National: Stalled Voting Rights Act gets June 25 Senate hearing | Miami Herald

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a June 25 hearing on a long-stalled bill to repair the 1965 Voting Rights Act after the Supreme Court weakened the landmark civil rights legislation by weakening key provisions last year. ‘It is time for Congress to act,’ Leahy said in a statement Monday. ‘Just as Congress came together 50 years ago to enact the Civil Rights Act, Democrats and Republicans should work together now to renew and strengthen the Voting Rights Act, which has always been bipartisan.’ The hearing will occur on the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling that knocked out parts of the voting rights act and urged Congress to revisit it, saying the law needs updating to account for how times have changed.

National: Impacts of voting case extend past Kansas, Arizona | Associated Press

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and other top lawmakers have urged a federal appeals court to overturn a decision by a judge in Kansas that they say would limit the authority of Congress to regulate federal elections and derail its ability to pass legislation protecting the right to vote. Their friend-of-the-court filing last week at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes in the lawsuit filed by Kansas and Arizona to force federal elections officials to help those states impose their proof-of-citizenship requirements on federal voter registration forms used by residents of the states. Both states argue the requirements prevent voter fraud by thwarting voting by noncitizens. Critics of such laws view them as suppressing voter turnout. But both sides agree the potential impacts of the case could extend to other states.

Editorials: Eric Cantor’s Last, Legacy-Burnishing Task: Update the VRA | Ron Chistie/The Daily Beast

As the fallout from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning primary defeat continues, the departing number two in the House should burnish his legacy by pushing through a bill to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). The Voting Rights Act prohibits discriminatory actions that had largely denied blacks the ability to vote in the South since Reconstruction following the Civil War. Congress has reauthorized the provisions of the VRA four times—most recently in 2006, under the leadership of George W. Bush and with bipartisan support from Congress. The House supported the measure 390-33 and the Senate unanimously approved the legislation 98-0. So why reauthorize the VRA now, and why should Eric Cantor be the driving force?

California: Thousands of mail-in ballots too late to count | Associated Press

Thousands of mail-in ballots are being invalidated in California elections because they arrive too late to be counted, government officials and political experts said Monday. In the state’s June 3 primary, Los Angeles County received about 2,400 mail-in ballots after the Election Day deadline — the close of polls — making them ineligible to be tallied. The number of latecomers invalidated in Santa Cruz County was nearly 600, all postmarked on or before the election. The postmark isn’t the deciding factor — the cutoff is the close of polls, when election officials must have the ballots in-hand. In a state with nearly 18 million registered voters, the figures for late-arriving ballots are relatively tiny, but even small numbers can make a difference in tight races.

Delaware: Same-day voter registration supporters push for bill’s passage | Delaware Newszap

Advocates for same-day voter registration met at Frazier’s restaurant Friday to pump up support for getting legislation passed. The bill, H.B. 105, if approved would make Delaware the 13th state in the nation to allow eligible voters to register to vote on the day of the election at their polling place. Currently, the registration deadline is 24 days prior to an election. The Central Delaware NAACP said Friday that states with same-day voter registration have a voter turnout around 10 points higher than states that do not.

Illinois: State board questioned in political remap case | Chicago Tribune

An unusual move by Illinois election officials has injected new controversy into a fight over who wields the crucial power of drawing Illinois’ political maps, with supporters of a proposed constitutional amendment complaining that insiders are undermining their efforts. The political intrigue was heightened when the state elections board abruptly decided to overrule its own hearing officer and shorten a key deadline for those seeking to prove the proposal has enough valid signatures to be placed on the statewide ballot in November.

New York: Lawmaker promises voting rights to illegal immigrants | Haaretz

A New York lawmaker wants to grant many of the rights of citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants and non-citizen residents, including the right to vote in local and state elections, under a bill introduced on Monday. The New York Is Home Act is the first bill in the United States that would provide such broad rights to non-citizens who can show they have lived and paid taxes in New York for at least three years, according to the bill’s sponsor, state Senator Gustavo Rivera. “Nearly 3 million people in the state of New York currently reside here and make New York their home, but can’t fully participate in civic, political, and economic life,” Rivera, a Democrat who represents the Bronx in New York City, said in a telephone interview. He described the bill as a response to the stagnation of immigration reform efforts in the U.S. Congress.

