Post-Election Audits: Restoring Trust in Elections

With the intention of assisting legislators, election officials and the public to make sense of recent literature on post-election audits and convert it into realistic audit practices, the Brennan Center and the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at Boalt Hall School of Law (University of California Berkeley) convened a blue ribbon panel (the "Audit Panel") of statisticians, voting experts, computer scientists and several of the nation's leading election officials. Following a review of the literature and extensive consultation with the Audit Panel, the Brennan Center and the Samuelson Clinic make several practical recommendations for improving post-election audits, regardless of the audit method that a jurisdiction ultimately decides to adopt

Making Democracy Harder to Hack

With the Russian government hack of the Democratic National Convention email servers and related leaks, the drama of the 2016 U.S. presidential race highlights an important point: nefarious hackers do not just pose a risk to vulnerable companies; cyber attacks can potentially impact the trajectory of democracies. Yet a consensus has been slow to emerge as to the desirability and feasibility of reclassifying elections—in particular, voting machines—as critical infrastructure, due in part to the long history of local and state control of voting procedures. This Article takes on the debate—focusing on policy options beyond former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson’s decision to classify elections as critical infrastructure in January 2017—in the U.S., using the 2016 elections as a case study, but putting the issue in a global context, with in-depth case studies from South Africa, Estonia, Brazil, Germany, and India. Governance best practices are analyzed by reviewing these differing approaches to securing elections, including the extent to which trend lines are converging or diverging. This investigation will, in turn, help inform ongoing minilateral efforts at cybersecurity norm building in the critical infrastructure context, which are considered here for the first time in the literature through the lens of polycentric governance

Restoring the Right to Vote

The right to vote forms the core of American democracy. Our history is marked by successful struggles to expand the franchise, to include those previously barred from the electorate because of race, class, or gender. As a result our democracy is richer, more diverse, and more representative of the people than ever before. There remains, however, one significant blanket barrier to the franchise. 5.3 million American citizens are not allowed to vote because of a felony conviction. As many as 4 million of these people live, work and raise families in our communities, but because of a conviction in their past they are still denied the right to vote

Protecting America\u27s Elections from Foreign Tampering: Realizing the Benefits of Classifying Election Infrastructure as Critical Infrastructure under the United States Code

In just the past five years, the United States has suffered numerous hacks into important entities and institutions across the country by ill-intentioned actors. Private companies and government agencies alike have felt the negative impacts of security breaches by hackers infiltrating proprietary and protected systems. Even the United States political landscape has proven vulnerable to bad actors in the realm of cyber security. Furthermore, analysts have attributed some of the most recent highly publicized hacks to state-sponsored groups. As cyber security threats and opportunities for foreign hackers to infiltrate critical systems become more prevalent, it is natural to wonder where the next hack will occur, when it will happen, and whom it will affect. This comment concludes that the critical infrastructure classification for election infrastructure will help thwart potential state-sponsored threats to American election legitimacy

Better Ballots

Literacy tests to gain access to the polls were banned in the United States in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.99 But in November 2008, eight years after an election debacle of historic proportions, millions of voters across the United States will face a literacy test of a different sort after they've stepped into the voting booth. Their intended choices may be recorded only if they can understand instructions written at a high reading level, often using legal and election terminology. And they will only be counted if they successfully navigate ballot designs that are needlessly complicated, where candidates for the same offi ce may be listed on multiple columns or pages, or different contests are inconsistently formatted. As we have tried to demonstrate in this report, ballot design and instructions can have a huge impact on election results. We sampled some of the more "high profi le" ballot design disasters over the last several years; this is not a comprehensive analysis of the cost of poor ballot design on elections and votes counted. But, the examples illustrate how dramatically poor ballot design can affect vote totals -- particularly when a number of design fl aws appear on the same ballot. Not surprisingly, when these mistakes affected many ballots (by appearing on a signifi cant percentage of the ballots in large counties like Los Angeles or Palm Beach, or on most of the ballots in a particular state), tens of thousands -- and sometimes hundreds of thousands -- of votes in a single federal or statewide race have been lost. This does not even include the voters who may have been so confused by a ballot design that they cast their ballot for a candidate for whom they did not intend to vote (for obvious reasons, it is far more diffi cult to determine this than to know when a voter failed to successfully cast a vote at all). Better ballot design will make it far more likely that the preferred candidates of all voters will be declared winners of their contests. Palm Beach County 2000 should have been a wake-up call to legislators, election offi cials, and watchdog groups that ensuring good ballot design is a critical election administration issue that needs to be systematically addressed. Unfortunately, for the last eight years, it has continued to be largely ignored. The predictable result has disproportionately affected low-income and elderly voters, and thrown several important elections into turmoil. The good news is that there is still time before November 2008 to ensure that ballot design fl aws do not throw the results of another closely contested race into doubt, as has happened in several federal and state races in the last decade. And unlike changes to equipment (which, there is no question, could make systems more secure, accessible and usable), improving ballot design and instructions is possible for little or no cost, and a relatively small-scale investment of time

