Monthly Archives: October 2014

In an academic experiment gone awry, researchers at Stanford and Dartmouth Universities sent official-looking campaign mailers assessing the political leanings of candidates to voters in California, Montana and New Hampshire — a move that may have violated university policy and state laws. The universities were forced to apologize Tuesday to 100,000 Montana voters who received one of the mailers. Adorned with a state seal, it placed four Montana state Supreme Court justices running for nonpartisan offices on an ideological scale, comparing them to President Barack Obama and former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. “Take this to the polls!” the guide says in large letters. That led Montana Secretary of State Linda McCulloch to file a complaint late last week with her state’s commissioner of political practices, saying the mailer appeared to violate several state laws.

New Jersey: Report says emergency voting after Sandy not a success as claimed | Asbury Park Press

Here’s a view of the super storm Sandy disruption you may not have heard about — a new step in Garden State voting some think was a big failure. After Sandy, Lieutenant Gov. Kim Guadagno in her dual role as secretary of state told county clerks she issued an emergency order granting any registered voter displaced by Sandy to ability to cast votes via email or fax. Journalist Steve Friess writes the Constitutional Rights Clinic at Rutgers Law School-Newark spent the past 18 months following a public document trail to show how that went. The team was led by law professor Penny Venetis. “There was mass confusion among county officials and voters alike,”‘ the 83-page report, called “The Perfect Storm: Voting in New Jersey in the Wake of Superstorm Sandy,” said.

Ohio: Democrats pushing voting-rights update | The Columbus Dispatch

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Joyce Beatty said yesterday that they are working to pass the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014 in the Senate and House, respectively, to improve voter access before Election Day. “That’s one way to suppress the vote is by confusing voters, and we’ve seen that in this state for a number of years,” Brown said at the event at Bethel AME Church on Cleveland Avenue in South Linden. Dispatch Voters Guide: View a sample ballot customized to your location. The Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014 would be an update to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prevents voter discrimination based on race, color or membership in a minority language group.

Virginia: Voting rights groups mobilize for Election Day and new photo ID law | The Washington Post

When Virginia’s new voter identification law goes into effect statewide Tuesday, voting rights groups will monitor select polling places to help people comply with the rules, which are among the nation’s strictest. For years, voters have been required to provide identification at the polls, but this year — for the first time in Virginia — an ID with a photograph will be required. “We’re all very concerned about the implementation of the photo ID law across the state and whether or not voters have been educated about the fact that they need a photo ID to vote,” said Hope Amezquita, staff attorney and legislative council at the ACLU of Virginia.

Texas: Ginsburg Was Right: Texas’ Extreme Voter ID Law Is Stopping People From Voting | Huffington Post

A Texas voter ID law considered to be one of the most restrictive in the country is doing exactly what Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned it would do: stopping Americans from voting. A disabled woman in Travis County was turned away from voting because she couldn’t afford to pay her parking tickets. An IHOP dishwasher from Mercedes can’t afford the cost of getting a new birth certificate, which he would need to obtain the special photo ID card required for voting. A student at a historically black college in Marshall, who registered some of her fellow students to vote, won’t be able to cast a ballot herself because her driver’s license isn’t from Texas and the state wouldn’t accept her student identification card. There are plenty of stories like this coming out of Texas in the early voting period leading up to Election Day. Texas’ tough voter ID law, signed by Gov. Rick Perry in 2011, requires voters to show one of seven types of photo identification. Concealed handgun licenses are allowed, but college student IDs are not, nor are driver’s licenses that have been expired for more than sixty days.

Texas: As Texas votes early, voter ID sparks frustration and motivation | MSNBC

Pastor Frederick Douglass Haynes marches across the stage of Friendship Baptist Church, a mega-congregation of 12,000 people here. It’s Oct. 26, the penultimate Sunday before the 2014 midterm elections. “This is Freedom Sunday!” Haynes shouts into a microphone, drawing out each word. The sound system plays “Jesus Walks,” an upbeat anthem by rapper Kanye West that samples “Walk With Me,” a gospel classic. The choir, about 50 teenagers clad in black t-shirts, sways. Haynes has promised a briefing on the church’s new political program, but he doesn’t say much about the candidates. His largest applause lines are about the right to vote itself. “There’s a shameful, sinful attempt to suppress the vote,” he says, criticizing Texas for “one of the most suppressive Voter ID laws in the nation.”

