Monthly Archives: August 2013

Pennsylvania is joining a multi-state consortium that aims to preserve the integrity of every vote by preventing voters from voting in an election in more than one state. Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele announced this new effort today at a statewide conference of county election officials in Philadelphia. “One concern about the integrity of voter lists has always been whether someone who moves to another state could be registered and possibly cast votes in both states, which is against the law. Participating in this consortium is our best way to prevent that,” said Aichele, whose department oversees elections in Pennsylvania.

Texas: Dallas County taxpayers will fund both sides of voter ID fight | The Dallas Morning News

No matter what Dallas County residents think about Texas’ controversial voter identification law, their tax dollars are being used to help fund the fight for it. And against it. Dallas County commissioners narrowly agreed Tuesday to join a lawsuit against Gov. Rick Perry over his intentions to implement the law requiring voters to show ID at the polls. The 3-2 vote at the Commissioners Court meeting means Dallas County taxpayers are helping fund the federal and county fights against the law, as well as the state’s battles to defend it. “It’s a dangerous precedent to be committing the Dallas County treasury for purely partisan politics,” said Mike Cantrell, the lone Republican county commissioner. Democratic Commissioner Elba Garcia bucked the party line and joined Cantrell in voting against joining the lawsuit. Democratic County Judge Clay Jenkins and Commissioners Theresa Daniel and John Wiley Price voted to do so. Their support allows District Attorney Craig Watkins, also a Democrat, to hire law firm Brazil & Dunn to help the county intervene in the existing lawsuit. U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, and seven others sued Perry in June.

Texas: Abbott goes on voter ID offensive | San Antonio Express-News

Attorney General Greg Abbott on Monday took aim at a civil rights lawyer who — according to a news story — advised folks in South Texas to ignore the state’s voter ID law when casting ballots in an upcoming local election. In an August 13 Rio Grande Guardian story, Jose Garza, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, is quoted saying he thinks Texas’ voter ID law is unconstitutional, and that he “needs practical examples of registered voters being denied the right to vote. The photo ID legislation may be the law of the land in Texas but I believe it is unconstitutional. The only way you can challenge it is to find people who have been denied the right to vote because they did not comply with this specific term,” Garza said, according to the story. Keep in mind: Abbott declared voter ID will “take effect immediately” after the U.S. Supreme Court in June suspended the section of the Voting Rights Act that forced Texas to get a federal OK before implementing changes to election law (Attorney General Eric Holder said in July he will ask a court to require Texas to receive preclearance from the Justice Department for voting laws because of a history of discrimination).

Editorials: Of course compulsory voting is a good thing | Van Badham/The Guardian

Australia is one of only 10 countries in the world that enforce compulsory voting, and one of only two majority-English-speaking countries to do so, alongside our neighbour Singapore. It’s a policy that activates loud bleating of complaint from the neo-libertarian crowd. Their opposition to compulsory voting is usually expressed in the identical vocabulary of waaaaaaaaaaah as their resistance to wearing seatbelts, educating their children with other people’s children, not plastering stores’ shelves with titty-porn, and being told they really shouldn’t smoke in front of a baby. Compulsory voting is also opposed by politicians keen to attack it for partisan advantage. As recently as the last Liberal government in 2004, the infernal former Liberal senator Nick Minchin had to be stopped from within his own party from removing a provision that has been our nation’s democratic backbone for 89 years. We can all be grateful that, at least in this instance, everyone’s favourite Liberal-of-last-resort, Petro Georgiou, found a flaming sword of sufficient brightness to banish Satan back to his cave. Liberals of Minchin’s ilk have realpolitik reasons to campaign against compulsory voting. In the vast majority of countries where voting is optional – especially the liberal democratic states of the West most demographically similar to our own – it’s a long established fact that voting turnout is massively concentrated amongst those communities with higher levels of education, urbanity, wealth, health, control of their own time and the other privileges of inherited social capital.

Cambodia: Parties Agree to Establish Joint Election Investigation | VoA News

Negotiators for Cambodia’s ruling and opposition parties have agreed to establish a special team to jointly investigate allegations of election irregularities. The decision was made by a working group that met for two hours at the National Assembly on Tuesday. Son Chhay, a lawmaker for the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, which has rejected preliminary results by the National Election Committee, said if irregularities are found by the investigative team they will consider what action to take against the NEC. “We tried to find ways to have an investigating team that can find the truth and then that result can be useful for the Constitutional Council in judging, because our complaints to the National Election Committee seemed to be rejected and ignored.”

