Last month, when Congress authorized three hundred and eighty million dollars to help states protect their voting systems from hacking, it was a public acknowledgement that, seven months out from the midterm elections, those systems remain vulnerable to attack.
Texas counties have doled out millions of dollars in recent months to replace thousands of old touch-screen voting machines that lack a paper record – a weakness security experts warn could allow Russians or other hackers to rig U.S. elections without detection.
The problem is, many of the new machines have the same vulnerability. So do similar machines in more than a dozen states across the country.
A pair of senators from each party is introducing legislation meant to deter foreign governments from interfering in future American elections.
The bill represents the latest push on Capitol Hill to address Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election and counter potential threats ahead of the 2018 midterms.
A bipartisan group of six senators has introduced legislation that would take a huge step toward securing elections in the United States. Called the Secure Elections Act, the bill aims to eliminate insecure paperless voting machines from American elections while promoting routine audits that would dramatically reduce the danger of interference from foreign governments.
The U.S. Senate should enthusiastically pass the Graham-Klobuchar amendment to H.R. 2810, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2018.
The amendment would enormously strengthen defenses against cyber attacks that could compromise the integrity of elections in the United States and undermine legitimacy of government. Public confidence in the reliability of elections is a cornerstone of national security—the willingness of the people to fight and die for their country.
Columbia County is gaining a reputation for voting integrity, thanks to its rigorous policy of hand-counting votes: County inspectors hand-tally all but state races and certified blowouts. Because of that policy, county Democratic Election Commissioner Virginia Martin has been invited to two recent panels on voting security.
Election officials in 27 states, most of them Republicans, have launched a program that threatens a massive purge of voter rolls, especially targeting minority voters.
Al Jazeera America has obtained 2.1 million names from the target lists, kept confidential until now. Experts reviewing the lists conclude it is suspiciously over-weighted with Black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters.
By Jamal Hagler | Thursday, May 28, 201
The nation’s criminal justice system is broken. People of color, particularly African Americans and Latinos, are unfairly targeted by the police and face harsher prison sentences than their white counterparts. Given the nation’s coming demographic shift, in which there will be no clear racial or ethnic majority by 2044, the United States cannot afford for these trends to continue. Not only could the money spent on mass incarceration—$80 billion in 2010—be put to better use, but the consequences for people who become entangled in the criminal justice system are also lifelong, leading to barriers to employment and housing, among many other things.
The shocking deaths at the hands of police in New York City; Ferguson, Missouri; North Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, to name a few, have awakened the nation to the criminal justice system’s disparate impact on people of color. Tensions have flared throughout the country as news stories about how people of color are targeted and mistreated have come to light. As Americans reflect on the devastating recent events and as momentum builds to reform the U.S. criminal justice system, it is important to take note of the many ways in which the current system disproportionately affects people of color and creates significant barriers to opportunity for people with criminal records. Consider the following eight facts:
These glaring disparities in the application of justice have real consequences for the nation as a whole. Mass incarceration is not sustainable, and evidence does not support the theory that harsh punishments effectively reduce crime or recidivism rates. Recent events have brought this issue to the forefront, and reform has garnered support along the ideological spectrum. It is time to take steps to reduce the disparate impact that the American criminal justice system has on people of color and institute reforms that apply justice fairly and equitably for all.
Jamal Hagler is the Special Assistant for Progress 2050 at the Center for American Progress.
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By Greg Gordon - McClatchy Washington Bureau
Introducing himself as a former Oregon state elections official, online voting industry lobbyist Donald DeFord vouched authoritatively to a Washington state legislative panel in late January as to the merits of statewide internet voting.
Oregon, he testified, ultimately came to the “same solution” offered by a bill before the Washington state House that would allow everybody to cast their election ballots by email or fax – an option that top cyber security experts warn would expose elections to hackers.
“First in a special congressional election and then statewide, we made our accessible online ballot delivery and return system available to any voter who was not able to use a paper ballot,” DeFord, who previously led Oregon’s program under the federal Help America Vote Act, told the committee.
There was a big problem, however, with the testimony he gave in his current job as a regional sales director for San Diego-based Everyone Counts.
Oregon doesn’t allow voters to send in marked ballots electronically, except for troops and citizens living abroad who have been prevented from mailing their absentee ballots due to an emergency or other extenuating circumstances.
DeFord now says he “misspoke.”
“There was a little bit of confusion about language in there. I probably could have been more clear about it,” he said in phone and email exchanges. “... I did not intend to imply that Oregon has expanded electronic ballot return to all voters.”
On Sunday, The New York Postand NY1 reported that the NYPD’s push to make resisting arrest a felony had officially been introduced as a bill before the New York State senate. After both Commissioner Brattonand NYPDpolice union simultaneously trial-ballooned a similar law change a few weeks ago, the plan to make “aggravated” resisting arrest a felony is officially moving forward after State Senator Tony Avella proposed Bill S04260, that would render anyone who “resisted arrest” more than twice in a ten year span a felon. As the Post spelled out:
Resisting arrest will lead to harsher penalties under legislation proposed by a Queens Democrat. State Sen. Tony Avella is behind a bill that would create a felony charge — “aggravated resisting arrest” — for people who have been convicted of resisting arrest twice in a 10-year period.
