Kansas: Kris Kobach seeks to block release of voting machine paper tapes | Topeka Capital-Journal

The top election official in Kansas has asked a Sedgwick County judge to block the release of voting machine tapes sought by a Wichita mathematician who is researching statistical anomalies favoring Republicans in counts coming from large precincts in the November 2014 general election. Secretary of State Kris Kobach argued the records sought by Wichita State University mathematician Beth Clarkson aren’t subject to the Kansas open records act and their disclosure is prohibited by Kansas statute. His response, which was faxed Friday to the Sedgwick County District Court, was made public Monday. Clarkson, chief statistician for the university’s National Institute for Aviation Research, filed the open records lawsuit as part of her personal quest to find the answer to an unexplained pattern that transcends elections and states. She wants the hard copies to check the error rate on electronic voting machines that were used in a voting station in Sedgwick County to establish a statistical model.

North Carolina: Future of voter ID lawsuit heard in state court | Associated Press

A lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s voter identification requirement should be allowed to continue even after the legislature added exceptions this summer easing the mandate that goes into effect next year, lawyers fighting the law told a state judge Monday. But a state attorney said the changes made to the 2013 law have addressed the accusations made in the litigation, giving registered voters who lack a qualifying photo ID a way to cast ballots in person anyway. “There is no question that the General Assembly in what they enacted answered the questions of unconstitutionality that the plaintiffs have raised,” Special Deputy Attorney General Alec Peters told Superior Court Judge Michael Morgan in a Raleigh courtroom. Peters said the lawsuit is moot and should be dismissed.

Pennsylvania: State planning online voter registration rollout | The Altoona Mirror

While state officials haven’t said much publicly about the plan, Pennsylvania could soon be the 28th U.S. state to offer paperless, online voter registration, local officials confirmed Friday. The plan would open voter registration – currently carried out by mail – to the Internet, with state driver’s-licenseholders able to submit their signatures electronically. Those without licenses could sign up as well, though they’d still have to fill out some paperwork, officials said. “It is coming. Online voter registration is coming,” Bedford County Chief Clerk Jill Gordon said Friday. “I don’t know an exact rollout date.” Gordon said county-level election officers have been involved in phone conferences with state officials, including Secretary of State Pedro A. Cortes, to discuss the plan. Planners had initially hoped to roll out the new system by the end of August, she said.

Puerto Rico: Statehood backers see opportunity as woes deepen | Associated Press

Revelers arrived in cars sporting the American flag and wore clothes in red, white and blue as they celebrated the anniversary of Puerto Rico’s pro-statehood political party with deafening salsa music and speeches. Like many others worried about the U.S. territory’s future, those rallying Thursday night in the coastal town of Manati believe statehood can help pull it out of a nearly a decade of economic stagnation. “Puerto Rico has to become a state,” insisted 63-year-old celebrant Norma Candelario. With unemployment at 12 percent, and the public debt reaching $72 billion, advocates for making the Caribbean island the 51st state say the economic woes are strengthening their arguments. As a state, Puerto Rico’s municipalities and public utilities would no longer be prohibited from restructuring their debts through bankruptcy. It would also receive more of certain kinds of federal funding that other states get.

Voting Blogs: 5th Circuit Decision Could Leave Hundreds of Thousands Without Right to Vote in Texas | Brad Blog

The recent decision by a unanimous three judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeal in Veasey v. Abbott was greeted as “very good news.” After all, it marked the first occasion in which a federal appellate court made an express finding that a state-enacted polling place Photo ID law violated the provisions of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The appellate panel affirmed the lower U.S. District Court’s finding late last year that a Texas polling place Photo ID law (SB 14), which threatened to disenfranchise 608,470 already legally registered voters (and many others not already registered), disparately impacted minorities and the poor. “Hispanic registered voters and Black registered voters,” the 5th Circuit appellate panel observed in their recent ruling, “were respectively 195% and 305% more likely than their Anglo peers to lack [the requisite Photo] ID” now required to cast a vote at the polls under the Texas law.

