American Samoa: Former territorial Senate president Moliga elected governor in special election | The Republic

Voters in American Samoa have elected former territorial Senate President Lolo Matalasi Moliga to be their governor. The special election was required after none of the six candidates in the Nov. 6 general election received a majority of the vote. Moliga received 53 percent of the ballots, or just over 6,600 votes, in Tuesday’s election. Lt. Gov. Faoa Aitofele Sunia won 47 percent. “This victory is not our victory but the people of American Samoa’s victory,” Moliga told supporters at his campaign headquarters. He said his campaign motto “People First” will remain throughout his term in office.

Editorials: Arizona’s nonpartisan redistricting creates fairer election outcomes | Arizona Daily Star

As Arizona’s election results become final, the benefits of nonpartisan redistricting become clear – at least if one believes that election results should reflect the will of the electorate. Compare what happened in Arizona’s congressional elections with the results in three states that were heavily gerrymandered. In Pennsylvania, 2,723,000 votes were cast for Democratic congressional candidates, while 2,652,000 were cast for Republicans. Had these votes been evenly divided among Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional districts, each party would have won nine. But instead, Democrats won only five seats, all in overwhelmingly Democratic congressional districts that they won with an average of 76.9 percent of the vote. Republicans, who the Republican-dominated legislature distributed more evenly among the other thirteen districts, won all thirteen with a much lower average 59.3 percent of the votes cast.

Florida: New Senate president: Elections will be improved | News-JournalOnline.com

Senate President Don Gaetz forcefully pledged that the Legislature will do something to avoid election embarrassment in two years, while also promising to reach out to Democrats and usher in a new era of more ethical conduct as he leads the Senate the next two years. Gaetz, a Republican from Niceville, was sworn in Tuesday as the 85th president of the state Senate as the Legislature held a short organizational session to admit new members elected earlier this month, and formally choose its leaders, though they’ve been known for months. The day also saw the Legislature’s 120 representatives and 40 senators taking their oaths of office two weeks after they were elected or re-elected.

Illinois: How a special election for Jesse Jackson Jr.’s open seat could work | Chicago Sun-Times

Election officials plan to ask a judge to waive the standard time frame and allow a special election to replace Jesse Jackson Jr. to occur at the same time as already-planned suburban elections. Cook County Clerk David Orr said he and his counterparts in Chicago, and Will and Kankakee counties — the four areas included in the 2nd Congressional District — want the special election held April 9, along with a primary on Feb. 26. The suburban areas all have elections already scheduled for those dates.

New York: Lever voting machine sales draw a light turnout | Times Union

They are complex machines, controlled by rows of switches and reset by a giant lever that activates a series of dials, switches, counters and a little bill. For decades these iron behemoths put a mechanical imprimatur on the annual rite of democracy, locking in the selections of millions of New Yorkers, from FDR to Nelson Rockefeller. Now they’re worth less than $42. The 2002 Help America Vote Act led to the statewide replacement of the old lever voting machines in time for the 2010 elections with paper ballots logged by electronic scanners. Since then counties have been either warehousing or auctioning off the old machines, or wondering in general how they can rid of them. “They have very little value anymore,” Saratoga County Republican Elections Commissioner Roger Schiera said.

Virginia: Lawmaker wants to stiffen new voter-ID law | HamptonRoads.com

Virginia’s voter identification policy will become tougher than it currently is if Del. Mark Cole has his druthers. Cole wants to remove several forms of ID now accepted for voting based on his belief that the recently revised law doesn’t do enough to thwart potential voter fraud. The Republican legislator would like the General Assembly to strike provisions that allow voters to present a current utility bill, bank statement, government check or pay stub with an address as valid ID at the polls. “Those never should have been added to the list of acceptable IDs,” said Cole, of Spotsylvania County.

Ghana: Ghana Prepares for December General Elections | VoA News

The National Democratic Congress, or NDC, has been at the helm for four years now, after wrestling power from the New Patriotic Party, or NPP, in the 2008 general elections. NDC leader and interim President John Mahama is asking voters to choose him for president based on sound management of the economy under his party’s leadership. The former vice president became interim president in July, after the sudden death of President John Atta Mills. Amin Joseph is the ruling party’s secretary in the Ashanti Region.  He said the NDC wants to retain the office to solidify economic gains.

