The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for February 27 – March 5 2017
Following reports in The Washington Post that he had twice met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign, contradicting testimony at his conformation hearing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that he will recuse himself from investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign. The Post article came a day after The New York Times reported that In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government.
Proposals to require photo identification for voting advanced in Arkansas, Iowa and Nebraska., facing opposition in each state. The Michigan Secretary of State’s office finalized a contract to replace the state’s ailing voting machines with new equipment in time for the August 2018 primaries that could grant vendors up to $82.1 million over the next 10 years.
North Carolina Senate leader Phil Berger said that a recent Court of Appeals order means that the state doesn’t have a board that oversees elections and ethics laws, Asked how any elections or ethics matter would be decided now, Berger responded “those are questions that will need to be answered. There could be some questions as to the legal effect of any decisions they make during that period of time that they are nonexistent.”
Following the Justice Department’s withdrewal from the case, lawyers for the state of Texas argued that the Legislature did not act with discriminatory intent when it passed a voter ID law that has since been struck down, but they also told a judge that lawmakers will make fixes to it in the current Legislative session. The U.S. Supreme Court instructed a lower court to re-examine whether the Virginia General Assembly unconstitutionally stuffed African-American voters into certain districts, opening the door to a new political map that could reshape the Republican-controlled state legislature.
There are indications that a software error may have caused thousands of names to disappear from voter rolls in legislative elections in India and Sinn Féin has emerged as the biggest winner in Northern Ireland’s Assembly election after the party came to within one seat of matching the Democratic Unionist return of 28 seats.