Yearly Archives: 2017

A coalition of 13 Asian-American and Latino Lowell residents on Thursday filed a federal voting-rights lawsuit against the city, alleging that Lowell’s municipal election system discriminates against minorities. Plaintiffs say the use of citywide at-large elections for all seats on the City Council and School Committee dilutes the combined electoral strength of minority voters in Lowell, violating the federal Voting Rights Act, as well as the United States Constitution, according to a release from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice (LCCR), a Boston-based private, non-profit, non-partisan legal organization that provides pro bono legal representation to victims of discrimination based on race or national origin.

Michigan: Bill Aims To Boost Fee For Election Recount When Margin Isn’t Close | Associated Press

Legislation up for a vote in the Michigan Senate would double the fee for losing candidates to file recount petitions if they are down by more than 5 percentage points. The bill is a response to Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s recount last fall despite her winning 1 percent of the vote. The Republican-sponsored measure to be approved Tuesday would increase recount fees from $125 per precinct to $250 if losing candidates are behind by more than 5 points.

Montana: Special election costs counties big money | NBC

It’s not often the state has a massive election just six months after deciding the president. Montanans know how high the stakes are. “It’s one of the basic requirements of citizenship is to go out and take part and vote,” Flathead County voter Rod Ayres said. But Montana’s special election, scheduled to take place Thursday between Democrat Rob Quist, Republican Greg Gianforte and Libertarian Mark Wicks, is costing local election offices big money. Montana’s lone U.S. House seat is vacant following Ryan Zinke’s appointment to Secretary of the Interior. We made calls around the region to find out how much this election costs.

Nevada: Voting center bill amended, passed on party lines | Las Vegas Review-Journal

Voting centers where any eligible voter in a county or city can cast a ballot on Election Day won partisan approval Friday in the Nevada Senate. Assembly Bill 272 passed on a 12-9 vote, with Republicans in opposition. The bill goes back to the Assembly to concur with an amendment by the Senate.

New Hampshire: Disagreement at State House over payment for Gardner’s participation on Trump election commission | WMUR

Top Democrats and Republicans in the New Hampshire Legislature disagreed Monday on whether Secretary of State William Gardner should use taxpayer funds and state time for his activities as a member of President Donald Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity. House Democratic Leader Steve Shurtleff asked Gardner to participate on his own time and not use state money. But Republican House Speaker Shawn Jasper and Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley disagreed and said the state should pay for Gardner’s travel to and from — and participation in — commission meetings.

Texas: Voter ID bill to be heard Wednesday in House | Times Record News

A dying bill that would have revisited Texas’ flawed voter ID law will be debated on the House floor Wednesday after it was jolted back to life by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. The legislation, Senate Bill 5, cleared the upper chamber in March but had been withering in the House ever since. However, as the 2017 legislative session enters its final week, Abbott declared the measure a legislative emergency. That means it moves to the head of the House calendar on Wednesday, the final day for the lower chamber consider legislation likely to see organized opposition.

Texas: Federal judge urges Texas to consider special session for redistricting after North Carolina ruling | Dallas Morning News

In striking down North Carolina’s congressional district map, the Supreme Court sent Texas a firm warning Monday about how the state’s case may fare if it reaches that stage. Hours after the ruling, the federal district court in San Antonio currently overseeing the Texas case issued an order to the relevant parties asking them to submit briefs detailing how the North Carolina ruling will affect their claims, with a deadline of June 6. Judge Xavier Rodriguez, on behalf of the panel, also directed Texas to consider whether it would like to “voluntarily undertake redistricting in a special session” of the legislature in light of the North Carolina ruling, giving the state until Friday to decide.

Albania: Parliament Approves Pre-Election Cabinet Shakeup | Associated Press

Albania’s parliament has approved a government shake-up as part of a compromise worked out between political parties before next month’s parliamentary election. The unanimous vote on Monday came after President Bujar Nishani issued decrees naming the opposition’s recommendations for deputy prime minister and six other ministerial posts: interior, education, health, social wellbeing, finance and justice. A three-month opposition boycott of parliament ended last week with an agreement between the governing Socialist Party and the opposition-led Democratic Party that was mediated by U.S. and European Union officials.

Iran: High Kurdish turnout in Iran elections despite opposition boycot | Rudaw

Over 58 percent of eligible voters have cast their ballots in the four predominately Kurdish provinces in Iran, despite Kurdish opposition groups’ joint call to boycott the votes in the run up to the polls in April, preliminary statistics from the election committees show. Iran held simultaneous elections for the post of the president and legislative seats in city councils across the country on Friday. Kermanshah province, a mainly Kurdish region with large Persian speaking populations had over 75 percent turnout, well above national average of around 73 percent.

