Rhode Island: The Strange Case of Rhode Island’s Voter-ID Law | VICE

Few political issues have drawn as much starkly partisan rancor in recent years as the subject of voting rights. Since the Supreme Court’s historic 2013 ruling disabling key sections of the Voting Rights Act, Democrats have accused conservatives of pursing a nationwide strategy to implement ballot restrictions that effectively block minorities from the polls. Of these new measures, perhaps the most controversial are new state voter-ID laws, which Republican lawmakers have aggressively pushed under the guise of preventing election fraud. While most of these laws have been passed in places where Republicans hold strong majorities in the state government, there is one state that has bucked that trend. Rhode Island, a Democrat-controlled state which hosts its 2016 primary election on Tuesday, has been a rare exception in the partisan divide over voter ID laws, passing a law in July 2011 that requires residents to show photo identification before casting a regular ballot. The law, which was approved by amajority of Democrats in the state legislature, ran afoul of the national narrative about voter ID laws, and has since been trumpeted by conservatives as proof that such measures are simply good-government policy.

Tennessee: Attorney General appeals judge’s ruling on abortion amendment recount | Times Free Press

Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery served notice today that the state will appeal a U.S. District judge’s ruling requiring a recount on the vote in a successful 2014 state constitutional amendment that made it easier for the state Legislature to enact new abortion restrictions. “We obviously disagree with the federal court’s decision,” said Harlow B. Sumerford, Slatery’s spokesman, in a statement. “Simply put, deciding what vote is required to amend the Tennessee Constitution is a matter of state law to be determined by a Tennessee Court.” U.S. District Court Judge Kevin Sharp on Friday ruled in a case challenging the 2014 amendment approved by a majority of Tennesseans that the method used to tabulate votes on the amendment was “fundamentally unfair” to eight Tennesseans who filed a lawsuit.

Virginia: GOP wants a say on restoring voting rights to 200,000 Virginia felons | The Washington Post

Virginia’s legislature should have a say in whether more than 200,000 ex-convicts get their voting rights restored ahead of the fall presidential election, Republican leaders said Tuesday as they called on Gov. Terry McAuliffe to convene a special General Assembly session. The GOP leaders were reacting to an executive order that McAuliffe (D) announced Friday, which instantly restored the voting rights of felons who have completed their sentences and been released from supervised probation or parole. McAuliffe and supporters said the move would advance civil rights and help reintegrate former convicts.

Wisconsin: Board will seek money for voter ID education | Associated Press

The state elections board voted Tuesday to ask lawmakers for a quarter of a million dollars to revive its efforts to educate people about photo identification requirements at the polls ahead of the fall election season. The Government Accountability Board mothballed its voter ID outreach campaign in 2012 after a court challenge blocked the requirement. A federal appellate court ultimately upheld the law in 2014 and it was in effect for both this past February’s primary and the April 6 general election, which included the presidential primary. Democrats feared the voter ID law would prevent some people from voting, but the turnout was 47 percent in the April election, the highest since 1972. GAB officials have said things went smoothly for the most part, although some voters faced long lines and difficulties trying to obtain valid IDs, particularly college students. Most college IDs aren’t acceptable under the law, so University of Wisconsin schools provided students with free secondary IDs for voting.

Bulgaria: Governing coalition backtracks on some controversial election law changes | The Sofia Globe

An April 26 emergency meeting involving Prime Minister Boiko Borissov and representatives of parties in the country’s governing coalition has led to a backtrack on some of the more controversial changes to election law approved by Parliament. Negotiations and debate on revisions to the Electoral Code were continuing in the National Assembly in the afternoon, with the special sitting expected to be extended. The meeting involving Borissov and Roumyana Buchvarova, deputy prime minister in charge of coalition policy, went on for more than two hours on Tuesday morning. After the meeting, it emerged that some clauses in the Electoral Code, approved at second reading on April 21 and 22, would be changed. The fate of Parliament’s decision, taken in response to a proposal by governing coalition minority partner the nationalist Patriotic Front, that polling stations abroad may only be opened at diplomatic missions, remained unclear by mid-afternoon.

