Saudi Arabia: Women get vote, still not free | Vanessa Tucker/CNN

News this week that women are registering to vote in elections in Saudi Arabia has garnered plenty of attention. The move, described by the kingdom as a “significant milestone in progress” is in keeping with a 2011 royal decree permitting women to run and vote in municipal polls to be held in December. But before we celebrate a step toward equality in one of the world’s most notoriously misogynist countries, it is important to look a little closer at this supposed reform. The reality is that when you view this change in the wider context of Saudi Arabia’s extreme and expanding political repression, it is clear that it is an advance on paper only. Indeed, the right to vote in thoroughly closed political systems is essentially meaningless — what do you vote for in a system that effectively forbids meaningful political opposition of any kind?

Switzerland: Swiss Post, Scytl to develop e-voting system | SWI

The Swiss Post is developing a new e-voting system with the Spanish company Scytl. Flüeler Oliver, a spokesman for the Swiss Post, told the NZZ am Sonntag on Sunday that the company hopes to compete with current cantonal e-voting projects, and is currently in talks with some, though no individual cantons were named. Two weeks ago, a system developed in the United States was rejected by the Swiss cabinet when it was proposed by nine cantons in an attempt to introduce e-voting for the parliamentary elections in October. Security flaws were cited as the reason for the rejection.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for August 17-23 2015

virginia-puzzle-260A USA Today analysis shows donations of $1 million or more account for nearly half of the money channeled into candidate-aligned super PACs and other outside groups during the first six months of the Presidential election cycle. In a Washington Post editorial, E.J. Dionne writes about the continuing importance of the Voting Rights Act, 50 years after it was signed. After meeting in a two-week special session, Florida’s House and Senate adjourned without agreeing on what the maps should look like, leaving it to a state judge to draw new maps for the state’s 27 congressional districts. Virginia’s legislature was similarly unable to agree on a map and now the same federal three-judge panel that has twice ruled the state’s congressional map unconstitutional will now be responsible for remedying the injustice it found. Senator Rand Paul has offered to personally finance a separate Presidential caucus for the Kentucky Republican Party to get around a state law disallowing a candidate’s name to appear twice on the same ballot. In court documents submitted Monday, attorneys representing the NAACP and other plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the ID provision and other parts of 2013 North Carolina election law overhaul said their pending claims “may be able to be resolved through discussion and negotiations with Defendants.” A Federal Appeals Court ruled that Texas must pay more than $1 million in legal fees to groups that challenged the state’s redistricting plans. The Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has announced he is stepping down to pave the way for snap elections next month and one of the candidates for the Labour Party leadership has called an emergency meeting over concerns of “large scale” infiltration of Conservative supporters in the leadership race.

National: Billionaires crowd out the bundlers in White House race | USA Today

During the 2012 presidential campaign, Montana lumber company owner Sherm Anderson found it “fairly easy” to help raise $2 million from his fellow Republicans to boost Mitt Romney’s presidential hopes. Anderson expects a far tougher road in 2016, given the growing dominance of super PACs and other outside groups that are amassing millions in political contributions from a small cluster of the nation’s richest individuals. “It turns small contributors off,” Anderson said. “They say, ‘Gee whiz, I thought I was helping by giving $100 or $1,000, but how can I help when someone else is giving $100,000?’ These super PACs are definitely changing the dynamic,” he said.

Editorials: The battle for voting rights continues | E.J. Dionne/The Washington Post

Many find politics frustrating because problems that seemed to be solved in one generation crop up again years or decades later. The good thing about democracy is that there are no permanent defeats. The hard part is that some victories have to be won over and over. And so it is with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a monument to what can be achieved when grass-roots activism is harnessed to presidential and legislative leadership. Ending discrimination at the ballot box was a way of underwriting the achievements of the Civil Rights Act passed a year earlier by granting African Americans new and real power to which they had always been constitutionally entitled. “The results were almost unimaginable in 1965,” writes Ari Berman in “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” his timely book published this month. … In fact, Obama’s election called forth a far more sophisticated approach to restricting voting. Republicans closely examined how Obama’s political organization had turned out large numbers of young African Americans who had not voted before. Their participation was facilitated by early voting, and particularly Sunday voting.

