Ohio: Husted bars local election officials from setting early voting hours pending appeals court decision | cleveland.com

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted on Tuesday prohibited county boards of elections — for the time being — from setting hours to open their doors for early voting the weekend before the presidential election. Although a federal judge last week restored in-person early voting during the last three days before the Nov. 6 election, Husted said it would be inappropriate to set voting hours for those days because the judge’s ruling has been appealed. “The constitutionality of the statute setting in-person absentee voting hours is still subject to court review and it would further confuse voters to set hours now that the court may change later,” Husted said in a directive issued Tuesday to all 88 county boards of elections.

South Carolina: State responds to court’s voter ID ‘impediment’ questions | TPM

Want to vote in an election in South Carolina but don’t have a photo ID? Lawyers for the state say it will be as easy as explaining why and then casting your ballot. In paperwork filed on Friday in federal court, South Carolina’s lawyers defended the state’s voting laws by saying anyone without a proper photo identification would still be allowed to vote by simply explaining what “reasonable impediment” kept them from getting an ID. The filing came after a panel of judges in Washington, D.C., quizzed the attorneys last week about what South Carolina meant by the term “reasonable impediment.” In essence, the state’s attorneys said, defining the term is up to each individual voter.

Tennessee: Davidson County election commission sets aside electronic poll books for November | The Tennessean

The Davidson County Election Commission voted Tuesday not to use electronic poll books for voting in November. The poll books, which were used to replace paper poll books recently in 60 of the county’s 160 voting precincts, have been at the center of criticism in the past week because some voters received the wrong ballots during the Aug. 2 primary. The commission had originally planned to use the new poll books in all 160 precincts for the Nov. 6 general election. But four of the five commission members voted Tuesday to revert back to the paper poll books for all precincts. The electronic poll books will be used only to help assist poll workers to help look up voter lists.

Texas: Data Issues in Texas Voter ID Case Highlight Coming Battle Over Voting Rights Act | Election Academy

Last Thursday, a three-judge federal court in Washington, DC refused to clear Texas’ new voter ID law under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The decision sets up an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court – though likely not before the 2012 election – during which the constitutionality of Section 5 of the VRA is certain to come under challenge. The constitutional argument about the VRA has many facets, but the Texas case’s treatment of data about voter ID is as good an example as any of why the Act – and in particular, Section 5 – is generating so much heat lately. We’ve covered the data issues involved in voter ID many times on this blog – and both sides in the Texas case did the same. For its part, Texas produced an expert who submitted testimony suggesting that 1) a comparison with voting rates in Indiana and Georgia showed that Texas voters (especially minority voters) would not be prevented from voting because of ID and 2) minority voters possess ID at the same rates as all voters. The Justice Department countered with an expert who used matching data to determine that minority voters were more likely to lack the required ID to vote.

Wisconsin: Groups tell Wisconsin Supreme Court to wait on taking voter ID cases | JSOnline

Groups that blocked the state’s new voter ID law in two separate lawsuits are fighting an effort to have the state Supreme Court take over the cases and render a ruling before the Nov. 6 election. Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen last month asked the high court to take the cases from two appeals courts, consolidate them and rule before the election. The Supreme Court this spring rejected an earlier effort by Van Hollen to take over the cases. Van Hollen argues it is appropriate to take the cases now that they both have full trial records. On Tuesday, the plaintiffs in both cases made separate filings arguing the high court should not take the cases. “The only thing that has changed since April, when this court last had the opportunity to take up this case, is the political climate,” said a filing from the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin.

Netherlands: Dutch Election Suspense | Presseurop

Rupture or continuity? The Dutch go to the polls on Sept. 12 for early elections marked by the crisis. Liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte seems well ahead, but on the left there’s tough competition to come up with an alternative. For the Dutch press this close vote risks prolonging the political crisis. The general election campaign of 12 September is still coming up with surprises. According to a survey published on September 3, the VVD party of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte (Liberal) is still in the lead, expected to pick up 35 of the 150 seats in the National Assembly. Its main rival, though, seems to be not the rising star of the Socialist Party led by Emile Roemer (radical left), which had set the tone of the debate over the summer, but the Labour Party (PvdA) under Diederik Samsom.

