Guam: Election Commission Running Short of Cash at It Prepares for Election | Pacific News Center

Guam Election Commission Executive Director Maria Pangelinan says the GEC is struggling to make ends meet as they prepare for the upcoming primary and general elections. Pangelinan told the Rotary Club of Guam Monday that the GEC is “barely functioning” with a budget of only $850 thousand dollars. That is less than previous years, she said. Pangelinan also spoke about the Commission’s efforts to increase voter participation this year and to encourage more people to enroll in the Decolonization registry.

Maine: Recount scheduled for State House race | The Kennebec Journal

Maine election officials have scheduled a ballot recount in a state House primary race that was decided by two votes. A recount will be held Tuesday for the House District 47 Republican primary, which covers Rockland and part of Owls Head. Unofficial results from last Tuesday’s primary showed GOP candidates Gordon Mank Jr. with 165 votes and James Raye with 163 votes. The seat is currently occupied by Democrat Edward Mazurek, who is term-limited and cannot seek re-election.

New Mexico: State ends straight-ticket voting option | KRQE

A fixture on ballots for decades, the option to vote a straight party ticket is disappearing in New Mexico and won’t be available when people head to the polls in November. Voters historically could easily choose to support a party’s entire slate of candidates by making just one mark on the ballot or pressing a single button or level on a machine. But Secretary of State Dianna Duran has decided not to allow that in this year’s general election because there’s no provision in state law specifically authorizing it. “Her job is to follow the law,” said Ken Ortiz, the secretary of state’s chief of staff. What remains unclear is whether elimination of the straight-ticket option will disproportionately help or hurt Democratic or Republican candidates.

South Carolina: Election Commission asks State Supreme Court to intercede in 7th District primary | MyrtleBeachOnline.com

The State Election Commission filed an emergency petition with the S.C. Supreme Court Monday asking for relief from a lawsuit over the 7th District Democratic primary and a restraining order that prohibits the Commission from preparing or distributing election materials for the Republican runoff as well. “The real concern is that voters are going in to participate in the Republican (runoff) and they can’t give them absentee ballots,” Marci Andino, executive director of the Election Commission said late Monday afternoon. She said the Commission’s filing was seeking a ruling without a hearing, but that she had received no word that one had been issued by 5 p.m.

Virginia: Federal appeals court affirms right to access voter registration applications | Daily Record

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, rejecting an Alabama county’s challenge to the landmark civil rights law. The provision requires state, county and local governments with a history of discrimination to obtain advance approval from the Justice Department, or from a federal court in Washington, for any changes to election procedures. It now applies to all or parts of 16 states. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that Congress developed extensive evidence of continuing racial discrimination just six years ago and reached a reasonable conclusion when it reauthorized section 5 of the law at that time. The appellate ruling could clear the way for the case to be appealed to the Supreme Court where Chief Justice John Roberts suggested in a 2009 opinion that the court’s conservative majority might be receptive to a challenge to section 5. Judge David Tatel wrote for the Court of Appeals majority that the court owes deference to Congress’ judgment on the matter.

Wisconsin: Vos claims that Lehman victory was achieved with “voter fraud” | The Recall Elections Blog

Republican House Rep. Robin Vos is now claiming that John Lehman’s close victory in the Wisconsin Senate recall was due to voter fraud and “illegitimate” because it was under the old district lines. Vos claimed that “Unfortunately a portion of it was fraud.” However, his factual back-up seems embarrassingly iffy for such a significant claim:

“There was no double checking to make sure that people even resided for 28 days,” he added.” I think people came in with same-day registrations and to their credit, I mean that’s just part of the get out the vote effort. But you have to have some sort of ID, in my mind; I think that was another thing that led to the potential for fraud.”

Wisconsin: Elections board orders recount in Senate race | TwinCities.com

A recount request filed by state Sen. Van Wanggaard was approved Monday by Wisconsin election officials, who ordered Racine County officials to begin reviewing all of the nearly 72,000 ballots cast starting Wednesday, June 20. Wanggaard requested a recount last week, three days after an official canvass showed him trailing Democratic challenger John Lehman by 834 votes. The margin represented 1.2 percent of the 71,868 ballots cast. Democrats had called on the Republican incumbent to concede, saying a recount would only waste taxpayer money and delay the inevitable. But Wanggaard’s campaign said it was concerned about reports of voting irregularities and wanted to ensure the outcome was accurate.