Germany: Frugal German election contrasts sharply with U.S. | The Washington Post

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s calendar this past week looked like this: unpack from an Italian vacation, catch up with advisers and kick off a campaign with a small-town rally for an election that will be held in just five weeks. In the United States, the 2016 campaign is well under way, with contenders jostling to give speeches in the battleground state of Iowa. But in Germany, where regulations keep political ads largely off the airwaves, the sleepy federal election campaign fired up only last week, when parties were finally allowed to string up signs on light poles. Merkel’s main challenger, Peer Steinbrueck, also just dusted himself off from a weeklong vacation and has been barnstorming from one half-timbered town square to another, although according to many local observers, the battle remains as lukewarm as any in memory. German candidates typically hit the trail just a few weeks before an election, spend far less than $50 million — pocket change by Obama-Romney standards — and yet draw voter turnout that, while declining, is still well above U.S. levels. “It’s sensible to have a short campaign,” said Heiko Geue, Steinbrueck’s campaign manager, in an interview in his spartan office at the Social Democrats’ red-bedecked Berlin headquarters. “People decide a few days or the day of the election whether they’ll vote and which party to vote for.”

Madagascar: Madagascar’s long road to elections | Deutsche Welle

Madagascar is in a deep crisis. Since 2009 the island state has been ruled by a controversial interim president. A court ruling has now opened the way for long overdue elections. The people of the Indian Ocean island state of Madagascar should have gone to the polls back in 2009, the year in which their country’s ongoing political crisis escalated. The government of President Marc Ravolamanana had become an object of hatred for many because of widespread bribery and corruption. There were violent demonstrations and, backed by the army, Andry Rajoelina ousted the unpopular ruler and declared himself the new interim president. The former mayor of the capital Antananarivo promised swift elections – but that promise has yet to be fulfilled.

Zimbabwe: Court to rule on election challenge | Associated Press

Zimbabwe’s highest court said it will rule Tuesday on a legal battle over disputed elections that gave President Robert Mugabe a landslide victory, even though the opposition dropped its challenge in protest to the state’s refusal to hand over polling data. Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court on Monday heard demands by Mugabe’s attorneys for a hearing to go ahead despite the opposition’s withdrawal, apparently reflecting the president’s confidence that the court will throw out the case and strengthen his assertions that the vote was legitimate. Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980, appoints the nation’s judges and they have frequently ruled in his favor in the past decade of political and economic turmoil. Terrence Hussein, an attorney for Mugabe, said a challenge to the presidential vote cannot be withdrawn under the constitution. The party of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai fears participation in the legal process would now give a stamp of credibility to the election.

National: Democrats push back on voting rights | The Washington Post

After crying foul over Republican efforts to modify election laws in key states, Democrats are launching their own wide-ranging push to change the way Americans vote, kicking off the latest battles in a fight over voting rights that’s as old as the republic itself. Last week, operatives tied to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee launched what they call a 50-state initiative to promote voting reforms that would make it easier to cast a ballot. The effort is being run by American Values First, an outside group organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code and run by Michael Sargeant, the DLCC’s executive director. Democrats will push legislation similar to a Colorado measure signed into law earlier this year that requires all elections to be conducted by mail. Legislators in at least seven other states will propose bills that would tweak election laws in other ways. In some states controlled by Democrats, the measures have a good chance to pass. In other states with divided control or that operate under Republican control, Democrats plan to use the measures as political cudgels, painting the GOP as opposed to basic voting rights.

