Monthly Archives: January 2017

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday welcomed a political agreement in Congo calling for President Joseph Kabila to leave power after an election by the end of the year and urged “swift implementation.” The council said in a presidential statement that it was encouraged “by the spirit of flexibility and compromise demonstrated by Congolese political leaders” in reaching the agreement. Council members stressed the importance of the government and its partners taking “all necessary steps to accelerate preparations for the elections without further delays, within the timeframe.”

Haiti: Losers in Haitian election cry foul | AFP

The losers in Haiti’s presidential election insisted Wednesday they will not recognise political neophyte Jovenel Moise as the winner, calling the officially declared result a political coup. But international organisations welcomed the conclusion of a tortuously long voting process that began in October 2015 and paralysed political life in this unstable Caribbean nation that is the poorest in the Americas. Moise was declared winner of the November 20 first round Tuesday night by the Provisional Electoral Council, with 55.6 percent of the votes. To check against fraud — the reason for the scrapping of the election the first time Haiti tried in 2015 — the council said right after the election that 12 percent of the ballots must be verified. After a week of checking, the council said there was no signficant fraud.

South Korea: Voting age likely to be lowered to 18 | Korea Times

The voting age is likely to be lowered to 18 for the 2017 presidential election. The New Conservative Party for Reform (NCPR), created by lawmakers who left the Saenuri Party, said Wednesday that it will seek to lower the voting age from 19 to 18 and apply it to the next election. With all three opposition parties supporting an increase in the number of eligible voters, there is a high possibility that the Election Law could be revised during an extraordinary session of the National Assembly in January. If revised, those who are 18, currently high school students, will be able to vote in the presidential election, which could take place earlier than scheduled.

United Kingdom: Online voting could leave British elections vulnerable to hacking, former MI6 head warns | The Independent

Adopting electronic voting systems could leave British elections vulnerable to cyber attack by other countries, the former head of MI6 has said. Sir John Sawers said traditional pencil and paper approaches to voting were “actually much more secure” – following allegations that the recent US presidential election was subject to hacking. “The more things that go online, the more susceptible you are to cyber attacks,” Sir John, who stepped down in 2014, said. “We need to have systems which are robust,” he said in an interview for the BBC documentary The New World: Axis of Power. “The only trouble is, the younger generation of people expect to be able to do things remotely and through electronic devices. “Bizarrely the stubby pencil and piece of paper that you put your cross on in the ballot box is actually much more secure than anything which is electronic.”

Texas: Dithering federal judges asked to rule on Texas political maps | The Texas Tribune

Whether they meant to or not, the three federal judges overseeing the state’s redistricting litigation have already decided the maps are legal enough for three general elections. But they have never finally resolved all of the challenges initially made to Texas’ political maps back in May 2011, when lawyers who believe the maps are discriminatory and unfair went to court seeking a remedy. That’s what the courts are for, after all — to protect one party from harming another party. Or maybe that’s to protect one political party from harming another political party. The three-judge panel in charge of the case appears to be stuck; they have not acted since a hearing in 2014. And now that another election has passed, those lawyers ended 2016 with a new plea, asking the judges to wrap up their work by mid-month. In their filing last week, the lawyers wrote that they hope to get a ruling in time to finish this court fight before another federal census is done and another set of maps has been drawn by a Legislature that might have been elected using unfair political lines.

National: Blue-state lawmakers want to keep Trump off 2020 ballot unless he releases tax returns | The Washington Post

Lawmakers in several deep-blue states want to require presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to appear on the ballot in those states, a sharp rebuke of President-elect Donald Trump’s ongoing refusal to make his tax records public. A pair of Maryland Democrats on Tuesday announced they would introduce a bill mandating the release of five years of tax returns, mirroring similar proposals in New York, Massachusetts, California and Maine. If approved, the proposals could keep Trump from appearing on some ballots in 2020 if he continues breaking with the decades-long tradition of financial transparency and decides to seek a second term. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in May introduced a federal bill requiring major-party candidates to release their returns, but that legislation didn’t advance in the Republican-controlled Congress.

National: Lawmakers preparing Russia sanctions bill | CNN

A group of bipartisan senators is preparing a bill that would offer sanctions against Russia, lawmakers confirmed as the Senate convened a new session of Congress on Tuesday. Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that he was working on the bill with a “broad group” of bipartisan senators. He said he hoped the bill would be released this week. “It will be a comprehensive bill that will provide congressional authorization for additional sanctions against Russia,” Cardin said.