China: Exiled Tibetans re-elect leader to spearhead autonomy drive | Reuters

Tibetans in exile have re-elected a Harvard-educated lawyer as their political leader to spearhead a campaign to press China to grant Tibet autonomy, a Tibetan government-in-exile said on Wednesday. Lobsang Sangay, who has led the 150,000-odd Tibetan diaspora since 2011 when the Dalai Lama relinquished his political power, won 57 percent of the almost 60,000 votes cast, the electoral commission announced in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala, where the administration is based. The Dalai Lama, 81, has sought to build a democratic system of government for exiled Tibetans that is strong enough to hold the community together and negotiate with China after his death. Question marks over what happens when the spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Laureate dies, amid competing assertions over who should succeed him, have reinforced Tibetans’ need for a leader endowed with democratic legitimacy.

Equatorial Guinea: The world’s longest-serving president just won a sixth term with 99% of the vote | The Washington Post

Teodoro Obiang Nguema has never received less than 97 percent of the vote in an election. On Monday, with partial results indicating that 99.2 percent of the vote has gone in his favor, Equatorial Guinea’s leader was surely all set for another seven years in a seat that has no doubt molded to his figure. One-sixth of African countries have an executive who has been in power for more than 20 years — that’s nine out of 54. Obiang, who took power nearly 37 years ago in a bloody coup, is in the company of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (who turned 92 in February), Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea and King Mswati III of Swaziland. But Obiang is most similar to — and most closely followed in terms of the number of years in office by — José Eduardo dos Santos of Angola.

Kenya: IEBC Chiefs to Give MPs Election Preparedness Status Report | allAfrica.com

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is this week expected to brief Members of Parliament on its status of preparedness towards the General Election in 2017. The Commission Chairperson Issack Hassan and his Commissioners who have come under sustained pressure from the opposition and the clergy to resign are expected to appear before the Justice and Legal Affairs on Thursday. According to the IEBC, one of the failures in the 2013 election was the late delivery of Electronic Voter Identification Devices to polling stations. It says this time around, it will send out the EVIDs in good time. The commission also intends to conduct a mock election in August to test the transmission of the devices. The Commission will conduct another mass voter registration exercise in March 2017, five months to the General Election slated for August 8, 2017. IEBC Chief Executive and Secretary Ezra Chiloba is slated to appear on Tuesday regarding the same matter.

Serbia: Progressives “form legal team”, demand election recount | B92.net

The Serb Progressive Party (SNS) announced on Tuesday it is requesting an election recount, and access to all electoral materials. This came only a day after a group of opposition parties formed its legal team to analyze the material from the April 24 elections, in which the SNS took nearly 50 percent of the vote. SNS leader Aleksandar Vucic confirmed on Tuesday that the party will review the entire election material and repeated his assessment that “somewhat strange things” had occurred after the closing of the polling stations. The Progressives soon afterwards announced that the party’s own newly-formed legal team had sent to relevant institutions an official request for an election recount.

National: Post Election Audits Help States Confirm Election Results | The Canvass

If the term “audit” either makes you shudder or makes you want to snooze, you’re not alone. But a post-election audit can be an integral step in ensuring the integrity of the election process. Voting machines go through lots of pre-election testing. They are tested against federal guidelines and state requirements, and then election officials do trial runs called “logic and accuracy testing” before each election to ensure they are working as they should (see NCSL’s webpage on Voting System Standards, Testing and Certification). But the pre-election testing doesn’t tell you whether or not the machine actually functioned correctly during the election. To do that, many states do additional testing after the election—a post-election audit. As explained by Pam Smith from the Verified Voting Foundation, “A post-election audit is a tool that election officials can use to prove that their voting systems are working properly and a tool that the public can use to have confidence that the outcome of the election was correct.”

Editorials: Should Everybody Vote? | Gary Gutting/The New York Times

At election time we inevitably hear earnest pleas for everyone to vote. Voter participation is a data point often cited in political studies, along with an assumption that the higher the percentage, the better: 100 percent participation is the goal. But we rarely question this belief, or objectively consider whether everyone who can vote ought to vote. Pleas for everyone to vote ignore the fact that not voting can itself be a way of voting. The trumpery of the current Republican primary campaign has led some of us to decide that they want no part of it and so will not vote. Not voting, then, can be a protest against all the available candidates. It’s hard, however, to distinguish such protest from mere apathy or forgetfulness, and we ought to provide a way of registering it in the polling booth. We might, for example, add as a ballot choice “No Acceptable Candidate.”

