Texas: Travis County Developing Electronic Voting System With a Paper Trail | Government Technology

Imagine casting your vote on an everyday touch-screen tablet that prints out a paper copy of your ballot, as well as a take-home receipt you can use to verify it was counted. Such a system could be in place at Travis County polls as early as 2017. For the past three years, the county and a group of experts have been designing the specifications for new voting software that would rein in costs while providing what critics of electronic machines have long requested: a verifiable paper trail. “You can never win the argument over black box voting,” said Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir. Under the system being developed, a voter would use a device — likely a tablet — to fill out an electronic ballot and then print out a paper copy for voters to check. The electronic ballot wouldn’t be tallied unless the voter deposited the paper copy into a ballot box that scans a serial number printed on it. The voter would also receive a receipt with a code that can be entered online to confirm the ballot was counted.

Texas: How a Texas redistricting case could revive the Voting Rights Act | MSNBC

A push to fix the Voting Rights Act has stalled in Washington. But a trial taking place this week in a sleepy San Antonio courtroom could help revive the landmark law without Congress lifting a finger. At issue in the case is a redistricting plan approved in 2011 by Texas’s Republican legislature. The Obama administration charges that the plan intentionally discriminated against the state’s soaring Hispanic population in an effort to boost the GOP’s share of seats in Congress and the statehouse. Texas admits the plan was designed to help Republicans—which isn’t illegal—but says it did not aim to target Hispanics. If a three-judge panel rules against Texas, it likely would not affect the state’s congressional district maps, because a federal court has already rejected the original maps and created new ones that are fairer. Instead, the implications would be much bigger—potentially even bolstering voting protections for racial minorities in states across the country.

Afghanistan: Audit of Presidential Election Begins | New York Times

Afghan election workers on Thursday began auditing the votes cast in last month’s presidential election runoff, monitored by American and United Nations observers. The audit of almost eight million ballots cast in the June 14 runoff was part of a deal brokered last weekend by Secretary of State John Kerry to ease a dispute between the two candidates, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, that had threatened to fracture Afghanistan’s government only months before the NATO-led combat mission here is to formally end. Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani also agreed to enact broad changes to Afghanistan’s system of government in the coming years. But first the audit must determine who will actually be Afghanistan’s next president. It is a huge undertaking that is expected to take three to six weeks and, officials cautioned, run into snags along the way.

Australia: Government rejects Senate order to disclose Electoral Commission software code | Sydney Morning Herald

The government has rejected a Senate demand to disclose the Australian Electoral Commission’s secret computer code used to electronically count Senate preference votes. The motion, passed by the Senate last week, was prompted by the AEC’s refusal to comply with a freedom of information request made by digital activist Michael Cordover. He wanted to scrutinise the source code for the EasyCount application, but the AEC’s chief legal officer Paul Pirani instead declared him “vexatious”. The Senate motion, introduced by Greens senator Lee Rhiannon, called on Special Minister of State Michael Ronaldson to table the source code, as well as correspondence and documents relevant to the decision to have Mr Cordover declared a “vexatious” applicant and the assertion he “colluded” with another activist to “harrass” the AEC. … Mr Ronaldson said the government would not table any documents or correspondence relating to Mr Cordover’s FOI request, because the matter would soon appear before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. He also refused to publish the source code for the Senate counting system.

National: College Students Claim Voter ID Laws Discriminate Based on Age | New York Times

Civil rights groups have spent a decade fighting requirements that voters show photo identification, arguing that this discriminates against African-Americans, Hispanics and the poor. This week in a North Carolina courtroom, another group will make its case that such laws are discriminatory: college students. Joining a challenge to a state law alongside the N.A.A.C.P., the American Civil Liberties Union and the Justice Department, lawyers for seven college students and three voter-registration advocates are making the novel constitutional argument that the law violates the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 from 21. The amendment also declares that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.” There has never been a case like it, and if the students succeed, it will open another front in what has become a highly partisan battle over voting rights.

