Yearly Archives: 2013

The record large Senate ballot papers have probably already annoyed many early voters. Their great length — over a metre in NSW and Victoria — will soon annoy many more voters. However, the real annoyance will come if new senators with very little popular support get elected. The reason why this might happen is a distortion of the Proportional Representation system, where, by voting “above the line”, it is the party — not the voter — that decides the preferences. In this election, more than ever before, large numbers of parties that we have never heard of are on the ballot paper. Preference deal strategies might even lead to some of them getting elected. Back in 2004, Labor and Australian Democrat preferences in Victoria went to Family First ahead of the Greens. Almost no Labor or Democrat voters knew this when they voted above the line, but this led to Family First’s Steve Fielding’s election to the Senate. This can happens because the above the line option — where the preferences are decided by the party you vote for, not by you the voter — was introduced for Senate polls in 1983. These preferences are listed in the Group Voting Tickets.

Editorials: Independent Cambodian Election Inquiry Needed | Thomsen-Reuters

The Cambodian government-controlled National Election Committee (NEC) has failed to address credible allegations of voter fraud and other irregularities or systematic unfairness in the election process. The NEC announced official election results on September 8, 2013. The NEC results give the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) 68 seats and the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), led by Sam Rainsy, 55 seats. Earlier the ruling party-dominated Constitutional Council dismissed all meaningful complaints about the conduct of the July 28 election.

Guinea: Opposition gives election commission 72-hour deadline to fix electoral roll | The Washington Post

Guinea’s opposition has announced that they are giving the country’s election commission 72 hours to fix the nation’s roll of registered voters, or they will pull out of the elections and start street protests. The opposition charges the just-released voter roll is deeply skewed in favor of the ruling party. The ultimatum, issued by opposition spokesman Aboubacar Sylla, comes just weeks before Guinea is expected to hold a much-delayed parliamentary election on Sept. 24. The poll has been repeatedly rescheduled, as the opposition and the ruling party wrangle over the preparations for the vote. The delays mean that this West African nation has gone years without a functioning legislature. “If in these 72 hours — which expire on Thursday — we don’t get what we asked for, which is the publication of a new electoral list that fixes the various anomalies we have pointed out … we are going to announce a schedule of street protests, and we are going to pull out of the electoral process,” said Sylla by telephone on Tuesday to The Associated Press.

Russia: Navalny demands recount in Moscow mayoral race | Associated Press

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny demanded a recount Monday in Moscow’s mayoral election after official results showed that the Kremlin-backed incumbent barely escaped facing him in a runoff. Russia’s most respected monitoring group also questioned the accuracy of the vote. The Moscow Election Commission said Monday that former Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Sobyanin won just over 51 percent of the vote while Navalny garnered 27 percent in second place, a strong result for a Russian opposition leader. If Sobyanin, 55, had won less than 50 percent, he would have faced a runoff with the charismatic 37-year-old Navalny, who has risen to wide prominence in the past few years with his anti-corruption campaign. “We do not recognize these elections,” Navalny told reporters. “Sobyanin can’t consider himself the mayor of all Muscovites, he can’t consider himself a lawfully elected mayor unless he agrees to our demands and allows a recount of the vote.”

South Africa: Right to vote abroad set to become law | The South African

With South Africa’s next national election coming up in 2014, the right of citizens to vote abroad looks set to be written into law. The Electoral Act of 1998 currently only allows government officials, travelling sporting teams and people on business trips or holidays abroad to cast special votes – if they notify the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) within 15 days of the proclamation of the election date. However, in 2009 this stipulation was successfully challenged in court by the Freedom Front Plus, AfriForum and others. The Constitutional Court found in Richter v Minister of Home Affairs and Others that the Electoral Act was unconstitutional and invalid as it prevented South Africans living overseas from voting. This meant that South Africans in the UK and elsewhere were allowed to vote in the 2009 national election. Now the IEC has taken this a step further and proposed amendments to the Electoral Act that would allow people to vote no matter where they are on election day.

