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San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos tabled a proposal Monday to allow 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in local elections, but vowed to try again next year. Avalos said the proposal — which must go before voters as a ballot initiative — will have a better chance at succeeding in 2016 when there is a presidential election and higher voter turnout. “We need more time to discuss this with young people and the public in general. But I also think it’s important the largest number of voters weigh in on this,” Avalos said after a special hearing on the matter.

Kansas: Now that Kris Kobach can hunt for voter fraud in Kansas, will he actually find it? | Kansas City Star

Usually, people say it’s a photo that’s worth a thousand words. But in Kansas politics, everything is upside down these days. So it was the accompanying flawed caption, not the photo of Gov. Sam Brownback signing a new law Monday, that had people musing. “… after the signing of Senate Bill 34, a bill that grants persecuting power to the Secretary of State for cases of voter fraud.” Persecuting. That’ll probably be accurate.

Tennessee: Budget ‘misunderstanding’ endangers early voting | The Tennessean

“The money is just not there,” said Davidson County Election Commission chairman Ron Buchanan, who vehemently denies that the commission’s decision to gut early voting for the August election had anything to do with voter suppression. Buchanan says that the mayor’s office forgot that the commission and Metro had agreed in November to convert 12 part-time employees, who had been working full-time hours for the past couple of years, to full-time staff members, which would move the funds to pay their salaries from the poll worker budget to the commission’s recurring expenditure budget. The disputed amount is $470,000. “I think they (Metro finance department) have made a huge mistake,” Buchanan said.

Wisconsin: Bill adjusting recount costs goes to governor | Associated Press

The state Assembly has approved a bill reworking election recount fees. The Assembly passed the measure on a voice vote Tuesday. The Senate approved it last month. It goes next to Gov. Scott Walker. Currently recounts are free if the margin is less than 10 votes with fewer than 1,000 votes cast or less than half-a-percent in larger elections.

Washington: Yakima council OKs options for elections stay | Yakima Herald

The Yakima City Council will ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to consider a full or partial stay of this year’s elections. In a 4-3 vote Monday, the council approved a resolution asking for a stay and cited the city’s old elections system as the preferred method for voting this year. Under that system, only the positions now held by Maureen Adkison, Thomas Dittmar, Rick Ensey and Kathy Coffey would be up for a citywide vote during the November general election. Dittmar and Ensey have said they would not run this year.

Press Release: Primary Election in Prince William County, VA Complete Success with Verity Voting System | Hart InterCivic

Hart InterCivic announced today that the Verity Voting system has performed exceptionally in the Prince William County, VA June primary election. The primary election was held on Tuesday, June 9, 2015 with polls open from 6 A.M. to 7 P.M. in 55 precincts and one Central Absentee Processing site across the county. Prince William County purchased the Verity Voting system in May of 2014, successfully piloting the system in the Dumfries Town Special Election in March of this year. The county completed State acceptance testing for Verity in just over two full days, using teams to help complete the detailed instructions for testing procedures. “Implementing Verity in Prince William County has truly been a milestone for Hart,” said Jessica McKay, Hart InterCivic Professional Services Project Manager, who was on site as part of the team helping to support the primary election. “The PWC staff was amazing and easy to work with; I could not imagine working with a better group of individuals to deliver an effective election.”

National: Two FEC officials implore agency to curb 2016 election abuse | USA Today

Two Democratic members of the Federal Election Commission, who say they are frustrated by the agency’s failure to rein in campaign-finance abuses ahead of the 2016 presidential race, are making what amounts to a drastic move Monday in the staid world of federal election law. Commissioners Ann Ravel, who is the agency’s chairwoman, and Ellen Weintraub are filing a formal petition, urging their own agency to write rules to clamp down on unfettered political spending and unmask the anonymous money flooding U.S. elections.

Editorials: Citizens United shouldn’t get all the blame | Wendy Kaminer/The Boston Globe

Imagine This: Next year, the Supreme Court accepts a campaign finance case for review and reverses its 2010 decision in Citizens United, which struck down a ban on independent electoral spending by corporations and unions. Many Americans would cheer, in the mistaken belief that the reversal would limit — if not end — the influence of super PACs. They’d be sorely disappointed. Super PACs are not dependent on corporate funding. They’re primarily funded by super-rich individuals, whose right to devote unlimited amounts of their own money on independent expenditures (those not involving direct contributions to candidates) was confirmed by the Court in 1976, in Buckley v. Valeo. As the Brennan Center, a fierce critic of the Citizens United ruling, has acknowledged, “the singular focus on the decision’s empowerment of for-profit corporations to spend in (and perhaps dominate) our elections may be misplaced.”

