"Other changes sought by the Coalition - include curbside voting for all ("Think of it as a kind of Sonic Drive-In form of voting"), personal protective equipment for poll workers, masks for voters and other demands which, remarkably, have not yet already been enacted by the state. ... a useful template for voters in other states who may wish to hold officials accountable for doing the right thing, as more than 20 states still have upcoming primaries and all 50 will somehow have to figure out a way to hold safe elections this November.“-Have drive-up voting facility where you vote in your car on paper
Scientific American Letter to the Editor
No-Confidence Vote
“One Phone, One Vote” by Wade Roush, discusses software developed to ensure votes are counted correctly. :But technology will never make elections more secure. And praising Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky for initially releasing a mere $250 million for election security (since followed by a woefully still inadequate $425 million), without any provisions banning hackable voting machines, is off base.
Our elections are under attack from sophisticated adversaries, foreign and domestic. They must have analog audits, not digital ones. Procedures must be in place for hand counts of hand-marked paper ballots to ensure that any electronic vote count is accurate.
Allegra Dengler
Citizens for Voting Integrity New York
South Korea’s Coronavirus Test Run: How to Hold an Election
South Korea and the US had their first covid19 case of the same day. Different approaches in the early days of the pandemic resulted in vastly different results.
We used to send Peace Corps Volunteers to South Korea. Maybe they could return the favor and help us run our elections? That is, if we ever get to where they are now in the recovery process.
"South Koreans streamed into polling stations wearing face masks and plastic gloves, taking part in the world’s first major national election held during the new coronavirus pandemic…. South Korea’s turnout on Wednesday, coupled with record levels of early voting last week, reached about 66% of the country’s 44 million eligible voters. That was the highest since 1992….With dozens of countries postponing votes in recent weeks, South Korea provides some early guidance on how elections might proceed once governments see rates of new virus infections flatten and fall..”
ELECTION FUNDING WITH NO OVERSIGHT WILL BE DISASTROUS
Many groups are currently pushing Congress for $4 billion in elections spending so that states can ramp up mail voting and other measures to enable voting during the pandemic. The election security community wants to make sure we tell Congress that the money must include specific requirements for how the money is spent and oversight of the spending. Without those requirements, this money could do more harm than good, or used for other purposes. Click read more for a link to a letter to Congress detailing what’s needed from a coalition of election administrators, security experts, and advocates. This group explains how safe and secure elections are at risk when elections spending comes with no strings attached.
Please call/email your Rep & Senators today. (Enter your zip code here https://whoismyrepresentative.com/ to find their contact info.)
Hi, I am a constituent. I urge you to support a $4 billion elections spending bill THAT INCLUDES oversight of spending AND requirements that (a) promote full participation of voters and (b) ensure votes are accurately counted. Oversight & requirements must be part of any spending package or we risk spending that makes elections LESS secure, such as when the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) allowed the purchase of hackable voting machines. Here is a list of requirements from a coalition of elections experts & advocates:
American Democracy May Be Dying
"Why was this (Wisconsin primary) so scary? Because it shows that America as we know it may not survive much longer. The pandemic will eventually end; the economy will eventually recover. But democracy, once lost, may never come back. And we’re much closer to losing our democracy than many people realize…. that’s why what just happened in Wisconsin scares me more than either disease or depression. For it shows that one of our two major parties simply doesn’t believe in democracy. ”
Prediction, Death Knell for Postal Delivery: Trump Will Kill the Postal Service to Prevent 2020 Election Voting by Mail
Trump is trying to kill the USPS as vote-by-mail becomes the best chance to save our democracy
Laura Clawson
Daily Kos Staff
2020/04/10
Though the novel coronavirus has Americans more reliant on package delivery than ever—including for prescription medications—it has put the future of the U.S. Postal Service in danger. Not distant, far-in-the-future danger, but could-stop-operating-in-June danger. And the Trump administration, which wants to bail out foreign-flagged cruise lines, is saying the postal service is on its own.
“I spoke with the Postmaster General again today,” Rep. Gerry Connolly tweeted Thursday afternoon. “She could not have been more clear: The Postal Service will collapse without urgent intervention, and it will happen soon. We’ve pleaded with the White House to help. @realDonaldTrump personally directed his staff not to do so.”
What’s on the line here? Those prescription medications so many people get by mail. Delivery to rural areas that the for-profit companies don’t think are worth delivering to; in many cases, the USPS brings UPS or FedEx packages the last leg to people’s actual doors, or to tiny rural post offices. Vote-by-mail, which will be essential this November, is—as David Nir put it—“our last best chance to save democracy.”
