Yearly Archives: 2016

Days into the 2016 legislative session, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan named redistricting reform as one of his top priorities, saying that Maryland is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. Thursday, his bill to accomplish that goal was scrutinized by the Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee. The bill, sponsored by House and Senate leadership at the request of the governor, requires an amendment to the Maryland Constitution and the creation of a commission to draw up new General Assembly and Congressional districts. General Assembly districts would be equally divided among population, with no more than a 2 percent change in population in any district, under the bill.

Mississippi: Senate takes step toward campaign finance reform | Clarion-Ledger

The Senate unanimously passed a bill Wednesday that would require Mississippi politicians to itemize campaign spending done with a credit card instead of just listing a lump-sum payment to the card company as many have been doing for years on their public reports. But the chances of further campaign-finance reform appear slim for this legislative session. A continuing Clarion-Ledger special report, “Public Office/Private Gain,” has shown Mississippi politicians spend campaign money on clothes, groceries, trips out of state, cars, apartments, home improvements, payments to their own companies and to themselves and many other personal expenses prohibited in other states and in federal campaigns. For many, campaign accounts appear to have become a second income, funded by lobbyists and special interests doing business with the state.

Mississippi: House would allow online voter registration, early voting | Associated Press

Mississippi voters could register online and vote in person ahead of elections under a bill moving forward in the Legislature. House members voted Thursday to pass three bills that would rewrite Mississippi’s election laws, a proposal pushed by Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. The package moves to the Senate for more work. Similar Senate legislation died when the body didn’t take it up Thursday before a deadline for actio

Armenia: New Draft Electoral Code Adopted by the Armenian Government | Asbarez.com

On March 3, a new Draft Electoral Code of Armenia was adopted at a cabinet sitting by the Armenian Government. Chief of Armenian Government Staff Davit Harutyunyan presented the Draft and announced that the final version of the document will be prepared through active political debates to be conducted until June 1. “The focus of the key discussions should be transferred to the political field, and for that reason some discussions are proposed to be held at the National Assembly. The adoption of the Code signals the launch of public discussion phase to be held at the National Assembly,” Harutyunyan sajd. Two major innovations were introduced into the new Code. One provision states that the Head of local self-government bodies in Gyumri, Vanadzor communities shall be elected directly by electors like in Yerevan City. “This is the first step and I think the list will expand and we will move toward strengthening of the role of political forces in the communities,” Harutyunyan added.

Canada: Financial fears prompt Halifax to seek back-up for electronic voting in 2016 elections | Metro News

Halifax Regional Municipality is looking for a back-up company to handle telephone and electronic voting in the next municipal election after fears that the company that holds the contract is financially unstable. A tender posted online Thursday seeks bids from companies that could administer telephone and e-voting for October’s 2016 municipal and school board elections, and any special elections after that till April 2020. But the winning bidder’s services will only be needed if the company that already has a standing offer — Dartmouth-based Intelivote — is unable to do the job.

Russia: Chairman Churov Removed From Russian Central Election Commission | The Moscow Times

Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a new list of the Central Election Commission (CEC) members which did not include the commission’s current chairman Vladimir Churov, the RBC news agency reported Thursday. The decree was posted Thursday by the Kremlin press service and appointed five members — Alexander Kanev, Vasily Likhachev, Ella Pamfilova, Yevgeny Shevchenko, Boris Ebzeev — to the commission. Churov’s position will most likely be given to human rights ombudswoman Ella Pamfilova, according to several unidentified sources of the TASS news agency, RBC reported.

Serbia: Government Asks President to Call Election Two Years Early | Reuters

Serbia’s government asked the president on Thursday to dissolve parliament and call an early election after Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said he needed a fresh mandate to pursue reforms and complete talks on joining the European Union. President Tomislav Nikolic is expected to set the parliamentary election for April 24, two years after the last poll. The ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) is well ahead in opinion polls, putting Vucic on track to win a second term. Once an ultra-nationalist disciple of the “Greater Serbia” ideology that fueled the wars of federal Yugoslavia’s bloody disintegration in the 1990s, Vucic has since rebranded himself as a pro-European modernizer.

