National: Access to polls is in the hands of the courts | MSNBC

Wisconsin’s voter ID law was on, then off, and now back on again—for now. A similar Texas law was blocked by a federal court before going into force last year, and could now be nixed once more. North Carolina’s sweeping and restrictive voting law looks likely to be in effect this November, but there’s no guarantee. Ohio’s cuts to early voting were put on hold recently, but that decision too could be reversed. And no one seems to know what’s going to happen with Arkansas’ ID law. In a slew of states with crucial races this fall, access to the polls is in the hands of the courts. That reality underlines how last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened the Voting Rights Act has transformed the legal landscape on the issue — but also how the conservative push to restrict voting is now a national, not a regional, campaign. It’s a situation that is likely to cause confusion for voters no matter the legal outcomes. And looming at the end of the road is the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts, no friend of voting rights, which could upend everything if it decides to clear things up by weighing in. “That is the big question right now,” said Myrna Perez, a top voting rights lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, who has been arguing the Texas case. “Is this going to get before the court before the 2014 election? It’s certainly something that folks are pondering.”

Georgia: On one side voter registration probe a big deal, on the other not so much | Online Athens

Beyond the headlines and campaign rhetoric, the state’s investigation into possible irregularities by a Democratic-leaning group’s efforts to register blacks, Asians and Hispanics to vote has many facets, and not all are yet known. The investigation into the New Georgia Project began in early May, when local registrars started reporting to the Secretary of State’s Elections Division that voters had complained of intimidation and that documents turned in by the group appeared suspicious. In all, officials in 13 counties so far — from Effingham and Toombs in the southeast to Coweta and Gwinnett in the northwest — have submitted suspicious documents to state investigators. Since Secretary of State Brian Kemp is a Republican, Democrats and officials of the New Georgia Project have alleged in the media that the investigation is a GOP attempt at minority voter suppression. But many of the complaints that triggered the probe originated in Democrat-controlled counties like Muscogee, DeKalb and Fulton.

Minnesota: Ritchie makes way for new Secretary of State | The Minnesota Daily

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie is stepping down in January after two terms in office, leaving behind a more modernized office and a tenure marked by conflict with the Legislature. He wants to let a “new generation of leadership” onto the scene, he said, but he’s not leaving due to a lack of energy. “He gets up really early in the morning and goes, goes, goes, goes,” said Dale Wiehoff, Ritchie’s former colleague and vice president for communications at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. “He’s very engaged in whatever conversation he’s in.” Ritchie’s tenure has spanned a period of change and political contention for the secretary of state’s office, which is tasked with overseeing elections and business registration. Because of his initiatives over the past eight years, both voters and businesses can register with the state online.

Montana: National voting rights expert warns of barriers jn Referendum 126 | The Missoulian

Inconvenience or expense are not excuses for denying people their right to vote, according to an attorney who’s been challenging voting restrictions since 1972. “If you can’t vote and participate in government, you become the victim of government,” said Laughlin McDonald, director emeritus of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project. “We have had experience with that in the South, where we had all-white primaries, literacy tests, character tests and poll taxes. The courts have ruled those block the 14th and 15th amendments (of the U.S. Constitution).”

North Carolina: Republicans see positives with voter ID credit | Associated Press

With all the legal wrangling and vocal protests about North Carolina’s new election changes, you’d think legislators who helped pass the wide-reaching 2013 law might keep quiet about that support as General Assembly elections approach. Actually, they’re actively taking credit for the law — or at least it’s most publicized provision. In mailers and on a television ad early in the fall campaign, a handful of North Carolina Senate Republicans seeking re-election are highlighting their votes for a bill that will soon require people to show a valid photo identification to vote in person. That’s because the idea of voter ID remains popular and reinforces a promise many lawmakers made to pass it when they first got elected.

Wisconsin: State has no budget for voter ID, agencies say | Journal Times

Three state agencies charged with implementing voter ID for the Nov. 4 election say they have no additional money set aside to help voters and state workers comply with the newly reinstated requirement. But municipal clerks in Wisconsin’s two largest cities say they will spend thousands of dollars and hire hundreds of poll workers in the next few weeks to ensure that voters have the proper government-issued photo identification when casting their ballots. Spokesmen for the three state agencies — the Government Accountability Board, the Division of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Health Services — all say they are using existing staff and resources to handle the demand. In addition, the accountability board says it has no money for a public information or outreach campaign to ensure voters are aware of the requirement. GAB spokesman Reid Magney said the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee has asked the agency to develop a budget request by Sept. 30, which it will consider at its quarterly meeting sometime after that.

