Yearly Archives: 2016

A federal judge on Thursday scrapped the city of Cleveland’s plans for a heightened-security zone that would have encompassed most of downtown during the Republican National Convention, saying that the restrictions are burdensome to people who want to express their free-speech rights. U.S. District Judge James Gwin’s ruling comes 25 days before Republican delegates and leaders will descend upon Cleveland and forces the city to redraw the boundaries to the so-called “event zone,” which would have encompassed a 3.5-square-mile area at the heart of the city.

Ohio: Husted warns election officials of error-laden voter registration drive | The Clermont Sun

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted today contacted the Voter Participation Center in Washington D.C. to make them aware of a number of recurring errors surrounding the group’s voter registration drive. Both the Secretary of State’s Office and Boards of Election across Ohio have reported an unusually high number of voter complaints regarding the effort, which is attempting to contact unregistered individuals via U.S. Mail with a voter registration form. Ohioans have reported the registration mailing being addressed to family pets as well as to those who will not yet be 18 before the November 2016 General Election. The Voter Participation Center’s mailing has also commonly been ad- dressed to people who do not live in Ohio as well as citizens who are deceased.

France: Far-Right Party in France Also Dreams of an Exit | New York Times

If Marine Le Pen is elected in France’s presidential elections next year, would she organize a “Frexit”? The leader of the far-right National Front party has used the term before, and she has made it abundantly clear that she thinks the European Union has been a “complete disaster,” as she put it in a speech in Vienna last week. The European Union is one of the most frequent targets of her scorn, depicted as a faceless bureaucracy bent on erasing the French nation in all of its individuality. “France has perhaps a thousand more reasons to leave the E.U. than the English,” she was quoted as saying during a gathering in the Austrian capital of representatives of far-right parties.

Russia: Opposition descends into infighting before elections | The Guardian

Russia’s liberal opposition has been subjected to all kinds of pressure in the last few months, from leaked clandestine sex tapes to dubious court cases and physical violence. As parliamentary elections approach in September, the authorities appear to be throwing every dirty trick in the book at them. But the opposition is also engaged in a fight with enemies who are proving even more destructive than the Kremlin: each other. Parliamentary elections on 18 September will set the tone for a presidential election in 2018, in which Vladimir Putin is expected to stand and win another six-year term in office. Currently, the Russian Duma is made up of just four parties: the pro-Kremlin behemoth United Russia, and three smaller parties known as the “systemic opposition”, which provide a semblance of competition but do not oppose the Kremlin on any substantive issues. Lying outside the system are the other opposition parties, ranging in spectrum from liberals to nationalists. They are not given airtime on television and are often struck off the ballot in elections. With the political system carefully controlled and state television only ever covering the opposition in negative terms, there is little public support for rocking the boat. However, when the anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny was allowed to stand for mayor of Moscow in 2013, he won 27% of the vote, showing there is appetite for new faces among a certain section of urban Russians.

United Kingdom: David Cameron to Resign After Losing His Big ‘Brexit’ Gamble in EU Referendum | Wall Street Journal

Scarcely a year after a triumphant general-election victory, British Prime Minister David Cameron is already on his way out of office following an epic miscalculation that on Thursday resulted in U.K. voters opting to leave the European Union. Mr. Cameron said Friday morning that he would step down as prime minister within a few months, a consequence of the U.K.’s historic referendum on whether to remain in the EU. Mr. Cameron in effect became collateral damage in a battle he himself launched by promising he would offer the public a vote on the Europe issue if his Conservative Party won the 2015 general election. The referendum’s outcome—nearly 52% of voters cast ballots to leave the EU—instantly reverses the legacy of a man who first became prime minister in 2010 as the leader of a coalition government.

United Kingdom: World stocks in freefall as UK votes for EU exit | Reuters

World stocks headed for one the biggest slumps on record on Friday as a decision by Britain to leave the European Union triggered 8 percent falls for Europe’s biggest bourses and a record plunge for sterling. Such a body blow to global confidence could well prevent the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates as planned this year, and might even provoke a new round of emergency policy easing from all the major central banks. Risk assets were scorched as investors fled to the traditional safe-harbors of top-rated government debt, Japanese yen and gold. Billions were wiped from share values as Europe saw London’s FTSE .FTSE drop 6 percent in early deals, Germany’s .DAX and France’s CAC 40 .FCHI slump 7.5 and 9 percent and Italian and Spanish markets plunge more than 11 percent.

