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Voters head to the polls in the rural Iowa town of Murray in 2018. State officials said they won't have a new voter registration system up and running until after the 2020 elections.
Iowa will keep voter registration system that thwarted Russian hackers
Iowa's aging voter registration system, which the Russians unsuccessfully tried to hack in 2016, won't be replaced until after the 2020 elections, the secretary of state's office has confirmed.
The $7 million project to replace the 14-year-old system was launched last year. A spokesman for Republican Secretary of State Paul Pate said potential vendors will be contacted soon, to be followed by a formal bidding process.
Current and former state officials said they are confident that additional security measures that have been added should prevent intrusions.
But Linn County Auditor Joel Miller, a Democrat, told The Associated Press he worries the system is running on outdated technology and could be vulnerable. He said he is disappointed at the pace of the replacement project and the lack of information that election officials have received.
"There is a level of frustration," Miller said. "It's not upgraded, and we don't know what's going on with it."
Iowa's system, in place since 2006 and upgraded several times, contains data on Iowa's roughly 2 million registered voters. The state's six electoral votes seem destined to be intensely targeted by both sides again next year; Iowa has very narrowly voted for the popular vote winner in seven straight presidential elections.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a trio of democracy reform bills this week.
California governor signs three political reform bills
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law on Tuesday three democracy reform bills focused on local redistricting, voting access and campaign contributions.
The first piece of legislation prohibits partisan gerrymandering at the local level by establishing criteria for cities and counties to use when adjusting district boundaries. While California is the largest state to use an independent redistricting commission to draw its congressional and state district maps, local districts did not have the same regulations.
Gov. Ralph Northam used his executive authority to restore voting rights for felons, noting that Virginia is among the states that permanently strips such rights after a felony conviction.
Virginia governor restores voting rights to over 22,000 felons
More than 22,000 Virginians with felony convictions have regained the right to vote thanks to executive actions taken by Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam since he took office in January 2018, his office announced this week.
In a statement, Northam's office said he has so far restored the civil rights of 22,205 people who had been convicted of felonies and have since completed their sentences. Those civil rights include the right to vote as well as the right to serve on juries, run for public office and become a notary public.
Northam previously announced in February that nearly 11,000 convicted felons had their voting rights restored under his watch.