Oregon: Brown denies state improperly struck signatures from marijuana measure | OregonLive.com

A lawsuit charging that Secretary of State Kate Brown improperly invalidated thousands of signatures on a proposed ballot measure to legalize marijuana was filed in Marion County Circuit Court Wednesday. Robert Wolfe, the chief petitioner for the marijuana initiative, charged that Brown’s actions unfairly denied his initiative a spot on the November ballot despite his turning in 170,000 signatures — far more than the 116, 284 valid signatures required. State Elections Director Stephen Trout, defended the secretary of state’s handling of the marijuana initiative, saying that officials are following long-established procedures based on state law. However, the lawsuit could result in the first major legal test of the state government’s handling of ballot measures since Brown put tougher regulations on paid petition gathering after taking office in 2009.

South Dakota: Pressure builds, but Secretary of State Gant won’t go | The Argus Leader

A state senator is calling for the resignation or impeachment of Secretary of State Jason Gant, who has faced a steady drumbeat of criticism for being too politically involved. Sen. Stan Adelstein, R-Rapid City, has filed an official complaint about Gant with Attorney General Marty Jackley, who is reviewing the issue and expects to produce a report within the next few weeks. Adelstein hopes this investigation will produce pressure on Gant to resign, or possibly provide grounds to impeach him when the Legislature reconvenes in January. “Gant has to leave,” Adelstein said. “My problem now becomes this: If it’s only going to be impeachment, it’ll be a terrible distraction to the legislative process. I’ve really got to see what I can do to make it more compelling for Gant to resign. I’m not sure how I’m going to do that.”

Wisconsin: Nickolaus changed software before April election breakdown | JSOnline

Sometime after final testing of Waukesha County’s election software – but before the April election – County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus mysteriously changed something in her office’s computer programming, according to a consulting firm’s report released Tuesday. Only Nickolaus knows what she did. The consultants can’t figure it out, and she’s not talking. But whatever she did, it caused a breakdown in reporting election results that will cost county taxpayers $256,300 to fix, the report says. And that’s not the only money that Waukesha County will have to spend to get its election systems operating properly, County Executive Dan Vrakas said Tuesday. Aging hardware is out of compliance with federal standards and nearing the end of its useful life, the report says. That equipment was supposed to be replaced in 2009, but Nickolaus killed the project because county purchasing officials wouldn’t let her award a no-bid contract, said Norm Cummings, county director of administration. Now Vrakas and the County Board will need to spend unknown amounts of money in the 2013 and 2014 budgets to replace that equipment before the 2014 gubernatorial election, Cummings said.

Wisconsin: Citizens group auditing recall election results—by hand | GazetteXtra

The Rock County Clerk’s Office opened its doors to an unusual request Tuesday. A group of six concerned citizens wanted to cross-check Rock County’s election results of last month’s gubernatorial recall election—by hand. The group members, who said they were part of the action group Election Fairness, had filed an open records request July 2 with Rock County and Wisconsin’s 71 other counties. Its members seek to hand-count paper ballots in storage at counties around the state to determine whether results on paper ballots match electronic tabulations that counties used to total votes in the June 5 recall election between Gov. Scott Walker and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, said James Mueller of Cross Plains, the group’s attorney. Most Wisconsin municipalities rely on electronic voting machines to tally votes from paper ballots. The electronic totals are recorded and added to late-arriving absentee ballots during a post-election canvass. That’s how counties arrive at official election results that they certify with the state. But members of Election Fairness say they believe electronic vote tabulation could be a flawed system. The group argues electronic voting machines can misread ballots and lead to mistakes that can skew election results.

