A bill that would restore voting rights for non-violent felons has passed a Kentucky House committee. The measure is Rep. Jesse Crenshaw’s latest attempt to put approximately 130,000 felons back on the voting rolls. Similar efforts have repeatedly stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. But Crenshaw says he hopes that his bill will fare better this year due to support from U.S. Sen. Rand Paul.
Massachusetts voters would have the convenience of casting ballots during a 10-day period before Election Day in state and federal elections, , starting with the 2016 presidential election, under a bill scheduled for a vote in the Senate Thursday. The legislation also would set up a new online voter registration system. The bill, put out by the Senate Elections Committee this week, would allow early voting at least at one site in every city or town for 10 business days before Election Day. The bill calls for the online voter registration system to be in place by August 2015.
Gov. Rick Snyder will set the tone for his re-election campaign and preview upcoming budget battles in tonight’s State of the State address. He is expected to talk about education, discuss what to do with a projected $1 billion surplus, renew the quest for more permanent road repair money and dwell on his accomplishments. What won’t be included is a repeat of his pledge from last year to join Secretary of State Ruth Johnson in seeking no-reason absentee voting and online voter registration — initiatives that are not popular among the Republican legislative majority. “I don’t think that’s something I’m going to emphasize because there was some effort to do that last year that didn’t work,” Snyder said in an interview Tuesday at the North American International Auto Show. “There’s a limited opportunity window, and given that it’s an election year, I think there are other things that will be priorities.”
As the midterm elections loom closer and closer, voter registration becomes increasingly important. Online voter registration is a recent concept in Missouri after going into effect December 20th. It was successfully pushed by Secretary of State Jason Kander in an effort to boost turnout rates, but there are some that feel it can cause issues. Beth Walker, the Nodaway County clerk and election authority, feels the idea may skew the numbers of voter turnout. “So many people register… but they are not wanting to go to the polls,” Walker said. “People are going to have to believe that their vote matters.” Another question that has been brought up is if online registration will lead to online voting. “There is a high possibility that we could see electronic voting in the near future,” Walker said. “This is in part because we have created a society to make everything easy.”
The state office that oversees elections is opposing a bill that would open individual ballots to public view after an election. Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan told the House Election Law Committee Tuesday that House Bill 1357, if passed, could open elections to corruption. “Hopefully,” Scanlan said, “you trust your local moderator” and other election officials “to make sure they are running the election in your town in a fair and impartial way.”
A civil rights organization pressed North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory on Tuesday not to wait until November to let voters elect a successor to former U.S. Rep. Mel Watt, saying that will deny representation to 12th Congressional District residents for too long. Holding a Nov. 4 election to fill Watt’s unexpired term means more than 700,000 citizens will be without someone in Congress to speak for them on critical legislation like the budget, immigration and possibly the Voting Rights Act for most of 2014, said the Rev. William Barber, president of the state conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “Citizens of North Carolina will be forced to go more than 300 days – almost one year – without their constitutionally guaranteed right to representation,” Barber told reporters. “This is taxation without representation.”
Republican Gov. Pat McCrory on Tuesday responded to a letter from Democratic Congressmen David Price and G.K. Butterfield that criticized his choice to delay a special election filling a vacancy in North Carolina’s 12th congressional district. Last week, Democratic Rep. Mel Watt formally resigned his seat in the district after being confirmed as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. On the same day, McCrory announced that the special election to complete the remainder of Watt’s term will follow the same schedule as this year’s regular elections, leaving the seat open until after a Nov. 4 vote. That decision would mean the 700,000 residents in the Democratic-leaning district, which winds narrowly up I-85 from Charlotte to Winston-Salem and Greensboro, would be without a representative in Congress for most of 2014. Price and Butterfield called the 300-day vacancy “indefensible” in their joint letter to McCrory.
Ohio’s election chief has set the hours and days that residents can vote early for the May primary election, saying it was necessary because the Legislature has failed to put uniform times into law. Voters can cast an absentee ballot early by mail or in person without giving any reason. The 2012 presidential election cycle in Ohio was marked by several disputes over early voting rules, including a lawsuit brought by President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. Secretary of State Jon Husted said Wednesday that he’s repeatedly asked the General Assembly to write the hours into law, but members have not acted.
