The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for February 15-21 2016
A group of voting rights activists filed a complaint in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia asking a federal judge for a temporary restraining order after the executive director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) told elections officials in three states that they could require residents to provide documented proof of U.S. citizenship when using federal forms to register to vote. Pam Fessler observed that so far, support for automatic voter registration — now being considered in about two dozen states — has pretty much broken down along party lines. Rick Hasen considered the impact of Justice Scalia’s death on the 2016 election. A federal judge decided against effectively suspending Alabama’s voter ID law. , while a judge in Kansas ruled that a Wichita State University statistician won’t get access to paper tapes from voting machines to search for fraud or mistakes. The US Supreme Court declined to stay a lower court ruling that has forced North Carolina’s Republican-dominated legislature to redraw its congressional electoral maps on the grounds that the original maps amounted to racial gerrymandering. Former Central African Republic prime minister Faustin-Archange Touadera has won a presidential run-off and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni won a fifth term, extending his three-decade rule in a vote rejected as fraudulent by an opposition leader under house arrest and criticised by the international community.