Ukraine: Tymoshenko blasts forthcoming Ukrainian poll as illegitimate | RT

Former Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko who is currently serving a jail sentence for abuse of office has addressed European politicians with a call to recognize the Ukrainian parliamentary poll as illegitimate before it even takes place. The address was read in the European Parliament by Tymoshenko’s daughter Yevgenia, who also held meetings with leaders of the European People’s Party – a coalition of European center-right parties who have long been allies with Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party. “The main message is to make a statement right now that these elections are illegitimate. After the elections are over it will be too late,” Yevgenia Tymoshenko said. “The dictatorship in Ukraine has practically been built. The elections will help to strengthen it,” she added. These words echoed last month’s statement by Wilfried Martens, president of the European People’s Party, who said that Yulia Tymoshenko’s arrest was a shift by President Viktor Yanukovich’s administration towards “Soviet-style authoritarianism.”

Venezuela: Voting drill in Venezuela | Al Jazeera

Sunday’s unusual “mock”elections are meant to test Venezuela’s newest innovation to its electronic voting system. Coming from a country where we still have to mark ballots by hand, fold them and then stuff then into cardboard boxes, this system is really quite state of the art. A machine now verifies a voter’s identification with his or her thumb print. It must be the same thumb print that appears on a person’s national identification card. After about 15 seconds, the machine gives the green light to go to the actual voting booth. There, you find a touch screen system to select the candidate of choice: President Hugo Chavez of the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela, or his rival Enrique Capriles of the opposition United Coalition. Just touch your candidate’s photo and another screen asks you to select YES or NO. It is very fast, easy and designed to make multiple voting impossible.

National: Voter ID and early voting cases heat up in courts across the country | CSMonitor.com

Before voters get a say in this year’s presidential race, lawyers and judges are having theirs. A series of court battles in several states may determine, over the next several weeks, everything from how people cast their votes, when polling locations will be open and what ballots will look like. Many cases have a partisan bent, with rulings potentially tipping the scales slightly in favor of Democrats or Republicans. The legal fights have entered an urgent phase, two months before the Nov. 6 election and just a few weeks before military and overseas absentee ballots must go out.

National: Late court decisions may impact 2012 election | The Associated Press

Before voters get a say in this year’s presidential race, lawyers and judges are having theirs.A series of court battles in several states may determine, over the next several weeks, everything from how people cast their votes, when polling locations will be open and what ballots will look like. Many cases have a partisan bent, with rulings potentially tipping the scales slightly in favor of Democrats or Republicans. The legal fights have entered an urgent phase, two months before the Nov. 6 election and just a few weeks before military and overseas absentee ballots must go out. Pennsylvania lawyers recently filed briefs arguing whether an appeal on the state’s strict voter ID law should be held in September or October. Opponents won a mid-September court date, which is late even by their standards. “This is by no means impossible, but certainly the closer you get a decision to Election Day the harder it is to make changes,” said Vic Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. Wisconsin’s attorney general is making a late push in the courts to reinstate voter ID requirements.

Editorials: GOP-Backed Voter Fraud Laws Aim To Disenfranchise Students | The Daily Beast

Twenty-one-year old Gillian Demers says she was “more than a little afraid” when she received a letter from the state warning she may be breaking the law—by registering to vote. Last September, the University of Maine senior received a letter from Maine’s secretary of state, Republican Charles Summers, questioning her right to vote in her newly adopted state. Two hundred and five other students received the same letter, sent after the state’s GOP chairman, Charlie Webster, asked his GOP colleague to investigate if the students had the right to vote in Maine. Unless she met certain bureaucratic regulations like registering for a Maine driver’s license, Summers’s letter said, Demers would have to revoke her  residency or be in violation of a law that could mean up to six months in jail. The letter is just one example of new laws and regulations rolled out largely by Republican-controlled statehouses over the last two years. Purportedly aimed at preventing voter fraud, the laws suppress the votes of students and minorities and, according to court records and interviews with political insiders from both parties, at least some GOP officials know it.

