Rigging

Tech and politics: Brian Barrett has a must-read piece in Wired about how America’s electronic voting machines could be hacked this November. Three-quarters of the country votes via paper ballots, he notes and only five (DE, GA, LA, SC and NJ) rely exclusively on “direct recording electronic” machines, while others do so partially, like Pennsylvania. Not every state has a provision for conducting a post-election audit to insure confidence in the results, though three that could be swing states—FL, OH and PA—do have relatively strong audit rules on the books.

As security analyst Bruce Schneier pointed out last week in the Washington Post, Russian hackers could disrupt the election not only by interfering with electronic voting machines, but also by deleting voter records, among other tactics.

Given that a national voter file with 191 million individual records on it appeared online last December, security experts worry that it would not be difficult for hackers to target state-level voter records to selectively purge people.

So, while Republican ignominee Donald Trump has started warning that the November election might be “rigged” against him, an unprecedented charge that may undermine confidence in the results, there’s also reason to fear that it might be disrupted from abroad.

This is civic tech: President Obama spoke to the National Convention of Disabled American Veterans on Monday, and in his remarks he highlighted the efforts of some of the tech talent he’s recruited to improve access to veterans care. “…[I]n one of their first innovations, veterans can now finally apply for VA health care anytime, anywhere, from any device, including your smartphone—simple, easy, in as little as 20 minutes. Just go to Vets.gov. The days of having to wait in line at a VA office, or mailing it in—those days are over. We’re finally moving into the 21st century when it comes to helping our veterans.”

The Sunlight Foundations labs director Kat Duffy announces that the annual Transparency Camp unconference will take place this October 14-15 in Cleveland, at the city’s Downtown Public Library. (The library sounds like a pretty smart civic innovator, with a branch located inside Cleveland City Hall.)

iStrategy Labs, the baby of Peter Corbett (who organized the first Apps for Democracy hackathon back in 2008 with DC CTO Vivek Kundra), has been acquired by J. Walter Thompson Company. Congrats to Peter and his team!

Civic Hall Labs is hiring! We’re looking for a director of technology and several other positions.

Civic Hall Labs has also just announced our Healthy Public Challenge, focusing on supporting projects that build a healthy society by promoting civic cohesion, civic agency or better access to public goods and social safety nets.