Wisconsin: Tens of Thousands of Students Face New Voting Hurdles | PR Watch

The last-minute reinstatement of Wisconsin’s voter ID restrictions could create voting problems for over 32,000 students attending state universities. University-issued ID cards from most public universities will not be accepted as proof of identification at the polls, and tens of thousands of students will have to go through additional hurdles before election day if they want to exercise their right to vote. University students tend to vote for Democrats, and the voter ID law was pushed by Republican legislators. The impact on students is one other ripple in the shockwave that the 7th Circuit sent across Wisconsin last week, when a panel of appellate judges — all appointed by Republican presidents — reinstated Wisconsin’s voter ID law just seven weeks before election day. Federal district Judge Lynn Adelman had blocked the law in April as unconstitutional and violative of the Voting Rights Act. More than 32,000 students from out of state attend public universities in Wisconsin, and are eligible to vote in the state, yet cannot use a driver’s license from their home state to vote in November. Until the 7th Circuit’s decision last week, out-of-state students had little reason to spend the time and money to obtain a Wisconsin ID card.

Wisconsin: Groups ask state Supreme Court to block voter ID for Nov. 4 | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Two groups representing minorities asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday to block the state’s voter ID law for the Nov. 4 election, seeking a new way to stop the measure. The Milwaukee branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera asked the court to keep the law from taking effect this fall to prevent “confusion and disenfranchisement.” The groups are not asking that the law be blocked for future elections. In July, the state Supreme Court ruled against the two groups and upheld the voter ID law. But the requirement to show ID at the polls remained block because of an order by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman in two other cases.

Afghanistan: Power-sharing deal ends months of political gridlock | The Guardian

Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank economist, has been officially declared the new president of Afghanistan, after three months of political deadlock was resolved through a new, untested power-sharing arrangement with his arch rival. Ghani signed the agreement with Abdullah Abdullah, his adversary in presidential elections in June that left the country suspended in acrimony, fraud allegations and political paralysis. Under the deal, Ghani will run the cabinet and be in charge of strategic functions, while Abdullah will be able to appoint a “chief executive” who will be in charge of daily duties. Neither man appeared overjoyed as they signed the deal. When the election results were finally declared, the ranking official did not use the words “winner” or “loser”, nor did he announce the final voting figures.

New Zealand: Clean sweep: New Zealand’s election | The Economist

Winning a third term is a remarkable achievement for any political party. New Zealand’s centre-right National Party did so on September 20th, carried to victory, as expected, by its popular leader and the country’s current prime minister, John Key (pictured). But securing an increased majority over its first and second terms, as National did on Saturday, is astounding: it raked in 48.1% of the vote.  Based on figures from election night, the party will also have enough members to form a government without the need for supporting parties—the first time this has happened since the introduction of the mixed-member proportional voting system in 1996. And even if special votes (yet to be counted) mean that National will not have an absolute majority of 61 in the 121-seat unicameral house, Mr Key is unconcerned: support from the United Future Party, the ACT Party and the Maori Party, which have all supported National Party-led governments in the last two terms, would give the National Party a comfortable majority.

New Zealand: Key wins third term with outright majority in New Zealand’s ‘dirty tricks’ election | Telegraph

New Zealand’s ruling National party secured a third term in government in the election on Saturday, winning an outright majority on a platform to continue strong economic growth. Prime Minister John Key’s centre-right party received 48.1 per cent of the vote, giving it 62 of 121 parliamentary seats and improving its performance on the previous vote in 2011. The 53-year-old former foreign exchange dealer triumphed despite allegations of dirty political tactics involving government ministers, and claims that a government spy agency had planned mass secret domestic surveillance. Investigative journalist and liberal activist Nicky Hager had previously published a book called “Dirty Politics,” which exposed the extent of the National Party’s links with a conservative blogger.

