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Less than 48 hours after a runoff election to choose the next president of Afghanistan, the first signs of a looming political crisis emerged on Monday, with the campaign of Abdullah Abdullah claiming there had been widespread ballot stuffing and suggesting he was being set up for a defeat he would not accept. A senior campaign official for Mr. Abdullah, who won the most votes in the election’s first round, said the candidate believes President Hamid Karzai and a coterie of advisers around him orchestrated the fraud. The aim, in the estimation of the Abdullah campaign, was either to install Ashraf Ghani, the other candidate for president, or to see Mr. Karzai use a postelection crisis as an excuse to extend his own term in office.

Afghanistan: Abdullah Abdullah Campaign Claims Inflated Turnout in Rival’s Power Base | Wall Street Journal

Indications of vote fraud during Afghanistan’s presidential election Monday threatened to ignite a political crisis and endanger the first democratic transition in the nation’s history. The nation’s election commission had said that more than seven million people voted in Saturday’s runoff—well above the 6.6 million who took part in the election’s first round in April—but that figure has come under scrutiny. Candidate Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, called the turnout claim “uncorroborated,” and on Monday members of Mr. Abdullah’s campaign team said that between one million and two million ballots were fraudulent, stuffed for his rival, former finance minister Ashraf Ghani. Naeem Ayubzada, head of the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan, an independent group that dispatched some 8,000 observers Saturday, also disputed the official figure. He estimated 5 million voters as a more realistic turnout number.

China: Hackers paralyse web voting platform | RTHK

An internet platform for this weekend’s vote on political reform has been paralysed following a large scale attack by hackers. The University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Programme, which is helping Occupy Central organisers to conduct the unofficial referendum, said their servers were bombarded by more than ten-billion system inquiries within 20 hours.

Tunisia: Autumn elections eyed to anchor democracy | Reuters

Tunisia’s election authority has proposed a parliamentary vote on Oct. 26 and the first round of presidential polls a month later, marking the final step towards full democracy in the cradle of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. Tunisia’s often turbulent political transition began after the popular revolt that ousted autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali and inspired revolutions across the region. The North African state has been run of late by aukbig caretaker government that saw through the adoption of a new constitution lauded as a model of democratic evolution in an unstable region.

National: Experts see an elder vote evolution | Herald Tribune

The stereotype of the “greedy geezer” voter, a political bloc of 65-and-older Americans who hate taxes but love their government entitlements, is a figment of the public imagination, according to election data. These older voters do turn out at higher rates — a phenomenon that goes back for only four decades. But election results over time show that older voters’ choices and party affiliations closely mirror those of the rest of the electorate. There’s at least one exception to this pattern, however: Florida retirees, who often sever their community and family ties when they relocate south, and may or may not form new ones after they arrive. Older Americans vote at three times the rate of 18-to-24-year-olds in midterm elections. Even when picking a president, their turnout is about 40 percent higher, said social scientists speaking at Columbia University’s Age Boom Academy, a yearly symposium for journalists who write about generational trends.

National: Population Shifts Turning All Politics National | New York Times

When William E. Davis was growing up here in DeSoto County, just across the state line from Memphis, there were more than 300 dairy farms, and he was raised on one of them. “Now there are zero,” said Mr. Davis, 66, who is known as Sluggo, the chancery court clerk in a county that has been transformed into a booming suburb of over 168,000 residents. About 800 miles to the east, the same kind of sweeping changes have taken hold in the sprawling suburbs around Richmond, Va., where woods and farmland have been turned into gleaming new subdivisions with names meant to evoke the state’s colonial past. In both states, the growth fueled by a migration of newcomers from other parts of the country and even abroad is bringing nationalized politics to races further down the ballot. It was these new arrivals, more than any other voters, who most crucially rejected two influential Republican incumbents — the House majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, and Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi — in primaries this month, upending long-held assumptions about the appeal of traditional levers of power.

