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Colorado became the first state in the nation after this month’s election to complete a “risk-limiting” audit, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. Such an audit, ordered by the Colorado Legislature in 2009, is a procedure designed to provide statistical evidence that the election outcome is correct, and has a higher-than-normal probability of correcting a wrong outcome. Risk-limiting audits require human beings to examine and verify more ballots in close races, and fewer ballots in races with wide margins. “Colorado is a national leader in exploring innovative solutions for accessible, secure and auditable elections,” said Matt Masterson, chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, who witnessed the audit. “Colorado’s risk-limiting audit provided great insights into how to conduct more efficient and effective post-election audits. (The commission) is eager to share some of the lessons learned with election officials across America.”

Pennsylvania: York County officials say overvotes didn’t affect election results, but numbers tell different story | York Dispatch

York County officials announced their determination that a technical oversight with voting machines didn’t affect the outcome of Nov. 7 election results, but the numbers in one race indicate a possible impact. York County’s Board of Elections voted unanimously to approve the preliminary certification of the election results during its meeting Monday, Nov. 20. County election staff discovered the oversight the afternoon before Election Day that allowed a single voter to cast multiple votes for a single candidate in races where more than one candidate was elected. On Nov. 13, about 20 volunteers — all county employees — spent about five hours counting all the instances where a single voter cast two votes for the same candidate — referred to as an “overvote.”

Virginia: Federal judge rejects Democrats’ request to block certification of races but leaves door open for new election | The Washington Post

A federal judge refused Wednesday to issue a temporary restraining order to stop Virginia’s board of elections from certifying the results in two House of Delegates races in which more than 300 voters were apparently assigned to the wrong races. It is unclear how many of those voters cast ballots on Nov. 7. The ruling was a setback for Democrats, whose hopes for taking control of the chamber could rest on one of the two seats. “The job of the board is to certify the count,” Judge T.S. Ellis III of U.S. District Court in Alexandria said in a hearing conducted by telephone. “Let the state process run its course.” But the judge let the lawsuit stand, meaning Democrats could return to the court after the results are certified by the state board of elections to challenge the outcome and request a new election. “We don’t have a clear picture, exactly, of the scope of the problem,” Ellis said.

Germany: Echoes of the Weimar Republic as German politicians lose knack of coalition-building | The Guardian

Danyal Bayaz has experienced many things during his first few weeks as a new MP, but boredom is not one of them. Two months after entering Germany’s parliament as a Green party candidate, Bayaz, 34, from Heidelberg, has watched rightwing politicians give each other standing ovations for Eurosceptic diatribes, leftwingers heckle the far right as racists and a former climate activist with dyed hair form unlikely alliances with Christian Democrats in tailored suits. Last week Bayaz saw the dramatic collapse of coalition talks that would have seen his Green colleagues catapulted into government and now faces the possibility that his seat may come up for grabs again in fresh elections next spring. “Right now I am not even sure if it’s worth me getting a loyalty card here,” he quips as he orders a cappuccino in the Bundestag’s canteen. For years, German politics were both mocked and admired for being too uneventful to the point of tedium. Only recently the lack of drama inside the reconstructed Reichstag’s circular plenary chamber led to calls for a more confrontational, Westminster-style approach. But as old geopolitical certainties have crumbled over the past 18 months, Berlin’s consensual, unexcitable style of policymaking has won new admirers.

Kenya: Court upholds President Kenyatta’s election victory | The Guardian

Kenya’s supreme court has upheld the victory of President Uhuru Kenyatta in last month’s controversial re-run of presidential elections, clearing the way for the 55-year-old leader to be sworn in for a second and final term next week. After hearing two days of arguments, a six-judge bench said two petitions demanding the cancellation of the polls were “without merit”. The ruling is unlikely to end the worst political crisis in a decade in east Africa’s richest and most developed economy, which has seen more than 60 people killed in political violence in three months. Opposition leaders immediately rejected the decision, while government supporters celebrated outside the court in central Nairobi.

National: A Year After Trump’s Victory, Our Elections Aren’t Much More Secure | Buzzfeed

The halfway point between the election of President Donald Trump and the 2018 midterms has come and gone, and it still isn’t fully clear what Russian hackers did to America’s state and county voter registration systems. Or what has been done to make sure a future hacking effort won’t succeed. US officials, obsessed for now with evidence that Russia’s intelligence services exploited social media to sway US voters, have taken solace in the idea that the integrity of the country’s voting is protected by the system’s acknowledged clunkiness. With its decentralized assortment of different machines, procedures, and contractors, who could possibly hack into all those many systems to change vote totals? … Most states’ elections officials still don’t have the security clearances necessary to have a thorough discussion with federal officials about what’s known about Russian, or others’, efforts to hack into their systems.