Editorials: What Does the Constitution Actually Say About Voting Rights? | Garrett Epps/The Atlantic

Since the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Shelby County v. Holder in June, conservative governments in the South and elsewhere have raced to introduce new voting restrictions. Most prominent in the attacks is the comprehensive vote-restriction law passed by the Republican majority in the North Carolina legislature. The law cuts back early voting, restricts private groups from conducting voter-registration drives, eliminates election-day voter registration, and imposes the strictest voter ID rules in the country. There is evidence that Republican legislatures elsewhere will follow North Carolina’s lead. Neither the American people nor the federal courts would tolerate restrictions of this sort if they were imposed on free speech, free assembly, freedom of religion, or freedom to petition government for redress of grievances. For that matter, many Southern states–and probably a majority of the Supreme Court–would reject far less onerous restrictions on the right to “keep and bear arms.” Yet each of those rights is mentioned only once in the Constitution. The “right to vote” is mentioned five times–and yet the Court has brushed it aside as a privilege that states may observe at their convenience. Even an overwhelming majority of Congress–which is given the power to enforce the right in no fewer than four different places in the Constitution–cannot protect this right more strongly than the Court feels appropriate. What would happen if we took the Constitution’s text on this matter seriously?

Editorials: Get to Know Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act | Abby Rapoport/American Prospect

arlier this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the most potent provision of the Voting Rights Act: Section 5, which had required nine states and a number of individual counties with long histories of voter discrimination to clear any new election law changes with the feds. In the weeks since the decision, voting rights advocates have been searching for new strategies to protect voting rights. And now, in recent days, a previously ignored portion of the Voting Rights Act has become a key tool in the fight. Advocates—as well as Attorney General Eric Holder—are hoping Section 3 will prove to be a powerful tool in the face of an onslaught of voting restrictions from Republican legislatures—and can at least partially replace the much stronger voter protections the Supreme Court took away. Since that Supreme Court decision, the states that had been covered by Section 5 have run roughshod over voting rights. Texas has set about implementing a voter ID law—previously nixed by the DOJ under the Section 5—that would require some people to drive 176 miles round trip on a weekday to get the government-issued photo ID they’ll now need to vote. In Florida, Governor Rick Scott has announced he would re-start a purge of non-citizens from the voter rolls. North Carolina, for its part, passed what is likely the most sweeping set of voting restrictions since the original Voting Rights Act was passed.

Editorials: Modern Vote Suppression Better Than Jim Crow | Daily Intelligencer

A pervasive sense of racial victimization has afflicted conservatives during the Obama years — the feeling that they are beset by a combination of false accusations of racism and actual anti-white racial animus that they dare not denounce lest they trigger still more false accusations of racism. That bundle of grievances resurfaced last week when North Carolina Republicans passed sweeping restrictions on voting rights, and Hillary Clinton declared in a speech, “Anyone who says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention.” Cast once again as the heirs to the political tradition of the segregated South, conservatives have lashed back. It is certainly true that modern Republican vote suppression pales in comparison with the pre-1965 version, in method and scale, to the point where equating the two is absurd. Segregated states used violence and “literacy tests” to disenfranchise the vast majority of the black population. The modern analogue instead works around the margins. Nobody is forcibly prohibited from voting. Instead, bureaucratic hurdles discourage some small share of disproportionately Democratic voters from voting. Life can be hectic, time is short, there are kids and jobs, paperwork is a hassle — Republican election policy is to use these weapons to gain a few percentage points here and there. People with less money have less flexibility at work and less ability to navigate government paperwork requirements. It’s far, far less vicious than Jim Crow, and conservatives are justified in taking umbrage at the easy, frequent equations between the two that pervade liberal discourse.

Voting Blogs: What Did VRA Preclearance Actually Do?: The Gap Between Perception and Reality | Election Law Blog

A widespread perception exists that, in the years before the Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the Section 5 preclearance regime was a powerful tool in protecting access to the ballot box for minority voters. Indeed, Section 5 is widely thought to have been overwhelmingly about protecting access in the covered areas: that is part of it symbolic meaning. On this view, Section 5 was a bulwark against laws like the one just signed by North Carolina’s governor – which makes voting more difficult for eligible voters by cutting the early voting period, eliminating same-day registration, and other measures. But the reality is that Section 5 was rarely used in this way, at least in its last three decades. Section 5 did not, primarily, function to protect access to the ballot box. Instead, the overwhelming uses of Section 5 were to ensure more majority-majority election districts or to stop at-large election systems and other practices believed to weaken minority voting strength. Some of these uses, especially the compelled creation of majority-minority election districts, are more controversial (even among conventional “liberals”) than are robust protections for access to the ballot box. Yet in practice, Section 5 was used primarily for redistricting and other matters of vote dilution rather than protecting the right of eligible citizens to cast a vote.

