Utah: GOP sues over nominating system overhaul | Associated Press

The Utah Republican Party filed a lawsuit Monday against the state’s new rule that allows candidates to bypass the caucus and convention system— a legal challenge to a measure approved by the majority of the state GOP. The measure was a compromise the Republican-dominated legislature reached with Count My Vote, which was gathering signatures for an initiative petition that would have let voters decide to abandon the caucus system. The initiative was backed by several high-profile Republicans including former Gov. Mike Leavitt and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Governor Gary Herbert, a Republican, signed it into law. The law, scheduled to take effect next year, preserves Utah’s caucus-convention system but allows candidates to participate in primary elections as an alternative path if they gather enough signatures. Utah’s current, relatively unique system allows candidates to avoid a primary election if they win their party’s nominations with 60 percent of delegate votes.

Japan: Parties begin to seek votes online | The Japan News

A ban on using the Internet in election campaigns has been lifted ahead of the Dec. 14 lower house election, following the upper house election held in summer last year. Each party is participating in the cybercampaign in their own way to attract the attention of voters. The Liberal Democratic Party has made a dedicated website. Linked with Twitter and Facebook accounts of its candidates, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the website is constantly sharing information from candidates on the campaign trail. On Tuesday, the website presented a photo of the prime minister as he visited the area affected by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake to make a speech supporting another candidate. Komeito has made a website focusing on the party’s most important pledge — introducing a reduced consumption tax rate system for daily necessities and other items when the tax increase to 10 percent is put in place. Their site highlights the importance of the introduction, with an animation and charts. Page views had exceeded 60,000 as of Tuesday, according to the website, which sports the catchphrase “You can understand in one minute.”

Namibia: Electronic Voting Comes to Namibia | Inter Press Service

Presidential polls in Namibia have incumbent prime minister Hage Geigob of the ruling SWAPO party leading with 84 percent of the roughly 10 percent of votes officially released so far but the new electronic polling gizmos are leaving some Namibians skeptical. Some 1.2 million people are expected to cast their votes electronically in the country’s fifth election since independence. It will be the first use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) on the African continent. Voters will select presidential and parliamentary candidates directly on the EVMs – slabs of green and white plastic with the names and images of candidates and their party affiliation – that make a loud beep after each vote. The voting modules will not be connected externally to any sources to prevent tampering, and the commission hopes electronic voting will reduce lines and speed up counting. But according to local media reports, results have been trickling in at a snail’s pace at the election centre in the capital Windhoek, worrying the ruling party.

Sweden: Prime Minister Calls Snap Election After Budget Defeat | Wall Street Journal

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven called the country’s first snap election in decades after a fringe populist party derailed his efforts to gather support for his first budget proposal. The decision, announced Wednesday, marks a rare moment of political drama in a country long known for the stability of its politics and the willingness of opposition lawmakers to work together to find solutions. The election, which is scheduled to be held March 22, would be Sweden’s first snap election since 1958. A decision the day before by the opposition, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats to back an alternative center-right budget plan effectively doomed the Social Democrat prime minister’s budget proposal, leaving him with a spending plan penned by political foes.

Taiwan: Media: Taiwan election ‘no rejection of Beijing’ | BBC

State media warn Taiwan’s resurgent opposition not to see its local election rout of the governing pro-Beijing Kuomintang (KMT) party as a mandate to push for independence. Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou has announced he is stepping down as KMT party chairman in response to the defeat, which was widely seen on the island as a rejection of his party’s push for closer ties with Beijing. An article in the official party paper, the People’s Daily, warns the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to “discard fantasies” about achieving formal independence. “As China’s might and influence expand internationally, it will have more say in the cross-strait ties,” Taiwan analyst Ni Yongjie tells the paper. “It will be difficult for any political forces in Taiwan to resist the peaceful development of the relationship.” China Daily lays the blame for Mr Ma’s defeat squarely on his domestic policies, denying any link to his pro-Beijing stance. But it acknowledges that with fewer than two years left of Mr Ma’s term in office, the KMT’s loss will add “uncertainty” to ties with Beijing, and could create “major difficulties in producing more ground-breaking achievements”.

