Iowa: Voter fraud cases may hit roadblock of intent | TimesRepublican.com

A state push to bring felony charges against noncitizens who voted in recent Iowa elections could run into two key roadblocks: local prosecutors who do not want to pursue the cases and jurors who may find no criminal intent. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation announced Thursday that three Council Bluffs residents — a husband and wife from Canada and a Mexican citizen living legally in the U.S. since 1986 — were arrested and charged with election misconduct for illegally voting. They were the first, and likely not the last, charges brought under an unusual two-year, $280,000 contract Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s office signed with the DCI to investigate voter fraud, his signature issue. But the push to prosecute legal residents who were ineligible to vote because they are not U.S. citizens may raise questions about selective enforcement and whether they had the intent to commit fraud. Police and prosecutors this year already declined to bring some similar cases discovered before the statewide effort started, citing a lack of intent, the cost associated with the cases and the harsh penalties they entail.

New Hampshire: Court rules out-of-state students have right to vote in New Hampshire | NEWS06

Strafford County Superior Court Judge John Lewis ruled Monday that out-of-state students have the right to vote in New Hampshire, a decision immediately criticized by top Republican legislators. “New Hampshire citizens have a right to elect individuals of their own choosing,” House Speaker William O’Brien said in a joint statement with Senate President Peter Bragdon. “Allowing non-residents into New Hampshire to dictate who will be our presidential choice, who shall be our governor, and who shall represent us in the Legislature takes away our voting rights.” He added: “Legislating otherwise from the bench to say there are two classes of voters — all of us who reside in New Hampshire, and those residents of other states who choose to vote here because we are a battleground state — is judicial activism of the worst sort. The Supreme Court needs to act quickly to restore the voting rights of New Hampshire’s citizens” The law — passed in June by a Senate override of Gov. John Lynch’s veto — required people to sign a form declaring New Hampshire as their domicile.

New York: Staten Island Rep. Grimm calls break-in ‘attack on free elections’ | SILive.com

An overnight intruder smashed several windows and gained entry into Rep. Michael Grimm’s New Dorp headquarters over the weekend, possibly tampering with computers inside the office, authorities said. Grimm’s staff discovered the damage Sunday morning — two large chunks of cement and some smaller rocks had been hurled through three, 4×8-foot vertical windows, according to a campaign spokeswoman. They also believed that someone had deleted computer hard drives. The congressman and his campaign staff believe the vandalism was staged to cover up the computer tampering. On further inspection it was determined the intruder had caused a different type of damage — someone installed the Linux operating system on the office’s computers, Grimm told the Advance Sunday night, and in the process wiped the hard drives clean. “All of my polling data, all of the data from my IDs of voters, and a bunch of other campaign information. But fortunately we had everything backed up from literally hours before, so we don’t lose anything because we have backups,” Grimm said. He has no doubt his office was targeted, and called the incident cowardly.

Pennsylvania: Voter ID Law In Jeopardy As Next Court Case Opens | Huffington Post

The state of Pennsylvania’s ability to get every would-be voter a government-issued photo ID by Election Day will literally be on trial Tuesday. The hearing before Commonwealth Judge Robert Simpson comes after the state Supreme Court last week instructed him to block a new law requiring ID at the polls unless he determines “that there will be no voter disenfranchisement” arising from its implementation. Opponents of the law have said the state can’t possibly prove that case, as the law’s entire reason for existence is precisely to make it harder for the poor, members of minority groups, students, and the elderly to cast their ballots, and in that way suppress the Democratic vote. Republican backers of the law have said it was intended to fight voter fraud. But in-person voter fraud — the only kind voter ID would reduce — is almost nonexistent.

Pennsylvania: Court Reconsiders Voter ID Availability | Businessweek

The Pennsylvania judge who last month upheld a law requiring voters to show photo identification is scheduled today to hear arguments over whether people will be able to comply before the general election in November. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Sept. 18 ordered Commonwealth Judge Richard E. Simpson to consider whether all eligible voters will be able to obtain acceptable ID if the law is upheld. Simpson ruled Aug. 15 that plaintiffs including the American Civil Liberties Union hadn’t proved the law would disenfranchise voters. The state high court asked Simpson to submit a supplemental opinion on the availability of alternate IDs by Oct. 2.

