Podcasts about election assistance commission

Today we're diving into the sixth of our eight-part series, exploring how nonprofits champion democracy and protect voting rights. We'll unpack the strategies these organizations use to advocate for democratic participation while operating within the law. This conversation feels especially urgent as we see acceleration to challenges to voting rights and democratic institutions in 2025.   Attorneys for this episode   Tim Mooney  Natalie Ossenfort Susan Finkle Sourlis    Shownotes Current Events / Executive Orders ·      Trump Administration Directives on Voting & Civil Rights o   Disbanded the DOJ Voting Rights Section's Election Monitoring Program. o   Rescinded Biden executive order promoting federal agency voter registration partnerships o   Halted implementation of interagency plans for voter access through social service agencies, and redirecting the Election Assistance Commission to implement draconian requirements outside the scope of its mission his authority over it. ·      Impact on Vulnerable Communities o   Revoked supporting access to the ballot for voters with disabilities and non-English speakers. o   Pressured USPS to deprioritize ballot delivery during election periods and issued an EO that attempts to reject mail in ballots postmarked on Election Day but received afterward.   Nonlobbying Advocacy Although you may consider this an off year for federal elections (but many local and state elections are happening this year)  – now is the time to work to ensure the protection of voting rights for the future. Advocacy can take many forms, lobbying is just one form. There are many ways organizations can advocate for change to ensure democracy and voting rights are secure. Organizing, educating the public, conducting research, executive branch and regulatory activities, working with your local state board of elections, trainings and litigation just to name a few way.   Here are some ways organizations have undertake ·      Educate the Public o   Democracy North Carolina launched a digital explainer on redistricting and gerrymandering for community audiences, and engaged in election protection work. This included monitoring polling stations for long lines, problems with voting, voting misinformation. ·      Hold a Rally or Event o   Detroit Action organized “Halloween Early Vote,” a trunk or treat in a historically underrepresented part of Detroit, promoting civic pride, early voting… and candy. ·      Litigation as Advocacy o   Campaign Legal Center and Southern Poverty Law Center sued Louisiana for new proof of citizenship documentation as a violation of federal law. o   League of United Latin American Citizens, the League of Women Voters Education Fund, the Democratic National Committee and others sued to overturn Trump's federal elections executive order, successfully enjoining some of the more egregious parts of it. Foundation-Funded Advocacy ·      Public and private foundations can fund 501(c)(3) nonpartisan voter engagement activities that do not support or oppose candidates for public office. ·      Special rules for private foundations re: voter registration drives (grants must be for nonpartisan VR drives conducted in 5 or more states over multiple election cycles), but community foundations can fund VR even for small, local, grassroots organizations. ·      Ford Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York have supported nonpartisan voter education and rights litigation to strengthen democracy and public trust in government.   Lobbying ·      Legislative Wins o   New York: Enacted the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, pushed through with support from a coalition including Legal Defense Fund and Citizen Action of NY o   New Mexico: Passed legislation mandating automatic and same-day voter registration following lobbying by ProgressNow NM and allies. ·      Ballot Measures Protecting Voting Rights o   Michigan Proposal 2 (2022): Guaranteed early voting and drop boxes; supported by Voters Not Politicians and League of Women Voters of Michigan. o   Arizona: Local advocates, including Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), defeated multiple voter suppression ballot initiatives. o   Nevada: Voters passed automatic voter registration (2018) and expanded it further in 2022 with strong nonprofit support. Resources ·      Democracy & Equity: The Advocacy Playbook for Democracy and Voting Rights ·      Public Charities Can Lobby (Factsheet) ·      Practical Guidance: what your nonprofit needs to know about lobbying in your state ·      Investing in Change: A Funder's Guide to Supporting Advocacy ·      What is Advocacy? 2.0 ·      Seize the initiative

In a powerhouse episode of Why We Vote, CannCon and Ashe in America are joined by Col. Conrad Reynolds and Will Huff to break down the Make Elections Secure Again (MESA) Act. The federal legislation crafted in partnership with Rep. Pete Sessions that could finally bring hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots back to American elections. The guests detail how electronic voting machines are vulnerable by design, how barcodes and ballot-marking devices subvert voter intent, and why no system relying on proprietary tech can ever be truly trusted. They recount their uphill battle to reform elections in Arkansas, where bipartisan public support for paper ballots has been met with fierce resistance from entrenched interests, election tech vendors, state officials, and powerful lobby groups. From illegal threats against local officials to grassroots wins like Searcy and Independence Counties, Col. Reynolds and Huff outline both the fight and the path forward. The conversation also explores the MESA Act's enforcement teeth, including replacing the Election Assistance Commission with a new oversight body, criminal penalties for noncompliance, and revoking funding for states that don't meet federal security standards. Plus: Tulsi Gabbard's explosive DNI statements, the failure of election judges to ensure vote verification, and why both parties may fear what true election integrity could expose. If you want to understand how elections are really manipulated, and what it will take to fix them, this episode is for you.

A new book published jointly by NCSL and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission is aimed at serving as a resource for election administrators, secretaries of state, state legislators and legislative staff. It will be available soon in digital form on the NCSL website. “Helping America Vote: Election Administration in the United States” was the focus of this podcast and features a discussion with Commissioners Ben Hovland and Donald Palmer.The EAC was established by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which was Congress' response to the problems with the 2000 election. The commission's goals include adopting voluntary voting system guidelines, serving as a national clearinghouse for election administration and certifying voting systems. The commissioners are bipartisan. Hovland, chairman until earlier this year, is a Democrat, and Palmer, the current chairman, is a Republican. The commissioners discussed a variety of topics related to elections including the pros and cons of our decentralized voting system, the importance of election administration as a profession, the value of a bipartisan approach to election administration and who they hope will read this book. ResourcesElections and Campaigns Program, NCSLU.S. Election Assistance Commission

President Donald Trump has signed another sweeping executive order that this time could dramatically change how elections are run across the country. The order targets mail-in voting and citizenship verification—two key components that could impact millions of voters. Under the new order, states would be required to reject ballots not received by Election Day, and the Justice Department would be directed to enforce the rule. Trump has routinely criticized mail-in voting, and voting rights experts warn this change could disproportionately affect low-income and minority voters. It also demands that the Election Assistance Commission add proof of citizenship to voter registration forms — a move that many argue could suppress votes, as these requirements are often difficult for marginalized communities to meet. Election law experts question the legality of the order, with some arguing Trump doesn't have the authority to enforce such sweeping changes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Post Election coverage. Interviews with Nicole Hunt, J.D., Life Issues Analyst, an attorney and serves as a writer and spokesperson at Focus on the Family, Debbie Wuthnow, President of iVoterGuide, vice president of American Family Association (AFA) Action, and a member of the board, Hans Von Spakovsky, who served on the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission is a senior legal fellow and manager of Heritage's Election Law Reform Initiative.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Imagine you're at home when you hear a knock. At your door are people who want you to share, in detail, who you voted for in the last election, months ago. When you ask them who they are and where they're from, they remain vague and perhaps even aggressive.This was the case for some Americans in the years after the 2020 election, part of a spate of behaviors by election skeptics and deniers that, in some cases, amounted to voter intimidation. The history of voter intimidation in the United States is sordid and violent, especially in the century between the U.S. Civil War and the passage of strong voter protections in the 1960s. But it's important to remember that voter intimidation is against the law. Whether you're voting in-person, by mail or via election dropbox, you should never be made to feel unsafe or intimidated while exercising your freedom to vote..Carly Koppes, the clerk and recorder of Colorado's enormous Weld County, describes to us the steps she and fellow officials took when they received reports of unwelcome and unofficial vigilante election “auditors” going door to door in 2021. Christina Das of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund walks us through the bleak history of voter intimidation in America. And CLC's Jonathan Diaz explains how voter intimidation has evolved to become sneakier and more subversive in the digital age — and the steps you can take if you encounter it.Nationwide nonpartisan Election Protection (EP) hotline:866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683)Host and Guests:Simone Leeper litigates a wide range of redistricting-related cases at CLC, challenging gerrymanders and advocating for election systems that guarantee all voters an equal opportunity to influence our democracy. Prior to arriving at CLC, Simone was a law clerk in the office of Senator Ed Markey and at the Library of Congress, Office of General Counsel. She received her J.D. cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 2019 and a bachelor's degree in political science from Columbia University in 2016.Carly Koppes has been working in the Weld County Clerk and Recorder's office for twenty years starting in June of 2004. Her main department was the Election department, but she has also worked in the Recording and Motor Vehicle departments during her time working for the Clerk and Recorder office. She received her Colorado Election Official Certification from the Colorado Secretary of State in October 2007 and finished up her national designation of Certified Elections/Registration Administrators (CERA) through the Elections Center's Professional Education Program at Auburn University in July of 2014. Carly is a 2016 graduate of the Leadership Program of the Rockies and in 2019 she received her Public Leadership certification from Pepperdine University through the International Association of Government Officials. Carly was also honored along with the Colorado County Clerks Association to receive the Defender of Democracy Award from The Center for Election Innovation and Research in 2022. In 2023 Carly was appointed to the national Local Leadership Council of the Election Assistance Commission and was elected as the Vice Chair of the Council. Carly is the youngest person to be elected to the position of Weld County Clerk and Recorder.  Carly is currently serving on the Executive Board for the Colorado County Clerks Association; Carly was President of the Colorado County Clerks Association in 2021 and will serve as President in 2026.Christina Das is Counsel on the Black Voters on the Rise team with LDF, an interdisciplinary team leading year-round election protection and election administration advocacy efforts across the South, using legal, organizing, and advocacy tools to defend and advance the rights of Black voters to participate in our democracy. Christina's experience includes executing strategic campaigns to expand voter access, such as passing legislation for in-person Early Voting in South Carolina in 2022 and working with state-based coalitions to implement jail-based polling places for eligible detained individuals across Texas. She co-leads the national Election Protection Working Group for Jail and Post-Release Voting and has been working with system impacted individuals over the past four years to break down procedural barriers to accessing the ballot behind bars. Christina will lead LDF's election protection program in Texas for the 2024 cycle and support ongoing litigation efforts. Post-election, she works to safeguard the election certification process from any targeted sabotage efforts, as well as working on future policy and election administration reforms at the local, state, and federal level.Jonathan Diaz is Director for Voting Advocacy and Partnerships at Campaign Legal Center. Jonathan helps lead CLC's work on combating election manipulation and participates on behalf of CLC on a number of democracy reform coalitions, coordinating CLC's work with partner organizations at the national, state and local levels. He also litigates voting rights cases across the United States, including VoteAmerica v. Raffensperger (N.D.Ga.), LUCHA v. Fontes (D.Ariz.), and Raysor v. Lee (N.D.Fla./11th Cir./SCOTUS). Jonathan frequently provides commentary on voting rights and election law issues in the media; he has been quoted in publications including the New York Times, Miami Herald, and ProPublica, and has appeared on Univision, NPR, and CNN, where he was an election law analyst during the 2020 election cycle.Links:Is Voter Intimidation Illegal? What Should I Do If I Experience It? - Campaign Legal CenterTexas Appeals Court Overturns Crystal Mason's Conviction, 5-Year Sentence for Illegal Voting - The Texas TribuneVoter Intimidation in 2022 Follows a Long History of Illegal and Racist Bullying - The ConversationRetro Report: Poll Watchers and the Long History of Voter Intimidation - PBS LearningMediaHow to Navigate Intimidation and Other Obstacles to Voting - CNN About CLC:Democracy Decoded is a production of Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization which advances democracy through law at the federal, state and local levels, fighting for every American's right to responsive government and a fair opportunity to participate in and affect the democratic process. Learn more about us.Democracy Decoded is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

This audit includes information about Ford County's policies and practices to ensure the security of storage units, ballots, and devices used to tabulate votes in the 2022 general election. It is a follow up to an election security audit that we completed in 2023 of 15 Kansas counties' election offices. We evaluated Ford County's security practices using 55 best practices from the US. Election Assistance Commission and state law. Ford County generally had adequate practices in the area of overall process security which was like the other counties we reviewed in the 2023 audit. Ford County had a mix of adequate and inadequate practices in the areas of ballot security and voting and tabulation machine security. This was also like other counties we reviewed. But Ford County's election management computer security and transfer and movement security practices were generally inadequate and were Ford County's weakest areas. This is different than other counties we reviewed because most of the other counties we reviewed in 2023 had adequate election management computer security practices. Additionally, most of the other counties we reviewed had a mix of adequate and inadequate transfer and movement security practices. Ford County also didn't have adequate written security policies during the 2022 general election, but this was like the other counties we reviewed in 2023. Overall, Ford County's results don't change our overarching conclusions from the 2023 audit.

