Donald Trump ’s Campaign Stands By Embrace of Putin Campaign rushes to defend candidate [ New York Times ] U.S. Voting government.vote.violationspreventvote System So ‘ Clunky ’ It Is Insulated From Hacking , FBI Director Says James Comey points to system ’s dispersal over 50 states , no centralized computer system [ Wall Street Journal ] Politics Newsletter Sign up to receive the day ’s top political stories .

_ _ _ 7 a.m. Voting government.vote.castvote in the 2016 election is getting underway . Advance voting is beginning Friday in North Carolina — the first of 37 states that will allow balloting by mail for any reason or in person before Election Day , which is Nov. 8 . It 's part of a nearly nine - week campaign frenzy during which millions of voters will have the ability to fill out a ballot for the 2016 presidential race .

FACT : If the above did n’t make it clear , the tension between the “ States ’ Rights ” Conservatives of the Southern Bloc and the Rest of the Democratic party essentially starts 1789 with tension in the anti - Federalist party , continues to Jackson , splits the party in Civil War , does n’t exactly help Bryan , results in Wilson , and is part of the story of FDR , but it really picked up steam after WWII over Brown v. the Board . From there we start getting the “ States ’ Rights ” third parties . Then Civil Rights 1964 and Voting government.vote.castvote Rights 1965 is the tipping point . Yes , many Republicans voted for Civil Rights and Voting Rights . Indeed .

Attackers reaching into the ballot box from thousands of miles away wo n’t happen , simply because the vast majority of election machines are not connected to the internet . Some 31 states offer voting via internet , email , or fax , but nearly all only allow it as an option for military families and Americans living overseas – a very small percentage of the electorate . Only Alaska allows any voter to cast a ballot across the net , according to Verified Voting government.vote.castvote . But election rigging is a potential threat , says Rubin . That ’s where adversaries attack the electronic voting machines themselves , altering the software inside the machines to favor one candidate .

" Trying to get a court to prevent people from participating in the political process in ways that are protected by the First Amendment . " 10/31 11:32 a.m. : North Carolina sued over alleged illegal purge of thousands of voters Voting government.vote.violationspreventvote rights lawyers have filed suit against North Carolina and three counties on behalf of the state 's NAACP chapter over what they allege is an illegal purge of the voter rolls . The complaint charges that the counties have been " cancelling the voter registrations of thousands of North Carolina voters who have been targeted in coordinated , en masse challenge proceedings brought in the final weeks and months before Election Day , and whose right to vote has been challenged solely on the basis of a single piece of undeliverable mail , in clear violation of the National Voter Registration Act ( “ NVRA ” ) and other federal laws . " A spokesman for the North Carolina Board of Elections did n't immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit , but the boards said last week that it believes the removals of voters are legal .

FBI Director James Comey 's letter to employees . Clinton 's campaign and allies quickly decried the decision 's timing , and the candidate herself on Friday forcefully called on the FBI to release the " full and complete facts " about its review . " Voting government.vote.castvote is underway , so the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately , " Clinton said at a brief news conference in Des Moines , Iowa , adding it was " imperative that the bureau explain this issue in question , whatever it is , without any delay . " Clinton said she was " confident whatever ( the emails ) are will not change the conclusion reached in July , " when Comey said he would n't recommend criminal charges in the matter . Republican nominee Donald Trump , who has spent the past several weeks on defense , seized on the issue .

Donald Trump is trying to convince voters that their votes do n't count by telling them that the system is rigged . He 's wrong , " interim DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile said in a statement on Saturday . " Voting government.vote.castvote has never been easier and more Americans are seeing Donald Trump 's fear mongering for what it really is . Fear . " Brazile rose to her post after embarrassing emails released by WikiLeaks forced Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz to step down as head of the DNC in July .

And it found an earlier public education campaign about the ID law to be “ woefully inadequate . ” What is this project ? Voting government.vote.violationspreventvote never goes perfectly smoothly in any election . But this year could bring a perfect storm of problems . One presidential candidate has made sweeping claims about the threat of voter fraud , and urged supporters to monitor the polls , raising fears of intimidation .

