WaPo: Maryland man arrested this week after authorities said they found child pornography on his cellphone worked for President Trump’s voter fraud commission, according to a senior administration official. Ronald Williams II, 37, of Suitland, was a researcher for the … Continue reading
Category Archives: election administration
Michael Wines for the NYT: State election officials, worried about the integrity of their voting systems, are pressing to make them more secure ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Reacting in large part to Russian efforts to hack the presidential … Continue reading
Phil. Inquirer: Pedro Cortes, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, abruptly resigned from office Wednesday, three weeks after his agency came under criticism for a glitch that may have allowed thousands of ineligible immigrants statewide to vote. Cortes’ departure was announced in a … Continue reading
McClatchy: A group of former Obama Administration lawyers on Wednesday moved for a temporary injunction against President Donald Trump’s voting fraud commission, saying the committee caused an “immediate blow to the proper functioning of our democracy” when it requested voter … Continue reading
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has denied a request by opponents of Texas’s strict voter id law to have the state’s appeal of the ruling holding the law illegal and enacted with racially discriminatory purpose … Continue reading
A tour through regular list maintenance in Florida. … Continue reading
I had the chance to speak yesterday with the Daily Journal’s Weekly Appellate Report podcast, about Gill and also a bunch of other stuff. For your consideration… … Continue reading
Coming up October 16. … Continue reading
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Wisconsin officials for a year were not told about specific attempts by the Russian government to gain access to the state’s voter registration database, the leaders of the state Elections Commission said Friday. Friday’s statement from the commission comes after … Continue reading
Sam Bagenstos, in a fine amicus brief for former DOJ officials, makes a very strong textualist argument (along with other arguments) that Ohio’s voter purge process violates the plain meaning of the NVRA and HAVA. (Sam makes other persuasive arguments … Continue reading
Patrick Marley for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: The federal Department of Homeland Security reversed itself Tuesday and told Wisconsin officials that the Russian government had not tried to hack the state’s voter registration system last year. Instead, Homeland Security said, the … Continue reading
Dan Froomkin: The Justice Department’s recent about-face on a voting rights case was such a betrayal of long-standing DOJ policy that a group of former political appointees and career lawyers filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court on Friday, citing more … Continue reading
Careful new study led by Ken Mayer: A survey of registered voters in Dane and Milwaukee Counties who did not vote in the 2016 presidential election found that 11.2% of eligible nonvoting registrants were deterred by the Wisconsin’s voter ID … Continue reading
Unanimous opinion: The American Civil Rights Union (“ACRU”) challenges the Philadelphia City Commissioners’ failure to purge the city’s voter rolls of registered voters who are currently incarcerated due to a felony conviction. Because state law prohibits felons from voting while … Continue reading
Lawrence Journal-World reports. … Continue reading
Michael McDonald has written this oped for USA Today, with the subhead: “The Kris Kobach group is clownish. But some seriously competent people are mobilizing to protect our elections.” … Continue reading
Pam Fessler for NPR: On Friday afternoon, DHS placed individual calls to the top election official in each state and six U.S. territories to fill them in on what information the agency has about election hacking attempts in their state … Continue reading
AJC reports. … Continue reading
NYT: Documents indicate that Jeffrey Gerrish, the president’s pick to be a deputy United States Trade Representative, moved from Virginia to Maryland last year, but opted in November to vote in the more competitive state of Virginia than his bright … Continue reading
Full throated defense of Texas’s current position in this litigation, a 180 from where DOJ was during the Obama administration. … Continue reading
Pema Levy for Mother Jones: In mid-August, as Washington reeled over the deadly white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, President Donald Trump quietly announced his pick for the top civil rights job at the Department of Homeland Security. The woman he chose … Continue reading
Find it here. … Continue reading
Advisory via email: On Tuesday, September 19th at 3:00 PM, U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Chairwoman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, along with U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, … Continue reading
Santa Fe New Mexican: The Santa Fe City Council is not obligated or prepared to implement ranked-choice voting for the 2018 municipal elections, the city attorney wrote Friday in response to a lawsuit filed in the state Supreme Court. With … Continue reading
Paul Gronke: I look forward to a more detailed analysis by voter registration and database match experts of the GAI report that will be presented to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity , but even a cursory reading reveals a number … Continue reading
Clarion-Ledger: U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson on Friday urged Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann to remove any Kaspersky Lab software from Mississippi’s elections systems over fears of Russian hacking. But Hosemann said he made that call about a month ago, after … Continue reading
