Ohio: Lawmakers Want To Push Stalled Voter ID Bill | Ohio Public Radio

A group of conservative Ohio lawmakers thinks it’s time the legislature pass a bill under consideration that would require voters to show a valid driver’s license or state issued photo ID before they can cast a ballot. The leader of the Ohio Christian Alliance, Chris Long, is supporting lawmakers who have pulled a discharge petition to put an existing bill in the legislature up for vote.  If the majority of lawmakers sign that petition, it could force the Ohio House and Senate leaders to let lawmakers in those chambers vote for it.  The bill, which would require voters to show a driver’s license or government issued id before casting a ballot, has been stalled in a legislative committee and hasn’t been brought up for a vote by the general assembly.  Long says the measure is needed to prevent voter fraud, even though Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted says there were only a little more than 2 thousandths of one percent of voter fraud cases in the 2012 election.

Texas: Legal challenge of Texas voter ID law kicks off in federal court | Scripps Media

A challenge of the Texas voter ID kicked off in federal court Tuesday in Corpus Christi with opening statements and a first round of evidentiary testimony. The trial comes about two months before the November midterm elections, and opponents of the voter photo ID law are hoping for a quick resolution so the higher standard of voter identification is thrown out before election day. “We’ve made it no secret that this case is important and needs to be ruled on before the next election,” Chad Dunn, an attorney for the plaintiffs opposing the bill, told the Caller-Times after the first day of hearings. “Evidence out there shows that hundreds of thousands in this state don’t have the photo ID they need.”

Texas: In Texas voter ID trial, witnesses describe burden of getting ID | MSNBC

Sammie Louise Bates moved to Texas from Illinois in 2011. She wanted to vote last year, but all she had was an Illinois identification card, and under Texas’s strict voter ID law, that wasn’t acceptable. To get a Texas ID, Bates needed a birth certificate from her native Mississippi, which cost $42. That was money that Bates, whose income is around $321 a month, didn’t have. “I had to put $42 where it would do the most good,” Bates, who is African-American, testified Tuesday, the first day of the trial over Texas’s ID law. “We couldn’t eat the birth certificate.” Another witness, Calvin Carrier, described the difficulties his father, a Korean War veteran, had in obtaining an acceptable ID, thanks to errors on his birth certificate. Myrna Perez, the deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice, whose lawyers are among those arguing the case for the plaintiffs, said those witnesses were there to show that “there are real people out there who don’t have the ID that’s needed. When you are limited income, it can be very challenging to scrape up the money that you need for the underlying ID, and it requires a tremendous amount of hoops to go through.”

Editorials: The Texas two-step and the Voting Rights Act | Scott Bomboy/Constitution Daily

The Justice Department and the state of Texas are tangling in two separate court cases that could determine how much of the Voting Rights Act is still enforceable. Last year, the United States Supreme Court moved to narrow the scope of the historic act, passed in 1965 as a watershed moment in the civil rights movement. The Act in its original form guaranteed the voting rights of minorities under the 14th and 15th Amendments, including a provision called Section 5 that required states with a history of discrimination to get federal government approval before changing their election laws. In 2013, the Supreme Court decided in Shelby County v. Holder that the formula used to decide which states had historically discriminated against voters was unconstitutional, and it asked Congress to devise a new coverage formula. The ruling effectively allowed nine states (mostly in the South) to change their election laws without federal approval, since there was little expectation that Congress could agree on a new coverage formula in the near future. But the Obama administration and the Justice Department, under Attorney General Eric Holder, vowed to use other parts of the Voting Rights Act to press its case where it believed voter discrimination existed. In Texas, the Justice Department is pursuing two federal court actions: one in San Antonio and the other in Corpus Christi.

Canada: Registration issues cropping up in Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership race | Metro

With just days to go in the Progressive Conservative leadership race, candidates are raising that the new online voting system may mean not everyone gets a chance to cast a ballot. The party is using an online system and verifying that voters are eligible to cast a ballot by cross-referencing members with the Elections Alberta voters’ list. Ric McIver said his team is working hard to fix issues where potential supporters didn’t align with the list.  “We have had a lot of rejections for a whole variety of reasons and we have just been working through them one file at a time,” he said.

