Monthly Archives: July 2013

A three-judge panel on Monday upheld legislative and congressional districts drawn by the Republican-dominated General Assembly in 2011, ruling unanimously that the maps were constitutional. Democrats, the state NAACP and good-government groups had sued to invalidate the maps, saying they were improperly drawn based on racial considerations. The opponents also argued lawmakers too finely split the state, dividing so many local voting precincts that it would create confusion. But the three Superior Court judges found that those challenging the maps had not showed “a violation of any cognizable equal protection rights of any North Carolina citizens, or groups thereof, will result.” The plaintiffs in the case, including a former state lawmaker and the state NAACP, have 30 days to decide whether to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court.

Oklahoma: Hurry up and wait: Tulsa’s new election process frustrates candidates, voters | Tulsa World

After a frantic eight weeks of campaigning leading up to the June 11 nonpartisan mayoral election, now comes the dead of summer and the long, seemingly endless march to the Nov. 12 general election between former Mayor Kathy Taylor and incumbent Dewey Bartlett. Why, one might wonder, is there five months between the primary and the general election? Or, worse yet, seven months between the April filing period and the November general election. And then there is this possibility: If one mayoral candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote in the June primary, that candidate becomes mayor but doesn’t take office until the first week of December. How did this happen?

Texas: Redistricting fight terribly tangled again | Fort Worth Star-Telegram

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in a landmark voting rights case last week released Texas from federal supervision of its election laws and procedures for the first time since 1972. But the clarity of that ruling was fleeting. This week, attorneys for minority groups filed motions with separate three-judge panels in San Antonio and Washington, D.C., asking that Texas be returned to federal oversight under a section of the Voting Rights Act left intact by the Supreme Court. Court watchers — and the San Antonio court itself, which held a hearing Monday — are taking the new challenges very seriously. Lawyers for the state want the whole thing dismissed. “There’s no question this is new territory for everyone,” wrote Dallas attorney Michael Li in his widely followed (among people who follow arcane politics) Texas Redistricting blog at txredistricting.org.

Editorials: An unseemly rush to voter suppression | San Antonio Express-News

Surely, street cred in conservative circles is not worth becoming the poster child for voter suppression. Again. What’s the rush? The ink was barely dry on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the Voting Rights Act, and there was Attorney General Greg Abbott saying Texas’ voter ID law would go into effect immediately. The problem: the ink has been quite dry for a while on another federal court ruling. This one, in August 2012, said discrimination and voter suppression was written all over Texas’ voter ID law. Yet, the state is now gearing up to implement this law, and county election officials around the state are surely scratching their heads. Why would a state, whose voting numbers are nothing to write home about, want to diminish them further? Particularly since this is ostensibly to address voter fraud — a problem that substantially doesn’t exist.

Virginia: Cuccinelli pushes for voter registration by party to help enforce closed primaries | The News Leader

In a state where party registration doesn’t exist, the idea that Virginians should have to pick a side has an important champion — the potential next governor. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, the GOP nominee for the commonwealth’s top job, reiterated Tuesday that he thinks that Virginia should change its system to make voters officially choose a party or declare themselves independent, so that parties could ensure that only their own members vote in their primaries. Cuccinelli backed the idea when he was in the Senate, too, but come January he could be in a more important position if he defeats Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe. “I’ve encouraged that in the past and I’ll encourage it in the future,” Cuccinelli said after speaking at the Greenspring retirement community in Springfield.

Wisconsin: Inactive voters removed from polling lists | The Marshfield News-Herald

Hundreds of thousands of inactive Wisconsin voters have been removed from local voting rolls as government officials undergo regular maintenance. More than 220,000 voters were removed in May by the Government Accountability Board, the nonpartisan agency tasked with overseeing the state’s elections and campaign finance laws. “Local clerks have recorded who all voted in November, and who didn’t. We can see who hasn’t voted in the last four years, and those people get postcards,” said Reid Magney, a GAB spokesman. If voters didn’t respond to the postcard mailed to their address, they are listed as inactive voters and removed from local voting rolls. The GAB conducts this regular maintenance of voting rolls during odd-numbered years after a presidential or gubernatorial election.

