Yearly Archives: 2016

Much of the support for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump this year comes from voters who feel the system is rigged. On Monday the 4th Circuit Court in Richmond lent support to that notion. Sanders and Trump themselves agree — at least in broad strokes. Sanders says he “wouldn’t use the word rigged,” just “really dumb.” Trump is (surprise!) not so restrained: “It’s a rigged system, it’s a corrupt enterprise.” Those complaints look a trifle odd coming from those sources. Nationwide, Hillary Clinton received 3 million more votes than Sanders did in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. Trump complains the system is rigged and corrupt in one breath — and then boasts about how many states he won in the next. Merits aside, Trump and Sanders are complaining about the nominating processes of the Republican and Democratic political parties, which are essentially private organizations. Any advantages or disadvantages a candidate faces are imposed by internal party rules, not the machinery of government. That’s not the case regarding third parties, which face obstacles imposed by law.

Austria: Austria Might Stage Another Vote Much Sooner Than You Think | Bloomberg

Last month’s Austrian presidential election vaulted the country into the international spotlight after nationalist Norbert Hofer and Green politician Alexander Van der Bellen clashed in an acrimonious campaign that rang with the same divisive tones heard ahead of this week’s Brexit vote. After Van der Bellen won the May 22 duel by a whisker — the final count gave him 30,863 lead out of 4.5 million votes — Hofer’s Freedom Party began collecting reports alleging irregularities at the polls. On June 8 they contested the election result before nation’s Constitutional Court. On June 20 the court’s 14 judges began questioning 90 witnesses, mostly election officials and volunteers, in an unprecedented exercise to determine how votes had been counted. A verdict is expected before July 8 — incidentally the day when Van der Bellen is scheduled be inaugurated.

Japan: Election campaign kicks off, voting age lowered to 18 | The Washington Post

Japan’s parliamentary election campaign kicked off Wednesday as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling party seeks a mandate for his economic policies amid opposition criticism that the lives of the ordinary people are not improving. As more than 380 candidates took to the streets across the nation, pleading for votes from vans outside train stations and shopping arcades, Abe opened the campaign with a pledge to proceed with his “Abenomics” plan to revive the economy and pull the country out of a slump. “The biggest topic of this election is economic policies,” Abe told a crowd in Kumamoto, a southern city struck by deadly earthquakes in April. “This is an election in which we decide whether to return to that dark doldrums or not.” Up for grabs in the July 10 vote are 121 seats, or half of the seats in Parliament’s less powerful upper house.

Latvia: Estonian and Latvian non-citizen petition for voting rights sent to European Parliament | Baltic Times

Latvian leftist MEPs Andrejs Mamikins (Harmony) and Tatjana Zdanoka (Russian Union of Latvia) have submitted petitions in support of Latvian and Estonian non-citizens to the European Parliament’s Committee on Petitions. Mamikins told LETA that they had collected over 20,000 signatures under the petition, and there were residents of Belgium, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, the United States, Canada, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh among the signatories of the petition. The petition seeks the rights for Estonia’s non-citizens to become members of political parties and to vote in the European Parliament election and, in the case of Latvia’s non-citizens, the right to vote in the European Parliament election.

United Kingdom: Brexit Voters Suspect Referendum Is Rigged, MI5 Participating In Backing ‘Remain’ | International Business Times

With only two days left before polls open in the historic Brexit vote on whether the United Kingdom will remain a member of the European Union, some voters believe spies and intelligence agents are playing roles in the referendum. Approximately a third of voters from political parties that support Britain leaving the EU believe the MI5 intelligence agency, Britain’s equivalent of the CIA, is working with the government to prevent a “leave” vote from taking place. A survey of 1,656 voters conducted by YouGov from June 13-14 asked potential voters whether it was true “MI5 is working with the U.K. government to try and stop Britain leaving the EU.”

