North Carolina: Will third time be a charm for those who want North Carolina Supreme Court to invalidate election maps? | News & Observer

A challenge to election maps drawn in 2011 that has twice come before the N.C. Supreme Court will return for a third pass before a court that has shifted since its most recent review from a Republican to a Democratic majority. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday issued an order that sent a lawsuit filed by former Democratic state legislator Margaret Dickson for another review by North Carolina’s highest court. The order tells the North Carolina justices to reconsider its 2015 decision upholding the maps in light of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week that found lawmakers relied too heavily on race when drawing congressional districts in 2011.

Ohio: The Supreme Court Takes Up Ohio’s Voter-Purge Case | The Atlantic

The U.S. Supreme Court will review Ohio’s contested purge of its voter rolls next term, adding a potentially major case on voting rights to its docket for the first time since Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the high court. The justices agreed to hear the case, Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, in their weekly release of orders on Tuesday. At issue is the removal of tens of thousands of Ohio voters from the state’s voter list ahead of last November’s election. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the process before Election Day last year before it had fully taken effect, while a federal district court allowed 7,515 voters who had already been removed by that point to cast a ballot.

Pennsylvania: How Jay Costa wants to fix Pennsylvania’s gerrymandered congressional districts | The Incline

Advocates for redistricting reform won the first battle: They got people talking about it. Now comes the hard part. The 2020 census is right around the corner, and with it, the redrawing of the boundaries of Pennsylvania’s legislative and congressional districts. There are a number of bills already under consideration that take these processes out of the hands of politicians and put them into the hands of average citizens. State Sen. Lisa Boscola has introduced legislation that would create an 11-person panel to draw both sets of boundaries, a proposal that has bipartisan support. The bill also has the backing of Fair Districts PA, a nonpartisan project of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania that supports giving redistricting power to an independent commission.

Rhode Island: House OKs automatic voter registration bill | Providence Journal

Legislation to automatically put anyone who applies for a Rhode Island driver’s license on the state’s voter rolls, unless they opt out, cleared the state House of Representatives on Wednesday, despite GOP efforts to block the same practice at other state agencies with troubled computer histories. In the end, the vote was unanimous for the legislation championed by Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, the governor and a long list of groups, including the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, Common Cause Rhode Island, Young Democrats of R.I., and the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island.

Texas: No Sign of Trump’s “Millions” of Illegal Voters in Texas | Texas Monthly

Since Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote in November, our new commander-in-chief has consistently attacked the legitimacy of popular vote totals that showed his rival, Hillary Clinton, well ahead of him on election day. “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump tweeted in November. Although he has doubled down on the claim in several subsequent statements, offering an estimate of three to five million illegal votes and complaints about specific states, Trump has failed to provide evidence of widespread fraud. Myrna Pérez, a Texas native and civil rights lawyer, won’t take the president at his word. As head of the Voting Rights and Elections project at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, Pérez has seen states around the country—Texas included—rushing to respond to voter fraud threats. “As someone who’s driven by data, as someone who researches elections, as someone who is in the business of making sure our elections represent the voices of actual Americans, I’m very troubled at the policies we see that seem to not have any science or data behind them,” Pérez says.

Texas: The State of Voting in Texas After the 2017 Legislative Session | Dallas Observer

As the 2017 Texas legislative session winds down, the way Texans will vote remains in flux. There’s a new voter identification law headed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, but it’s unclear whether it will pass muster in federal court. A bigger voting rights issue, which threatens the state’s entire congressional map, remains unaddressed, also with a pending court case. In that one, the state faces charges of illegally diluting the votes of the state’s black and Latino populations. On Sunday afternoon, the Texas House of Representatives finally signed off on Senate Bill 5, the seemingly dead revision of the state’s 2011 voter ID bill that Abbott revived as a priority last week. The bill is mostly the same as the 2011 measure and requires that all Texans hoping to vote present a state driver’s license or ID card, a concealed handgun license, a U.S. passport, a military ID card, a U.S. citizenship certificate or an election identification certificate. However, it also adopts similar remedies to those put in place by U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos for the 2016 general election after she ruled that the 2011 measure discriminated against minority voters.

Australia: Russia risk to elections: police chief | The Australian

The federal police chief says it would be “naive” to dismiss the threat of Russian interference in a future Australian election. AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin will head to the United States soon for talks with his counterparts on counter-terrorism and cyber security. American intelligence and security agencies say there was Russian interference – ranging from the spreading of disinformation to data theft – in the 2016 US presidential elections and 2017 French elections. Mr Colvin said the issue would be on his agenda. “I think we would be ignorant and naive if we didn’t think this is a real threat,” Mr Colvin told the National Press Club on Wednesday.

Cambodia: Monks Debate Their Right to the Ballot Box | The Cambodia Daily

To vote or not to vote. For many of Cambodia’s saffron-robed Buddhist monks, it’s a difficult question. On one hand, activism among monks has a long tradition, from helping create a strong Khmer national identity during colonial rule, to leading the drive for independence in the 20th century, to protesting with the urban and rural poor in their land rights battles. On the other hand, as one of Cambodia’s top monks, Tep Vong has repeatedly said that monks should be a neutral force in an effort to protect the national religion’s hallowed image. At Wat Langka, one of Phnom Penh’s oldest pagodas, near Independence Monument, a respected veteran monk said he had never voted in his birth country.

Germany: Facebook says Germany’s fake news rules don’t comply with EU-law | Business Insider

Facebook has criticised a new German law that would force social media companies to pay up to €50 million (£43 million) if they fail to remove hate speech and false news, saying it will encourage paranoid tech companies to delete legal content in order to avoid the hefty fines. In March, the German government proposed legislation to fine social media companies if they fail to remove slanderous or threatening online postings quickly. The plans were approved by Germany’s cabinet in April but they are yet to come into force. Now Facebook has responded to the new law, which is being referred to as the “Network Enforcement Act” or “Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz” in German (NetzDG, for short). The Californian tech giant issued a statement over the weekend explaining why the draft law “is not suitable to combat hate speech and false news.”

Nepal: Rainfalls may affect elections during monsoon | Republica

With the monsoon now just around the corner, concerns have been raised that the second phase of local elections rescheduled for June 28 might be marred by rainfalls and water-induced disasters. Monsoon rain in Nepal originates from the Bay of Bengal and enters the country from the eastern side usually around June 10. This year, the Meteorological Forecasting Division (MFD) is expects the monsoon to arrive on time. In the worst case scenario, even if the monsoon gets delayed by a week, the second phase of the elections will be held only after the onset of the monsoon.

Russia: Putin echoes Trump, Nunes lines on U.S. Russia investigation | The Hill

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have adopted President Trump’s rhetoric about the ongoing probes on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, calling it “fiction” and accusing the Democrats of inventing the allegations because they are still bitter about losing. The Kremlin leader told Le Figaro, a French newspaper, that the allegations were inspired by the “desire of those who lost the U.S. elections to improve their standing,” The Associated Press reported Tuesday. Putin also repeated his firm denial of Russian involvement with the hacking of members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee — hacks that negatively impacted the Democrats in the election.