captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, july 31: campaign 2016: are state and local election systems vulnerable to hackers? in our signature segment, from ohio, inactive voters purged from the voter registry. and, turkey's president continues to tighten control over the military following the failed coup. next, on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the john and helen glessner family trust. supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided

by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. this is pbs newshour weekend. >> sreenivasan: good evening, thanks for joining us. the war of words between republican presidential nominee donald trump and the parents of a decorated muslim american soldier who died in combat escalated today. the father of the u.s. army captain who was killed in iraq in 2004 and who denounced trump at last week's democratic national convention criticized trump again today. >> he is a black soul, and this is totally unfit for the leadership of this country. the love and affection that we have received affirms that our grief-- that our experience in this country has been correct

and positive. >> sreenivasan: at the convention, khazir khan, father of captain humayun khan, addressed trump directly, saying "you have sacrificed nothing and no one," and asking if he has read the u.s. constitution. in an interview on abc, trump rejected the accusation. >> i've made a lot of sacrifices. i work very, very hard. i've created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. i've done a lot. >> sreenivasan: trump also took to twitter today to respond to the controversy. "captain khan, killed 12 years ago, was a hero, but this is about radical islamic terror and the weakness of our "leaders" to eradicate it! i was viciously attacked by mr. khan at the democratic convention. am i not allowed to respond? hillary voted for the iraq war, not me!" trump also has questioned why captain khan's mother stood silently at her husband's side at the convention. today, she responded in a washington post opinion piece,

saying in part: "without saying a thing, all the world, all america, felt my pain. i am a gold star mother. whoever saw me felt me in their heart." meanwhile, in another simmering controversy, democratic presidential nominee hillary clinton has laid direct blame for the recent hack of democratic national committee computers on russia. >> we know that russian intelligence services, which are part of the russian government and under the firm control of vladimir putin, hacked into the d.n.c. and we know that they arranged for a lot of those emails to be released and we know that donald trump has shown a very troubling willingness to back up putin, to support putin. >> sreenivasan: the clinton campaign is wrapping up its rust belt bus tour today in columbus, ohio. donald trump will campaign in ohio and pennsylvania tomorrow. muslims throughout france attended catholic mass yesterday and today to pay tribute to a priest killed by islamic radicals in a knife attack earlier this week.

father jacques hamel, an 85 year old catholic priest, was killed in his church near rouen in normandy by two men who had pledged their allegiance to isis. the killers were shot to death by police. the french muslim community council had urged muslims throughout the country to join catholics in solidarity as they pay tribute to the slain priest. meanwhile pope francis wrapped up a five day visit to poland with a massive outdoor service near krakow. the pope encouraged hundreds of thousands of young people gathered to mark world youth day to "believe in a new humanity". turkey's president recep tayyip erdogan moved today to further tighten his government's control of the armed forces following this month's failed military coup. erdogan fired 1,400 soldiers, sailors and airmen, including his own chief military adviser, for suspected links to u.s.- based cleric fethullah gulen, accused by erdogan of masterminding the abortive coup. erdogan also abolished all military academies, stacked the

top military council with civilians, and said he and the prime minister will have direct authority over the armed forces. just how far will erdogan's crackdown go? joining us via skype from istanbul is wall street journal reporter dion nissenbaum. this shake up in the military is happening at a time when nato allies are wondering, wait, who is actually in charge, who do i have a relationship with that i can trust. >> that's right. there is actually two wars going on on the border with turkey. you have turkey's own war with kurdish militants and one of the cuop plotters, was actually overseeing that war. and then you have the war against islamic state and the general at the air base which is the main base where the u.s. uses to carry out strikes against islamic state he was arrested as well. there are tankers used from that base to refuel some of the jet fighters used in the coup plot. you have u.s. military saying, how much is this going to impact our fight.

