United Kingdom: Thousands of EU referendum postal votes feared lost in Germany | The Guardian

Thousands of British citizens fear their votes in the EU referendum could have got lost in the post after Germany’s postal service said its workers were confused by the format of pre-paid envelopes sent out to Britons living abroad. A spokesperson for Germany’s postal service, Deutsche Post, said that while the pre-paid envelopes were valid under the Internal Business Reply Service (IBRS) scheme, many of its employees had rejected the envelopes and told voters to pay postage instead. More than 100,000 British citizens are registered as living in Germany. The confusion has arisen partly because the European Union has so far failed to regulate the size of standard letters across the continent.

United Kingdom: EU referendum voter registration site crashes before deadline | The Guardian

Members of the public attempting to register to vote in the EU referendum complained that the government website had crashed hours before the deadline. The development could mean that tens of thousands of potential voters may be disenfranchised and unable to cast a vote in what is expected to be closely fought contest. Voters have been encouraged to register before 11.59pm on Tuesday 7 June to be able to take part in the EU referendum. However, the Cabinet Office website would not allow voters to input their details at 10.40pm on Tuesday. A tweet from the Cabinet Office acknowledged that the site had crashed. “We’re aware of the technical issue on [the site]. We’re working to resolve it. This is due to unprecedented demand. Update soon,” it said.

National: Online voting would be a ‘complete disaster’ according to Stanford Computer Scientist | Examiner

Imagine the convenience of being able to cast a vote from the comfort of a couch, coffee shop, library or a toilet if you’re truly trying to capture the spirit of the 2016 election cycle. Online voting may seem like a no-brainer given myriad of ways one can connect to the internet. However, according to David Dill, a computer scientist from Stanford, it would be a ‘complete disaster.’ It’s not just him that isn’t fond of the idea of putting the future of our country into computer, but security experts as well. “Computers are very complicated things and there’s no way with any reasonable amount of resources that you can guarantee that the software and hardware are bug-free and that they haven’t been maliciously attacked,” Dill said in an interview. “The problems are growing in complexity faster than the methods to keep up with them. From that perspective, looking at a system that relies on the perfectibility of computers is a really bad idea.”

Editorials: Ideas on Reconciling Critics of the Presidential Primary Process | Albert R. Hunt/The New York Times

It’s rare that President Obama and Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, agree. In recent weeks, they both have said that the presidential nominating process is not rigged. They are right. But that hasn’t stopped those displeased with the results — not only establishment Republicans but also Democrats who support Senator Bernie Sanders — from insisting on changing the rules for the next election. Some tweaks are always in order, but both sides are trying to craft procedures that would have benefited them this time. As with generals fighting the last war, experience shows this rarely works and often backfires. “Every time someone tries to game out this system,” said Benjamin Ginsberg, a leading Republican election lawyer, “the great law of unintended consequences rears its head.”

Editorials: The Supreme Court needs to settle American Samoa birthright citizenship | Mark Joseph Stern/Slate

Soon, the Supreme Court will decide whether to take a case of astounding constitutional importance. Its outcome could alter the rules governing citizenship, equal protection, and the power of the federal government. And it centers around a tiny chain of islands that you probably cannot find on a map. The question: Can Congress decide that an entire group of Americans—born in America, raised in America, allegiant to America—does not deserve United States citizenship? American Samoans, the group in question, have been Americans since 1900, when the United States acquired their territory in the midst of an imperialist expansion. Since then, residents of America’s other territories have either achieved independence or gained U.S. citizenship. But in 2016, American Samoans stand alone: Unlike people born in, say, Puerto Rico or Guam, they are not granted citizenship at birth. Instead, they are considered “noncitizen nationals,” a legally dubious term that effectively renders them stateless, a mark of second-class status imprinted on their (American) passports.

