Editorials: The Supreme Court and Ed Corsi’s Life of Political Crime | Bradley Smith/Wall Street Journal

In the winter of 2008, Ed Corsi decided that he was tired of stewing about the politics in his home of Geauga County, Ohio, and the country at large. He started a website, put Thomas Jefferson’s quote, “The price of freedom . . . constant vigilance” at the top, dubbed the site “Geauga Constitutional Council,” and set about blogging his thoughts on local and national politics. So began his life of political crime. Over the next two years, Mr. Corsi and a few friends would sometimes gather to talk politics. He occasionally sponsored meetings featuring speakers (not political candidates) on public policy issues (not elections), and charged a nominal fee for seating to offset his costs. He and two friends passed out political pamphlets they made at the Geauga County Fair. Mr. Corsi spent $40 a month to maintain his website, and perhaps a couple hundred dollars a year in other expenses. According to the state of Ohio, however, these activities are illegal under campaign-finance laws because Mr. Corsi did not first register with the state, report to the state on his activities, and subject himself to the regulations governing the operation of a state political action committee.

Pennsylvania: State: Only opinion on voter ID should come from court | Observer-Reporter

Mum’s the word when it comes to local election board members discussing the status of the Pennsylvania Voter ID law with prospective voters at the upcoming election. Larry Spahr, Washington County elections director, told a group of trainees gathered Friday morning to learn about operating the new electronic poll book that he had just received notification from the Pennsylvania Department of State that it intends to provide a flier to counties to disseminate to election boards. “You are not to verbalize an opinion on the law’s constitutionality to any voters,” Spahr told the election board members.

South Dakota: No deal on voting rights lawsuit fees | The Argus Leader

An inability to agree to the wording of a joint news release has stalled negotiations between the Four Directions voting rights advocacy group and the South Dakota Public Assurance Alliance, the insurance cooperative that provides liability coverage to local government entities in the state. Four Directions executive director O.J. Semans now plans a return to the court of public opinion to try to persuade the SDPAA to stop trying to recover $6,300 in court costs from 25 mostly low-income plaintiffs from the Oglala Sioux Tribe who filed a federal lawsuit against the state and Shannon and Fall River counties to get early voting provisions established on the tribe’s Pine Ridge Reservation. But SDPAA executive director Judy Payne said she thinks while an initial agreement could not be reached, talks between the insurance cooperative and Four Directions are ongoing. “We’re still waiting to hear from their attorney,” she said Thursday. SDPAA lawyer Sara Frankenstein and Four Directions lawyer Steven Sandven are the principals exchanging positions on a joint press statement, “as it should be,” Payne said.

Texas: Court: Texas can use existing election maps in 2014 | Associated Press

A federal court said Friday it will not delay Texas’ primary elections and ordered the state to use political maps drawn by the Legislature _ but only temporarily, while the 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. The court order, signed by all three judges, also allows the civil rights and minority groups to argue that all changes to Texas election law should be reviewed by federal authorities before they can be implemented. The Justice Department has sought to intervene in the case after a recent Supreme Court decision requiring Congress to make changes to the Voting Rights Act. The fundamental issue of the lawsuit, filed in 2011, is whether the Legislature illegally drew political maps that intentionally diminish the voting power of minorities in Texas. Abbott’s office has argued in court papers that Republicans who control the Legislature drew maps to boost the chances of their party _ which is legal _ and that if minorities who vote predominantly Democratic are hurt as a result, that does not constitute a civil rights violation. That argument could eventually put this case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Texas: Few voter-fraud cases would have been prevented by photo ID law, review shows | Dallas Morning News

Attorney General Greg Abbott champions a requirement for voters to show photo identification to prevent ballot fraud. But such a rule would have deterred just a few of the cases his office has prosecuted in the last eight years. Abbott, who’s making his defense of the state’s voter ID law a centerpiece of his campaign for governor, has pursued 66 people on charges of voting irregularities since 2004. Only four cases involved someone illegally casting a ballot at a polling place where a picture ID would have prevented it. In most cases, voter-fraud violations in Texas have involved mail-in ballots. A few involved felons who aren’t allowed to vote. Some involved an election official engaged in illegal behavior. But none of those would have been stopped by the photo ID requirement. Nevertheless, Abbott defends voter ID and says the fact that he hasn’t found many cases of in-person voter fraud doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

