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Wisconsin’s attorney general asked a federal appeals court to revive the state’s suspended voter identification law in time for the November elections. The law, which requires would-be voters to present a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot, was blocked in an April ruling by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman in Milwaukee. He concluded after a trial that the measure illegally makes it more difficult for minority voters to cast ballots. Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, in his request filed today with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, cited two rulings handed down by the Wisconsin Supreme Court last week, upholding the measure enacted by Republican Governor Scott Walker in 2011.

Afghanistan: Snags pile up at Afghan poll audit | The Peninsula

Afghanistan’s election audit needs to be fast and decisive to avert the threat of spiralling instability as US troops pull out, but attempts to speed up the process are bogged down in squabbles and confusion. Election officials are sorting through more than eight million votes in front of domestic observers, international monitors and representatives from the two presidential candidates. Every individual vote is physically examined and, if either campaign team complains, it is put to one side for further assessment. In a sweltering warehouse in Kabul on Monday, a UN official peered at a row of disputed ballot papers from the eastern province of Paktika — a hotbed of alleged fraud on polling day more than seven weeks ago. Both campaign teams had alleged that some papers showed suspiciously similar tick marks for their opponent, leading to a noisy four-hour dispute over one single ballot box. “We have a pattern here,” the adjudicating UN official said, pointing at some ticks. “But it is only three in a row, so it is ok. Now let’s look at the other side’s complaints.”

Indonesia: Court Hears Prabowo Subianto’s Challenge to Indonesia Election Results | Wall Street Journal

Indonesia’s Constitutional Court began hearing a legal challenge Wednesday lodged by presidential contender Prabowo Subianto to overturn the results of last month’s election, won by Jakarta Gov. Joko Widodo. The former army general lost the tightly contested two-man race by 8.4 million votes, the country’s election commission said July 22, in an official count two weeks after more than 133 million ballots were cast. Mr. Widodo accumulated 53.15% of the votes, a gap that legal and political experts have said is all but unbridgeable in Mr. Subianto’s attempt to challenge the results on the basis of what he has said is wide-scale fraud and irregularities. Chief among Mr. Subianto’s claims is the contention that ballots exceeded the number of eligible voters at more than 50,000 of the sprawling country’s 479,000 polling stations.

Turkey: Presidential candidate queries ballots | Associated Press

Turkey’s main opposition candidate in the upcoming presidential election questioned on Tuesday why electoral authorities are printing millions of extra ballots. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said international observers had noted that about 18 million additional ballot papers were being printed for the vote, the first round of which is on Aug. 10. If no candidate wins an absolute majority, a runoff will be held on Aug. 24. “Of course some of the ballot papers may come to harm. They could be destroyed by rain, floods and mud,” Ihsanoglu said. “But what does it mean to print 18 million extra? Who will use these ballots? How will they not go into the wrong hands? This is what we are asking. Who is responsible?”

Editorials: Reflecting on the voting Rights Act of 1965 | Alcee Hastings/Sun Sentinel

Half a century ago, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought an end to the era of Jim Crow by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. One year later, the landmark legislation was strengthened and expanded when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law on Aug. 6, 1965. The Voting Rights Act prohibited discrimination in voting and, together with the Civil Rights Act, enshrines the principles upon which our nation was founded. These laws serve as a testament to all who sacrificed to work toward ending segregation and discrimination. For nearly half a century, the Voting Rights Act has stood as a central pillar in the protection of fair voting practices. Our nation now faces the greatest threat to voting rights since Reconstruction.

