Both of Belize’s two main political parties concluded the campaign for Wednesday’s general elections expressing confidence. The ruling United Democratic Party and the main opposition People’s United Party have each nominated candidates for all 31 constituencies, while the newly formed People’s Progressive Party is contesting 25 seats.
Election officials in Myanmar are still struggling to finalize the nationwide voter list as the nation heads to the polls on Sunday. The Union Election Commission (UEC) had initially announced it intended to release the final list on November 2. But the head of the Yangon Region Election Commission, Ko Ko, told VOA Burmese Tuesday the plan was delayed due to technical difficulties. He said hundreds of thousands of eligible voters have been added for the nation’s largest city. He added that the final list for the Yangon Region is expected to be posted later this week. “The total number in the previous list was 4,180,705 and the final voter list now tallies some 4,960,000, meaning that [the number of] eligible voters in the Yangon Region increased by about 800,000,” he said.
Turkey reached the end of an early election period that saw bombings, mob violence, the burning of party offices, political arrests, a nationwide media clampdown and military curfew in the Kurdish region of the country. After failing to establish a majority government in the 7 June elections, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a landslide victory with 49 percent of the popular vote. Ranging from announcements of a “Ballot Box Revolution” to “Fear’s Triumph,” media responses differed drastically. TV coverage of joyful celebrations by AKP supporters on the streets were matched with a sense of shock and incredulity circulating through social media among the supporters of opposition parties. They have been sharply awakened from the dream of ending the AKP’s monopoly over state power and preventing the implementation of a ‘Turkish-style’ super presidency. In the wake of these general elections, what is it about Turkey’s media culture that it undergirds the formation of a society so divided, that people seem to inhabit parallel realities?
The United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC) announced the hiring of a new Executive Director and General Counsel for the agency today. Brian D. Newby is the agency’s new Executive Director. Mr. Newby served as the Election Commissioner in Johnson County, Kansas for the last eleven years. Newby serves on the Election Center Legislative Committee, is a member of the International Association of Clerks, Recorders, and Election Officials and is a former board member of the National Association of County Records, Election Officials, and Clerks. A Kansas City, Missouri native, Newby holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a bachelor’s degree in communications studies from the same school.
In addition, the EAC announced the hiring of Cliff Tatum of Washington, DC as its new General Counsel today. Mr. Tatum spent the last four years at the DC Board of Elections serving as Executive Director. Tatum previously served as the Interim Director of the Georgia State Elections Division and as an Assistant Director of Legal Affairs for the Georgia Secretary of State. Previously, Tatum was an active trial attorney practicing commercial and general litigation in Atlanta, Georgia. He also served as Deputy Solicitor General for the City of East Point in the State of Georgia. Tatum is an alumnus of Thomas M. Cooley Law School and has a degree in Administration of Justice from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina.
While everyone is paying attention to the 2016 primary battles unfolding in both parties, its easy to forget that we have another election coming up this Tuesday, Nov. 3. And while we won’t be choosing our next president, in three places — Maine, Seattle and Ohio — voters will be able to weigh in directly, through ballot initiatives, on how their future elections will work. Both Maine and Seattle’s ballot initiatives are aimed at limiting the power that special-interest donors wield in the political process. For over a decade, Maine has been cited as a prime example that publicly financing elections can work. The state’s Clean Elections Act offers public financing to any candidate who collects enough small donations to demonstrate widespread support, and who swears off large contributions. Passed in 1996 and implemented in 2000, the system worked, with the majority of Maine’s legislators opting in. But the system was undermined by two Supreme Court decisions — Citizens United and Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett, the latter of which went after public financing direct
Not enough people vote. It’s a perennial source of concern in American politics. There’s no shortage of reforms designed to address the problem, but one idea that seems particularly promising, at least in theory, is compulsory voting. It would produce much higher turnout for the obvious reason that it requires people to vote. It’s long been dismissed, though, as an impossible pipe dream, unlikely to ever happen in the United States. But if reformers were to start at the municipal level, they could set into motion forces that might lead to its nationwide adoption. Start with some statistics: In years with presidential elections, voter turnout peaks at just above 60 percent. In off-year elections, turnout dips to 40 percent or less. In November 2014, only 36 percent of eligible voters went to the polls—the lowest share in more than 70 years. Participation this paltry calls into question the political system’s legitimacy. It also hints that election outcomes might be quite different if more people bothered to show up.