Texas: Voting Rights Dispute Enters Another Round | The Texas Tribune

Texas and the Obama administration are at odds over the Voting Rights Act, but all that’s really changed is the venue. In 2011, the Legislature drew new political maps, adjusting congressional and legislative districts to accommodate growth in the population and — since it was a Republican Legislature at the time — to try to ensure a Republican majority for the next decade. Democrats would have done the same thing, if they’d had a majority. We know that because that’s what happened in 1991. Lawmakers adopted a tough law in 2011 requiring Texans to produce state-approved photo IDs before their votes can be counted. Both the maps and the voter ID law got stuck in the federal courts. The U.S. Supreme Court unstuck things earlier this summer with a ruling that effectively removed federal oversight over Texas election laws.

Norway: Vote early, vote often: Inside Norway’s pioneering open source e-voting trials | ZDNet

With Norway holding parliamentary elections this week, the country has taken the opportunity to hold its second e-voting pilot. The pilot follows an earlier trial which took place during the local government elections in 2011. According to statistics released by the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, the ministry responsible for running elections in Norway, the e-voting participation increased significantly compared to 2011. The trial was carried out in 12 municipalities, chosen for geographical and demographical diversity, which play home to 250,000 of Norway’s 3.6 million voters. … Even though the e-voting system with security front and centre, it still has attracted some criticism from security professionals. The first and most discussed issue were concerns raised over the encryption used in the pilot. The encryption software on the voters’ computers was thought to not have a good enough random number seed for the algorithm and, according to the security company Computas which was engaged by the government to control the system, the seed value was “very predictable”.

Russia: Opposition Leader Asserts Broad Problems in Moscow Race | New York Times

The Russian opposition leader, Aleksei A. Navalny, on Thursday submitted to a court more than 50,000 pages of documents illustrating what he said were irregularities in Sunday’s voting in the Moscow mayor’s race in an attempt to prove that he won enough votes to force a runoff against the incumbent, Sergei S. Sobyanin. But the court refused to block the inauguration of Mr. Sobyanin, who barely cleared the threshold for an outright victory with 51.4 percent. He was sworn in on Thursday evening during a ceremony in the city’s World War II museum. According to the official returns, Mr. Navalny placed second with 27.2 percent. Yet, even as Mr. Navalny and his aides lugged 21 boxes of documents to the courthouse, they acknowledged not only that there was little hope of overturning the results, but also that the voting had been relatively fair. So they have adopted a new message: while the vote was generally free of blatant fraud like ballot stuffing, the election itself was rigged from the beginning.

Editorials: What voting fraud problem? | South Florida Sun Sentinel

It’s time to face reality: there’s no significant problem with voter fraud in Florida. If it does exist, highly trained investigators with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have been unable to find it. Late last month, the law enforcement agency quietly closed two high-profile cases, having found no fraud of any significance. The first case involved a group called Florida New Majority Education Fund, which sought to sign up voters in under-represented groups that tend to vote for Democrats. In this case, no arrests were made. The second case involved Strategic Allied Consulting, a vendor for the Republican Party of Florida. In this case, one arrest was made. A man admitted to stealing the identify of a former girlfriend’s ex-husband and filling out two false registration forms. While other cases are pending, there’s nothing to suggest the epidemic of voter fraud trumpeted by Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature in advance of the 2012 presidential election.

Iowa: Activists Ask Judge To Block Rule Allowing Voter Purge ‘Scare Letters’ | TPM

The Iowa chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa have sued Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz (R) over a rule that aims to remove names from voter rolls if a federal immigration database suggests they are not authorized to vote. The ACLU and the LULAC filed a legal motion in Iowa’s Polk County on Wednesday asking the judge to issue a ruling in the lawsuit, originally filed last year, and permanently block Schultz’s rule. Schultz was given tentative permission to use the rule Aug. 14. If the judge approves the request, the activists will have successfully stopped the proposed voter roll purge. The rule in question allows Schultz’s office to cross reference self-identified non-citizens on voter registration rolls with the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, which the Department of Homeland Security operates. The SAVE program retains information on immigrants in the country on a temporary visa. If a non-citizen on the SAVE list is also listed as a registered voter a letter is sent to the registrant telling him or her that he or she might be illegally registered to vote. If the voter does not respond to that first letter, a second letter is sent reminding “the individual that registering to vote without citizenship is a felony,” according to Schultz’s office. After the second letter a voter might have to appear before a hearing to present evidence on voter eligibility.

