Monthly Archives: July 2013

Japanese politicians across the political spectrum jumped at the opportunity to use the Internet in campaigning for Sunday’s election, the first to be held after the lifting of a ban on using the Web in the run-up to a national vote. But while a media survey shows that the vast majority of candidates used the Net as a campaigning tool to garner votes from younger and tech-savvy voters, another poll indicates there is still a long way to go before all voters embrace the Internet as a primary source of information for deciding who they will support. Analysis of the media survey also shows that although the victorious Liberal Democratic Party boasted the ability to reach the largest number of people with its messages on social media, it ranked only fifth in terms of the quantity of tweets posted on microblogging site Twitter. Leading the way on planet Twitter was the Japanese Communist Party, arguably the most enthusiastic convert to the ways of Internet campaigning since the law changed. The survey by national broadcaster NHK showed that 91% of candidates for the upper house election used social media services such as Twitter and Facebook to post information about their campaign platforms, rally schedules, and videos of previous speeches and messages from supporters. According to analysis of the survey conducted with assistance from NTT Data, election tweets from candidates of all major political parties during the campaign period totaled 53,000, with almost 20% of those postings coming from the JCP.

Mali: First election since coup threatened by massive problems in voter list | Associated Press

Oumou Sangare is used to getting what she wants. Unlike most of the people lined up outside the election office here, the wife of Mali’s former ambassador to the United Nations is not accustomed to hearing the word ‘no.’ Yet that’s exactly what the elegant, middle-aged woman heard earlier this week after making her way to the front of the line of would-be voters who, due to a technical glitch, don’t appear on the voter list for the upcoming presidential election. Clutching her designer handbag, she stood on tiptoes in her petite heels, straining to peer through the open window of the election headquarters, where a clerk typed her name into a database. “I’m the wife of the ambassador,” she pleaded after the screen came back blank. “I’ve been voting for years,” she said. “Am I not going to be able to vote?”

Togo: Family dynasty may be tested in polls | Associated Press

Pierre Warga is among the majority of Togo’s 6 million citizens who have spent their entire lives ruled by the Gnassingbe family. Eyadema Gnassingbe was in power for 38 years before dying of a heart attack in 2005. His son Faure Gnassingbe was then installed by the military before winning a highly flawed and violent election later that year, and a re-election in 2010. The small West African country goes to the polls Thursday for legislative elections that will test whether recent signs of discontent might legitimately threaten Gnassingbe’s hold on power. Some experts say there may be, for the first time, vulnerabilities in a country that has seen an increasingly daring public outcry against entrenched poverty, high youth unemployment and controversial crackdowns by the security forces.

United Kingdom: Stripping people of benefits if they don’t vote is undemocratic | guardian.co.uk

A bill was introduced by Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh in the Commons last Wednesday which has received surprisingly little attention. In an attempt to boost the number of registered voters, McDonagh’s idea is to make voter registration a requirement for anyone trying to claim benefits. She describes her scheme as a kind of trade-off: “[You get] the rewards of living in a democracy in return for signing up to a democracy.” There’s a smattering of detail in McDonagh’s speech about how the electoral register helps fight crime and is a symbol of our democracy. But the key message to take away from the bill is that benefits are a public service reserved only for those who engage in national politics (ie voting). And voting is “a civic duty”. Unfortunately, she’s wrong on both counts. Benefits are just another public service the state provides, within its capacity to help and provide for all citizens wherever there is such a need. There’s no political reason or agenda behind it: the idea is simply to help people who are struggling to get by. (Of course, whether or not it’s effective, and how it should be distributed, are separate issues.)