Alabama is one of many states with unnecessary voter ID laws, voter-suppression policies passed on the pretext of preventing virtually nonexistent forms of voter fraud. Last month, the state government made things even worse. Its new budget will make it harder to get a driver’s license in Alabama, particularly in majority-black, poor and rural areas. After an initial round of uproar, Gov. Robert Bentley (R) tried to scale back and downplay the toxic interaction between these two policies. But it is too little, too late: Unless state leaders fully reverse both, they will be guilty of eroding the fundamental principle of one person, one vote, and they will deserve condemnation. State examiners used to issue driver’s licenses in satellite offices around the state. Under the new budget, 31 of these satellite offices were slated to close. After a national outcry, Mr. Bentley partially reversed that plan, promising that state workers will travel into remote counties once a month. That’s better than never, but it is still a massive reduction in access.
A Republican claim of bias in the legislative redistricting process does not stand up under scrutiny, according to an attorney for the Independent Redistricting Commission. In legal briefs filed at the U.S. Supreme Court, Mary O’Grady points out that challengers to the maps drawn by the five-member commission claim it purposely created unequal districts for partisan purposes. They charge that the panel “packed” Republicans into some districts in a deliberate effort to give Democrats an edge. O’Grady said that was not the primary purpose, a conclusion backed by the majority of a three-judge panel in a ruling last year. She said the real aim was to protect minority voting strength as required by the federal Voting Rights Act. Anyway, she said, if commissioners really intended to boost Democrat representation in the Legislature, they failed.
The race to the 2016 presidential primary is heating up, but on a state level, Colorado voters have a pressing political deadline. On Tuesday, an estimated 40 percent of Colorado’s registered voters will head to the polls, according to Jerome Lovato, voting systems specialist for the state of Colorado. But this year, voters will also have a hand in deciding the future of Colorado’s elections by helping test new voting machines. The upcoming elections are a trial period for four different vote-counting machines, each of which will be tested in both a large Front Range county, as well as a smaller rural county. The test counties include Adams, Denver, Douglas, Garfield, Gilpin, Jefferson, Mesa, and Teller. Secretary of State Wayne Williams plans to authorize one of these machines for use in future elections statewide, starting in 2016. The winning machine will be chosen for its security, usability, accuracy, and user feedback, among other criteria, according to Lovato. By streamlining Colorado votes on one system, the department hopes to start moving away from the current, outdated mix of direct-record electronic voting machines—a process that’s long overdue. So what do you need to know about our current (and upcoming) voting systems before heading to the polls? Read on to find out why Colorado’s antiquated voting system is in desperate need of an upgrade.
The head of the D.C. Board of Elections is departing the agency charged with managing the city’s voter rolls and elections, leaving just as preparations ramp up for an upcoming election year that will feature both local races and the presidential contest. Clifford Tatum, who took over the elections board in October 2011, is heading to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, where he will serve as general counsel. The commission was created in the wake of the contested 2000 presidential election, and provides technical information and assistance to state and local election administrators. Since Tatum took the helm of the elections board, he’s managed elections every year: two primaries, two general elections and four special elections. He also oversaw a controversial change in the city’s primary date from September to April; in 2016 it will move to June.
The House and Senate are again poised to clash over redrawing political boundaries after a House redistricting committee Monday changed a plan passed by the Senate last week to redraw 40 Senate districts. The most significant changes shift district lines in Miami-Dade County. Sen. Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, amended a “base map” drawn by legislative staffers that drew more compact districts there but that also kept him out of a district that included fellow incumbent Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami. House redistricting chairman, Rep. Jose Oliva, R-Miami, said he redrew the Senate map to include some changes sought by the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, the voters rights groups who brought the redistricting lawsuit. Because his map includes much of the Senate version and parts of the voters groups’ preferred map, he doesn’t see another “collision course” with the Senate.
The House redistricting committee voted along party lines Monday to approve its version of new districts for the state Senate, potentially setting up a battle with the upper chamber as a special session on the map entered its final week. On a 9-4 vote, the Select Committee on Redistricting’s Republican majority pushed through a proposal by Chairman Jose Oliva, R-Miami Lakes, that sets aside a compromise on South Florida seats struck in the Senate last week. That compromise, which supporters say protected Hispanic voting strength but opponents said was a crass political move, helped boost a plan that passed the Senate on a narrow 22-18 margin.