National: US elections 2016: Anger over new voter ID laws | Al Jazeera

In many ways, Alabama is the cradle of the voting rights movement, a place where Wilcox County circuit clerk Ralph Ervin says “stumbling blocks” have been turned into “stepping stones”. But on Super Tuesday civil rights activists say those stumbling blocks are preventing black voters from going to the polls. The issue in this state, where a quarter of the population are African-American, is voter ID laws. In 2014, the state changed the law and now requires all voters to produce government-issued photo IDs. At first glance that does not seem like an unreasonable request and those who back the law say it prevents voter fraud. But in sparsely populated poor communities, like Wilcox County, public transport is virtually non-existent -compounding the problem is the partial closure of more than 30 drivers license offices, many in predominantly black counties.

Editorials: Why Is Anyone Still Doing Caucuses? | Evan McMorris-Santoro/BuzzFeed

About a half hour from the Las Vegas Strip, in a large public high school on the day the state’s Democratic nominating contest, a man stepped up onto the gym bleachers and shouted: “Let’s make sure we never caucus again!” “And then,” said Sondra Cosgrove, president of the League of Women Voters of Las Vegas Valley, “the whole room erupted, chanting, ‘No more caucus! no more caucus!’” The man, and Cosgrove, were among the 80,000 or so who sucked it up and made their voice heard during a chaotic Saturday in Nevada last month. Their particular caucus site — El Dorado High School — had all the hallmarks of the process: confusing rules, long lines that seemed to go nowhere, volunteers unprepared to deal with the crush of people who showed up.

California: Online voting will be vulnerable to hackers | Los Angeles Daily News

Fraud will be massive if we let people register online to vote, the doomsayers warned in 2012 as California’s then-Secretary of State Debra Bowen put the finishing touches on software now used by all 58 of the state’s counties. Those skeptics were wrong. So far, there are no signs of massive fraud or even moderate fraud in use of that online registration system, available to anyone at the secretary of state’s website. This system is now widely accepted, and there are very few known cases of false registrations, signups by non-citizens or fake names being registered online. Now comes an initiative aiming for a spot on the November ballot that would take online voter registration much farther, authorizing actual voting via the Internet. Doomsayers have many of the same objections today as in 2012, and this time they may be correct. …Backers insist votes can be made secure and encrypted in ways that are almost impossible to hack. But the same was said of electronic voting machines. That was before Bowen conducted her “top to bottom” review of those gadgets and essentially ordered almost all of them scrapped or resold to other states and countries because of the ease with which votes cast on them could be “flipped.”

Idaho: Senate unanimously backs online voter registration | The Spokesman-Review

Legislation to start online voter registration in Idaho has passed the Senate on a unanimous vote, 34-0. It wouldn’t start until after next fall’s general election. The bill estimates a state cost of about $258,000 in one-time development costs, but Sen. Curt McKenzie, R-Nampa, said over time the move should save the state money. A study in Arizona found that online registration cost the state 3 cents per voter, McKenzie said, while registering on paper costs about 83 cents per voter. “So over time it does result in cost savings,” he said. “But for the most part, it really just makes it easier for citizens to register to vote. That’s what states have seen that have implemented, so it’s a good-government bill.” In an earlier committee hearing, Ada County Chief Deputy Clerk Phil McGrane told the State Affairs Committee, “As far as clerks go, this is long overdue, in terms of the time and the workload that we handle. … It’s good policy in that it makes voting more accessible to our voting public.”

Voting Blogs: Conflicted Court Likely to Reverse 4th Circuit in Maryland Redistricting Case | State of Elections

The stakes were high at oral argument for Shapiro v. McManus on November 4, 2015. Justice Breyer said Shapiro and his co-plaintiffs “want[ed] to raise about as important a question as you can imagine . . . And if they [were] right, that would affect congressional districts and legislative districts throughout the nation.” It was clear that the justices struggled with the serious implications that their decision could have for future redistricting and partisan gerrymandering cases. In Shapiro v. McManus, a group of Maryland citizens brought suit challenging the state’s contorted congressional districts, drawn by Democrats in 2011. Petitioners claimed that the political map violated Republicans’ First Amendment rights “by placing them in districts where they were the minority, therefore marginalizing them based on their political views.”

