Iowa: State Supreme Court Considering Felon Voting Rights Case | Iowa Public Radio

What makes a crime infamous in the eyes of the law? That’s a question currently being considered by the Iowa Supreme Court as the justices make a decision that could impact about 57,000 felons in Iowa who are currently banned from voting. On this edition of River to River, host Ben Kieffer talks about the Griffin v. Pate case with law expert Tony Gaughan of Drake University, Jamie Ross, a rehabilitated felon from Norwalk, and Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate. Pate says the Iowa Supreme Court should not be determining who can and cannot vote, but instead it should be left to lawmakers to decide which crimes should bar someone from voting, as the legislature determines which crimes are felonies.

National: What Keeps Election Officials Up At Night? Fear Of Long Lines At The Polls | NPR

Election officials around the country are nervously planning how to avoid long lines at the polls this year, after voters waited for hours at some Wisconsin sites earlier this week. That came after voters in Maricopa County, Ariz., had to wait up to five hours last month, in part because the county cut back on the number of polling sites. Those delays led to raucous protests at the state capital and a voting rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. This year’s unusually large voter turnout in the primaries has caught a lot of people by surprise, according to Tammy Patrick of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C. “I think most election administrators worry about this, and are staying awake at night thinking about it,” she said.

National: Republicans keep admitting that voter ID helps them win, for some reason | The Washington Post

Voter ID laws have swept across the United States in recent years, following big GOP gains in the 2010 and 2014 elections. With Republicans now more powerful in the states than they’ve been since the Great Depression, it has been a priority for them from coast to coast. The stated purpose of these laws, of course, has always been that they prevent voter fraud; you need to have ID to verify your identity for other things, after all, so why not voting? And polls generally show a strong majority of Americans agree. But as any voter ID opponent will tell you, there are so few cases of documented voter fraud that it’s not clear there’s actually an ill that’s being cured. Instead, Democrats allege that these laws are clearly aimed at disenfranchising minority voters, in particular, because they are less likely to have the proper IDs. And minority voters, of course, heavily favor the Democratic Party.

Voting Blogs: Long lines at the polls? There’s an app for that! | electionlineWeekly

Everyone knows that the waiting is the hardest part and with work, family and other responsibilities many voters don’t have time to wait in the lines they are sometimes greeted with during high profile elections or peak voting hours. Election administrators too admit that they lose sleep worrying about election-day lines and from resource allocation to polling place relocation, work hard to make sure that if there are lines, they are as short as possible. One county in Texas has done something about election day lines with the Voter Line Wait app. In 2009 Collin County became part of Texas’ vote center pilot program and have been a successful addition to the county’s elections arsenal.

Voting Blogs: One FEC Commissioner’s Answer to Citizens United | More Soft Money Hard Law

FEC Commissioner Weintraub believes that she has hit upon a regulatory maneuver to stop publicly traded corporations from making independent expenditures, or unlimited contributions to independent expenditure committees. At a time when newspaper editorialists carry on with attacks on the Commission as “worse than useless,” the Commissioner seems determined to prod the FEC to face the major “money in politics” issues of the day. This is her theory: foreign nationals cannot make contributions or independent expenditures, which means that the FEC could establish that no corporation with foreign nationals as shareholders could engage in this political spending. The rule would not bring about this result outright: it would require a corporation to “certify” that it was not making contributions or independent expenditures with these funds. As a practical matter, corporations with foreign national shareholders could not risk making the certification and would forgo this political spending. The Commissioner plans to direct lawyers to produce proposals that she and her colleagues can consider in a future rulemaking.

Kansas: The conservative gladiator from Kansas behind restrictive voting laws | The Washington Post

Inside a federal courtroom in Washington earlier this year, the presiding judge peered down in disbelief as a Justice Department official told him that the Obama administration would not defend a tiny elections agency but was instead siding with civil rights groups suing the government. “Unprecedented,” U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said from the bench. “I’ve never heard of it in all my years as a lawyer.” From the back of the packed courtroom emerged someone else to argue for the federal agency: a tall, clean-cut figure in a dark suit, carrying a sheaf of papers, who had traveled more than 1,000 miles that day to make his case. “Your honor, Kris Kobach, Kansas secretary of state,” he told the judge. He went on to defend the actions of the director of the elections agency who had single-handedly rewritten voter registration rules, prompting an immediate challenge from civil rights groups.

