Texas: Supreme Court Rejects Judge-Drawn Maps in Texas Redistricting Case | NYTimes.com

The Supreme Court on Friday instructed a lower court in Texas to take a fresh look at election maps it had drawn in place of a competing set of maps from the Texas Legislature. The justices said the lower court had not paid enough deference to the Legislature’s choices and had improperly substituted its own values for those of elected officials. The court’s unanimous decision extends the uncertainty surrounding this major voting-rights case, which could help determine control of the House of Representatives.

Iowa: The Semantics and Statistics of Santorum’s Win in Iowa | 538/NYTimes.com

Amid the swirl of developments on Thursday came word from the Iowa Republican Party that it had certified the results from the state’s Jan. 3 caucuses — and that Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney, had gotten more votes. Mr. Santorum received 29,839 votes in the state’s certified tally, 34 more than Mr. Romney, who had 29,805. Iowa Republicans were hesitant to deem Mr. Santorum the winner, however. Early Thursday morning, the state party chairman, Matt Strawn, instead described the result as having been “too close to call.” Later, Mr. Strawn was somewhat clearer. “One thing that is irrefutable is that in these 1,776 certified precincts, the Republican Party was able to certify and report Rick Santorum was the winner of the certified precinct vote total by 34 votes,” he told reporters, He cautioned, however, that there was ambiguity in the outcome because the results from eight other precincts were unaccounted for and had never been certified. How safe is it to assume that Mr. Santorum in fact won? And does any of this matter, other than to historians and data geeks?

Voting Blogs: When is an Election Over? Depends Who You Ask – and Why | Doug Chapin/PEEA

Not surprisingly, the recent news about the muddled finish in the GOP Iowa caucuses has got people talking about what it means to say an election is “over”. To an election official, an election is over when the outcome has been certified according to applicable state or local law. At that point, the process for that election is “final-final” and in the books. That’s why election administrators are so insistent about calling Election Night returns “unofficial” returns; experience teaches that lots of factors – including everything from math errors to multiparty litigation – can make the Election Night results turn out to be incomplete or incorrect.

Editorials: Despite Supreme Court ruling, Texas congressional map still very uncertain | The Washington Post

The drama over Texas’s new congressional map will drag on after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday blocked an interim court-drawn map. The Court on Friday ruled that an interim 2012 election map drawn by a federal court in San Antonio must give greater deference to the original map drawn by the GOP-controlled Texas state legislature. The ruling is at least a temporary victory for Republicans, in that it blocks an interim map to be used for the 2012 election that is preferred by Democrats. But it’s still not clear that the end result will be any better for Republicans. In fact, it’s not clear what the end result will be at all.

Voting Blogs: Court rejects Texas maps, delays West Virginia map | SCOTUSblog

The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously overturned orders issued by a federal court in Texas that drew its own new maps for legislative districts, and ordered it to reconsider.  In an 11-page unsigned opinion, the Court said that the three-judge District Court in San Antonio may not have used the “appropriate standards,” which the Court spelled out in some detail.  Justice Clarence Thomas, in a separate opinion, repeated his view that a key federal voting rights act implicated in the Texas case is unconstitutional.  The decision is here.

National: Citizens United Fallout: Coalition Asks SEC To Order Corporate Disclosure Of Political Spending | Huffington Post

It used to be against the law for executives to spend funds from their massive corporate treasuries to directly influence elections. But two years ago this week, the Supreme Court declared such restrictions unconstitutional — and short of a constitutional amendment, it’s hard to get around that. The Court never said corporations should be able to spend all that money in secret, however. So on Thursday, a coalition of campaign reform and corporate transparency advocates called attention to their petition to persuade the Securities and Exchange Commission to require that corporations publicly disclose their political contributions.

Voting Blogs: It’s here – Global centralization of elections, privatized | GlobalResearch

In a major step towards global centralization of election processes, the world’s dominant Internet voting company has purchased the USA’s dominant election results reporting company. When you view your local or state election results on the Internet, on portals which often appear to be owned by the county elections division, in over 525 US jurisdictions you are actually redirected to a private corporate site controlled by SOE software, which operates under the name ClarityElections.com.

Alabama: Key provision of voting rights law under court scrutiny | NBC

A central part of election law dating back to the historic civil rights struggles of the 1960s could be scrapped or curtailed in the coming months as a critical case makes its way through the courts. The fate of a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is now being decided by the federal appeals court in Washington, as a three-judge panel weighs an appeal from Shelby County, Ala. asking the court to find that Congress exceeded its power when it renewed section 5 of the law in 2006.

