Florida: Online voter registration moves forward | Herald Tribune

Florida took another step toward becoming the 28th state to approve some form of online voter registration system Tuesday after legislation cleared the House with broad bipartisan support. The bill is strongly supported by local supervisors of elections, including those in Sarasota and Manatee counties. It tasks the state Division of Elections with developing a secure website for processing new voter registrations and updates to existing voter records. The legislation passed the Senate 34-3 on Monday but must go back for another vote after House Republicans added additional security measures to the proposal Tuesday.

Illinois: Group starts new bid to put redistricting on 2016 ballot | Associated Press

A coalition of business, clergy and civic leaders has launched a petition drive and fundraising efforts for a 2016 ballot question aimed at changing how Illinois draws political boundaries, an initiative group officials said Tuesday builds on a previous failed attempt. Independent Maps, which wants to take the mapmaking process out of the hands of politicians and give it to an independent commission, said the state’s once-a-decade process of redistricting is too political. The group bills itself as nonpartisan and board members include former Tribune Co. CEO Dennis FitzSimons, former White House chief of staff Bill Daley, the Rev. Byron Brazier of Chicago’s Apostolic Church of God and former Playboy Enterprises CEO Christie Hefner.

Kentucky: Appeals court: electioneering law unconstitutional | Cincinnati.com

A federal appeals court agreed with a lower court’s ruling that Kentucky’s electioneering laws banning campaign signs within 300 feet of a polling place was unconstitutional. The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld the last year’s federal district court’s ruling. The case was sparked by a Northern Kentucky business that displayed election signs on private property near a polling place. U.S. District Court Judge William Bertelsman in an October 2014 ruling found Kentucky’s electioneering sign law too broad. The law banned signs on public and private property within 300 feet of polling location. Kentucky’s attorney general and secretary of state appealed the ruling.

Missouri: Pleadings due today in Clay Chastain’s legal attempt to get Sly James off Jackson County ballot | The Pitch

A Jackson County Circuit Court judge has told Clay Chastain, April’s distant third-place finisher in the Kansas City mayoral primary, and attorneys for incumbent Sly James to file arguments to the court by the end of the day Tuesday about whether James should be disqualified as a candidate. Tuesday’s deadline is the first major step in Chastain’s bid to remove James from the ballot. Jackson County Judge Joel Fahenstock indicated on Monday that she might hold a hearing on Friday afternoon.

Texas: State Asks Appeals Court to Uphold Voter Photo ID Law | Associated Press

Supporters and opponents of a Texas law requiring specific forms of photo identification for voters faced close questioning in a federal appeals court Tuesday on whether the law was meant to discriminate against minorities and whether there are ways to remedy it. The U.S. Justice Department and others oppose the law as an unconstitutional burden on minority voters. The state of Texas says the law was aimed at preventing fraud. The state is appealing a federal district judge’s ruling last October that struck down the law. Judge Catharina Haynes, one of three judges hearing the Texas case at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, suggested in questioning that the matter should perhaps be sent back to the district court for further consideration. She noted that the Texas Legislature currently has several bills that that could broaden the number and types of ID voters could use to cast ballots.

Texas: Federal Appeals Court to Scrutinize Voter ID Law | The Texas Tribune

Texas’ voter ID law faces a fresh round of legal scrutiny in New Orleans on Tuesday, the next step in a long-winding case that may be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court. Three judges on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments from Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller and lawyers for the plaintiffs, including minority groups and the U.S. Department of Justice. The case asks whether Texas intentionally discriminated against Hispanics and African-Americans when it passed what are widely considered the nation’s strictest rules for the identification voters must present at the polls. The dispute stands out in the national debate over recently tightened identification requirements in many Republican-controlled states, and could factor into whether Texas might – once again – need federal approval to enact new election laws.

Virginia: Henrico to spend $1.2 million to replace outdated voting equipment | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Henrico County has agreed to pay $1.2 million to buy new voting equipment after state authorities decided hundreds of machines the county already owns are no longer fit for use. Registrar Mark J. Coakley announced the purchase to the county’s Board of Supervisors at its Tuesday meeting. The State Board of Elections voted earlier this month to disallow the use of WinVote touch-screen voting machines due to security concerns. Henrico owned about 800 of the machines and only a handful of others. The county will replace the touch-screen machines with optical scan devices. To use the new machines, voters will fill out paper ballots, then feed them into the machines.

India: E-voting for Non-Resident Indians too risky, say Rajya Sabha members | The Times of India

Cutting across party lines, members of Rajya Sabha on Tuesday supported the calling attention notice by Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad about the risks involved in giving voting rights to Non-Resident Indians through proxy voting or e-postal ballots. The members also pointed out that government needs to do something about millions of migrant workers who are denied voting rights within the country. Bhupendra Singh, BJP member from Odisha, and NDA leaders like Anil Desai of Shiv Sena and Naresh Gujral of Akali Dal said wider consultation is needed for the proposal of e-ballot for NRIs as it may not be very secure and advised the government not to rush into amending the Representation of People’s Act. They said supremacy of Parliament in framing laws should not be usurped by the Supreme Court.

