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Lawsuit aims to halt any more online voting in New Jersey
May 15 2020
New Jersey piloted a new online voting system for people with disabilities this week, but a lawsuit could stop the state from using it again.
Human rights activists and law school students are challenging the new voting system, arguing it's unfair to expose only one category of voters to significant risk their ballots will get hacked with impunity.
Using a special app to vote over the internet is denigrated by most cybersecurity experts, who say the threat of votes being compromised is hardly worth the convenience. Four federal technology, law enforcement and election agencies united behind a report this month bluntly warning states against adopting online voting because "ensuring ballot integrity and maintaining voter privacy is difficult, if not impossible, at this time."
<p>New Jersey ran its first test of online voting in 33 local elections Tuesday. The system was only available for people with disabilities, who would have had difficulty casting ballots in contests that were otherwise conducted entirely by mail because of the coronavirus pandemic.</p><p>State officials have not yet indicated whether they will use the system for the presidential and congressional primaries, which have been postponed to July 7. But the lawsuit seeks to prevent them from doing so. The suit was filed Monday, hoping a state court would block internet voting the next day, but the judge did not set a hearing in time.</p><p>Penny Venetis of Rutgers Law School sued on behalf of the human rights organization Coalition for Peace, its New Jersey affiliate and a state legislator. The lawsuit maintains the electronic voting system violates a 2010 court order that New Jersey conduct its elections in the traditional, offline manner.</p><p>The state has not announced its plans for allowing the app in the future and did not say how many used it this week.</p><p>The cloud-based system was developed by a Seattle-based company, <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting/online-voting-for-all-in-a-seattle-election-security-concerns-be-damned" target="_self">Democracy Live</a>. Delaware and West Virginia plan to allow disabled, military and overseas voters to use the same app this year. Officials there argue, as do those in New Jersey, that such a system is appropriate for those who cannot benefit from expanded vote-by-mail options during the public health crisis.</p><p>At a time of near total consensus that voting equipment is most secure when it relies on marking sheets of paper — or at a minimum generates a paper receipt a voter can double-check before submitting — internet-based voting heads in the opposite direction: Voters have no way to be sure their computers, phones or tablets haven't been compromised — and no way to trace their ballot into the cloud and watch it get captured accurately by vote counters.</p><p>New Jersey is also the state that, <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/louisiana-elections" target="_self">after Louisiana</a>, still relies the most on computerized voting machines that do not create any paper trail.</p>
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"How can you possibly be knocking on doors for a long period of time now?" President Trump said Monday, calling for an extension of the census.
Mapmakers will have to scramble if Trump gets the census delay he wants
Apr 14 2020
Time to redraw all the country's legislative maps would be shortened if the census gets slowed down because of the coronavirus. But it's unclear how many significant problems that would create — and whether Congress will approve the Trump administration's request for a delay.
The Census Bureau on Monday proposed postponing all its major deadlines by 120 days, starting with the time for trying to count everyone in the country during the pandemic, producing a cascading effect on the entire redistricting timetable.
Such a four-month extension would mean the states would not know until the end of next April how many U.S. House districts they will have for the next decade and would not get the detailed population information required for congressional, legislative and local government mapmaking until the end of July.
<p>This would have the most immediately problematic impact on the only two states slated to hold legislative elections in November 2021 using new maps: Virginia, where voters this fall will decide whether to turn the line drawing over to an independent commission, and New Jersey, where the process is already in the hands of a special panel outside the control of either party.</p><p>Neither state is projected to see the size of its congressional delegation change, but the delay could nonetheless upend efforts at good governance in both — and in states around the country, where almost all the rules are designed for redistricting to happen in the first half of next year. </p><p>Both New Jersey and Virginia hold their primaries in June, for example, and it would be impossible to keep to such a timetable without retaining the maps currently in use. </p><p>But that could inappropriately preserve political power in places that have lost people in the past decade while denying clout to neighborhoods that have grown. It could also cost the taxpayers if, to correct those inequities, all 120 legislators in New Jersey and the 100 Virginia House members are compelled to run again in special elections under the new maps in 2022.</p><p>Such complexities would spread across the country soon enough. </p><p>The Texas Legislature, for example, would have to convene a special session in the summer to draw a new congressional map that will probably include 39 instead of 36 districts — and be even more intensely fought-over than usual if Austin, as seems likely, become less monolithically Republican after this election than at any time since the early 1990s.</p><p>But the Texas Constitution says the maps for state legislative districts are to be remade at the "first regular session after the publication of each United States decennial census," which will end in May, so it's not at all clear how the Trump administration's proposed timetable would square with that requirement.</p><p>It's largely up to census officials to decide when to end efforts at an accurate count of who is living in the country and where. In-person work was called off in March and has now been put on hold until the end of May to comply with social distancing guidelines.</p><p>But it is not immediately clear if Congress will agree to delay announcement of the reapportioned congressional seats and the delivery of the neighborhood-level head counts to the states — figures that will determine not only the distribution of political power throughout the 2020s but also the allocation of billions of dollars in federal funding.<br/></p><p>The most influential voice on the census at the Capitol, Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said the panel "will carefully examine the administration's request, but we need more information that the administration has been unwilling to provide."</p><p>The New York Democrat was referring to the unwillingness of Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham to answer congressional questions about how the census was faring during the Covid-19 outbreak.</p><p>Only 70 million households have participated in the constitutionally mandated count so far, about half the number the government expected would respond by this point. </p><p>"How can you possibly be knocking on doors for a long period of time now?" President Trump said at his daily news briefing Monday, where he said a 120-day delay in such field work might not be "nearly enough" and wondered aloud if congressional approval is needed to change the deadlines.</p><p>The Constitution says Congress decides how the census is conducted.</p><p>The administration's proposal won a rare endorsement from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which opposes Trump on almost every front but is an ardent promoter of census participation in the count. "We cannot afford to compromise the health of our communities or the fairness and accuracy of the census," said the group's president, Vanita Gupta.</p>
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Some Wisconsin voters who had requested absentee ballots had to vote in person because their mail-in ballots did not arrive in time.
