Pew’s Stateline: “With their eyes on the 2024 presidential election, state lawmakers around the country are preparing to reshape voting rules in what election experts expect will be another busy legislative season.”
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Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
Pew’s Stateline: “With their eyes on the 2024 presidential election, state lawmakers around the country are preparing to reshape voting rules in what election experts expect will be another busy legislative season.”
LaunchWashington and Oregon are by far the easiest states in the country to vote in, a new study featured in The New York Times has found. Meanwhile, voters in New Hampshire and Mississippi “face the highest personal cost in the country in terms of the time and effort required to cast a ballot.”
LaunchMesa County Clerk Tina Peters, a Republican accused of compromising sensitive election machine data, was indicted by a grand jury Wednesday. Here’s an explanation of everything that’s happened so far from The Colorado Sun.
LaunchAssembly Bill 126 would “do away with Nevada’s caucus system that has been used to determine each major party’s presidential nominee in the state since 1981,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal explains.
Launch“By the time rioters ransacked the Capitol, the machinery of the left had already been primed to respond — prepared by months spent sketching out doomsday scenarios and mapping out responses, by countless hours of training exercises and reams of opinion research,” The New York Times reports.
Launch“Our number one job is to make sure that we have an accurate election, an accurate tally,” said Meagan Wolfe, the administrator of the Badger State’s Elections Commission.
LaunchBen Brasch of The Atlanta Journal Constitution has details on an a burst water pipe that is impairing one of Georgia’s biggest counties from counting ballots tonight.
LaunchArs Technica’s Timothy B. Lee has put together an incredibly good article that reiterates what security researchers and election integrity advocates have known for a long time: online voting is a terrible idea and should not be used for any elections for public office.
Launch“Trump and his allies have always been motivated by partisanship, even at the expense of American lives,” retorted Nevada’s State Democratic Party Chair after Trump tweeted that Democrats were “using COVID to steal the state” by implementing vote at home in the Silver State.
Launch“[T]he Pavlovian urge to win the short-term news cycle, own the libs and defend the economic interests of corporate America and Trump’s re-election are combining with the predilection for conspiracy-minded thinking on the right.”
Launch“Quarantines and fear could decimate voter turnout. Congress needs to fund mail-in ballots nationwide now,” Jon Stokes argues in an essay for WIRED.
Launch“A significant majority of Americans have lost faith in tech companies’ ability to prevent the misuse of their platforms to influence the 2020 presidential election, according to a new study from Pew Research Center,” TechCrunch reports.
LaunchVia Ars Technica: “Election security advocates scored a major victory on Thursday as a federal judge issued a 153-page ruling ordering Georgia officials to stop using its outdated electronic voting machines by the end of the year.”
LaunchThe former Attorney General of the United States offered opening remarks at Defending the Census, a Netroots Nation 2019 panel.
Launch“I think a full investigation would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf,” the legendary former President said.
LaunchVia Politico: “Trump’s willingness to accept foreign assistance has essentially invited overseas spies to meddle with 2020 presidential campaigns, undoing months of work, said law enforcement veterans.”
Launch“I’m not asking any of you to give any blood,” civil rights legend Representative John Lewis said at a rally for Stacey Abrams. “I’m just asking you to go and vote like you never voted before. We have to vote!”
LaunchRequired reading from the Associated Press’ cybersecurity writer: “Three privately held companies sell and service more than ninety percent of U.S. elections systems. But the companies have long stressed convenience for their customers over product security, security experts and elections officials say.”
Launch“On Monday, Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court dealt Republican gerrymandering a crippling blow when it struck down the GOP’s congressional map for illegally discriminating against Democratic voters,” Stephen Wolf reports.
LaunchThe Commonwealth is moving to immediately decertify all electronic (black box) voting machines that do not produce a verifiable paper trail and are easily compromised.
LaunchVia The Washington Post: “Representatives of Facebook told congressional investigators Wednesday that the social network has discovered that it sold ads during the U.S. presidential campaign to a shadowy Russian company seeking to target voters, according to several people familiar with the company’s findings.”
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