Editorials: District of Columbia’s Democratic Primary Highlights Their Statehood Blunder | Pat Garofalo /US News & World Report

Tuesday is officially the last election day of the 2016 Democratic presidential primary campaign. Not that it matters much, of course: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is already the presumptive nominee. But going 57th in the primary order and having their votes rendered largely meaningless by the previous contests is nothing new to Tuesday’s set of voters – after all, we’re casting our ballots in the District of Columbia. Yes, adding a lot of insult to plenty of injury, the voters of Washington, D.C. – myself included – were stuck at the end of the presidential politics playlist, relegated to a footnote in the campaign, after already being largely disenfranchised at the national level. But it doesn’t have to be this way: That D.C. is still stuck in representative purgatory highlights one of the biggest mistakes Democrats made during the Obama era.

Kansas: Appeals court ruling will let some Kansas voters register, for now | Reuters

Thousands of Kansas residents who signed up to vote at motor vehicle offices but were kept off the rolls by a state law requiring proof of citizenship could be allowed to cast ballots in the November general election, under a ruling on Friday by a U.S. appeals court. Kansas’ secretary of state, Kris Kobach, a Republican who has become a national leader in pushing for voting changes, had asked the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to place on hold a decision last month by a lower-court judge ordering the state to begin registering 18,000 residents affected by the law. In requesting the stay, the state said the order to begin to register voters would “result in extraordinary confusion on November 8, 2016.” The Denver-based federal appeals court, however, rejected the argument.

Texas: Lawsuit claims Hidalgo County voting machines ‘either faulty or tampered with’ | KGBT

Voting machines in western Hidalgo County were “either faulty or tampered with” to rig the Democratic Party primary runoff election, according to a lawsuit filed Monday. Bail bondsman Arnaldo Corpus — who challenged Justice of the Peace Precinct 3 Place 2 Marcos Ochoa in the primary — filed the lawsuit. Ochoa won 54 percent of 6,625 ballots cast, defeating Corpus, according to results published by the Hidalgo County Elections Department. Corpus, though, claims the Elections Department count isn’t correct.

Utah: How a Utah county silenced Native American voters — and how Navajos are fighting back | High Country News

To understand why Wilfred Jones wanted an ambulance, you have to understand where he lives. San Juan County, in southeastern Utah, is nearly as big as New Jersey but is home to fewer than 15,000 people. The lower third is part of the Navajo Nation and is almost entirely Ute and Navajo. The upper two-thirds are white and predominantly Mormon. Jones, a 61-year-old grandfather with jet-black hair and a diamond stud in each ear, lives in the lower third, five miles south of the blink-and-you-miss-it town of Montezuma Creek. It’s rough, rocky country, where bullet holes riddle the road signs and lonely pumpjacks ply oil from the earth. The nearest services are in Blanding, some 40 miles north. Sixteen years ago, when Jones joined the board of the Utah Navajo Health System, he realized his neighbors were dying because the closest ambulances — the county’s, in Blanding, and the tribe’s, in Kayenta, Arizona — were an hour away “on a good day.” So Jones asked the county commission if one of San Juan’s ambulances could be housed in a garage in Montezuma Creek. From there, it would take half the time to rush an elder suffering a heart attack to medical care.

Virginia: Voting rights restoration case to go before Virginia Supreme Court | Roanoke Times

The Supreme Court of Virginia will hold a special session July 19 to take up the Republican challenge to Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s order that restored voting rights for more than 200,000 felons. Republican leaders in the General Assembly had sought to have the case heard as early as next month. They argued in court filings that the matter should be decided by Aug. 25 at the latest to avoid “casting doubt on the legitimacy” of the November elections. The McAuliffe administration has refused to release the list of the 206,000 felons, saying that state election law exempts from the Virginia Freedom of Information Act individual records maintained in the state’s voter registration system. Edgardo Cortes, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Elections, asserted in an email Wednesday that “all information received from other entities for the purpose of maintaining accurate voter registration records” is “part of our statewide voter registration system and covered by this exemption.”

