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The Obama administration is weighing new steps to bolster the security of the United States’ voting process against cyberthreats, including whether to designate the electronic ballot-casting system for November’s elections as “critical infrastructure,” Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, said on Wednesday. In the wake of hacks that infiltrated Democratic campaign computer systems, Mr. Johnson said he was conducting high-level discussions about “election cybersecurity,” a vastly complex effort given that there are 9,000 jurisdictions in the United States that have a hand in carrying out the balloting, many of them with different ways of collecting, tallying and reporting votes. “We should carefully consider whether our election system, our election process is critical infrastructure, like the financial sector, like the power grid,” Mr. Johnson told reporters at a breakfast in Washington. “There’s a vital national interest in our electoral process.” A national commission created as part of a voting overhaul enacted in 2002 in response to the controversy surrounding the 2000 presidential election “raised the bar” on security, Mr. Johnson said. “But there is more to do,” he added. “The nature of cyberthreats has evolved.” Mr. Johnson said that he was considering communicating with state and local election officials across the country in the coming weeks to inform them about “best practices” to guard against cyberintrusions, and that longer-term investments would probably have to be made to secure the voting process.

National: America’s Electronic Voting Machines Are Sitting Ducks | WIRED

This week, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump openly speculated that this election would be “rigged.” Last month, Russia decided to take an active role in our election. There’s no basis for questioning the results of a vote that’s still months away. But the interference and aspersions do merit a fresh look at the woeful state of our outdated, insecure electronic voting machines. We’ve previously discussed the sad state of electronic voting machines in America, but it’s worth a closer look as we approach election day itself, and within the context of increased cyber-hostilities between the US and Russia. Besides, by now states have had plenty of warning since a damning report by the Brennan Center for Justice about our voting machine vulnerabilities came out last September. Surely matters must have improved since then. Well, not exactly. In fact, not really at all. … So electronic voting machines aren’t ideal. The good news is, it’s entirely possible to mitigate any potential harm they might cause, either by malice or mistake. First, it’s important to realize that electronic voting machines aren’t as commonplace as one might assume. Three-quarters of the country will vote on a paper ballot this fall, says Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a group that promotes best practices at the polls. Only five states—Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, and New Jersey—use “direct recording electronic” (DRE) machines exclusively. But lots of other states use electronic machines in some capacity. Verified Voting also has a handy map of who votes using what equipment, which lets you drill down both to specific counties and machine brands, so you can see what’s in use at your polling station.

Editorials: Turning the Tide on Voting Rights | Rick Hasen/The New York Times

Has the tide against restrictive voting laws turned? In the last few weeks, voting rights groups, in some instances working with the Department of Justice, have posted a series of victories that seemed unlikely when their cases against these laws were first brought. The rights of hundreds of thousands of voters are at stake. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, perhaps the most conservative federal appeals court, ruled 9-6 last month that Texas’ strict voter identification law had a racially discriminatory effect on African-American and Latino voters. Not only did the Fifth Circuit send the case back to the trial court to establish a procedure to make it easier for those who lacked one of the narrow forms of identification to be able to vote, but also to decide if Texas had acted with racially discriminatory intent. Such a finding could lead the courts to put Texas back under direct federal supervision. Last Friday, a Fourth Circuit panel ruled that a North Carolina voting law, possibly the largest rollback of voting rights since the 1965 Voting Rights Act, was enacted with racially discriminatory intent. The court threw out not only the state’s strict voter ID law, but also other voting restrictions that could make it especially hard for minorities to vote.

North Dakota: Federal judge blocks North Dakota’s voter-ID law, calling it unfair to Native Americans | The Washington Post

A federal judge on Monday called North Dakota’s strict voter-ID law unfair to Native Americans and blocked its use in the coming election, continuing a series of recent victories against restrictions imposed by state legislatures. In recent days, judges have blocked or loosened voting restrictions in Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Kansas. The fights have pitted Democrats and civil rights groups who say restrictive ID laws discriminate against minorities against Republican legislators, who say they enacted the laws to combat voter fraud and protect the public’s confidence in elections. U.S. District Judge Daniel L. Hovland said North Dakota for years had provided a safety net for those unable to provide the specific kinds of ID required, and that eliminating it in 2013 would mean eligible voters are disenfranchised. Before 2013, the state allowed many forms of identification for use at the polls, and those without could sign affidavits to their identity. But the 2013 law allowed only four forms of ID: a North Dakota driver’s license; a North Dakota non-driver’s ID card; a tribal government-issued ID card; or an alternative form of ID prescribed by the secretary of state. A provision added last year prohibited the secretary of state from allowing college IDs or military IDs to be used.

