Haiti: Protesters rally in capital demanding vote | Associated Press

A few thousand protesters allied with Haiti’s opposition marched through the capital on Sunday demanding the chance to vote in legislative and local elections that are three years late, among other grievances. Placard-waving demonstrators started their rally in the downtown slum of Bel Air, burning piles of rum-soaked wood and holding up their voting cards to show they were ready to cast ballots. Some carried placards showing the bespectacled image of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is confined to his home in a Port-au-Prince suburb amid a war of wills with a Haitian judge investigating corruption allegations against him. Earlier this year, President Michel Martelly called for legislative and municipal elections overdue since late 2011 to take place on Sunday. But the vote has been postponed due to an ongoing stalemate over an electoral law between the government and six opposition senators.

Mozambique: Electoral Body Yet to Endorse Election Results | VoA News

Mozambique’s National Electoral Commission (CNE) has yet to officially endorse provisional results of the presidential vote.  It shows governing FRELIMO party has won with about 57.2 percent and main opposition RENAMO in second place with 36 percent.  The Mozambique Democratic Movement trails in third place with about 7 percent of the vote, according to Paulo Cuinica, spokesman for the electoral body. Cuinica said the provisional results could change since the electoral body is still working to confirm the outcome of the vote. “These are likely to change since the electoral commission is still working on the votes, [and] since there are no agreements from political parties over those votes,” said Cuinica. Cuinica said the CNE is waiting to confirm the official outcome of the presidential, parliamentary and provincial assemblies’ elections after resolving all complaints from the opposition parties. “The electoral commission is working hard to see if this announcement can happen [soon],” said Cuinica.

Tunisia: Votes counted after historic poll -in Tunisia | Al Jazeera

Tunisia has voted in historic elections to choose its first parliament since the overthrow of long-time ruler in 2011 that sparked the ‘Arab Spring’ protests. Votes were being counted across the country on Sunday as Tunisians cast their ballots in parliamentray elections, four years after the ouster of autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Many polling stations reported high turnouts and long lines early in the day, with an estimated 60 percent of the 5.2 million registered voters turning out to vote for the 217-seat parliament. “The spotlight is on us and the success of this [vote] is a guarantee for the future,” Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa said as he cast his ballot. US President, Barack Obama called the election an “important milestone in the country’s historic political transition”. “In casting their ballots today, Tunisians continued to inspire people across their region and around the world,” Obama said.

Ukraine: President Claims Win for Pro-West Parties | New York Times

Pro-Western parties won an overwhelming majority in Ukraine’s Parliament, President Petro O. Poroshenko declared on Sunday, citing exit polls. With the country still on a war-footing with Russian separatists in the east, Mr. Poroshenko hailed Sunday’s vote as a resounding endorsement of his government’s efforts to break free of Kremlin influence and shift hard toward Europe. “I asked you to vote for a democratic, reformist, pro-Ukrainian and pro-European majority,” he said in a statement posted on his website after polls closed. “Thank you for having heard and supported this appeal.” Mr. Poroshenko said more than three-quarters of those who voted “powerfully and permanently supported Ukraine’s course toward Europe.” He called the result “a landslide vote of confidence from the people.”

Ukraine: Parliamentary Elections Show Political Turmoil Is Continuing in Ukraine | New York Times

As two of Ukraine’s best-known investigative journalists, Sergii Leshchenko and Mustafa Nayyem showed a boundless zeal for exposing corruption and hypocrisy at the highest levels of government. So it set heads spinning within the country’s political and media elite last month when they suddenly announced that they were not only jumping the fence to run for Parliament, but also joining the establishment as candidates of President O. Poroshenko’s coalition party. Or at least that’s how it seemed. In a sign of how hard it can be to kick old habits, Mr. Leshchenko and Mr. Nayyem have spent the final week of the campaign not working to promote themselves, but rather crusading to defeat a candidate from their own party — a former official in the Kiev city government, whose place on the ballot in this rural district 250 miles south of the capital, they say, was the result of corrupt back-room dealing approved by someone close to Mr. Poroshenko, if not by the president himself.