With 40 days to go and voters paying attention, Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are vying for the upper hand when it comes to their plans for the economy and border security. Former Senator Claire McCaskill distills who has the winning arguments with her co-host this week, former chair of the RNC and co-host of MSNBC's The Weekend, Michael Steele. The duo then get some insights into the integrity of our election process and why we should all feel good about the safety and security of the vote, with Benjamin Hovland, Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. And before wrapping up, Claire and Michael explain why late September is the season for opposition research dumps, with some notable examples in North Carolina, Maryland and Ohio.  Further reading: As Claire mentioned, here is a Harris-Walz campaign fact sheet on their economic plan.  Want to listen to this show without ads? Sign up for MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts. As a subscriber you'll also be able to get occasional bonus content from this and other shows.

Local election officials and how they interact with voters, candidates and sign carriers … it can all have a lot of influence on people's confidence in elections. To help, the Election Assistance Commission … a small, independent federal agency … has established a you tube channel with videos about that very topic. How to effectively communicate with people in what can be challenging situations. E-A-C Chairman Ben Hovland joins me with more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Local election officials and how they interact with voters, candidates and sign carriers … it can all have a lot of influence on people's confidence in elections. To help, the Election Assistance Commission … a small, independent federal agency … has established a you tube channel with videos about that very topic. How to effectively communicate with people in what can be challenging situations. E-A-C Chairman Ben Hovland joins me with more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for Aug. 1, 2024Do You Support Democracy and Want to Protect Our Elections?  August 1 is National Poll Worker Recruitment Day.National Poll Worker Recruitment Day is Aug. 1st.  The pool of roughly 800,000 poll workers nationwide is aging, and shortages have been reported in some areas.  If you have been vocal about making sure our elections are free and fair, now's your chance to protect them by becoming a trained poll worker.To view the whole script of today's report, please go to our website.Today's LinksArticles & Resources:U.S. Election Assistance Commission - 2024 National Poll Worker Recruitment DayStateline News - Wanted: Poll workers. Must love democracyNational Association of Counties - August 1, 2024 is National Poll Worker Recruitment DayPew Research - Key facts about U.S. poll workersBrookings Institution (Commentary) - The Americans on the front lines of electionsUSA Today - States are grappling with recruiting poll workers. This Nebraska county drafts them.National Conference of State Legislatures - Election Poll WorkersGroups Taking Action:Power the Polls, Vet the VoteCheck Your Voter Registration U.S. Election Assistance Commission – Register And Vote in Your State USA Vote Foundation – Registration, Eligibility, State Election Office Links Vote.Gov – Register to Vote in Your State Vote.Org – Check Your Registration to Vote Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter and SHARE!  Find all of our reports at AmericanDemocracyMinute.orgWant ADM sent to your email?  Sign up here!Are you a radio station?  Find our broadcast files at Pacifica Radio Network's Audioport and PRX#Democracy  #DemocracyNews #BeaPollWorker #ProtectElections #PollWorkerRecruitmentDay

The High Turnout Wide Margins team recently traveled to Portland, Oregon, for a special workshop on State Associations hosted by the Election Center. While there, we were able to have face-to-face conversations with people working in elections across the country. In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with Commissioner Tom Hicks, one of the longest serving members of the Election Assistance Commission, or EAC. They spoke about Tom's time as a commissioner, how elections can be more accessible for disabled voters, and how the EAC could play a role in developing the election administration workforce.

Drew Davies, the founder of Oxide, a civic-minded brand and design consultancy, talks about the practical and creative side of his years as a designer and a business founder, his work on election and civic engagement materials, and his recent co-authorship of Creative Genius: The Art of the Nebraska Capitol, a book about the Nebraska Capitol's art.Davies established Oxide in 2001. He is a national president emeritus of AIGA, the professional association for design, and is the only Nebraskan to have served as a judge for the prestigious design competition, Communication Arts Design Annual. As part of his civic work, Davies contributed to the national ballot design standards for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and collaborated with the Federal Voting Assistance Program to enhance the registration and voting process for U.S. citizens abroad. In partnership with the Center for Civic Design, Davies designed the Field Guides to Ensuring Voter Intent, which were featured in the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. He also testified before President Obama's Presidential Commission on Election Administration. Davies recently designed and co-authored “Creative Genius: The Art of the Nebraska Capitol,” a coffee table book showcasing 100 years of art contained within the State's grandest building, revealing the themes driving the art, and chronicling the stories behind the artists and their creations.

More than 30 county and state election programs were recently honored by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The EAC's Clearinghouse Awards recognize best practices in election administration. To find out just how those winners were picked and what some of those best practices are, Federal News Network's Eric White spoke with EAC Chairman Ben Hovland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than 30 county and state election programs were recently honored by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The EAC's Clearinghouse Awards recognize best practices in election administration. To find out just how those winners were picked and what some of those best practices are, Federal News Network's Eric White spoke with EAC Chairman Ben Hovland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

One more day of repeats and we're back doing new reports!   Thanks for your patience while we navigated the challenges of the past week.  - Brian BeihlThe American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for April 9, 2024Nonpartisan Report Recommends Ways Local Officials Can Expand Voter Participation and Recruit Election Workers Using Public/Private PartnershipsThe nonpartisan Fair Elections Center released a report to state and local election officials in February suggesting ways voter participation can be expanded.  Recommendations include expanding voter registration options, making use of public/private partnerships to distribute voting information, developing communication plans, and expanding poll worker training.To view the whole script of today's report, please go to our website.Today's LinksArticles & Resources:Fair Elections Center - LOCAL INITIATIVES TO IMPROVE THE VOTING EXPERIENCE:Recommendations for Local Elected Officials and Election OfficialsU.S. Election Assistance Commission -  Election 2024 ToolkitsGroups Taking Action:Fair Elections Center, Campaign Legal Center, Brennan Center for JusticePlease follow us on Facebook and Twitter and SHARE!  Find all of our reports at AmericanDemocracyMinute.orgWant ADM sent to your email?  Sign up here!Are you a radio station?  Find our broadcast files at Pacifica Radio Network's Audioport and PRX#Democracy  #DemocracyNews #RegistertoVote #BeAPollWorker #ProtectElections

Meet State Auditor Candidate:  https://www.rickyhatch.com/about-ricky "Ricky has a passion for good government. Since his election as Weber Clerk/Auditor in 2010, his mission and purpose have been to operate the Clerk/Auditor's Office with the highest degree of integrity and transparency. He often says, “My job is to protect your money and your vote.” That statement proves true in both the fiscal improvements he has made, and the recognition he has earned in guiding national governmental accounting standards and election policy. Ricky is a public servant in the truest sense of the word. He is always willing to hear and discuss the recommendations and concerns of Utah's citizens. His expertise is evidenced by the many awards he and his team have earned, and the overwhelming outflow of support he has received across the state.   After graduating with honors from Brigham Young University with a master's degree in accounting, he worked as an information systems auditor and consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Los Angeles and Warsaw, Poland. He worked as a business analyst and project manager in Germany and Boston. In 2002, he established, ran, and taught at a private K-12 school in Ogden, Utah, later becoming CFO and COO of a chain of private schools throughout the western U.S. He has been honored by his peers as Utah's County Auditor of the Year in 2013 and 2017 County Clerk of the Year in 2015 and 2022. He served as President of the Utah Association of Counties, President of the Utah Clerk and Auditor Association, and has chaired the Utah Clerk's Legislative Committee for the past eight years. Ricky served as the chair of Leadership Northern Utah, the leadership development program for the Ogden Weber Chamber of Commerce. A devoted fan of the U.S. Constitution, he served ten years on the Constitution Day Committee of Utah. He's also an Eagle Scout. Ricky has five fantastic children and three cute-as-a-button grandchildren. He speaks French, albeit slowly and with a funny accent.   Establishing an Internal Audit Function (700 attendees, Government Finance Officers Association, Minneapolis, 2014) Audit Committees for Governments (Eide Bailly, 2015) Best Practices for Public Sector ERP Modernization Initiatives (250 webinar participants nationwide, Eide Bailly, 2023) Segregation of Duties and Best Practices (Utah Association of County Commissioners and Council Members, 2021) Tax Sale Best Practices (Utah Association of Counties, 2018) Conflict Resolution (Utah Association of County Commissioners and Council Members, 2020) Citizens Academy (Weber State University, 2021) Girls' State (150 attendees, Weber State University, 2014, 2015) Elections Cybersecurity (Utah Association of Counties, 2018) Rotary Club (Ogden, 2012) Community Service (Utah Military Academy, 2016) National Elections Funding (U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Orlando, Florida 2017) Drop boxes – Best Practices (Pennsylvania Election Officials, 2021) Vote by Mail Best Practices (International Association of Government Officials, Nevada, 2021) Vote Centers and Vote by Mail Best Practices (Maryland Association of Election Officials, 2017, 2023) Vote by Mail and Cybersecurity (South Carolina Association of Recorders and Election Officials, 2018) Utah's Election-day Registration System (200 attendees, National Association of State Election Directors, Washington DC, 2019) Administering Elections During COVID 19 (National Association of Counties, webinar, 2020) Internet Voting, Possibilities and Warnings, (100 attendees, International Association of Clerks, Recorders, Election Officials, and Treasurers, Colorado, 2015) Internet Voting, (50 attendees, National Association of County Recorders and Clerks, California, 2015)"

This month, Kelly is joined by Tom Hicks, Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission. They discuss the role of the EAC, the future of ranked choice voting, the state of U.S. elections in general, and more! Resources mentioned in this episode: - EAC: https://www.eac.gov/ - VVSG: https://www.eac.gov/voting-equipment/voluntary-voting-system-guidelines - The EAC and election security video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwxlTbm4lpo

This week I come from hotel in DC as I wrap up the Local Leadership Council annual meeting for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. I detail what the LLC is and how it is helping Election Administrators throughout the country. Enjoy.

On Election Day, people are expected to do their civic duty and vote. Some citizens have a harder time voting than others because of the lack of accessibility at various polling stations. Approximately 13% of people surveyed by the U.S. Census reported illness or disability kept them from voting in the 2020 presidential election. Almost 2 million voters with disabilities, or 11% of voters, had some type of difficulty voting in 2020, according to a study by the Program for Disability Research at Rutgers University and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. People with a disability voted at a lower rate...Article LinkSupport the show

First – Newsweek congressional correspondent Alex Rouhandeh discusses Congressman Mike Johnson's election as House Speaker and what's next on the congressional agenda. Then, Heritage Foundation's James Carafano and Mara Rudman of the Center for American Progress discuss the myriad foreign policy challenges facing the Biden administration. Plus –  Benjamin Hovland – Vice Chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission -- discusses efforts to restore trust in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system ahead of the 2024 cycle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Originally Aired: October 24, 2022 On this episode, we welcome Thomas Hicks,  Chair of the Election Assistance Commission  and Academy Fellow to discuss voter engagement and turnout, security in elections, and advantages of a decentralized voting system.Links:EAC.govHelpamericavote.govSupport the Podcast Today at:donate@napawash.org or 202-347-3190Music Credits: Sea Breeze by Vlad Gluschenko | https://soundcloud.com/vgl9Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

This audit reviewed a selection of county election offices' policies and practices to ensure the accuracy and security of voting machines, ballots, storage units, and tabulators.State law gives county election officials discretion over how to run elections in their counties, so election processes vary across counties. We identified and reviewed election security best practices from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the federal election agency. They fall into 5 general security categories: overall process, election management computer, ballot, voting and tabulation, and transfer and movement security. Kansas only has a few high-level election security-related laws and regulations related to these 5 best practice categories.We reviewed whether 13 counties had policies and practices that aligned with 55 best practices and state laws during the 2022 primary or general elections. These counties generally had adequate overall process and election management computer security practices. Ballot security practices were weaker overall, but county results varied. Most of the 13 counties we reviewed had inadequate voting and tabulation machine security practices except for physical security practices. And the 13 counties we reviewed had some adeqate transfer and movement security practices, but others that were generally inadequate. Overall, larger counties generally had stronger security practices than smaller counties because of their greater security needs and resources. But these results don't necessarily mean elections aren't secure.Finally, none of the counties we reviewed had adequate written election security policies or guidance.

On this episode: We're joined by Donald Palmer, the Commissioner of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to discuss election integrity, new voting technology, and more. A conversation between our Editor-In-Chief Geoff Pallay Stream "On the Ballot" on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you have questions, comments, or love for BP, feel free to reach out at ontheballot@ballotpedia.org or on Twitter @Ballotpedia. Learn more about Palmer and the E.A.C. here: https://www.eac.gov/about/commissioner-donald-palmer    Follow Palmer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VotingGuy  Sign Up for BP's Newsletters: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballotpedia_Email_Updates  *On The Ballot is a conversational podcast featuring interviews with guests across the political spectrum. The views and opinions expressed by them are solely their own and are not representative of the views of the host or Ballotpedia as a whole. 

