The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly October 8-14 2012

Courts Block Voter ID Laws – For Now

The Verge examined the security concerns surrounding internet voting. The potential for disruptive crowds of observers at some precincts has sparked fears that voters may be intimidated or harassed or have their eligibility to vote challenged directly. Federal courts have blocked voter ID laws in several States but legal battles are likely to continue after the November election. CBS Miami investigated the programming errors that marred a local Palm Beach election that raise fears of another meltdown next month. Security issues were uncovered in online registration systems in Maryland and Washington. Montana’s campaign donation restrictions were reinstated by a Federal appeals court. The dispute over early voting in Ohio has reached the Supreme Court and South Carolina’s Voter ID law has been put on hold until 2013.

National: Why can’t you vote online? | The Verge
National: At polling places, some fear monitors will challenge some legitimate voters, intimidate others | The Washington Post
National: Voter ID Foes’ Wins in Pennsylvania, Other States Could be Short Lived | Stateline
Florida: Palm Beach County’s 2012 Ballot Debacle | CBS Miami
Maryland, Washington: Cracks in Maryland and Washington Voter Databases | NYTimes.com
Montana: Federal appeals court reinstates Montana campaign contribution limits as election looms | The Washington Post
Ohio: Ohio voting dispute makes its way to the Supreme Court | The Washington Post
South Carolina: Court Blocks South Carolina Voter ID Law, for Now | NYTimes

Oct 12, 2012
National: Why can’t you vote online? | The Verge

Elections in the United States aren’t perfect. Between rare instances of voter fraud, attempts to make it harder for people to vote, voter intimidation, egregious manipulation of voting districts by major parties, and regularly low voter turnout, there’s plenty of room for improvement — leading governments at all levels in the US federal system to examine alternative voting mechanisms that could alleviate these issues. In the age of the internet, an obvious solution for many is remote internet voting — an option that seems more palatable every year given the adoption of PCs, mobile devices, and broadband internet. And in 2012, more citizens than ever will have access to online voting assistance: more than 30 states and the District of Columbia will offer registration or provide absentee ballots for overseas voters using email or an internet portal. But can internet voting really solve problems in US elections? New voting technologies face a mountain of scrutiny.

… A leading expert on internet voting, Professor David Dill from Stanford University, says that it’s still far on the horizon — and that it may never happen. Dill, a computer security expert and founder of Verified Voting, an organization that pushes for integrity in elections, says that he hasn’t seen any encouraging developments in recent years. “My position is that internet voting will be trustworthy at some point, but we don’t know how to do it now,” Dill says. “There are some problems where a single challenge has to be solved, and those are more feasible to solve. But internet voting has multiple challenges.”

The biggest technical challenge, Dill says, is the “trusted platform problem.” Since remote internet voting would occur on the home computers or mobile devices of voters, those machines would need to be secure enough to reliably transmit a vote that couldn’t be tampered with. “Most schemes want to be convenient so they have people voting on uncontrolled personal computers,” Dill says. “Those are subject to the usual problems of viruses, or other malware.” He notes that many PCs are part of botnets, and that “malware could conceivably be used to steal votes.” And even if the transmission of the vote is protected with cryptography en route to its destination, Dill says that personal devices are still vulnerable: “if you intercept the vote at the voter’s keyboard there’s not a lot the voter can do about it,” he says. “I’m not just worried about external hackers here: when you’re talking about the stakes of US elections — control of the government — the incentive for people to steal an election are really large.” Dill says malware could be installed by someone with access to a voting machine, like a programmer who writes apps for smartphones.

Full Article: Why can’t you vote online? | The Verge.

Kimberly Kelley of Tampa has provided Florida elections officials with thousands of names of people she thinks may be ineligible to vote and should be removed from the rolls. On Election Day, she’ll join thousands more — people of all political stripes — to monitor balloting. “I believe there is fraud both ways. I don’t think it’s a specific group,” said Kelley, a registered Republican whose group is called Tampa Vote Fair. “We’re just there to observe. We’re not going to intimidate anyone.” Poll watchers from unions, immigration groups and other organizations favoring greater voter access will also be on hand. Gihan Perera of the group Florida New Majority said training sessions are being held for observers and communications lines set up to respond to problems. “We’ll be aware and vigilant so that all of the rules and processes are honored and that our people are able to vote with ease,” he said.

