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All the counting was supposed to be all but over by Friday, but North Carolina’s too-close-to-call governor’s race remains nowhere near done, the State Board of Elections said Thursday. Election officials say delays in receiving information from the Department of Motor Vehicles are causing many of the problems. A federal judge ordered that votes of people who signed up at DMV offices must be counted unless the agency proves they refused to register. Lots of formal local challenges also are postponing final totals as state board figures late Thursday showed Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper leading McCrory by about 4,600 of the nearly 4.7 million votes already tallied. By Friday, all 100 counties were supposed to finish deciding whether to count or set aside more than 60,000 mailed-in absentee and provisional ballots statewide, unseal the voters’ choices and send updated vote totals for dozens of races to the State Board of Elections.

Texas: Both in court and under Trump, Texas Voter ID law faces uncertain future | The Texas Tribune

Five years ago, Texas passed one of the strictest Voter ID laws in the country. The legal fight began immediately and has continued through this day, with critics of the law getting some assistance from the Obama administration’s Justice Department. Now, with Republican Donald Trump set to ascend to the Oval Office, the law’s future is more uncertain than ever. Among the questions up in the air: Whom will Trump nominate to the U.S. Supreme Court seat left vacant by Antonin Scalia’s death, and how will a Trump-led Justice Department operate compared to the current administration? “We’re not going to stand idle when a law is discriminatory,” said Leah Aden, senior counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “The strategy may be different depending on who is in office, but we’ll fight it regardless of who’s in power.”

China: Voting in an election ‘with Chinese characteristics’ | AFP

When Chinese voters go to the polls, it is only to pick local representatives to advise on mundane issues like rubbish collection and parking. But when Ye Jinghuan sought election in Beijing, she was treated like an enemy of the state. Plainclothes officers tailed the 64-year old retiree as she left her home on polling day Tuesday, and she faced constant harassment from police and government officials after announcing her run, she said. The nationwide contest for spots in local legislatures, held every five years, is the only direct election in the People’s Republic of China. Authorities were eager to show off what they describe as democracy “with Chinese characteristics”, with officials ushering dozens of reporters into a polling station in Xingfu, in central Beijing. Voters filled out their pink ballot papers in front of officials, ignoring a screened-off area labelled “Secret Balloting Place”.

Haiti: Still reeling from hurricane, Haiti holds long-awaited election | Reuters

Haitians began voting in a long-delayed presidential election on Sunday, hoping a new government will lift the economy after a devastating hurricane and more than a year of political instability. First held in October 2015, the election was annulled over allegations of fraud, and a rescheduled vote was postponed last month when Hurricane Matthew struck, killing up to 1,000 people and leaving 1.4 million in need of humanitarian assistance. Homes, schools and farms across southwestern Haiti all bear the scars of Matthew, which piled fresh misery onto the nation of more than 10 million on the western half of the island of Hispaniola still recovering from a major earthquake in 2010. “We are in a political crisis. We need an elected government to get out of this situation,” said 19-year-old Launes Delmazin as he voted for the first time in a school in Les Cayes, a southwestern port ravaged by Matthew last month.

National: Voters encounter some malfunctioning machines, other headaches on Election Day | The Washington Post

As voters flooded polling places across the country on Election Day, some reported problems such as broken machines, long lines and voter intimidation in states ranging from Texas to Pennsylvania. While voting appeared to proceed without headaches in many locations, election observers said they expect a significant increase in the number of issues reported nationwide compared to earlier presidential elections. In particular, voters in a handful of jurisdictions across the country encountered problems with malfunctioning voting machines, highlighting issues with the aging infrastructure expected to support tens of millions of voters turning out on Election Day. One major with some technological problems was Durham County, N.C., which has more than a quarter-million residents outside Raleigh. Officials there had technical issues with electronic poll books used to check in voters. As a result, state authorities told Durham officials to use paper poll books, rather than electronic ones, eventually leading to some delays. (Durham was already using paper ballots.) Local officials asked the North Carolina State Board of Elections to extend voting hours in some precincts, a request that was echoed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager. On Tuesday evening, state officials agreed to extend voting in eight precincts, pushing back the closing of polls by as much as an hour in some Durham locations and by 30 minutes in Columbus County. A group had also filed a lawsuit Tuesday afternoon seeking to keep the Durham polls open until 9 p.m.