Editorials: Hong Kong’s Democracy Dilemma | Margaret Ng/New York Times

On Sunday the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress issued restrictive guidelines for the election of Hong Kong’s next chief executive in 2017. Shorn of its technical details, the proposal in effect gives Beijing the means to control who could run for the top office in Hong Kong: Voters would get to cast a ballot, but only for one of just a handful of candidates pre-selected by the Chinese government. “By endorsing this framework,” Cheung Man-kwong, a veteran politician of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, wrote, “China has in truth and in substance reneged on her promise to give Hong Kong universal suffrage.” Three decades ago, when Beijing and the British government, which was in charge of Hong Kong then, were negotiating the terms of the territory’s handover back to China, Mr. Cheung was among those who supported “reunification” on the understanding that Hong Kong would eventually acquire a fully democratic system.

Fiji: First vote in over 8 years for Fijians | Stuff.co.nz

For the first time in eight and a half years, nearly 600,000 Fijians are voting in a democracy-restoring general election. Early voting before the September 17 elections began today in venues around the archipelago, including army bases and prisons. But the long wait for democracy’s return coincides with the capture of 45 Fijian peacekeepers by an al Qaeda-linked group in civil war-racked Syria. They are all new soldiers without peacekeeping experience. The military says they have been affected by seeing people being beheaded near their base. Pre-poll voters are confronted with a big sheet of paper containing numbers beginning from 135 and up to 382. Each number relates to the 247 people running in the elections. Military strongman Frank Bainimarama, who ended democracy with a coup in 2006 and who devised the voting system, is No 279.

United Kingdom: Votes for expats: Plan to end UK’s 15-year rule | The Local

British expats have long campaigned against the rule which states that once they have lived abroad for longer than 15 years they lose their right to vote back in the UK. That has left many UK citizens disenfranchised as they are also denied the right to vote in most foreign countries, unless they seek citizenship. And this week it appears that at least one political party has answered their call. While the Liberal Democrats have said they will push for changes on expat voting rights, and there are suggestions some Labour MPs also support a possible scrapping of the current regime, David Cameron’s Tory party has now promised to abolish the rule – if they win the next general election, scheduled for May 2015. The Tories say they want to protect the rights of citizens overseas who have “contributed to Britain all their lives”, according to a Tory spokesman quoted in the Daily Telegraph.

National: Wealthy political donors seize on new latitude to give to unlimited candidates | The Washington Post

Andrew Sabin gave Republicans so much money in 2012 that he accidentally went over a limit on how much individuals could donate to federal candidates and party committees. So Sabin, who owns a New York-based precious-metals refining business, was delighted when the Supreme Court did away with the limit in April. Since then, he has been doling out contributions to congressional candidates across the country — in Colorado, Texas, Iowa and “even Alaska,” he said. Top Republicans have taken notice: Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Florida Gov. Rick Scott have paid him personal visits this year, he noted proudly. “You have to realize, when you start contributing to all these guys, they give you access to meet them and talk about your issues,” said Sabin, who has given away more than $177,000. “They know that I’m a big supporter.”

Editorials: Don’t let Arizona and Kansas get away with potentially discriminatory voter registration rules | Los Angeles Times

Arizona, which has become infamous for its hostility toward immigrants who are in the country illegally, lost an important case in the U.S. Supreme Court last year when the justices ruled that the state couldn’t require proof of U.S. citizenship as part of the registration process for voting in elections for Congress. The 7-2 decision said that, where federal elections were concerned, the state had to “accept and use” a federal registration form on which an applicant states under penalty of perjury that he or she is a citizen without having to provide a passport or other documentation. Congress, which has the power under the Constitution to override state rules for congressional elections, clearly intended to make voting easier, not harder. The decision was good policy as well as good law because there is little evidence that immigrants who are in the country illegally are trying to register to vote in meaningful numbers. On the other hand, a requirement to supply documentation could keep many citizens — immigrants and otherwise — from exercising the franchise. Like efforts to require a photo ID at polling places, a requirement of proof of citizenship disproportionately affects minorities and the poor.

