South Carolina: Critics challenge South Carolina ‘Voter ID’ plan | TheState.com

When Delores Freelon was born in 1952, her mother could not decide on a name for her. So the space on the birth certificate for a first name was left blank. In the decades since, the incomplete birth certificate did not prevent Freelon from getting her driver’s license and voter registration card in the various states she has lived, including Texas and Louisiana.

But a measure — already passed by the General Assembly and signed by Gov. Nikki Haley — will create new hurdles for Freelon and others to vote.

Delores Freelon, 59, who has voted since she was 18 years old, worries she wont’ be able to vote under the new photo ID law. Although she has a Social Security card, a Medicare card, and an expired Louisiana drivers license the S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles will not issue her a S.C. drivers license or S.C. identification card because her first name is not on her birth certificate.

Nevada: Judge’s ruling halts North Las Vegas special election | ReviewJournal.com

A District Court judge ruled Friday that North Las Vegas must certify a City Council race decided by one vote and it can’t hold a special election to resolve questions about an ineligible voter who might have participated in the June 7 contest. Wade Wagner, a Republican, beat incumbent Councilman Richard Cherchio, a Democrat, by a single vote for the Ward 4 seat in the nonpartisan election.

The council later decided to redo the election on July 19 in one precinct and allow all registered voters to take part, even if they didn’t cast ballots in the first race.

Wagner’s attorney, Todd Bice, said the judge’s ruling nullifies an improper action by the council. He accused the council of trying to skew the outcome by picking a heavily Democratic precinct and not limiting participation to those who had voted before.

Florida: Abhaxas Hacks Florida’s Voting System Again | Zeropaid

In an apparent effort to show that election votes can be tampered with, Abhaxas previously dumped parts of the Florida voting database to PasteBin. Officials since then downplayed the hack, but suggested that the systems are more secure than ever before. Even though authorities, on top of this, were contacted, it seems that Abhaxas decided to hack the database again. Call it whatever you like, but it seems that Florida is in for a repeat of what happened last week.

Apparently, since the initial hack, Florida officials downplayed the incident saying that there is no reason to fear because of a paper trail and that only a select few are able to have access to the votes to begin with.

Kentucky: Johnson plans legal action regarding homeless voters issue | Kentucky Politics

GOP Secretary of State candidate Bill Johnson said he will either file an ethics complaint or motion in court soon objecting to a memo sent from the state on the procedure for registering homeless voters.

The Kentucky Board of Elections sent a memo to county clerks identifying the need for clarification in voter registration applications from the homeless that have incomplete address information, due to a recent increase in the number of those voters.

Both Johnson and Boone County Clerk Kenny Brown have expressed concerns that the policy could lead to voter fraud.

New Jersey: Supreme Court reverses decision in Atlantic Beach Town Council election | TheSunNews.com

The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that two write-in candidates for seats on the Atlantic Beach Town Council may begin serving their terms as council members, saying there “was a direct attempt by the [Atlantic Beach Municipal Election Commission] to interfere with the full and fair expression of the voters’ choice.”

In the opinion, the state Supreme Court justices reversed a circuit court ruling that upheld the town election commission’s decision to overturn election results. Former town manager Carolyn Cole and the Rev. Windy Price were thedeclared winners in the town’s municipal election in November 2009.

Texas: Officials confirm irregularity in Rowlett special election | dallasnews.com

Elections officials confirmed Wednesday that there was an opening-day glitch in the early voting process for the July 16 special election. The glitch involved voters in Rowlett, which straddles Dallas and Rockwall counties.

A voter who lives in the Rockwall County part of Rowlett, Nicholas Kreekon, went to vote at about 12:15 p.m. on June 29 and was turned away. He was told only the Dallas County portion of Rowlett was eligible.

New Mexico: Vigil-Giron seeks to restore her name | Alamogordo Daily News

Former secretary of state Rebecca Vigil-Giron has no job, few obligations, too much idle time. At 56, her life is on hold, but she still burns with one ambition. “I want vindication,” she said.