United Kingdom: Scotland Seeks to Restore Harmony After Independence Vote Divides Nation | Wall Street Journal

Though Scotland has settled its independence referendum by choosing to stay in the U.K., rifts created in the fiercely contested vote remain. “The Scottish people got it wrong,” said Susie McIntyre, a 40-year-old stay-at-home mother in central Edinburgh over the weekend, who was one of the 45% of voters who had cast a ballot for independence. “The people who voted for the union—they should’ve taken the bull by the horns and stood up for what they truly believed.” Senior politicians and other public figures are now waging a campaign to mend such divisions and soothe resentment toward the British government.

United Kingdom: Scotland’s Other Winners: Teenage Voters | Bloomberg

The 16- and 17-year-olds who voted in Scotland’s referendum didn’t determine the outcome. The margin of victory for the “yes” vote was larger than their total number of votes. But they did make a strong case to the rest of the world for a lower voting age. The U.K.’s voting age is 18, but Scottish Nationalist Party leader Alex Salmond struck a deal to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to participate in the referendum, believing it would benefit the “yes” vote. It was a logical calculation: Support for independence was highest among those under 30. Pre-election polls and surveys, however, suggested that voters under 18 were narrowly divided and leaning the other way. Kids today. So conservative. If Salmond had gotten his wish, and the vast majority of 16- and 17-year olds had voted for independence, conservatives at home and abroad would have tut-tutted that they were too young to know what they were doing. By not voting as a bloc, and by largely mirroring societal attitudes, the young Scots knocked down the image of young voters as radicals. In doing so, they gave a big boost to the argument that 16-year-olds can responsibly participate in the democratic process — and to a nascent international movement to lower voting ages.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for September 15 – 21 2014

scotland_260Al Jazeera reports that existing voting machines in the US are reaching the end of their operational life spans, jurisdictions often lack the funds to replace them, and those with funds find market offerings limited because several constraints have made manufacturing new machines difficult. Facing South observes that while there has been a flurry of state election legislation, little has been done to alleviate the long lines that plagued some parts of the country in 2012.  Investigators in Georgia backed away from allegations a Democratic-backed group may have organized voter registration fraud, saying they can confirm irregularities in only 25 applications of more than 85,000 submitted to the Secretary of State’s office. The Kansas Supreme Court ordered Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach Thursday to strike Democratic candidate Chad Taylor’s name from the Nov. 4 ballot. rejecting Kobach’s contention that Taylor’s Sept. 3 withdrawal letter failed to meet the standard set in state law. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted Secretary of State Jon Husted issued an order to county elections boards to prepare for voting a week earlier than he’d planned and during the two weekends before Election Day while at the same time pushing for a higher court to overturn the lower-court ruling that added the extra days of early voting. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel criticized last week’s federal appeals court ruling reinstating the state’s voter ID requirement for this November’s election. As the Afghanistan Electoral Commission prepared to announce the results of a comprehensive audit of June’s presidential election, the two rival candidates agreed to a power-sharing arrangement and voters rejected a referendum that would have dissolved Scotland’s 307-year-old union with England.

National: Voting’s ‘impending crisis’ | Al Jazeera

A recent presidential commission report on election administration characterizes the state of U.S. voting machines as an “impending crisis.” According to the report, created in response to a presidential order, existing voting machines are reaching the end of their operational life spans, jurisdictions often lack the funds to replace them, and those with funds find market offerings limited because several constraints have made manufacturing new machines difficult. On Election Day, these problems could translate into hours-long waits, lost votes and errors in election results. In the long term, such problems breed a lack of trust in the democratic process, reducing the public’s faith in government, experts say. According to Barbara Simons, a member of the board of advisers to the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the problem can’t be avoided any longer. “People died for the right to vote as recently as the civil rights movement,” she said. “The American Revolution was all about being able to control our own democracy, and that means voting … We know that a lot of machines were breaking in the 2012 election. It’s not that it’s an impending crisis. This crisis is already here.” Also, outdated voting machines can present security risks both in hardware deficiencies (some machines use generic keys to protect sensitive panels) and in software flaws that are difficult if not impossible to detect when compromised, according to security audits. Assessing the security of many of these systems is difficult, however, since companies insist proprietary software and hardware may not be disclosed to third parties. Government audits are often not fully public. The current problem is rooted in the short-term fixes that were implemented to solve the last major voting crisis, in 2000, when unreliable punchcard machines led to ambiguous ballots in Florida, putting the presidential election into question. After further issues in the 2002 midterm elections, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that fall. HAVA gave states millions of dollars to replace punchcard machines and created the EAC, charged with establishing standards for voting systems.