Alabama: Shelby County won’t have to pay fees in voting rights case | Montgomery Advertiser

An Alabama county won’t have to pay a $2 million legal bill for winning a case that led the Supreme Court to throw out part of the Voting Rights Act, according to the man who spearheaded the lawsuit. “Shelby County owes nothing,” Edward Blum of the Project on Fair Representation said in an email. Blum, whose legal defense fund partnered with Shelby County to challenge portions of the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional, said he has raised money from private donors to pay part of the legal costs. If he doesn’t raise more, the Wiley Rein law firm in Washington, which handled the case for the Project on Fair Representation, will absorb the costs, Blum said. Wiley Rein also is working to convince a federal court that the Justice Department, which lost the Supreme Court case, should have to pay the fees. A federal judge ruled that the Justice Department doesn’t have to pay, but the firm has appealed that ruling.

Arizona: Scott Fistler, “Cesar Chavez”: Arizona congressional race devolves into war over Hispanic surnames. | Slate

On Aug. 26, Democratic voters in Arizona will choose a successor to 7th Congressional District Rep. Ed Pastor. It’s a safe, blue seat, covering the most liberal parts of Phoenix and Glendale. And it’s heavily Hispanic. That’s what led a Republican trickster named Scott Fistler to pay $319 to legally change his name, to “Cesar Chavez,” and attempt to get on the ballot. It was difficult to overstate the chintziness of the move. On his website (now offline), Fistler posted pictures of mobs of people marching in “Chavez” shirts—he took them from rallies for the late Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez. When I was in Phoenix last week, it was widely understood that Fistler would face challenges to his ballot petitions. In interviews, he’s responded to the challenges by saying “the Cesar Chavez train is smoking and it’s not going to stop until the election” and “my campaign is too legit to quit.” So we’re not talking about a serious person. Here’s where the story veers into pure derp. Ready? OK.

Editorials: The dirty secret of vote counting | Paul Mitchell/The Sacramento Bee

If there’s one thing elections officials pray for, it’s wide margins on Election Day. A clear and convincing election result allows final tallies to be announced. Winners receive congratulations, losers give concession speeches and everyone else returns to work. But that’s not what’s happening this year. In the state controller’s race, we find an incredibly close result that has changed leads repeatedly throughout the counting period. Republican Ashley Swearengin is solidly in first place, nearly guaranteed a spot in the runoff. But the vote differential between second and fourth is a mere four-tenths of a percent, with hundreds of thousands of votes to count. This easily could go to a recount if the margins remain this narrow.

Delaware: House passes bill to consolidate election boards | Delaware Newszap

The House of Representatives passed an elections reform bill Thursday that will consolidate the state’s three county election boards into one state panel. Republican legislators grilled the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Earl Jaques, D-Glasgow, and state elections commissioner Elaine Manlove on the details of House Bill 302. The bill was crafted to mirror the Election Law Task Force’s review of election protocol. It creates an 11-member state elections board and eliminates election boards in Kent, Sussex and New Castle counties. County elections offices would still be in place, but under the new proposal, directors would report to the state board to ensure all offices were communicating.

Florida: Voting-rights groups blast Legislature for secrecy, favoritism in drawing congressional districts | Florida Times-Union

A state judge has the power to decide that Florida’s congressional districts were illegally drawn to favor Republicans — and he should do just that, a coalition of voting-rights organizations argues in written closing arguments. In arguing that the districts violate a voter-approved Constitutional amendment specifically prohibiting such political favoritism, the plaintiffs fired a volley of salvos following 12 days of testimony in a landmark trial. “The 2012 congressional plan is exactly what one would expect from a legislature that fought the Fair Districts amendments at every hedgerow, involved partisan operatives in its decision-making, and made key decisions outside of the public eye,” the plaintiffs wrote to Circuit Judge Terry Lewis.

Illinois: Term limits, redistricting will take center stage this week | News-Gazette

This is going to be a big week in the ongoing death struggle for political power in Illinois. Even as a ballot dispute over a proposed constitutional amendment on legislative redistricting continues in Springfield, House Speaker Michael Madigan’s lawyers are going to court in Chicago to kill two proposals that could eventually bring the state’s professional political class to its knees. One proposed constitutional amendment would set eight-year term limits on legislators while the other would strip them of their authority to draw boundary lines for their own House and Senate districts, transferring that authority to a bipartisan citizens’ group. Oral arguments on Madigan’s legal challenges will be heard Wednesday by Cook County Circuit Judge Mary Mikva, the daughter of former congressman and federal appeals court judge Abner Mikva.