The justification for the new measures, in typical NYPD victim-blaming spin, is being presented a a way of preventing future Eric Garners:
The legislation is in response to protests last December following a Staten Island grand jury decision not to charge a police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner.
The bill is based off a letter the Lieutenants Benevolent Association sent to Police Commissioner Bill Bratton in January requesting an “aggravated resisting” charge.
“This helps everybody,” LBA President Louis Turco told The Post. “Civilians don’t get hurt and officers don’t get hurt.”
Setting aside the now all-too-routine fact that police policy is largely directed by the unelected NYPD brass and then later driven through by compliant state legislators, such a policy would have deeply troubling implications. First off, making resisting arrest a felony would severely and disportionately affect communities of color. As WYNC reported last December, resisting arrest - like all facets of our justice system - is not applied evenly among class and race:
NYPD officers appear to be far more likely to file resisting arrest charges against black suspects than white suspects — with dramatic differences in some parts of the city, according to a WNYC Data News analysis of court records.
Law enforcement experts say resisting arrest charges are a strong indicator that an arrest went bad and a cop had to use force. So, with the death of Eric Garner over the summer during an arrest for selling loose cigarettes, WNYC's Data News team analyzed court records to look at who gets charged with resisting arrest.
By Greg Gordon - McClatchy Washington Bureau
A Pentagon official sat before a committee of the Washington State Legislature in January and declared that the U.S. military supported a bill that would allow voters in the state to cast election ballots via email or fax without having to certify their identities.
Military liaison Mark San Souci’s brief testimony was stunning because it directly contradicted the Pentagon’s previously stated position on online voting:
It’s against it.
Along with Congress, the Defense Department has heeded warnings over the past decade from cybersecurity experts that no Internet voting system can effectively block hackers from tampering with election results.
And email and fax transmissions are the most vulnerable of all, according to experts, including officials at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is part of the Commerce Department.
San Souci declined to comment. A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Nathan Christensen, said the Defense Department “does not advocate for the electronic transmission of any voted ballot, whether it be by fax, email or via the Internet.”
The Washington state legislation is dead for this year. But the episode provides a window into how the voting industry, with an occasional boost from the Pentagon, is succeeding in selling state and local officials on the new technology, despite predictions of likely security breaches.
It’s also put state lawmakers and election officials at odds with their counterparts in the other Washington: the nation’s capital.
Published at Pew Charitable Trust
The way in which local election officials verify signatures on mail ballots in Oregon, where elections are conducted entirely by mail, and the guidance the state provides to the counties were the subjects of a recent legal challenge.
by Sen. Doug Whitsett
Oregon and its people have long prided themselves on their Pioneer Spirit, a willingness to embrace new ideas long before other states decide to do so. And while I applaud that in part, it has also prompted a series of potentially problematic policies that continue to harm the state. Examples include our unique land-use system, which has stunted economic growth throughout rural Oregon for decades. Another example is our unique vote-by-mail system.
Vote-by-mail began with the overwhelming passage of Measure 60 in the 1998 general election. The measure passed with around 69 percent of the vote, and made Oregon the first state in the nation to do its elections exclusively by mail. Prior to that, the concept had been introduced incrementally.
Our history of vote-by-mail began as far back as 1981, when the Legislature approved it under certain conditions for local elections. The practice became widespread among the counties over the following six years.
In 1992, a task force on local government services determined that the state could save money by doing all of its elections in such a manner. Three years later, Oregon was the first state in the union to do a federal primary exclusively by mail.
Early supporters of the concept included groups like the League of Women Voters, the League of Conservation Voters and the Oregon Education Association.
The 2000 election saw Oregon become the first state to do a presidential election by mail. But despite this, it took over a decade for any other state to follow suit.
Washington’s Legislature passed a law in 2011 requiring all of its counties to do vote-by-mail. Local governments had the option of conducting their elections by mail since 1987, and the practice had been allowed for statewide elections since 1993. Colorado became the third state to adopt vote-by-mail in 2013.
All of this begs the question of why this practice hasn’t caught on in more states.
This document produced by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) asks that question, and identifies several issues surrounding vote-by-mail, as well as approaches other states have taken on this matter.
It states that legislators throughout the country introduced 42 bills in 2013-14 related to vote-by-mail. In that period of time, lawmakers in Alaska rejected a proposal to establish vote-by-mail for general elections, and their counterparts in Georgia failed to pass a resolution to study all-mail elections. The document also cites research that determined that “vote by mail in Oregon only affected turnout during special elections.”
Issues identified in the NCSL document include that of “leakage,” which is defined as the circumstances under which ballots are requested and not received, transmitted but not returned for counting or returned for counting but rejected. A lack of chain of custody procedures remains a specific security concern for researchers from the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project.