Voting Blogs: You Should Talk to Your Kids—As long As You Are Not Engaged in Illegal Coordination | More Soft Money Hard Law

The Times was doing well with the younger set in recent days, hammering home the virtues of legalized access to marijuana, but it has taken a step back. Now it is questioning the right of youth to accept unlimited support from parents and other relatives through family-established or -financed Super PACs. This was one opportunity for the realization of a young person’s dream—unlimited financial support from family which could not be used as leverage to tell the kids what to do. This spending must be independent. It’s the law. This turns out to be an exception from the trend noted just this morning by Robert Samuelson in The Washington Post toward large numbers of young people returning home after college. They can have family support while mapping out their careers. Should their career interest turn to politics, however, family options dwindle. Neither the mother nor the father, not the sister nor the brother, and certainly none of the relatives outside the immediate family circle, can contribute more than $2,600 per election. Unless the family sets up a Super PAC.

Florida: Legislature plans quick fix for districts | Associated Press

The Republican-controlled Florida Legislature laid out plans Monday to move ahead quickly and make minimal changes to congressional districts declared illegal by a state judge. Florida legislators will hold a nine-day special session starting on Thursday to redraw the state’s 27 congressional districts. Circuit Judge Terry Lewis had given legislators until Aug. 15 to draw up a new map that may be used for a special election later this year. Senate President Don Gaetz said that it was the goal of legislative leaders to “move forward without delay to remedy the boundaries of the two congressional districts” cited by Lewis in his July ruling. Lewis ruled that the districts were drawn to benefit Republicans in violation of the “Fair Districts” standards adopted by voters four years earlier. The two districts are a sprawling district held by U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown that stretches from Jacksonville to Orlando and a central Florida district held by U.S. Rep. Dan Webster. “Because the court held intact 25 of the state’s 27 congressional districts as the Legislature drew them, I believe we can and should meet the court’s requirements with minimal impact on the rest of the state,” Gaetz said in a statement.

Editorials: Time to find a better way on voting | Detroit Free Press

On Election Day, newspapers all over the country write editorials urging readers to get out and vote. We talk about civic duty, the need for citizens to participate in the governing process, and how the right to vote is the bedrock of American democracy. But let’s face it — if you’re reading this editorial, you’re probably already planning to vote. Let’s talk instead about how we get people out to vote — and why what we’re doing isn’t working. Based on previous turnouts, about 1.4 million people statewide could cast ballots in Tuesday’s primary election, about 20% of the state’s more than 7 million registered voters. That’s unsurprising for a primary in a non-presidential year, with a noncompetitive gubernatorial primary (both Republican and Democratic nominees for the office have been chosen for more than a year).

Mississippi: Chris McDaniel Opens Legal Challenge in Mississippi GOP Primary Race | ABC

Mississippi State Sen. Chris McDaniel officially announced the beginning of a legal effort to challenge the results of his primary fight against six-term incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran. The campaign formally filed a challenge with the Mississippi Republican Party’s executive committee, the official first step to mounting a legal challenge. On June 24, Cochran beat McDaniel by more than 7,600 votes and those results were certified unanimously by the party’s executive committee. McDaniel never conceded — instead he almost immediately began accusing his opponent of “stealing” the election because Cochran was able to woo Democrats, specifically African American voters in the Magnolia State, to support him in the run-off. This is legal, but not if the Democrats also voted in their primary three weeks earlier. Since then, McDaniel volunteers have been combing through voter rolls, and in a press conference Monday, McDaniel’s attorney Mitch Tyner said they have found 3,500 cross-over voters, 9,500 votes they believe have irregularities, and 2,275 absentee ballots they also believe were “improperly cast.” Tyner said they believe they have 15,000 votes “cast that should not have been.” “We are not asking for a new election, we are simply asking that the Republican Party actually recognize the person who won the run-off election,” Tyner said.

