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A bill delaying Maine’s switch to a ranked-choice voting system will apparently become law without Gov. Paul LePage’s signature. LePage, a vocal opponent of the ranked-choice voting ballot initiative passed by voters last year, told Maine Public on Friday that he will neither sign nor veto the bill that delays adoption of the new system until 2021. Instead, LePage indicated he will allow the bill to take effect without his signature. The governor’s communications office did not respond to a request for comment from the Portland Press Herald on Friday evening. But LePage’s decision to hold onto the bill for the full 10 days allowed under Maine’s Constitution could hamper supporters of ranked-choice voting from gathering signatures on Election Day for a “people’s veto” to implement the process without delay. Even so, LePage seemed to welcome the prospect of a people’s veto campaign.

North Carolina: Republicans object to special master in North Carolina remap | Associated Press

North Carolina Republican legislative leaders on Monday opposed a plan by federal judges to use an outside expert to help them examine and possibly redraw General Assembly district lines, arguing that it’s premature to hire one and questioning the expert’s impartiality. An attorney for GOP mapmakers objected to the judicial panel’s intentions — announced last week — to appoint a Stanford University law school professor as what’s called a “special master.” The same three judges last year struck down nearly 30 districts originally drawn in 2011 by the GOP-controlled legislature, determining they unlawfully relied too heavily on race. The General Assembly approved new lines in August, but the judges wrote last week they remained concerned that seven House and two Senate districts “either fail to remedy the identified constitutional violation or are otherwise legally unacceptable.”

Liberia: Liberia’s Supreme Court to Rule Monday on Delaying Election | Bloomberg

Liberia’s Supreme Court will rule Monday on a petition asking to delay the runoff presidential election after a complaint said the National Election Commission failed to investigate claims of irregularities in the first round of the vote to replace Africa’s first elected female president. All activity to prepare for Tuesday’s runoff has been halted until the court’s decision. A delay of the vote is almost certain, as the electoral commission has said it would be hard to meet deadlines now. The court heard arguments Friday. Charles Brumskine, the Liberty Party candidate who placed third, has asked the court to grant an Oct. 27 petition to halt the runoff vote until the claims of irregularities are investigated. He argued before the packed court that the Oct. 10 first round was marked by fraud. His party petitioned the court to compel the election commission to investigate the complaints.

Spain: Ousted Catalan leader agrees to election, summoned to Madrid court | Reuters

Catalonia’s ousted leader Carles Puigdemont agreed on Tuesday to a snap election called by Spain’s central government when it took control of the region to stop it breaking away, but he said the fight for independence would go on. Spain’s High Court issued a summons for Puigdemont and 13 members of his sacked administration to testify in Madrid on Thursday and Friday as the court starts processing charges of rebellion, sedition and breach of trust against them. Under Spain’s legal system, a judge will then decide whether Puigdemont should go to jail pending a comprehensive investigation and potential trial.

National: State officials press Congress for more election cyber resources | The Hill

State election officials on Tuesday urged members of Congress to send more resources to states to bolster the security of their election IT infrastructure. Officials from Rhode Island and Virginia made the plea to Democratic members of a task force focused on election cybersecurity that was formed in the wake of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. “States need additional funding and resources dedicated to the security of election systems,” Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea (D) told lawmakers at the public forum on Capitol Hill. “These funds are critically needed for the assessments, testing procedures and the strengthening of IT capacity. In many states, they also need funding for the hardware of voting systems themselves.” Gorbea urged Congress to play a “critical role” by both appropriating additional resources to states for election cybersecurity and exercising oversight of the federal government’s efforts to safeguard future elections.

National: Kobach transcript: Changes to US election law discussed | Associated Press

The vice chairman of President Donald Trump’s election fraud commission says he wants to change U.S. election law so states have an incentive to require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote, according to a deposition unsealed Thursday. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a leading advocate of tighter voting laws, gave the testimony in a deposition made public as part of a federal lawsuit filed by American Civil Liberties Union challenging a Kansas voter registration law that requires documents such as a birth certificate, U.S. passport or naturalization papers. The deposition in August is the result of an ACLU court filing after Kobach was photographed holding a document with the words on one page facing out as he entered a meeting with then President-elect Donald Trump to talk about immigration. The ACLU asked a court to force Kobach to release the document. A federal judge said there was a pattern of Kobach misleading the court in that suit, fined him $1,000 and ordered him to submit to questioning under oath by the ACLU about that document and a proposed draft amendment to the National Voter Registration Act.

