Australia: Leadership in Doubt as Election Too Close to Call | The New York Times

Australians awoke Sunday to a government plagued in uncertainty after a stunningly close national election failed to deliver a clear victor, raising the prospect of a hung parliament. The gamble by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to call a rare early election may have failed, with his conservative Liberal Party-led coalition on track to lose a swathe of seats in the House of Representatives — and potentially control of the country. One day after the election, the race remained too close to call, with mail-in ballots and early votes yet to be counted. Still, Turnbull sounded a confident tone during a speech to supporters early Sunday morning. “Based on the advice I have from the party officials, we can have every confidence that we will form a coalition majority government in the next parliament,” Turnbull said.

Austria: Presidential election result overturned and must be held again | The Guardian

Austria’s Freedom party will get another go at providing the first far-right president in the European Union, after the country’s constitutional court annulled the result of May’s presidential election. The court president, Gerhart Holzinger, announced on Friday that the run-off vote, in which Norbert Hofer of the Freedom party (FPÖ) narrowly lost to Green-backed Alexander Van…

Louisiana: Lawsuit seeks to restore voting rights for some 70,000 residents on probation or parole | Associated Press

A lawsuit filed Friday in state court seeks to restore voting rights for some 70,000 Louisiana residents who are on probation or parole for felonies. The suit was filed in Baton Rouge by the group Voice of the Ex-Offender and several convicted felons who have been denied voting rights. The suit says state laws blocking people who are on parole or probation from voting violate the Louisiana Constitution. The 1974 constitution allows suspension of voting rights for people judicially declared mentally incompetent or those who are “under an order of imprisonment” for a felony. The lawsuit contends that the denial of voting rights does not extend to felons who have been released on parole or probation.

National: League Of Women Voters To Appeal Judge’s Decision On Proof Of Citizenship | KCUR

Kansans who register to vote using a federal form at the Department of Motor Vehicles will have to provide proof of citizenship as a lawsuit plays out, a judge ruled Wednesday. The League of Women Voters and other civil rights groups had sought a preliminary injunction to block such rules in Kansas, Alabama and Georgia. “Because it’s a barrier to voting,” says Dolores Furtado, the immediate past president of the League of Women Voters of Kansas. “The percentage of eligible registered people that vote is sometimes terrible.”

National: Federal Election Commission splits, closes Fox News debate case | Politico

The Federal Election Commission, in a split decision, will not punish Fox News for expanding their criteria by adding the second ‘undercard’ debate for the first Republican primary debate in August, 2015. But while the decision, made in May but only published on Thursday, leads to no action, it’s exposing fraught political fault lines within the FEC. The decision stems from a complaint filed by Mark Everson, a former IRS commissioner and relatively unknown Republican candidate for president, who alleged that when Fox News dropped the requirement that candidates must poll at least 1 percent in national polls, it violated FEC rules on debates that say debate hosts must use “pre-established objective criteria to determine which candidates may participate in a debate.” Because of the split decision on party lines (three commissioners voted against a violation, two voted for, and one voted to dismiss), no action will be taken against Fox News. But one of the Republican commissioners, Lee Goodman, began publicizing the ruling before it was published on Friday because he said he was alarmed by the way the three Democratic commissioners voted.

National: Adverse Court Rulings Could Threaten Voting Rights This Fall | NBC

Three separate court rulings issued Wednesday and Thursday to uphold voting restrictions are likely to increase the number of voters disenfranchised this fall. In Ohio, likely the nation’s most important swing state, a federal judge on Wednesday upheld a controversial method for purging the voter rolls, which is likely to lead to eligible voters being removed. Around the same time, a federal judge based in Washington, D.C., approved — for now — a change to the federal voter registration form that will allow some red states to require proof of citizenship from people registering to vote. Then Thursday morning, Iowa’s Supreme Court ruled to maintain the state’s strict ban on voting by ex-felons.