This month we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his commitment and accomplishments for equality — including voting rights — during the civil-rights movement. Even though great voting rights accomplishments have been achieved over the decades, injustices still exist. U.S. citizens residing in American territories such as Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and Samoa are denied the right to vote for president. The premise is that these territories are not states of the union, and therefore, U.S. citizens residing in these territories must be denied the right to vote. But a U.S. citizen, for example, residing in, say, North Korea, under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, will still maintain his or her right to vote. This is the same for any other country that the citizen moves to as long as they resided in a state of the union prior to moving. However, a U.S. citizen who was born in a territory will never have the right to vote as long as they are a resident of that or another U.S. territory.
Republican Wayne Coleman will ask for a recount by Thursday in the close election to represent Virginia’s 6th Senate District. “We will file a petition on or before Thursday,” Coleman’s campaign manager, Austin Chambers, said today. Democrat Lynwood Lewis, a longtime Eastern Shore state delegate, was certified the winner Friday after a Jan. 7 special election. He beat Coleman, a Norfolk businessman, by nine votes out of roughly 20,400 cast. Even before Lewis’ win was made official, Coleman’s campaign had said it planned to seek a recount, but it hadn’t said when. Asked if the candidate is taking his time in filing with control of the split Virginia Senate at stake, Chambers said Coleman’s petition will be submitted “when we feel comfortable that we have everything we need to file.”
The military-backed government portrayed a two-day referendum to amend the constitution that ended on Wednesday as an endorsement of its legitimacy. The draft constitution is expected to be approved following a well-financed “yes” campaign promoted by the government, businessmen and liberal political parties. Ehab Badawy, the spokesman for the interim president, Adly Mansour, wrote in an email Wednesday that millions had voted to demonstrate their “belief in democracy.” The referendum was boycotted by the Muslim Brotherhood, whose leaders were arrested after the July ouster of their leader, Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
The State Duma’s Legislation Committee on Monday approved a bill reintroducing the “none of the above” option in all elections except for those choosing a president. The ballot option was introduced in Russia in 1991 but was removed in 2006. Its planned reintroduction has been widely interpreted as an attempt by United Russia to take votes away from opposition candidates. Legislation Committee chairman Vladimir Pligin, of United Russia, said that the option would be reasonable for municipal elections but that its relevance for State Duma and regional elections was open to discussion. The bill was submitted last October by Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Federation Council, and other members of the parliament’s upper house. They argued that the option would help determine whether a particular vote was a protest vote against the ruling party or a genuine preference for a specific candidate.
A European season of separatist fervor kicks off Thursday with Catalan lawmakers voting on whether to seek the right to hold a referendum on independence from Spain. The EU will be watching closely as Belgium’s Dutch speakers gear up to push for greater autonomy in May elections, and Scotland prepares to hold its own referendum on breaking away from Britain in the fall. Thursday’s vote is a milestone in years of mass protests by Catalans, who are fiercely proud of their distinct culture and language, demanding the right to decide whether they want to secede. But it is also largely a symbolic one.
Thai caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has also called for a meeting with all sides to discuss an Electoral Commission proposal to postpone the February 2nd snap election. The move comes amid fierce anti-government protests that have paralysed parts of Bangkok since Monday. But her proposal has already been rejected by the People’s Democratic Reform Committee. Pressure is mounting on caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra as protests tighten. In hopes of placating her opponents, Yingluck has decided to comprise, calling for negotiations with the opposition about postponing next month’s election.
The elected members of Tunisia’s High Election Commission were sworn in on Wednesday at the presidential Palace in Carthage. The ceremony was attended by President Moncef Marzouki, caretaker Prime Minister Ali Larayedh and new premier Mehdi Jomaa. “Several things must be present so that the commission can do its work properly, including a free media that can convince citizens to go to polling stations during elections,” said Marzouki. The Tunisian leader called for holding parliamentary and presidential elections as early as possible to bring about a much-needed security to his country. “I hope we can hold the elections before the summer,” he said. Meanwhile, election commission chief Shafiq Sersar said he and his colleagues would work hard to hold successful, transparent and democratic elections. Sersar was elected head of the commission last Thursday.