Voting Blogs: Analysis: McDaniel Likely to Lose #MSSEN Challenge | Election Law Blog

A press conference concluded a few minutes ago by the McDaniel campaign suggests that the campaign found far fewer illegal votes than the approximately 7,600 votes separating him from Sen. Thad Cochran in the MS Republican Senate primary. Instead, it sounds like the campaign has alleged only 3,500 votes cast by voters who also (presumably illegally) voted in the earlier Democratic primary. There are 9,500 other votes said to be “irregular,” and 2,500 allegedly improper absentee ballots. Those numbers alone suggest there will not be enough to get a new election, unless the “irregularities” are serious enough to call the result in question. But that would not be impossible, depending on what the evidence shows. But the reason I expect McDaniel will likely lose is that he is not asking for a new election. Instead, he is asking for a remedy of having him declared the winner. He would apparently rely upon polling to show that Democrats who voted in the primary did not intend to vote for the eventual Republican nominee in the fall. This relies upon a MS code provision saying that only those who will support the nominee in the general election can vote in the primary.

New York: Redistricting amendment language set, critics object | NCPR

The state board of elections approved the language for a ballot amendment that would change the way redistricting is done in New York. But not everyone is happy with the wording or the amendment. The November ballot amendment would permit the Senate and the Assembly to appoint members to what the amendment describes as an “independent” commission to redraw legislative district lines every ten years, as required by the census. The state Board of Elections approved the language for the proposal at their August meeting. Board commissioner Andy Spano says he’s satisfied with the final wording. “We all talked about it,” Spano said. “It made a lot of sense because it defined what was the initial intent of the legislature and the governor.”

US Virgin Islands: Voters embrace new machines | Virgin Islands Daily News

The new approach to casting ballots seemed to be a hit with the territory’s voters during the primary election on Saturday. Voters, many of them for the first time, familiarized themselves with the DS 200, a product of Elections Systems and Software, or ES&S. The machine allows voters to fill in a paper ballot so that there is a lasting record of the vote, but it also has the speed and convenience of an electronic voting machine. “It was just inserting a paper,” said Courtney Reese, a voter at Charlotte Amalie High School poll location. “You didn’t really even interact with the machine. It was like scanning or faxing something.” The V.I. Elections System purchased the 43 machines from Elections Systems & Software for $646,480 in 2013, and since has been organizing public demonstrations of the machines and how they work. The machines have been certified by the Election Assistance Commission, which is not required under federal law but is required under Virgin Islands law.

Wisconsin: Court Ruling Leaves Voter ID Procedure in the Hands of the Wisconsin DMV | WUWM

The Wisconsin Supreme Court stirred some confusion last week, with its Voter ID ruling. It indicates that the DMV must set the standards for obtaining free identification. The high court upheld the state law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. But the court added – that the law cannot require people to spend money, to obtain the necessary documents. The document some justices seemed to have in mind, when considering Wisconsin’s Voter ID law, is birth certificates. They can cost $20 or more, and people may need them in order to obtain government identification to vote. The court apparently thought the Voter ID law would then amount to a poll tax, so it implemented what’s called a ‘saving construction’ to keep the law constitutional. Justices left it up to the Wisconsin Division of Motor Vehicles to decide how to accommodate people who can’t obtain a free birth certificate. That’s where confusion and perhaps long lines, enter the picture, according to UW-Madison Political Scientist Barry Burden.

Editorials: Another blow to campaign finance disclosure in Wisconsin? | Capital Times

There have long been plenty of methods for corporations, special interests and wealthy individuals to pour money into political campaigns without having to publicly disclose their activity, but recent action by Wisconsin regulators suggests even fewer state political groups will be subject to regulation, at least in the near future. Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board, the state agency that monitors elections, recently told a number of electioneering groups — conservative and liberal — that they are welcome to disclose their spending activity and donors, but are not required to. That is a change from previous years in Wisconsin, when, at the very least, groups that expressly advocated for the election or defeat of a candidate have been required to periodically submit financial reports that listed their donors and spending activity. Groups that engaged solely in “issue advocacy,” meaning they did not produce advertising using words such as “vote for” or “vote against,” were not required to disclose. Now, however, the GAB is allowing even groups that engage in a certain amount of express advocacy to forgo disclosure. “We aren’t going to force you to report just because you’re making independent expenditures,” explained Kevin Kennedy, director and general counsel for the GAB.