Cambodia: Election challenge rejected | theguardian.com

Cambodia’s government-appointed election board has ratified the victory of incumbent prime minister Hun Sen’s ruling party, rejecting opposition claims that the polls were unfair. The results announced on state television on Sunday morning handed 68 National Assembly seats to Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s party and 55 to the opposition Cambodia National Rescue party.

Maldives: Coconut detained in Maldives over vote-rigging claims | theguardian.com

A coconut has been detained by Maldivian police on suspicion of vote-rigging in a key presidential election. The coconut, described as “young”, was found near a school that will be used as a polling station on Saturday on the remote Kaafu atoll, one of the hundreds of islands that comprise the Indian Ocean archipelago state. Though the population of the Maldives is Sunni Muslim, continuing belief in magic is widespread in rural areas. Coconuts are often used in rituals and inscribed with spells. The hundreds of thousands of international tourists who travel to the Maldives usually stay in isolated resorts and have no contact with local people other than staff. The local Minivan news website reported that police “took the coconut into their possession” around 7.05am on Tuesday, after they received a complaint about the suspicious fruit near the school on the Guraidhoo Island, which lies 130 miles from the capital, Male, and has a population of around 2,000.

Norway: OSCE monitors Norway parliamentary elections | The Foreigner

2013 is the second General Election year this will be done. Their presence is by official invitation from the Government of Norway. It is also based on the findings and conclusions of a Needs Assessment Mission (NAM), conducted between 4 to 6 June. The OSCE/ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights)-deployed Election Assessment Mission (EAM) is headed by American Peter Eicher. Other foreign core team members are election analyst Goran Petrov (former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), and Lisa Klein, a legal and campaign finance analyst from the UK. Sweden’s David Bismark, a new voting technologies analyist, and Yuri Ozerov (procurement and contracting officer, Russia), make up the final two foreign NAM team members. In particular, the election observers will investigate aspects related to the Internet voting pilot project.

Russia: Mayor’s Rival Contests Moscow Vote | Wall Street Journal

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny delivered an unexpectedly strong showing in Moscow’s mayoral elections, but still vowed to challenge the preliminary official results, which gave a majority to incumbent Sergei Sobyanin. Mr. Navalny said he didn’t expect to win himself, but was confident that his Kremlin-backed opponent had fallen short of the 50% needed to avoid a runoff. The final official count, with 100% of precincts in Moscow reporting had Mr. Sobyanin winning 51.37% with just under 1.2 million votes and Mr. Navalny 27.24% with 632,697 votes; the rest was split among four other candidates, according to the Moscow City Election Commission. The tension over the election raises the prospect of a repeat of the massive demonstrations against the Kremlin that were spurred by widespread allegations of falsification of votes in the Dec. 2011 parliamentary ballot. Mr. Navalny’s supporters received a permit to hold a rally Monday evening at one site of those protests. It wasn’t clear how large turnout was likely to be; recent opposition protests have been thinly attended.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for September 2-8 2013

bush_vraThe Presidential Commission on Election Administration held a public hearing in Philadelphia. The San Francisco Chronicle commented on the State laws that have been enacted in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision weakening the Voting Rights Act, while the New York Times considered alternate approaches to protecting voting rights. Efforts to modify election law changes that could disenfranchise thousands of Kansas voters failed to move state legislators. Thousands of ballots were included in the retabulation of the balots cast in Detroit’s mayoral election. Despite a recent decision to allow a college student to use a dorm address in filing for candidacy for local office, severe restrictions and inconveniences remain as obstacles for students voting in North Carolina. A federal court has allowed Texas to use controversial interim redistricting maps for the 2014 elections and the New Zealand Herald questions the decision in favor of internet voting trials in the 2016 election.

