National: Senate panel to examine voting rights fix | The Hill

The Senate Judiciary Committee next week will examine legislation designed to restore the voting rights protections shot down by the Supreme Court last summer. Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has scheduled a June 25 hearing on the Voting Rights Amendment Act, his bill aimed at updating those sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) deemed by the high court to be unconstitutional. The date marks the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision, which Leahy characterized as a “disastrous” threat to voting protections. He’s urging lawmakers to adopt his bill ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Massachusetts: Military Ballots No Longer Secret | The Valley Patriot

We ask the men and women serving overseas to make the ultimate sacrifice, to protect the rights you and I take for granted. And how do we thank them? – by asking them to waive their right to a secret ballot. Under MA General Laws: Chapter 54, Section 95: “… Email or facsimile transmissions of a federal write-in absentee ballot shall include a completed form approved by the Federal Voting Assistance Program, or any successor program, declaring that the voter voluntarily waives the right to a secret ballot….” Allowing overseas citizens the option of electronic voting, assuming they have access to it, was the state’s solution to our September primary being too close to the November election (see May 2014 Massachusetts Military: The REAL Disenfranchised). Nine other states and the District of Columbia, that had similar conflicts, have changed the dates of their primaries. But despite repeated opportunities, politicians on Beacon Hill refuse to do so, seemingly because they oppose extending their campaign season. State Senator Jamie Eldridge, disagrees with those colleagues, and supports moving the primary to late spring or early summer. “As it is now, whoever wins the primary has only 6 weeks before the general election.”

Montana: State to open voting offices on reservations | Associated Press

Montana will open satellite voting offices on the Crow, Northern Cheyenne and Fort Belknap reservations in October as part of a settlement in a federal voting-rights lawsuit. The offices will be open twice week for late registration and for voters to cast absentee ballots for the Nov. 4 general elections. Last year, 12 Indian plaintiffs sued Secretary of State Linda McCulloch and elections officials in Blaine, Rosebud and Big Horn counties. They argued they had to drive long distances to county courthouses — in some instances, a more than 100 miles roundtrip — to register late and vote early in elections.

Ohio: U.S. Supreme Court will allow constitutional challenge of Ohio law that bars campaign lies | Cleveland Plain Dealer

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled today that an anti-abortion group can challenge the constitutionality of an Ohio law that bars lies about politicians during an election. The Susan B. Anthony List in April told the Supreme Court that the law, which allows citizens to file complaints about untruthful statements with Ohio’s Election Commission, chills free speech before elections. “The threatened proceedings  are of particular concern because of the burden they impose on electoral speech,” said the decision authored by Justice Clarence Thomas. “Moreover, the target of a complaint may be forced to divert significant time and resources to hire legal counsel and respond to discovery requests in the crucial days before an election.” The case stemmed from an ad the group placed that accused former Cincinnati-area Democratic congressman Steve Driehaus of voting for “taxpayer-funded abortion” by backing the Affordable Care Act.

Afghanistan: Candidate’s Protest Clouds Afghan Vote-Counting for President | New York Times

Afghanistan’s presidential election was cast into crisis on Wednesday as the candidate Abdullah Abdullah announced a boycott of the electoral process, accusing his opponent and President Hamid Karzai of engineering huge fraud in the runoff vote on Saturday. Rejecting the process laid out under Afghan electoral law, he called on the election commission to halt all vote-counting and immediately investigate any inflated ballot totals — steps that are designed to come after partial vote results are announced in the next few weeks. Mr. Abdullah also withdrew his election observers from the vote-counting and suspended his cooperation with the Independent Election Commission, which his campaign accuses of bias. If Mr. Abdullah were to reject the official results of the vote, it would cast into doubt an election that Western and Afghan officials alike have considered critical to the legacy of the long Western war in Afghanistan. The election’s legitimacy has been directly tied to the country’s stability, and to continued international aid now that Western troops are leaving.