Editorials: Awarding presidential delegates by congressional district is unfair | Derek T. Muller/The Sacramento Bee

This year’s presidential primaries have exposed problems in the nomination process, and they’re highlighted by California’s uneven method of awarding its delegates. Most delegates in Tuesday’s primaries will be awarded to the candidates who win the most votes in each of California’s 53 congressional districts. While that system is designed to ensure that a candidate has widespread support and that delegates come from across the state, it produces bizarre results in districts dominated by one party or the other. The Republican Party will award three delegates per district. The Democratic Party gives districts between four and nine delegates, based on total population, plus extra delegates to districts with more Democratic voters. The 13th District in San Francisco has about 260,000 registered Democrats and gets eight delegates, or one delegate per 32,500 voters. But there are just 86,000 registered Democrats in the 42nd and 50th districts, and they each will award five delegates, or one delegate per 17,200 voters. It doesn’t take a math degree to recognize that Democrats in San Francisco will have less power than Democrats elsewhere in the state.

Louisiana: Foreign-born citizens in Louisiana have had to take extra steps to register to vote — until now | PRI

Until this week, naturalized citizens in Louisiana were required to go an extra mile to register to vote: After filing a standard registration form, potential voters born outside the US were required to submit proof of citizenship, in person, at their local registrar’s office. “It felt like we were targeted,” says Tu Hoang, an attorney in Louisiana. Hoang, 28, emigrated from Vietnam with his parents when he was five. He became a US citizen when he was 19 and registered to vote soon after. He was able to navigate the system without any hiccups, providing proof of citizenship with his voter registration form, but noticed an unsettling shift years later when he was organizing voter registration drives in the Vietnamese community of New Orleans. Around 2012 the procedure became more cumbersome — a shift other advocates also noticed. The proof of citizenship requirement became more strictly enforced and applicants were required to make an extra trip, several weeks after filing the registration form, rather than submitting both together.

Mississippi: Analysis: Early voting could make you a liar in Mississippi | Associated Press

Mississippi lawmakers this year rejected a proposal to stop making liars of their fellow citizens, at least when it comes to early voting. Current state law allows any registered voter who is disabled or at least 65 years old to cast an absentee ballot before election day. Anyone else needs an excuse, such as being out of town on election day, to vote early by absentee. A bipartisan study group led by Republican Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann met in 2015 and recommended several election law revisions for legislators to consider this year. The group unanimously backed the concept of allowing voters to cast ballots in circuit clerks’ offices starting 21 days before any election, without having to give a reason. During a news conference at the beginning of the legislative session in January, Hosemann said about 9,000 people cast absentee ballots in Mississippi statewide elections. He said about one-third request mail-in ballots, while two-thirds go to a circuit clerk’s office to vote absentee. Almost half of the people going to clerks’ offices say they’re planning to be out of the county on election day.

New York: Audit: New York City Elections Board Lost Track Of Voting Machines | Associated Press

City Board of Elections officials have lost track of more than 1,450 pieces of equipment, including some voting machines, according to an audit released Monday. “If you can’t count inventory, how can New Yorkers trust you to count their votes?” said Comptroller Scott Stringer, who led an army of auditors carrying out the task. Election officials examined Board of Elections inventories over nearly three years, ending last February. Tracing more than 5,000 items out of about 11,000 inventoried, they scoured five board warehouses and other facilities to match the entries.

Ohio: State remains voting-rights battleground | The Columbus Dispatch

Doug Chapin knows it’s a cliche, but he can’t help himself when asked to explain why our state sees so many bitter battles over voting. “I think Ohio just ends up being the epicenter of the perfect storm,” says the elections-law expert with the University of Minnesota. He cites three reasons: No state is a more reliable barometer of presidential elections; few, if any, states have a more powerful secretary of state; and “the level of mutual partisan distrust in Ohio is as high as anyplace.” In case you’re skeptical of the latter point, you should listen to the litany Ohio Democratic Chairman David Pepper throws at GOP Secretary of State Jon Husted. Pepper, who teaches election law as an adjunct at the University of Cincinnati, points to how Husted and other state officials have been shot down “over and over and over and over” in various courts for trying to restrict Ohioans’ voting rights in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Puerto Rico: Vote count stalls in Puerto Rico as officials take day off | Associated Press