Egypt: Parliamentary vote to be held in about 6 months | Reuters

Egypt will hold new parliamentary elections once amendments to its suspended constitution are approved in a referendum, the interim head of state decreed on Monday, setting out a timeframe that could see a legislative vote in about six months. A presidential vote would be called once the new legislative chamber convenes, the decree said. It set a four-and-a-half month timeframe for amendments to the state’s controversial, Islamist-tinged constitution that was passed in December.

Mexico: Recount in Baja California governor’s race | GlobalPost

Mexican electoral officials Monday declared the preliminary results of a race for governor in Baja California invalid after the ruling party and the opposition both claimed victory in the politically pivotal state. The election in Baja California, which borders the United States, was the biggest prize in regional polls held in 14 states on Sunday after one of the most violent campaign seasons in recent years. Analysts say the result in the border state could affect a national political reform pact.

Peru: Electronic voting used for first time in Peruvian elections | Peru this Week

In Sunday´s elections, voters in the Lima district of Cañete used an electronic voting system that proved efficient. According to statements given to Andina, participants took only 30 seconds to complete the entire voting process. It is simple and efficient, allowing the results to be released more quickly. The head of the ONPE (Office of Electoral Processes) told Andina that Pacarán, Cañete is an example of the future of voting in Peru: “We congratulate the population of Pacarán that participated in this day of democracy: using new technologies, such as the electronic vote, allows the voting process to be more secure and flexible, today showed us that we can use technological innovations that the world is currently using.”

Russia: Moscow mayoral election to decide opposition’s fate | Russia Beyond The Headlines

Early elections for mayor of Russia’s capital will be held on Sept. 8. This will be the opposition’s zero-hour: The key electorate for opponents of the regime is represented most widely in Moscow. If the opposition does not win on its own turf, the protest movement may be forgotten for a long time to come. Last year’s elections in the Moscow suburb of Khimki were seen by many as a dress rehearsal for the upcoming battle for Moscow. Consequently, the voting there was closely followed by all of Russia’s political observers—as was the opposition’s defeat. Yet protest leaders have been offered the chance to take their revenge far sooner than they expected: The next mayoral elections in Moscow were scheduled to take place only in 2015. The opposition’s plans have been thrown into disarray by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s sudden resignation.

National: States Eye Voting Obstacles in Wake of High-Court Ruling | TIME.com

Less than a week after the Supreme Court watered down the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a handful of states seemed poised to roll back the protections afforded to minorities by the 48-year-old law. Two hours after the decision, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced that a 2011 voter-ID law that federal courts found disproportionately burdened poor and minority voters would go into effect “immediately.” New redistricting maps, Abbott says, could swiftly follow. Since the high court’s ruling on June 25, four of the other 15 states covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act — Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia — are in position to move forward on tightening voting laws. In Alabama and Mississippi, voters will have to present a photo-identification card at the 2014 primary polls under laws that are now being implemented, but were previously being held until cleared by Washington officials. Both states plan to issue photo IDs to voters who don’t have them.

National: GOP has tough choices on Voting Rights Act | Associated Press

When the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights act last week, it handed Republicans tough questions with no easy answers over how, and where, to attract voters even GOP leaders say the party needs to stay nationally competitive. The decision caught Republicans between newfound state autonomy that conservatives covet and the law’s popularity among minority, young and poor voters who tend to align with Democrats. It’s those voters that Republicans are eyeing to expand and invigorate the GOP’s core of older, white Americans. National GOP Chairman Reince Priebus began that effort well before the court’s decision by promising, among other initiatives, to hire non-white party activists to engage directly with black and Latino voters. Yet state and national Republicans reacted to the Voting Rights Act decision with a flurry of activity and comments that may not fit neatly into the national party’s vision.

Editorials: Sabotage at the Election Commission | New York Times

The Federal Election Commission is already in a state of wretched dysfunction, but it will only get worse if Republican members succeed in crippling the agency further when the commission meets on Thursday. The three Republicans on the commission appear ready to take advantage of a temporary vacancy on the three-member Democratic side to push through 3-to-2 votes for a wholesale retreat from existing regulations. Under their proposals, agency workers would no longer be allowed to routinely forward information about potential criminal violations by campaigners to the Justice Department, and the commission’s staff investigators would be severely hobbled in conducting preliminary inquiries. This would provide further aid and comfort to politicians and operatives who run roughshod over campaign laws.