China: Beijing Implicated As Hong Kong Vote Sites Crash Under Massive DDoS | Infosecurity

Even Amazon Web Services servers couldn’t cope with traffic overload. A major anti-Beijing news site and an online voting platform have been hit by major DDoS attacks rendering them unusable, just days before an unofficial referendum in Hong Kong on universal suffrage. The websites of the popular Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong and Taiwan were both inaccessible for much of Wednesday, while the Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong was still down at the time of writing. The university was appointed, along with Center for Social Policy Studies at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, to carry out an online referendum on voting rights in the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China. Occupy Central, a movement striving for universal suffrage, organized the vote from June 20-22.

Ukraine: Election narrowly avoided ‘wanton destruction’ from hackers | CSMonitor

A three-pronged wave of cyber-attacks aimed at wrecking Ukraine’s presidential vote – including an attempt to fake computer vote totals – was narrowly defeated by government cyber experts, Ukrainian officials say. The still little-known hacks, which surfaced May 22-26, appear to be among the most dangerous cyber-attacks yet deployed to sabotage a national election – and a warning shot for future elections in the US and abroad, political scientists and cyber experts say. National elections in the Netherlands, Norway, and other nations have seen hackers probe Internet-tied election systems, but never with such destructive abandon, said experts monitoring the Ukraine vote. “This is the first time we’ve seen a cyber-hacktivist organization act in a malicious way on such a grand scale to try to wreck a national election,” says Joseph Kiniry, an Internet voting systems cyber-security expert. “To hack in and delete everything on those servers is just pillaging, wanton destruction.” That wanton destruction began four days ahead of the national vote, when CyberBerkut, a group of pro-Russia hackers, infiltrated Ukraine’s central election computers and deleted key files, rendering the vote-tallying system inoperable. The next day, the hackers declared they had “destroyed the computer network infrastructure” for the election, spilling e-mails and other documents onto the web as proof. A day later, government officials said the system had been repaired, restored from backups, and was ready to go. But it was just the beginning.

National: Political parties fight to manipulate voting times | Associated Press

Election Day is approaching, and you’ve made up your mind. There’s no need to wait. In many states, you now can vote early. Yet what’s convenient to you is increasingly an opportunity for political gamesmanship to the candidates on the ballot. In key swing states, Democrats and Republicans are battling this year to gain even the slightest electoral advantages by tinkering with the times, dates and places where people can vote early. Their sights are set not only on this year’s gubernatorial and congressional campaigns, but on an even bigger prize: control of the White House after the 2016 elections. Republican-controlled legislatures in Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina and Wisconsin all have taken recent steps to curtail early voting by limiting the days on which it’s available. Meanwhile, Democratic-led legislatures have passed measures expanding early voting or instant registration in Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts and Minnesota. And Democratic activists in Missouri are backing an initiative petition that could create one of the nation’s most expansive early voting systems.

National: Voter Fraud Is Rare, but Myth Is Widespread | New York Times

Is vote fraud common in American politics? Not according to United States District Judge Lynn Adelman, who examined the evidence from Wisconsin and ruled in late April that “virtually no voter impersonation occurs” in the state and that “no evidence suggests that voter-impersonation fraud will become a problem at any time in the foreseeable future.” Strikingly, however, a Marquette Law School poll conducted in Wisconsin just a few weeks later showed that many voters there believed voter impersonation and other kinds of vote fraud were widespread — the likely result of a yearslong campaign by conservative groups to raise concerns about the practice. Thirty-nine percent of Wisconsin voters believe that vote fraud affects a few thousand votes or more each election. One in five believe that this level of fraud exists for each of the three types of fraud that individuals could commit: in-person voter impersonation, submitting absentee ballots in someone else’s name, and voting by people who are not citizens or Wisconsin residents.

Kansas: Kobach: Some Kansans will vote for federal candidates only | Topeka Capital-Journal

Kansas voters who registered using a national form without providing proof of U.S. citizenship will be given full provisional ballots during the Aug. 5 primary elections — but only the votes they cast in federal races will actually be counted, the state’s top election official said Tuesday. Secretary of State Kris Kobach told The Associated Press that fewer than 100 Kansas voters who used the federal registration form without providing citizenship documents will be affected. “No one is disenfranchised — any person can vote a full ballot by providing proof of citizenship,” Kobach said. “The notion a person is disenfranchised because they have to provide proof of citizenship is a silly one.”