With polls showing a close race between President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney, a relative handful of votes either way in a battleground state like Florida or Ohio could make all the difference. The potential for disruptive crowds of observers at some precincts has sparked fears that voters may be intimidated or harassed or have their eligibility to vote challenged directly.

Full Article: At polling places, some fear monitors will challenge some legitimate voters, intimidate others – The Washington Post.

In recent months, courts have struck down voter identification laws in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Texas, heartening critics who feared the laws would turn away legitimate voters in November. But because the judges declined to reject the laws as unconstitutional, voter ID opponents may be winning battles but losing the broader war. The recent rulings have done little to alter the legal basis that has allowed comparable laws in Georgia and Indiana to stand for years. In Pennsylvania, for example, the judge ruled that state officials did not have enough time to implement the new voter ID law before Election Day. And a federal court ruled that Texas’s specific law would place a disproportionate burden on minority voters, but it left the door open for a different voter ID measure.

For the most part, opponents have been unable to win the crucial argument: That voter ID laws are an unconstitutional infringement on voting rights. “The long-term trend is for courts to uphold most of these changes and to leave the issues to the political process,” says Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of the recent book The Voting Wars. “Most courts are holding that these laws are, in fact, constitutional.”

Full Article: Stateline – Voter ID Foes’ Wins in Pennsylvania, Other States Could be Short Lived.

Al Paglia yearned to hear that he had won the Wellington, Florida city council election. “It was ecstasy I had 50 people at my house at 11:00 at night it finally came across the TV screen.” Paglia recalled. “On the election website Al Paglia upsets incumbent – it was wonderful.” The supposed win took place earlier this year in March. Even in the world of politics – his honeymoon was shorter than anyone could have imagined. Just days after being declared the victor in a city councilman race, he got a call saying he was indeed… a loser. It was Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections, Susan Bucher, and her team who discovered the mistake. In two races, winners including Paglia were announced and certified… when they were actually the losers. Bucher said Palm Beach’s optical scan election system had – unbeknownst to anyone-mixed up the race results. As a result, the wrong winners and losers were called. When asked by CBS4 Investigative reporter, Michele Gillen, what is was like to declare the wrong winners? Bucher said, “It humiliating. It was awful. It was never our intent.” Bucher is one of several election supervisors we’ve met, who are taking aim at Florida’s audit process — the review of the paper ballots– only a sampling is done, and only after elections are certified.

Bucher said that if the audit was done on all races there could be other elections where the wrong winner was chosen. However, what is most outrageous to Bucher is that this technical problem, she told Gillen, was known by the vendor. The company did not ever reveal this information to her. “We took over this equipment in 2007. They never disclosed the error,” said Bucher “The company didn’t own up to it real quickly and neither did the state. And we had to prove that it was a software error and we did so.”

Bucher said its time to hold Florida accountable– the State of Florida tests and certifies the voting machines for the state. Florida is one of just a handful of states that opted out of the federal program that certifies voting machines… deciding to do it on its own. Bucher said she is not confident in the system and would love to change the system she uses. She also said that the pickings are slim when it comes to finding a better choice.

Full Article: CBS4 Investigates: Palm Beach County’s 2012 Ballot Debacle « CBS Miami.

Computer security experts have identified vulnerabilities in the voter registration databases in two states, raising concerns about the ability of hackers and others to disenfranchise voters. In the last five years, Maryland and Washington State have set up voter registration systems that make it easy for people to register to vote and update their address information online. The problem is that in both states, all the information required from voters to log in to the system is publicly available. It took The New York Times less than three minutes to track down the information online needed to update the registrations of several prominent executives in Washington State. Complete voter lists, which include a name, birth date, addresses and party affiliation, can be easily bought — and are, right now, in the hands of thousands of campaign volunteers.

Computer security experts and voting rights activists argue that a hacker could use that information to, say, change a person’s address online to ensure that the voter never receives a ballot in Washington, where voting is now done entirely by mail. In Maryland, hackers could ensure that a voter is not listed on the precinct register at a designated polling station. In that case, the voter would be redirected to another precinct, or asked to fill out a provisional ballot. In both cases, the person would not be able to vote in local, or possibly, Congressional races. But the real concern, critics say, is that large numbers of voters from one political party, or demographic, could have their information changed by automated computer programs. A program that could change tens of thousands of voter records at once, they say, would require only a dozen lines of code.