Wisconsin: Legislature’s budget committee approves $250,000 for voter ID education | Wisconsin State Journal

The Legislature’s budget committee Monday approved spending $250,000 for a public education campaign on the controversial voter ID law. The campaign, details of which still must be settled by the new Elections Commission, would inform the public about the need to bring a valid photo ID to vote in the upcoming fall primary and general elections. The money would pay for radio and television public service announcements, website ads, online videos and possibly ads at movie theaters, on buses and on social media. The campaign includes English and Spanish ads newspapers can run, but doesn’t include funds for print ads, spokesman Reid Magney said. The committee passed the motion unanimously with one member absent after addressing concerns raised by a Republican lawmaker that the campaign would be a “waste of money” because most people already know about the law.

Austria: Expert: Election rerun is ‘likely’ | The Local

In an interview with Der Standard newspaper, University of Vienna professor Theo Öhlinger also said that two of the complaints in the 150-page document filed with the constitutional court were “very serious”. One of those complaints is about postal votes being counted in some places by municipal officers rather than the electoral commission as a whole. Öhlinger added that it was also a serious concern that interim results were being published online before the polling stations had closed. The run-off presidential election on May 22nd was won by the independent Alexander Van der Bellen, the former leader of the Green party, who defeated the anti-immigration Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer by a margin of only 30,863 votes.

Japan: Mobilizing 18- and 19-year-old voters a challenge | Japan Today

“Elections are exciting!” proclaims “election visualist” Garei Zamamiya in an interview with Weekly Playboy (June 20). A lot of people will be surprised to hear that. If Japanese election campaigns were as exciting as they are noisy, it would be a different story, but everyone knows they’re not, with debate dumbed down to imbecility and outcomes largely foregone conclusions. Zamamiya may have a point, however, with reference to the Upper House election slated for July 10. Two factors set it apart. One is a question of some urgency: Will the governing coalition led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe procure a two-thirds majority enabling it to revise the Constitution?

Kenya: Opposition Gives Ultimatum on Electoral Body Reforms | Bloomberg

Kenya’s main opposition Coalition for Reforms and Democracy said its supporters will resume protests on Thursday if the government doesn’t meet its demand for talks on changes to the national electoral body. The group has staged weekly demonstrations in the capital, Nairobi, and other cities since April to demand the resignation of officials at the electoral agency over alleged corruption and bias. Clashes with police have left at least five people dead. “CORD has called off Monday protests because of high level engagement involving the church, business community and diplomats pending a response from the government,” spokesman Dennis Onyango said in a text message. He said he expected the U.S. to appeal to the government to take part in talks.

Venezuela: Maduro goes to court to block recall referendum | BBC

Venezuela’s government has asked the Supreme Court to reject the opposition’s proposal to hold a referendum to remove President Nicolas Maduro from office.
It accused the leaders of the recall referendum movement of fraud. On Friday the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared more than 600,000 signatures on a petition for the referendum invalid. The opposition says the electoral authorities are biased against them. Venezuela is on the brink of economic collapse, facing high inflation and the shortage of food and basic goods. The opposition blames the Socialist policies of Mr Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, for the country’s economic decline.

National: Groups making sure voting materials are available in Spanish | USA Today

National groups are translating state voter ID laws into Spanish to help make sure Hispanic voters bring proper identification to the polls on Election Day. “There are so many voter ID laws they can be confusing because in every state they are different,” said Joanna Cuevas Ingram, associate counsel with Latino Justice PRLDEF (Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Educational Fund). “There’s a need for clarity. We believe every vote counts and every voter should have access to information regardless of the language they speak.’’ Latino Justice PRLDEF is teaming with the Brennan Center for Justice and Rock the Vote to translate into Spanish voter ID requirements and registration deadlines for all 50 states for the Nov. 8 elections. The groups plan to unveil the project later this summer.

