Archive for July 2017

South Carolina’s state election commission disclosed in a recent report on Election Day 2016 that outsiders attempted to access the state’s voter registration system nearly 150,000 times. It’s a reminder that voter data can be at risk from outside threats – and whatever the debates about who should work together and/or be in charge, that work needs to start RIGHT. NOW.

electionlineWeekly’s Mindy Moretti has a must-read piece this week on a troubling new phenomenon: voters asking to cancel their voter registrations because of personal privacy concerns related to the federal request to share voter rolls. It’s a painful reminder that hacking fears can have as much to do with compromise of individuals’ personal information as wider concerns about altered outcomes.

The ongoing battle between North Carolina’s newly-elected Democratic Governor and the GOP-controlled legislature over appointment of election boards has left numerous counties unable to function for lack of quorum. Specifically, policymakers’ inability and/or unwillingness to set aside partisanship is starting to have an effect on the ability to administer elections at the county level.

As you probably already know, cybersecurity is a hot topic in the elections world these days as it has been in many others for a while. What you may not know is that a whole new ecosystem of information sharing has sprung up around cybersecurity – an ecosystem that’s making its way into elections. A new blog post by the EAC’s Mark Listes helps election officials understand the full “alphabet soup” of entities that can be involved.

Despite all the recent attention to election cybersecurity, the discussion has been largely focused on how different levels of government can cooperate to share information on possible threats to the voting process. A new article by Sean Gallagher in Ars Technica, however, is a nice primer for individuals on both why and how to create “threat models” to identify potential threats and develop plans to protect against them.

A recent survey by The Pew Research Center illuminates both Americans’ deep commitment to the idea of voting and increasingly divergent views on how it should work in practice. It’s further evidence of the divide on whether voting is a right or a privilege, with splits between parties, races and even age groups – meaning that the current fights aren’t just “inside baseball” but actually represent differences of opinion in the country itself.

June 2017 has been more intense than most “off-year” months in the election world. While most of that is definitely due to the rush of headlines in recent weeks, it’s also due to a series of key departures from the field. electionlineWeekly has its latest “exit interview” with Pam Smith of the Verified Voting Foundation, who stepped down at the end of June after 13 years with the organization including 10 years as President.

The last week or so has seen an explosion of headlines in the elections world as the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity begins its work. The news has come so fast that it can be hard to keep up … so here’s a quick summary of where things stand to date.

There is a lot happening in the election community right now – some of it encouraging, some less so – but last Friday, June 30 definitely included some very good news: the arrival of the Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) collected and compiled by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

Happy Independence Day, everyone! I’ll be taking a short break for the long weekend – which may or may not involve one or more of the items in the picture above – and I’ll be back on Wednesday, July 5.