Colorado: Suspect voters sent to Colorado DAs mostly Democrats | The Denver Post

Democrats make up more than half of the 155 suspected noncitizen voters that Secretary of State Scott Gessler is referring to prosecutors, according to figures released by his office Friday. The party affiliation breakdown shows that 88 of the voters are Democrats, 49 are unaffiliated, and 13 are Republicans. Five others are from minor parties, according to numbers provided by Gessler’s office to The Associated Press. No charges have been filed yet against the voters, which Gessler said Monday are being referred to prosecutors. It’s the latest chapter in a heated debate that Gessler, a Republican, has helped drive since taking office in 2011, repeatedly saying noncitizens on voter rolls are vulnerability in the system. He said this week that officials “can no longer turn a blind eye” to it.

Kansas: Beware Kobach’s lie about Kansas City voter fraud case | Kansas City Star

For an elected Secretary of State who claims he wants to prevent real voter fraud in elections, Kris Kobach sure has a cavalier way of talking about the subject. Or, more bluntly, the Kansas Republican has a way of lying about it. Case in point: In a recent op-ed in the Wichita Eagle-Beacon, Kobach states that he knows “aliens” have been involved in stolen elections. He then cites what he calls two “recent” incidents. His first case, by the way, is from 1997! Let me state the obvious: That’s hardly recent, and hardly any evidence that this kind of “alien” action is going on to subvert U.S. elections. But then comes the untruth from Kobach, reprinted fully here: “Another incident happened in 2010 in Kansas City, Mo. In the state representative race between J.J. Rizzo and Will Royster, the election was stolen when Rizzo received about 50 votes illegally cast by citizens of Somalia. The margin of victory? One vote.” Wow, that’s a big story: Votes were “illegally cast” by Somalis. Let’s go to the court records to find proof for that serious allegation made by a sitting Secretary of State. What’s that? There is no proof?

New York: NYC Board Of Elections Finds Nearly 1,600 Brooklyn Ballots Never Counted In Nov. 2012 | New York Daily News

The city Board of Elections just re-certified the results of the race — including an additional 1,579 ballots finally counted last week. Exactly 238 days elapsed between the Nov. 6 election and the beleaguered Board’s Tuesday sign-off on the latest update — raising serious questions about how quickly and reliably the agency can make a call in the upcoming Sept. 10 primary. “There’s three weeks between the primary and the runoff election, and the Board is going to have to perform at a optimal level,” said Alex Camarda, public policy director for the Citizens Union good-government group. “The fact that they’re discovering these uncounted votes [only now] casts doubt on their ability to do that,” he said. “It diminishes public confidence in the integrity of the election system.” Under a bill awaiting Gov. Cuomo’s signature, the Board could haul out its old lever voting machines for the primary and a widely anticipated subsequent runoff that would be triggered if no candidate captures 40% of the vote.

South Carolina: No widespread voter fraud found in South Carolina elections | The Augusta Chronicle

No one intentionally cast a ballot in South Carolina using the names of dead people in recent elections, despite allegations to the contrary, according to a State Law Enforcement Division report. Attorney General Alan Wilson asked the agency to investigate last year after the Department of Motor Vehicles determined in early 2012 that more than 900 people listed as deceased had voted in recent years. Wilson called the number “alarming” and said it “clearly necessitates an investigation into criminal activity.” State Election Commission Director Marci Andino had her staff look at questionable votes from the November 2010 general election, or about 200 of the more than 900 votes total – information that was also ultimately analyzed by SLED. Nearly half of the issues could be attributed to clerical errors, while several dozen resulted from DMV officials running Social Security numbers of voters against dead people but not seeing whether the names matched.

Texas: Voting Rights Lawsuit Wants Texas Back Under Pre-Clearance | Texas Public Radio

A lawsuit filed by several civil rights groups this week could result in continued federal oversight of Texas voting laws despite a Supreme Court ruling that section 4 of the voting rights act is unconstitutional. Section 4 mandated that some states, including Texas, must get pre-clearance for any voting changes made by the legislature. The suit was filed in a Washington D.C. court by the League of United Latin American citizens, the NAACP, the Texas Legislative Black Caucus and state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth.

