Yearly Archives: 2013

The Maine Senate on Tuesday gave its approval to a measure that would trigger a statewide referendum on whether to allow towns and cities to offer their residents the chance to cast ballots officially in advance of Election Day. The Senate voted 24-11 in favor of sending a ballot question to voters asking whether they favor amending the constitution to allow towns and cities to offer early voting. The vote came a day after the House voted 90-50 in support of the bill, LD 156. The measure will ultimately require two-thirds support in both chambers if the question is to reach Maine voters.

Pennsylvania: Technical difficulties cause election havoc | Citizens’ Voice

An election happened in Luzerne County on Tuesday, but for two hours after the polls closed the results could only be found on a projection screen at the county courthouse. An apparent traffic overload periodically crashed the county’s usually reliable website, www.luzernecounty.org, and prevented officials from posting results. The outage forced reporters, some candidates and other interested parties to the courthouse rotunda to watch a scroll of results. The top county races, for controller and the county council, shared equal time on the screen with school board races and the campaigns for municipal councils. Some reporters used their cellphones and compact camera to take pictures of the screen to freeze the fast-moving results.

Utah: GOP weighs next step in election reforms | Daily Herald

Utah Republicans pushing reforms in their state caucus and convention system are weighing their next move after the GOP rejected efforts that would force more candidates into primaries. Former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt is among the prominent Republicans in the group Count My Vote, which wants to increase the number of votes required in a nominating convention before a candidate can forgo a primary. GOP delegates rejected proposals on Saturday to raise the current 60 percent threshold to either 66.6 percent or 70 percent.

Wisconsin: Elections board agrees to ask lawmakers for absentee voting rule changes | Associated Press

Wisconsin election officials on Tuesday agreed to ask the Legislature to revamp the state’s absentee voting regulations by streamlining request deadlines, expanding electronic ballot access for overseas voters and implementing other changes. The state Government Accountability Board agreed after only brief discussion to make the recommendations at the request of a municipal clerk task force. That panel contends the state’s absentee voting requirements have grown too complicated and confusing over the years.

Iran: Ahmadinejad protests aides disqualification from Iran election | Los Angeles Times

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has denounced as unjust the disqualification of his top aide from next month’s presidential election and says he plans to appeal to Iran’s supreme ruler. Ahmadinejad spoke a day after the Guardian Council, which vets candidates, barred the out-going president’s confidant, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, from the June 14 poll along with former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the nation’s most illustrious political figures. Tuesday’s decisions enraged the pair’s many supporters and threatened to deflate turnout. Mashaei was “unjustly treated,” the president told reporters, according to the conservative Fars News Agency. “I have presented … Mashaei as a righteous and religious person who could be useful for the country.”

Malta: AG to be involved in votes recount cases | Times of Malta

A court this morning decided that the Attorney General should be a party in a case instituted by the Nationalist Party where it demanded a recount of the votes cast in the eighth and thirteen districts in the general election. Justice Jacqueline Padovani said the Attorney General should be a party in the case to safeguard state interests. The PN had argued that the Attorney General should not be involved while the Electoral Commission requested that the AG be called into the proceedings.

Russia: Kremlin ‘outraged’ by electoral fraud… in Eurovision song contest | CSMonitor.com

Russian authorities have finally found a case of alleged voting fraud that they can get really incensed about. No, it’s not the 2011 Duma elections, which experts from across Russia’s political spectrum now agree were probably falsified on a huge scale. That has never been the subject of official outrage, or even investigation. This is something far more important: the continental song competition, Eurovision. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists yesterday that he was “outraged” to learn that the voting system in neighboring Azerbaijan had eliminated the votes cast for Russian Eurovision contestant Dina Garipova in that country. Voters registering their preferences by cellphone had given a second-place finish to Ms. Garipova – which should have given her 10 points in the overall contest – but they had somehow disappeared in the reporting process.

