The House Administration Committee will step up election oversight, as it increases hearings to twice a month and sets its sights on terminating the Election Assistance Commission. “There are a number of things that need to be addressed in the coming months,” said Elections subcommittee Chairman Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.). “Oversight certainly has been lacking…
The state’s investigation into vote irregularities in Waukesha County will stretch back at least five years, the head of the Government Accountability Board said Thursday. Questions over vote totals in Waukesha have lingered over the past week after County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced she failed to report more than 14,000 votes from the city of Brookfield…
The Tennessee House of Representatives approved a bill Thursday that would require voters to show a photo ID at the polls. The passage came despite a state Attorney General’s opinion that the measure would likely be ruled a “poll tax” by a court The state attorney general’s opinion released this week that says the courts…
The South Carolina Senate voted to non-concur on what senate leaders called a “flawed” Voter ID bill passed by the House of Representatives. Because of the flaws in the House language and new matter inserted in the supposedly clean bill, the vote to non-concur was overwhelming. Without agreement from the house, the bill, which would…
The Marshall mayoral race is over. Mark Gooden is the mayor-elect with a final vote tally of 759 to 746 for Mayor Pro Tem Ron Duvall. “I have to congratulate these men on how they conducted themselves,” said Circuit Judge Dennis Rolf. “This could have been a long difficult process.” Rolf said he spoke with Duvall and…
A House committee approved a bill Thursday that would require people to show a photo ID before they can vote, and with Republicans in control in the Legislature, the bill has a stronger chance of passing than in years past. Despite Republicans in the Minnesota House and Senate looking at significant spending cuts to erase…
For more than a decade, lawmakers have been tweaking election rules to improve on Florida’s ham-fisted history of counting ballots. This year, an election law rewrite is moving through the state House that voter-rights activists have assailed as “good old-fashioned voter suppression” and “Jim Crow tactics.” The legislation was described as a cleanup bill in…
A measure that makes it clear a voter’s intent takes precedence when casting a write-in vote has passed the Legislature and now goes to the governor for signature. Senate Bill 31, sponsored by Sen. Joe Thomas of Fairbanks, grew out of the 2010 U.S. Senate race. Fairbanks attorney Joe Miller beat incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski…
Election Assistance Commission May Be Closing : Roll Call Politics House Republicans may have found a way to trim $14 million from the federal budget: eliminate the Election Assistance Commission. The House Administration Committee is holding a hearing today to discuss closing the agency that is charged with administering federal election requirements and testing voting…
If you are an ethical hacker, then the state Election Commission is looking for you. As it aims to introduce e-voting in the upcoming civic elections in Mumbai next year, officials wary of independent agencies embarrassing them have now decided to offer Rs 10 lakh to anyone who can hack their e-voting system. The SEC…
Anyone who has received a Nigerian scam e-mail—offering to share vast wealth in exchange for just a teensy bit of advance capital—will instantly grasp how rife corruption is in Africa’s most populous and entrepreneurial country. This is true of politics as well as commerce. Cheating has become so brazen that few Nigerians expect fair elections.…
Voters might have turned out in full force across the city but electronic voting machines (EVMs) at many polling booths failed to match up to the electorate’s eagerness. Many EVMs failed to work in the morning leading to confusion and anger among voters. At Shri Krishnaswamy College for Women in Anna Nagar, several voters, who…
The Electoral Commission (EC) has expressed the wish to adopt the electronic voting system in the next general election because it will solve many problems in the election process. “It is our wish because it will solve a lot of our problems”, the Deputy Chairman of the EC (Operations), Mr Kwadwo Safo Kantanka, responded to…
Across the nation, elections offices are moving further and further away from a paper society and allowing residents to do everything electronically, whether it’s registering to vote, requesting an absentee ballot, or in some recent experiments, even voting online. One stronghold remains though: the printed and mailed voters’ guide. Moving to online-only voter guides is seen by many…
Fresh off commanding electoral victories in November, Republican majorities in many state legislatures want to require voters to show photo identification at the polls, a move Democrats say is cynically designed to help the GOP during the next election cycle. Voter identification laws have been a demarcation line between Democrats and Republicans for years. Democrats…