Wisconsin: State senate recount order expected Monday | WTAQ

The state Government Accountability Board will order a recount of results, in the 21st state Senate District recall election between incumbent Republican Van Wanggaard and Democratic challenger John Lehman. Government Accountability Board staff attorney Mike Haas says the order for the recount will issued by GAB on Monday, and the Racine County Clerk’s office will begin the process at 9:00 Wednesday morning. “The recount has to be completed within 13 calendar days of the date that we issue the order. After that time there’s an appeal period of five business days, if a candidate wants to appeal to circuit court,” says Haas. Barring an appeal, GAB would then certify the results. Right now, Democrat John Lehman leads Republican incumbent Van Wannggard by 834 votes. Costs of the recount will be borne by the taxpayers of Racine County, although the Wanggaard campaign did pay a fee $685 when the petition requesting the recall was filed with GAB.

Egypt: Election Results Delayed | WSJ.com

Egypt’s Presidential Election Commission said it would delay the announcement of a winner in the weekend contest as it pressed forward with an investigation into fraud claims. The commission’s decision, reported by the state news agency, didn’t say when it would announce results, which had been expected to come on Thursday. The delay and the unusually vigorous investigation deepened suspense in a country on edge as it waited to learn who will be its first freely elected president. Conflicting reports about the deteriorating health of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, who was briefly pronounced “clinically dead” by state media late on Tuesday before authorities called that an exaggeration, have heightened tensions. “The most dangerous 48 hours in the history of Egypt,” the state-run Al Ahram Newspaper blasted across its front page on Wednesday. Some 3,000 additional soldiers were deployed to protect government buildings across the country as the military braced for unrest following the announcement of results, the newspaper reported on its website.

Egypt: Islamists claim presidency as army tightens grip | Reuters

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said on Monday its candidate won the country’s first free presidential election, but a sweeping legal maneuver overnight by Cairo’s military rulers made clear the generals planned to keep control for now. An election committee source told Reuters that Islamist Mohamed Morsy, a U.S.-educated engineer, was comfortably ahead of former air force general Ahmed Shafik with most of the votes tallied. But the count, which would make him the first civilian leader in 60 years, had yet to be officially finalized. In any event, however, the new president will be subordinate for some time at least to the military council which last year pushed fellow officer Mubarak aside to appease street protests.

Libya: Election Campaigning Starts | Tripoli Post

Campaigning for the country’s first national election in more than four decades set for on July 7, started Monday as the eligible candidates, 2,501 independents, and 1,206 political association candidates eligible and the 1,206 associated to the 142 parties, Eill be vying for a place on the national assembly that will be entrusted with drafting a constitution. During his 42-year rule, Gaddafi banned direct elections, saying they were bourgeois and anti-democratic. The new assembly will re-draw the autocratic system of rule put in place by the former Libyan dictatorial leader Muammar Gaddafi. The electoral commission said in a statement during a press conference at the weekend, that candidates will have 18 days to campaign, until July 5, that is, two days before the election.

Editorials: Challenging the market power of one voting machine maker | Sean Flaherty/Iowa City Press Citizen

I am co-chairman of Iowans for Voting Integrity, a nonpartisan citizen group that works for voting systems worthy of the public trust. We have worked for six years for two reforms that both we and many of the world’s leading computer technologists consider essential to fair elections: First, we believe that all computer voting systems must provide a reliable paper record of every ballot cast, and Second, we believe that following every election, election officials should routinely conduct a manual tally of a sample of cast ballots to check against electronic tallies. This column revisits an issue well-known both to the small community of advocates and technology experts who work on electronic voting issues and to an untold number of conspiracy theorists around the nation, but largely unknown outside those communities. This issue is the centralized marked power of the nation’s leading vendor of election equipment and services, Election Systems and Software (ES&S), and the opacity of ES&S’s ownership. I’d like to share some highly judicious and disturbing comments about ES&S that I heard June 7 at a reading at Prairie Lights by University of Iowa computer scientist Douglas Jones. Along with his co-author Barbara Simons, Jones recently published an important book, “Broken Ballots.” The reading was livestreamed on the Internet, and and audio archive should be available soon.