Editorials: Prizes for Voting? Tackling Turnout in American Politics | John Wilson/Article 3

In the 2012 presidential election, over 125 million votes were cast for one of two presidential candidates. President Obama was reelected with 51% of the popular vote (a little over 65 million votes). And yet in that election, only 57.5 percent of eligible citizens cast a ballot. We should take a second to note that there are countries with so called “compulsory voting” where citizens are required vote. According to the Center for Voting and Democracy, an advocacy group for electoral reform, countries with mandatory voting, such as Australia, have achieved close to 90% voter turnout in recent years. If only 57.5 percent of eligible voters vote in a presidential election year, you can imagine what happens at the midterms (like the one we will have in November). For context, turnout for the last five midterm elections has hovered between 39 and 42 percent. So despite how crucially important our right to vote is in this country, somewhere between 42 percent and 61 percent of the eligible population decides not to vote in a given election year. The problem with this low voter turnout is that it can have a major impact on the types of candidates that succeed. We have talked before about the polarization of American politics into two more extreme parties unable that are unwilling to compromise. While voter turnout isn’t entirely to blame for this, you can see how if only the most enthusiastic (and usually extreme) voters turn out to vote for candidates, its more likely that those extreme candidates win primaries and general elections.

Alabama: Court to weigh use of race in drawing political lines | USA Today

Democrat Quinton Ross has represented a pretty safe district in the Alabama state Senate since 2002, when 72% of its voting-age population was black. In his last two elections, he ran unopposed. When it came time to redraw the state’s political lines in 2012, however, Republicans who had won control of the state Legislature made it even safer for Ross, an African American. To replace voters who had moved away, they added 14,806 blacks and 36 whites to District 26, resulting in a 75% black majority. The Legislature’s artistry had the intended effect throughout the state, racially and politically. It solidified the ability of black voters to elect their favored candidates, as mandated by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And it made adjacent suburban and rural districts even more white – and more friendly to Republicans. “The district was already at a point where you had quite a few blacks,” Ross says. “Sometimes, you can just go overboard.”

Arizona: Peoria checks options for council vote | Daily News Sun

Peoria officials continue to examine their choices for conducting this year’s election for City Council representing the Mesquite District a week after a federal judge ordered ballot counting stopped. The ruling came after a pair of errors by Maricopa County elections officials and the county’s printing firm that left one of the candidate’s names off the ballot. U.S. District Judge David Campbell ordered city and county officials to come up with a voting plan for the sprawling, mostly undeveloped district — Peoria’s largest — after candidate Ken Krieger sought a temporary restraining order preventing the election from continuing. Krieger’s name was left off the original ballot due to an error by county Elections Director Karen Osborne and was omitted from a replacement ballot due to a mistake by the county’s election-ballot printing firm, Runbeck Election Services of Tempe.

California: Two counties ask to form a separate state | KCRA

Representatives of two counties in far Northern California petitioned state officials Thursday for the right to form a 51st state called Jefferson, formally asking state lawmakers to vote on their proposal. Modoc and Siskiyou counties, which share a border with Oregon and have a combined population of about 53,000, submitted petitions from their county governments to the secretaries of the state Assembly and Senate after filing a petition complaining about a lack of representation to the secretary of state. Organizer Mark Baird told a crowd of about 70 supporters at a rally outside the state Capitol that residents of as many as 10 counties “would be free to create a small state with limited government.” “We don’t need government from a state telling people in a county what to do with their resources and their children’s education. You are better equipped to educate your children than the state or federal government,” Baird said to applause.

Florida: Is Redistricting Case Headed to State’s High Court? | New Service of Florida

A coalition of voting-rights organizations and individual voters wants the Florida Supreme Court take up the legal battle over the state’s congressional districts. In a notice of appeal filed Friday with the 1st District Court of Appeal, the groups—which include the League of Women Voters of Florida—also said they were giving up on having the lines changed in time for this year’s congressional elections. That had emerged as a major flashpoint in the battle between the Republican-led Legislature and the voting groups about whether congressional districts violated the anti-gerrymandering Fair Districts constitutional amendments approved by voters in 2010. In July, Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis found that a congressional map approved by lawmakers in 2012 violated the constitutional requirements. That led lawmakers to hold a special legislative session and redraw portions of the map. Lewis upheld the new map, despite arguments from the voting groups that it continued to violate the constitution.

Guam: Election board scrutinizes ballot printing process, other poll issues | Marianas Variety

Members of the Guam Election Commission spent nearly two hours yesterday scrutinizing the issues surrounding Saturday’s primary election, one of which was the discovery of misprinted ballots for the partisan election. The misprinted ballots were described as one-sided ballots on which voters could only choose candidates from one particular party. The other side of the misprinted ballots was blank. Correctly printed ballots were to have candidates of the Democratic Party on one side and Republican candidates on the other side. Voters were to vote only for candidates from one party. Joseph Mesa, GEC chairman, yesterday questioned the person in charge of printing the ballots in order to shed light on the issue. Program coordinator Joseph Eseke said that in producing the partisan ballots, the document ran four times in the printers. In setting up the printers, it was revealed that plates sometimes moved affecting the output. Eseke also mentioned the “sensitivity” of the printers in some elements in the ballot document such as the lines and ovals. He said GEC used one printer for the color and one printer for the text, which was black.