Almost two years have passed since state Attorney General Gary King obtained indictments against Vigil-Giron and three other people who were contract employees in her office. They are charged with 49 counts of money laundering, fraud and kickbacks.

“I was quiet for quite a while. Not now. This is a political witch hunt,” Vigil-Giron said in an interview.

Thailand: Thai Democrats seek Pheu Thai Party’s dissolution | Bangkok Post

The Democrat Party of Friday initiated legal action seeking the dissolution of the Pheu Thai Party, filing a complaint with the Election Commission about the involvement of banned politicians.

Democrat Party’s legal team member Wirat Kallayasiri (Photo by Tawatchai Kemgumnerd)

The outgoing ruling party asked the Election Commission to recommend that the rival Puea Thai Party, which won the July 3 general election, be disbanded on the grounds that banned politicians were involved in its election campaign.

Vietnam: Over 300,000 selected for Vietnamese People’s Councils | Viet Nam News

The nation selected 302,648 members for People’s Councils at all levels for the 2011-16 term, reported the Ministry of Home Affairs at a conference in Ha Noi yesterday to review the parliamentary election.

Just 3,843 candidates failed to win seats, according to Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Tran Huu Thang. Of those elected, 3,822 will sit on provincial People’s Councils, over 21,000 on councils at district level and 277,740 at commune’s level.

During the election, which took place on May 22, 500 National Assembly deputies were also elected. The result was announced earlier.

Guatemala: Former Guatemalan first lady’s presidential bid hits obstacle – CNN.com

Guatemala’s former first lady, who divorced the sitting president in order to run herself for the top post, had her candidacy rejected by the country’s electoral tribunal Wednesday.

The decision is a setback for Sandra Torres, who announced her intention to run for president in March, but had been dogged by critics who called her candidacy illegitimate because of a constitutional article that bars relatives of the president from seeking the high office.

To get around this law, Torres split from her husband, President Alvaro Colom. Many called the divorce a sham and many individuals, organizations and political parties filed motions to block it, but a judge allowed it.

Nevada: Judge rules against special election in North Las Vegas | Las Vegas Sun

Clark County District Judge Elizabeth Gonzales ruled in favor of Wade Wagner this morning in a hearing for his lawsuit against the city of North Las Vegas. The judge ruled the city can’t move forward with a special election that had been planned for July 19.

“Wade Wagner will be the winner once the council canvasses and certifies the vote,” said Wagner attorney Todd Bice. Wagner filed a lawsuit against the city after officials refused to canvas votes in the general election for the Ward 4 City Council seat.

Florida: Florida Election Servers Hacked Again | InformationWeek

For the second time in a week, a hacker has broken into systems connected with voting in Florida, stolen data, and released it to the public. The most recent breach occurred after Florida election officials had touted the security of their systems. “Glad you cleaned things up, pretty secure now guys,” said the hacker responsible for the attack–who goes by the name “Abhaxas”–in a post to Pastebin uploaded on Thursday. That post also contained data obtained during the second hack.

We spoke with Chris Sather, Product Management for Network Defense at McAfee about McAfee’s next generation firewalls that analyze relationships and not protocols.

Via Twitter, Abhaxas said that hacking into the servers–using well-known and what would be easy-to-close holes–took him about 10 minutes. Furthermore, he said he had access to all 310 databases on the server, though only publicly released information from two of them.

National: New voter ID legislation sparks debate among younger voters | MiamiHerald.com

A series of laws and proposals popping up across the country this year to strengthen voter identification requirements is part of an effort to discourage voting by students, who turned out in large numbers for Barack Obama in 2008, the head of Rock the Vote told a conference of young liberals on Thursday.

“Under the radar, there are a set of people trying to make it harder for students to vote,” said Rock the Vote president Heather Smith at the Campus Progress National Conference, just one day after Rhode Island announced a new voter identification law requiring photo IDs.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Rhode Island became the seventh state to have new or strengthened voter identification policies signed into law this year; several dozen more are considering or have considered similar proposals.