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. California Attorney General's office reaches settlement in its first case concerning the California Tenant Protection Act. Russia continues its war in Ukraine with a strike on the port city of Odessa. Republicans try – and fail – to censure California Representative Adam Schiff. House committee holds hearing on the Election Assistance Commission. The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – June 14, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. California Attorney General's office reaches settlement in its first case concerning the California Tenant Protection Act. Russia continues its war in Ukraine with a strike on the port city of Odessa. Republicans try – and fail – to censure California Representative Adam Schiff. House committee holds hearing on the Election Assistance Commission. The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – June 14, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

Free and fair elections are an essential of the democratic process, but in recent years foreign inference and disinformation have shaken voters trust in the electoral system. In this episode, guest host Sabrina Verleysen, sits down with CNA's Dawn Thomas and former Elections Assistance Commissioner Matt Masterson. They discuss how jurisdictions can secure their elections, what resources are available to them and how to ensure their voters are confident in the results. Guests Matt Masterson served as Senior Cybersecurity Advisor at the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (known as CISA), where he focused on election security issues. He previously served as a Commissioner at the Election Assistance Commission from December 2014 until March 2018, including serving as the Commission's Chairman in 2017-2018. Dawn Thomas is a co-director of the Center for Emergency Management and Operations and director of the Center for Critical Incident Analysis. She is an expert in large-scale incident planning and response. She has worked on a large array of emergency preparedness issues including: biological attacks, active shooters, large-scale evacuations, medical evacuations, earthquakes and tsunamis, mass casualty chemical incidents, public health outbreaks and cyberattacks. Sabrina Verleysen is an expert in government relations and Indonesian civilian-military relations. She collaborates regularly on business development lifecycle activities and executes strategic initiatives, events, and engagements. In addition, she supports projects funded by the Department of State that focus on civilian harm mitigation. Further Reading Learn more about election security preparations using workshops, drills, and tabletop exercises on CNA.org. If you'd like to receive updates about upcoming election security seminars please email electionsecurity@cna.org.  

In this episode, hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey speak to Ben Hovland and Carrie Levine. Ben is the current Vice Chair for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and Carrie is the Story Editor for Votebeat, a “nonprofit news organization committed to reporting the nuanced truth about elections and voting at a time of crisis in America.” They spoke about the current state of federal election funding heading into the 2024 Presidential election cycle and about some of the funding challenges that come from the U.S.'s decentralized system of elections. They also spoke about the important role local election administrators play when it comes educating the public and rebuilding trust.

For 35 years, the Internet has been bedeviled by attackers. For about as long, defenders have tried deploying various defenses; these have often been of limited utility. We look back at what has happened, focusing on the explicit or (more often) implicit assumptions behind the defenses, and why these assumptions were or were not correct. About the speaker: Steven M. Bellovin is the Percy K. and Vida L. W. Hudson Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, member of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Center of the university's Data Science Institute, and an affiliate faculty member at Columbia Law School. Bellovin does research on security and privacy and on related public policy issues. In his copious spare professional time, he does some work on the history of cryptography. He joined the faculty in 2005 after many years at Bell Labs and AT&T Labs Research, where he was an AT&T Fellow. He received a BA degree from Columbia University, and an MS and PhD in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While a graduate student, he helped create Netnews; for this, he and the other perpetrators were given the 1995 Usenix Lifetime Achievement Award (The Flame). He has also received the 2007 NIST/NSA National Computer Systems Security Award and has been elected to the Cybersecurity Hall of Fame. Bellovin has served as Chief Technologist of the Federal Trade Commission and as the Technology Scholar at the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and has served on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. In the past, he has been a member of the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Advisory Committee, and the Technical Guidelines Development Committee of the Election Assistance Commission.Bellovin is the author of Thinking Security and the co-author of Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker, and holds a number of patents on cryptographic and network protocols. He has served on many National Research Council study committees, including those on information systems trustworthiness, the privacy implications of authentication technologies, and cybersecurity research needs; he was also a member of the information technology subcommittee of an NRC study group on science versus terrorism. He was a member of the Internet Architecture Board from 1996-2002; he was co-director of the Security Area of the IETF from 2002 through 2004.More details may be found at http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/informal-bio.html.

Elections are operated by local officials. So methods vary all over the country. At the federal level, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission encourages innovation each year with a program called the Clearinghouse Awards. Nominations are now open for 2022. With more on how the commission looks at elections, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with EAC Chairman Thomas Hicks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elections are operated by local officials. So methods vary all over the country. At the federal level, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission encourages innovation each year with a program called the Clearinghouse Awards. Nominations are now open for 2022. With more on how the commission looks at elections, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with EAC Chairman Thomas Hicks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Purcell v. Gonzalez (2006) Per Curiam Opinion (Purcell Principle, Imminent Elections, Changes in Election Laws) In 2002, when Arizona passed a law requiring a photo ID in order to register to vote, The Election Assistance Commission notified them that the new law violated the National Voter Registration Act and Arizona residents and organizations petitioned for a restraining order to prevent the new law from taking effect, which the district court denied. But, when the plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for an emergency injunction, it was granted. The question before the Supreme Court in this case was whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit erred in granting that injunction. In a per curiam decision, the Court said it did because, given the imminence of the election and the inadequate time to resolve the factual disputes, they would allow the election to proceed without an injunction suspending the new law. So, the case was remanded and the Purcell Principle was born, holding that states shouldn't change election laws when an election is imminent.   Access this SCOTUS opinion and other essential case information on Oyez. Music by Epidemic Sound

If the nation learned anything in the last couple of weeks, it's that the process of voting is anything but simple. People overseas and people with disabilities can encounter logistics barriers to voting. The operations of elections is where the Election Assistance Commission comes in. To learn more about that operation, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with commission chairman Thomas Hicks, who also just became a fellow at NAPA: the National Academy of Public Administration.

Registration on Election Day Still an Option in 21 StatesToday's LinksArticles & Resources: The 21 States Which Have Same Day Registration:   California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Washington, DC, Idaho, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and  Wyoming.U.S. Election Assistance Commission -  Links to Registration Information in Every StateNational Conference of State Legislatures  -  Same Day Voter Registration StatesBrennan Center -  Study Showing No Increase in Fraud With Election Day RegistrationUniv. of Massachusetts/Demos - NEW STUDY FINDS THAT STATES WITH SAME DAY VOTER REGISTRATION HAVE HIGHER BLACK AND LATINX TURNOUTGroups Taking Action:Common Cause MA,  American Academy of Sciences, Student Public Interest Research GroupsYou're listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people.Election Day is upon us, and voter registration in most states is closed.  But if you're lucky enough to live in one of the 21 states which allow Same-Day registration, you still may be able to vote on election day.Used to help make voter registration more accessible since the 1990s, Same Day registration has been attacked recently as unsecure, despite the facts.  New Hampshire, which has used Same Day  registration for decades, recently tightened its restrictions with no justification, making same-day registrants use a provisional, rather than a normal, ballot.Same day registration is used most often by new residents, younger citizens, and eligible voters who are historically underrepresented, such as the Black and LatinX community.  To register on Election Day, you need these documents in most states:  A state-issued ID;  proof of your citizenship, like a birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers;  and proof of your residence, such as rental receipts, property tax bills or utility bills showing your name & address.  Check your state or local election office website before you go.In some states, you may need to also sign an affidavit, have your picture taken, and may only be able to use a provisional ballot until your address is verified.  But, it may also be your best option to have your voice heard! So use it!We have links to state Same Day registration information and groups taking action at AmericanDemocracyMinute.org Granny D said Democracy isn't something we HAVE it's something we DO! For the American Democracy Minute, I'm Brian Beihl.

On this episode, we welcome Thomas Hicks,  Chair of the Election Assistance Commission  and Academy Fellow to discuss voter engagement and turnout, security in elections, and advantages of a decentralized voting system.Links:EAC.govHelpamericavote.govSupport the Podcast Today at:donate@napawash.org or 202-347-3190Music Credits: Sea Breeze by Vlad Gluschenko | https://soundcloud.com/vgl9Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

On this episode, we tackle election days advocacy. We intentionally say “days” since many states offer vote by mail or early in-person voting well before election day. This means that voting doesn't just happen on election day itself, even though the election is on November 8th this year. We talked about the role nonprofits can play leading up to this period a few weeks ago — on this episode we talk about their big role in helping people vote during this "election days" period. Attorneys for this Episode Leslie Barnes Tim Mooney Victor Rivera   Why should 501(c)(3)s do this work? 501(c)(3)s are trusted messengers.   Educate your community and constituents about their different voting options.    Rules for nonpartisan voter engagement No supporting/opposing candidates Other rules will vary by states and sometimes even counties   Types of nonpartisan voter engagement on "voting days" Voter education What to expect going to the polls Polling locations Proper document/ID required for voting Vote by mail education or absentee voting Setting expectations for results GOTV Facilitate voting by offering rides to polls (ex. Souls to the Polls) But check state laws. Absentee voting, line warming, what can be worn inside polling places providing childcare or identify childcare services Translation of voting materials for non-English readers.  Social media messaging Text banking, etc. etc. Election protection Provisional ballots Be a poll worker, poll monitor or staff voter protection hotlines in your community. 866-OUR-VOTE is probably the most well-known election hotline in the NP community. Educate on misinformation and voter intimidation. Litigation Example: Texas Civil Rights Project. Stopped voter “purges” that would have affected many naturalized citizens. https://www.bolderadvocacy.org/story/legal-advocacy-in-action-texas-civil-rights-project/ Mobilize public support for safe and fair election   Private Foundations Private Foundations can fund all nonpartisan efforts (except you cannot earmark funds for voter registration drives without complying with additional rules)  election protection litigation poll monitoring rides to the polls supporting poll workers for everything they need on election days. voter education messaging   Partisan work 501(c)(4)s-can do everything a c3 can do + they could do one of these activities in a partisan manner.    Resources Nonprofit Voter Assistance Guides – 19 states Appendix B of Rules of the Game:  Permissible Nonpartisan 501(c)(3) and Partisan Campaign Contact on Voter Engagement and Protection Efforts  Voter Protection by 501(c)(3)s Voter Registration Deadlines by State (Vote.org) State Compendium of Election Worker Laws and Statutes (U.S. Election Assistance Commission)  Do you want to be a poll worker? Learn more here: https://www.powerthepolls.org/ Election Protection https://866ourvote.org/

Ensuring election systems security Thomas Hicks, chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, discusses what his organization is doing to ensure the security of election systems and the safety of election officials as midterms approach   Preventing international child abductions and supporting adoptions Michelle Bernier-Toth, special advisor for children's issues at the Office of Children's Issues, explains how her office prevents international child abductions, supports international adoptions and works with other countries on these efforts   US sending $625 million in weapons to Ukraine Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, discusses the details of new weapons shipments to Ukraine, other requests from Ukraine and attacks on the Nord Stream undersea pipeline

On this episode, we are joined by our Election Integrity Working Group, made up of Academy Fellows Nancy Tate,  Co-chair of the Women's Vote Centennial Initiative, Mark Robbins, Interim Executive Director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission,  Barry Van Lare, an Independent Consultant of Management and Public Policy, and Edie Goldenberg, Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. They discuss the growing issue of disinformation regarding our electoral system, the rise in threats towards election workers, and what Fellows can do to uphold our country's electoral integrity.This podcast episode was adapted from a webinar discussion that took place on September 29th. If you would like to watch the webinar, you can find it here. Academic Resources mentioned:ESRA Annual Meetings  ESRA 2021: https://electionlab.mit.edu/events/esra-2021 Democracy Fund's  “Idea Page”Annual surveys of local election officialshttps://evic.reed.edu/leo-survey/Election Law JournalJournal of DemocracyMIT Election Data LabU of Wisconsin-Madison's Elections Research CenterReed College's Elections & Voting Center Please access NAPA's Election Resources at the 2022 Election Integrity Platform webpage, under our Grand Challenges tab.Music Credits: Sea Breeze by Vlad Gluschenko | https://soundcloud.com/vgl9Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

There are still a lot of barriers to voting, and when we're thinking about access to voting, it should be easier for every voter to cast a ballot.  According to the CDC, about 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. live with some type of disability: nearly 61 million people. When it comes time to cast their ballots, voters with disabilities can face a number of challenges at the polls. For in-person voters in the 2016 election, the Government Accountability Office found that less than half of polling places were accessible from parking to the voting booth. Accessibility increased in 2020, and people with disabilities made large gains in the historic voter turnout surge of 2020. Expanded access to mail-in ballots pushed disability turnout to 17.7 million in 2020, up from 16 million in 2016, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. We spoke with Michelle Bishop, Voter Access & Engagement Manager at the National Disability Rights Network, and Michelle explained how the steps taken during the 2020 presidential election and against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, lowered some of those barriers and helped make it safer to cast a ballot for all voters,  including voters who have a disability.