Russia: Putin critic set to capture protest vote in Moscow polls | AFP

As Muscovites prepared Saturday to elect a mayor for the first time in a decade, many said they would support a controversial critic of Vladimir Putin who channels public anger against the Kremlin. On Sunday, they will have to choose from six candidates including Kremlin-backed incumbent Sergei Sobyanin and the main opposition candidate Alexei Navalny, who has campaigned under the shadow of a five-year sentence on charges he condemned as politically motivated. The candidacy of the 37-year-old anti-corruption blogger has made the race the first genuinely competitive Russian election since the heady first post-Soviet years, even if many harbour reservations about his tough anti-migrant rhetoric. Kremlin-backed Sobyanin, 55, is expected to win with a majority, while Navalny is set to come second with around 20 percent, according to opinion polls.

Russia: Elections to Elect Governors, Moscow Mayor After 9-year Break in Popular Votes | RIA Novosti

Millions of Russians will take to the polling booths on Sunday to cast their votes in regional and municipal elections. The most important race is happening in Moscow, where Acting Mayor Sergei Sobyanin faces off against Russia’s protest leader Alexei Navalny. Sobyanin, an ally and former administration head of President Vladimir Putin, is uniformly expected to win the mayoral seat by a wide margin. Turnout for Navalny, though, will determine to what extent Moscow residents oppose the Kremlin and its policies, political pundits said. “A sizeable part of the vote against Sobyanin will be against not the Moscow city government or the personality of the Moscow mayor, but against federal politics,” said Boris Makarenko, chairman of the Center for Political Technologies. “The Kremlin is receiving many signals that a sizeable part of the population has problems with how it is governing the county.” Authorities worked intentionally to keep Navalny in the race, in what analysts say was an effort to boost the legitimacy of the crucial vote after tens of thousands of Muscovites took to the streets to protest the 2011 parliamentary and 2012 presidential elections results. The opposition claimed the contests were rigged in favor of the Kremlin.

National: Commission To Improve Elections Meets in Philadelphia | Lawyers.com

The Presidential Commission on Election Administration met in Philadelphia yesterday to hear testimony given by experts from up and down the east coast and beyond on how to improve voting in America. The commission was created by President Obama this year to “promote the efficient administration of elections” in response to long lines and other glitches that have threatened the integrity of voting days in years past. The commission solicited input from election officials and academics on how to overcome technical and logistical obstacles that impede voting. Among the topics addressed were analytical methods to better distribute polling resources, the use of electronic signature databases for more streamlined registration, language access issues particularly for Asian and Latino voters, access for people with disabilities and emergency preparedness to salvage elections that are disrupted by major disasters such as Hurricane Sandy.

Editorials: Creating barriers to voting | San Francisco Chronicle

A recent panel discussion on the Latino vote at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, moderated by actress Eva Longoria, took a couple of unexpected turns. One was the claim of a Republican strategist who said he was blacklisted on the orders of panelist John Pérez, the state Assembly speaker, a flap that drew the most media attention. The other, and more consequential, takeaway was the content of the session itself. The focus was not on immigration reform, education, high unemployment rates or even the Republican Party’s inability to connect with an emerging demographic force in American politics. The main topic of the day? Vote suppression. “This is the No. 1 issue that Latinos and other communities should be worried about,” Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana, told the gathered journalists. Sanchez knows a little something about vote-chilling tactics. In 2006, a mailer was sent to 14,000 registered voters with Latino surnames and foreign birthplaces telling them it was a crime for immigrants to vote in a federal election. Her Republican opponent was convicted of obstruction of justice in connection with the scheme.

National: Regulators to weigh bitcoin donations in politics | USAToday

Will digital dollars soon fund U.S. political campaigns? If a conservative political action committee has its way, supporters will be able to donate to federal elections using bitcoins, a relatively new form of virtual currency. The Conservative Action Fund PAC this week asked the Federal Election Commission to approve rules governing the use of this online form of currency. The move seeks to push the technology envelope for federal regulators who just last year endorsed political donations via text message for the first time. The FEC has 60 days to respond to requests such as these but can extend the amount of time it takes to consider the matter. “As bitcoins become a bigger part of the economy, we see a future in this … particularly among libertarian-minded voters,” said Dan Backer, the Conservative Action Fund lawyer who filed the FEC request.