Florida we gon na landslide TRUMP .... wear'n red at polls ... We gon na be watch'n fer shenanigans ... & haul ya away .. pic.twitter.com/YbSJTZvRWp — Harry Miller ( @jackbgoode1 ) August 20 , 2016 Those concerns have been heightened by last month ’s announcement by the U.S. Justice Department that it will reduce the number of its own election observers deployed to polling places this fall . The DOJ said the pull - back was required by the Supreme Court ’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder , which significantly weakened the Voting government.vote.violationspreventvote Rights Act , though some voting rights advocates have called that an unnecessarily conservative reading of the ruling . The OSCE is perhaps best known as an international security organization , but its human - rights arm sends election monitors at the request of member states . The U.S. government has invited OSCE monitors to observe the last three presidential elections , as well as the upcoming one .

Ted Cruz has taken time away from campaigning in South Carolina to attend the funeral Mass in Washington for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia . The Republican presidential candidate plans to be back in South Carolina later Saturday to await the results . Voting government.vote.castvote ends at 7 p.m. The Texas senator has a personal connection to the high court : In the late 1990s , he served as a law clerk for a year to then - Chief Justice William Rehnquist . _ _ _

Everything noted so far leads up to one other thing that needs to be discussed on its own ( you ’ll see it below in the story , but it is important to note ) . After Voting Rights 1965 it was n’t just a matter of switching the South , it was a matter of taking that 1930 ’s conservative coalition to the next level and the Republicans switching themselves ( again , in response to the increasing social liberalism of America and the Democratic party ) . No social conservative faction was strong enough on its own to win an election , not after Voting government.vote.castvote Rights , but together , under a strategically planned big tent , the social conservatives and establishment conservatives could create a siren - like Frankenstein ’s monster to push for free - enterprise ( classically liberal and Gilded Age business interest ) and socially conservative values against the progressive state an increasingly progressive Democratic Party ( the reference to Frankenstein is a political metaphor made , not an insult ) . This story involves : The Powell memo , the southern strategy , the John Birch Society , the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine , Goldwater , Nixon , Reagan , Norquist , Roger Aisle , Lee Atwater , Karl Rove , Fox News , Reagan , Right - Wing Radio , Alex Jones , Rush Limbaugh , and “ a vast right - wing conspiracy ” aimed at getting the many different social conservative and establishment conservative factions to adopt each other ’s ideology ( each not popular enough to win elections on their own , but in a “ Big Tent ” a force ) .

She is the establishment , the status quo . The best argument in her favor is that she ’s not Donald Trump . Voting government.vote.castvote for her lets us survive as a nation for four more years . Things will be bad but manageable . As a public school teacher , under Clinton I can expect more support for charter schools , more standardized tests , more corporate school reform .

For example , as the glue that attaches the screen to the machine gets degraded , you get alignment issues , Norden explained . Poll workers and technicians have to recalibrate these machines regularly to ensure the buttons are aligned correctly , he said . In other cases , it 's a problem of plain old user error , said Pamela Smith , the president of Verified Voting government.vote.castvote , a nonpartisan organization that advocates for accurate and transparent elections . In Texas , for example , where a handful of voters reported attempting to vote a straight Republican ticket , but found the Clinton / Kaine ticket selected instead , many precincts use an old , rotary - style voting machine . " If you 're used to using a mouse and then you 're asked to use a track pad , it 's easy to make a mistake , " Smith told TIME .

Only five states — Delaware , Georgia , Louisiana , South Carolina , and New Jersey — use “ direct recording electronic ” ( DRE ) machines exclusively . But lots of other states use electronic machines in some capacity . Verified Voting government.vote.castvote also has a handy map of who votes using what equipment , which lets you drill down both to specific counties and machine brands , so you can see what 's in use at your polling station . More than half of the states conduct post - election auditing , by checking vote totals against paper records , to ensure that the votes are accurate . Both Smith and Norden agree that this sort of auditing is the single best way to guarantee confidence in election results , as does MIT computer scientist Ronald Rivest , who has written extensively [ PDF ] on voting machine issues .

I 'll give you $ 20 for your absentee ballot and then I can vote it the way I want . Unlike impersonation fraud , when it 's an absentee ballot , you can verify how someone voted because you have the actual ballot , so that does happen . And for " The Voting government.vote.na Wars , " I was able to find regularly in local elections - and certainly in some parts of the country there 's been an unfortunate history of this , in parts of Kentucky , South Texas , parts of Florida . We have had this kind of fraud . But it 's been in small local elections , never on a large enough scale , I think , to affect a presidential election and not the kind of fraud that Donald Trump is talking about to affect the outcome .