Monthly Archives: November 2011

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said he wants to include opponents of voter identification as state officials work to implement Initiative 27, the state constitutional amendment passed last week calling for Mississippians to present photo identification before voting. “My goals would not be to have people on the sidelines of the field waiting for someone to fumble the ball,” he said. “Help me implement it.”

Getting opponents’ help could aid the state when it seeks Justice Department approval. Under the federal 1965 Voting Rights Act, Mississippi must seek preclearance from federal officials before it makes changes to election procedures because of its history of discrimination against black voters.

Missouri: Fremont senator to push voter ID again | Missouri News Horizon

Nebraska is poised to enter the national debate over whether voters should be required to show some kind of identification in order to vote, as Fremont Sen. Charlie Janssen plans to push legislation requiring Nebraskans to show ID before being allowed to vote.

Thirty-one states require voters to present some kind of identification in order to vote — and in 15 of those states it must be a photo ID. But Nebraska is one of 20 states with no voter ID law, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. As more states adopt stricter voter ID laws, it’s become a hot-button issue, because critics say poor people, minorities and elderly people are less likely to carry identification while proponents say requiring proof of ID reduces voter fraud.

Wisconsin: UW will provide students with valid voting ID cards | The Badger Herald

A planned mass deputation organized by members of Student Council on Monday night coincided with the announcement that the University of Wisconsin will be issuing voter IDs to students requiring them.

The deputation was organized by Associated Students of Madison first year representative Colin Higgins and involved 13 students. These now-official special registration deputies will be able to register other students and community members to vote.

Bangladesh: No birds, animals or billboards in campaigns | bdnews24.com

The Election Commission has banned city corporation polls candidates from using billboards and live animal and birds in their publicity campaigns. “A sub-clause is being included into the electoral code of conduct to this end,” senior assistant secretary of the Election Commission Secretariat, Mohammad Forhad Hossain told bdnews24.com.

EC secretary Mohammad Sadique requested the law ministry to issue a circular on the matter in a letter sent on Monday. Out of the 68 symbols set to be allocated to mayor and councillor posts contenders under the local government election guideline, 12 are pictures of animals and birds – tiger, duck, butterfly, fish, crocodile, rabbit, parrot, deer, stork, cow, chicken and elephant.

Canada: B.C. province backs online voting trials | Vancouver Sun

B.C. could soon be testing Internet voting after a formal request to try the idea received a verbal endorsement from the provincial government Monday. Elections B.C. wants permission to run pilot projects on online voting and other new technologies, chief electoral officer Keith Archer said in a report tabled in the legislature.

The independent elections agency wants the freedom to try new technologies and look at security issues, Archer said. “We want to have the mandate to at least have the exploration of this topic,” he said.

Egypt: Protesters, Forces Clash for Third Day Before Election | Businessweek

Clashes erupted in Cairo for a third day after fighting between security forces and demonstrators protesting military rule left at least 22 people dead, a week before Egypt’s first parliamentary elections since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

Protesters were driven back by tear gas in Tahrir Square, the center of the uprising that toppled Mubarak in February, some waving Egyptian flags and others hurling stones at riot police, in scenes televised from the site. Besides those killed, hundreds were injured in the fighting that started on Nov. 19, Health Ministry spokesman Mohammed el-Sherbeeny said today by telephone.

Guam: Lawsuit filed against Guam Election Commission | KUAM News

Guam – The Guam Election Commission may be headed to court as a non-profit public interest law firm is filing suit, alleging racial discrimination due to the upcoming vote to determine Guam’s future political status. While a series of meetings and workshops on the process of decolonization were a positive step forward in Guam’s quest for self-determination, a civil suit filed by an island resident who isn’t eligible to vote could bring the process to a standstill.

The Center for Individual Rights – a non-profit public interest law firm based in our nation’s capitol, is taking the GEC and its commissioners to court. On behalf of Guam resident Arnold Davis, the CIR alleges racial discrimination after he was not allowed to register for the plebiscite because he didn’t meet the definition of a native inhabitant of Guam.

Philippines: Comelec techie asks Congress: Probe 2010 polls | Inquirer News

An official of the Commission on Elections on Thursday called on the House and Senate to convene the joint congressional oversight committee (JCOC) on poll automation to help the Comelec find the best voting technology for the 2013 midterm polls. Commissioner Augusto Lagman said the committee’s input was needed by the Comelec Advisory Council (CAC) which is mandated by law to evaluate and recommend the appropriate election automation technology to the poll agency.

“I think the committee should convene. It has not met since the 2010 elections. There should have been an assessment of those elections. This is important because we want to learn what lessons we can from the 2010 elections,” Lagman told reporters.