Wisconsin: Voters getting confusing, misleading messages about election | Wisconsin Gazette

Wisconsin residents are receiving confusing messages by phone and in the mail about the election, according to the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. The organization said that just last week some people received a Wisconsin voter registration form in the mail with their name and address already filled in. They were told to mail the form in to their municipal clerk, even though it was already too late for mailed registrations to be processed. Other people have reported receiving robocalls telling them to bring a photo ID to vote. This happened after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the voter ID law would not be implemented in this election.

Canada: Angry towns consider withholding payment to Internet voting company | Windsor Star

Leamington and Kingsville are considering withholding payment to the company that conducted Internet voting this election after results came in hours later than expected. “I’m very disappointed,” said Leamington clerk Brian Sweet, who is bearing the brunt of complaints in his municipality about how long it took to release voting results Monday night. “We were under the impression we would have our results between 8:30 and quarter to nine, possibly, before 8:30,” Sweet said. Instead, like in Kingsville and Tecumseh, results were not released to waiting crowds until close to 11 p.m. “What was frustrating for us was we were not getting results and we weren’t getting any information or time estimates either,” Sweet said. “We didn’t understand what the problem was.”

Romania: Ponta heads for presidency with justice in spotlight | Reuters

Romanians are likely to move Prime Minister Victor Ponta into the presidency in elections that start on Sunday, offering one of Europe’s poorest countries political stability but raising concerns about judicial independence. Backed by a well-oiled party machine, Ponta has led opinion polls in the run-up to the Nov. 2/16 vote, trumpeting a record of easing the painful spending cuts and tax hikes Romanians endured in a 2009-10 recession. A Ponta win would consolidate his leftist Social Democrats’ hold on power. His combative rival, incumbent President Traian Basescu, steps down after two terms, which should end constant feuds over policy.

Ukraine: Eastern Ukraine’s Fake State Is About to Elect a Fake Prime Minister | Foreign Policy

The sounds of artillery fire boomed from the northwest suburbs of Donetsk, but in the glittering foyer of what was once a downtown conference center, camouflage-clad militants toting Kalashnikovs sat in leather armchairs, paying no heed to the noise. They were keeping guard over those engaged in the important work upstairs: In the luxurious penthouse, trapped in stifling heat but cut off from the sound of shelling, Roman Lyagin worked to turn a fantasy republic into reality. Lyagin, as head of the Central Election Committee of this unrecognized nation, is writing the rules that will govern the first parliamentary elections of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, scheduled for Nov. 2. “I and some like-minded people are making a new state,” he said. “We are building the state of our dreams.”

Tunisia: The election result isn’t simply a victory for secularism over Islamism | The Guardian

A self-styled, secular, modernist party called Nidaa Tounes won against the Islamist Ennahda party in the Tunisian election this week. For many, the subsequent headline – “Secularist party wins Tunisia elections” – will seem more impressive than the fact Tunisia just completed its second genuinely competitive, peaceful elections since 2011. Indeed, in a region wracked by extremism and civil war, the secularists’ victory will strike many as further proof that Tunisia is moving forward and is the sole bright spot in a gloomy region. Some may prematurely celebrate, yet again, the death of political Islam, arguing that Tunisians achieved through the ballot box what Egyptians achieved through a popular coup, rejecting the Brotherhood and its cousin-like movements once and for all. We should exercise caution, however, in labelling Nidaa Tounes’s victory part of a seamless sweep of democratic achievements, or seeing Sunday’s vote as a clear referendum against all varieties of political Islam.

Ukraine: Europe, Russia at odds over early eastern Ukraine elections | The Age

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone that elections planned for Sunday in eastern Ukraine were illegitimate and would not be recognised by European leaders, a Berlin government spokesman said on Friday. Ms Merkel and Mr Putin held a joint telephone conversation with French President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Ms Merkel’s spokesman Georg Streiter said at a government news conference. He said in the call there were diverging opinions on Sunday’s “so-called elections” in the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. “Merkel and Hollande underlined that there can only be a ballot in line with Ukrainian law,” he said, adding that the vote would violate an agreement endorsed by Russia and further complicate efforts to end the crisis in eastern Ukraine. Sunday’s separatist poll is aimed at electing leaders and a parliament in a self-proclaimed autonomous republic.