New Jersey: “Human error” found in Fairfield New Jersey election results | NJ.com

A supposed malfunction of the problematic and much-debated Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines is being chalked up to human error. Results from Primary Election day last month puzzled two candidates who expected the exact opposite. Less than a month later, there’s a line in the sand being drawn between a second election and inspection of the voting machine itself.

“On Election Day, the votes cast for Candidates Vivian and Mark Henry registered for Candidates Cynthia and Ernest Zirkle, respectively,” read a statement addressed to all affected by the Democratic County Committee election in Fairfield.

According to documents provided to The News, Cumberland County Board of Elections Director Lizbeth Hernandez takes responsibility and regrets a pre-election programming error. Attached to a legal petition filed by the Zirkles were 28 affidavits from voters swearing they supported the two candidates. Those 28 votes of the 43 total cast on June 7 make up the majority.

National: Bill Clinton: GOP War on Voting Is Most Determined Disenfranchisement Effort Since Jim Crow | ThinkProgress

Speaking yesterday at the annual Campus Progress convention, former President Bill Clinton called out the GOP’s state by state efforts to make it harder to vote— a war on voting designed almost entirely to reduce the number of Democrats who cast ballots:

I can’t help thinking, since we just celebrated the Fourth of July and we’re supposed to be a country dedicated to liberty, that one of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time. There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the other Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today.

Rhode Island: Chafee: Voter ID law will boost accuracy | The Providence Journal

Governor Chafee, in a statement Wednesday, said a new requirement mandating Rhode Islanders to show some form of identification before voting is a “reasonable request” to ensure the “accuracy and integrity” of state and local elections.

He said concerns about voter fraud raised by the state’s “minority communities” were “particularly compelling” as he weighed whether to allow the legislation, which passed the Democrat-controlled state General Assembly, to become law.

“One of our most cherished rights as Americans is the right to vote,” Chafee, an independent, said. “Throughout our nation’s history, we have fought to ensure that no citizen be denied that right. Similarly, we have also worked to maintain confidence in our elections by enacting appropriate safeguards to prevent voter intimidation and fraud.”

Rhode Island: New Law: Hobbits Cannot Vote in Rhode Island | Rock the Vote Blog

Rhode Island’s Governor Lincoln Chafee signed the latest photo ID legislation into law on Saturday, adding Rhode Island to the onslaught of restrictive voting policies.

Under the new law, poll workers will ask voters for identification beginning in 2012, but a number of non-photo documents such as a Social Security card, debit card, or birth certificate will suffice for identification. In 2014, however, all identification will need to include a photo. All college, Rhode Island and federally issued IDs will be accepted under the new law. The state will provide free photo ID starting in 2012.

While the Rhode Island Tea Party is praising the Democratic-led General Assembly and Republican-turned-independent Governor Chafee for requiring voters in future elections to show identification at the polls, opponents were taken aback by the bipartisan support of the measure. The novel push by Democrats in Rhode Island came in the wake of Democratic governors in New Hampshire, North Carolina, Missouri, Montana and Minnesota all vetoing similar legislation for fear of disenfranchising student, elderly and minority voters.

Wisconsin: ACLU Targets Wisconsin Voter ID Law | 620 WTMJ

The ACLU of Wisconsin is using local food pantries as a means to gather data about the impacts of the recently passed voter ID bill. Outspokenly opposed to the voter ID bill in Wisconsin, the ACLU of Wisconsin called the measure the “the worst and most restrictive we’ve seen,” explaining that the bill would “deny potentially thousands of voters the right to freely cast a ballot based on the non-existent problem of so-called voter fraud.” When the bill was signed into law on May 26, the ACLU went right to work to prepare a lawsuit like the one they filed recently in Ohio.

Their first step was to gather data. And what better place to find all those “disenfranchised voters” than at a food pantry.

Estonia: Lessons from Estonia: Preparing for a major cyberattack | Nextgov

Visit “Governing Security in a Networked World” to see in-depth video interviews with top thinkers on cybersecurity.

