Tag Archives: tvnw

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling that had upheld the state’s Republican-drawn legislative and congressional districts. The nation’s highest court ordered the state’s highest court to reconsider whether legislators relied too heavily on race when drawing the 2011 maps, which shape how state and federal elections are decided. In an order released Monday, the U.S. justices ordered North Carolina’s highest court to reconsider the 2011 maps in light of a recent decision the court made in a similar Alabama case.

North Dakota: Legislature passes voter ID bill | Bismarck Tribune

North Dakota lawmakers approved legislation Tuesday clarifying the acceptable forms of voter identification. But one state representative from Grand Forks said the bill does little to make it easier for students and others who had trouble casting a ballot at the polls last November. The final legislation doesn’t include a provision from the bill’s introduction that would have allowed bills, bank statements and change-of-address forms to be used to help prove residency. It also removes the ability for students to use identification certificates issued by their university. Under House Bill 1333, valid forms of ID will be a current driver’s license or nondriver’s ID card issued by the state Department of Transportation, an official tribal ID, a long-term care certificate prescribed by the secretary of state, or a current military ID card or passport.

China: Hong Kong Presents Plan for Elections, Offering Little to Democrats | New York Times

Hong Kong entered a new bout of struggle over its political future on Wednesday, as the local government offered only minor changes to an election overhaul plan that set off months of pro-democracy demonstrations last year. Opposition lawmakers denounced the latest proposals, signaling the start of a political contest that will make or break the government’s plans. The Hong Kong government has wagered that it can persuade enough city legislators, and members of the public, to accept the latest proposal as the best deal that can be had from the Chinese Communist Party, whose leader, Xi Jinping, has repeatedly condemned liberal democracy as anathema to Chinese values.

United Kingdom: Almost half a million people register to vote on final day | The Guardian

Almost half a million voters registered in the final hours before the deadline to participate in the 7 May UK general election, the vast majority of them young people. More than 485,000 people registered to vote online on Monday, with 16,000 paper applications made. According to figures from Gov.uk’s voter registration site, thousands left their registration until the last minute – quite literally. The Electoral Commission data shows that more than 3,700 people were accessing the service at 11.59pm on Monday night. Spikes from Monday evening saw more than 18,000 people accessing the site at certain times.

National: As states warm to online voting, experts warn of trouble ahead | McClatchy DC

A Pentagon official sat before a committee of the Washington State Legislature in January and declared that the U.S. military supported a bill that would allow voters in the state to cast election ballots via email or fax without having to certify their identities. Military liaison Mark San Souci’s brief testimony was stunning because it directly contradicted the Pentagon’s previously stated position on online voting: It’s against it. Along with Congress, the Defense Department has heeded warnings over the past decade from cybersecurity experts that no Internet voting system can effectively block hackers from tampering with election results. And email and fax transmissions are the most vulnerable of all, according to experts, including officials at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is part of the Commerce Department. San Souci declined to comment. A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Nathan Christensen, said the Defense Department “does not advocate for the electronic transmission of any voted ballot, whether it be by fax, email or via the Internet.”

Editorials: AVS WinVote: The Worst Voting Machine in America | Jeremy Epstein/Slate

On April 14, the Virginia State Board of Elections voted to immediately decertify use of the AVS WinVote touch-screen Direct Recording Electronic voting machine. That means that the machine, which the Washington Post says was used by “dozens of local governments” in Virginia, can’t be used any more, though the commonwealth is holding primaries in just two months. The move comes in light of a report that shows just how shoddy and insecure voting machines can be. As one of my colleagues taught me, BLUF—bottom line up front: If an election was held using the AVS WinVote, and it wasn’t hacked, it was only because no one tried. The vulnerabilities were so severe, and so trivial to exploit, that anyone with even a modicum of training could have succeeded. A hacker wouldn’t have needed to be in the polling place—he could have been within a few hundred feet (say, in the parking lot) and or within a half-mile if he used a rudimentary antenna built using a Pringles can. Further, there are no logs or other records that would indicate if such a thing ever happened, so if an election was hacked any time in the past, we will never know.

Connecticut: Judge Rules Hartford Council Cannot Remove Registrars of Voters | Hartford Courant

Two hours before the city council planned to start removal hearings for Hartford’s three registrars of voters, a Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that it doesn’t have the power to oust the elected officials. Judge Constance Epstein said that the council can’t take any further steps to remove the registrars — Democrat Olga Vazquez and Republican Sheila Hall — from office. The third registrar, Working Families Party member Urania Petit, had also filed for an injunction to stop the removal hearings but withdrew her case before the ruling Tuesday. She submitted her resignation Tuesday morning, council members said, after reaching a settlement with the city.