Ohio: Early voting hasn’t boosted Ohio turnout | The Columbus Dispatch

Early voting has not led to more voting in Ohio, at least not in terms of total votes cast. A Dispatch analysis of the vote totals from the past three presidential elections in the state shows that overall turnout in the 2012 race, when Ohioans arguably had the most opportunities in state history to vote early, was lower than in the 2004 election, when there was virtually no early voting in Ohio. Turnout in 2008, the first presidential race in which Ohioans had no-fault absentee voting and also the first time an African-American was on the ballot, was about 1 percent higher than in 2004. “People who vote early are people who are typically going to vote anyway,” said Paul Beck, a political science professor at Ohio State University. “So, early voting hasn’t really succeeded in turning out more people to vote. We’ve made it a lot easier to vote, but on the other hand, some people are very discouraged about politics and might not care how easy it is to vote.”

Tennessee: Green, Constitution parties push for recognition | Tennesseean

Most voters will think only about Republicans and Democrats when they go to the polls this summer and fall, but a few political activists want at least some Tennesseans to consider alternatives. Representatives of the Green Party and Constitution Party say they will push to establish a foothold in Tennessee politics following years of battles in the courts and state legislature. They would appear to have their best opportunity in decades to do so. A federal judge has ordered state officials to let Greens and Constitutionalists appear on the ballot for just the second time ever. And the races at the top of the ballot are likely to be landslides, which could make it easier for them to pitch Tennesseans on casting third-party votes in protest.

Texas: Analysis: Texas Seen as “Kind of an Electoral Wasteland” | The Texas Tribune

Voter turnout in Texas is indisputably awful. The March primaries drew 1.9 million, with only 560,033 voting in the Democratic contest and the rest voting in the more competitive Republican races. According to the Texas secretary of state’s office, there were 18.9 million adults in the state in March, and 13.6 million of them were registered to vote. Texans did even worse in the runoff last month. Only 951,461 voted — 201,008 in the Democratic primary. The competitive pickings were admittedly slim on that side of the ballot, but there is no way to spin Texas voters’ anemic level of interest into a positive commentary on civic engagement.

Virginia: New voting machines to improve voting in Fairfax County | WTOP

Residents of Fairfax County will be able to use a new voting machines in this upcoming November election, the first such comprehensive equipment replacement in more than a decade. The Fairfax County Office of Elections purchased 1,125 voting machines from Election Systems and Software, which includes 525 paper ballot scanning machines and 600 paper ballot generating machines, with the initial price at approximately $6.4 million. The new equipment will provide and scan paper ballots for voters, and will also let voters know if their ballot is blank or they voted for more candidates than allowed in any race.

Afghanistan: Candidate Alleges Voting Fraud by Karzai and Aides | New York Times

Less than 48 hours after a runoff election to choose the next president of Afghanistan, the first signs of a looming political crisis emerged on Monday, with the campaign of Abdullah Abdullah claiming there had been widespread ballot stuffing and suggesting he was being set up for a defeat he would not accept. A senior campaign official for Mr. Abdullah, who won the most votes in the election’s first round, said the candidate believes President Hamid Karzai and a coterie of advisers around him orchestrated the fraud. The aim, in the estimation of the Abdullah campaign, was either to install Ashraf Ghani, the other candidate for president, or to see Mr. Karzai use a postelection crisis as an excuse to extend his own term in office.

Afghanistan: Abdullah Abdullah Campaign Claims Inflated Turnout in Rival’s Power Base | Wall Street Journal

Indications of vote fraud during Afghanistan’s presidential election Monday threatened to ignite a political crisis and endanger the first democratic transition in the nation’s history. The nation’s election commission had said that more than seven million people voted in Saturday’s runoff—well above the 6.6 million who took part in the election’s first round in April—but that figure has come under scrutiny. Candidate Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, called the turnout claim “uncorroborated,” and on Monday members of Mr. Abdullah’s campaign team said that between one million and two million ballots were fraudulent, stuffed for his rival, former finance minister Ashraf Ghani. Naeem Ayubzada, head of the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan, an independent group that dispatched some 8,000 observers Saturday, also disputed the official figure. He estimated 5 million voters as a more realistic turnout number.