Georgia: Incompetence or a Cover-Up? Georgia destroyed election data right after a lawsuit alleged the system was vulnerable. | Slate

On July 3, state voters and a good-government group filed a lawsuit alleging that Georgia officials ignored warnings that the state’s electoral system was extremely susceptible to hacking. On July 4, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office was alerted about the lawsuit by the press and declined to comment. It received a copy of the suit on July 6. And on July 7, Georgia officials deleted the state’s election data, which would have likely been critical evidence in that lawsuit, the Associated Press reported Thursday. Two things could have happened here. Either it was an incredible act of incompetence on the part of Georgia’s election officials, or it was an attempted cover-up to try to hide from the public a major election security lapse. Lawmakers from both parties are calling for heads to roll.

Editorials: Georgia’s voting system – Outrageous security lapse | SavannahNow

The fact that the state university housing the servers that are at the center of a case over the security of Georgia’s election system wiped them clean of all data is both an outrage and extremely suspicious. If a pending state investigation into this breach at the Center for Elections System at Kennesaw State University shows that laws were broken, then Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr shouldn’t hesitate to file charges. The sanctity of Georgia’s ballot box and its elections records must be protected. Our democracy is based on free and fair elections. The public must have confidence that the process is safe and secure. According to The Hill newspaper in Washington, the servers in question had been in the possession of the Center for Elections System, which runs Georgia’s election system on a contract basis. On July 3, a diverse group of election reform advocates filed suit, alleging that Georgia’s election system was flawed and could potentially be rigged. The plaintiffs want to scrap the state’s 15-year-old vote-management system, particularly its 27,000 AccuVote touchscreen voting screens, which are used in Chatham County and elsewhere, that don’t employ paper ballots or keep hardcopy proof of how voters voted. They allege these machines are hackable.

Maine: Legislature delays and potentially repeals ranked-choice voting | Portland Press Herald

A citizen-backed law that made Maine the first state to adopt a ranked-choice voting system will be delayed and possibly repealed following a series of contentious votes Monday in a special session of the Legislature. The Senate voted 19-10 to delay the law until December 2021 – and then repeal it if a constitutional amendment hasn’t been passed by then to address legal concerns raised by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. The House held six procedural votes, then finally agreed with the Senate on a 68-63 tally. The bill now will go to Republican Gov. Paul LePage. LePage will have 10 days to sign it, veto it or allow it to become law without his signature. The Republican long has argued that ranked-choice is unconstitutional and he is unlikely to veto the delay.

Michigan: House panel OKs new rules after Stein’s halted recount | The Detroit News

The Green Party’s 2016 presidential candidate Jill Stein could not have requested a recount in Michigan under legislation a committee advanced Thursday to the full House for a possible vote. The House Elections and Ethics Committee approved a bill sponsored by the panel’s chairman, Rep. Aaron Miller, R-Sturgis, that would require “aggrieved candidates” to show that they could have won the election if not for fraud or error. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to initiate a recount, as Stein did after Republican Donald Trump won Michigan last November by 10,704 votes over Democrat Hillary Clinton. “The ridiculous 2016 recount charade for which Michigan taxpayers were forced to foot the bill shows just how important it is to update our statutes before it happens again,” Miller said in a statement. “These bills protect tax dollars while still preserving the integrity of the recount process for instances in which it is truly necessary.”

New Jersey: New Jersey to replace thousands of aging voting machines | WHYY

Many of the 11,000 voting machines in New Jersey are so old, officials said, they will soon have to be replaced. Amid concerns about hacking, state lawmakers are examining how to make sure new machines will be more secure. While there’s no evidence of hacking, the machines are hackable, said Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker, D-Middlesex. And Princeton computer science professor Andrew Appel said he could quickly break the security seals on a voting machine, replace the chip that records the results, and reseal it so the tampering would be undetectable. “I was able to get a bunch of them and figure out what their weaknesses are,” he said during a hearing before lawmakers Thursday. “So if you have three or four seals on there, it’ll take me 10 minutes to get them off.”