National: An estimated 5.9 million voting-age Americans won’t be able to vote next Tuesday | The Washington Post

Next Tuesday, tens of millions of Americans will take to the polls to vote on everything from ballot issues to federal, state and local representation. But millions of voting-age adults will be sitting this one out. An estimated 5.85 million Americans won’t be able to vote due to prior felony convictions, according to an estimate from the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice nonprofit think tank. Of those, roughly 44 percent are estimated to be felons who live in the 12 states that still restrict voting rights after sentences have been served, a practice that excludes as many as 1 in 10 voting-age residents of Florida, the state with the highest rates of felon disenfranchisement. Such policies have a disproportionate impact on blacks, restricting the vote for roughly 1 in 13 voting-age blacks nationwide.

National: Turns Out Nobody Wants To Donate To Politicians With Bitcoin | Huffington Post

The Federal Election Commission voted earlier this year to allow political candidates and committees to accept donations in bitcoin. But a week before Election Day, candidates who accept the popular virtual currency reported that their total bitcoin donations were small to nonexistent, though they remained optimistic about the currency’s political future. Candidates who have entered the Wild West frontier of accepting bitcoin donations said they have been unable to turn bitcoin into a major fundraising strategy — yet. Blaine Richardson, an independent House candidate running in Maine’s 2nd District, reported that he didn’t get any bitcoin contributions at all. “I think there is a future for it, but we just may be ahead of the curve right now,” he told The Huffington Post.

Arizona: Voter Fraud Allegations Land Protesters at Arizona Republican Party HQ | Phoenix New Times

The activist group Citizens for a Better went to the state GOP headquarters in Phoenix to demand an apology after Maricopa County Republican Party chairman A.J. LaFaro accused the group of voter fraud. LaFaro drummed up nationwide controversy by implying he witnessed voter fraud when someone with Citizens for a Better Arizona dropped off some voters’ completed ballots at the Maricopa County elections headquarters, which is actually a completely legal practice. “LaFaro started the rumor,” CBA organizer Ramiro Luna said to state GOP executive director Chad Heywood, who greeted the protesters in the lobby yesterday. “The Republican Party, the extreme right has been spreading that rumor so much that it has caused much harm. My young canvasser right here, the cops got called on her. We have another canvasser who got put in the back of a cop car because of these statements.”

Florida: Rick Scott, Charlie Crist ready to lawyer up if Florida recount needed | Tampa Bay Times

It’s the nightmare scenario nobody wants to discuss: an election night result for Florida governor that’s so close it demands a recount. “Oh, no, the R-word,” said Pasco County Supervisor of Elections Brian Corley. “It’s going to be a close one. We’re ready.” It’s Florida. Anything can happen. With polls showing Gov. Rick Scott and Charlie Crist in a virtual deadlock, both sides are making plans in case of a stalemate next week. Republicans and Democrats would mobilize armies of lawyers in a frantic search for ballots, triggering memories of the agonizing and chaotic five-week Florida recount that followed the 2000 presidential election. “Expect the unexpected,” said Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent.

Georgia: Judge declines to intervene in ‘missing’ voters lawsuit | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A Georgia judge declined Tuesday to intervene in Georgia’s voter registration process, letting stand existing measures by state and local election officials to help applicants ahead of the Nov. 4 election. The decision came after a two-hour hearing Friday, during which Fulton County Superior Court Judge Christopher Brasher seemed skeptical of a lawsuit that sought what he called an “extraordinary legal remedy.” “What does the law require that they haven’t done?” Brasher asked during the hearing. “That’s what I’m a bit fuzzy about here.”

Hawaii: Election officials preparing for threat from lava | The Maui News

Officials are hoping to avoid disruptions in next month’s elections from an advancing lava flow in a mostly rural region on the Big Island of Hawaii. In August, Tropical Storm Iselle kept some voters in the Puna region from during the polls primary election, and there was subsequent confusion about how they could cast their ballots. Now, a lava flow threatens to isolate some voters ahead of the Nov. 4 general election.

Kansas: Statewide network of Republican lawyers ready to intervene on Election Day | Topeka Courier-Journal

The Kansas Republican Party plans to have a statewide network of GOP lawyers ready to intervene on Election Day, and it will analyze close races for potential legal action — as its director warns of “dubious tactics” from Democrats. The network of attorneys is part of the Republicans’ plan for a poll-watching program as well as an Election Day war room with a complement of lawyers on standby. The party will target some polling locations for all-day observation and is urging candidates, county officers and precinct leaders to become poll agents (often called poll watchers) and visit polling locations. The Kansas Republican Party’s poll-watching operation is detailed in a Sunday email from Clayton Barker, the organization’s director. The email, obtained by The Topeka Capital-Journal, begins with a reminder of the election’s consequences.