National: US election: all quiet on the cyber front | Sydney Morning Herald

Despite concerns about possible attempts to hack or otherwise tamper with the US election, voting appears to have gone smoothly, with no attacks or intrusions. The Department of Homeland Security said it had no reports of election-related cyber breaches. … “All the discussions this year about security gave states another measure of protection,” said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a non-partisan, non-profit organisation that advocates for elections accuracy. That work also helped minimise the effects caused by breakdowns of voting machines or crashes of registration databases. In Smith’s experience, the resiliency of the voting system after something goes wrong is what keeps small problems small. For example in Colorado, the state’s electronic voter registration system went down for 29 minutes, from 2.47pm to 3.16pm local time, according to Secretary of State’s spokeswoman Lynn Bartels.

Editorials: American Elections Will Be Hacked | Bruce Schneier/The New York Times

It’s over. The voting went smoothly. As of the time of writing, there are no serious fraud allegations, nor credible evidence that anyone hacked the voting rolls or voting machines. And most important, the results are not in doubt. While we may breathe a collective sigh of relief about that, we can’t ignore the issue until the next election. The risks remain. As computer security experts have been saying for years, our newly computerized voting systems are vulnerable to attack by both individual hackers and government-sponsored cyberwarriors. It is only a matter of time before such an attack happens. Electronic voting machines can be hacked, and those machines that do not include a paper ballot that can verify each voter’s choice can be hacked undetectably. Voting rolls are also vulnerable; they are all computerized databases whose entries can be deleted or changed to sow chaos on Election Day.

Verified Voting Blog: Election integrity: Missing components to remedy

This oped appeared originally at the The Hill on November 8, 2016.

Our election systems’ vulnerabilities received unprecedented bipartisan and media attention from mid-summer onward, sparked by the apparently Russian origins of hacks into the Democrat’s communications systems. If tampering with the U.S. election process was a goal, then election technologies used for voter registration and vote tabulation, and the Internet itself, were hypothesized as additional potential targets. Further disclosures added fire to the considerable smoke.

While correction of U.S. election vulnerabilities may appear to be largely a simple matter of upgrading the election technologies, including voting devices and voter registration databases, that focus alone would be window dressing. It would conceal and permit continuation of a broad array of vulnerabilities warranting reassessment and remedy. Indeed, a full cyber risk assessment of our “mission critical” election processes would highlight a broad range of soft points that include many not yet a part of public and policymaker scrutiny. Outdated technology may appear to be the easiest correction, yet it is not. Other weak links in the process will defeat secure and resilient elections processes unless they, too, are redressed—like any weak chain.

The illustrative list below elucidates some agenda items relevant on the eve of casting, counting, and reporting tallies — and on checking the accuracy of vote tallies if hacking may have occurred.

Connecticut: Glitches plague state election results website | Connecticut Post

The statewide debut of an election results website was marked by growing pains, including the deletion of tallies from Tuesday’s watershed presidential contest that forced the system to be temporarily shut down. This was the first time all 169 Connecticut municipalities were required to use the system, which cost the state between $350,000 and $450,000 as part of a broader technology upgrade. Participation had been voluntary for the presidential primary in April, and for the August primaries. From Bridgeport to Danbury to Greenwich, local registrars of voters reported multiple kinks in the system, from lost data to network crashes, and then being unable to log back in to complete their work. The registrars say that having a centralized website is more efficient than the past practice of faxing in the results to the state and waiting up to two days for the information to be posted. But the execution, they say, was a mess.

Missouri: Voters support campaign contribution limits and voter ID requirements | St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Missourians on Tuesday appear to have overwhelmingly voted to reinstate campaign donation limits and to require photo identification for future elections but snuffed out two proposed cigarette tax increases. … The campaign donation proposal, if it withstands an expected court challenge, will cap donations at $2,600 per election for individual candidates for state and local offices and $25,000 for political parties. The measure, Constitutional Amendment 2, also makes it illegal in most cases to shuffle money between committees. “It just resonated with the people,” said Todd Jones of the Missouri Campaign Contribution Reform Initiative, speaking of the wide margin late in the evening. “They finally want to take back control of their government. They haven’t had that opportunity when people are writing million-dollar checks” to campaigns. Opponents contended that the current system ensures transparency and that the limits would unfairly restrict political expression.