California: Appeals court upholds Washington state’s open primary system | latimes.com

In a decision that could foreshadow survival of California’s new “top two” primary system, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld a similar Washington state ballot initiative that changed the way voters choose candidates in primaries. Both states’ voters approved measures allowing the top two vote-getters in a primary to advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation. The format replaced closed primaries, in which each party chose a candidate for the general election.

Florida: U.S. Supreme Court weakens Florida Democrats’ hand in redistricting disputes | Palm Beach Post

A House panel Friday worked to narrow the number of plans for Florida legislative and congressional boundaries, even as a U.S. Supreme Court ruling strengthened the Legislature’s hand in drawing new district boundaries. The House Redistricting Committee centered on one map each for House, Senate and congressional lines, heading toward a scheduled vote next week. The House is playing catch-up to the Senate, which earlier this week approved its own set of maps. “We’re moving as quickly as we can, but not to the detriment of the public or the membership” (of the Legislature), said Redistricting Chairman Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel.

Idaho: Idaho Supreme Court Throws Out Redistricting Plan | Times-News

The Idaho Supreme Court overturned a controversial plan to redraw the state’s legislative districts Tuesday, ordering the commission that made it to adopt a new district map that more closely follows the state and U.S. constitutions.
Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs filed a petition on behalf of four Idaho counties and four cities in November, arguing that it wasn’t necessary to split so many counties to create 35 legislative districts of roughly equal population. In the 4-1 decision, the Supreme Court agreed that the adopted map splits more counties than is necessary to meet the U.S. Constitution’s requirement of one person, one vote. It ordered the Redistricting Commission to reconvene and adopt a map with minimal county splits.

Iowa: Who won the Iowa primary – and does it matter from a technical perspective? | Jeremy Epstein/Freedom to Tinker

As Americans know, the 2012 presidential season began “officially” with the Iowa caucuses on January 3. I say “officially”, because caucuses are a strange beast that are a creation of political parties, and not government. Regardless, the Republican results were interesting – out of about 125,000 votes cast, Mitt Romney led by eight votes over Rick Santorum, with other contenders far behind. The “official” results released today show Santorum ahead by 34 votes. However, it’s not so simple as that.

Texas: Supreme Court sides with Texas on redistricting plan | The Washington Post

The Supreme Court on Friday set aside Texas redistricting plans drawn by a federal court that were favored by minorities and Democrats, and ordered the lower court to come up with new plans based more closely on maps drawn by the Texas legislature. In an unsigned opinion that drew no dissents, the justices said a federal panel in San Antonio “exceeded its mission” in drawing interim plans for the state’s upcoming primaries. It said the court was wrong to believe its plans needed to be completely independent of the ones passed by the legislature. “A district court should take guidance from the state’s recently enacted plan in drafting an interim plan,” the justices wrote. They added, however, that courts must be careful not to incorporate parts of a state’s plan that might violate the Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act.

Texas: Voters? We don’t need no stinkin’ voters: Why recent changes to Texas election laws may unintentionally undermine voter turnout | State of Elections

The Texas Secretary of State is fighting to uphold Texas’s new voter photo identification law against federal scrutiny. The press has reported extensively on the battle brewing between the states and the United States Department of Justice over the impact that voter ID laws will have on voter turnout. Many groups believe that voter ID laws—which require persons to show photo ID before casting their votes—unfairly target minority voters, making it more difficult for them to participate in the democratic process. While the photo ID requirement is the most widely reported change to the Texas election process, it is not the only new roadblock likely to affect voter turnout in the Lone Star State’s upcoming elections.

Editorials: Voter ID legislation, not fraud, is the real problem | Michael Paul Williams/Richmond Times-Dispatch

The legislative drive against voter fraud is a solution in search of a problem. Proposed General Assembly legislation would scratch the current provision that allows voters to sign a sworn statement that they are who they claim to be if they’re unable to produce a required form of identification. Instead, they would cast a provisional ballot. For lack of an ID, a potentially eligible vote would not be counted on election night, and possibly not at all, if the would-be voter doesn’t provide the information. At the least, this measure would leave registrars sitting on more uncounted ballots after Election Day, potentially causing confusion for voters and candidates.