Voting Blogs: Welcome to the Jungle: Senate Majority May Come Down to Louisiana | State of Elections

Pundits have framed this year’s election cycle as having the potential to shift control of the United States Senate from Democrats to Republicans—and given the sheer number of close races across the country, nearly every seat in serious contention has the makings of being the deciding race. Due to Louisiana’s unusual election laws, however, the chattering class might not know which way the pendulum will swing until long after Election Day on November 4th. Louisiana’s Senate race is, by all accounts, extremely close: both Republican and Democratic party committees (as well as outside superPACs) have poured money into the state in recent weeks. Incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has struggled to distance herself from an unpopular President, is facing Republican challenger Bill Cassidy, who some have characterized as “too boring” for a state with a history of colorful political characters. Louisiana’s election laws are atypical in that they provide for a non-partisan “jungle primary” on November 4th—the general election day for the rest of the country—with the general election following a month later, if necessary, on December 6th.

Montana: Court to decide quickly on campaign law challenge | Associated Press

A group whose tax-exempt status allows it to keep its donors and spending secret is asking a federal appeals court to block several Montana laws regulating campaign contributions and expenditures before next Tuesday’s elections. An injunction request by Montanans For Community Development was rejected earlier this month and again Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen, who called the breadth of what the group was trying to do “staggering.” The group has now gone to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for an emergency injunction that would allow it to release ads that mention candidates in this year’s elections, without fear of being labeled a political organization. That designation would require Montanans For Community Development to disclose who is funding the group, and possibly open it to accusations of illegally coordinating with candidates.

US Virgin Islands: Early voting put on hold on St. Croix | Virgin Islands Daily News

With more than 400 ballots already cast early voting was suspended Sunday night in the wake of the V.I. Supreme Court re-affirming its decision that Sen. Alicia Hansen be removed from the ballot. According to a press release, Supervisor of Elections Caroline Fawkes made the decision to comply with the Supreme Court order. It is anyone’s guess when early voting will resume and what course of action the St. Croix District Board of Elections and the Supervisor of Elections will take to ensure that the ballots for the Nov. 4 General Election are in compliance with the order handed down Friday. As part of the opinion by the justices, Supervisor Caroline Fawkes has been ordered to immediately recall all General Election ballots with Hansen’s name and replace them with ballots omitting her as a candidate or in the alternative “remove Hansen’s name from the ballot, such as by covering her name with a sticker”, the opinion read.

Botswana: What Botswana’s elections say about Africa’s postcolonial headache | The Week

Botswana, a tiny landlocked country north of South Africa, held an election over the weekend. The result was a victory for the incumbent, the Botswana Democratic Party, but by the narrowest margin in the country’s electoral history. It was an alarming campaign. As Amy Poteete points out at The Washington Post, the run-up to the election featured some extremely ugly politics, including the death of an opposition politician under mysterious circumstances and the alleged kidnapping and torture of others by the security apparatus. One journalist fearing for his life fled to South Africa, and his editor was charged with sedition. Nevertheless, the election itself appears to have been free of overt fraud. To folks unfamiliar with the region, all this may seem like typical African politics. But Botswana has always been the great exception to the rule. It is the only country in the entire continent to have had free and fair elections since the end of colonial rule. But it seems even Botswana is now dealing with the same sort of postcolonial troubles that have afflicted most other African nations.

Tunisia: Vote ‘transparent and credible,’ EU observers say | AFP

Tunisia’s first parliamentary election since the Arab Spring revolution of 2011 was transparent and credible, the head of the EU observer mission said on Tuesday. “The Tunisian people have reinforced their commitment to democracy with credible and transparent elections that gave Tunisians of all political tendencies a free vote,” Annemie Neyts-Uytterbroeck told a news conference. “Polling day passed off in a calm and orderly fashion. Everything was really very normal,” she said. “The campaign generally went smoothly. Freedom of expression and assembly were respected.”