National: Uncertainty clouds debate on Russia’s suspected role in election hacks | PCWorld

How do you prove Russia meddled with the presidential election? That’s a question the U.S. government is facing, but may never fully answer, at least not publicly. Last week, the U.S. punished Russia, claiming the country’s cyberspies hacked Democratic groups and figures during the election season. However, missing from last week’s announcement was any new evidence — or a smoking gun — proving the Kremlin’s involvement. This isn’t sitting well with everyone in the security industry, especially since identifying the culprit of any cyberattack is no easy matter. “Maybe Russia did do it, but until we have sufficient evidence, it’s a mistake to move forward,” said Jeffrey Carr, a cybersecurity consultant. Carr isn’t the only skeptic. Incoming President Donald Trump has also been doubtful over Russia’s suspected role in the cyber-meddling. “Unless you catch ‘hackers’ in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking,” tweeted Trump, who’s compared the problem to the U.S. incorrectly concluding that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction over a decade ago. Nevertheless, the outgoing administration of President Barack Obama remains convinced that the Kremlin directed the high-profile hacks in an effort to sway public opinion in the run-up to the election.

Alabama: N.A.A.C.P. President Arrested During Sit-In at Office of Jeff Sessions | The New York Times

Protesters from the N.A.A.C.P., including its national president, were arrested on Tuesday after an hourslong sit-in at the Mobile, Ala., office of Senator Jeff Sessions, where they demanded that he withdraw his name from consideration as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s attorney general. Almost two dozen civil rights activists occupied the office around 11 a.m. to denounce what they called the senator’s “hostile” attitude toward civil rights and the Voting Rights Act, which was weakened by a Supreme Court decision in 2013. The sit-in ended shortly after 6:30 p.m. when the protesters refused an order from the building’s management to leave the premises. It was not immediately clear how many people had been arrested, but a live-stream broadcast on Facebook by Lee Hedgepeth, a local journalist, showed at least six people agreeing to be arrested and kneeling before the police in prayer.

District of Columbia: Republican-led Congress denies D.C. delegate a vote. Again. | The Washington Post

On the first day of the 115th Congress, members buzzed Tuesday about the repeal of President Obama’s health-care law, tax reform and whether to gut the ethics office. All Eleanor Holmes Norton wanted to discuss was a vote. And a symbolic one at that. For the fourth consecutive session, Norton (D), the nonvoting D.C. representative, formally asked the speaker of the House for the ability to vote on amendments and procedural issues. Again, she was thwarted. This time, she brought D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and a veterans advocate with her. Norton pushed for a vote in the Committee of the Whole as “a down payment on full voting rights for the more than 680,000 American citizens residing in the District of Columbia, who pay the highest federal income taxes per capita in the United States and have fought and died in every American war, yet have no vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, ‘the people’s house,’ ” she said.

Georgia: State Democrats hope to prevent GOP from redistricting | 11alive

Georgia Democrats hoping to prevent Republicans from controlling the 2020 redistricting process have pre-filed legislation that would remove the power of reapportionment from the General Assembly. Instead, under a bill authored by state Sen. Pat Gardner of Atlanta, reapportionment would be handled by an independent bipartisan commission. Congressional and statewide House and Senate districts are redrawn every 10 years based on new U.S. Census numbers. The majority political party in the legislature controls the redistricting process, and Republicans have held large majorities under Georgia’s gold dome for more than a decade.

North Carolina: Justice Roberts Sets New Filing Deadline In North Carolina Racial Gerrymandering Case | TPM

Chief Justice John Roberts requested on Tuesday that a response be filed to an emergency request by North Carolina late last month that the 2017 special elections ordered by a federal court be put off as the case that prompted them — a major racial gerrymandering lawsuit — is appealed. The move Tuesday was a fairly minor procedural move by Roberts, who oversees the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals where North Carolina resides, but the emergency request suggests an attempt to put off special elections where Republicans risk losing seats with the redrawn districts. The state officials’ legal moves are also part of a series of last-ditch efforts by North Carolina Republicans to undermine incoming Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

Wisconsin: Jill Stein: $1.5 million refund could pay for new voter advocacy group | Wisconsin State Journal

Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein said a roughly $1.5 million refund from the Wisconsin recount could go toward a new voter advocacy effort in the state. Stein, who received about 1 percent of the vote and gained 66 votes in the recount, held a rally Tuesday at the state Capitol to address the results of the state’s historic recount, which her campaign paid $3.5 million to initiate, and launch Count My Vote Wisconsin. … Stein’s campaign raised more than $7 million in a short period to fund recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Only the Wisconsin recount made it past court challenges seeking to halt all three.

The Gambia: Electoral commissioner flees country after threats | Reuters

The head of Gambia’s electoral commission has fled to Senegal due to threats to his safety after declaring that President Yahya Jammeh lost last month’s election, a defeat the ruler has refused to accept. Alieu Momarr Njai left the country on Friday, family members said on Tuesday. He had declared opposition leader Adama Barrow the winner of the Dec. 1 election, stunning many Gambians who were used to Jammeh who took power in a coup in 1994 and whose government gained a reputation for torturing and killing perceived opponents.

