The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for November 10-16 2014

National Journal took a look behind the scenes at those who run elections and the complexity of election administration. A computer science research and development firm published a paper that explains an attack against common home routers that would allow a hacker to intercept a PDF ballot and use another technique to modify a ballot before sending it along to an election authority. Voter turnout in the 2014 Midterm elections was the lowest since World War II and possibly also one of the four lowest-turnout elections since the election of Thomas Jefferson. Depressed turnout has been blamed on a wave of new election laws enacted by Republican statehouses since 2010 and research suggests that efforts to suppress voter turnout may have changed the outcomes of some of the closest races. The Supreme Court heard arguments in a case brought by black and Democratic lawmakers in Alabama who said the state Legislature had relied too heavily on race in its 2012 state redistricting by maintaining high concentrations of black voters in some districts. Election watchdog groups are worried about the role electronically submitted ballots in Alaska might play in the state’s two tight federal elections. The Hartford Courant looked at mistakes that denied some voters the opportunity to vote in Connecticut, while new restrictive voter ID requirements are blamed for voter disenfranchisement in Texas. Voters in Romania held to the polls to choose a new President in a run-off election and over two million Catalans defied a Spanish court and voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence.