CALIFORNIA Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signs AB 1887, which bars state agencies from requiring employees to travel to states that have laws which allow discrimination based on sexual identity or gender. The measure is aimed at barring travel to NORTH CAROLINA, which adopted a measure this year (HB 2) that critics contend institutionalizes discrimination against LGBTQ people (SACRAMENTO BEE).
Gov. Brown also signs AB 1732, which requires all single occupancy CALIFORNIA bathrooms statewide to be gender-neutral (LEXISNEXIS STATE NET).
CALIFORNIA Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signs AB 797, which exempts citizens from criminal or civil liability for breaking the window of a vehicle to rescue an animal left in hot or freezing conditions (CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR’S OFFICE).
Also in CALIFORNIA, Gov. Brown signs AB 1785, which expands the Golden State’s prohibitions on drivers using cell phones while behind the wheel to include a prohibition on “holding and operating” those devices for any reason. Violators face fines ranging from $20 to $50 per violation (SACRAMENTO BEE).
Staying in CALIFORNIA, Brown signs SB 807, which removes civil liability from emergency response personnel who damage or disable a drone aircraft while performing in an emergency situation (CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR’S OFFICE).
NEW YORK Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signs SB 2582, which allows Empire State residents to be buried alongside their cremated pets in non-profit cemeteries. The law, which exempts cemeteries owned and operated by religious groups, requires non-profit cemeteries to place all payments for the pet interment in its permanent maintenance fund and provide customers with a list of charges pertaining to the burial of the pet (LIVINGSTON COUNTY NEWS).
-- Compiled by RICH EHISEN
The fastest way to a man’s heart, we’re told, is through his stomach. The same can often be said of lawmakers, so with the session winding down to its last hours and her bill to ensure employees stuck with working on Thanksgiving are paid double time going nowhere, you can’t blame California Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez for at least giving it a try. As the Sacramento Bee reports, 55 of the 80 lawmakers arriving for the last session of the year were greeted with pumpkin pies. Alas, the catering company she hired to make the sweet treats didn’t have the means to make that many pies so not everyone got one. We doubt that had anything to do with the bill not making it off the floor, but then again...
One bill that did end up garnering Gov. Jerry Brown’s autograph will soon have folks popping a cork on their favorite vino. Not necessarily to celebrate, mind you. As the Davis Enterprise reports, Brown signed a bill that allows the University of California Davis department of viticulture and enology to sell the wine produced by its students. The sales will come via a newly-created non-profit, with all proceeds going back to the department. Given the UCD program is one of the finest in the nation, this seems like something long overdue. It also begs the question: what were they doing with it before this law came along. That’s right...they poured it out! I would write more but I can’t see through the tears.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s dancing days are over. Yes, as the Houston Press reports, Perry last week became the second dancer this season to be voted off the ABC reality dancing show “Dancing With The Stars.” Alas, his demise came at the hands of 90s hip-hop goofball Vanilla Ice, who shared the bottom rung with Perry. But while that had to hurt less than the results of his last presidential run, Perry didn’t seem overly despondent. Perry acknowledged coming into the competition that he was not much of a dancer, but that he wanted to do the show to highlight his efforts to support military veterans. He also noted his intention to use what he learned to dominate the dance floor at this daughter’s impending wedding. Nice.
When Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) recently claimed that “90-plus percent” of those arrested for dealing illegal drugs in the Pine Tree State are black or Hispanic, it sparked a wave of requests from media and others who wanted to see the data to support his claim. The governor finally released that information last week, but the binder full of photos and arrest information did nothing to bolster his position. In fact, it showed that blacks and Hispanics account for only about 40 percent of those arrested on drug dealing charges, while the remaining 60 percent appear to be white. Gov. LePage’s office has now qualified his original claim, saying he was speaking only of heroin and other opioid dealers who come in from other states. Okay, but even that clarification only bumps the percentage a small amount, as only 24 of the 51 individuals facing opioid charges – about 47 percent – appeared to be people of color. Might be time to check what...uh, substances...the governor is on.