China: Hackers paralyse web voting platform | RTHK

An internet platform for this weekend’s vote on political reform has been paralysed following a large scale attack by hackers. The University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Programme, which is helping Occupy Central organisers to conduct the unofficial referendum, said their servers were bombarded by more than ten-billion system inquiries within 20 hours.

Tunisia: Autumn elections eyed to anchor democracy | Reuters

Tunisia’s election authority has proposed a parliamentary vote on Oct. 26 and the first round of presidential polls a month later, marking the final step towards full democracy in the cradle of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. Tunisia’s often turbulent political transition began after the popular revolt that ousted autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali and inspired revolutions across the region. The North African state has been run of late by aukbig caretaker government that saw through the adoption of a new constitution lauded as a model of democratic evolution in an unstable region.

National: Experts see an elder vote evolution | Herald Tribune

The stereotype of the “greedy geezer” voter, a political bloc of 65-and-older Americans who hate taxes but love their government entitlements, is a figment of the public imagination, according to election data. These older voters do turn out at higher rates — a phenomenon that goes back for only four decades. But election results over time show that older voters’ choices and party affiliations closely mirror those of the rest of the electorate. There’s at least one exception to this pattern, however: Florida retirees, who often sever their community and family ties when they relocate south, and may or may not form new ones after they arrive. Older Americans vote at three times the rate of 18-to-24-year-olds in midterm elections. Even when picking a president, their turnout is about 40 percent higher, said social scientists speaking at Columbia University’s Age Boom Academy, a yearly symposium for journalists who write about generational trends.

National: Population Shifts Turning All Politics National | New York Times

When William E. Davis was growing up here in DeSoto County, just across the state line from Memphis, there were more than 300 dairy farms, and he was raised on one of them. “Now there are zero,” said Mr. Davis, 66, who is known as Sluggo, the chancery court clerk in a county that has been transformed into a booming suburb of over 168,000 residents. About 800 miles to the east, the same kind of sweeping changes have taken hold in the sprawling suburbs around Richmond, Va., where woods and farmland have been turned into gleaming new subdivisions with names meant to evoke the state’s colonial past. In both states, the growth fueled by a migration of newcomers from other parts of the country and even abroad is bringing nationalized politics to races further down the ballot. It was these new arrivals, more than any other voters, who most crucially rejected two influential Republican incumbents — the House majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, and Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi — in primaries this month, upending long-held assumptions about the appeal of traditional levers of power.

Alabama: Shelby County won’t have to pay fees in voting rights case | Montgomery Advertiser

An Alabama county won’t have to pay a $2 million legal bill for winning a case that led the Supreme Court to throw out part of the Voting Rights Act, according to the man who spearheaded the lawsuit. “Shelby County owes nothing,” Edward Blum of the Project on Fair Representation said in an email. Blum, whose legal defense fund partnered with Shelby County to challenge portions of the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional, said he has raised money from private donors to pay part of the legal costs. If he doesn’t raise more, the Wiley Rein law firm in Washington, which handled the case for the Project on Fair Representation, will absorb the costs, Blum said. Wiley Rein also is working to convince a federal court that the Justice Department, which lost the Supreme Court case, should have to pay the fees. A federal judge ruled that the Justice Department doesn’t have to pay, but the firm has appealed that ruling.

Arizona: Scott Fistler, “Cesar Chavez”: Arizona congressional race devolves into war over Hispanic surnames. | Slate

On Aug. 26, Democratic voters in Arizona will choose a successor to 7th Congressional District Rep. Ed Pastor. It’s a safe, blue seat, covering the most liberal parts of Phoenix and Glendale. And it’s heavily Hispanic. That’s what led a Republican trickster named Scott Fistler to pay $319 to legally change his name, to “Cesar Chavez,” and attempt to get on the ballot. It was difficult to overstate the chintziness of the move. On his website (now offline), Fistler posted pictures of mobs of people marching in “Chavez” shirts—he took them from rallies for the late Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez. When I was in Phoenix last week, it was widely understood that Fistler would face challenges to his ballot petitions. In interviews, he’s responded to the challenges by saying “the Cesar Chavez train is smoking and it’s not going to stop until the election” and “my campaign is too legit to quit.” So we’re not talking about a serious person. Here’s where the story veers into pure derp. Ready? OK.

