Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Lawsuit aims to halt any more online voting in New Jersey

online voting
sorbetto/Getty Images

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."


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.

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.

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.

The state has not announced its plans for allowing the app in the future and did not say how many used it this week.

The cloud-based system was developed by a Seattle-based company, Democracy Live. 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.

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.

New Jersey is also the state that, after Louisiana, still relies the most on computerized voting machines that do not create any paper trail.

Read More

An oversized ballot box surrounded by people.

Young people worldwide form new parties to reshape politics—yet America’s two-party system blocks them.

Getty Images, J Studios

No Country for Young Politicians—and How To Fix That

In democracies around the world, young people have started new political parties whenever the establishment has sidelined their views or excluded them from policymaking. These parties have sometimes reinvigorated political competition, compelled established parties to take previously neglected issues seriously, or encouraged incumbent leaders to find better ways to include and reach out to young voters.

In Europe, a trio in their twenties started Volt in 2017 as a pan-European response to Brexit, and the party has managed to win seats in the European Parliament and in some national legislatures. In Germany, young people concerned about climate change created Klimaliste, a party committed to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement. Although the party hasn’t won seats at the federal level, they have managed to win some municipal elections. In Chile, leaders of the 2011 student protests, who then won seats as independent candidates, created political parties like Revolución Democrática and Convergencia Social to institutionalize their movements. In 2022, one of these former student leaders, Gabriel Boric, became the president of Chile at 36 years old.

Keep ReadingShow less
How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

Demonstrators gather outside of The United States Supreme Court during an oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford to call for an end to partisan gerrymandering on October 3, 2017 in Washington, DC

Getty Images, Olivier Douliery

How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground. ~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Col. Edward Carrington, Paris, 27 May 1788

The Problem We Face

The U.S. House of Representatives was designed as the chamber of Congress most directly tethered to the people. Article I of the Constitution mandates that seats be apportioned among the states according to population and that members face election every two years—design features meant to keep representatives responsive to shifting public sentiment. Unlike the Senate, which prioritizes state sovereignty and representation, the House translates raw population counts into political voice: each House district is to contain roughly the same number of residents, ensuring that every citizen’s vote carries comparable weight. In principle, then, the House serves as the nation’s demographic mirror, channeling the diverse preferences of the electorate into lawmaking and acting as a safeguard against unresponsive or oligarchic governance.

Nationally, the mismatch between the overall popular vote and the partisan split in House seats is small, with less than a 1% tilt. But state-level results tell a different story. Take Connecticut: Democrats hold all five seats despite Republicans winning over 40% of the statewide vote. In Oklahoma, the inverse occurs—Republicans control every seat even though Democrats consistently earn around 40% of the vote.

Keep ReadingShow less
Once Again, Politicians Are Choosing Their Voters. It’s Time for Voters To Choose Back.
A pile of political buttons sitting on top of a table

Once Again, Politicians Are Choosing Their Voters. It’s Time for Voters To Choose Back.

Once again, politicians are trying to choose their voters to guarantee their own victories before the first ballot is cast.

In the latest round of redistricting wars, Texas Republicans are attempting a rare mid-decade redistricting to boost their advantage ahead of the 2026 midterms, and Democratic governors in California and New York are signaling they’re ready to “fight fire with fire” with their own partisan gerrymanders.

Keep ReadingShow less
Stolen Land, Stolen Votes: Native Americans Defending the VRA Protects Us All – and We Should Support Them

Wilson Deschine sits at the "be my voice" voter registration stand at the Navajo Nation annual rodeo, in Window Rock.

Getty Images, David Howells

Stolen Land, Stolen Votes: Native Americans Defending the VRA Protects Us All – and We Should Support Them

On July 24, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked a Circuit Court order in a far-reaching case that could affect the voting rights of all Americans. Native American tribes and individuals filed the case as part of their centuries-old fight for rights in their own land.

The underlying subject of the case confronts racial gerrymandering against America’s first inhabitants, where North Dakota’s 2021 redistricting reduced Native Americans’ chances of electing up to three state representatives to just one. The specific issue that the Supreme Court may consider, if it accepts hearing the case, is whether individuals and associations can seek justice under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). That is because the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, contradicting other courts, said that individuals do not have standing to bring Section 2 cases.

Keep ReadingShow less