Nepal: Parties in final phase to select candidates for second round polls | Republica

With the second round of the local elections now just 23 days away, major political parties in Province-1 are almost done finalizing their candidates to compete in various positions of their local units. Motivated by the overwhelming participation of voters in the first round of the elections, parties are working with full energy to finalize their candidates so that they will have more time to prepare for the fierce and competitive elections ahead. Province-1, which consists of 14 districts, will hold the elections for its 1,157 ward members. The upcoming election slated for June 14 will elect a total of 137 mayors, deputy mayors and rural municipality chiefs from this province, which has 2,674,563 eligible voters. Election Officers of the districts in the province has fixed 1,862 polling centers, according to Regional Election Office, Biratnagar.

Editorials: The Tories promised to give expats the vote last year. It was a whopper | Giles Tremlett/The Guardian

In the rough-and-tumble of democracy, a general election is that magic moment when you kick out a politician who has reneged on their promises, or reward one who has fulfilled them. The genius, or cynicism, of Theresa May’s early election is that, after so few months of government, she has no real record to study. But here, for those wondering about her ability to flout any of her own government’s solemn pledges, is a whopper that has left millions of UK citizens in the lurch. In October her minister for the constitution, Chris Skidmore, made a clear and unequivocal pledgeto bring UK citizens living abroad back into the democratic fold, by allowing them to vote, before the next election. This was especially important to those whose lives are most traumatically affected by Brexit because they live elsewhere in the EU.

National: Trump-Russia investiigation: Coverup is now part of it | McClatchy

Investigators into Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential elections are now authorized to probe whether White House officials have engaged in a cover-up, according to members of Congress who were briefed Friday by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. A Justice Department official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic, confirmed that Rosenstein told members of the House of Representatives that the special counsel in charge of the probe, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, “has been given the authority to investigate the possibility of a cover-up.”

National: Senators told of broadening Russia investigation | The Hill

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein dropped two bombshells during a hotly anticipated appearance before the Senate on Thursday, less than 24 hours after he announced the appointment of a special counsel in the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election. According to lawmakers, Rosenstein confirmed that the bureau’s investigation is no longer strictly a counterintelligence investigation — a kind of probe that does not normally result in charges — but also a criminal one.

Editorials: ‘Pervasive’ election fraud and the man who’ll find it, even if it doesn’t exist | The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Amid a firestorm of controversy last week over President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, the administration announced formation of a new commission on “election integrity.” It seemed an amateurish attempt to deflect national attention from the president’s growing credibility problems regarding Russian influence on his presidential campaign and his reasons for firing the person in charge of investigating it. Doubly absurd was his naming of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to serve as the deputy head of the commission under Vice President Mike Pence. Republican Kobach’s record of attempting to suppress votes of minorities and young people in Kansas is legendary. Putting Kobach in charge of election integrity is like putting Russian President Vladimir Putin in charge of U.S. internet security.

Alabama: House approves redistricting bill over objections | Associated Press

Alabama’s GOP-dominated legislature redrew legislative maps Friday under court order to fix racial gerrymandering, punctuating a session rife with racial turmoil over issues such as the protection of Confederate monuments and an email that compared lawmakers to monkeys. The Senate on Friday approved new district maps and sent them to the governor despite objections from black Democrats who said the new ones are still gerrymandered to maintain white GOP dominance in the conservative state. In January, a three-judge panel in January ordered legislators to redraw lines before the 2018 elections, saying Republicans had improperly made race the predominant factor in drawing 12 of 140 legislative districts.

Kansas: ‘Kris Kobach Came After Me for an Honest Mistake’ | Politico

When Kris Kobach, Kansas’ aggressive secretary of state, convinced the state legislature to give him prosecutorial power to pursue voter fraud, he said it was necessary to root out tens of thousands of undocumented aliens who were voting as well as tens of thousands more who he claimed were voting in two states. Two years later, Kobach has produced exactly nine convictions. Most of them were not illegal immigrants but rather older registered Republicans. Who Kobach targeted, and the controversial homegrown computer program he used to find them, matter even more now that he has been selected by President Trump to lead a commission on voter fraud. Kobach’s boss has claimed on numerous occasions, without evidence, that millions of illegal ballots cost him the popular vote. Kobach, despite his sweeping pronouncements to Kansas politicians, hasn’t found anything resembling a fraud of that proportion. What he found was Lincoln L. Wilson.