There are still a lot of barriers to voting, and when we're thinking about access to voting, it should be easier for every voter to cast a ballot.  According to the CDC, about 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. live with some type of disability: nearly 61 million people. When it comes time to cast their ballots, voters with disabilities can face a number of challenges at the polls. For in-person voters in the 2016 election, the Government Accountability Office found that less than half of polling places were accessible from parking to the voting booth. Accessibility increased in 2020, and people with disabilities made large gains in the historic voter turnout surge of 2020. Expanded access to mail-in ballots pushed disability turnout to 17.7 million in 2020, up from 16 million in 2016, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. We spoke with Michelle Bishop, Voter Access & Engagement Manager at the National Disability Rights Network, and Michelle explained how the steps taken during the 2020 presidential election and against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, lowered some of those barriers and helped make it safer to cast a ballot for all voters,  including voters who have a disability.

The national midterm elections are fast approaching, with candidates campaigning for offices across the United States. The Election Assistance Commission, the federal elections clearinghouse, turns 20 this year during a midterm year and EAC chair Thomas Hicks says his group has been helping state and local governments prepare for the midterm elections using lessons learned from recent previous elections. Recently, GovExec correspondent and frequent GovExec Daily guest Courtney Bublé interviewed Hicks about the ways he and his agency are preparing for the midterm elections. In this episode, Courtney's speaks to Hicks about the EAC's work with other federal agencies and other levels of government to make elections fairer and more secure.

Tin Foil Hat Week - Election Workers Report Conspiracy-Fueled Threats, Harassment & Intimidation Today's LinksArticles: CNN - Election workers reported more than 1,000 'hostile' contacts in past yearWashington Post - Over 1,000 election-worker threats reported in past year, official saysWashington Post - Threats against election workers could have bad consequencesU.S. Dept of Justice Release - Readout of Election Threats Task Force Briefing with Election Officials and WorkersBrennan Center - Local Election Officials Survey (March 2022)Groups Taking Action:  Brennan Center for Justice, U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Protecting Democracy, Election Official Defense NetworkYou're listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people. While the Tin Foil Hat Week on the American Democracy Minute was a humorous way to spotlight crackpot election fraud theories, a U.S. Senate hearing Wednesday shows the 2020 conspiracy theories have had serious and even life-threatening impacts on our nation's election workers. The Judiciary Committee hearings coincided with preliminary findings by the U.S. Justice Department's Election Threats Task Force, which cites over 1,000 cases of “hostile harassing,” 11% of which rose to federal crimes. A survey of election workers by the Brennan Center for Justice showed that one in five election workers had been harassed, but only 20% of those incidents had been reported, suggesting the 1,000 DOJ total could have been much, much larger.   The survey also found that nearly 2 of 3 election officials believed that false information was making their job more dangerous, and one in three knew an election worker who had left the job because of threats or intimidation. The Justice Department hosted a virtual meeting with 750 election officials around the country on the subject of election threats and intimidation on Monday.  But so far, the DOJ has engaged in just five cases, and only one, a Nebraska man, has been brought to trial. New Mexico's Secretary of State suggested Wednesday that conspiracy-fueled intimidation may lead to shortages of willing, experienced election workers.   Articles and groups taking action are at AmericanDemocracyMinute.org.                          For the American Democracy Minute, I'm Brian Beihl.

The House votes on a contraception bill, a new electoral college reform bill is coming before Congress, and military chaplains continue their fight for freedom from medical coercion… … and more on today’s CrossPolitic Daily News Brief. My name is Toby Sumpter and today is Friday, July 22, 2022. FLF Conference Plug: Folks, our upcoming Fight Laugh Feast Conference is just 4-months away from happening in Knoxville TN, October 6-8! Don't miss beer & psalms, our amazing lineup of speakers which includes George Gilder, Jared Longshore, Pastor Wilson, Dr. Ben Merkle, Pastor Toby, and we can’t say yet…also dont miss our awesome vendors, meeting new friends, and stuff for the kids too…like jumpy castles and accidental infant baptisms! Also, did you know, you can save money, by signing up for a Club Membership. So, go to FightLaughFeast.com and sign up for a club membership and then register for the conference with that club discount. We can’t wait to fellowship, sing Psalms, and celebrate God’s goodness in Knoxville October 6-8. Sen. Blumenthal Thinks it’s Very important for congress to pass a bill guaranteeing access to drugs that prevent pregnancy. https://twitter.com/SenBlumenthal/status/1550216973199474688?s=20&t=atHLw9SjnQTHPyZrUIBPug 0:00-0:33 Meanwhile nations in Europe are already trying to incentivize couples to have more children because there is already a sansdemic, that is a growing population gap that is not replacing current population levels, leaving nations without workers. Turns out your need people to work and to provide, to have a thriving economy and nation. House votes to pass bill guaranteeing access to contraception https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/21/politics/contraception-access-house-vote/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2WKa07UvjlHP5qKWXPzgSm1ylUFA4JoREcolRudQTpD6e-nL7SviSLF1U The House voted Thursday to pass a bill that would guarantee access to contraception by protecting the right to buy and use contraceptives without government restriction. The final vote was 228-195. Eight Republicans crossed over to vote with Democrats. Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Fred Upton of Michigan, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, John Katko of New York, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Maria Salazar of Florida and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois joined all the Democrats in voting for the bill. Two Republicans, Reps. Bob Gibbs of Ohio and Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, voted present, meaning they took no position either way on the bill The vote falls among action House Democrats are trying to take following the Supreme Court's decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. In that decision, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately in a concurring opinion that the high court should reconsider "substantive due process precedents" in decisions, including Griswold v. Connecticut, that allows access to contraception. The Right to Contraception Act, introduced by Democratic Rep. Kathy Manning of North Carolina, aims to "protect a person's ability to access contraceptives and to engage in contraception, and to protect a health care provider's ability to provide contraceptives, contraception, and information related to contraception," according to text of the bill. We should note that the text of the bill also includes “emergency contraceptives” in its list of what is included. Historically “emergency contraceptives” has also included chemicals intending to prevent or disrupt implantation of a fertilized egg. It should also be pointed out that some forms of oral contraception also include this as an intended function. Why would we trust Margaret Sanger and her descendants to give us good medicine? The mindless embrace of birth control by Christians got us into this mess. The White House said it "strongly supports" the bill in a statement Monday, adding "access to contraception is essential to ensuring all people have control over personal decisions about their own health, lives, and families." And making sure that we don’t have enough people to work productive jobs to provide for their families. This on the heels of Earlier this week, the House passed a bill that would enshrine protections for same-sex marriage into federal law, with 47 Republicans joining Democrats voting in favor of the bill. It is unclear whether the bill can pass the Senate where at least 10 Republicans are needed to side with Democrats to overcome the filibuster's 60-vote threshold. Redballoon Not so long ago, the American dream was alive and well. Employees who worked hard were rewarded, and employers looked for people who could do the job, not for people who had the right political views. RedBalloon.work is a job site designed to get us back to what made American businesses successful: free speech, hard work, and having fun. If you are a free speech employer who wants to hire employees who focus on their work and not identity politics, then post a job on RedBalloon. If you are an employee who is being censored at work or is being forced to comply with the current zeitgeist, post your resume on RedBalloon and look for a new job. redballoon.work, the job site where free speech is still alive! www.redballoon.work New Electoral College Count Reform Proposal https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-promising-new-electoral-count-act-reform-proposal/ The proposal takes the form of two bills. The first is sponsored by nine Republican senators (Susan Collins, Shelley Moore Capito, Lindsey Graham, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, Thom Tillis, and Todd Young) and seven Democratic senators (Joe Manchin, Ben Cardin, Chris Coons, Chris Murphy, Jeanne Shaheen, Kyrsten Sinema, and Mark Warner) and is focused on the Electoral Count Act itself. This bill clarifies that states must appoint presidential electors in accordance with the laws they each pass before election day and does away with the dangerously vague concept of a “failed election” in the original ECA. It requires that the governor of each state (or else another particular official specifically assigned this role by state law) be the person to certify the state’s slate of electors, to avoid the possibility of different officials sending different slates to Congress. It clarifies that the vice president’s role in counting electoral votes in Congress is purely ministerial and does not involve any sole decision-making authority. It raises the threshold for raising objections to a state’s electoral votes in Congress from one member of each house to one-fifth of the members of each house and narrows and clarifies the grounds for filing objections. And it allows for expedited federal judicial review of any challenges raised by a presidential candidate under already existing federal law to a state’s certification of its elections, but does not create any new right of action in federal court regarding state officials’ enforcement of state laws. Some Democrats wanted to go further, and give the federal courts more jurisdiction over the ways in which state officials enforce state election laws. This was a disastrously misguided idea, and it is very good that this proposal avoids any such path. This is a significant success for a number of Republicans who fought hard against that approach — particularly Ben Sasse and Mitt Romney. And it is the reason why I think this bill could get enough Republican votes to pass the Senate. The restraint shown in this proposal suggests this bipartisan group really wants to get these reforms enacted. The second bill, sponsored by most of the same senators as the first (with the exception of Republican senators Capito, Young, Sasse, and Graham) takes up some issues beyond the scope of the Electoral Count Act. It would increase the penalties for threatening election officials, improve the postal service’s procedures for handling mail-in ballots where those are allowed under state law, reauthorize the Election Assistance Commission, and increase the penalties for tampering with election records. These are modest reforms directed to modest problems, and the result is a bill that doesn’t do anything particularly important. If it’s necessary to get more Democrats to accept the restrained approach to ECA reform in the first bill, then I see no problem with it, and certainly some of what it proposes is worthwhile. Chaplains File Class Action Lawsuit Against DODhttps://uncoverdc.com/2022/07/21/vaccine-mandate-chaplains-file-class-action-lawsuit-against-dod/ Thirty-one military chaplains filed a class action lawsuit in May alleging the unconstitutional denial of religious accommodations relating to the vaccine mandate. The chaplains maintain they are protected by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Defendants in the case are the Department of Defense (DoD), several military branches, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FDA, and the CDC. The lawsuit provides a fulsome review of the blatant, concerning changes in definitions and procedural rules to achieve politically driven agendas and goals that seemingly ignore service members’ most basic constitutional rights. Plaintiffs argue that the vaccine mandate and the military’s “no accommodation directive” are unconstitutional. Military chaplains who fail to comply with the vaccine mandate face “threat of disciplinary action” and “punitive discharge,” violating their “express statutory rights to follow their conscience as formed by their faith.” Defendants in the case contend the “venue is not proper,” Plaintiffs’ claims “are not ripe or justiciable prior to exhaustion of military remedies” (some requests have not yet been adjudicated), and the vaccine is the best remedy for “the health and readiness” of the military forces. The 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) lays out in Section 533—the right of chaplains to conduct themselves according to their conscience or religious faith. Section 533 allows a chaplain to reject performing any duty that violates their conscience without repercussion or penalty. As the footnote on page 5 of the lawsuit explains, the genesis of the 2013 NDAA amendment grew out of social policy changes in 2012 during the Obama administration concerning “the repeal of the military ban on homosexual behavior and the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the Defense of Marriage Act.” Chaplains at the time were concerned that they might have to perform wedding ceremonies that would violate their religious beliefs. Those protections were reinforced in both the 2016 and the 2018 NDAAs. Retired Army veteran Arthur A. Schulcz’s testimony filed on July 18, 2022, speaks poignantly to the difficulties of defining and implementing religious freedom policies in the military in recent years. He fought to properly define the role of chaplains in the military in December 2012, working with Congress in anticipation of amendments to the 2013 NDAA to “defend chaplains’ rights to authentically represent their faith to the military, especially in their speech.” He describes the discrimination many in the military have experienced over the years if they dared speak against the prevailing political agenda. The complaint states military chaplains are “unique military officers” because they are both commissioned officers and clergy. As such, they “raise unique statutory and constitutional religious liberty claims, in addition to the claims for systematic violations of service members’ RFRA and First Amendment rights that several courts have recently found Military Defendants likely committed.” The lawsuit states congressional authority concerning honoring and protecting military chaplains’ conscience and faith has been violated by the mandate. Chaplains are unique in their roles as service members because they are afforded additional First Amendment protections as a result of their clerical roles. It has to do with the potential violations of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” Psalm of the Day: St. Patrick’s Breastplate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SXXz5k_F_I&list=PL1C638E88FCA83B7A&index=22 0:18-1:24 Amen! This is Toby Sumpter with CrossPolitic News. Remember you can always find the links to our news stories and these psalms at crosspolitic dot com – just click on the daily news brief and follow the links. Or find them on our App: just search “Fight Laugh Feast” in your favorite app store and never miss a show. If this content is helpful to you, would you please consider becoming a Fight Laugh Feast Club Member? We are building a cancel-proof news and media network with Christ at the center, and we can’t do it without your help. Join today and get a $100 discount at the Fight Laugh Feast conference in Knoxville, TN Oct. 6-8, and have a great day.