The Voting News Daily: Who’s behind Americans Elect and what they want, Agency faces tough balancing act with voter ID regulations

Editorials: Who’s behind Americans Elect and what they want | Los Angeles Times A few weeks ago I wrote about an effort to put a centrist “third party” candidate on the presidential ballot next year, launched by an organization called Americans Elect. The privately funded group plans to stage a wide-open primary on the Internet, to…

Editorials: Who’s behind Americans Elect and what they want | Los Angeles Times

A few weeks ago I wrote about an effort to put a centrist “third party” candidate on the presidential ballot next year, launched by an organization called Americans Elect. The privately funded group plans to stage a wide-open primary on the Internet, to enable voters to choose a ticket drawn from the middle of the political spectrum. Voters can propose anyone they like, but the process is designed for potential centrist candidates such as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

That column provoked a torrent of questions from readers. Some asked: Isn’t this just a Republican plot to seduce independents away from President Obama? Others asked: Isn’t this just a Democratic plot to seduce moderates away from the GOP? These are fair questions in an age in which seemingly benign proposals sometimes conceal hidden agendas. So I did some more digging to find out who is behind Americans Elect and what it’s really after.

Indiana: How Many Ballot Scanners Should We Buy for 2012 | individual.com

How many voting machines does Monroe County really need? If the county decided to scan paper ballots at a central location, such as at the Justice Building, after 2012 elections, it wouldn’t matter whether the county commissioners purchase enough machines for 81 precincts or 20-some vote centers.

The county could consider buying just one high-speed digital ballot scanner, similar to the one it used in the May 2011 primary elections. Even if all 94,164 registered voters in the county show up to vote, results would be delayed only by a few hours over having a scanner at each polling place, and the county would save money.

Indiana: State officials want proposed Lake voting machines tested | nwitimes

The Indiana Elections Commission refused Friday to immediately approve Lake County’s purchase of remodeled electronic voting machines, which local officials say are crucial to reducing long lines of voters next year. Sally LaSota, county elections director, said Friday more machines are needed before the 2012 primary election when President Barack Obama’s re-election bid is expected to bring out busloads of early voters.

LaSota said she needs help handling the anticipated crowd and asked state elections officials to permit MicroVote, which has manufactured the 1,050 current machines, to provide more updated electronic voting stations. Michelle Fajman, county recorder and elections director during the 2008 Obama campaign, said, “In Gary, we had people voting as late as 10 p.m. Lake County is in dire need of more machines.”

South Carolina: Agency faces tough balancing act with voter ID regulations | Aiken Standard

Back in 2004, Marci Andino was accused of shilling for corporate America and the Republican Party as she rolled out the state’s new electronic voting machines. Those complaints continue to this day, as critics insist that machines that don’t spit out paper receipts to voters are subject to manipulation and stolen elections.

Then over the past couple of years, the director of the State Election Commission got some harsh looks from GOP lawmakers when she joined county election officials in calling for an open early voting system. Democrats love and Republicans hate early voting, which election professionals argue would help keep lines moving on Election Day, at minimum cost, by replacing the restricted absentee voting procedure that more and more people are using illegally to vote in advance.

Wisconsin: Recall election costs projected in millions | Appleton Post Crescent

At least $650,000 will be needed by state election officials to cover the costs of handling petitions for Wisconsin’s upcoming wave of recalls, according to a memo from the state Government Accountability Board. But that estimate doesn’t include costs for local governments, which are expected to be in the millions statewide.

The election watchdog agency said it will need an additional $652,699 to cover recall expenses, including personnel costs, mainly from hiring and supervising about 50 temporary workers to review as many as 1.5 million signatures, renting additional office space, buying supplies and equipment and doing public outreach about the state’s new voter ID law.

Ghana: Biometric Verification is on | The Statesman

Government and the Electoral Commission have finally yielded to both domestic and international pressure and agreed to compliment the biometric voter registration with biometric voter verification at the polling station in order to enhance the integrity of the 2012 elections. However, investigations undertaken by The New Statesman suggest that the ruling party, which has still not come to terms with biometric verification, is shifting the responsibility of funding the process to Ghana’s ‘development partners’.

Biometric verification is the process whereby a registered voter would be required to insert his or her biometric voter’s ID into a battery-operated e-zwich mobile payment system-like machine, place a finger on it for the machine to verify the card-bearer’s true identity before a ballot paper could be issued to a voter to cast his or her ballot.

India: Parties oppose introducing electronic voting in the Maldives | HaveeruOnline

Most of the political parties have opposed the plan of introducing an electronic voting system in the Maldives, Elections Commission said today. Commissioner Fuad Thaufeeq said the parties made their remarks at the meeting held yesterday with the visiting International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) delegation to discuss on establishing an electronic voting system for future elections.