South Carolina: States’ voter ID laws are underlying issue in 2012 presidential race | The Washington Post

South Carolina is in federal court arguing that its new law requiring people prove their identity at the polls won’t make voting so tough that it reduces turnout of African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities. A federal panel is to determine whether South Carolina’s voter identification law violates the Voting Rights Act by putting heavy burdens on minorities who don’t have the identification. Last December, the Justice Department refused to allow South Carolina to require the photo IDs, saying doing so would reverse the voting gains of the states’ minorities. Closing arguments in the case — which went to trial in August and included several state officials as witnesses — were scheduled for Monday. South Carolina has said it would implement the law immediately if the three-judge panel upholds it, although a decision either way is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

South Carolina: Voter ID gets judges’ scrutiny | The Associated Press

Recognizing this year’s elections are just a few weeks away, a panel of three federal judges questioned on Monday whether South Carolina should wait until 2014 to put its voter identification law into effect. The judges raised the question as an attorney for South Carolina delivered closing arguments in the trial over whether the state’s law discriminates against minorities. Last December, the Justice Department refused to “preclear” — find it complies with the Voting Rights Act — the law so it could go into effect. A decision in the case is expected in early October.

South Carolina: Laziness Not An Excuse Under South Carolina Voter ID Law | TPM

A lawyer for South Carolia said on Monday there are plenty of reasons voters would be able to sidestep the state’s voter ID law if a panel of federal judges allows it to take effect this year, but laziness is not among them. While defending the state’s voting law during closing arguments in federal court here, attorney H. Christopher Bartolomucci said voters could offer any number of reasons for showing up to the polls without a government-issued photo ID. However, he added, those who simply say they “didn’t feel like” it will be turned away. South Carolina is among the states that must have changes to their voting laws cleared by either the Justice Department or a panel of judges in D.C. under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The state wants its voter ID law to go into effect for the November election.

Belgium: Decision to Use Smartmatic Voting Machines Reignites E-voting Debate | CIO.com

Despite vocal mistrust of e-voting, 151 Flemish municipalities in Belgium will use new electronic voting machines in October 14 elections. More than 60 percent of the country’s Flemish citizens as well as voters in the Brussels region will choose their local and provincial leaders using a newly developed Linux-based e-voting system made by Venezuelan company Smartmatic. Belgium has been experimenting with e-voting systems since 1991 and is one of the few European countries that is still using a form of electronic voting. The Netherlands, for instance, banned the use of electronic voting machines in 2008 after a group of activists successfully demonstrated that both types of electronic voting machines then in use could be tampered with. The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany decided in 2009 to stop using electronic voting machines because results from the machines were not verifiable. There were some experiments with e-voting in the U.K., but bigger projects never got a foothold, said a Belgian government report detailing the history of e-voting in Europe. Meanwhile, while a wide variety of voting machines are used in the U.S. and about 20 percent of the population of Estonia votes via the Internet, Belgium is one of the few European countries that still invests in new e-voting technology.

Georgia (Sakartvelo): Georgian Election Commission Imposes Polling Station Filming Rules, Drops Initial Plan of Tough Restrictions | Civil.Ge

The Central Election Commission (CEC) has passed a decision introducing regulations for filming inside polling stations during the voting day imposing less restriction than initially proposed. The decision was passed by 13-member CEC shortly before the midnight on September 24. CEC members from the Conservative Party and Industrialists, both within the Georgian Dream coalition, voted against, citing that there was no need to introduce any regulations for making video recordings and taking photos inside polling stations on the election day. CEC members from ruling party, UNM, as well as Christian-Democratic Movement were among those who voted in favor; Labor Party representative was absent. Initial proposal was offering to give journalists and others, authorized to be present inside the precinct, only five minutes to film and take pictures of the voting inside polling station.