Why is the novel coronavirus crisis such an immediate, life-or-death crisis for USPS, a part of the federal government that is actually written into the Constitution? Mail volume is already down by nearly a third and could be down by half by the end of June. But the origin of the crisis comes from Congress—specifically from a congressional mandate for the USPS to prepay its retiree health obligations decades into the future and from congressional blocks on the postal service doing things like online bill-paying, money transfer services, postal banking, copy and fax services, phone cards, notary public services, and hunting and fishing licenses. There are so many things that post offices, which are located in nearly every community in the nation, could do that would help Americans out by providing affordable services they need, and at the same time the USPS would be strengthened. But Congress won’t allow it.
And now in the current crisis, Congress would have passed a bill including at least part of what the USPS needs to survive—but Donald Trump wasn’t having it, in part because he’s angry that the postal service doesn’t charge enough to deliver packages for Amazon, which was founded by Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, which has published stories Trump didn’t like.
So the postal service’s ability to continue delivering the mail as it has done for hundreds of years is in immediate danger at the moment when, without vote-by-mail, we might face the choice between risking our lives and giving up our democracy.
Sign the petition to Congress: Save the U.S. Postal Service. Seriously.
New York Democratic presidential primary likely canceled
"Douglas Kellner, the state Board of Election Democratic co-chair, …said that they would probably cancel the primary…..Jay Jacobs, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, told City & State that while the law is on New York’s side to remove Sanders from the ballot, the move could divide the party at a time when it needs to unify “Now that we have a nominee, I’d like to figure out ways to bring everybody together in harmony,” Jacobs said. “Rather than to say to Bernie supporters, ‘You know what, I know Sen. Sanders wants his name on the ballot, but in spite of that, we’re going to take it off the ballot because the law says we can.’” “
The US Postal Service is on track to run out of money by June, and it could be a disaster for states trying to expand voting by mail
The ongoing COVID-19 outbreak in the United States has plunged the US Postal Service into dire financial straits
It could severely impact the 2020 elections as states pivot to vote by mail.
Two Democratic lawmakers who oversee the Postal Service warned in late March that the agency "will not survive the summer without immediate help from Congress and the White House."
The stimulus package President Trump recently signed into law allows the post office to borrow up to $10 billion from the US Treasury, but did not provide emergency funding or debt relief.
One election expert told Insider she is confident in the Postal Service's ability to process more ballots.
Wisconsin Primary Recap: Voters Forced to Choose Between Their Health and Their Civic Duty
As they say, if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.
Bradcast: WI's Democratic Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes was being overly polite when she tweeted today: "Good morning and welcome to the Shit Show! Today's episode has been produced by the Supreme Court and directed by the incomparable Speaker and Senate Majority leader duo," before adding: "Buckle up, this one's sure to disappoint!" She was being too kind in her reference to the 4 to 2 party-line vote that yesterday evening overturned an Executive Order that would have postponed today's election in the Badger State until June, as issued by Democratic Governor Tony Evers. The case which blocked that order was brought to the state Supreme Court by GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald, both representing "majorities" in their respective state chambers thanks to Republican gerrymandering that prevented Democrats from controlling the state legislature despite receiving more votes than Republicans.
Why voting by mail will be so hard for states to set up on the fly
"Pure politics Some Republicans — from a Georgia state lawmaker to the president of the United States — have outright said it: If you mail every registered voter a ballot, you expand the voting pool beyond those who would go to a polling place….
Wow. GA House Speaker David Ralston comes right out and says he doesn’t want every voter to receive an absentee ballot application because it would hurt Republicans
https://t.co/4B3s8BQAQI pic.twitter.com/mAuGqC4p1m
— David Nir (@DavidNir) April 2, 2020
“The things they had in there were crazy,” President Trump said this week on Fox and Friends of Democrats’ proposals for the coronavirus relief package. “They had things — levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.””
You Shouldn’t Have to Risk Your Life to Vote
New York Times: You Shouldn’t Have to Risk Your Life to Vote
“... In their zeal to ram through this vote, Republicans are subjecting Wisconsinites to the worst of both worlds: a turnout that will be sharply reduced because so many voters will continue to do the right thing and abide by the stay-at-home order, and yet one that will still be large enough to inundate the few precincts that will be open, and expose untold numbers of people to potential infection.
Turnout is likely to be especially lower in Democratic-leaning cities like Milwaukee, which holds a large majority of the state’s minority voters and which has been hit hardest by the pandemic.