Editorials: Brexit earthquake has happened, and the rubble will take years to clear | Rafael Behr/The Guardian

There is a difference between measuring the height of a drop and the sensation of falling; between the sight of a wave and hearing it crash on to the shore; between the knowledge of what fire can do and feeling the heat as the flames catch. The theoretical possibility that Britain might leave the European Union, nominally the only question under consideration on the ballot paper, turns out to prefigure nothing of the shock when the country actually votes to do it. Politics as practised for a generation is upended; traditional party allegiances are shredded; the prime minister’s authority is bust – and that is just the parochial domestic fallout. A whole continent looks on in trepidation. It was meant to be unthinkable, now the thought has become action. Europe cannot be the same again. The signs were always there, even if the opinion polls nudged Remainers towards false optimism at the very end of the campaign. Brexit had taken the lead at times and always hovered in the margin of error. But the statistical probability of an earthquake doesn’t describe the disorienting feeling of the ground lurching violently beneath your feet.

Zimbabwe: Opposition Parties Slam Electoral Commission For Voter Registration Dereliction | VoA News

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission revealed earlier this week that it was failing to honor its mandate of registering voters around the year in line with the law due to financial limitations. But opposition parties are firing back, accusing the ruling Zanu PF of deliberately compromising the electoral body for its own benefit. ZEC has always come under attack from the opposition for colluding with the ruling Zanu PF to disenfranchise voters to boost the party’s numbers. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) was brought into existence on February 1, 2005, in conformity with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Act after a constitutional amendment was passed which, among other things, abolished the Electoral Supervisory Commission and reestablished the ZEC.

National: New Report Says Voter Suppression Threatens 2016 Elections | The Seattle Medium

Since the US Supreme Court invalidated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, states that were once required to get permission from the US Department of Justice to enact voting laws have been free to implement limits to voting that activists say could have a negative impact on the 2016 presidential elections. The high court ruling against the federal government in the Holder v Shelby case in 2013, was followed closely by several primarily southern states, enacting a series of draconian laws that have made it increasingly more difficult for African-Americans, Latinos, students and the elderly to cast their ballots. The Republican legislators supporting these bills claim that the measures are an effort to block voter fraud. Their critics contend that the laws are a way to disenfranchise voters who are more likely to vote Democratic. But, a national coalition of voters, advocacy groups and voting rights activists as well as in the Department of Justice, have been fighting back in the courts, statehouses and city council chambers. These advocates have now released a new report, showing the adverse impact of the Shelby case.

National: Will Dominant Images of Conventions Be of Unity or Protest? | The New York Times

Republicans arriving in Cleveland next month to nominate Donald J. Trump will be greeted by as many as 6,000 protesters on the first day, a noisy coalition of dozens of groups, including Black Lives Matter and the Workers World Party. The demonstrators intend to ignore restrictions keeping them far from the delegates, raising fears the violence that accompanied some of Mr. Trump’s rallies will be magnified on a mass scale. Two marches along routes the city has not authorized are planned for the convention’s opening day, July 18. Organizers say they want to avoid violence. But they are also gearing up for confrontation with the police, including training in civil disobedience. “If there are people willing to put themselves on the line to be arrested, so be it,” said Deb Kline, a leader of Cleveland Jobs With Justice, one of the groups that will march. A week later, as Democrats pour into Philadelphia, so will an army of Bernie Sanders supporters planning Occupy Wall Street-style protests against what they call the “fraudulent” nomination of Hillary Clinton. One group, Occupy DNC Convention, is circulating information about protecting oneself from tear gas by wearing a vinegar-soaked bandanna and swim goggles.

Editorials: Get Ready: The Next ‘Citizens United’ Is Coming | Carrie Levine/ Politico

Most Americans last heard from conservative lawyer Jim Bopp six years ago when he crafted a case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that won the Supreme Court’s favor and helped uncork a torrent of cash—some of it secret—that continues pouring into elections. But Bopp is back. The Terre Haute, Indiana-based attorney, who was literally laughed at by a judge when he made his first arguments in Citizens United, is now the lead lawyer in the most prominent of a series of lawsuits attempting to further destroy political contribution limits. The case, brought by the Republican Party of Louisiana, addresses restrictions on how state and local political parties use “soft money” contributions to influence federal elections. Bopp’s clients argue that if independent outside groups such as super PACs are permitted to raise and spend unlimited amounts of such money, there’s no reason why state political parties, acting independently of federal candidates, should be treated differently. Political parties are “disadvantaged” compared with super PACs, Bopp said in an interview with the Center for Public Integrity. “They want to compete, and they want to do this activity without the severe restrictions that they suffer under,” said Bopp.