Kansas: Hundreds of Douglas County voters still in limbo as primary election nears | Lawrence Journal-World

Douglas County election officials are reaching out to more than 600 would-be voters whose registrations are being held “in suspense” because they have not yet provided necessary documents to prove they are U.S. citizens. County Clerk Jamie Shew said Thursday that those voters have until Aug. 4 to provide those documents if they want to vote in the Aug. 5 primary elections for federal, state and local offices. But a small number of them – four, to be exact – may be eligible to vote in the federal primaries for U.S. House and Senate, although they will not be able to vote in state and local races. “There has been some confusion about that,” Shew said Thursday. “Some people think they can show their proof of citizenship at the polls. But they have to file it with us before Election Day to be eligible.”

Editorials: Restructuring Maine elections has key support | Douglas Rooks/Sun Journal

Now that the primary elections are behind us, the debate returns to what was always the main subject – the race for governor. The battle between incumbent Paul LePage and challenger Mike Michaud, with Eliot Cutler again in the mix, has an epochal quality to it. Whatever happens, it won’t be one of those elections where you wonder how much difference it would have made had the other guy won. So it’s time to dust off the modest proposal I raised back in March – whether we could create a grand bargain to reform what are some of the oddest and least useful parts of Maine’s political system. Those would be legislative term limits – unnecessary in a citizen legislature whose powers are already limited – and the indirect election of the attorney general, secretary of state, and treasurer, something practiced by no other state, and not in federal elections, either, since the 17th Amendment provided for direct election of U.S. senators a century ago.

South Dakota: State, counties find bumps, success in voter registration system | Argus Leader

The TotalVote comprehensive voter database got its first statewide test in the primary election June 3. Whether it succeeded depends on whom you talk to. While reported problems seem roughly proportional to the size of the counties using it, Minnehaha County Commissioners heard enough tales of voters being directed to the wrong precincts in the low-turnout primary to spark concern about how TotalVote will perform in the November general election, when turnout is expected to be much higher. Getting the election right is a sobering responsibility for public officials. The effect, for them, of heading toward the general election with potentially unresolved TotalVote issues might be summer dreams haunted by apocalyptic visions along the lines of Supreme Court justices peering owlishly at hanging chads and banana republic dictators winning elections by margins greater than 100 percent.

Afghanistan: Voters brave Taliban threats to choose new leader in presidential runoff | Associated Press

Afghans braved threats of violence and searing heat Saturday to vote in a presidential runoff that likely will mark the country’s first peaceful transfer of authority, an important step toward democracy as foreign combat troops leave. The new leader will be challenged with trying to improve ties with the West and combatting corruption while facing a powerful Taliban insurgency and declining international aid. Despite a series of rocket barrages and other scattered attacks that Interior Minister Mohammad Umar Daudzai said killed 46 people, the voting was largely peaceful. Independent Election Commission Chairman Ahmad Yousuf Nouristani said initial estimates show that more than 7 million Afghans voted, which would be equivalent to the first round on April 5. That would be a turnout of about 60 percent of Afghanistan’s 12 million eligible voters. Abdullah Abdullah, who emerged as the front-runner with 45 percent of the vote in the first round, faced Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, an ex-World Bank official and finance minister. Neither garnered the majority needed to win outright, but previous candidates and their supporters have since offered endorsements to each, making the final outcome unpredictable.

Editorials: The Next Afghan President | Wall Street Journal

Some 60% of Afghan voters went to the polls Saturday for the second round of presidential elections. Former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani was in a tight race with former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, and it will be weeks before we know the final outcome. But the fact that both men are pro-Western moderates should put to rest the notion that the Afghan people and their leaders are not ready for democracy. The election marks an improvement over the 2009 ballot that re-elected Hamid Karzai, which was marred by low voter turnout and credible allegations of widespread fraud. The turnaround is a testament to the success of the U.S. surge in routing the Taliban from their old strongholds, and of the ability of Afghan security forces—army and police—to maintain security at thousands of polling places.