Kansas: Issues with voter citizenship rule to linger | Associated Press

Kansas appears likely to be dealing for some time with a significant number of new prospective voters whose registrations remain on hold because they haven’t provided proof of their U.S. citizenship, a legislative committee learned Monday. The issue arose during a meeting of the Joint Committee on Information Technology, as it reviewed the Department of Revenue’s work on a $40 million upgrade of the computer system that handles vehicle titles and registrations, as well as driver’s licenses. The next, still-unscheduled phase of the project deals with driver’s licenses. Department officials told the committee that they don’t have a timetable for requiring everyone who renews a driver’s license to submit documents proving their citizenship. The requirement is in place for people who are getting a new Kansas license.

Mississippi: Walthall County agrees in federal court to purge its voter rolls | The Clarion-Ledger

A federal consent decree has been entered into by the Walthall County Election Commission to purge its voter rolls of deceased individuals, felons and duplicate registration after it was determined that the county has more voters on its rolls than the voting age population. Earlier this year, the non-profit Washington-based organization American Civil Rights Union filed a lawsuit against the county for failure to maintain its voter rolls under the National Voting Rights Act. Last week, U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett signed the consent decree between the county and ACRU.

New Jersey: Christie vetoes bill to move general election to October | NJ.com

Gov. Chris Christie today vetoed a measure that would had New Jersey voters casting ballots on just one election day this fall: Oct. 16. “Moving the date of the general election has the potential to cause unnecessary voter confusion, as the general election takes place at the same time each year,” Christie said in his veto message of the bill to move the election (A4237). “While the bill would require the Secretary of State to provide appropriate notice regarding the date change, there is no guarantee that every voter would know that the general election had been moved to October.” After U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) died on June 3, Democrats wanted Christie to call the special election to fill his seat for Nov. 5 — the same day Christie and candidates for all 120 seats in the Legislature are on the ballot. Christie, however, called the Senate special election for Wednesday, Oct. 16. The special election is estimated to cost an extra $12 million. Democrats charged it was because he did not want to share the ballot with a high profile Senate race.

New York: The return of the lever pull: To prepare for runoff, BOE goes Lo-Fi | AMNewYork

Voters will experience a blast from the not-too- distant past Tuesday when they use the old lever voting machines to cast their primary ballots. The city Board of Elections pushed for the one-time use of the retro devices, which were last used in the 2009 election, primarily because they are better suited to a two-person runoff. “It’s a much more shorter time process to change it to a two-person contest,” BOE spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez said. But not everyone is convinced the old ways are the best. City Councilwoman Gale Brewer, the chair of the governmental operations committee and a candidate for Manhattan borough president, said she is concerned that voters will be confused by the temporary change. “I think it’s weird for 21st century to be available and then go to the lever machines,” she said. “I’m not hopeful, but I might be wrong.”

Editorials: Democracy wins for ECSU student, but what about the rest of North Carolina? | Charlotte News Observer

The North Carolina Republican Party and its elected legislators haven’t been subtle about their aim to suppress voting. The GOP majority in the General Assembly and the Republican governor approved a Voter ID law, ended straight-ticket voting and pre-registration by 16- and 17-year-olds and cut back on opportunities to vote early. When it comes to weighing the public’s will through elections, they’re like a butcher with his thumb down on the scale. Now that they’re in charge, Republicans mean to hold on to power any way they can, even if it means bending, challenging or just changing the rules. But last week, a young man named Montraviaus King, a student at Elizabeth City State University in northeastern North Carolina, won a right that never should have been challenged. He can run for the city council there using his campus address as his official address, his voting address. So says the State Board of Elections, reversing a decision by the Pasquotank County Board of Elections.