Mississippi: Top election officials place blame for ballot change costs | WLOX

The Secretary of State’s Office said it will cost Mississippi hundreds of thousands of dollars to add a name to the Democratic Presidential Primary ballot. On Feb. 25, 2016, the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered the Secretary of State’s Office to add Willie Wilson to the ballot. While Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann’s office appealed the decision, citing already printed absentee ballots, the Supreme Court issued a revised decision placing Wilson on all other ballots for the March 8 primary. The Secretary of State’s Office estimates the change will cost Mississippians hundreds of thousands of dollars. Additionally, it says the state’s Democratic Party is to blame.

New York: After locking horns, Senate passes August primary election bill | Times Union

Following one of the more robust debates of the year, the state Senate on Wednesday approved legislation that would consolidate state and federal primaries to a single date in August. The bill, designed to follow federal mandates for getting out overseas absentee ballots, sparked debate over more than just New Yorkers’ voting habits and saving tens of millions of dollars on costly separate elections. It also hit on when people take their summer vacations, the need to stop “playing tiddlywinks” and pass legislation that ensures military personnel the right to vote, and whether time allows for lawmakers to campaign during the legislative session. It also featured the unusual move by a senator to stop yielding the floor for another senator to continue his line of questioning about the bill.

Texas: Counties grapple with aging electronic voting systems | KXAN

As the 2016 election approaches, Texas counties are looking toward future elections and the possibility that the machines you use to vote might begin breaking down. “The longer we delay purchasing new equipment, the more problems we risk,” the authors of a 2015 report from the Brennan Center for Justice wrote. “The biggest risk is increased failures and crashes, which can lead to long lines and lost votes.” The report points to a lifespan of 10 to 20 years for key components in the electronic systems. Travis County uses machines from 2001. Williamson County uses a system that it purchased around 10 years ago, putting both systems in the range for issues.

Virginia: GOP vote surge in Northern Virginia definitely included some Democrats | The Washington Post

Did Democratic “crossover” voters in Virginia help fuel the state’s extraordinary surge in Republican voting on Super Tuesday? More than twice as many GOP ballots were cast on Tuesday than had been submitted in the 2008 presidential primary. Part of the increase was undoubtedly because of the tumultuous nature of this year’s Republican primary, and the fact that there are still many candidates jostling for votes. But interviews at the polls and posts on social media showed that at least a slice of those voters were people who planned to vote Democratic in the fall, but took advantage of Virginia’s open-primary law to try to impact the Republican race. “Lifelong Democrat here and I cast my first vote for a Republican yesterday in the VA primary,” Liz Odar, an Arlington millennial, said in an email. “I decided my vote was better used as a vote against Trump.”

Australia: Coalition ditches building watchdog trigger for double-dissolution election | The Guardian

The Turnbull government appears to have given up its most plausible double-dissolution trigger, with legislation establishing the new building industry watchdog left off the list of bills it is insisting be passed in the final Senate sitting week before the May budget. The legislation to re-establish the Building and Construction Commission has been widely assumed to be the government’s preferred trigger for a double dissolution, building on findings and allegations about construction unions raised during the Heydon royal commission. The employment minister, Michaelia Cash, has held several meetings this week with the Senate crossbench about the building watchdog bill, but it has appeared unlikely to pass – particularly since the government angered the crossbenchers with the Senate voting changes that will make it extremely difficult for them to be re-elected.