… “They could influence an election with 20,000 votes for less than a penny a head,” said J. Alex Halderman, one of the computer scientists who first discovered Washington’s loophole. “That would be a great return on investment for them.” … Last week, Mr. Halderman, David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and Barbara Simons, a retired IBM computer scientist, sent a letter to Washington and Maryland election officials with seven recommendations for security, including authenticating voters with nonpublic information like the last four digits of their Social Security numbers and setting up disaster plans that would let them shut down their systems during an attack.

Full Article: Cracks in Maryland and Washington Voter Databases – NYTimes.com….

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Montana’s campaign donation limits, telling the federal judge who struck down the limits that the panel needs to see his full reasoning so it can review the case. The court intervened late Tuesday less than a week after the judge’s decision opened the door to unlimited money in state elections — during the height of election season. In response, U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell issued a 38-page conclusion Wednesday morning that reinforced his earlier decision finding that the state’s limits are too low to allow effective campaigning. He suggested the state Legislature would have a “clean canvas” to perhaps establish new, higher limits that could meet constitutional muster.

The 9th circuit did not immediately respond, leaving the state limits in place — for the time being. The legal back and forth came with less than a month until Election Day. Montana limits range from $630 for an individual contributing to a governor’s race to $160 for a state House candidate. The amounts are adjusted each election cycle to account for inflation. The law also limited aggregate donations from political parties. Conservative groups emboldened by the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision have made Montana the center of the fight over many campaign finance restrictions.

Full Article: Federal appeals court reinstates Montana campaign contribution limits as election looms – The Washington Post.

On one side, 15 states have joined Ohio in asking the Supreme Court for emergency protection from federal judges who seek to “micromanage” elections. On the other, President Obama’s reelection committee has invoked the lessons of Bush v. Gore to counter that Ohio is attempting to favor one group of voters above all others. And now, in a case with legal and political ramifications, the Supreme Court must decide whether to intervene just three weeks before the election in a state that both Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney consider critical to their chances of winning.

The issue is whether Ohio may allow only military voters to take advantage of in-person early voting in the three days before the Nov. 6 election. A district judge and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit said the state had not shown why it should differentiate among groups of voters. “While there is a compelling reason to provide more opportunities for military voters to cast their ballots, there is no corresponding satisfactory reason to prevent nonmilitary voters from casting their ballots as well,” the appeals court said. About 105,000 voters had cast their ballots during the three days in question in 2008.

Full Article: Ohio voting dispute makes its way to the Supreme Court – The Washington Post.

A federal court on Wednesday blocked South Carolina from enforcing its new voter photo ID law in next month’s election, saying that there was not enough time to educate voters and officials about it. The ruling was the latest in a string of judicial interventions blunting a wave of Republican-led efforts to impose new restrictions on voting for the Nov. 6 election. But the court also ruled that South Carolina might put the law into effect in 2013. That permission, however, was contingent on a promise by state election officials to use an “extremely broad interpretation” of a provision that will make exceptions for voters who lack photo ID cards, allowing them to cast ballots as long as they give a reason for not having obtained one.

The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia portrayed that interpretation, offered by officials at a trial this summer, as crucial to its ruling that the law could go into effect next year. The judges said that if South Carolina later wanted to interpret the law more strictly, it would first have to seek federal permission under the Voting Rights Act. “At first blush, one might have thought South Carolina had enacted a very strict photo ID law,” wrote Judge Brett Kavanaugh. “Much of the initial rhetoric surrounding the law suggested as much. But that rhetoric was based on a misunderstanding of how the law would work.” The law, as construed by South Carolina officials, “does not have the effects that some expected and some feared,” the judge wrote.

The Justice Department blocked South Carolina’s law in December, shortly after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. gave a speech vowing to take an aggressive stance in reviewing new laws that civil rights advocates say will dampen minority participation in elections. The state then filed a lawsuit asking the judges to allow it to enforce the measure.

Full Article: Court Blocks South Carolina Voter ID Law, for Now – NYTimes.com….

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The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly October 8-14 2012

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