Supreme Court case: Should you be able to vote without a photo ID?
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Arguments over Indiana's voter-identification law, the most stringent in the US, will be heard Wednesday.
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Blog: A sweeping new proposal scheduled for a preliminary vote Wednesday contains criminal penalties for unauthorized sales and fraudulent uses of Social Security numbers, but are there too many exceptions?
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The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether voter identification laws unfairly deter the poor and minorities from voting, stepping into a contentious partisan issue in advance of the 2008 elections.
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Opponents of controversial law win vote in the Senate on Wednesday to restrict uses of the forthcoming digital ID cards, signaling the political winds may have shifted.
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Straight answers not compulsory either For the third time in four days, Gordon Brown has sown doubts about the future of compulsory ID cards for UK citizens. Speaking at prime minister's question time today, Brown confirmed that it was "policy" for ID cards to become compulsory, but added the rider that this was subject to a vote in parliament.â¦
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The U.K. government sees a national identity card now making its way through Parliament as a way to fight terrorism, but opponents see it as an expensive waste of time. By Wendy M. Grossman.
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First of its kind ... but not the last A bid by the US government to force a child porn suspect to surrender his encryption password has sparked fierce debate about whether the move violates constitutional protections against self-incrimination.â¦
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A federal judge ruled on Monday that Florida&#39;s elections division did not need to create a paper trail for the controversial touchscreen voting systems that will be used
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has recommended that the U.S. government require touch-screen electronic voting machines to include independent audit technology, such as printouts. "The lack of an independent audit capability in systems is one of the main reasons behind continued questions about voting system security and diminished public confidence in elections," says a NIST paper released this month. "In practical terms the software-dependent approach cannot be made secure or highly reliable." The Technical Guidelines Development Committee of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) is scheduled to review the NIST's recommendation that direct record electronic (DRE) machines include voter-verified paper trails or other auditing mechanisms at a meeting Monday and Tuesday. DREs do not assure that voting records are accurate, and 15 states using the e-voting machines do not use independent audit mechanisms statewide, the NIST paper says. "Trust in an election outcome relies heavily upon trusting the correctness of the DRE's software and upon trusting that the DRE software has not been replaced or tampered with," the paper says. "Simply put, the DRE architecture's inability to provide for independent audits of its electronic records makes it a poor choice for an environment in which detecting errors and fraud is important." A spokesman for the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), representing e-voting machine vendors, didn't immediately return a message seeking comment on the NIST recommendations. The ITAA has argued that paper trail ballots may simply print out the same results stored on the DREs. Paper trail systems can be costly to add on to DREs, and printer breakdowns can cause problems during elections, the ITAA has said. One e-voting critic praised the report. "That's really good news," said Barbara Burt, director of the election reform program at Common Cause, one of several groups calling for e-voting paper trails. "It looks like it's going to help us finally get rid of the paperless DREs." NIST's recommendations come after scattered reports of problems with DREs in the Nov. 7 U.S. elections. In Florida's 13th congressional district, Democratic candidate Christine Jennings has filed a lawsuit asking for a revote after 18,000 voters failed to cast a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives race. Two recounts found Republican Vern Buchanan the winner of the race, but Sarasota County did not require the Elections System and Software (ES&S) e-voting machines to include paper printouts to back up the electronic vote. While e-voting supporters say the machines make it hard to undervote, Sarasota County voters cast about 16,000 more votes in the Florida governor's race and in the Florida Senate race than were recorded in the House race. About 4,000 more people cast ballots for the county's Southern District Hospital Board than were recorded in the House race. Thirty-five states either mandate voter-verified paper-trail systems or use them statewide without a mandate, according to the NIST report. But 10 states use paper-trail ballots on a county-by-county basis, and five states, including Maryland, Georgia and Louisiana, use DREs statewide without paper- trail ballots. The NIST paper published this month recommends states use "software-independent" voting systems, using either paper-trail ballots or cryptographic audit systems instead of relying on the "correctness of the software" for election results. The paper suggests that the EAC require audit mechanisms in e-voting machines, and recommends that federal election officials stop certifying e-voting machines without independent audit systems after 2009 or 2010.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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The Supreme Court agreed today to consider whether voter-identification laws unfairly keep poor people and minority groups from going to the polls.
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Will they be checking for out-of-state IDs at the caucuses?
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Hard to keep up with the voting rights section of the Justice Department's civil rights division. Division chief John Tanner recently made some news with a fascinating analysis of how photo IDs for voters actually help minorities.
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WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court turned away a challenge Monday to the federal do-not-call registry, ending telemarketers' bid to invoke free-speech arguments to get the popular ban on unwanted phone solicitations thrown out.    The court, without comment, let stand a 10th U.S...
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote as early as Thursday on a bill that would require a paper record for electronic voting machines. Representative Rush Holt's Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, which has 216 cosponsors in the 435-member House, would require that all e-voting machines used in the November 2008 U.S. elections be accompanied by a voter-verified paper ballot. E-voting critics have been calling for paper-trail ballots for several years, arguing there's no way to audit e-voting machines without them. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat, said on his Web site that he's pleased the House is set to move forward with the legislation. His bill would require random audits of voting results in 3 percent of all U.S. precincts, and it would prohibit e-voting machines that include wireless or Internet connections. While groups like Common Cause and VerifiedVoting.org have called for paper trails, groups like the National Federation of the Blind have resisted efforts to slow the adoption of e-voting machines, saying e-voting allows blind people to vote without assistance for the first time. The Holt bill faces several obstacles to becoming law, said Matt Zimmerman, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which supports the bill. "It is not at all clear whether the bill will pass or, even if it does, whether a substantively similar companion bill will then pass the Senate," Zimmerman wrote on the EFF blog. "Like it or not, with election officials arguing that they're running out of time to implement wholesale changes, this likely amounts to Congress's only attempt to make any serious improvements to the nation's election procedures ahead of the 2008 presidential election." Common Cause sent an alert to members Wednesday morning, urging them to contact lawmakers in support of the bill, said Mary Boyle, a Common Cause spokeswoman. "This is the last chance for Congress to ensure that ballots are backed by paper records in the critical 2008 presidential election," she said.
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A California judge says Diebold Election Systems broke the law when it threatened students for posting internal company memos on the web. Advocates say this is a precedent-setting victory for free speech on the web, and a warning to litigious companies. By Kim Zetter.
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The Supreme Court appeared ready Wednesday to uphold the nation's strictest requirement that voters show photo identification before casting a ballot.
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Personal identity has taken on a new  meaning in the digital age, where basic facts like your name,  address or age are far less important to some people than the  collected records of what you were looking at online.