Editorials: The polls called last year’s election wrong. Will they get the referendum right? | Peter Kellner/The Guardian

As the referendum results flow in, the pollsters will be as nervous as the Brexit and remain campaigns. Having worked hard to scrape the egg of their faces after last year’s general election, they would hate having to do the same again. As things stand, some pollsters seem certain to be more embarrassed than others. A year ago, their final headline figures were much the same; they were all wrong together. (The experience was especially painful for me, as the then-president of YouGov. On the night, other pollsters could grieve in private. I had to sit for 10 hours in the BBC studio, pretending to stay calm.) This time there have been big variations, both between individual surveys by the same companies and, on average, between polls conducted online and those conducted by telephone. Monday night was typical – the ORB/Telegraph phone poll showed remain 7% ahead, while the YouGov/Times online poll reported a 2% leave lead. If that difference persists in the final polls, somebody is bound to have awkward questions to answer.

Zimbabwe: Electoral Commission: We Can’t Register Voters Because We’re Broke | VoA News

Zimbabwe’s electoral body said on Tuesday it was failing to register voters at any given time in lockstep with the country’s laws due to crippling financial constraints. And given its dire straits, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) said it was only registering new voters in areas with by-elections. Critics say the failure to keep the process open is jeopardizing thousands of prospective voters and undermining the country’s electoral system.

National: Congressional Black Caucus balks at two political reforms being pitched by Bernie Sanders | The Washington Post

The Congressional Black Caucus is voicing strong opposition to two key political reforms being sought by presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in the run-up to the Democratic National Convention: abolishing superdelegates and opening up Democratic primaries and caucuses to independent voters. Sanders is seeking to leverage his unexpectedly strong showing against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential race this year to secure a series of policy and political objectives. Although none of the political reforms Sanders is seeking would affect his standing now, they are rooted in his frustrations with the contest against Clinton. As of Sunday night, 587 superdelegates had announced their support for Clinton compared with 48 for Sanders, who sought to make a virtue of running against the “political establishment.” As a rule, the senator from Vermont also performed better against Clinton in primaries and caucuses where independent voters could participate. In a letter sent to Sanders and Clinton on Saturday, the Democratic members of the Congressional Black Caucus said they oppose changes in both areas.

National: Anti-Trump delegates raising money for staff and a legal defense fund | The Washington Post

Supporters of a growing anti-Donald Trump movement announced plans Sunday to raise money for staff and a possible legal defense fund as they asked recruits to help spread the word with less than a month until the Republican National Convention. Having started with just a few dozen delegates, organizers also said Sunday that they now count several hundred delegates and alternates as part of their campaign. “As we carefully consider not only the presidential nominee but the rules of the convention, the platform of the Republican Party and the vice presidential nominee, remember that this is true reality TV — it is not entertainment,” Regina Thomson, co-founder of the group now calling itself “Free the Delegates,” said Sunday night.

National: Why Open Primaries Won’t Change Our Politics Much | Pacific Standard

One of the reforms Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters have been pushing in recent months is open primaries. Many argue that more open primaries, allowing independents to participate, can produce more moderate nominees that are more representative of the electorate as a whole. Evidence suggests, however, that this doesn’t really happen. Here’s why. The logic of the open primary is pretty straightforward. Under a closed primary, only people who are registered party members (usually for some time) are permitted to vote. Those party registrants tend to be die-hard partisans, and the candidates they pick will tend to be from the ideological extremes. Independent voters, who might legitimately want a more moderate set of nominees, are forbidden from participating. Allow them in, and you end up not only with more moderate nominees, but nominees who recognize it’s in their interests to keep moderate independent voters happy while they serve in office. Eric McGhee, Boris Shor, Nolan McCarty, Steve Rogers, and I tested this assumption in a large-scale study a few years ago. We looked at two decades of voting behavior by state legislators across all 50 states, and we compared legislators based on the type of primary system that nominated them. Quite a few state parties have changed their primary rules one way or another over this time period, allowing us a good deal of leverage on the question.
People unaffiliated with a party tend, on average, to be less interested in politics and less likely to vote.