Zimbabwe: Ruling Party Militias Spread Fear of Voting | allAfrica.com

For the last month Gibson Severe and his wife, Merjury Severe, known opposition supporters from Hurungwe district in Zimbabwe’s Mashonaland West Province, have been hiding out in the country’s capital Harare. The Movement for Democratic Change – Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) supporters were forced to flee their rural home in Hurungwe district after Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) militias threatened them for encouraging people to participate in the recently-ended mobile voter registration. “It’s been a month since we left Hurungwe district after the Jochomondo militia, which has known links to Zanu-PF, besieged our rural home accusing us of encouraging people to register to vote for the MDC-T,” Gibson Severe told IPS. Since last year, the Jochomondo militia has allegedly terrorised residents in Zimbabwe’s northern Hurungwe district, a Zanu-PF-stronghold, making it almost impossible for opposition parties to campaign in the region.

Ohio: Fraud just a tiny blip of 2012 vote | The Columbus Dispatch

0.002397 percent. That’s how much voter fraud there was in Ohio last year, according to a report released yesterday by Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted. Out of about 5.63 million votes cast in a presidential election in this key swing state, there were 135 possible voter-fraud cases referred to law enforcement for more investigation. “Voter fraud does exist, but it’s not an epidemic,” Husted said. The report summarized a comprehensive review of alleged voter fraud and suppression that Husted ordered all 88 county boards of elections to conduct in January. Rumors of fraud and suppression at the polls undermine voter confidence in elections, Husted said. Those same things also inspire legislation in Ohio — where in 2011 House Republicans passed a bill that would have, in the name of minimizing fraud, required a photo ID to vote on Election Day. Democrats fought that bill, and Husted played a roll in killing it. His report yesterday gives folks on all sides of the debate something to latch onto.

Iran: After being banned from election, Iran’s Rafsanjani blasts ruling clerics, report says | Associated Press

Banned from upcoming elections, Iran’s former president has leveled harsh criticism at the Islamic Republic’s clerical rulers, saying they are doing a poor job running the country, an Iranian pro-reform website reported late on Wednesday. The remarks by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani come days after a constitutional watchdog disqualified him from running in the June 14 presidential election. The wording was particularly strong for Rafsanjani, considered a centrist who generally defers to the supremacy of the ruling clerics. He had previously lashed out at authorities after a crackdown on protests following the disputed 2009 elections. Because of his stance then, Rafsanjani’s 2013 candidacy had revitalized reformist hopes. Rafsanjani has not made any direct public statements since his Tuesday disqualification. The quote was not carried on his official website, and the report could not independently verified.

South Carolina: Charleston County considering a switch to paper ballots | Charleston City Paper

Before the start of last Wednesday’s sparsely attended Charleston County Board of Elections and Voter Registration meeting, Frank Heindel turned around in his seat to ask a question of the woman sitting behind him: “You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?” Heindel, a Mt. Pleasant resident, has almost single-handedly taken up the crusade of reforming South Carolina’s electronic voting system, and the idea he presented to the BEVR last week might sound crazy to the uninitiated: He wants the county to go back to using paper ballots. “I believe every citizen in Charleston County deserves an election process that is transparent, conforms to existing laws, and can produce an audit paper trail,” Heindel said. The board heard him out, and it voted to have its executive director look into new options for the November 2013 general elections — including new electronic machines and old-school paper ballots read by optical scanners. Heindel’s full proposal was that the county conduct some, if not all, local elections this November without using its iVotronic touchscreen voting machines, which the election-integrity hellraiser says are flawed due to problems like vulnerability to virus attacks and a lack of hard-copy verification. Heindel also asked the board to require a post-election audit be conducted.

National: Obama launches panel to reduce long lines at polls | MSNBC

More than six months after declaring on election night that “we’ve got to fix” long lines at the polls that forced some voters to wait up to eight hours, President Obama has announced the members of his commission on election administration. The list includes a mix of business executives, public officials, and election administrators, but no dedicated voting-rights advocates. Obama had previously revealed that Washington super-lawyers Bob Bauer and Ben Ginsberg, a Democrat and Republican respectively, would chair the panel. Obama also announced that Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Columbia Law School who has generally been skeptical of voting restrictions aimed at combating fraud, will be the commission’s senior research director. And the commission unveiled a new website,supportthevoter.gov.

