technology and systems as critical infrastructure, giving state election officials access to technical and policy aid from the agency. The move, announced Jan. 6, makes the election infrastructure in the United States part of the government-facilities critical infrastructure sector, one of the 16 sectors deemed crucial by the U.S. government. Other sectors include health care, energy and the defense industrial base. While some states have reportedly opposed the designation, the DHS assured election officials that states would still have full oversight and responsibility for running elections. … Election-security groups have long called for the infrastructure to be designated critical. Verified Voting, a group of voting experts, pushed for election systems to be deemed critical since 2013, Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, told eWEEK in an e-mail.“Voting systems should receive at least as much attention and care as other critical infrastructure systems do,” Smith said.

National: Jeff Sessions views on voting rights debated by panel during confirmation hearing | AL.com

The Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to remove a vital piece of the 1965 Voting Rights Act returned to the fore Wednesday during an initial panel discussion at Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing as the next attorney general. But the morning hearing, during which issues of Sessions’ political and prosecutorial record were debated by his opponents and supporters, was overshadowed by the star power of the afternoon panel and the abrupt ending of their appearance. The afternoon hearing was adjourned after each panel member made introductory remarks. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, ended the hearings and instructed everyone that written statements can be submitted into the record until Tuesday of next week. Beth Levin, a spokeswoman with Grassley, said a committee vote has not been set. She said that the committee cannot act until the nomination has been officially sent to Congress, “which can’t happen until after” President-elect Donald Trump is sworn into office on Jan. 20.

Editorials: Running for president showed me how our elections are broken. We can fix them | Jill Stein/The Guardian

After a divisive election, with record levels of public distrust for a political system dominated by Super Pacs and lobbyists, ordinary Americans joined together to begin healing our wounded democracy – by verifying the vote in three key states. For three weeks, a historic recount campaign pushed forward in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, defying political blockades, bureaucratic hurdles, legal maneuvering and financial intimidation. This unprecedented effort by more than 10,000 volunteers and 161,000 donors coalesced in a matter of days. It affirmed the determination of the American people to raise the bar for our democracy. At its core, the recount essentially asked one question: do we have a voting system we can trust, that is accurate secure and just, and free from modern-day Jim Crow in our elections? The answer, we found, is a resounding “no”.

California: Clock ticking on open source voting effort as San Francisco extends voting machine contract | San Francisco Examiner

San Francisco is expected today to extend a voting machine contract for two years, even as The City plans to switch over to an open source voting system. An update on those open source voting plans are expected to be provided during the upcoming budget process before the Board of Supervisors later this year as the board is expected to approve the extension today. In the meantime, John Arntz, director of the Elections Department, said The City needs to extend the contract with Dominion, formerly known as Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc., for the two scheduled upcoming elections in 2018 – the Statewide Primary Election on June 5, 2018, and the General Election on Nov. 6, 2018. The two-year contract extension from Dec. 11, 2016 through Dec. 31, 2018, totals $2.3 million, for a total of $21 million since The City first entered into an agreement with the voting machine company in 2007 through a competitively bid process. There is also a chance there may be a special November election through a local signature gathering effort.

Michigan: Justice Department sues Eastpointe, cites voting rights violations | Detroit Free Press

The Justice Department is suing the city of Eastpointe, alleging that it violates the Voting Rights Act by denying black residents an equal opportunity to elect city council members of their choice. The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in Detroit, says no black candidate has ever served on the Eastpointe City Council and that white voters have consistently opposed and defeated black voters’ preferred black candidates. It seeks a court order that would force Eastpointe to change how its city council is elected. It currently consists of the mayor and four council members who serve staggered four-year terms. Of the 32,000 people living in Eastpointe in 2010, nearly 10,000 were black, according to the U.S. Census. Current estimates place the city’s black population at closer to 40%.

North Carolina: US Supreme Court puts 2017 legislative election, redistricting on hold pending appeal | News & Observer

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday put a court-ordered legislative redistricting and 2017 special election on hold while it reviews Republican legislators’ appeal in an ongoing lawsuit. A lower federal court ruled months ago that the current legislative districts are an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, and it ordered the General Assembly to draw new districts by March 15 and hold a rare off-year election in altered districts this November. Tuesday’s Supreme Court order puts that order on hold until a Jan. 19 conference among the justices at which they will consider an appeal seeking to keep the current districts in place. From that conference behind closed doors, it could become clearer whether there will be elections held in 2017. The justices could immediately dismiss the appeal and keep the order for new maps and new elections this year. Or they could ask attorneys involved in the case to give them more briefs in the case and set arguments for later in the year, leaving the question of an election this year ambiguous. Since the court is currently missing a ninth justice following Antonin Scalia’s death, a 4-4 decision would keep the lower court’s ruling in place.