“Some noted that it’s wise to continue how voting takes place in the Maldives now while we noticed that most of them still need more information about how the system works. For instance, Adhaalath Party admitted that going along the technological advancements is an option but said they needed more information about the system,” he said.

Nigeria: Assessing INEC Ahead Next Elections | Leadership Newspapers

The Independent National Electoral Commission has rolled out plans to conduct elections in six states. The commission was prevented from conducting elections in these states during the 2011 general elections by a court ruling after it had claimed that the tenure of the governors in question should have ended on May, 29 2011 in spite of the fact that their 2007 elections into office had been annulled and they had to face re-election.

INEC has now come to terms with the court ruling which determined when the tenure of each of the governors is to end. INEC is to hold governorship election in Kogi State on December 3 where the tenure of the Governor Ibrahim Idris will end on April 4, 2012. According to the commission’s timetable, the governorship election in Adamawa will hold on January 14, 2012 and the four years of Murtala Nyako will end on April 30, 2012. In Bayelsa, the election will hold February 11, 2012 and the tenure of Timipre Silva ends on May 27, 2012.

Morocco: Thousands of Moroccans make final boycott call 5 days before elections | The Washington Post

Thousands of Moroccans from the pro-democracy movement made a final call Sunday to boycott upcoming elections with protests across the country. At least 3,000 people marched through the capital Rabat and another 4,000 chanted demonstrated in Casablanca, the country’s largest city. Demonstrations took place in other cities across the country as well.

Anti-government protesters hold Moroccan national flag, left, and the 20th February movement flag in red black and white during a rally organized by the 20th February, the Moroccan Arab Spring movement in Casablanca, Morocco, Sunday, Nov 20, 2011, in a mass popular call to bring more democracy into this North African kingdom. Some thousands of Moroccans from the pro-democracy movement braved pouring rain and high winds in Casablanca to make a final call to boycott upcoming elections.

Spain: Cubans who became Spanish citizens recently are voting in Spain’s elections Sunday | bellinghamherald.com

Some Cubans will vote in their first democratic elections this Sunday. But they won’t be electing anyone in their own country. Instead, they will vote in Spain’s parliamentary elections because they are among the more than 25,000 Cubans who took advantage of a 2006 Spanish law that grants citizenship to the foreign-born grandchildren of Spanish emigrants.

More than 12,000 Spanish citizens living in Cuba requested mail-in ballots for Sunday’s parliamentary election, according to Spanish news media reports. Among them are expected to be some who were born Cuban and recently became Spaniards.

Spain: People’s party sweeps to crushing victory over Socialists | The Guardian

The conservative People’s party (PP) of Mariano Rajoy has swept to a landslide victory in Spain’s general election, inheriting sky-high unemployment and one of the shakiest economies in Europe. Rajoy’s PP gained an absolute parliamentary majority with a crushing 16 percentage point win over the Socialists of outgoing prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

The Socialists lost a third of their seats as voters dumped a government that presided over a dramatic economic slump which has left 23% of Spaniards out of work. With the PP winning 186 of the 350 seats in parliament, 56-year-old Rajoy was given a free hand to carry out sweeping reforms and impose further austerity in an attempt to turn the country around.

Taiwan: President Ma Ying-jeou registers for presidential election | Taiwan News Online

President Ma Ying-jeou and his running mate Premier Wu Den-yih were the first presidential candidates to register for the January 14 election at the Central Election Commission Monday morning.

Opposition Democratic Progressive Party Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen and her running mate Su Jia-chyuan are expected to show up on Wednesday, while People First Party Chairman James Soong and his vice-presidential choice, Lin Ruey-shiung, could pick Thursday or Friday, reports said. Allegations that Lin might still hold United States citizenship and therefore be ineligible to run for election have thrown doubts on that timing.

Wisconsin: Walker Opponents Plagued By Threats, Thefts | WISC Madison

Opponents of Gov. Scott Walker said they have faced threats and thefts in the days since the recall effort began. Two volunteers in the petition drive reported violent threats made against them to the police. Neighbors in Monona also complained to authorities of politically motivated thefts from their yards.

The threats involved phone calls from an area code in Minnesota. The calls came overnight after Walker’s opponents began the recall, said Madison resident Tom Peer, who said he received a call at 2 a.m. on Thursday. “They said, ‘If you don’t stop circulating recall petitions, we will kill you,'” said Peer.

