The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for June 30 – July 6 2014

A decade after Congress appropriated billions in funding for voting equipment that equipment is quickly becoming obsolete and cash-strapped states and counties are unable to replace it. 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. The right to vote for President for American citizens from U.S. territories is at issue in a Guam lawsuit headed to federal court. 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. Though he has yet to present evidence to support his claim that voter fraud pushed Senate incumbent Thad Cochran to victory in Mississippi’s GOP runoff, State Senator Chris McDaniel continues to threaten to contest the election in court. 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. 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 and voters in Indonesia head to the polls to elect a new President.