California: Voter Fraud Probe In California Turns Into Voter Intimidation Boondoggle | TPM

Having police come to your home wielding weapons and asking questions about your voter registration status just days before an election sends a clear signal. That signal wasn’t lost on residents of Hmong communities in rural northern California, who said police came to their doors doing just that earlier this month. They said authorities also set up a roadway checkpoint to target Hmong drivers, threatening to arrest and prosecute them if they voted illegally. Following those allegations of flagrant voter intimidation in the lead-up to Tuesday’s state primary, the sheriff of Siskiyou County, where just about 43,000 people reside, told TPM his deputies played only a “minor” role in a state-led gumshoe probe into potential voter registration fraud. Sheriff Jon Lopey (pictured right) said deputies accompanied investigators to provide security in an area he described as potentially dangerous and “inundated” with what he estimated to be 2,000 illegal marijuana grow sites.

District of Columbia: Dead last — again — among U.S. primaries, D.C. Democrats chafe at a trivial vote | The Washington Post

Democrats heading to the polls Tuesday for the District’s presidential primary will participate in an odd ritual: They’ll vote, but the results won’t matter. The party’s intensely fought battle between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is over — decided last week, when Clinton racked up enough victories across the country to secure her party’s nomination. The city’s inconsequential status is largely a function of its dead-last place on the primary calendar, something Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) says she wants to change for future presidential contests. But that feeling of futility and sense of invisibility go beyond presidential primaries: They underscore the civic experience in the District, residents say.

District of Columbia: New Columbia? Washington DC sees new hope in fight for statehood | The Guardian

The leading contender is New Columbia, but that has associations with Christopher Columbus some would question. Other options include Anacostia or Potomac. Or how about Douglass Commonwealth – conveniently DC – after the abolitionist Frederick Douglass? The debate over what to call America’s hypothetical 51st state is just one of the thorny issues facing campaigners as they strive to correct what they claim is a long historical injustice unique among capital cities around the world. The effort to gain statehood for Washington, District of Columbia, received a boost on Thursday when the Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders reaffirmed his support. “I hope that the next time I’m back we’re going to be talking about the state of Washington DC,” he said to cheers at a rally ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic primary. Hillary Clinton has also endorsed the plan, although the fact that Washington’s Democratic primary is the last in the country, and a “dead rubber” now that Clinton is certain of victory, could be seen as symbolic of how one city deeply underrepresented in Washington politics is Washington itself. It was not until 1964 that residents of DC could even vote for president.

Editorials: Kris Kobach must stop violating voting rights of up to 50,000 Kansans | Yael T. Abouhalkah/The Kansas City Star

Kris Kobach’s incompetence on voting rights has been exposed for all Kansans to see — again. In a nationally watched case, the Republican Kansas Secretary of State was slapped down late Friday by a federal appeals court for trying to enforce his overly restrictive voting law. Instead of trying to make it easier to cast a ballot, Kobach has been engaged in a campaign making it harder for young people, minorities and poorer residents — often Democratic voters — to do that. Up to 50,000 Kansans could be affected, state officials say, higher than earlier estimates of 18,000 as more people register to vote this summer.

Maryland: Baltimore’s primary election foul-ups did not happen elsewhere | Maryland Reporter

Baltimore’s troubled primary election could be blamed on delayed training materials for Maryland’s new paper ballot system and repeated revisions to a training manual for election judges. But it doesn’t explain why major voting irregularities took place in only one of Maryland’s 24 voting jurisdictions, while the rest of the state experienced nominal problems. Baltimore City’s own elections director, who denies fraud or wrongdoing in the April 26 election, suggests that hundreds of election judges not showing up as scheduled, trouble recruiting quality judges and a lack of uniformity in general knowledge of procedures could be at issue. But plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit believe repeated negligence by top officials led to the problems. Meanwhile, the governor’s office raised red flags about preparedness well before the election but were reassured that all was well. Over 1,700 provisional ballots were improperly handled, and the lawsuit has been filed in federal court alleging voter fraud and gross negligence.

