Egypt: Voters head to polls again in parliament vote | Reuters

Egyptians vote Tuesday in the third round of a parliamentary election that has so far handed Islamists the biggest share of seats in an assembly that will be central in the transition from army rule. Islamist groups came late to the uprising that unseated president Hosni Mubarak in February, but were well placed to seize the moment when Egyptians were handed the first chance in six decades to choose their representatives freely.

The run-up to the third round has been overshadowed by the deaths of 17 people last month in clashes between the army and protesters demanding the military step aside immediately. But the ruling generals have insisted the election process will not be derailed by violence. Monitors mostly praised the first two rounds as free of the ballot stuffing, thuggery and vote rigging that once guaranteed landslide wins for Mubarak’s party.

But police raids on pro-democracy and rights groups last week have disrupted the work of leading Western-backed election monitors and drew accusations that the army was deliberately trying to weaken oversight of the vote and silence critics.

Egypt: Army hastens end of parliamentary election | Reuters

Egypt’s army rulers issued a decree on Sunday to hasten the conclusion of parliamentary elections after deadly clashes in Cairo last month raised pressure for a quicker handover to civilian control. Final run-offs to the assembly’s upper house will end on February 22 instead of March 12 as previously planned, the ruling military council said in a statement, and the house will hold its first sitting on February 28.

Fifty-nine people were killed in confrontations in late November and December between security forces and protesters demanding the military leave power sooner. Many Egyptians voiced outrage at video footage of soldiers beating men and women after they had already collapsed on the ground, some dragging a female protester by her black full-body veil, exposing her bra then clubbing and kicking her.

Egypt: Chairman of the Centre Party Demands Electronic Voting in the Next Parliamentary Elections in Egypt | allAfrica.com

Chairman of the Centre Party Abu-Ela Madhi said that his party would demand to add a new article to the new Constitution to activate the electronic voting in the next parliamentary elections.

Madhi said, in a statement reported by the Middle East News Agency (MENA), that the e-voting guarantees that elections are based on the principle of transparency and justice of all contestants.

Kuwait: Government moves to set up election commission in Kuwait | Kuwait Times

In a surprising move, the Cabinet yesterday reviewed two key election reform draft laws presented by Prime Minister HH Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah, one of them calling for the establishment of an independent election commission. The second bill calls for setting up of an independent national committee for supervising election campaigns in a bid to ensure equal and fair opportunities to all candidates contesting the polls.

The two draft laws were then referred to the Cabinet’s legal committee to study its details before they come back to the Cabinet for final approval, according to a statement issued following the Cabinet’s weekly meeting. The two draft laws will not be issued immediately as they will be referred to the next National Assembly which will be elected on Feb 2. The establishment of an independent election commission has been among the main demands by the opposition to reform the election process which has been under the supervision of the interior ministry since 1962 when Kuwait began adopting the parliamentary system.

Libya: Citizens linked to Muammar Gaddafi can’t run in election: draft bill | National Post

Libyans with ties to ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi will be banned from running in elections under a bill drafted by the country’s new rulers. Academics who wrote about Gaddafi’s “Green Book,” containing his musings on politics, economics and everyday life, will also be barred from running under the draft law, published online by the National Transitional Council (NTC) on Sunday night.

“This is a very important law because people are complaining that some of Gaddafi’s figures still occupy high positions,” said Abeir Imnena, a university professor among a number of legal experts, judges and lawyers involved in drafting the bill. “This is to tell people that there’s no room for them [Gaddafi supporters].”

The Voting News Daily: Redistricting Spurs Debate Over Voting Rights Act, Montana Supreme Court upholds state ban on corporation spending

National: Redistricting Spurs Debate Over Voting Rights Act | Roll Call As new Members take the oath of office in January 2013, something unprecedented may occur: Not a single white Democrat from the Deep South could be a Member of the 113th Congress. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina already have just a single Democratic Representative…

National: Redistricting Spurs Debate Over Voting Rights Act | Roll Call

As new Members take the oath of office in January 2013, something unprecedented may occur: Not a single white Democrat from the Deep South could be a Member of the 113th Congress. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina already have just a single Democratic Representative in Congress. Each of those Democrats is African-American and represents majority-black districts.