National: One last try: Senate Dems push campaign finance reform | Politico

Senate Democrats are making one last try to bring their chamber’s campaign finance records into the 21st century, but their effort to attach to it a critical government funding bill will likely require them to make concessions to Republicans to succeed. Unlike House candidates, presidential hopefuls and political action committees, Senate candidates are not required to electronically file their campaign finance reports. The result: Reporters, campaign finance experts and everyone else must manually scroll through Sen. Mary Landrieu’s latest pre-runoff fundraising report, which clocks in at nearly 1,300 pages and is not searchable. So some Senate Democrats are pushing for a bill requiring e-filing to be attached to an expected omnibus government spending bill that would fund the government until next September, according to sources in both parties familiar with the discussions. With Republicans taking the Senate in January, Democrats are hoping for one last opportunity to modernize the campaign finance record-keeping by marrying it with the must-pass omnibus.

Arizona: Giffords’ House seat heads to recount as GOP lead dwindles | CNN

Republicans hoping to secure yet another House victory in their already substantial majority won in the 2014 midterm election are on edge as GOP candidate Martha McSally’s lead over incumbent Rep. Ron Barber has dwindled down to a mere 161 votes, a margin small enough to trigger an automatic recount. This will be the state’s first-ever congressional recount. Emerging from election night, McSally led Barber by a mere 36 votes. But technical difficulties later triggered a recount for early votes in Cochise County — a predominantly Republican area — that gave McSally a slightly greater lead.

Arizona: High court won’t halt 2nd District recount | Associated Press

The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to halt a recount in southern Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District race between Democratic incumbent Ron Barber and Republican challenger Martha McSally. The high court dismissed a special-action lawsuit filed by a group of voters challenging the state’s plan to use the same computer program it used in the regular ballot count. The justices said in a brief order that the voters could continue to try to challenge the recount rules in Superior Court. “I’m really disappointed,” said Tucson attorney Bill Risner, who filed suit on behalf of seven voters in Cochise and Pima counties and isn’t affiliated with either campaign. “Our courts in general, there’s a real hostility to democracy and getting involved in election stuff. This is a simple case, it’s highly important and they’re making a real mistake in terms of their job of not taking this case.” Risner said he was considering whether to start the case over in the lower court.

Editorials: New Florida voting map tough to unravel | Joe Brown/The Tampa Tribune

Recently released documents related to the decennial redistricting process in Florida show that the firm in charge, Data Targeting, made a concerted effort to benefit the state’s Republican Party and keep it all out of the sunshine. One email even made note of the need to converse over the phone instead of by email. I’m not surprised. Back in July, Circuit Judge Terry Lewis ruled that Republican operatives “made a mockery of the Legislature’s proclaimed transparent and open process of redistricting.” The 538 pages of records show that’s exactly what happened. While redistricting always has been a kind of behind-closed-doors process, what was different this time around was Florida’s Fair Districts amendment passed by 63 percent of voters. Not only were the state’s open-government laws violated, the amendment states in part that “congressional districts or districting plans may not be drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party.” The next step is up to the Florida Supreme Court. The groups that filed the original challenge will argue that the revised map approved by Judge Lewis after last summer’s special legislative session doesn’t fix the many violations of the amendment. Oral arguments are set for March 4.

Indiana: Hearing set on ousted politician Charlie White’s appeal | Indianapolis Star

The Indiana Court of Appeals is set to hear oral arguments next week in former Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White’s appeal of his perjury, theft and fraud conviction. The hearing is set for 1 p.m. Dec. 9. White’s appeal came after a Hamilton Superior Court judge denied his request to overturn his 2012 conviction of six Class D felony charges. He filed the request in March 2013, saying that his attorney, former Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi, failed to provide effective counsel. The criminal charges against White stemmed from his residency while he served on the Fishers Town Council. He claimed that he lived at his ex-wife’s home on the east side of Fishers. But prosecutors said he actually lived in a townhouse on the opposite side of town with his then-fiancee. The townhouse was outside his council district, but he continued to take his council salary and vote in the precinct of his former residence.