The Voting News Weekly: TVN Weekly November 14-20 2011

November 20, 2011

The New York Times commented on a law requiring voter ID at the polls approved by voters in Mississippi. Mother Jones investigated the secrecy surrounding Americans Elect. The Department of Justice delayed a Texas voter ID law. Oregon experimented with iPads to facilitate voting for voters with disabilities despite security concerns. Demos considered difficulties faced by mobile young voters. With election day voting restored by a citizens’ veto, Maine Republicans are now pushing a voter ID law. The Kazahkstan President dissolved the parliament and called snap elections and elections in South Ossetia went to a run-off after none of the 11 candidates managed to top the 50 per cent of the vote required by law.

The Voting News Daily: Disenfranchise No More, Meet the Political Reform Group That’s Fueled by Dark Money

Editorials: Disenfranchise No More | NYTimes.com Mississippi voters just approved a new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. But that law will not go into effect immediately, thanks to the Voting Rights Act. Instead Mississippi will get in line behind Texas and South Carolina as the Department of Justice examines each…

Editorials: Disenfranchise No More | NYTimes.com

Mississippi voters just approved a new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. But that law will not go into effect immediately, thanks to the Voting Rights Act. Instead Mississippi will get in line behind Texas and South Carolina as the Department of Justice examines each state’s voter ID laws, in a process known as “preclearance.”

The Justice Department will allow each law to go into effect only if the state can show its law will not have a racially discriminatory purpose or effect. Such proof may be hard to come by: a recent study by The Associated Press found that African-American voters in South Carolina would be much harder hit by that state’s ID law than white voters because they often don’t have the right kind of identification.

National: 13 States Plugged Into Electronic Poll-books | The Canvass

“I’ve been doing elections for 33 years, and I think electronic poll-books have been the best advance in elections I’ve seen since we began computerizing many years ago,” says Wendy Noren, county clerk in Boone County, Mo.

What is an electronic poll-book? In Boone County, it is a system of networked computers in each polling place pre-loaded with data on registered voters. This system has shortened voter check-in time at polling places from 5 to 6 minutes to just 15 to 20 seconds, which everybody likes. That translates into huge savings; in 2012, Noren expects to hire 25 percent fewer poll workers, dramatically reducing one of her two largest expenses.

The other big expense? Training for poll workers. Here, too, electronic poll-books have provided savings. A well-designed, uncomplicated electronic poll-book reduces training needs and associated costs.

Voting Blogs: Meet the Political Reform Group That’s Fueled by Dark Money | Mother Jones

An upstart political reform group called Americans Elect is looking to blow apart the Democrat-Republican duopoly that dominates American politics. Its imaginative scheme: nominating an independent presidential candidate over the internet. The group is on the ballot in a half-dozen states, and the national buzz surrounding its initiative is growing—but so too are the questions about who’s bankrolling this effort and the security of the outfit’s voting procedures.

Americans Elect rose from the ashes of Unity08, a group formed in 2006 to increase access to the electoral system for independent presidential candidates. Via Americans Elect’s website, registered voters can sign up as “delegates” and nominate “any American [they] believe can be a great leader.” (For reference, the site offers a lengthy list of current political figures.) In April, delegates will winnow the field of candidates to six finalists, each of whom will then select a running mate from another party (if a finalist decides not to run, he or she can decline). And in June, Americans Elect plans to hold an online convention to decide which candidate will appear on the Americans Elect ballot line.

To become certified as a political party, the group must first collect a certain number of signatures in each state. All told, Americans Elect plans to spend $10 million on this effort.So far the group has been certified in six states, including key swing states Florida and Michigan. Certification is pending in California. That’s an encouraging sign for a group hoping to starting an electoral revolution.

Indiana: State officials want proposed Lake County voting machines tested | nwitimes

Sally LaSota, county elections director, said Friday more machines are needed before the 2012 primary election when President Barack Obama’s re-election bid is expected to bring out busloads of early voters. LaSota said she needs help handling the anticipated crowd and asked state elections officials to permit MicroVote, which has manufactured the 1,050 current machines, to provide more updated electronic voting stations.

Nebraska: Board opposes voter ID proposal | omaha.com

The Douglas County Board has unanimously voted to oppose a state lawmaker’s attempt to require stringent photo identification to vote in Nebraska elections. If passed, Legislative Bill 239 would require people to have valid state-issued photo identification to vote. At this week’s meeting, County Board member Mike Boyle cited the unknown costs of the bill, plus the adverse effect it would have on elderly voters and particularly Hispanics if it became law.

A valid state ID, under the proposed legislation, is one that is unexpired and provides a current address. State Sen. Charlie Janssen of Fremont introduced the bill. Adam Morfeld, executive director of Nebraskans for Civic Reform, said the County Board’s bipartisan opposition should signal that Janssen’s bill is a costly attempt to solve a problem that does not exist.

New Mexico: GOP New Mexico Sec of State Finds Tiny Fraction Of The Voter Fraud She Alleged | TPM