-- By RICH EHISEN
This post was guest written by Brandon Teeple, a junior at Wright State University.
What topics do you care about? Is it ever-increasing national budget? Or is it, perhaps, protecting gun rights? Each generation has a particular set of issues that are important to them, based on what stage of life they are in. For example, for the Baby Boomers (people born between 1946 and 1964) are greatly impacted by the current and future state of Social Security. But what about the millennials?
The Millennial generation is made up of those who are born somewhere between the early 1980s and early 2000s, aging somewhere between 19-36 in 2016. They are also now the world’s largest generation, accounting for 75.4 million people, or approximately 34% of the U.S. population.
According to a Pew Research Study, Millennials take a more liberal stance on social issues such as the legalization of marijuana, same-sex marriage, and immigration reform. As of 2014, 68% of Millennials support same-sex marriage, compared to 55% of Generation X and 48% of Baby Boomers. Even those Millennials who identify as Republican, either support or have no opinion on same-sex marriage. According to interviews of young Republicans conducted by Generation Progress, it’s a “no brainer,” citing the hesitancy to “infringe on any American Citizen’s God-given right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.”
Much like Social Security for Baby Boomers, the millennials face a financial concern: debilitating student debt. According to a study by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Millennials typically incur a student debt of $30,000--nearly double that of the previous generation. This “debt sentence” for the 70% of students who take on student loans may have a long-term effects, as these students are putting off key milestones in life, such as getting married, having children, and saving for retirement. The trouble doesn’t stop there. In 2014, the unemployment rate for 16-24 year old’s was at 13.6%, more than doubling the U.S. unemployment rate (6.2%) at that time. Even this is an improvement when compared to the 2010 rate, where the rate was at an all-time high at 19.6%. With the debt woes of Millennials, it is no surprise that a poll conducted by Public Policy Polling discovered that Millennials are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports student loan refinancing and even free education.
But how much are this year’s candidates talking student debt and other important issues for Millennials?
Above depicts the percentage breakout of “Hot Topics” both Presidential Candidates have discussed since July. These articles monitored include topics such as abortion, gun control, marijuana and other social issues. The biggest topics that have been discussed over the past 30+ days are clear: taxes, immigration, and racial issues. With the recent developments in Charlotte, North Carolina, racial issues certainly are on everyone’s minds represented by the gray sections, and make up approximately 13% of the topics discussed by the candidates since July. Compare that to taxes, which make up more than 35% of all topics discussed. It should be noted, however, that the number of news stories for taxes is inflated due to the focus on Republican Party nominee Donald Trump’s tax returns being discussed and scrutinized since the first Presidential Debate on September 26th.
But again, what about the topics that resonate most with millennials, such as the legalization of marijuana, same-sex marriage and student loans? These topics combined make up less than 10% of the topics discussed. Does this mean the candidates don’t care about these issues? Have they decided to disregard these topics because the generation most likely to vote for them, the Millennials, have terrible voter turnout? While no one can say with absolute certainty “yes” or “no,” this is likely not the case. Instead, this might be case of candidates needing to discuss topics that have come up and taken the nation’s interest, such as the racial issues and gun control. Look for the candidates to focus more on less polarizing and more moderate topics now that they have secured their party’s nominations in an attempt to entice the undecided millennial voters.
The information discussed in this post is derived from sources and graphics acquired via LexisNexis Newsdesk and Academic.
Earlier this year, CMO.com reported that “89% of companies expect to be competing primarily on customer experience.” One way that companies can tap into customer expectations is through voice-of-the-customer programs. If you’re a customer of LexisNexis®, you’ve probably been on the receiving end of a VoC survey—and we want you to know that your opinion makes a real difference. How much of a difference? A recent Jinfo review offers a recap of customer-driven enhancements made to Nexis® in recent months.
If you aren’t familiar with Jinfo, here’s a quick introduction. Jinfo focuses on the use of information expertise to address business challenges. In addition to offering consulting and bespoke research projects, JInfo conducts independent research around the components of an effective information strategy—namely sources, technology and value. It is in this capacity as an impartial researcher that Jinfo test-drove the latest enhancements to Nexis. Now, take a look at some of the highlights from the review.