Editorials: Meet the hanging chad of 2012 – absentee ballots | NY Daily News

At this point in a closely fought presidential campaign, pundits and pollsters are checking their guts and sifting through data to try to predict November’s winner. Those of us who specialize in election law engage in a more heart-wrenching task: attempting to make an educated guess about the likelihood that one or another election irregularity will lead to a Bush v. Gore-style meltdown. My candidate for the honor of the next potential chad to dangle: absentee ballots. Competition for this year’s biggest potential ballot box nightmare is pretty stiff. We can expect the rise in voter identification laws to lead to some confusion at the polls. This confusion may arise both from the voters who face unfamiliar barriers to entry and from untrained poll workers who must enforce sometimes arcane, novel laws on the fly. This will probably lead to a large number of provisional ballots — the kind a poll worker gives you when they can’t find your name on the rolls. The legality of these would be determined in a post-election recount, if one comes to pass. But the silent, creeping revolution in the timing and method of voting presents bigger opportunities for trouble. In recent years, absentee and mail-in ballots have been steadily rising as a share of total ballots cast. The majority of states now allow “no-excuse absentee” voting, meaning anyone can ask to cast a ballot by mail. You don’t need the political equivalent of a doctor’s note, as was true previously.

Ireland: E-Voting machines finally put to use | TheJournal.ie

A Tullamore-based recycling company which recently purchased 7,500 mostly unused e-voting machines from the State has made a generous donation to a children’s charity. KMK Metals Recycling presented Barretstown with a cheque for €10,000 today after it decided to go ahead with the donation despite not being allowed to sell any of the machines for the cause. Kurt Kyck bought the machines last month with intentions of selling 100 of them to raise funds for the Kildare residential camp for children with serious illness. However, he was advised by the Department of the Environment that the machines should be put entirely beyond functional use and could not be sold. “My staff were disappointed and so when we looked at the figures it was agreed that we were in a position to go ahead with the donation to Barretstown,” he said.

Libya: Jibril has vote lead, Islamists say not beaten | Reuters

Libya’s wartime prime minister Mahmoud Jibril extended his lead in landmark elections, vote tallies showed on Wednesday, but Islamist rivals predicted their score would be boosted by allied independent candidates. Jibril’s National Forces Alliance headed for a landslide win in the eastern district covering the towns of Tobruk and Derna, seen as a hardline Islamist stronghold, suggesting his support was broader than urban areas such as the capital Tripoli. However Western-educated Jibril’s gains do not automatically translate into dominance of the 200-seat national assembly which is set to choose a prime minister and cabinet before setting the stage for full parliamentary elections in 2013.

Voting Blogs: Revisiting Fraud and the 2012 Mexican Presidential Election | The Monkey Cage

In view of the large amount of attention yesterday’s post on the potential for vote buying in the 2012 Mexican presidential election has received, we are very pleased to have a second follow up post-election report on this election from  Marco A. Morales, a Ph.D candidate in the Department of Politics at New York University, that addresses more directly the question of the potential for and consequences of electoral fraud in this election. In addition to his graduate work in political science, Morales has also served as a public official under both PRI and PAN administrations, most recently – under the current PAN administration – as Press Counsellor and Spokesman for the Mission of Mexico to the United Nations, and Director General for Political Analysis at the Office of the Mexican Presidency. The official tally for the Mexican presidential election has now been released. After all votes have been counted (and recounted whenever there were discrepancies in the tallies) the results advanced by the PREP and the expedite count remain virtually unchanged: PRI’s Peña Nieto has38.21% of the vote, PRD’s López Obrador 31.59%, and Vázquez Mota 25.41% of the vote. This means that a difference of over 3.3 million votes between the front-runner and the second place remains virtually unchanged. (Or in other words, that there was human error on the vote counts, but no systematic error). Yet, for outside observers, this could seem like a convoluted process taking an exceptional amount of time. And that would be a correct observation. Nevertheless, that is what the electoral law dictates. So what exactly is going on, and why?