Zimbabwe: Electoral Commission Allows Special Voting On Wednesday | ZimEye

Security forces and civil servants who failed to vote under the special vote dispensation will now cast their ballots with the rest of the electorate next Wednesday. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission yesterday summoned political parties to deliberate on the fate of those who failed to vote where it was resolved that all registered citizens must be allowed to vote. It was resolved that the commission would address legal issues to facilitate the votes. Sources close to developments said MDC-T, which had been quoting Section 81B:2 of the Electoral Act that says: “A voter who has been authorised to cast a special vote shall not be entitled to vote in any other manner than by casting a special vote in terms of this Part,” concurred with others after it was pointed out to them that the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to vote. Those who applied to cast their ballots under the special vote were drawn from the uniformed forces, election officials and civil servants who will be deployed far from their wards on July 31.

National: The Voting Rights Act: Hard-Won Gains, An Uncertain Future | NPR

Access to the polls has not always been assured for all Americans, and before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, many were subjected to so-called literacy tests and poll tax. The law was created to tackle such injustices, but in June, the Supreme Court struck a key provision of the legislation. Section 4 established a formula determining which states and localities had to get federal approval (known as pre-clearance) before changing their voting procedures. The provision applied to nine states, mainly in the South, with a history of voter discrimination. The court deemed it unconstitutional for relying on old data. It is now up to Congress to figure out where the Voting Rights Act goes from here. Both the House and Senate held hearings this past week.

National: Congress divided on voting rights fix | The Greenville News

The Voting Rights Act remains an effective tool for preventing discrimination against minority voters even after the Supreme Court threw out a key section last month, a key House Republican said Thursday. Democrats countered that the remaining provisions aren’t enough and said the one the court overturned needs to be replaced. That dispute played out before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, the second congressional panel this week to discuss the Supreme Court’s June 25 decision in a historic case out of Shelby County, Ala. The court’s 5-4 decision ended the 48-year-old requirement that certain states with a history of discrimination at the polls — including Alabama and South Carolina — obtain “pre-clearance” from federal officials before making any changes to their election procedures.

Editorials: The Court & the Right to Vote: A Dissent by John Paul Stevens | The New York Review of Books

… Writing for the five-man majority in Shelby County, the recently decided Supreme Court case challenging the VRA, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that “times have changed” since 1965. The tests and devices that blocked African-American access to the ballot in 1965 have been forbidden nationwide for over forty-eight years; the levels of registration and voting by African-Americans in southern states are now comparable to, or greater than, those of whites. Moreover, the two southern cities, Philadelphia, Mississippi and Selma, Alabama, where the most publicized misconduct by white police officials occurred in 1964 and 1965, now have African-American mayors. In view of the changes that have occurred in the South, the majority concluded that the current enforcement of the preclearance requirement against the few states identified in the statute violates an unwritten rule requiring Congress to treat all of the states as equal sovereigns. The Court’s heavy reliance on the importance of a “fundamental principle of equal sovereignty among the States,” while supported by language in an earlier opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, ignored the fact that Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution created a serious inequality among the states. That clause counted “three fifths” of a state’s slaves for the purpose of measuring the size of its congressional delegation and its representation in the Electoral College. That provision was offensive because it treated African-Americans as though each of them was equal to only three fifths of a white person, but it was even more offensive because it increased the power of the southern states by counting three fifths of their slaves even though those slaves were not allowed to vote. The northern states would have been politically better off if the slave population had been simply omitted from the number used to measure the voting power of the slave states.

Alaska: Native Alaskans sue over election translations | Juneau Empire

Two elderly Yup’ik speakers and two tribal organizations have filed a federal lawsuit against Alaska, saying state election officials have failed to provide language assistance at the polls as required by law. The lawsuit was filed Friday, naming Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, the state’s top election official, as a defendant, along with his director of elections, Gail Fenumiai. Regional election officials in Fairbanks and Nome were also sued, The Anchorage Daily News reported. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court by the Anchorage office of the Native American Rights Fund, says the state is violating the federal Voting Rights Act by not providing ballots and voting instructions for speakers of Yup’ik and its dialect in Hooper Bay, Cup’ik.