Montana: Indian voting lawsuit settled | Great Falls Tribune

Indian plaintiffs who sued in federal court to force the Montana secretary of state and three rural counties to open satellite voting offices on remote reservations have settled the lawsuit out of court. Under the agreement, the three counties agree to open satellite voting locations on three reservations and pay plaintiffs’ attorney fees in the amount of $75,000. In a separate agreement, the state agrees to pay an additional $25,000 in attorney fees, according to Secretary of State Linda McCulloch. “I pledged to help assist the tribes and the counties to make this all work,” McCulloch said.

Nevada: ‘None of the above’ beats out all Democratic Governor candidates in Nevada | Las Vegas Review-Journal

Those few registered Democrats who bothered to vote in Tuesday’s primary might have been driven more by dissatisfaction with the party choices for governor than optimism about the slew of candidates on the ballot. In what appeared to be a protest vote over the lack of a strong challenger to GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval, more Democrats opted for “None Of These Candidates” over the eight actual individuals running for the party nomination. Despite U.S. Sen. Harry Reid’s pronouncement that a credible party-backed candidate would file against Sandoval, no such individual sought the office. Sandoval is expected to win re-election easily this fall. The “none” ballot option was picked by nearly 30 percent of Democratic voters, edging out Las Vegas resident Bob Goodman, who pulled about 25 percent of the vote. The other seven candidates lagged well behind. Goodman will be the party choice on the Nov. 4 general election ballot, however. Goodman ran Nevada’s economic development program under the late Gov. Mike O’Callaghan.

Ohio: State must restore three early voting days, court says | Associated Press

Ohio must allow voters to cast in-person ballots on the final three days before an election, a federal judge ordered Wednesday. The order wraps up one segment of long-running dispute over early-voting days in the quintessential swing state. Most notably, the decision allows voters in the November gubernatorial election to cast ballots on one Sunday, a popular voting day for urban churches whose largely African-American congregants organize “souls to the polls” caravans after services. For years, Democrats have claimed Ohio’s laws, along with orders from Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, unequally affected some voters in the state, especially those in urban areas. In 2012, President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and Democrats filed a lawsuit over an Ohio law that cut off in-person early voting three days prior to Election Day. The law made an exception for military personnel and Ohio voters living overseas. Democrats claimed that was unequal treatment, and everyone should have the chance to vote those three days.

Afghanistan: Afghans to vote in run-off election as US troops exit | AFP

Afghans head to the polls Saturday for a second-round election to choose a successor to President Hamid Karzai, with the threat of Taliban attacks and fraud looming over the country’s first democratic transfer of power. April’s first-round vote was hailed a success as turnout topped 50 percent and Islamist militants failed to launch any high-profile attacks on polling day. But Saturday presents another major challenge in the prolonged election process, which began with campaigning in early February and will end when the final result is announced on July 22.

Colombia: 11,000 polls ready, overseas voting under way in Colombia’s presidential election | Colombia Reports

Colombia’s National Registrar has confirmed that all the necessary preparations have been made for the country’s second-round elections this Sunday. According to the Registrar, more than 32 million Colombians are eligible to vote in Colombia’s June 15 elections, both domestically and abroad. Early voting for the nearly 600,000 Colombian citizens living abroad started on Monday, with polling stations located in 64 different countries. Nearly 11,000 polling stations will be open in the country on election day. According to Radio W, the National Registrar has installed thousands of biometric identification tools throughout the country to combat voter impersonation fraud. Nearly half a million Colombian citizens will also be working as jurors to ensure that the elections run as smoothly as possible.

Verified Voting Blog: Hack the Vote: The Perils of the Online Ballot Box

While most voters will cast their ballots at polling stations in November, online voting has been quietly and rapidly expanding in the United States over the last decade. Over 30 states and territories allow some form of Internet voting (such as by email or through a direct portal) for some classes of voters, including members of the military or absentees.