National: Waiting at the polls: Long lines and voting rights | Facing South

Every big election year, horror stories surface around the South and the rest of the country of voters having to wait for hours to cast their ballots. In 2008, reports came out of Georgia of voters having to stand in line for up to 12 hours to vote. In 2012, the battleground state of Florida garnered national headlines with accounts of voters waiting six hours at the polls. In 2013, President Obama assembled a 10-member bipartisan commission to look into the experiences of voters in the previous year’s elections and to propose solutions to help streamline the voting process. The commission found that the Florida and Georgia experiences weren’t isolated: More than 10 million people had to wait more than half an hour to vote in 2012. Arguing that “no citizen should have to wait in line for more than 30 minutes to vote,” the group outlined a series of ways election officials could make voting easier, saying that “jurisdictions can solve the problem of long lines through a combination of planning … and the efficient allocation of resources.” Yet despite a flurry of election law bills at the state level, many states have failed to act on the commission’s proposals and make improvements to ensure long wait times don’t taint the 2014 mid-term elections.

Georgia: State says 25 voter applications of 85,000 “confirmed” forgeries | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Investigators backed away Wednesday from allegations a Democratic-backed group may have organized voter registration fraud, saying they can confirm 25 applications of more than 85,000 submitted to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. Chief investigator Chris Harvey, however, said the office needed more information from the New Georgia Project to confirm no more fraudulent forms existed — already, it has identified another 26 applications as suspicious. The state has extended a deadline for the group to get investigations such information through Sept. 26. Harvey spoke after the group’s leaders said Secretary of State Brian Kemp may be ignoring more than 51,000 unprocessed voter registration applications to instead pursue what they called “a witch hunt.” With the state’s Oct. 6 registration deadline quickly approaching, state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, D-Atlanta,and more than a dozen civil rights and religious leaders who support the New Georgia Project called on Kemp —the state’s top elections official — to focus on ensuring ballot access to thousands of new voters they and others have signed up this election year.

National: 5 States Put Voting Reform to the Voters | Governing

American election reform, where states look to either impede or assist people’s ability to influence government with their vote. Ballots in at least five states — Connecticut, Montana, Missouri, Illinois and Arkansas — focus on some kind of election reform. Most states have made voting harder in the past decade by enacting voter ID laws, ostensibly to guard against voter impersonation, a problem that the public believes to be more widespread than the evidence suggests. For example, a five-year crackdown by the Justice Department under President George W. Bush resulted in only 86 people being found guilty of voter fraud across all 50 states, according to a 2007 investigation by The New York Times. In part because many of these voter ID laws have already passed, the majority of the legislative activity in 2014 actually focused on making voting more convenient. … Based on interviews with state and local election officials in states with early voting, the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School argues that early voting brings a host of benefits, including shorter lines and less administrative burden on election day. Nonetheless, eight states have cut back on early voting since 2010. One recent example is North Carolina, where the legislature decided to cut a week of early voting, eliminate same-day registration during early voting and reduce the hours of early voting on the final Saturday before election day.

District of Columbia: Elections officials ‘cannot guarantee’ a smooth Nov. 4 general election | The Washington Post

Top D.C. election officials said Thursday they have fixed problems with computer switches and servers that caused a four-hour delay in reporting results of the city’s April 1 primary. But in sometimes contentious testimony before a D.C. Council committee , the city’s elections chief said he cannot ensure a smooth night on Nov. 4. “While we have resolved the technical issues . . . I cannot guarantee” there won’t be “more glitches,” said Clifford D. Tatum, executive director of the D.C. Board of Elections. Tatum also refused to make any promises about what time the vote tallying would be finished after the close of polls in the city’s general election. “We will plan for every reasonable contingency,” Tatum said, “but we cannot make any guarantees to when the election night process will be complete.” Tatum said that on Nov. 4 the board would have 45 “roving technicians” to deal with any issues that arise at polling places.