Yesterday’s fascinating New York Times deep dive into partisan money networks, state legislative elections, and the resulting policy outcomes really underlines the sometimes-complex relationship between campaign finance regulations and effective disclosure: “Not unlike a political version of Cayman Islands banks, the networks allow political strategists to sidestep regulations and obscure the source of funds. Campaign contributions that would be banned or restricted in one state can be sent to a state where the rules allow money to flow more freely, often scrubbed of the identity of the original donor. Some groups work behind the scenes to orchestrate ‘money bombs’ of smaller contributions from hundreds of different donors, allowing the groups to provide candidates with large doses of cash — fingerprint-free — even in states with low contribution limits.” Under current constitutional doctrine — and, really, this has been true since the 1970s, well before Citizens United and other recent court cases — regulations are generally incapable of preventing big money from ending up wherever it wants to go. What regulations can do is disrupt the way money is raised by candidates and parties, forcing political actors to innovate to gain access to funds.
The American Political Science Association Task Force report on political polarization,Negotiating Agreement in Politics (2013) includes a discussion of the role of campaign spending. The co-authors of this analysis, Michael Barber and Nolan McCarty, write that the role is small. But they suggest that there is more work to be done, raising the question of whether some spur to polarization might come from the rising importance to candidates of ideologically motivated individual donors. Before turning to that question, it is worth noting what else the co-authors have to say about the impact of money. They refer to the research that shows the “weak connection” between contributions and roll call votes, and between campaign spending and election outcomes. One would not know this from standard media coverage of the issue. This is not to say, of course, that money in politics does not present important public policy issues. But one is reminded once again that much of what passes for a telling critique of campaign finance in America is weakly or inconsistently supported by social science research.
A state law that went into effect Jan. 1 allows 17 year olds to vote in the March 18 primary if they turn 18 on or before the November general election. So far the only person to sign up has been a male student from Granite City High School whose birthday fell during the summer. “He was here on Jan. 2 at 8:30 a.m. He was ready!” County Clerk Debbie Ming-Mendoza said Monday at her office at the Administration Building. “He was very excited about the idea of being able to vote in the primary and not having to wait until November. It was a big topic in the social studies and government classes. He said he was going to try to encourage his classmates.” Ming-Mendoza declined to name the student.
Nearly 180,000 ex-felons in Kentucky who have fully served their sentences would regain their right to vote under a proposed constitutional amendment that a state House committee approved Tuesday. House Bill 70, sponsored by Rep. Jesse Crenshaw, D-Lexington, would not apply to ex-felons who committed intentional murder, rape, sodomy or a sex offense with a minor. The legislation has sailed through the Democratic-controlled House in past sessions but has stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. Some Republicans say the measure would benefit Democratic candidates, but House Minority Leader Jeff Hoover, R-Jamestown, told the House Committee on Elections, Constitutional Amendments and Intergovernmental Affairs on Tuesday that he doesn’t buy that argument. The legislation is needed because it “is a matter of fairness,” he said. “We are a forgiving society.”
The state’s attorney general and political practices commissioner have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a 2012 federal appeals court decision that struck down Montana’s ban on political party endorsement of candidates in the state’s nonpartisan judicial races. The case involves an attempt by the Sanders County Republican Central Committee in 2012 to endorse candidates for an open Montana Supreme Court race and in a contested race for district judge in the district that includes Lake and Sanders counties.
Nevada’s unique “none of the above” voting option for statewide races will remain an election spoiler for the foreseeable future after the U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to consider an appeal by national Republicans. The decision came after Republicans sued in 2012 to get the option, appearing as “none of these candidates,” stricken from the ballot, fearing it could siphon votes from a disgruntled electorate and sway the outcome of close presidential races and Nevada U.S. Senate contests. The option has been on the ballot since 1976. It applies only to statewide races and was enacted by the Legislature to try to curb voter apathy in the wake of the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon. The intent was to give voters a way to voice their displeasure with candidates and elected officials at the ballot box.
Death doesn’t necessarily disqualify you from voting in New York City. Investigators posing as dead voters were allowed to cast ballots for this year’s primary and general elections, thanks to antiquated Board of Election registration records and lax oversight by poll workers, authorities said. The election board’s susceptibility to voter fraud by people impersonating the departed was uncovered during a massive probe of the agency by the Department of Investigation. The probe uncovered 63 instances when voters’ names should have been stricken from the rolls, but weren’t — even though some of them had died years before. “The majority of those 63 individuals remained on the rolls nearly two years — and some as long as four years — since a death, felony conviction, or move outside of New York City,” said DOI Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn.