Florida: Miami-Dade aims at absentee-voter fraud | Florida Today

The Miami-Dade elections department is working with its software vendor to make it easier for staff members to flag suspicious requests for absentee ballots. The change will take effect next year. It won’t cost the county any additional money. A grand jury had recommended that the elections department should beef up security on its website by requiring user logins and passwords after the office uncovered thousands of fraudulent requests for absentee ballots in the August 2012 primary election. Elections Supervisor Penelope Townsley said the grand jury’s recommendation would have required an initial investment of $843,000, with possible costs of $743,000 in every major election. And, she told The Miami Herald, legitimate voters may have been dissuaded to request ballots if the system were made more challenging. “It would have also deterred voters,” Townsley said.

Iowa: ACLU renews suit over voting rules | Associated Press

Civil liberties groups have renewed their court battle with Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz in their effort to stop him from using a federal immigration database to try to find voters registered in Iowa who might not be citizens. The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa filed documents on Aug. 26 asking a judge to rule on a lawsuit they filed last year or to at least issue a temporary order to keep Schultz from using the data until the lawsuit can be decided. The lawsuit revolves around a voter removal rule Schultz proposed that went into effect March 27. The rule sets up a process to remove voters from registration rolls if Schultz cannot confirm their citizenship by comparing state records with a federal immigration database. After months of negotiations, Schultz obtained permission from the federal government Aug. 14 to get access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, called SAVE. It’s administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security and used to confirm immigrant citizenship status to determine eligibility for certain federal benefits.

Kansas: Lawmakers Do Not Hear Legislation That Could Allow 16,000 To Register To Vote | Huffington Post

Kansas’ fight over showing proof of citizenship in order to register to vote spilled into the state Legislature Tuesday, with Republican leaders denying a vote to ease the process. Republican leaders in the state House of Representatives denied Rep. Jim Ward’s (D-Wichita) amendment to a crime bill that would have allowed residents to sign an affidavit when they register saying they are citizens, a practice allowed nationally. Under current Kansas law, residents have to show proof of citizenship as well as sign an affidavit. The Legislature was in special session this week to vote on legislation changing the state’s mandatory sentences for convicted murderers. Between 15,000 and 16,000 Kansas residents have been placed on a suspended list for failure to produce proof of citizenship when registering to vote. The American Civil Liberties Union is suing Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), the author of the citizenship law, in an effort to overturn it and add the 16,000 people on the voting rolls. “How can you have just over 15,000 being denied the right to vote?” Ward said to HuffPost. “That kind of disregard over the right to vote is wrong.”

Louisiana: Redistricting lawsuit raises local awareness on voting rights | LSU Reveille

Voting rights have a long history in the South, but a Baton Rouge lawsuit regarding the races of city court judges is giving locals and students a new sense of awareness on the issue. Baton Rouge residents Byron Sharper and Kenneth Hall filed suit against the state in October of 2012 for not drawing new district lines for Baton Rouge city court judge elections after the 2000 census indicated the location of the city’s primarily African-American population. Three out of the five judgeships are white, and Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson told The Advocate about 55 percent of the city’s population is African-American. The lawsuit argues against the Baton Rouge City Court that election boundaries weaken African-American votes and is still waiting on a ruling from federal courts.

Michigan: Wayne County canvassers vote to recount Detroit mayoral ballots | Detroit Free Press

It may be hard to believe but the primary election in Detroit still is not settled. And today makes exactly one month since voters cast ballots for mayor, city council and city clerk. The Wayne County Board of Canvassers voted Thursday to recount ballots from Detroit’s August primary, based on a petition from former mayoral candidate Tom Barrow, who alleged fraud in the election process. It will be the fourth time ballots from Detroit’s mayoral race will be counted. Detroit elections workers counted the ballots initially, then workers from the Wayne County Elections Division verified the counts to try and certify the results. But the certification came from the Board of State Canvassers after the Wayne County board found issues they said called for state intervention.