Editorials: The super PAC election? Not quite | The Washington Post

To read the news coverage of late, you could be forgiven for thinking that we’re headed into a campaign in which super PACs will determine the winner. Ten million dollars from Sheldon Adelson here, $1 million from Bill Maher there, and it’s easy to conclude that these new organizations will have the biggest say in the identity of the next president and control of Congress. But it’s not quite so simple. In fact, the realities of campaign advertising today still put a premium on candidates themselves — and specifically, on their fundraising. As a rule of thumb, super PACs and national party committees pay significantly more for ad space (on average, about 40 to 50 percent more) than candidates do, meaning their dollar doesn’t go nearly as far on TV. And in a crowded media market, that markup can reach as high as three, four or even five times as much as the candidates when the super PACs and party committees have to pay extra to bump existing ads off the air. The Arizona special election on Tuesday is a good example of this ad reality.

Editorials: Citizens United: Watergate redux | Fred Wertheimer/Politico.com

When the Supreme Court issued its disastrous Citizens United decision, five justices took the nation back to the era of secret money, unlimited campaign contributions and corporate funds at the core of the Watergate scandal. On June 17, 1972, a burglary at the Watergate Hotel began the unraveling of the worst political and campaign-finance scandals of the 20th century — and the downfall of President Richard Nixon. Yet today, massive amounts of secret money, unlimited contributions and corporate funds are again flowing into federal elections. The same elements that corrupted government decisions and officeholders in the early 1970s have returned. As baseball great Yogi Berra said, it is “déjà vu all over again.” During the Watergate scandals, we had the benefit of the special prosecutor, congressional hearings led by Sen. Sam Ervin and aggressive investigative journalism to crack through the secrecy and reveal the depths of government corruption. Such official government efforts are absent today, however, even as huge, and/or secret contributions are flowing into the 2012 presidential and congressional races. This money has the power to influence future government actions — just as huge, secret contributions were used in the Watergate era to buy government decisions. After Watergate, 20 corporations were criminally convicted for illegal campaign-finance activities. The hotel break-in itself was financed with secret campaign contributions.

Michigan: Michigan GOP Set to Enter Voter ID Game | Politic365

A new law moving through the Michigan legislature would make it harder for groups to hold voter registration drives, unregister voters who haven’t recently voted and require voters to show identification at the polls. Does the new legislation in Michigan make it easier to vote? No. As part of a trend seen across the nation, Republican controlled legislatures are passing new and more restrictive voting laws.  In each case, the legislation makes it more likely that a citizen would be prevented from casting a ballot. The move in Michigan also comes at a time when the Republican presidential nominee Gov. Mitt Romney wants to ensure that he wins the state at all costs.  The Wolverine State has become a symbolic and personal battleground for Romney since it’s where he grew up while his father George Romney was Governor from 1963 – 1969.  As a result, the stakes are high for Michigan Republicans to produce electoral results.Those stakes are even higher as a recent Rasmussen poll shows incumbent President Barack Obama “comfortably” ahead in Michigan by 8 points, 50% to 42% against Romney. In 2008, the President crushed former Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) 57.4% to 40.9%, easily grabbing the state’s coveted 17 electoral votes.  Additionally, the state is over 14% African American, more than the national average and critical to Obama’s re-election hopes.

New Hampshire: Voter ID bill resisted by town, city clerks | NashuaTelegraph.com

Oops. There’s another glitch in the voter ID bill that’s headed to the desk of Gov. John Lynch. The compromise bill enjoys strong Republican support in the House of Representatives and the Senate. But this was predicated on the measure not facing opposition from the city and town clerks across the state or Secretary of State Bill Gardner. That’s where the hang-up comes in. At the 11th hour, the legislation was changed by House and Senate negotiators. The key language deals with what happens at the general election this November if you don’t have an ID. The compromise requires that you have to sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury that attests you are who you say you are and that you’re eligible to vote at the polling place. The clerks had wanted the affidavit to be the one the Senate had proposed for challenged voters.

New York: Proposed election law could simplify voter registration | Queens Chronicle

State Sen. Mike Gianaris (D-Astoria), Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh (D-Manhattan) and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law introduced the Voter Empowerment Act of New York bill on June 7. The bill will automatically register eligible consenting citizens at designated government agencies; permit pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds; automatically transfer registrations of New Yorkers who move within the state; provide access to voter registration records and registration of eligible citizens online and allow people to register or change their party later in the election cycle.