Arizona: GOP: Voting Rights Act ruling changes redistricting lines | AZ Daily Sun

Last month’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling voiding a key section of the Voting Rights Act requires the lines for the state’s 30 legislative districts to be redrawn before the 2014 election, an attorney for Republican interests is contending. In legal papers filed in federal court late Friday, attorney David Cantelme said the Independent Redistricting Commission’s own data shows that it overpopulated some of the districts and underpopulated others. The result, Cantelme said, was to politically disadvantage Republican candidates to the benefit of Democrats. Cantelme also pointed out to the three-judge panel hearing his legal challenge that the commission’s key legal argument for why it made those decisions was that it needed comply with the federal Voting Rights Act. More to the point, commissioners wanted to ensure that the map it drew was “precleared” by the U.S. Department of Justice as not diluting the voting strength of minorities. But the high court last month overturned a provision of that law that created a formula to identify which states and counties have a history of discrimination and therefore must submit any changes in voting laws to be precleared. That list included nine states, including Arizona, and parts of several others.

Florida: Manatee County learns from Miami-Dade’s phantom ballot scandal | Bradenton Herald

The cities of Anna Maria, Holmes Beach and Bradenton Beach will have city municipality election Nov. 5 where voters will choose city commissioners, city council members and a mayor. A new system of checks in the Manatee County Office of Elections will be used to guard against absentee ballot fraud. The new system, which involves some software and coding for the ballots, has evolved over the last few months after a scandal involving phantom absentee ballots in Miami-Dade, said Michael Bennett, supervisor of Manatee’s Office of Elections. Bennett traveled to Orlando last week to meet with other Florida election office supervisors who were addressed by Miami-Dade officials. “Miami-Dade officials went over what exactly had happened to them and how they caught it,” Bennett said. “They walked us through it so we would all be on the same page going forward.” In Miami-Dade, hackers submitted thousands of phony ballot requests online at the Miami-Dade Elections Department, according to a Miami Herald investigation. More than 2,500 such requests were flagged by the Miami-Dade Elections Department after they were found to have originated from only a handful of Internet Protocol addresses.

Editorials: Eliot Spitzer and New York’s incumbent-protection ballot rules | Joshua Spivak/Newsday

Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s surprise entrance into the New York City comptroller race highlights one issue that will be ignored — how New York laws continue to serve incumbents and the existing political system at the expense of the voters. Spitzer’s entry was a last-minute decision. He had four days to gather 3,750 signatures on nominating petitions. This may not seem to be a high bar, but obviously Spitzer didn’t agree — he reportedly paid signature gatherers as much as $800 a day to get their John Hancocks. He said he ended up with 27,000. Why did Spitzer need to gather so many? It wasn’t because he wanted to show that he had a popular following. Nor was it an example of a gross overpayment. Instead, it was simply because New York’s ballot-access laws remain convoluted enough to require candidates to get a very large cushion of signatures to prevent them from being tossed off the ballot by party regulars who know — and make — the rules.

North Carolina: Senate’s voter ID proposal tougher than House version | Salisbury Post

The North Carolina Senate on Thursday rolled out its voter identification bill, scaling back the number of acceptable photo IDs to cast a ballot in person starting in 2016 and could make it more difficult for young people to vote. The bill sets out seven qualifying forms of photo ID. But they do not include university-issued IDs, like the House allowed for University of North Carolina system and community college students when it passed a bill three months ago. The Senate also removed from its list those cards issued by local governments, for police, firefighters and other first responders, and for people receiving government assistance. Someone who doesn’t present an approved ID could cast a provisional ballot, but would have to return to an elections office with an ID for the vote to count. “We have tweaked it, tightened (it) up some with the particular IDs that will be accepted,” said Sen. Tom Apodaca, R-Henderson and chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, which neither debated nor voted on the measure Thursday.