Ohio: Multimillion-dollar voting rights battle could prove even more costly for taxpayers | Cleveland Plain Dealer

The state of Ohio has racked up more than $2.7 million in legal fees it will likely have to pay to attorneys who have engaged in a decade’s worth of litigation over voting laws passed by the state’s legislature and enforced by the secretary of state’s office. And while a federal appeals court said part of that amount must be re-calculated, the cost is expected to increase significantly in the future, as those same lawyers still need to add in the nearly three years of legal work completed since the last time a judge ordered payment. The legal battle at issue has raged on since 2006, though it is in line with challenges to a series of laws passed by Republican-controlled legislatures across the country in the past few years. Courts in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas, North Dakota and Kansas issued scathing opinions in the past week that invalidated key parts of voting legislation passed in each state, with each court stating that the laws were aimed at curbing minority participation in elections. The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless first filed suit against the secretary of state over laws passed by the legislature that required voters to provide identification at polling places. The case has evolved and continued after elected officials passed laws that affected provisional ballots. This resulted in a trial earlier this year, after which Columbus federal Judge Algenon Marbley issued a constitutional rebuke of the state’s laws pertaining to the disqualification of absentee and provisional ballots for technical violations.

Texas: State agrees to weaken voter ID law | Associated Press

Texas agreed Wednesday to weaken its voter ID law as courts across the U.S., with only months before the November election, are blocking Republican-controlled states from imposing polling place restrictions that critics say target minorities and the poor. The changes must still be approved by a federal judge. But the looser rules have the important blessing of the U.S. Justice Department and minority rights groups, who sued over the 2011 law and said that 600,000 voters would otherwise lack a suitable ID to cast a ballot this fall. Those voters would now be allowed to sign an affidavit to cast a regular full ballot, and their vote would be counted. Texas must also spend at least $2.5 million on voter outreach before November, according to the joint proposal that Texas and opponents of the law submitted to U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos. “The provisions we’ve agreed to now are critical safeguards for voters,” said Houston attorney Chad Dunn, who is one of the lead attorneys in the lawsuit against Texas. “It’s a critical leap forward.” A spokesman for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Texas worked fast to soften the law before Election Day after a federal appeals court last month ruled that the tough ID restrictions – which accepted concealed handgun permits at polling place, but not college student IDs – violated the federal Voting Rights Acts.

Wisconsin: State seeks emergency stay in Wisconsin voting laws case | Capital Times

Attorney General Brad Schimel is seeking an emergency stay in a federal court ruling in a case challenging voting policies signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker between 2011 and 2015. “It would cause major disruption and voter confusion to require Defendants to change election procedures and inform the public of those changes, only to change the procedures back, and re-inform the public, after an appeal,” Schimel wrote in his request. The state’s request comes one day after lawyers representing One Wisconsin Institute, Citizen Action of Wisconsin and individual voters filed a motion of appeal with the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, although U.S. District Judge James Peterson’s ruling went heavily in their favor. In a decision released late Friday afternoon, Peterson found a series of voting changes signed into law by Walker over the last five years to be unconstitutional, but did not overturn the state’s photo identification requirement. Laws that limited in-person absentee voting to one location, limited early voting hours and eliminated weekend voting are unconstitutional, Peterson ruled. A 2013 law limiting hours for in-person absentee voting “intentionally discriminates on the basis of race,” he wrote.

Ireland: Meet Billy Lawless, the Irish Expat Senator Who Can’t Vote | Wall Street Journal

Long before Billy Lawless became the first expatriate to serve in the Irish Senate, he was a regular guest at a uniquely Irish event known as the “American wake.” A full-blown going-away party held in a small Irish village, this occasion earned its dour name “because Johnny or Mary were going to the United States and that was probably the last we’d ever see of them,” said Mr. Lawless, a Chicago restaurateur who grew up on the outskirts of Galway. “But that day is gone now. Everything has changed.” Though emigration once implied a dramatic severing of ties, today’s expats are remaining more engaged than ever with the political affairs of their home countries, following local news on the internet and voting from abroad. In a more profound break with old patterns, expats like Mr. Lawless are even taking on political roles in their native countries. Most nations, including 23 of 28 European Union member states, now allow some form of voting for non-resident citizens, said Jean-Thomas Arrighi, a political scientist specializing in the issue at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. Thirteen countries have gone further, establishing “external constituencies,” with representatives directly elected by citizens abroad.