Voting during the virus: Missing ballots, missing postage, delayed Democrats
Apr 09 2020
Coronavirus continues to roil the country's elections — not only in states where elections have taken place, most notoriously in Wisconsin, but also in those where voting hasn't happened yet.
A federal judge has ordered Wisconsin's results kept under wraps until next week, to allow ballots mailed in the final hours to arrive and get counted. So for now the focus after Tuesday's chaotic primary is on why so many of those envelopes didn't get to people's houses in time.
Meanwhile, at least five states are making plans to further delay or modify their primaries in hopes the voting can be free of masks and rubber gloves. And election officials in Georgia faced new complaints about their plans for making voting easier in the state's primary.
These are the latest developments:
<h3>Wisconsin</h3><p>In the weeks leading up to the primary, when in-person voting looked like it would be on again and off again too many times to count, nearly 1.3 million absentee ballots were requested, according to the Wisconsin Election Commission. </p><p>Voting rights groups said the main complaint at polling places were from legions of people who said they felt compelled to venture out to vote because the ballots they'd asked for never showed up.</p><p>The Supreme Court ruled Monday night that their return had to bear an Election Day postmark at the latest. The justices reversed a lower court decision that said, because of the delays in fulfilling such a huge and late-peaking flood of requests, voters could fill out their ballots after Tuesday so long as the paper made it to election offices by Monday.</p><p>The Milwaukee Election Commission plans to seek a formal Postal Service investigation into what happened to absentee ballots that failed to reach voters, according to executive director Neil Albrecht. He said Wednesday the commission noticed a pattern where absentee ballots mailed out by the city on March 22 or 23 never arrived. He did not have exact numbers.</p><p>Meanwhile, Wisconsin Election Commission head Meagan Wolfe also said her agency was going to look into the same issue. She guessed that the problem was one of data entry.</p><h3>Georgia</h3><p>The <a data-linked-post="2638969815" href="https://thefulcrum.us/american-civil-liberties-union" target="_blank">American Civil Liberties Union</a> and the group Black Voters Matter filed a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of voters demanding that the state pick up the cost of postage to return absentee ballots.</p><p>The suit argues that the cost to voters to pay for postage amounts to a poll tax, which is illegal. It also argues that requiring people to leave their homes to buy stamps will expose them to the virus. Georgia's delayed primary is scheduled for May 19.</p><p>In addition, officials announced that about 60,000 voters received absentee ballot request forms with the wrong return mail or email address. Election officials said the absentee ballot requests will be delivered to their correct destinations, even if voters send them to the erroneous pre-printed addresses.</p><h3>Delayed primaries</h3><p>With their party's presidential nomination no longer being contested, Democratic governors in five states on Wednesday made plans to delay, cancel or alter the rules for their primaries.</p><p>In Virginia, Gov. Ralph Northam pushed back the state's congressional primaries by two weeks, to June 23.</p><p>In Maine, Gov. Janet Mills signaled congressional and legislative primaries would be delayed five weeks, to July 14.</p><p>In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy postponed congressional primaries by five weeks, to July 7, and said he was considering an all-mail primary.</p><p>In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced he was suspending the excuse requirements for obtaining absentee ballots for the June 23 primaries for Congress and the Legislature.</p><p>In Connecticut, Gov. Ned Lamont signaled he would take the advice of Secretary of State Denise Merrill, who called for the cancellation of the already-postponed-once June 2 presidential primaries now that both President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are running unopposed for their nominations. Primaries for Congress and the General Assembly are not until Aug. 11.</p>
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After a chaotic primary in Wisconsin, officials in Florida and Texas are scrambling to avoid more election disasters.