North Carolina: County elections boards in North Carolina challenging college student voting patterns | NewsObserver.com

Montravias King is an Elizabeth City State University senior who has been voting in Pasquotank County since he started school there four years ago. The civic-minded student government leader has voted early in city, county, state and national elections in the Pasquotank County seat in northeastern North Carolina, always using his campus dorm address. Now King wants to run for City Council in his college town and his campaign has drawn the attention of such national media figures as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, a vocal critic of the sweeping North Carolina elections revisions signed into law last week. Pete Gilbert, the Pasquotank Republican Party chairman, has tried to put a halt to King’s candidacy in a campaign that could test the scope of the state’s elections law changes. As voting site changes are proposed for other college campuses, the Eastern North Carolina incident also could test the extent to actions that voting rights advocates have described as a GOP-controlled effort to weaken turnout among young voters more likely to vote against them.

Editorials: North Carolina House Bill 589; or, Politics in the New Third World | Mark Axelrod/Huffington Post

I find it increasingly difficult to believe that certain states in the alleged “United States” would mindfully attempt to undermine the right to vote especially in relation to many of those “third world” countries that the U.S. often dismisses as being, well, third world. Case in point is the travesty that is North Carolina House Bill 589 which, among other things, requires voters to show photo identification — a driver’s license, passport, veteran’s ID, tribal card — (though, with all sympathies to Michael Jordan, student IDs are not an acceptable form of identification); “reduces early voting by a week, eliminates same-day registration, ends pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds and a student civics program, kills an annual state-sponsored voter registration drive and lessens the amount of public reporting required for so-called dark money groups, also known as 501(c)(4)s.” This is all set up for the 2016 elections presumably as a way to reduce the monster that is voter fraud even though Governor McCrory has gone on record stating the bill was necessary even if there are very few reported cases of voter fraud. “Even if the instances of misidentified people casting votes are low, that shouldn’t prevent us from putting this non-burdensome safeguard in place.” He then went on to opine, “Just because you haven’t been robbed doesn’t mean you shouldn’t lock your doors at night or when you’re away from home.”

Texas: Dallas County could take on Texas over voter ID law | The Dallas Morning News

Dallas County commissioners on Tuesday could join a federal challenge to a controversial state law that requires voters to show photo identification. Commissioners are expected to vote on whether to hire a law firm to join a federal lawsuit at Tuesday’s regular meeting. The move would pit county leaders against state officials. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last month he is also taking aim at Texas legislators’ voting laws. Battles over voter identification laws have raged across the country in recent years. Supporters are typically Republicans. They say the laws prevent ineligible voters from casting ballots. Opponents are typically Democrats. They say such laws are designed to keep poor residents and minorities from casting ballots by adding financial and bureaucratic hurdles to voting. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins and District Attorney Craig Watkins, both Democrats, said in a joint statement Monday that the law “could disenfranchise many registered voters.”

Australia: How long is a piece of electoral string? | The Age

How long is a piece of string? In the case of the coming federal election, it’s 140 kilometres! That’s how much string will anchor the the 100,000 pencils the Australian Electoral Commission is distributing for voters to mark their voting slips on September 7. The logistical task of organising an election has never been greater, according to the commission, which is busy delivering the Official Guide to the Federal Election to 9.7 million Australian households. If that isn’t enough, you can always go to the commission’s website to gain access to digital formats of the guide. Around 70,000 polling officials will be required to oversee events on election day, and almost 50,000 of them already signed up. About 50,000 ballot boxes have been hammered together and are being distributed across the land, and more than 43 million ballot papers – just to be sure, to be sure – are being sent out to cater for voting for the House of Representatives and Senate polls.

Cambodia: High court begins review of contested general election results | Associated Press

Cambodia’s highest court, the Constitutional Council, has begun a review of the contested results of last month’s general election, leaving open a small possibility that it will resolve the opposition’s claims of unfairness. The state National Election Committee on Saturday already rejected all 19 complaints filed by political parties against the results of the July 28 polls. The official results would give the ruling Cambodian People’s Party 68 seats in the National Assembly, and 55 to the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party.