Nebraska: Ballot-counting machine purchased for Gage County | Beatrice Daily Sun

Votes cast in Gage County for the 2016 elections will be processed through a new machine aimed to tally more quickly and with fewer issues. The County Board voted unanimously to purchase a DS850 machine from Omaha-based Election Systems and Software (ES and S) during its Wednesday meeting. Dawn Hill, County Clerk and Election Commissioner, said the current machine, a 650 model, is prone to several issues, adding hours to the counting process on election night. “The machine that we currently have now, I did confirm with ES and S and that was manufactured in 1996,” Hill said. “We have issues with slow ballots, jamming, it stops. It does read correct — I want to make sure everyone knows we do not have a problem with reading the ballots and totaling the votes. We do have an audit performed.”

Ireland: Counting finally ends six days later | Financial Times

The counting of votes in Ireland’s general election finally ended on Thursday as the last two parliamentary seats were distributed six days after voters went to the polls. The result of the election is now official – and it does not make happy reading for Enda Kenny, the outgoing prime minister, writes Vincent Boland in Dublin. Mr Kenny’s centre-right Fine Gael party won 50 of parliament’s 158 seats – a far worse showing than it had expected. It had won 76 seats in the last election in 2011, and (after defections) had 66 seats in the outgoing parliament, making it by far the biggest party.

New Zealand: Flag vote — ‘beach towel v colonial relic’ | AFP

New Zealanders began voting Thursday on whether to adopt a new flag, in a referendum Prime Minister John Key has called a once-in-a-generation chance to ditch Britain’s Union Jack from the national banner. After 18 months of heated debate, Kiwis must choose between an existing flag that Key insists is a colonial relic and an alternative silver fern design critics label “an ugly beach towel”. About three million ballot papers are being distributed in the South Pacific nation of 4.5 million people for the vote, conducted only by post, which closes on March 24. The result will be binding and John Burrows, the head of a panel overseeing the referendum, said New Zealanders would have to live with their choice far into the future. “Whatever the decision, this flag will fly for generations to come,” he said.

Slovakia: Fico set for election win, reinforcing central Europe’s EU dissenters | Reuters

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is on course to win another term in parliamentary elections on Saturday, maintaining an anti-immigration alliance with his European Union neighbors, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Fico, 51, is a Social Democrat but fits in with his two conservative peers when it comes to a focus on national pride, social conservatism and strong opposition to immigration. Opinion polls show Fico’s Smer party will win 32.5-38.4 percent of the vote, enough to retain power with a coalition partner or two. Many in Brussels are watching the election and Fico’s views on migration because Slovakia will hold the rotating six-month EU presidency from July, giving it a bigger voice in EU discussions.

Spain: Parliament Rejects Socialist Sánchez’s Bid to Form Spain’s Government | Wall Street Journal

The Spanish parliament on Wednesday rejected Socialist party leader Pedro Sánchez´s candidacy to form a center-left government in the first of two votes that will end or prolong the country’s 10-week-old leadership impasse. The conservative Popular Party of incumbent Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and the far-left Podemos party led the opposition to Mr. Sánchez, who lost the vote of confidence by a margin of 219 to 130. If Mr. Sánchez loses a second confidence vote on Friday Spain will face more weeks of bargaining among political parties represented in the parliament elected on Dec. 20 and the possibility of a new parliamentary election this summer.

Uganda: Mbabazi Narrowly Beats Election Petition Deadline | allAfrica.com

Independent presidential candidate Mr Amama Mbabazi has finally filed his petition before the Supreme Court, challenging president Yoweri Museveni’s victory in the February 18 elections. Journalists who had been waiting to cover the petition in the Kampala based court since morning breathed a sigh of relief when Mr Mbabazi’s lawyers arrived at the court, from downtown Kampala, at 5:07pm. The court’s registrar Tom Chemtai received the lawyers and took them through the requirements for a petition. He spent four minutes on this. Among other requirements, the lawyers had to pay Shs400, 000 to file the petition and Shs1 million, which serves a security for costs in case the petition fails, which they did.

National: Scattered problems for voters at polling sites, especially in the South | MSNBC

As voters in 12 states head to the polls for Super Tuesday, there are scattered reports of election problems — especially in the South. Officials at Election Protection, a coalition of groups that runs an election-day hotline to help voters who encounter problems, say the phone lines have been busy, with about 1,500 calls as of around 5:45 p.m. ET. The highest volume came from Texas, Georgia and Alabama, with Virginia and Colorado also well represented. Many of the calls came from voters who have moved recently and want to know whether they can still vote at their old polling location, said Kristen Clarke, the executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which helps lead the effort.