Moves in three states to avoid another Wisconsin, even as Sanders bows out
Apr 08 2020
Bernie Sanders ending his campaign, obviating the need for more Democratic presidential primaries, is the biggest news of the week about keeping democracy safe during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Vermont senator dropped out Wednesday, hours after the end of a chaotic day of primary voting in Wisconsin that went ahead on schedule even though a federal court is keeping the results sealed until next week.
Florida's local election officials and Democrats in Texas, meanwhile, launched efforts to prevent such a shambolic situation in their states during summertime primaries. New Jersey prepared to become the 16th state postponing partisan contests, while the inability to gather ballot petition signatures put a veteran senator in a bind.
These are the latest developments:
<h3>Texas</h3><p>Democrats filed their latest federal voting rights lawsuit in the state Tuesday, citing the spread of the coronavirus as the reason for a significant expansion of voting by mail in the second-most-populous state.</p><p>The state party's suit maintains that holding July 14 runoffs and the November general election under current rules, and while complying with public health guidelines likely to be in place, would be unconstitutional in several ways and violate the <a data-linked-post="2636710625" href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting-rights-act" target="_blank">Voting Rights Act</a>.</p><p>Texas has one of the more restrictive absentee voting laws in the nation: Getting a vote-by-mail ballot requires signing an application saying you are disabled, older than 65, in jail awaiting trial or will be out of the county both during early voting and on Election Day. The lawsuit says those limitations discriminate against younger people and those without disabilities.</p><p>The all-Republican government in Austin vowed to contest the suit and has already filed a response to earlier litigation, filed in state court, arguing the Texas Election Code permits balloting by mail during a public health emergency. That's because its definition of disability includes "a sickness or physical condition that prevents the voter from appearing at the polling place on election day without a likelihood of needing personal assistance or of injuring the voter's health."</p><p>GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a stay-at-home order of indefinite duration and ordered the postponement of the local May elections into the summer.</p><h3>Florida</h3><p>A bipartisan group of 67 local election supervisors Tuesday warned Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of chaos without changes to election rules in the nation's biggest swing state in time for the Aug. 18 primaries.</p><p>"Florida is not in a position, at this time, to conduct an all-mail ballot election this year," Tammy Jones, the president of the state Association of Supervisors of Elections, wrote on behalf of every member of the group.</p><p>As an alternative, they urged the governor to issue an executive order expanding to 22 days the periods for early in-person voting before the primary and general elections and to keep those polls open through Election Day, which they said would allow a consolidation of polling places.</p><p>Even in a normal year, about one-third of the state's votes in November are by mail. That number seems sure to surge this fall, in part because Democrats recently launched an expansive campaign — with 1 million texts and 200,000 mailers — to get their core supporters to request their no-excuse absentee ballots.</p><p>The party is hoping a big turnout pushes the state's 29 electoral votes into the blue column. Florida has voted for the winner in six straight presidential elections, but generally by extremely narrow margins — most historically George W. Bush's win by 537 official votes 20 years ago.</p><h3>Massachusetts</h3><p>The hottest Democratic primary for a Senate seat in the country has been scrambled by one candidate's inability to circulate petitions because of the state's stay-at-home order.</p><p>Amazingly, the problem is facing the long-serving incumbent. Sen. Edward J. Markey, who's been in Congress since the 1970s, has gathered only 7,000 of the 10,000 signatures from registered Democrats or independents required to secure a place on the Sept. 1 primary ballot. He has four weeks, until May 5, to get them.</p><p>His challenger, Rep. Joe Kennedy III, has already gathered 50 percent more than the minimum required and sent them to local officials for certification.</p><p>In addition to sending canvassers to grocery stores and town meetings to gather signatures, candidates in the state usually rely on local party caucuses. But those scheduled for the coming weeks have all been postponed because of the pandemic. So now Markey has to rely on a cumbersome process: Get supporters to go to a website, download a form so the campaign can mail them a paper copy of a Markey's nomination request, sign the paper and then mail it to campaign headquarters.</p><p>Candidates for other down-ballot contests have asked the Legislature to significantly lower the signature thresholds for various offices, but so far there's been no movement.</p><h3>New Jersey</h3><p>The state, which after New York is by far and away the hardest hit by the pandemic so far, has all but formally decided to postpone its primaries by five weeks, to July 7.</p><p>Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, who had earlier delayed local elections and converted them to exclusively mail-in ballots due in May, planned to make the announcement by Thursday.</p><p>In the statewide primary, Democrats will assign 186 delegates to the presidential convention and both parties will pick nominees for Congress. State and legislative offices are not on the ballot this year.</p><p>Fifteen states have already either pushed back their presidential primaries or switched to voting by mail with extended deadlines. New Jersey, with more than 44,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases and more than 1,200 deaths, was originally going to be part of a small group voting June 2. Now it's hopscotched beyond six states that have switched to that date.</p>
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