The House votes on a contraception bill, a new electoral college reform bill is coming before Congress, and military chaplains continue their fight for freedom from medical coercion… … and more on today’s CrossPolitic Daily News Brief. My name is Toby Sumpter and today is Friday, July 22, 2022. FLF Conference Plug: Folks, our upcoming Fight Laugh Feast Conference is just 4-months away from happening in Knoxville TN, October 6-8! Don't miss beer & psalms, our amazing lineup of speakers which includes George Gilder, Jared Longshore, Pastor Wilson, Dr. Ben Merkle, Pastor Toby, and we can’t say yet…also dont miss our awesome vendors, meeting new friends, and stuff for the kids too…like jumpy castles and accidental infant baptisms! Also, did you know, you can save money, by signing up for a Club Membership. So, go to FightLaughFeast.com and sign up for a club membership and then register for the conference with that club discount. We can’t wait to fellowship, sing Psalms, and celebrate God’s goodness in Knoxville October 6-8. Sen. Blumenthal Thinks it’s Very important for congress to pass a bill guaranteeing access to drugs that prevent pregnancy. https://twitter.com/SenBlumenthal/status/1550216973199474688?s=20&t=atHLw9SjnQTHPyZrUIBPug 0:00-0:33 Meanwhile nations in Europe are already trying to incentivize couples to have more children because there is already a sansdemic, that is a growing population gap that is not replacing current population levels, leaving nations without workers. Turns out your need people to work and to provide, to have a thriving economy and nation. House votes to pass bill guaranteeing access to contraception https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/21/politics/contraception-access-house-vote/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2WKa07UvjlHP5qKWXPzgSm1ylUFA4JoREcolRudQTpD6e-nL7SviSLF1U The House voted Thursday to pass a bill that would guarantee access to contraception by protecting the right to buy and use contraceptives without government restriction. The final vote was 228-195. Eight Republicans crossed over to vote with Democrats. Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Fred Upton of Michigan, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, John Katko of New York, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Maria Salazar of Florida and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois joined all the Democrats in voting for the bill. Two Republicans, Reps. Bob Gibbs of Ohio and Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, voted present, meaning they took no position either way on the bill The vote falls among action House Democrats are trying to take following the Supreme Court's decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. In that decision, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately in a concurring opinion that the high court should reconsider "substantive due process precedents" in decisions, including Griswold v. Connecticut, that allows access to contraception. The Right to Contraception Act, introduced by Democratic Rep. Kathy Manning of North Carolina, aims to "protect a person's ability to access contraceptives and to engage in contraception, and to protect a health care provider's ability to provide contraceptives, contraception, and information related to contraception," according to text of the bill. We should note that the text of the bill also includes “emergency contraceptives” in its list of what is included. Historically “emergency contraceptives” has also included chemicals intending to prevent or disrupt implantation of a fertilized egg. It should also be pointed out that some forms of oral contraception also include this as an intended function. Why would we trust Margaret Sanger and her descendants to give us good medicine? The mindless embrace of birth control by Christians got us into this mess. The White House said it "strongly supports" the bill in a statement Monday, adding "access to contraception is essential to ensuring all people have control over personal decisions about their own health, lives, and families." And making sure that we don’t have enough people to work productive jobs to provide for their families. This on the heels of Earlier this week, the House passed a bill that would enshrine protections for same-sex marriage into federal law, with 47 Republicans joining Democrats voting in favor of the bill. It is unclear whether the bill can pass the Senate where at least 10 Republicans are needed to side with Democrats to overcome the filibuster's 60-vote threshold. Redballoon Not so long ago, the American dream was alive and well. Employees who worked hard were rewarded, and employers looked for people who could do the job, not for people who had the right political views. RedBalloon.work is a job site designed to get us back to what made American businesses successful: free speech, hard work, and having fun. If you are a free speech employer who wants to hire employees who focus on their work and not identity politics, then post a job on RedBalloon. If you are an employee who is being censored at work or is being forced to comply with the current zeitgeist, post your resume on RedBalloon and look for a new job. redballoon.work, the job site where free speech is still alive! www.redballoon.work New Electoral College Count Reform Proposal https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-promising-new-electoral-count-act-reform-proposal/ The proposal takes the form of two bills. The first is sponsored by nine Republican senators (Susan Collins, Shelley Moore Capito, Lindsey Graham, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, Thom Tillis, and Todd Young) and seven Democratic senators (Joe Manchin, Ben Cardin, Chris Coons, Chris Murphy, Jeanne Shaheen, Kyrsten Sinema, and Mark Warner) and is focused on the Electoral Count Act itself. This bill clarifies that states must appoint presidential electors in accordance with the laws they each pass before election day and does away with the dangerously vague concept of a “failed election” in the original ECA. It requires that the governor of each state (or else another particular official specifically assigned this role by state law) be the person to certify the state’s slate of electors, to avoid the possibility of different officials sending different slates to Congress. It clarifies that the vice president’s role in counting electoral votes in Congress is purely ministerial and does not involve any sole decision-making authority. It raises the threshold for raising objections to a state’s electoral votes in Congress from one member of each house to one-fifth of the members of each house and narrows and clarifies the grounds for filing objections. And it allows for expedited federal judicial review of any challenges raised by a presidential candidate under already existing federal law to a state’s certification of its elections, but does not create any new right of action in federal court regarding state officials’ enforcement of state laws. Some Democrats wanted to go further, and give the federal courts more jurisdiction over the ways in which state officials enforce state election laws. This was a disastrously misguided idea, and it is very good that this proposal avoids any such path. This is a significant success for a number of Republicans who fought hard against that approach — particularly Ben Sasse and Mitt Romney. And it is the reason why I think this bill could get enough Republican votes to pass the Senate. The restraint shown in this proposal suggests this bipartisan group really wants to get these reforms enacted. The second bill, sponsored by most of the same senators as the first (with the exception of Republican senators Capito, Young, Sasse, and Graham) takes up some issues beyond the scope of the Electoral Count Act. It would increase the penalties for threatening election officials, improve the postal service’s procedures for handling mail-in ballots where those are allowed under state law, reauthorize the Election Assistance Commission, and increase the penalties for tampering with election records. These are modest reforms directed to modest problems, and the result is a bill that doesn’t do anything particularly important. If it’s necessary to get more Democrats to accept the restrained approach to ECA reform in the first bill, then I see no problem with it, and certainly some of what it proposes is worthwhile. Chaplains File Class Action Lawsuit Against DODhttps://uncoverdc.com/2022/07/21/vaccine-mandate-chaplains-file-class-action-lawsuit-against-dod/ Thirty-one military chaplains filed a class action lawsuit in May alleging the unconstitutional denial of religious accommodations relating to the vaccine mandate. The chaplains maintain they are protected by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Defendants in the case are the Department of Defense (DoD), several military branches, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FDA, and the CDC. The lawsuit provides a fulsome review of the blatant, concerning changes in definitions and procedural rules to achieve politically driven agendas and goals that seemingly ignore service members’ most basic constitutional rights. Plaintiffs argue that the vaccine mandate and the military’s “no accommodation directive” are unconstitutional. Military chaplains who fail to comply with the vaccine mandate face “threat of disciplinary action” and “punitive discharge,” violating their “express statutory rights to follow their conscience as formed by their faith.” Defendants in the case contend the “venue is not proper,” Plaintiffs’ claims “are not ripe or justiciable prior to exhaustion of military remedies” (some requests have not yet been adjudicated), and the vaccine is the best remedy for “the health and readiness” of the military forces. The 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) lays out in Section 533—the right of chaplains to conduct themselves according to their conscience or religious faith. Section 533 allows a chaplain to reject performing any duty that violates their conscience without repercussion or penalty. As the footnote on page 5 of the lawsuit explains, the genesis of the 2013 NDAA amendment grew out of social policy changes in 2012 during the Obama administration concerning “the repeal of the military ban on homosexual behavior and the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the Defense of Marriage Act.” Chaplains at the time were concerned that they might have to perform wedding ceremonies that would violate their religious beliefs. Those protections were reinforced in both the 2016 and the 2018 NDAAs. Retired Army veteran Arthur A. Schulcz’s testimony filed on July 18, 2022, speaks poignantly to the difficulties of defining and implementing religious freedom policies in the military in recent years. He fought to properly define the role of chaplains in the military in December 2012, working with Congress in anticipation of amendments to the 2013 NDAA to “defend chaplains’ rights to authentically represent their faith to the military, especially in their speech.” He describes the discrimination many in the military have experienced over the years if they dared speak against the prevailing political agenda. The complaint states military chaplains are “unique military officers” because they are both commissioned officers and clergy. As such, they “raise unique statutory and constitutional religious liberty claims, in addition to the claims for systematic violations of service members’ RFRA and First Amendment rights that several courts have recently found Military Defendants likely committed.” The lawsuit states congressional authority concerning honoring and protecting military chaplains’ conscience and faith has been violated by the mandate. Chaplains are unique in their roles as service members because they are afforded additional First Amendment protections as a result of their clerical roles. It has to do with the potential violations of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” Psalm of the Day: St. Patrick’s Breastplate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SXXz5k_F_I&list=PL1C638E88FCA83B7A&index=22 0:18-1:24 Amen! This is Toby Sumpter with CrossPolitic News. Remember you can always find the links to our news stories and these psalms at crosspolitic dot com – just click on the daily news brief and follow the links. Or find them on our App: just search “Fight Laugh Feast” in your favorite app store and never miss a show. If this content is helpful to you, would you please consider becoming a Fight Laugh Feast Club Member? We are building a cancel-proof news and media network with Christ at the center, and we can’t do it without your help. Join today and get a $100 discount at the Fight Laugh Feast conference in Knoxville, TN Oct. 6-8, and have a great day.

Since Donald Trump lost the presidential election in 2020, prominent Republican figures have continued to fuel the “Big Lie” of voter fraud and election rigging. The coordinated efforts around pushing this false information have included widespread targeting and harassment of election officials and poll workers. Many of these workers now feel unsafe at their jobs overseeing and certifying elections, and some are quitting to avoid the threats. In a recent poll from the Brennan Center of nearly 600 local election officials across the country, one in six repor­ted that they have experienced threats because of their job. Ruby Freeman is a former poll worker in the Atlanta area. Near the end of June, the January 6th House Committee showed a video of Freeman's testimony about the harassment. In a virtual hearing with GOP lawmakers in Georgia after the election, Rudy Guiliani accused Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, of processing fake ballots for Joe Biden. He pointed to a surveillance video in which Moss hands her mother a small item, which he claimed was a USB drive. In reality, that item was a ginger mint. Strangers began leaving Freeman and Moss death threats on their voicemails, sending racist texts, and even showing up on their doorsteps. Freeman said that the threats were so violent and incessant that the FBI advised her to leave her home for 2 months. And Moss testified that she had to go into hiding, change her appearance, and leave her job due to the threats. Tina Barton, a former Republican City Clerk in Rochester Hills, Michigan faced some of this same harassment after the 2020 election. Tina and her colleagues had already been working late hours due to high voter turnout and the challenges of facilitating an election during a pandemic. And then there were the added pressures of political tensions and scrutiny over every part of the vote process. After a minor mistake with counting absentee ballots was fixed on the morning after the election, Tina, and her small town of less than 75,000 people, were thrust into the national spotlight, with some Republicans stating that the vote count was inaccurate. She received several voicemails with verbal harassment and death threats. Tina left her city clerk job in 2021 because she wanted to make a bigger impact on her fellow election officials who she saw needed help. She spent time working at the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and is now working as a senior elections expert at The Elections Group. But she still sees more work that needs to be done. We speak with Gowri Ramachandran, senior counsel in the Brennan Center's Elections & Government Team.