Ohio: Supreme Court tackles Ohio voter purge efforts | McClatchy

After tackling partisan gerrymandering in October, the U.S. Supreme Court will take on the controversial issue of voter purges in a November case that could have major implications for the 2018 mid-term elections. Scheduled for oral argument on Nov. 8, Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute will determine whether failure to cast a ballot in recent elections, or “voter inactivity,” can lawfully trigger efforts to remove a person from the voter registration rolls. Critics say the purge policy used by Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and disproportionately impacts black, Hispanic and poor voters who traditionally support Democrats. Republicans argue that fraud by ineligible voters can occur if people who die or move away aren’t regularly identified and cleared from the registration rolls as the NVRA requires.

Czech Republic: Election websites hacked, vote unaffected: Statistics Office | Reuters

results were hacked on Saturday afternoon, the Czech Statistical Office (CSU) said on Sunday, adding that the vote count was not affected. Czechs voted on Friday and Saturday in the parliamentary election, with the results then shown on two websites that CSU maintains with an outside provider. “During the processing (of the vote), there was a targeted DDoS attack aimed at the infrastructure of the O2 company used for elections,” CSU said on its website. “As a result, servers volby.cz and volbyhned.cz had been temporarily partly inaccessible. The attack did not in any way affect either the infrastructure used for the transmission of election results to the CSU headquarters or the independent data processing.”

Kenya: Low Turnout in Kenya’s Do-Over Election Raises Concerns | The New York Times

It took the police the better part of two hours to haul away the bricks that had been stacked, at some point in the night, in front of the polling station at the Olympic Primary School. But few people in the sprawling Nairobi neighborhood of Kibera — as in many other places across Kenya — wanted anything to do with Thursday’s historic vote for president. Some Kibera residents spent the day lobbing stones at the police, while the police spent the day firing tear gas back. “This vote is a massive flop, whichever way you cut it,” said Maina Kiai, a leader of a Kenyan civil society coalition and a former United Nations special rapporteur. For decades, Kenya has been struggling to move from the shadow of dictatorship to a truly inclusive democracy, and the country has sacrificed much on that journey. Ten years ago, more than 1,100 people died and hundreds of thousands were displaced after an election many thought was stolen.

National: A Death And More Questions For Trump’s Fraud Commission | NPR

A member of President Trump’s voter fraud commission, former Arkansas state Rep. David Dunn, died suddenly Monday from complications during surgery, according to his office. According to the Associated Press, Dunn was 52 years old. Dunn was one of five Democrats on the advisory panel, which has been embroiled in controversy ever since it was created earlier this year to study problems in the nation’s electoral system. In a statement, fellow commissioner J. Christian Adams, a Republican, said Dunn was “courageous to serve, courteous in his manners, and kind to everyone.” The commission has met only twice so far — the last time on Sept. 12 in New Hampshire. There’s been no word on when, where or whether it will meet again.

Editorials: States Take On Election Hacking. Washington Ignores It. | The New York Times

As Washington ignores the danger, state election officials have finally begun facing up to the threat of Russian hackers and other troublemakers infiltrating the American voting process in the midterm and presidential elections. There have been months of apparent indifference in many state election offices, despite stern warnings from federal security experts that hackers will be back for more after their 2016 meddling. But now state election officials have begun trying to tighten the security of outdated, vulnerable balloting systems. These systems were last updated after the hanging-chad debacle of the 2000 election, before internet hackers were a powerful threat.

Verified Voting Blog: Verified Voting Names Voting Rights Lawyer and Pennsylvania Election Official Marian K. Schneider New President

Schneider: “Now more than ever, we need to secure our voting systems, and Verified Voting is leading the way.” Nearly a year after intelligence agencies confirmed foreign interference in our elections – and with midterm primaries just around the corner – the U.S. is looking to safeguard its elections infrastructure. To that end, Verified Voting, the…

Georgia: Voters test paper ballots beginning Monday | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A crucial test for the future of Georgia elections begins Monday when early voting opens across the state ahead of the Nov. 7 local and special elections. Voters in Conyers will begin casting paper ballots along with new voting and tabulating machines as they decide on a new mayor and two City Council seats. The pilot program comes as advocates have sued to force the state to dump its aging all-electronic system amid fears of hacking and security breaches. And it could pave the way for the first elections system reboot in Georgia since 2002. “Everything is still on track and we are ready to go,” said Cynthia Welch, the elections supervisor for Rockdale County, which is running the Conyers election. Welch and her team have spent the past several weeks demonstrating the system, including to other local elections officials as well as lawmakers.