The state of Ohio agreed to a settlement Monday with voting awareness groups Judicial Watch and True the Vote, effectively ending a lawsuit that lasted almost a year and a half. The case dates to August 2012, when the groups claimed Secretary of State Jon Husted hadn’t taken reasonable steps to keep ineligible voters out of polling places. Monday’s settlement, which involves no money, established nine criteria for Husted’s office to follow, ensuring compliance with the National Voter Registration Act, known widely as the “Motor Voter” Act.
If ever the political axiom of needing a scorecard to keep up with the players applied to an election cycle, it would be the set of three elections in 2014 across Shelby County. The middle election of the three – the August ballot of county general elections and state and federal primary elections – is expected to be one of the longest in the county’s political history, if not the longest. But the two “scorecards” kept electronically by the Shelby County Election Commission don’t match up, making it hard to know who has a qualifying petition out and who has filed their petition, and even more difficult to know some of the basic information like a candidate’s address on their qualifying petition.
Minor political parties fighting to get on the ballot in Tennessee were given a chance to air their views Monday, but they left the Capitol disappointed. In a meeting held on the eve of the start of the 2014 legislative session, representatives for the Libertarian, Constitution and Green parties presented plans that would have slashed the number of signatures needed for minor parties to be recognized by state election officials. But state lawmakers would agree only to a nonbinding recommendation to lower the requirement for local and statehouse races. The decision frustrated representatives for third parties, which have sued state officials over rules that they say have been designed to thwart them.
The State Board of Elections voted Friday to certify Del. Lynwood W. Lewis Jr. (D-Accomack) as the winner of a Senate special election by just nine votes, and his Republican foe made clear he would ask for a recount. Lewis and Wayne Coleman (R), the owner of a Norfolk shipping company, squared off Tuesday in the contest to fill the Hampton Roads-based seat of Lt. Gov-elect Ralph Northam. The outcome of the race, and the Jan. 21 special election to succeed Attorney General-elect Mark Herring (D), will determine which party controls a Senate that had been split 20-20. Lewis’s edge of nine votes — .04 percent — entitles Coleman to ask for a government-funded recount.
A group of municipal officials from Milwaukee County tiptoed Monday into the issue of consolidating the purchase and programming of voting machines. The Intergovernmental Cooperation Council will name a work group to study the idea, which came out as the top shared-service idea in a survey of 14 municipal officials done by the nonpartisan Public Policy Forum. Interest in the idea was prompted in part by an unsuccessful attempt last fall by County Supervisor John Weishan Jr. to have the county finance the cost of buying 375 voting machines to supply the City of Milwaukee and every other municipality. The idea failed to win County Board approval as an amendment to the county’s 2014 budget on a 9-9 tie vote.
Caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has called an urgent meeting to discuss the Election Commission’s proposal that government postpone the election from Feb 2, PM’s secretary-general Suranand Vejjajiva said on Monday. The premier has instructed Deputy Prime Minister Pongthep Thepkanchana to coordinate the meeting to take place this Wednesday, Jan 15. Mr Suranand said Ms Yingluck will preside over the meeting herself if all relevant parties agree to discuss the proposal to postpone the polls. He said the government is calling the meeting because it sincerely wants all concerned with the issue to come together for talks.
Linda Petherick, South West regional organiser of the National Federation of Occupational Pensioners, said that proposals from The Electoral Commission, which would require voters to show some sort of ID at polling stations before voting, could stop the older generation from using their vote. NFOP is concerned that these proposals could create a number of potential problems, especially for older people. Mrs Petherick said: “There needs to be some clarification on how this is going to work, including what sort of ID will be accepted, as many older people do not have a photo driver ID or even a relevant passport.
Two congressional leaders — one Republican and one Democrat — are calling for investigations into Federal Election Commission computer security and operational breakdowns that the Center for Public Integrity detailed in a recent report. The report revealed that Chinese hackers crashed the FEC’s computer information technology systems in October just as the federal government shut down, and that the agency is suffering from chronic staffing shortages. A subsequent audit the FEC commissioned revealed a variety of other security issues. “The revelations that FEC IT systems were compromised raises serious concerns,” said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Government Operations Subcommittee which oversees federal IT matters. “I am working with my staff and the staff of the full House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to investigate the extent of the breaches, and I intend to conduct a full and thorough review of the vulnerabilities of FEC systems which should raise concerns for all federal elected officials.”