Pennsylvania: Voter ID law trial wraps up first week | Associated Press

A professor who specializes in political communication gave low grades Friday to the 2012 multimedia campaign to educate Pennsylvania voters about the state’s new voter-identification law as part of a court trial on its constitutionality. Diana Mutz, a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania and its Annenberg School for Communication, said the centerpiece of the campaign — TV ads in which people holding up photo ID cards urged voters to “show it” — seemed confusing. “It wasn’t always clear what ‘it’ was,” said Mutz, the author of several books, who testified as an expert witness on behalf of plaintiffs who sued the state in an attempt to overturn the yet-to-be-enforced March 2012 law.

Australia: Rudd to rally troops for an early election | The Australian

Kevin Rudd will put his Labor colleagues on alert for an imminent election as he assembles the federal caucus in Sydney today to prepare for a “tough campaign” in the wake of his policy shifts on border protection and climate change. The Prime Minister is expected to overcome objections to the severity of his new policy on asylum-seekers to gain a show of support for the “no settlement” regime despite doubts among some of the party’s Left faction. Amid talk within the caucus that the federal election would be held on August 31, party members reported a positive response from voters to the Papua New Guinea solution to asylum-seekers over the weekend.

Japan: Election Win by Ruling Party Signals Change in Japan | New York Times

Japanese voters handed a landslide victory to the governing Liberal Democrats in parliamentary elections on Sunday, strengthening the grip of a party that promises accelerated changes to Japan’s economy and a shift away from its postwar pacifism. By securing control of both houses of Parliament for up to three years, the win offers Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — an outspoken nationalist who promises to revitalize Japan’s deflationary economy and strengthen its military — the chance to be the most transformative leader in a decade. Although a lackluster turnout indicated that Mr. Abe might not have as much of a mandate as his supporters hoped, the margin of victory was large enough to suggest he has an opportunity to also bring stability to the country’s leadership after years of short-lived and ineffective prime ministers.

Mali: Governor says election workers kidnapped in north have been freed | The Washington Post

A group of election workers, who were kidnapped over the weekend in northern Mali’s troubled Kidal region where they had gone to distribute voter ID cards, were released Sunday, officials said. The incident comes a week before Mali is rushing ahead with a July 28 presidential election, despite concerns over the lack of government control in the province of Kidal, which remains largely the turf of Tuareg separatists. The rebels known as the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, or NMLA, reluctantly signed an accord last month, renouncing their claim to independence and agreeing to allow government administrators to return ahead of the election.

Malaysia: Election commission may replace ink with biometric system | Asia One

The Election Commission is looking into replacing the indelible ink with a biometric system as proposed by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim. Its deputy chairman Datuk Wira Wan Ahmad Wan Omar said amendments to the laws must be made if it were to scrap the use of indelible ink. “We are still scrutinising the matter internally,” he said, adding that the biometric system should be more suitable for Malaysia as it was at the forefront of digital as well as information and communication technology. He pointed out that the national registry system and MyKad were among the best in the world.

Russia: Navalny Arrives In Moscow, Vows To Win Mayoral Election | RFE

Convicted Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny has arrived in Moscow after being released on bail while he appeals his conviction on embezzlement charges. Addressing a crowd of supporters who were waiting to greet him at Moscow’s Yaroslavsky train station, Navalny thanked them and credited supporters with helping gain his release from detention in Kirov so he could campaign for mayor of Russia’s capital. Navalny said his freedom was a sign of the growing power of Russia’s people. “We are a huge, powerful force and I am glad you are starting to recognize your power,” he said. The opposition leader and anticorruption blogger said the Russian authorities were starting to sense the power of the country’s people as well, and it made them nervous. “In court, their [officials’] hands were trembling and here they are trembling because in the courtroom there is no power, no authority but here [in the crowd] there is strength, here there is power,” he said. “We here are the power!”