Haiti: Court rules that electoral process unaffected by voting irregularities | Jamaica Observer

The Office of the National Electoral Litigation (BCEN) in Haiti on Monday ruled that while there had been irregularities in the tabulation of votes cast in the November 20 presidential elections last year, they did not “affect the electoral process”. One month after voters had cast ballots in the legislative and presidential elections, the BCEN had handed a lifeline to three political parties that had been challenging the victory of businessman Jovenelle Moise, when it ordered a review of the preliminary results.

Kenya: Electronic voting system bound to fail, Attorney General tells Senate | The Star

The emphasis on electronic voter system is ignorance of what happens in Kenya, Attorney General Githu Muigai told a senate committee on Tuesday. The AG noted that many commentators on the amended election laws have misled Kenyans to think Kenya has an electronic voting system. Muigai, when he faced the Senate Legal Affairs Committee during the public hearing on contentious election laws, said the assertion was ‘far from the truth . He said Kenya has a manual voting system that is supported by an electronic system, and not the other way round.”In Kenya, we have a manual voting system with few electronic interventions. Voting largely remains manual,” he said.

National: Sanctions mark rare window into cyberwar | USA Today

Sanctions and the expulsion of Russian diplomats from the USA in response to alleged hacking intended to influence the U.S. presidential election are rare physical responses to growing cyberwars between nations. President Obama’s announcement of sanctions Thursday and Russia’s subsequent decision not to expel U.S. diplomats Friday may signal a larger engagement over events in cyberspace, one experts have long said was coming but that may seem like a strange new world to the public. Previous responses to cyberthreats were directed toward nation-states with no full nuclear deterrent capability, said Ian Gray, a cyberintelligence analyst with the Flashpoint company. Those include Iran and North Korea, cases that never escalated to full-blown sanctions. “The possible implications of two fully nuclear-armed powers escalates the potential for future conflict, making the implications unique,” Gray said.

National: Early Voting Didn’t Boost Overall Election Turnout, Studies Show | Wall Street Journal

Most early voting programs didn’t increase the number of people who cast ballots in 2016, they just changed the way people participated, according to examinations of this year’s election results. President-elect Donald Trump’s Nov. 8 victory also put aside long-held notions that pre-Election Day indicators from early-voting data could serve as useful predictors of who would win the election. Election figures in Ohio bear out the lack of relationship between the availability of early voting and overall turnout. Before the 2008 election, Ohio lawmakers for the first time introduced early and no-excuse absentee voting in the state. When President Barack Obama defeated Sen. John McCain that year, 1.72 million Ohioans voted before Election Day. But postelection figures showed that overall turnout increased from 2004 by just 51,000 votes. Fewer Ohioans voted in 2012, and fewer still in 2016, even as early voting numbers rose to 1.86 million in 2012 and 1.88 million in 2016.

Florida: Effort to restore voting rights to Florida felons moves forward | Sun Sentinel

The new year could mark a major milestone toward hundreds of thousands of Floridians regaining the right to vote. The Florida Supreme Court in March will hear arguments on a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow felons — except murderers and sex offenders — to have their voting rights restored after they complete prison and probation. Just over 6 million felons in the United States are unable to vote, according to The Sentencing Project, a prison reform group. About 1.7 million of them live in Florida, which amounts to more than 10 percent of the state’s voting population.

Missouri: Incoming Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft working on voter photo ID | St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Although he has not formally taken office, Missouri’s next secretary of state is working to implement a new state law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. Republican Jay Ashcroft told the Post-Dispatch Friday that he was in talks with the Legislature to ensure there is enough funding for the voter photo ID law. And, he is crafting guidelines for how it will work if someone shows up at the polls without an ID card. “It’s a big thing to take care of,” said Ashcroft, who will replace Secretary of State Jason Kander, a Democrat. On Nov. 8, 63 percent of Missouri voters favored a change in the state constitution to require voters to show a photo ID before casting a ballot. For those without a valid form of photo identification, the state will be required to provide an ID for free.

North Dakota: Jaeger asking for new voting machines, electronic poll books | Prairie Public Broadcasting

North Dakota’s Secretary of State says it’s time to replace the state’s voting machines. Al Jaeger has asked the 2017 Legislature Jaeger has asked for a $9 million appropriation for that. He says the current machines were first used in 2004. “Even at that time, though the equipment came in fancy new boxes, the technology was already aged,” Jaeger said. “We’re now at a point where the voting system is not being supported any more.” Jaeger said counties have had to cannibalize some of their devices for parts, to keep some machines running. “We haven’t had any malfunctions,” Jaeger said. “But we know in another election, it would be very difficult to be able to run it.”