Ukraine: Patriotism Trumps Graft in Ukraine’s Wartime Election | Businessweek

War may have ended the era when Ukrainians traded their votes for some cooking oil and flour. “I took the buckwheat but voted my heart,” reads an Internet meme of an elderly lady displaying a rude gesture on Twitter and Facebook from an Internet group called Our Guard. It’s urging voters not to exchange ballots for food before tomorrow’s general election. Parties have abandoned the pop concerts and pomp that accompanied past campaigns after more than 3,800 deaths in Ukraine’s battle against pro-Russian separatists and earlier protests in Kiev. President Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and other contenders have instead signed military heroes and anti-graft activists to their voter lists. They’re trying to counter the electorate’s increasing frustration with the conflict, an outlook for a 10 percent economic contraction this year and corruption that’s worse than Russia’s and tied with Nigeria’s, according to Transparency International’s corruption perception index.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for October 20-26 2014

voter_id_260Anticipating election challenges, both parties have hired armies of lawyers ahead of next month’s elections. Matthew McKnight considered the impact of recent Supreme Court decisions in voting rights cases. Following the Arkansas state supreme court ruling that the State’s voter ID law was unconstitutional, county election officials are scrambling to make last minute changes, redoing things they’ve already done in order to get the proper information to polling sites. Los Angeles Supervisors approved a $15-million contract with Palo Alto consultant Ideo for the design of a new voting system. The Florida Supreme Court has set the day after the opening of the 2015 Legislature for a pivotal hearing into whether the state’s redrawn congressional districts are valid. According to a a highly-critical report released by the Rutgers School of Law in Newark, emergency measures intended to allow people to vote in the days immediately following Hurricane Sandy violated New Jersey state law. Richard Hasen considered Justice Ginsburg’s scathing dissent in the Supreme Court decision to allow Texas’ Voter ID for this election. Wisconsin’s voter ID law has been put on hold for the fall election, leaving local election officials to make adjustments less than a month before voters go to the polls. Voters in Brazil return to polls for a run-off between the top two candidates from last month’s Presidential election and Ukraine’s election website was hacked in advance of this weekend’s parliamentary elections.

National: Parties Are Lawyering Up in Preparations For Recount on Election Day | InTheCapital

Both the Republicans and the Democrats are preparing for some tough races that could go all the way to recounts, by hiring armies of election lawyers. According to Bloomberg Politics, the Republican National Lawyers Association is training upwards of 1,000 lawyers in a series of 50 sessions leading up to election day, to deal with any legal issues that should come up on November 4. This is in addition to the legal teams held by national party committees and the thousands of volunteer lawyers, from advocacy groups and lobbying firms, that are ready to step in if the need arises. The Democrats meanwhile, have a full time staff of trained lawyers focusing on poll access across 23 states. The DNC is requiring that their poll workers use mobile app “incident trackers” to quickly communicate with state party directors about anything that takes place on election day that could effect the way people vote – from broken ballot counters to bad weather, as well as more nefarious instances of potential vote tampering. These apps will then allow party leaders to send out mass emails to registered voters about possible changes in voting places or extended voting hours.