Florida: Judge To Redraw Florida’s Congressional Maps After Legislature Fails To Reach Deal | NPR

A Florida judge will draw up new maps for the state’s 27 congressional districts. After meeting in a two-week special session, Florida’s House and Senate adjourned without agreeing on what the maps, ordered by the State Supreme Court, should look like. This was the Florida Legislature’s third attempt to draw congressional maps that comply with the state Constitution. Under an amendment adopted by voters in 2010, Florida’s Legislature must compile maps for congressional and legislative districts that don’t protect incumbents or political parties. But although Florida’s House and Senate are both controlled by Republicans, the two bodies were unable to come to an agreement. They adjourned amid acrimony between House and Senate leaders. It was an atmosphere similar to that when the regular session ended in April with an impasse over whether to expand Medicaid. Republican leaders denied that feud carried over into this special session.

Kentucky: Rand Paul Purchases a Path Around an Inconvenient Kentucky Law | The Atlantic

Rand Paul is giving new meaning to the term “buying an election.” Over the weekend, the Kentucky senator said he gave $250,000 to his state’s Republican Party for the explicit purpose of funding its presidential caucus in March. He promised to pony up another $200,000 in the fall, enough to cover the entire cost of the nominating event. Put another way: Paul is paying the party to hold an election in which he is running. He’s doing it neither to ensure a victory nor out of the simple goodness of his heart. No, Paul is making a rather blatant end-run around state law, and he’s compensating the Kentucky GOP for going along with him. The law forbids someone from appearing on the same ballot as a candidate for two different offices, and Paul, who is up for reelection next year, doesn’t want to give up his Senate seat to make his rather long-shot bid for the presidency.

North Carolina: Two sides negotiate voter ID provision | News & Observer

Attorneys on both sides of the lawsuits challenging the 2013 state election law overhaul are trying to find common ground on North Carolina’s voter ID law and plan to report the results of their efforts to a judge next month. Lawyers for the NAACP and others offered that detail in an update to the federal judge presiding over the cases that will determine which rules govern elections in North Carolina next year. They plan to report to the judge on Sept. 17 as part of a trial that could test the breadth of protections for African-Americans with claims of voter disenfranchisement two years after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder presided over three weeks of arguments in July on parts of the challenge that did not include the requirement that N.C. voters show one of six photo identification cards to cast a ballot. The legislature amended that portion of the law on the eve of the trial, setting up a request from the challengers for deeper review of the broader implications of the changes.

National: Federal Election Commission refuses to release computer security study | Center for Public Integrity

Next to the Federal Election Commission’s front door is a quotation from former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” But the agency is refusing to uncloak a pricey, taxpayer-funded study that details decay in the security and management of its computer systems and networks, which the Center for Public Integrity revealed had been successfully infiltrated by Chinese hackers in October 2013. The report — known within the FEC as the “NIST study” — also provides recommendations on how to fix the FEC’s problems and bring its computer systems in line with specific National Institute of Standards and Technology computer security protocols.

Voting Blogs: OIG report recommends USPS develop Vote by Mail strategy | electionlineWeekly

The U.S. Postal Service is the largest self-funded agency of the U.S. government and is supported entirely by revenue from postage and products. Because of that, unlike most federal agencies that are always looking for ways to cut costs, the Postal Service is also always looking for ways to boost revenue. Therefore, with the increasing popularity of vote-by-mail, the Office of the Inspector General of the USPS (USPSOIG) set out to evaluate voting methods to identify opportunities to increase voting by mail and therefore revenues for an agency that has struggled under budget constraints and the changing mailing habits of Americans.

Florida: House, Senate still at odds over redistricting map | Tallahassee Democrat

With their special legislative session set to end at noon Friday, House and Senate leaders were in stark disagreement over congressional redistricting Thursday night. One thing that appears certain, though, is that Tallahassee will be split between a newly configured District 5, a minority-access district running from downtown Jacksonville to Gadsden County, and a redrawn District 2 that extends from the Panama City area to near Ocala. State Rep. Alan Williams, D-Tallahassee, made one last try at keeping all of Tallahassee in one district Thursday but his amendment died in a voice vote. Williams pleaded with his colleagues to support his amendment, which would have kept the city and most of the county in the 5th District.