National: US elections: Facebook clout under lens | ETtech

As the U.S. presidential campaign heats up, Facebook is going out of its way to show its neutrality – an increasingly urgent matter for the social network as evidence of its power continues to emerge. Recent studies have shown the site has extraordinary influence. According to research scheduled to be published in August in the Journal of Communication, when people tagged their friends on Facebook in voting reminders, turnout increased by 15 to 24%. During U.S. presidential primary elections this year, a Facebook reminder that informed people when their state’s voter registration deadline was approaching and provided a link helped produce a surge of nearly 650,000 new voter registrations in California alone, according to Secretary of State Alex Padilla.

California: Los Angeles County unveils new voting system prototype | SCV Signal

A new voting system prototype for Los Angeles County, which will replace a system based on technology from the 1960s, was unveiled Thursday in the city of Los Angeles. “Today’s event was received with great excitement,” said Brenda Duran, a spokeswoman with the Los Angeles County Voting Systems Assessment Project, established in 2009 to create the new voting system. “L.A. County’s core system that is used today has been in existence for almost 60 years. People are excited for a new system.” The new voting system will replace the current one known as “InkaVote Plus.” One of the main drawbacks of the current system: It does not allow for any technical upgrades. “Because of the technology, we knew it was time to replace it,” Project Manager Monica Flores said. She added that with limited voting system options, the county decided to design a whole new system.

District of Columbia: District To Become 51st State? Washington, DC, Could Be Named ‘New Columbia’ If It Gets Statehood | IBT

A commission working out the logistics of Washington, D.C.’s bid for statehood decided this week if they’re successful in becoming the 51st state, it should be called “New Columbia,” the Washington Post reported. New Columbia beat out suggestions like “the State of Washington, D.C.,” “Anacostia,” “Douglass Commonwealth” and “Potomac,” according to WAMU, American University radio in Washington. It emerged as the victor in part because voters have technically already approved it once — in 1982, another time Washingtonians pushed to become a state. “It’s the only name that’s even been voted on by the people of the District of Columbia,” shadow Sen. Michael Brown told WAMU. “For 34 years, people have used this name to push this movement forward.”

Illinois: Judge to issue ruling on Rauner-backed redistricting referendum by July 21 | Chicago Tribune

A Cook County judge said Thursday she will rule by July 21 on whether a petition-driven proposed constitutional amendment aimed at taking much of the politics out of the redrawing of legislative districts will appear on the fall ballot. Regardless of Judge Diane Larsen’s decision, attorneys on both sides of the case ultimately expect it to end up before the Illinois Supreme Court. The Independent Map proposal, which has gained enough signatures to qualify for a spot on the Nov. 8 ballot, would create a multistep process in which an 11-member board, including representatives of the four legislative leaders, would be charged with drawing new boundaries for Illinois’ 118 House and 59 Senate seats after the once-a-decade federal census.

Editorials: Iowa Supreme Court fails voters | Quad City Times

The Iowa Supreme Court issued the mother of all cop-outs Thursday. And, in so doing, reinforced Gov. Terry Branstad’s draconian voter disenfranchisement of more than 50,000 Iowans. In a 4-3 decision, rendered along partisan lines, Chief Justice Mark Cady strains to avoid upsetting the apple cart, a problem created by the vagueness of “infamy” as the state Constitution’s standard for disenfranchisement. Yes, words change, Cady admits. Victorian psuedo-scientific voting bans on “idiots” and the “insane,” appearing in the original state Constitution, are long gone, he notes. And, yes, Iowa’s excessively harsh approach to voting rights disproportionately affects black communities thanks to flaws in the application of justice, Cady concedes. But, he concludes, the courts — the body designed to interpret words written by long-dead men — shouldn’t get involved in a provision that cedes access to the most important democratic right to the whims of a governor. It’s the very court that, just two years ago, redefined the outdated term, “infamy,” to exclude misdemeanor convictions that included jail time. And it’s the very court that, in its landmark 2009 ruling legalizing gay marriage, recognized the Constitution’s living, breathing status. Astonishing.

North Carolina: Bill would force attorney general to defend redistricting, other local acts | Greensboro News & Record

A bill fast-tracked through the N.C. House on Thursday would require the state Attorney General’s Office to defend local acts passed by the General Assembly that are challenged in court. The move comes in the wake of the state’s redistricting of the Greensboro City Council and Wake County Board of Education, which are both being challenged in court. In both cases Attorney General Roy Cooper, the Democratic challenger to Gov. Pat McCrory this November, chose not to defend redistricting laws passed by the legislature’s Republican majority. In the Greensboro council lawsuit, the Guilford County Board of Elections was left to defend the law and initially took no position on its constitutionality.