Editorials: Double voting? Not necessarily: Widespread voter fraud in Maryland is unlikely | Baltimore Sun

The recent report by Election Integrity Maryland that there may be as many as 164 individuals who voted in both Maryland and Virginia in the 2012 election hasn’t exactly caused the Maryland Board of Elections to press the panic button. There’s a reason for that: The numbers don’t prove fraud and more likely point to clerical error. That’s not to suggest the Fairfax County Electoral Board should not seek criminal investigation, as officials announced last week, into 17 possible cases of duplicate voting in that Northern Virginia county — such due diligence is entirely appropriate — but the chances that such incidents will result in fraud convictions are slim. If there’s one thing experience has taught, it’s that duplicate voter registration is almost always the result of nothing more nefarious than people moving from one state to another and registration rolls not being expunged in a timely manner. Trumped up horror stories about voting irregularities have fueled a Republican-led push to enact voter identification laws that are far more likely to discourage voting, particularly by young, elderly and minority voters who are less likely to have government-approved ID, than it is to uncover organized (or even disorganized) attempts to alter election outcomes. Voter fraud is not unknown, it’s simply uncommon.

Mississippi: Could federal case succeed where McDaniel failing? | Clarion-Ledger

Special Judge Hollis McGehee delivered what could be the final blow to Chris McDaniel’s election challenge in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate. McGehee sided with Thad Cochran in dismissing the court challenge, saying McDaniel missed a 20-day deadline to file his challenge with the Mississippi Republican Party. McDaniel has the option to appeal McGehee’s ruling to the Mississippi Supreme Court, a decision McDaniel is expected to announce Tuesday. If McDaniel appeals, we are left with two scenarios:

1. The state’s high court could overturn McGehee’s ruling, in which case the challenge would be returned to the circuit clerk and move forward.
2. Justices could uphold McGehee’s ruling, and that would be the end of this long ordeal.

It is seemingly illogical that McDaniel would choose to throw the towel in at this stage. To not appeal would be conceding defeat, something he has absolutely refused to do to this point. It would be ending the fight for what he has deemed “the integrity of Mississippi’s electoral system” when there are still one more avenue to explore.

Ohio: Libertarians protest Kasich ties to ballot decision | Associated Press

Libertarians in Ohio cried foul Tuesday after learning a Republican consultant and appointee of Gov. John Kasich was responsible for hiring the law firm whose challenge pushed two of their candidates off the statewide ballot. Terry Casey worked for Kasich’s 2010 campaign and the governor has since appointed him to the $70,000-a-year job chairing the state personnel review board. Casey’s role hiring Zeiger, Tigges & Little emerged in a case in which Libertarians are asking federal Judge Michael Watson to restore governor candidate Charlie Earl and attorney general candidate Steven Linnabary to November’s ballot. In a new court filing, the party also says Bradley Smith, hired to oversee the disqualification hearing by Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, didn’t disclose he was working for Ohio’s Republican attorney general, Mike DeWine, doing pro bono work at the time.

Ohio: GOP lawmakers in Ohio seek vote on photo ID bill | Associated Press

Several Republican lawmakers hope to force the House to vote on a bill requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls in the political swing state. Backers of the measure announced plans Tuesday to use a legislative maneuver to pull the bill from a committee, which hasn’t held hearings on it. The legislation was introduced almost a year ago. “What is the problem that we cannot have photo ID required for voting in Ohio?” state Rep. Matt Lynch said at a news conference in Columbus. “Frankly, there should be no problem because we can’t get on an airplane — we can barely get into a public building — if we don’t have such an ID.” Lynch, a Geauga County Republican, joined three GOP lawmakers in signing a discharge petition to get the bill out of committee. The petition requires 50 signatures from representatives to force it to the House floor for a vote.

