The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for July 27 – August 2 2015

Florida Republican state Sen. Rene Garcia examines a map of proposed changes in congressional districts in January 2012.

The National Conference of State Legislatures looked at the prospects for internet voting in their election newsletter The Canvass. On the 50th anniversary of the passage of The Voting Rights Act, Jim Rutenberg considered the challenges still facing minority and disadvantaged voters in an extensive piece in the New York Times. The Arizona Court of Appeals threw out the conviction of a Bullhead City woman who prosecutors said voted in both Colorado and Arizona, saying that the way the Arizona law is worded, people who are qualified to vote here can also cast ballots in other states. As the result of a settlement between lawmakers and lawyers for Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, the Florida Legislature will be called into its third special session of the year to redraw at least 28 of its 40 districts statewide. A federal trial regarding North Carolina’s election law — one that civil-rights activists call the most sweeping and restrictive in the country — ended late Friday afternoon, a week before the 50th anniversary of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Virginia Board of Elections members mulling a redesign of voter registration forms have heard complaints from conservatives local registrars. Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper is poised to call a parliamentary election for October 19, kicking off a marathon 11-week campaign – the longest in the nation’s history and the Philippine Commission on Elections awarded Smartmatic, a division of Dominion Voting Systems, a major contract for the lease of 23,000 vote-counting machines.