Burundi: Presidential vote not credible: UN observers | AFP

A United Nations observer mission said Monday that last week’s presidential elections in Burundi were relatively peaceful but had not been “an inclusive free and credible” vote. Separately, the 15 UN Security Council members plan to hold consultations on the crisis Tuesday. In a preliminary report, UN observers said Thursday’s vote, which saw President Pierre Nkurunziza re-elected, was marred by violence and obstacles to freedom of expression and the press.

Myanmar: Burma’s Moment of Truth | Foreign Policy

o the Burmese government has finally set a date for the next national election. That’s good news. At least we know that there’s definitely going to be a vote. The government’s dithering had raised fears that it might be angling for a postponement. Yet Burma’s tribulations are far from over. The country’s nascent democracy is in deep trouble. The country’s nascent democracy is in deep trouble. And you don’t have to rely on me as the source. Just ask the Burmese. Recently I had the privilege to meet up here in Washington with Wai Wai Nu, a 27-year-old Burmese political activist. She had come to speak with U.S. government officials and human rights organizations, but ended up getting a bit more than she’d bargained for. On June 23, President Barack Obama invited her (and a diverse bunch of American Muslims) to the White House for iftar, the evening meal that marks the daily breaking of the Ramadan fast. Wai Wai Nu is a Rohingya, the Muslim minority that has been the object of considerable violence and discrimination in Burma in recent years.

Editorials: Message on prisoner voting rights ‘unequivocal’ | Andrew Geddis/NZ Herald News

Because New Zealand has an unwritten, largely informal constitution, it can change in quite major ways without generating much fanfare. One such development took place last Friday with the delivery of the High Court’s judgment in Taylor v Attorney-General. This case involved a challenge by five prisoners to a 2010 law that prevents all sentenced prisoners from voting. (Before 2010, only prisoners sentenced to three or more years in jail were stopped from doing so.) After hearing this challenge, Justice Heath concluded that the 2010 law limits prisoners’ right to vote as guaranteed under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and does so in a way that cannot be “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” That finding was no real surprise; the Attorney-General already had warned Parliament about the problem before the law was passed.

South Korea: Electoral map is being totally rewritten | Korea JoongAng Daily

The reform committee of the main opposition party has opened a political Pandora’s Box by recommending a wholesale reorganization of electoral districts and proportional representatives, a plan that would ultimately increase the number of seats in the National Assembly by nearly a fourth. The New Politics Alliance for Democracy’s (NPAD) reform committee, headed by Kim Sang-gon, a liberal icon in the education community, presented a plan on Sunday that would redraw the current electoral map. It is based on an earlier proposal by the National Election Commission. In October, the Constitutional Court ruled the current electoral constituency map unconstitutional, saying it resulted in unequal representation caused by population changes. The National Election Commission presented its plan in February and the National Assembly created a special committee in March to discuss the issue. The redistricting is supposed to be finalized by October.

National: Presidential Race Just Started? Not According to the Spending | The New York Times

Since late last year, presidential hopefuls have been romancing donors, hiring staff and haunting the diners and senior centers of Manchester and Dubuque. But on paper, most of the candidates spent virtually no money exploring a presidential bid until very recently. According to campaign disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission last week, the much-promoted campaign staff they hired had other jobs. And their many, many trips to New Hampshire and Iowa had nothing to do with running for president. Such accounting — which the campaigns defended as perfectly appropriate but some election lawyers said violated the law — has allowed would-be candidates to spend months testing the presidential waters while saving cash to use later in the primaries.

National: Where Candidates Stash Their Cash | Bloomberg

Chain Bridge Bank’s single ­location is next to a wine store and a café on the ground floor of a luxury condo building in suburban McLean, Va., about a half-hour outside downtown Washington. It looks like any small-town bank. Tellers keep bowls of candy at their windows, and staff members talk to customers about no-fee checking accounts. But right now, Chain Bridge, which has about 40 employees, is responsible for more of the hundreds of millions of dollars flooding into the 2016 presidential race than any other bank in the country. According to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings, Chain Bridge is the sole bank serving Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, which reported raising $11.4 million as of June 30, and his allied super-PAC, Right to Rise, which says it’s raised $103 million so far. Donald Trump’s campaign banks at Chain Bridge, and it’s listed as the primary financial institution for the campaigns of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and former Texas Governor Rick Perry. It’s also the only bank used by super-PACs supporting neurosurgeon and author Ben Carson, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, former technology executive Carly Fiorina, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, all Republicans.