Arizona: Voters testify in Arizona presidential primary challenge | Associated Press

Voters dismayed with Arizona’s problematic presidential primary voiced frustrations with long lines and registration issues Monday during a hearing for a court challenge to have the election results thrown out. Testimony came in the wake of the March 22 election where Arizona’s most populous county drastically cut polling places. The move emboldened Tucson resident John Brakey, elections integrity activist to sue Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan and all 15 counties. In a courtroom packed with elections officials and onlookers, voters described waiting in long lines and arguing with elections about problems with their party affiliation. “The judge is going to have to extrapolate and see how that is a representative example of the variety of similar things that happened to people,” said Michael Kielsky, Brakey’s attorney.

California: How California’s U.S. Senate ballot could cause problems for the June 7 primary | Los Angeles Times

If elections officials could send just one message to California’s 17.2 million registered voters about the U.S. Senate primary in June, it would probably be this: Read the instructions carefully. “It’s not necessarily intuitive on how to properly mark this ballot,” said Kammi Foote, registrar of voters for Inyo County. And a mistake could keep a ballot from counting. On primary day, the race to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer will feature 34 candidates. Only four of those candidates have received appreciable support in public polling so far, and five will appear at the first Senate debate Monday night. But the full field is larger than any single roster of statewide contenders since the colossal list of 135 candidates who ran in the 2003 special election that recalled then-Gov. Gray Davis. (To make the ballot, candidates must pay about $3,500 or collect 10,000 signatures.)

Colorado: Bill to restore Colorado presidential primary is before lawmakers | The Denver Post

Legislation to restore a presidential primary in Colorado passed its first committee hurdle Monday, as lawmakers race to get it done by the end of the session May 11. House Bill 1454 would allow every voter — even those registered as unaffiliated with a party — to cast a mail ballot in a presidential primary in 2020. Coloradans would have their first presidential primary since 2000, before the state returned to the caucus system in 2004. The House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee voted 5-4 along party lines, with Republicans in opposition. Under the bill, unaffiliated voters would pick which party’s ballot they wish to receive, then that temporary affiliation would go away 30 days after the vote.

New Hampshire: Electronic voter checklist proposal to go before Senate | New Hampshire Union Leader

A proposal to host a pilot program of an electronic voter checklist in three New Hampshire communities next fall, including Manchester, is the subject of a public hearing before a state Senate subcommittee later this week. A hearing on proposed amendment 2016-1514s — an act relative to reports of death of voters and authorizing an electronic poll book trial program — is scheduled for Wednesday, April 27 at 10 a.m. before the Senate Public and Municipal Affairs Committee in the Legislative Office Building, Room 102. The proposed amendment would be tacked on to HB 1534, relative to reports of death of voters. If approved by committee members, the amendment would go before the full Senate on May 5.

New York: Everyone Is Angry at the New York City Board of Elections | Observer

It hasn’t exactly been a banner week for the New York City Board of Elections, and it’s only Monday. The fallout of a problem-plagued presidential primary last week continued today with an offer of $20 million in extra city funding from Mayor Bill de Blasio—but only if the board cleans up its act. That would include making “systemic changes” based on recommendations from an outside consultant and publicly posting all job vacancies, improving poll worker staffing with better pay and better training, and communicating more clearly with voters about poll sites, election days and registration statuses. “We’ve said this is, in effect, a challenge grant,” Mr. de Blasio said. “There’s a lot we’d like to help the Board of Elections do, but we must see commitment to reform and modernization, or we’re not going to spend the taxpayers’ dollars.”

North Carolina: Federal judge who backed limits on early ballots upholds voter ID requirement | The Charlotte Observer

A federal judge has upheld North Carolina’s voter ID law in a ruling posted Monday evening. U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder issued a 485-page ruling dismissing all claims in the challenge to the state’s sweeping 2013 election law overhaul. Schroeder, a George W. Bush appointee, also upheld portions of the 2013 law that cut the number of days people could vote early, eliminated same-day registration and voting and prohibits people from casting a ballot outside their precinct. The decision comes nearly three months after a trial on the ID portion of the law. Schroeder noted that North Carolina had “become progressive nationally” by permitting absentee voting, having early voting for 17 days before the Election Day, a lengthy registration period, out of precinct voting on Election Day and a pre-registration program for 16-year-olds. “In 2013, North Carolina retrenched,” Schroeder said in his opinion. Ultimately, though, Schroeder said the state had provided “legitimate state interests” in making the changes and the challengers failed to demonstrate that the law was unconstitutional.