Germany: How do Germans elect their parliament? | Deutsche Welle

Will Angela Merkel or Peer Steinbrück win the race? Although the two top candidates are in the media spotlight, German elections are all about political parties rather than individuals. “If you’re not a member of a political party, you have little chance of getting one of those 600 seats in the Bundestag.” That was what a guide to Germany’s lower house of parliament told a young visitor recently. Germany’s basic law stipulates that “Political parties shall participate in the formation of the political will of the people.” But many political scientists admit that they do far more than “participate,” they basically decide on who can shape politics in Germany. It is very difficult for any independent candidate without party backing to obtain a seat in parliament. And that is because of the very complex electoral system. 61, 8 million Germans are eligible to vote this year – these are all Germans above the age of 18; three million of them are voting for the first time.

eSwatini: Election Law Broken Across Kingdom | allAfrica.com

The law banning candidates from campaigning in the forthcoming primary election is being broken across Swaziland. And, police are trying to clamp down on public gatherings, social parties and food distributions. A meeting aimed at sensitising people to the need to elect more women to parliament was abandoned after a warning from the Swazi Elections and Boundaries Commission. Candidates for the primary election to be held on 24 August 2013 were chosen nearly two weeks ago, but they are forbidden by law from campaigning for votes. Allegedly illegal activities reported over the past few days include the distribution of water, clothes and food at a church gathering at Nhlambeni.

Zimbabwe: Court to rule on election challenge even after opposition drops its case | Associated Press

National: Obamacare: Can You Register to Vote at State Health Care Insurance Exchanges? | Stateline

Two of the fiercest political disputes between Washington and the states could soon come together in legal fights that involve tying the new federal health care overhaul to voter registration. Every state is preparing to open a health insurance exchange by Oct. 1. Whether these new agencies will offer voter registration as well as health care information is emerging as a potential fault line that could further divide states from one another and from Washington. The Obama administration and voting rights advocates say there’s no question the agencies must offer voter registration under federal law. But Republicans in Congress and in some states are pushing back, and even some election law experts aren’t so sure the question has an easy answer. So far, just three states have officially said they’ll link the exchanges and voter registration. But whether the rest will – or will be required to under federal law – is an open question that will likely lead to court battles and at least a temporary patchwork approach nationwide. “I don’t expect it to go evenly and don’t expect it to go well, initially,” said R. Doug Lewis, head of the National Association of Election Officials. “There’s not universal agreement about what can be done here, as you can imagine.”

Editorials: A New Danger to Campaign Law | New York Times

Republican operatives are charging forward with their efforts to sabotage the Federal Election Commission in its lawful obligation to police campaign abuses. The six-member commission is evenly divided between the two parties, but the Republican vice chairman, Donald McGahn, has spent his tenure as a partisan obstructionist, adroitly engineering 3-to-3 standoff votes to block penalties and other recommendations by staff investigators who uncover abuses by big-money campaigners. Now Mr. McGahn aims to take advantage of a temporary Democratic vacancy and 3-to-2 Republican edge to push through rules that would make total lackeys of commission staff members by blocking them from the usual sharing of information with the Justice Department and other agencies. In his partisan cunning, Mr. McGahn would even bar them from looking into possible violations publicly reported in news media and on the Internet.

Editorials: Here’s Where Rand Paul Can Find ‘Objective Evidence’ of Vote Suppression | Andrew Cohen/The Atlantic

Dear Senator Rand Paul:

If you want to be president of the United States one day, if you want more people to take you seriously as an independent thinker within the Republican Party, if you want to lead your party back to control of the Senate, or if more modestly you want simply to tether yourself to some form of reality, you are going to have to stop making false and insulting statements like you did Wednesday when you declared: “I don’t think there is objective evidence that we’re precluding African-Americans from voting any longer.” I guess it all depends upon your definition of “objective evidence.” On the one hand, there are the factual findings about evidence and testimony contained in numerous opinions issued recently by federal judges, both Republican and Democrat, who have identified racially discriminatory voting measures. And on the other hand, there is your statement that none of this is “objective.” It’s a heavy burden you’ve given yourself, Senator — proving that something doesn’t exist when we all can see with our own eyes that it does. Last August, for example, three federal judges struck down Texas’s photo identification law under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act because it would have led “to a regression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise.” Those judges did find that some of the evidence presented to them was “invalid, irrelevant or unreliable” — but that was the evidence Texas offered in support of its discriminatory law. You should read this ruling before you talk about minorities and voting rights.