Massachusetts: Warren VP chatter highlights Massachusetts’ special election law | Boston Globe

Talk of Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren as a possible running mate for presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is throwing a fresh spotlight on Massachusetts’ process for filling an empty Senate seat. Warren is in the fourth year of her first six-year term and if she is elected vice president, she would be leaving her seat vacant in a year when Democrats are hoping to retake the Senate. It would also spark the state’s third special election for a Senate seat since the death in 2009 of Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy after 47 years in office. Before his death, Kennedy sent a letter to state lawmakers urging they change the special election law to let the governor — then Democrat Deval Patrick — name an interim appointment to the seat while a special election was held.

Montana: Costs of Indian voting rights legal counsel released | Great Falls Tribune

Money spent by counties defending a 2012 lawsuit on Indian voting rights could have gone toward setting up satellite voting and alternative voting areas on reservations for years, Indian voting activists said. Blaine County paid $119,071 and Rosebud County paid $116,000 for outside legal counsel in the 2012 Wandering Medicine lawsuit, which was settled in 2014, a figure that could reach about $460,000 when combined with Bighorn County, which was also involved in the lawsuit, and the $100,000 paid to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, activists said. However, attorneys involved in the litigation say that is not the case. The $119,071 figure was released in a May 13 public records request to William “Snuffy” Main, a member of the Gros Ventre Tribe on the Fort Belknap Reservation, said attorney Sara Frankenstein of the South Dakota law firm of Gunderson, Palmer, Nelson & Ashmore, who represented Blaine County in the lawsuit.

Editorials: GOP upends NC’s voting process | Raleigh News & Observer

North Carolina’s capital is a place where Republicans battle with Democrats, but since Republicans took full control of the General Assembly, the Supreme Court and the governor’s office, that conflict has changed. Instead of Republicans against Democrats, it’s Republicans colliding with democracy. Republican candidates and lawmakers used the district maps and election laws drawn and written by Democrats in the majority to ascend to power, but they’ve thrown out both to keep it. Political gamesmanship is to be expected, especially when a party takes full control of the state after more than a century. But what Republican lawmakers have done – and Gov. Pat McCory has abetted – goes well beyond settling scores or tilting the electoral landscape in their favor. Instead, they’ve made a hash of the state’s electoral process. They’ve gerrymandered the state’s districts to a new extreme, passed laws to suppress the vote and turned what were once nonpartisan state Supreme Court elections into expensive, highly charged partisan fights.

Ohio: Senate bill causes voting rights controversy | Times Leader

A Senate bill was passed that would make it more difficult for citizens to petition a court to keep polling places open after hours on Election Day in Ohio. People seeking to keep the polls open after hours for emergency reasons would have to pay a cash bond to be determined by a judge. The legislation, Senate bill 296, was sponsored by Cincinnati Republican Sen. Bill Seitz and was passed along a purely party-line vote in both the House and Senate. It will go to the Governor’s desk to be either signed or vetoed. Regarding his legislation, Seitz stated “most courts to consider the question (of keeping polls open longer) have held that the courts have no power to extend Election Day voting hours because the legislature, and not the courts, set the voting hours. Sadly, in both the November 2015 and March 2016 elections, rogue courts in Hamilton County issued orders extending polling hours. These orders cost Hamilton County taxpayers $57,000, and forced the inside poll workers to stay around for an extra 60 to 90 minutes after already working a 14-hour day.”