Mississippi: Democrats ask Justice Department to observe Hattiesburg mayoral election | The Clarion-Ledger

Saying that “some of the controversy surrounding” Hattiesburg’s special mayoral election has taken on a racial tone it finds “troubling,” the Democratic Party of Mississippi has asked the federal government to send representatives to observe the Sept. 24 election. In a letter dated Aug. 23, 2013, Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Rickey L. Cole made the request of United States Attorney General Eric Holder. “The more eyes on the process, the better,” Cole said Wednesday. “The more attention and daylight that’s brought into the process, whether there was anything untoward that happened or might have happened or not, it’s much better to have independent observers to make their observations from the standpoint of a disinterested person.” Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree, whose 37-vote victory in June over former City Councilman Dave Ware was challenged in court and eventually led to the second election, said in a statement Wednesday that he had asked Coleman to make the request.

Virginia: Without Warning, 57,000 Virginians Could Have Their Voter Registrations Cancelled | ThinkProgress

With two months until Virginians decide which of two polar opposites — Terry McAuliffe and Ken Cuccinelli — will be their next governor, tens of thousands of voters could be removed from the rolls in a statewide purge. Approximately 57,000 Virginians have been flagged as being registered in another state, and counties are removing some from the voter rolls without any notice or opportunity to rebut the claim. Before conservatives lose their marbles that this is clear and irrefutable evidence of voter fraud, it’s worthwhile to consider how voter registration works. Each state maintains its own roll rather than a nationwide system. When Joe America, who had been registered in Richmond, moves to Philadelphia and registers there, he’s not required to cancel his Virginia registration before enrolling in Pennsylvania.

Australia: Queensland ballot paper mix up under investigation | Brisbane Times

The Australian Electoral Commission is trying to determine how many Queensland voters were accidentally given ballot papers for the NSW Senate contest. A voter in the far north Queensland tourist town of Port Douglas says he and other voters were given the wrong ballot papers at a pre-polling booth. The man says he realised the mistake about an hour after he voted, and returned to the booth to alert officials. The AEC says it’s unsure how many Queensland voters were given the wrong ballot papers. An investigation into the incident, which happened in the electorate of Leichhardt, is under way.

Australia: Is there a choice of two methods when voting for Senators? | The Age

The Australian Electoral Commission says we have “a choice of two methods” when voting for Senators on Saturday. We can either vote “above the line'” by putting the number ‘1’ in one box only. That gives the group we are voting for the right to allocate our preferences. It says “the rest of the ballot paper must be left blank.” Or we can vote “below the line” by putting the number ‘1’ in the box of our first choice, then number ‘2’ and so on until all the boxes have been numbered. “If a voter chooses to vote below the line, they must number every box below the line for their vote to count,” the website says. “The top part of the ballot paper must be left blank.” If true, it could leave some of us unable fully exercise our democratic rights.

Canada: Torontonians ambivalent about giving permanent residents a local vote | Toronto Star

Just over half of Torontonians polled by Forum Research, a Toronto-based public opinion research company, do not support allowing permanent residents to vote in municipal elections. Toronto City Council voted in June to ask the province to give permanent residents the right to vote and participate in city elections. If approved by the province, the new system could be in effect for the 2018 election and would allow an estimated 250,000 non-citizens to vote in the municipal election. Toronto isn’t the first city to look at offering the vote to permanent residents. Some cities in about 40 countries, including Dublin and Oslo, currently allow non-citizens to cast their ballot municipally.

Editorials: Plan B for Voting Rights | New York Times

Voting-rights advocates generally don’t look to Justice Antonin Scalia for comfort. During oral arguments earlier this year in Shelby County v. Holder, the case in which the Supreme Court struck down a central part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Justice Scalia called the act a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” But a growing circle of legal scholars is focusing on a lower-profile ruling — issued one week before the Shelby County decision and written by Justice Scalia — that may point the way to a new approach to protecting voting rights. The 7-to-2 decision, in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, struck down an Arizona law requiring anyone who wanted to vote to provide proof of citizenship. It said the state could not impose a rule that was more restrictive than the federal “motor voter” law, which requires only a sworn statement of citizenship by the voter.