Florida: Senators approve online voter bill, despite Detzner’s opposition | Tallahassee Democrat

Senators approved an online voter registration provision Thursday — even though the state official tasked with implementing the system pleaded with them not to. For 45 minutes, Senate Appropriations Committee members grilled Secretary of State Ken Detzner on why he opposed Sen. Jeff Clemens’ SB 228, which is supported by the state’s supervisors of elections. The bill requires the Division of Elections within Detzner’s agency to implement a statewide voter registration system by Oct. 1, 2017. The system would allow prospective voters to enter their driver’s license of Florida ID number online, which would be checked against Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles records before being sent to a local supervisor of elections.

Ohio: Settlement reverses some cuts to Ohio early voting | MSNBC

Voting rights advocates and Ohio’s top election official have settled a lawsuit over controversial cuts to the pivotal presidential state’s early voting period. The deal, announced Friday morning between Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, and the ACLU, undoes some but not all of the damage to voting access caused by last year’s cuts.…

Virginia: Board of Elections votes to decertify AVS WINVote | The Washington Post

The Virginia Board of Elections on Tuesday voted to scrap a type of voting machine used by dozens of local governments, including Fairfax City and Arlington County, after identifying security concerns. The move leaves 30 counties and cities scrambling to replace hundreds of voting machines. Ten of those local governments have primary elections scheduled for June 9. During a public meeting, the Board of Elections voted 2 to 0, with one member absent, to decertify WINVote touchscreen voting machines. Edgardo Cortés, commissioner of the state Department of Elections, said continuing to use the aging machines “creates an unacceptable risk to the integrity of the election process in the commonwealth.”

Australia: Votes gone walkabout after Australian election voting flaw | SC Magazine UK

As many as 66,000 votes in the New South Wales state election 2015 could have been tampered with. The election was held on 28 March 2015 and is now closed. Voters used the iVote system which is described by its makers as “private, secure and verifiable” in its operation. Further, the Australian Electoral Commission insists that all Internet votes are and were “fully encrypted and safeguarded” at this time. The iVote system is a form of voting where eligible voters can vote over the Internet or telephone as an alternative to voting at a physical polling station. Security is provided using an 8-digit iVote number, a 6-digit PIN and a 12-digit receipt number for each individual. Australia is arguably a perfect test case for electronic voting with its vast distances that prevent some voters from getting to a polling location. A system like this also benefits the disabled and other less mobile voters. However, the system has been derided by non-profit digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), “The problem is that the system was not ready to be one of the biggest online voting experiments in the world.” EFF’s Farbod Faraji says that a FREAK flaw has been discovered in the Australian system by Michigan Computer Science Professor J Alex Halderman and University of Melbourne Research Fellow Vanessa Teague.

Sudan: Voting Ends in Sudan With a Small Turnout | New York Times

Voting ended Thursday in Sudan’s elections, with a low turnout despite a one-day extension. “Vote for who, vote for what?” said Ihab Shareef, 40, a former civil servant who now drives a taxi. “It would have been better if the elections money was spent on hospitals.” President Omar al-Bashir, who has been in power for more than 25 years, is expected to win amid widespread apathy and a call for a boycott by opposition groups. Final results are to be announced April 27. Fifteen other largely unknown candidates ran for president. Forty-four parties officially participated in the elections, which began Monday, for seats in the National Assembly and local legislatures.

National: Technology aims to improve the voting experience | The Washington Post

In an age where people can transfer money using their mobile device, it’s not hard to envision a future where citizens wake up on Election Day, pull out their phones and choose the next leader of the Free World on the way to work. Last week, a federal election agency took a small step toward that futuristic vision. … The updated guidelines will allow manufacturers to test machines against modern security and disability standards and get them certified for use by states ahead of the 2016 presidential election. … When it comes to Internet-based voting systems, many experts argue there’s no clear solution to address the issues of security and verifiability. A securely designed online system also needs to be easy to use, and so far that goal has eluded researchers, said Poorvi Vora, an associate professor of computer science at George Washington University who has researched Internet voting systems. Vora is part of a group of academics, computer scientists, election officials and activists working on a project led by the Overseas Vote Foundation, an Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit, to answer one question: Is it possible to design a system that lets people vote remotely in a secure, accessible, anonymous, convenient and verifiable manner? The answer so far is no, but the group says it is close to a possible solution and will present its design to the election research community and federal agencies this summer. As with health records or financial data, online security remains an obstacle.