Florida: House rejects Florida Senate redistricting map, proposes new one | Sun Sentinel

With one day left in a special session to redraw congressional district maps, the Florida House and Senate seem as far apart as ever. The House on Thursday received the Senate’s redistricting plan but voted instead to largely keep their base map. The tweaks they made would keep the cities of Riviera Beach and Sunrise wholly within a single congressional district, unlike the original map. As with previous maps, the new map calls for districts 21 and 22 in Broward and Palm Beach counties to be stacked on top of each other rather than run side by side as they currently do. The new House map was approved 60-38, with 22 absentees.

Ohio: Democrats seek to join lawsuit over voting changes | Associated Press

The Ohio Democratic Party and two of its county organizations are seeking to join a federal lawsuit filed in May that alleges that election laws and rules in the political battleground state disproportionately burden Democratic-leaning voters. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative brought the case. But in court filings last week, the organization’s attorneys asked Magistrate Judge Norah McCann King to let it withdraw and substitute in its place the state’s Democratic Party and Cuyahoga and Montgomery county parties. “OOC is a non-profit organization with limited resources, and it does not have the institutional capability to remain as a plaintiff,” attorneys wrote in court documents.

Editorials: Redistricting drama gets three out of four stars | Richmond Times-Dispatch

When it turns political, the American arts scene sometimes descends into such heavy-handed didacticism that it can make Ayn Rand seem as frolicsome as P.G. Wodehouse. So it is a delight to report that the Virginia Political Repertory’s production of “Special Session: Redistricting” avoids this trap, and instead delivers keen observations on homo politicus. The script cleverly weaves two seemingly unrelated plot lines: congressional redistricting and judicial appointments. These might seem unlikely topics for compelling drama, but in the deft hands of the cast they become powerful vehicles for exploring the contradictions of contemporary governance and the foibles of the political class.

Myanmar: Rights group urges Myanmar to prevent Rohingya disenfranchisement | Bangkok Post

A US-based rights group has urged Myanmar to prevent the exclusion of hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya from voting in crucial November elections after the minority were stripped of their identity cards earlier this year. The Carter Center also warned that growing anti-Islamic hate speech in the Buddhist-majority nation could see religious tensions flare during the upcoming campaign period. Myanmar authorities began collecting temporary identification documents from minority groups, mainly the displaced Rohingya in western Rakhine state, in April — a move which takes away their voting rights.

Turkey: Election board proposes snap polls in November | The Guardian

Turkey’s election board has proposed holding a snap legislative poll on 1 November, adding to a security crisis and sending the Turkish lira to a record low. The date for the fresh ballot is sooner than most commentators had expected after efforts to form a coalition ended in failure after inconclusive polls in June. The proposal, presented to political parties before a final decision is made, comes three days before the deadline for forming a new government. The Justice and Development party of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, lost its overall majority in the June election for the first time since it came to power in 2002.

United Kingdom: Labour seeks legal advice over leadership election infiltration fears | The Guardian

Labour is seeking legal advice to ensure its leadership election is being conducted according to party rules, amid fears that the contest is being infiltrated by people who oppose the party. A spokesperson for acting leader Harriet Harman confirmed that the party had called in lawyers to ensure that the process would not be open to challenge, but denied that there were any plans to halt or suspend the process. Under new rules anyone can vote if they pay £3 to register as a supporter, which prompted concerns that the system was being gamed by people who support other parties. About 400,000 people have become eligible to vote in the contest since the general election, swelling the electorate to 600,000 A spokeswoman for Harman denied that legal advice had been sought as a result of the worries over “entryism” from the left and right. “The party’s focus is on making sure that the rules are fully complied with, as we said last week we have taken legal advice to make sure that the rules are being complied with and that all due diligence as possible was being done,” she said.

Texas: Federal Appeals Court Orders Texas to Pay $1M in Legal Fees in Voting Rights Case | National Law Journal

Texas must pay more than $1 million in legal fees to groups that challenged the state’s redistricting plans, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled Tuesday. Texas forfeited any opposition to fees when it failed to make substantive arguments in the lower court, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said. A three-page advisory filed by the state—contending that Texas became the winner in the redistricting case after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a provision of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder—didn’t cut it, Judge Patricia Millett wrote. “Texas gets no second bite at the apple now,” Millett wrote. “What little argument Texas did advance in its ‘Advisory’ provides an insufficient basis for overturning the district court’s award of attorneys’ fees.”