Mexico: Mexico Still Far From Fair Elections | Huffington Post

The media rewrites history every day, and in so doing it often impedes our understanding of the present. Mexico’s presidential election of a week ago is a case in point. Press reports tell us that Felipe Calderón, the outgoing president from the PAN (National Action Party) “won the 2006 election by a narrow margin.” But this is not quite true, and without knowing what actually happened in 2006, it is perhaps more difficult to understand the widespread skepticism of the Mexican people as to the results of the current election. The official results show Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Enrique Peña Neto winning 38.2 percent of the vote, to 31.6 percent for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and 25.4 percent for Josefina Vázquez Mota of the PAN. It does not help that the current election has been marred by widespread reports of vote-buying.

Romania: Romanian Court Raises Bar for Recalling President | WSJ.com

Romania’s Constitutional Court on Tuesday ruled that at least half the electorate must cast ballots in a recall referendum aimed at removing the president for the vote to be valid, a new twist to a bitter partisan feud between a resurgent left and a right no longer favored by an austerity-weary electorate. The government of Prime Minister Victor Ponta, a Social Democrat who took office in May, has drawn criticism from European capitals and local civil liberties groups for a series of rapid-fire maneuvers that set the stage for the impeachment of right-leaning President Traian Basescu. Parliament voted Friday to suspend Mr. Basescu. The national vote on whether he should be ejected from office is to be held July 29. The court upheld a new law lowering the threshold for removal to a majority of the votes cast, but added the turnout proviso, which could make for a close election.

United Kingdom: Scottish independence: Electoral Commission ‘will not test panel’s question’ | BBC

The Electoral Commission has said it will not examine any proposed referendum question drawn up on behalf of the pro-union parties. Labour, the Tories and Lib Dems have asked an expert panel to compose a question which would be submitted to the commission for testing. But the commission said only the “relevant government” could propose a question. The SNP said the decision was a humiliation for the pro-union campaign.

The Voting News Daily: Has SCOTUS OK’d campaign dirty tricks?, List of 180,000 suspect Florida voters to be made public

Editorials: Has SCOTUS OK’d campaign dirty tricks? | Richard L. Hasen/Politico.com An obscure procedural order issued the day after the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Barack Obama’s health care law got lost in the saturated media coverage of the health ruling and the palace intrigue over whether Chief Justice John Roberts switched his vote…

Editorials: Has SCOTUS OK’d campaign dirty tricks? | Richard L. Hasen/Politico.com

An obscure procedural order issued the day after the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Barack Obama’s health care law got lost in the saturated media coverage of the health ruling and the palace intrigue over whether Chief Justice John Roberts switched his vote and alienated his conservative colleagues. Without comment or dissent, the justices declined to hear Minnesota’s appeal of a federal appeals court ruling in 281 Care Committee v. Arneson — holding that Minnesota’s law banning false campaign speech about ballot measures is likely unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The result could be even nastier campaigns and more political dirty tricks. Minnesota had asked the Supreme Court to hold its petition until the court decided United States v. Alvarez, the so-called “Stolen Valor” case. The court decided Alvarez the same day as health care, striking down as a free speech violation a federal law making it a crime to falsely claim to be a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Alvarez casts considerable doubt over when, if ever, states can take actions to combat false campaign statements and campaign dirty tricks — including lying about the location of a polling place or the voting date. The court could have used the 281 Care Committee case to clear up the muddle next term. But it just denied the petition. Without new clarity, I expect anyone charged with making election-related lies to raise a First Amendment defense. Which they just may win.

Florida: List of 180,000 suspect Florida voters to be made public | Naked Politics

After weeks of declining to make it public, Gov. Rick Scott’s administration now says it will release a much larger list of more than 180,000 voters in Florida whose citizenship status is in question. Secretary of State Ken Detzner said two weeks ago that he would seek an advisory opinion from Attorney General Pam Bondi as to whether the database was public record under Florida law — a political hot potato if ever there was one. Detzner did not request the opinion, and his spokesman, Chris Cate, says: “Our conclusion is that the set of 180,000 names is a public record. We are in the process of redacting it now so that it can be provided to everyone who has made a public records request.”