Rhode Island: Secretary of State Gorbea Under Fire for Voting Access at Primary | GoLocalProv

Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea is coming under stinging criticism for the organization and lack of polling places available for tomorrow’s primary in RI. Much of the criticism has come from those supporting Bernie Sanders that fear long lines will deter new voters. Gorbea has endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. Gorbea ran for Secretary of State on her platform of expanding access for voters. Her campaign web site promised, that she would “ensure fair, fast and accurate elections.” Her leading campaign priority on her campaign website promised,”Nellie Gorbea believes that democracy works best when people actively participate in voting. She will increase voting levels through public education campaigns, expand access to mail ballots and begin online voter registration to make it easier to vote. She will ensure that all eligible voters can vote.”

Austria: Populist Party’s Surge in Presidency Vote Rocks Austria | Bloomberg

Austria’s governing coalition was thrown into turmoil after its candidates were humiliated in the first round of presidential elections by the Freedom Party, a nationalist force that took the most votes following a campaign that played on discontent with the handling of the refugee crisis. The Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer, 45, who placed first with 35 percent of the first-round ballots on Sunday, said he may fire the current government or veto some of its decisions if elected, raising the stakes for the May 22 runoff. Hofer will run against Alexander van der Bellen, 72, a candidate backed by the opposition Green party, who took 21 percent, according to official results.

Bulgaria: Protests Over New Voting Rules | Balkan Insight

Bulgarian citizens, angered over controversial changes to the electoral code, planned to stage a protest in front of parliament in Sofia on Tuesday. Protesters oppose the introduction of mandatory voting, a ban on opening polling stations outside Bulgarian diplomatic missions abroad as well as the launch of experimental online voting in the presidential elections in October, which they view as hasty. ‘We are warning MPs that… any attempt to technically limit our rights will not pass without consequences,” the organizers said on Facebook. Bulgaria’s parliament gave a green light to mandatory voting on April 21, qualifying it as a “civil duty” following a legislative proposal of the far-right Patriotic Front party.

Equatorial Guinea: Obiang Has 99% of Equatorial Guinea Vote in Early Election Count | Bloomberg

Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang received 99 percent of the early vote count from Sunday’s election in the two most-populous areas, the government said. Obiang, 73, obtained 40,600 votes out of 40,926 in partial results tallied in the capital, Malabo, and the port city of Bata, according to a statement on the government’s website. Already Africa’s longest-serving leader, Obiang is on track to beat out six other candidates for another seven-year term.

Kenya: Police fire tear gas as opposition marches on electoral body | Reuters

Kenyan police fired tear gas into a crowd of opposition leaders and their supporters as they marched on the office of the country’s electoral commission to demand it disband before next year’s election. Several protesters were arrested and at least two policemen were injured by stones, police said. The opposition rejected the outcome of the last presidential vote in March 2013. Its leaders petitioned the supreme court to overturn the result. The court upheld it. Raila Odinga, the leader of the opposition and its candidate for president, said then that he accepted the court’s decision and the victory of his opponent, Uhuru Kenyatta. That helped avert the kind of violence that broke out after Kenya’s 2007 election, when more than 1,200 people were killed.

Mexico: Millions of Mexican voter records leaked to Amazon’s cloud, says infosec expert | Ars Technica

A leaked database containing the voting records of millions of Mexican voters has been discovered by a security researcher. Chris Vickery, who works for MacKeeper, said he first spotted the Mexican voters’ roll—containing the records of 87 million voters in Mexico—on April 14. Vickery told Ars that he found the database with Shodan, a search engine that can find pretty much anything connected to the Internet. “The search term that returned this database was just ‘port:27017’ (the default MongoDB port),” Vickery said. “There really was nothing special about the search terms. It was just a stroke of luck that I saw it and followed up.” He added that the database was not accessible over HTTP: “You had to use a MongoDB client, but all you needed was the IP address. There was nothing protecting it at all.”

Serbia: Elections Deemed Fair Despite Irregularities | Balkan Insight

The international election observation mission led by the OSCE and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, PACE, on Monday declared that the elections in Serbia were generally conducted in accordance with the law, but admitted problematic issues at polling stations. “The design of the voting screens and the layout of the PSs [polling stations] did not ensure the secrecy of the vote, which is not in line with OSCE commitments and other international obligations and standards,” an official statement said. The OSCE/PACE mission said it had received reports about the intimidating presence of members of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, SNS, in and around some polling stations.