Russia: Election likely fraudulent, study says | latimes.com

Widespread ballot-box stuffing and fraud likely occurred in the 2012 Russian presidential election that returned Vladimir Putin to the office, according to a new statistical model. The analysis, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also identifies Uganda as a site of widespread election tampering. There have been rumors of election fraud in Russia for the past several elections, and they reached a fever pitch this year. But election fraud is difficult to prove. Past approaches looked for examples of something called “Benford’s law,” which looks for regularities in the numbers reported in elections– like the presence of too many zeros because someone rigging the election prizes multiples of ten. But that approach has been difficult to apply, because it requires that analysts know just how many of each digit are likely to occur in the results of a fair election. The new model, created by a team of Austrian scientists, takes a much more rigorous statistical approach, but it relies on a relatively simple idea: If an election has areas that have extremely high voter turnout — close to 100% — where that turnout is mostly for one candidate, the fix is likely in.

Russia: Kremlin considering resumption of election bloc practice | Russia Beyond The Headlines

The formation of party blocs, which proved efficient in the elections of 1999, may resume with the weakening of the United Russia position, Nezavisimaya Gazeta said on Monday. “The law on election blocs may become a part of Russian politics again in the next election cycle. The Presidential Administration is considering this initiative. The reason is the weakening position of United Russia,” the newspaper said. “The party rating is down, which leads to the downgrading of the national leaders,” it said. “The United Russia bureaucratic foundation is unchanged, and All-Russia People’s Front bound to back up the United Russia authority increasingly separates itself from the party.”

Georgia (Sakartvelo): Scandal and intrigue split voters | BBC

The former Soviet state of Georgia will hold fiercely contested parliamentary elections on Monday. For the first time since coming to power in 2004, President Mikheil Saakashvili’s fervently pro-Western government risks being ousted – by a billionaire tycoon, suspected of having close links to the Kremlin, who wants to re-establish relations with Russia. Two elderly women selling fruit at one of Tbilisi’s many outdoor markets shout loudly at each other, arguing about who should lead the country. A man carrying his shopping yells over his opinion as he walks past. This is political debate, Georgian-style. Apathy is certainly not a problem in these elections. Both sides regard this vote as an all-or-nothing fight for power. Most of the people standing behind the stalls here scrape by on a few dollars a day, selling fruit and vegetables. They see Georgia’s richest man – the billionaire opposition leader, Bidzina Ivanishvili, as their saviour – and the possibility of renewed trade links with Russia as an economic lifeline.

The Voting News Daily: Voter Harassment, Circa 2012, Voting Wrongs

National: Voter Harassment, Circa 2012 | NYTimes.com This is how voter intimidation worked in 1966: White teenagers in Americus, Ga., harassed black citizens in line to vote, and the police refused to intervene. Black plantation workers in Mississippi had to vote in plantation stores, overseen by their bosses. Black voters in Choctaw County, Ala., had to hand…

Editorials: Voting Wrongs | Elizabeth Drew/New York Review of Books

The Republicans’ plan is that if they can’t buy the 2012 election they will steal it. The plan, long in the making and now well into its execution, is to raise great gobs of money—in newly limitless amounts—so that they and their allies could outspend the president’s forces; and they would also place obstacles in the way of large swaths of citizens who traditionally support the Democrats and want to exercise their right to vote. The plan would disproportionately affect blacks, who were guaranteed the right to vote in 1870 by the Fifteenth Amendment; but then that right was negated by southern state legislatures; and after people marched, were beaten, and died in the civil rights movement, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now various state legislatures are coming up with new ways to try once again to nullify that right. In a close election, the Republican plan could call into question the legitimacy of the next president. An election conducted on this basis could lead to turbulence on election day and possibly an extended period of lawsuits contesting the outcome in various states. Bush v. Gore would seem to have been a pleasant summer afternoon. The fact that their party’s nominee is currently stumbling about, his candidacy widely deemed to be in crisis mode, hasn’t lessened their determination to prevent as many Democratic supporters as they can from voting in November.