Editorials: The Millions of Marginalized Americans | Frank Bruni/The New York Times

Not long ago I had separate chats with two political insiders who offered to fill me in on Jeb Bush’s strategy, if he prevails in the primaries, for winning the general election. In each instance I braced for a lengthy exegesis but got only one sentence: He picks John Kasich as his running mate. That was the playbook. It presumed that Bush would collect Florida’s electoral votes, having once governed the state. It presumed that Ohio could be delivered by Kasich, its current governor, who announced his own presidential bid on Tuesday. And it presumed that tandem victories in Florida and Ohio would seal the deal, because so much of the rest of America was dependably Republican — or Democratic. Just a handful of states decide the country’s fate. Shortly after my chats with those two insiders, a third described Hillary Clinton’s supposed plan for victory. “Cuyahoga County,” this operative said.

Arizona: Tucson election with no races to cost $540,000 | Arizona Daily Star

It’s already clear who will win in the city’s Primary Election next month. Every candidate is unopposed. But the election must go on — and it will cost taxpayers about $540,000. In the Aug. 25 election, members of each political party, and independent voters who opted to choose a party ballot, will select candidates for mayor and City Council member in Wards 1, 2 and 4. The winners advance to the Nov. 3 General Election.

Florida: State Senate races likely to face fallout of redistricting | Miami Herald

Like the aftershocks of an earthquake, Florida legislators are feeling the tremors of the Florida Supreme Court’s redistricting ruling on their own districts — particularly in the state Senate. Senators who thought they had comfortable re-election bids are now facing uncertainty as questions loom about whether the same factors that led the court to invalidate the congressional map will provoke judges to reject the Senate political boundaries, too. That would force the Legislature into another special session to redraw the Senate map and potentially make politically safe districts for many incumbents more competitive. Legislative leaders are privately discussing whether to proactively redraw the Senate map before it is thrown out by a court or — in their worst-case scenario — redrawn by the court.

Illinois: Voter registration on election day may cost local counties big money | Chicago Tribune

A new state law allowing election-day voter registration at polling places has those who run elections in the Fox Valley area reeling. Kane County Clerk John Cunningham said complying with the new law, which mandates registering voters at every polling place, would cost both Kane and DuPage counties about $1.9 million each, and Will County about $1.2 million. He said he knows this because of a meeting he hosted that included eight county clerks, including those in Will and Kendall, and the DuPage Election Commission. The meeting topic was what to do about the new law. Statewide, election officials have estimated it will cost between $10 million and $11 million to comply with the law.

Editorials: Kobach gains power to intimidate voters | Michael A. Smith/The Hutchison News

I am a white male, but most Americans are not. For many, even everyday encounters with public authority, law enforcement for example, can be terrifying. This makes me especially alarmed about a new law giving Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach the power to prosecute voter fraud, passed by the Kansas Legislature last month in the frenzy of last-minute legislation. The law is strange. First, because prosecution power is typically vested in federal authorities, state attorneys general, and local county prosecutors and district attorneys, not secretaries of state. Second, even Kobach himself cannot find voter fraud in Kansas. For example, his office publicly named a Wichita voter who they claimed was deceased. Wichita Eagle reporters found the man raking leaves in his yard. … Kobach’s new law may have chilling effects on voting.

North Carolina: Greensboro redistricting: One battle down, war to come | Greensboro News & Record

Last week, the City Council won a first victory in a federal lawsuit, halting a controversial redistricting law that would have fundamentally changed the council’s structure and how its members are elected. But council members said they realize that U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles’ decision late last week was the end of a battle, not the war. “It’s a step in the right direction,” Councilman Jamal Fox said. “It’s a big win for the people of Greensboro, but we know it’s not over.”

North Carolina: No one comes to defense of Greensboro redistricting | WRAL.com

A federal court ruling halting the redrawing of Greensboro City Council districts has prompted plenty of finger-pointing in Raleigh, but the blame game is because of what happened at the defense table Thursday not the decision from the bench. No one showed up at the federal courthouse in Greensboro to defend the law creating the new districts, which was rammed through the General Assembly three weeks ago after hours of debate and plenty of political arm-twisting. “I was surprised that no one from the legislature filed anything,” Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughn said. “They put so much time and effort into it, I thought that they would file a brief or be here in some capacity.”

Ohio: State redistricting lands back on the ballot | The Akron Legal News

The Ohio electorate will have the opportunity to pass a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would create a new format for redistricting state elections following the 2020 census. The effect of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent redistricting decision on Ohio law, however, is not yet clear, according to experts in the field. Ohio’s proposed amendment, which will appear on the November ballot as Issue 1, was passed by a bipartisan Ohio legislature in December 2014 as HJR 12, led by two outgoing legislators– Democrat Vernon Sykes and Republican Matthew Huffman.