Pennsylvania: Western Pennsylvania Democrats to challenge voter ID law | The York Daily Record

Democrats on Allegheny County’s elections board have announced that they plan to challenge Pennsylvania’s GOP-backed voter identification law. County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said Friday that the legal action to be taken next week will argue that the law is too expensive and difficult to implement in time for the November election. The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and others have already challenged the law on constitutional grounds, arguing that it makes it harder for some citizens to vote, especially the elderly and minorities. Backers say the law, similar to measures recently passed in other states, will reduce existing and potential voter fraud.

Pennsylvania: Lawsuit planned over Pennsylvania’s voter ID law | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Democrats on Allegheny County’s election board plan to challenge the state’s new voter ID law as being too expensive and too difficult to implement in time for the November presidential election. That claim will be at the heart of a lawsuit the election board is expected to bring next week, county Executive Rich Fitzgerald said at a news conference Friday. Rather than challenging the constitutionality of the law itself, as the American Civil Liberties Union and others are doing, local officials say the new law is too complicated and expensive to put in place by Nov. 6. Mr. Fitzgerald is one of three members of the election board. The new law requires voters to show government-approved photo identification before they can cast ballots. Mr. Fitzgerald said it would be prohibitive for the county to train the more than 6,500 poll workers who man the county’s 1,300 polling places. He said there would not be enough time to train them in new procedures required to check identifications and allow voters to use provisional ballots if they don’t have proper ID.

South Carolina: Election Commission certifies Bromell Tinubu as 7th District Dem winner; no runoff ordered | The Republic

Election officials opted Friday not to order a runoff between the top two vote-getters in the Democratic race for South Carolina’s new 7th congressional district, although all sides acknowledged the issue would next play out in court. After 90 minutes of executive session but with no public debate, the state Election Commission voted to certify Coastal Carolina University professor Gloria Bromell Tinubu’s victory in Tuesday’s primary over Myrtle Beach attorney Preston Brittain. At issue was whether the commission would count the votes of state Rep. Ted Vick, who withdrew May 25 following an arrest for drunken driving, but remained on the ballot. Without Vick’s more than 2,300 votes, Bromell Tinubu won the four-way race outright, with 52 percent of the vote to Brittain’s 39 percent. But five names were on the ballot. Both the state Democratic Party and Brittain’s campaign had argued none of the five received a majority, thus necessitating a runoff or otherwise disenfranchising voters. The commission voted 3-2 not to count Vick’s votes.

Canada: Nova Scotia town approves online voting bylaw | The Vanguard

The Municipality of Argyle has voted to approve a bylaw that paves the way for electronic and telephone voting in this October’s municipal elections. The municipality held a public hearing on the bylaw prior to its June 12 meeting, although the hearing didn’t attract any members of the public. In the upcoming fall vote there will be no paper ballots in the Municipality of Argyle, but there will still be some polling stations. The Town of Yarmouth, which is also going strictly with electronic (computer) and telephone voting, also won’t have paper ballots in this fall’s vote. The town will have one polling station set up at the town hall with computers and telephones, and at which people can get assistance, if required, to vote.

Egypt: Islamist Declares Presidential Win, Rival Disputes | VoA News

Egyptian Islamist Mohammed Morsi has declared victory in the country’s first post-uprising presidential election, but his establishment-backed rival Ahmed Shafiq disputed the claim as Egypt’s military rulers expanded their powers over the next president. Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement said unofficial results show he won about 52 percent of the vote in the two day run-off election that ended Sunday, compared to 48 percent for Mr. Shafiq, the last prime minister to serve under ousted president Hosni Mubarak. The Brotherhood based its victory claim on results tallied by Brotherhood representatives at almost all of the country’s the polling stations. In a speech at his campaign headquarters Sunday, Mr. Morsi said he will serve as a leader of all Egyptians, both Muslims and Christians, and promised not to “seek revenge or settle accounts” with opponents of the Islamist group. “We are seeking stability, love and brotherhood for an Egyptian state that is civil, national, democratic, constitutional and modern. We all are looking forward to love each other.”