North Carolina: The governor’s race still isn’t over. And it’s about to get even uglier. | The Washington Post

One of the most hotly contested races of 2016 is still being contested. And the North Carolina governor’s race could drag on past Thanksgiving in an ugly way: The Democrat is declaring victory but the Republican incumbent is refusing to concede, and his campaign is raising the possibility of voter fraud. There could even be a recount. Cooper declared victory early Wednesday with a 5,000-vote lead over McCrory out of 4.6 million votes cast. That’s a 0.5 percentage point lead, and it’s small enough that McCrory isn’t willing to concede until thousands of provisional, absentee and military ballots are counted and the election results certified by state election officials. In fact, on Thursday afternoon, McCrory’s campaign announced they hired a lawyer and set up a legal defense fund in preparation to contest the results.

Wisconsin: Milwaukee elections head says voter ID law hurt city’s turnout | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin’s voter ID law caused problems at the polls in the city and likely contributed to lower voter turnout, Milwaukee’s elections chief said Thursday. The city saw a decline of some 41,000 voters in Tuesday’s election compared with 2012, when President Barack Obama won broad support in Milwaukee and coasted to re-election. “We saw some of the greatest declines were in the districts we projected would have the most trouble with voter ID requirements,” said Neil Albrecht, executive director of the city’s Election Commission. …Albrecht acknowledged that some of the drop-off in turnout had to do with the candidates and less enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Austria: Interior Minister says no further delay to December 4 election, dismisses ballot scare | Reuters

Austria said on Tuesday there was no reason to delay again its presidential election due on Dec. 4 after newspapers reported it was possible to order postal ballots online using fake passport numbers. A new flaw in the electoral system would be a major embarrassment. A re-run of the presidential run-off held in May was already ordered because rules on ballot-counting were broken, which in turn was postponed because of faulty envelopes. Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka, however, said there was no reason for yet another delay of the re-run between the far-right Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer and former Greens leader Alexander Van der Bellen. Having narrowly lost the neck-and-neck contest in May, Hofer could become the European Union’s first far-right head of state. The post is largely ceremonial but the president heads the armed forces and can play an important role in the formation of coalition governments. Asked if there was any reason to postpone the vote, Sobotka said: “No, absolutely certainly not.”

Germany: Merkel warns of Russian cyber attacks in German elections | Deutsche Welle

Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on Tuesday that Russia could try to influence next year’s German national elections through cyber warfare and disinformation, an assertion that comes after Washington blamed Moscow for interfering in the US election. Merkel told a conference that Germany already faced “a daily task” of responding to Russian cyber attacks and a disinformation campaign. “We are already, even now, having to deal with information out of Russia or with internet attacks that are of Russian origin or with news which sows false information,” Merkel said alongside her Norwegian counterpart Erna Solberg.

National: Scary Dogs! Rigged Machines! Votes From the Grave! This Election, Paranoia Reigns | The New York Times

There was the myth of Trump supporters sending wild dogs to scare off black voters in Ohio. In Texas, some of the voting booths supposedly became possessed, switching ballots cast for Donald J. Trump to Hillary Clinton. And then there was the amateur genealogist said to be committing voter fraud by jotting down names found on gravestones. A week before Election Day, warnings of a rigged vote, amplified largely by Mr. Trump himself, have led to anxiety across the country about the integrity of the electoral process. In some instances, the concerns appear to be justified, but many have resulted from simple glitches or a heightened sense of suspicion. In any case, a year of extraordinary political polarization has left voters increasingly wary about their fellow citizens and the credibility of the country’s method for picking a president. “I think there’s definitely more paranoia this year,” said Pamela Smith, the president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that promotes the integrity of elections. “There has been a lot of talk about election rigging. If you think an election is going to be rigged, then you look at everything through that filter.” Many of the rumors of rigged votes have taken on a life of their own on social media, where conspiracy theories flourish and accusations fly. The reports have left election officials and the local authorities scrambling to verify claims of mischief and, often, to offer reality checks.