While Nexis supports users with advanced research expertise, input from customers led to some enhancements that make the tool more intuitive and simple to use. This is a critical differentiator for some users, especially Millennials entering the workforce. After all, as digital natives, these researchers grew up googling any question for which they required an answer. As a result, they expect an equally user-friendly experience from professional news and business research tools—and, according to Jinfo, the enhanced Nexis interface delivers. The review breaks down the advantages as follows:
In addition, the Jinfo review highlights added convenience of a research dashboard that provides a comprehensive view your alerts, saved searches, recently run searches and recently viewed documents.
If you’re already a Nexis user, keep providing your VoC feedback—because we’re listening and evolving to meet your needs. And if you aren’t—isn’t it time you checked Nexis out?
Financial services, energy, construction, pharmaceutical and biomedicine—these highly-regulated industries must undertake robust due diligence and risk monitoring. Did you just breathe a sigh of relief because the company you represent doesn’t fall into the highly-regulated bucket? Think again. Globalization means that companies of all sizes and across a wide range of industries need to develop the appropriate due diligence procedures to mitigate strategic, financial, reputational—and, yes, even regulatory—risk.
Globalization isn’t new, of course. It has, however, increased significantly in recent decades. The accelerated pace of globalization boils down to several factors.
As a result of these and other advances, your company does not have to be a multinational giant to feel the impact of globalization. As we saw during the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the U.S., for example, the global nature of the financial system meant that major banks in other countries felt the impact. You need to stay alert to potential risk now, more than ever, because it can come from places you might not expect.
A highly-regulated industry like banking conducts due diligence as a result of ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) regulations designed to detect and protect against money laundering. But in today’s fluid, global business landscape, your customers represent only a fraction of the entities and individuals you need to know. And anti-money laundering (AML) compliance is just the tip of the iceberg too. Let’s take a look at why globalization has increased different types of risk you face.
So, you aren’t in a highly-regulated industry. But as you can see from above, regulatory risk appears in each of the areas above—and it isn’t limited to only certain companies. If you want to grow your business, you must navigate a complex tangle of international compliance requirements covering bribery, corruption, modern slavery and more. And as the examples above show, simple third-party screening falls short in providing the type of supply chain transparency needed in a global business landscape. Is your due diligence process ready?
Like it or not, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Periscope and Snapchat have become an indispensable part of political campaigns and the vast majority of lawmakers’ offices. And with numerous studies showing the overwhelming connection between social media use and civic engagement, that is not likely to change any time soon.
Social media is in fact now so ubiquitous it seems almost impossible to fathom that Facebook has only been around for general public use since 2006. Or that it was only 2008 when then-candidate Barack Obama changed the game entirely by effectively using the likes of Facebook and Twitter – along with other then-new toys like text messaging - to directly reach that most elusive of political big game, Millennial voters. According to Pew Research, 25 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 were personally contacted by someone from the Obama campaign, compared to just 13 percent by someone from that of GOP candidate John McCain. That connection paid major dividends: 53 percent of all eligible voters under age 30 in 2008 voted, the highest total since 1972. Of those, an astounding 66 percent went with Obama, helping to propel him to the White House. It was also the gift that kept on giving, as young voters propelled him to re-election in 2012 amidst an otherwise disastrous year for Democrats in Congress and numerous statehouses.
It’s not surprising then that Obama has been dubbed our first “social media president.” It should also not be surprising that his overwhelming success prompted others to jump on the bandwagon. These days, just about every elected official has a presence on multiple social media sites: of the 7,940 legislator profiles in the LexisNexis State Net legislative tracking database, over 3,800 include links to the legislators’ social media sites, with more being added all the time. And as the National Conference of State Legislatures notes, virtually every government agency has a presence on social media, as do legislative bodies and caucuses or committees in 49 states – all but Mississippi.