Utah: Residents in some Utah County cities may be asked to vote twice on Nov. 3 | The Salt Lake Tribune

Chicago gangster Al Capone supposedly told corrupt friends to vote early and often. Now, officials may also ask some Utah County voters to do just that — but legally — in the upcoming Nov. 3 election. A fight between the county and five cities may force voters to cast one ballot by mail to choose their city leaders and then again in person at traditional polling places on a countywide proposal to raise sales taxes for transportation. Asking people to cast two different ballots in two ways in the same election “just doesn’t seem like it’s a smart thing, and frankly it’s not in the best interest of the voters,” complained Orem City Administrator Jamie Davidson. But Utah County Clerk-Auditor Bryan Thompson said the dual vote is needed to ensure fairness on the tax-hike proposal in a county where five cities vote by mail, but the rest of the county uses traditional in-person voting.

Virginia: Redistricting Battle Continues in General Assembly | WVTF

The General Assembly’s impasse over whether or not the Special Session on Redistricting is legally over shows no signs of abating. The Senate adjourned last week thanks to a ruling by Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam and the votes of the chamber’s Democrats and one Republican—but the House of Delegates has still not adjourned. The bone of contention is how to interpret Article 4, section 6 of the Virginia Constitution. The provision says: “Neither house shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn to another place, nor for more than three days.” GOP Senator Bill Stanley says the vote to adjourn defied both that and a federal court.

Canada: An election campaign is a massive human investment | Ottawa Citizen

Many people have written about the financial cost of the 78-day campaign, but I haven’t seen anybody look at the human cost. What this is costing candidates, leaders, staff, and volunteers? To start figuring out the human cost we have to rewind back to 2013 when most political parties opened up nominations, the process by which candidates are selected to run in each of 338 ridings. Tens of thousands of hopefuls applied to the various parties to run in the 2015 election, starting in 2013, and were vetted by the internal parties and either accepted or rejected. Imagine that many people in each party who applied were told, after many weeks or months, that they were not suitable candidates for any number of reasons. Some prospective candidates signed up party members as they were told to do in anticipation of a nomination in their riding. Friends, family members, colleagues and acquaintances were asked to sign membership forms; usually a small fee is also involved. Dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of people signed and paid the fee, and their candidate was not even allowed to test themselves against other same party candidates in that riding. Of the lucky few who were accepted after the vetting process, still many thousands of potential candidates, they then had to compete against other hopefuls to win their party nomination. Although the spending limits for nominations are strict during the nomination process, many would spend untold fortunes in advance of the nomination on promotion, a campaign in itself involving handfuls of volunteers and in some cases dozens or hundreds of people. Many months can go by awaiting the official call of a nomination, and those lucky enough to be accepted sign up new members to vote for them. Nobody knows when the date will be called; there is no defined finish line for nominations.

Myanmar: As elections near, a struggle to get the word out | UCA News

Long Tway village is a long way from anywhere. The nearest city, Taunggyi, is a rough three-hour drive to the west of this small settlement of about 30 households, sitting high in a steep valley amid the vast Shan Hills in eastern Myanmar. In lowland areas of the country and the urban centers, anticipation is rising ahead of elections scheduled for Nov. 8. More than 6,000 candidates have applied to take part in the elections, and campaigning is likely to involve large-scale rallies and poster campaigns. But here in the hills, people have only a vague knowledge of the polls. “No one came here to tell us about the election,” local woman Nan Yon, 44, told ucanews.com recently. She had heard an election was coming, she said, but was surprised to learn that the vote was only months away.