Editorials: Scytl e-voting exposes the dangers of automating a democracy | Scott M. Fulton/Fierce Enterprise Communications

Technology is already neutral. While vendors and manufacturers and lobbyists characterize technology as a natural force unto itself with the power to improve our lives and work simply through direct contact with it, more often than not, it provides people within organizations, societies, states and countries with the tools they require to further entrench themselves in bureaucracy, and to bury themselves further in the obscurity and anonymity they desire. The first trials of Scytl’s protocol took place in Norway in 2013. The Carter Center, which has monitored and verified the accuracy of global elections ever since Pres. Carter left the White House, reported on the progress of the Scytl approach (.pdf). The process of voting in Norway, according to that report, was not at all dissimilar to the way B-52 bombers were told to attack Moscow in the movie Dr. Strangelove:

In order to vote, a voter had to register their mobile phone with a centralized government register (one could do so online while the voting was underway). The voter should have also received a special card… delivered through the postal service, with personalized numeric return codes. These cards provided the voter a list of four-digit numbers corresponding to each party running for election. The four-digit numbers were randomly assigned for every voter so that, for example, any two voters who wanted to cast their vote for Labour would unlikely have the same return codes associated to the Labour party.

California: Controller recount highlights concern about California election law | Los Angeles Times

In much the way surgeons need skilled hands and fighter pilots must have great eyesight, there is at least one key requirement for election workers handling the recount in California’s controller race: long attention spans. Starting Friday, they will gather in government offices and sit four to a table, where ballots will be lined up for their review. One worker will read a voter’s decision, another will watch and two more will keep count. They will do this thousands and thousands of times. “It has to be people who can stay focused, because you can understand how boring it can get,” said Debra Porter, Imperial County registrar. And if the workers lose count, they’ll have to backtrack to make sure they get it right. This tedious process is at the heart of what could become the largest recount in California history. It will also showcase a rarely discussed area of state law that observers and participants say fails to provide an equitable safeguard in close elections.

Florida: Judge throws out Florida’s congressional map | Miami Herald

A judge threw out Florida’s congressional redistricting map Thursday, ruling that the Legislature allowed for a “secret, organized campaign” by partisan operatives to subvert the redistricting process in violation of the state Constitution. Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis ruled that two of the state’s 27 districts are invalid and must be redrawn, along with any other districts affected by them, to bring the map into compliance with the state’s new Fair District amendments. The 41-page ruling, issued late Thursday, invalidates the entire congressional map and raises questions now about whether the map will be redrawn before the November elections or revised later. The case, brought by a coalition led by the League of Women Voters, is expected to be appealed and ultimately decided by the Florida Supreme Court.

North Carolina: Decision on voting law injunction now up to federal judge | Winston-Salem Journal

A federal judge will now have to decide whether North Carolina’s new voting law is so onerous on black voters that it needs to be blocked before the upcoming November elections. That’s the central question after a four-day hearing in U.S. District Court in Winston-Salem ended Thursday afternoon. National and local voting-rights activists are closely watching the case. U.S. District Judge Thomas D. Schroeder said in court that he would issue a written decision at a later date, noting it would be “sooner rather than later,” given the urgency of the matter. State attorneys argued Thursday that the law was not discriminatory and that it gave everyone an equal opportunity to vote. Opponents disagree. The hearing featured about three days of testimony from state officials, Democratic legislators, experts and blacks voters who said they would be burdened by voting changes that Republicans legislators passed in 2013. The law, known as the Voting Information Verification Act and referred to in the hearing as House Bill 589, would reduce early voting from 17 days to 10, eliminate same-day voter registration, prohibit county elections officials from counting ballots cast by voters in the correct county but wrong precinct and get rid of pre-registration by 16- and 17-year-olds.

Texas: Voter ID law must stand trial, judge rules | MSNBC

It’s far too soon to make any predictions. But a recent decision by a federal judge in the challenge to Texas’s harsh voter ID law may augur well for the chances of getting the law struck down when it goes to trial in September. Overturning the law would be a massive win for the Obama administration, which is spearheading the challenge, and could boost Democrats’ long-term hopes of competing in Texas. It would be an embarrassing defeat for Gov. Rick Perry and for Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is highlighting his defense of the law as he runs to succeed Perry as governor. The law, passed in 2011 with strong support from Perry, imposes the strictest ID requirement in the nation. It requires that Texans show one of a narrow range of state or federal IDs. Gun licenses are accepted, but student IDs, and even out-of-state driver’s licenses, aren’t. Finding that it would disproportionately affect minority voters, a federal court blocked the law in 2012 under the Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required the state to get federal approval for its voting laws. But hours after the Supreme Court invalidated Section 5 last year, Abbott announced that the law would go into effect.