National: Super Tuesday is still offline. What’s the catch? | ESET

The US presidential election is fast approaching and the nation, along with the rest of the world, is waiting to see who will be chosen to run for the White House. … Yet, even though the US is among the most technologically advanced nations in the world, most of its voters cannot cast their ballots online. This is despite the fact that nowadays we can do pretty much anything in the virtual world: work, entertainment, paying bills or buying things are now part of our everyday online lives. So is internet voting really such a risk? And if so, where’s the catch? There are actually several of them. First of all, cyberspace isn’t actually as safe as everyone thinks, not even for banking or paying for for online shopping … that is if you’re not properly protected. The upside is that potential fraud affects only a small portion of all online transactions. Due to this, online merchants, banks and big companies can ‘hide’ the costs that the victims of fraud would normally have to pay. The rather unpopular downside is that everyone ends up covering these losses in the form of fees or higher prices. But this approach doesn’t apply to online voting. Who would pay for the damage done by electoral fraud? And what would be the mechanism to fix glitches, especially if they were uncovered years later? Making things ‘even worse’, voting is anonymous, so by design there should be no way to find out who rigged the results or who cast the fraudulent ballots.

National: How Different Polling Locations Subconsciously Influence Voters | Scientific American

During President Obama’s final State of the Union address, he called for reforms to the voting process, saying, “We’ve got to make it easier to vote, not harder. We need to modernize it for the way we live now.” Just ahead of Super Tuesday and in the midst of the presidential primaries—where we’ve already witnessed record turnout and long lines in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada—it’s a good time to reconsider the president’s appeal to modernize the voting process, and review an encouraging effort to do just this. Many have questioned the burden and fairness of voter ID laws, particularly for minority voters. But even easing voter ID laws doesn’t eliminate the bias of the polling locations themselves. In fact, a score of recent studies highlight how the building where you vote—whether it’s a church or a school—can subconsciously influence which boxes you check on the ballot.

California: All of California’s voters are now in one online database | Los Angeles Times

A single, instantly updated list of registered voters in California became reality on Monday, as two final counties plugged in to an electronic database mandated by a federal law enacted in the wake of the contentious 2000 presidential campaign. In other words, a database that was long overdue. “It’s been more than a decade in coming,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said. The $98-million project allows elections officials in each of California’s 58 counties to easily track voters who move from one place to another and to quickly update their records in the event of a death or a voter deemed ineligible after conviction of a felony.

Illinois: Judge dismisses Cruz eligibility complaint | Reuters

An Illinois voter’s lawsuit challenging Ted Cruz’s eligibility to run for president of the United States because he was born in Canada was dismissed on a technicality on Tuesday by a state judge. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Maureen Ward Kirby in Chicago ruled that she did not have jurisdiction in the lawsuit – which had sought to have Cruz removed from the state’s primary election ballot – because it had not been properly served on the state Board of Elections. She found that the plaintiff, Lawrence Joyce, had not properly filed his petition for judicial review.

Editorials: Kansas’s restrictive voter-ID law keeps citizens from exercising a fundamental right | The Washington Post

The American Civil Liberties Union went to court last month to challenge an egregious Kansas law that requires residents to provide proof of citizenship — such as a birth certificate — to register to vote. The requirement seems contrary to the intent of the federal Motor Voter law, which was supposed to make registration simple. But legal or not, this state law and others like it are truly awful public policy. The case for the Kansas law is that noncitizens might be able to get driver’s licenses and register to vote at the department of motor vehicles, potentially allowing them to skirt the fraud prevention that more conventional voter-ID laws provide. But there is scant evidence of such voter fraud, and certainly not enough to justify demanding that people jump through even more hoops to cast a ballot.

Mississippi: Another Democrat added to Mississippi presidential primary ballot | Associated Press