For folks like Rhys Williams, chief of staff for California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), one of the most vocal advocates for using technology to make government more efficient and responsive to the citizenry, that is definitely a good thing.
“Social media has completely democratized communication between citizens and their government. Done correctly, it can definitely help people become more aware and engaged,” he says.
Sometimes that engagement takes a more circuitous route. Nancy Kincaid, Press Secretary for California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones (D), says social media was not initially an effective tool for her agency to reach the general public.
“We’re not a ‘top-of-mind’ agency,” she says. “I don’t think many people wake up itching to get on the Department of Insurance Facebook page.”
But that changed when they started posting arrest and booking photos and related information to their Flickr site. That material was soon being picked up and forwarded on social media by the audiences Kincaid says they really wanted most of all: law enforcement, the insurance industry and the media.
“We went from zero engagement to engagement in the millions within a year,” she says. “We knew if we could connect with those people first, then we could then better engage with the public.”
But that gets back to “done correctly.” There are as many ways to get it wrong as there are to get it right, and the social media landscape is littered with the carcasses of political animals victimized by their own unfortunate behavior. Most are simply harmless gaffes made worse by the relentlessly negative and snarky nature of the Internet, such as a recent campaign by the California GOP that featured a character with the same name as an internationally known male burlesque performer. Others are much worse, from the shockingly lewd shenanigans of former Democratic Congressman and New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner to a New Jersey local government candidate who took to Facebook to tell a reporter he wished she would be sexually assaulted. And because the Internet is nothing if not eternal, those actions – awful or just inept - will probably live forever.
Consultants like Kevin Eckery, a former senior aide to California Gov. Pete Wilson (R), says the biggest mistakes most campaigns and elected officials make are far more mundane, such as using the wrong platform to reach their desired audience.
“So much depends on knowing what platforms you use,” he says. “For example, I would not use Twitter if was trying to reach Millennials. I would use Snapchat or [the non-social media music site] Pandora.”
Speaking of Millennials, no group in society today expects more that their social media interactions will be a two-way channel. That can be problematic for those who, as Williams says, start out interacting well enough with their audiences but then become “less human, more formulaic” after a successful campaign is over. There is also a tendency, he says, “to worry more about the number of followers someone has than with using the medium for effective engagement.”
Eckery calls that “the echo chamber mentality,” noting that effective political social media users understand that most people won’t have immersed themselves in the same New York Times or Wall Street Journal or think tank white papers that they have.
“They need to grasp that most people likely don’t know what they know, and they don’t want to be lectured to,” he says. “They really need to listen as much as they talk.”
Kincaid says understanding social media’s reach is also critical. She was with another, occasionally controversial state agency when social media first took off. The powers that be were anxious to utilize the fun new tool at every turn, and as such wanted to regularly post the whereabouts of the agency director. But Kincaid, who had previously dealt with a stalker in her personal life, advised against it, saying that doing so could place him in harm’s way. The agency followed her advice.
That fear is understandable. Every social media site suffers from the infection of trolls – those users who appear to be there primarily to insult, threaten or just argue with others with whom they disagree. Usually acting under the veil of anonymity, trolls can turn even the most benign social media post into an awful experience. These days many of the worst social media trolls are not even humans, but “bots,” automated software applications designed to post inflammatory comments or to spread racist or other hateful thoughts and language.
Even without trolls, social media is often the place people go to find like-minded people to the exclusion of those with differing political views. In that way, experts say, we are creating our own echo chambers.
All of which brings us to the 2016 presidential campaigns, easily the most malicious and vitriolic in recent memory. Both major party candidates – Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump – have a significant presence on social media, particularly Twitter. Trump has received much criticism for what many observers consider to be boorish online behavior, though supporters of both candidates have unquestionably driven the level of discourse there to the far depths. While many fear this could well be the new normal, others hold out hope it is not.
Tim Rosales, a vice president with the Wayne Johnson agency in Sacramento and a veteran of almost two decades of political campaigns waged all over the country, says there have always been candidates who tend toward outrageous “off the cuff” statements, regardless of the platform. The power of social media, he says, is that “it allows them to magnify the power of their bullhorn.”