Colombia: Santos predicts ‘beginning of a new Colombia’ after victory | Miami Herald

Colombians decided Sunday to give President Juan Manuel Santos four more years to clench his signature project — a peace deal with the nation’s guerrillas that might end a half century of civil conflict. With 99 percent of the vote counted, Santos had won 51 percent versus 45 percent for former Finance Minister Oscar Iván Zuluaga. Months of whiplash polls and bitter recriminations boiled down to a difference of about 900,000 ballots in a race that was largely seen as a referendum on ongoing peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Havana. After he plowed through a crowd of supporters and white-clad children waving cutouts of doves, Santos said he was determined to clench a peace deal.

Indonesia: Presidential election hit by ‘black campaign’ | World Bulletin

One month before the world’s largest Muslim democracy, chooses a new president, pollsters say an Indonesian tabloid’s “black campaign” is evidence of a concerted effort to discredit the leading candidate. Independent pollster Politicawave has found that Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and running mate Jusuf Kalla had been the subject of 94.9 percent of slander, while rivals Prabowo Subianto and Hatta Rajasa were the subject of a minimal amount. In the past few months, questions have been raised in the nation’s press about Jokowi’s ethnicity, race and religion, along with allegations of corruption. One report even went as far as to claim Jokowi had died.

New Zealand: Conservative Party may face fight over new logo | New Zealand Herald

Colin Craig’s Conservative Party may be buying into a fight over the proposed alternative logo it is trying to register with the Electoral Commission. The logo which the party wants to have printed on ballot papers is a round blue speech bubble which simply says “Vote” in white writing. However it was been criticised on Twitter over the weekend, including by Labour’s Northcote candidate Richard Hills who said it was confusing. Electoral Commission rules state a logo will not be accepted if is “offensive, indecent, misleading, confusing, referring to an honour or title, or infringing someone else’s intellectual property rights”.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for June 9-15 2014

June 15, 2014

early_voting_260 In key swing states, Democrats and Republicans are battling over the times, dates and places where voters can vote early. The New York Times considers the gap between the rarity of in-person voter fraud and the perception that it is widespread. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach told the Associated Press that those who registered to vote using the federal registration form without providing proof of citizenship will be given full provisional ballots but that only the votes cast in federal races will be counted. Plaintiffs who sued in federal court to force the Montana secretary of state and three rural counties to open satellite voting offices on remote reservations have settled the lawsuit out of court. After surviving several legal challenges in previous election cycles, “None of the Above” came out on top of the Democratic Gubernatorial primary in Nevada. A Federal judge ordered that all Ohio counties must allow voters to cast in-person ballots on the final three days before an election. Under threat of Taliban attacks, Afghans vote in a run-off election to choose a successor to President Hamid Karzai and voters head to the polls in Columbia.

National: Political parties fight to manipulate voting times | Associated Press

Election Day is approaching, and you’ve made up your mind. There’s no need to wait. In many states, you now can vote early. Yet what’s convenient to you is increasingly an opportunity for political gamesmanship to the candidates on the ballot. In key swing states, Democrats and Republicans are battling this year to gain even the slightest electoral advantages by tinkering with the times, dates and places where people can vote early. Their sights are set not only on this year’s gubernatorial and congressional campaigns, but on an even bigger prize: control of the White House after the 2016 elections. Republican-controlled legislatures in Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina and Wisconsin all have taken recent steps to curtail early voting by limiting the days on which it’s available. Meanwhile, Democratic-led legislatures have passed measures expanding early voting or instant registration in Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts and Minnesota. And Democratic activists in Missouri are backing an initiative petition that could create one of the nation’s most expansive early voting systems.

National: Voter Fraud Is Rare, but Myth Is Widespread | New York Times

Is vote fraud common in American politics? Not according to United States District Judge Lynn Adelman, who examined the evidence from Wisconsin and ruled in late April that “virtually no voter impersonation occurs” in the state and that “no evidence suggests that voter-impersonation fraud will become a problem at any time in the foreseeable future.” Strikingly, however, a Marquette Law School poll conducted in Wisconsin just a few weeks later showed that many voters there believed voter impersonation and other kinds of vote fraud were widespread — the likely result of a yearslong campaign by conservative groups to raise concerns about the practice. Thirty-nine percent of Wisconsin voters believe that vote fraud affects a few thousand votes or more each election. One in five believe that this level of fraud exists for each of the three types of fraud that individuals could commit: in-person voter impersonation, submitting absentee ballots in someone else’s name, and voting by people who are not citizens or Wisconsin residents.