Editorials: Judging the Right to Vote | Matthew McKnight/The New Yorker

Early voting began on Monday in Texas and Wisconsin. As a result of recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, Texas residents will need a particular form of identification to vote; Wisconsinites can vote without one. On Saturday, the Supreme Court issued an order, in response to an emergency request from the Justice Department and various civil-rights groups, that permits Texas to enforce a voter-I.D. law that had been struck down twice by lower courts. The Texas law had previously been found to violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racist discrimination, because it requires that voters in the state obtain one of seven types of identification that are not held by many African-Americans and Hispanics. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissent for the Court, which Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor signed. Ginsburg called the conditions under which elections in Texas will now take place “the strictest regime in the country.” She argued that the rigidity of Texas’s law distinguished it from Wisconsin’s law. “For example, Wisconsin’s law permits a photo ID from an in-state four-year college and one from a federally recognized Indian tribe,” Ginsburg wrote. “Texas, under Senate Bill 14, accepts neither.” The court’s tone was a contrast from earlier this month, when it stopped Wisconsin from implementing its voter-I.D. law because of the proximity of the upcoming election. The rationale had little, if anything, to do with the plaintiffs’ argument that certain communities of voters—the poor, the elderly, the African-Americans, the Latinos—were being disproportionately burdened in trying to obtain the proper form of identification. There are at least two lines of logic that the Court is using to address the set of voting-rights cases that it has reviewed leading up to November’s election. One, as exhibited in Wisconsin, asserts that, just weeks out, it is too late to implement changes to voting permissions. The other is less straightforward, not least because the Court did not affirmatively defend its decision in the Texas case, and calls into question the way that the right to vote has been interpreted, as well as the role of the Supreme Court in offering clarity.

Arkansas: Counties scramble to make changes to voter ID materials before election | KATV

The law requiring Arkansans to show their photo identification at the polls in order to vote, is no longer law following Wednesday’s state supreme court ruling. But as early voting begins on Monday, counties are scrambling to make last minute changes, redoing things they’ve already done in order to get the proper information to polling sites. Workers at the Saline County Clerk’s office say they’ll work into the night packing boxes full of supplies for polling sites. But, because of the voter ID law being struck down, they’re having to take some items out of the box, like signs asking voters to show their identification. “The early voting sites, we’re going to have to change all of those. all of the signage we spent money on, taxpayer money on, all of those are going to have to be pulled out of the thing that’s going to be sent out. those will no longer be in place,” said Saline County Clerk Doug Curtis.

National: Want Your Absentee Vote To Count? Don’t Make These Mistakes | NPR

Millions of voters — about 1 in 5 — are expected to vote absentee, or by mail, in November’s midterm elections. For many voters, it’s more convenient than going to the polls. But tens of thousands of these mail-in ballots are likely to be rejected — and the voter might never know, or know why. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission found that in 2012 more than a quarter of a million absentee ballots were rejected. The No. 1 reason? The ballot wasn’t returned on time, which in most states is by Election Day. Sometimes it’s the voter’s fault. Others blame the post office.

Editorials: Shame on Texas and the U.S. Supreme Court | Andrew Cohen/LA Times

In allowing Texas’ voter identification law to go into effect, at least for the November election, the U.S. Supreme Court last week showed the nation precisely what it meant in 2013 when its conservatives struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County vs. Holder. The Texas law, one of the most discriminatory voting laws in modern history, runs afoul of constitutional norms and reasonable standards of justice. It is hard to chronicle in a short space the ways in which the Texas law, one of the most discriminatory voting laws in modern history, runs afoul of constitutional norms and reasonable standards of justice. State lawmakers rammed through the measure, jettisoning procedural protections that had been used for generations in the state Legislature. By requiring registered voters to present a certain kind of photo identification card, and by making it difficult for those without such cards to obtain one, the law’s Republican architects would ensure that poor voters, or ill ones, or the elderly or blacks or Latinos — all likely Democratic voters — would be disenfranchised, all in the name of preventing a type of voter fraud that does not materially exist. These lawmakers — and for that matter the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court judges who now have sanctioned the law’s implementation for next month’s election — were shown mountains of evidence on what the law’s discriminatory impact would be on minority communities. Witness after witness testified that the new law amounted to a poll tax on people who had, even in the deepest recesses of Texas, been able for decades to adequately identify themselves before lawfully casting their ballot.