Ohio: Court Expands Ballot Access Rights for Independent Candidates in Judicial Elections | Ballot Access News

On September 9, the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously expanded the ability of independent candidates to run for judicial office, including not only judgeship elections, but elections for Clerk of a Court. The decision is State ex rel Coughlin v Summit County Board of Elections, 2013-3867. Ohio and Michigan have peculiar elections for judicial office. Candidates are either nominated in partisan primaries or in party conventions, or they can petition directly onto the general election ballot if they do not wish to be entangled with political parties. But, oddly, no party names ever appear on the ballot for these elections. Ambiguity in the English language makes it unclear whether to refer to such elections as “partisan” or “non-partisan.”

Editorials: History Repeats Itself: Why Is South Dakota Denying American Indians an Equal Opportunity to Vote? | Eunice Hyon Min Rho/Huffington Post

Every election, South Dakota voters have 46 days when they can vote early, which makes it easier for people to take part in our democracy. But the rules appear to be different for American Indian voters living on reservations in the state–at least according to recent actions by the South Dakota’s Secretary of State, who is stonewalling a request for early voting sites in three American Indian communities. Officials in Shannon County, which is home to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and has a population that is 92 percent American Indian, planned to offer only six days of early voting. For the other 40 days, voters would have to travel up to three hours for the nearest early voting location. This created a significant hurdle for voters for whom arranging and paying for transportation would be no small feat–you see, Shannon County is one of the poorest areas in the country where over half of the residents live below the poverty line. After county residents sued over this clear disparity in voting opportunities, Secretary of State Jason Gant relented. Until 2019, South Dakota will use federal Help America Vote Act funds – designed, as you might imagine, to help Americans vote – to set up early voting locations within Shannon County for the full early voting period.

Texas: Court Ruling Allows Texas To Use Current Election Maps; Civil Rights Groups Claim Victory | Fox News

A judicial ruling means Texas’ primary elections will not be delayed since the state will be able to use existing voting maps, not the controversial 2011 maps drawn by the legislature, deemed as illegal by civil rights groups. But advocates may not be able to claim victory for long, since the ruling is temporary as judges sort out a complex and possibly precedent-setting lawsuit. The three-judge panel in San Antonio gave both sides in the lawsuit over Texas’ voting maps reason to claim victory. The court will not draw its own map for the 2014 elections, as civil rights groups wanted, but it also did not throw out the lawsuit completely, as Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott requested. But the ruling is viewed largely as a win for state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, because the redistricting case at one time threatened to dismantle her senate district.

Australia: Tony Abbott wants voting procedures to change | News.com.au

Voting procedures could be set for a major shake-up, with the Abbott government flagging changes to the Senate process over widespread confusion at the weekend. Constitutional law experts said on Monday many punters had no idea of who they had actually voted for, with a maze of preference deals and sprawling ballot paper contributing. “In this election it was almost impossible for an ordinary voter to cast a vote with knowledge of where their preference might ultimately end up,” said Professor George Williams from Melbourne University. “Even if you were an expert you would have struggled to have a sense of who you ultimately voted for in the Senate and that’s a major problem. People ended up voting for someone they didn’t support and in many cases voting for someone who they didn’t even know existed.”

Norway: Opposition set for sweeping election victory | Reuters

Norway’s center-right opposition, pledging privatization, tax cuts and smaller government, was set for a sweeping election win on Monday but faces difficult coalition talks since a populist anti-immigration party will hold the balance of power. Norway has enjoyed rare economic success, thanks to its flourishing offshore oil sector boosting per capita GDP to $100,000. But growth is slowing and voters are ready to punish Labour Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, accusing him of wasting a once-in-a-lifetime economic boom. “To me, this vote is about using our fortunes better,” Oslo voter Geir Henriksen, 36, said. “Public service, like health and elderly care, is not getting any better even as the government spends more and more. We need to rebalance government.” Labour could still end up as the biggest party with 30 percent, opinion polls show, but that will not be enough. The four center-right parties, led by likely future prime minister Erna Solberg’s Conservatives, are on course for around 100 seats in parliament, 15 more than needed for a majority.

