Canada: B.C. electoral panel opposes online voting | The Globe and Mail

British Columbia should not adopt online voting because it won’t necessarily improve voter turnout and is less secure, a report from an electoral panel says. The 106-page report, released Wednesday, makes four recommendations for municipal and provincial elections. Chief among them is that online voting not be used at this time. “There’s no consistent relationship between the use of Internet voting and increased voter turnout in those jurisdictions that have used Internet voting,” Keith Archer, the chief electoral officer and panel chair, told reporters. “Sometimes turnout goes up, sometimes it stays the same, and sometimes it has gone down.” Online voting advocates have argued such a system would engage younger voters. But Mr. Archer said the five-person panel – which formed last year, after being invited by the provincial government to study the issue – found the people most likely to use online voting were middle-aged or older. “Those findings led the panel to conclude that moving towards Internet voting in British Columbia is likely not the panacea for the challenges of declining voter turnout that we’ve seen in the last generation or so,” he said. Mr. Archer described the report as “cautionary” and said it’s important to maintain the integrity of the electoral process. Although traditional voting is not without risk, the report said, “it is much harder to perform and conceal large-scale fraud in traditional voting than in Internet voting.”

Editorials: Politicians’ Extortion Racket | Peter Schweizer/New York Times

We have long assumed that the infestation of special interest money in Washington is at the root of so much that ails our politics. But what if we’ve had it wrong? What if instead of being bribed by wealthy interests, politicians are engaged in a form of legal extortion designed to extract campaign contributions? Consider this: of the thousands of bills introduced in Congress each year, only roughly 5 percent become law. Why do legislators bother proposing so many bills? What if many of those bills are written not to be passed but to pressure people into forking over cash? This is exactly what is happening. Politicians have developed a dizzying array of legislative tactics to bring in money. Take the maneuver known inside the Beltway as the “tollbooth.” Here the speaker of the House or a powerful committee chairperson will create a procedural obstruction or postponement on the eve of an important vote. Campaign contributions are then implicitly solicited. If the tribute offered by those in favor of the bill’s passage is too small (or if the money from opponents is sufficiently high), the bill is delayed and does not proceed down the legislative highway.

Voting Blogs: More Unhappiness About Judge Posner’s Second Thoughts, From Another Direction | More Soft Money Hard Law

Ed Whelan in the National Review is frustrated with Judge’s Posner’s renunciation of his Crawford opinion on voter ID. He contends that Posner’s admission of error—and his new, more critical judgment about voter photo ID requirements—is a demonstration of the flaws in the “pragmatic” adjudication that the Judge has long championed. Posner is now convinced that photo ID requirements have led to voter suppression, and Whelan counters that Posner is just expressing a personal judgment, “sloppy and ill-considered,” that follows from an open-ended mode of judging that invites subjective judgments. In support of his view, he cites from Posner’s book for the proposition that “how a judge should decide a case ‘will often depend on moral feelings, common sense, sympathies, and other ingredients of thought and feeling that can’t readily be translated into a weighing of measurable consequences.’” Whelan, citing Richard A. Posner, Reflections on Judging 6 (2013). This is not fair representation of Posner’s views, and it cannot help account for his change of heart on photo ID. If pragmatic adjudication failed Posner in this case, it is not in the way Whelan suggests.

California: Alameda County Can’t Dismiss Suit From Blind Voters | News Service

Blind voters in California can advance claims that the voting machines meant for them in Alameda County malfunctioned and violated their rights, a federal judge ruled. The California Council of the Blind and five individual voters sued Alameda County because the accessible voting machines for the blind failed to work properly, forcing them to vote with the help of another person. The county has Sequoia AVC Edge voting machines at each of its polling places. Using voice prompts, headphones and a tactile keypad, a blind person can vote independently. But the machines allegedly malfunctioned several times on Election Day, and the plaintiffs say they endured long delays as poll workers failed to get the machines working. More than one plaintiff said they were shuttled to another voting site, only to discover that the machine there did not work either.