Wisconsin Republicans aren’t outliers in their attempts to make voting harder. Republicans across the country have known for years that they win when fewer people vote.”
Hack the vote: terrifying film shows how vulnerable US elections are
HBO’s Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections
Watch this important documentary now, free for the month of April.
https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/kill-chain-the-cyber-war-on-americas-elections
In advance of the 2020 Presidential Election, Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections takes a deep dive into the weaknesses of today’s election technology, an issue that is little understood by the public or even lawmakers.
Trump says election proposals in coronavirus stimulus bill would hurt Republican chances
"The President says that if we make it easier to vote, Republicans will lose elections,” Lofgren said in a statement. “He is apparently willing to expose voters to the deadly COVID-19 for purely partisan political advantage.”..Ellen Kurz, the founder and CEO of iVote, a political action committee, told The Hill that Trump’s "sentiments bring into stark relief why Republican officials across the country have taken every opportunity to keep people from voting.”
Voting by Mail Would Reduce Coronavirus Transmission but It Has Other Risks
New York will allow voters to check “sickness” as a reason to request an absentee ballot this year. Gov Cuomo is being pressed by some groups to go to a vote-by-mail system this year for everyone, which would entail ballots being mailed to all registered voters. There are huge problems for either response.
“….There is bipartisan consensus that mail-in ballots are the form of voting most vulnerable to fraud. A 2005 commission led by President Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker III — George W. Bush’s secretary of state — concluded that these ballots “remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” Ballot harvesting scandals, in which political operatives tamper with absentee ballots that voters have entrusted to them, have marred recent elections in North Carolina and Texas.
...In some cities with diverse populations, hundreds of types of ballots in multiple languages must be designed and directed to the appropriate voters in the correct precincts. Envelopes must be thick enough to protect voter privacy, and the paper thickness must be appropriate for scanners used to count ballots. When ballots are received, machines often open the envelopes and sort and tabulate the votes. These machines are expensive, and they generally take several months to order.
...Rodriguez said requests for absentee ballots have already skyrocketed, with more than 15,000 applications awaiting approval. Workers must open each emailed request, verify the voter’s identity and then manually enter the information before any absentee ballot can be generated. ...“It’s a serious struggle,” she said, adding that there have been supply shortages for paper and envelopes across the state. “All of the normal suppliers we have are completely out of stock.”
The 2020 Election Won’t Look Like Any We’ve Seen Before
New York Times: "The most practical fix is to make voting by mail a clear and free option for every eligible voter in the country. This means, at a minimum: printing tens of millions of mail-in ballots and envelopes; ensuring that all registered voters receive one automatically, can request a replacement if they don’t, and can return it by Election Day; and finally, having the human and technological resources, like ballot scanners, available to count those votes quickly and accurately."
PEW: "U.S. elections have been in flux since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland and Ohio all delayed their Democratic primaries. New York officials also are considering delaying that state’s April 28 primary….Election officials in states with restrictive absentee requirements are looking for ways to allow as many voters as possible to use absentee ballots, a safer alternative to in-person voting in a global pandemic. If this crisis continues into November, however, some experts warn that a pivot to voting by mail could strain state resources and disenfranchise certain voters if not handled properly.”
The Cybersecurity 202: Democrats see coronavirus stimulus as last, best chance for vote-by-mail push
The to-do list includes machinery to print huge numbers of paper ballots, high-speed scanners to count filled-out ballots and a totally revamped security system to ensure no one tampers with the ballots between people’s homes and election offices. In some cases, states that don’t offer no-excuse mail in voting would also have to change their constitutions to do so, Amy and Isaac report.
Voting Rights Roundup: These states could delay primaries and change how to vote amid coronavirus
Gov Cuomo is being urged to establish vote by mail on an emergency basis for New York State. This has implications for the security of the election system if not done with attention to guidelines such as recommended by the Brennan Center for Justice. https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/Coronavirus Response Memo.pdf
The Brennan Center recommends:
Requesting, receiving, and returning mail ballots
Options for requesting, receiving, and returning mail-in ballots should be expanded, while maintaining the security of the voting system.
States should offer multiple methods of requesting mail-in ballots, including online, in person, by phone, and by mail.
Secure options for returning ballots should be expanded.
States should offer voters drop boxes in accessible locations, if they are able to do so securely. Outside of government offices, drop boxes should be equipped with secure cameras.
Voters should also be offered secure curbside drop-off options at polling places.
States should allow voters who are unable to leave their homes to designate individuals to return their completed ballots.