National: White House Readies to Fight Election Day Cyber Mayhem | NBC

The U.S. government believes hackers from Russia or elsewhere may try to undermine next week’s presidential election and is mounting an unprecedented effort to counter their cyber meddling, American officials told NBC News. The effort is being coordinated by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, but reaches across the government to include the CIA, the National Security Agency and other elements of the Defense Department, current and former officials say. Russia has been warned that any effort to manipulate the actual voting or vote counting would be viewed as a serious breach, intelligence officials say. “The Russians are in an offensive mode and [the U.S. is] working on strategies to respond to that, and at the highest levels,” said Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. Officials are alert for any attempts to create Election Day chaos, and say steps are being taken to prepare for worst-case scenarios, including a cyber-attack that shuts down part of the power grid or the internet. But what is more likely, multiple U.S. officials say, is a lower-level effort by hackers from Russia or elsewhere to peddle misinformation by manipulating Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.

National: Military, overseas votes raise risk of hacked election | Politico

Tens of thousands of military and overseas Americans casting ballots online this fall face a high risk of being hacked, threatening to cause chaos around Election Day if their votes get manipulated or they transmit viruses to state and local election offices. More than 30 states — including battlegrounds such as Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada and North Carolina — allow various methods of online voting for citizens living outside the U.S. While state officials insist their ballots will be counted without any serious problems, ample warnings are nonetheless being sounded from the left, right and even inside the federal government that internet votes can’t be securely transmitted in today’s everything-is-hackable environment. “It’s not something you would do with your Social Security number. You shouldn’t do it with your ballot,” warned Susannah Goodman, director of voting integrity at Common Cause. It’s a point of pride for many states that Americans abroad and overseas troops can even cast a ballot online using the latest in technology, giving these voters a say on their next commander in chief even if they’re stationed in a remote or even hostile location, like Afghanistan or Iraq.

National: E-Voting Refuses to Die Even Though It’s Neither Secure nor Secret | Scientific American

In theory, using the internet or e-mail to vote for the U.S. president sounds like a good idea. It would be easier than rushing to the nearest polling station before or after work, and it might pull in notoriously apathetic younger voters already living most of their lives via screens. But in reality these online channels have proved to be terribly insecure, plagued by cyber attacks and malicious software able to penetrate supposedly well-protected financial, medical and even military systems. Such security concerns are the most frequent and convincing arguments against online voting—there is no way to fully secure e-voting systems from cyber attack. Online voting systems are also expensive and often require voters to waive their right to a secret ballot. Still, at least 31 states and the District of Columbia do let military and expatriate voters use the internet to submit marked ballots via e-mailed attachments, fax software or a Web portal according to Verified Voting, a nonprofit organization that studies the security of electronic voting systems. Twenty-one of those states and D.C. let voters e-mail or fax in their ballots, and another five states allow some people to cast their votes via special Web sites. “You can make voting more secret with a Web site because there is no e-mail address to trace a vote back to but the information about a person’s vote and their voter ID number are still out there on a server,” says Jeremy Epstein, a senior computer scientist at nonprofit research organization SRI International.

Arizona: US appeals court says Arizona precinct voting rule stands | Associated Press

A federal appeals court panel rejected a challenge Wednesday night to an Arizona election law that throws out ballots cast by voters who go to the wrong precinct. The 2-1 opinion from a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel turned away a legal challenge mounted by Democrats. Lawyers representing the state and national Democratic parties said Arizona throws out more out-of-precinct ballots than any other state and that minorities are more likely to be affected. A federal judge in Phoenix rejected the challenge last month, ruling that the state has a valid reason not to count such votes because different races are on ballots in different precincts. The judge also said that Democrats haven’t shown that minorities were affected more than white voters. Democrats appealed, and two of the appeals court judges agreed with the lower court and rejected the challenge, which cited Voting Rights Act and Constitutional violations.

Editorials: Maryland voting audit falls short | Philip B. Stark & Poorvi L. Vora/Baltimore Sun

At the Board of Public Works Oct. 19th meeting, members passed without discussion a proposal by the State Board of Elections to pay Clear Ballot Group Inc. $275,000 for an “independent and automated solution to verify [the] accuracy” of the state’s election results. Seems reasonable, right? Especially now that the term “rigged” frequently precedes “election” in this year’s campaign rhetoric. The only problem is it won’t work. We have some experience to back this judgment: Between us, we have helped audit about 20 contests in several states and designed auditable voting systems. Methods developed by one of us are in laws in two states. It’s great that Maryland voters get to vote on paper ballots this year; paper ballots that voters can check are the best evidence of “the will of the people.” Maryland’s ballots will be scanned and then counted electronically. As required by hard-won state legislation passed in 2007, the paper ballots will be stored securely as durable evidence of what voters wanted.