Texas: Testimony Begins in Trial Over Texas Voter ID Law | The Texas Tribune

The U.S. Department of Justice and other plaintiff’s attorneys began their challenge Tuesday in federal court to Texas’ stringent voter ID law, the first national test of such laws that have surfaced following a Supreme Court ruling that cleared the way for such measures. Six plaintiff’s attorneys made opening statements in the case, arguing that the law is designed to neutralize the voting power of Texas’ growing minority population. Lawyers from the Texas attorney general’s office countered that the plaintiffs have offered no proof that minority voters were being unfairly edged out of the voting process and that the law helps stamp out fraud. The trial over the law, which has been enforced through two elections since 2013, is expected to last two weeks before U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos makes a decision. Elizabeth Westfall of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the first plaintiff’s attorney to make an opening statement, said that 787,000 Texas voters do not have acceptable photo identification to vote now. “And Hispanics and African-Americans make up a disproportionate share,” she added.

Texas: Texas voter ID trial opens in U.S. court | Reuters

A U.S. court in Texas heard arguments on Tuesday in a case over a law requiring voters to present photo identification, a move the state’s Republican leaders say will prevent fraud while plaintiffs call it an attempt at suppressing minority turnout. The case is also part of a new strategy by the Obama administration to challenge voting laws it says discriminate by race in order to counter a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that freed states from strict federal oversight. The trial that started on Tuesday at the U.S. District Court in Corpus Christi stems from a battle over stringent voter ID measures signed into law by Texas Governor Rick Perry, a Republican, in 2011. The law requires voters to present a photo ID such as a concealed handgun license or driver’s license, but it excludes student IDs as invalid. Plaintiffs argued in opening arguments the law will hit the elderly and poorer voters including racial minorities the hardest because they are less likely to have such IDs.

Editorials: Sky-high stakes in Texas voter ID trial | Zachary Roth/MSNBC

For students at Prairie View A&M, a historically black university about an hour’s drive from Houston, the right to vote has never come easy. In the early 1970s—soon after 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds gained the franchise—the Waller County voting registrar began requiring that students answer questions about their employment status, property ownership, and other issues before they could be added to the rolls. He was stopped by a federal court, in a key ruling for student voting rights. A few years later, local officials tried to move school-board elections from April to August, making it harder for Prairie View students to vote—a scheme that was blocked by the Justice Department. Then in 2004, the local prosecutor sent a letter to election administrators saying Prairie View students weren’t automatically eligible to vote at their college address, and threatening the possibility of arrest, before backing down amid an outcry. That same year, the county tried to cut early voting hours on campus—again, it was stopped by the federal government. And in 2008, the county acknowledged in a settlement with the Bush Justice Department that it had rejected voter registration applications in violation of federal voting law, primarily affecting Prairie View students.

Afghanistan: Abdullah threatens to back out of Afghanistan election | Los Angeles Times

The campaign team of Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister running against Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai for the presidency of Afghanistan, has issued a 24-hour notice to the United Nations and international observers that if changes are not made to processes in the ongoing audit of all 8 million votes cast in the second round of the election, they will back out of the election process entirely. “We will give one day to the international community to review and assure that the vote auditing and the political negotiations are moving forward properly. … If our demands are not met and the auditing not conducted legitimately and the political talks without honesty, then we will withdraw from both processes,” said Abdullah spokesman Syed Fazel Sancharaki. nThe Monday afternoon warning came a week after the team of Reform and Partnership, as Abdullah’s campaign refers to itself, backed out of the audit claiming their concerns about widespread fraud in the June 14 runoff were ignored by the United Nations.

China: Ruling On Hong Kong Election Brings The City Closer To A Mass Occupation | Associated Press

China’s legislature on Sunday ruled out allowing open nominations in the inaugural election for Hong Kong’s leader, saying they would create a “chaotic society.” Democracy activists in the Asian financial hub responded by saying that a long-threatened mass occupation of the heart of the city “will definitely happen.” In setting tight limits on how far electoral reforms can go in Hong Kong, Beijing issued its firmest reminder yet that it’s still in charge despite the substantial autonomy it promised the city after taking control from Britain in 1997. The guidelines laid down by China’s communist leaders ratchet up the potential for a showdown pitting Beijing against Hong Kong democracy supporters, a group that represents a broad swath of society, including students, religious leaders and financial workers. The decision by the legislature’s powerful Standing Committee sharpens fears that China wants to screen candidates for loyalty to the central government and is reneging on its promise to let Hong Kong’s leader be directly elected by voters, rather than the current committee of mostly pro-Beijing tycoons.