Editorials: Do Arab Women Need Electoral Quotas? | Foreign Policy

Women are at a crossroads in the Middle East and North Africa. This is widely reflected in the current battles over the adoption of quotas aimed at improving women’s chances of being elected into parliaments. Although women’s quotas were introduced as early as 1979 in Egypt, there are new efforts underway in the Middle East to implement them. Last year, Tunisia adopted a law requiring that party lists alternate between men and women. In a more restrained manner, Libya recently drafted an election law that gives women only 10 percent of the seats. However, the struggle for quotas has also met with resistance as in Egypt, which abandoned a 2010 quota law altogether that would have ensured the presence of 64 women in the parliament.

Finland: Publishing of poll results immediately before elections unlikely to be banned in Finland Experts would rather rely on self-regulation by media | Helsingin Sanomat

In the Tuesday presidential debate arranged by Helsingin Sanomat and the commercial television channel Nelonen, four Presidential candidates out of eight were of the opinion that gallup poll results should not be made public just before the election. The candidates complained that the gallup polls direct people’s voting behaviour and provide contradictory information. Addressing the situation by making changes to the country’s election laws seems unlikely, however, despite the fact that in certain European countries – France, for instance – this had been done. In Finland, too, putting restrictions in place on last-minute polls has been discussed, but such amendment preparations were never launched.

Latvia: Voting abroad on language issue possible in more places than ever | Latvians Online

A total of 85 polling stations in 41 countries—the greatest number ever—will be open outside the homeland on Feb. 18 for a national referendum to decide if Russian should become an official language alongside Latvian. The Central Election Commission in Rīga announced the list Jan. 20 after the Constitutional Court decided not to interfere in the referendum, although it will take up a case questioning the legitimacy of parts of Latvia’s initiative and referendum law.

United Kingdom: Scottish local election: UK ministers ‘silent’ over vote power plea | BBC

Westminster has been “silent” in response to calls for Holyrood to have the power to run all Scottish elections, an SNP minister has claimed. Derek Mackay said the Scottish government had asked UK ministers to devolve these responsibilities. But he said it had received no response from the UK government. Transferring powers to run local council and Holyrood elections was a recommendations of the Gould report into the 2007 election fiasco. In May of that year, voters were left confused because of the design and number of the ballot papers. There were also failings in the electronic counting system which saw thousands of ballot papers for the Scottish and local elections rejected.

Yemen: Yemen unrest may force election delay: minister | Reuters

Yemen’s presidential election, set for February, may be delayed by security concerns, the foreign minister said, raising the prospect that a U.S. and U.N.-backed plan to end months of unrest by easing the president from office may collapse. The comments – the first suggestion the vote might be held up – came after Islamist fighters seized an entire city, underscoring U.S. and Saudi fears that chaos born of political crisis may empower al Qaeda in Yemen, which sits alongside key oil and cargo shipping lanes in the Red Sea. The vote is central to the plan crafted by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a bloc of Yemen’s wealthy neighbors, to ease President Ali Abdullah Saleh from power after nearly a year of protests against his 33-year rule.

The Voting News Daily: Activist groups want to undo ruling that led to ‘super PAC’ frenzy, More voters casting ballots early – early voting benefits campaigns with money, manpower

National: The Influence Industry: Activist groups want to undo ruling that led to ‘super PAC’ frenzy | The Washington Post Two years ago this week, the Supreme Court set the political world on its head by ruling that corporations could spend unlimited money on elections, rolling back decades of legal restrictions. An array of liberal-leaning activist…

Editorials: Actual Winner Unclear in Supreme Court’s Ruling on Texas Redistricting | ProPublica

The Supreme Court ruled this morning that federal judges in Texas overstepped their bounds in drawing a minority-friendly set of interim maps for the state to use in the 2012 elections. The Court ruled unanimously that the judges should have given more deference to the new district maps drawn by the Republican-controlled Texas legislature even though parts of these maps may discriminate against Latinos. The Department of Justice has argued that the state legislature’s plans would harm minorities and violate the Voting Rights Act.  A panel of federal judges in Washington, D.C., is in the process of determining whether those plans did, in fact, break the law. Because that decision may not be made in time for the next elections, federal judges in San Antonio were tasked with drawing interim maps for the state to use. The maps used in Texas’ next elections could impact the balance of power in Congress. They will likely determine whether the four new congressional seats awarded Texas via the census will be held by Democrats or Republicans.  The Supreme Court’s decision leaves the fate of those seats in limbo.