Afghanistan: Kerry announces ‘comprehensive audit’ of disputed Afghanistan election | The Guardian

Secretary of state John Kerry said on Saturday both of Afghanistan’s presidential candidates were committed to abiding by the results of the “largest and most comprehensive audit” of the election runoff ballots possible. Kerry stood with the two candidates who are disputing the results of Afghanistan’s presidential election. He announced that finance minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah had agreed to abide by a 100%, internationally supervised audit of all ballots in the presidential election in Kabul. “Both candidates have committed to participate in and abide by the results of the largest and most comprehensive audit; every single ballot that was cast will be audited,” Kerry said. “This is the strongest possible signal by both candidates of the desire to restore legitimacy to the process.” The audit is expected to take a “number of weeks” and will begin with ballot boxes in Kabul. Ballot boxes from the provinces are to be flown by helicopter to the capital by US and international forces and examined on rolling basis. Observers from each campaign as well as international observers will be involved in the oversight of the review, and the candidate with the most votes will be declared the winner and become president.

Indonesia: Presidential candidate declares victory, opponent says not so fast | CNN

Hours after voting ended in Indonesia’s presidential race, candidate Joko “Jokowi” Widodo proclaimed victory while his rival Prabowo Subianto urged patience as the official vote count proceeded. Results of an unofficial quick count on Wednesday indicated a slight edge for Widodo, a former furniture exporter who rose to become Jakarta governor, ahead of Prabowo, a former military man. “Today, Indonesia’s new son has been chosen by the people,” Widodo declared. “We begin a new phase in our history and we start a new beginning of Indonesia.” Widodo’s leap from relative obscurity to potential leader of the world’s most populous Muslim nation has drawn comparisons to U.S. President Barack Obama’s meteoric rise in 2008. For his supporters, the “Jokowi effect” heralds a new breed of political leaders — a break from Indonesia’s tradition of leaders with military, bureaucratic or elite backgrounds.

National: The Looming Crisis in Voting Technology | Governing.com

More and more often these days, Neal Kelley and his staff find themselves rooting through shelves at used computer stores in Orange County, Calif., looking for something they can’t find anywhere else: laptops that run on Windows 2000. Kelley is the registrar of voters in Orange County, and one component of his election equipment still runs on the Microsoft operating system from 14 years ago. As in most places around the country, Orange County’s voting technology is based on federal standards set after Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002. The razor-thin presidential election in 2000 between Al Gore and George W. Bush revealed that outdated technology had left thousands of votes uncounted. With HAVA, Congress encouraged local governments to install electronic voting equipment, resulting in a wave of upgrades across the country. Between 2002 and 2004, Congress allocated more than $3 billion for some 8,000 local jurisdictions to replace the punch card devices and lever machines they had been using for more than 30 years. But today, a decade later, that upgraded election infrastructure is quickly becoming obsolete. In a worst-case scenario, current equipment will start to fail in the next couple years, forcing fewer voting booths to process more ballots, a recipe for longer lines and voter frustration. “What you don’t want is disenfranchised voters who are deciding not to cast a ballot because of these issues,” says Kelley. “We can’t let ourselves get to that point. We need to be ahead of this curve.”

Alaska: Expert in Native voting rights trial says Alaska has long history of discrimination | Anchorage

An expert testifying in the federal voting rights trial in Anchorage said Monday it’s possible to trace Alaska’s current failure to provide full language assistance to Native language speakers to territorial days when Alaska Natives were denied citizenship unless they renounced their own culture. “This represents the continuing organizational culture, looking at the law as something they’re forced to do, instead of looking at the policy goal of being sure that everyone has the opportunity to participate,” said University of Utah political science professor Daniel McCool. “It’s part of a pattern I see over a long period of time, a consistent culture — they’re going to fight this. When forced to do something, they’re going to do it, but only when they’ve been ordered to.”