Editorials: Justice Ginsburg’s dissent on Texas’ voter ID law a wake-up call for voting rights | Richard L. Hasen/Dallas Morning News

Every so often, Supreme Court watchers are reminded that these justices are working hard behind the scenes by reading briefs, exchanging memos and debating outcomes. Case in point: The justices issued an order and a dissent in a Texas voting rights case at 5 a.m. Saturday. Supreme Court reporters stood by all night for the ruling. The holdup apparently was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s six-page dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. The Supreme Court allowed Texas to use its voter ID law in the upcoming election, even though a federal court decided a few weeks ago that Texas’ law violated both the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act, and that Texas engaged in intentional racial discrimination in voting. The trial court had barred Texas from using its law this election, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed that decision last week, and the law’s challengers went to the Supreme Court, where, as expected, the court sided with Texas. The Supreme Court’s order was consistent with some of its other recent orders indicating that lower courts should not change the rules of running an election shortly before voting begins. I have dubbed this rule the Purcell Principle, for a 2006 Supreme Court case.

Editorials: The Supreme Court and voting rights: Silent treatment | The Economist

The supreme Court’s weirdly busy October brings to mind an old Cadillac commercial showing a sedan gliding silently down the highway, driver calm and confident in a hermetic, leather-appointed cabin, while the announcer intones, “quietly doing things very well.” Whether the justices are doing their jobs well depends on your point of view. But there is no disputing that they have been doing their most consequential work in uncharacteristic silence in recent weeks. The justices’ moves on gay marriage, abortion and voting rights have been delivered all but wordlessly, as Dahlia Lithwick of Slate recounts. The notable exception to the rule is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the justice who refused to hold her tongue over the weekend, when six of her colleagues permitted Texas to enforce its new photo identification law in the November elections. The Court’s announcement came down at the ungodly hour of 5am on Saturday. It followed a federal district court decision on October 9th that the Texas law was discriminatory in both intent and effect and “constitutes a poll tax”—a ruling that was stayed by the Fifth Circuit Court on October 11th. The stay prompted an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court via Antonin Scalia, the justice assigned to the Fifth Circuit. The six justices who denied the request to lift the stay before dawn on October 18th were mum as to why; they released no reasoning for the decision, which effectively gives Texas’s questionable voter law a pass. But Justice Ginsburg and her clerks apparently ordered pizza and downed some Red Bull on Friday evening, pulling an all-nighter to compose a six-page dissent, which Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined. (Rick Hasen asks why Justice Stephen Breyer, the fourth liberal justice, did not sign on to the dissent; one strong possibility is that he was asleep.)

Editorials: Should the Poor Be Allowed to Vote? | Peter Reinert/The Atlantic

If Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters succeed in booting C.Y. Leung from power, the city’s unelected chief executive should consider coming to the United States. He might fit in well in the Republican Party. In an interview Monday with The New York Times and other foreign newspapers, Leung explained that Beijing cannot permit the direct election of Hong Kong’s leaders because doing so would empower “the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month.” Leung instead defended the current plan to have a committee of roughly 1,200 eminent citizens vet potential contenders because doing so, in the Times’ words, “would insulate candidates from popular pressure to create a welfare state, and would allow the city government to follow more business-friendly policies.” If that sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Leung’s views about the proper relationship between democracy and economic policy represent a more extreme version of the views supported by many in today’s GOP.

Editorials: Bleak voting rights landscape for election and beyond | Zachary Roth/MSNBC

In the run-up to the 2012 election, there was widespread concern about a slew of restrictive voting laws passed by Republicans. But those fears mostly weren’t borne out. Courts blocked several of the worst moves before election day. And record African-American turnout suggested the assault on voting might even have backfired by firing up minority voters. But Republicans didn’t ease off on the push to make voting harder. If anything, they doubled down. And this time around, they’ve had a lot more success as several voting restrictions are now in effect for the first time in a major election. That’s likely to help the GOP this fall. But voting rights advocates say the bigger lesson is that current laws protecting access to the ballot just aren’t strong enough. “This is a clear example of the need for additional federal protections,” said Myrna Perez, a top lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice, and one of the attorneys who argued against the Texas voter ID law, which was approved for the election by the U.S. Supreme Court early Saturday morning. That decision—which came just two days before early voting kicks off in the Lone Star State—means most of the statewide voting restrictions that in recent weeks were the subject of court fights will be in place when voters go to the polls. In addition to the Texas law—green-lighted despite a federal judge’s ruling that it intentionally discriminated against minorities—North Carolina’s sweeping voting law and Ohio’s cuts to early voting will also be in effect.