California: Bill Extends California Vote-Counting Deadline | The Associated Press

California would allow three extra days for mail-in ballots to be accepted by elections officials under a bill approved by the state Senate. Democratic Sen. Lou Correa of Anaheim says AB562 is needed because mail delivery may be delayed after the closure of five mail processing centers in California. The Senate passed the bill 28-9 Friday. It was headed to the Assembly for a final vote.

Editorials: Costly Minnesota voter ID amendment ‘solves’ an imaginary problem | Grand Forks Herald

In the wake of the Minnesota Supreme Court’s ruling on Aug. 27, Minnesotans will decide in November whether we rewrite our state Constitution to include new restrictions on voting, including the need to show photo ID at the polls. In its decision, the court affirmed the Legislature’s authority to place amendments on the ballot. Missing was proof that an amendment was even needed in this case. And that makes for an unfortunate and shortsighted opinion, one that puts Minnesota at odds with states such as Wisconsin and Missouri, where courts held that such measures are unconstitutional because they threaten citizens’ fundamental right to vote. But it goes even beyond that.

Ohio: State ordered to restore weekend early voting in judge’s ruling | The Washington Post

A federal judge ruled Friday that Ohio must allow in-person voting on the weekend before the presidential election, a victory for Democrats who claimed Republican efforts to close down early voting were aimed at discouraging voters most likely to support President Obama. The ruling is the second this week on Ohio voting. Ohio has allowed in-person voting the weekend before the election since 2005, and U.S. District Judge Peter C. Economus said Friday that the state did not offer a convincing argument as to why it was changing the rules now. The change contained an exception for military voters, and the Obama campaign and Ohio Democrats said all voters should be allowed to vote on the weekend.

Voting Blogs: OFA v. Husted: Understanding the Ohio Early Voting Decision | Election Law @ Moritz

Today’s federal district court ruling in Obama for America v. Husted raises several interesting issues. The case, which began only last month, quickly achieved some notoriety as an attack on military voting rights protected both by state law and by the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), though in fact it was merely an effort to leverage some of the additional accommodations that Ohio was offering military (or UOCAVA) voters into a basis for restoring early in-person voting for all Ohio voters. In that regard, today’s decision provides exactly the relief that the Plaintiffs desired, subject to an appeal to the Sixth Circuit. Before exploring some implications of today’s decision, it may be helpful to consider some background. From 2005 to 2010, Ohio’s early voting law permitted early in-person voting up through the Saturday, Sunday, and Monday before Election Day, a three-day period during which close to 100,000 voters may have voted in the 2008 presidential election. In 2011, however, the Ohio legislature amended the applicable statutory provisions to halt early voting at 6:00 p.m. on the Friday before Election Day. Unfortunately, the legislative process by which Ohio arrived at this reduced early voting period was not a model of clarity.

Pennsylvania: Path to voter ID not without glitches | Philadelphia Inquirer

With the arrival last week of the Pennsylvania Department of State voter ID card, state officials say it should be possible for every eligible voter to obtain poll-worthy identification.
Possible does not always mean easy. The new voter ID has been officially described as a “safety net” for people who cannot obtain all of the documents needed for a traditional nondriver license. Those include people who never had a birth certificate or can’t produce a marriage license to verify a name change, for example. But the card isn’t valid for any purpose other than voting, and you can’t get one without swearing that you have tried every other avenue to get a secure ID. For most people, that means at least one previous trip to a Department of Transportation office. “We call this an exhaustion requirement,” for both legal and metaphoric reasons, said Witold “Vic” Walczak, the ACLU lawyer who is fighting the state’s voter ID law in court.

Pennsylvania: Voter ID Laws an Extra Challenge to Asian Americans | Asianweek

In an election year where just a handful of votes could sway a tight election, some states are enacting laws to make it more difficult for citizens to vote. Voter identification laws have been passed or modified in 10 states since 2010 when Republicans made big gains in national politics through the Tea Party movement. Critics say these voter ID laws disproportionately affect voters who come from traditional minority communities.Although much attention has been given to African American and Latino voters these laws may have an even greater affect on Asian American voters. Pennsylvania’s new voter ID law is being challenged on just that idea. Due to the diversity of language, foreign name structure and customs, voter rolls are frequently fraught with clerical errors that could cause legally registered voters to be turned away at the polls.