Editorials: Japan’s elections: Pole dancers | The Economist

The old joke about Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is that it was neither liberal, democratic, nor even a proper party. Cobbled together from a ragbag of anti-socialist factions in the 1950s, the LDP nevertheless held together for over half a century before coming unstitched in 2009. Now, history seems to be repeating itself, as 14 different political parties have mobilised since Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, called a general election for December 16th. As Mr Noda’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) weakens, most of the newer parties are on the right, united in their desire to revitalise Japan, a strategy reflected in some of their names: Sunrise, Restoration, Renaissance. The question for Japan’s voters is whether anything else unites them?

Kazakhstan: Change put on hold in Nazarbayev’s Kazakhstan | openDemocracy

Since independence in 1991, Kazakhstan’s ‘southern capital’, Almaty, has engaged in fairly extensive efforts at ‘Kazakhising’ local toponyms. Now the central arteries of the city, once part of the old Soviet planimetry, display ‘genuinely’ Kazakh names. Streets once bearing the names of Bolshevik icons like Kalinin and Kirov are now named after legendary heroes (Kabanbai Batyr) or other figures from Kazakhstan’s nomadic past (Bogenbai Batyr). The example of Furmanova ulitsa offers a fitting metaphor to describe the sense of political stagnation that pervades today’s Kazakhstan. A sense that much-needed change has been postponed until the inevitable, though not yet imminent, leadership change.

National: The election commission with no commissioners | Salon.com

Despite rampant concerns on both the right and left about the integrity of the election, we seem to have dodged a bullet on Nov. 7, at least on the presidential level. There were no serious problems reported — no hanging chads, endless recounts or credible evidence of widespread dirty tricks — and 97 percent of voters said they had no problems voting this year, aside from waiting in lines. It’s lucky that was the case, because the federal commission tasked with making elections function better has been stymied by partisan infighting that has left it with zero commissioners, with Republicans refusing to appoint new ones and blocking Democrats from doing the same.

Arizona: Pima County Supervisors reject request for special hand ballot audit | Arizona Daily Star

The Pima County Board of Supervisors denied a request from its Election Integrity Commission to sort early ballots by precinct for a special hand audit for this election. The board spent about an hour Tuesday listening to commissioners and activists describe the need for an improved ballot-counting process. Pima County is the only county in the state that doesn’t sort ballots by precinct, said commissioner Michael Duniho. “Resisting improvement in vote count auditing has earned Pima County a reputation for suspect elections,” he told the board. A precinct-level hand count would confirm the accuracy of the machine count, Duniho said.

Florida: Allen West’s Concession Won’t End Troubles for St. Lucie County Elections | Sunshine State News

U.S. Rep. Allen West may have ended his two-week battle with election officials in St. Lucie County on Tuesday, but the Treasure Coast office will continue to face scrutiny over how it handled the election. Florida Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, vowed she will pursue correcting how the supervisor of elections office reportedly double-counted some ballots and misplaced others in West’s defeat to Democrat Patrick Murphy of Jupiter. “We’re going to move forward looking very carefully at the recommendations, seeing exactly what they say and see what went wrong with this election process in St. Lucie County,” Harrell said Tuesday.

Illinois: Orr To Ask Judge To Adjust Schedule For Special Election To Replace Jackson | CBS Chicago

Now that Jesse Jackson Jr. has resigned his seat in Congress, Gov. Pat Quinn must set the date for an election to fill the seat. Cook County Clerk David Orr has a plan — and hopes the courts will go along. It would require a court order condensing the schedule so that the primary and general elections to replace Jackson would fit the existing suburban Cook County, Will and Kankakee County election schedules. All have primary elections Feb. 26 and general elections April 9. However, as it stands, there is a March 15 deadline to hold a special election. Orr said sticking to the existing deadline would mean staging extra elections — and incurring extra costs.

Iowa: Secretary of State set to resume campaign to root out voter fraud | TheGazette

A general election that went off with hardly a hitch hasn’t changed Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s determination to clean up voter registration rolls. Now that the election is over, Schultz plan to resume efforts to root out voter fraud as soon as a Polk County District Court judge lifts a temporary injunction preventing him from removing ineligible Iowans from voter registration rolls. “My position hasn’t changed: If you’re not a citizen you shouldn’t be voting,” the first-term Republican said. “It’s my job to protect the integrity of the vote. If every vote really does count, then it’s important for us to protect that.”

