August 3, 2026 10:04AM # Election Policy Roundup #28: China Data Concerns, Voting Rights, and Maryland’s Redistricting Battle By [Walter Olson](https://www.cato.org/people/walter-olson) --- SHARE Listen to this article Generated with [ ElevenLabs](https://elevenlabs.io/) AI technology. Loading the [Elevenlabs Text to Speech](https://elevenlabs.io/text-to-speech) AudioNative Player... ![voters](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/2024-11/vote%201.jpg?itok=l0xF12En) (Getty Images) Number 28 in our [series of occasional roundups](https://www.cato.org/search?query=%22election+policy+roundup%22) on election law and policy: - “When more than a third of the \[House\] seats see no competition at all, polarization and gerrymandering can explain some of the problem, but not all,” said \[Olson\]. And none of the other likely explanations “are exactly good signs for democracy.” \[[Eric Boehm, *Reason*](https://reason.com/2026/07/28/there-are-150-completely-uncompetitive-house-races-in-this-years-midterms/)\] - Did the Chinese collection of American voting data constitute a huge security breach? States say federal authorities never notified them about it \[[*Washington Post*](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/07/30/states-cast-doubt-trumps-claim-that-china-hacked-their-voter-rolls/) via [ELB](https://electionlawblog.org/?p=157686)\] Hard to discern any new resultant chill on relations with China \[[Phelim Kine, Politico](https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/17/trump-spares-beijing-in-probe-of-alleged-chinese-election-plot-01004011)\] or with Russia, for that matter \[[Alan Feuer and Dustin Volz, *New York Times*](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/21/us/politics/trump-china-russia-election.html)\] - Regarding selective declassification of election-security intel: “The intelligence committees should obtain less-redacted versions of the released documents \[and underlying reports\]. They should hear first from the analysts and technical specialists who evaluated the intelligence, not only the officials who selected it for release.” \[[Brian O’Neill, Just Security](https://www.justsecurity.org/147633/trump-election-interference-speech/)\] - Supreme Court did not annihilate the Voting Rights Act: “The case for Callais” \[[Brian Fitzpatrick, SCOTUSBlog](https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/07/the-case-for-callais/)\] - Desirous of flattering the big guy’s claims that his 2020 loss was other than fair and square, FBI Director Patel surges hundreds of agents into a new Election Georgia Operation, call it the EGO squad for short \[[MS NOW](https://www.ms.now/news/fbi-directing-hundreds-of-analysts-to-dig-into-subjects-of-ga-election-probe-sources-say)\] - I submitted this written testimony opposing the Maryland General Assembly’s scheme for a constitutional amendment (HB 2100) to overturn state court precedent so as to enable extreme partisan gerrymandering of the state’s House map \[[Free State Notes](https://freestatenotes.wordpress.com/2026/07/31/my-testimony-on-hb-2100-the-maryland-gerrymandering-bill/)\] ##### Related Tags [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Free Speech and Civil Liberties](https://www.cato.org/free-speech-civil-liberties), [Politics and Society](https://www.cato.org/politics-society) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).