Thailand: Junta Seeks to Extend Its Power With Constitutional Referendum | The New York Times

Thailand’s military junta will hold a national referendum Sunday on a new constitution that it casts as an essential step toward restoring democracy. But the junta has blocked opponents from campaigning against the measure, banned election monitors and restricted news coverage of the referendum. And the proposed constitution, critics say, would weaken the role of elected…

Venezuela: Recall clears hurdle, but obstacles remain | AFP

Venezuela’s opposition got a green light Monday to proceed with efforts to remove President Nicolas Maduro in a referendum, but the crumpling oil giant still appeared far from holding a vote. The National Electoral Council (CNE) said the opposition had collected nearly double the requirement of 200,000 valid signatures on a petition demanding the leftist leader face a recall referendum. But it did not set a date for the next stage in the lengthy process, in which the opposition must collect four million signatures in just three days. And, in a boost to the Maduro camp’s claims of rampant fraud, the council’s chief, Tibisay Lucena, said the authorities had detected more than 1,000 apparently fraudulent signatures.

National: Trump, Putin and the hacking of an American election | The Boston Globe

Did Republican nominee Donald Trump just ask Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to cast the deciding vote in the US presidential election? On Wednesday morning, Trump said he hoped Russia would find and publish 30,000 e-mail messages deleted by his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, from the personal server she used as secretary of state. It was a startling spectacle: a presidential candidate urging a foreign government to play a role in America’s game of thrones. But there’s a chance Putin is already a player. The trove of embarrassing e-mails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, which were leaked to the press just in time for this week’s party convention in Philadelphia, were probably swiped by Russian hackers, according to US intelligence officials and independent cybersecurity companies. Russia’s apparent election tampering — and Trump’s call for the Russians to expose Clinton’s deleted e-mails — shows that the insecurity of America’s data networks could undermine our ability to hold free and fair elections. But if the Russian president would go this far to pick our next president, why not take the direct approach? Why not tamper with the computers that manage the nation’s voting systems? Maybe that has already happened. Those voting systems are certainly vulnerable.

Editorials: By November, Russian hackers could target voting machines | Bruce Schneier/The Washington Post

Russia was behind the hacks into the Democratic National Committee’s computer network that led to the release of thousands of internal emails just before the party’s convention began, U.S. intelligence agencies have reportedly concluded. The FBI is investigating. WikiLeaks promises there is more data to come. The political nature of this cyberattack means that Democrats and Republicans are trying to spin this as much as possible. Even so, we have to accept that someone is attacking our nation’s computer systems in an apparent attempt to influence a presidential election. This kind of cyberattack targets the very core of our democratic process. And it points to the possibility of an even worse problem in November — that our election systems and our voting machines could be vulnerable to a similar attack. If the intelligence community has indeed ascertained that Russia is to blame, our government needs to decide what to do in response. This is difficult because the attacks are politically partisan, but it is essential. If foreign governments learn that they can influence our elections with impunity, this opens the door for future manipulations, both document thefts and dumps like this one that we see and more subtle manipulations that we don’t see.

Illinois: Voter registration system shut down following cyber breach | StateScoop

The Illinois’ Voter Registration System, IVRS, is still down after officials discovered a security breach on July 12. The system was shut down the day after the breach was discovered, according to Kyle Thomas, the state board of elections’ director of voting and registration systems. “Once the severity of the attack was realized, as a precautionary measure, the entire IVRS system was shut down, including online voter registration,” Thomas wrote in a memo to the election authority that was posted to McLean County Clerk Kathy Michael’s Facebook page. A look-up field on IVRS that allowed voters to find out if they were already registered to vote, and at which address, could have allowed hackers access to the system, Ken Menzel, general counsel for the State Board of Elections, told StateScoop.