Guam: Presidential vote issue may be brought to federal court | Pacific Daily News

Whether residents of Guam should be able to vote for President may be brought up in federal court. We the People Project, a nonprofit organization that aims to fight for the rights of residents in Guam and other U.S. territories, is hoping to file a federal lawsuit on the issue by fall, according to a press release. “It’s simple — the right to vote for president should not depend on where you live,” Neil Weare, president and founder of the project, said in the release “That’s not how democracy is supposed to work. Guam’s sons and daughters proudly serve in uniform to defend democracy overseas; they should have the right to fully participate in democracy at home.”

Kansas: ACLU seeks to block Kansas voter-citizenship move | Topeka Capital-Journal

The American Civil Liberties Union asked a Kansas judge Friday to prevent Secretary of State Kris Kobach from starting a “dual” voting system to help the conservative Republican enforce a proof-of-citizenship requirement for new voters that he championed. The ACLU filed a request for a temporary injunction with Shawnee County District Judge Franklin Theis in a lawsuit that the group filed last year on behalf of two voters and Equality Kansas, the state’s leading gay-rights group. Theis already had scheduled a hearing for July 11, and the ACLU wants its request considered then, ahead of the state’s Aug. 5 primary.

Mississippi: McDaniel still not conceding; fight over poll books continues | Mississippi Business Journal

State Sen. Chris McDaniel has presented no evidence to support his claim that voter fraud pushed Senate incumbent Thad Cochran to victory in Mississippi’s GOP runoff. And without evidence, the tea party-backed hopeful is going to have a tough time overturning Cochran’s nearly 6,800-vote win. But a week after the balloting, McDaniel isn’t giving up. McDaniel spokesman Noel Fritsch said yesterday that the campaign continues to examine poll books for possible examples of crossover voting that is prohibited by state law — people who voted in both the Democratic primary June 3 and the Republican runoff June 24. “We haven’t determined our specific legal recourse,” Fritsch said. “We’re kind of in a holding pattern, to a certain degree, while we’re collecting evidence.” Mississippi voters don’t register by party. State law says the only people banned from voting in the June 24 Republican runoff were those who voted in the June 3 Democratic primary.

Oregon: Website breach: State officials failed to patch ‘high risk’ software problem | OregonLive.com

The hackers who breached the Oregon Secretary of State’s website in February probably exploited software that cybersecurity websites had identified as vulnerable but that state IT officials had not patched, documents and information obtained by The Oregonian show. On Friday, agency spokesman Tony Green said the hackers first gained access to the site Jan. 21. That’s one week earlier than previously disclosed and two weeks before the breach was detected Feb. 4. The attack, possibly from China or North Korea, prompted officials to take the state’s campaign finance and business registry databases offline for about three weeks. State officials also closed international access to the entire website for weeks, and this week declined to say what controls on foreign traffic remain.

Afghanistan: Amid Claims of Fraud, Presidential Candidate Vows More Deadlock | New York Times

After a potential opening last week to ease Afghanistan’s political crisis, the presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah signaled on Sunday that more deadlock was ahead, promising again that he would not accept any decisions made by the country’s election commission after the panel rejected a list of his demands. “From today onward, we reject all the decisions and activities of the Independent Election Commission, which will not have any legal value anyway,” said Baryalai Arsalai, Mr. Abdullah’s campaign manager. “They have no intention to assess the fraudulent votes and separate the dirty votes from the clean votes.” In the two weeks since the presidential runoff vote, the election process has been shadowed by accusations of fraud and conspiracy, with the Abdullah campaign accusing a range of officials all the way to the presidential palace of rigging the vote against him. There have been dramatic protests flooding the streets of Kabul, and secretly captured phone calls that allegedly show election officials conspiring to rig the race.

Indonesia: Knife’s edge: Indonesia’s presidential race tightens as election day approaches | The Economist

In late June the two candidates in Indonesia’s presidential race both held rallies in Jakarta, the capital. Supporters of Joko Widodo, known to all as Jokowi (pictured right), walked and cycled through the central business district. From a stage set up at a roundabout, Jokowi thanked his supporters in a brief, rather flat speech. Prabowo Subianto held his rally at Bung Karno stadium, which seats more than 80,000. Trumpeters and drummers heralded his arrival in a white convertible. He was flanked by his running mate, Hatta Rajasa, and by leaders of the parties in his coalition—all wearing identical white shirts. The rally did not quite reach the theatrical heights of an event back in March, where he arrived by helicopter and pranced astride a bay charger. But he delivered a fiery speech, and was carried off on the shoulders of cheering supporters. Vulgar showmanship, no doubt. But Mr Prabowo has run a devastating campaign against Jokowi, clawing his way back in opinion polls from a 39-point deficit. The election, which will be held on July 9th, is too close to call. On June 30th Jokowi was polling at 46% of the votes and Mr Prabowo at 42.6%.