National: States Start Using Statistical Methods to Check Voter Count Accuracy | eWeek

In the face of overwhelming evidence that the Russians meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, states are adopting auditing measure to detect any possible direct ballot fraud and give voters confidence in the results. After clear evidence emerged that Russia attempted to influence the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election by social media, and more directly by hacking election systems, state governments are embarking on a variety of efforts to use statistical auditing to verify election results. On Nov. 15, Colorado kicked off its first statewide statistical audit of its most recent election by using a statistical technique known as risk-limiting audits to establish the integrity of the vote. Because of mail-in ballots from voters serving in the military, the state had to wait eight days to receive all votes and initiate the audit. Risk-limiting audits, or RLAs, allow election officials to verify the outcome of an election by sampling a much smaller subset of ballots compared to a full recount. Verifying the results of presidential elections in each state from 1992 to 2008, for example, only requires an average of 307 ballots per state. The number of ballots required to verify the vote, however, increases as the contests become closer and eventually defaults to a full recount, in the case of an extremely close race. Colorado’s legislature voted to adopt an election-wide audit in 2010, and election officials began piloting RLA in 2013.

Alabama: Ivey Quashes Idea of Strange Resigning Early to Block Roy Moore | The Hill

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has rejected the idea that Sen. Luther Strange could resign his Senate seat, sparking a new special election and potentially blocking Roy Moore from being elected to the Senate. National Republican leaders have called on Moore to step aside as the GOP nominee following allegations of sexual misconduct and assault. Politico reported Wednesday that one idea GOP leaders have contemplated is having Strange resign his seat so Ivey could set a new special election. Strange was appointed to the seat in February when Sen. Jeff Sessions resigned to become attorney general. Ivey, the first female Republican governor of Alabama, rejected that in a Wednesday night interview with AL.com.

Arizona: Voting rights groups say state is in violation of National Voter Registration Act | Arizona Daily Sun

A coalition of voting rights groups is charging that state agencies are violating federal laws designed to provide opportunities for people to register. In a 15-page complaint Tuesday to Secretary of State Michele Reagan, attorneys for the groups detailed what they say are flaws in both state statutes and the processes used by state agencies in getting people signed up to vote. The lawyers say if the problems are not corrected within 90 days they will sue. Attorney Darrell Hill of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona defended the 90 day deadline. “The state has been aware of some of these problems for quite some time,” he told Capitol Media Services. Hill said groups have filed similar complaints in the past.

Colorado: State embarks on a first-of-its-kind election audit that’s drawing interest from out of state | The Denver Post

Colorado is embarking on a first-of-its-kind, statewide election audit that seeks to validate the accuracy of the state’s ballot-counting machines amid national concern about election integrity. The so-called risk-limiting audit involves a manual recount of a sample of ballots from 56 counties that had elections this year to compare them with how they were interpreted by tabulating machines. The exercise is drawing observers from Rhode Island, as well as top federal voting-oversight officials. “It’s a huge deal in the election world,” said Lynn Bartels, spokeswoman for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office, which is implementing the audit.

North Carolina: Expert proposes legislative maps in redistricting case | WRAL

A map-making expert brought in by federal judges to rework North Carolina’s House and Senate districts released his proposal Monday. Attorneys on both sides of the underlying lawsuit requiring new maps have until Friday to recommend changes for a plan that’s due Dec. 1 to the federal judges overseeing the redraw. That panel of three judges could accept that map, drawn by Stanford University law professor Nathaniel Persily, or stick with something closer to what the General Assembly’s Republican majority submitted earlier this year. The attorneys who initially sued to change the state’s maps argue that the GOP’s redraw didn’t fully address the racial gerrymander found by the judges and affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ohio: Lawsuit against Jon Husted by blind Ohio voters is revived by appeals court | Cleveland Plain Dealer

A federal appeals court on Monday revived a lawsuit filed by a national advocacy group for the visually impaired against Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted that says the state’s voting regulations violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. The National Federation of the Blind’s 2015 lawsuit alleges that the state’s system of only allowing absentee voters to cast their ballots on paper infringes on the right of blind people to vote privately and independently. Senior U.S. District Judge George Smith had dismissed the lawsuit, which also included three blind Ohio voters as plaintiffs, before either the advocacy group or Husted had conducted any discovery. A three-judge panel from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said the dismissal was premature. The 6th Circuit’s decision means the case will be sent back to Smith to be litigated.