New York: Justice Department Seeks to Join Suit Over 117,000 Purged Brooklyn Voters | The New York Times

The Justice Department announced on Thursday that it had filed a motion to join a lawsuit against the New York City Board of Elections, alleging that the board’s Brooklyn office violated federal voter registration law by erasing more than 117,000 Brooklyn voters from the rolls before the primary election simply because they had not voted in previous elections. The filing accused the board of failing to take several steps that are normally required before a voter’s name is removed, and also raised concerns about how the board oversaw the Brooklyn office’s handling of the voter rolls. The petition by the Justice Department to intervene in a lawsuit filed in November by Common Cause New York, a good-government organization, lends significant muscle to an effort to hold the agency responsible for a chaotic Primary Day in April, when many voters in Brooklyn were surprised and infuriated to learn that their voter registrations had been canceled.

Wisconsin: Recount raised ‘human error’ concerns among Wisconsin’s county clerks | Green Bay Press Gazette

Now that they’ve finished recounting roughly 3 million presidential election ballots, several clerks throughout eastern and central Wisconsin continue to worry about one aspect of the voting process. Human error. Some voters struggled to mark ballots correctly. Some made the correct marks, but used pens that scanning machines couldn’t read. Some forgot to have a witness sign an absentee ballot. Some election workers allowed unsigned absentee ballots to be counted. “One thing that surprised me (was) the amount of human errors that I’m still seeing with this election,” Fond du Lac County Clerk Lisa Freiberg said. Whether they might be able to improve the process, however, remains to be seen. Clerks agreed that machines used to tally votes worked as they were supposed to. But they also said the recount helped them discover human errors that, while they did not affect the overall outcome of the state’s presidential vote, might have been problematic in a local election in which fewer votes were cast.

The Gambia: President’s party seeks to block rival’s inauguration | Reuters

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. The question of whether Gambia can install opposition figure Adama Barrow as president is seen as a test case for African democracy in a region accustomed to coups and autocratic rule. Barrow, who won the poll and has received the support of the international community, has said he will go ahead with his inauguration on Dec. 19 despite Jammeh’s rejection of the result. Supreme Court Chief Justice Emmanuel Fagbenle, confirmed receipt of the petition, which was filed by Edward Gomez, a lawyer for Jammeh’s Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC).

Kenya: President signs election amendments law despite opposition rigging fears | Reuters

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta approved a law on Monday 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. Veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga disputed the result of the 2013 race, which he lost to Kenyatta after electronic voter identification and other election systems collapsed. He has led opposition to the new law. The build-up to the 2017 vote has already been marred by protests and clashes with police that led to at least four deaths. Last year’s demonstrations were sparked by a row over who sat on a committee overseeing the conduct of the election. The government agreed to replace the commissioners in a deal with the opposition.

National: Declassified report says Putin ‘ordered’ effort to undermine faith in U.S. election and help Trump | The Washington Post

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, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a remarkably blunt assessment released Friday. The report depicts Russian interference as unprecedented in scale, saying that Moscow’s role represented “a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort” beyond previous election-related espionage. The campaign initially sought to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, “denigrate” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and damage her expected presidency. But in time, Russia “developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump” and repeatedly sought to artificially boost his election chances.

National: US designates election infrastructure as ‘critical’ | Associated Press

Citing increasingly sophisticated cyber bad actors and an election infrastructure that’s “vital to our national interests,” 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. “Given the vital role elections play in this country, it is clear that certain systems and assets of election infrastructure meet the definition of critical infrastructure, in fact and in law,” Johnson said in a statement. He added: “Particularly in these times, this designation is simply the right and obvious thing to do.” The determination came after months of review and despite opposition from many states worried that the designation would lead to increased federal regulation or oversight on the many decentralized and locally run voting systems across the country. It was announced on the same day a declassified U.S. intelligence report said Russian President Vladimir Putin “ordered” an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. The declassified report said that Russian intelligence services had “obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple U.S. state or local electoral boards.” None of the systems targeted or compromised was involved in vote tallying, the report said.

Editorials: The Rules of the Game: A New Electoral System | Eric Maskin and Amartya Sen/The New York Review of Books

Americans have been using essentially the same rules to elect presidents since the beginning of the Republic. In the general election, each voter chooses one candidate; each state (with two current exceptions) awards all its Electoral College votes to the candidate chosen by the largest number of voters (not necessarily a majority) in that state; and the president-elect is the candidate with a majority of Electoral College votes. Primary elections for president have also remained largely unchanged since they replaced dealings in a “smoke-filled room” as the principal method for selecting Democratic and Republican nominees. In each state, every voter votes for one candidate. In some states, the delegates to the national convention are all pledged to support the candidate getting a plurality of votes (again, possibly less than a majority). In others, delegates are assigned in proportion to the total votes of the candidates. These rules are deeply flawed. For example, candidates A and B may each be more popular than C (in the sense that either would beat C in a head-to-head contest), but nevertheless each may lose to C if they both run. The system therefore fails to reflect voters’ preferences adequately. It also aggravates political polarization, gives citizens too few political options, and makes candidates spend most of their campaign time seeking voters in swing states rather than addressing the country at large.There a re several remedies. Perhaps in order of increasing chance of adoption, they are: (1) to elect the president by the national popular vote instead of the Electoral College; (2) to choose the winner in the general election according to the preferences of a majority of voters rather than a mere plurality, either nationally or by state; and, easiest of all, (3) to substitute majority for plurality rule in state primaries.