Georgia: Kemp says lawmakers will have to consider ending runoff elections in Georgia | AJC

State lawmakers will have to consider getting rid of runoff elections in Georgia next year – at least those involving federal candidates in general elections – because of a recent ruling by a U.S. district judge requiring 45 days for ballots cast by members of the U.S. military to make their way home, Secretary of State Brian Kemp on Monday. Ballot requirements insisted on by the U.S. Justice Department and upheld by the court last week all but invalidate a current state law requiring that winners in all general elections receive 50 percent plus one vote, Kemp said – given that federal runoffs in those contests would have to be delayed until late December. “We’d be voting during Christmas. There may be people getting certified while other people are getting sworn in. It’s really a logistical nightmare,” Kemp said.

Michigan: McCotter’s resignation timing difficult for Michigan election officials | Detroit Free Press

Local election officials are anxiously awaiting word from Gov. Rick Snyder on whether a special election will be held to fill the remaining time of U.S. Rep. Thad McCotter’s term of office in Congress. The timing of McCotter’s resignation on Friday, following a petition signature scandal that erupted on Memorial Day weekend, couldn’t be much worse. It’s too late to include a special election during the Aug. 7 primary election because absentee ballots already have been mailed to thousands of voters. And the resignation comes as thousands of voters already are confronted with the prospect of new congressional representation because of redrawn districts, dictated by population shifts that are reported every 10 years by the U.S. Census.

Minnesota: Opponents pummel Ritchie over amendment titles | Minnesota Public Radio

What’s in a name? Well, it may be the difference between winning and losing, according to supporters and opponents of two referenda heading for the ballot in November. Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has now renamed both of them. First, he renamed the marriage amendment “Limiting The Status Of Marriage To Opposite Sex Couples.” It had been called “Recognition of marriage solely between one man and one woman.” The most recent change came this afternoon, when Ritchie decided to rename the state’s proposed voter ID amendment, designated by its legislative sponsors “Photo Identification Required for Voting.” Ritchie decided to rename the amendment “Changes to In-Person & Absentee Voting & Voter Registration; Provisional Ballots.” Supporters quickly cried foul.

North Carolina: State Supreme Court hears redistricting issue Tuesday | BlueRidgeNow.com

legal battle over North Carolina’s redistricting maps will reach the state Supreme Court on Tuesday but the case is far from finished, as justices must first decide how much of the correspondence between mapmaking lawmakers and their lawyers should be disclosed. The state’s highest court will hear oral arguments about whether the public should learn about legal advice outside attorneys gave to Republican legislative leaders on drawing General Assembly and congressional seat boundaries, getting them enacted and preparing for potential lawsuits. Civil rights and election reform groups as well as Democratic voters who sued in November to overturn the maps on constitutional and discrimination grounds have asked for records to attempt to buttress their case. They’ve already received hundreds of thousands of pages. Taxpayer-paid contract attorneys representing GOP lawmakers say some of their documents should remain confidential due to attorney-client privilege and other restrictions.

New York: The cost of democracy? $36.30 per voter in Onondaga County | syracuse.com

New York’s June 26 primary where Republicans chose Manhattan lawyer Wendy Long as their nominee for U.S. Senate just missed setting a record-low for voter turnout in Onondaga County, according to the final unofficial tally. A total of 4,105 people voted out of 85,374 active Republicans enrolled in Onondaga County, according to the Board of Elections. It amounts to a voter turnout of 4.8 percent. That means the record-low of 4.6 percent is safe for now. That record was set it in the 2006 U.S. Senate GOP primary when John Spencer defeated K.T. McFarland for the party’s nomination.

Ohio: Court Rules Husted is Still Bound by Consent Decree on Provisional Ballots Agreed to by Previous Secretary of State | Ballot Access News

On July 9, U.S. District Court Judge Algenon Marbley ruled that Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted must continue to abide by a consent decree agreed to by his predecessor Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner. Husted is a Republican and Brunner is a Democrat. The consent decree provides that provisional ballots are valid when they are cast in the right building, but the wrong precinct, and if the provisional voter revealed the last four digits of the Social Security Number when voting provisionally, and if the error was made due to polling place official error. Apparently Ohio has many polling places in which multiple precincts vote in the same building. The case is Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless v Husted, 2:06-cv-896. It is not known if the Secretary of State will appeal.