This Morning we are joined by Brian Canncon to further expose the election fraud that has plagued our nation of the last few years. The more evidence that comes out the closer we get to exposing this fraud and gaining back election integrity! If you want to support the show, you can donate here: http://bit.ly/cd-donate Become a Conservative Daily member right now for massive savings on Faxblasts, discounts at Joe's Depot, and more perks like backstage time with the hosts of Conservative Daily! Use the link and sign up today! https://conservative-daily.com/forms/Step1b Liberty Cigars is a Patriot owned business with an extensive line of historically themed individual cigars and cigar collections including the Commander Series, Founders Series, and the Presidents Series. All packaging is proudly made in the USA by American workers. A truly unique gift for both cigar and history lovers. All orders over $76 will receive a free Patrick Henry cigar, the perfect gift for anyone who says, "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" this holiday season. Use code BEFREE at www.libertycigars.com If you want to support Mike Lindell and our show, use promo code CD21 to get up to 66% off at https://www.mypillow.com/radiospecials or by placing your order over the phone at 800-872-0627. When you use promo code CD21, a Queen Sized MyPillow is just $29, the cheapest it has ever been! Make sure you Like, Comment, and Share! Text FREEDOM to 89517 to get added to our text list to receive notifications when we go Live! Please make sure you join our newsletter to receive our action alerts: https://bit.ly/joinconservativedaily Conservative Daily is on Rumble! https://rumble.com/user/ConservativeDaily We are now also going to be streaming on dlive! Check us out here: https://dlive.tv/ConservativeDaily Click here to donate: http://bit.ly/cd-donate Subscribe to our daily podcast at Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/ConservativeDailyPodcast on Google Podcasts (for Android users): https://bit.ly/CDPodcastGoogle We are also available on Spotify! https://open.spotify.com/show/2wD8YleiBM8bu0l3ahBLDN And on Pandora: https://www.pandora.com/podcast/conservative-daily-podcast/PC:37034 And on iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-conservative-daily-podcast-53710765/ on TuneIn: https://tunein.com/radio/Conservative-Daily-Podcast-p1350272/ And on Podbean: https://conservative.podbean.com/ And now also on Audible! https://www.audible.com/pd/Conservative-Daily-Podcast-Podcast/B08JJQQ4M Support Joe Oltmann in his legal battle against Eric Coomer: https://givesendgo.com/defendjoeoltmann

You're listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people.A report by the Brennan Center for Justice has some sobering news for American election officials, who face the made up accusations of widespread voter fraud, and the very real cybersecurity threats coming from overseas.The Brennan Center reports that 77% of electon workers say threats against them have increased since 2020, and nearly 1 in 3 know of at least one election worker who has left the job because those concerns. Nearly 2 of 3 cite the spread of false information as making their jobs more dangerous.On top of that, the FBI reported in March that hackers have targeted election officials in at least nine states with phishing attacks, and intelligence officials have warned that Russia may attempt to interfere with American elections this fall. The Brennan Center recommends that the Department of Homeland Security should provide additional assistance to election offices to secure the infrastructure, protect election workers, and fight misinformation and disinformation. With states poised to purchase over $500 million dollars of election systems in the next decade, Brennan says the Election Assistance Commission should expand training, improve voter system testing and certification programs, and increase oversight of election system vendors.To read the report, entitled “How Federal Departments and Agencies Can Help Secure America's Elections,” visit BrennanCenter.org, or our website at AmericanDemocracyMinute.org.Granny D said, “Democracy is not something we HAVE, it's something we DO.” For the American Democracy Minute, I'm Brian Beihl. 

You're listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people.This week to Arizona, where Republican Governor Doug Ducey has signed HB 2492, which imposes a “proof of citizenship” requirement to vote for all Arizona voters. After 1996, Arizona required proof of citizenship for any new driver's licenses, allowing a driver's license to be used when registering to vote. But voters in prior years could swear to citizenship, subject to civil penalty for inaccurate information. The Arizona Republic reports that under HB 2492, an estimated192,000 voters, many of whom have been voting for decades, will now have to provide citizenship documents before voting this fall. Many of these voters will be unaware of the changes and may become disenfranchised. This also sets up a showdown with federal law. A subset of Arizona voters use a federal voter registration form, which allows qualified voters to vote in federal, but not state, elections, often used by Native American voters, some of whom do not have birth certificates or other citizenship documents. A 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision upheld the sworn citizenship for this U.S. Election Assistance Commission form.HB2492 was proposed by an Arizona legislator implicated in the “fake electors” scheme, supporting the now debunked claims of voter fraud around the country. Granny D said, “Democracy is not something we HAVE, it's something we DO.” For the American Democracy Minute, I'm  Brian Beihl. 

This is Toby Sumpter with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Tuesday, August 18, 2020. Today you will hear about Trump going postal, dead people are voting again, Fortnite goes to war with Apple and Google, Facebook sometimes sends Democrats to timeout, and Ted Cruise has thoughts about US dealings with Iran.  DNC Goes Virtual The Democratic National Convention started Monday, packed full of disgruntled Republicans, or at least John Kasich.  The originally scheduled Milwaukee convention has been transformed into a virtual convention, with speeches being delivered from various locations across the country. In addition to former Republican Presidential candidate John Kasich, Michelle Obama and Former Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders had the microphone Monday night.  Has Trump Gone Postal? You might be wondering what all the fuss in the news about the US Postal Service is about. Former President Barack Obama recently accused President Trump of trying to “actively kneecap” the Postal service in an effort to suppress mail-in voting. For some reason many democrats have been particularly giddy about the idea of mass mail-in voting. And please note, this is not the same thing as absentee voting, where you request a ballot, it is sent to you, and then you send it in. That sort of thing has been done routinely for many years. But the idea that every eligible voter might receive a ballot to mail in, is quite different and raises a number of legitimate questions. Like, for example, how do we know if the ballot returned was returned by the right person? How do we know that person has not moved, voted twice, or maybe even died?  Meanwhile, the US Postal Service has lost 78 Billion since 2007. It is not exactly in tip-top shape. Since the advent of email, the need for letters has dropped dramatically. And then comes the Coronapanic. In the 2 Trillion dollar CARES Act, congress gave the Postal Service permission to borrow up to 10 Billion. Completely separately, 400 million was included in for the Election Assistance Commission.  Later, the House barely based another Coronavirus bill called HEROES Act which has not yet seen the light of day in the Senate. That bill earmarked 25 Billion as a full bailout gift to the Postal Service. Likewise, in the HEROES Act a few million was also earmarked for more Election Assistance. But again, the HEROES Act got stuck after the House passed it.  But the US Postmaster has been busy doing his job. His name is Louis DeJoy (a major Republican donor and Trump supporter), but he started implementing changes to help the ailing postal service, including two particular pilot programs: the first is to implement an Expedited Street/Afternoon Sortation in order to cut down on overtime hours being paid. The second is the removal under utilized collection boxes and letter sorter machines. With the decline in sending letters, the collection boxes and letter sorter machines just aren't being used as much. They cost money to maintain and sorter machines take up a lot of space.  Well, all of this is the backstory on the giddy Democrats wanting universal mail-in voting for the Presidential election while Trump and other Republicans have raised doubts and concerns. And then there's the Post Master doing his job and a stimulous bill held up in congress. Oh, and one more thing, in a couple of interviews Trump has apparently conflated all the money in the stimulus bills as related to funding mail in voting. Thus, adding to the blood in the water for the democrats. Trump is removing letter collection boxes, letter sorter machines, and won't approve the stimulus money for the Post Office. Clearly, he is preparing to destroy the ability of people to vote by mail.  Well, he might be bungling some of the questions, and at points seems to be conflating universal voting with absentee voting, but the Post Office has delivered hundreds of millions of piece of mail every year and despite the random mistakes that are made from time to time, this looks like a lefty conspiracy theory this time.  White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on CNN Sunday that the removals of the collection boxes and letter sorting machines would be halted until after the election just so everybody can stop hyperventilating. He also clarified that the President doesn't have a problem with anybody voting by mail with an absentee ballot, but he opposes universal mail in ballots.” More from Byron York on this here: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-whats-really-going-on-with-trump-and-the-post-office Meanwhile, Michigan has announced that 10,694 of the state's 1.6 million absentee ballots for their August 4th primary have been rejected.  https://disrn.com/news/michigan-rejects-846-mail-in-ballots-because-the-voter-was-dead/ Many thousands were rejected for arriving late or without signatures, but 846 of the ballots received were rejected because the voter was dead.  Dead people and pets were among the nearly 500,000 rejected absentee ballots in Virgiania, while another quarter of a million met the same fate in Nevada's June primary.  However, Kanye West's lawyer is going on the offensive saying that Democrats will have to prove that the Micky Mouse and Bernie Sanders signatures on his Wisconsin ballot petition are not real.  This is why we need Weapons for this War. Which is why we want to invite you to our first annual Fight Laugh Feast Conference in Nashville October 1-3. We've put together a package that is full of feasting and psalm singing, hearty fellowship, and a line up of speakers committed to showing you how God's Word applies to politics, economics, business, education, creativity, marriage and family, and much more. We aren't abolishing history. We're going to dig deep. So please join us this October 1st through the 3rd as we build a rowdy Christian culture for God's glory and our good. Go to Fightlaughfeast dot com and register today. Fortnite in Battle Royal with Apple & Google Apple and Google both booted the blockbuster video game “fortnite” from their app stores last Thursday, after its mother company Epic Games, launched a new in-game payment system that bypassed both app stores' payment rules. The company's founder, Tim Sweeny, has been complaining about the 30% commissions charged by the app stores for years, and quickly filed two lawsuits in federal courts following the ejection from the app stores – accusing both platforms of monopolistic behavior – charging such high commissions that makes it difficult for competitors to emerge. Apple CEO was questioned last month during congressional anti-trust hearings about whether the company treats app developers equally, citing some lower commissions for app store sales from Amazon.com for example.  Facebook Sometimes Disciplines Democrats The Washington State Democratic Party Facebook Page got the temporary church discipline ban for about a month during June, the Wall Street Journal reports. Facebook has apparently crafted its' on policy for political ads, independent of the state's own ad disclosure rules. And as usual, the social media giant refused to answer questions about what part of the policy the Washington Democrats had violated. The gods do not answer direct questions like that. After a number of days, the gods did condescend to give two examples of ads that were considered violations.  Ted Cruise Raise Alarms Over Obama-Era Nuclear Deal Ted Cruise writes in Newsweek that perhaps the most pernicious part of the Obama-Biden Nuclear Deal with Iran was the provision that would allow Iran to begin purchasing billions of dollars of conventional weapons from countries like China and Russia. Senator Cruise writes to raise the alarm that it turns out those deals are already in motion.  https://www.newsweek.com/we-need-invoke-un-snapback-iranbefore-its-too-late-opinion-1525424 This is Toby Sumpter with Crosspolitic News. You can find this and all of our shows at Crosspolitic.com or on our app, which you can download at your favorite app store, just search “Fight Laugh Feast”. Our app is the only way to get In the Bullpen with Mark Dewey. Support Rowdy Christian media, and become a Fight Laugh Feast Club Member, and for a limited time you can get your very own Fight Laugh Feast t-shirt and access to tons of extended discussions with Sho Baraka, David French, Erick Erickson, Maj Toure, Biblical Parenting with Doug and Nancy Wilson, God and Government and End Times Eschatology with Gary Demar, Pastors and Politics with George Grant and C.R. Wiley and more, Proverbs with Me, and our very own Worldview Shotgun Series. You also get $100 off your registration for our first annual Fight Laugh Feast Conference, where we hope to meet many of you in Nashville, TN October 1st through the 3rd. Go to fightlaughfeast.com to register now. Have a great day. https://flfnetwork.com/coming-soon/  

In this panel discussion, three leading experts—Sarah Isgur (The Dispatch), Megan McArdle (Washington Post), and Matthew Weil (Bipartisan Policy Center)—will examine the causes of distrust in American elections and investigate its broader impact on the resilience of U.S. democracy.About the speakers:Sarah Isgur is a staff writer and host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions for The Dispatch, a professor at George Washington's School of Media and Public Affairs and George Mason Law School, a contributing editor at Politico, and an ABC News contributor. She most recently served in the Department of Justice as the Director of the Office of Public Affairs and Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General during the Russia investigation. She was backstage for more than a half dozen presidential debates as the Deputy Campaign Manager for Carly Fiorina's presidential campaign. Isgur clerked for the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Northwestern University.Megan McArdle is a Washington Post columnist and the author of "The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success." Previously, she was a Bloomberg View columnist. McArdle wrote for the Daily Beast, Newsweek, the Atlantic and the Economist and founded the blog Asymmetrical Information.Matthew Weil is director of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Elections Project where he is responsible for all of the organization's voting-related policy development efforts at the state and federal level, the Business Alliance for Effective Democracy, and collaborations with social media platforms to provide authoritative election information to voters. Prior to joining BPC in February 2013, he worked at the Department of the Treasury on domestic finance issues in the office of public affairs. He also previously served as a research and policy analyst at the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and as a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute. Weil holds a Master of Science in Government Analytics degree from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.Chair: Dr Thomas Gift 

On this episode of Both Sides, Allan and Mike talk to elections Commisioner Benjamin Hovland!  Comissioner Hovland serves on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Listen in as they talk conspiracy theories and election security.

The Donald Trump plan lives. As Stephen Dinan reports, the Supreme Court rebuffed President Biden's request to halt a lower court order that revives the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” border policy, effectively forcing the new administration to make a “good faith” effort to push illegal immigrants back across the border. The ruling is a devastating blow to the Biden team, which had made erasing Trump-era immigration policies a major hallmark of its first seven months in office. Plus, about 20 million ballots mailed out for the November general election were not returned, the federal government's Election Assistance Commission says in a report detailing the successes and hiccups of the voting. Stephen explains what that means.

