[EL] ELB News and Commentary 9/14/18

Fri Sep 14 07:12:02 PDT 2018

“The Overlooked Weak Link in Election Security”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101158>
Posted on September 14, 2018 7:10 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101158> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

ProPublica:<https://www.propublica.org/article/the-overlooked-weak-link-in-election-security>

More than one-third of counties that are overseeing elections in some of the most contested congressional races this November run email systems that could make it easy for hackers to log in and steal potentially sensitive information.

A ProPublica survey found that official email accounts used by 11 county election offices, which are in charge of tallying votes in 12 key U.S. House of Representatives races from California to Ohio, could be breached with only a user name and password — potentially allowing hackers to vacuum up confidential communications or impersonate election administrators. Cybersecurity experts recommend having a second means of verifying a user’s identity, such as typing in an additional code from a smartphone or card, to thwart intruders who have gained someone’s login credentials through trickery or theft. This system, known as two-factor verification<https://authy.com/what-is-2fa/>, is available on many commercial email services.

“Humans are horrific at creating passwords, which is why ‘password’ is the most commonly used password,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, the chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C., who has pushed for security fixes in the voting process. This means increasingly we need something other than passwords to secure access to our accounts, especially email, which tends to undergird all our other accounts.”
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>

Unanimous 11th Circuit Panel Holds that Local Election Change in Jurisdiction Previously Covered by Voting Rights Act Section 5 and Passed Before Shelby County Must Be Implemented Now<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101156>
Posted on September 13, 2018 9:10 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101156> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

This<http://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201711941.pdf> could have some very large implications.  How many other laws are out there that were never enacted or blocked by Section 5 which someone could now sue to revive?

(h/t John Nieman<https://twitter.com/AlabamAppeals/status/1040387451502645250>)
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Posted in Voting Rights Act<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>

“Orange County DA finds ‘no crime’ in review of Assembly decoy candidate allegations”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101154>
Posted on September 13, 2018 8:22 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101154> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The OC Register reports.<https://www.ocregister.com/2018/09/13/orange-county-da-finds-no-crime-in-review-of-assembly-decoy-candidate-allegations/>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

What’s Behind the DOJ Request for Voting Documents in North Carolina?<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101152>
Posted on September 13, 2018 3:55 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101152> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Steven Rosenfeld:<https://www.salon.com/2018/09/13/north-carolina-is-at-the-heart-of-trumps-vote-suppression-project_partner/>

According to two now-retired senior North Carolina State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement<https://www.ncsbe.gov/index.html> (BOE) officials — Gary Bartlett, its former executive director, who served for 20 years in that post, and Marshall Tutor, his top investigator — the federal prosecutor’s office and top federal prosecutor seeking those millions of records<https://dl.ncsbe.gov/index.html?prefix=State_Board_Meeting_Docs/2018-09-07/> in North Carolina’s most heavily Latino counties on behalf of the DOJ and ICE refused to prosecute an elaborate ballot-box stuffing case involving registering non-citizens a decade ago. That case, which the two North Carolina BOE officials referred to federal prosecutors, centered around an early campaign by one of North Carolina’s most powerful current leaders — its Senate Republican majority whip.
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“How Brett Kavanaugh could help create an era of rampant corruption”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101150>
Posted on September 13, 2018 10:55 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101150> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Paul Waldman<https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/09/13/how-brett-kavanaugh-could-help-create-an-era-of-rampant-corruption/?utm_term=.4f1dde0092b8> for the Plum Line.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, Supreme Court<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>

Unanimous 7th Circuit Panel, in Opinion by Judge Skyes, Rejects Challenges to Illinois Campaign Finance Limits<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101148>
Posted on September 13, 2018 10:54 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101148> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Nice to see. <http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2018/D09-13/C:16-3585:J:Sykes:aut:T:fnOp:N:2217703:S:0>
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

“Exclusive: Audio Reveals Potentially Illegal Coordination Between NRA and Montana Senate Hopeful Matt Rosendale”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101146>
Posted on September 13, 2018 10:20 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101146> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Daily Beast:<https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-audio-reveals-potentially-illegal-coordination-between-nra-and-montana-senate-hopeful-matt-rosendale?ref=wrap>

Before the National Rifle Association dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to flip a competitive, Democratic-held Senate seat, the gun-rights group’s chief lobbyist apparently gave the race’s Republican challenger a heads-up.