Kansas: Judge: 17,500 suspended voters can cast ballots in all races Tuesday | The Wichita Eagle

A Shawnee County judge has ruled that 17,500 voters can have their votes counted in state and local races as well as federal ones in Tuesday’s Kansas primary election. “Losing one’s vote is an irreparable harm in my opinion,” Judge Larry Hendricks said in his bench ruling Friday. A state board approved a rule earlier this month to allow people to vote only in federal elections – not state and local ones – if they registered at DMV offices but failed to provide proof of citizenship as required by Kansas law. The rule, crafted by Secretary of State Kris Kobach, was meant to put the state in compliance with a recent ruling by a federal judge to let these voters vote under the federal “motor-voter” law. Kobach contended that the federal ruling applied only to federal elections and that the state’s proof of citizenship requirement still barred these voters from casting votes in state and local races. The American Civil Liberties Union challenged the rule under the equal protection clause in the Kansas Constitution. “You’re either registered or you’re not,” ACLU attorney Sophia Lakin told the judge. “There’s no such thing as half registration.”

North Carolina: US 4th Circuit overturns voter ID law | News & Observer

Federal appellate judges on Friday struck down a 2013 law limiting voting options and requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls, declaring in an unsparing opinion that the restrictions “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” The three-judge panel of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law was adopted with “discriminatory intent” despite lawmakers’ claims that the ID provision and other changes were designed to prevent voter fraud. The ruling – which could have implications for voting laws in other states and possibly for the outcome of close races in the swing state of North Carolina – sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder, who in April issued a 485-page decision dismissing all claims in the legal challenge.

Texas: What’s the Fix for Texas’ Voter ID Law? “Time is short” to implement a replacement | The Austin Chronicle

Voter ID in Texas violates the Voting Rights Act, and the state must develop new rules before the November election. That was the definitive statement in a majority opinion, nine to six, issued by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last week. But don’t put your driver’s license away quite yet. While the court has ruled that the current state rules are in the wrong, no one knows what the replacement rules will look like. Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said, “We don’t know very much. The takeaway is that we don’t know what to do.” The core issue was the strict photo ID requirements passed in 2011’s Senate Bill 14, which have been facing legal challenges for half a decade. In 2012, the Justice Department blocked implementation of the rules, and then the state lost its first major defense in 2014, when U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos found that the law did indeed suppress minority voters. The majority opinion of the 5th Circuit’s 15-member appeals bench upheld the core ruling of the lower court, and instructed it to create interim rules in time for the November 8 general election.

Virginia: ‘Why don’t they want us to vote?’ Felons cope with losing voting rights twice in Virginia | The Washington Post

Louise Benjamin, 48, looked forward to casting her first ever ballot in Virginia this November, after Gov. Terry McAuliffe restored her voting rights and those of more than 200,000 other convicted felons who had also completed their sentences. She saw voting as a chance for redemption after serving time for assault charges. Then, last week, the state Supreme Court decided she couldn’t vote after all. “I was so hurt. I couldn’t even believe it,” said Benjamin, after the state’s highest court ruled that McAuliffe had overstepped his authority by restoring voting rights en masse instead of on a case by case basis. “Why they don’t want us to vote?” Across the state, more than 13,000 ex-offenders who had registered to vote after McAuliffe signed his wholesale clemency order in April have been thrust into a kind of voting limbo. “They have felt like they just had their rights restored and before they could even savor that for long, here comes the court just swooping in and taking it all away again,” said Tram Nguyen, co-executive of New Virginia Majority which has been registering ex-offenders including Benjamin. “A lot of them are hearing the message that they don’t belong, they don’t deserve a voice.” The court directed the state elections commissioner, Edgardo Cortés, to cancel the registrations by Aug. 25 of the 13,000 felons and add their names to a list of prohibited voters.

Wisconsin: Judge strikes down voter ID, early voting laws | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Finding that Republican lawmakers had discriminated against minorities, a federal judge Friday struck down parts of Wisconsin’s voter ID law, limits on early voting and prohibitions on allowing people to vote early at multiple sites. With the presidential election less than four months away, GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel said he plans to appeal the sweeping decision by U.S. District Court Judge James Peterson. Peterson also turned back other election laws Republicans have put in place in recent years. “The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities,” U.S. District Judge James Peterson wrote. “To put it bluntly, Wisconsin’s strict version of voter ID law is a cure worse than the disease.”

Russia: Why would Russia interfere in the U.S. election? Because it sometimes works. | The Washington Post

Late last week, WikiLeaks released private emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. Experts suspect the documents were obtained by hackers affiliated with the Russian government. Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager has even charged that the Russians are trying to use the emails to help elect Donald Trump. Since then, people on the left and right have expressed outrage that a foreign government would seek to influence American politics. That furor is naive. Foreign governments have sought to shape other country’s politics before. The United States has honed interventions in other countries’ elections to something of an art form. They (we) do it because such interventions can succeed, especially if they find willing accomplices in the targeted country.