Maine: Panel’s chairman promises thorough review of contentious Senate race recount | The Portland Press Herald

The Republican chairman of a committee that will pick the winner of a disputed state Senate race in Portland’s northern suburbs said Monday that the panel will thoroughly review 21 ballots from Long Island that showed up during the recount of the contest but weren’t recorded on Election Day. Sen. Roger Katz, R-Augusta, also said that the panel expects to hear testimony from the Long Island town clerk, who oversaw the election and signed off on the Election Day count. “Obviously it’s political, but the most important thing to Senate Republicans is that the right person who was duly elected gets seated and we maintain the integrity of this institution,” Katz said. “And we intend to do that.” The 21 ballots are at the center of the contested Senate District 25 race between Republican Cathleen Manchester of Gray and Democrat Cathy Breen of Falmouth. Unofficial results on the night of Nov. 4 showed Breen beating Manchester by 32 votes, 10,930 to 10,898. Manchester challenged the results, and after a recount, Manchester appeared to be the winner by 11 votes, 10,927 to 10,916.

Michigan: Bill to change electoral college vote allocation in Michigan tabled | Detroit Free Press

The opposition to changing how Michigan’s 16 electoral votes are allocated was unanimous during a committee hearing on a bill that would change the state’s winner-take-all system for presidential candidates. But House Elections and Ethics Committee chairwoman, state Rep. Lisa Posthumus Lyons, R-Alto, decided not to take a vote on the controversial issue Tuesday. “This whole process is to bring this issue up for a good discussion. I haven’t decided yet whether we’ll vote or not,” she said. “Our electoral college system in Michigan is broken, and we have to focus on making Michigan matter more in terms of having our presidential candidates give Michigan voters attention on Michigan issues.” The 14 people who testified before the committee were all opposed to the latest proposal, saying Michigan should concentrate on more sensible election reforms that would increase turnout — like allowing for no-reason absentee voting and same day registration, instead of confusing voters even more.

New Jersey: Move toward early voting faces Christie veto | NewsWorks

New Jersey’s Senate has passed a bill requiring each county to open at least three polling places for voters to cast their ballots early days before an election. The measure would expand access and ensure the integrity of the voting system, sponsor Sen. Nia Gill said Monday. “We will avoid the issues that we faced in Sandy of invalid votes, of people voting by fax machine,” said Gill, D-Essex. Republicans voted against the legislation because it’s unnecessary, said Sen. Joe Pennacchio. “We already have early voting. We have absentee voting, and anybody can walk into a county clerk’s office 45 days before the election and actually cast their vote,” he said.

New York: Dispute over election delay derails redistricting settlement | Times Union

County lawmakers scrapped a vote Tuesday to settle a three-year-old voting rights lawsuit after the ruling Democrats failed in a closed-door caucus to muster enough support to withstand County Executive Dan McCoy’s veto and just hours after McCoy sued to stop them. The chief sticking point was a provision that would have delayed next year’s legislative elections until 2016 ostensibly to accommodate redrawing the county’s political map to include a fifth district in which minority voters are a majority. A coalition of minority residents sued the county in 2011 alleging the redistricting plan violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting minority voting power. But McCoy, a Democrat also up for re-election next year, said he saw no justification for stalling the races when the new district has already essentially been drawn and ballot petitioning won’t begin for seven months.

North Carolina: Redrawn political lines create sparse choice for voters | Citizen-Times

In the ideal view of American government, voters choose the leaders who will guide their states and country. But some say the way U.S. House and state legislative districts are drawn has turned that idea on its head: Every 10 years, the party in power picks which voters incumbents will face in the next election. Results of this year’s general election have once again fueled concerns about North Carolina’s redistricting process, one in which the state General Assembly draws lines for U.S. House and legislative districts once a decade. Exactly half of all 120 state Houses races in November featured only one candidate. In the Senate, 19 of 50 races had just the one candidate. Only 30-40 of the remaining seats in the two chambers were truly “in play,” meaning either candidate had a realistic chance of winning, according to state political experts.

Oregon: GMO labeling ballot recount begins | Associated Press

Oregon election officials began tallying 1.5 million ballots by hand Tuesday, kicking off an automatic recount of a ballot measure that would require labels on genetically modified foods. Workers have until Dec. 12 to finish the recount, though some of the smaller counties expect to wrap up quickly. The first tally showed Measure 92 was defeated by less than a tenth of a percentage point — 812 votes — following the most expensive campaign in state history. Advocates on both sides of the issue spent nearly $30 million combined. The recount is conducted by four-person “counting boards” appointed by the county clerk. The counters must be registered Oregon voters, and no two of them can be members of the same political party. One voter for and one against are allowed to observe.