Ohio: Voting rights activists say election lawsuit claiming Jon Husted illegally purged voters is not over | Cleveland Plain Dealer

A day after Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted scored a win in federal court, voting rights activists say the case is not over. The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, the Ohio A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless sued Husted in April, arguing the practice of removing voters who are inactive over six years violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, also called the “Motor Voter” law. U.S. District Judge George C. Smith disagreed, saying Ohio’s method Ohio’s process is consistent with federal laws because voters are not removed solely for not voting. “The court finds that the public interest is being served by Ohio’s voter maintenance procedures and will continue to be served as long as Ohio continues to operate in compliance with the NVRA,” Smith wrote.

Wisconsin: Judge: ‘Decent case’ political role in Wisconsin voting laws | Associated Press

A federal judge said Thursday that opponents of more than a dozen new Wisconsin election laws had made a “pretty decent case” that Republicans approved them to secure a partisan advantage, but added he isn’t convinced the measures actually had a dramatic effect. U.S. District Judge James Peterson’s comments came in closing arguments of a lawsuit challenging the laws passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Scott Walker since 2011. Peterson promised to rule by the end of July but has said that will be too late to affect the Aug. 9 primary for the field of candidates running for dozens of state and federal races will be narrowed before the Nov. 8 general election. An attorney for two liberal groups challenging the laws, including the requirement that voters show photo identification at the polls, argued that they should be found unconstitutional and stopped from being enforced. But a state Department of Justice attorney said there was no evidence to support a wholesale undoing of the laws. “They’re going for the home run,” Assistant Attorney General Clay Kawski said. “They just haven’t shown that.”

Austria: Top Austrian court annuls presidential election result | Deutsche Welle

Austria’s constitutional court annulled May’s president election on Friday, upholding a legal challenge by the anti-immigation Freedom party (FPÖ) and opening the way for a repeat poll in September or October. “The challenge brought by Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache against the May 22 election… has been upheld,” said constitutional court head Gerhard Holzinger. The court said it was using its strict standard on the application of election rules. Final results on May’s election – after a count of absentee ballots – had put former Green party politician Alexander Van der Bellen ahead by little more than 30,000 votes. The margin of presumed victory was less than one percentage point – out of the 4.6 million ballots cast. Norbert Hofer of the FPÖ had come top in a first round in April.

Australia: From Outback to Antarctica, Australian votes roll in | AFP

From the harsh desert Outback to the frozen reaches of Antarctica, Australians at remote locations have been casting their votes ahead of tomorrow’s national election. Close to 2.2 million ballot papers had been handed in at pre-polling centres by mid-week, with small teams travelling across the vast country to ensure everyone eligible can vote. On Antarctica, expeditioners at Australia’s Davis Station voted on the sea ice in front of the research station, where temperatures are around minus 20 degrees Celsius. “I am glad that I can still have my say whilst being so far away from it all,” said Aaron Stanley, who works for the bureau of meteorology at Davis but was tasked with helping oversee the vote. “I’ve voted while on holiday in Malta before, but this is totally going to top the best voting location.”

Japan: Political parties target internet generation with innovative campaign videos | Japan Today

As Japan’s newly enfranchised teen voters make up their minds ahead of the July 10 House of Councillors election, the country’s political parties are taking their online campaign videos beyond the mundane to appeal to the youth vote. Since internet campaigning was legalized in 2013, parties’ online election campaign videos have tended to be limited to footage of leaders’ public speeches or press conferences. But with approximately 2.4 million new voters aged 18 and 19 joining the electorate in time for the upper house race after the voting age was lowered from 20, the parties are exploring new territory as they vie to become a familiar presence on young people’s smartphones.