Maldives: Ousted leader faces presidential runoff | Associated Press

The first democratically elected president of the Maldives said Sunday that his rivals portraying him as anti-Islamic may have turned some voters against him and possibly denied him a simple majority in the presidential election. Mohamed Nasheed emerged the clear leader in Saturday’s election, receiving 45 percent of the votes, but fell short of the more than 50 percent needed in the first round to avoid a Sept. 28 runoff against Yaamin Abdul Qayyoom, a brother of the Maldives’ former autocrat Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Nasheed’s rivals have long accused him of working with Jews and Christians and of trying to undermine Islam in the 100 percent Muslim nation. He was ousted from power midway through his first term last year, plunging the Indian Ocean archipelago into political uncertainty. “Some used religion as a campaign strategy, manipulating it to a large extent, and it did affect a few voters,” Nasheed told reporters.

Colorado: Gov. John Hickenlooper critical of Jon Caldara’s recall voting “stunt” | Denver Post

Gov. John Hickenlooper is the latest to weigh in with concerns about Jon Caldara’s residency switch Saturday so he could vote in the recall election of Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs. Caldara, a longtime Boulder resident, said he was was trying to make a point that a new election law passed by Democrats and signed into law by Hickenlooper in May undid residency requirements that had been in Colorado law for years. “We are hearing disturbing reports that some people are being encouraged to go to the polls, not to legitimately vote, but to disrupt the process,” Hickenlooper said in a statement issued today. “That would be unlawful and makes a mockery of the democratic process. We urge the county clerks in Pueblo and El Paso counties to make clear that people engaged in attempting to disrupt the elections are open to criminal prosecution. We’ve also reached out to the attorney general to help us ensure fair elections take place this week.” Morse and another Democratic senator, Angela Giron of Pueblo, face recall elections Tuesday for their support for gun legislation in the 2013 session. The Independence Institute opposed the bills, and Caldara talks about the election law on the group’s web site. The governor’s spokesman, Eric Brown, on Sunday talked about “political stunts.”

Editorials: The pulpit should be free of politics | Los Angeles Times

Churches and other nonprofits long have been forbidden from endorsing political candidates. But erratic enforcement of the law has emboldened supporters of legislation in Congress that would end the restriction. Far from needing to be repealed, the ban on politics in the pulpit ought to be enforced more aggressively. A bill sponsored by Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) would repeal a 1954 amendment to the tax code sponsored by then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson. The amendment says that churches and other so-called 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations may not “participate in, or intervene in … any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.”

Colorado: County clerk discounts voter fraud allegations | The Gazette

As voters continued to cast ballots early in the recall election Saturday, questions swirled about voter fraud and ballot box stuffing. The fears are, so far, unfounded. Although Jon Caldara, president of the think tank Independence Institute, cast a blank ballot in the election Saturday to prove a point that ‘gypsy voting’ is very real. Caldara lives in Boulder but attested a Colorado Springs address was his permanent residence in a sworn affidavit. “It is easy to move voters around,” Caldara said Saturday morning after casting a ballot he left blank at the Garden of the Gods voting center. “The whole purpose of this was to finally show what I think and I speculate happens often, that people come and use this same-day voter registration to move voters around.”

Colorado: New El Paso County resident Jon Caldara turns in blank recall ballot | The Denver Post

Republican Jon Caldara changed his voter registration Saturday morning from Boulder to El Paso County, saying a flawed election law Democrats passed earlier this year allows him to claim residency in another jurisdiction. But Caldara didn’t mark a ballot in the recall of Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs, a Democrat who faces ouster for pushing through stricter gun laws in the 2013 session. Caldara is president of the Independence Institute, a think tank that fought the gun legislation and would like to see Morse lose his seat. Critics of Caldara’s plan claimed he could be charged with vote fraud, but he said that’s not why he left his ballot blank when he submitted it. “The point was not to be that last vote for Morse — as delicious as that might be — the purpose is to show how easy it is under the new law to move voters from district to district,” he said. Caldara originally marked his ballot “VOID,” which resulted in the elections machine not taking it, so he received another ballot, which had to be specially entered into the voting machine because it was not filled out.