National: Conservative group True the Vote sues IRS over being subject to heightened scrutiny | The Wahsington Post

True the Vote, a Houston-based voter watchdog group that arose from a tea party organization, filed suit in federal court Tuesday against the Internal Revenue Service over the agency’s processing of its request for tax-exempt status. The lawsuit, filed by the conservative ActRight Legal Foundation, asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to grant its request for tax-exempt status and award damages for what it described as unlawful conduct by the IRS. True the Vote, which was founded in June 2010, is affiliated with the King Street Patriots, a tea party group which started in December 2009. Originally called KSP/True the Vote, the group filed in July 2010 for tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(3) charity organization. In August 2011, the group changed its name to True the Vote Inc.; King Street Patriots has separately been seeking the 501(c)(4) status from the IRS. True the Vote has come under fire for intimidating African-American and other minority voters at the polls.

National: A Sleeper Scandal Awakens, Post-Election | New York Times

The allegations had all the makings of a perfect election-year scandal that might threaten President Obama’s chances for a second term and re-energize a listless Tea Party movement: an activist president, running an overbearing government, treating conservative groups unfairly by wielding the federal taxing power to undermine his adversaries. But a year ago, when the current Internal Revenue Service scandal that has swirled around Mr. Obama first emerged, Washington — and, apparently, the White House — shrugged. It was March 2012 and Tea Party groups around the country had been complaining for months of what they called an I.R.S. conspiracy to delay and disrupt their efforts to obtain tax-free status. A few Republicans in Congress expressed concern, sent letters to I.R.S. officials and scheduled a hearing.

Colorado: El Paso County clerk says Colorado’s new election law will be costly | The Gazette

El Paso County will feel the pinch before the year is out from an elections bill that will kick in July 1. As a result of House Bill 1303, the upcoming November consolidated election in El Paso County will cost more, it will be tougher to find election judges and the likelihood of fraud will be higher, said Wayne Williams, El Paso County clerk and recorder. In the General Election in 2014, the impact will be more severe, Williams told the El Paso County commissioners on Tuesday. While the election in 2013 will cost an additional $134,212, in 2014 the county is looking at a whopping increase of almost $700,000. Most of the costs for this year’s election will be borne by school districts with upcoming board elections because counties bear the initial cost, then bill the jurisdictions. In the General Election, however, the county’s costs will soar.

Editorials: Motor Voter at 20: Successes and Challenges | Miles Rapoport/Huffington Post

It may seem unthinkable now, but as late as the 1980s, Americans in many states had only one option if they wanted to register to vote: Show up in person at a central registrar’s office, which might be open only during restricted business hours and located far from the voter’s home. Even in places where voter registration applications could be distributed outside the registrar’s office, strict limits often applied — such as in Indianapolis where groups like the League of Women Voters were allowed to pick up only 25 voter registration applications at a time. Overly complicated and restrictive procedures meant that fewer and fewer eligible voters were registering — and without registering, they couldn’t vote. Voting rights advocates knew that America must fiercely protect the freedom to vote for all citizens, regardless of race or privilege. So, they began a multi-year campaign to make voter registration more accessible. Their efforts paid off in 1992 when Congress first passed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), only to see President George H.W. Bush veto the bill. Not to be discouraged, the movement kept fighting, and 20 years ago this week, Congress passed the NVRA and President Clinton signed it into law.

Hawaii: No Agreement on Election-Day Registration | Big Island Now

They tried during six different meetings, but state lawmakers last month could not reach an agreement on a bill that would have allowed Hawaii residents to register to vote on election day. House Bill 321 was introduced to increase access to voting. Current state law requires that a voter register 30 days before an election. In testimony submitted on the bill, the American Civil Liberties Union said in the 2012 election, 62% of Hawaii’s registered voters went to the polls – the lowest voter turnout in the nation.