Editorials: Age of candidacy laws should be abolished: Why 18 year olds should be able to run for public office. | Osita Nwanevu/Slate

In January, state Sen. Linda Lopez of Arizona retired after 13 years in the legislature. Before announcing her retirement, Lopez looked for a candidate to endorse to fill her vacancy. She soon settled on Daniel Hernandez, Jr., a friend and a board member of Tuscon’s Sunnyside Unified School District. He agreed and began gathering support to run for office. A win seemed likely. There was just one problem. Hernandez was 24. Arizona law requires legislators to be at least 25 years old. But Hernandez initially hoped he could run because he would turn 25 just 13 days after being sworn in. It wouldn’t have been unprecedented. Young federal and state legislators-to-be have found ways to work around age of candidacy laws for almost as long as the laws have existed. Back in 1806, antebellum statesman Henry Clay was appointed to the U.S. Senate at the age of 29 and reached the Senate’s age of eligibility, 30, more than three months after being sworn in. No one seemed to mind. Hernandez wasn’t so lucky. As he found out, Arizona state law requires candidates to sign an affidavit proving that they will be eligible for the office they seek on Election Day, barring him from running altogether. The law was clear: 24-year-old Hernandez was unqualified to serve in the state Senate this year. But a 25-year-old Hernandez would have been fine.

California: Los Angeles County takes step toward voting system overhaul | Los Angeles Times

Supervisors took a significant step Tuesday to overhaul Los Angeles County’s antiquated ink-based balloting system by approving a $15-million contract with Palo Alto consultant Ideo for the design of a more modern way to record votes. Elections officials — who must serve about 4.8 million registered voters scattered across 5,000 precincts — began planning for a new system five years ago. The process was guided by an advisory committee that included local city clerks, voting rights and open government advocates, and officials from the local Democratic and Republican parties. The current system is known as InkaVote and requires voters to mark a paper ballot with their selections. Under the new system, projected to roll out in 2020, voters would make their selections using a touch screen, and the voting machine would then print a paper ballot to be tallied.

California: Alameda County Alerts Berkeley Voters to Ballot Snafu | KQED

Alameda County elections officials are sending out cards to alert 27,000 voters in Berkeley that they’ve received mail-in ballots imprinted with the incorrect date for next month’s election. The address window in Alameda County mail-in ballots displaying incorrect date for this year’s election. The ballots arrived in voters’ mailboxes last month. In addition to the legend “Official Election Balloting Material,” the ballots’ address window says, “Election Day November 5, 2014.”

California: Los Angeles could move to even-year elections to increase voter turnout | Los Angeles Daily News

In an effort to increase voter turnout, the Los Angeles City Council Wednesday called for a proposal moving city elections to June and November of even-numbered years. The 12-1 vote, with Councilman Bernard Parks dissenting, asked that the proposal be drafted in time to submit to voters at the March 2015 election. The shift from odd- to even-numbered years would take effect with the 2020 elections. It would allow incumbent officials at that time to serve an extra 18 months. “If voting was a business, we would be going bankrupt,” said Darry Sragow, a USC professor and a former campaign consultant. “The first thing is the way people vote should be a reflection of the way they lead their lives. Everything in our lives is different with cell phones, the Internet, where we work, how we work. “Participation rates are steadily declining. It is not the people’s fault. It is the fault of a system that no longer reflects their day-to-day existence.”

Georgia: Concern Over New-Voter Registration In Georgia Ahead Of Election | NPR

This election season is proving to be tough for Democrats, but many believe they can turn the red state of Georgia blue with the help of new voters. One voter registration campaign led by the New Georgia Project, a “nonpartisan effort” according to its website, has targeted black, Latino and Asian-American residents. The organization’s parent group, Third Sector Development, is currently engaged in a legal battle with election officials over more than 40,000 voter registration applications that, the group says, are missing from Georgia’s voter logs. This month, that organization, along with the NAACP and other civil rights groups, filed a lawsuit against five counties and Georgia’s Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who oversees elections in the state.