Gov. Larry Hogan’s redistricting commission may have been doomed from the start — its intent to reduce or eliminate gerrymandering of congressional and legislative districts running at odds with the intent of the Democratic majority within the General Assembly to keep that particular weapon in their political arsenal. But at least opponents should have the decency to offer intellectually honest critiques. Sen. Joan Carter Conway’s complaint voiced during Tuesday’s meeting of the Maryland Redistricting Reform Commission, as reported by the Capital News Service, failed to meet that standard. To put it in a nutshell, Senator Conway, a commission member, said a proposed nine-member panel that would be created to draw legislative boundaries — a group chosen at random from applicants vetted by randomly-selected state judges and with balance given to party affiliation so that no one party would dominate — would be “as far from independent” as legislators are. Really? To paraphrase a popular NFL pregame show, “Come on, ma’am.”
Ohio voters are expected to overhaul how election maps are drawn as states look for ways to make congressional and legislative districts more competitive and less confusing after decades of partisan gerrymandering. The Midwestern state will vote Tuesday on a constitutional amendment to change how Ohio is carved up into state House and Senate districts. Congressional districts won’t be affected by the changes, but advocates say they could be next. Attempts to change the map-drawing process have failed before in Ohio. But the amendment on the ballot Tuesday passed the Legislature with bipartisan support and has no organized opposition. The redistricting process, which takes place once a decade to account for population shifts, is criticized in many states for being used by elected officials to boost the chances of incumbents and expand the reach of the political party in power. “When you have more competitive districts, you have more collaboration, more compromise—and we feel better government,” said Vernon Sykes, a former Democratic state representative who pushed for the Ohio constitutional amendment with a Republican colleague.
A bill that has passed the Assembly and could be considered by the state Senate as early as Tuesday would make it much harder for citizens to learn the background of who is financing candidates’ campaigns and codify a recent Wisconsin Supreme Court decision allowing candidates to work closely with issue groups that don’t have to disclose where they get their money. The Republican legislation would also allow unions and corporations to give money to political parties and campaign committees controlled by legislative leaders. And wealthy donors would be free to give as much as they wanted to those entities, which could then pass them on to candidates. As passed by the Assembly, the bill includes a provision championed by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) that would end a requirement that donors disclose where they work, making it harder for the public to know when companies are investing heavily in certain politicians.
Labor leader Bill Shorten announced he plans to reduce the voting age to 16 if elected. He offers three arguments for this.
One relates to consistency and fairness. If young people have the right and capacity to join the armed services, pay taxes or make their own choices about medical treatment, then why can’t they vote? His second argument is that the young are disengaged politically and from civic life generally. This seems to rely on the stereotype of narcissistic young people (the me generation) who are too self-absorbed to become responsible citizens. He also thinks lowering the voting age to 16 will help to “correct democracy’s participation problem”. Much of the criticism of this plan points to Shorten’s deficiencies. While Shorten is generally proving to be an ineffectual leader, his plan to lower the voting age to 16 should be supported. For a society to be considered democratic as many people as possible ought to be able to vote. There is an old ethical and democratic principle that says for any policy, law, or decision to be legitimate everyone affected by it ought to have a say about its adoption.
President Ilham Aliyev’s ruling New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) has claimed a landslide victory in the country’s November 1 parliamentary elections — a vote that was boycotted by Europe’s largest monitoring agency and all of Azerbaijan’s established opposition parties. Aliyev’s ruling party was widely expected to maintain its dominance as a result of the election, which came in the midst of a persistent government clampdown on dissent that shows few signs of being lifted. The former Soviet republic’s 5,547 polling stations closed at 7 p.m.local time and some 5 million Azerbaijanis were eligible to vote.