It will be a little while longer before final vote totals are known in Puerto Rico’s Democratic presidential primary, because the U.S. territory’s election commission workers took the day off on Monday. Officials will resume manually counting votes on Tuesday and expect to issue a final certification later that day, Roberto Prats, the island’s Democratic Party chairman, told The Associated Press. He said officials worked until nearly dawn counting results of both the presidential primary and a local primary in which voters narrowed their choice for the island’s next governor, legislators and mayors. “We will resume tomorrow morning and try to close the local and presidential primaries at 100 percent,” Prats said, adding that election workers received compensation time on Monday. Griselle Lopez, the elections commission spokeswoman, did not return messages for comment.

Virginia: State at Center of Racially Charged Fight Over the Right of Felons to Vote | The New York Times

On the night Barack Obama became the nation’s first black president, Leah Taylor, a fast-food worker and African-American mother of six, stayed up until 2 a.m. watching the election returns. “I knew that was history, and I wanted to be a part of it,” she said. But she did not vote. Ms. Taylor, 45, has never voted. In 1991, when she was 20, she was stripped of her voting rights after being convicted of selling crack cocaine and sent to jail for a year. So she was stunned when an organizer from a progressive group, New Virginia Majority, showed up one recent afternoon at the church soup kitchen where she eats lunch and said he could register her. “Your rights have been restored!” the organizer, Assadique Abdul-Rahman, declared with a theatrical flourish, waving an executive order signed in April by Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Ms. Taylor, so moved she nearly cried, promptly signed up. Thus did Ms. Taylor join a wave of newly eligible voters, all with criminal pasts, signing up in Virginia. But what Mr. McAuliffe granted, the Virginia Supreme Court may now take away. Top Republicans in the state legislature are seeking to block Mr. McAuliffe’s sweeping order, which re-enfranchised 206,000 Virginians who have completed sentences, probation or parole. Last week, the Supreme Court announced a special session to hear arguments in July — in time to rule before the November election.

Virginia: Supreme Court takes case claiming racial gerrymandering in Virginia | Politico

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a Virginia case that could clarify how much consideration of race is permissible when legislatures or other bodies redraw district lines. The justices announced Monday that they will wade into a legal challenge to Virginia’s 2011 redistricting for the state House of Delegates. Civil rights groups and Democrats criticized the GOP-led process for packing too many African-American voters into so-called majority-minority districts. “This case gives the Supreme Court the opportunity to further clarify how exactly to determine whether race has been taken into account too much in the drawing of district lines,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of election law at University of California at Irvine. “It’s kind of a Goldilocks problem. You must take race into account somewhat to comply with the Voting Rights Act, but if you take into account too much the racial considerations you can get in trouble as well. The question is how do you know when you’ve gotten it just right.”

Australia: NSW Electoral Commission investigates allegations of Labor vote-rigging | Sydney Morning Herald

Allegations that Labor party officials misused electoral roll details to rig a community preselection are being investigated by the NSW Electoral Commission. Possible misuse of electoral roll information is proving to be a headache for the party during the run up the July Federal election with former party boss Jamie Clements last month charged by the NSW Electoral Commission for disclosing protected information to his factional ally, the disgraced union boss Derrick Belan. The new investigation was prompted by Fairfax Media revelations that Labor’s community preselection for the state seat of Ballina might have involved vote rigging. A senior figure from Labor’s head office in Sussex Street recently informed Fairfax Media that a party official had used a database called “Campaign Central”, which contains detailed information on voters including electoral roll details, to influence the outcome of a preselection ballot.