Wisconsin: Wanggaard won’t challenge recall election loss | Green Bay Press Gazette

epublican state Sen. Van Wanggaard decided not to go to court to challenge his recall election loss, effectively conceding the race Tuesday to his challenger and giving Democrats at least a temporary majority in the Wisconsin Senate. Wanggaard, of Racine, lost to Democrat John Lehman by 819 votes, or about 1.1 percent of the nearly 72,000 ballots cast. Wanggaard had demanded a recount, which affirmed his loss. That left Wanggaard with two choices: File a challenge by Tuesday or concede the race. His campaign chose not to challenge, clearing the way for state election officials to certify the race Wednesday morning and make the outcome official.

Wisconsin: Investigating, fixing Nickolaus election errors to cost Wisconsin county $256,300 | JSOnline

A consultant’s report traces problems in reporting Waukesha County election results directly to mistakes by outgoing County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus – mistakes that will cost county taxpayers more than a quarter of a million dollars to fix. Nickolaus had promised to post timely results online and update them periodically for the April 3 election. But the public didn’t learn the results of contested local races for hours, while reporters and election reporting service representatives were forced to tabulate the vote totals themselves from long paper tapes hanging on the walls of a meeting room. The embattled county clerk already was under scrutiny because of her role in the 2011 state Supreme Court race, when she left the entire city of Brookfield out of countywide vote totals. When those 14,000 votes were added in, two days after the election, Justice David Prosser had won by 7,000 votes, instead of narrowly losing to Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, as the original count showed. But the uncertainty over the Waukesha County vote led to a statewide recount that confirmed Prosser’s victory.

Canada: Voting rights at stake in overturned election case, Supreme Court told | The Chronicle Herald

The voting rights of people in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke Centre were trampled by simple record-keeping errors, the Supreme Court of Canada heard Tuesday. The decision to overturn Conservative MP Ted Opitz’s win in last year’s federal election disenfranchised all the voters whose ballots were thrown out, his lawyer said. “It’s hard to think that a constitutional right of this importance can hang by so fine a thread,” lawyer Kent Thomson told the court. Opitz won the riding by just 26 votes over Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj in last year’s federal election. But Wrzesnewskyj went to court, claiming procedural irregularities. Earlier this year, an Ontario Superior Court judge found that Elections Canada officials made clerical errors at the polls. After Justice Thomas Lederer threw out 79 votes and overturned the final result, Opitz appealed the case to the Supreme Court.

Jordan: Opposition leaders suggest postponing elections to draft ‘acceptable law’ | The Jordan Times

Opposition leaders have suggested that parliamentary elections be delayed until next year, so that the government will have time to draft a new elections law acceptable by all. They made the remarks as political powers were still internally discussing their final stance on whether to boycott or participate in the upcoming elections, expected to be held before the end of this year. The Lower House on Sunday endorsed an amended version of the 2012 Elections Law, raising the number of House seats allocated for the national list to 27. A majority of MPs voted in favour of the government’s amendments, under which the number of seats allocated for the closed proportional list at the national level was raised to 27 instead of 17 as stipulated in the previous version.

Libya: Wartime Prime Minister Jibril takes early lead in Libya vote | Reuters

Wartime rebel prime minister Mahmoud Jibril took an early lead in Libya’s national assembly election, according to partial tallies released on Monday that pointed to a weaker than expected showing for Islamist parties. If confirmed that trend would set Libya apart from other Arab Spring countries such as Egypt and Tunisia where groups with overtly religious agendas have done well – although Jibril insists his multi-party alliance is neither secular nor liberal and includes sharia Islamic law among its core values. Saturday’s poll was the first free national vote in six decades and drew a line under 42 years of rule under former dictator Muammar Gaddafi. International observers said it went well despite violent incidents that killed at least two people. Jibril’s National Forces Alliance (NFA) was heading for landslide victories in the Tripoli suburb of Janzour and the western region towns of Zlitan, Misalata, Tarhouna and Khoms with over three-quarters of votes counted in those areas. In Misrata, Libya’s third city, the Union for the Homeland led by a long-time Gaddafi opponent, was on course to win.

