The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for July 20-26 2015
House majority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) expressed an interest in an “overall review” of potential amendments to the Voting Rights Act, though remains limited by resistance from Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goddlatte (R-VA). Lawrence Lessig advocated for campaign finance reform in a New York Times editorial. After a nine-year wait, California has begun a limited launch of VoteCal, its computerized voter registration database. Florida legislators announced they will convene a 12-day special session starting Aug. 10 to comply with a court order to revise the state’s congressional districts. A mathematician at Wichita State University who wanted to check the accuracy of some Kansas voting machines after finding odd patterns in election returns said she is finding out how difficult it can be to get government officials to turn over public documents. After two weeks, attorneys representing the North Carolina NAACP and other groups rested their case Friday, having called more than 40 witnesses who testified either in court or via video depositions, that North Carolina’s election law is racially discriminatory. Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza won a third term in office on Friday after the opposition boycotted the vote, while an Ontario Appeals Court overturned an earlier victory for two Canadian expatriates that had restored right to cast a ballot to the roughly 1.4 million Canadians of voting age who have lived abroad for five or more years.