Editorials: Hillary Clinton is politicizing voting rights: The Democratic frontrunner is destroying the chance for election reform by blaming all Republicans. | Richard Hasen/Slate

Hillary Clinton spoke at Texas Southern University last week, where she put forward some good and provocative ideas for improving our elections. She wants Congress to fix the part of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court gutted in 2013. She wants to expand early voting periods nationally to at least 20 days. And most provocatively, she advocates automatic universal voter registration across the country, including a program to automatically register high school students to vote before their 18th birthdays. But the partisan way she’s framed the issue—by blaming Republicans for all the voting problems—makes it less likely these changes will actually be implemented should she be elected president. Instead, she’s offering red meat to her supporters while alienating the allies she would need to get any reforms enacted.

Florida: Hernando County Elections Office to Purchase New Voting Equipment for 2016 | Hernando Sun

Hernando County will update their voting system in time for the 2016 Election Cycle. Supervisor of Elections Shirley Anderson announced that she will begin contract negotiations with Dominion Voting Systems, one of the two companies who submitted a bid. “We are very excited to continue our working relationship with Dominion Voting Systems. They have provided a reliable tabulation system and excellent customer service to Hernando County since 1998,”stated Supervisor Anderson. As in previous elections, voters will fill in the ovals on a paper ballot. One of the many new features is that we will only have one universal vote tabulator. The new system will allow disabled voters to cast a paper ballot using the same equipment as all other voters.

Illinois: Election Schock: Special Election Triggers Early Onset Of New Law | WUIS

Former Peoria Republican Congressman Aaron Schock’s fall from political grace set in motion an unexpected special election, and that has unexpected consequences for county clerks. On July 7, primary voters in the 18th Congressional district will get their first crack at choosing who’ll represent them in D.C., following Aaron Schock’s resignation. Anyone who forgot to register to vote beforehand will be able to do it that day. That’s thanks to a law that was intended to be in place for the first time for next year’s elections. McLean County Clerk Kathy Michael and others had asked legislators to delay the law until then. It never happened.

Kansas: Brownback signs election bill, gives Kobach prosecutorial authority | The Wichita Eagle The Wichita Eagle

Gov. Sam Brownback has officially given Secretary of State Kris Kobach the power to prosecute. The governor signed SB 34 at a ceremony Monday, granting the secretary of state the authority to prosecute voter fraud. Kobach, who crafted and pushed for the legislation, said his office has already begun preliminary work on investigations and said he had identified more than 100 possible cases of double voting. He said his office has started requesting voters’ signatures from counties as evidence.

Maryland: Shalleck to head Montgomery County Board of Elections | Gazette.Net

Former county executive candidate Jim Shalleck will lead the Montgomery County Board of Elections as the board majority shifts from Democratic to Republican. Shalleck, a Republican, was appointed to the elections board in February by Gov. Larry Hogan and confirmed by the Senate. Shalleck was unanimously elected to serve as president of the seven-member board on Tuesday. “I’m very honored by this and grateful to the governor,” he said. For the next four years, local boards of election across the state will be led by Republicans. State law dictates that the majority party — the party of the sitting governor — have a majority on local elections boards.

New Hampshire: Ballot law pits freedom of speech vs. potential voter fraud | Associated Press

A federal judge on Monday sounded dubious that a New Hampshire ban on posting photos of voter ballots online was a necessary safeguard against fraud in the information age. U.S. District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro heard arguments in a lawsuit brought by three people who are under investigation after they posted pictures of their ballots online, including one man who voted for his dead dog because he didn’t like any of the candidates. The American Civil Liberties Union took up their cause, saying the ban was an overreaching restriction on free speech. “I think there is a serious problem with a law that bans the dissemination of truthful, public speech related to a matter of public concern,” said Gilles Bissonnette, the legal director for the ACLU’s New Hampshire chapter. “This is actually a blanket ban on a certain kind of speech.”

US Virgin Islands: Voting rights group seeks V.I. plaintiffs Appeals court: No birthright citizenship for American Samoa | Virgin Islands Daily News

The attorneys behind a series of lawsuits that will seek federal election voting rights for the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam are continuing their efforts to find plaintiffs and are now developing their legal strategy, according to Neil Weare, founder of the voting rights group We the People Project. Weare would not give a specific date when his group would file the suits but said they would take place “in the next few months.” Semaj Johnson, a St. Croix attorney who is working with Weare on the cases, said that the group is taking its cues from the African-American civil rights movement, using legal action as a spark for wider social change. “With litigation, oftentimes it’s setting just a piece of precedent to move forward, and for our cause, it really is essentially about the incremental movement,” Johnson said. “We believe that it won’t only happen through the courts, most likely. It will happen through a combination of the courts, legislation, and of course public support.”