they are seeing an impact already, but it's a little bit too early to say, if they will be a measurable or long-term impact. >> sreenivasan: we've heard different reports, we've heard some detentions, we've heard some arrests. we've heard some people release understand they are out if they're not detaineds there a possibility that they decide to kind of group text each other and form the equivalent of, you know, a movement against erdogan. >> it's difficult to tell, we're under a state of emergency here in turkey up to three months maybe longer depending how it goes. the crackdown here has been widespread, 10,000 people arrested. up to 70,000 people have lost their jobs, suspended or dismissed. there is, i'd saya broad fear right now about this crackdown, journalists have fled the country, passports have been cancelled. there isn't a lot of space here, i would say, for political

opposition against president erdogan there was some space before the coup, now that it's been put down it's given president erdogan to suppress forward with what he really wants in this country which is an executive american-style presidency, putting all of the resources under his control. as you mentioned at the beginning, doing that now, today with the military. >> sreenivasan: what about these different military acadamies, why are though so important to try to purge or to retain under his control? >> it's an interesting question. the notion here by the government is that the people who plan the cous led by the cleric as you mentioned. and he's known for essential she feeding people throughout the government. so, i guess the suspicions with the military academy is that it's filled with these people that are loyal not to turkey but to fethullah gulen they must

feel like they must wipe the slate clean and start again. it's just happened today so we don't have a lot of the rational for why their closing the acadamies. that would be my guess. >> sreenivasan: joining us via skype from istanbul of the "wall street journal." thanks so much s. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: this election season, ohio-- as always-- figures to be a key presidential battleground; a diverse state that swings back and forth between the two major parties. no republican has ever won the white house without winning ohio, and neither has any democrat since 1960. with the stakes so high, a series of legal skirmishes reveals both parties maneuvering for maximum advantage at the polls in november. special correspondent chris bury reports from columbus. >> reporter: larry harmon, a lifelong ohioan who has lived in

the same house near akron for 16 years, never gave his voting registration a second thought. >> i've been voting since 1976. a couple of times i didn't vote. if i felt i wasn't up on the issues or i couldn't really decide who was worse of the two candidates, i just wouldn't vote. >> reporter: harmon voted in the 2008 presidential election, but sat out the 2012 race. then, last november, the 59 year old software engineer and navy veteran arrived at his polling place-- this high school-- to vote on a ballot initiative that, he worried, would allow monopolies to control legalized marijuana in ohio. >> i went down tre to vote against it, and my name wasn't on the list, and i couldn't vote. >> reporter: harmon was removed from the rolls of eligible voters in 2015, because he had not voted in the previous six years.

when it comes to the right to vote, ohio is a "use it, or lose it" state. just last year, ohio's 20 most populous counties purged more than 200,000 inactive voters, according to research by pbs newshour weekend. in ohio's largest county, cuyahoga, with heavily democratic cleveland, nearly 52,000 voters were purged. >> i thought, ¡well, jeez. you know i pay my taxes every year, and i pay my property taxes, and i register my car. so the state had to know i'm still a voter.' why should we fight for the country if they're gonna be taking away my rights? i mean, i'm a veteran, my father's a veteran, my grandfather's a veteran, now they aren't giving me my right to vote, the most fundamental right i have? i just can't believe it. >> reporter: in ohio, the secretary of state sent out this form warning voters who have not cast ballots in two years to confirm their eligibility or risk having their voting registrations canceled. the practice has been state law

under democrats and republicans for more than 20 years. ohio secretary of state jon husted, a republican who served two terms as speaker of ohio's statehouse, has increased enforcement of the practice. as secretary of state, is it your mission to ensure that as many people as possible vote in ohio? >> my goal is to strike the balance between making it easy to vote and hard to cheat. >> reporter: husted says it's his legal duty is to make sure voting rolls stay up to date and don't become bloated with voters who've died or residents who've left ohio like college students. don't i have the right to vote whenever i choose? if i don't want to vote for 20 years, isn't that perfectly fine? >> it's perfectly fine if you don't. but you just have to re- register. >> reporter: husted says the state maintains the accuracy of its voting list in two ways. first, by using the national post office database. but many people don't register their new addresses when they move. that's when the second process-- known as purging--kicks in.

>> you're inactive for two years, meaning that you've not voted, you've not done anything, we send you a card to say, "hey, are you still registered to vote?" and, "are you still living at this address?" >> reporter: to stay on the voter rolls, residents have four years to respond to the letter and confirm their address, or simply vote, or they can sign a petition-- the kind that requires signatures from registered voters. harmon says he doesn't remember receiving the form in the mail. so after being turned away from his polling place last year, he joined a lawsuit brought by the american civil liberties union and the public policy group demos against secretary of state husted, challenging ohio's purge process. attorney dan tokaji, who's a co- counsel on the lawsuit, says ohio's law violates the national voter registration act of 1993, better known as the motor voter bill, which requires states to improve opportunities to register to vote, such as when

