The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly | January 27 – February 2 2014
In his State of the Union address, President Obama urged Congress to restore provisions of the Voting Rights Act that had been “weakened” by a Supreme Court decision last summer. Michael McDonald investigated the nationwide trend toward online voter registration. Iowa State Auditor Ken Kline says he wants an investigation of allegations that errors in state records could be denying eligible voters the right to vote. Nebraska legislators considered a bill that would reinstate a “winner-take-all” allocation of the State’s electoral college votes. As expected, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has indicated that he intends to appeal a Commonwealth Court decision that ruled the State’s voter ID law unconstitutional. A bill that would have forced localities still using direct recording electronic machines to replace them with optical scan tabulators by November was defeated by a Virginia legislative committee. The European Commission issued guidance to five EU-Member States with rules in place leading to a loss of voting rights for citizens in national elections, simply because they have exercised their right to free movement in the EU and Thailand goes to the polls in spite of violent protests and widespread disruption of polling places.