It’s a trend that may extend to a fifth state in the Deep South. Georgia’s Republican-written Congressional redistricting map, which became law earlier this year and was approved by the Department of Justice just before Christmas, undermines the current Democratic bent of Rep. John Barrow’s district. He’s the Peach State’s one white Democratic Member. The new map is likely to leave Georgia’s delegation with only four Democrats — representing the state’s four majority-black districts.

Montana: Supreme Court upholds state ban on corporation spending | Billings Gazette

The Montana Supreme Court on Friday overturned a lower court’s ruling and reinstated the state’s century-old ban on direct spending by corporations for or against political candidates. The justices ruled 5-2 in favor of the state attorney general’s office and commissioner of political practices to uphold the initiative passed by Montana voters in 1912.

Western Tradition Partnership, a conservative political group now known as American Tradition Partnership, joined by Champion Painting Inc., and the Montana Shooting Sports Association Inc., had challenged the Montana ban after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The U.S. Supreme Court decision granted political speech rights to corporations. District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock of Helena ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court decision rendered the Montana ban unconstitutional. But the Montana Supreme Court’s majority saw it differently and overturned Sherlock.

Montana: A Citizens United sequel: different result | SCOTUSblog

The Montana Supreme Court on Friday put to work its own view of what the Supreme Court had decided in the controversial ruling allowing massive corporate spending in political campaigns, and came out differently: the state court upheld a 99-year-old state ban on the use of corporations’ own money to support or oppose any candidate in state elections.   The 5-2 ruling, including two dissenting opinions, is here.  One of the dissenters predicted that the ruling would not survive an inevitable appeal to the Justices, and might be overturned without even a close look.

Both the majority and the dissenters treated the voter-approved Corrupt Practices Act as a flat ban on independent spending of corporations’ internal funds to support or oppose specific candidates for state office — independent in the sense that the financial effort was not coordinated with a candidate.  Thus, the measure was nearly identical to the ban in federal law that was struck down by the Supreme Court in January of last year in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

South Carolina: Gingrich says Obama administration seeks to steal elections with voter ID ruling | MiamiHerald.com

Republican presidential hopefuls spent Saturday crisscrossing Iowa ahead of Tuesday’s caucuses, but some candidates had one eye toward South Carolina’s Jan. 21 primary and an issue that might help them gain traction in the Palmetto State. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who represented Georgia, used a stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to accuse the Obama administration of trying to “steal elections” in the wake of the Justice Department’s rejection of South Carolina’s voter identification law.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division determined that the South Carolina law requiring voters to show a photo ID at polling places was discriminatory against minorities. “… You have to ask, why is it that they are so desperate to retain the ability to steal elections, and I think that’s what it comes down to,” Gingrich said.

Texas: Justice Department review delays Texas Voter ID law | Your Houston News

The U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing Texas’ recently passed Voter ID bill after a ruling Dec. 23 stated that a similar bill in South Carolina did not meet requirements of the 1965 Voter Rights Act and made it more difficult for minorities to vote. “I’m disappointed the Department of Justice is playing politics in this,” State Rep. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said. “I’m intrigued to see the outcome of the litigation, but at the end of the day, the Supreme Court is going to uphold it.”

Creighton said the bill would require voters to provide a Texas Driver’s License or Department of Public Safety public identification card, citizenship papers or a U.S. passport, or similar documents. For those who do not have the required document, Creighton said a DPS identification card can be obtained free of charge.

Virginia: Attorney General changes mind, won’t intervene in primary ballot case | The Washington Post

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) announced Sunday that he has reconsidered his decision from Saturday and will not seek to get several GOP presidential candidates added to the state’s primary ballot. Every candidate except Mitt Romney and Ron Paul failed to meet the stringent requirements to get on the ballot for the state’s March 6 primary, and Cuccinelli said Saturday that he would seek to get them added to the ballot.