Philippines: Comelec decides against testing electronic voting system in 2016 | Philippine Daily Inquirer

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will no longer push through with a plan to pilot-test the touch screen technology during the 2016 elections. In a memorandum, the Comelec said it would not be pilot-testing the direct recording electronic (DRE) voting system, as this would just present an “unnecessary hurdle” in the preparations for the May 2016 presidential polls. “The value of pilot-testing the DRE technology and its potential to further revolutionize Philippine elections are undeniable. However, present circumstances sway the undersigned that pilot-testing the use of DRE voting machines in Pateros is an unnecessary hurdle to the already daunting task of conducting the 2016 polls,” said the memorandum signed by acting Comelec Chair Christian Robert Lim.

Togo: President re-elected with 58.75% of vote: official | AFP

Togo’s President Faure Gnassingbe has won a third term with 58.75 percent of the vote in Saturday’s polls, the electoral commission said, with his main rival Jean-Pierre Fabre taking 34.95 percent. “The national electoral commission states that Faure Essozimna Gnassingbe has been elected based on provisional results which are subject to confirmation by the Constitutional Court,” the commission’s head Taffa Tabiou said late Tuesday. Outside the headquarters of the ruling party, about 50 of his supporters danced to campaign songs late at night shortly after the results were announced.

National: Sen. Grassley: No Need To Fix Voting Rights Act Since ‘More Minorities Are Already Voting’ | Huffington Post

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said Monday he doesn’t expect to bring up legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act, because lots of minority people are already voting. During an event at the National Press Club, Grassley was asked about the committee considering a bill that would fix the landmark 1965 law. The Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the law in 2013, ruling that it needed to be updated. The section determined which states and localities with a history of suppressing minority voters had to get permission from the Justice Department to change their voting laws. The justices instructed Congress to come up with a new formula for designating which regions of the country warrant special scrutiny. Grassley dismissed the idea that there’s a need to act.

National: Federal Election Commission Deadlock Could Open Door To More Foreign Money In Local Ballot Initiatives | HNGN

“Imagine, for example, a foreign billionaire who was dissatisfied with U.S. Immigration policy and decided to try to change it more his own liking, one statewide ballot measure at a time,” wrote Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub. “The ballot measure is the mechanism design to most directly express the will of the American people regarding the laws that govern us. I think most Americans would be disturbed by the notion that a wealthy foreigner could freely spend to rewrite our laws.” In reaching a 3-3 deadlock, the Federal Election Commission decided to not investigate allegations that an international pornography and advertising firm made $327,000 in donations to a campaign to defeat a ballot initiative in Los Angeles County, a move that some worry could open the door to more foreign money in state elections.

Editorials: How Record Spending Will Affect 2016 Election | Albert R. Hunt/Bloomberg View

The role of money and politics in the 2016 presidential election is a conundrum. Humongous sums will be spent; the effect on the outcome could be minimal, but in time the flood of cash may produce Watergate-level money scandals. Spending by candidates, parties and outside groups and individuals may approach $10 billion. Both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, if they receive their parties’ nominations, each could spend more than $2 billion, about twice as much as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each forked out in 2012. With several Supreme Court decisions lifting restrictions — on the misguided premise that money doesn’t buy political influence — the way is open for an orgy of spending by well-heeled interest groups and super rich individuals on both political sides. Even beneficiaries, including Clinton and several top Republican aspirants, say the system is rotten.

Arizona: Federal court upholds election law | Arizona Daily Star

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a 2011 Arizona law designed by Republicans to slow the tide of people not registering with their party. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged that the statute says voter registration forms can specifically list the names of only the two parties with the highest number of members, and list them in the order of most adherents. That means the Republicans and Democrats. And anyone who wants to register as a Libertarian or otherwise has to fill in that party’s name on a line that’s less than an inch long. But Judge Wallace Tashima, writing for the three-judge panel, said that differentiation was not enough of a burden on minor parties — or those who want to sign up for them — to make it illegal.

Florida: Senate approves bill to create an online voter registration | Tampa Bay Times

The Florida Senate on Monday overwhelmingly passed a bill that requires the state to create an online voter registration application by 2017. The 34 to 3 vote sends the bill to the House, where passage is also expected, despite strong opposition from Gov. Rick Scott’s chief elections official, Secretary of State Ken Detzner. To underscore bipartisan support for online voter registration, the Senate’s Republican leadership left a Democratic senator as the bill’s sponsor. The bill (SB 228) is sponsored by Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth. Three Republican senators voted no.

