Ohio: State data glitch delays delivery of thousands of Ohio voter registration records | cleveland.com

A small fraction of Ohio voters’ absentee ballot requests may have been mistakenly rejected due to a recently discovered glitch in the transfer of change-of-address records. Even though the deadline for voters to register or change their address was three weeks ago, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted just this week sent about 33,000 updated registration records to local elections officials. The local boards had to immediately process the records to ensure those voters could properly cast a ballot in the Nov. 6 election. An unknown number of absentee ballot applications across the state have been rejected due to the delay because election officials did not have some voters’ current addresses.

South Carolina: All South Carolina voter registration machines go down, causing long lines | WYFF

Election officials say all the machines used to check voter registrations in the state of South Carolina were down for a time on Tuesday morning, causing long lines for absentee voters. Initially, Greenville County Registration and Elections Director Conway Belangia told News 4’s Nigel Robertson that the voting machines in Greenville County were down.  News 4 checked with other counties, and was told that the machines were down across the state. Robertson called the State Elections Office, and clarified that the machines that were down were the ones used to check voter registration and identification and to determine what ballot voters should be using, not voting machines.

Utah: Printing error slows Utah County absentee ballot scanning | Deseret News

A misplaced bar code slowed the processing of absentee ballots in Utah County, frustrating campaigns that rely on voting data for 11th hour electioneering. The vendor that printed the county’s absentee ballot envelopes placed the bar code on the outside but under the flap. That means election workers have to open each envelope to scan the code just to check the ballot into the computer system.

Guinea: Guinea’s new election commission delayed | San Jose Mercury News

Guinea’s opposition blocked the swearing-in ceremony of the country’s new election commission Wednesday and reiterated that it will sue if the panel’s members are not changed. Disagreements over the electoral process in this West African nation already have spilled over into violent protests and made it impossible for the country to hold legislative elections.

Russia: Russian election chief criticises US democracy | guardian.co.uk

When Russian protesters took to the streets last year following allegations of mass fraud in the parliamentary elections, Vladimir Churov became a popular hate figure. Many held the head of the central elections commission responsible for massaged results that had given the ruling United Russia party up to 99% of the vote in some regions of the country. In a comment widely lampooned by protesters, the then-president Dmitry Medvedev referred to Churov as a “wizard” for his success in predicting the election’s outcome. As the presidential vote looms in the US, however, Churov has gone on the offensive with his own scathing criticism of American democracy.