Colorado: Court issues ruling on Colorado recall vote system | 7NEWS

The Colorado Supreme Court has reaffirmed its decision in two Colorado legislative recall elections that voters do not have to first vote “yes” or “no” on the recall to have their votes for a successor validated. The Colorado high court said Monday a state constitutional requirement that voters must first vote on the recall before voting for a candidate violates rights to voting and expression under the U.S. Constitution. The court’s written ruling came in response to a question from Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Florida: Ex-aide to Miami Rep. Joe Garcia to head to jail in absentee-ballot case | Miami Herald

Congressman Joe Garcia’s former chief of staff will head to jail for orchestrating a fraudulent, online absentee-ballot request scheme during last year’s elections. Jeffrey Garcia, the Miami Democratic congressman’s longtime political strategist, will spend 90 days in jail as part of a plea deal reached with the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office, the Miami Herald has learned. The deal, expected to be inked Monday, will require Garcia, 41, no relation to the congressman, to plead guilty to requesting absentee ballots on behalf of voters, a felony. His attorney, Henry Bell, noted Garcia never “touched a ballot, manipulated a vote or otherwise interfered with anyone’s vote.” “He accepts responsibility for his conduct which involved requesting absentee ballots for voters when it was the voters themselves who are required to make the requests,” Bell said in a statement. “Jeff is a good person who made a mistake. He is sorry and is doing the right thing in admitting this and accepting responsibility.”

Indiana: Ex-elections chief questions lawyer’s health at 2012 trial, wants convictions tossed | Associated Press

Indiana’s former elections chief raised questions about his attorney’s health during his 2012 voter fraud trial and said he thought it was “a joke” that his defense strategy was to call no witnesses. Charlie White testified Monday in a Hamilton County court that attorney Carl Brizzi appeared exhausted and “worn down” and was taking medication during the trial. “Every night he complained he couldn’t sleep,” White said. White was ousted as secretary of state in February 2012 after being convicted of voter fraud and other felonies. The charges stemmed from his use of his ex-wife’s home in Fishers as his voting address in 2010 while serving on the Fishers Town Council and running for secretary of state. Prosecutors said White lived in a townhouse outside his council district with his then-fiancee but continued to receive his council salary and vote in his old precinct.

Kentucky: Opposition to Felon Voting Rights Thawing, Kentucky Lawmaker Says | WFPL

Saying Kentucky state senators have been the historical roadblock, Democrat Gerald Neal of Louisville has pre-filed a bill to restore voting rights to certain former felons. Movement on the proposal comes weeks after U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., spoke out in favor of restoring felons’ voting rights at the state and federal levels, which many observers argue is an indication the GOP may be changing its view on the issue. For the past six years, the Democratic-led state House has passed similar proposals by wide, bipartisan margins to give convicted felons their rights back. All of those measures have died in the Republican-controlled Senate and often without a hearing. Neal says senators in the Republican caucus are beginning to come around and putting the bill in his chamber first is a better strategy given its history.

Editorials: For online voter registration, it’s about time | Mark Ritchie/Star Tribune

Last month, the office of the Minnesota secretary of state launched online voter registration to deliver a less expensive and more secure method for our citizens to register to vote (“Online voting system needs bipartisan OK,” editorial, Oct. 15; “Beware of online voter registration,” editorial counterpoint, Oct. 18). Minnesotans have responded enthusiastically to this new tool, with nearly 1,500 applications submitted. Along with praise of the system, we’ve also been asked: “What took you so long?” It is fitting that the state that regularly records the highest voter turnout in the nation has access to all the available tools that support voter participation. Online voter registration joins a series of other innovative web-based services from our office that help voters find their polling place, look up registration or absentee ballot status, view a sample ballot, and request an absentee ballot if in the military or working overseas.

North Carolina: Officials ask court to dismiss elections law challenges | Charlotte News Observer

Gov. Pat McCrory and other state officials filed their first official response Monday to two of the three federal court lawsuits that challenge the extensive election-law changes adopted this past summer. In response to allegations by the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, several voters and other civil rights organizations, attorneys for the governor and state officials dispute plaintiffs’ contentions that the new measures are a blatant attempt to suppress the African-American vote. The filings offer few details of the legal strategy the attorneys representing the governor and the Republican-led legislature plan to employ in fighting the suits. They ask for the cases to be dismissed. Also on Monday, McCrory defended North Carolina’s law at an event in Washington held by the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation.