Egypt: Islamists claim presidency | Reuters

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood claimed on Monday that its candidate had won the country’s first free presidential election, defeating Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister and ending 60 years of rule by presidents drawn from the armed forces. An election committee source told Reuters that Islamist Mohamed Morsy, a U.S.-educated engineer, was comfortably ahead of former air force general Ahmed Shafik with most of the votes tallied, but that the count had yet to be officially finalized. However, new head of state is likely to remain subordinate to the military for some time at least. In yet another twist in Egypt’s tortuous path from revolution to democracy, the ruling military council issued a decree as voting ended on Sunday that set strict limits on the president’s powers. On the eve of the election, it had already dissolved the Islamist-led parliament. Liberal and Islamist opponents denounced a “military coup”.

Egypt: Presidential election overshadowed by further army power grab and voter fraud claims | Telegraph

Few analysts were willing to predict the outcome of the battle between the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq, a former general and aide to ex-President Hosni Mubarak, despite the Islamist movement’s long domination of the Egyptian street. The Brotherhood said opinion polls showed their man would win a free vote comfortably. But they also claimed that “fake voters” were appearing on polling station lists – dead people and members of the security forces, who in Egypt are supposed to remain neutral and are disqualified.

Greece: New Democracy Party Scores Narrow Win in Elections | TIME.com

Has the euro zone found some breathing room in its crisis? The conservative New Democracy (ND) party eked out a victory in Greece’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, edging out the leftist Syriza party, which is strongly opposed to the austerity measures imposed as part of the country’s bailout. The margin was less than 3 points. The victory, however, still leaves Greece without a government. ND failed to win an outright parliamentary majority and must join forces with at least one party to govern. The scenario is similar to the results of an earlier round of voting. ND also came in first in May 6 elections, again with Syriza running a close second, but failed to form a government then. Forming a government quickly is crucial because Greece could run out of cash to pay its bills as early as next month. It’s unclear which party might join ND in coalition. Greek media are speculating that the conservatives might join force with their traditional rival, the Socialist PASOK party, which came in a distant third on Sunday. Whether the results fully reflect the popular will is another question: nearly 38% of eligible voters abstained from voting — a much higher percentage than any party received.

Greece: Voters give Europe and single currency a chance | The Guardian

European leaders working to avert a meltdown of the single currency gained some respite when Greek voters handed a narrow victory to mainstream conservatives and the chance to forge a pro-euro and pro-bailout coalition. In the single most closely watched election in years, which amounted to a referendum on whether Greece would become the first country to be forced out of the single currency, the anti-austerity radical Alexis Tsipras was also given a boost, increasing his share of the vote to more than 27%. On a momentous night in European politics, Greece’s conservative New Democracy, under Antonis Samaras, appeared to have pulled the country back from the brink of what many feared would be a national catastrophe and averted a much deeper immediate crisis in Europe.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly June 11-17 2012

Elections are taking place this weekend in Greece and Egypt that will have significant international impact. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy issued a temporary delay of a Ninth Circuit Court ruling that had suspended an Arizona law requiring proof of citizenship for registering to vote. In dueling litigation related to Governor Scott’s aborted purge of the State’s voter rolls, the Justice Department sued Florida while Florida sued the Department of Homeland Security. With the control of the State Senate at stake, GOP Senator Van Wanggaard has requested a recount of his recall election defeat. The Supreme Court considered whether to take up a case that would challenge their 2010 Citizens United decision and, in a rare unanimous vote, the Federal Election Commission ruled that campaigns could receive text message donations.

Greece: In Greece, Fears That Voting Won’t Resolve Turmoil | NYTimes.com

Greeks head to the polls on Sunday for the second time in two months with a pervasive sense of dread that any government that comes to power will fail to resolve the political and economic turmoil that threatens the country’s future — and the financial stability of Europe itself. If the establishment center-right party New Democracy ekes out a victory in a race that polls show as tight, Greece still faces weeks or months of negotiations with European lenders over the terms of its austerity program, which all parties agree are too onerous to enforce on its rapidly shrinking economy. A victory by the leftist party Syriza promises a more serious confrontation, especially with Germany, over how — and perhaps whether — to keep Greece in the euro zone.

Greece: Countdown to crucial election in Greece | euronews

With polls due to open in less than 24 hours, leftwing Syriza and the conservative New Democracy party are level-pegging in the race to win the election in Greece. The vote is being seen as a crucial indicator for the country’s future within the eurozone. Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras is the most likely candidate for the next prime minister of Greece. Although his party does not want to abandon the single-currency, it does reject the harsh austerity that comes with accepting the 130 billion euro bailout the country desperately needs.