Editorials: The dirty secret of vote counting | Paul Mitchell/The Sacramento Bee

If there’s one thing elections officials pray for, it’s wide margins on Election Day. A clear and convincing election result allows final tallies to be announced. Winners receive congratulations, losers give concession speeches and everyone else returns to work. But that’s not what’s happening this year. In the state controller’s race, we find an incredibly close result that has changed leads repeatedly throughout the counting period. Republican Ashley Swearengin is solidly in first place, nearly guaranteed a spot in the runoff. But the vote differential between second and fourth is a mere four-tenths of a percent, with hundreds of thousands of votes to count. This easily could go to a recount if the margins remain this narrow.

Delaware: House passes bill to consolidate election boards | Delaware Newszap

The House of Representatives passed an elections reform bill Thursday that will consolidate the state’s three county election boards into one state panel. Republican legislators grilled the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Earl Jaques, D-Glasgow, and state elections commissioner Elaine Manlove on the details of House Bill 302. The bill was crafted to mirror the Election Law Task Force’s review of election protocol. It creates an 11-member state elections board and eliminates election boards in Kent, Sussex and New Castle counties. County elections offices would still be in place, but under the new proposal, directors would report to the state board to ensure all offices were communicating.

Florida: Voting-rights groups blast Legislature for secrecy, favoritism in drawing congressional districts | Florida Times-Union

A state judge has the power to decide that Florida’s congressional districts were illegally drawn to favor Republicans — and he should do just that, a coalition of voting-rights organizations argues in written closing arguments. In arguing that the districts violate a voter-approved Constitutional amendment specifically prohibiting such political favoritism, the plaintiffs fired a volley of salvos following 12 days of testimony in a landmark trial. “The 2012 congressional plan is exactly what one would expect from a legislature that fought the Fair Districts amendments at every hedgerow, involved partisan operatives in its decision-making, and made key decisions outside of the public eye,” the plaintiffs wrote to Circuit Judge Terry Lewis.

Illinois: Term limits, redistricting will take center stage this week | News-Gazette

This is going to be a big week in the ongoing death struggle for political power in Illinois. Even as a ballot dispute over a proposed constitutional amendment on legislative redistricting continues in Springfield, House Speaker Michael Madigan’s lawyers are going to court in Chicago to kill two proposals that could eventually bring the state’s professional political class to its knees. One proposed constitutional amendment would set eight-year term limits on legislators while the other would strip them of their authority to draw boundary lines for their own House and Senate districts, transferring that authority to a bipartisan citizens’ group. Oral arguments on Madigan’s legal challenges will be heard Wednesday by Cook County Circuit Judge Mary Mikva, the daughter of former congressman and federal appeals court judge Abner Mikva.

Kansas: Hundreds of Douglas County voters still in limbo as primary election nears | Lawrence Journal-World

Douglas County election officials are reaching out to more than 600 would-be voters whose registrations are being held “in suspense” because they have not yet provided necessary documents to prove they are U.S. citizens. County Clerk Jamie Shew said Thursday that those voters have until Aug. 4 to provide those documents if they want to vote in the Aug. 5 primary elections for federal, state and local offices. But a small number of them – four, to be exact – may be eligible to vote in the federal primaries for U.S. House and Senate, although they will not be able to vote in state and local races. “There has been some confusion about that,” Shew said Thursday. “Some people think they can show their proof of citizenship at the polls. But they have to file it with us before Election Day to be eligible.”