Utah just passed a law allowing disabled voters to vote online; and Alaska allows anyone to cast their ballots online. And there were recent news reports that Democratic and Republican national committees are contemplating holding primaries and caucuses online. We estimate that over three million voters now are eligible to vote online in the U.S.

But online voting is fraught with danger. Hackers could manipulate enough votes to change the results of local and national elections. And a skilled hacker can do so without leaving any evidence.

National: Voting problems across south could spell trouble for November | MSNBC

We’re still more than five months from midterm elections, but already Republican voting restrictions are causing chaos in states across the South, and in some cases, blocking access to the ballot. The slew of problems, even in a recent series of low-profile elections, is raising fears that large numbers of voters could be disenfranchised this fall if the laws aren’t blocked before then. Because two of the states involved, Arkansas and North Carolina, are hosting tight Senate races this fall, it’s possible that the laws could even be decisive in helping Republicans gain total control of Congress. “The problems we’re seeing in places like Arkansas and North Carolina are only going to worsen in higher-turnout elections in November, when hundreds of thousands more voters will arrive at the polls,” said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “They demonstrate exactly why we’ve filed motions to put these laws on hold until they’ve been thoroughly vetted by the courts.”

National: Red, Blue States Find Some Common Ground on Elections Reform | Stateline

After nearly five years of partisan feuds over state elections laws, there are growing signs that lawmakers are finding common ground on both sides of the aisle, in blue and red states alike. During legislative sessions this year, several states enacted changes designed to ease the voting process, such as online voter registration and same-day registration.  When Illinois finishes the rollout of its online system this summer as expected, more than 100 million eligible voters will live in states offering online registration — about half of the nation’s eligible voters, according to the United States Elections Project. The raft of new measures comes on the heels of a bipartisan presidential elections commission report released in January that encouraged states to “transcend partisan divisions and view election administration as public administration that must heed the expressed interests and expectations of voters.”

Voting Blogs: States, counties, NGOs roll out more technology to help voters | electionlineWeekly

With the primary season in full swing, it has been a busy spring for state and local elections offices in their efforts to make voting/registering easier for citizens. Like the trees and flowers coming into season, new websites and mobile apps have been blooming from coast to coast. For some a lot of this may be old hat, but it’s important to take notice of these new apps/sites to highlight the progress being made in the elections field; and to encourage others who may late bloomers to get the ball rolling with their own tech improvements. What follows is a snapshot of what some counties, states and voter advocacy organizations have done lately to make voting and/or registering to vote easier. In Connecticut, Secretary of State Denise Merrill recently announced that a mobile app for the state’s new online voter registration system is available. The app — for smartphone or tablet — is available through Google Play and Apple. Since OVR launched in February, more than 2,000 Connecticut residents have registered to vote or updated their registration. Merrill hopes the new app will increase those numbers.

Florida: GOP Consultant Asks U.S. Supreme Court To Block Records Release | CBS Miami

A Republican consultant trying to keep hundreds of pages of redistricting-related documents secret is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the release of the records in the latest twist in a legal battle over Florida’s congressional districts. Pat Bainter on Wednesday asked U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to issue an emergency stay blocking an order by the Florida Supreme Court less than 24 hours earlier that granted permission for the documents to be used in an ongoing trial challenging the constitutionality of the congressional map approved by the Legislature in 2012. Bainter argues that the 538 pages of “confidential material” contain “protected political speech — internal deliberations and strategy, and the names and contact information for like-minded individuals who wish to remain anonymous,” according to documents filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Bainter, his Gainesville-based consulting company, Data Targeting, Inc., and several employees.

Oregon: Outside software blamed for Oregon secretary of state computer breach | KATU

A piece of third-party software that hadn’t been updated might have been the vulnerable point invaded by hackers of the Oregon secretary of state’s website, a state report found. The February breach took election and business records offline for nearly three weeks, delaying disclosure of campaign-finance information and forcing staff to handle many functions by hand. Citing security concerns, officials wouldn’t name the suspect software but described it as an application development tool commonly used by governments and private-sector organizations. They say the software has now been patched, and they’re working to have future security updates installed automatically.