Indiana: Lawmakers push for Election Day voter registration, no-excuse absentee voting | Indianapolis Star

Election Day voter registration and expanded voting by mail should be considered by next year’s Indiana General Assembly, a panel of lawmakers decided Thursday. The committee’s chairman Sen. Greg Walker, R-Columbus, said he already is drafting legislation for the upcoming legislative session that would allow Hoosiers to mail in absentee ballots without having to provide an excuse required under current law. Hoosiers currently have to send in an application eight days before election day in order to receive an absentee ballot. On that application, they have to choose one of the 11 specific reasons available to vote absentee, such as working during the full 12 hours the polls are open or being away from the county during that same time period. Already, the state doesn’t check a person’s excuse to make sure it’s valid.

North Carolina: Arguments wrap in partisan gerrymander case | WRAL

Arguments wrapped Thursday in a North Carolina lawsuit that aims to change American politics. The case targets partisan gerrymandering in general and North Carolina’s current congressional map in particular. Republican legislators, attorneys for good-government groups argue, drew intensely partisan lines, using detailed data from past elections to produce maps nearly guaranteed to elect 10 Republicans and three Democrats to Congress. Such partisan efforts have long been accepted, but the federal courts may eventually draw a line in the sand. North Carolina’s case is before a three-judge panel and could take months, or even years, to run its course. A similar case out of Wisconsin has already been argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the court’s decision is pending.

Pennsylvania: Gerrymandering: Advocates ask State Supreme Court to use rare power | Philadelphia Inquirer

Advocates are trying to fast-forward court action on changing Pennsylvania’s congressional map — considered among the most distorted in the nation — before the important 2018 elections. A state judge overseeing a suit by the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania wants to hold off any action pending a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a similar case out of Wisconsin, but the league is asking the state high court to fast-track the case. In a hearing earlier this month, Commonwealth Court Judge Dan Pelligrini made clear he did not see the case being decided before the 2018 elections, saying, “I can tell you it isn’t going to happen.” On Monday he ordered a stay in the league’s suit. “The idea that we would have yet another election that takes place under a map that violates people’s constitutional rights to vote, that’s not acceptable,” Mimi McKenzie, legal director at the Philadelphia-based Public Interest Law Center, which is representing the league, said Thursday.

Kenya: Election Official Fears New Vote Won’t Be Credible | The New York Times

After his fellow commissioner fled the country, citing threats to her life, Kenya’s top election official on Wednesday accused the nation’s political parties of undermining the country’s stability and warned that he was not confident that next week’s presidential election would be credible. Kenyans are scheduled to vote — again — for president on Oct. 26. The nation’s current president, Uhuru Kenyatta, handily won the first election in August, beating the veteran opposition leader, Raila Odinga, by 1.4 million votes. But Mr. Odinga turned to Kenya’s Supreme Court, arguing that the vote had been manipulated to assure the president’s victory. To the nation’s surprise, the court ruled that the vote was flawed and, in a first for Africa, annulled the results, paving the way for a new election. Still, Mr. Odinga said he would withdraw from the race anyway, insisting that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission was deeply biased against him and would not be able to fix its underlying problems by election day.

Venezuela: Opposition claims evidence of tampered vote count | Associated Press

Venezuela’s opposition presented evidence Thursday of possible ballot tampering in gubernatorial elections, seeking to bolster its claim that its shock loss at the polls was the result of fraud. The Democratic Unity Roundtable’s claim rests on results from a single race, in industrial Bolivar state, where pro-government candidate Justo Noguera was declared the winner by just 1,471 votes over opposition candidate Andres Velasquez. The opposition coalition said the results on the National Electoral Council’s website don’t match the tallies from 11 ballot boxes certified by poll workers representing multiple political parties. It said the inconsistencies resulted in 2,199 votes from those polling stations being awarded incorrectly to Noguera, enough to swing the vote in his favor. Electoral authorities had no immediate comment.

National: Are Americans Beginning to Care About Election Integrity? | WhoWhatWhy

Nearly a year after the 2016 presidential election, many Americans have been forced, some for the very first time, to look critically at their voting protections, and recognize that US balloting systems are not nearly as impregnable as they once thought. Clearly, the US intelligence reports about Russia hacks provided a long-overdue wake up call for this issue. The good news: some progress has been made in some jurisdictions in the last year. The bad news: that progress hasn’t been as widespread or comprehensive as the problem would seem to demand. “I think we’re moving in the right direction,” said Larry Norden, of NYU’s nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. “I’m heartened by the fact that, for instance, we’re seeing, in both House and Congress, bipartisan proposals to invest in increased election system security.” … Election consultant Pam Smith agreed that there has “definitely [been] a pattern towards more secure elections” across the country. Some states appear to be ahead of the game. Virginia, for example, recently earned praise for decertifying all its touchscreen, paperless Direct Record Electronic (DRE) voting machines ahead of the termination date required by its own legislation.