Kenya: Kenya’s Collective ‘Uh-Oh’: Another Election Is Coming | The New York Times

By 9 a.m. on Monday, clouds of black smoke blotted out the sky. A mountain of tires burned. Roads were blocked. Young men poured into the streets of a slum in Nairobi, gleefully carrying huge, jagged pieces of concrete. In Kisumu, a city on Lake Victoria, witnesses said police officers had fired on a crowd. A 5-year-old boy was in critical condition after being shot in the back. A demonstrator was killed. For the past several weeks, Kenya’s opposition leaders have turned Mondays into protest days. Now they are threatening to hold demonstrations twice, and soon four times, a week. Many Kenyans are shaking their heads with a sense of fatigue and dread, saying, Here we go again. Kenya is a relatively prosperous, developed and politically tolerant African nation. But elections have not been its strong suit. In the past 25 years, almost every presidential race has been marred by violence; the worst one was in 2007-8, when ethnic rivalries cracked open and more than 1,000 people were killed, many in deadly protests.

Kenya: Opposition Says Five Killed as Election Protests Resume | Bloomberg

Kenya’s main opposition Coalition for Reforms and Democracy accused the police of shooting dead five people in the western city of Kisumu during protests to demand electoral reforms. “At least five have been shot dead as of now, it could be higher,” party spokesman Dennis Onyango said by phone from the capital, Nairobi. The demonstration in Kenya’s third-biggest city will continue as it has been declared “legal and legitimate,” he said. Calls to police spokesman Charles Owino didn’t connect when Bloomberg sought comment. The party’s supporters marched on all but one Monday in the past month to demand the resignation of officials at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission over alleged corruption. At least three people were killed during one of the demonstrations when police fired at protesters, according to media including Nairobi-based broadcaster Citizen TV.

Mexico: Ruling party headed for stinging defeat in state elections | The Guardian

Mexican voters have punished the country’s deeply unpopular ruling party in regional elections, with early results suggesting that the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has lost governorships in six states – including four where it had never lost power for more than 80 years. Dogged by allegations of rampant corruption and political thuggery, the PRI lost the Gulf Coast states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas, where kidnapping and extortion have reached alarming levels and drug cartels appear to operate with impunity. The results dealt a heavy blow to Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, putting the opposition National Action Party (PAN) – either alone or in coalition – ahead in seven of the 12 states which held elections on Sunday. “We’ve broken the authoritarian monopoly the PRI has held for more than 86 years,” a buoyant PAN leader Ricardo Anaya told cheering supporters after polls closed on Sunday.

Peru: Election comes down to last few votes | Financial Times

Peru’s presidential election hung in the balance late on Monday, with the economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski holding a narrow lead over Keiko Fujimori, daughter of a disgraced former president. With 95.36 per cent of votes counted, Mr Kuczynski was marginally ahead with 50.2 per cent, while Ms Fujimori was on 49.8 per cent. In an election where 17m Peruvians cast ballots, Mr Kuczynski’s lead was a little over 59,000 votes. But given the remoteness of some parts of Peru, as well as votes coming from overseas, the final result could be delayed until later this week. Ms Fujimori has lost a lead over the past week that had been as high as 8 percentage points after Mr Kuczynski ran a campaign focused on her father Alberto Fujimori. The once autocratic president is now serving time in prison for crimes against humanity.

Kansas: Former Johnson County election chief Brian Newby rises, then falls into national controversy | The Kansas City Star

The League of Women Voters in 2014 honored Brian D. Newby, then the Johnson County election commissioner, for his work in helping people register to vote. The league this year sued him for allegedly doing the opposite. Yet, as Newby said recently in a brief phone interview, “I’m the same person with the same values” as that award recipient. Recent headlines tell a different story, one of a spectacular fall into unfamiliar controversy. Once regarded as something of a rock star among the nation’s election gurus, Newby has drawn intense fire from more than one direction after becoming executive director of a bipartisan federal elections panel in November. Voting rights groups have asked a federal court to invalidate one of Newby’s first actions taken at the helm of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Some have alleged that a unilateral decision he made was a gift to his former boss, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who had offered high praise of Newby to the federal commission considering his appointment.