Hawaii: Election officials prep for lava | West Hawaii Today

Hawaii County and state election workers are preparing for the possibility that voting could again be disrupted in lower Puna as a lava flow continues to advance toward populated areas. Election officials say they identified 7,542 voters in three precincts from Ainaloa to Kalapana who could have difficulty voting during the Nov. 4 General Election should the June 27 lava flow continue its long march to the sea. They are essentially the same voters, minus the precinct covering Hawaiian Paradise Park, who had voting disrupted during the Aug. 9 primary because of damage from Tropical Storm Iselle.

Kansas: Court scrubs Democrat Chad Taylor from ballot for U.S. Senate | The Kansas City Star

Democrat Chad Taylor’s name won’t appear on the Kansas ballot for the U.S. Senate. The Kansas Supreme Court, dominated by Democratic appointees, ordered Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach Thursday to strike Taylor’s name from the Nov. 4 ballot. In its ruling, the court turned aside Kobach’s contention that Taylor’s Sept. 3 withdrawal letter failed to meet the standard set in state law. “The Secretary of State thus has no discretion to refuse to remove Chadwick J. Taylor’s name from the ballot,” the court said. Kobach, a Republican mired in his own tough re-election battle, had moved to keep Taylor’s name in front of voters on grounds that the Democrat had not specified that he would be legally “incapable” of serving in the Senate. Kobach was scheduled to meet with reporters late Thursday afternoon in Topeka to discuss the ruling.

Kansas: Court strips Taylor’s name from U.S. Senate ballot; Kobach tells Democrats to pick new candidate | The Wichita Eagle

Democrat Chad Taylor’s name won’t be on the ballot for U.S. Senate. But Secretary of State Kris Kobach is determined that another Democrat will be. Minutes after the Kansas Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision overturning Kobach’s decision to keep Taylor on the ballot, Kobach declared the state’s Democratic Party must convene its state committee and choose another nominee by Sept. 26. Democratic leaders did not have an immediate response to that, though party chair Joan Wagnon said earlier in the week that “until the court tells me to do something, I’m not going to anything.” The court said the Democratic Party was not part of the case and did not rule on whether it had to appoint a replacement. The outcome of the dispute and the race could affect whether the Republican Party can recapture control of the U.S. Senate. Republicans need a net gain of six seats to take the Senate majority from Democrats, and Kansas is one of about a dozen races nationally that could determine the outcome.

Montana: State to Vote on Same-Day Voter Registration | Flathead Beacon

Montana voters will lie to rest a divisive issue this November when they fill out their General Election ballot – whether to continue allowing new voters to register on Election Day, as the state has allowed since 2006. The legislative referendum will appear on the ballot after heated legal debate. In February, the state Supreme Court ruled the issue could proceed when it denied a petition by voting-rights groups attempting to occlude the referendum from the ballot. The Republican-controlled Legislature passed the referendum in 2013, placing it on the 2014 ballot, though it was rewritten after opponents argued that language in the referendum’s ballot initiative was misleading. The language asserted that ending same-day registration was necessary to comply with federal law. If the referendum passes and same-day registration is rescinded, voter registration would end at 5 p.m. on the Friday before Election Day.

Nebraska: Candidate will appeal judge’s ballot ruling | Lincoln Journal Star

A candidate for Nebraska governor says he will seek to appeal a judge’s decision allowing Mike Foley’s name to remain on the ballot as Republican Pete Ricketts’ running mate. Ricketts selected Foley as his lieutenant governor after former Lt. Gov. Lavon Heidemann resigned from his post and dropped out of the race last week. On Wednesday, Lancaster County District Judge Lori Maret dismissed a petition by Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Mark Elworth Jr. to have Heidemann’s name on the ballot for the Nov. 4 election. Elworth and state Democrats have criticized Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale, a Republican, for allowing Foley’s name onto the ballot despite the switch taking place after a deadline for Ricketts to commit to a running mate.