Philippines: Comelec: Mix of old, new tech for 2016 polls | ABS-CBN News

The Commission on Elections will be reusing the existing Optical Mark Reader technology as the primary voting system for the 2016 Presidential Elections. Chairman Sixto Brillantes made the announcement to the media Tuesday afternoon following an en banc meeting of the Commission. Brillantes said that the en banc has decided to adopt in general the recommendation of the Comelec Advisory Council to reuse the existing technology, “provided that the existing machines be subjected to rigorous quality assurance and testing processes” and “that the security features and minimum system capabilities required by law will be fully implemented.” Brillantes said that the Commission is looking to purchase or lease between 10,000 to 41,000 additional precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines to augment the existing 80,000 purchased machines.

Editorials: Will Texas Get Away With Discriminating Against Voters? | Ari Berman/The Nation

Imani Clark, Aurica Washington, Crystal Owens and Michelle Bessiake are students at Prairie View A&M and Texas Southern University, two historically black colleges in Texas. They do not have a driver’s license or own a car, and do not possess one of the five forms of government-issued identification required by Texas to vote. They can no longer vote with their students IDs in Texas, where a handgun permit is a valid voter ID but a student ID is not. The four students are among the plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of Texas’s voter ID law in federal court in Corpus Christi this week. The trial before Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, an Obama appointee, is expected to last two to three weeks. In August 2012, a three-judge district court in Washington found that the law discriminated against black and Hispanic voters under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The court called it “the most stringent [voter ID law] in the country.” But after the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder freed states like Texas with a long history of voting discrimination from having to approve their voting changes with the federal government, Texas wasted no time in implementing the blocked law. “With today’s decision, the state’s voter ID law will take effect immediately,” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced hours after the court’s ruling. Groups like the Justice Department, NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus are now challenging the law under Section 2 of the VRA, which remains on the books.

China: Democracy in China: The struggle for Hong Kong | The Economist

Chinese officials have called it a “leap forward” for democracy in Hong Kong. Yet their announcement on August 31st of plans to allow, for the first time, every Hong Kong citizen to vote for the territory’s leader has met only anger and indifference. Joy was conspicuously absent. This is not because Hong Kong’s citizens care little for the right to vote, but because China has made it abundantly clear that the next election for Hong Kong’s chief executive, due in 2017, will be rigged. The only candidates allowed to stand will be those approved by the Communist Party in Beijing, half a continent away. At its worst, this risks provoking a disaster which even China cannot want. Democrats are planning protests. It is unclear how many people will join in, but the fear is that the territory’s long history of peaceful campaigning for political reform will give way to skirmishes with police, mass arrests and possibly even intervention by the People’s Liberation Army. That would disrupt one of Asia’s wealthiest and most orderly economies, and set China against the West. But even if, as is likely, such a calamity is avoided, this leap sideways is a huge missed opportunity not just for Hong Kong but also for the mainland. A chance to experiment with the sort of local democracy that might have benefited all of China has been missed.

Voting Blogs: The Presidential Commission on Election Administration — A New Model for Reform | Heather Gerken/Election Law Blog

Reform is always hard. Election reform is even harder, on average. There are two unusual obstacles that are always at play for election reform. To begin, you don’t just have to get by the legislators beholden to interest groups; you have to get by the legislators’ own interests. The foxes are guarding this particular henhouse. That means that those who know the most about reform and care the most about it are often the legislators who oppose it.  Second, election reform is always second-order reform because it focuses on process rather than substance. I firmly believe that process shapes substance, but election reform is still one step removed from bread-and-butter issues like healthcare and jobs. That makes organizing harder. In the face of these political tides running against reform, note how differently the President’s Commission looks than most reform commissions of the past.

Alaska: Democrat and independent challengers to Gov. Sean Parnell negotiate merging campaigns | Associated Press

The two challengers to Gov. Sean Parnell are discussing uniting their campaigns, representatives of the candidates said Monday. Democrat Byron Mallott and independent candidate Bill Walker were in their second day of discussions Monday about whether they would run as a bipartisan or non-partisan ticket, Mallott spokeswoman Laury Scandling said in an email to The Associated Press. A formal statement was expected by noon Tuesday, said Scandling, who added that she plans to leave the campaign at the same time. Any changes to the ballot have to be made by Tuesday.