Virginia: Advocates worry about Virginia’s new program to restore voting rights to felons | The Washington Post

With a week left until Virginia has to determine how it will restore the voting rights of certain nonviolent felons, some advocates helping to shape the program are concerned about how the new policy will work. Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) announced in late May that he would waive the waiting period and automatically restore the voting rights of nonviolent felons who have completed their sentences and satisfied certain conditions. Grass-roots groups working with the McDonnell administration to streamline the process have spent weeks wrestling with details such as how to determine who will qualify, how to find the thousands who could be eligible, and whether felons should be required to pay outstanding fines before they can regain voting rights.

Cambodia: Self-exiled opposition head vows poll return | Fox News

Cambodia’s opposition leader, who lives in self-imposed exile abroad, has vowed to return to the country, in a move his party hailed Sunday as a boost to its chances in elections this month. Sam Rainsy, seen as the main challenger to strongman Hun Sen, promised to travel to Cambodia “before the election day” on July 28 in a video posted on his Facebook page. “The presence of Sam Rainsy will encourage voters to believe in CNRP (Cambodia National Rescue Party),” said opposition spokesman Yim Sovann. Rainsy’s presence would “create a strong force that would make a change and bring a positive result for the country”, he said, adding that the opposition leader was working to set a date for his return.

Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood can run in next election, official says | PressTV

A spokesman of interim Egyptian President Adly Mansour says the Muslim Brotherhood can run candidates in the upcoming elections that are supposed to be held according to the military’s roadmap. “We extend our hand to everyone, everyone is a part of this nation,” Mansour’s media advisor, Ahmed al-Muslimani, stated on Saturday. “The Muslim Brotherhood has plenty of opportunities to run for all elections, including the coming presidential elections or the ones to follow,” he added. However, many Muslim Brotherhood supporters were not ready to quietly accept the military’s decision to oust President Mohamed Morsi.

Russia: Electoral Watchdog Dodges Government Ban | RIA Novosti

Russia’s leading election monitor, known for accusing the Kremlin of vote rigging and suspended over its alleged “foreign agent” status, found a way to continue its operations, the group’s representative said. Nongovernmental organization (NGO) Golos, would transform into a new legal entity with the same function as before, its deputy head Grigory Melkonyants told RIA Novosti on Thursday. Golos was formally re-established as a non-profit foundation to monitor the elections on Friday, Russian media said, though the necessary paperwork would only be completed next week.

Russia: Prosecutor Urges Six-Year Sentence for Opposition Leader | New York Times

In closing arguments on Friday, prosecutors urged a Russian judge to convict the political opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny of embezzlement and sentence him to six years in jail — a verdict that would destroy his political career and eliminate him as a threat to President Vladimir V. Putin by imprisoning him until after the next presidential election. Mr. Navalny is the most prominent opposition figure in modern Russia to face prosecution, and he has accused the Kremlin of pursuing trumped-up charges as political retribution. While forcefully denying the allegations, he has long said he expects to be convicted in the trial, which was streamed live online from Kirov, a regional capital. The verdict is to be delivered on July 18. For more than a year, as Mr. Navalny helped to lead big street protests against Mr. Putin, the Kremlin seemed to waver between a desire to imprison him and a reluctance to galvanize his supporters by locking him up. Mr. Navalny has declared his candidacy for mayor of Moscow in an election to be held in September, but he has also said he hopes one day to be president.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly – July 1-7 2013

July 7, 2013

egypt The Supreme Ruling effectively invalidating Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act will force voting rights advocates to rely on Section 2 to challenge election procedures which might impede voters. Section 3 is also being used to challenge redistricting maps in Texas. A bi-partisan pair of Senators are working to eliminate waivers in the MOVE Act of 2009 for states that that fail to mail ballots to military and overseas 45 days before elections. The New Jersey legislature has passed a bill that would consolidate the general election and the special election to replace US Senator Frank Lautenberg. Freed from Federal pre-clearance requirements by the Supreme Court, North Carolina’s GOP-led legislature is poised to establish a voter ID requirement and eliminate in-person early voting. Attorney Steve Hamm presented a report explaining the election meltdown in Richland County South Carolina last November. The Egyptian military removed the country’s first democratically-elected President and vowed to hold new elections later this year, while the Russia government has begun arresting popular opposition leaders ahead of scheduled elections.