United Kingdom: Jeremy Corbyn’s rivals to demand Labour reversal on stronger checks against infiltration | Telegraph

Jeremy Corbyn’s rivals will today demand that Labour reverses a decision not to weed out “infiltrators” with extra checks amid fears they could skew the result of the leadership contest. In a showdown meeting in Stevenage, Harriet Harman, the acting Labour leader, will be told to use election canvass returns to double-check the allegiance of new joiners. Failure to do so could trigger a slew of legal challenges from donors who funded campaigns in good faith or councillors who have been infuriated Tory infiltration, they will warn.

Editorials: Labour’s election process: a case for politics, not the law | The Guardian

It is reasonable for the Labour party to exclude people who oppose its values and aims from the contest to elect a new leader. Conservatives infiltrating the process are committing not mischief but fraud and should be duly ashamed. Hovever, the numbers involved in that kind of chicanery are in all likelihood very small and the controversy around Labour’s vetting process for newly registered “supporters” involves a different phenomenon. Several would-be electors have been excluded on the basis of evidence – some compelling, some flimsy – that they have supported rivals on the left: Greens and fringe socialist groups. Labour is entitled to question these people’s loyalty. Endorsing a different party hardly implies stalwart support. Yet many of those who are being weeded out – or “purged” as they see it – in “Operation Icepick” see themselves as refugees of the anti-Blair left, alienated by the party under recent leaders, seeking a right of return as acolytes of Jeremy Corbyn. This is more a conceptual challenge to Labour than a technical one. The passionate Corbynites who may not have supported Labour in recent years claim nonetheless to be the authentic supporters of the party’s “aims and values” – more so even than the apparatchiks who would seek to exclude them. They challenge the authority of the machine to decide who is entitled to vote in the contest and, in so doing, say they are honouring the spirit of the new rules that offered them a vote at the bargain price of three pounds.

Venezuela: 9 Opposition Candidates Barred From Venezuela’s December Ballot | The New York Times

When he handily won a primary to run for the National Assembly, Enzo Scarano hoped to be part of a wave carrying the opposition to a legislative majority that would alter the political balance in Venezuela. But when a government agency stripped him of his right to hold public office, scuttling his candidacy, he found himself caught up in a different kind of wave — of government measures that appear aimed at weakening the opposition ahead of a make-or-break legislative election in December. “It was a message to the Venezuelan people: ‘Look, we can do whatever we want,’ ” Mr. Scarano said of the move to bar him and at least eight other prominent politicians and activists from running for office. He said the goal was “to discourage people from voting and to create an internal conflict” in the opposition’s Democratic Unity coalition.

Editorials: Want to fix a broken U.S. election system? Copy Canada | Tony Keller/The Globe and Mail

In the 2014 U.S. midterm elections, the Republican and Democratic Party candidates for one of North Carolina’s Senate seats, together with the various political action committees backing and attacking them, spent a combined total of $111-million (U.S.). That’s more than Canada’s three main political parties, including 900-plus candidates, spent in the 2011 federal election. Canada’s system of political finance isn’t perfect, and it has grown slightly worse in the past year. Thanks to the Fair Elections Act, the current election’s spending limits are more than double 2011’s. Canada’s process of figuring out who gets to vote has also become a little less perfect, again courtesy of the Fair Elections Act. But compared to the way elections are run in the United States, Canada’s system is still awfully close to nirvana. Which explains why, if you’re an American hoping to fix what’s wrong with America’s broken democratic process, you end up proposing reforms that look a lot like, well, Canada.

Alabama: Redistricting battle back in federal court | Montgomery Advertiser

Three federal judges will hear arguments Tuesday on whether the Alabama Legislature tried to reduce the voice of minority voters with a new district map? Attorneys for black legislators say yes and want to have the districts thrown out completely. “We’re hoping that the court will declare all of the majority black districts to be unconstitutional,” said James Blacksher, an attorney for the plaintiffs, in a phone interview Friday. “And then give the legislature a deadline for producing new plans. We hope in time for elections to be held under new plans in 2016.” The state says the plaintiffs have no proof that race was the predominant factor in the maps’ creation. “As the case comes back home to Montgomery, we continue to work hard to defend the constitutionality of Alabama’s legislative districts and look forward to Tuesday’s oral arguments,” Mike Lewis, a spokesman for Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, said in a statement.