Australia: Private investigators want a look at the rolls | The Australian

The Australian Institute of Professional Investigators is lobbying MPs involved in a review of last year’s election to push for restrictions on accessing the roll to be overturned. Other groups keen to see access to the roll restored include those separated by forced adoption or child removal or similar practices who are trying to track down their relatives. They have won the backing of Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews, who is calling for change. Security personnel are also lobbying to have access to the roll restored. Investigators institute president Jim Corbett said private investigators had freely used the roll in their work until the most recent changes, but now were not.

Afghanistan: Audit process resumes | BBC

A massive operation to check eight million votes in Afghanistan’s disputed elections has resumed in Kabul. Vote-checking restarted on Sunday after a holiday break without the involvement of one of the candidates, but Abdullah Abdullah later rejoined the process. Mr Abdullah had claimed that “widespread fraud” denied him victory over his rival Ashraf Ghani. The vote will see power transferred from Hamid Karzai, the only president since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Around 23,000 ballot boxes from 34 provinces will be brought to the Independent Election Commission (IEC) headquarters in Kabul. … The boxes have been stored in provincial capitals around Afghanistan since a second round of polling on 14 June.

New Zealand: Working group nixes drive for online voting in 2016 | ZDNet

A working party has recommended online voting trials be conducted in New Zealand local body elections in 2016, but concluded broad availability is “not feasible” for that election round. The working party, established last September, was a a response to calls from the Justice and Electoral Committee of Parliament, some local authorities, Local Government New Zealand and the New Zealand Society of Local Government Managers to conduct a trial of online voting for local authority elections. “We do not think that broad implementation of an online voting option in the 2016 local elections is feasible.” It was asked to consider the options, costs, and security issues involved in online voting and the feasibility of implementing it for New Zealand’s 2016 local elections. The working group decided a broad roll out is not feasible as the 2016 election will be the first real opportunity to conduct a trial of what could be relatively untested technology.

Philippines: Comelec to hold pilot tests on online voting | Inquirer

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has announced its plan to pilot-test a scheme that will allow Filipinos abroad to cast their ballots through the Internet during the 2016 elections. According to Commissioner Lucenito Tagle, chair of the Office for Overseas Voting, the commission was already looking at conducting the pilot test in areas in the Americas, the Middle East, Hong Kong and Singapore. The move was in response to the Senate’s call for the election body to find a technology that will allow overseas absentee voting using the Internet. “We are looking at these areas for pilot testing in 2016 [as] they have the adequate technology, Internet connection and large overseas Filipino concentration, which are needed for pilot-testing,” Tagle told reporters in an interview.

National: Kansas, Arizona Require Proof of Citizenship for Voting | Wall Street Journal

Election rules in Kansas and Arizona are set to bar thousands of people in coming weeks from casting ballots in state primaries even as the federal government allows some of them to vote in congressional races. The split system is the result of a growing battle between federal officials and a handful of states over the necessity of verifying that a newly registered voter is a U.S. citizen. Kansas and Arizona say the federal registration process doesn’t rigorously check citizenship. They have established their own verification systems and are barring people who register using the federal system from voting this month for such offices as governor and local posts. In recent years, mostly Republican-controlled states have tightened voting rules, including requiring voters to produce picture identification at the polls, arguing it prevents fraud. “There is a very real problem with aliens being registered to vote,” said Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who said about a dozen states are likely to pass such measures in coming years. Democrats have countered that there are few examples of fraud at the polls and that such steps suppress the vote of such groups as minorities and women.

Florida: Legislators plan to return for redistricting session on Thursday | Miami Herald

Facing an Aug. 15 deadline, Florida legislative leaders will announce Monday that they will bring lawmakers back for a week-long special session on Thursday, Aug. 7, to revise the congressional redistricting map declared invalid by a judge. Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis on Friday ordered lawmakers to revise their congressional redistricting map to fix two districts he had previously ordered unconstitutional, those held by U.S. Reps. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville and Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden. Lewis gave the Legislature until Aug. 15 to fix the map, an action that requires a special session of the Legislature and an abrupt halt to their summer vacations and primary campaigning. Lewis also said he was considering calling a special election after Nov. 4 for the affected districts and he called for an Aug. 20 hearing to decide how to go forward.

