The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for August 15-21 2016

This year 32 states will allow voting by email, fax and internet portals – mostly for overseas and military voters. In most states, voters using Internet voting must waive their right to a secret ballot according a new report coauthored by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Verified Voting and Common Cause. In addition to concerns about voter privacy, security researchers also warn that online voting could be vulnerable to hackers who could digitally hijack elections. Department of Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson held a call with state election officials to outline the kind of assistance that DHS will provide to help prevent cyber attacks in this fall’s elections. In a New York Times editorial, Deuel Ross warns that recent major victories for voting-rights advocates may obscure a more pernicious problem: In towns, cities and counties across the country — particularly throughout the Deep South — many discriminatory voting changes have been made at more local levels. A federal appeals court rejected efforts by Michigan officials to preserve a ban on straight-party voting through the coming elections. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed a bill that would have established a system for automatic voter registration. Emails revealed that the North Carolina Republican Party encouraged GOP appointees to county elections boards to “make party line changes to early voting” by limiting the number of hours and keeping polling sites closed on Sundays. Bucking a nationwide trend, an Oklahoma judge upheld the constitutionality of the state’s voter id requirement. Russian opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov said that parliamentary elections next month were being rigged against his party, meaning it would have to win up to three times more votes than legally necessary to get into parliament and Zambia’s opposition leader challenged the results of last week’s presidential election citing widespread irregularities.