National: Senators spar over the need for new voting rights legislation | Los Angeles Times

Republicans and Democrats in the Senate argued bitterly Wednesday about the need for a new law to protect the voting rights of minorities. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on proposed legislation to resuscitate a critical provision of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court a year ago. The court invalidated the system whereby most Southern states were required to clear changes to their voting laws in advance with the Justice Department. The new bill would attempt to get around the court’s objections by creating a new system in which any state with more than five voting rights violations in the previous 15 years would have to seek “pre-clearance.” Currently only Texas, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana would be covered, which provoked outrage from Texas’ two senators, who both sit on the committee. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) asked why only four states would be covered, and not others such as Minnesota, which is represented on the committee by two Democrats. “Every state is covered by this if they violate the law five times in 15 years,” replied Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn).

Editorials: Bitcoin Voting and the Myth of the Un-Hackable Election | The Daily Signal

Bitcoin, the alternative to currency taking the Internet by storm, now may move to another mission. Some advocates want to translate the technology into online voting. Advocates promise a utopian voting scheme driven by smartphones and apps that can overcome all the inherent vulnerabilities to classic e-voting thanks to Bitcoin’s un-hackable code. But the reality is that total security and anonymity online is a virtual impossibility (pun intended) – and both are absolutely crucial to a fair and reliable election. Bitcoin might be the world’s first viable digital currency; it exists entirely in electronic form, and is regulated by a market of online buyers and sellers, rather than a nation and a central bank. As a currency, it is an intriguing experiment. As the foundation of a democratic election, it quickly loses its luster.

Alaska: Trial opens in lawsuit claiming Alaska denied Native rights in voting material translations | Associated Press

A federal trial began this week in a voting rights lawsuit filed by several Alaska villages, alleging the state has failed to provide accurate, complete translations of voting materials into Native languages. State officials denied voting rights to Alaskans with limited English proficiency because voting information lacked Yup’ik, Cup’ik and Gwich’in translations, according to the lawsuit filed last year on behalf of four Native villages and elders with limited English skills. The state says elections officials have taken all reasonable steps to implement standards for voting materials for non-English speakers that are equivalent to those for English speakers. The state Division of Elections provides several methods of oral language assistance, a trial brief says.

Editorials: Scaring Away Black Voters in Mississippi | Juliet Lapidos/New York Times

Several right-wing groups have banded together to form a “voter integrity project’ in response to the news that Republican Senator Thad Cochran is courting black Democratic voters in his runoff with the Tea partier Chris McDaniel. The Senate Conservatives Fund, Freedom Works and the Tea Party Patriots, all political action committees, will “deploy observers in areas where Mr. Cochran is recruiting Democrats,” according to a Times article. Ken Cuccinelli, the president of the Senate Conservative Funds, said these observers would be trained to see “whether the law is being followed.” Does anything think this “project” will actually encourage voter “integrity” as opposed to voter suppression? Misinformation is already circulating as to the details of the law that voters must follow.

Ohio: A ‘people’s movement’ for voting rights | MSNBC

After taking office in 2010, Democratic Ohio State Rep. Alicia Reece was determined to push back against Republican-sponsored voting restrictions. So Reece did what a lawmaker is supposed to do: She introduced bills, drew up amendments, pushed for hearings and testified before commissions. But with the GOP in complete control of state government beginning January 2011, she didn’t get far. Reece, 42, grew up immersed in the civil rights movement. She volunteered for Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition before she was old enough to vote, and at college in Louisiana she organized her dorm to fight David Duke, a onetime state lawmaker and former Ku Klux Klan leader who was running for governor. So with Democrats shut out in Columbus, and no end in sight to GOP efforts to restrict access to the ballot, Reece decided to go back to her roots. “I tried to work on the inside,” Reece, 42, explained on a recent Saturday over lunch at Pleasant Ridge Chili—the self-proclaimed inventor of gravy cheese fries. “Now, I had to go outside, and get organizing a people’s movement.”

