Latvia: Latvia vote poses question on Russian as EU language | EUobserver.com

A referendum on making Russian an official language in Latvia has raised the dim possibility of it also becoming an official language of the EU. The country’s Central Election Commission (CEC) itself predicts the poll, on 18 February, will be a non-starter. A CEC spokeswoman, Kristine Berzina, told EUobserver on Tuesday (14 February) that “the level for the vote is so high it will never happen.” According to the rules, half of all eligible voters in Latvia – 1.5 million people – must turn out in order to make a quorum, and half of all 1.5 million must vote Yes to get a positive result. Around one third of Latvians are Russian speakers. But in some rural communities the figure is 60 percent. If the bid comes through, it will put pressure on Riga to take steps at EU level.

India: EVMs must have ‘no-vote’ option: Citizens | The Times of India

During first two phases of Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, over 300 voters chose not to vote for any candidate and exercised the “Section 49-o” option available to them under Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961. However, lakhs of others who did not find any contestant “suitable” preferred to skip voting by staying at home. Citizens now want that ‘no-vote’ option must be available on Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) and number of such voters should be counted. During 2009 Lok Sabha (LS) and assembly polls, many exercised the Section 49-o They, however, had to face nightmares at polling booths as officers were completely unaware of this provision.

Pakistan: Increasing voter pool: ECP grants overseas Pakistanis voting rights | The Express Tribune

Voting rights were finally granted by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to 3.7 million overseas Pakistanis on Tuesday. “The decision will pave the way for overseas Pakistanis to actively take part in national politics,” observed ECP Secretary Ishtiak Ahmed Khan. The move was immediately praised by parties across the political spectrum. Overseas Pakistanis Minister Farooq Sattar said, “This decision will enable them to become a part of Parliament, as they are sending over $11 billion in remittances (to Pakistan) per annum”. They should also be given representation on reserved seats in the national and provincial assemblies, he added. “The ECP’s move is a historic step for strengthening democracy by involving more and more people in electoral process,” observed Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Mushahidullah Khan.

Voting Blogs: Super PAC Disclosure Statements Disclose Little | Brennan Center for Justice

One might guess that groups with names like Restore Our Future, Priorities USA, and Winning Our Future would all be campaigning for the same thing — but that could not be further from the truth. These similarly named groups are the Super PACs who are fighting each other in the presidential election. Their confusing names are paltry in comparison to the biggest concern: many of their real donors remain hidden from the public eye. With unlimited contributions made possible by the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and subsequent court decisions, the groups have already raised millions of dollars from wealthy individuals, corporations, unions, and nonprofits. While President Obama is not immune from the Super PAC trend, the Republican nominees have raised more money in much larger amounts. Twelve billionaires donated to Restore Our Future, the Super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, with contributions ranging from $50,000 to $1 million.

National: New voting laws prompt efforts to educate students across nation | The Marquette Tribune

Last year, changes tightening Wisconsin voter ID laws sparked controversy among college students across the state, with some students and state officials claiming the new requirements would dissuade student participation in elections. Now, advocate groups have reacted to these concerns and sought to educate students about what they need for the polls. The Campus Vote Project, an initiative started in 2012 by the Fair Elections Legal Network, aims to mobilize students on college campuses across the country to work with college administrators and election officials to educate students about voting. According to Campus Vote Project’s website, the organization hopes to “overcome barriers students often face to voting that students often mention such as residency laws, registration deadlines, and strict voter ID requirements.” Students who contact the Campus Vote Project can receive a “tool kit,” which includes information about roadblocks to student voting and how to educate colleges about voting requirements.

National: Three weeks until Super Tuesday, but some states are already voting | CSMonitor.com

February is supposed to be the lull in the craziness of this year’s GOP presidential primary, without a single contest between the Maine caucuses (which ended Saturday) and the Michigan and Arizona primaries on Feb. 28, but Super Tuesday has already begun. On Monday, early voting began for Georgia primary voters. The March 6 primary is three weeks off, but expect plenty of Georgians to vote between now and then. Of the 10 states where voting takes place on Super Tuesday, Georgia is the one with the most delegates: 76. But other states are significant, too. Ohio, another big prize, began its early-voting period last week. And Vermont’s began even earlier, a full 45 days before the primary is held. Tennessee’s begins Wednesday, and Oklahoma will have a brief period of early voting just before the primary.