Virginia: Virginia judge won’t force count of 55 absentee ballots in close delegate race | The Washington Post

A federal judge in Alexandria declined Friday to force a count of 55 absentee ballots that could help determine control of the Virginia House of Delegates. In the race to fill the seat held by retiring Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford), Republican Robert Thomas is ahead of Joshua Cole by 82 votes. Cole’s campaign filed suit arguing that 55 absentee ballots that arrived in Stafford County the day after the Nov. 7 election were late because of postal-office problems and should be counted. Judge Claude M. Hilton disagreed. “These ballots were late,” he said. Everyone, Hilton added, wonders sometimes “what’s wrong with the mail.” But he saw no evidence of “improprieties” here.

Virginia: Postal Service change may be key to late-arriving absentee ballots in tight races | WTOP

Changes at the U.S. Postal Service may be a key reason hundreds of absentee ballots submitted across Virginia will not count — including 55 ballots in tight races in Stafford County. Former Virginia Board of Elections Secretary Don Palmer, now a fellow with the Bipartisan Policy Center focused on election improvements, said changes that added two days to standard processing times for First Class mail, among other things, have made it less likely that even ballots mailed the Friday before an election arrive in time to be counted. In Virginia, only ballots received before polls close can be counted under current law; the postmark does not matter.

International: Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky wants to run your next election | VICE

Kaspersky, the Russian cybersecurity company accused of helping the Kremlin spy on the U.S. intelligence agencies as part of its 2016 election meddling, has launched a new product aimed at helping secure online voting and make elections more transparent and open. Polys, an online voting platform built using the same blockchain technology that underpins bitcoin, allows anyone to conduct “secure, anonymous, and scalable online voting with results that cannot be altered by participants or organizers,” the company said. Kaspersky is already speaking to a number of “politicians and political organizations in Europe” about using the system, and it says that countries in western Europe, Scandinavia and Asia are technologically and mentally ready to make the change to online voting. But one place Kaspersky will not be hawking Polys is Washington.

Switzerland: Should Swiss vote hackers be rewarded with cash? | SWI

In order to ensure the security of online voting systems used in Switzerland, the government needs to issue a challenge to the worldwide hacker community, offering rewards to anyone who can “blow holes in the system”, says a computer scientist in parliament. Since it began in 2000, Switzerland’s e-voting project has been a matter of controversy. While some have been calling for its introduction to be fast-tracked in all the country’s 26 cantons, others would like to see the project slowed. In parliament there has been a call for a moratorium on electronic voting in the whole country for four years, except for the Swiss abroad. To put an end to all the concerns and convince the critics that security and secrecy of online voting can be guaranteed, Radical Party parliamentarian Marcel Dobler thinks there needs to be an unequivocal demonstration that systems used in Switzerland are proof against computer piracy. The best way to do this, he says, is to invite hackers to target them.

National: Securing the vote: How ‘paper’ can protect US elections from foreign invaders | CSMonitor

When Logan Lamb visited the website of Georgia’s Center for Election Systems in Aug. 2016, what he found left him speechless. Although the cybersecurity researcher had no password or special authorization, he was able through a Google search to download the state’s voter registration list, view files with Election Day passwords, and access what appeared to be databases used to prepare ballots, tabulate votes, and summarize vote totals. He also discovered a vulnerability that would allow anyone to take full control of a server used for Georgia’s elections. It was everything a Russian hacker – or any malicious intruder – might need to disrupt the vote in Georgia. “Had the bad guys wanted to just completely own the central election system, they could have,” Mr. Lamb told the Monitor in an interview … There are only a handful of states in the US that are currently performing audits that start with voter-verified paper ballots. Many counties in California have conducted pioneering work with such audits. New Mexico hires an independent CPA to oversea an audit of a few key races in that state. And Rhode Island recently enacted a law to develop a voter-verified audit system. But the single most important development in this area is about to take place in Colorado.

National: State election boards’ hands are sometimes tied when it comes to voting machine security. | Slate

Voting in the United States is highly decentralized—and in many ways that’s a good thing when it comes to security. Having different regions operate their own elections and count their own votes makes it harder for someone to forge, compromise, or change a large number of votes all at once. But that decentralization also means that individual states, counties, or districts are also often free to make bad decisions about what kind of voting technology to use—and it’s surprisingly hard to stop them. Earlier this week, North Carolina’s state elections board made a last-ditch attempt to convince a judge to prohibit counties in the state from using voting software manufactured by VR Systems on the grounds that the board hadn’t officially certified the software since 2009. On Monday—the day before Election Day—that attempt failed when Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway declined to intervene.

