id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc	stage	has_patch	needs_docs	needs_tests	needs_better_patch	easy	ui_ux
20675	`ModelBackend.authenticate` raises an assertion error when no password is specified.	Simon Charette	Simon Charette	"The regression was introduced by 2c4fe761a0e2b28e2c5c3b4bc506ee06824a443d to allow blank passwords (#20593).

Prior to this change `authenticate` returned `None` when no password was specified.

Note that this affect version ''1.6-beta-1'' and ''master'' but I'm not sure this should be considered a release blocker.

I'm reporting because one of my testcases failed and I thought this change might have other side effects. We should at least raise a `ValueError` with a description instead of a non-intuitive assertion error.

I'll write tests and a fix if this gets accepted in order to backport it."	Bug	closed	contrib.auth	dev	Release blocker	fixed			Ready for checkin	1	0	0	0	0	0