Montana: Special election means additional costs for counties | KRTV

The May federal election brought unexpected expenses for Montana counties. The election to replace Ryan Zinke comes just months after the statewide 2016 general election. There was a big push by county elections officials statewide to bring down that cost by having the option to conduct the election by all-mail ballots. “There was 169 out of 174 commissioners and probably 70% of them were republicans that supported this, all 56 clerk and recorders supported this and we just could not get them to take action on it,” said Cascade County Clerk and Recorder Rina Moore.

North Carolina: Despite high court’s decision on voting law, activists worry about chief justice | The Washington Post

The big win for voting rights activists at the Supreme Court last week came with an equally big asterisk, and provided new reason for jittery liberals and civil rights groups to continue to fret about Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. The justices without noted dissent on May 15 said they would not consider reviving North Carolina’s sweeping 2013 voting law, which had been struck down by a lower court after years of litigation. A unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit had ruled that the state’s Republican legislative leadership had intentionally crafted the law to blunt the growing political power of African American voters.

Texas: Republicans fear federal oversight as voter ID overhaul stalls | The Texas Tribune

With bill-killing deadlines looming, some Texas Republicans are trying to unstick legislation that would overhaul the state’s voter identification rules, saying failure to do so would torpedo the state’s position in a high-profile court battle over whether lawmakers disenfranchised minority voters. Inaction, they fear, would dramatically boost the odds Texas would return to the list of governments required to seek federal approval before changing their election laws.

Texas: Effort to overhaul Texas voter ID rules survives — for now | The Texas Tribune

A flurry of legislative activity Sunday night gave life to efforts to overhaul Texas’ voter identification rules — legislation Republicans call crucial to the state’s arguments in a high-profile legal battle over whether the state disenfranchised minority voters. After clearing the Senate in March, Sen. Joan Huffman’s Senate Bill 5, which in some ways would soften current photo ID rules, had languished in the House. But just an hour before the latest in a series of bill-killing deadlines, an emergency declaration by Gov. Greg Abbott helped push the legislation onto the House’s calendar. The bill will be eligible for a vote on Tuesday, the deadline for the House to approve Senate bills.

Utah: Condensed special election calendar set – and it’s already started | The Salt Lake Tribune

Just one day after Rep. Jason Chaffetz announced his date of departure from Congress, state officials released an expedited timeline to fill his soon-to-be-vacated 3rd Congressional District seat. Filing started Friday afternoon — and remains open for one week — with many candidates having already announced their bids in a mad scramble to join the race. The field will be set by June 30, the day Chaffetz steps down. A special election is scheduled for Nov. 7, aligning with voting for municipal offices. If needed — and Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox said it is “very likely” — a primary will be held on Aug. 15. The deadlines, Cox said, are meant to “mirror as closely as possible” the standard process. “This is an election,” he said. “It’s not an appointment.”

Albania: President sets June 25 for parliamentary election | Associated Press

Albania’s president has decreed that a parliamentary election that was postponed as part of compromise among political parties will be held on June 25. The election had been scheduled for June 18, but was pushed back as part of the agreement mediated by U.S. and European Union officials. President Bujar Nishani moved the election back one week on Sunday to account for the compromise between the governing Socialist Party and the opposition-led Democratic Party.

Iran: Hassan Rouhani wins Iranian election by a landslide following near-record turnout | The Washington Post

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was reelected to a second term by a landslide, the interior minister declared Saturday, presenting him a resounding endorsement of his plans to end Iran’s pariah status and rejoin the global economy. With 57 percent of the vote, Rouhani defeated his hard-line rival, Ebrahim Raisi, who had the backing of the ruling clergy and allied security forces. He also won a clear mandate to push through domestic reforms and pursue talks with the West, building on the nuclear deal he negotiated with world powers. That agreement, which Rouhani and his cabinet clinched during his first term, constrains Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for international sanctions relief.

Lebanon: Election law deadlock threatens another crisis | The National

Last October, Lebanese politicians finally elected a new president to end a two-and-a-half-year power vacuum that had crippled the functioning of the government. But just over six months later, Lebanon is drifting into yet another political crisis that could leave the country without a functioning parliament. The parliament’s term expires on June 20, and it is extremely unlikely that an election will be held before then. The members of parliament were elected in 2009 for a four-year term but have extended their mandate twice, citing instability caused by the Syrian civil war and later the country’s lack of a president.