Virginia: Uncertainty Reigns as Court Takes Over Virginia Redistricting | Roll Call

The same federal three-judge panel that has twice ruled that Virginia’s congressional map unconstitutionally packs blacks into the 3rd District will now be responsible for remedying the injustice it found. How will the court arrive at a new map for the 2016 elections? “We don’t know,” Loyola Law School Professor Justin Levitt told CQ Roll Call Tuesday. “I think they were really hoping the legislature would do it.” The court had given the General Assembly a Sept. 1 deadline to redraw district lines, and Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe had called a special August session to begin that process. But the state Senate failed to agree on a map Monday, when a dispute over a Supreme Court appointee derailed the session.

Greece: Alexis Tsipras steps down to trigger new elections | The Guardian

Seven months after he was elected on a promise to overturn austerity, the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has announced he is stepping down to pave the way for snap elections next month. As the debt-crippled country received the first tranche of a punishing new €86bn (£61bn) bailout, Tsipras said on Thursday he felt “a moral obligation to place this deal in front of the people, to allow them to judge … both what I have achieved, and my mistakes”. The 41-year-old Greek leader is still popular with voters for having at least tried to stand up to the country’s creditors and his leftwing Syriza party is likely to be returned to power in the imminent general election, which government officials told Greek media was most likely to take place on 20 September. The prime minister insisted in an address on public television that he was proud of his time in office and had got “a good deal for the country”, despite bringing it “close to the edge”. He added he was “shortly going to submit my resignation, and the resignation of my government, to the president”. The prime minister will be replaced for the duration of the short campaign by the president of Greece’s supreme court, Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou – a vocal bailout opponent – as head of a caretaker government.

United Kingdom: Andy Burnham calls for urgent meeting over concerns that ‘large scale’ Tory infiltration could lead to legal challenge | The Independent

Andy Burnham has called for an emergency meeting over concerns of “large scale” infiltration of Conservative supporters in the Labour leadership race. His team has written to Labour HQ demanding a meeting be held early next week between all four campaigns, claiming that the evidence of ‘entryism’ from supporters of other parties in the leadership election…

Editorials: How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election | Robert Epstein/Politico

America’s next president could be eased into office not just by TV ads or speeches, but by Google’s secret decisions, and no one—except for me and perhaps a few other obscure researchers—would know how this was accomplished. Research I have been directing in recent years suggests that Google, Inc., has amassed far more power to control elections—indeed, to control a wide variety of opinions and beliefs—than any company in history has ever had. Google’s search algorithm can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more—up to 80 percent in some demographic groups—with virtually no one knowing they are being manipulated, according to experiments I conducted recently with Ronald E. Robertson. Given that many elections are won by small margins, this gives Google the power, right now, to flip upwards of 25 percent of the national elections worldwide. In the United States, half of our presidential elections have been won by margins under 7.6 percent, and the 2012 election was won by a margin of only 3.9 percent—well within Google’s control. There are at least three very real scenarios whereby Google—perhaps even without its leaders’ knowledge—could shape or even decide the election next year. Whether or not Google executives see it this way, the employees who constantly adjust the search giant’s algorithms are manipulating people every minute of every day. The adjustments they make increasingly influence our thinking—including, it turns out, our voting preferences.

Florida: Prison population affecting Florida’s redistricting fight | Miami Herald

Florida’s prison population is fast becoming a point of contention in the Legislature’s attempt to redraw the state’s congressional districts. The last Census counted more than 160,000 people in Florida correctional facilities, and they cannot vote. But they can skew how districts are drawn, and ultimately who represents the state in the U.S. House of Representatives. That is exactly what U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, is convinced is happening in North Florida. Brown said the proposed new Congressional District 5 stretching from Jacksonville to Tallahassee will see a reduction in the percentage of black residents who are of voting age — a key measure used to ensure black voters can elect who they want to represent them in Congress — from 50 percent to 45 percent under the map that passed the House on Tuesday and is expected to be before the Senate on Wednesday. But Brown, who is suing the Legislature to block the redrawing of her district, said the reduction of the black voting age population in her district could be even greater because her new district would have 17,000 prisoners in it — giving it one of the highest prison populations in the state. Her current district has just 10,000.