Denver Post: Ten of Colorado’s nearly 3 million voters in the 2016 presidential election may have cast two ballots, while 38 of them might have voted in another state. Those are among the findings of a study released Friday and … Continue reading
Last week I reported that a 5th Circuit motions panel, on a 2-1 vote, allowed Texas to enforce its revised voter id law pending appeal in the case. The court put this stay in place this even though the trial court found … Continue reading
HuffPost: A Democratic member of President Donald Trump’s commission to investigate voter fraud issued some of the strongest criticism yet from within the panel on efforts to make it more difficult to vote. In a lengthy statement to the commission, Alan King, a Democratic … Continue reading
WaPo: Concerned about potential hacking two months away from the state’s closely watched gubernatorial election, Virginia’s state Board of Elections voted Friday to replace any touchscreen voting machines before November’s elections. The three-member board voted unanimously to decertify Direct Recording … Continue reading
The other day I reported that a 5th Circuit motions panel, on a 2-1 vote, allowed Texas to enforce its revised voter id law pending appeal in the case. The court did this even though the trial court found Texas … Continue reading
Good news via Politico: Virginia’s election office on Friday urged the state’s election supervisors to prohibit touchscreen voting machines before November’s elections, saying the devices posed unacceptable digital risks. If approved, the move would represent one of the most dramatic … Continue reading
NHPR: A newly released report from the New Hampshire Secretary of State and Department of Safety says a majority of people who used out-of-state IDs to register in last November’s elections haven’t registered vehicles in New Hampshire or gotten in-state drivers licenses … Continue reading
California Civic Engagement Project: In 2016, nearly 58% of ballots cast in the general election were Vote-by-Mail (VBM) ballots-up from 27% in 2002. Encouraged by this rising usage, some counties are now planning to expand access to VBM balloting, and … Continue reading
Cyberscoop: Election officials are pushing back against a new Harvard study saying hackers could disenfranchise Americans in 35 states and the District of Columbia by exploiting vulnerabilities in online voter registration systems. The study published Wednesday in the journal Technology Sciencesays hackers could buy … Continue reading
Phys.org: Online attackers may be able to purchase – for as little as a few thousand dollars – enough personal information to potentially alter voter registration information in as many as 35 states and the District of Columbia, according to … Continue reading
A ChapinBlog. … Continue reading
Zack Roth in The Baffler. … Continue reading
AJC: The test of the system, demonstrated exclusively Tuesday for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV, came as early voters in Conyers will begin Oct. 16 to use the ballots along with new electronic record, voting and tabulating machines ahead of … Continue reading
Release: The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Lawyers’ Committee), together with LatinoJustice PRLDEF and the law firm of Dechert LLP, filed suit in federal court in New York on Wednesday on behalf of Common Cause New York to … Continue reading
Michael Chertoff oped in the WSJ: American voters received yet another rude awakening last month. Chicago’s Board of Elections reported that names, addresses, birth dates and other sensitive information about the city’s 1.8 million registered voters had been exposed on … Continue reading
Politico: The U.S. needs hundreds of millions of dollars to protect future elections from hackers — but neither the states nor Congress is rushing to fill the gap. Instead, a nation still squabbling over the role Russian cyberattacks played in … Continue reading
Not good. … Continue reading
New Hampshire Union Leader: The legal maneuvering sets the stage for a showdown over the controversial election law, SB3, passed by the Republican majority in the state Legislature in the spring, and signed into law by Gov. Chris Sununu. Opponents … Continue reading
NYT: After a presidential campaign scarred by Russian meddling, local, state and federal agencies have conducted little of the type of digital forensic investigation required to assess the impact, if any, on voting in at least 21 states whose election … Continue reading
New filing in the 5th Circuit does not even recognize that the trial court found Texas engaged in intentional racial discrimination in passing its voter id law and substitute, and that this finding allows for a broader remedy under the … Continue reading
Brookings event: When: Friday, September 8, 2017, 10:30 a.m. — 12:00 p.m. Where: The Brookings Institution, Saul/Zilkha Room, 1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC What: Free and fair elections are a foundational pillar of American democracy, one it has held other countries … Continue reading
Wichita Eagle editorial: Kansas handed out 40,872 provisional ballots and discarded a third of them. Some reasons for throwing them out: The voter moved to another county but didn’t update registration; trying to vote in the wrong jurisdiction; and not … Continue reading
Troubling McClatchy report: They knew Russian operatives might try to tamper with the nation’s electronic voting systems. Many people inside the U.S. government and the Obama White House knew. In the summer of 2016, a cluster of volunteers on a … Continue reading
Express News: Less than a week after a judge tossed Texas’ voter identification law, the state is asking permission to keep the requirements in place for a handful of upcoming elections in which early voting had already been underway. Looks … Continue reading