Wyoming: Lawmakers Propose Changing Voting Location Requirements | KCWY

The intent is to save time, effort, and money as well as make it easier for people to vote. For example Natrona county has 46 polling places this bill could narrow it down to 3. Secretary of State- Elect Ed Murray says he supports the concept, but others are skeptical. “Three polling places isn’t very many for our geographic area and the problem is even worse in the larger counties like Carbon and Fremont,” said Republican State Senator Charles Scott. Senator Scott says Natrona county is equal in size to Connecticut, in which three doesn’t sound like enough to accommodate voters in Natrona county. County Clerk Renea Vitto says at first it may increase voter turnout.

India: Election Commission to check bogus voting, link Aadhaar with electoral rolls | Hindustan Times

To check bogus voting, the Election Commission (EC) on Friday decided to use a person’s 12-digit biometric-based Aadhaar number while updating electoral rolls across India. “We have held discussions with the unique identification authority on leveraging Aadhaar database to check bogus voting,” an EC functionary said. The process in Delhi is likely to start after the Delhi assembly elections. Once Aadhaar numbers are linked to electoral rolls, the EC will have biometric reading machines at polling booths for online authentication of voters before they are allowed to vote. The machines will be connected to the Aadhaar database for biometric authentication. The government has already decided to enrol all eligible persons above the age of five for Aadhaar by March 2015. This would mean that every voter by then will have an Aadhaar number and the EC will demand the number while updating the electoral rolls.

India: Impressive Turnout in Jammu and Kashmir as Voters Defy Boycott Call | The New Indian Express

People braved a separatist boycott call and inclement weather to cast their ballots in the second phase of Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections Tuesday. The army foiled an infiltration bid on the Line of Control (LoC) in Kupwara district Tuesday morning, on a day when voters of this border district were queueing up at polling booths. An official said a group of five to eight heavily armed guerrillas made an infiltration bid in Nowgam area of the LoC. Three militants were killed in a gunfight between the security forces and the infiltrators. At Kupwara town, barely 40 km from the site of the gunfight, voters stood in long lines to cast their franchise. People were calm and waited patiently for their turn to vote. Accompanying children played cricket at a polling station, unperturbed by the militant firing.

Israel: Electronic Voting in the Works for Israel | Arutz Sheva

While no date has been set for elections yet, the Central Elections Commission has been preparing for weeks for the possibility that a vote would be held soon – and one of the ideas it has been considering is the implementation of electronic voting, at least to some extent, in the upcoming elections. However, it’s unlikely that electronic voting will be ready in time for snap elections which are likely to take place in the coming months. Speaking on Channel 10 earlier Tuesday, Attorney Orly Ades, head of the Commission, said that officials were “ready for any and every development.” As the political crisis of the past few weeks worsened, she said, the Commission intensified its preparations. Among the tasks the Commission must now take on is the establishment of 18 regional election committees to handle voting issues.

Namibia: Indians defend electronic voting machines | The Namibian

The two Indian experts, who were in the country from Bangalore, Krishna Kumar and Sreenivasa Rao, said any delay in election results, was not because of the machines. “Any election is a long process.Whatever delay there is, has nothing to do with the EVMs,” Kumar said, during an interview with The Namibian at the ECN headquarters on Monday. Opposition parties, including the Workers Revolutionary Party, the Namibian Economic Freedom Fighters and Nudo, blamed the election mishaps on the EVMs, including the delay in the announcement of the Presidential and National Assembly results, which they claimed were being “cooked and manipulated behind closed doors” using the machines. “They are cooking and stirring a pot inside there. EVMs were pre-programmed to give a pre-determined election result in favour of the ruling party (Swapo),” human-rights activist and labour consultant August Maletzky said as he commented on the delay in announcing the results on Monday. But the Indians insist the machines cannot be pre-programmed. “The electronic voting machine is a stand-alone equipment which cannot be connected to an electronic device such as Bluetooth and cannot be manipulated. Once programmed, it cannot be altered,” explains Rao, who is the senior assistant engineer at Bharat. He says the device has been programmed only once during its manufacturing and therefore cannot be re-programmed as some people allege. The experts say back in India, the EVMs have also stirred up debate and received a lot of criticism from opposition parties since they were introduced in the country’s elections in 2000, but said all those disputes have come to naught.