Virginia: Why the fate of Virginia’s congressional map matters | MSNBC

When voters in Virginia went to the polls in 2012, a narrow majority backed President Obama’s re-election bid, just as they’d done four years earlier. In a closely watched U.S. Senate race, the commonwealth’s voters also elected Sen. Tim Kaine (D) over former Sen. George Allen (R) by about six points. But just a little further down on the ballot is where things get tricky. If you add up all the votes case in each of Virginia’s U.S. House races, roughly 49% of Virginians voted for Democratic candidates, while about 51% supported Republican candidates. The state has 11 congressional districts, so if there was some kind of parallel between voter preferences and partisan results, we might expect to see five Democrats head to Congress from the state, along with six Republicans.

Burundi: Opposition Rejects New Election Timetable | VoA News

A spokesman for Burundi’s independent opposition coalition said the proposal by the electoral commission to change the dates for national elections has no standing because Burundi has no legally constituted electoral commission. Francois Bizimana, spokesman for Mizero Y’Barundi, or “Hope for All Burundians,” said the commission lacks a quorum because three of its five members have fled the country. Burundi’s constitution stipulates that the commission must make decisions by consensus which requires that four out of its five members be present.

Denmark: Danes Face Cliffhanger Vote as Ex-Colonies Become Kingmakers | Bloomberg

It’s a little bit like the Falkland Islands getting to decide who leads the government in the U.K. Danes may have to spend the final hours of June 18 — election night — watching their former colonies Greenland and the Faroe Islands decide their fate. After almost two weeks of campaigning, polls show it’s now too close to predict a winner in Denmark’s election. That means four parliamentary seats reserved for the two Atlantic islands that form part of the Kingdom of Denmark may determine who becomes the country’s next prime minister. “The likelihood that North Atlantic votes will be decisive is rising,” said Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, a professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen. Should voting among Danes prove inconclusive, it “would be an unfortunate development for democracy,” he said.

Mexico: Soldiers guard polling stations as protesters burn ballot boxes | The Guardian

Protesters burned ballot boxes in several restive states of southern Mexico on Sunday, in an attempt to disrupt elections seen as a litmus test for President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government. Officials said the vote was proceeding satisfactorily despite “isolated incidents”. Thousands of soldiers and federal police were guarding polling stations where violence and calls for boycotts threatened to mar elections for 500 seats in the lower house of Congress, nine of 31 governorships and hundreds of mayors and local officials. Midterm Mexican elections usually draw a light turnout, but attention was unusually high this time as a loose coalition of radical teachers’ unions and activists vowed to block the vote. They attacked the offices of political parties in Chiapas and Guerrero states and burned ballots in Oaxaca ahead of the vote.

National: Citizens United is making local TV rich. Here’s why. | Slate

Remember the outrage over Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission? The 2010 Supreme Court decision allowed corporations and other entities to expend unlimited funds on electoral influence, inspiring feverish protests and calls for constitutional reform. Jeremiads about the devolution of political discourse from an active citizenry engaged in public debate to a Machiavellian nightmare of corporate manipulation proliferated. Coupled with the growing awareness of economic inequality, Citizens United helped incite the Occupy movement and has already become a byword for corruption in the American political process. Like plenty of Americans, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg detests the ruling. “If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be Citizens United,” she told Jeffrey Rosen of the New Republic. “I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.” While it’s easy to locate those who defend Citizens United on constitutional grounds, finding support for the decision’s real-world effects on public discourse, debate, and democratic participation is a tougher task. But there’s one party that ought to be cheering the ruling’s positive impact on its livelihood: local TV.

Editorials: Hillary Sides With Democracy | Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg View

Hillary Clinton’s call for universal automatic voter registration is a major positive development in the voting wars. She puts the national Democratic Party squarely behind Oregon’s recent innovative registration law. As Cass Sunstein says at View, Americans don’t need to register with the government to be entitled to other rights; voting shouldn’t be any different. It’s pretty simple: If we want everyone to participate, then voting should be easy. Voter registration in the U.S. is a real, and unnecessary, hurdle. That’s no coincidence: Registration was originally set up around the turn of the previous century in part by those concerned that the wrong kinds of people (mostly recent immigrants from southern and eastern Europe) would vote. There are plenty of ideas to make voting easier, but removing registration as a hurdle is the big one, on both a practical and theoretical level.