California: How insufficient election funding can hold back voter turnout | California Forward

A recent post-election panel held by The Future of California Elections (FoCE) to assess the state’s recent primary election revealed a number of issues. FoCE is a collaborative statewide group funded by the James Irvine Foundation and dedicated to modernizing elections and increasing voter participation. As one might expect, the voter experience varied widely across the state but a number of problems related to potential disenfranchisement were called out including some confusion among poll workers and voters. Voters who registered as No Party Preference should have had the option to vote using a cross-over ballot in the Democratic primary. But, not all poll workers offered the alternative ballot and many voters didn’t know to ask for it. In other cases, voters also had mistakenly registered for the American Independent Party – thinking they were independent of any party – rather than registering with no party affiliation. Those voters couldn’t vote for any of the major party candidates.

Illinois: Redistricting reform heads to court as Madigan forces try to block it from ballot | Chicago Tribune

Now that the Illinois State Board of Elections says a proposed constitutional amendment to change the way legislative districts are drawn has gained enough signatures to be eligible for the fall ballot, the fate of the proposal is with the courts. Oral arguments in a challenge to the Independent Map Amendment proposal, aimed at removing some of the politics from the redrawing of House and Senate districts, are scheduled for 2 p.m. June 30 before Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane Larsen. In preparing for the case, the Independent Map group filed a response to the legal challenge from the People’s Map opposition, whose lead attorney is Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan’s top legal ally, Mike Kasper.

Kansas: Voting rules confusing for upcoming elections; here are some answers | Lawrence Journal World

Thousands of wanna-be Kansas voters who thought they might not be able to cast ballots for president and other federal officials this year are now eligible to vote in them — but not in state or local races. It’s part of the latest fallout from lawsuits surrounding the state law that requires prospective voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship — such as a birth certificate, passport or naturalization papers — when they register. Republican Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is defending the law against multiple legal challenges. Supporters of the law say it’s important to make sure those who aren’t U.S. citizens don’t vote. Opponents say non-citizens aren’t voting in significant numbers and the real result is making it harder for the poor, the young and the elderly — those who might have trouble getting documents — to vote. There are so many legal challenges in play that it’s hard to keep track of who can vote and under what circumstances.

Louisiana: State increases private and independent voting options for voters with disabilities | American Press

People with disabilities will now find it easier to vote. On Thursday, Governor John Bel Edwards signed HB 614 into law. This legislation, authored by Rep. Helena Moreno, D-New Orleans, will provide voters with disabilities the opportunity to vote privately and independently via absentee ballot for the first time. “I was honored to author this necessary legislation so that individuals with disabilities will finally gain the independence of filling out their own ballots. This not only enhances voting rights, but also helps reduce fraud,” said Moreno said in a news release. With the signing of this legislation, Louisiana will become one of the first states in the country to make its absentee ballot by mail process accessible to people with disabilities.

Massachusetts: Towns prepare for first-ever early voting | The Boston Globe

For the first time ever, Massachusetts will hold an early-voting period ahead of the general election in November, giving residents more time to get to the polls — but worrying town clerks who must administer the new program. The early-voting law, signed in 2014 by then-Governor Deval Patrick, requires communities to let residents vote during a 10-day window immediately preceding Election Day during biennial statewide elections. This is the first year Massachusetts will try it out. Now, communities across the state must determine how to best undertake early voting — a task that is more complicated than it seems.

Ohio: Online voter registration won’t make boards of election obsolete | Journal-News

When online voter registration goes into effect in January, it will save tax dollars and make it easier for Ohioans to register to vote. But local election officials say there likely won’t be a huge decrease in the amount of work for their offices — at least in the beginning. Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed Senate Bill 63 on Monday establishing an online voter registration system in Ohio. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who’s been pushing this initiative since his days in the Ohio General Assembly, said this “moves Ohio forward into the 21st Century.”