Editorials: Past appointee did Kobach’s bidding | The Wichita Eagle

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach loses a legal fight with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Then a Kobach appointee newly hired to lead the EAC unilaterally does what his former boss wanted. And an agency created by the 2002 Help America Vote Act is cast in the unlikely role of joining Kobach in making it harder for Americans to vote. The sequence of events looks more sketchy in light of documents obtained by the Associated Press. They indicate that the ties to Kobach helped then-Johnson County Election Commissioner Brian Newby get the job last fall as the EAC’s executive director. Once hired, Newby promptly granted Kobach’s renewed request to require that would-be voters in Kansas, Georgia and Alabama provide citizenship documents when they use the national voter registration form. According to AP, Newby had e-mailed Kobach last summer that he was friends with two EAC commissioners and that “I think I would enter the job empowered to lead the way I want to.” Newby had further advised Kobach: “I also don’t want you thinking that you can’t count on me in an upcoming period that will tax our resources.”

Missouri: Another scrambled election has Missouri and St. Louis County officials searching for answers | St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Ballot shortages, delayed vote tabulations and faulty polling equipment resulted in a botched municipal election Tuesday that has everyone from Gov. Jay Nixon to the voting public denouncing the agency responsible for the fiasco: the St. Louis County Board of Elections. The polls had yet to close before Nixon, Secretary of State Jason Kander, County Executive Steve Stenger and countless voters delivered a verdict on the performance of an agency that managed to deliver incorrect ballots or no ballots at all to more than 60 precincts spread across the county. Stenger said Tuesday during the voting problems, “That board really needs to get its act together.” He said the situation “is completely unacceptable because it affects every resident in St. Louis County.”

Wisconsin: Statements about voter ID law renew controversy about GOP motivation | Wisconsin State Journal

Two separate comments about the state’s now fully operational voter ID law this week set off a tempest about why Republicans passed the law in the first place. On election night, U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman told a Milwaukee TV reporter that Republican presidential nominee has a chance of winning Wisconsin this year partly because “photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference.” Former GOP Senate aide Todd Allbaugh says he left the Republican Party because of its position on voter ID. Then on Wednesday, Todd Allbaugh, a former aide to Sen. Dale Schultz and U.S. Rep. Scott Klug, wrote on Facebook that the voter ID law was “the last straw” for why he left the Republican Party.

Wisconsin: Challenge to GOP-drawn legislative maps headed to trial | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

A challenge to how Republican lawmakers drew legislative districts in 2011 is heading to trial in May. A panel of three federal judges unanimously ruled Thursday they should decide whether the maps were drawn correctly after holding a trial, rather than based on legal briefs that have already been filed. The ruling is a victory for the 12 Democrats who brought the case on the theory Republicans had violated their voting rights by drawing legislative districts that are so favorable to the GOP. Those bringing the case hope to set a standard that could be used around the country to determine when politicians — whether Republicans or Democrats — go too far in drawing maps to help them. Republicans won control of Wisconsin in 2010 and the next year drew new maps that greatly favored them. Lawmakers have to draw new maps every 10 years to account for changes in population, and the party in power has the ability to set lines that help them.

Djibouti: Presidential Election 2016: Guide To Candidates, Key Issues, Rules And Results | International Business Times

Under the baking hot sun in Djibouti’s capital, campaign posters of President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh line the buildings and supporters clad in the ruling coalition’s colors parade the streets looking to win over voters ahead of Friday’s national election. With a divided opposition and no strong challenger, Guelleh is widely expected to extend his 17-year grip on power in the Horn of Africa nation yet again. Guelleh, who is nicknamed IOG, has been in power since 1999 and is seeking a fourth term Friday. He won the last presidential election five years ago with 80 percent of the vote, after Parliament amended the constitution to get rid of term limits in 2010. Guelleh, 68, is Djibouti’s second president since it gained independence from France in 1977. He was the handpicked successor of his uncle and the country’s first president, Hassan Gouled Aptidon, who died in 2006. Supporters of Guelleh’s ruling coalition, the Union for the Presidential Majority, are confident of an easy victory on Friday. “We are optimistic, especially when we see that the opposition party is straggling,” Foreign Minister Mahamoud Ali Youssouf recently told Agence France-Presse.

Haiti: Haitian Americans to Kerry: Stop opposing Haiti elections recount | Miami Herald

Sixty Haitian-American leaders and diaspora organizations are calling on the Obama administration to end its staunch opposition to a recount in Haiti’s disputed presidential elections, charging that it is undermining democracy in the Caribbean nation. The letter, addressed to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday, comes a day after provisional President Jocelerme Privert announced that he will soon form an independent verification commission to look into allegations of ballot tampering and multiple vote-buying in the Oct. 25 presidential first round. Privert said the commission is “indispensable” to political stability and putting confidence back in the interrupted electoral process.