Zimbabwe: Documents reveal plan to rig elections | New Zimbabwe

Damning top-secret intelligence documents that expose President Robert Mugabe’s plans to rig the forthcoming election and crush his political rivals have been handed to The Mail on Sunday. The dossier reveals in astonishing detail how Mugabe is plotting to steal millions of votes with massive and systematic ballot-rigging combined with widespread intimidation by party thugs. His tactics, along with details of massive funding from named British, Chinese and African backers, are disclosed in highly confidential papers written for his closest aides. They were obtained from intelligence sources who risked their lives to expose the covert campaign to keep 89-year-old Mugabe and his military cabal in power.

Zimbabwe: Electoral Commission Opens Special Ballots | allAfrica.com

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission yesterday started opening, verifying and tallying ballot papers cast nationwide during the special vote held between July 14 and 15. The process was done in the presence of political parties, regional and international observers.ZEC chief elections officer Mr Lovemore Sekeramayi and his deputy Mr Utoile Silaigwana superintended over the process while some commissioners also attended. Zanu-PF and MDC-T hailed the process saying it was transparent to the extent that no manipulation of results could be done.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly – July 15-21 2013

July 21, 2013

voterID Hearings on the future of the Voting Rights Act were held in both the Senate and House, while Democratic Congressional leaders called for the revival of the Election Assistance Commission. A student at Cal State San Marcos was sentenced in federal court to a year in prison for hacking an internet election for president of the school’s student council. At least one New Jersey county has indicated that they will force the state to take the county to court over funding of the State’s special election for US Senate. North Carolina Republican introduced a stricter version of their Voter ID proposal that would exclude the use of university-issued IDs. A federal judge has made permanent his earlier order that Ohio must count provisional ballots cast in the right polling place but wrong precinct — so-called right church, wrong pew ballots. Pennsylvania’s voter ID law was back in court last week and Estonia’s release of their internet voting software was the topic of heated debate among IT specialists.

National: Congress Gingerly Takes Up Voting Rights Legislation | National Law Journal

Congress kicked off an effort to restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with a series of Capitol Hill hearings this week, less than a month after the U.S. Supreme Court severely weakened the law by striking down a key anti-discrimination provision. No legislation has been proposed yet. But senators and a leading representative spoke during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday about their appetite to fix the now-unconstitutional Section 4 formula, which set out when a state or local jurisdiction warrants special scrutiny before it can implement electoral changes. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who led the House effort to reauthorize the VRA in 2006, testified that he is committed to crafting a constitutional response to the Shelby County v. Holder decision that “will last a long time.”

National: Congress weighs fixes to Voting Rights Act | McClatchy

Congress took the first step Wednesday toward trying to repair a vital section of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, a month after the Supreme Court ruled the provision unconstitutional. In a packed hearing room, witnesses told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Congress needs to put partisanship aside and work together to come up with a solution to fix the Section 4 formula, a linchpin of the act. “A bipartisan Congress and Republican presidents worked to reauthorize this law four times,” Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil rights icon, told the Senate committee. “The burden cannot be on those citizens whose rights were, or will be, violated; it is the duty of Congress to restore the life and soul to the Voting Rights Act. And we must do it on our watch, at this time.”

National: Voting Rights Act Will Be Restored, Lawmakers Vow | The Hill

Key lawmakers vowed Wednesday to ensure the full Voting Rights Act is restored to full strength, following the Supreme Court’s June decision to strike down part of the law. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, the GOP negotiator of the law’s most recent reauthorization, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the high court decision “severely weakened the protections both Republicans and Democrats fought hard to preserve” and that he already is working on a response to deal with the new gaps in the law. “The Voting Rights Act is the most successful of all civil rights acts in actually limiting discrimination. We cannot afford to lose it now,” the former House Judiciary chairman said. “I’m working to pass a constitutional response to the Shelby v. Holder decision.” In front of his Senate colleagues, however, Sensenbrenner conceded the challenges he faces in the GOP-controlled House. When he pushed to reauthorize the legislation in 2006, it was in part because he feared that when he surrendered his gavel to caucus-imposed term limits, his successor would not work to re-up the law. “Sometimes the difference between [the House] and the Senate is the difference between here and the moon,” Sensenbrenner said.