Colorado: Lots Of Questions As Colorado’s Primary Election Approaches | CBS

With so much attention focused on the presidential election in November, there’s some confusion around Colorado’s primary election in June. Since ballots went out at the beginning of the month, Denver Elections Division has fielded more than 1,200 calls. “Everything from why you don’t see the presidential candidates on the June ballot to you didn’t send us a secrecy sleeve this year,” said Alton Dillard with the Denver Elections Division. Anticipating questions, he said they included an instruction sheet with every ballot — that also serves as a secrecy sleeve — and a notice explaining that Colorado doesn’t vote on presidential candidates in a primary. There are caucuses for that.

Indiana: Hancock County residents, officials debate primary debacle | Greenfield Reporter

Marcia Moore wasn’t going to address the crowd. The Hancock County clerk didn’t plan to give a formal speech to residents gathered during a special meeting Tuesday to address problems, including long lines and equipment failures, that plagued May’s election — which left the county without results until 24 hours after polls closed. The Hancock County Election Board called the meeting to give the county’s election software company the opportunity to come before the board to discuss what changes it’s making to prevent such problems in the future. Residents were also invited and given the chance to address the election board, which answered questions as they popped up but didn’t plan to make a formal presentation to the crowd. But after voters and candidates who attended the public meeting complained for nearly 30 minutes about long lines, unprepared staff and a faulty voting system, Moore spoke up. She told residents if they’re unhappy with Hancock County’s voting system, to get involved: volunteer to be a poll worker or vote early.

Kansas: Kobach to Use Provisional Ballots for Upcoming Elections | Associated Press

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is planning to use provisional ballots during the upcoming elections and then throw out all of the votes for state and local races cast by the thousands of voters who register to vote at motor vehicle offices without providing proof of citizenship. An email sent from Kobach’s office to county election officials outlines the state’s proposed plans for implementing a two-tiered election system in the wake of a federal court order requiring Kansas to allow these voters to cast ballots at least in the federal races. The email sent by Election Director Bryan Caskey tells local election officials that the secretary of state has not approved a shorter “federal only” ballot. Instead, Kobach wants to institute a “partial provisional” process that allows election officials to go back into those provisional ballots and throw out any votes cast in state and local races and count only votes cast for president and U.S. Senate and House.

Massachusetts: House passes campaign finance changes aimed at transparency, special elections | MassLive

The Massachusetts House on Wednesday passed three campaign finance bills aimed at increasing transparency and leveling the playing field for special election candidates. “These three bills would tighten potential loopholes that can result in abuses of campaign finance laws,” said State Rep. John Mahoney, D-Worcester, who spoke in favor of the bills on the House floor. The bills now go to the state Senate. All three bills were sponsored by State Rep. Garrett Bradley, D-Hingham, a member of the House committees on rules and ethics. One bill relates to donor limits for special elections. Currently, donors are allowed to contribute $1,000 to a candidate each year. The bill, H.542, which passed unanimously, would allow a candidate who runs in both a special election and a general election in the same calendar year to accept $1,000 from a donor before the special election and another $1,000 before the general election.

Missouri: St. Louis voters can’t use touch-screen machines at Tuesday’s election | St. Louis Post-Dispatch

St. Louis and St. Louis County residents who like to cast their votes on a touch-screen machine won’t find one when they go to polling places for Tuesday’s election. Election authorities say the unusually short three-week period since the March 15 presidential primary didn’t provide enough time to reprogram and test each of the touch-screen devices without major difficulty. So all voters in the city and county will have to use paper ballots and feed them into optical-scan machines. Normally both optical-scan and touch-screen methods are available across the city and county. “In theory it would have been possible to do a complete turnaround, but my staff would have been run so ragged,” said Eric Fey, Democratic director at the county Election Board. “The possibility of mistakes and the cost just begins to increase exponentially.”

Nebraska: Secretary of state questions ACLU survey | Lincoln Journal Star

Nebraska’s secretary of state is challenging the conclusions of an ACLU of Nebraska survey that questioned county election officials’ knowledge of voting rights for former felons. Secretary of State John Gale said the question asked in the survey done by volunteers might not have been consistent across all counties. None of the eight counties contacted by his office Tuesday could remember getting a phone call in the past month from someone from ACLU of Nebraska, he said. But Tyler Richard, spokesman for the ACLU, said the volunteers did not identify themselves as calling for the ACLU. And they asked a standardized question to all counties: “Can a former felon register to vote?”