Kansas: Kobach: Some Kansans will vote for federal candidates only | Topeka Capital-Journal

Kansas voters who registered using a national form without providing proof of U.S. citizenship will be given full provisional ballots during the Aug. 5 primary elections — but only the votes they cast in federal races will actually be counted, the state’s top election official said Tuesday. Secretary of State Kris Kobach told The Associated Press that fewer than 100 Kansas voters who used the federal registration form without providing citizenship documents will be affected. “No one is disenfranchised — any person can vote a full ballot by providing proof of citizenship,” Kobach said. “The notion a person is disenfranchised because they have to provide proof of citizenship is a silly one.”

Montana: Indian voting lawsuit settled | Great Falls Tribune

Indian plaintiffs who sued in federal court to force the Montana secretary of state and three rural counties to open satellite voting offices on remote reservations have settled the lawsuit out of court. Under the agreement, the three counties agree to open satellite voting locations on three reservations and pay plaintiffs’ attorney fees in the amount of $75,000. In a separate agreement, the state agrees to pay an additional $25,000 in attorney fees, according to Secretary of State Linda McCulloch. “I pledged to help assist the tribes and the counties to make this all work,” McCulloch said.

National: Bipartisan panel warms to weekend voting | The Hill

Republican and Democratic lawmakers agreed Wednesday that weekend voting could help increase voter turnout in elections. During The Hill’s Voting in America event, sponsored by advocacy group Why Tuesday?, Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) called weekend voting a “practical” and “common-sense solution” to ensure that hard-working people have the opportunity to vote, boosting turnout. He was joined by former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who suggested the Saturday voting model has worked well in states such as Louisiana. “We don’t encourage people to vote enough,” Lott said. Speakers discussed the issue in the immediate aftermath of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) shocking defeat, in which turnout was low in Tuesday’s primary.

National: Latino groups push for update to Voting Rights Act | McClatchy

Citing concerns about new state voter-ID laws and voter roll purges, a coalition of Latino organizations on Thursday called on Congress to push ahead with its update of the federal Voting Rights Act. Speaking in a news conference on the steps of the Supreme Court a year after justices struck down a key component of the federal law, members of three organizations released a report on what they say are potential problems in states with histories of discrimination. “We were told that this kind of voting discrimination doesn’t exist anymore,” said Luz Weinberg, a city commissioner from Aventura, Fla., who’s a member of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. “They said, ‘Give us some examples.’ So here are our examples; now it’s time for Congress to act.”

Voting Blogs: What if you throw an election and no one shows up? | electionlineWeekly

What happens if you hold an election and no one shows up? Well that’s what happened recently at one polling place in Sonoma County, California. The Rohnert Park precinct on the Sonoma State University campus saw not one voter on June 3. Not one. “Maybe a couple of people came by to drop off mail ballots, but we didn’t have a single voter,” Gloria Colter, assistant registrar told The San Francisco Chronicle. This is of course an extreme, but as we prepare to hit the halfway point in the 2014 mid-term election cycle, turnout has been abysmally low with some states and the District of Columbia hitting record low numbers. Obviously there is a litany of reasons for why voters don’t show up during non-presidential years, but what impact does low voter turnout have on elections officials?

Florida: Voting-rights group makes final pitch in redistricting case | News Service of Florida

A Leon County judge should throw out the state’s current congressional districts as illegal because they were drawn as part of a secret process that favored Republicans, according to new filings from a coalition of voting-rights organizations opposed to the map. In a brief and a proposed ruling for Circuit Judge Terry Lewis to consider, the plaintiffs in a trial that ended last week tried to tie together the threads of 12 days of testimony about congressional districts approved by the Legislature in 2012 as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process. The brief, in particular, is meant to substitute for closing statements that were canceled because of a scheduling issue.

Mississippi: Despite Talk, No Way to Prove Voter ID’s Effects | Jackson Free Press