No Stimulus Without Election Protection
"Come November, people may still not be able to gather safely at polling places, and election workers — many of them elderly — may not be able to interact safely with hundreds of people. That’s terribly worrisome. As Seth Masket of the University of Denver has pointed out, elections are an essential institution in a democracy, much as grocery stores are...Fighting coronavirus will take war-like mobilization of govt resources. But even during the Civil War & WWII, we still held elections. It’s essential that Congress mandate & provide funding for every state to adopt universal vote-by-mail so we don’t have a political crisis too..”
Pandemic Planning Should Ensure All Votes Can Be Cast by Mail in November, Experts Say
Senator Wyden and Klobuchar’s bill includes $500 million in federal funding to cover the cost of providing prepaid envelopes to voters and for states to purchase high-speed scanners to quickly count tens of millions of absentee ballots.
A provision would also bar any of the money from being used for internet-based voting, which experts say is insecure and Wyden argues would aid further Russian interference in the election.
While Wyden is a proponent of having votes cast entirely by mail, or dropped off in locked collection bins close to election day, … Hasan favors “in-person absentee balloting because it’s more secure,”
… In a Washington Post opinion article, Marc Elias argued that “all votes postmarked by Election Day must be treated as timely and counted in full.” …… Hasen argues that in-person early voting should be part of the package.
“I tend to favor in-person absentee balloting because it’s more secure,” Hasen said. “When you have ballots floating around out there, there’s the potential for ballot-tampering — as we saw in the North Carolina 9th Congressional district race in 2018, where you had political operatives taking ballots and potentially destroying them or changing them.”
……………………………………………………………………………………………...
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/pandemic-planning-ensure-votes-can-cast-mail-november-experts-say/
Pandemic Planning Should Ensure All Votes Can Be Cast by Mail in November, Experts Say
Robert Mackey
March 16 2020, 9:30 p.m.
AS OHIO’S GOVERNOR defied a court ruling and ordered that his state’s primary be delayed until June, citing the need for social distancing in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Senate Democrats and election experts pressed Congress to act immediately on legislation to ensure that voters in all 50 states will be able to cast ballots by mail or vote early in the general election if the public health emergency lasts into November.
That is particularly urgent because, as Marc Elias, a lawyer who represents the Democratic Party on voting rights issues, explains, while states can set their own primary days, “the federal general election is set by federal statute as the the Tuesday following the first Monday in November. This date cannot be changed by a state nor by the President.”
Democratic senators Ron Wyden, of Oregon, and Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, introduced legislation on Monday that would require all states to offer an option for voters to mail in or drop off hand-marked paper ballots if 25 percent of the states have declared a state of emergency related to an infectious disease, like Covid-19, or a natural disaster.
“The pandemic could hit like a tsunami,” Wyden told The Intercept by phone from his home in Portland. “How can we tell people, particularly elderly veterans, that they have to choose between their health and their vote?”
Ron Wyden
✔
@RonWyden
Since he’s taking advantage of #VoteByMail himself, I hope Donald Trump would commit to signing my bill into law to help states implement vote by mail through November to keep every American safe. https://twitter.com/pbpost/status/1237854320617349123 …
The Palm Beach Post
✔
@pbpost
President Trump requests absentee ballot https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20200311/president-trump-requests-absentee-ballot?rssfeed=true&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=ghf-palmbeach-main …
Even if the spread of Covid-19 slows in the coming months, previous pandemics, like the global outbreak of influenza that killed about 50 million people in 1918 and 1919, have struck in waves. As a CDC timeline for that pandemic’s impact on the United Kingdom shows, it struck first in the summer of 1918, and then receded, only to return with increased virulence in October and November.
A timeline of the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 in the United Kingdom, from a CDC study.
If enacted, the new law would force 16 states that still have restrictions on who can request an absentee ballot to remove them. Wyden’s home state of Oregon has conducted general elections entirely by mail since 2000, when turnout spiked to 79 percent.
“In about two-thirds of the states, there already is no-excuse absentee balloting,” election-law expert Rick Hasen pointed out in a Skype interview on Monday. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of the new book, “Election Meltdown,” noted that expanding such voting to the whole country would cost money and likely delay the counting of votes well beyond election night.
Ron Wyden
✔
@RonWyden
In-person elections are going to be harder and harder to run during a pandemic when social isolation and quarantines are in place. The #VoteByMail system pioneered by Oregon is our best option for keeping our democracy running during this crisis. https://twitter.com/BaltSunBrk/status/1237799948298616833 …
“Absentee ballots take time to be processed because you have to check signatures,” Hasen said. “We’re going to need more federal funding because you’re going to need scanners, you’re going to need employees checking these ballots. It should be one of the things that is thought about as part of the package of coronavirus-related legislation.”