Colorado: Concerns over military voting in recall election | The Pueblo Chieftain

It’s a scramble to make sure the recall elections of state Sens. John Morse and Angela Giron are fair after a judge ruled that candidates can join the race up until 15 days before the election. Some are concerned about the more than 900 military and overseas voters who’ve already received ballots that will likely be outdated by the time the Sept. 10 election day arrives. “Military service members overseas are going to have a difficult time voting and, if they do vote, many are going to lose the right to a secret ballot,” said Garrett Reppenhagen, a veteran and member of the nonprofit Vet Voice Foundation. For all elections, military members can vote through email, fax or a secure website, but they waive their right to a secret ballot when voting this way. One person in the county elections office sees their name and vote. “I think just trusting the fact that one person is going to see your ballot, and it’s not necessarily secret isn’t comforting to every service member and every voter,” said Reppenhagen.

Colorado: State Supreme Court declines to hear recall appeal | The Denver Post

The Colorado Supreme Court on Thursday declined to hear an appeal that sought to throw out this week’s ruling by a Denver district judge that recast a pair of recall elections of state lawmakers. The decision means Monday’s ruling by District Judge Robert McGahey stands. McGahey agreed with arguments made by the Libertarian Party of Colorado that prospective candidates in the recall elections of Democratic Sens. John Morse of Colorado Springs and Angela Giron of Pueblo can petition onto the ballot up until 15 days before the Sept. 10 election.

Iowa: Secretary of State’s office gains access to federal database for voter fraud investigation | Des Moines Register

After months of negotiations and paperwork, Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz said Wednesday his office will gain access to a federal immigration database it can use to investigate potential voter fraud. Schultz, a Republican, released a signed memorandum of understanding between his office and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that will allow him to tap the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, Program, which tracks the legal status of immigrants. “While there are still many logistics to work out in this process that may take some time, I want to thank the Federal government for finally granting my office access to the federal SAVE program,” Schultz said in a statement. “Ensuring election integrity without voter suppression has been our goal throughout this process. This is a step in the right direction for all Iowans that care about integrity in the election process.”

Kansas: Proof-Of-Citizenship Law Blocks Many From Voting | Huffington Post

A few weeks after moving to suburban Kansas City from the Seattle area, Aaron Belenky went online to register to vote. But he ended up joining thousands of other Kansas residents whose voting rights are in legal limbo because of the state’s new proof-of-citizenship rule. Starting this year, new voters aren’t legally registered in Kansas until they’ve presented a birth certificate, passport or other document demonstrating U.S. citizenship. Kansas is among a handful of GOP-dominated states enacting rules to keep noncitizens from voting, but the most visible result is a growing pool of nearly 15,000 residents who’ve filled out registration forms but can’t cast ballots. Critics of the law point out that the number of people whose registrations aren’t yet validated – and who are thus blocked from voting – far outpaces the few hundred ballots over the last 15 years that Kansas officials say were potentially tainted by irregularities. Preventing election fraud was often cited as the reason for enacting the law.

North Carolina: New law cancels ballots cast in wrong precinct | Associated Press

For a decade, registered North Carolina voters who didn’t go to their home precincts on Election Day – by error or on purpose – could still ensure their top choices would count. They’d fill out a conditional ballot from the incorrect precinct. If officials confirmed soon after that they were legally able to vote in the county, their votes for elections not specific to their home precinct would be tabulated. But Republicans at the legislature say people should be responsible to know where they’re supposed to vote, rather than force election workers to crosscheck their ballots and figure out their lawful choices. So they inserted in their elections overhaul bill passed last month a new law barring those out-of-precinct ballots- usually thousands combined annually in primary and general elections – from being counted at all. “If you do cast you ballot, you should know which precinct you belong in,” said Sen. Bob Rucho, R-Mecklenburg, who shepherded the election law through the Senate, calling the change a “small part of the overall streamlining of the election process.”

North Carolina: Lawmakers may defend laws in court if AG won’t | NBC News