Opposition politicians in the Democratic Republic of Congo warned recent upheaval at the national electoral commission may delay elections and undermine stability in Africa’s biggest copper producer, after the vice president of the body resigned at the weekend. The resignation of Andre Pungwe from the Independent National Electoral Commission came after its president, Abbe Apollinaire Malu Malu, quit in October because of ill-health. “If we are not careful, the crisis situation at the CENI, which the ruling Presidential Majority is in the process of creating, will soon undermine the organization of elections and the stability of Congo,” the opposition group, known as the G7, said in an e-mailed statement. The G7 said Pungwe’s resignation was a result of political pressure placed on the independent body by the government, which it says intends to delay a series of elections over the next 12 months that will culminate in a presidential vote in 2016. Pungwe’s decision to leave was personal and unrelated to his work at the CENI, government spokesman Lambert Mende said Monday by phone from Kinshasa, the capital.
Myanmar’s first final, nationwide voter list was slated to go on public display yesterday, but after months of outraged political parties and voters calling election officials to task, most will have to wait at least another day to see the final roll. The Union Election Commission had initially planned on publicly posting the final list on November 2. The schedule was revised and extended to a last-minute, staggered release that would start at the local election office and progress to the township, state and Union level, where it would be combined and cross-checked. The relevant lists were also supposed to be posted at each polling station on November 6 and 7. Widespread voter list omissions, redundancies and inaccurate data plaguing the last two lists have proven a contentious and central obstacle in the coming election. While the final, corrected renditions were supposed to start rolling out yesterday, Myanmar Times reporters posted around the country found varying degrees to which local offices succeeded in meeting the deadline.
A string of small bombings on the island of Zanzibar has residents there fearing that the explosions could be related to last month’s disputed election and that more trouble could be coming. Early Sunday, a small homemade bomb exploded near Stone Town, a popular tourist destination known for its labyrinthine streets and teeming bazaars. On Saturday, two similar bombs went off. On Friday, an undetonated bomb was found with a cellphone. The police said there were no injuries from any of the explosives. Still, many residents and foreign embassies were concerned. Britain issued a travel advisory that read: “Violence could escalate quickly. If you’re in Zanzibar, avoid being out on the streets and avoid traveling into the center of Stone Town.”
The influence of billionaires in the post-Citizens United era is in no way limited to the 2016 presidential and congressional elections. While the super-wealthy dominate those races, local and state elections in 2015 are also attracting big money from Forbes-listed billionaires and local wealthy interests that’s funneled through super PACs. Not all states, cities and…
Fifty years after passage of the Voting Rights Act, “Give Us the Ballot” makes a powerful case that voting rights are under assault in 21st century America. Current events underscore the book’s timeliness. In September, Alabama announced it was closing 31 driver’s license offices, a disproportionate number of them in majority-black counties, making it even harder for African Americans to comply with Alabama’s 2011 law requiring voters to show government-issued IDs to cast ballots. As author Ari Berman points out, Alabama is one of nine Republican-controlled states to pass voter ID laws since 2010, and those are only the most blatant of restrictions that also include limits on early voting and rules that make voter registration more difficult. Efforts to roll back the act’s protections for minority voters are nothing new, Berman demonstrates; the first legal challenge to the law was filed five days after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it in 1965. When the Supreme Court upheld the Voting Rights Act a year later, Southern legislators turned from preventing African Americans from voting to diluting their votes. Black-majority counties were consolidated with larger white ones; at-large elections and multi-member districts made it nearly impossible for African American candidates to gain office. Section 5 of the act, which required seven Southern states with histories of voting discrimination to submit any changes in their voting laws for federal review, became the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division’s instrument for preventing such manipulations.
Airbnb has spent more than $8 million and hired a top political operative to defeat a San Francisco initiative on the ballot Tuesday that could threaten the growth of one of the most valuable global technology companies. Proposition F, which would limit short-term rentals, was brought by affordable housing advocates fed up with the city’s housing stock being used as rentals for tourists while residents face skyrocketing rents and evictions. For Airbnb, a defeat in its hometown of San Francisco would be mostly a symbolic blow. Should similar measures be introduced elsewhere, however, the company could face serious financial consequences. At stake is its ability to continue adding rentals at the same speed, increase revenue and maintain its $25.5 billion valuation, all of which fall under greater scrutiny as it moves closer to an initial public offering.