National: Let the lawsuits begin: Advocates pivot strategy following Voting Rights Act ruling | NBC

One side effect of the Supreme Court’s decision to stop enforcement of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is clear: a flood of new lawsuits that have already begun. The ruling all but guarantees that voting rights advocates will pivot toward filing lawsuits relying on a separate piece of the law, Section 2, to challenge procedures which might impede voters. Nine states, mostly in the South, and other jurisdictions in places from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Shannon County, S.D., had been covered by Section 5 of the law which required election officials to get either the Justice Department or a federal judge to pre-approve changes in voting procedures. Section 2, on the other hand, bans voting procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups — such as speakers of Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, or Navajo — identified in the VRA. In its decision Tuesday in a case involving Shelby County, Ala., the high court essentially made Section 5 unenforceable for now. It found that the formula to determine which jurisdictions were covered under the VRA was flawed, and Congress seems unlikely to write a new formula before the 2014 elections. Texas Secretary of State John Steen immediately announced that his state’s voter photo identification law — which had been passed by the Texas legislature in 2011, but then barred by a federal judge using section 5 of the Voting Rights Act — will now be in effect.

National: U.S. States Tighten Voter Restrictions | Independent European Daily Express

Advocacy groups here are reacting with frustration as several southern U.S. states have moved to enact stricter voting requirements in the wake of a recent Supreme Court decision that rolled back key legislation that had safeguarded minority voters for decades. Following last week’s five-to-four Supreme Court decision overturning a key part of the Voting Rights Act, nine southern states with a history of discriminatory voting requirements are now able to change their election laws without approval from the federal government. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, stating: “Our country has changed. While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation is passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.” Yet just 48 hours after the decision, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina announced plans to push through together voting restrictions that critics are warning could disenfranchise minority voters.

National: Voting Rights Act Hands GOP Tough Questions | Fox News

Republicans face tough questions with no easy answers over how, and where, to attract voters even GOP leaders say the party needs to stay nationally competitive when the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights act last week. The decision caught Republicans between newfound state autonomy that conservatives covet and the law’s popularity among minority, young and poor voters who tend to align with Democrats. It’s those voters that Republicans are eyeing to expand and invigorate the GOP’s core of older, white Americans. National GOP Chairman Reince Priebus began that effort well before the court’s decision by promising, among other initiatives, to hire non-white party activists to engage directly with black and Latino voters. Yet state and national Republicans reacted to the Voting Rights Act decision with a flurry of activity and comments that may not fit neatly into the national party’s vision. In Washington, Republicans like House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia embraced the nuances of the ruling. The court didn’t actually strike down preclearance, instead tossing rules that determined which jurisdictions got oversight. Congress is free to rewrite those parameters and revive advance review.

National: Voting Rights Act Ruling Forces Justice Department Reassignments | Huffington Post

In striking down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last week, members of the Supreme Court didn’t just neuter a major component of landmark civil rights law. The justices also eliminated the workload of several dozen federal employees. Until the Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder on June 25, a few dozen of the 100 or so employees of the Voting Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division had been assigned to review the 14,000 to 20,000 voting changes submitted each year by jurisdictions that needed DOJ permission before implementing new rules or, say, changing the location of a polling place. DOJ is reassigning those attorneys and support staff after the Supreme Court ruled that the Voting Rights Act Section 4 — the part of the law that defined which localities needed to have their laws precleared under Section 5 — was unconstitutional. The court’s Section 4 declaration effectively eliminates Section 5 enforcement.

Arizona: Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Decision Contradicts Arizona Ruling | Highbrow Magazine

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Voting Rights Act last week, only two weeks after ruling that an Arizona law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote is unconstitutional. The Court’s decision last Tuesday and the idea underpinning it – that voter suppression of ethnic minority and poor voters is no longer an issue that warrants the same federal protections as it once did – sits at odds with their ruling on the Arizona voter ID law, which was a clear acknowledgment that state laws can, at times, be discriminatory. “Arizona is the poster child of the need for federal oversight,” said Democratic Senator Steve Gallardo. In a 5 to 4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court did away with Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) that required Arizona and other states to get pre-approval from the federal government before implementing changes to their state voter laws.

Illinois: Quinn at Stevenson High to sign law expanding voting rights to more teens | Daily Herald