Florida: Judge takes on gerrymandering; sets stage for Supreme Court cases in fall | The Washington Post

About 10 years ago, the justices of the Supreme Court took a good, hard look at the way politicians bend, tweak and manipulate electoral boundaries in order to protect themselves and punish their enemies — and threw in the towel. The Constitution, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for a plurality in Vieth v. Jubelirer , does not provide “a judicially enforceable limit on the political considerations that the states and Congress may take into account when districting.” In other words, politics is politics. It’s the court’s duty to decide what the law is, Scalia said, but sometimes the answer is that it is none of the court’s business. Scalia acknowledged that the Supreme Court had previously ruled otherwise. But “18 years of essentially pointless litigation” had convinced Scalia and others on the court that it was impossible to come up with a test to decide when partisan gerrymandering amounted to a constitutional violation. The political parties have been running through that green light ever since.

Iowa: Democrats tweak 2016 caucus rules | Politico

Iowa Democrats, eager for Hillary Clinton to compete in their state and thus maintain the credibility of their caucuses, unveiled five proposals Friday to increase turnout in 2016. But they did not go nearly as far as some thought they would. After her humiliating third place finish in Iowa in 2008, Clinton noted in her concession speech that “there were a lot of people who couldn’t caucus tonight.” She mentioned troops serving overseas, hospital workers, waitresses and cops on patrol. As she moves toward a likely 2016 presidential campaign, one of the biggest decisions that Clinton must make is how hard to compete in the caucuses that kick off the nominating process. They tend to draw a more ideological, motivated set of base voters. A higher turnout would favor the better-known, better-funded former secretary of State, senator and first lady.

North Carolina: Despite budget squeeze, lawmakers poised to step up anti-voter fraud spending | Facing South

This week, North Carolina state lawmakers put forward a budget plan that calls for tens of millions of dollars in program cuts — sacrifices that Republican leaders say are necessary since the state will be collecting $1.57 billion less in revenues through 2015 due to hefty tax cuts approved last year. But at least one program is getting a boost in the plan proposed by the Senate: a request from the N.C. State Board of Elections, led by Kim Strach, to add three new investigators to tackle alleged voter fraud. While the Senate’s budget eliminates at least 12 positions from the Department of Health and Human Services, the latest budget plan released Thursday [pdf] calls for $201,657 in new funding “for three new positions to investigate fraud in elections, discrepancies in voter registration information, including duplicate registrations, and to pursue prosecution for violations of election law.” According to news reports, Strach had asked for five new investigators to focus on voter fraud. This was addition to the state board’s May 2014 hire of former FBI agent Chuck Stuber, who has been tasked with investigating voter fraud and campaign finance issues.

US Virgin Islands: Court Puts Coffelt, Canegata Back On the Ballot for Governor/Lieutenant Governor | St. Thomas Source

The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals put independent gubernatorial candidate Soraya Diase Coffelt and running mate, Republican John Canegata back on the general election ballot in an order published Friday. In late May, the V.I. Elections Office rejected the nominating petition for lieutenant governor candidate Canegata, saying that as a registered Republican he could not legally run on a nonpartisan ticket with an independent, Coffelt, giving Canegata three days to resubmit. Coffelt and Canegata declined to resubmit, instead challenging the ruling in court. On June 7, Chief Judge for the U.S. District of the Virgin Islands Wilma Lewis issued a temporary restraining order blocking the election system from disqualifying the two running mates.

