Indiana: Faintly, the fine print – Printed boxes on absentee ballots too light, longtime voter discovers | Terre Haute Tribune Star

In the warm sunlight bathing the front porch of Margaret Taylor’s South 14th Street home, faint boxes are barely visible on her absentee ballot for the May 6 Democratic Party primary. According to instructions on the ballot, the boxes are vital because they are what voters must fill in to have their votes counted for various candidates. Voters must fill in the boxes across from the names of the candidates they support. However, when Taylor stands up and takes her ballot into her home, the reduced lighting makes the lightly shaded boxes nearly invisible. “I have a lot of trouble seeing it,” Taylor said. “You gotta really look hard.” Taylor, 82, a former Democratic Party vice precinct committee person and longtime activist in local politics, has been voting since she was legally eligible, and this is the first time she’s seen a ballot like this one, she said. She worries that the boxes may be difficult for older people or those with weak eyesight to see.  “I think it’s unfair to everyone on that ballot,” she said, adding that other people she has spoken with share her concern.

Iowa: Matt Schultz to appeal decision invalidating voter registration rule | Des Moines Register

Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz will appeal the decision handed down last month nullifying rules his office wrote regarding voter registration. The Republican, who has made voter fraud investigations and ballot security efforts the centerpiece of his term in office, on Thursday asked the Iowa Supreme Court to review and overturn the March 6 ruling which said he exceeded his authority regulate elections in the state. At issue in the case, American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa v. Schultz, was a rule issued by Schultz’s office to identify and remove ineligible voters from the state’s voter rolls. The rule outlined a process for identifying and removing non-citizens from Iowa’s voter registration list first by screening registered voters against state and national lists of non-citizens and then running suspected foreign nationals through a federal citizenship database. Voters identified as ineligible were then to be referred to their local county auditor, who would initiate a challenge to their registration.

North Carolina: Election officials identify hundreds of cases of potential voter fraud | Charlotte News Observer

North Carolina elections officials told state lawmakers Wednesday that they have identified hundreds, and potentially thousands, of voters who may have cast ballots in two states in the 2012 general election. Republican legislators on an elections oversight committee quickly reacted, calling the number of possible voter fraud cases “shocking,” “outrageous” and “proof positive” that fraud is occurring in North Carolina elections. They called on elections officials to investigate all possible fraud and refer potential criminal cases for prosecution. Double voting is a felony. “That is outrageous. That is criminal. That is wrong, and it shouldn’t be allowed to go any further without substantial investigations from our local district attorneys who are the ones charged with enforcing these laws,” said Sen. Thom Goolsby, a Wilmington Republican. Others urged caution until more information about the numbers comes to light.

Afghanistan: Who is watching Afghanistan’s elections? | Al Jazeera

Security has been a scarce commodity in Afghanistan for some time, but the Taliban’s recent spate of attacks intended to disrupt the April 5 elections – and the promise of more to come – have amplified the sense of insecurity. Assaults targeting international observers and the election commission itself have left open questions regarding the legitimacy and the security of Saturday’s vote. In an attempt to calm nerves and promise a safe day at the polls, the Interior Ministry, coupled with Afghan Special Forces, planned a press conference on Thursday to answer security questions. But things did not go as planned; after Wednesday’s deadly attack on the MOI’s compound within central Kabul’s heavily guarded “steel belt”, it started to seem that the Taliban can strike at will. So can the security apparatus improve confidence?

Afghanistan: Afghan refugees barred from voting in presidential elections | Deutsche Welle

Afghans are excited about the upcoming presidential poll. For the first time in history the war-torn country will see the transfer of power from one elected president to another. But for Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, the April 5 election will just be another ordinary day as they have been officially disenfranchised. The Afghan election commission says it does not have sufficient resources to make proper polling arrangements for the Pakistani Afghans, most of whom dwell in the refugee camps along the Pakistani-Afghan border. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, there are around 2.6 million registered Afghans in Pakistan, most of whom had migrated to the neighboring Islamic republic during the 1980s Afghan war against the Soviet forces. After the US invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent toppling of the Islamist Taliban government in 2001, many Afghans moved back to their homeland. A large number, however, preferred to stay back in Pakistan. Afghanistan allowed its citizens in Pakistan to vote in the 2004 presidential vote, but in the 2009 election, they were excluded due to security risks. Incumbent Afghan President Hamid Karzai was successful in both elections.