National: Voter ID Laws Take Aim At College-Student Voters | Huffington Post

In Tennessee, a new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls explicitly excludes student IDs. In Wisconsin, college students are newly disallowed from using university-provided housing lists or corroboration from other students to verify their residence. Florida’s reduction in early voting days is expected to reduce the number of young and first-time voters there. And Pennsylvania’s voter identification bill, still on the books for now, disallows many student IDs and non-Pennsylvania driver’s licenses, which means out-of-state students may be turned away at the polls. In 2008, youth voter turnout was higher that it had been since Vietnam, and overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. This time around, the GOP isn’t counting solely on disillusionment to keep the student vote down. In the last two years, Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed dozens of bills that erect new barriers to voting, all targeting Democratic-leaning groups, many specifically aimed at students. The GOP’s stated rationale is to fight voter fraud. But voter fraud — and especially in-person fraud which many of these measures address — is essentially nonexistent.

Voting Blogs: Relocation, Relocation, Relocation: Online Voter Registration’s Impact on Existing Voters | Election Academy

My electionline.org colleague Mindy Moretti has an info-packed story in this week’s electionlineWeekly on the push to get voters registered before deadlines start to hit in early October. Her story covers a variety of items, but the ones that jumped out at me were the online voter registration (OVR) numbers for states who have recently begun the practice. These two grafs stood out in particular:

In Maryland, the [OVR] system launched in July and has seen more than 8,000 new registrants and more than 14,000 people have updated their registration….
…
Since its launch in August, 9,716 New Yorkers have used the [online] voter registration system to update their registration or complete an application. According to [the State Board’s Doug] Kellner, 3,168 are new registrants.

Florida: Revised try at purging noncitizen voters draws legal fire | www.palmbeachpost.com

Two Miami-Dade County voters and Hispanic voting groups have asked a federal judge to halt Gov. Rick Scott’s revised to purge voter rolls of non-citizens, saying it comes too close to the Nov. 6 election and remains problematic. Lawyers for Karla Vanessa Arcia and Melande Antoine and a variety of voting-rights groups including the Florida Immigrant Coalition and the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, filed the request in a federal court in Miami Wednesday night. The groups reached a settlement with Scott’s administration last week and dropped three other portions of their complaint but now are asking Judge William Zloch to stop the effort. Secretary of State Ken Detzner last month revamped the effort, the subject of multiple lawsuits, and switched to using the federal Department of Homeland Security Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or “SAVE,” database to vet a list of potential noncitizens. The list had been created by matching state driver’s licenses and voter registration records. Detzner said the federal database will result in a less problematic list than one sent to elections supervisors in April. State and local officials abandoned the purge this spring after it was discovered that many of the flagged 2,626 voters were naturalized citizens — including Arcia and Antoine — and, therefore, eligible to vote.

Idaho: Secretary of State says ‘absolutely no truth’ to claim Obama has ordered U.S. votes counted in Spain | Idaho Statesman

Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa is debunking a claim that the federal government has transferred authority to count 2012’s ballots to a Spanish company. Ysursa said he was questioned about the rumor last week after at an Ada County Republican breakfast and responded with a joke. “I just chuckled and said, ‘Well, the Basques have been counting ’em for years — ever since Pete came in,'” Ysursa said, referring to fellow Basque and predecessor, Pete Cenarrusa, Idaho’s chief election official from 1967-2002. But Ysursa, a Republican, told me today that assuring public confidence in the integrity of voting is a serious matter. He dug into the issue after I inquired on behalf of a reader. The reader called saying she’d heard radio talk-show host Michael Savage on KINF 730 allege U.S. votes will be counted in Spain. Depite being determined to be false by the rumor-vetting Snopes.com, the blogosphere is rife with such speculation. In April, Savage said that a Spanish count is part of President Obama’s plan to “steal” the election. His comments have been excerpted on many blogs.