Moldova: Three main pro-Europe parties likely to form coalition government in Moldova | Reuters

Moldova’s three main pro-Europe parties appeared yesterday to be able to form a new coalition government, despite the pro-Moscow Socialist Party taking first place in Sunday’s election. With 87 per cent of the vote counted, according to the election authorities, the three parties – the Liberal Democrats, the Liberals and the Democrats – had a combined vote of 44 per cent – enough to win a majority in the 101-seat parliament. This was in spite of the pro-Russia Socialist Party taking a surprise lead with 21.5 per cent of the vote and the communists, who wish to revise part of a trade deal with the EU, taking third place with 17.8 per cent. The three-party coalition, led by Prime Minister Iurie Leanca’s Liberal Democrats, has piloted one of Europe’s smallest and poorest countries along a course of integration with mainstream Europe since 2009, culminating in the ratification of a landmark association agreement with the EU this year.

Tunisia: Parliament holds first session, as court rejects Marzouki’s election challenge | Middle East Eye

Tunisia’s newly-elected parliament held its first session on Tuesday in capital Tunis. Ali bin Salem, the assembly’s oldest parliamentarian, led the session after a brief opening statement by Mustapha Ben Jaafar, the head of the country’s outgoing Constituent Assembly. “Tunisia has managed to secure a peaceful power transfer in a fluid and civilised manner that will ensure the gradual introduction of democratic traditions,” he told deputies, after singing the national anthem. In the session parliamentarians voted to elect a speaker and two deputies and established a committee to draft the new assembly’s bylaws. … At this stage Nidaa Tounes’ leader Beji Caid Essebsi leads incumbent leftist politician Moncef Marzouki by 39.4 percent to 33.4 percent, or 1.9 million votes against 1.1 million votes. Marzouki contested the legitimacy of the outcome citing “attempts to prevent him from casting his ballot, breaches of regulations on electoral silence, and lack of neutrality along with fraud and forgery.” However, his appeal was thrown out of court on Monday: “The court told [Marzouki’s] campaign orally that the appeal has been rejected,” his campaign director Genidi Taleb told Anadolu Agency (AA). He said that Marzouki’s campaign will meet later to discuss the court decision.

United Kingdom: Bill to restore expat voting rights clears first hurdle in Commons | Telegraph

A Bill to restore voting rights to all British expatriates before next year’s general election was given permission by MPs to move to the next stage of the process today. Although a date was set for the second reading of the Bill, on March 6, it is thought unlikely that it will be successfully passed into law due to the slim window of time before Parliament is dissolved ahead of the general election in May. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, a Conservative MP, raised the matter in the Commons today, urging MPs from all parties to support his efforts to get the current ’15-year rule’ abolished as soon as possible. The rule blocks Britons overseas from voting in UK elections if they have been out of the country for longer than 15 years. In his speech, made under the Ten Minute Rule – a procedure that allows MPs to seek the leave of the house to introduce a Bill – Mr Clifton-Brown said the ban on voting affects an estimated one million of the 5.5 million Britons living overseas.

National: Clamor Rises to Rewrite the U.S. Constitution | New York Times

Rising frustration with Washington and conservative electoral victories across much of the United States are feeding a movement in favor of something America hasn’t done in 227 years: Hold a convention to rewrite the Constitution. Although it’s unlikely to be successful, the effort is more serious than ever before: Already more than two dozen states have called for a convention. There are two ways to change or amend the founding document. The usual method is for an adjustment to win approval from two-thirds of both houses of Congress and then be ratified by three-quarters of the 50 states. There have been 27 amendments adopted this way. The second procedure is separate from Congress. It requires two-thirds of the states, or 34, to call for a convention. The framers thought this might be necessary because Congress wouldn’t be likely to advance any amendments that curtailed its powers. But this recourse has never been used. Two states, California and Vermont, have called for a convention to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that permits huge amounts of unregulated money into federal campaigns. Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist, wants a convention to adopt sweeping changes, including a single six-year presidential term, and concomitant House and Senate terms to create more of a parliamentary system. Petitions to adopt term limits for members of Congress have circulated for years. But much of the current impetus comes from fervent fiscal conservatives. This includes calls for an amendment requiring a balanced budget and other restraints on the federal government’s spending and taxation powers.