Ukraine: Ukraine Denounces Russian Stance on Rebel Vote in East | VoA News

Ukraine on Tuesday condemned as “destructive and provocative” Russia’s stance towards elections organized by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine next Sunday, saying Moscow’s recognition of the vote could wreck chances of bringing peace. The November 2 vote would be held in defiance of Ukrainian national elections last Sunday in which pro-Western parties, dedicated to holding the former Soviet republic together and negotiating a settlement to the conflict, triumphed. Russia announced Tuesday it will recognize the results of upcoming elections in Donetsk and Luhansk. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the voting would be important for the “legitimization of power” in the “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, not recognized by Kyiv or the West. “We expect the elections to be held as arranged and of course we will recognize their results,” Lavrov told Russia’s Izvestia paper and LifeNews TV in an interview published on his ministry’s website on Tuesday.

Uruguay: A broad front advances | The Economist

In the weeks preceding Uruguay’s October 26th presidential elections, the capital of Montevideo was blanketed in political advertisements. Billboards for Tabaré Vázquez (pictured), who was president from 2004 to 2009 and belongs to the current ruling party, the Broad Front, read: “Uruguay will not be stopped.” For a while, however, it looked like Mr Vázquez might be. Pollsters predicted he would not collect the 50% of votes needed to avoid a run-off, where they thought Luis Lacalle Pou, a flowing-haired, centre-right 41-year-old lawyer and son of a former Uruguayan president, might scrape a victory. In Uruguay “it is very rare for governments to increase their support base while in power,” says Adolfo Garcé, a political scientist at the University of Social Sciences in Montevideo. Put more simply, “what comes up must come down,” says Luis Eduardo Gonzalez of Cifra, a polling group.

National: Election Apps Are on the Rise, but Online Voting Is Not | Kansas City infoZine

In a buzzing and ringing world, technology has become an integral part of society, where almost anything can be done with the press of a fingertip But when voting is involved, things get a little tricky. With more than a million apps in the Google Play store and 900,000 apps in the Apple Store, users can download a variety of voting and polling apps. Several states, including Tennessee and Louisiana, have released voting apps that are free or can be purchased in the Apple and Android store for smartphones. New Hampshire is developing its own app for the midterm elections. Voters can’t cast ballots with these apps, but they can use them to find polling locations, ask for absentee ballots, look at sample ballots and more. The D.C. Board of Elections released its free app that can answer questions about the Nov. 4 election. “It’s a great trend for elections offices to be putting these kinds of tools out there. Not only does it help voters, but it can also ease some of the burden on calls coming in at busy times for finding polling places,” Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, said. Her group provides voting information and wants to make sure technology is adopted carefully.

Editorials: Methodological challenges affect study of non-citizens’ voting | Michael Tesler/The Washington Post

A recent Monkey Cage piece by political scientists Jesse Richman and David Earnest, which suggested that non-citizen voting could decide the 2014 Election, received considerable media attention over the weekend. In particular, columns such as Breitbart.com’s “Study: Voting by Non-Citizens Tips Balance for Democrats” and the National Review’s “Jaw-Dropping Study Claims Large Numbers of Non-Citizens Vote in U.S” cited results from the authors’ forthcoming Electoral Studies article to confirm conservatives’ worst fears about voter fraud in the United States. A number of academics and commentators have already expressedskepticism about the paper’s assumptions and conclusions, though. In a series of tweets, New York Times columnist Nate Cohn focused his criticism on Richman et al’s use of Cooperative Congressional Election Study data to make inferences about the non-citizen voting population. That critique has some merit, too. The 2008 and 2010 CCES surveyed large opt-in Internet samples constructed by the polling firm YouGov to be nationally representative of the adult citizen population. Consequently, the assumption that non-citizens, who volunteered to take online surveys administered in English about American politics, would somehow be representative of the entire non-citizen population seems tenuous at best.

Editorials: The new world of voter suppression | Los Angeles Times

A week from Tuesday, voters will choose an entirely new House of Representatives, a third of the U.S. Senate and the governors of 36 states. Lamentably, many qualified voters will stay home, some out of apathy or disillusionment but others because they lack the right sort of identification. In Texas, thanks to an outrageous order by the Supreme Court, voters will have to display a photo ID under a law that a lower court judge concluded was a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise blacks and Latinos, who disproportionately lack such identification. Welcome to the new world of voter suppression, the culmination of a sustained effort by mostly Republican state legislators to make it harder for Americans to exercise the most basic right afforded to citizens in a democracy. It’s an effort whose effect, if not its intent, has been to reduce the participation at the ballot box by groups that historically have been the victims of discrimination. It has been abetted by a Supreme Court that blithely gutted an important section of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act and by a Congress that has been to slow to undo the damage caused by the court.

Editorials: Are Our Courts for Sale? | Joe Nocera/New York Times