Puerto Rico: Exodus from Puerto Rico could upend Florida vote in 2016 presidential race | The Washington Post

Puerto Rico’s economic crisis meant Jeffrey Rondon, 25, struggled to find even part-time work, so he recently joined the growing exodus from his Caribbean island to Florida. Now he holds a full-time restaurant job and something that could upend the 2016 presidential election — the right to vote in Florida, the biggest of all swing states. “It’s important to vote and be heard — it’s a privilege,” said Rondon, who is one of thousands of Puerto Ricans who have moved to Florida in the past year. As U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans are relatively easy to register to vote, and they are attracting unprecedented attention because they could change the political calculus in a state that President Obama won by the thinnest of margins in 2012: 50 percent to 49.1 percent.

Texas: Attorney General’s Office Probing Valley Election Fraud Claims | The Texas Tribune

The Texas attorney general’s office has opened an investigation into a contested election in the Rio Grande Valley won by a client of Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa two years ago, according to a lawyer for the losing candidate. Houston attorney Jerad Najvar said Thursday that Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office is acting on a criminal complaint filed by his client, Letty Lopez. She lost to Lupe Rivera, Hinojosa’s client, by 16 votes in a November 2013 election for a spot on the Weslaco City Commission. More than a year ago, a visiting judge ruled that some of the votes for Rivera were illegally cast and ordered a new election held as soon as possible, according to local media. Legal wrangling has kept the new election from taking place, and Rivera has remained in office while Hinojosa has defended him in court.

Burundi: U.S. calls Burundi vote ‘deeply flawed’, urges dialogue | Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called Burundi’s election this week “deeply flawed” and urged President Pierre Nkurunziza to hold a “meaningful, serious” dialogue with the African country’s opposition, the State Department said. Nkurunziza won a third term in Tuesday’s election, which was boycotted by the opposition. Rivals accused him of violating the constitution by running for another five years in office. The election commission said on Friday that the president, who cited a court ruling saying he could run again, had secured 73 percent of the vote. Nkurunziza’s re-election bid has plunged Burundi into its biggest crisis since an ethnically charged civil war ended in 2005. Dozens of people have been killed in weeks of protests and more than 170,000 have fled to refugee camps in neighboring states.

New Zealand: Prison vote law breaches human rights – judge | Radio New Zealand

The ruling is a victory for career criminal Arthur Taylor, who has been fighting to give prisoners the right to vote since a 2010 law took it away from all inmates, no matter how long their sentence. At the time the legislation was being considered, the Attorney-General warned Parliament that a blanket ban contravened the Bill of Rights, but the law was passed anyway. Now Justice Heath has made a formal declaration that the law is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights and is unjustified. Under New Zealand law, Parliament can pass legislation that is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights if there are justifiable grounds for doing so. However, Justice Heath found that the law was full of inconsistencies and would lead to arbitrary outcomes.

Philippines: 3.8m registered Pinoys may lose voting rights | The Standard

Around 3.8 million registered voters may be disenfranchised in the national and local elections in 2016 if they fail to have their biometrics taken, a Commission on Elections official said on Friday. In his personal Twitter account, Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said the 3.8-million registered voters without biometrics would not be able to vote if they would fail to come to a Comelec registration satellite booth within three months. Since the Comelec started the satellite registrations in all shopping malls nationwide, it has been able to take the biometrics of 500,000 registered voters.

Russia: Murder, Poisoning, Raids: It’s Election Season in Russia | Bloomberg

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the only billionaire jailed by Vladimir Putin, is assembling an army of volunteers to challenge the electoral system that supports his nemesis. Accusations of murder and poisoning are already flying. Khodorkovsky, freed 18 months ago, has said he hopes to spark a palace coup from self-imposed exile in Switzerland, exploiting what he predicts will be rising discontent with a contracting economy. He’s starting with a project to hunt for violations in the first major elections Putin and his ruling United Russia party will face since the president returned to the Kremlin in 2012 after a four-year stint as prime minister.

Spain: King Takes Swipe at Catalonia Independence Leaders | teleSUR

As Catalonia rushes towards a de facto vote on independence, tensions are growing with Madrid. Spain’s King Felipe VI lashed out at Catalonia independence advocates Thursday, amid allegations Madrid is trying to block a vote on separation. In some of his sharpest comments on Catalonia yet, Felipe warned, “Public authorities are subject to the rule of law.” “Respect for the law is the source of legitimacy and an unavoidable requirement for living together democratically in peace and freedom,” he said during a speech in Barcelona. Although the address did not specifically mention Catalonian independence, the monarch’s remarks appeared to be directly aimed at separatist leaders.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for July 20-26 2015

burundi_260House 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.