California: Mullin introduces bill to reform California’s ‘flawed’ recount laws | San Jose Mercury News

Assemblyman Kevin Mullin introduced legislation Monday to overhaul California’s system for recounting votes in tightly contested statewide elections, claiming the June primary in the state controller’s race highlighted flaws in the current format. The bill would require the state to pay for a full recount in any election involving a statewide office or ballot measure when the margin of victory is one tenth of 1 percent or less. The law presently allows candidates to recount the tallies of individual counties as long as their campaigns foot the bill. Mullin, D-South San Francisco, introduced similar legislation this summer, but the bill stalled. The new bill, AB 44, would also call for automatic recounts in presidential elections.

Florida: Democrats want to change an election law they created to help them win again | The Washington Post

In 1960, when Richard Nixon carried Florida’s 10 electoral votes, an unknown Republican gubernatorial candidate named George Petersen won just over 40 percent of the vote against Democrat Farris Bryant. Democrats who controlled the state legislature were worried that holding their gubernatorial elections in presidential years, when more Republican voters showed up at the polls, threatened their solid grip on state politics. So a group of rural segregationist Democrats called a special statewide election to change the year in which Florida elected its governors. Voters approved the change, shifting gubernatorial elections to midterm years, rather than presidential years. Fast forward half a century, and the political calculus has changed: Now it’s Democratic voters who are more likely to turn up in a presidential year. Democrats have won Florida’s electoral votes in three of the last six presidential elections, but they find themselves in the midst of an historic gubernatorial losing streak.

Maine: If election rules followed, tampering with ballots is difficult | The Portland Press Herald

The discovery of 21 previously uncounted ballots from Long Island and their impact on the Senate District 25 race has conjured up images of nefarious political operatives covertly stuffing ballot boxes to tilt the election. That scenario would require a serious breach of Maine election law, which specifies an elaborate and detailed set of procedures to secure ballots – especially those subject to a recount – according to state election officials. If those procedures were followed, someone would have had to obtain a single key to reopen a locked metal box of ballots without disturbing an official seal to add the 21 ballots to the 171 ballots that were tabulated on Election Day. The 21 ballots were not discovered until a Nov. 18 recount in the race between Republican Cathy Manchester of Gray and Democrat Cathy Breen of Falmouth. The ballots were not formally challenged by Democrats during the recount, but they are now at the center of a mystery over why they weren’t counted when the polls closed on the night of Nov. 4, or how they ended up in a box that at several points was in the custody of Maine State Police.

Voting Blogs: Vote-Flipping in Maryland: The Consequence of Voting with Dinosaurs | State of Elections

The gubernatorial race in Maryland, the notoriously blue state, was tighter than anticipated. Larry Hogan, the Republican nominee, narrowly beat out the Democratic candidate, Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown. Now that the dust is beginning to settle from the shocking upset, a new issue is creeping into the forefront: faulty voting machines. Although complaints of faulty voting machines during election time are hardly new, the prospect is always a little unsettling. In Maryland, the problems began cropping up during the early voting period. Many believe the problem was due to some voting machines’ calibrations. The selected choice and the visual on the screen seemed to be out of sync. Before the end of the early voting period, the Maryland Republican Party had received complaints from over 50 voters across Maryland who said the voting machine flipped their Republican vote to the Democratic candidate. On all of the Maryland ballots, the Democrat candidate for governor, Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, was listed above the Republican candidate, Larry Hogan. Under Maryland election law §9-210(j)(2)(i), the majority party candidate is always listed first on the ballot followed by the candidate of the principal minority party. Joe Cluster, the director of the state Republican Party, indicated in the Baltimore Sun, that the flipping reports were primarily affecting Republican voters because of the display of the candidates on the ballot.

New Jersey: Senate votes to expand early voting | NorthJersey.com

Less than six weeks after a report found New Jersey’s election system after Superstorm Sandy was chaotic and left voters vulnerable to hackers, the state Senate passed a measure to allow early voting. The legislation is seen by proponents as a more effective solution to voting in emergencies while getting in line with most other states. Rutgers University School of Law found that in the 2012 election, one week after Sandy knocked out power to power to 2.4 million homes and businesses in New Jersey, a directive to allow voting by fax and email “increased the chaos clerks experienced trying to run the election.” The report also noted that New Jersey law does not allow for Internet voting.