The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for June 8-15 2015
Electionline Weekly surveyed the many states and counties that are moving to new voting systems for the first time in more than a decade in advance of the 2016 election cycle. The chairman of the Federal Election Commission and a fellow Democratic commissioner have filed a petition asking their own agency to do its job. “Don’t hold your breath“, advises Ruth Marcus in a Washington Post editorial. Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has signed a bill that gives Secretary of State Kris Kobach the power to prosecute voter fraud, while New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan is likely to veto legislation that would require people to live in New Hampshire for 30 days before they can vote in the state. Ohio is the latest state to move toward online voter registration. Democrats allied with Hillary Clinton have filed a voting rights lawsuit in Virginia, the third time they have done so in a crucial presidential battleground state in the last two months. A group of 17 political parties have agreed to boycott proposed elections in Burundi because they don’t believe they will be free and fair while the failure of the failure of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP to secure a parliamentary majority, the backlash against Erdoğan and the electorate’s embrace of the leftist pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) represent a watershed in Turkish politics.