Arizona: Secretary of State to elections panel: ‘Tread lightly’ on dark money rules | Arizona Republic

The turf war between the Arizona Secretary of State and the Clean Elections Commission is continuing, but on a slower timetable and with softer, yet stern, rhetoric. On Thursday, Secretary of State Michele Reagan told the five commissioners to “tread lightly” as they consider a rule that could force disclosure of so-called “dark-money” contributors. “I believe you have noble intentions,” Reagan said. “You want to be able to rein in groups if they corrupt our election system.” But, she continued, the way the commission is trying to do that would set a precedent that she called “extremely troubling.”

Florida: Congressional redistricting session facing extension amid acrimony | Sun Sentinel

The battle is over. Nobody won. Florida lawmakers on Friday conceded defeat on redrawing the state’s congressional district map and headed home. Unless the legislature calls another special session, or the governor orders one, it will likely fall to the courts to draw the map. The legislature had until Aug. 25 to come up with a map, which the Florida Supreme Court was scheduled to review on Sept. 25. Now, the most likely scenario is that lawyers for the House and Senate will each present their versions of a map to the court, which will either approve one or draw something different. The dispute between the two chambers centered on the Senate’s desire to shift district lines in Central Florida, a move that the House did not believe would stand up to the court’s scrutiny. Both maps largely agreed on South Florida, with districts 21 and 22 in Broward and Palm Beach counties being stacked on top of one another, rather than the current side-by-side configuration. If another special session is to occur, it would have to happen before Sept. 25.

Florida: Legislature ends special session with no agreement on new congressional districts | Miami Herald

A special legislative session to fix Florida’s flawed congressional district lines ended in chaos Friday as senators staged a walkout and the House rejected Senate requests to extend the session into a third week. Lawmakers ended the session on time but with no agreement on a new map. As a result, legislators have turned over the job of redrawing the 27 districts to a trial judge, who can choose a House or Senate map, solicit other options or create his own to comply with a Florida Supreme Court decision ordering lawmakers to fix eight districts that it said were illegally gerrymandered. “That should make everybody nervous,” said Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando.

Florida: Partnership paves way for new voting system | Apalachicola Times

Following weeks of intense negotiations, the Florida Department of State has agreed to release funds obtained under the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to purchase a new state-of-the art voting tabulation system for a 12-county consortium that includes Franklin County. In an article published in late 2014, Secretary of State Ken Detzner expressed concerns with aging voting equipment being utilized in many Florida counties. His remarks mirrored conclusions found in a non-partisan presidential commission on the voting experience that was released last year. When emerging technology and “mileage” are factored, experts generally estimate the useful shelf life of tabulation hardware and software to be about 10 years. Franklin County is utilizing tabulation equipment that while has proven to be reliable to date, was purchased nearly 15 years ago.

Kansas: Kobach proposal would purge more than 34K prospective voters | The Kansas City Star

Opponents of a proposed regulation that would allow Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to purge the names of more than 34,000 prospective voters will protest at a public hearing next month, but concede there is little else they can do. The architect behind some of the nation’s strictest voter ID requirements, Kobach is pushing an administrative rule that would allow him to throw out any incomplete voter registration forms after 90 days, most of which lack proof-of-citizenship documentation such as a birth certificate, passport or naturalization papers. Purging the suspension list, which had 34,454 names as of Wednesday, would leave just 4,202 names. … A hearing is set for Sept. 2 over the purge, but Kobach and his opponents agree that, as secretary of state, he has the power to unilaterally change the rules. “These are just formalities he has to go through before he can do it,” said state Rep. Jim Ward, a Democrat.