Belgium: Software bug disrupts e-vote count in Belgian election | PCWorld

A bug in an e-voting application halted the release of European, federal and regional election results in Belgium, the country’s interior ministry said Monday. On Sunday, problems occurred when counting votes made on older voting machines in around 20 of the country’s 209 cantons, the ministry said. The voting machines in question are x86 PCs from the DOS era, with two serial ports, a parallel port, a paltry 1 megabyte of RAM and a 3.5-inch disk drive used to load the voting software from a bootable DOS disk. A bug in the voting software used at canton headquarters where the votes are counted caused “incoherent” election results when it tried to add up preferential votes from those machines, ministry spokesman Peter Grouwels said. The application counted the results in different ways that should always get the same outcome but that wasn’t the case, he said, adding that the release of the results was immediately stopped when this was discovered. The fault appeared in the system despite the fact that the application was especially developed for these elections, was “tested thousands of times” and was certified by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, he said.

Malawi: Malawians Await Court Ruling on Controversial Election | VoA News

The Malawi High Court is expected to rule Friday whether the results of the May 20th presidential election should be announced or a recount should be held. With about a third of the votes counted, opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Peter Mutharika is leading with 42 percent of the unofficial tally. But Malawi Congress Party presidential candidate Lazarus Chakwera, who is in second place, has gone to court along with third place candidate President Joyce Banda to demand a recount. Meanwhile, Malawi’s Electoral Commission Chair Maxon Mbendera said late Thursday that despite some irregularities, over 95 percent of voting was free, fair, transparent and credible. He said he will announce the final results Friday barring any court intervention.

National: Technology Makes Voting Less Private | Government Technology

Where is the line between technology and voter privacy? Secret ballots are one of the tenets of voting, and as technology moves forward there’s a push to keep voting secret, with Monroe County poll sites banning cellphones and photos of the ballots themselves. But what happens once a vote is cast, and it becomes one point in a data set about voting trends throughout the region? Voting data can reveal various trends, from where Democrats and Republicans are voting, to where the most voters live, to the ages of most voters. Data like this was always available in some form, but it was usually buried in hundreds of sheets of paper and information was rarely gathered, given the large time commitment necessary to do so. Monroe County Clerk Linda Robbins said in a particularly busy election, it might take a year to get a precinct-by-precinct breakdown of votes. This election, it took one day due to the first-time use of the electronic poll books. Voter data information is now available with the click of a button, and that information can be pretty revealing for trying to determine how someone voted.

Editorials: Voting Online Is Not in the Foreseeable Future | Hans A. von Spakovsky/National Review

Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos recently published a commentary in the Hill claiming that “voting online is the future.” He also accused me of being against Internet voting because I want to “suppress” votes. That kind of ad hominem attack seems to always be the first refuge of those who are unable to argue substantively about a particular issue. I am against it because of the fundamental security problems presented by online voting and the fact that it could result in large-scale voter disenfranchisement. Moulitsas claims that creating a secure online voting system is “possible given current technology.” That is 100 percent wrong and shows how little he understands about the Internet or the voting process. You don’t have to take my word for it — that is the opinion of most computer scientists. In January 2004, a group of well-known computer experts issued a devastating report on the security of an Internet voting system proposed by the Pentagon for overseas military voters. As a result of that report, the project was cancelled. The vulnerabilities the experts discovered “are fundamental in the architecture of the Internet and of the PC hardware and software that is ubiquitous today. They cannot all be eliminated for the foreseeable future without some unforeseen radical breakthrough. It is quite possible that they will not be eliminated without a wholesale redesign and replacement of much of the hardware and software security systems that are part of, or connected to, today’s Internet.”

