“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.
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Good news: Virginia is getting rid of its easily hacked black box voting machines
The Commonwealth is moving to immediately decertify all electronic (black box) voting machines that do not produce a verifiable paper trail and are easily compromised.
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Facebook sold ads to Russian firm tied to pro-Kremlin propaganda during election
Via 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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Will the Georgia special election get hacked?
“To understand why many computer scientists and voting rights advocates don’t trust the security of many US election systems, consider the experience of Georgia-based researcher Logan Lamb.”
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Federal judge says Texas “voter ID” law intentionally discriminates
Via The New York Times, a not unexpected but welcome development: “A federal judge ruled on Monday that the voter identification law the Texas Legislature passed in 2011 was enacted with the intent to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters, raising the possibility that the state’s election procedures could be put back under federal oversight.”
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New evidence: Before Trump job, Manafort worked to aid Putin
“Before signing up with Donald Trump, former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian billionaire with a plan to ‘greatly benefit the Putin Government,’ The Associated Press has learned. The White House attempted to brush the report aside Wednesday, but it quickly raised fresh alarms in Congress about Russian links to Trump associates.”
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Comey: We’re investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election
I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s
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Wild west: How B.C. lobbyists are breaking one of the province’s few political donation rules
Via The Globe and Mail: “With no limits on political donations in B.C., the provincial Liberals [who are actually conservatives] raised an astonishing $12-million last year. One alarming source: Lobbyists are giving tens of thousands of dollars in their own name – and some power brokers are breaking one of the few rules the province has in place. Kathy Tomlinson reports.
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Hillary Clinton’s campaign to participate in Wisconsin presidential recount
[N]ow that a recount is underway, we believe we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton
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Oregon Republican Party claims responsibility for robocalls about inactive voters
“County clerks around Oregon are being ‘overwhelmed’ by calls from concerned voters who have received automated robocalls erroneously telling them that their voter registration may be inactive and that their ballot may not be counted,” reports The Register-Guard of Eugene, Oregon. Oregon Republicans have admitted they’re behind the calls; Democrats are demanding the Republicans cease their voter suppression activities immediately and disclose who they’ve already called.
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Top Trump operative: “We have three major voter suppression operations under way”
We have three major voter suppression operations under way. — A top Trump operative, admitting to Bloomberg that Trump is trying to keep Democratic voters
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Luis Moscoso: Kim Wyman did not work with me on Voting Rights Act
I never worked directly with Wyman in any of the four years I was the prime sponsor of HB 1745, enacting the Washington Voting Rights
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Russian hackers infiltrated two state voter registration databases, federal officials say
Another reminder why voting needs to be done on paper: “Hackers based in Russia were behind two recent attempts to breach state voter registration databases, fueling concerns the Russian government may be trying to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials tell NBC News.”
LaunchDan Rather speaks out against Donald Trump’s incitement of violence
No trying-to-be objective and fair journalist, no citizen who cares about the country and its future can ignore what Donald Trump said today. When he
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The Republican Party’s war on voting is working
It made me physically ill… It was like a gut punch. I never thought, after all the years of dedicating my life to helping advance
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Democratic Party, Clinton and Sanders campaigns to sue Arizona over voting rights
“The Democratic Party and the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will sue the state of Arizona over voter access to the polls after the state’s presidential primary last month left thousands of residents waiting as long as five hours to vote,” The Washington Post reports.
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Conservative lose key Supreme Court voting rights case
Another right wing political power grab has ended in failure after the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that states may draw legislative districts based on total population, not merely the population on the voter rolls. The opinion in the case, Evenwel v. Abbot, was authored by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
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John Oliver tackles voting in the United States on “Last Week Tonight”
John Oliver tackles voting in the United States on “Last Week Tonight”
LaunchRedmond’s Villeneuve, Eyman file dueling statewide initiatives
Redmond’s Villeneuve, Eyman file dueling statewide initiatives Reporter Newspapers reports on the filing of the Majority Vote Protection Act by NPI founder and Executive Director
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Ten ways to make Seattle (and Washington) politics more inclusive in 2016
Ten ways to make Seattle (and Washington) politics more inclusive in 2016 Laura Bernstein of The Seattle Globalist recaps the highlights of Young, Gifted and
LaunchNYT has mostly ignored its own public editor’s call to stress lack of voter fraud in stories about voter ID schemes
NYT has mostly ignored its own public editor’s call to stress lack of voter fraud in stories about voter ID schemes Media Matters holds The
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