Kansas: Mathematician seeking to audit election results isn’t optimistic | The Wichita Eagle

A Wichita State University mathematician suing Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman isn’t optimistic that she’ll win her case. Beth Clarkson, a WSU mathematician, says she has identified anomalies with election results in Sedgwick County in the 2014 election and wants an opportunity to perform an audit. To that end, she is suing the county and the state’s top election officers. Clarkson, who filed an unsuccessful suit in 2013, told supporters in an Aug. 19 newsletter that she was not optimistic about her chances of winning in court this time.

Kentucky: GOP rule change allows Paul to run for Senate amid his White House bid | The Washington Post

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) avoided a major headache Saturday after the Kentucky Republican Party approved a rule change that will allow him to run for president while seeking reelection to his Senate seat. “I applaud the Republican Party of Kentucky on their decision to hold a caucus in the upcoming Republican presidential cycle,” Paul said in a statement. “The people of Kentucky deserve a voice as the GOP chooses their next nominee, and holding a caucus will ensure that Kentucky is relevant and participates early in the process.” State law in Kentucky bars a person from appearing on an election ballot as a candidate for two different offices. So if Kentucky Republicans were to choose their nominees for president and Senate in a primary election, Paul could not run for both. By approving a caucus to select a presidential nominee, the Republican Party has cleared the way for him.

New Hampshire: Dixville Notch and the midnight vote will not die without a fight | The Washington Post

Tom Tillotson lives beside a closed-down ski mountain in a town that doesn’t exist. He doesn’t miss the chairlift that used to be out back. He has strong legs and likes hiking the slopes. And he doesn’t really miss the people who used to vacation at his late father’s hotel — the now-crumbling Balsams Resort. His three Labradors and his wife are company enough. He does, however, miss the visits from presidential candidates. “They don’t call anymore,” Tillotson said in the reclaimed barn he calls his home. He’s stocky, with a strawberry-shaped nose and flat light brown hair that rests like an A-frame house atop his head. “They used to come by all the time, but that’s just not happening now.”

North Carolina: Challenge to voter ID law set for hearing in state court | News & Observer

If a bill to move up the date of North Carolina’s presidential primary wins approval from both houses and the governor this legislative session, North Carolina voters could go to the polls as soon as March 15 in 2016. As that scheduling uncertainty hangs over the state, so does the constitutionality of a voter ID requirement set to go into effect in 2016. On Monday morning, a Wake County judge is scheduled to hold a hearing on whether to dismiss a challenge in state court to the 2013 change in election law that requires voters to show one of seven state-approved forms of photo identification before casting a ballot. Attorneys for state lawmakers and the governor contend that a legislative amendment to the requirement earlier this summer – offering voters without an approved ID the option of using a provisional ballot – made the lawsuit moot. Attorneys for the challengers disagree.

Ohio: Secretary of State advises counties on electronic pollbooks | The Jackson County Times-Journal

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted recently advised county boards of elections on the amount of funding available to each board for the implementation of new electronic pollbooks. “E-Pollbooks are a great advancement in voter technology that will make elections simpler for both Ohio voters and the staff and volunteers who assist them on Election Day,” explained Husted. The state legislature appropriated $12.7 million to aid county governments in covering the cost of upgrading to e-pollbooks during the biennial budget (Am. Sub. H.B. 64) enacted on June 30.

Texas: Justice Department to 5th Circuit: Texas voter ID law needs to be fixed ASAP | San Antonio Express-News

The Obama administration and several civil rights groups are urging a federal appeals court to fast track the process of temporarily fixing Texas’ voter ID law in time for the upcoming Nov. 3 elections. In court filings Thursday, the Justice Department and civil rights groups asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to allow a lower court to start getting to work immediately on an interim remedy to the law passed in 2011 by the state’s Republican-led Legislature. A three-judge panel at the 5th Circuit ruled in part earlier this month that Texas’ strict voter ID measure violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Wisconsin: Audit finds no major problems with Wisconsin elections board | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