Maryland: Voter fraud allegations against Rosen prompt Maryland write-in campaigns | baltimoresun.com

The Maryland Democratic Party this week said it will back a write-in candidate challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Harris in Maryland’s 1st Congressional District — which includes much of Carroll County — after voter fraud allegations ended the previous Democratic candidate’s bid. The party had scrambled for a replacement since its primary winner Wendy Rosen had to drop out of the race on Sept. 10, after confirming reports that she had voted in two different states in more than one election. The party this week threw its support behind John LaFerla, 63, a gynecologist from Chestertown, who had lost in the primary to Rosen by just 57 votes. But because LaFerla is late entering the campaign he will have to run as a write-in candidate, a distinct disadvantage.

Minnesota: Voter ID: Close elections drive amendment battle in Minnesota | TwinCities.com

A dozen years ago, proving who you were at the polls wasn’t a big issue. But then came the presidential election of 2000, which spotlighted mechanical and other flaws in Florida’s vote-counting system and ended with the U.S. Supreme Court intervening to declare a winner. That high-stakes drama touched off a re-examination of election processes and led several states over the next decade to tighten ID requirements to reduce the possibility of fraud. By 2011, voter ID was “the hottest topic of legislation in the field of elections,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In Minnesota, voters in November will be deciding whether to move from having no voter ID requirement to adopting one of the strictest in the nation.

New Hampshire: Judge expects to rule today on New Hampshire voter residency law | NEWS06

While he was leaning toward siding with four college students, Superior Court Judge John Lewis won’t decide until this afternoon whether out-of-state students need to establish residency to vote here. Lewis heard arguments Wednesday about a new law — originally filed as Senate Bill 318 — which requires people to sign a form declaring New Hampshire as their domicile. As a result, voters would be subject to all state laws, including having to register their vehicle and obtain a New Hampshire driver’s license within 60 days of coming to live in the state. Between 1979 and 2007 students were allowed to vote in New Hampshire while maintaining residency in other states. The law was changed in June after the Legislature overrode Gov. John Lynch, who had vetoed the bill. “This is a serious decision,” Lewis said, adding both sides have until this afternoon to file any additional arguments, evidence or information before he makes a ruling.

Pennsylvania: Provisional ballots loom large in Pennsylvania voter id law | mcall.com

Hail the lowly and under-appreciated provisional ballot. If the courts leave Pennsylvania’s voter ID law in place for the November election, this rarely used paper stand-in for the modern electronic voting machine could be all that stands between a voter who shows up at the polls without an acceptable ID and electoral disappointment. But just filling out the ballot on Nov. 6 won’t be enough. Under the law, voters who complete provisional ballots because they failed to bring an ID to the polls must provide proof of ID to their county voter registration office within six days of voting for their votes to count. The ID can be emailed, faxed, mailed or brought to the office in person, and must be accompanied by a signed affirmation that the voter cast a provisional ballot.

Pennsylvania: Voter ID Laws ‘Stink,’ Says Republican Community Leader | Huffington Post

Longtime Republican politician Stanley R. Lawson Sr. says he knows a rat when he smells one. And what’s going on politically around recently passed voter ID laws in his home state of Pennsylvania reeks of partisan politics. Lawson, 70, a registered Republican, is currently the head of the Harrisburg chapter of the NAACP, but has served as chair to the Dauphin County Republican Party and as a member of the Harrisburg City Council. “The whole thing stinks,” Lawson told The Huffington Post on Friday afternoon. “They say the reason they did this is because of all the fraud going on. But I happen to be a former Republican chairman of the county, I’ve been on the city council, I’ve been a township commissioner, and I’ve never seen it or heard anyone complain about voter fraud.”

South Carolina: Voter ID case could close with legal fireworks | TheState.com

Closing arguments Monday about South Carolina’s voter ID law will cap an extraordinary case that already has seen charges of racism directed at the law’s author as well as federal judges’ open frustration over state officials’ changing stances on how they would enact the law. Opponents of the embattled law, which U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder blocked last year under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, will challenge the credibility of its chief author, state Rep. Allan Clemmons, R-Myrtle Beach. Lawyers for groups opposed to the voter ID law, including civil rights groups, will say Clemmons took false credit for its “reasonable impediment” clause, which allows voters to cast ballots if they have “reasonable” reasons for not having photo identification.