Editorials: Down and Out and Voteless in Ohio | The New York Times

The attempts by Republican lawmakers to suppress the turnout of Democratic-leaning voters in the 2016 election have reached shameless levels in Ohio — a swing state where it turns out that even homeless citizens have been blocked from exercising their right to vote. Thanks to a timely ruling last week from a federal district judge, Algenon Marbley, the obstacles to minorities at the polling booth come November may be less formidable than they might have been, though the state plans to appeal and problems remain. The judge struck down a 2014 Republican-sponsored state law that, among other things, required that absentee ballots be thrown out for essentially trivial mistakes. This, the judge ruled, discriminated against minority voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act, including homeless people disqualified for not providing precise addresses. Other changes in the 2014 law shortened the period during which voters could correct such errors and barred election clerks from helping someone confused by the forms, unless the voter was physically disabled.

Tennessee: Federal judge stays abortion vote recount | The Tennessean

A federal judge has ordered a halt to a vote recount on the controversial abortion measure, Amendment 1, pending an appeal by state election officials. U.S. District Judge Kevin Sharp, who ordered the recount in April, issued the stay on Tuesday at the request of Tennessee election officials who are appealing his decision the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. Sharp cited the potential price tag of a recount to Tennessee taxpayers — approximately $1 million — in issuing his order. Should the Court of Appeals overturn his order, it “raises the possibility that public money may be spent on something which turns out to be unnecessary,” Sharp wrote.

Wisconsin: Joint Finance Committee to consider voter ID education campaign, GAB transition | The Cap Times

The Legislature’s budget committee will meet next week to discuss funding a voter ID education campaign and transitioning the state Government Accountability Board into new elections and ethics commissions. Last month, the GAB requested $250,000 from the Joint Finance Committee to educate voters about Wisconsin’s voter ID law before the 2016 presidential election. The agency has proposed two informational campaigns with different combinations of radio, TV and digital advertisements. One option would also include pre-show advertisements at movie theaters, interior bus ads and sponsored Facebook posts. Gov. Scott Walker approved the voter ID law, which requires certain forms of photo identification to be shown at the polls in order to vote, in 2011.

Editorials: Why the Wisconsin redistricting lawsuit will win | Matthew Flynn/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

I had the good fortune to serve as a law clerk to the Honorable Thomas E. Fairchild, chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, the year after I graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School. Fairchild was one of the most respected federal judges in the country, and many of his opinions are still cited as precedent. I once asked him the secret to courtroom advocacy, and he said “Matt, make me want you to win. If a judge wants you to win, the judge will find a way to do it.” The redistricting lawsuit pending in federal court is very likely to result in the court’s overturning the present imbalanced legislative districts, but not for the reasons most people think. The decision itself is likely to be couched in terms of “packing” (loading large Democratic majorities, usually minorities, in safe districts, resulting in overwhelming Democratic margins), and “cracking” (diluting the remaining Democratic votes in what could be competitive districts to ensure a Republican victory no matter whom the Democrats nominate). But the reasons why the three-judge panel will want the redistricting position to win are more profound.

Canada: Referendum on electoral reform would be fraught with complications |CBC

Britain’s referendum five years ago on electoral reform was, in the words of one learned observer, “rich on demagoguery and unsubstantiated claims with no empirical foundation.” Another called it “disgraceful.” Opponents of adopting the alternative vote (AV) method proposed for Britain claimed the new system would cost more and thus leave less money for things like health care: “She needs a new cardiac facility NOT an alternative voting system,” was the tagline of an advertisement that featured the picture of a newborn infant. An ad by the Yes side suggested the current system made MPs lazy. And after a Conservative critic suggested AV would force governments to negotiate with extremist fringe parties, a Liberal-Democrat proponent accused the No side of participating in a “Goebbels-like campaign.” Turnout for the referendum, which the No side won convincingly, was 42 per cent, more than 20 points lower than in the United Kingdom’s general elections in 2010 and 2015.