Georgia: Think Congress has a gerrymandering problem? It has nothing on Georgia | The Washington Post

Want to know how badly gerrymandered American politics is? Take a look at the Georgia general assembly. There are 236 seats in both the state House and the state Senate. Precisely three of those 236 seats are held by people who aren’t in the same party as the presidential candidate who won the district in 2012. The lone exceptions are the in state House, where three non-Democrats represent districts that President Obama won. Republican state Reps. Gerald E. Greene and Joyce Chandler and independent state Rep. Rusty Kidd are the exceptions. Kidd’s district went for Obama by a hair, while Chandler’s went for him by two percentage points, according to data shared with The Fix by the election reform group FairVote.

Ohio: Legislature considers enacting automatic voter registration | Ohio Capital Blog

Residents would be registered to vote automatically when seeking driver’s licenses or interacting with other state agencies, under legislation planned in the Ohio House and Senate. The bills also would allow online voter registration and automatically register graduating high school students. The proposed law changes will be offered by Rep. Kathleen Clyde (D-Kent) and Sen. Kenny Yuko (D-Cleveland), who said in released statements April 24 that the legislation would add more than a million Ohioans to the state’s voter rolls. “It’s 2015 and with all the technology we have at our disposal, there is no good reason not to modernize our voter registration system,” Clyde said. “We can easily make a list of all eligible voters in our state.

Texas: Right to vote at stake in Texas voter ID appeal | MSNBC

By any measure, Mario Rubio went to great lengths to vote last fall. Though he was in a rehab center after developing an infection during surgery, Rubio, a 60-year-old resident of Austin, Texas, asked the facility’s director whether a trip to the polls could be arranged. But he had given his wallet with his driver’s license to his brother for safe-keeping when he went to the rehab center, meaning he didn’t have an acceptable photo identification under the state’s strict voter ID law. As a result, after waiting in a van for over an hour and a half, Rubio was forced to cast a provisional ballot, even though he had plenty of other identification. A day later, Rubio was transferred to a different facility. But the papers he’d been given telling him where to send a copy of his ID in order to make his provisional ballot count weren’t transferred with him. That left him unable to validate his provisional ballot within the 6-day time frame provided by the law. Rubio later got a letter telling him his vote was thrown out.

Editorials: Will the Courts Finally Block Texas’ Worst-in-the-Nation Voter-ID Law? | Ari Berman/The Nation

The 2014 election in Texas illuminated the burdens of voter-ID laws. Because of the law—the strictest in the country—many longtime voters were turned away from the polls and unable to vote. The Texas voter ID law is once again before a court on Tuesday, when the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will consider whether to uphold a lower-court decision striking down the law as an “unconstitutional poll tax.” The debate over voter ID in Texas is like a bad movie that never ends. A federal district court first blocked the law in 2012, a decision that stood until the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act a year later, freeing states like Texas from having to approve their voting changes with the federal government.

Wisconsin: Legal fight over voter IDs in Wisconsin continues | Associated Press

With two special elections looming next month and one to fill a vacancy in the state Senate coming later this year, opponents of Wisconsin’s new voter identification law want a federal court to expand the number of IDs that voters can show at the polls. The legal fight comes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court last month rejecting a challenge to the law’s constitutionality. The issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union in the challenge to the law, passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Scott Walker in 2011, remain unresolved. Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights project, said Monday that it’s unclear when the legal fight will end.

Italy: Parliament starts possible final push on new electoral law | Europe Online

What could be the final phase of legislative consideration of a controversial new electoral law – the passage of which Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has staked the survival of his government upon – began Monday in Italy‘s lower house of parliament. The so-called Italicum law is designed to put an end to political instability in Italy, a country that has had 63 governments in 69 years of republican history, and last suffered paralysis after a hung parliament result in the general elections of 2013. The new system would guarantee a 55-per-cent majority to election winners, but critics – including a minority of the ruling Democratic Party (PD) – argue this would give too much power to the executive, weakening parliamentary democracy.

Kazakhstan: Nazarbayev apologizes for 97.7 percent re-election victory | Reuters

Kazakhstan’s long-serving President Nursultan Nazarbayev apologized on Monday for winning re-election with 97.7 percent of the vote, saying it would have “looked undemocratic” for him to intervene to make his victory more modest. Sunday’s election gives another five year term to the 74-year-old former steelworker, who has ruled the oil-producing nation since rising to the post of its Soviet-era Communist Party boss in 1989. Central Election Commission data showed turnout was 95.22 percent. Television showed a triumphant Nazarbayev walking on a red carpet, smiling and shaking hands and greeting thousands of jubilant supporters at what officials called “The Victors’ Forum” held in a spacious stadium in the capital Astana. “Kazakhstan has shown its political culture to the entire world,” he told his supporters.