Belarus: Polls close in Belarus election amid boycott | Al Jazeera

Parliamentary elections in Belarus have ended without the country’s main opposition parties taking part, following calls for a boycott on grounds of irregularities and illegal detentions. Poll closed at 8pm local time (17:00 GMT) having opened 12 hours earlier. The news comes as the Central Election Commission declared the parliamentary vote valid with a turnout of at least 65.9 per cent, while independent monitors have suggested a far lower turnout at 30 per cent. The main opposition parties said official claims that turnout was 65.9 percent even before polls closed were wildly out of step with reality. “The election commission is unscrupulously lying as these figures are so radically different from those of observers,” Vitaly Rymashevsky, co-chairman of the Belarus Christian Democracy party, told the AFP news agency.

Belarus: Opposition boycott and apathy threaten Belarus election | Reuters

A Belarussian parliamentary election on Sunday is likely to reinforce hardline President Alexander Lukashenko’s grip on the small former Soviet country despite a boycott call from the dispirited opposition. The two main opposition parties have urged people to go fishing and mushrooming rather than vote in what they see as a sham exercise to produce a chamber which largely rubber-stamps Lukashenko’s directives. But four days of early voting by students, armed service staff and police in the tightly-controlled country have already produced a 19 percent turnout, according to official figures, and there was no question of the boycott threatening the overall turnout threshold and the validity of Sunday’s ballot. The outcome will enable Lukashenko to present the election as a genuine democratic process. Western monitoring agencies have not judged an election in Belarus, ruled by Lukashenko for 18 years, free and fair since 1995.

Canada: Elections Canada wants more people to cast ballots, but online voting is still out | The Globe and Mail

Elections Canada is trying to ease registration for young voters and is pushing for more civic education in elementary classrooms, according to the federal elections watchdog. But online voting is still out of the question. Marc Mayrand, Canada’s chief electoral officer, delivered the remarks in an online discussion with Globe and Mail readers Thursday night. “Online voting would certainly make voting more convenient for everyone, including young voters,” Mr. Mayrand wrote. “That being said, there are still issues surrounding the integrity, verifiability and secrecy of the vote.” As for the robocalls affair – alleged misleading automated calls during the 2011 federal election – Mr. Mayrand said the investigation continues but he couldn’t give a timeline.

Ukraine: Ukraine on eve of parliamentary elections | Kyiv Post

A number of recent opinion polls shed light on the attitudes of residents of Ukraine to separation, the new language law, relations with Russia and the forthcoming parliamentary elections. Overall they suggest that residents of Ukraine are relatively patriotic (including in the eastern regions), have not radically altered their outlooks as a result of the new language law, and though they are primarily oriented toward the European Union, they do not perceive the relationship with Russia as hostile, nor do they anticipate any serious threats to their country from the larger neighbor. The polls suggest a growing maturity and confidence among Ukrainians concerning the future of the independent state that is rarely highlighted in media reports that focus purely on politics and the elite. On the other hand, there remain significant differences in outlook between the east and the south vis-à-vis the western regions in almost every poll. But these divisions are less polarized than has been the case in the past.

Venezuela: The Venezuelan Election Deserves Our Attention | Forbes

There is a crucial election about to take place in Venezuela. Basic issues of freedom and economic liberty are at stake for the Venezuelan people. And with Venezuela being both our largest oil provider and a chief anti-American aggressor with alliances in Iran, Syria and Russia amongst others, this election is not only critical for us but much more so than policymakers in DC have acknowledged or realized. Democratic challenger Henrique Capriles could surely change the direction of the Venezuela. He is poised to serve as a much-needed positive force in shaping Venezuela’s future as a cooperative member of the international community if he is elected on October 7th. The head of Venezuela’s oil workers union, the United Federation of Oil Workers, said just yesterday that his members are not even entertaining the idea of a Chavez defeat. “It is impossible for Capriles to win this year…We the working class will not allow it.”