Editorials: Utah is correct to both be at the front of online voting, and cautiously study security | Deseret News

Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox has convened a committee to study how the Beehive State might proceed with online voting. He has said Internet voting is inevitable, but his office agrees that security is the top concern. That is the correct attitude to assume as this effort proceeds. Security — the idea that a voter’s secret ballot is transmitted and tabulated correctly — must be nailed down and ensured beyond any reasonable doubt before anyone votes directly through the Internet. If voters lose confidence in the integrity of the election system, the notion of government by the people would be imperiled. We have yet to hear of any online effort that has successfully overcome these concerns. Norway, a pioneer in online voting, ended a three-year experiment with it last month, citing a lack of security. A small number of people there succeeded in voting twice by casting both online and paper ballots.

Wisconsin: State court’s voter ID ruling has experts confused | Associated Press

creating confusion and may even open the door to the very type of behavior Republican lawmakers were trying to prevent. Policy makers, attorneys and voter ID experts were struggling Friday with how to interpret a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling from a day earlier, which mandated a change to the law in order to make it constitutional. The court said the state can’t require applicants for state-issued IDs to present government documents that cost money to obtain, such as a copy of a birth certificate. The court left it to the Division of Motor Vehicles to come up with a solution. “We don’t know how that’s going to work,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Thursday shortly after the ruling. When asked whether obtaining photo IDs without having to present government-issued documents verifying a person’s identity could result in fraud, Vos said: “It’s got a potential for it.”

Afghanistan: Election recount stalls again | BBC

A recount of votes in the Afghan election has been suspended again, despite being scheduled to restart on Saturday after the Muslim Eid holiday. The breakdown came despite late night phone talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and candidates Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani. A spokesman for Mr Abdullah said that the UN had not taken his concerns into account. Both candidates accuse each other of electoral fraud. It was Mr Kerry’s intervention last month in three days of talks in Kabul that led to agreement to carry out a full audit of votes. The current dispute is over how to deal with ballot boxes found to contain invalid votes.

Afghanistan: Election crisis deepens with new fraud allegations | Reuters

Afghanistan’s troubled presidential election plunged deeper into crisis on Sunday when one of the main contenders accused a deputy of President Hamid Karzai of orchestrating fraud in favour of his rival. Supporters of Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, released an audio recording they said was Vice President Mohammad Karim Khalili encouraging vote-rigging in favour of Ashraf Ghani, the other contender in the race. Khalili’s and Ghani’s staff dismissed the recording as a fake. Allegations of mass fraud have overshadowed the outcome of the vote, which was meant to be the first democratic transition of power in Afghanistan’s history and came before the withdrawal of international combat troops at the end of this year. The eight million votes cast in the second round of the election, held in June, are currently being audited under U.N. supervision, according to a deal brokered by the United States.

Indonesia: Prabowo still confident ahead of ‘pointless’ Indonesia election appeal | Asian Correspondent

On Wednesday this week a team of 95 lawyers representing defeated presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto will head to Indonesia’s Constitutional Court as part of a last-ditch effort to nullify the results of this year’s election. It is the first hearing of an extremely ambitious legal challenge which aims to discredit at least 4.2 million votes and bring about repeat elections in allegedly fraud-ridden constituencies – an outcome so unrealistic that even Prabowo’s former campaign manager has denounced the appeal as “pointless”. Following on from the bogus quick count extravaganza, which led to Prabowo’s original declaration of victory shortly after voting ended on July 9, the court case is the latest addition to his manifold attempts to manipulate and ultimately steal this year’s presidential contest. But for those readers who have finally succumbed to Indonesian election fatigue, you will be pleased to know that Prabowo’s Constitutional Court appeal is the very last chance for the tormented old general to overturn rival Jokowi’s victory, and it’s almost certainly bound to fail. Not only do the laws of probability suggest that proving 4.2million fraudulent ballots is a lost cause, but Prabowo’s chances of launching a post-results day comeback have been further dashed by his own attorneys’ careless penmanship.

New Zealand: Thousands missing from electoral roll | Stuff.co.nz