North Carolina: Lawyers reject arguments in election lawsuits | The Asheville Citizen-Times

Attorneys for the state of North Carolina and Gov. Pat McCrory on Monday requested that a pair of federal lawsuits challenging substantial changes to portions of a law overhauling elections in the state be dismissed. Offering their initial formal responses to litigation filed in August on the same McCrory signed the bill into law, the lawyers denied all of the racial discrimination allegations made by civil rights and election advocacy groups and voters about the legislation. The lawsuits seek to throw out new rules requiring photo identification to vote starting in 2016, reducing the number of early-voting days by a week and eliminating same-day registration during the early-voting period, among other steps. The lawsuits argue the changes are dramatic and would make it disproportionately harder for black citizens to vote, turning back the clock on voting rights.

Editorials: Virginia’s voter purge must stop | Tram Nguyen/Richmond Times-Dispatch

With just two weeks remaining before voters go to polls to elect the state’s next governor, Virginia’s State Board of Elections is engaged in an ill-advised effort to purge voters from the registration rolls. While all agree that it is important that Virginia election officials maintain an up-to-date registration list, this hurried review undertaken immediately before a major statewide election is not the way to ensure a fair and appropriate election process. As history has shown us, when politicians purge lists this close to an election, mistakes invariably happen and valid citizens may be denied their right to vote. In an attempt to engage in list maintenance, Virginia is participating in a data-matching program known as the Interstate Voter Crosscheck Program (IVCP). The IVCP collects registration data from all participating states (including each voter’s full name, date of birth, address and, if provided, the last four digits of her or his Social Security number). The IVCP then attempts to match the records to identify any duplicates, and makes the results of this matching effort available to each participating state.

Czech Republic: Artwork reflects widespread cynicism ahead of Czech election | Business New Europe

Four days ahead of Czech parliamentary elections, a giant middle-finger salute directed at Prague Castle – seat of the head of state – appeared on October 21. The sculpture appears a protest both at the cynicism of Czech politics, and the efforts of President Milos Zeman to leverage the disillusionment within the country to increase his power. At ten metres tall, the purple finger – mounted on a barge floating on the Vltava River which weaves through the capital – leaves little room for interpretation. Artist David Cerny refused to discuss the work, except to say that the gesture is well-known and clear. More important, he told state broadcaster CTK, is the direction in which it is facing. Zeman is not currently in the country and through a spokesperson said that he did not want to comment on something he has not seen. The election on October 25-26 follows the collapse of the previous centre-right coalition amid a corruption and spying scandal. The left-leaning Zeman, who took office in March, exploited loopholes in the constitution to install a “caretaker” government, despite objections from all the major parties. Many have likened the move to a “quiet coup” by the president.

Luxembourg: Opposition parties eye coalition without Juncker | AFP

Europe’s longest-serving leader Jean-Claude Juncker risked losing power in Luxembourg as three rival parties were set to begin negotiations on Tuesday to form a coalition without him. The heads of the Liberal and Socialist parties said a day after parliamentary elections they would open talks with the Green party, a move that could see Juncker’s centre-right Christian Social People’s party (CSV) ousted, despite winning the largest share of the vote. The 40-year-old head of the Liberal Party, Luxembourg city mayor Xavier Bettel, told journalists he had been given a “mandate” to open talks on forming an unprecedented coalition of the three parties. “We need different policies to pull the country out of crisis,” he said.

Madagascar: Voters hope election will end nearly five years of crisis | Los Angeles Times

Madagascar is set to hold elections Friday, trying to shrug off the effects of a 2009 coup that plunged millions of people into poverty and hunger due to subsequent African and Western sanctions and withdrawal of budget aid. The efforts of donors to punish the country’s politicians have backfired and hurt its most vulnerable people, especially children, U.N. humanitarian agencies said Monday. Madagascar, a country that relied on donors to cover about 40% of its budget in 2008, is a study on what goes wrong after a coup: Tourism evaporates, investors go elsewhere and international donors drastically cut their support. “Before the coup, Madagascar was seen as a donor darling. Things were coming up. They were going to reach their Millennium Development Goals,” said UNICEF’s Madagascar representative, Steven Lauwerier, who was in Johannesburg on Monday.