On Thursday, April 14th, at 10:30am, the Elections Subcommittee of the Committee on House Administration will hold a hearing on H.R. 672, proposed legislation to abolish the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, one of the main architects of the Help America Vote Act which created the EAC, is scheduled to testify about…
Monday’s Wisconsin State Journal editorial, “State needs streamlined count,” calls for a website to fix our vote counting situation. Actually, Wisconsin needs to pay more attention to assuring that the vote count is correct. Wisconsin falls well short of having a reliable end-to-end system. We need to improve the method of appointing the members of the…
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin today asked state elections officials to review the Waukesha County vote tally in the 2006 state Attorney General election, after a liberal blogger pointed out there were about 17,000 more votes recorded than ballots cast. Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus posted an asterisk on the 2006 results on the county’s…
The National Popular Vote bill passed the Vermont House of Representatives Tuesday, placing the bill before the governor for signature and enactment. If Gov. Shumlin signs, Vermont will join the effort to guarantee the presidency to the candidate who wins the most votes in all 50 states. The bill passed the house by a 84-50…
A proposal to require Tennessee voters to present a photo ID at their polling place ran into a speed bump at the state capitol Wednesday. Tennessee’s attorney general issued an opinion saying that the Voter ID bill would likely be found unconstitutional. Representative Craig Fitzhugh, the House Democratic Leader, was one of the lawmakers who…
The latest House makeover of Florida election laws stirred intense controversy Thursday as unions and grass roots political groups complained that it would suppress 2012 voting in a state Barack Obama won in 2008. By a 12-6 party-line vote, the House State Affairs Committee approved the new bill, setting up a vote by the full…
Saguache County Clerk Melinda Myers, represented by County Attorney Ben Gibbons issued an answer last week to a suit filed last month by Sec. of State Scott Gessler, seeking voted ballots from the Nov. 2 election. “Defendant specifically denies the allegation contained in paragraph 8 of the Complaint that she or her staff ever altered any…
On Wednesday, April 13, I proudly joined Gov. Brian Schweitzer as he heated up his branding iron and vetoed House Bill 180, a partisan bill that would have ended Election Day voter registration across Montana. Hours before the veto was issued, I read a guest opinion in support of HB180. It was written by former…
House Republicans may have found a way to trim $14 million from the federal budget: eliminate the Election Assistance Commission. The House Administration Committee is holding a hearing today to discuss closing the agency that is charged with administering federal election requirements and testing voting equipment. A corresponding Republican bill that would transfer most of…
WI: Nickolaus fends off calls for resignation – JSOnline Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, under blistering attack by critics since an election night reporting error that temporarily reversed results of the Supreme Court race, on Tuesday rejected calls that she resign. “I will serve the remainder of my term,” Nickolaus said in a written statement. “I…
For the first time, the Election Commission is considering mixing up the electronic voting machines (EVMs) during the counting so that counting agents will not be able to identify which constituency a particular EVM belongs to. The EC is trying to remove any fears people may have about voting as some political parties have allegedly…
Our election process has gone hitech with electronic voting machines, but some areas in Tamil Nadu are so backward that these new-age machines have to be taken on the back of donkeys or carried on head by men. In a few villages devoid of motorable roads in Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri districts, EVMs were transported on…
A full week after voters in Wisconsin cast ballots for the State Supreme Court in a volatile, topsy-turvy contest that had become a referendum on the state’s new Republican leadership, the state was still waiting for the final outcome. By Tuesday, Wisconsin’s top election monitors were investigating how more than 14,000 votes had been overlooked…
Montana Secretary of State Linda McCulloch has weighed in on a proposal to move Helena’s mail-sorting operations to Great Falls, expressing concerns about what it could mean for local elections. In a letter addressed to Montana’s congressional delegation, McCulloch noted that an increasing number of Montanans are choosing to vote using absentee mail ballots, with…
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, under blistering attack by critics since an election night reporting error that temporarily reversed results of the Supreme Court race, on Tuesday rejected calls that she resign. “I will serve the remainder of my term,” Nickolaus said in a written statement. “I understand why people are upset and I am…