Iceland: Panama Papers: Iceland president blocks PM’s snap election call | The Guardian

Iceland’s president has refused a request from the country’s embattled prime minister, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, to dissolve parliament and call snap elections until he has had time to consult all of the country’s political parties. As the island’s political crisis deepened on Tuesday, its president, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, flew back early from a US visit to sound out party representatives in parliament, where the leftwing opposition has presented a motion of no confidence in Gunnlaugsson’s centre-right coalition government. Further mass protests were planned in Reykjavik for later on Tuesday as pressure mounted on the prime minister to resign following revelations in the leaked Panama Papers that his wife owned a secretive offshore investment company with multi-million pound claims on Iceland’s failed banks.

Peru: A dangerous farce | The Economist

Football fans are familiar with the occasional match in which the referee changes the course of the game by mistakenly sending off players and awarding a dubious penalty or two. Peruvians are discovering, to their bemusement, that the referee can determine who wins in politics, too. On April 10th they will go to the polls to choose a new president. Two names, those of Julio Guzmán and César Acuña, will not be on the ballot, although polls promised them almost a quarter of the vote between them. However, barely a month before the election and after weeks of legal gyrations, the electoral authority disqualified them. Mr Guzmán, who had a good chance of reaching and winning the probable run-off ballot and thus becoming president, was thrown out because the small party which had adopted him changed its procedure for choosing its candidate without informing the electoral authorities beforehand. Mr Acuña was expelled for handing out a total of around $4,400 during a couple of campaign stops.

United Kingdom: Election watchdog opposes Cameron’s pro-EU mailshots for 23m homes | International Business Times

The UK’s electoral watchdog has expressed its discontent over David Cameron’s decision to spend £9.3m ($13.1m) of taxpayers’ money on 23 million ‘remain’ leaflets ahead of the EU referendum. “We don’t think the government should have done it, but it’s not illegal,” a spokeswoman for the Electoral Commission told IBTimes UK. The 14-page documents will be sent to homes across Britain in a bid to drum-up support for a ‘remain’ vote ahead of the 23 June ballot. The move has enraged Eurosceptics, who have questioned the fairness of the initiative.

National: Senator Warren Stands Up For Disenfranchised Voters in U.S. Territories After Snub | Huffington Post

On Monday, actor Tim Robbins of Shawshank Redemption fame made an ill-considered political dig against Hillary Clinton by making a punchline of disenfranchised voters in Guam, declaring at a Bernie Sanders rally that “winning South Carolina in a Democratic primary is about as significant as winning Guam.” Less than 24 hours later, Senator Elizabeth Warren took a stand for Americans who call Guam and other U.S. territories home, arguing at a Senate hearing that “the four million people who live in the territories are not the subjects of a King. They are Americans. They live in America. But their interests will never be fully represented within our government until they have full voting rights just like every other American.” As Senator Warren explained, Americans living in U.S. territories “are subject to federal law. More than 150,000 people from these islands have served our country in the Armed Forces – and many have died in that service.”

Editorials: Caucusing With a Disability | Rabia Belt/Stanford Law School

Like many in Iowa, Jacki O’Donnell is an avid political enthusiast. She was prepared to vote for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic caucus. Unfortunately, she had to leave before party business began. O’Donnell was in a back brace after fracturing her vertebrae, and sitting in a metal folding chair for hours while caucus-goers deliberated proved too much. Thus, she became one of thousands of U.S. citizens with disabilities unable to participate fully in the caucus process. Thirteen states use the caucus system to select 10 percent of Democratic and 15 percent of Republican delegates, who in turn vote for their party’s presidential nominee. Caucuses are the quintessential places of public accommodation. Everyone affiliated with a political party is expressly invited to attend and participate. But, whereas voters in a primary cast a secret ballot and then leave, caucus-goers cluster to listen to people speak about their chosen candidate. Attendees then vote for delegates who will carry their wishes to the national party convention.

Arizona: Records reveal scope of wait times in Arizona primary | Associated Press

Five polling places in metro Phoenix still had voters in line after midnight during Arizona’s botched presidential primary two weeks ago, including one location where the final ballot was cast at nearly 1 a.m., according to county records. The Associated Press obtained a document from the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office that shows the time when each of the 60 polling sites closed in the March 22 primary, providing a more complete picture of the abysmal wait voters experienced. Votes were still being cast past 10 p.m. in 20 of the 60 locations, meaning residents had to wait at least three hours to choose a candidate in the White House race. The polls closed at 7 p.m., but anyone who was in line at that point could vote.