Australia: Election explainer: why can’t Australians vote online? | The Conversation

In 2015, more than 280,000 votes were received in the New South Wales election from a personal computer or mobile phone. This was the largest-ever binding election to use online voting. But federally, the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters has ruled out allowing Australians to cast their vote online, arguing it risks “catastrophically compromising our electoral integrity”. Despite years of research, nobody knows how to provide evidence of an accurate result while keeping individual online votes private. Internet voting is similar to online banking, except you’re not sent a receipt saying “this is how you voted” because then you could be coerced or bribed. Your vote should be private, even from the electoral commission.

Japan: First teens cast ballots as early voting starts for Upper House election | The Japan Times

Teenage voters cast ballots as early voting began Thursday across Japan for the first national election since the minimum voting age was lowered to 18 from 20. Chiho Tatsumi, an 18-year-old high school student, is believed to be the first teenage voter to cast a ballot for the July 10 House of Councilors election. Tatsumi, who voted shortly after 6:30 a.m. at an early voting station in Mino, Osaka Prefecture, before going to school, told reporters, “If I got the right to vote but did not go to vote, that would not make sense,” adding she hoped her friends also participate in the voting.

United Kingdom: EU referendum: what if it’s a tie? | The Conversation UK

If the most recent polls are to be believed (and as we all know, that’s a very big “if”), the result of the EU referendum is likely to be very close. But what happens if it’s a dead heat? Statistically this is of course highly unlikely, but it’s not impossible. It’s more plausible that the difference between the two camps is just a handful of votes. The question is: how close would the result have to be to trigger a recount? There is, perhaps surprisingly, no simple answer to this question. The general rules of the game are set out in the EU Referendum Act 2015, and there are specific regulations for conducting the poll. As for all elections in the UK, counting officers are responsible for the votes cast in their voting area and specific guidance rules for this referendum have also been published by the Electoral Commission.

United Kingdom: Britain’s EU referendum: Hoping that demography is not destiny | The Economist

On June 23rd Britons will head to the polls to answer a simple question they have not been asked since 1975: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” If the answer is “remain”, Britain will continue to integrate with the EU’s 27 other countries. If it chooses to “leave”, the Kingdom may split apart and begin to drift gently into mid-Atlantic obscurity. “Remain” has led in the polls for almost the entirety of the campaign. In early June the “leave” side surged, and briefly appeared to have taken a decisive lead. But the tragic murder on June 16th of Jo Cox, a pro-EU member of Parliament, may have helped swing the polls again in recent days. On the surface, this has restored a narrow edge for “remain”. However, the share of people saying they intend to vote for “remain” has not actually increased. Instead, a sliver of the electorate has simply switched from “leave” to “don’t know”. With just one or two percentage points splitting the two sides, the outcome will depend largely on the 10-15% of voters who say they are still undecided.

National: The States Where Voting Laws May Affect Election Results | Governing

Changes to state voting laws — some geared toward expanding access to the polls, some intended to prevent fraud and thus making it harder to vote — have been proliferating in recent years. But how much of an impact will they have on the 2016 elections, from the presidential contest on down? While it’s still early, a review of states that have changed their election laws since the last presidential cycle suggests that the impact will be felt widely by voters but won’t necessarily affect the outcome of contests in more than a few states. All told, 17 states — most of which are solidly conservative — have tighter voting laws in place this year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The new laws range from strict photo ID requirements to early voting cutbacks to registration restrictions. Such laws are often decried by opponents as harmful to minorities and young voters — groups that are more likely to vote Democratic. But many of the states that have implemented such measures aren’t considered competitive in the presidential election. Nor do many of them have competitive gubernatorial elections this year.

National: Clinton Foundation Said to Be Breached by Russian Hackers | Bloomberg

The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation was among the organizations breached by suspected Russian hackers in a dragnet of the U.S. political apparatus ahead of the November election, according to three people familiar with the matter. The attacks on the foundation’s network, as well as those of the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, compound concerns about her digital security even as the FBI continues to investigate her use of a personal e-mail server while she was secretary of state. Clinton Foundation officials said the organization hadn’t been notified of the breach and declined to comment further. The compromise of the foundation’s computers was first identified by government investigators as recently as last week, the people familiar with the matter said. Agents monitor servers used by hackers to communicate with their targets, giving them a back channel view of attacks, often even before the victims detect them.