National: Trump fraud commission sued by one of its own members, alleging Democrats are being kept in the dark | The Washington Post

President Trump’s voter fraud commission was sued Thursday morning by one of its Democratic members, who alleged that he has been kept in the dark about its operations, rendering his participation “essentially meaningless.” Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said in a complaint filed in federal court that the 11-member panel is in violation of a federal law that requires presidential advisory commissions to be both balanced and transparent in their work. “The Commission has, in effect, not been balanced because Secretary Dunlap and the other Democratic commissioners have been excluded from the Commission’s work,” says the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “The Commission’s operations have not been open and transparent, not even to the commissioners themselves, who have been deprived access to documents prepared by and viewed by other commissioners.”

Alabama: Gov. Kay Ivey has no plans to change Senate election date | AL.com

One possible consequence of the controversy engulfing Roy Moore’s campaign for the U.S. Senate is apparently off the table. Josh Pendergrass, communications director for Gov. Kay Ivey, said today the governor does not intend to change the date of the Dec. 12 election. “The Governor is not considering and has no plans to move the special election for the U.S. Senate,” Pendergrass said in a text message. Moore has strongly denied the allegation reported by the Washington Post that he dated and had a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl when he was 32.

New Jersey: Pols Push for Voting Machines that Offer Paper Trail for Every Ballot Cast | NJ Spotlight

Voters across New Jersey are going to polling places today to pick a new governor, select candidates for seats in the state Legislature, and to decide many contested county and municipal elections. But questions have been raised in recent weeks about whether the electronic machines that will be used to count the vote in many places in New Jersey are vulnerable to computer error or even hacking, and lawmakers are pushing for the machines to eventually be upgraded so there’s a “voter-verified” paper trail to back up each vote that is cast on Election Day. To be sure, there’s been no evidence of any widespread voting-machine failure or large-scale tampering leading up to today’s elections in New Jersey, and election officials say there have been no recorded cases of an electronic-voting machine having been hacked in New Jersey during any recent election. What’s more, the machines themselves are not attached to any network so hacking would have to occur in person rather than remotely. But a Princeton University computer-science professor opened the eyes of lawmakers by showing them during a recent hearing in Trenton how voting machines that are used in 18 of New Jersey’s 21 counties could theoretically be hacked manually by someone seeking to make sure an election turns out in a specific way.

North Carolina: Forsyth County seeks voting machine extension from General Assembly | Winston Salem Chronicle

Forsyth County Board of Elections is hoping the General Assembly will give counties an extension on getting new voting machines. Currently the county is under a state deadline to switch to a paper-based ballot system by next year. The county had planned to replace its current touchscreen voting machines used for early voting with new machines that will produce paper ballots. Plans to test the machines and have them ready by 2018, were sidelined by a legal battle over proposed changes to the makeup of election boards in the state. As North Carolina awaits a ruling, the State BOE’s term expired and the board is currently vacant. Without a state board, there is no one to certify new voting machines for use in the state, so Forsyth can’t get new machines and its current ones will no longer be certified after year’s end.

Pennsylvania: In case that could affect 2018 elections, high court rules gerrymandering suit can proceed | Philadelphia Inquirer

In a case that could force the redrawing of congressional maps before the 2018 elections, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Thursday ordered the Commonwealth Court to decide a gerrymandering lawsuit by the end of the year. “We will have our day in court, and we will get a decision and a resolution of this matter in time for the 2018 election,” said Mimi McKenzie, the legal director of Philadelphia-based Public Interest Law Center, which represents the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania in the case. If the districts are, in fact, redrawn before next year’s midterm elections, the result could have national implications. New districts could give Democrats a boost in competitive, Republican-held districts just outside Philadelphia as they push to take control of the U.S. House. “It’s something that has broad national implications,” said Michael Li, senior redistrict counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Kenya: Petition filed in Kenya court challenging Kenyatta’s election victory | Reuters

A former lawmaker filed a petition at Kenya’s Supreme Court on Monday challenging President Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory in last month’s presidential election in a last minute move that opens the door to legal scrutiny of the vote. Harun Mwau filed the petition hours before a Monday deadline set by the constitution expired. Earlier in the day, a coalition of civil society groups said they were being targeted by the government in an effort to head off potential legal cases. The Supreme Court has until Nov. 14 to rule on election petitions. If it upholds the result, Kenyatta will be sworn in on Nov. 28.