One of the best sources for information on problems related to vote-by-mail comes from our own Secretary of State’s office. It maintains this log of prosecuted election law complaint cases related to voting.
Read Full Story
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
By Greg Palast
Statistics guru Nate Silver simply can’t understand why every single legitimate poll indicated that Democrats should have gotten 4% more votes in the midterm elections than appeared in the final count.
The answer, Nate, is “Crosscheck.”
No question, Republicans trounced Democrats in the Midterm elections. But, if not for the boost of this voter-roll purge system used in 23 Republican-controlled states, the GOP could not have taken the US Senate.
It took the Palast investigations team six months to get our hands on the raw files, fighting against every official trick to keep them hidden.
Here’s what we found.
Interstate Crosscheck is computer system that officials claim can identify anyone who commits the crime of voting twice in the same election in two different states. While the current list of seven million “suspects” did not yield a single conviction for double voting, Crosscheck did provide the grounds for removing the registrations of tens of thousands of voters in battleground states.
The purge proved decisive in North Carolina, Colorado, Kansas and elsewhere. Without Crosscheck, the GOP could not have taken control of the US Senate. [Read my original investigative report.]
Nate Silver might want to punch these numbers into his laptop:
The Crosscheck purge list also swamped GOP Senate margins in Alaska and Georgia and likely provided the victory margins for GOP gubernatorial victories in Kansas and Massachusetts.
No, states do not purge every name on the lists. Typical is Virginia which proudly purged 64,581 “duplicates” from its voter rolls in 2013, equal to about 19% of its Crosscheck list. Other states refuse to provide numbers, but their scrub methods are the same, or even more aggressive, than Virginia’s.
We can conservatively calculate that the purge of 19% of the Crosscheck lists accounted for at least three GOP Senate victories – and thereby, control of the Senate.
by Greg Palast for Al Jazeera America
Election officials in 27 states, most of them Republicans, have launched a program that threatens a massive purge of voters from the rolls. Millions, especially black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters, are at risk. Already, tens of thousands have been removed in at least one battleground state, and the numbers are expected to climb, according to a six-month-long, nationwide investigation by Al Jazeera America.
At the heart of this voter-roll scrub is the Interstate Crosscheck program, which has generated a master list of nearly 7 million names. Officials say that these names represent legions of fraudsters who are not only registered but have actually voted in two or more states in the same election — a felony punishable by 2 to 10 years in prison.
Until now, state elections officials have refused to turn over their Crosscheck lists, some on grounds that these voters are subject to criminal investigation. Now, for the first time, three states — Georgia, Virginia and Washington — have released their lists to Al Jazeera America, providing a total of just over 2 million names.
The Crosscheck list of suspected double voters has been compiled by matching names from roughly 110 million voter records from participating states. Interstate Crosscheck is the pet project of Kansas’ controversial Republican secretary of state, Kris Kobach, known for his crusade against voter fraud.
The three states’ lists are heavily weighted with names such as Jackson, Garcia, Patel and Kim — ones common among minorities, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, fully 1 in 7 African-Americans in those 27 states, plus the state of Washington (which enrolled in Crosscheck but has decided not to utilize the results), are listed as under suspicion of having voted twice. This also applies to 1 in 8 Asian-Americans and 1 in 8 Hispanic voters. White voters too — 1 in 11 — are at risk of having their names scrubbed from the voter rolls, though not as vulnerable as minorities.
By the New York Times Editorial Board
Election Day is three weeks off, and Republican officials and legislators around the country are battling down to the wire to preserve strict and discriminatory new voting laws that could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court — no friend to expansive voting rights — stepped in and blocked one of the worst laws, a Wisconsin statute requiring voters to show a photo ID to cast a ballot. A federal judge had struck it down in April, saying it would disproportionately prevent voting by poorer and minority citizens. Last month, however, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit allowed it to go into effect, even though thousands of absentee ballots had been sent out under the old rules.
There was sure to be chaos if the justices had not stayed that appeals court ruling, and their decision appears to be based on the risk of changing voting rules so close to an election. But they could still vote to uphold the law should they decide to review its constitutionality.
Similar laws have been aggressively pushed in many states by Republican lawmakers who say they are preventing voter fraud, promoting electoral “integrity” and increasing voter turnout. None of that is true. There is virtually no in-person voter fraud; the purpose of these laws is to suppress voting.
In Texas, where last week a federal judge struck down what she called the most restrictive voter ID law in the country, there were two convictions for in-person voter impersonation in one 10-year period. During that time, 20 million votes were cast. Nor is there any evidence that these laws encourage more voters to come to the polls. Instead, in at least two states — Kansas and Tennessee — they appear to have reduced turnout by 2 percent to 3 percent, according to a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office.
Voter ID laws, as their supporters know, do only one thing very well: They keep otherwise eligible voters away from the polls. In most cases, this means voters who are poor, often minorities, and who don’t have the necessary documents or the money or time to get photo IDs.
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