Kenya: Electoral Commission to invite hackers to ‘invade’ its systems | nation.co.ke

Do you consider yourself an IT hacker? Then the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission will soon be looking for you. In November, the IEBC plans to invite hackers to try tamper with the system that it will use to transmit provisional results. According to IEBC CEO James Oswago, this will help the system attract the confidence of Kenyans ahead of the planned March 4, 2013 General Elections. “We are confident that our system is tamper-proof. However, sometime in November we will invite those who think they can hack into the system to do it. We want Kenyans to have confidence in the system,” Mr Oswago said. According to Mr Oswago, this is one of the lessons that the Commission has learnt from engagement with electoral bodies that use such systems.

Mexico: Elections certain to face challenges in courts | The Washington Post

Mexican leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Monday he will mount court challenges against the results of the July 1 election, claiming vote-buying and campaign overspending by the winner of official vote counts, Enrique Pena Nieto. The announcement comes amid rising calls to investigate what appears to have been the distribution of thousands of pre-paid gift cards to voters before the election, and allegations by Lopez Obrador’s supporters that some state government officials passed funds to Pena Nieto’s campaign effort. Lopez Obrador finished about 6.6 percentage points behind Pena Nieto of the old guard Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Palestine: Local elections called for October 20 | AFP

The Palestinian government in the West Bank called Tuesday for local elections to be held in the West Bank and Gaza on October 20, the first since 2006, an official said. “The Palestinian government decided today during its meeting to hold the local, municipal and district elections on October 20th throughout the Palestinian territory,” the Palestinian official told AFP on condition of anonymity. The decision followed two such calls for local elections last year, with the Palestinian government in the West Bank seeking to hold the vote first in July 2011 and then in October 2011. It was at first scheduled for July 9, but after a surprise reconciliation deal between the rival Fatah and the Hamas movements, the date was put back to October 22.

United Kingdom: Elections watchdog to review need for voter ID at polling stations | guardian.co.uk

The Electoral Commission is to review whether voters should produce identification at polling stations amid continued concerns about electoral fraud. It said it was disappointed the government had not conducted its own review. The review was announced as the elections watchdog published its reports on May’s local elections, in which it highlighted voters’ concerns about the potential for fraud. Allegations of fraud in Tower Hamlets, east London, are under investigation by the Metropolitan police. Post-election polling found that about a third of voters felt that fraud had taken place in the 3 May elections, at least “a little”. The government is introducing individual electoral registration to tighten up the voting process, but the commission said it would see whether further changes were necessary.

Pennsylvania: Big Romney Donor Paid To Inform Pennsylvanians About Voter ID Law | TPM

The man behind a company that got a big state contract to educate Pennsylvania voters on the commonwealth’s restrictive new voter ID law is a fundraiser for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Ads created by his company, a Republican lobbying group, encourage Pennsylvania residents to obtain state-issued photo identification so they don’t “miss out” on their right to vote. Republican lobbyist Chris Bravacos, who according to the Center For Responsive Politics has thus far bundled $30,000 for Romney’s campaign, is president and CEO of the Bravo Group, which received a $249,660 government contract from Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration for the ad campaign. Two ads the company created were posted online by the Bravo Group back in April (according to a Google cache) and taken down after Philadelphia City Paper’s Daniel Denvir published a story about the contract on Sunday. Occupy Harrisburg later reposted the two videos, one of which uses what looks like stock photos of a diverse cast of smiling individuals holding ID-sized cards that read “My Valid Pennsylvania Identification.” The campaign’s slogan? “Your right to vote: it’s one thing you never want to miss out on.”