Kansas: Nonprofit demands investigation of former Kansas election official | Associated Press

A nonprofit public advocacy group called Wednesday for an investigation of a top federal elections official in the wake of a media report about his communications with one of the nation’s leading advocates of voting restrictions. Washington, D.C.,-based Allied Progress provided to The Associated Press a letter is said will be sent on Thursday to the Inspector General of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission asking it to look into communications between that agency’s executive director, Brian Newby, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. The nonpartisan group calls itself a grassroots organization that aims to hold special interest groups accountable, and has taken up causes as diverse as voting rights, payday lending reform and keeping a crude oil export ban.

Kentucky: Grimes Touts New Online Voter Registration Tool | Richmond Register

Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes continued her statewide tour of college campuses Tuesday at Eastern Kentucky University, where she is encouraging people, especially students, to register in time for the May 17 primary election using the Commonwealth’s new online voter registration portal, GoVoteKY.com. The deadline to register to vote in the May primary is April 18. Several students used the portal at the town hall to register to vote and attendees discussed the portal’s ease of use, accessibility and other election issues. Grimes said the OVR will improve the accuracy of voter rolls and will lead to major cost savings for the Commonwealth and hailed the portal as a major success for Kentucky. Grimes said her administration has worked creating the portal for less than a year and that the new online system was created in-house using Kentucky talent while partnering with Microsoft.

Maryland: Republican Larry Hogan really wants redistricting reform. He wrote to Obama about it. | The Washington Post

Republican Gov. Larry Hogan is pulling out all the stops — including asking for President Obama’s help — in pressing Maryland’s Democratic-controlled legislature to vote on his plan for redistricting reform before lawmakers adjourn for the year on Monday. It is almost certainly not going to happen. Hogan has proposed putting a referendum on the November ballot that would ask voters whether they want a nonpartisan commission to redraw the state’s voting boundaries, which are widely considered to be among the nation’s most gerrymandered, or manipulated to give one party an advantage. In a state with an extremely popular Republican governor and a 2-to-1 ratio of registered Democrats to registered Republicans, all but one of the state’s eight congressional seats is held by a Democrat. The state constitution gives the legislature and governor authority to create congressional and legislative districts every 10 years.

Missouri: St. Louis County suffers ballot problems, voting confusion | St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A voting debacle in St. Louis County left residents in more than 60 precincts unable to cast ballots Tuesday, leading the St. Louis County Council and Secretary of State Jason Kander to announce separate investigations. Gov. Jay Nixon called the problems “inexcusable,” adding: “The St. Louis County Board of Elections, and particularly its two directors, must rectify these mistakes, explain how they occurred, and be held accountable for this unacceptable failure.” Kander said his office’s Elections Integrity Unit would review the election in St. Louis County. He also called the election performance “unacceptable.”

Missouri: New proposal would only allow paper ballots in Missouri | KMOV

A St. Charles County lawmaker is pushing for a proposal that would get rid of electronic voting machines in Missouri. State Senator Bob Onder-R, Lake St. Louis, is the sponsor of a bill that would make paper ballots the only type of ballots available in Missouri when voters go to the polls. Onder has previously expressed doubts about the accuracy of electronic voting machines during recounts. The proposal comes in midst of a probe into problems with paper ballots in St. Louis County. On April 5, many precincts ran out of ballots or had ballots meant for other towns or wards. As a result, lots of voters were turned away. Only paper ballots were used on April 5. County election officials believe the mess would have been avoided if touch screen voting was available. Only paper ballots were used because officials believed there was not enough time between the presidential primaries and the April elections to properly test the machines.

Ohio: New Lawsuit Challenges Alleged Voter Purge In Ohio | TPM

Voting rights groups filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging what they described as a massive voter purge in Ohio. The lawsuit accuses the state of violating the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 — also known as the “Motor Voter” law — by taking tens of thousand of voters off the registration rolls because they did not participate in past elections. “As a result of these violations, numerous Ohioans have been disenfranchised in recent elections, and many more face the threat of disenfranchisement in the 2016 Presidential Election and future elections,” the complaint said. The lawsuit is being brought by the progressive public policy organization Demos and the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, who are representing a state chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, an African-American labor group, and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless. It was filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Ohio.