Wisconsin: Future of Wisconsin voter ID law could hinge on Texas case | WTAQ

The future of Wisconsin’s photo ID law for voting could hinge on a case from Texas that’s headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Thursday, a three-judge federal court panel in Washington threw out the Texas voter ID law that Republicans passed a year ago. The judges said the law imposes, “strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor.” And the court said minorities would be hurt the most, because they’re more likely to live in poverty. Appellate judge David Tatel said the Texas law imposes a heavier burden on voters than similar laws in Indiana and Georgia, because many voters would have to pay for documents they need to get the proper ID’s.

Virginia: New voter ID law with provisional ballot option could cause election nightmare in Virginia | The Washington Post

Take two deadlocked races in a battleground state that Republicans and Democrats alike say will play a huge role in who wins the White House and controls the U.S. Senate. Blend in a new voter identification law and the possibility of thousands of additional provisional ballots that won’t be counted for days. Whip it to a froth with unprecedented political cash supporting get-out-the-vote efforts and eleventh-hour dirty tricks, and there’s your recipe for a lingering election nightmare. Virginia and 10 other states either enacted new laws or tightened existing ones in the past two years that compel voters to bring identification with them to their polling places, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In eight of those states, Republicans are governors. Virginia’s law takes effect for the first time this fall.

Angola: Ruling MPLA Party Wins 74 Percent of Vote | ABC News

President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ ruling party has won 73 percent of the national vote assuring his government, in power for 32 years, another five years in power. With 85 percent of the votes counted from Friday’s poll, the state election commission said Sunday that the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, has gained a large majority. The MPLA will control Angola’s 220 seat legislature, but the party’s margin of victory is down from the 82 percent that it won in 2008. The largest opposition party, UNITA, won 18 percent of the vote, nearly twice its share from 2008. And newcomer party, CASA-CE, gained five percent. Both opposition parties criticized the elections for not being free and fair.

Netherlands: Stoner voters targeted in Dutch election campaign | KansasCity.com

With slogans like “Don’t let your vote go up in smoke!”, owners of the free-wheeling cafes where bags of hashish are sold alongside cups of coffee are mounting a get-out-the-stoner-vote campaign ahead of next week’s Dutch election. The campaigners are calling on their sometimes apathetic dope smoking clientele to get out and support political parties that oppose the recently introduced “weed pass” that is intended to rein in the cafes known as coffee shops and close them altogether to foreign tourists. At a coffee shop in The Hague, a member of staff selling weed wears a T-shirt emblazoned with a modified Uncle Sam style poster calling on smokers to “Vote against the weed pass on Sept. 12.” Under the new system, coffee shops become member-only clubs and only Dutch residents can apply for a pass to get in. The cafes are limited to a maximum of 2,000 members.

Somalia: Electoral Commission Releases Criteria for Candidates Running for President | allAfrica.com

The electoral commission announced the criteria for candidates running for president of Somalia, Garowe Online reports. Spokesman for the electoral commission Osman Libah Ibrahim held a press conference in Mogadishu on Saturday explaining the criteria for candidates running for president. The ten point criteria included that the candidate must pay a $10,000 registration fee before running for elections. The candidate must be a Muslim and age must be 40 or over and not have a criminal background.

Mississippi: Where Voter ID Stands in Mississippi | Jackson Free Press

After years of unsuccessfully trying to get the Mississippi Legislature to pass a voter ID law, last November, state conservatives put the issue of voter ID to the state’s voters. In the same election where voters said “no” to a controversial initiative to make a fetus a person, voters said “yes” to forcing voters to present a government-issued identification card to cast a ballot. The initiative passed with 62 percent of the vote. Of course, that wasn’t the end of the issue for Mississippi. First, the state Legislature had to pass a law, which it did. Before implementing any laws that change voting procedures, Mississippi has to get a ruling on the law from the U.S. Department of Justice. That isn’t a frivolous request; the state has a history of black voter suppression going back to Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era. Essentially, because it wouldn’t give a fair and level playing field to African Americans then, the federal government is watching us to make sure we do now. By June 20, however, the Justice Department had not received all the pertinent information it needed to make its ruling. Among the items missing were Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann’s specific procedures to implement voter ID across the state.