applying for a driver's license. >> if the state has other reasons for believing somebody has moved, for example, if they get information from the post office indicating that that person's address has changed, it can initiate the process for removing voters. what neither ohio nor any other state can do is to initiate the purge process solely because of a registered voter's failure to vote. >> reporter: but ohio did. six other states-- alaska, montana, south dakota, tennessee, georgia, and west virginia-- also consider voter inactivity when striking names from lists of registered voters. do many of these folks not know that they have been purged? >> many of them will not realize that they've actually been removed from the rolls until they go to vote. we think that the biggest impact is going to be felt in urban areas, especially places where you've got less affluent voters. >> ohio has removed infrequent

voters off the voter roll. >> reporter: community organizer andre washington is spreading the word about ohio's voting rules at triedstone baptist church, one of columbus's largest predominantly black churches. he has also joined the lawsuit against the secretary of state. >> most of the people that they purged look like me and you. >> reporter: washington fears ohio's purge practice will disenfranchise african-americans who have not voted since 2008, when they helped elect the first black president. so, after sunday services, these volunteers helped congregants check the secretary of state's public records to see if they're still registered. >> it's very important that these people that were purged get put back on the rolls so that they can exercise their right to vote. because one of the jobs of the secretary of state is to make sure that the ballot box is accessible to all citizens of

ohio. and make sure it's easier for them to vote, not harder for them to vote. >> reporter: does this policy disenfranchise poor african- americans? >> it actually has no race, gender, ethnicity component to it, because it treats every single voter exactly the same. and remember, if you receive one of these cards, it's because you haven't voted. >> reporter: you don't think it's an unfair burden, requiring people who haven't voted for a while to make some kind of affirmative statement? >> the law says it's six years. the federal court agreement says it's six years. i can understand people who have policy disagreements. if you want to make it longer, change the law i'll follow the law. >> reporter: ohio's purge of inactive voters is among several election rules under fierce legal attack here. in may, a federal judge reinstated seven days of early voting when same day registration is also allowed, known as "golden week." the republican state legislature

eliminated it two years ago in a law signed by ohio's republican governor, john kasich, reducing the number of early voting days to 28. but the judge found the early voting rollback discriminatory, because black voters are more likely than white voters to cast ballots early and in-person. in june, another federal judge struck down laws allowing ohio election officials to use trivial errors to disqualify absentee ballots and provisional ballots-- the ones voters fill out when their registrations are challenged at polling places. for example, a voter registered as "william thomas smith" could have his absentee ballot rejected, because he wrote the abbreviation "w.t. smith" or "bill smith" on his envelope. civil rights groups had argued those rejections amounted to an unconstitutional literacy test. if you take these together, your opponents would argue that the intent is to suppress democratic votes.

>> well, that's nonsense, and they know it is. many of them have actually voted for the same policies that i am enacting. i adopt the same directives that my democrat predecessor was using, but democrats now call that voter suppression. it's almost in the history of the world never been easier to vote anywhere than it is in ohio today. >> reporter: ever since the bitterly contested 2000 presidential election, where lawyers fought over florida's disputed ballots all the way to the u.s. supreme court-- legal maneuvering over voting rules has intensified. for example, 17 states have laws now in effect requiring photo identification in order to vote, all but two of those states led by republicans when the laws passed. the number of lawsuits nationwide over voting practices and results has also dramatically increased, from only 80 cases in 1999 to more than 300 in 2014, a trend ohio

state university professor edward foley calls "the voting wars." >> the voting wars is to use the tools of the legal system to try to get one side or the other a little bit of an advantage on election day in the counting of the ballots. and it can be through lawsuits, or it can be through creating new laws that you think might be favorable to your side. >> reporter: foley says both parties are constantly fighting over what he calls "the margin of litigation"-- legal skirmishes that could change outcomes in close races. >> in battleground states, the chances are that the election could be really close-- 1,000 votes could tip a state. so the rules for how you count disputed ballots, really matter. could determine who wins a state like ohio. >> reporter: and the stakes are high here. >> stakes are the white house. >> reporter: in the voter purge case, last month a federal judge ruled in favor of secretary of

state husted, saying, "the purge process does not violate the national voter registration act...and the public interest is being served by the procedure." lawyers representing larry harmon and other ohio voters have appealed. and two weeks ago, the department of justice asked the court to reverse its decision. knowing the stakes in ohio, harmon has already re- registered. are you planning to vote in this november's election? >> yes, i am. >> reporter: hear from young voters about the issues that matter the most to them this election season. visit www.pbs.org newshour. >> sreenivasan: the political fallout continues following the cyber attack into a program used by the clinton campaign, along with a related hack into the emails and voicemails of the democratic national committee. but it does raise concerns over other aspects of the election as we head toward november-- like the security of voter registrations, voting locations, and donor lists. politico national security reporter bryan bender has been looking into this and has found