Nepal: Renewed deadlock fears loom large | The Kathmandu Post

An ambivalent ruling coalition and a rigid main opposition, which looks buoyed by results of the first phase of local elections, have stoked some uncertainty over the second round polls, which are less than a month away. A promise by the Nepali Congress-Maoist Centre government that it would address the demands of the agitating Madhes-based parties, six of which have joined hands to form the Rastriya Janata Party Nepal (RJP-N), had paved the way for local level elections in two rounds—first on May 14 and the second on June 14. With the first phase of polls over, negotiations have started on addressing the agitating party’s concerns which include constitution amendment and increasing the number of local units in some districts along the plains.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for May 15-21 2017

May 21, 2017

Following a week of turmoil over the firing of FBI director James Comey, the Department of Justice named former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Moscow. Deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein had been under escalating pressure from Democrats, and even some Republicans, to appoint a special counsel after he wrote a memo that the White House initially cited as the rationale for Mr. Comey’s dismissal.

The Supreme Court declined to consider reinstating provisions of North Carolina’s 2013 omnibus elections law bill that included restrictive voter ID requirements, leaving in place an appeals court ruling that had struck down parts of the law as unconstitutional. Though the decision was a victory for voting rights advocates, many worry that it is only a temporary reprieve, postponing a showdown over what kind of voting rules are acceptable and how much influence partisanship should have over access to the ballot box.

A Washington Post editorial warned that the recently announced Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity will likely endeavor to create further pretexts for GOP-dominated state legislatures determined to throw up barriers to minority turnout. The leading voice on the panel in Kansas Sewcretary of State Kris Kobach, described by the Post as a longtime champion of voter suppression laws who seconded as “absolutely correct” the president’s fabricated assertion that Hillary Clinton’s victory in the popular vote, which she won by nearly 3 million ballots, was a result of millions of illegal votes.

The closely-watched special election run-off election in Georgia’s 6th district will use 15 year old Diebold touchscreen voting machines that run on Microsoft Server 2000. “That’s a crap system,” said Douglas Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa in a phone interview; adding that the database in use, Microsoft Access is a “toy database” that should never be used for industrial applications.

Members of the Utah House GOP caucus threatened to sue Republican Governor Gary Herbert over whether he will call them into a special session to decide how a replacement for resigning U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz will be picked. At issue is the Governor’s “secret plan” for establishing the terms on which the special election will run rather than involving the legislature.

Dismissing Gov. Scott Walker’s recommendation, the Wisconsin legislature’s budget committee approved state funding for five of six Elections Commission staff positions that have been supported by federal grant that’s set to run out. Lawmakers from both parties agreed that the staffing was necessary to ensure the proper administration of elections in the state.

Turnout was high in Nepal’s first elections in nearly two decades, though some voters are frustrated by the slow vote counting and there are concerns about preparations for anticipated run-off elections next month.. The Diplomat posted an article describing enthusiasm about the local elections in regions hit by earthquakes last yearTime ran an extensive piece examining Russia’s efforts to undermine Western democracy.

Arizona: Redistricting commission wins another legal challenge | The Arizona Republic

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission has won another legal battle over the political boundaries it drew earlier this decade. It could be the final legal skirmish in the current commission’s seven-year existence. On Thursday, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge rejected challenges from a coalition of Republican voters that the commission used the wrong process in drawing boundaries for Arizona’s nine congressional districts. Superior Court Judge Roger Brodman also rejected claims that the five-member commission violated the state’s Open Meetings Law as it went about its work.

National: Former FBI chief Mueller appointed to probe Trump-Russia ties | Reuters

The U.S. Justice Department, in the face of rising pressure from Capitol Hill, named former FBI chief Robert Mueller on Wednesday as special counsel to investigate alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Moscow. The move followed a week in which the White House was thrown into uproar after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Democrats and some of the president’s fellow Republicans had demanded an independent probe of whether Russia tried to sway the outcome of November’s election in favor of Trump and against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

National: For Voting Rights Advocates, Court Decision Is ‘Temporary Victory’ | The New York Times

It seemed like an important victory for voting rights advocates on Monday when the Supreme Court declined to reconsider an appellate decision striking down North Carolina’s restrictive voting law. But those who follow the arcana of election law have another view — that the justices have merely postponed a showdown over what kind of voting rules are acceptable and how much influence partisanship should have over access to the ballot box. And in that struggle, it is by no means certain who will prevail. A parade of voting rights cases is headed for likely review by the Supreme Court — including challenges to gerrymanders in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Texas and a ruling against another restrictive voter law in Texas. At the same time, states controlled by Republican legislatures and governors are continuing to enact stringent election laws, many of them similar to the ones already moving through the courts.

Editorials: Trump’s commission on voter fraud is, well, fraudulent | The Washington Post