Maldives: New dates set for presidential election 2 days after police stopped scheduled revote | Associated Press

Maldives officials on Monday set a new date for the country’s presidential election two days after police stepped in to prevent a scheduled revote, claiming that the balloting was illegal. The move comes as a breakthrough in ending a political stalemate and as a reassurance to this troubled young democracy. But questions remain over how the island nation would bypass a constitutional vacuum because the new schedule may not produce a new president before the end of the incumbent’s term. Vice Elections Commissioner Ahmed Fayaz told reporters that the new election date would be Nov. 9 and if no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote, a runoff election would be held on Nov. 16. The constitution of the Maldives requires a president to be elected by Nov. 11, when sitting President Mohamed Waheed Hassan’s term ends.

Editorials: The perils of two-tier voter registration systems | Franita Tolson/Alliance for Justice

In Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council, the Supreme Court held that Arizona’s Proposition 200, which required proof of citizenship in order to register to vote in federal elections, was preempted by the National Voter Registration Act (“NVRA”) because the NVRA did not require such proof from voters. Shortly after the oral argument in the case, I noted that “the practical reality of compliance with the NVRA may very well mean that a state has to maintain two separate voter registration rolls” for state and federal elections. It appears that Arizona has taken this observation to heart, joining Kansas in setting up a voter registration system for state and local elections that is separate from its system governing federal elections. Under the dual system, voters who provide proof of citizenship will be able to vote in all elections, but those who do not will only be able to vote in federal elections. In adopting this approach, neither Kansas nor Arizona heeded my warning after Inter Tribal was decided about the significant risk of liability that comes with operating separate voter registration regimes.

Editorials: Philanthropy Must Help Heal the Breakdown in Democracy | Robert L. Gallucci/The Chronicle of Philanthropy

America’s democracy is in trouble. Given the current government shutdown, the rancor of our political process, the likelihood that we will go on lurching from crisis to crisis, and the low level of confidence Americans have in their government, that observation probably won’t stir much controversy. But it ought to be a call to action. As citizens, we should be deeply concerned that our political system is failing. As donors, we should be equally engaged. Philanthropic foundations pride themselves on taking on urgent and significant challenges. They don’t come more urgent or significant than the future of our republic. The malaise of representative democracy in this country is not only a betrayal of American ideals and principles. It has real and negative effects on our economy, the health of our institutions, and our standing in the world. Why should we in philanthropy get involved? Because it is in our interest.

Arizona: Redistricting Commission asks court to dismiss challenge to Congressional lines | Arizona Daily Star

Attorneys for the Independent Redistricting Commission are asking a federal court to dismiss what they contend is a power grab by state lawmakers. Legal papers filed late Friday in federal court acknowledge there was a loss of power by the Legislature in 2000 when voters approved creating the commission and gave it the power to draw the lines for congressional and legislative districts. But Mary O’Grady said that does not make the system illegal. “That was the intent,’’ she wrote. O’Grady said the leaders of the Legislature, who are trying overturn at least part of the 2000 initiative, are “concerned more with the loss of power than the will of the people who elect its members.’’ The filing comes as Ray Bladine, the commission’s executive director, said lawmakers need to allocate at least another $1.25 million for the balance of this budget year which runs through June 30. And the big cost is defending three lawsuits against the commission, including this one filed by the Legislature.

California: County leaders settle dispute over charges for recounting ballots of Riverbank election | Modesto Bee

Stanislaus County leaders have dismissed the balance owed for the recount of the Riverbank mayoral election of 2012. County officials entered an agreement last month with former mayor Virginia Madueño to dismiss a remaining balance of $3,250, with neither side admitting fault. After Madueño lost by 53 votes to Richard O’Brien last year, one of her supporters asked for the Dec. 10 recount, which was stopped after five hours because the results were not changing. Madueño was stunned when county elections sent her campaign an invoice six weeks later showing a $7,817 balance owed in addition to the $2,400 deposit paid the day of the recount. The Registrar of Voters’ total charges for counting about 500 ballots was $10,217, or $20 per ballot. The person who requests a recount is expected to pay for it, but the invoiced costs tend to vary from county to county in California. And critics have suggested that county registrars arbitrarily impose recount charges.

