The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for January 18-24 2016

Many might spend the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday remembering the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march to push for voting equality for black Americans, voting rights advocates note that there have been many major voting rights setbacks in recent years. Currently Internet voting is “a nonstarter,” according to Aviel D. Rubin, technical director of Johns Hopkins University’s Information Security Institute and author of the 2006 book Brave New Ballot. “You can’t control the security of the platform.” The Florida Legislature will not contest a court ruling that redraws all of the state’s 40 state senate districts for the 2016 election cycle. Maryland’s legislature began the process of overriding Gov. Larry Hogan’s vetoes, with the House upholding legislation that would allow felons to regain the right to vote sooner. The legality of a 2013 North Carolina law requiring identification to vote will be challenged in a trial set to begin in federal court Monday ahead of March U.S. presidential primaries in the state. North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger was served with a lawsuit by seven members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa who claim that recent changes to the state’s voter identification laws infringe on their right to vote. Virginia’s election officials urged the Supreme Court to keep in place a new, judge-selected redistricting plan for this year’s congressional elections, putting the officials at odds with 10 current and former members of the state’s Republican delegation in Congress. Bulgaria’s Parliament approved a resolution on the introduction of electronic voting, while the United States pressed Haiti’s leaders to go ahead with a presidential runoff election, despite a growing chorus of warnings that the vote could lead to an explosion of violence.