Rosales hopes such behavior doesn’t become the rule, noting that most elected officials and political participants still behave themselves in those settings. Many lawmakers also are well versed enough in social media platforms to use them effectively to interact with their constituents.
Which is a good thing, given that social media isn’t going anywhere any time soon. And even if it does, the need to communicate with voters and constituents will not.
“The bottom line is that the old rules really haven’t changed,” says Eckery. “You still need to have a message. You still need to know what you’re trying to say and how you want to say it.”
As of 2010, the state with the highest Facebook penetration rate - and conceivably one of the most social media-friendly populations, given Facebook’s status then and now as the nation’s most popular social networking site - was Washington, with 57.7 percent of its estimated 6,734,229 inhabitants users of the social networking service, according to the website Internet World Stats. The state with the lowest penetration rate at the time (24.2 percent of a population of 894,424) was Delaware.
Source: Internet World Stats
The North Carolina Education Lottery took in a record $2.4 billion last year. But it’s not the state’s only big lottery winner. According to lottery records Ricky Vanzant of Lexington purchased 46 winning scratch-off tickets between 2008 and 2015, claiming a total of $56,000 in prizes. Betty Manning of High Point had 17 scratch-off ticket wins last year, 21 in 2014, and has averaged roughly one big win per month over the last five years. And Ralph Havis of Greensboro won a $150,000 scratch-off prize in 2014, another $150,000 prize this past April, and a $1 million prize in May.
“When I scratched the ticket, I thought, ‘Good God almighty, I won again,’” he told lottery officials. “No one’s going to believe it.”
Just as unbelievable is that the $1.3 million in jackpots weren’t Havis’ only lottery wins; he’s cashed in 55 winning tickets since 2008. And an analysis of 189,000 lottery prize claims in the state since 2006 by The Charlotte Observer revealed that more than 300 people have claimed 12 or more scratch-off wins of at least $600 - the minimum payout the Internal Revenue Service requires lotteries to report – that together total over $35 million.
Alice Garland, the North Carolina Education Lottery’s executive director, attributes all the wins to good fortune.
“I’ve just decided there are lucky people in this world,” she said.
But Ron Wasserstein, executive director of the American Statistical Association, said, “You have to ask yourself, ‘How is this happening?’”
“It doesn’t pass the smell test,” he said.
Statisticians say the odds of winning just one $1,000 prize in a scratch-off game are greater than 1 in 1,500. One particular four-month stretch of Manning’s winning streak involved odds of 1 in 5,000, 1 in 40,000, 1 in 70,000 and 1 in 120,000, while the odds for Havis’ big wins ranged from 1 in 816,000 to 1 in 1.5 million, the Observer reported. And the odds of Havis winning as often as he has?
“Less than 1 in 1 trillion, trillion, trillion,” said George Rooney, a graduate student in statistics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
He said that for one person to have a 1 percent chance of winning the lottery as often as Havis, everyone in the country would have to play about seven times a day for years. To win as often as Manning, it would take every American playing 11 times a day.
Jan Hannig, a statistics professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, expressed the odds a little differently, calculating that to win so many times, Havis - even excluding his big recent jackpots - would have had to spend at least $716,000; Vanzant would have had to spend $806,000; and Manning would have had to spend $756,000.
“As a statistician, you can’t tell if the lady cheated or not,” he said. “Maybe she’s wasting an inheritance. That’s a lot of money.”
The more likely explanation, according to Dawn Nettles, who’s been a watchdog of the Texas lottery for over two decades, is that people are deceiving lottery officials in North Carolina.
“They’re not that lucky in the lottery,” she said. “She [Garland] knows it. And I know it.”
One possibility is that North Carolina lottery winners are selling their tickets to others for less than the prize amount in order to avoid having to forfeit even more money to the state for such things as back taxes or unpaid child support. So-called “ticket discounting” is illegal in some states but not in North Carolina, where only store owners or employees are barred from buying or selling discounted tickets.