Editorials: Florida voter purge will repeat mistakes | Robert M. Brandon/Orlando Sentinel

Secretary of State Ken Detzner’s attempt to establish confidence in Florida’s upcoming purge of voters has raised more questions than it answers. Rather than providing information on how this round of purges protects the integrity of the voter rolls, his so-called Project Integrity tour has proved that this voter-list-maintenance process lacks transparency, support and validity. Throughout his meetings with supervisors of elections and the public, Detzner and his staff did not answer many important questions on how the state plans to remove suspected noncitizens from the voter rolls while not repeating the same mistakes of the past. Despite Project Integrity’s façade of explaining the purge process and touting its validity, several supervisors of elections expressed concern with the use of the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database and the process of carrying out this purge. Many questions remained unanswered, such as what the potential cost will be and what the procedure will be to correct wrongly targeted voters.

Editorials: Kansas and Arizona continue voter suppression efforts | The Washington Post

Nothing frightens today’s Republican Party quite like the voters. Before the 2012 elections, GOP lawmakers in statehouses across the country tightened voter identification laws with one goal in common: to suppress turnout on Election Day among likely Democratic voters, especially minorities and the poor. It didn’t work. Now, harking back to the days of Jim Crow, they are at it again. In Arizona and Kansas, GOP officials are moving to adopt a two-tiered voting system, the effect of which would be to disenfranchise thousands of voters. The ploy relies on requiring birth certificates, passports and other documents that establish proof of citizenship in order to register to vote in state and local elections. Such documents are not necessary to register for federal elections. Many voters cannot easily produce such documents; fewer than half of Kansans and Arizonans possess a passport, and it’s a safe bet that many of them don’t have a birth certificate readily at hand either. That means that voter registration drives in gubernatorial, legislative and local county races, which, in the case of Democratic candidates, often target minority and poor neighborhoods, are likely to yield fewer new voters. The results are whiter and richer voters. That’s electoral gold for Republicans.

Editorials: Kansas election confusion | Lawrence Journal World

There are a number of ways Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach could improve the accuracy and integrity of the state’s election system. Creating a two-tiered voter registration system whereby some voters would be qualified to cast ballots only in federal races is not one of them. A recent Associated Press story focused on the efforts of a consortium of 22 states that are working to update their voter rolls. An effort to identify voters who are registered in more than one state is known as the “Kansas project” in recognition of the leadership of Kansas and Kobach. A second project, the Electronic Registration Information Center is working to identify registered voters who have died. The goal of the projects seems to be simply to improve the accuracy of voter registration rolls, which is a concept most people should support. Cleaning up their records to prevent abuses should be a top priority for both local and state election officials.

Montana: DOJ Declares Indian Vote Denial ‘Completely Incorrect’ | ICTMN.com

“May it please the court, Erin Flynn on behalf of the United States.” So began the Justice Department’s presentation in a landmark Native voting-rights lawsuit. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in Portland, Oregon, heard oral arguments in the suit,Wandering Medicine v. McCulloch,on October 10. The appeals court’s decision, upcoming in the next few months, will turn on whether a Montana district judge misread Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act when he denied requests for satellite registration and early-voting offices on isolated Montana reservations. The local magistrate reasoned that Indians have been elected to office in the state, so Indian voters’ lack of equal rights—which he readily acknowledged—was immaterial. “The district judge held that as long as Indians get to vote at all, what’s the problem,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Steven Sandven, of Sioux Falls. “The law needs to be clarified.”

New Jersey: Mail-in ballot confusion raises fears of lost votes | NorthJersey.com

Democrat Barbara Buono’s campaign claimed the morning after Wednesday’s special election that thousands of voters in the governor’s race are being disenfranchised by confusion over mail-in ballots. At issue are mail-in ballots for both Wednesday’s special U.S. Senate election, in which Newark Mayor Cory Booker defeated Republican Steve Lonegan, and the general election, which is headlined by Buono’s challenge to Governor Christie, a Republican. Some voters erroneously submitted their general election ballots in the same return envelope as the one used for their special election ballot.