National: In This Snapchat Campaign, Election News Is Big and Then It’s Gone | The New York Times

Every modern presidential election is at least in part defined by the cool new media breakthrough of its moment. In 2000, there was email, and by golly was that a big change from the fax. The campaigns could get their messages in front of print and cable news reporters — who could still dominate the campaign narrative — at will, reducing what had been a 24-hour news cycle to an hourly one. The 2004 campaign was the year of the “Web log,” or blog, when mainstream reporters and campaigns officially began losing any control they may have had over political news. Anyone with a computer could weigh in with commentary, news and, often, searing criticism of mainstream reporters and politicians — “Media Gatekeepers be damned!” Then 2008: Facebook made it that much easier for campaigns to reach millions of people directly, further reducing the influence of newspaper, magazine and television journalists. In 2012, Twitter shrank the political news cycle to minutes if not seconds, exponentially adding to the churn of campaign news.

National: Republican says delegate vote-buying and gifts are part of ‘the free market of politics’ | ABC

“Cash is on the table,” veteran Republican Marti Halverson says. “I don’t know why you’re so shocked.” This is not the response I was expecting — my mouth gaping. I had just finished asking Wyoming National committeewoman Mrs Halverson about the “wooing” of delegates to switch their vote in this very-likely-to-be-contested upcoming Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. Ms Halverson is also opposed to any rule that would stop delegates accepting gifts. “This is a great country,” she said. “We give presents to our friends. No, I would not vote for a rule that said candidates cannot ‘woo’ delegates. I wouldn’t do that. It’s not the American way.” But what is the difference between wooing someone and buying their vote without cash? “Cash is on the table,” she replied. “Absolutely. It is going around that delegates are going to be offered free trips to Cleveland. Not Wyoming delegates, we haven’t heard that. But it is on the table. It is not illegal.”

Arizona: Spanish-language screw-up on Maricopa County election ballots | KPNX

In yet another elections embarrassment for Maricopa County, two million ballots were printed with the wrong Spanish-language description for a ballot proposition May 17, resulting in a massive reprinting of ballots and mailing of postcards to correct the mistake. This latest screw-up was uncovered the same day the county recorder’s office filed its formal response to a U.S Justice Department investigation of the botched presidential primary in March, which forced many voters to stand in line for hours. Many voters claimed they were disenfranchised by elections officials huge cut in polling places for the primary.

Arizona: Officials: Long lines at Arizona primary affected minorities and non-minorities equally | Associated Press

Election officials in Arizona’s largest county on Friday told the U.S. Justice Department that minority and non-minority voters were equally affected by problems during the state’s presidential primary election. Recorder Helen Purcell said in a 12-page letter to the department that wealthy, predominantly white parts of the Phoenix area saw the same long polling place lines as poor and minority parts of the county. The statement came in response to a Justice Department inquiry about problems during the March 22 election as it tries to determine if voting-rights laws were broken. Purcell again apologized for the long lines, as she has repeatedly since Election Day. “I sincerely apologize to all of the voters who had to wait in long lines,” Purcell wrote. “The burdens of long waiting times were county-wide and did not disproportionately burden areas with substantial racial or language minority populations.”

Colorado: Bipartisan Bill Seeks To Bring Back Primaries | CPR

Colorado legislators Thursday rolled out a measure that could bring back a state presidential primary, one in which all registered voters would be able to participate. The bill is a response to frustration over a caucus system that has disenchanted many voters from all political stripes. “Regardless of party affiliation, Coloradans are demanding more inclusion in the presidential primary,” said Rep. Tim Dore, R-Elizabeth, a bill sponsor. “And we stand before you today to tell them, ‘We’re listening.’”

Illinois: Elections board IDs McHenry County 2016 primary problems | Northwest Herald

The issues that plagued the March 15 primary in McHenry County might have led to some eligible voters not casting their ballots, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections’ report. The report was requested by state Rep. David McSweeney, R-Barrington Hills, who was not alone in demanding answers after an Election Day many felt was full of problems. McSweeney, who provided the memo to the Northwest Herald on Thursday after receiving it from the state board of elections, said the report was disconcerting. “It was an absolute fiasco,” McSweeney said after receiving the report. “I’m concerned, and I think there should be changes so that never happens again. … That’s the most basic American right – to vote.”