Venezuela: Government stalling recall vote to keep power, opposition claims | The Guardian

Venezuela’s opposition has demanded authorities move forward on a a referendum to force Nicolás Maduro from office, amid complaints that the government is digging in its heels to delay the process. Groups of opposition members attempted to march to the headquarters of the National Electoral Council (CNE) in Caracas to demand it set a date by which they would have to collect signatures of nearly 4 million voters to trigger a presidential recall. Police and national guard barricades blocked the way, leading marchers to retreat. “We did not come to confront the police, just to demand a date for the 20%,” said Henrique Capriles, a leading opposition figure and former presidential candidate, referring the percentage of the electorate they would have. The CNE had been expected to announce on Tuesday whether referendum organizers had managed to collect enough valid signatures – 1% of the electorate – to put a process in motion to force a recall vote on Maduro. But late on Tuesday, officials said they would meet on 1 August to further discuss the issue.

National: Rulings May Make Voter ID Laws Presidential Race Nonfactors | Associated Press

Federal courts have reined in strict voter ID laws in Texas and Wisconsin, while a legal battle continues to rage over North Carolina’s rules mandating showing identification at the polls — even after lawmakers there took pre-emptive steps to soften them. The court ruling almost certainly won’t be enough for Democrat Hillary Clinton to win fiercely conservative Texas in November, and Wisconsin has been reliably blue enough in recent presidential cycles that the legal setback for its voter ID law may not prove decisive, either. North Carolina could be enough of a swing state that the fate of its election rules may have an impact — but exactly where its voter ID requirements will stand by Election Day on Nov. 8 remains to be seen. What is coming into clearer focus is just how hard it could be for Republican-controlled states to enforce tougher ballot box restrictions that energized conservative activists when they were approved in statehouses around the country in recent years. That means an issue that looked to be a slam dunk for the right following the rise of the tea party in 2010 may actually be little more than an afterthought during this year’s make-or-break presidential election.

National: A hackable election: 5 things you need to know about e-voting machines | PCWorld

As the U.S. heads toward an especially contentious national election in November, 15 states are still clinging to outdated electronic voting machines that don’t support paper printouts used to audit their internal vote counts. E-voting machines without attached printers are still being used in a handful of presidential swing states, leading some voting security advocates to worry about the potential of a hacked election. Some makers of e-voting machines, often called direct-recording electronic machines or DREs, are now focusing on other sorts of voting technology, including optical scanners. They seem reluctant to talk about DREs; three major DRE vendors didn’t respond to questions about security. … While a hacked election may be unlikely, it’s not impossible, said Joe Kiniry, a long-time election security researcher. Researchers have found many security holes in DREs, and many states don’t conduct comprehensive election audits, said Kiniry, now CEO and chief scientist at Free and Fair, an open-source election technology vendor. “I would say that a determined adversary, with the standard skill that people like me have, would be able to hack an election nationally,” he said. “With enough money and resources, I don’t think that’s actually a technical challenge.” Voting results are “ripe for manipulation,” Kiniry added. Hacking an election would be more of a social and political challenge than a technical one, he said. “You’d have a medium-sized conspiracy in order to achieve such a goal.”

Editorials: Beware of Robots Telling You How to Vote | Mark Buchanan/Bloomberg

Voting is partially a social endeavor, in which people consider the opinions of others when making up their own minds. Increasingly, though, they’re being influenced by an inhuman force: software robots specifically designed to deceive them. Lest democracy be undermined, humans need help in distinguishing their brethren from the bots. Two years ago, in a report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the social networking site Twitter estimated that more than 23 million of its active user accounts were being run by “bots” — software agents or bits of code that act on their own to respond to news and world events. They interact with real users, never revealing their true nature.

Illinois: Judge knocks redistricting off Illinois ballot in loss for Rauner | Chicago Tribune

A Cook County judge on Wednesday tossed from the fall ballot a constitutional amendment to take away the General Assembly’s power to draw legislative district boundaries, dealing a loss to Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and a win to Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan. The ruling marked the second time in three years that the Independent Maps group suffered a major legal setback in attempting to ask voters whether the state should remove much of the politics from redistricting. The stumbling block was the same as last time, with a judge finding the proposal did not fit a narrow legal window for a petition-driven initiative to change the Illinois Constitution. Independent Maps chairman Dennis FitzSimons vowed to appeal the case to the Illinois Supreme Court, in hopes the question could still appear on the Nov. 8 ballot. Both FitzSimons’ coalition and the People’s Map group that filed the lawsuit anticipated that’s where the case would end up anyway.