Rosemary Rodriguez was the State Director for Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado. She also served as a commissioner on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and chaired the commission in 2008. Prior to that, Rodriguez served on the Denver City Council for three and a half years, and was council president from 2005 to 2006. She also chaired the 2001 Colorado Reapportionment Commission, a constitutional body that was responsible for redrawing legislative districts after the 2000 Census. Rosemary is a Colorado native and attended Metropolitan State College (now Metropolitan State University), where she studied Political Science.Follow the podcast on Instagram @Resilience_and_ResistanceLearn more about Marisol & EMDR Therapy | Start Your Treatment Today via TeleheathMusic: Inte-Gritty by Bianca MikahnArt: Maite Nazario | http://www.maitenazario.comPodcast Production: https://www.theplug-agency.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Former Chairman of the Election Assistance Commission Paul DeGregorio joins Brianna and Eric for a conversation about the origins of the Election Assistance Commission, bipartisan legislation, and his path in elections.

Voters elect officials in representative democracies who pass laws, interpret laws, enforce laws, or appoint various other representatives to do one of the above. The terms of elected officials, the particulars of their laws, the structure of courts that interpret laws, and the makeup of the bureaucracies that are necessarily created to govern are different in every country.  In China, the people elect the People's Congresses who then elect the nearly 3,000 National People's Congress members, who then elect the Present and State Councils. The United States has a more direct form of democracy and the people elect a House of Represenatives, a Senate, and a president who the founders intentionally locked into a power struggle to keep any part of the government from becoming authoritarian. Russia is setup similar. In fact, the State Duma, like the House in the US are elected by the people and the 85 States, or federal subjects, then send a pair of delegates to a Federal Council, like the Senate in the US, which has 170 members. It works similarly in many countries. Some, like England, still provide for hereditary titles, such as the House of Lords - but even there, the Sovereign - currently Queen Elizabeth the second, nominates a peer to a seat. That peer is these days selected by the Prime Minister. It's weird but I guess it kinda' works.  Across democracies, countries communist, socialist, capitalist, and even the constitutional monarchies practice elections. The voters elect these representatives to supposedly do what's in the best interest of the constituents. That vote cast is the foundation of any democracy. We think our differences are greater than they are, but it mostly boils down to a few percentages of tax and a slight difference in the level of expectation around privacy, whether that expectation is founded or not.  2020 poses a turning point for elections around the world. After allegations of attempted election tampering in previous years, the president of the United States will be voted on. And many of those votes are being carried out by mail. But others will be performed in person at polling locations and done on voting machines.  At this point, I would assume that given how nearly every other aspect of American life has a digital equivalent, that I could just log into a web portal and cast my vote. No. That is not the case. In fact, we can't even seem to keep the voting machines from being tampered with. And we have physical control over those! So how did we get to such an awkward place, where the most important aspect of a democracy is so backwater. Let's start  Maybe it's ok that voting machines and hacking play less a role than they should. Without being political, there is no doubt that Russia and other foreign powers have meddled in US elections. In fact, there's probably little doubt we've interfered in theirs. Russian troll farms and disinformation campaigns are real. Paul Manafort maintained secret communications with the Kremlin. Former US generals were brought into the administration either during or after the election to make a truce with the Russians. And then there were the allegations about tampering voting machines. Now effectively stealing information about voters from Facebook using insecure API permissions. I get that. Disinformation goes back to posters in the time of Thomas Jefferson. I get that too.  But hacking voting machines. I mean, these are vetted, right? For $3,000 to $4,500 each and when bought in bulk orders of 16,000 machines like Maryland bought from Diebold in 2005, you really get what you pay for, right? Wait, did you say 2005? Let's jump forward to 2017. That's the year DefCon opened the Voting Machine Hacking Village. And in 2019 not a single voting machine was secured. In fact, one report from the conference said “we fear that the 2020 presidential elections will realize the worst fears only hinted at during the 2016 elections: insecure, attacked, and ultimately distrusted.” I learned to pick locks, use L0phtCrack, run a fuzzer, and so much more at DefCon. Now I guess I've learned to hack elections. So again, every democracy in the world has one thing it just has to get right, voting. But we don't. Why? Before we take a stab at that, let's go back in time just a little.  The first voting machine used in US elections was a guy with a bible. This is pretty much how it went up until the 1900s in most districts. People walked in and told an election official their vote, the votes were tallied on the honor of that person, and everyone got good and drunk. People love to get good and drunk. Voter turnout was in the 85 percent range. Votes were logged in poll books. And the person was saying the name of the official they were voting for with a poll worker writing their name and vote into a pollbook. There was no expectation that the vote would be secret. Not yet at least. Additionally, you could campaign at the polling place - a practice now illegal in most places. Now let's say the person taking the votes fudged something. There's a log. People knew each other. Towns were small. Someone would find out.  Now digitizing a process usually goes from vocal or physical to paper to digital to database to networked database to machine learning. It's pretty much the path of technological determinism. As is failing because we didn't account for adjacent advancements in technology when moving a paper process to a digital process. We didn't refactor around the now-computational advances. Paper ballots showed up in the 1800s. Parties would print small fliers that looked like train tickets so voters could show up and drop their ballot off. Keep in mind, adult literacy rates still weren't all that high at this point. One party could print a ticket that looked kinda' like the others. All kinds of games were being played.  We needed a better way.    The 1800s were a hotbed of invention. 1838 saw the introduction of a machine where each voter got a brass ball which was then dropped in machine that used mechanical counters to increment a tally. Albert Henderson developed a precursor to a computer that would record votes using a telegraph that printed ink in a column based on which key was held down. This was in 1850 with US Patent 7521. Edison took the idea to US Patent 90,646 and automated the counters in 1869. Henry Spratt developed a push-button machine. Anthony Beranek continued on with that but made one row per office and reset after the last voter, similar to how machines work today.    Jacob Meyers built on Berenek's work and added levers in 1889 and Alfred Gillespie made the levered machine programmable. He and others formed the US Standard Voting Machine Company and slowly grew it. But something was missing and we'll step back a little in time. Remember those tickets and poll books? They weren't standardized.    The Australians came up with a wacky idea in 1858 to standardize on ballots printed by the government, which made it to the US in 1888. And like many things in computing, once we had a process on paper, the automation of knowledge work, or tabulating votes would soon be ready to take into computing. Herman Hollerith brought punched card data processing to the US Census in 1890 and punch cards - his company would merge with others at the time to form IBM.    Towards the end of the 1890s John McTammany had aded the concept that voters could punch holes in paper to cast votes and even went so far as to add a pneumatic tabulation. They were using rolls of paper rather than cards. And so IBM started tabulating votes in 1936 with a dial based machine that could count 400 votes a minute from cards. Frank Carrell at IBM got a patent for recording ballot choices on standardized cards. The stage was set for the technology to meet paper. By 1958 IBM had standardized punch cards to 40 columns and released the Port-A-Punch for so people in the field could punch information into a card to record findings and then bring it back to a computer for processing. Based on that, Joseph Harris developed the Votomatic punched-cards in 1965 and IBM  licensed the technology. In the meantime, a science teacher Reynold Johnson had developed Mark Sense in the 1930s, which over time evolved into optical mark recognition, allowing us to fill in bubbles with a pencil. So rather than punch holes we could vote by filling in a bubble on a ballot.   All the pieces were in place and the technology slowly proliferated across the country, representing over a third of votes when Clinton beat Dole and Ross Perot in 1996.    And then 2000 came. George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in a bitterly contested and narrow margin. It came down to Florida and issues with the ballots there. By some tallies as few as 300 people decided the outcome of that election. Hanging chads are little pieces of paper that don't get punched out of a card. Maybe unpunched holes in just a couple of locations caused the entire election to shift between parties. You could get someone drunk or document their vote incorrectly when it was orally provided in the early 1800s or provide often illiterate people with mislabeled tickets prior to the Australian ballots. But this was the first time since the advent of the personal computer, when most people in the US had computers in their homes and when the Internet bubble was growing by the day that there was a problem with voting ballots and suddenly people started wondering why were still using paper.    The answer isn't as simple as the fact that the government moves slowly. I mean, the government can't maintain the rate of technical innovation and progress anyways. But there are other factors as well. One is secrecy. Anywhere that has voting will eventually have some kind of secret ballots. This goes back to the ancient greeks but also the French Revolution. Secret ballots came to the UK in the 1840s with the Chartists and to the US after the 1884 election. As the democracies matured, the concept of voting rights matured and secret ballots were part of that. Making sure a ballot is secret means we can't just allow any old person to look at a ballot.    Another issue is decentralization. Each state selects their own machines and system and sets dates and requirements. We see that with the capacity and allocation of mail-in voting today.    Another issue is cost. Each state also has a different budget. Meaning that there are disparities between how well a given state can reach all voters. When we go to the polls we usually work with volunteers. This doesn't mean voting isn't big business. States (and countries) have entire bureaucracies around elections. Bureaucracies necessarily protect themselves.    So why not have a national voting system? Some countries do. Although most use electronic voting machines in polling places. But maybe something based on the Internet? Security. Estonia tried a purely Internet vote and due to hacking and malware it was determined to have been a terrible idea. That doesn't mean we should not try again.    The response to the 2000 election results was the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to define standards managed by the Election Assistance Commission in the US. The result was the proliferation of new voting systems. ATM machine maker Diebold entered the US election market in 2002 and quickly became a large player.    The CEO ended up claiming he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to” Bush. They accidentally leaked their source code due to a misconfigured server and they installed software patches that weren't approved. In short, it was a typical tech empire that grew too fast and hand issues we've seen with many companies. Just with way more on the line. After a number of transitions between divisions and issues, the business unit was sold to Election Systems & Software, now with coverage over 42 states. And having sold hundreds of thousands of voting machines, they now have over 60% of the market share in the us. That company goes back to the dissolution of a ballot tabulation division of Westinghouse and the Votronic. They are owned by a private equity firm called the McCarthy Group.    They are sue-happy though and stifling innovation. The problems are not just with ES&S. Hart InterCivic and Dominion are the next two biggest competitors, with equal issues. And no voting machine company has a great track record with security. They are all private companies. They have all been accused of vote tampering. None of that has been proven. They have all had security issues.   In most of these episodes I try to focus on the history of technology or technocratic philosophy and maybe look to the future. I rarely offer advice or strategy. But there are strategies not being employed.    The first strategy is transparency. In life, I assume positive intent. But transparency is really the only proof of that. Any company developing these systems should have transparent financials, provide transparency around the humans involved, provide transparency around the source code used, and provide transparency around the transactions, or votes in this case, that are processed. In an era of disinformation and fake news, transparency is the greatest protection of democracy.    Providing transparency around financials can be a minefield. Yes, a company should make a healthy margin to continue innovating. That margin funds innovators and great technology. Financials around elections are hidden today because the companies are private. Voting doesn't have to become a public utility but it should be regulated.    Transparency of code is simpler to think through. Make it open source. Firefox gave us an open source web browser. ToR gave us a transparent anonymity. The mechanisms with which each transaction occurs is transparent and any person with knowledge of open source systems can look for flaws in the system. Those flaws are then corrected as with most common programming languages and protocols by anyone with the technical skills to do so. I'm not the type that thinks everything should be open source. But this should be.    There is transparency in simplicity.  The more complex a system the more difficult to unravel. The simpler a program, the easier for anyone with a working knowledge of programming to review and if needed, correct. So a voting system should be elegant in simplicity.   Verifiability. We could look at poll books in the 1800s and punch the vote counter in the mouth if they counted our vote wrong. The transparency of the transaction was verifiable. Today, there are claims of votes being left buried in fields and fraudulent voters. Technologies like blockchain can protect against that much as currency transactions can be done in bitcoin. I usually throw up a little when I hear the term blockchain bandied about by people who have never written a line of code. Not this time.    Let's take hashing as a fundamental building block. Let's say you vote for a candidate and the candidate is stored as a text field, or varchar, that is their name (or names) and the position they are running for. We can easily take all of the votes cast by a voter, store them in a json blob, commit them to a database, add a record in a database that contains the vote supplied, and then add a block in chain to provide a second point of verification. The voter would receive a guid randomly assigned and unique to them, thus protecting the anonymity of the vote. The micro-services here are to create a form for them to vote, capture the vote, hash the vote, commit the vote to a database, duplicate the transaction into the voting blockchain, and allow for vote lookups. Each can be exposed from an API gateway that allows systems built by representatives of voters at the federal, state, and local levels to lookup their votes.    We now have any person voting capable of verifying that their vote was counted. If bad data is injected at the time of the transaction the person can report the voter fraud and a separate table connecting vote GUIDs to IP addresses or any other PII can be accessed only by the appropriate law enforcement and any attempt by law enforcement to access a record should be logged as well. Votes can be captured with web portals, voting machines that have privileged access, by 1800s voice counts, etc.   Here we have a simple and elegant system that allows for transparency, verifiability, and privacy. But we need to gate who can cast a vote. I have a PIN to access by IRS returns using my social security number or tax ID. But federal elections don't require paying taxes. Nextdoor sent a card to my home and I entered a PIN printed on the card on their website. But that system has many a flaw. Section 303 of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 compels the State Motor Vehicle Office in each state to validate the name, date of birth, Social Security Number, and whether someone is alive. Not every voter drives. Further, not every driver meets voting requirements. And those are different per state.    And so it becomes challenging to authenticate a voter. We do so in person, en masse, at every election due to the the staff and volunteers of various election precincts. In Minnesota I provided my drivers license number when I submitted my last ballot over the mail. If I moved since the last time I voted I also need a utility bill to validate my physical address. A human will verify that. Theoretically I could vote in multiple precincts if I were able to fabricate a paper trail to do so. If I did I would go to prison.    Providing a web interface unless browsers support a mechanism to validate the authenticity of the source and destination is incredibly dangerous. Especially when state sponsored actors as destinations have been proven to be able to bypass safeguards such as https. And then there's the source. It used to be common practice to use Social Security Numbers or cards as a form of verification for a lot of things. That isn't done any more due to privacy concerns and of course due to identity theft.    You can't keep usernames and passwords in a database any more. So the only real answer here is a federated identity provider. This is where OAuth, OpenID Connect, and/or SAML come into play. This is a technology that retains a centralized set of information about people. Other entities then tie into the centralized identity sources and pull information from them. The technology they use to authenticate and authorize users is then one of the protocols mentioned.    I've been involved in a few of these projects and to be honest, they kinda' all suck. Identities would need to be created and the usernames and passwords distributed. This means we have to come up with a scheme that everyone in the country (or at least the typically ill-informed representatives we put in place to make choices on our behalf) can agree on. And even if a perfect scheme for usernames is found there's crazy levels of partisanship. The passwords should be complex but when dealing with all of the factors that come into play it's hard to imagine consensus being found on what the right level is to protect people but also in a way passwords can be remembered.    The other problem with a federated identity is privacy. Let's say you forget your password. You need information about a person to reset it. There's also this new piece of information out there that represents yet another piece of personally identifiable information. Why not just use a social security number? That would require a whole other episode to get into but it's not an option. Suddenly if date of birth, phone number (for two factor authentication), the status of if a human is alive or not, possibly a drivers license number, maybe a social security number in a table somewhere to communicate with the Social Security databases to update the whole alive status. It gets complicated fast. It's no less private that voter databases that have already been hacked in previous elections though.    Some may argue to use biometric markers instead of all the previous whatnot. Take your crazy uncle Larry who thinks the government already collects too much information about him and tells you so when he's making off-color jokes. Yah, now tell him to scan his eyeball or fingerprint into the database. When he's done laughing at you, he may show you why he has a conceal and carry permit.    And then there's ownership. No department within an organization I've seen wants to allow an identity project unless they get budget and permanent head count. And no team wants another team to own it. When bureaucracies fight it takes time to come to the conclusion that a new bureaucracy needs to be formed if we're going anywhere. Then the other bureaucracies make the life of the new one hard and thus slow down the whole process. Sometimes needfully, sometimes accidentally, and sometimes out of pure spite or bickering over power. The most logical bureaucracy in the federal government to own such a project would be the social security administration or the Internal Revenue Service.     Some will argue states should each have their own identity provider. We need one for taxes, social security, benefits, and entitlement programs. And by the way, we're at a point in history when people move between states more than ever. If we're going to protect federal and state elections, we need a centralized provider of identities. And this is going to sound crazy, but the federal government should probably just buy a company who already sells an IdP (like most companies would do if they wanted to build one) rather than contract with one or build their own. If you have to ask why, you've never tried to build one yourself or been involved in any large-scale software deployments or development operations at a governmental agency. I could write a book on each.    There are newer types of options. You could roll with an IndieAuth Identity Provider, which is a decentralized approach, but that's for logging into apps using Facebook or Apple or Google - use it to shop and game, not to vote. NIST should make the standards, FedRAMP should provide assessment, and we can loosely follow the model of the European self-sovereign identity framework or ESSIF but build on top of an existing stack so we don't end up taking 20 years to get there.  Organizations that can communicate with an identity provider are called Service Providers. Only FedRAMP certified public entities should be able to communicate with a federal federated identity provider. Let's just call it the FedIdP.  Enough on the identity thing. Suffice it to say, it's necessary to successfully go from trusting poll workers to being able to communicate online. And here's the thing about all of this: confidence intervals. What I mean by this is that we have gone from being able to verify our votes in poll books and being able to see other people in our communities vote to trusting black boxes built by faceless people whose political allegiances are unknown. And as is so often the case when the technology fails us, rather than think through the next innovation we retreat back to the previous step in the technological cycle: if that is getting stuck at localized digitization we retreat back to paper. If it is getting stuck at taking those local repositories online we would have retreated back to the localized digital repository. If we're stuck at punch cards due to hanging chads then we might have to retreat back to voice voting. Each has a lower confidence interval than a verifiable and transparent online alternative. Although the chances of voter fraud by mail are still .00006%, close to a 5 9s. We need to move forward. It's called progress. The laws of technological determinism are such that taking the process online is the next step. And it's crucial for social justice. I've over-simplified what it will take. Anything done on a national scale is hard. And time consuming. So it's a journey that should be begun now. In the meantime, there's a DARPA prize. Given the involvement of a few key DARPA people with DefCon and the findings of voting machine security (whether that computers are online and potentially fallible or physically hackable or just plain bad) DARPA gave a prize to the organization that could develop a tamper proof, open-source voting machine. I actually took a crack at this, not because I believed it to be a way to make money but because after the accusations of interference in the 2016 election I just couldn't not. Ultimately I decided this could be solved with an app in single app mode, a printer to produce a hash and a guid, and some micro-services but that the voting machine was the wrong place for the effort and that the effort should instead be put into taking voting online.  Galois theory gives us a connection from field theory and group theory. You simplify field theory problems so they can be solved by group theory. And I've oversimplified the solution for this problem. But just as with studying the roots of polynomials, sometimes simplicity is elegance rather than hubris. In my own R&D efforts I struggle to understand when I'm exuding each.  The 2020 election is forcing many to vote by mail. As with other areas that have not gotten the innovation they needed, we're having to rethink a lot of things. And voting in person at a polling place should certainly be one. As should the cost of physically delivering those ballots and the human cost to get them entered.  The election may or may not be challenged by luddites who refuse to see the technological determinism staring them in the face. This is a bipartisan issue. No matter who wins or loses the other party will cry foul. It's their job as politicians. But it's my job as a technologist to point out that there's a better way. The steps I outlined in this episode might be wrong. But if someone can point out a better way, I'd like to volunteer my time and focus to propelling it forward. And dear listener, think about this. When progress is challenged what innovation can you bring or contribute to that helps keep us from retreating to increasingly analog methods.  Herman Hollerith brought the punch card, which had been floating around since the Jacquard loom in 1801. Those were individuals who moved technology forward in fundamental ways. In case no one ever told you, you have even better ideas locked away in your head. Thank you for letting them out. And thank you for tuning in to this episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We are so, so lucky to have you.