Wyden and Klobuchar’s bill includes $500 million in federal funding to cover the cost of providing prepaid envelopes to voters and to for states to purchase high-speed scanners to quickly count tens of millions of absentee ballots.
A provision would also bar any of the money from being used for internet-based voting, which experts say is insecure and Wyden argues would aid further Russian interference in the election. The senator noted that the nation’s top voting machine maker, Election Systems and Software, had already admitted to him in 2018 that it lied about securing its machines from hacking by making sure that they were never connected to the internet.
While Wyden is a proponent of having votes cast entirely by mail, or dropped off in locked collection bins close to election day, the system Oregon has operated for years, Hasen argues that in-person early voting should be part of the package.
“I tend to favor in-person absentee balloting because it’s more secure,” Hasen said. “When you have ballots floating around out there, there’s the potential for ballot-tampering — as we saw in the North Carolina 9th Congressional district race in 2018, where you had political operatives taking ballots and potentially destroying them or changing them.”
“We need to have safeguards about that,” Hasen added, “but we need also to make sure that we need to have procedures in place for people who don’t have easy access to the mail, like people who live on Indian reservations, to make sure their ballots can be distributed and collected. It’s complicated and so now is the time to be planning for November. We can’t wait until September or October to try to roll something out.
In a Washington Post opinion article, Marc Elias argued that “all votes postmarked by Election Day must be treated as timely and counted in full.” If the pandemic forces nationwide voting by mail, Elias wrote, postal facilities, already dealing with the impact of Covid-19 on their own workforces, will have to handle millions of ballots. That will likely mean delays in mail delivery times, which should not disqualify votes cast by election day.
Hasen also echoes Wyden’s concern about proposals for internet voting. “I think the consensus among computer scientists is that internet-based voting is a bad idea: it’s not secure,” Hasen said. “And beyond the question of the actual security, there’s the question of public confidence in the process,” he added. “When you don’t have a piece of paper that can be checked, I think people are concerned that there could be hacking somehow changing the votes. You even see it now when we don’t have internet-based voting, that people are concerned about voting machines. This is why I suggest that we always need a paper trail, something that can be counted in the event that there is a concern.”
“Internet voting is not ready for prime time,” Hasen said. “It’s hard to think of a worse idea than internet voting to roll out for the first time in what might be the most contentious presidential race of our lifetimes.”
Absentee ballots, by contrast, are hand-marked on paper “and can be recounted by hand if necessary,” Hasen said. “People voting with an absentee ballot, its on a piece of paper, they’ve hand-marked it, which I think of as the gold standard.
Hasen generally favors Wyden’s proposed legislation, but argues that it needs to include protections for voters. “For example, the ability of voters to get notice if their ballot is rejected because signatures don’t match, so they have a chance to cure that,” he said.
“I want to see limits on the ability to collect absentee ballots from strangers, which is something that I know some Democrats oppose, but I think it’s important as a security measure and as a confidence measure,” he added. “I think there would need to be some exceptions in there for places where you have large rural areas without good mail service, but generally speaking I would favor some limits — like in Colorado, where a person can collect up to 10 absentee ballots and return them, which seems reasonable.”
Coronavirus and 2020 Elections: What Happens to Voting in an Outbreak
Concerns are rising about the impact of coronavirus on elections, but New York can eliminate one source of contagion to reduce the risk:
BAN TOUCHSCREEN VOTING MACHINES IN NEW YORK A8597 (Paulin)/ S6733 (Myrie)
Sign the Common Cause New York petition to oppose the Certification of the Broken ExpressVote XL Voting System!
https://citizensvotingny.org/take-action
NYTimes: Coronavirus and 2020 Elections: What Happens to Voting in an Outbreak "Edmund Michalowski, the deputy clerk for elections in Cook County, Ill.,..added that officials have also been looking at effective disinfectants to wipe down touch screens between each vote.”
Touchscreens: The Mosquito of the Digital Age "The widespread and rapidly growing automation and digitization of our world has led to the installation of billions of touchscreens, both in our personal possession and in public use, such as at hospitals, airports, schools, restaurants, public transit, banks and government offices."
Germs at the Airport "According to our research, the average self check-in screen contained 253,857 CFU – over 13 times more than the average CFU of an airport water fountain button. One check-in screen recorded over 1 million CFU. In comparison, an average of only 172 CFU are found on toilet seats."