California: Supervisors Considering Changes to San Francisco’s Election System | The Bay Citizen

Two dueling ballot measures to change San Francisco’s election system will go in front of the city’s Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. San Francisco’s current ranked-choice voting system allows voters to rank up to three candidates for each elected office, and those with the lowest vote totals are eliminated and their second- and third-place votes are reassigned until someone has a majority of the votes. But the two charter amendments being considered by the board to put on the June ballot are proposing to either overhaul the current system or make small tweaks and keep ranked-choice voting in the city.

Colorado: Scott Gessler targeted by activist over voting in Saguache county and beyond | Denver News

The woman behind Citizen Center, a nonprofit organization that focuses on elections issues and more, is pushing Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s office to hold a hearing prompted by her complaint about alleged voting irregularities in Saguache County. And today, she plans to announce a broader lawsuit focusing on Gessler and officials in several other counties.  Marks’s background? “I used to be the primary owner and CEO of a trailer manufacturing firm,” she says. “I retired to Aspen in 2002 and ran for mayor in 2009 — and that experience caused me to get completely passionate about Colorado’s elections, which are some of the least transparent, most troublesome elections in the country. In the past almost-three years, I have become a full-time election-quality advocate: I have seven active lawsuits going on across the state on election transparency and election quality. And now, I’ve established a nonprofit so that I can continue my work in a more organized way.”

Maine: Some in GOP want recount in Maine caucuses | The Portland Press Herald

Republicans are pressuring their party’s leaders for a recount of Mitt Romney’s narrow victory over Ron Paul in Maine’s closely watched Republican caucuses. And some say it may be time to get rid of Maine’s quirky process for selecting presidential candidates and switch to conventional primary elections – with voting booths and counting machines. “If we are to do a primary, we need to bring that up before the Legislature,” said Kim Pettengill, a Republican State Committee member representing Kennebec County. “I, for one, am going to see if we can do that, (and) I’ve talked to other people who feel the same way.”

Texas: Redistricting battle returns to court Tuesday as judges may decide fate of April primary | The Washington Post

If Texas can still hold an April primary, now is when the state likely finds out. A federal court in San Antonio that has spent months refereeing a clash over bitterly disputed Texas voting maps reconvenes again Tuesday, and Republicans and Democrats are hoping to learn when the state’s primary elections will finally take place. April 3 is the currently scheduled date, but that no longer seems realistic since not even temporary maps for the 2012 elections in Texas are settled. Another weekend of court-ordered negotiations between the state and minority rights groups, meanwhile, ended with little to show for it.

The Voting News Daily: The Strange Career of Voter Suppression, Oscar voting by computer invites cyber attacks – Academy’s plan to allow voting by computer is an open invitation for cyber attacks and fraudulent outcome

Editorials: The Strange Career of Voter Suppression | NYTimes.com The 2012 general election campaign is likely to be a fight for every last vote, which means that it will also be a fight over who gets to cast one. Partisan skirmishing over election procedures has been going on in state legislatures across the country for several…

Editorials: The Strange Career of Voter Suppression | NYTimes.com

The 2012 general election campaign is likely to be a fight for every last vote, which means that it will also be a fight over who gets to cast one. Partisan skirmishing over election procedures has been going on in state legislatures across the country for several years. Republicans have called for cutbacks in early voting, an end to same-day registration, higher hurdles for ex-felons, the presentation of proof-of-citizenship documents and regulations discouraging registration drives. The centerpiece of this effort has been a national campaign to require voters to present particular photo ID documents at the polls. Characterized as innocuous reforms to preserve election integrity, beefed-up ID requirements have passed in more than a dozen states since 2005 and are still being considered in more than 20 others. Opponents of the laws, mostly Democrats, claim that they are intended to reduce the participation of the young, of the poor and of minorities, who are most likely to lack government-issued IDs — and also most likely to vote Democratic.

National: Oscar voting by computer invites cyber attacks – Academy’s plan to allow voting by computer is an open invitation for cyber attacks and fraudulent outcome | latimes.com

It’s often been said that Oscar season reflects the broader splendors and dysfunctions of American public life. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ ideals of scrupulous fair play have been under constant challenge in recent years, on such issues as the promotional pull of A-list stars, the power of big-studio money and negative advertising campaigns designed to undermine the competition.