National: The Race to Secure Voting Tech Gets an Urgent Jumpstart | WIRED

Numerous electronic voting machines used in United States elections have critical exposures that could make them vulnerable to hacking. Security experts have known that for a decade. But it wasn’t until Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential campaigns and began probing digital voting systems that the topic took on pressing urgency. Now hackers, researchers, diplomats, and national security experts are pushing to effect real change in Washington. The latest update? It’s working, but maybe not fast enough. On Tuesday, representatives from the hacking conference DefCon and partners at the Atlantic Council think tank shared findings from a report about DefCon’s Voting Village, where hundreds of hackers got to physically interact with—and compromise—actual US voting machines for the first time ever at the conference in July. Work over three days at the Village underscored the fundamental vulnerability of the devices, and raised questions about important issues, like the trustworthiness of hardware parts manufactured in other countries, including China. But most importantly, the report highlights the dire urgency of securing US voting systems before the 2018 midterm elections.

National: Wary of Hackers, States Move to Upgrade Voting Systems | The New York Times

State election officials, worried about the integrity of their voting systems, are pressing to make them more secure ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Reacting in large part to Russian efforts to hack the presidential election last year, a growing number of states are upgrading electoral databases and voting machines, and even adding cybersecurity experts to their election teams. The efforts — from both Democrats and Republicans — amount to the largest overhaul of the nation’s voting infrastructure since the contested presidential election in 2000 spelled an end to punch-card ballots and voting machines with mechanical levers. One aim is to prepare for the 2018 and 2020 elections by upgrading and securing electoral databases and voting machines that were cutting-edge before Facebook and Twitter even existed. Another is to spot and defuse attempts to depress turnout and sway election results by targeting voters with false news reports and social media posts.

Verified Voting Blog: Yes, Voting Machines Can Be Hacked – Now the Hard Work Begins

DEFCON Report on Machine Vulnerabilities Critical First Step in Raising Awareness, But to Secure Election Systems, States Must Adopt Paper Ballots A new report on cyber vulnerabilities of our elections systems raises awareness of a critical issue, but in order to secure our elections, we need fundamental changes made at the state and local level.…

Editorials: Closing Florida’s write-in loop hole a way to protect voters’ rights | Tallahassee Democrat

Of all the wide-ranging suggestions the Constitution Revision Commission has received, there are two dealing with Florida’s election laws that we hope the panel will put on the 2018 ballot for a statewide referendum. Actually, the Legislature should have taken care of these things the old-fashioned way long ago. But since the elected politicians won’t, we hope the CRC will act to close the “write-in loophole” and bring about open primaries next year. First, that write-in gimmick. The last time the state constitution was overhauled, 20 years ago, commissioners decided that when only Republicans or only Democrats run for an office, everybody should be allowed to vote in the primary in that race. But then the Division of Elections issued a legal opinion decreeing that write-in candidates are real contenders for a public office. Legally, on paper, perhaps they are — but as a matter of practical politics, they’re not. Meaning no disrespect to sincere, well-intended people who can’t afford the qualifying fee, so they offer themselves as write-in candidates, they have no chance of winning. Not one state legislator ran as a write-in, nor has anyone won that way in modern times.

New Jersey: Are New Jersey’s voting machines vulnerable to hacking? | NJTV

In his Princeton University office, computer science professor Andrew Appel held up a small computer chip from a New Jersey voting machine. It’s the program that tallies your vote behind the curtain, inside the polling booth. It’s used in every single voting machine in 18 out of New Jersey’s 21 counties. It’s also outdated technology, and if you really wanted to, it’s not all that difficult to hack. “If you put a fraudulent program that adds up the votes a different way, you can install it in the voting machine by prying out the legitimate chip in there now and installing this fraudulent chip in the socket,” he said. Appel knows because he did it. Almost all of New Jersey’s 11,000 computerized voting machines are AVC Advantage systems. The Mercer County Board of Elections has a warehouse where the systems have been decertified in most of the country, but not here.

North Carolina: New district maps get hearing from judges | News & Observer