North Dakota: Secretary of State Al Jaeger gets funding request to cover costs of reviewing ballot measures | Associated Press

A state commission on Wednesday approved Secretary of State Al Jaeger’s emergency funding request to help his agency cover overtime, temporary help and other costs associated with a spate of measures on the Nov. 4 ballot. North Dakota’s Emergency Commission, a six-member panel that includes the governor, legislative leaders and Jaeger, unanimously voted to increase funding to review the measures from $8,000 to $15,000. Voters will decide eight measures this fall, the most on a ballot since there were nine in North Dakota’s 1996 June election, Jaeger said. November elections in 1980 and 1990, and a 1989 special election each had eight ballot measures.

Wisconsin: Opponents of voter ID law seek reversal of court’s decision | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Groups challenging Wisconsin’s voter ID law in filings asked a full appeals court to reverse a decision by three federal judges that allows the law to go into effect this fall. The submissions Tuesday and Wednesday by lawyers for the Advancement Project and the American Civil Liberties Union said Friday’s decision by a panel of judges from the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals was a “radical, last-minute change to procedures for conducting an election that is already underway.” “Supreme Court precedent and other circuits uniformly caution against such eleventh-hour changes to the election laws, even where those courts have approved such changes for future elections,” the attorneys wrote. In a terse order Wednesday, the court told Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s office to respond by Tuesday. Van Hollen declined to comment on the filings through his spokeswoman, Dana Brueck. The legal fight is coming to a head just seven weeks before the Nov. 4 election between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democrat Mary Burke. Walker signed the voter ID law in 2011; Burke opposes it.

Fiji: Election Hit With Fraud Accusations | Wall Street Journal

Fiji’s election has been thrown into confusion as a united opposition says it has evidence of fraud, contradicting international observers’ findings that the election result looked to be in line with what people wanted. Provisional results give Rear Adm. Voreqe Bainimarama’s party, Fiji First, a convincing lead with more than 60% of the vote, according to data released by the Fijian election authority early Thursday. The military strongman has ruled Fiji for eight years. The nearest opposition, the Social Democratic Liberal Party, known as Sodelpa, won just 27% of the vote, the election authority said. Final results aren’t expected for several days. Peter Reith, the Australian co-leader of the Multinational Observers Group, said that after talking to 92 observers from 15 countries, it had been concluded the elections were “on track to broadly represent the will of the Fijian voters.”

New Zealand: New Zealand prepares to vote after ‘strangest, dirtiest’ election campaign | The Guardian

Election campaign labelled New Zealand’s strangest, dirtiest and most dramatic, reaches a climax as voters go to the polls, though it may take days or weeks before a government is agreed. In the last month conventional policy arguments have been squeezed to the margins, with the ruling National party forced to face down revelations of links to a notorious attack-blogger that hogged headlines for a fortnight. That was soon followed by allegations of deception over state surveillance from the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the journalist Glenn Greenwald. In response, the National party leader and prime minister, John Key, maintained a consistent strategy of dismissing the allegations and attacking the messenger’s motives and credibility.

New Zealand: The law is the law on election day | MSN-NZ

Rules preventing people saying how they have voted and taking selfies with their ticked voting paper will be tested as never before on polling day. Publishing anything on election day that could potentially influence another voter is strictly prohibited in New Zealand. People can post on Facebook that they have voted but not who they have voted for because that may influence others. They can take selfies outside the voting place after they have voted but no pictures are allowed in polling booths depicting ticked boxes on the ballot paper. The Electoral Commission says it will investigate complaints. “This is a long-standing law in New Zealand and one most New Zealanders value,” chief electoral officer Robert Peden told NZ Newswire.

United Kingdom: Voter Intimidation Grips Scotland as It Votes on Independence | The Daily Beast

Scuffles have broken out in Scotland amid confrontations and reports of voter intimidation on the final day of an increasingly passionate campaign for independence. Andy Murray, Scotland’s most celebrated athlete, joined a dramatic late surge for voting Yes on independence with a rallying cry on the eve of the historic referendum. “Let’s do this!” he declared. The tennis star’s unexpected change of heart has been replicated by hundreds of thousands of Scots who, according to polls, have swung behind independence in the last month, ratcheting up the tension ahead of polling day on Thursday. The battle to secure a fully independent Scotland for the first time in more than 300 years reached dramatic new heights on the final night of campaigning when there was a stand-off between rival supporters in Glasgow, while a heavy police presence monitored the melee in Edinburgh. Street and police confirmed one arrest outside a polling station. Both sides accuse the other of bullying tactics.