National: On Cyber Guard At The Voting Booth | AOL Government

As we approach the 2012 presidential election, concerns are being raised about the likelihood of cyber attacks leading up to and during that event. There are many individuals, groups and rogue nation states that would like nothing better than to disrupt this year’s election. Remember back in 2010 there were reports of a cyber attack that allowed hackers to gain access to online voting system in the District of Columbia. Now add to that the activity of hackers during last year’s elections in Russia, as well as the cyber fire exchanged during the last Iranian elections. We shouldn’t forget the cyber attacks back in 2008 that targeted the Obama and McCain campaigns. With all this activity it is easy to see why cyber security practitioners have a heightened state of awareness and are on cyber guard. In an election that looks like it will be too tight to call, all they have to do is to create a reason for the results to be called into question.

Verified Voting Blog: Problems come when using databases to disqualify voters

During their news conference Friday, Iowa’s Republican secretary of state, Matt Schultz, and Democratic attorney general, Tom Miller, presented evidence suggesting there are non-citizens who have registered to vote illegally and that some of these illegal registrants have voted. Clearly, further investigation is called for, and if indeed these people have voted, they should be prosecuted. I am worried, however, about the effort to run a database matching effort to ferret out and remove non-citizens from the voting rolls. The central problem here is that we have no requirement of registering to vote under the same name as we use for other purposes.

For a driver’s license, you present a birth certificate, so your name on the driver’s license will match your birth certificate. To register to vote, you can use your employer ID card and a phone bill. As it turns out, my voter registration is in the same name as my driver’s license. That’s because I used my license to register about 32 years ago. On the other hand, my employer’s ID card lists my name differently (just a middle initial). I could have registered to vote with that card, had I wanted to. There is no legal requirement that I use the same name everywhere, and in fact, I use a variety of names and nicknames:

  • Most people know me as Doug Jones.
  • Some know me as Douglas Jones.
  • To my employer, I’m Douglas W. Jones.
  • And on my driver’s license, I’m Douglas Warren Jones.

I’m not trying to confuse people. It’s just that, at various times, I’ve used different and obvious variations on my full name.

National: Counting Votes Is a Tricky Business | Discovery News

As the Presidential election nears, attention turns to voting – and counting those votes. Thanks to the Help America Vote Act of 2002, this year’s elections will be the first time that every state will have traded in their old-fashioned lever and punch-card machines for electronic voting. But computerized voting is not without its problems. Glitches arise. Paper jams. Service personnel are not always available in times of trouble. And if that weren’t bad enough, there’s always human error to add to the mix. One thing’s for certain, though. Everyone wants his or her vote to count. Despite some recent voting debacles, the country is moving to a more accurate way of tallying your vote. “What you need is a system where if something goes wrong you have a way to recover,” said Pam Smith, president of Verified Voting, a non-partisan organization that studies voting systems. “You want to be able to reconstruct what should have been the outcome without a do-over.”

Florida: Brevard County FL Clerk’s campaign aide seeks recount, suspects hacking | floridatoday.com

Sean Campbell, the chief deputy to Clerk of Courts Mitch Needelman, said he has suspicions about the results of the primary election last week that ousted his boss and want the Supervisor of Elections Office to check into it. Former Clerk Scott Ellis won that election, getting 61 percent of the vote to Needelman’s 39 percent. Campbell said he fears that the vote-counting system may have been hacked, either from within the Supervisor of Elections Office or from the outside, and the results reported were not the actual vote totals. He wants election officials to hand-count ballots from three randomly selected precincts to double-check the accuracy of the reported totals. “I’m not accusing anybody,” Campbell said. “I’m just concerned. If the results are what they are, well, OK.”

National: Pre-Election Legal Battles Target Voting Rules | NPR

If you vote, you might very well be confused about what the rules will be when you go to cast your ballot this fall. There’s been a flood of new laws on things such as voter identification and early voting, and many of them are now being challenged in court. Some cases could drag on until Nov. 6, Election Day, and beyond. The outcomes will affect voters, and maybe even the results. Last week alone, a Pennsylvania judge rejected an effort to stop that state’s new voter ID law from going into effect. A federal panel blocked Florida’s plan to limit early voting hours. Another court is expected to rule on a Texas voter ID law any day now.