Tennessee: Shelby County Election Commission Puts New Voter Registration System First | Memphis Daily News

Before Shelby County voters get new voting machines, the elections administrator wants a new voter registration system to begin a badly needed upgrade of election technology. “Mostly, we really need a system that I don’t fear is going to crash and burn,” administrator Linda Phillips said. She and the five election commissioners are working on a request for proposals and intend to have the new voter registration system installed and working by June 30, the end of the current fiscal year. The election commission’s budget for the current fiscal year has $1 million available for such a system. “I really do not know,” she said of the exact cost of a new system. “The model in registration systems is moving more toward software than service. So a relatively low upfront price, but you pay an annual maintenance license fee. … I would expect it to be less than $2 million without question.

Virginia: Court-imposed election map paved way for new Virginia congressmen | The Washington Post

When two new members of the Virginia congressional delegation are sworn in Tuesday, they can partially thank a panel of federal judges for their seats in Congress. The judges fiddled with the boundaries of the districts enough to allow a Democrat to win in Richmond and a new Republican to oust an incumbent in the Virginia Beach area. That means hello, Rep.-elects Donald McEachin (D) and Scott Taylor (R). Goodbye, seven-term congressman J. Randy Forbes (R). Their unexpected paths to victory — or early retirement — reveal the extent to which the nuances of an elections map can help determine winners and losers. The Virginia map changes started with a lawsuit filed by Democratic lawyer Marc E. Elias in 2013.

Wisconsin: Presidential recount cost far less than $3.9 million estimate | FOX6

Wisconsin’s presidential recount, which produced very few changes to the Election Night tally, will end up costing far less than the original $3.9 million estimate. With 69 of the 72 counties reporting, the actual cost is a little more than $1.8 million – about half the original estimate, according to data provided to FOX6 News by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Kenosha, Brown and Pierce counties have not yet reported, but Elections Administrator Mike Haas said he expects their final numbers this week. Combined, clerks in the three counties had expected the recount to cost them around $500,000.CLICK HERE to view the election recount estimates, actual cost

Wisconsin: Both sides optimistic about success in redistricting case | The Cap Times

Wisconsin’s 2011 state Assembly maps were ruled unconstitutional last November and the state is looking for a Supreme Court review of the case. Both sides are optimistic that district lines will fall in pleasant places for them. Two separate guests on the Sunday morning political talk show “Capital City Sunday,” expressed their confidence that the results would go their way. Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel believes the Supreme Court will most likely take up the case and rule in the state’s favor, while Wisconsin Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca sees the initial “unconstitutional” ruling as a source of hope for state Democrats. After a panel of three federal judges ruled that the maps made it more difficult for Democrats to “translate their votes into seats,” both parties in the case were required to submit a plan about how to rectify the gerrymandered district lines.

Wyoming: Bill would give election officials more time to accept mail-in ballots | Casper Star Tribune

State lawmakers will consider a bill in Cheyenne that would give county clerks additional time after the primary and general elections to count mail-in absentee ballots. With a number of close races in 2016, absentee ballots can make a difference in the outcome, said Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, a Cheyenne Republican who is sponsoring House Bill 68. State law currently allows county clerks to accept mail-in ballots until 7 p.m. on the day of the election. But Zwontizer said that there are people who don’t mail in their ballots until a day before the election. If there are any delays at the post office, county clerks don’t receive the mail until after the election, and the ballots cannot be counted, he said.

Europe: Europe Worries About Russian Cyber Attacks During 2017 Elections | VoA News

Some European leaders are worried that Russia will try to influence their elections this year. The concerns come as possible Russian interference in the United States presidential election last year continues to be debated. There will be national elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands in 2017. Experts say Russia is already trying to help some candidates win. Russia denies that it is doing so. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will seek a fourth term in office this year. She has led efforts in Europe to punish Russia for taking actions that democratic nations oppose. Experts say she is the European leader that Russia would most like to see voted out of office. In December, Merkel said Germany must be ready to stop attempts by other countries to interfere with its elections. “We have to inform people and express our political convictions clearly. We also should not allow ourselves to be irritated. We just have to know that there’s such a thing and learn to live with it.”

The Gambia: Opposition Warns Longtime Ruler Against ‘Rebel’ Moves | Associated Press

Gambia’s political opposition said Monday that longtime ruler Yahya Jammeh could be considered a rebel leader if he takes up arms and doesn’t step down later this month, a firm warning issued after the president recently vowed that any presence of foreign troops in the tiny West African nation would be tantamount to an act of war. Two days earlier, Jammeh railed against the West African regional bloc known as ECOWAS that has urged him to step down. Jammeh claims that numerous voting irregularities invalidate the Dec. 1 ballot won by opposition coalition’s Adama Barrow, and Jammeh’s party is challenging the results in court. Meanwhile, Barrow says he is planning a Jan. 19 inauguration, which puts him on a collision course with Jammeh, who seized power in a bloodless 1994 military coup.

South Korea: Opposition party pushes to lower voting age to 18 | Korea Herald