Now, though, the academy may be committing a blunder of its own making. It recently announced that it would be ditching its current all-mail secret ballot system, and that its more than 5,000 members would be voting through their own computers, starting next year. The academy said the software developed by the San Diego-based computer voting company Everyone Counts would incorporate “multiple layers of security” and “military-grade encryption techniques” to ensure that nothing untoward or underhanded could occur before PricewaterhouseCoopers, its accountancy firm, captured the votes from the Internet ether. Unfortunately, leading computer scientists around the world who have looked at Internet voting systems do not share the academy’s confidence. On the contrary, they say the technology is vulnerable to a variety of cyber attacks — no matter how many layers of encryption there are — and risks producing a fraudulent outcome without anyone necessarily realizing it.

National: Super PACs: Real life, or Comedy Central? | Kenneth P. Vogel/Politico.com

When it comes to super PACs, it’s getting hard to tell the difference between reality and a Comedy Central bit. Stephen Colbert made an ongoing gag last month out of lampooning the rules barring coordination between outside groups and campaigns. When he announced a plan to run for president, he made a big show of handing off his super PAC to his fellow Comedy Central host Jon Stewart. Stewart promised not to coordinate with Colbert — giving the camera a wink and a nod. But it was no joke last week when President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney cleared their top aides to raise cash for the super PACs supporting their campaign.

National: U.S. Voter Registration Rolls Are in Disarray, Pew Report Finds | The New York Times

The nation’s voter registration rolls are in disarray, according to a report released Tuesday by the Pew Center on the States. The problems have the potential to affect the outcomes of local, state and federal elections. One in eight active registrations is invalid or inaccurate. At the same time, one in four people who are eligible to vote — at least 51 million potential voters — are not registered. The report found that there are about 1.8 million dead people listed as active voters. Some 2.8 million people have active registrations in more than one state. And 12 million registrations have errors serious enough to make it unlikely that mailings based on them will reach voters.

Alabama: Is it bribery or just politics? | The Washington Post

All elected officials, and those who help finance elections in the expectation that certain promises will be kept — and everyone who cares about the rule of law — should hope the Supreme Court agrees to hear Don Siegelman’s appeal of his conviction. Until the court clarifies what constitutes quid pro quo political corruption, Americans engage in politics at their peril because prosecutors have dangerous discretion to criminalize politics. Siegelman, a Democrat, was elected Alabama’s governor in 1998 and was defeated in 2002. In 2006, he and a prominent Alabama businessman — Richard Scrushy, former chief executive of HealthSouth — were convicted of bribery.

Arizona: Changes sought in rules for recall vote | Arizona Daily Star

Senate Republicans are moving to keep Democrats from doing to them what they did to Russell Pearce. Legislation set for debate today at the Senate Judiciary Committee would scrap the rules mandating that recall elections be conducted as nonpartisan contests. Instead, anyone who wants to replace a sitting official would first have to survive a partisan primary. The change is crucial.

Colorado: Voters file suit against Gessler, six county clerks over ballots | The Denver Post

A group of Colorado voters filed a federal lawsuit against Secretary of State Scott Gessler and six county clerks today, saying their election practices are unconstitutional because they allow some ballots to be traced to the person who cast them. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, argues that voters in those counties are being deprived of their right to a secret vote, and asks a federal judge to order the practices stopped. “The right to a secret ballot is a revered principle of American democracy,” said Marilyn Marks, a voting integrity activist who founded Citizen Center, the group that filed the lawsuit. “No one, most particularly government officials, should have access to information that can connect ballots with voters,” Marks said.

Indiana: Romney Indiana co-chair could decide Santorum fate | Post-Tribune

Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney’s Indiana co-chairman could decide whether opponent Rick Santorum makes it onto the state’s May primary ballot. Dan Dumezich is guiding Romney’s effort to win Indiana. He also chairs the Indiana Election Commission, which considers challenges to candidates’ ballot access. Santorum is eight signatures shy of the 500 needed from Indiana’s 7th District.