National: Some Republicans quietly cheer end of voting rights act | MSNBC

Several Republicans spoke out against VRA reform today, but softly. Rep. Franks, who is known for his strident abortion views and opposition to the VRA, struck a respectful and bipartisan tone. He hailed John Lewis as a civil rights hero. He emphasized his openness to working with James Sensenbrenner, the most prominent Republican backer of the VRA. But Franks has not changed his mind. After the hearing, he told me that his “heart and mind is open,” but he doesn’t think VRA reform is necessary. He pointed to parts of the law that the Supreme Court didn’t strike down. And he said when he assesses racism in America, he looks to the Court’s standards, voter turnout in the South, and the “mechanisms of discrimination” that were used in the 1960s. “I don’t know all of the suppression that existed at the time,” he volunteered, but still, Franks said he believes under current precedent, DOJ no longer needs to oversee local voting in advance. Several witnesses and Democratic members marshaled data showing the persistence of voter discrimination today, and the need for the VRA’s supervision. But just as Senate Democrats muddled their focus at yesterday’s hearing, some House Democrats hit on themes that are unlikely to recruit GOP support. (Rick Hasen, an election law expert, has more on that point.)

National: Many Republican no-shows at Voting Rights Act Hearing | Politico.com

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were mostly no-shows at Wednesday’s high-profile hearing on restoring a portion of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court last month. The Republicans chalked up their absence to scheduling confusion. With a brief appearance, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz became the only Republican to join Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and a packed room to hear testimony about updating formulas in the 1965 law that required jurisdictions in 15 states to clear changes to voting procedures with the Justice Department. “I actually was asking my staff, I think that may have been an oversight,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who sits on the committee, said. “I think that might have been an oversight because I had other scheduling, other matters scheduled.”

National: Should Congress restore key part of Voting Rights Act? House hears both sides. | CSMonitor.com

Voting rights experts presented sharply divergent opinions to a House Judiciary subcommittee on Thursday as members of Congress tried to assess the impact of the US Supreme Court’s decision striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act. Some analysts told the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice that the remaining provisions of the VRA were more than enough to safeguard minority voting rights. Others said the high court’s action marked a considerable setback to future efforts to fight discrimination in the United States. “We have made amazing progress in this country over the last 50 years,” said Spencer Overton, a voting rights scholar and professor at George Washington University Law School. “Unfortunately, evidence shows that too many political operatives maintain power by manipulating election rules based on how voters look and speak.” Professor Overton said Congress must update the VRA and reauthorize the section struck down by the Supreme Court.

Editorials: On Voting Rights, Discouraging Signs From the Hill | Andrew Cohen/The Atlantic

The story of voting rights in the year 2013 — how the five conservative justices of the United States Supreme Court undercut them last month and what Congress must do to restore them now — is really the story of America itself. There has been much premature self-congratulation mixed in with a great deal of denial and dissonance. There has been a widening gulf between promise and reality. Patriotic words of bipartisanship have flowed, promises of cooperation have oozed, but there are few rational reasons to believe that the nation’s representatives will quickly rally together to do what needs to be done. The premature self-congratulation came from the Court itself. Less than one year after Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act stymied voter suppression efforts in the 2012 election in Florida, Texas and South Carolina, Chief Justice John Roberts in his opinion in Shelby County v. Holder heralded the “great strides” the nation has made in combating such suppression and the fact that “blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare.” Not so rare. Before the sun set that day, June 25th, officials in Texas and North Carolina had moved forward with restrictive voting measures that had been blocked by the federal law.

Editorials: Key date for test of voting law’s preclearance requirement | Lyle Denniston/SCOTUSblog