North Carolina: Democratic state official speaks out | Los Angeles Times

Roy Cooper is in a very lonely place. He’s a Democratic state attorney general surrounded by conservative Republicans who control North Carolina state government. Now those Republicans have put Cooper in an awkward spot. He has publicly condemned GOP-sponsored laws on voter identification and gay marriage, yet must defend those same laws in court. Further complicating matters, Cooper plans to run for governor in 2016. That has prompted Republican charges that he’s more interested in being governor than upholding North Carolina’s laws.

Editorials: Voting fight: Is it race or is it politics? | Charlotte Observer

North Carolina’s new restrictions on voting may favor the Republican Party, but Democrats must prove more than that to beat them in court. GOP legislators who passed the rules last summer say they are designed to streamline and modernize the state’s voting while also blocking election fraud, a problem they describe as rampant and undetected. Opponents – including U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder – say the claims of fraud are a ruse and that the laws are part of a national campaign by conservatives to suppress voting by minorities, the poor and the young. Those groups are part of an emerging Democratic coalition that swung North Carolina to President Barack Obama in 2008 and came close again four years later. Who wins in court may hinge on whether judges believe Republicans were motivated by politics or race. In other words, have black voters been discriminated against? Or were they legal targets of hard-ball GOP politics? For now, what Republicans describe as reforms, critics call “the Monster Law.”

Voting Blogs: Paper Trail: South Carolina’s Problematic DRE Voting Machines | State of Elections

Last November, Richland County residents seeking to participate in local elections encountered an unanticipated hindrance at polling stations: stagnant lines of voters unable to cast their ballots because of malfunctioning voting machines. The lines reportedly were so outrageous that some residents had to wait upwards of seven hours to vote. Many voters grew impatient and left polling stations without submitting a ballot. Moreover, the disarray was hardly confined to election day. In the week after polls closed, a court-ordered recount of the election results sparked a back-and-forth legal battle between Democrats and Republicans over whether a local or statewide election agency should be tasked with tallying the votes in the recount. The dispute was not settled until the South Carolina Supreme Court intervened, and nearly two weeks elapsed before the election results were finalized. In 2004, the South Carolina State Election Commission (SEC) purchased roughly twelve thousand iVotronic voting machines for around $34 million. At the time of their purchase, the iVotronic systems were considered ultramodern direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting technology. Like most DRE models, the iVotronic enables voters to cast their vote via an electronic touch-screen without handling a paper ballot. Once a voter has electronically submitted his choice, the machine stores the selection in an internal memory device. Upon an election’s conclusion, the iVotronic machine prints a tape displaying the total number of votes cast for each office as well as the total number of votes cast for each candidate. In theory, DRE systems such as iVotronic provide a modern solution to antiquated election problems. In practice, however, DRE systems do not always function so smoothly.

Tennessee: State Supreme Court upholds voter ID law | The Tennessean

The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld a 2011 law requiring photo identification at the polls, ruling that lawmakers had the authority to take steps to guard against fraud. The court ruled unanimously Thursday against the City of Memphis and two voters in Shelby County who had argued the ID requirement placed an unfair burden on the poor, elderly and others who lack driver’s licenses. Chief Justice Gary R. Wade wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court and many other state courts have upheld similar voter ID requirements. He also said that, while instances of people impersonating voters at the polls have not been documented in Tennessee, such cases have occurred elsewhere. “Protection of the integrity of the election process empowers the state to enact laws to prevent voter fraud before it occurs,” Wade said. “It is within the authority of the General Assembly to guard against the risk of such fraud in this state, so long as it does not do so in an impermissibly intrusive fashion.”

Australia: Voter ID laws politically motivated | Sydney Morning Herald

An unusual admission of regret by of one of America’s top judges throws new light on Queensland’s misguided attempts to tackle the non-existent problem of voter fraud. In a rare turnaround, Judge Posner of the United States Court of Appeals recently admitted that he was wrong in a landmark case he decided 7 years ago. Crawford v Marion County allowed the state of Indiana to require voters to show photo identification at the ballot box and was later upheld by the US Supreme Court. … Judge Posner’s turnaround should be on the mind of Queensland Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie this week. Bleijie has announced plans to introduce laws requiring voters to produce identification in order to cast their vote at Queensland elections, making Queensland the only state or territory to have a voter ID requirement.