Peru: Keiko Fujimori concedes defeat to Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Peru election | The Guardian

Five days after Peru’s presidential election, the daughter of imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori has conceded defeat, putting an end to an agonising wait for results in one of the most closely contested votes in the country’s history. Keiko Fujimori, the frontrunner throughout the campaign, said on Friday that she accepted “democratically” the electoral body’s results which indicated her rival, the conservative economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski had won by a hair’s breadth: The margin of victory was 42,597 votes out of more than 17m ballots cast. Flanked by members of her political party, Fuerza Popular, Fujimori blamed her defeat on the outgoing government, business leaders and the media, who she said had backed a campaign which “sought and awoke hatred and fanaticism, feelings which resent democracy”.

Spain: Unidos Podemos: Spain’s leftwing alliance hoping to end political impasse | The Guardian

Pablo Bustinduy is a typical Podemos MP: although holding the grand title of secretary for international relations, he travels with a rucksack, and wears jeans and a sweatshirt. Bustinduy, 33, spent much of his 20s pursuing a career in academia in France and the US, gaining a doctoral thesis in political philosophy at the New School in New York and publishing papers on Descartes, Occupy and the indignados (outraged). He returned to Europe to join Podemos, Spain’s new leftwing party, in 2014, and now criss-crosses the continent meeting its allies and supporters – overwhelmingly young Spaniards forced to leave the country in search of work. Reflecting on the collapse of Spain’s two main parties in the general election in December, Bustinduy said: “What happened was nothing short of revolutionary. Because even with an electoral system that promotes bipartisanship, we have this completely new landscape.”

Ukraine: Savchenko calls for early elections in Ukraine | Associated Press

Pilot Nadiya Savchenko on Friday called for early parliamentary elections to “infuse fresh blood” into Ukraine’s politics, a call that could send shock waves across the volatile nation. Savchenko, 35, who has become a national icon in Ukraine after spending two years in a Russian prison, told The Associated Press that the “Ukrainian people deserve a better government that they now have.” She said that the Ukrainian government has failed public expectations raised by the ouster of the country’s former Moscow-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was driven from power in February 2014 after months of massive street protests on Kiev’s main square, the Maidan.

Venezuela: Maduro vows no recall referendum before next year | AFP

Venezuela’s embattled President Nicolas Maduro vowed on Saturday that no referendum on ending his administration would be held until next year. Maduro’s opponents are racing to call a referendum before January 10, as a successful recall vote before that deadline would trigger new elections rather than transfer power to the vice president. If the opposition meets all requirements with their bid to oust Maduro, “the recall referendum will be held next year. Period,” the leftist populist said. For months now, Maduro has faced increasing hostility, with opponents accusing him of driving oil-rich Venezuela to the brink of economic collapse and launching a marathon process to call a vote on ousting him from office. “We must respect whatever the electoral authorities” decide, Maduro said at a pro-government event in Caracas.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for June 6-12 2016

absentee_ballots_260In a Stanford Review interview Verified Voting founder David Dill discussed the risks of Internet voting, the challenge of educating an increasingly tech-comfortable public, and why paper is still the best way to cast a vote. Voters faced a tough time in the California primary, with many voters saying they have encountered broken machines, polling sites that opened late and incomplete voter rolls, particularly in Los Angeles County. A federal appeals court ruled that Kansas cannot prevent thousands of eligible voters from casting ballots in the November federal election because they didn’t prove they were U.S. citizens when registering to vote at motor vehicle offices. A federal judge threw out provisions in Ohio’s law that had voided  absentee and provisional ballots for technical flaws made by otherwise qualified voters. Computer scientist Daniel Lopresti notes that the Pennsylvania Legislature is considering an internet voting bill that would jeopardize the vote and voice of our troops and compromise the integrity of elections by exposing them to attacks from hackers operating anywhere and everywhere throughout the world. The U.S. Supreme Court said it would intervene in another political redistricting case from Virginia to consider whether state office voting lines were racially gerrymandered. Haiti’s major foreign donors reluctantly gave the green light to the country’s elections body to rerun last year’s contested presidential elections in October and the U.K. government’s website for voter registration crashed, sparking panic that citizens may miss out on casting their ballots.