Maryland: Democrats launch effort on voting rights | Baltimore Sun

The state Democratic Party, mindful of past “shenanigans” at the polls, launched a program Wednesday that they said would protect Marylanders’ right to vote in the Nov. 4 election. Two of the party’s senior leaders, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin and U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, held a news conference in Baltimore to call attention to the Democrats’ “voter empowerment operation.” Cummings said voters in Maryland face fewer barriers than those in many other states that have adopted voter ID requirements that Democrats believe are designed to suppress the minority vote. But he said Maryland Democrats have to be on guard. “We cannot remain silent when people are trying to lessen the rights of people to vote,” said Cummings, a veteran Baltimore congressman. With eight days of early voting starting Thursday, the Democrats have set up a hotline — 1-888-678-VOTE — where people can receive information on when and where to vote and report any problems at the polls.

New Jersey: Christie says GOP gubernatorial candidates need to win so they control ‘voting mechanisms’ | NorthJersey.com

Governor Christie pushed further into the contentious debate over voting rights than ever before, saying Tuesday that Republicans need to win gubernatorial races this year so that they’re the ones controlling “voting mechanisms” going into the next presidential election. Republican governors are facing intense fights in the courts over laws they pushed that require specific identification in order to vote and that reduce early voting opportunities. Critics say those laws sharply curtail the numbers of poor and minority voters, who would likely vote for Democrats. Christie — who vetoed a bill to extend early voting in New Jersey — is campaigning for many of those governors now as he considers a run for president in 2016.

New Hampshire: ‘Domicile’ vs. ‘resident’: a matter of ballot access | New Hampshire Business Review

Secretary of State William Gardner recently made public comments that threaten the fundamental right to vote held by citizens who live in New Hampshire and call this state home. The secretary suggested that only citizens who meet the legal definition of “resident” under state law should be able to vote. He added that the Granite State permits “drive-by” voter fraud. Respectfully, he’s wrong. Gardner’s view that voting should be reserved for those who meet the definition of “resident” under state law would, if enacted, deprive the right to vote to thousands of citizens who call New Hampshire home. His position also violates Part I, Article 11 of the state constitution and has repeatedly been rejected by courts for more than 40 years. Just recently, the secretary’s view was rejected by two separate judges in a case challenging a controversial 2012 law that changed the state’s voter registration form to deliberately suppress voting rights. In striking down the registration form that the secretary supported, the superior court ruled in July that the form’s equating of legal “residency” with the right to vote is an “unreasonable description of the law” that would cause a chilling effect on voting rights.

North Carolina: Appalachian State voting site survives legal fight | WRAL

The North Carolina Supreme Court said Wednesday afternoon the courts should take up the issue of early voting on the campus of Appalachian State, literally moments after the State Board of Elections had voted to restore the on-campus early voting site. However, the early voting site will remain open as the state elections board voted, unless the board meets again to cancel the site. The Supreme Court order came down just before 5 p.m., about twenty minutes after the state board voted unanimously to OK the site in a hastily called emergency meeting. Early voting is scheduled to begin in Watauga County at 8 a.m. Thursday. The latest developments follow a ruling last week in a lawsuit filed by a group of Watauga County voters that argued the closure of the on-campus site was a transparent attempt to reduce Democratic turnout. Wake Superior Judge Donald Stephens agreed with the plaintiffs, ordering the state elections board to adopt a new early voting plan for Watauga County that would include a site on campus.