Arkansas: Voter ID law causes chaos and confusion | MSNBC

Arkansas’s voter ID law was recently declared unconstitutional by a judge, who ruled that it violated the state constitution’s right to vote. But for now, the law is still in effect—and it created chaos and confusion in its first real test Tuesday. Just as troubling, the state’s election administrators are reacting with a collective shrug. Arkansas’s primaries, held Tuesday, were fairly low turnout affairs. But the state is playing host to a crucial and high-profile U.S. Senate race this fall. Among the problems reported from Tuesday: poll workers quizzing voters on their personal information, including address and birthdate, after being shown ID, and using electronic card strip readers to verify ID—both of which go far beyond what the law allows. Some voters without proper ID are said to have been wrongly denied provisional ballots. And large numbers of absentee ballots also are in danger of not being counted, thanks to the ID law. “We’re hearing from some pretty steamed voters,” said Holly Dickson, a lawyer with the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, citing “a smorgasborg of complaints and issues” about the law’s application. The ACLU is challenging the law in court.

Florida: Redistricting, gerrymandering trial begins | The News Herald

A high-stakes trial that could decide the future of the state’s congressional districts began Monday in Tallahassee , as a Republican political consultant testified that he didn’t influence the drawing of U.S. House lines in 2012. The testimony of Marc Reichelderfer marked the beginning of the first-ever court battle over the state’s once-a-decade redistricting process under the anti-gerrymandering Fair Districts amendments. Those constitutional standards, passed by voters in 2010, bar lawmakers from drawing lines intended to harm or favor parties or candidates when overhauling legislative and congressional districts after each U.S. Census. Over three weeks, members of the Tallahassee establishment ranging from behind-the-scenes aides and consultants like Reichelderfer to high-profile politicians like House Speaker Will Weatherford and Senate President Don Gaetz are expected to answer questions about their role in redistricting as it unfolded two years ago. Weatherford and Gaetz could testify as soon as this week; former House Speaker Dean Cannon is also expected to be called to the stand during the trial.

Kansas: As counties look at new voting machines, paper ballots are returning | Great Bend Tribune

When it comes to elections, the pendulum just keeps swinging. With electronic voting equipment nearing the end of this life expectancy, Barton County Election Officer Donna Zimmerman is eyeing the future and sees a need for a change. This change could include a return to the old-school paper ballots. With such an evolution on the horizon, Zimmerman hosted a voting equipment demonstration in the Barton County Courthouse Thursday morning. Kansas county clerks and election officials joined her staff for the presentations. Participants witnessed demonstrations from multiple voting system manufacturers. ElectionSource of Grand Rapids, Mich., presented Dominion Voting Systems and Henry M. Adkins & Son of Clinton, Mo., presented Unisyn Voting Solutions. “It appears that the trend is to return to paper ballots with equipment only for used by those with disabilities,” Zimmerman said. “This is the yo-yo in elections. It seems really weird that we’re going back to paper ballots,” said Darin DeWitt, Barton County voter registration clerk. “It’s like two steps backward.” DeWitt and Zimmerman were among the handful of election officials huddled around the pricey new equipment in the Barton County Commission chambers to hear the sales pitch for from ElectionSource.

Massachusetts: Governor signs voting bill into law | masslive.com

Massachusetts voters will be able to cast their ballots early beginning in 2016, under a new law signed by Gov. Deval Patrick on Thursday. “Whenever we have a law that expands access to the ballot and makes it easier for people to register and to vote, it makes our democracy better,” Patrick said moments after signing the law, surrounded by legislators and voting reform activists. The election reform law allows for early voting in biennial statewide elections, starting 11 business days before an election and ending two business days before Election Day. The law also establishes online voter registration and requires the Secretary of State’s office to develop a tool that lets voters check their registration status and their polling location online. The law allows 16 and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote, although they will not be allowed to cast a ballot until they turn 18.

Malawi: Joyce Banda demands recount amid rigging fears | The Guardian

The Malawi president has called for an immediate manual audit of this week’s election results, alleging serious irregularities after the electoral commission reported its vote-tallying system had collapsed. “It has come to my attention that there (are) some serious irregularities in the counting and announcement of results in some parts of the country,” Joyce Banda said. She said unofficial partial results revealed vote tallies that exceeded the total number of registered voters in some constituencies. Discarded and tampered ballots had also been discovered, said Banda, who faces her first electoral test since she succeeded Bingu wa Mutharika after his death two years ago.