California: Bill introduced to provide automatic voter registration | Santa Clarita Valley Signal

Proponents say the bill, dubbed the “California New Motor Voter” law by sponsors, could provide a big boost to voter participation in the Golden State — where there are nearly seven million residents who are eligible, but not registered, to vote. “Our democracy is stronger when more people in the community have a voice at the ballot box,” said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, the bill’s sponsor. “Even as some states are becoming more restrictive in guaranteeing the public a voice in our democracy, California should do everything it can to ensure people’s right to be a voter.” There are 1.2 million unregistered eligible voters in Los Angeles County, according to information from county election officials. The bill would allow information collected by the Department of Motor Vehicles to be sent to the Secretary of State to verify if residents are eligible to vote.

Connecticut: Judge Postpones Ruling As Hartford Council Moves Forward With Hearings To Remove Registrars | Hartford Courant

Council members looking to oust the city’s registrars of voters will hold a hearing Tuesday, but they won’t be able to hear testimony or consider evidence. A Superior Court judge on Monday postponed ruling on whether to grant an injunction that would stop the removal hearings. The court wanted to give the registrars’ attorneys an opportunity to respond to a brief filed Monday by lawyers for the council. The attorneys will file their response Thursday and a ruling on the injunctions, sought by the registrars’ lawyers, is expected early next week. In the meantime, the council can proceed with the first of the removal hearings, but they won’t be able to hear testimony from witnesses until the judge rules on the injunction.

Florida: Top elections official under fire on two fronts | Tampa Bay Times

Gov. Rick Scott’s chief elections official is in big trouble with two key groups: state legislators who write the voting laws and county supervisors who run elections. Secretary of State Ken Detzner can’t afford to alienate either constituency as Florida heads toward a presidential election in 2016, when the eyes of the nation will again be on the biggest battleground state. Lawmakers blasted Detzner Wednesday for fighting their plan to let people register to vote online by October 2017. Elections officials, meanwhile, were livid to learn that Detzner released private data on more than 45,000 voters — including judges and police officers — and didn’t alert them immediately.

Illinois: Marshall County sends Aaron Schock a bill for special election costs | Journal Star

The Marshall County Board wants former U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock to pay the $76,000 in unbudgeted county costs for special elections to fill the 18th Congressional District seat he abandoned. The board voted unanimously Thursday to send the Peoria Republican a letter requesting the reimbursement. Schock resigned last month following controversy over his use of taxpayer and campaign funds. The costs for the special primary and general election have been estimated at $38,000 each, officials said. In a vein somewhat similar to a collection letter, the board offers Schock options of sending either the full amount or an agreement stating that he will pay later.

North Carolina: Proposed bill would delay voting machine upgrades | Morganton News Herald

A new bill filed in the state House of Representatives would delay some counties, including Burke, from having to buy new voting equipment. HB 373 would extend the time those counties would have to implement paper ballots. State Rep. Hugh Blackwell (R-86), who is a co-sponsor of the proposed bill, said there are 36 counties, including Burke, to which the bill would apply. Burke and the other 35 counties use direct record electronic voting machines, which create a paper receipt of a voter’s choices.

Voting Blogs: Virginia DOE releases report critical of WinVote system | electionlineWeekly

On April 1, the Virginia Department of Elections released an interim report citing critical, potential security concerns with the WinVote DREs, in particular with the wireless capability of the system. Despite the date, this was no joke. Following scattered reports of problems with voting systems in the state during the November 2014 election, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) called for an investigation into the irregularities. The State Board of Elections began its review in late 2014, but it wasn’t until early 2015 that the extent of the problem became obvious. “We really didn’t know until early February that there was a potential security issue with the WinVotes,” said Edgardo Cortes, commissioner of elections for the Commonwealth. “At that point we moved quickly to conduct additional testing, but it wasn’t until the preliminary test results were provided on March 26 that we knew how serious a vulnerability we were facing.” Twenty-nine localities — about 20 percent of the precincts in the Commonwealth — use the WinVote DREs and of those, 10 are facing June primaries.

Australia: New South Wales Attacks Researchers Who Found Internet Voting Vulnerabilities | Electronic Frontier Foundation

April 8, 2015

A security flaw in New South Wales’ Internet voting system may have left as many as 66,000 votes vulnerable to interception and manipulation in a recent election, according to security researchers. Despite repeated assurances from the Electoral Commission that all Internet votes are “fully encrypted and safeguarded,” six days into online voting, Michigan Computer Science Professor J. Alex Halderman and University of Melbourne Research Fellow Vanessa Teague discovered a FREAK flaw that could allow an attacker to intercept votes and inject their own code to change those votes, all without leaving any trace of the manipulation. (FREAK stands for Factoring RSA Export Keys and refers to the exploitation of a weakness in the SSL/TLS protocol that allows attackers to force browsers to use weak encryption keys.) But instead of taking the researchers’ message to heart, officials instead attacked the messengers.