Kansas: Push to end proof-of-citizenship rule falters | Associated Press

Critics of a Kansas law requiring new voters to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship when registering urged legislators Tuesday to repeal the policy during their special session, but such an effort immediately stalled. About 100 people gathered at the Statehouse for a rally sponsored by KanVote, a Wichita-based group that opposed the law, which took effect in January. The NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and Equality Kansas, the state’s leading gay-rights organization, also called publicly for the law’s repeal. The law took effect in January, backed by Secretary of State Kris Kobach and fellow Republicans, who view it as a way to prevent non-citizens from voting improperly. But more than 15,000 legal Kansas residents’ voter registrations are on hold because they have yet to provide proper documents, meaning they can’t legally vote.

Michigan: State elections director: Re-tabulation prevented disenfranchisement of over 24,000 Detroit voters | MLive.com

The state Board of Canvassers voted Tuesday to certify election results from Detroit’s Aug. 6 primary election after staffers reviewed write-in ballots and calculated totals that differed vastly from Wayne County numbers. Michigan Bureau of Elections workers spent days re-tabulating write-in ballots from 385 of Detroit’s 614 precincts after Wayne County’s Board of Canvassers declined to certify results because of questions surrounding the way mayoral write-in votes were initially counted. In some precincts, poll workers did not use hash marks to count write-in votes, leading the County Clerk’s office to seek to disqualify thousands of votes and calling mayoral candidate Mike Duggan’s overwhelming write-in victory into question. The state unsealed ballot containers and reviewed votes from precincts where there were discrepancies between the county’s vote summary and statements of votes prepared by elections inspectors.

Editorials: North Carolina’s Student Voting Battle Is Not Over | Penda D. Hair/Huffington Post

Apparently, it wasn’t enough for the state of North Carolina to pass the most far-reaching and extreme voting law in the nation. The radical rollback of voting rights, signed into law by Governor Pat McCrory a few weeks ago, cuts a week from early voting, eliminates same-day voter registration, creates a strict photo ID requirement (which specifically prohibits college IDs from being accepted for voting), bans the pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds, and expands the ability to challenge voters, among other sweeping provisions. Collectively, these changes make it harder to vote for people of color, students, seniors, people with disabilities and low-income North Carolinians. Yet the state did not stop there. Now two county election boards have employed a top-down approach to take over the voting process at the local level. They are specifically taking aim at student voting. Just days after the state’s restrictive voting law took hold, election officials in Watauga and Pasquotank counties announced policies to drastically curb student voting. First, the local elections board of Watauga County, home to Appalachian State University, voted to eliminate an early voting and general election polling place on campus. Now students seeking to cast a ballot will have to travel to an off-campus voting site that is absurdly difficult to reach: inaccessible by public transportation, and over a mile from campus, alongside a 45 mph road with no sidewalk. Worse still, in the Watauga County election board’s decision to condense what used to be three county polling places into one, this single precinct — which was designed for 1,500 voters and only has 35 parking spaces — will have to serve 9,300 voters.

National: Federal panel urged to reform election rules | Philadelphia Inquirer

Ellen Kaplan delivered a blunt message Wednesday to members of a presidential blue-ribbon panel on election reform. The 2012 vote in Philadelphia was a “national embarrassment” spoiled by massive confusion, partisanship, and mismanagement, said Kaplan, policy director of the watchdog group Committee of Seventy. She pointed to numbers such as the 26,986 provisional ballots cast, more than 12,000 of them by registered voters who should have been allowed to use voting machines, and almost 100 Republican poll inspectors who “were not permitted to sit” by their Democratic counterparts and had to get court orders. “Perhaps,” she added, in what could be a touch of overstatement, “the worst-run election in the city’s history.”