An audit released Thursday looking into how Wisconsin’s nonpartisan elections and ethics board handles complaints found no major problems, leading the panel’s director to say it should put to rest concerns about its operations even as Republicans and Gov. Scott Walker plan major overhauls. The nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau report was limited to previously confidential records related to nearly 1,900 complaints filed with the Government Accountability Board between 2010 and 2013. The audit had two recommendations: that the board consistently resolve complaints in a timely manner and that staff consistently provide the board with the names of three people who can be hired to work as special investigators. Board director Kevin Kennedy, under fire by Republican lawmakers, said the recommendations were minor and consistent with the agency’s existing practices.

Myanmar: Lawmaker Barred From Re-election on Citizenship Grounds | The New York Times

As an elected lawmaker and member of Myanmar’s governing party, U Shwe Maung attended dinners with the president and made speeches from the floor of Parliament. But this weekend, the country’s election commission ruled that despite more than four years in office, he was not a citizen and thus was ineligible to run for re-election in landmark voting in November. “I was approved and considered a full citizen in 2010,” he said in an interview on Saturday. “Now, after five years, how could I not be eligible?” Mr. Shwe Maung’s plight is but one example of what appears to be the mass disenfranchisement of the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority who number around one million in Myanmar.

Saudi Arabia: Women get vote, still not free | Vanessa Tucker/CNN

News this week that women are registering to vote in elections in Saudi Arabia has garnered plenty of attention. The move, described by the kingdom as a “significant milestone in progress” is in keeping with a 2011 royal decree permitting women to run and vote in municipal polls to be held in December. But before we celebrate a step toward equality in one of the world’s most notoriously misogynist countries, it is important to look a little closer at this supposed reform. The reality is that when you view this change in the wider context of Saudi Arabia’s extreme and expanding political repression, it is clear that it is an advance on paper only. Indeed, the right to vote in thoroughly closed political systems is essentially meaningless — what do you vote for in a system that effectively forbids meaningful political opposition of any kind?

Switzerland: Swiss Post, Scytl to develop e-voting system | SWI

The Swiss Post is developing a new e-voting system with the Spanish company Scytl. Flüeler Oliver, a spokesman for the Swiss Post, told the NZZ am Sonntag on Sunday that the company hopes to compete with current cantonal e-voting projects, and is currently in talks with some, though no individual cantons were named. Two weeks ago, a system developed in the United States was rejected by the Swiss cabinet when it was proposed by nine cantons in an attempt to introduce e-voting for the parliamentary elections in October. Security flaws were cited as the reason for the rejection.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for August 17-23 2015

virginia-puzzle-260A USA Today analysis shows donations of $1 million or more account for nearly half of the money channeled into candidate-aligned super PACs and other outside groups during the first six months of the Presidential election cycle. In a Washington Post editorial, E.J. Dionne writes about the continuing importance of the Voting Rights Act, 50 years after it was signed. After meeting in a two-week special session, Florida’s House and Senate adjourned without agreeing on what the maps should look like, leaving it to a state judge to draw new maps for the state’s 27 congressional districts. Virginia’s legislature was similarly unable to agree on a map and now the same federal three-judge panel that has twice ruled the state’s congressional map unconstitutional will now be responsible for remedying the injustice it found. Senator Rand Paul has offered to personally finance a separate Presidential caucus for the Kentucky Republican Party to get around a state law disallowing a candidate’s name to appear twice on the same ballot. In court documents submitted Monday, attorneys representing the NAACP and other plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the ID provision and other parts of 2013 North Carolina election law overhaul said their pending claims “may be able to be resolved through discussion and negotiations with Defendants.” A Federal Appeals Court ruled that Texas must pay more than $1 million in legal fees to groups that challenged the state’s redistricting plans. The Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has announced he is stepping down to pave the way for snap elections next month and one of the candidates for the Labour Party leadership has called an emergency meeting over concerns of “large scale” infiltration of Conservative supporters in the leadership race.