“North Carolina does seem to make it easy for people to do the wrong thing, especially if there is no enforcement against it,” said Philip Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
But Garland defends her state’s security measures, which include investigating repeat winners.
“I feel strongly that we have one of the most stringent security procedures of any lottery in the country,” she said.
Changes to the state’s lottery could be coming, however. North Carolina House Speaker Pro Tem Paul Stam (R), a long-time lottery opponent, said he wasn’t aware of the ticket reselling issue until the Observer brought it to his attention but supported the idea of banning the practice. And Rep. Jason Saine (R), who co-chairs the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on the North Carolina State Lottery, likewise, said the committee needed to look into ways of preventing ticket reselling.
“Shirking [tax or child support] responsibilities, whether you are the retailer or the player or whomever, we really can’t have that,” he said. (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER)
For the last three decades, Washington has allowed Oregonians to spend their money in the state without paying its 8.89 percent combined state and local sales tax rate, the fifth-highest in the nation. But an initiative on Washington’s November ballot could end that courtesy.
Washington’s Initiative 1464 would create a publicly financed election system in the state and fund it by eliminating the sales tax exemption on purchases of common retail goods for residents of states without a sales tax, including Alaska, Delaware, New Hampshire and Montana as well as Oregon. Major purchases, such as boats and cars, would still qualify for that exemption.
Washington lawmakers have been eyeing the exemption in recent years because the two states’ proximity and starkly differing tax structures -- with Oregon imposing a high personal income tax but no sales tax, and Washington relying on a high sales tax but no income tax -- has encouraged Washingtonians to nip over the border and purchase goods in Oregon and Idaho, which also has lower sales taxes, costing Washington an estimated $247 million in tax revenue in 2013-14.
“It’s an odd exemption,” said I-1464’s campaign manager, Peter McCollum. “Washington’s tax code needs to be updated, and this is going to help clean up politics in Washington.” (BEND BULLETIN)
A task force appointed by Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) in June to review the state’s revenue forecasting process has recommended ending the practice of issuing monthly reports comparing revenue estimates with actual collections. The task force proposed issuing reports comparing collections only with prior-year results instead.
The recommendation came just one day after the state’s Department of Revenue reported that tax collections were short of projections for the fifth month in a row, for the 10th time in the last 12 months and, actually, for a majority of the months since 2013, when sweeping tax cuts passed by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature and signed into law by Brownback took effect. The proposal also follows the news the Cap J reported last week that Brownback’s economic advisory council is no longer compiling the quarterly review of economic markers handpicked by the administration as an accountability check for its economic policies.
Still, Sam Williams, the retired Wichita businessman who led the revenue forecasting task force, insisted the recommendation was “not just a response to the environment that we’re in.”
“Our responsibility was to get above the environment we’re in and say, ‘What would be best practices?’”
Sen. Tom Holland (D), the ranking minority party member on the Kansas Senate Committee on Assessment and Taxation, however, was baffled by the task force’s suggestion.
“For the life of me, I cannot figure out why we would take away from policymakers information they need to make state policy,” he said. “It sounds to me like someone who doesn’t want to be held accountable for past policy decisions.”
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley (D) drew a sports analogy.
“Changing the estimating process is like moving the goal post instead of replacing the kicker who can’t make the goal,” he said, adding: “Despite what Sam Brownback believes, the problem is not the estimating process. The problem is his reckless tax experiment.”
