[EL] ELB News and Commentary 9/18/19

[Rick Hasen]

“Check-in computers stolen in Atlanta hold statewide voter data”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107366>
Posted on September 18, 2019 7:09 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107366> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

AJC:<https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/check-computers-stolen-atlanta-hold-statewide-voter-data/0W40RoNQQ3maPRUt3KPYnL/>

Two computers that are used to check in voters were stolen from a west Atlanta precinct hours before polls opened<https://www.ajc.com/news/local/fulton-county-elections-will-held-today-results-thursday-paper/hsjrNn3nfzPJLxv4U2luOL/> Tuesday for a city school board election.

Officials replaced the computers before voters arrived, and the election wasn’t disrupted, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.
The express poll computers contain names, addresses, birth dates and driver’s license information for every voter in the state, said Richard Barron, Fulton County’s elections director. They don’t include Social Security numbers. They are password-protected, and the password changes for every election.

The computers, which were in a locked and sealed case, haven’t been recovered.

(h/t Doug Chapin<https://editions.lib.umn.edu/electionacademy/2019/09/18/not-so-small-stuff-cont-e-pollbooks-stolen-from-atlanta-polling-place/>)
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“The Cybersecurity 202: Democrats launch ‘full court press’ on election security”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107364>
Posted on September 18, 2019 7:06 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107364> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo:<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-cybersecurity-202/2019/09/18/the-cybersecurity-202-democrats-launch-full-court-press-on-election-security/5d81660988e0fa7bb93a8bd8/>

Democrats are pressing hard this week in what could be their final chance to pass legislation aimed at protecting the 2020 contest against Russian hackers.

Senate Democrats have failed for months<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-cybersecurity-202/2019/09/09/the-cybersecurity-202-here-s-why-mitch-mcconnell-s-blocking-election-security-bills/5d758b86602ff171a5d734b6/> to force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to allow a vote on bills committing an additional $600 million to election security and also mandating security reforms such as paper ballots and post-election cybersecurity audits. Now they’re shifting tactics and trying to force some of that funding into a must-pass spending bill.

Round one of the fight starts Thursday at a Senate Appropriations Committee meeting where the top-ranking Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy (Vt.), and the top Democrat on the committee’s general government panel, Sen. Chris Coons (Del.), will try to force the money into the Republican draft of a spending bill.
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>


“In post-Greitens Missouri, new campaign fundraising rules going into effect”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107362>
Posted on September 18, 2019 7:03 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107362> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.<https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/in-post-greitens-missouri-new-campaign-fundraising-rules-going-into/article_492ab5aa-ddb1-5feb-ba86-cdddddccbd03.html>
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>


The Proposed North Carolina Remedy<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107358>
Posted on September 17, 2019 10:05 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107358> by Nicholas Stephanopoulos<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=12>

Earlier today, the North Carolina legislature approved<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/us/north-carolina-gerrymandering.html> remedial maps to replace the state house and state senate plans that were recently struck down as partisan gerrymanders. PlanScore<https://planscore.org/#!2016-ushouse> assessed the remedial maps, and here are the results. For the state house, the old plan<https://planscore.org/plan.html?20190917T220826.357313396Z> had an efficiency gap of 9%, a partisan bias of 7%, and a mean-median difference of 5% (all in a Republican direction, and based on a model using 2016 data). On the other hand, the new map<https://planscore.org/plan.html?20190917T202200.603042866Z> has an efficiency gap of 5%, a partisan bias of 3%, and a mean-median difference of 3% (again all pro-Republican). So the new map is about half as skewed as the old plan.

Old House Plan:
[cid:image002.png at 01D56DF0.3444A430]

New House Plan:
[cid:image003.png at 01D56DF0.3444A430]

For the state senate, the old plan<https://planscore.org/plan.html?20190917T220830.323876781Z> had an efficiency gap of 11%, a partisan bias of 6%, and a mean-median difference of 4% (all pro-Republican). By comparison, the new map<https://planscore.org/plan.html?20190917T202326.441339462Z> has an efficiency gap of 3%, a partisan bias of 2%, and a mean-median difference of 3% (all pro-Republican). So the new map is approximately one-third as skewed as the old plan.

It’s also interesting to compare the remedial plans to the distributions of maps randomly generated by the plaintiffs’ expert, Jowei Chen. (Especially since each remedial plan used one of Chen’s maps as its starting point.) At the state house level, Chen’s maps contained anywhere from 43 to 51 Democratic districts with a median of 46 (assuming a 48% Democratic statewide vote share). The remedial plan has 49 Democratic districts in that electoral environment. At the state senate level, Chen’s maps contained anywhere from 19 to 22 Democratic districts with a median of 20. The remedial plan has 22 Democratic districts.

I should note that this isn’t a perfect apples-to-apples comparison. Chen analyzed partisanship using an aggregate of ten statewide elections from 2010 to 2016. PlanScore relies on a model using 2016 data in which legislative vote share is a function of presidential vote share and incumbency. Still, PlanScore assumes the same electoral environment as Chen (48% Democratic) so the estimates for the remedial plans are at least roughly comparable to Chen’s figures.

One’s conclusion about the remedial plans, then, depends entirely on the baseline. Given a baseline of perfect symmetry, one would find the remedial plans better than their predecessors but still reasonably far from treating both parties equally (especially the House plan). But given a baseline of randomly generated maps, one would find the remedial plans satisfactory. Both plans fall within the corresponding distributions of simulated maps—and indeed on the Democratic side of the distributions’ medians.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Do I need a REAL ID to vote?”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107355>
Posted on September 17, 2019 10:26 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107355> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Helpful info from VoteRiders.<https://voteriders.salsalabs.org/realid>
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, voter id<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=9>


--
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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