New Jersey: Slammed by Sandy, New Jersey counties seek more time to count ballots | Philadelphia Inquirer

Fourteen New Jersey counties, swamped with provisional and mail-in ballots in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, on Tuesday were granted more time to count. Those counties, including Burlington, Camden and Gloucester, have until next week to certify the results of the Nov. 6 election. That means a few close local races in towns such as Stratford, Laurel Springs, Delanco, Bordentown, and Moorestown will remain undecided a while longer. “Election offices are bombed here” because of overseas and provisional ballots, Camden County Election Commissioner Robert Venuti said Tuesday. The county has yet to start counting those ballots, he said.

Ohio: Cuyahoga County elections chief Jane Platten leaving to take job at prosecutor’s office | cleveland.com

Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Director Jane Platten, who helped bring credibility and efficiency to the once-broken office, announced Tuesday she is taking a job as chief of staff for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty. Platten’s resignation comes two weeks after a largely trouble-free general election in Cuyahoga County — an occurrence much less common under previous elections directors. “When I told people that I had accepted the job as Board of Elections director, many of the reactions I received were, ‘Are you crazy?’ or they laughed,” Platten recalled in an interview Tuesday. “People’s perception of the Board of Elections was that it was an agency of extreme turmoil and it was broken, and we turned it around.”

Pennsylvania: Audit of Philadelphia election process planned | PA Independent

Voting irregularities in Philadelphia on Election Day have prompted city official to launch an audit. City Controller Alan Butkovitz announced Tuesday afternoon that his office would conduct an audit of the Philadelphia City Commissioners’ handling of the election, in light of the fact that more than 27,000 individuals in the city were forced to vote by provisional ballot on Nov. 6. There are plenty of questions to be answered about how the election went down in Philadelphia. In a letter sent to the city commissioners – a three member board that is responsible for conducting elections in Pennsylvania’s largest city – Butkovitz said there were numerous reported incidents where individuals who had voted in one election district for years were forced to vote with a provisional ballot this year because their names had been removed from the voting rolls. The 27,000 provisional ballots is more than double the number of such ballots cast in 2008 – though turnout was actually slightly lower this time around.

Puerto Rico: Puerto Rico’s Fortuno Asks for Recount | Fox News

Outgoing Puerto Rican Gov. Luis Fortuño is not going down without a fight. The Republican leader of the U.S. territory is demanding a recount to the results from this month’s elections that saw him lose his gubernatorial post to Alejandro García Padilla, the Popular Democratic Pary candidate who pulled in 47.78 percent of the vote, compared with Fortuño’s 47.09 percent. “I was informed by our electoral commissioner that, with a number of write-in votes still remaining and estimated at 20,000, which are yet to be verified, counted and included, whatever the case is, the trend observed so far in the candidacy for governor indicates that, provided it continues, the point-five percent (0.5%) difference referred to in Article 10.010, quoted, will probably be reached,” Fortuño wrote in a letter to Puerto Rico’s president of the State Elections Commission, Hector Conty, according to the newspaper El Nuevo Dia.

South Carolina: South Carolina Governor Haley admits state failed to protect its residents | TheState.com

As more South Carolinians learned that hackers hold their tax return data, Gov. Nikki Haley admitted Tuesday that the state did not do enough to protect their sensitive financial information and accepted the resignation of the agency director in the middle of the controversy. “Could South Carolina have done a better job? Absolutely, or we would not be standing here,” said Haley, who had insisted in the first days after revealing the cyber attack that nothing could have prevented the breach. Hackers possess Social Security and other data belonging to 5.7 million people – 3.8 million taxpayers and their 1.9 million dependents, Haley said. The number of businesses affected has risen slightly to nearly 700,000. All of the stolen tax data dating back to 1998 was unencrypted.

South Carolina: The Great Richland County Election Debacle of 2012 | Free Times

There’s a saying: If you don’t like the weather in South Carolina, wait five minutes. This year, that might also be said for election results. The Great Richland County Election Debacle of 2012 is already being described in monumental terms. In news stories, The State has called it “perhaps the mother of all bungled county elections in modern S.C. history.” State Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian summed it up in fewer words. “It’s f#!ked up,” he said. Richland County Democratic Rep. Mia Butler characterized it even more succinctly. “Inexcusable,” she called the county’s election process in an open letter to media and her constituents.