Sudan: President Is Re-elected With 94 Percent of Vote | New York Times

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, the country’s longtime leader, was declared re-elected on Monday, winning 94 percent of the vote in balloting that was boycotted by opposition groups and marred by low turnout and public apathy. Mukhtar al-Asam, head of the Sudanese Elections Committee, said that 46 percent of eligible voters across the country had cast presidential ballots in four days of voting that began April 13, and that the turnout was lowest in the capital, Khartoum, and its surroundings, at just 34 percent. “The elections were useless,” said Mouyaser Hasan, 26, an engineer in Khartoum who said he did not vote.

Sudan: Election Chief Defends April Poll Results | VoA News

The chairman of Sudan’s Independent Electoral Commission has defended the conduct of the country’s April 13 elections, saying the only way to have peace in Sudan is to have a constitutionally-elected government. Mukhtar al-Assam said those who criticized the election want Sudan to be in chaos like South Sudan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Iraq. The commission announced Monday that President Omar al-Bashir had been re-elected to another five-year term after winning more than 94 percent of the vote. Most of the major opposition parties boycotted the election. Assam said the turnout of 46 percent was better than last month’s general election in Nigeria, which was 42 percent.

Voting Blogs: Wait … What? Agency Advising California Governor on Payments to Counties Proposes Moving to VBM to Save Money | Election Academy

The State of California, like some other states, has an “unfunded mandate” law that requires the state to make money available for new legislation that imposes costs on counties. In practice, those mandates can be “suspended” for budgetary reasons, leaving localities holding the bag on costs. This practice has been particularly difficult for California’s election officials, who are owed more than $100 million collectively for a variety of suspended mandates – the most significant of which involves permanent absentee balloting and vote by mail. That’s why county officials were pleased to see that last year the Legislature asked the Department of Finance (DoF) to write a report analyzing the election mandates and making recommendations to the governor about how to address them.

Florida: Feds charge ex-congressional chief of staff with secretly funding 2010 ringer candidate | Miami Herald

Federal prosecutors on Friday accused former Miami Democratic Rep. Joe Garcia’s ex-chief of staff of secretly financing a ringer tea-party candidate in 2010 to draw votes away from a Republican rival — an illegal scheme that appeared to inspire a more serious copycat case two years later. Jeffrey Garcia was charged with conspiracy to give a campaign contribution of less than $25,000, a misdemeanor offense. Prosecutors say Garcia, no relation to the former congressman, put up the $10,440 qualifying fee for the shadow candidate, Jose Rolando “Roly” Arrojo, to pose as another challenger to David Rivera. Arrojo was also charged Friday with the same misdemeanor.

Editorials: Registering to vote online isn’t controversial | The Tampa Tribune

Americans have been casting ballots for the better part of 230 years, and even though the trend has been toward broader eligibility and easier access, the suspicion remains widespread that we still haven’t managed to get it right. This is particularly true in Florida, where — despite having revamped, twice, our entire vote-casting and tabulating process — like a shoeless guest of an unlit hotel room, we keep stubbing our toes. It’s not enough that we continue to endure the stigma of the 2000 presidential election. It’s not often, after all, the leadership of the free world pivots on 537 votes and county elections officials are pressed to decipher the mysteries of dimpled punch-cards. No, more recently and in precincts dominated by voters of color, we have to have hours-long lines and lawyers beseeching courts to keep some voting places open longer than others.

Maine: Bill to Repeal Maine’s Clean Elections Law Comes Under Fire | Maine Public Broadcasting

A freshman Republican lawmaker is encountering some significant opposition – some from within his own party – over his proposal to send Maine’s taxpayer-funded campaign law back to the voters for reconsideration. Sen. Eric Brakey of Auburn wants to repeal the law and redirect the millions of tax dollars spent on legislative campaigns toward local education costs. But some critics say Brakey actually has an ulterior motive. With a title like “An Act To Repeal the Maine Clean Election Act and Direct the Savings To Be Used for the State’s Contribution toward the Costs of Education Funding,” you could say that Brakey’s bill appears pretty straightforward at first glance.

Voting Blogs: “War Chests” and Political Spending in Massachusetts: Are Unions and Corporations Similarly Situated? | State of Elections

In March of 2015, two family-owned companies headquartered in Massachusetts filed suit in state court challenging certain provisions of Massachusetts’ campaign finance laws. The provisions in question prohibit corporations and corporate PACs from contributing to candidates or political party committees, but permit labor unions and their PACs to directly contribute up to $15,000 per calendar year to candidates or parties. According to the plaintiffs’ complaint (filed as 1A Auto, Inc. v. Sullivan), this law represents a “lopsided ban” that stifles First Amendment-protected speech and associational rights for corporations. Additionally, the plaintiffs allege that the law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution by granting unions and their PACs a privilege that is forbidden to their corporate counterparts.