Virginia: State Board of Elections to re-evaluate voter ID rule after lawmaker raises concern | Associated Press

The State Board of Elections plans to re-evaluate its definition of a valid identification under Virginia’s new voter ID law after a state lawmaker raised concerns about the rule. On June 10, the board determined that expired but otherwise valid forms of identification will be accepted at the polls. Board members voted Tuesday to reconsider the regulation and reopen the public comment period for 21 days. The board plans to study whether it has the authority to determine what forms of ID are valid, media outlets reported. “What we are after is to find out if this person representing themselves at the polls is who they say they are,” said Chairman Charles Judd. “Then we have achieved what we need to achieve.”

Afghanistan: Thousands march on Afghan president’s palace to protest election | Reuters

Thousands of angry protesters marched on the Afghan president’s palace on Friday in support of candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s allegations that mass fraud had been committed during the presidential election by organizers and state officials. The run-off pitting the former Northern Alliance leader against ex-finance minister Ashraf Ghani on June 14 has fallen into deadlock over Abdullah’s decision to drop out last week. The impasse has revived longstanding ethnic tensions in Afghanistan because Abdullah’s base of support is with the Tajiks, the second largest ethnic group, while Ghani is Pashtun, the largest group. It also comes at a dangerous time, with the Taliban insurgency still raging and most NATO-led forces preparing to leave the country by the end of the year. Abdullah joined protesters aboard a small truck, driving alongside the crowd and waving a flag.

China: Herculean hacking attack takes aim at Hong Kong’s dreams of democracy | The Globe and Mail

The full fury of the Internet attack started three hours before polls opened. As people in Hong Kong prepared to cast electronic ballots in an effort to show Chinese authorities their hunger for democracy, hackers opened fire with a potent effort to derail the vote. Suddenly, a flood of data swarmed the servers designed to handle the voting in a poll held by Occupy Central with Love and Peace, a burgeoning protest movement that has sought the right for Hong Kong people to nominate and elect their own chief executive, the territory’s most powerful position. But the informal vote on universal suffrage was attacked by at least 300 gigabits of data per second – and perhaps as high as 600, a level not before reached in a publicly disclosed hacking attack. The torrent reached 200 million packets, or tiny bits of data, per second. It was “just a stunning amount of traffic,” said Matthew Prince, chief executive officer of CloudFlare, the San Francisco-based Internet security company that managed to keep the website online.

Norway: Norway Does A Ctrl+Alt+Delete On E-Voting Experiment | NPR

After a two-year trial for Internet voting, Norway is pulling the plug. The country’s Office of Modernization said in a statement that there’s no evidence that online voting, tested in elections in 2011 and 2013, improved turnout. It also said that “political disagreement” over the issue, along with voters’ fear that ballots might not be secure, could undermine the democratic process. The office said it had “decided that the attempt with voting over the Internet should not be promoted.” The idea of online voting has been in the ether for as long as the Internet, so Norway’s experience might be relevant elsewhere. … David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, wrote in 2011 that “computer and network security experts are virtually unanimous in pointing out that online voting is an exceedingly dangerous threat to the integrity of U.S. elections. “There is no way to guarantee that the security, privacy, and transparency requirements for elections can all be met with any practical technology in the foreseeable future,” he says.

National: Court Rulings on Voter Restrictions Create Limbo as Midterms Near | New York Times

With the midterm elections only months away, efforts to carry out some of the country’s strictest photo ID requirements and shorten early voting in several politically pivotal states have been thrown into limbo by a series of court decisions concluding that the measures infringe on the right to vote. The most recent ruling came last Wednesday, when a federal judge ordered Ohio’s elections chief to restore early voting hours on the three days before Election Day. It is the second lower court decision in Ohio since 2012 that bolsters voter rights. The court decisions have gone both ways, but several have provided a new round of judicial rebukes to the wave of voting restrictions, nearly all of them introduced since 2011 in states with Republican majorities. The decisions have ensured that challenges will remain a significant part of the voting landscape, perhaps for years. And, with challenges still going through the courts, voting rules and requirements remain uncertain in several states before the midterm elections.