Florida: Senate, House members on redistricting collision course | News Service of Florida

With just four days left until the end of a special session called to redraw the state’s congressional map, the Senate Reapportionment Committee on Monday approved a plan that changes lines for districts in Southwest and Central Florida, setting up a potential collision with the House. Even as members of the House rejected an amendment to a “base map” developed by legislative staff members ahead of the session, the Senate panel approved on a voice vote new boundaries proposed by Sen. Tom Lee, a Brandon Republican and former Senate president. Lawmakers returned to Tallahassee last week following a July ruling by the Florida Supreme Court striking down eight of the state’s 27 congressional districts for violating the anti-gerrymandering “Fair Districts” standards approved by voters in 2010. It is the first of two redistricting sessions scheduled to be held this year. Another is needed to redraw Senate lines after a lawsuit dealing with those districts was settled after the Supreme Court decision on the congressional plan.

North Carolina: Court documents: Legal challenge to N.C. voter ID could be settled | Winston-Salem Journal

North Carolina’s voter ID law may not go to trial after all, according to court documents filed Monday. The recent federal trial on North Carolina’s Voter Information Verification Act that ended about two weeks ago did not deal with the state’s photo ID requirement that goes into effect in 2016. It only dealt with other provisions of the law, which reduced the early voting period, eliminated same-day voter registration, prohibited county election officials from counting ballots cast in the wrong precinct but correct county, and abolished preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder decided that the legal challenge to the photo ID requirement would be dealt with later. Schroeder’s decision came after state Republican legislators approved an amendment easing the photo ID requirement.

North Carolina: Voter ID law topic of negotiations | News & Observer

North Carolina’s voter ID law will be the topic of discussion this week among attorneys on each side of the lawsuits challenging the 2013 state election law overhaul. Lawyers for the NAACP and others offered that detail in an update to the federal judge presiding over the cases that will determine which rules govern elections in North Carolina next year. They plan to provide a report of their efforts to find common ground in a report to the judge on Sept. 17 as part of a trial could test the breadth of protections for African-Americans with claims of voter disenfranchisement two years after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder presided over arguments during three weeks in July on parts of the challenge that did not include the requirement that N.C. voters show one of six photo identification cards to cast a ballot. The legislature amended that portion of the law on the eve of the trial, setting up a request from the challengers for deeper review of the broader implications of the changes.

Ohio: Democratic Party slow to support redistricting proposal | The Columbus Dispatch

Consternation inside the Ohio Democratic Party over whether to endorse a November ballot issue on legislative redistricting should be nearing a conclusion. The legislature passed Issue 1 in December, and there was only one Democratic “no” vote. The proposal has been endorsed by the Ohio Republican Party, the League of Women Voters and a variety of groups that generally align with Democrats, including ProgressOhio, Common Cause Ohio and the Coalition of Democratic & Progressive Organizations of Central Ohio.

Texas: State again ordered to pay lawyers’ fees in redistricting case | Austin American-Statesman

In a scolding tone, a federal appeals court panel in Washington, D.C., ordered the state of Texas on Tuesday to pay more than $1 million in attorneys’ fees in a case challenging district boundaries drawn by the Republican-led Legislature. First under the direction of then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and now under Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state has been fighting a court order for more than a year to pay the lawyers who battled the state over the issuance of redistricting maps for the Texas House, Texas Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.

Utah: Five cities’ vote-by-mail put in limbo | Herald Extra

When the Utah County commissioners voted Tuesday to place a local sales tax increase on the general election ballot, they included a modification to the motion that would not allow cities to hold a vote-by-mail option in the general election. According to the modification, made after the recommendation of Utah County Clerk/Auditor Bryan Thompson in order to have “equal access to all citizens that will be voting on this countywide issue,” cities will not have a vote-by-mail option when it comes to the sales tax measure. County residents will have the option of voting at a polling place on paper or electronically, or they can request an absentee ballot, according to Thompson. Thompson said that by allowing the five cities that held a vote-by-mail election for the primary election to provide that same option to their respective cities, “You’re giving the citizens in those five cities a greater say potentially.”