Texas: Andrade resigns as Texas secretary of state | Houston Chronicle

Hope Andrade, the first Latina to serve as Texas secretary of state, abruptly announced her resignation Tuesday in the wake of controversy over a so-called voter purge. “It has been the highest honor of my professional life to serve as the secretary of state for the greatest state in our nation,” she said in a statement announcing her departure. In a letter to Gov. Rick Perry, who in 2008 named her to the post in which she served as Texas’ chief elections officer, the San Antonio resident said her resignation would be effective Friday. There was no immediate word on her replacement.

US Virgin Islands: Outcome unchanged on St. Croix after board finishes counting votes | Virgin Islands Daily News

Almost two weeks after the General Election, the St. Croix Board of Elections on Monday morning wrapped up counting all elements of the vote, an official said. The final tallying of votes did not change the outcome of the election or displace any of the winners, which have held their leads since electronic votes were totaled on the evening of Nov. 6, just after the polls closed for the General Election.

Virginia: Fairfax County approves commission to examine Election Day problems | The Washington Post

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to create a special commission to examine problems on Election Day, namely long lines that forced some voters to wait hours to cast their ballots. “The fact that so many people came out to exercise their right to vote is a good thing,” said Chairman Sharon Bulova (D), who proposed the commission. “That so many people had to wait in long lines for several hours was not. We’ll never know how many people gave up.” The commission’s mandate will be to study a range of issues suspected of contributing to the lines — from equipment and staffing shortages to reports of poorly trained poll workers — and to return with findings and recommendations.

Virginia: Paper Ballots In Prince William County? | NBC4

According to PotomacLocal.com, Prince William County has decided to use paper ballots in elections, following long lines at the polls on Election Day. The local-news website tweeted the news Tuesday night: “Breaking News: Prince William County Board of Elections to institute use of paper ballots following long lines at polls Nov. 6.” On Election Day, some voters in the county waited for up to four hours to vote. The long lines attracted some press reports – including from News4’s Voter Patrol – and even national attention. But it also prompted concern for the Board of Elections.

Editorials: How to Fix a Broken Election System | NYTimes.com

While President Obama was delivering his victory speech in the early hours of Wednesday, Nov. 7, people were still standing in line in Florida to vote. Thousands had waited hours to vote in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, some in the cold, some giving up wages to do so. In a spontaneous aside — “by the way, we have to fix that” — the president acknowledged the unnecessary hardship of casting a vote in the United States and established a goal that he now has an obligation to address. The long lines can be shortened with commitments from Washington, as well as state and local governments, but they are just the most glaring symptom of a deeply broken democratic process. In too many states, it’s also needlessly difficult to register to vote. States controlled by Republicans continue to erect partisan impediments to participation. And the process for choosing a candidate remains bound to unlimited and often secret campaign donations that are bound to lead to corruption.

Editorials: Gridlocked election commission awaits action by Obama | The Center for Public Integrity

The nation’s enforcer of election laws was largely paralyzed during the 2012 election, despite a Supreme Court ruling that left several key money-in-politics issues open to interpretation. With five of six Federal Election Commission members working on expired terms (one since 2007), President Barack Obama had an opportunity to remake the agency with members more inclined to enforce campaign finance rules, say reformers. But that hasn’t happened. The situation hasn’t done much for the agency’s reputation.

Editorials: Here’s a thought. Why don’t we make voting easy? | The Washington Post

Of course: Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is reacting to Democratic electoral victories by trying to make it harder for people to vote. He wants to end same-day voter registration. Same-day voter registration is, in fact, a bad policy — because registration should be automatic. But in the current situation it’s the least-bad of bad policies. That’s because everything about voter registration in this country is awful. We should have universal, automatic voter registration. Period. End of story. Just as most democracies do.

Florida: New Florida leaders vow election fix | SFGate

Florida’s new legislative leaders on Tuesday pledged to fix the state’s troubled elections system, and promised a new era of cooperation in the wake of a string of Election Day defeats that surprised many top Republicans. The GOP still firmly controls the Florida Legislature, but the tone struck by new Senate President Don Gaetz and new House Speaker Will Weatherford was a stark turnaround from the past two years. Weatherford stressed the need for Democrats and Republicans to work together, while Gaetz said that voters don’t want finger-pointing over why things can’t get done.