Ohio: Pets, kids and dead people getting voter registration forms from outside group | The Columbus Dispatch

An effort to encourage voter registration by a Washington D.C. group seems to unwittingly be sending letters to pets, children and deceased Ohioans, according to a news release from Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office. The Voter Participation Center, which mails voter registration forms to those who are unregistered, has been the subject of an increasing number of complaints at boards of elections throughout the state and the secretary of state’s office, according to the release. Josh Eck, spokesman for the office, said he didn’t have an exact figure for how many complaints have been fielded, but nearly every county has reported issues with the group.

Virginia: Prosecutors argue against McAuliffe’s order on rights | Associated Press

A bipartisan group of 43 commonwealth’s attorneys are fighting Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s restoration of voting and other rights for more than 200,000 ex-felons. In a brief filed Friday with the Virginia Supreme Court, the prosecutors said each ex-felon’s rights restoration should be handled individually, rather than en masse, in order to avoid allowing unfit ex-felons the right to own a gun or sit on a jury. “The governor’s blanket restoration order makes no distinction among felons, treating the nonviolent felon the same as the cold-blooded killer, and the one-time offender the same as the career criminal,” the brief said. “The governor’s order thus hinders commonwealth’s attorneys’ ability to discharge their duties.”

Voting Blogs: Fourth Circuit Upholds Virginia’s Discriminatory Ballot Listing for Candidates | Ballot Access News

On June 20, the Fourth Circuit agreed with the U.S. District Court that Virginia’s discriminatory listing of candidates on the general election ballot is constitutional. Libertarian Party of Virginia v Alcorn, 15-1162. The decision is by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee. It is co-signed by Judge G. Stephen Agee, a Bush Jr. appointee, and Andre M. Davis, a Clinton appointee. The Virginia law says the nominees of the qualified parties are always listed first on the ballot, followed by the nominees of the unqualified parties, and then by independent candidates. Ironically, Virginia does require random placement of each candidate within each category, so a random order procedure is used in every election to determine whether the Republican or the Democratic Party nominees are listed first or second. The decision does not mention any of the court decisions that say the U.S. Constitution requires an equal chance for all candidates to be listed first on the ballot, except for a U.S. District Court decision from Oklahoma that struck down a law saying the Democratic Party should always be listed first (the law mentioned the Democratic Party by name). The Fourth Circuit decision ignores contrary decisions of the Seventh and Eighth Circuits, a U.S. District Court in New Mexico, and the California and New Hampshire Supreme Courts.

Austria: High Court Hears Challenge to Presidential Vote | Bloomberg

Austria’s Constitutional Court began questioning 90 election officials and assessors Monday in Vienna at an unprecedented hearing that will determine whether Alexander Van der Bellen was rightfully elected president. The populist Freedom Party challenged the election, in which its candidate Norbert Hofer lost by just over 30,000 votes out of more than 4.5 million cast, by alleging some ballots were opened too early and others were counted by people not authorized to do so. Witnesses from the Innsbruck region confirmed some of the allegations but said they were a long-standing practice needed to count the votes in time and didn’t compromise the results. Along with 13 other justices on the bench, the court’s top judge, Gerhart Holzinger, 69, posed questions to a rural electoral official from the western province of Tirol. At issue was whether the court case was necessary in order to address an Austrian vote-counting system whose complex rules may have rendered it practically unmanageable.

Croatia: Early vote looms in Croatia as lawmakers dissolve Parliament | Associated Press

Croatian lawmakers voted Monday to dissolve Parliament, paving the way for early elections after the government fell in a no-confidence vote last week. The vote was 137 in favor of dissolving Parliament, two against and one abstention. Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic and his government fell on Thursday after weeks of political deadlock that has stalled much-needed economic reform in the newest European Union member state. Croatia joined the EU in 2013 after fighting a war for independence from Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The ruling right-wing Croatian Democratic Union, which brought Oreskovic to power in January but later turned against him, wanted to form a new government with a new prime minister. Opposition parties, however, collected enough votes in the parliament for the dissolution and the holding of early elections.