North Carolina: Early voting starts today, eligibility for 10,000 not verified | Winston-Salem Journal

The State Board of Elections will not be able to verify before the early-voting period begins today whether all of the nearly 10,000 names that it has flagged as belonging to possible ineligible voters are in fact ineligible, according to interviews with elections and transportation officials. Elections officials estimate that most are likely eligible to vote, but the uncertainty has led some state lawmakers to question why the verification process is happening now. The Winston-Salem Journal reported Wednesday that, according to the SBOE, a specific search of those 10,000 names on the state’s voter rolls turned up 145 that belong to immigrants in the U.S. under the federal program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which provides qualified applicants with a two-year reprieve from deportation. The number has been pared down to 119 after more research, said Josh Lawson, a spokesman for the SBOE. “Zero” DACA license holders have cast a ballot, he said. Mike Charbonneau, the deputy secretary of communications at the N.C. Department of Transportation, provided information on where some of the DACA license holders registered to vote.

Botswana: Doubts over IEC preparedness | Botswana Gazette

A series of mishaps at various polling stations around the country during the advance voting process over the weekend have raised doubts about the readiness of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to host the 2014 general elections. Uproar broke out on Monday after reports emerged that the weekend poll marred with controversy as some public servants were denied a chance to vote. Reports from various constituencies in the country indicate that voters were made to wait for long hours while in some instances voting was postponed because ballot papers were either defective or in short supply. In some instances, voters waited until midnight to cast their vote as the IEC was forced to extend voting hours to allow for new ballot papers to arrive. In an interview with The Botswana Gazette, Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) parliamentary hopeful in Molepolole North, Mohammed Khan expressed disappointment at the way the IEC handled the advanced voting process and cast aspersions of the Commission’s preparedness to coordinate the October 24 general election.

China: Amid Clamor Over Democracy, Hong Kong’s Tycoons Keep Silent | New York Times

The two events a month ago could scarcely have been more different: As this city’s wealthiest tycoons, impeccably tailored, gathered in an opulent hall in Beijing to meet with President Xi Jinping of China, thousands of scruffy university and high school students hit the streets of Hong Kong, boycotting classes to protest Chinese-imposed limits on voting rights here. The student protest led to turbulent demonstrations and the occupation of downtown avenues, the biggest challenge to Beijing’s authority in Hong Kong since the territory reverted to Chinese rule in 1997. The tycoons, however, have barely been heard from. As a struggle over Hong Kong’s political future unfolds, the men and women who arguably wield the most influence with Beijing, and financially have the most at stake, have maintained a studied silence on the outcome. Wary of upsetting China’s leaders, who could dismantle or damage their businesses, and concerned about offending the Hong Kong public, many of whom are already resentful, they have instead retreated behind the tinted windows of their limousines and the elaborate gates of their hillside estates.

Ukraine: Conflict-stricken Ukraine prepares for elections | La Prensa

Ukraine on Sunday will hold its first legislative elections since clashes erupted last April between government forces and pro-Russia separatists, who will boycott the vote in the eastern provinces they hold. Kiev has said the boycott in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk will not affect the legitimacy of the process. Before the conflict started, around 6.5 million people lived in the region, around 15 percent of the total population. An estimated one million people have fled the area and sought refuge in neighboring Russia or other Ukrainian regions because of the fighting. “Here, there will be no elections,” said Andrei Purguin, deputy Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. Donetsk and Lugansk are scheduled to choose their own parliaments and leaders in a separate election scheduled for November 2. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has stressed the importance of full transparency in the October 26 elections in areas controlled by Kiev in the two rebel regions.

Uruguay: The most competitive election since the return of democracy | MercoPress

All this despite the fact that president Jose Mujica, who can’t be re-elected but enjoys strong popularity both at home and overseas, has been openly campaigning for the candidates of the ruling coalition. The latest polls indicate that the incumbent ticket of former president Tabare Vazquez (74) and Raul Sendic (54) are leading in the range of 40% to 42% of vote intention, but a formidable and unexpected young contender has emerged, Luis Lacalle Pou, 41, and his conservative National party. Legislator and lawyer Lacalle Pou has a vote intention above 32% and has made the Sunday event, unthinkable only six months ago, in the most competitive election since democracy returned to Uruguay in 1985. ”Uruguay’s financial crisis of 2002 left Uruguay divided in a centre left half with a floor of 40% of the electorate and another 40% centre right.