THE NIGERIAN WARS, REGIONAL CRISES AND ETHNIC DISTURBANCES:POLICY RESPONSES AND DEMOCRATIC IMPLICATIONS

Nigeria was incorporated in 1914 when Frederick Lugard (First Governor General) amalgamated the two British protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria and the Crown Colony of Lagos into a single entity. The primary reason for amalgamation was economic rather then political. It is therefore, a matter for great regret that this country (Nigeria) has sulfured as a result of the all-pervasive disunity that has characterized all government action since our accession to independence in 1960. This disunity has distorted, complicated and to a large extent stultified every development effort undertaken by government. This paper therefore argents that the much-celebrated Nigeria reform progress might be rhetoric or much ado about nothing. And that the âÃÂÃÂBB-, BB and BâÃÂàrating of the Nigerian economy might have been a baseless exercise. Consequently, the paper recommends the adoption of e-governance (development) as a therapy for a heterogeneous and divisible nation such as Nigerian (Ceteris Paribus).war; nigeria; biafra; ethnicity; trabalism; regionalcrises; disturbances; policy; democracy; governance-voting; elections; economy; corruption; coup; constitution; nigerdelta

The Nigerian Wars, Regional Crises and Ethnic Disturbances: Policy Responses and Democratic Implications

Nigeria was incorporated in 1914 when Frederick Lugard(First Governor-General) amalgamated the two British protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria and the Crown colony of Lagos into a single entity. The primary reason for almalgamation was economic rather than political. It is therefore, a matter for great regret that this country(Nigeria)has suffered as a result of the all pervasive disunity that has characterised all government action since our accession to independence in 1960. This disunity has distorted, complicated and to a large extent stultified every developmental effort undertaken by government. This paper therefore argues that the much celebrated Nigerian reform progress might be a rhetorics or much ado about nothing. And that the 'BB-, BB AND B'rating of the Nigerian economy might have been a baseless exercise. Consequently, the paper recommends the adoption of e-governance(development as a therapy for a heterogenous and divisible nation such as Nigeria(ceteris paribus).war; nigeria; biafra; ethnicity; trabalism; regional; crises; disturbances; policy; democracy; governance; e-voting; elections; economy; corruption; coup; constitution; niger delta

The Role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the 2015 Presidential Election of Nigeria

The use of ICT in elections has been attracting a lot of interests in the country and has been a subject for discussion in various media during the past years after elections. The paper based method of voting during elections in Nigeria comes with a lot of problems such as delay in voting, multiple voting, result manipulations, invalid votes and delay in declaring results. This paper investigated the feasibility of ICT implementation in Nigeria by assessing the role played by ICT in the 2015 elections. It relied on documentary method for the generation of data. Using the diffusion of innovation theory, the research concluded that ICT has reinforced the legitimacy of Nigerians in the democratic process as majority after the elections believed that their votes counted  and as such  their  will could be respected in future elections. Thus, it is recommended that the innovation of ICT shouldn’t only be welcomed but also incorporated into the Nigeria’s electoral system as a lasting solution to electoral fraud. The Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended) should be amended to include the use of the card reader for biometric verification of voters for the purpose of accreditation in future elections. Keywords: E-participation, ICT, Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT), Nigeria, 2015 Presidential elections