The reporting change isn’t a certainty yet; it still has to be approved by the Legislature’s nonpartisan research staff. (LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD, LEXISNEXIS STATE NET)
NEVADA Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) has called a special session to consider increasing room taxes in Clark County to finance $750 million of a proposed $1.9 billion, 65,000-seat stadium in Las Vegas - the potential new home of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders and UNLV football teams - as well as an expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center. (LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, LEXISNEXIS STATE NET)
A report released last month by NEW MEXICO state Auditor Tim Keller indicated that the state failed to collect $193 million in premium taxes from health insurance companies between April 2010 and April 2015. The news comes as the state faces a $589 million budget shortfall for the current and recently-ended fiscal years. (ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL)
-- Compiled by KOREY CLARK
As the Cap J reported last week President Obama’s homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco said last month that it would be difficult for hackers to actually change the outcome of a national election because U.S. election systems generally aren’t connected to the Internet and vary from state to state. But Computerworld reported this month that voters in 10 states, including swing state Pennsylvania, will use voting machines without paper backups that could be susceptible to malware attacks that erase votes or assign them to other candidates and make it impossible to determine how the votes were actually cast. So even if vote tallies raised suspicions and hacking was proven by comparing a voting machine’s firmware with that supplied by the machine’s vendor, there isn’t anything that could be done about it. Daniel Lopresti, a professor and chair of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, said, “it’s like you burned all the ballots.”
“We have no way to confirm that we can really trust the output from the machine,” he said.
Computerworld also noted that an attack that caused a backup at a polling place and sent some voters home, reducing turnout, might “be as effective as voting-machine tampering in affecting the outcome” and “also undermine confidence in the results.” (COMPUTERWORLD)
A federal judge has ordered the state of Wisconsin to investigate reports that employees of the Department of Motor Vehicles have been misleading people trying to obtain state-issued identification to vote. U.S. Western District Judge James Peterson issued that order after news reports surfaced about an African-American man named Zack Moore being told that he needed a birth certificate to obtain a voter ID quickly or would have to wait six to eight weeks to obtain one by initiating a petition process for those who can’t easily obtain ID, statements that contradicted an earlier order by the same judge.
“These reports, if true, demonstrate that the state is not in compliance with this court’s injunction order, which requires the state to ‘promptly issue a credential valid as a voting ID to any person who enters the [ID Petition Process] or who has a petition pending,’” Judge Peterson wrote in his order.
Molly McGrath, Wisconsin’s national organizer for VoteRiders, the non-profit voter-education group that released the audio recording, praised the judge’s order but also expressed concern that there are other voters out there receiving the same misinformation as Moore.
“Because this happened to one voter, it leaves me concerned about what [is] happening at DMVs across the state when they don’t have somebody by their side,” she said. “This means that there’s voters across the state who could be falling through the cracks and that is incredibly alarming to me.” (WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO, NATION [NEW YORK CITY], VOTERIDERS.ORG)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit has upheld an order blocking KANSAS Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) from requiring voters to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote at Department of Motor Vehicles offices in the state. The court said the National Voting Rights Act preempted Kansas’ proof-of-citizenship requirement. (WICHITA EAGLE)
A judicial court in ALABAMA has suspended state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore for the remainder of his term for defying the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage. Moore was also removed from the bench in 2003 for disobeying a federal order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state’s judicial building. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
The OHIO Supreme Court is considering rule changes that would allow members of the public to petition for the release of secret grand jury proceedings in cases where the grand jury doesn’t return an indictment. The proposed rule changes will be open for public comment through Oct. 26. (CLEVELAND.COM)
California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) recently finished addressing the last of the 1,059 bills lawmakers sent to him this year. Brown vetoed 159 of those measures, roughly 15 percent, a figure almost double the 8 percent overall figure he has accumulated during his 14 years in the governor’s office. It also marked a significant increase over his most agreeable year – 1982 – in which he rejected a scant 1.79 percent of the 1,674 bills that made it to his desk.
Many of the bills Brown vetoed this year would have driven up state spending, something he has been very vocal about not doing. Brown has said many of those measures are good ideas on the surface, but simply cost too much to fit into the state’s long-term budget restrictions.
Some of the more notable bills that Brown signed include SB 32, which extends and expands the state’s effort to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; SB 1234, which will make California the latest state to create a state-sponsored 401k-style savings plan for workers without access to a pre-tax retirement savings plan through their employer; AB 1066, which phases in a 40-hour work week for farmworkers and ensures they receive overtime pay for working more than eight hours a day; AB 2888, which changes a provision in state law that treated sexual assault as a less severe crime if the victim was unconscious; and SB 813, which eliminates the statute of limitations for the criminal prosecution of rape and sexual assault.