North Carolina: US judge tells North Carolina counties to restore purged voter names to polls | McClatchy DC

A U.S. District Court judge ruled on Friday that four counties must restore names to voter rolls that were part of a recent mass purge. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs came in response to a lawsuit filed Monday by the state NAACP. In the lawsuit, seeking an emergency halt to voter roll purges in Beaufort, Moore and Cumberland counties, NAACP representatives and several voters affected described the practice as an effort to suppress the African-American vote. At issue was whether the North Carolina law that allows individual voters in this state to challenge anyone’s registration violates the National Voter Registration Act, which “prohibits the mass removal of voters from the rolls within the 90 days prior to the election.” The organization also contends that county election boards did not follow proper notification or hearing procedures for the challenges. “[T]here is little question that the County Boards’ process of allowing third parties to challenge hundreds and, in Cumberland County, thousands of voters within 90 days before the 2016 General Election constitutes the type of ‘systematic’ removal prohibited by the [National Voter Registration Act],” Biggs wrote in her ruling.

Ohio: U.S. Supreme Court rejects final challenge to Ohio voting laws | The Columbus Dispatch

The last pending legal challenge to Ohio’s voting laws died a quick death Monday when it was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. And thousands of Ohio voters could have their ballots thrown out as a result, the attorney who filed the lawsuit says. Justice Elena Kagan dismissed the matter after consulting with the other seven members of the high court, her one-sentence decision indicated. “This case has been ongoing in Ohio, taking many forms, under the administration of three secretaries of state, both Democratic and Republican, and it is time for the chaos and waste of taxpayer money to come to an end,” said Secretary of State Jon Husted in a statement Monday night. The attorney pushing the challenge, Subodh Chandra of Cleveland, said, “Unfortunately, Secretary of State Husted is now free in this election to disenfranchise voters who he and the elections boards know are eligible, over ‘errors’ as trivial as writing a name legibly in cursive on a form rather than in print. And Husted is free to continue his scheme to have boards in the big, urban counties disfranchise voters when smaller, white rural counties count ballots involving identical errors — and he looks the other way.”

Ivory Coast: A referendum vote mirred by a low turnout and machete attacks | International Business Times

Abidjan was largely quiet and peaceful on Sunday (30 October) when there was a visibly low turnout in Ivory Coast’s constitutional referendum following a short campaign for changes the president said will help end years of unrest. Voters were asked to approve a draft constitution containing provisions that the opposition contended will significantly strengthen the power of the presidency, with one of the proposed modification effectively scrapping a clause that sets 75 as the age limit to be able to run for president. Led by 74-year-old President Alassane Ouattara and the ruling coalition, the ‘Yes’ camp campaign kicked off last week, while Human Rights Watch claimed opposition parties’ ability to explain their position to the public during their ‘No’ campaign had been “severely undermined”. Violence was reported in between 100 and 150 polling stations out of the nations’ 10,000. In some cases, stations were held up by young men with knives and ballot boxes were taken away, while others were attacked with men armed with clubs and machetes, according to Reuters. Overall, however, the issues lay with the process, participation and inclusiveness rather than the violence.

Nicaragua: Wife and Running Mate: A Real-Life ‘House of Cards’ in Nicaragua | The New York Times

She started out as a teenage mother working as a newspaper secretary, then spent decades of revolution, conflict, power and public scandal at the side of one of the region’s most influential men. Now the first lady of Nicaragua, Rosario Murillo, has succeeded in doing something that seems more like a plotline out of the Netflix series “House of Cards”: She will be on the Nov. 6 ballot to become vice president. Her running mate? Her husband, President Daniel Ortega. The election, in which the couple’s victory and Mr. Ortega’s third consecutive term are all but certain, is a critical step in what people around Ms. Murillo describe as her decades-long climb to power. She paved the way by helping the poor and winning over the public, but also by holding political grudges and pushing aside nearly all the members of her husband’s inner circle. “Denying something to my mother is a declaration of war,” her daughter Zoilamérica Ortega said. But in many ways, the first lady’s spot on the presidential ticket is an acknowledgment of the role she already plays in the country.