In the spring of 2007, Estonia became the first nation to face a coordinated, nationwide cyberattack when a series of electronic bombardments struck down media, telecommunications, government and banking websites. Digital traffic from servers as far away as Peru, Vietnam and the United States flooded Estonian websites, drowning them in superfluous data. The attack knocked telephone exchanges offline for more than an hour, jeopardizing emergency services. It knocked out media and government portals, leaving citizens in an information vacuum. Beginning April 29, three waves of attacks during a two week period severely disrupted the ordinary tasks that fuel modern economies — shopping, pumping gas, withdrawing cash from automatic teller machines. A significant act of cyberterrorism posed an economic and political threat in a way no modern economy had previously experienced.

Oklahoma: Baker files motion to intervene in appeal of recount | Cherokee Phoenix

The Cherokee Nation Supreme Court has a busy docket tomorrow, as it’s set to hear petitions, appeals and motions regarding the 2011 general election. One of those is a motion to intervene that was filed today by Principal Chief-elect Bill John Baker.

Baker filed the motion to intervene in Principal Chief Chad Smith’s July 5 appeal of the Election Commission’s June 30 recount that gave Baker a 266-vote win in the principal chief’s race.

Designating himself as the movant or petitioner, Baker states he was certified the winner by the EC and is an interested party because the election results, recount and appeal directly impact his interests as chief-elect.

Kentucky: Grimes’ campaign says homeless have a right to vote | Kentucky Politics

Kentucky law does not require someone own property to vote, says the campaign manager of Democratic Secretary of State candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes. Campaign manager Jonathan Hurst issued a statement Wednesday in response to GOP opponent Bill Johnson’s response on issues raised over homeless voter registration.

Johnson echoed Boone County Clerk Kenny Brown’s concerns about a memo from the State Board of Elections instructing clerks not to refuse to register a homeless person because they don’t have a traditional residential address.

Kentucky: Bill Johnson slams Secretary of State and his opponent on homeless voter registration | Kentucky Politics

GOP Secretary of State candidate Bill Johnson has gone on the offensive with the issues raised over homeless voter registration.

Johnson echoed Boone County Clerk Kenny Brown’s concerns about a memo from the State Board of Elections instructing clerks not to refuse to register a homeless person because they don’t have a traditional residential address.

He issued another statement Wednesday morning:

Nevada: Secretary Of State Rejects Requests For Mail Ballot Only Precincts For Special Election | Nevada News Bureau

Secretary of State Ross Miller has denied requests from Esmeralda and Nye counties to expand the number of mail ballot only precincts in their counties for the special election to fill the 2nd Congressional District seat set for Sept. 13.

While both counties claimed they would realize modest cost savings by designating more mail ballot only precincts, Miller said his overriding concern is the integrity of the election process.

“This election is already on a greatly expedited timeline,” Miller said. “My first and foremost objective is to conduct an error-free election and I’m concerned that unknown challenges are likely to arise in implementing a new and different process in such short order.”

Missouri: Suit filed against Missouri voter ID amendment | KansasCity.com

Voter advocacy groups and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a lawsuit challenging a proposed state constitutional amendment that would allow photo-identification requirements in Missouri elections.

State lawmakers passed the proposed amendment in May, placing it on the November 2012 ballot for ratification. If voters approve the measure, lawmakers will be empowered to require future voters to show a state-issued photo ID at the ballot box.

Currently, voters can prove their identity with one of several documents, including a utility bill or bank statement.

Missouri: Photo ID proposal prompts GOP concern about cost, voting-rights suit | St. Louis Beacon

State Auditor Tom Schweich’s surprisingly hefty estimate of the annual government cost of Missouri’s proposed photo ID requirement for voters has some Republican legislative leaders now fearing that the proposal could be a tougher sell when it hits ballots in 2012.

A spokeswoman for state Senate President Pro Tem Rob Mayer, R-Dexter, said he even briefly considered filing suit by today’s 5 p.m. deadline in a last-ditch attempt to get the estimate changed.