Chris Cox, the top political strategist for the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), assured Montana Republican Matt Rosendale that the group would spend heavily to support his bid to unseat Sen. Jon Tester, Rosendale told attendees at a July event in Washington.

PAY DIRT exclusively obtained audio<https://soundcloud.com/user-379527848/matt-rosendale-on-nra-support/s-uApYn> of Rosendale’s remarks, which good-government groups say raise serious questions of potentially illicit coordination between Rosendale and an independent political group supporting his campaign.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

Crum: The Prospect of Bailing-in Texas: Initial Thoughts (1)<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101135>
Posted on September 13, 2018 9:39 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101135> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The following is the first of five guest posts from Travis Crum<https://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/crum> on Bailing in Texas to voting rights preclearance:

The three-judge district court overseeing the long-running Texas redistricting litigation recently ordered<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=100925> the parties to brief whether the State should be “bailed-in” under Section 3(c) of the Voting Rights Act for its unconstitutional conduct during the 2011 redistricting cycle. Section 3(c) authorizes courts to place States and political subdivisions that have violated the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments under preclearance—a process that requires pre-approval of election-law changes by federal authorities. The prospect of Section 3(c) relief in the Texas redistricting litigation is the latest and perhaps most significant development for bail-in since Shelby County<https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-96_6k47.pdf>. Indeed, a Lone Star bail-in has been at the top of the agenda of numerous civil rights groups and, until recently, the Department of Justice.

After Northwest Austin<https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-322.ZS.html> sounded the alarm bells over the VRA’s constitutionality, I outlined<https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/the-voting-rights-acts-secret-weapon-pocket-trigger-litigation-and-dynamic-preclearance> a blueprint<https://www.wsj.com/articles/student-maps-voting-rights-approach-1397435415> for using bail-in as an alternative if—and, as it turns out, when—the Supreme Court invalidated the VRA’s coverage formula for preclearance. In this series of posts, I am expanding on that idea and will be discussing recent bail-in cases as well as the statutory, constitutional, and strategic issues surrounding a potential bail-in of Texas.

Supreme Court watchers may recall this litigation from the recent 5-4 decision in Abbott v. Perez<https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-586_o7kq.pdf>, which reversed the district court’s findings of intentional vote dilution in Texas’s 2013 redistricting plans. But hope is not lost. Even after that decision, there are numerous judicial findings of unconstitutional conduct that justify bailing-in Texas. These constitutional violations span Texas’s 2011 and 2013 redistricting plans and include both intentional vote dilution—that is, the drawing of districts that deny racial minorities a fair opportunity to elect their candidates of choice—and Shaw claims, which occur when a State’s use of race predominates over traditional redistricting criteria and is not narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest. As I’ll argue in a subsequent post, although any of these findings could trigger bail-in as a statutory matter, it would behoove plaintiffs to focus on the intentional vote dilution claims from the 2011 plans.

And even though a Texas bail-in is statutorily authorized and constitutionally sound, the voting rights community should approach this case with eyes wide open. Indeed, a Texas bail-in could be the first major race and federalism case heard by Justice Kennedy’s anointed successor, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. As I’ll address in my last two posts, Section 3(c) relief should be carefully crafted to survive a more conservative Supreme Court.
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Posted in Voting Rights Act<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>
“BOB PHILLIPS: Has North Carolina become democracy’s twilight zone?”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101133>
Posted on September 13, 2018 9:35 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101133> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Op-ed<https://www.wral.com/bob-phillips-has-north-carolina-become-democracy-s-twilight-zone-/17838317/> at WRAL.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Trump Officials Prepared For Supreme Court Fight Over Census Question”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101131>
Posted on September 13, 2018 9:31 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101131> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Hansi Lo Wang, who has been the go-to reporter on Censusgate, with this NPR report<https://www.npr.org/2018/09/12/646936577/trump-officials-prepared-for-supreme-court-fight-over-census-question>.
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Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

--
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>
http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org<http://electionlawblog.org/>
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