New York: Elections Board Rings In the Old, as Lever Machines Replace Scanners | New York Times

Dented, dinged and dated, New York’s battleship-gray lever voting machines have been hauled out of retirement because the city can’t seem to get the hang of electronic voting.Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for news and conversation. The board is using the lever machines for the coming primary elections because of their quicker turnaround. About 5,100 old machines, each weighing more than 800 pounds and made of 20,000 parts, have been lubricated, and the names of candidates from 2009 (Michael R. Bloomberg, anyone?) have been removed and replaced with those of this year’s contenders. But there is a question no one can answer for sure: Will they work? “I’m very nervous about it,” said Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer, who leads a City Council panel that monitors the Board of Elections. Ms. Brewer’s interest is personal as well — she is one of four candidates in a hotly contested Democratic primary for Manhattan borough president. The lever machines to be used on Tuesday were acquired in the 1960s. In 2010, they were replaced with a $95 million electronic system that uses optical scanners to read paper ballots. But after long lines and chaotic polling scenes in 2012, as well as problems producing complete election results, the State Legislature this year authorized the return of the lever machines for the primary and any ensuing runoff, though it insisted that the city make the electronic machines work for the November general election.

North Carolina: Voters fear new ID law will keep them from polls | Los Angeles Times

Alberta Currie, the great-granddaughter of slaves, was born in a farmhouse surrounded by tobacco and cotton fields. Her mother, Willie Pearl, gave birth with the assistance of a midwife. No birth certificate was issued; a birth announcement was handwritten into the Currie family Bible. Today, 78 years later, that absence of official documentation may force Currie to sit out an election for the first time since 1956. Under a restrictive new voter ID law in North Carolina, a state-issued photo ID is required for voting as of the 2016 election. Voters can obtain a state-issued ID at no cost. But that requires getting to a state driver’s license office, waiting in line — and providing documents that many voters lack, among them an original or certified birth certificate and original Social Security card. The law’s Republican backers say the new measure combats voter fraud and ensures voting integrity. Civil rights groups contend that the bureaucratic obstacles are a part of a blatant attempt to make it difficult for Democratic-leaning voters — particularly African Americans, students and the elderly — to obtain IDs needed to vote.

North Carolina: One victory, one defeat for student voting rights in North Carolina | MSNBC

In what’s been described as a victory for student voting rights, the North Carolina Board of Elections ruled Tuesday that an Elizabeth City State University student can run for office using his school address, despite challenges from Republicans. The Pasquotank County Republican Party chair had challenged Montravias King‘s candidacy for city council on the grounds that his on-campus address did not prove permanent residency. Republicans on the local board of elections upheld that challenge, disqualifying King from running for office. On Tuesday, the State Board of Elections reversed that decision.

North Carolina: Voter registration for 2013 election affected by voter ID bill | Tryon Daily Bulletin

North Carolina voters will see some changes during the upcoming election even though the law a new voter ID bill signed by Gov. Pat McCrory doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2016. The new law will specifically require photo identification for the November 2016 election. As of Oct. 1, 2013, however, same day voter registration (G.S. 163.82.6A) is repealed. This means residents will no longer be able to register to vote during early voting. Previously, residents could register to vote during early voting as long as they voted when they registered. Residents will have until 5 p.m. Oct. 11 to register for the Nov. 5 municipal election. Registration can be done at the Polk County Board of Elections Office in the Womack building in Columbus. Another change as of Sept. 1, 2013 is that persons must be at least 17 years old and turning 18 by Election Day in order to register. Previously, North Carolina allowed 16-year-olds to preregister to vote at the department of motor vehicles while obtaining a driver’s license.

Editorials: Equal voting rights still a dream in North Carolina? | Al Jazeera America