Editorials: Restructuring Maine elections has key support | Douglas Rooks/Sun Journal

Now that the primary elections are behind us, the debate returns to what was always the main subject – the race for governor. The battle between incumbent Paul LePage and challenger Mike Michaud, with Eliot Cutler again in the mix, has an epochal quality to it. Whatever happens, it won’t be one of those elections where you wonder how much difference it would have made had the other guy won. So it’s time to dust off the modest proposal I raised back in March – whether we could create a grand bargain to reform what are some of the oddest and least useful parts of Maine’s political system. Those would be legislative term limits – unnecessary in a citizen legislature whose powers are already limited – and the indirect election of the attorney general, secretary of state, and treasurer, something practiced by no other state, and not in federal elections, either, since the 17th Amendment provided for direct election of U.S. senators a century ago.

South Dakota: State, counties find bumps, success in voter registration system | Argus Leader

The TotalVote comprehensive voter database got its first statewide test in the primary election June 3. Whether it succeeded depends on whom you talk to. While reported problems seem roughly proportional to the size of the counties using it, Minnehaha County Commissioners heard enough tales of voters being directed to the wrong precincts in the low-turnout primary to spark concern about how TotalVote will perform in the November general election, when turnout is expected to be much higher. Getting the election right is a sobering responsibility for public officials. The effect, for them, of heading toward the general election with potentially unresolved TotalVote issues might be summer dreams haunted by apocalyptic visions along the lines of Supreme Court justices peering owlishly at hanging chads and banana republic dictators winning elections by margins greater than 100 percent.

Afghanistan: Voters brave Taliban threats to choose new leader in presidential runoff | Associated Press

Afghans braved threats of violence and searing heat Saturday to vote in a presidential runoff that likely will mark the country’s first peaceful transfer of authority, an important step toward democracy as foreign combat troops leave. The new leader will be challenged with trying to improve ties with the West and combatting corruption while facing a powerful Taliban insurgency and declining international aid. Despite a series of rocket barrages and other scattered attacks that Interior Minister Mohammad Umar Daudzai said killed 46 people, the voting was largely peaceful. Independent Election Commission Chairman Ahmad Yousuf Nouristani said initial estimates show that more than 7 million Afghans voted, which would be equivalent to the first round on April 5. That would be a turnout of about 60 percent of Afghanistan’s 12 million eligible voters. Abdullah Abdullah, who emerged as the front-runner with 45 percent of the vote in the first round, faced Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, an ex-World Bank official and finance minister. Neither garnered the majority needed to win outright, but previous candidates and their supporters have since offered endorsements to each, making the final outcome unpredictable.

Editorials: The Next Afghan President | Wall Street Journal

Some 60% of Afghan voters went to the polls Saturday for the second round of presidential elections. Former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani was in a tight race with former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, and it will be weeks before we know the final outcome. But the fact that both men are pro-Western moderates should put to rest the notion that the Afghan people and their leaders are not ready for democracy. The election marks an improvement over the 2009 ballot that re-elected Hamid Karzai, which was marred by low voter turnout and credible allegations of widespread fraud. The turnaround is a testament to the success of the U.S. surge in routing the Taliban from their old strongholds, and of the ability of Afghan security forces—army and police—to maintain security at thousands of polling places.

Colombia: Santos predicts ‘beginning of a new Colombia’ after victory | Miami Herald

Colombians decided Sunday to give President Juan Manuel Santos four more years to clench his signature project — a peace deal with the nation’s guerrillas that might end a half century of civil conflict. With 99 percent of the vote counted, Santos had won 51 percent versus 45 percent for former Finance Minister Oscar Iván Zuluaga. Months of whiplash polls and bitter recriminations boiled down to a difference of about 900,000 ballots in a race that was largely seen as a referendum on ongoing peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Havana. After he plowed through a crowd of supporters and white-clad children waving cutouts of doves, Santos said he was determined to clench a peace deal.

Indonesia: Presidential election hit by ‘black campaign’ | World Bulletin

One month before the world’s largest Muslim democracy, chooses a new president, pollsters say an Indonesian tabloid’s “black campaign” is evidence of a concerted effort to discredit the leading candidate. Independent pollster Politicawave has found that Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and running mate Jusuf Kalla had been the subject of 94.9 percent of slander, while rivals Prabowo Subianto and Hatta Rajasa were the subject of a minimal amount. In the past few months, questions have been raised in the nation’s press about Jokowi’s ethnicity, race and religion, along with allegations of corruption. One report even went as far as to claim Jokowi had died.