But in a statement Sunday, he reversed course and said he would seek a change in the requirements for future elections only. In the end, Cuccinelli said trying to make immediate changes wouldn’t be fair to the Romney and Paul campaigns.

Virginia: Four GOP candidates join Perry’s lawsuit challenging Virginia ballot access | The Hill

Four additional GOP presidential candidates joined Rick Perry’s federal court challenge to Virginia’s ballot-access rules this weekend, in a show of force by five rivals for the Republican nomination who otherwise will not appear on the state’s primary ballot. Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman, and Perry all failed to qualify for Virginia’s primary ballot because their campaigns did not collect enough signatures.

Texas Gov. Perry first filed a federal court challenge to Virginia’s ballot-access rules on Tuesday. Attorneys representing the additional candidates sent a letter to the chairman of Virginia’s Republican party on Saturday. The letter asks that the candidates’ names be added to the ballot, an action that would moot their constitutional challenge to the current law. The state requires candidates to obtain 10,000 signatures from registered voters in the state, including at least 400 from each of 11 congressional districts.

Virginia: Republican candidates may get another shot at Virginia ballot for Super Tuesday | The Washington Post

 

The slate of Republican presidential hopefuls who did not qualify for the Virginia primary might get another shot. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II plans to file emergency legislation to re-open the process to GOP candidates. Virginia’s process has come under fire since it was announced last week that only former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) had qualified for the ballot.“Recent events have underscored that our system is deficient,” Cuccinelli (R) said in a statement Saturday. “Virginia owes her citizens a better process. We can do it in time for the March primary if we resolve to do so quickly.”

 

Neither Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, former senator Rick Santorum nor former House speaker Newt Gingrich submitted the 10,000 signatures required to get a spot on the state’s ballot in time for Super Tuesday. According to news reports, Cuccinelli’s plan would allow candidates who qualify for federal matching funds to go onto the state’s ballot. Perry’s campaign filed a lawsuitmaintaining that he was unable to submit the required signatures because of the state’s “requirement that all petition circulators be an eligible or registered qualified voter in Virginia.”

Editorials: Review & Outlook: Holder’s Racial Politics | WSJ.com

Eric Holder must be amazed that President Obama was elected and he could become Attorney General. That’s a fair inference after the Attorney General last Friday blocked South Carolina’s voter ID law on grounds that it would hurt minorities. What a political abuse of law.

In a letter to South Carolina’s government, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez called the state law—which would require voters to present one of five forms of photo ID at the polls—a violation of Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Overall, he noted, 8.4% of the state’s registered white voters lack photo ID, compared to 10% of nonwhite voters. This is the yawning chasm the Justice Department is now using to justify the unprecedented federal intrusion into state election law, and the first denial of a “pre-clearance” Voting Rights request since 1994.

Congo: DRC Opposition Figure Blames MONUSCO for Election Debacle | VoA News

A top adviser for veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi says the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is to blame for the “fraudulent” November elections. Albert Moleka, the cabinet director of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress party and spokesman for Mr. Tshisekedi, said the UN mission failed in its mandate to help Congo’s electoral commission administer a credible vote during the November elections.

“We found out that all these election figures were all made up with the complicity of the MONUSCO because it was part of the commission that validated the results,” said Moleka. “It’s a serious matter because MONUSCO was supposed to [bolster] security for the Congolese people and also to help us through the electoral process.”

The Voting News Weekly: TVN Weekly December 26 2011 – January 1 2012

As we open a new year, Fareed Zakaria noted the many significant elections scheduled across the world in the coming year. Hackers have threatened to disrupt this week’s Iowa Caucuses. Rick Perry files a lawsuit after he failed to submit sufficient signatures to meet ballot access requirements for the Virginia primary. The Montana Supreme Court upheld the State’s ban on corporation spending on political campaigns, while the Indiana Supreme Court upheld a ban on robo-calls. The New York Times surveyed laws passed in 2011 that could make it difficult for students to vote. Jeffrey Toobin consider Attorney General Eric Holder’s legacy after the Department of Justice blocked South Carolina’s Voter ID law and Joshua Spivak considered the causes for the many recall elections over the past year.