Spain: Revolution cancelled | The Economist

The idea of re-running a vote when the first result is unsatisfactory has been getting a bad press recently. But Spain’s second general election in six months, on June 26th, showed that if the goal is to break a political deadlock, do-overs can be useful. The big winners were Mariano Rajoy, the prime minister, and his centre-right People’s Party (PP). Though they failed to get an absolute majority, they took 33% of the vote, up from 29% in the December election, which was so splintered that no party could form a government. Now, with 137 seats in the 350-member Cortes (parliament), Mr Rajoy is set to remain prime minister, albeit at the head of a coalition or minority administration. The election’s big surprise was that Podemos, a new far-left party dedicated to reversing austerity and defenestrating the traditional political class, stalled. Contrary to all poll forecasts, it failed to overtake the more moderate Socialist Party to become the largest force on the left. Podemos had merged with the old Communists of the United Left party for this election, but the merged force won 1m fewer votes than its constituent parts did last time.

Arizona: Security concerns shut down parts of secretary of state’s elections site | The Arizona Republic

Parts of the Arizona secretary of state’s website are down for unspecified security-related maintenance, angering some candidate campaigns that received belated notice. The portion of the site dealing with online contributions to the public campaign-finance system was shut down Tuesday evening, said Matt Roberts, a spokesman for Secretary of State Michele Reagan. But it was only Wednesday morning that the office sent a notice to the Clean Elections candidates using the site’s online service for gathering the $5 contributions necessary to qualify for public financing. “Why wouldn’t you notify the candidates first?” asked Chad Campbell, a consultant for the campaign of Corporation Commission candidates Tom Chabin and Bill Mundell.

Arizona: Voting rights advocates condemn March voting process | Cronkite News

Voting rights advocates Wednesday said the March presidential preference election amounted to voter suppression and proposed renewing federal election standards to protect voters. Community leaders representing numerous advocacy groups, along with Democratic Congressional representatives, said at a forum at the Greater Bethel A.M.E. Church in south Phoenix that the long wait times at Maricopa County election sites prevented many people from voting. “Let’s just make clear what happened. There was voter suppression,” Congressman Ruben Gallego said. Maricopa County had only 60 polling places, including one serving all of south Phoenix for the March 22 election, said Gallego, a Democrat who represents the area.

Iowa: Court To Release Ruling On Felon Voting | Iowa Public Radio

The much anticipated ruling on felon voting from the Iowa Supreme Court will be released Thursday morning. Iowa has one of the most restrictive felon voting policies in the nation. It is one of three states that permanently disenfranchises someone if they commit a felony. That’s because Iowa’s constitution states anyone convicted of an infamous crime forever loses the right to vote. So what’s an infamous crime? The Iowa Supreme Court will likely tell us. More specifically, justices are asked to decide if all felonies are “infamous crimes,” or if the term applies only to a select group of felonies.

Virginia: Judge Sets Hearing on Delegate Lawsuit Aimed at Derailing Trump’s Nomination | NBC

A federal judge has ordered a hearing for July 7 in a lawsuit brought by a Virginia Republican who says a state law requiring him to vote for Donald Trump is unconstitutional. It’s the latest legal front in efforts to stop Trump at the Republican Convention. Federal District Court Judge Robert Payne of Richmond is moving quickly, ordering lawyers on both sides to respond to questions he raised Tuesday. While the pace is driven partly by the July 18 opening of the Republican National Convention, it also suggests that the judge is receptive to the claim. The lawsuit was filed by Carroll Correll, a northern Virginia Republican chosen as a delegate to the national convention, on behalf of himself and the state’s other Republican delegates. He believes that “Donald Trump is unfit to serve as President of the United States” and that voting for Trump would violate his conscience, according to court filings.

Virginia: McAuliffe lambasts “fear mongering” by Republicans over voting rights restoration | The Virginia-Pilot

Gov. Terry McAuliffe arrived at the community center in Huntersville Tuesday filled with zeal for restoring voting rights to over 200,000 felons, and zingers for Republicans who have criticized his action. “April 22 was probably my proudest day as governor. It was the right thing to do,” McAuliffe said, referring to the day he issued his executive order at a ceremony outside the Capitol. “I don’t understand the fear mongering by the Republicans. You would have thought I had burned the Capitol down.” McAuliffe was in Huntersville to hear the stories of people who had their voting rights restored. Outside, GOP lawmaker Jason Miyares of Virginia Beach waited to provide reporters a counterpoint.