American Samoa: U.S. court rejects American Samoans’ bid for full citizenship rights | Reuters

A U.S. appeals court on Friday ruled against a group of American Samoans who had argued that those born in the U.S. territory in the South Pacific should be eligible for U.S. citizenship at birth. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, noting that both the U.S. government and the government in American Samoa opposed the campaign, rejected the legal challenge made by named plaintiff Leneuoti Fiafia Tuaua and seven others. Writing on behalf of a three-judge panel, Judge Janice Rogers Brown said the court was sympathetic to the claim, but reluctant to “impose citizenship by judicial fiat – where doing so requires us to override the democratic prerogatives of the American Samoan people themselves.”

Arizona: Redistricting plan begins ahead of court decision | Arizona Republic

The meter’s running … Work has already begun on drawing new congressional maps at the Legislature, even as the political world awaits a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether that would even be needed. The House and Senate leaders inked a $65,000 contract with National Demographics Corp. in late May. The Glendale, Calif.-based firm is no stranger to Arizona: It did the redistricting duties for the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission in 2001. Back then, the Legislature had no quarrel with the IRC, unlike this decade, when it took the commission to court, challenging its authority to draw congressional boundaries.

Editorials: Kris Kobach’s pursuit of ‘double voters’ in Kansas is hollow | Steve Rose/Kansas City Star

While all eyes were focused last week on the Kansas budget, without fanfare a new law was passed and sent to the governor to sign that turns Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office into the voter fraud police, as well as the state’s attorney general. Lawmakers and the governor took away the power from county district attorneys. This is important because, alas, Kobach got what he wanted and can now go after “criminals” who vote twice and throw the book at them. There’s just one little hitch. To pull off his grandstand play, Kobach will only be able to rustle up a tiny number of offenders. Kobach claims he will go after 100 or so double-voting offenders from the 2014 election. The truth is, it is too soon to know much about the 2014 race. It takes a while for another state to match its voting database with that of Kansas to see whether someone did, indeed, vote in one state and then another. For example, Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe does not yet have that 2014 election information and doesn’t expect it for quite some time.

Michigan: Governor signs bill to fix Flint election, opening up ballot for mayoral candidates | MLive.com

Candidates for mayor of Flint can start focusing on the campaign and forget about whether they’ll be on the primary election ballot. Gov. Rick Snyder signed legislation today, June 5, to authorize extension of the filing deadline for the August primary election, a move that will allow for a standard showdown for the city’s top job. Incumbent Dayne Walling, businesswoman Karen Weaver, and two city councilmen — Wantwaz Davis and Eric Mays — are in line for spots on the ballot, city officials have said.

Tennessee: Nashville early voting sites axed unless more funding added; mayor’s office blasts decision | Associated Press

Davidson County Election Commission has outraged officials at the Nashville mayor’s office after the panel voted that it is prepared to cut the number of early voting sites in metro Nashville’s general election from 11 to one, unless more funding is acquired. Media outlets report that the election commission voted 3-2 on Wednesday to operate only one early voting site — the state’s legal minimum — if the Metro Council approves Mayor Karl Dean’s proposed budget without changes. Dean’s proposed operating budget is $868,000 lower than what the commission sought.

Virginia: District Court Strikes Down Virginia Congressional Maps | National Journal

A federal court ruled Friday that Virginia legislators will have to redraw the state’s congressional lines after misinterpreting Voting Rights Act requirements, but an attorney for the defendants said it’s likely that they’ll appeal to the Supreme Court. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled for the second time that legislators unnecessarily “packed” African-American voters into certain congressional districts, ostensibly to follow a requirement that minority voters maintain their control of certain districts—but also limiting their ability to affect other districts’ elections. The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the Republican-controlled legislature had packed an excessive number of minorities into a single district, represented by Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott, when it drew the congressional map in 2012.

Washington: State AG’s opinion on ACLU case could have wide reach | Yakima Herald

Reverberations from Yakima’s voting rights lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union are being felt across the state and in Olympia, where the state Attorney General’s Office is expected to release an opinion related to the issue. The opinion won’t have much, if any, impact in Yakima’s case. But it’s likely to be studied carefully in many other cities, especially Pasco. When Pasco officials saw how poorly Yakima fared in the ACLU lawsuit, they began drafting plans earlier this year to revamp their city’s election process in order to avoid a similar fate. Yakima has been ordered to change its election process by a federal judge who said its old election system violated federal election law by routinely suppressing Latino interests. Under the judge’s order, which is under appeal, Yakima City Council members would be elected by voters in their districts and would no longer be subject to citywide voting.

Burundi: Opposition leader says elections must be held by August | Reuters