Kansas: ACLU sues Kansas over voting rule for state, local races | Associated Press

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block a Kansas election rule that could throw out thousands of votes in state and local races by people who registered at motor vehicle offices or used a federal form without providing documents proving U.S. citizenship. The temporary rule, sought by Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach and approved last week by the State Rules and Regulation Board, will count votes only for federal races by that segment of new Kansas voters through Nov. 8, the date of the general election. It comes in response to a federal judge’s recent decision that voters do not need to show citizenship papers to register for federal elections as required by a 2013 Kansas law. If allowed to stand, thousands of Kansas voters will be denied their right to vote in state and local elections in a year when all 165 seats of the Kansas Legislature are up for election, the ACLU argued in its lawsuit.

Texas: Appeals court calls Texas voter ID law discriminatory, orders changes | Dallas Morning News

Texas’ voter identification law violates federal laws prohibiting electoral discrimination and must be amended before the November election, an appeals court ruled Wednesday. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the heart of the 2011 state law, widely viewed as one of the nation’s strictest requirements, ruling that it violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The ruling does not nullify the entirety of the law, so voters will still need to show identification at the polls in November. But a lower court will need to create some form of interim relief until it can develop a more comprehensive solution for those who face obstacles to obtaining an ID. “The record shows that drafters and proponents of SB 14 were aware of the likely disproportionate effect of the law on minorities, and that they nonetheless passed the bill without adopting a number of proposed ameliorative measures that might have lessened this impact,” Judge Catharina Haynes wrote in the ruling.

Virginia: State Supreme Court strikes down McAuliffe’s order on felon voting rights | Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Supreme Court of Virginia on Friday struck down Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s executive order restoring voting rights to 206,000 felons, dealing a severe blow to what the governor has touted as one of his proudest achievements in office. In a 4-3 ruling, the court declared McAuliffe’s order unconstitutional, saying it amounts to a unilateral rewrite and suspension of the state’s policy of lifetime disenfranchisement for felons. The court ordered the Virginia Department of Elections to “cancel the registration of all felons who have been invalidly registered” under McAuliffe’s April 22 executive order and subsequent orders. As of this week, 11,662 felons had registered to vote under McAuliffe’s orders. The court gave a cancellation deadline of Aug. 25. McAuliffe, a Democrat, took the sweeping action in April, saying he was doing away with an unusually restrictive voting policy that has a disproportionate impact on African-Americans. In a legal challenge, Republican leaders argued McAuliffe overstepped his power by issuing a blanket restoration order for violent and nonviolent felons with no case-by-case review. The court majority found that McAuliffe did indeed overstep his authority.

Wisconsin: Judge issues injunction, allows voters without IDs to cast ballots | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Paring back the state’s voter ID law four months before the presidential election, a federal judge ruled Tuesday that Wisconsin voters without photo identification can cast ballots by swearing to their identity. The decision by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman in Milwaukee creates a pathway for voters with difficulties getting IDs who have been unable to cast ballots under the state’s 2011 voter ID law. “Although most voters in Wisconsin either possess qualifying ID or can easily obtain one, a safety net is needed for those voters who cannot obtain qualifying ID with reasonable effort,” Adelman wrote in his 44-page decision. The judge issued his preliminary order because he found that those arguing for a pathway for some voter without IDs were “very likely” to succeed.

China: Court convicts youthful leader of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests | Los Angeles Times

Joshua Wong, the teenage leader who is the face of the youthful pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, was convicted Thursday of participating in an unlawful assembly that snowballed into a massive sit-in known as the Umbrella Movement. Two fellow youth movement leaders, Alex Chow, 25, and Nathan Law, 23, were also convicted on various charges. Both are former presidents of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, which organized the class boycott that led to mass demonstrations in 2014 demanding more direct public participation in the election of Hong Kong’s chief executive. For nearly three months, thousands of protesters filled the financial district and other parts of the city demanding democratic reforms in China’s most significant public demonstrations since the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

Japan: Court rules law denying inmates right to vote constitutional | The Japan Times