Significant vetoes include SB 654, which would have required employers to offer employees up to six weeks of paid maternity or paternity leave; a series of seven bills that would have collectively repealed taxes on items like tampons and diapers; AB 2826, which would have required that school districts evaluate educators based on multiple measures of student academic growth and performance, including state test scores; and AB 709, a bill that would have required that charter schools comply with the same state laws governing open meetings, open records and conflict of interest laws that traditional public schools do. (SACRAMENTO BEE, LEXISNEXIS STATE NET, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, LOS ANGELES TIMES)
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) announced he is creating a seven-member advisory council on gambling to try to resolve ongoing disagreements with lawmakers over electronic bingo and other issues. The governor said the Alabama Advisory Council on Gaming will review state and local gambling laws as well as those in other states, with the goal of issuing recommendations to him and lawmakers for consideration during the 2017 legislative session. Bentley said he hopes the council will give legislative leaders “a fresh perspective” after a rancorous summer that saw ongoing disputes in the legislature over Heart of Dixie bingo casinos and the rejection of his proposal to create a state lottery. (TUSCALOOSA NEWS, BIRMINGHAM NEWS)
Saying that schools spend too much money on superintendents, MAINE Gov. Paul LePage (R) said on his weekly radio show that he will push to have Pine Tree State school districts consolidate administrations in the two-year state budget he will propose to the Legislature in early 2017. (PORTLAND PRESS HERALD, MAINE SUN JOURNAL)
LOUISIANA Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) has filed suit against Attorney General Jeff Landry (R), accusing him of blocking state legal contracts over language meant to protect the LGBTQ community. Landry has rejected at least three dozen state contracts for a variety of state government agencies because they include language preventing discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. (TIMES-PICAYUNE [NEW ORLEANS])
A federal judge rules that federal laws do not pre-empt MINNESOTA’s law that diesel sold at the pump contain at least 10 percent biofuel. U.S. District Judge John Tunheim rejected a suit from trucking, automotive and oil industry groups, concluding that if the federal government thought the Gopher State law violated federal law they would have filed suit themselves (MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE).
CALIFORNIA Gov. Jerry Brown (D) vetoes SB 654, which would have required employers to provide workers with up to six weeks of maternity or paternity leave (CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR’S OFFICE).
The NEW MEXICO House approves HB 5, which would double the number of crimes covered under the state’s three strikes law. It is now in the Senate (SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN).
NEW JERSEY Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino issues a directive that will require Garden State police officers to take continuing-education courses aimed at reducing deadly confrontations with African-Americans and other minority group members. The directive acts on legislation (AB 1663) signed into law by Gov. Chris Christie (R) in August (BERGEN RECORD).
The U.S. Supreme Court declines to rehear a challenge to a proposal from President Barack Obama that would have protected approximately 4 million unauthorized immigrants from being deported. The Court earlier this year deadlocked 4-4 on their initial review, leaving a lower court’s ruling blocking the law intact (U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT).
A federal court rules that INDIANA Gov. Mike Pence (R) does not have the authority to block the relocation of Syrian refugees in the Hoosier State. A three-judge federal panel said Pence’s directive to block money from going toward those resettlements constituted “discrimination” (WASHINGTON POST).
The OKLAHOMA Supreme Court rules that a 2015 law (SB 642) that would have made it a felony for someone to help a minor obtain an abortion without parental consent is unconstitutional. The court ruled that the law, which would have also created new protocols for statutory rape investigations and required abortion providers to preserve fetal tissue when an abortion was performed on someone under 14 years old, unconstitutionally covered multiple subjects (OKLAHOMAN [OKLAHOMA CITY]).
The MASSACHUSETTS Supreme Judicial Court rules that people in same-sex relationships who never married and have no biological connection to a child but can show that they actively took part in the child’s upbringing since birth may obtain parental rights (BOSTON GLOBE).