National: McCarthy Cracks Door, Slightly, on Voting Rights Act | Roll Call

Last year, House Democrats saw ex-Majority Leader Eric Cantor as a possible (if ultimately disappointing) ally in the fight to rewrite the Voting Rights Act for the 21st century. On Tuesday, Cantor’s leadership successor, Kevin McCarthy, might have revealed himself as another important potential friend to the effort. The California Republican echoed at a pen-and-pad briefing what fellow GOP lawmakers have said before: Any revision of the landmark 1965 law has to start in the Judiciary Committee — a disappointing answer for advocates who know Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte, R-Va., is disinclined to tackle the matter. But McCarthy later said he thinks the time has come for an “overall review.” “On a personal level, I’d like to see the debate go forward,” he said. “I’d like to see [us] have the debate in committee. I think everything, when it’s first written and where the world is today, has changed. So just as most of our bills, how do you modernize? An overall review, I think, it’s the right time to do it,” McCarthy continued. “What the outcome can be, I don’t prejudge.”

Editorials: The Only Realistic Way to Fix Campaign Finance | Lawrence Lessig/New York Times

For the first time in modern history, the leading issue concerning voters in the upcoming presidential election, according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, is that “wealthy individuals and corporations will have too much influence over who wins.” Five years after the Supreme Court gave corporations and unions the right to spend unlimited amounts in political campaigns, voters have had enough. Republican candidates, including Chris Christie, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, and the main Democratic candidates, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders, all acknowledge the problem, with some tying it to the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United, which unleashed virtually unlimited “independent” political spending. The solution proposed by some, notably Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Graham and Mr. Sanders, is amending the Constitution. It sounds appealing, but anyone who’s serious about reform should not buy it. For a presidential candidate, constitutional reform is fake reform. And no candidate who talks exclusively about amending the Constitution can be considered a credible reformer.

California: VoteCal database makes debut in Sacramento, Orange counties | The Sacramento Bee

The long-awaited replacement for California’s aging voter registration database has started to deploy, with Sacramento and Orange counties serving as test counties for the VoteCal system that will begin expanding to other counties this fall. All 58 counties will be covered by June 2016 if the process stays on schedule. VoteCal’s debut comes more than a dozen years after the Florida election debacle in the 2000 presidential election prompted Congress to order a revamp of states’ voting procedures with the Help America Vote Act. Since it went live in Sacramento and Orange counties, VoteCal already has helped voting officials identify about 400 seemingly duplicate registrations, said Neal Kelley, Orange County’s registrar of voters. Reconciling the duplicates, which usually stem from people moving, used to rely on a paper-based system. “That’s a big deal,” Kelley said.

Florida: Legislators set August special session to redraw congressional map, order staff to limit contact | Tampa Bay Times

Florida legislators announced Monday they will convene a 12-day special session starting Aug. 10 to comply with a court order to revise the state’s congressional districts and will take some extraordinary measures to make sure staffers draw an initial base map without consulting anyone but lawyers. The unusual process is a response to the unprecedented situation in which legislators find themselves after the Florida Supreme Court ruled 5-2 to invalidate the state’s congressional map because it was “tainted with unconstitutional intent to favor the Republicans and incumbents.” Now, after spending $8.1 million defending their flawed map in court, the burden of proof shifts to lawmakers to prove that they are following the law.

Kansas: Wichita State mathematician says Kansas voting machines need audit | Associated Press

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. Beth Clarkson, a certified quality engineer with a doctorate in statistics, said her calculations from the November election showed enough patterns to suspect that “some voting systems were being sabotaged.” Sedgwick County election officials refused to allow the computer records to be part of a recount and told her that to get paper recordings of votes, she would have to go to court and fight for them, said Clarkson, who is also the chief statistician for WSU’s National Institute for Aviation Research.

North Carolina: Plaintiffs rest case in federal voting rights trial; state attorneys call first witness | Winston-Salem Journal

After two weeks, attorneys representing the N.C. 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. Now, it is the state’s turn to present evidence. Attorneys representing North Carolina and Gov. Pat McCrory called Janet Thornton, an economist, as their first witness. Thomas Farr, one of the attorneys for the state, said they expect to finish presenting evidence by Wednesday. The N.C. NAACP and other groups, including the U.S. Department of Justice, are suing North Carolina and McCrory over House Bill 589, which passed both chambers of the General Assembly in July 2013. McCrory signed the legislation into law in August 2013. The law eliminated same-day voter registration, reduced the days of early voting, got rid of preregistration of 16- and 17-year-olds and prohibited out-of-precinct provisional voting, among other provisions.

Burundi: Nkurunziza wins presidential vote boycotted by rivals | Reuters

Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza won a third term in office on Friday after the opposition boycotted the vote, a victory that leaves the east African nation politically divided and facing international isolation after months of unrest. Nkurunziza’s decision to seek a third term plunged Burundi into its biggest crisis since an ethnically charged civil war ended in 2005. The opposition says Nkurunziza’s bid violated the constitution and could spark another conflict. Major donors United States and the European Union, both critical of Nkurunziza, have threatened measures from cutting aid to imposing sanctions after Burundi went ahead with an election they said could not be free or fair.