National: Jury Out on Effectiveness as Some States Make Voting Easier | The New York Times

A parade of Republican-controlled states in recent years has made it more difficult to cast a ballot, imposing strict identification requirements at polling stations, paring back early-voting periods and requiring proof of citizenship to register. Then there is Oregon. It is leading what could become a march in the opposite direction. From January through April, Oregon added nearly 52,000 new voters to its rolls by standing the usual voter-registration process on its head. Under a new law, most citizens no longer need to fill out and turn in a form to become a voter. Instead, everyone who visits a motor-vehicle bureau and meets the requirements is automatically enrolled. Choosing a political party — or opting out entirely — is a matter of checking off preferences on a postcard mailed later to registrants’ homes. With the change, Oregon now boasts perhaps the nation’s most painless electoral process; mail-in ballots long ago did away with polling places’ snaking lines and balky voting machines

National: Voting Rights at the Crossroads | The Atlantic

The November election will be the first presidential contest to take place since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to strip some of the major protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required states with a history of voter discrimination to get federal clearance before changing their voting laws. Seventeen states will have new voting restrictions in place for the first time. Among them, Wisconsin, Texas, and North Carolina have tightened their photo ID requirements; Kansas now requires proof of citizenship to cast a ballot; and Arizona has made it a felony for people to collect ballots from others and take them to the polls. Some people—mostly Democrats—say these laws disenfranchise poor and minority voters. But others—mostly Republicans—defend the stringent requirements as part of an effort to prevent voter fraud (an occurrence scholars largely consider to be a myth, and in some states, is more rare than a lightning strike). But just as some states are making it more difficult to vote, others are passing legislation to make it easier.

Arizona: Secretary of state being investigated after special election issues | Yuma Sun

Attorney General Mark Brnovich hired a special investigator Thursday to determine if Secretary of State Michele Reagan broke any laws in the just-completed special election. Michael Morrissey, a former federal prosecutor, will review the failure of Reagan’s office to ensure that pamphlets describing the issues on the May 17 ballot were delivered to the homes of all registered voters before the early ballots went out. That should have happened by April 20. Reagan does not dispute that at least 200,000 of the 1.9 million pamphlets were not mailed on time. And each of those was to go to a home with more than one registered voter, meaning at least 400,000 people may not have had the descriptions of the two measures before they mailed back their early ballots. She said, though, the blame lies with others, including a contractor and a consultant.

California: San Francisco funds open source voting | GCN

San Francisco’s open source voting project is quickly becoming a reality. Mayor Ed Lee’s proposed budget includes $300,000 towards planning and development of an open source voting system that would allow the city to own and share the software. Dominion Voting Systems, formerly known as Sequoia Voting, has provided San Francisco’s voting technology for years, but its contract with the city and county expires at the end of the year, according to KQED News. “When you rely on an outside vendor, it’s their technology, which is proprietary and confidential, and the public really doesn’t have access to the code that they’re relying on,” said Supervisor Scott Wiener, who’s running for state Senate. “It’s very ‘black box,’ so we just have to have faith that their machines are producing accurate results,” he told KQED.

Editorials: California’s Election Calamity | Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg View

California voters are set to vote in their primary on Tuesday, and will suffer the consequences of a serious self-imposed mistake in how they run their state. No, it has nothing to do with the presidential race. The disaster is its “top two” system, in which the candidates for state offices — regardless of party — go on to compete in the general election in November if they finish first and second in the primaries. The likely perverse result? Voters in November will probably have a choice between two Democrats for an open U.S. Senate seat. The motivation for the California system was to elevate more moderate politicians than the parties were producing on their own. In practice, at least in the first two election cycles since the change was carried out, the results have not matched reformers’ hopes. Candidates have not been more moderate.