Maine: Effort to change early voting in Maine kept alive by House vote | Bangor Daily News

An effort to allow residents who vote early to place their ballots directly into a ballot box or voting machine rather than seal them in signed envelopes and submit them to a municipal clerk survived an initial vote Monday in the Maine House. The House voted 90-50 in favor of a measure that would ask voters whether they want to amend the state constitution to allow towns and cities to set up early voting. Maine residents who wish to vote early now do so by completing absentee ballots, which are sealed in envelopes that the voter signs and held at a municipal clerk’s office until Election Day, when poll workers place them in ballot boxes or voting machines. While Monday’s majority vote allows the bill to stay alive, the measure will need at least two-thirds support in future House and Senate votes in order to send a ballot question to voters.

Missouri: Another legislative session, and still no action on early voting | Kansas City Star

The 2013 session has come and gone, and Missouri still has no law allowing advance voting. According to one 2012 tally, 32 of the 50 states have a system that allows voters to cast ballots prior to Election Day. Kansas is one of those 32 states. But not Missouri, although both Democratic and Republican secretaries of state, who serve as the state’s chief elections officer, have pushed for it in the last decade.

Ohio: Senate puts brakes on plan to link in-state tuition to voting | The Columbus Dispatch

A House-passed budget provision that would have cost Ohio universities about $370 million a year in tuition payments is likely to be removed by the Senate, but that doesn’t mean the issue of out-of-state students voting in Ohio is dead. House Republicans last month put an amendment in the budget that would require universities to charge in-state tuition rates for out-of-state students who are given college documentation so they can vote in Ohio. The idea has drawn sharp criticism from university leaders, who do not want to be put in the middle of a political voting controversy, say they cannot afford the lost tuition revenue, and argue it would make the system unfair for in-state students whose families help subsidize state colleges through taxes.

Wisconsin: Republicans push for changes to election observer, local recall laws | Chippewa Herald

Election observers could get far closer to the tables where poll workers gather information from voters on Election Day under a bill introduced by a group of Assembly Republicans late last week, which already had a public hearing on Tuesday. At the campaigns and elections committee hearing, lawmakers also considered GOP-authored legislation that would raise the bar for recalling local officials. Under the election observer bill, chief inspectors and municipal clerks would be required to designate areas for observers at the polls that are within five feet of the tables where voters provide their names and addresses, as well as within five feet of the tables where people can register to vote.

Iran: Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad ally barred from Iran election | Alarabiya

Iran’s electoral watchdog has barred moderate ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from standing in a June 14 presidential election, the interior ministry said on Tuesday. Eight candidates won approval to stand — five conservatives close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as two moderate conservatives and a reformist, according to AFP. Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, a close but controversial aide to incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was also omitted from the list, AFP reported. No explanation was given for the disqualifications. Earlier today, Iranian news websites boosted speculation Tuesday that election overseers have barred two prominent but divisive figures from next month’s presidential ballot, in a move that would eliminate a threat to the country’s hard-liners, AP said.

Iran: Election overseers block 2 wild card figures from presidential race | The Washington Post

Iran’s election overseers removed potential wild-card candidates from the presidential race Tuesday, blocking a top aide of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a former president who revived hopes of reformers. Their exclusion from the June 14 presidential ballot gives establishment-friendly candidates a clear path to succeed Ahmadinejad, who has lost favor with the ruling clerics after years of power struggles. It also pushes moderate and opposition voices further to the margins as Iran’s leadership faces critical challenges such as international sanctions and talks with world powers over Tehran’s nuclear program.

Malaysia: Election Commission sets up team to probe indelible ink issue | Borneo Post

The Election Commission (EC) yesterday set up a special team to find out why the indelible ink used to mark voters in the 13th general election could be easily removed, said EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof. He said the team would look into, among others, the ingredients of the ink, the Health Ministry’s conditions and how the ink was applied on the finger. The team would also examine the outcome of tests conducted before and after the ink was brought into Malaysia, he said in a statement. For the first time in a general election in Malaysia, the EC used the indelible ink to mark voters in the May 5 general election to prevent possible repeat voting, but received flak from political parties, electoral candidates and voters when it was learnt that the ink could be washed away easily. Abdul Aziz said the team was expected to complete the investigation in a month.