a patchwork of security measures across the country. he joins me now from washington, d.c. you and cory bennett had a piece look at this hacking beyond just the specific incident, beyond the parties. lieutenants break that down. first concern, donor. >> liz:, i'd imagine a lot of people would be concerned about their social security number, amount given to a candidate all that being out in the public. >> so many things now related to the elections process, the political organization process are digital. so, in the case of donors, if you give money to a political party, a grass roots organization, you do so with the idea that your information is go to be protected. >> sreenivasan: campaigns don't have the equivalent of the secret service agency, no one agency that manages digital information of the campaigns. federal election commission they don't actually have any other authority. >> a lot of the election officials we talked to, cyberexperts that we talk to,

all point outed that basically the election system, the election industry, if you wills playing catch up when it comes to threats from cyber-space. there is no one government agency that is supposed to layout guidelines and help these very disparity organizations come up with the rules of the road that the election system, wrong station, voters, all that kind of information is proceed selected screen on county by county basis -- >> sreenivasan: on county by county you see diversity of the technology, the option, is that they choose. what are some things that can go wrong electronically. >> many experts pointed to the fear that voter registration information could get corrupted by some malicious actor online. for example, someone could break in change the party registration of voters. that would affect a primary, for example, in many states you can only vote in republican primary if you're registered as a republican. in other cases you can simply

drop people's names from the voter registration rolls and many stacey you can't register to vote on election day. if you showed up at the polls the system show that you are not registered, would you not be able to vote. those are just a couple of ways that could seriously corrupt the process, certainly cause headaches. >> sreenivasan: any examples of county level or any kind of election commission successfully thwarting a hack and figuring out what was being attempted on them? >> we do know that illinois we know that actors got into the voter registration rolls. and obviously that was something that government officials were able to track, were able to plug the holes. one of the big worries is that hackers could do some very subtle things. election officials might not notice them immediately, if ever. i think there's some worry that some of these attacks may not be large, they can be very small, pinprick attacks done in strategic way could have impact on the election. >> sreenivasan: bryan bender,

thanks for joining us. >> thank you. >> this is pbs newshour weekend, sunday. >> sreenivasan: only five days before the summer olympics open in brazil, which is experiencing an outbreak of the zika virus. americans bob and mike bryan, the defending gold medal tennis doubles team, withdrew from the games. they cited health concerns for themselves and their families. and the international olympic committee said a three-person panel will make the final decision on which russian athletes will be allowed to compete in the wake of a doping scandal. i.t.n.'s steve scott reports from rio. >> you may have wanted to talk rio but ioc president knew what was coming. question after question, on the russia doping scandal. >> the ioc is not responsible for the fact that a different information, which was offered,

already a couple of years ago, was not been followed up. >> it's now five days before the games start, several days after the majority of russians cleared by their own sport have arrived in rio. while more than 100 have been ruled out, including all but one of the track and field team, more than 200 have been given the go ahead. yet still, some of those may be sent back home. this confusing, chaotic situation stems from an investigation that uncovered eye-watering state supported doping at russia's own winter games. that same investigation also implicated a number of summer sports, too. in turn, that sparked a number of from the beijing. and cause for an out right within on russia, which the ioc ignored. it's proving an inevitable distraction to all competing teams.

steve scott, itv news. rio degentleman marrow. the first person to ever attempt and successfully jump without a parachute or wing suit, toward the california desert with two minutes before landing at 10,000 square foot net suspended nearly 200 feet above the ground. that's all for this edition of pbs "newshour," i'm hari sreenivasan hari sreenivasan have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the john and helen glessner family trust. supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

>> explore new worlds and new ideas through programs like this made available for everyone through contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> if you're presently overweight, have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes, i'm gonna show you how easily this can be reversed without medications, saving you years of suffering and adding many quality years to your life. >> announcer: dr. joel fuhrman, board-certified family physician and nutritional researcher has developed a simple and life-changing way of eating, the nutritarian diet, that emphasizes the critical importance of consuming adequate micronutrients and phytochemicals from food. >> in my more than 25 years of