Italy: Virginia Raggi of Five Star Movement Sweeps Election for Rome’s Mayor | The New York Times

Angry voters have swept anti-establishment candidates to power in Rome and Turin, dealing a severe blow to Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s political standing — and highlighting his vulnerability as he moves forward with a plan to revise Italy’s Constitution. Mr. Renzi became prime minister two years ago pledging to change Italy’s sclerotic political system, but judging by the results from Sunday, voters have become tired of waiting. Channeling fury over corruption scandals and ineptitude, Virginia Raggi of the Five Star Movement, a party co-founded by the comedian Beppe Grillo, crushed her opponent from Mr. Renzi’s governing Democratic Party to become the first female mayor of Rome. “A new era begins with us,” Ms. Raggi, a 37-year-old lawyer, told reporters early Monday, as polls showed her winning by a ratio of two to one. “I will work to bring legality and transparency.”

Russia: Chechnya Schedules Preterm Parliamentary Elections | RFE/RL

At the proposal of parliamentary speaker Magomed Daudov, Chechnya’s 41 lawmakers voted unanimously on June 16 to dissolve the legislature and schedule preterm parliamentary elections for September 18, concurrently with elections for the new Russian State Duma and for the post of Chechen Republic head. Both Daudov and acting Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov adduced as the rationale for that decision the need to avoid the additional expenditure a separate parliamentary ballot would entail. The money saved could, Daudov suggested, be invested in economic development or resolving social problems. Russian commentators have cast doubt on that argument, however. Aleksei Makarkin of the Center for Political Technologies pointed out that since the outgoing parliament was elected in September 2013 for a five-year term, it would have been equally feasible to save money by scheduling a parliamentary ballot concurrently with the Russian presidential election due no later than March 2018, i.e. just six months early.

National: “Guccifer” leak of DNC Trump research has a Russian’s fingerprints on it | Ars Technica

We still don’t know who he is or whether he works for the Russian government, but one thing is for sure: Guccifer 2.0—the nom de guerre of the person claiming he hacked the Democratic National Committee and published hundreds of pages that appeared to prove it—left behind fingerprints implicating a Russian-speaking person with a nostalgia for the country’s lost Soviet era. Exhibit A in the case is this document created and later edited in the ubiquitous Microsoft Word format. Metadata left inside the file shows it was last edited by someone using the computer name “Феликс Эдмундович.” That means the computer was configured to use the Russian language and that it was connected to a Russian-language keyboard. More intriguing still, “Феликс Эдмундович” is the colloquial name that translates to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the 20th Century Russian statesman who is best known for founding the Soviet secret police. (The metadata also shows that the purported DNC strategy memo was originally created by someone named Warren Flood, which happens to be the name of a LinkedIn user claiming to provide strategy and data analytics services to Democratic candidates.) Exhibit B is this opposition research document on Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Exhibit B is also written in Word. Several of the Web links in it are broken and contain the error message “Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.” But in a PDF-formatted copy of the same document published by Gawker a few hours before Guccifer 2.0’s post went live, the error messages with roughly the same meaning appear in Russian. The most likely explanation is that the Russian error messages are an artifact left behind when the leaker converted the Word document into a PDF. That kind of conversion would be expected if the leaker’s PC was set up to use Russian.

National: Momentum builds to reduce politics in redistricting | Associated Press

They have nicknames like “the dead lizard,” ”the praying mantis” and “the upside-down elephant.” The odd-shaped legislative districts that dot many states are no coincidence. The jagged lines often have been carefully drawn by state lawmakers to benefit particular incumbents or political parties. The tactic, known as gerrymandering, is nearly as old as the country itself. It’s also a maneuver that can result in an underrepresentation of minorities in some legislatures. Across the U.S., minorities now comprise nearly two-fifths of the population, yet hold less than one-fifth of all legislative seats, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Congress and the National Conference of State Legislatures. Federal guidelines require that legislative districts are similar in population and not drawn to deny minorities a chance to elect the candidate of their choice. But racial gerrymandering can occur in a couple of ways: when minority communities are divided among multiple districts, thus diluting their voting strength; or when minorities are heavily packed into a single district, thus diminishing their likelihood of winning multiple seats.