Florida: Ion Sancho, the voters’ advocate, steps down | Tallahassee Democrat

While Dave Jacobsen’s introduction hung in the air, more than 60 people rose to their feet for a standing ovation for Ion Sancho. Jacobsen had said the Leon County Elections Supervisor will be long remembered for his efforts to make voting easier and the ability to run a problem-free election. Sancho’s term as supervisor ends Tuesday. While Sancho was not available for comment for this story because his wife passed away on Wednesday, his decades-long career speaks for itself. Back in May 2016, Sancho beamed as he walked to the lectern at the Leon County Public Library. He wore an American flag bow tie. He’s an internationally-recognized elections experts and was featured in an HBO documentary 10 years ago. “The most basic civil right, no other right stands if you don’t get to vote for who represents you in government,” he said earlier when asked what he was going to talk about. Sancho has been strumming the same chord for 30 years — leafing through notebooks and recordings of radio, television or newspaper interviews the song remains the same. On this particular afternoon in May the chorus he wrote for the mix of retirees, downtown office workers, and university students was a ditty about career politicians and their bureaucratic henchmen attacking democracy’s foundation — fair, transparent elections.

Iowa: State’s top election official announces voter ID bill | Associated Press

Iowa will require voters to show identification at the polls under a bill announced Thursday by the state’s top election official, and Republicans in the new GOP-controlled Legislature have indicated a willingness to pass it. The legislation mirrors voter ID bills introduced in Republican-controlled statehouses around the United States in recent years and comes just weeks after President-elect Donald Trump questioned — with no evidence — the integrity of voting in the presidential election. “We just want to ensure that voters are who they say they are,” Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate said in releasing details. Pate’s office said a draft of the bill was not available yet, but included a plan to require Iowa residents to show an Iowa driver’s license, passport or other approved form of ID to vote. The office would distribute free state-issued IDs to existing registered voters, according to Pate, though his office is seeking $1 million to help make that happen.

North Carolina: Judges block elections board overhaul as Roy Cooper’s lawsuit pends | News & Observer

A three-judge panel Thursday upheld Gov. Roy Cooper’s request to block a revamp of the state elections board while his lawsuit makes its way through the courts. In the first hearing before the panel of judges assigned to the case this week, Greensboro attorney Jim Phillips argued for Cooper that a law adopted by the General Assembly in one of its special sessions last month violates the constitutional separation of powers. It was a similar argument to one made last week by Phillips on the eve of the date the law would have disbanded the five-member state Board of Elections and passed its duties to the state Ethics Commission. The merger was set to happen on Jan. 1, but Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens temporarily blocked the law from taking effect. His restraining order was set to expire Monday. The three-judge panel – assigned to the case because of the constitutional questions the new law raises – heard from the lawyers for nearly three hours before retreating behind closed doors. The panel contacted attorneys in the case several hours later, letting them know that they had granted Cooper’s request. They instructed Phillips to write an order, circulate it among the legislators’ lawyers and return it to them by Friday.

Texas: Federal judge: Pasadena deliberately worked to reduce voting clout of Latinos | Houston Chronicle

A federal judge in Houston dealt a major blow Friday to the City of Pasadena in a closely watched voting rights case, ruling that officials deliberately diluted the clout of Hispanic voters by revising the system for electing City Council members. Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal ordered Pasadena to revert to its previous use of single-member districts for the upcoming May elections and ruled the city would need pre-clearance from the Department of Justice for any future changes. “In Pasadena, Texas, Latino voters … do not have the same right to vote as their Anglo neighbors,” Rosenthal concluded in the 113-page decision released late Friday. Patricia Gonzales, one of the plaintiffs who filed the federal lawsuit, said fairness can be restored to the city election system. “All right,” she said, when informed of the ruling. “Now each section will be able to vote on who they want and their voices will be heard. I’m very pleased with the outcome.”

Wisconsin: Presidential Recount Expected To Come In Vastly Under Budget | Wisconsin Public Radio

The final cost of Wisconsin’s presidential recount will likely be about half of what was estimated. Seventy-one of the state’s 72 counties have reported their final recount costs to the state Elections Commission. The total is about $1.8 million. Last month, estimates from counties projected the cost of the recount to be about $3.8 million. Reid Magney, spokesman for the Elections Commission, said the overestimates were likely due to counties being “cautious” about the expense. “I think they probably, not knowing exactly what it would cost, wanted to make sure that their costs would be covered,” Magney said.

The Gambia: Army chief reverses pledge and stands by embattled president Jammeh | The Guardian