Maine: Could Ron Paul Still Win Maine? | NYTimes.com

Ron Paul’s campaign is claiming that it could still win the presidential preference poll in the Maine caucus because of a county that postponed its vote and will hold its caucus next Saturday, Feb. 18. On Saturday, the Maine Republican Party declared Mitt Romney the winner of the presidential preference vote, which he led by 194 ballots based on the caucuses that have been held so far. State Republicans said they considered the results of the straw poll final. However, Washington County, in the easternmost part of the state, postponed its caucus after a snowstorm was forecast there. The Washington County G.O.P. Chair, Chris Gardner, said his county would conduct the straw poll at its caucuses and will report the results to the state. All if this will be moot unless Mr. Paul is able to make up 194 votes in the county.

Voting Blogs: Hurry Up Already: In What Could Be a Busy Election Year, New York City Urged to Pick Up the Pace | Doug Chapin/PEEA

This blog has already covered – in great detail – the frustrations many feel about New York state’s seeming inability to find a way to schedule and administer elections in a way that doesn’t do violence to common sense and, potentially, the state’s finances. An editorial in today’s Daily News suggests that this approach is not unique to Albany, but also exists in New York City as well. In particular, the Daily News complains that the City Board of Elections is treating its new voting machines like old technology in a way that unnecessarily complicates and delays the count.

Texas: Voting rights group files suit over Texas registration practices | Houston Chronicle

The nonprofit Voting for America filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging Texas voter rolls have been actively suppressed by excessive restrictions on volunteers who conduct registration drives, aggressive purges of county voter rolls and poll workers who improperly requested identification from voters. “A developing body of state practices and provisions targeted at voter registration activities is endangering the rights of many Texas voters,” the lawsuit alleges. The group, affiliated with the Washington D.C.-based Project Vote, runs nonpartisan voter registration drives nationwide and has previously mounted legal challenges to state voter registration procedures in Missouri, Ohio, Indiana and New Mexico, among other states.

Virginia: Federal Redistricting Lawsuit in Virginia Dismissed | Roll Call

One of two lawsuits filed by Virginia residents over the General Assembly’s inability to complete Congressional redistricting last year was dismissed in federal court Friday. According to the office of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia dismissed the case brought by six residents in part “based on its finding that the recent actions of the General Assembly in passing a new redistricting rendered the case moot.”

Belarus: Belarusian Opposition in “Status Quo” Survival Mode | Belarus Digest – News and Analysis of Belarusian Politics, Economy, Human Rights and Myths

While the presidential election campaign of December 2010 saw a revival of dynamism and interest in the opposition in Belarus, the subsequent violent clampdown ended hope of an opening in Belarus. The opposition, rattled and weakened by these events and continued government pressure, has not been able to turn the economic crisis, mismanagement by the government and falling ratings of Alexander Lukashenka to their advantage. Instead, the opposition parties since the elections have been in “status quo” survival mode. Dependent on modest Western aid, they have been caught up primarily in their own parallel political reality. Disengaged from the wider population, they have missed opportunities such as the economic crisis to explain how their plans would positively impact individuals in society. Meanwhile, a resurgent “political middle” is now more disappointed with Lukashenka’s leadership than ever before.

National: Santorum suggests Romney rigged CPAC straw poll victory | The Hill

Rick Santorum suggested on Sunday that Mitt Romney’s campaign may have rigged a straw poll of conservative activists by paying the entrance fee for supporters. Romney beat Santorum by 7 points Saturday in a straw poll of almost 3,500 attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Santorum pointed out that Ron Paul had won the poll in both of the past two years “because he just trucks in a lot of people pays for their ticket, they come in and vote and then leave.” “I don’t try to rig straw polls,” Santorum said on CNN’s State of the Union.

National: Caucus system under fire | Politico.com

The presidential caucus system is under attack after embarrassing contests in Iowa and Nevada put on national display missing ballots, endless counting delays and lots of confusion. The result is Republican activists calling for big change to the antiquated system, particularly to the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. “All the candidates are out there slogging around at Christmastime and New Year’s, and then they produce a non-result result and they can’t even get the count right,” said David Norcross, a former Republican National Committee general counsel and New Jersey GOP committeeman. Norcross told POLITICO that Iowa’s Jan. 3 caucuses were “numbingly stupid.” “How foolish is it for everyone to go to Iowa the first week in January when there are no delegates selected and they can’t even get the vote right? It’s just a joke, it’s Iowa’s joke on you and all of us.”