National: Uncontested Legislative Races Are Becoming More Common | Governing

Control of the Iowa Senate is up for grabs this fall. Democrats currently have a 26-24 majority, a meager margin Republicans are eager to erase. Given the circumstances, you’d expect both parties to press hard to win every available seat. But that’s not the case. Half the Senate seats are up in November, but in nine of the 25 contests, one of the major parties hasn’t bothered fielding a candidate. That’s more common than you might think. When filing deadlines had passed in the first 27 states this year, one party or the other had failed to run candidates in nearly half the legislative seats — 45 percent, according to Ballotpedia, an online politics site that tracks races and ballot initiatives. Nearly all incumbents can rest easy in Georgia, because 80 percent of the races there will be uncontested. In recent years, it’s been common for a third to 40 percent of state legislative seats to lack major party competition. It’s even worse during primary seasons, meaning legislators win re-election simply by showing up. In the four states that held legislative elections last year, 56 percent of the races went uncontested in the fall.

Editorials: Kansas election law created chaos | The Wichita Eagle

Legislators and the governor should stop taking legal advice from Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, and start taking some responsibility for the chaos created by the law requiring people prove U.S. citizenship to register to vote. As it is, the burden of guaranteeing at least partial voting rights in Kansas is falling on judges – most recently the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ refusal last week to temporarily block a May order by U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson. In response, Kobach’s office told county election officials late Tuesday to start registering affected Kansans. They had tried to register to vote when they applied for or renewed a driver’s license, as intended by the federal 1993 “motor-voter law,” but had their applications put on hold or thrown out for lack of citizenship proof. Counting past and future motor-voter applicants, the state thinks as many as 50,000 voter registrations could be involved.

North Carolina: Photo ID, voting law heading to an appeals court | Associated Press

Far-reaching voting changes in North Carolina approved by Republicans three years ago and upheld by a federal judge now head to an appeals court that previously sided with those challenging the law on racial grounds. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals scheduled oral arguments Tuesday, just two months after a lower court ruled photo identification requirements to vote in person, early-voting restrictions and other changes violated neither the federal Voting Rights Act nor the Constitution. The appeals court’s decision to accelerate review of the case reinforces the stakes involved with the outcome in an election year, particularly in North Carolina. The presidential battleground state also has big races for governor and U.S. Senate on the fall ballot. “The legislative actions at issue must be analyzed in the context of the high levels of racially polarized voting in North Carolina, where many elections are sensitive to even slight shifts in voting,” lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department wrote in a brief heading into the arguments before three judges in Richmond, Virginia.

Editorials: Ohio Governor Kasich’s far-seeing veto of SB 296 and its virtual poll tax | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Secretary of State Jon Husted on Friday rightly applauded fellow Republican Gov. John Kasich’s wise veto of Senate Bill 296 – which had the potential to become a punitive poll tax on those Ohioans who sought to preserve their constitutional voting rights by appealing to a judge to keep polls open late. Ohio Gov. John Kasich vetoed a controversial elections bill that would have required voters seeking a county court order keeping the polls open to post bond. The bill would have required a potentially crushing bond to be posted by anyone asking a judge to keep polls open after hours for any reason. One example: problems with electronic poll books that plagued Hamilton County voters last November, prompting a (Republican) Common Pleas judge to order polls kept open until 9 p.m. Our editorial board condemned SB 296, sponsored by state Sen. William Seitz, a Republican from Hamilton County, and called for such a veto. And Kasich agreed, saying Friday in his veto statement that “prohibiting state court judges from exercising their discretion to waive [a bond] in only these types of cases is inequitable” and might deter citizens from seeking a court ruling to allow after-hours voting even “when there may be a valid reason for doing so.” Kasich’s right – so right, that it’s unlikely GOP lawmakers will vote to overturn his veto, even though they have the votes to do so.

Virginia: State officials pull 132 confined sex offenders from list of eligible voters | The Washington Post