The chairman of the House redistricting committee Friday filed a new Senate map that would recast districts in South Florida, opening up a potential conflict with the Senate a week before a special legislative session on the lines is set to end. Rep. Jose Oliva, R-Miami Lakes, said in a memo to House members that his proposal for the 40 state Senate districts was inspired in part by a plan floated by the League of Women Voters of Florida and Common Cause Florida. Those voting-rights organizations have helped lead a legal fight against congressional and Senate maps drawn by the Legislature in 2012, saying that the plans violated the anti-gerrymandering “Fair Districts” amendments approved by voters two years earlier.
Will County Clerk Nancy Schultz Voots and her staff are staying busy as they work to comply with an unfunded state mandate ahead of the March 15 primary that requires certain Illinois counties to offer same-day voter registration at every polling place. Start-up costs carry a price tag of more than $1 million for just Will County when taking into account the required staff time, printed materials, additional training for election judges and the installment of Internet capabilities, among other factors, Schultz Voots said. “All these little things add up,” Schultz Voots said, noting how extension cords alone cost $4,000. The law requires Schultz Voots to equip the county’s 300 polling places with electronic poll books – or computer tablets with voting and registration capabilities. The law only applies to counties with a population of 100,000 or more, or those already using electronic poll books.
Steve Shapiro recently pulled his first all-nighter in years. He worked until about 1 a.m. last month on an assignment for a class at American University’s Washington College of Law, where he is a first-semester 1L. From then until dawn, he pored over his brief due at the U.S. Supreme Court, where his battle against Maryland’s often-criticized gerrymandered congressional districts will be heard this week in a case that bears his name. At age 55, Shapiro is not the typical law school newbie; he’s more often mistaken for a professor. It was his decades-long fight with Maryland’s political leadership over redistricting that, in part, fueled his decision to leave his job as a career federal employee and enroll full time in law school.
On Tuesday, voters will be asked for the third time in a decade to overhaul the inherently political process of how Ohio redraws state legislative districts every 10 years. Voters said “no” the first two times. This time a broad coalition of Republicans, Democrats, and business, labor, government watchdog, and voting-rights groups that have often aligned on opposite sides of the issue have come together to urge voters to say “yes” on Issue 1. Many are already looking ahead at a similar bipartisan approach with congressional remapping if this one affecting only state House and Senate maps passes. “Fair districts mean fair elections,” said Catherine Turcer, policy analyst with Common Cause Ohio. “Issue 1 creates greater transparency, keeps communities together, and establishes a bipartisan plan. I look at Issue 1 as a reform decades in the making. There is general agreement that this is the proposal that will make a real change.”
A new machine that voters will use to cast their ballots in the territory’s next election will not only save the V.I. Board of Elections money on paper costs, but it will also reduce the chance of voting errors, said Willie Wesley Jr. of Omaha-based company Election Systems and Software. “It’s going to actually put the Virgin Islands on the cutting edge of technology,” Wesley said. “If there’s something out there more advanced than this, I want to see it.” Wesley, who has been working with Elections Supervisor Caroline Fawkes to overhaul the territory’s voting technology, gave a demonstration of the new machine at Tutu Park Mall on Thursday evening. The machine is called ExpressVote and is a touchscreen computer system that voters insert a blank ballot into before making selections. The ExpressVote then prints barcodes on the ballot that can be read by an electronic tabulator.
Running for re-election, Seattle City Council Member Mike O’Brien knows firsthand that the campaign chase for donors is often at odds with the hunt for votes. “Most candidates spend about 10-15 hours a week on the phone dialing for dollars,” he estimates. “You start by looking up the people who can write the big checks. Often they aren’t even in your district and can’t even vote for you but they have the capacity to finance your election.” In the 2013 election two-thirds of all of the money raised by Seattle candidates came from just 0.3 percent of the city’s residents, according to a report by the Sightline Institute, a nonprofit think tank. This makes for heavy competition as dozens of candidates try to appeal to a very narrow slice of the electorate. “Of course everyone else is calling those same people so you’re fighting with other candidates whether they’re in your race or not, to convince the donors that you’re their guy and they should write you a check,” O’Brien said.
Last week, the Wisconsin Assembly passed a bill that would dramatically reduce voters’ ability to know which corporations, unions and wealthy individuals are funding state campaigns. The Senate is expected to vote on a companion bill (SB 292) shortly. Supporters of the measure say these changes are required by recent court decisions. Don’t believe it. If passed, SB 292 would radically change the law, not comply with it. As we explained in a letter to legislators this week, the Senate should vote it down.