Spain: Will Catalonia’s separatists win in December? The voting system is stacked in their favor. | The Washington Post

Catalonia’s Oct. 27 unilateral declaration of independence from Spain has gained the region a lot of attention — perhaps more so than at any time since the Spanish Civil War. How did Catalonia end up declaring independence? Like the U.S. electoral college, Catalonia’s electoral system can turn a popular vote loser into a winner. In fact, the strong biases built into the Catalan electoral system elevated the crisis by inflating the secessionists’ parliamentary majority. And these same rules may perpetuate the crisis. After the declaration of independence, Spain’s central government used its powers under Article 155 of the constitution to take control of the regional government. Madrid called for fresh regional elections on Dec. 21. But Catalonia’s separatists may win a parliamentary majority again, even if they lose at the polls. The Catalan parliament is elected via proportional representation, which is commonly used around the world. Why did this “proportional” system lead to a surprise advantage for separatists? It’s all in the fine print.

National: Senators release new election cybersecurity bill | The Hill

Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) introduced a multifaceted election cybersecurity bill Tuesday, including a bug bounty program for systems manufacturers and a grant program for states to upgrade technology. “While the Intelligence Committee’s investigation is still ongoing, one thing is clear: The Russians were very active in trying to influence the 2016 election and will continue their efforts to undermine public confidence in democracies,” said Collins in a statement celebrating the bill. “The fact that the Russians probed the election-related systems of 21 states is truly disturbing, and it must serve as a call to action to assist states in hardening their defenses against foreign adversaries that seek to compromise the integrity of our election process.”

National: Fiery exchanges on Capitol Hill as lawmakers scold Facebook, Google and Twitter | The Washington Post

Senators from both parties took tech company officials to task in a hearing Wednesday for failing to better identify, defuse and investigate Russia’s campaign to manipulate American voters over social media during the 2016 presidential campaign. In the second of three Capitol Hill hearings this week on Russian’s online information operation, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee challenged Facebook, Google and Twitter in strikingly direct terms that, at times, seemed to carry the implicit threat of legislation that could rein in the nation’s wildly profitable technology industry. “I don’t think you get it,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), whose home state includes all three companies. “What we’re talking about is a cataclysmic change. What we’re talking about is the beginning of cyberwarfare. What we’re talking about is a major foreign power with sophistication and ability to involve themselves in a presidential election and sow conflict and discontent all over this country. We are not going to go away gentlemen. And this is a very big deal.”

Editorials: Beware: this Russian cyber warfare threatens every democracy | Natalie Nougayrède/The Guardian

Anyone in Europe and Britain worried about the state of US democracy should take time to watch the videos of this week’s congressional hearings over Russian online meddling in the 2016 presidential election. If the words “checks and balances” mean anything, this surely is it. My favourite moment is when senator Dianne Feinstein leans into the microphone and says sternly to the Facebook, Twitter and Google representatives (whose evasive answers have exasperated her): “You don’t get it! This is a very big deal. What we’re talking about is cataclysmic. It is cyber warfare. A major foreign power with sophistication and ability got involved in our presidential election.” We don’t yet know the full picture. In particular, we don’t know if Russian-promoted bots, trolls and online ads had an impact that in any way altered the outcome of the US election. At this stage, to claim they did may be crediting Vladimir Putin with more power than he actually wields. What emerged from the hearings is that Russia’s likeliest goal was to sow discord and confusion among citizens of the world’s most powerful democracy.

Georgia: Attorney General Quits Representing Election Officials In Lawsuit After Server Wiped | Associated Press

The Georgia attorney general’s office will no longer represent state election officials in an elections integrity lawsuit in which a crucial computer server was quietly wiped clean three days after the suit was filed, The Associated Press has learned. The lawsuit aims to force Georgia to retire its antiquated and heavily criticized touchscreen election technology, which does not provide an auditable paper trail. The server in question was a statewide staging location for key election-related data. It made national headlines in June after a security expert disclosed a gaping security hole that wasn’t fixed for six months after he first reported it to election authorities. Personal data was exposed for Georgia’s 6.7 million voters as were passwords used by county officials to access files. The assistant state attorney general handling the case, Cristina Correia, notified the court and participating attorneys Wednesday that her office was withdrawing from the case, according to an email obtained by the AP. Spokeswoman Katelyn McCreary offered no explanation and said she couldn’t comment “on pending matters.”

Indiana: Lawsuit: Secretary of State’s office broke election law | Associated Press