Massachusetts: Reid reviews scenarios for filling Senate seat if Warren is VP pick | The Boston Globe

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has been actively reviewing Massachusetts rules for filling a US Senate vacancy, another indication of the seriousness with which Democrats are gaming out the possibility of Elizabeth Warren joining likely presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s ticket. The upshot of Reid’s review is that Senate Democrats may have found an avenue to block or at least narrow GOP Governor Charlie Baker’s ability to name a temporary replacement and prevent the Senate from flipping to a Democratic majority if Warren were to leave the chamber. That suggests the issue is not as significant an obstacle as Reid previously feared. Pieces of the legal guidance given to Reid were shared with the Globe by a person close to Reid who is familiar with the guidance. “Reid sees a number of promising paths to making sure that Democrats keep Warren’s seat and is very open to her being selected,” said this person, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Ohio: Inside the Purge of Tens of Thousands of Ohio Voters | WTVQ

Chad McCullough, 44, was born in Ohio and has lived in Butler County for about nine or 10 years, he says. Last November, McCullough and his wife made their way to the local polling station in southwest Ohio to cast their ballots. But as he attempted to exercise his right to participate in the democratic process, a poll worker told him that he couldn’t find his name on the voter registration list — McCullough was no longer registered. “I had no idea that my voter registration could be cancelled, even if I did not move,” McCullough said. McCullough is among tens of thousands of voters in Ohio, many from low-income neighborhoods and who typically vote for Democratic candidates, who have been deemed ineligible to vote by Ohio election officials last year simply because they haven’t voted enough — a move that disenfranchises voters and is illegal, voting rights advocates say. McCullough’s comments are now part of a federal lawsuit against Ohio’s Secretary of State — a legal action that has spurred heavy debate among voting rights activists and elected officials during the 2016 election cycle.

Utah: GOP to continue legal fight against SB54 | Deseret News

The Utah Republican Party voted on Saturday to continue its fight against a state election law that the party believes circumvents its caucus and convention system. Giving up “is not an option,” said state party Chairman James Evans. “At the end of the day, the Republican brand is greater than the skirmish of the day.” Evans counseled county chairpersons at Saturday’s State Central Committee meeting to make strategic decisions that will “lift the party” long-term, even though at least one person voiced concern about declining morale in their county due to a lack of support for candidates who went the signature-gathering route provided by SB54. “We have no guarantee they buy into any aspect of our platforms,” said Utah County Republican Party Chairman Craig Frank. “We call them the small r’s, by the way.”

Italy: Voters go to the polls in mayoral elections for largest cities | The Guardian

Italians have begun voting to choose mayors for the country’s largest cities in elections that will test the popularity of the prime minister, Matteo Renzi, and could produce a big breakthrough for the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. Five Star’s Virginia Raggi, a 37-year-old lawyer, hopes to become Rome’s first woman mayor and was ahead in opinion polls before their publication stopped 15 days before the vote on Sunday, as required by Italian law. Only in Turin is the candidate of Renzi’s Democratic party, incumbent mayor Piero Fassino, a clear favourite. Renzi has said the elections would have no repercussions for his left-right coalition government.

Malta: Parties remain cautious about e-voting | The Times of Malta

The Nationalist Party is taking a cautious approach when it comes to electronic voting following revelations last month that people who bought Maltese citizenship made it onto the electoral register without satisfying the minimum residency requirements. PN sources told the Times of Malta the party would only agree to use ID cards for voting, instead of the traditional voting document, if political parties were allowed to carry out audits on Identity Malta’s ID card processes. Last week this paper revealed that after reviewing the complaints filed by the PN, the Electoral Commission had conceded that 39 out of the 91 complaints were justified. The use of ID cards to vote would be the first step in a host of new technological measures in the local voting system.

Romania: Graft concerns cast shadow over local elections in Romania | Reuters

Dozens of candidates standing for office in Romania’s local elections on Sunday are either already subject to graft investigations or have not been sufficiently screened for any past abuses of power, anti-corruption groups say. Data compiled by Reuters showed around a third of the some 350 local officials under investigation or sent to trial since 2012 are running — with many confident of securing office. Sunday’s voting stakes are high, with local administrations having an overall budget of 67 billion lei (11.5 billion pounds) this year — roughly a third of the country’s consolidated budget revenue — and access to European Union development funds.