Editorials: Why Prisoners Deserve the Right to Vote | Corey Brettschneider/Politico

On April 22, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe issued a sweeping executive order that changed the lives of 200,000 ex-felons in Virginia, instantly restoring their right to vote. This order leaves only Kentucky, Florida and Iowa with blanket lifetime disenfranchisement policies for ex-felons. In these three states, no citizens convicted of a felony are allowed to vote, regardless of the crime committed, absent government-granted exceptions to the policy. Governor McAuliffe’s act is a reminder that public support for giving ex-felons the right to vote after prison is significant, and growing—but this type of order doesn’t go far enough. Ex-felons should be able to vote, yes. But so should prisoners themselves.

Editorials: Want to help end voter suppression? Junk the caucuses. | Jim Kessler/The Washington Post

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have vowed to tear down barriers to voting, especially for the poor and minorities. The Democratic Platform Committee has already heard testimony calling for changes to make it easier to vote. But no one is calling for a change Democrats could make to remove barriers to voting in their own party: junking caucus elections that are elitist, inconvenient, intimidating, anti-Democratic and suppress the vote. If voter suppression is truly a Democratic concern, consider that fewer people participated in the 17 caucus races in the recently completed Democratic nominating contest than those who turned out for the Wisconsin primary alone. These 17 caucus races with minuscule turnout selected 528 earned delegates to the convention. Wisconsin, where roughly the same number of voters cast a ballot, chose just 86 delegates. If that seems undemocratic, it is.

Editorials: The Gutting of the Voting Rights Act Could Decide the 2016 Election | Ari Berman/The Nation

On June 21, 1964, the civil-rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner were abducted in Neshoba County, Mississippi, and brutally murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. The killings in Mississippi, where only 6.7 percent of African Americans were registered to vote in 1964, shocked the nation and helped lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Yet opponents of the VRA never stopped fighting the law. Ronald Reagan, who called the VRA “humiliating to the South,” kicked off his general-election campaign for president in 1980 at the nearly all-white Neshoba County Fair, which had long been a hotbed of white supremacy. Reagan spoke nearly 16 years to the day after the bodies of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were discovered, and told the crowd, “I believe in states’ rights”—a phrase that had long been the rallying cry of Southern segregationists. (I tell this story in more detail in my book Give Us the Ballot.) “For a presidential candidate to kick off his campaign there, that was heartbreaking,” said civil-rights leader John Lewis. “It was a direct slap in the face of the movement and all of the progress that we were trying to make.”

Arizona: Judge may rule on claims of Arizona voter suppression | Cronkite News

A U.S. district court judge may decide two critical issues in Arizona before the November presidential election: whether to stop the state’s new so-called “ballot harvesting” law from taking effect and whether to force elections officials to count out-of-precinct provisional ballots. The Democratic National Committee and a group of voters have filed a lawsuit accusing officials of voter suppression after people in Maricopa County – the state’s largest county – waited for hours to cast their ballots in the March 22 presidential preference election. They also claim that making ballot harvesting a felony could disenfranchise thousands of minority voters.

Nebraska: Secretary of State questions ACLU survey on felon voting rights, follows up with counties | Omaha World Herald

Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale took issue Tuesday with an ACLU survey that reportedly found half of the state’s county election officials gave wrong answers when asked about felons’ voting eligibility. ACLU of Nebraska said Monday that 47 of 93 county officials answered incorrectly when asked by phone: “Can a former felon register to vote?” In Nebraska, someone with a felony conviction can register to vote two years after completing all terms of a sentence.

North Carolina: State Faces Tough Questions From Appeals Court on Voting Law | Wall Street Journal

A federal appeals court asked tough questions Tuesday about North Carolina’s Republican-backed law that imposed tighter rules for voting, including a photo identification requirement at the polls. The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considering legal challenges from the Justice Department, civil rights groups and citizens who allege the North Carolina law illegally discriminated against minority voters. Allison Riggs, a lawyer for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, argued that North Carolina engaged in an unprecedented rollback of voting rights, which intentionally targeted minorities who tend to vote for Democrats. State lawmakers “knew the disparate impact of every one of these provisions,” she said.

North Dakota: Group asks judge to block ND Voter ID law | KFGO