Good elections are secure elections—but what does that mean? Does it mean that election processes help eligible people vote, while thwarting anyone else? Does it mean accurate vote tabulation—and being able to prove that the counting was done right? Does it mean keeping voters safe at the polls? Does it mean giving the voting public a sense of security in a time of disinformation and misinformation? Yes, yes, yes and yes. Learn from national elections experts about cybersecurity, election validation and audits, healthy polling places and communicating about security. Panelists: Wendy Underhill, Director for Elections and Redistricting, National Council of State Legislatures Matt Masterson, Senior Cybersecurity Advisor, Department of Homeland Security Jennifer Morell, Director of Elections Validation Project, the Democracy Fund Maurice Turner, Senior Advisor to the Executive Director, U.S. Election Assistance Commission

We are taking a closer look at what citizen engagement in our national election process actually looks like because today is National Poll Worker Recruitment Day! Since True the Vote was launched we've always had a deep-seated passion for individuals getting involved and working in the polls on election day. This election cycle will surely be a historic one; If patriotic citizens do not get involved, someone else will. Catherine talks about her personal story with poll working and what really goes into a poll workers job. Different states have different laws and there is virtually no limit to how many ways citizens can get engaged in the build-up to the 2020 Election. Articles mentioned: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/do-not-open-until-election-day-state-laws-will-delay-n1238806 https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/27/delayed-presidential-election-will-impact-the-economy.html https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2020/08/29/pollworkers-detroit-primary-election/3428840001/ https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/30/politics/2020-election-voting-trump-intelligence-briefing/index.html Like this video? To see more from Catherine and True the Vote, subscribe to this channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/TrueTheVote || Remember to ring the notification bell! Website: https://truethevote.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrueTheVote Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/TrueTheVote

We are joined by Lou Ann Black Deputy Executive Director Blindness Initiatives at NFB and Clark Rachfal, at ACB to discuss voting with a disability. Guest host Paul Schroeder, Senior Public Policy Advocate at VisionServe Alliance. Election Assistance Commission round table discussion on accessible voting during the COVID: https://www.eac.gov/roundup-and-review-virtual-roundtable-assist-voters-disabilities-and-election-officials Blind Voter's Guide, Blind Voter Registration Drive Guide, Accessible Vote-By-Mail Toolkit available, the blind voter experience video, and other resources: https://www.nfb.org/programs-services/center-excellence-nonvisual-access/national-center-nonvisual-election-3 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/visionserve-alliance/message

U.S. Election Assistance Commission chairman emeritus Paul DeGregorio discusses remote balloting for 2020 and a secure transition to online voting. 

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

For years, legal wiretapping was straightforward: the officer doing the intercept connected a tape recorder or the like to a single pair of wires. By the 1990s, though, the changing structure of telecommunications — there was no longer just "Ma Bell" to talk to — and new technologies such as ISDN and cellular telephony made executing a wiretap more complicated for law enforcement. Simple technologies would no longer suffice. In response, Congress passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which mandated a standardized lawful intercept interface on all local phone switches. Technology has continued to progress, and in the face of new forms of communication — Skype, voice chat during multi-player online games, many forms of instant messaging, etc.— law enforcement is again experiencing problems. The FBI has called this "Going Dark": their loss of access to suspects' communication. According to news reports, they want changes to the wiretap laws to require a CALEA -­like interface in Internet software.CALEA , though, has its own issues: it is complex software specifically intended to create a security hole — eavesdropping capability — in the already-­complex environment of a phone switch. It has unfortunately made wiretapping easier for everyone, not just law enforcement. Congress failed to heed experts' warnings of the danger posed by this mandated vulnerability, but time has proven the experts right. The so-­called "Athens Affair", where someone used the built-­in lawful intercept mechanism to listen to the cell phone calls of high Greek officials, including the Prime Minister, is but one example. In an earlier work, we showed why extending CALEA to the Internet would create very serious problems, including the security problems it has visited on the phone system.This talk explores the viability and implications of an alternative method for addressing law enforcement's need to access communications: legalized hacking of target devices through existing vulnerabilities in end-­user software and platforms. About the speaker: Steven M. Bellovin is the Percy K. and Vidal L. W. Hudson Professor of computer science at Columbia University, where he does research on networks, security, and especially why the two don't get along, as well as related public policy issues. In his spare professional time, he does some work on the history of cryptography. He joined the faculty in 2005 after many years at Bell Labs and AT&T Labs Research, where he was an AT&T Fellow. He received a BA degree from Columbia University, and an MS and PhD in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While a graduate student, he helped create Netnews; for this, he and the other perpetrators were given the 1995 Usenix Lifetime Achievement Award (The Flame). Bellovin has served as Chief Technologist of the Federal Trade Commission. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is serving on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academies, the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Advisory Committee, and the Technical Guidelines Development Committee of the Election Assistance Commission; he has also received the 2007 NIST/NSA National Computer Systems Security Award and has been elected to the Cybersecurity Hall of Fame.Bellovin is the co-author of Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker, and holds a number of patents on cryptographic and network protocols. He has served on many National Research Council study committees, including those on information systems trustworthiness, the privacy implications of authentication technologies, and cybersecurity research needs; he was also a member of the information technology subcommittee of an NRC study group on science versus terrorism. He was a member of the Internet Architecture Board from 1996-2002; he was co-director of the Security Area of the IETF from 2002 through 2004.More details may be found at http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/informal-bio.html.