National: The Influence Industry: Activist groups want to undo ruling that led to ‘super PAC’ frenzy | The Washington Post

Two years ago this week, the Supreme Court set the political world on its head by ruling that corporations could spend unlimited money on elections, rolling back decades of legal restrictions. An array of liberal-leaning activist groups are marking the anniversary by launching new efforts to overturn the decision, including calls for a potential constitutional amendment. The 5 to 4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission effectively laid the groundwork for super PACs, the new independent groups that have overwhelmed the Republican presidential race with millions of dollars in negative advertising over the past few weeks.

National: More voters casting ballots early – early voting benefits campaigns with money, manpower | USAToday.com

When South Carolina voters cast their ballots in the Republican presidential primary Saturday, they’ll have company. That same day, Florida Republicans can begin in-person voting for the state’s Jan. 31 primary, joining more than 100,000 state residents who already have cast absentee ballots. As the votes are counted in Florida on Jan. 31, voters in Ohio and other states with primaries on March 6 — Super Tuesday because of its 10 GOP primaries and caucuses — will begin absentee voting. That week, voters can vote early in Arizona for its Feb. 28 primary. Later in February, polls will open for early voting in the March 6 Georgia and Tennessee primaries.

Editorials: Super PACs wreak havoc | Fred Wertheimer/Politico.com

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, issued two years ago this week, is wreaking havoc on the 2012 elections. When the Roberts Court decided to strike down the ban on corporate expenditures in campaigns, the five justices who issued the opinion surely had no idea their misguided decision would cause such enormous damage to our political system. Meanwhile, the rest of us are living with the destructive consequences of their ruling.

Editorials: ‘Super PACs’ dominate the political landscape | latimes.com

Trevor Potter is an unlikely repeat guest for a late-night comedy show. As the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, the courtly Washington lawyer is a leading expert on campaign finance law — not the kind of material that generates a lot of laughs. So the fact that he’s appeared seven times on “The Colbert Report” in the last year, helping host Stephen Colbert set up his own “super PAC” as part of a mischievous political parody, underscores an unexpected development in the 2012 presidential race: Super PACs have seized the zeitgeist.

Editorials: Election e-voting has its advantages and disadvantages | Star Phoenix

Like a lot of terrible ideas, voting over the Internet in federal elections is not without superficial appeal. That would explain why Elections Canada reportedly is moving us towards electronic or e-voting. E-voting certainly would make it easier to participate in the democratic process. Instead of schlepping to the polls, we could vote from the comfort of our homes simply by clicking a computer mouse or swiping a smart phone. We could vote while travelling anywhere outside the country with Internet access. Canadian astronauts could even vote from space if they happened to be in orbit on election day. … So what’s not to like about e-voting? Security, for starters.

Alabama: Appeals Court Hears Challenge To Voting Rights Act | Fox News

Appeals court judges expressed concern Thursday about whether to overrule Congress’ determination that some southern states and other jurisdictions still must have federal election monitoring to protect minority voting rights. Alabama’s Shelby County is challenging a requirement under the Voting Rights Act that governments with a history of discrimination obtain federal approval to change even minor election procedures. An attorney for the county argued in federal appeals court in Washington that the South has changed and that extraordinary oversight is no longer needed. But two of three judges on the panel hearing the case pointed out Congress renewed the provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2006 after finding that discrimination still exists. A lower court endorsed that finding.

Delaware: Delaware Senate committee tables National Popular Vote legislation | The News Journal

An effort to award Delaware’s three Electoral College votes in presidential elections to the winner of the national popular vote stalled Wednesday in a Senate committee. The National Popular Vote legislation, House Bill 55, is part of a nationwide movement to change the Electoral College’s perceived flaws from the 2000 presidential contest in which Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

Indiana: Tempers flare at White hearing | WISH-TV

Fireworks flew in a Hamilton County courtroom as lawyers prepared for the Charlie White criminal trial. White, Indiana’s secretary of state, faces seven felony charges, including voter fraud, perjury and theft. His lead defense lawyer, Carl Brizzi, sees the upcoming criminal trial as an tough task. “Any time someone is charged by the state or federal government for a crime, it’s an uphill battle,” he said. “We talk about a legal presumption of innocence, but i don’t think that really exists out in society.”