National: ‘We don’t want voters to be terrified’: Officials seek to allay fears of a ‘rigged’ election | The Washington Post

In an election one side claims is “rigged” as the other was apparently targeted by Russian hackers and Wikileaks, voters may be concerned that some entity will alter the results on Nov. 8. It’s possible, according to some experts, although the likelihood of a significant attack on ballot boxes is exceedingly low. “Everything is hackable,” said Jeremy Epstein, a senior computer scientist at SRI International, a nonprofit California-based think tank. “Everything could have bugs in it.” … The District, Maryland and many counties in Virginia use paper ballots — a gold standard for election-watchers. These ballots are scanned and counted electronically, leaving behind a hard copy of each voter’s preferences. “It seems old-school, but if you have good security practices and a good ballot chain of custody . . . it’s more indelible than bits and bytes in the ether,” said Pamela Smith, president of the nonpartisan Verified Voting, a nonprofit that works for fair elections.

National: Federal and state law enforcement officials concerned About Risk of Violence as Election Day Nears | NBC

Trump supporters held up Clinton “target practice” posters at a rally in Florida Monday, with a bulls-eye framing her face. Two days earlier in Virginia Beach, one Trump backer hoisted a plastic Hillary Clinton head on a stick, while others waved target signs. And several weeks ago, two armed Trump supporters protested outside the congressional campaign office of a rural Virginia Democrat, in what they said was a gesture of solidarity with closet supporters of Trump. Federal and state law enforcement officials say such incidents have heightened their concerns about violence in the final two weeks of the long and bitter Presidential campaign, and well beyond that if Donald Trump loses and refuses to accept the vote as legitimate. “There is a motivated army of ‘fingers in their ears’ supporters of his who believe he’s giving them license to behave badly, and license not to except the findings of the 9,000 bipartisan polling jurisdictions around the country,” one senior federal law enforcement official told NBC News.

National: Some Voting Machines Are Flipping Votes But That Doesn’t Mean The Election Is ‘Rigged’ | NPR

Vote flipping. The stories and conspiracy theories have begun. In every recent election, there have been reports of voters pressing one candidate’s name on a touch-screen machine, only to have the opponent’s name light up instead. It can be unnerving for voters and often leads to allegations that the machines have been “rigged” to favor one candidate over another. Enter election 2016, when the word “rigged” is more politically charged than ever. In the first few days of early voting, there are already scattered reports of vote-flipping machines in North Carolina, Texas and Nevada. … So what’s going on? Are the machines rigged? No, says just about every voting technology expert. “If you were actually trying to rig an election, it would be a very stupid thing to do, to let the voter know that you were doing it,” says Larry Norden, with the Brennan Center for Justice in New York.

Arizona: Court considers law on disqualifying certain provisional ballots | Tucson News Now

There’s a court battle going on over Arizona’s law that allows provisional ballots cast in elections to be disqualified, or thrown out. Voters might have to use a provisional ballot if their voter registration is not up to date or they lost their early ballot or they go to the wrong polling place. A federal appeals court is deciding whether to force the state to count provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct. In Arizona voters have to vote in the precinct assigned to their residential address. The three-judge panel heard arguments Wednesday, Oct. 26. A lawyer for state and national Democrats told the panel nearly 11,000 voters in Arizona had their provisional ballots disqualified in the last presidential election because they voted in the wrong place, and that it affects minority voters more often than not. The Democrats said throwing out the ballots disenfranchises voters and is unconstitutional. The state argued that counting the ballots would be unfair to candidates in local races.

Indiana: Here’s What We DON’T Know About That Sketchy Indiana ‘Voter Fraud’ Probe | TPM

Ever since Indiana State Police raided a voter registration office in Indiana and effectively shut down a voter registration drive aimed at getting African-American voters to the polls, there have been a lot of unanswered questions. Among the biggest: What actually initiated the state police investigation? What was the motivation? What happens to the thousands of legitimate registration forms submitted through the voter registration drive under investigation? Here’s what we know. On Oct. 4, the Indiana State Police executed a search warrant and raided the Indiana Voter Registration Project’s office. They took phones, paperwork and computers as evidence in their investigation into alleged voter fraud. The raid and subsequent statements about the case by the state police have received a lot of media coverage in Indiana, and nationally. “State Police raid Indy office in growing voter fraud case” read the headline in the state’s largest newspaper, the Indianapolis Star. Another one from the Star: “Top Indiana election official alleges more voter fraud.” The case has also been followed by the Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times and The New Republic.

Pennsylvania: Fraud Claims in Philadelphia? They Add Up to Zero | The New York Times