Pakistan: Concerns over massive rigging : PTI calls for vote recount in 25 NA constituencies | Daily Times

Reiterating its blame on Returning Officers for ‘rigging’ and misappropriations in the general elections, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Tuesday demanded recounting in 25 constituencies of National Assembly including NA-154, on the basis of thumb impression’s audit. PTI stalwart Jahangir Tareen had contested from NA-154. Speaking at a press conference at Central Secretariat about rigging and misappropriations in his constituency, Tareen, along with party’s Central Information Secretary Dr Shireen Mazari, presented a comprehensive account of data about massive anomalies in voting process by electoral staff.

National: Confusion and Staff Troubles Rife at I.R.S. Office in Ohio – Unprepared Office Seemed Unclear About the Rules | New York Times

During the summer of 2010, the dozen or so accountants and tax agents of Group 7822 of the Internal Revenue Service office in Cincinnati got a directive from their manager. A growing number of organizations identifying themselves as part of the Tea Party had begun applying for tax exemptions, the manager said, advising the workers to be on the lookout for them and other groups planning to get involved in elections. “I don’t believe there’s any such thing as rogue agents,” said Bonnie Esrig, a former senior manager in the I.R.S. office in Cincinnati. The specialists, hunched over laptops on the office’s fourth floor, rarely discussed politics, one former supervisor said. Low-level employees in what many in the I.R.S. consider a backwater, they processed thousands of applications a year, mostly from charities like private schools or hospitals.

National: IRS Probe Ignored Most Influential Groups | Associated Press

There’s an irony in the Internal Revenue Service’s crackdown on conservative groups. The nation’s tax agency has admitted to inappropriately scrutinizing smaller tea party organizations that applied for tax-exempt status, and senior Treasury Department officials were notified in the midst of the 2012 presidential election season that an internal investigation was underway. But the IRS largely maintained a hands-off policy with the much larger, big-budget organizations on the left and right that were most influential in the elections and are organized under a section of the tax code that allows them to hide their donors.

Editorials: IRS scandal is about donors, not tax | Roger Colinvaux/CNN

The outrage over the IRS’s conduct in targeting certain tax-exempt groups is based on a misunderstanding. Obviously, mistakes were made in how the IRS examined the groups, but what should not get lost amid the resulting hue and cry is that this is fundamentally about disclosure of donors, not tax-exempt status. First of all, the IRS is to a certain extent in the “targeting” business. The agency’s job — like it or not — is as an enforcer. It is supposed to go after tax scofflaws. It has to look for clues in tax returns and other materials to find the cheaters and dodgers. In the current scandal, the method of the “targeting” — searching returns for names like “tea party” as indicators of possible misfeasance — was a mistake. But it does not follow that the IRS should not have been looking at these and other groups as a class, without regard to political affiliation.

Voting Blogs: Theories of Corruption and the Separation of Powers | More Soft Money Hard Law

In a policy paper just published by the Cato Institute, John Samples takes up the constitutional amendments proposed in response to Citizens United and attempts to expose their dangers. Samples, a distinguished scholar of campaign finance, has much to offer here, regardless of where a reader stands on the feasibility of these proposals. It may be true, as Samples writes, that the constitutional amendments he criticizes “provide answers to constitutional questions, not a means for courts to reconsider those questions.” John Samples, Move to Defend: The Case against the Constitutional Amendments Seeking to Overturn Citizens United (April 2013) at 9. They do provide a means for others to reconsider those questions. And, in fact, Samples’ analysis leads him to return to first principles and to ask the question: what control should we entrust to the government in matters of campaign finance, and on what theory?

California: Counties seek election cost relief | Press-Enterprise