Philippines: Comelec drops touch screen voting | The Manila Times

April 8, 2015

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will no longer purchase precinct-based direct recording electronic (DRE) machines amid questions on the reliability of the touch screen technology. Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez on Tuesday said the Comelec en banc had shelved the bidding of the project, which should have been part of the poll body’s P2.503 billion voting machines procurement program. Jimenez explained that the project has not been totally scrapped but the commission is “going a little slower on it than we used to.” The Comelec en banc recently came out with a resolution suspending the progress of the second round of bidding for the DRE and the pilot testing of the technology.

National: The Mobile Election: How smartphones will change the 2016 presidential race | Politico

Four years ago today, President Barack Obama was gearing up to announce his reelection campaign, Mitt Romney was leading Newt Gingrich in the polls, and roughly one out of every three American adults owned a smartphone. You read that right: In the spring of 2011, just 35 percent of American adults owned a smartphone, according to Pew Research. The Internet and social media may have been changing politics in myriad ways, but news consumption was mostly a sedentary experience. Today, as Hillary Clinton prepares for the formal launch of her campaign, and as Jeb Bush and Scott Walker are neck and neck in the polls, roughly two out of every three American adults, or 64 percent, own a smartphone, according to a new report from Pew. The new mobile reality is changing the state of news and advertising, and it will also change the dynamic of American politics — especially during the 2016 campaign season, journalists and political operatives said.

Connecticut: Compromise election overhaul bill clears Connecticut panel | Associated Press

A newly crafted compromise aimed at professionalizing Connecticut’s election system after a spate of polling mishaps cleared a legislative hurdle Monday. While the revamped bill would still retain the current system of 339 locally elected, partisan registrars of voters, it now requires a new certification program for registrars and a process for investigating and possibly removing those who behave negligently. The proposed legislation also enables the Secretary of the State to temporarily remove a registrar for failing to obtain the newly required certification.

North Dakota: Senate approves voter registration study | INFORUM

A bill requiring a study of voter registration in North Dakota will soon be on its way to Gov. Jack Dalrymple for his signature. The Senate voted 28-19 Monday to approve House Bill 1302, which requires legislative management to study policies to implement a system of voter registration, including provisions necessary to allow same-day voter registration. North Dakota is the only state without voter registration. But Rep. Corey Mock, D-Grand Forks, who offered the study as an amendment to his original bill that sought to reverse changes made to the state’s voter identification law in 2013, said he believes the state has created a de facto voter registration system through its central voter file.

Ohio: Kasich’s veto removes voting target for out-of-state college students | The Columbus Dispatch

In a rebuke of fellow Republicans, Gov. John Kasich used his line-item veto authority today to kill language that would have targeted out-of-state college students who register to vote in Ohio to quickly obtain in-state licenses and vehicle registrations. The governor let stand a new portion of the law requiring new Ohio residents to get an updated license and registration within 30 days. But he stripped out the measure linking that provision with voting registration. The Dispatch reported today that state officials could not say how the voting requirement would have been enforced. Democrats and voting-rights activists had lobbied the governor’s office to veto the measure, contending it would discourage students from voting if they had to obtain Ohio documentation within 30 days of registering to vote.

Vermont: Senate passes same-day voter registration, rejects photo ID | VTDigger

The Vermont Senate rejected a last-ditch effort Wednesday to require photo identification at the polls as part of a same-day voter registration bill. State senators amended an original version of the Election Day voter registration bill last week and delayed implementation of S.29 until 2017 — after the next presidential election. Sen. Dustin Degree, R-Franklin, last week attempted to delay S.29 until the Secretary of State’s Office could prove in writing that all polling places had Internet connections in order to access the secretary’s online voter checklist. Degree abandoned that amendment Tuesday.

Virginia: Report cites security issues with some AVS WinVote voting machines | Associated Press

An investigation into voting irregularities during the November general election has raised serious security concerns about equipment used in about one-fifth of Virginia’s precincts, a new report says. The report issued late Wednesday says the state Board of Elections should consider decertifying the WinVote touchscreen system and barring its use in future elections. The board is expected to conduct a public hearing on this and other options in the next few days. Link: Full DOE report on Virginia voting equipment

United Kingdom: Expat standing in general election to highlight vote ban injustice | Telegraph