Wisconsin: Jury is still out on voter ID after first big test | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

The state’s first major test of its voter ID law arrived with historic turnout and scattered long lines, prompting Republicans to dismiss claims it suppresses the vote and Democrats to maintain that it played a role in some delays. U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) also said Tuesday that he thought the law would take Republicans a small step closer to winning the presidential election in Wisconsin for the first time in 32 years, and a former legislative aide said he had quit the Republican Party over the voter ID law, calling it the “last straw.” In general, voting went smoothly Tuesday, but there were lines of an hour or more in a few locations statewide, especially near college campuses such as Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Wisconsin: GOP congressman: Voter ID law will help Republicans | CNN

A Wisconsin Republican congressman confirmed Democratic critics’ claims Tuesday when he pointed to the state’s new voter ID laws as a reason the Republican candidate will be competitive there in the general election. The candid assessment by Rep. Glenn Grothman, who supports Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for president, came during an interview with Milwaukee news station TMJ4 at the Cruz campaign’s victory rally Tuesday night. Asked by reporter Charles Benson why Cruz would be able to turn a reliably Democratic state like Wisconsin red, Grothman said: “Well, I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever put up. And now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well.” Grothman pivoted back to praising Cruz and the interview moved on without any follow-up.

Wisconsin: Voter ID requirement has largest impact for students | Associated Press

The huge voter turnout in the Wisconsin primary could have been even higher without the state’s new photo identification requirement, voter advocacy groups said Wednesday. The 2011 voter ID law went into effect this year after lengthy court battles and had its first statewide run in the February election. The state Government Accountability Board says the primary Tuesday went more smoothly than February at the polls, but some voters faced long lines and difficulties trying to obtain valid IDs. “Probably by far the population that seemed to be struggling yesterday were students attempting to use their student IDs to meet the photo ID requirement,” said Neil Albrecht, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission. Most college IDs aren’t acceptable as photo IDs under the law, so University of Wisconsin schools and other colleges have been providing students with free secondary ID cards specifically for voting. Those IDs include a signature and expiration date and must be shown alongside proof of enrollment.

Iceland: Government appoints new Prime Minister, to call early elections | Reuters

Iceland’s government named a new prime minister and called for early elections in the autumn on Wednesday, a day after Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson quit to become the first global politician brought down by the “Panama Papers” leaks. It was unclear whether the naming of Fisheries Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson to head the government or the call for early elections would satisfy the thousands of Icelanders who in street protests this week demanded the government resign immediately for early elections. Gunnlaugsson quit as prime minister on Tuesday after leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm showed his wife owned an offshore company that held millions of dollars in debt from failed Icelandic banks. The government said the decision to hold elections in autumn would give it time to follow through on one of the biggest economic policy changes in decades – the ending of capital controls introduced to rescue the economy from the 2008 financial crisis.

Netherlands: Dutch referendum voters overwhelmingly reject closer EU links to Ukraine | The Guardian

Dutch voters have overwhelmingly rejected a Ukraine-European Union treaty on closer political and economic ties, in a rebuke to their government and to the EU establishment.The broad political, trade and defence treaty – which had already been signed by the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte’s government and approved by all other EU nations, and Ukraine – provisionally took effect in January. But on Wednesday 64% of Dutch referendum voters rejected it; the turnout was just 32% – barely enough for the result to be valid. Voters said they were opposing not only the treaty but wider European policymaking on matters ranging from the migrant crisis to economics.

Peru: Thousands protest against presidential bid by daughter of corrupt former Peru leader | The Guardian

The statue of José de San Martín astride a horse in the plaza named after the South American liberation hero in downtown Lima has seen a lot of protests. But a march against the presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori on Tuesday was probably the biggest since the end of her father’s decade-long rule in 2000. At least 30,000 people joined the march, on the 24th anniversary of the infamous “self-coup”, or “auto-golpe”, when her father Alberto Fujimori dissolved congress, assumed extraordinary powers and sent tanks and soldiers onto the streets. Alberto Fujimori, who led Peru between 1990 and 2000, was jailed for 25 years in 2009 for directing death squads, embezzlement and bribing the media to smear his opponents. Five years earlier, he had been listed as No 7 in a list of top 10 corrupt leaders in Transparency International’s Global Corruption Report. Peruvians vote on Sunday in presidential elections and Keiko Fujimori is currently the frontrunner, with polls showing her with more than 40% of the vote. But Tuesday’s march suggested she may yet face defeat if the vote goes to a second round.