Armenia: National Assembly Approves Major Amendments to Electoral Code | Asbarez

The National Assembly approved on Wednesday major amendments to Armenia’s new Electoral Code that stem from a compromise agreement reached by the government and the parliamentary opposition earlier this month. Government officials again made clear, however, that the amendments regulating the conduct of next year’s parliamentary elections will be annulled unless foreign donors pay for the purchase of special equipment needed for their implementation.

Editorials: Only 58% of Indigenous Australians are registered to vote. We should be asking why | Paul Daley/The Guardian

The last week of the federal election campaign opened with news that Indigenous people in Western Australia’s Kimberley region are seven times more likely to take their own lives than other Australians. If ever a revelation might halt an election in its tracks, prompt politicians and the media who trail them around Australia on their set-piece campaign operations, to pause and reflect for a day – even an hour or a moment – then a disclosure of such tragic human import should, surely, have done so. But the major party caravans just bumped along, each attacking the other with fallacious claims about alleged changes to Medicare and border protection policies. While policy argument was anchored in the illusory, there was no substantive, mainstream political engagement with this real tragedy in the Kimberley. The social, political and economic indicators of Indigenous Australian wellbeing have, since the 1950s, been an acute source of international embarrassment to Australian federal and state politicians. Indeed, international opprobrium – which rightly lumped Australia’s treatment of its first people in with South Africa’s apartheid regime – were, together with the burgeoning civil rights movement, instrumental in delivering the federal vote to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in 1962.

Austria: Court to rule Friday on far-right election challenge | AFP

Austria’s Constitutional Court has said it will rule Friday on the challenge brought by the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) against its candidate’s narrow defeat in May’s presidential election. The court, which has heard from around 90 witnesses during two weeks of public hearings, said Thursday it would announce at noon (1000 GMT) whether the election result was valid or a new vote must be held. The FPOe’s Norbert Hofer, 54, topped the poll in the first round of the election in April but lost out to 72-year-old Alexander Van der Bellen, an independent backed by the Greens, by just 30,863 votes in the May 22 run-off.

Haiti: Bickering lawmakers avoid vote on interim leader | Associated Press

Haiti’s fragmented Parliament failed again Wednesday to decide what to do about the caretaker president whose term has expired but remains in office in the absence of a vote resolving the latest leadership disorder. A joint National Assembly session adjourned after grandstanding speeches, arguments over agenda items and breaks for closed-door negotiations went on for hours. No vote was taken. For two weeks, Haiti’s bickering senators and deputies have avoided a vote on whether to extend the mandate of acting President Jocelerme Privert or pave the way for another provisional leader. Privert’s 120-day mandate expired two weeks ago under the terms of a February accord that helped bring him to power.

Mongolia: Ruling party defeated in Mongolian parliament elections | Associated Press

The opposition Mongolian People’s Party has won a decisive victory in parliamentary elections in the landlocked nation where a fall in commodity prices has sent the economy into a sharp decline. The head of the national election commission said Thursday that the MPP won 65 out of 76 seats in the national legislature, formally known as the State Grand Khural. The ruling Democratic Party won just nine seats while independents and smaller parties won two seats. The MPP is the former communist party that ruled Mongolia for 70 years before the country’s transition to democracy and a free market economy after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Under Mongolian law, the majority party in parliament forms a new government and appoints the prime minister and speaker of the legislature.

Spain: Election renews political uncertainty | Associated Press

Spain’s repeat election on Sunday failed to clarify the political future of the European Union’s fifth-largest economy, with the main parties placing roughly the same as in December’s ballot, which brought six months of stalemate. The conservative Popular Party, which has ruled for the past four years, again collected the most votes in the election but fell short of the majority of 176 seats it needed in the 350-seat parliament to form a government on its own. With 97 percent of the votes counted late Sunday, incumbent Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s party earned 137 seats in parliament. That is better than the 123 it won in December but still means it will need allies if it wants to govern. Its earlier efforts to find support from rival parties after December proved fruitless.