Canada: Court battle begins over McGill students’ voting rights | CBC

The case of five McGill University students who were refused the right to vote in the Quebec election went before the court Thursday morning and should be decided on by Friday. Constitutional lawyer Julius Grey requested an emergency injunction to allow the students to vote because Thursday was the last day to make revisions to the list of electors before Quebecers go to the polls on Monday. Because the students will only find out after the revision deadline whether they can vote or not, a legal mechanism could be used to permit them to vote in the event that the judge rules in their favour. But the lawyer for the director general of elections argued that the revisors have some judicial and authoritative powers, and ruling against them could call into question the entire voter registration system.

Costa Rica: Why Costa Rica will have a runoff election this weekend | The Tico Times

After National Liberation Party candidate Johnny Araya announced he was no longer campaigning for president in a second-round vote, many journalists and politicians questioned why a runoff election was necessary at all since his decision effectively gave the presidency to Luis Guillermo Solís of the Citizen Action Party. Costa Rican law prohibits any of the two candidates in a runoff election from stepping aside. The constitution demands that the Costa Rican people vote on April 6. Voters will weigh their options and freely decide who is the best. The decision is theirs to make, and the future belongs to the voters, not the Legislative Assembly or a candidate who steps down. Only the people can make this decision. Candidates can withdraw from the race during a first round, but once entered into a second round, they are legally required to finish the process. This is not a whim or some old, unrevised piece of legislation; it was established after two bitter experiences in the country’s past. The people must vote, and a mandate must be given. Yes, it’s expensive and it may seem unnecessary, but democracy is funny that way.

Guinea-Bissau: UN panel calls for clean polls in Guinea Bissau Voting | SpyGhana.com

The United Nations panel dealing with peacebuilding efforts in Guinea-Bissau today welcomed the successful preparations for the country’s upcoming legislative and presidential elections and called on all stakeholders to cooperate in ensuring that the polls are free and fair. The elections, which have been postponed several times, most recently from 16 March to 13 April, is seen as a crucial step on the path to restoring constitutional order in the West African nation, which is recovering from an April 2012 coup. “With the voter registration successfully completed, political campaign[ing] in full swing, and financial requirements timely made available by various international partners, it is expected that general elections will be held on 13 April,” said a statement issued by the Guinea-Bissau Configuration of the UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC). “No further delay is justifiable.”The United Nations panel dealing with peacebuilding efforts in Guinea-Bissau today welcomed the successful preparations for the country’s upcoming legislative and presidential elections and called on all stakeholders to cooperate in ensuring that the polls are free and fair. The elections, which have been postponed several times, most recently from 16 March to 13 April, is seen as a crucial step on the path to restoring constitutional order in the West African nation, which is recovering from an April 2012 coup. “With the voter registration successfully completed, political campaign[ing] in full swing, and financial requirements timely made available by various international partners, it is expected that general elections will be held on 13 April,” said a statement issued by the Guinea-Bissau Configuration of the UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC). “No further delay is justifiable.”

National: Supreme Court Strikes Down Aggregate Limits on Federal Campaign Contributions | New York Times

The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a major campaign finance decision, striking down limits on federal campaign contributions for the first time. The ruling, issued near the start of a campaign season, will change and most likely increase the role money plays in American politics. The decision, by a 5-to-4 vote along ideological lines, was a sequel of sorts to Citizens United, the 2010 decision that struck down limits on independent campaign spending by corporations and unions. But that ruling did nothing to disturb the other main form of campaign finance regulation: caps on direct contributions to candidates and political parties. Wednesday’s decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, No. 12-536, addressed that second kind of regulation.

India: India’s new voters: We are connected | The Economist

India’s general election, the world’s biggest democratic exercise, kicks off on April 7th. Voting will take place, across 35 states and territories, until May 12th. The country has a Westminster-style system: it is divided into 543 roughly equal constituencies (typically with some 1.5m voters), each sending a single MP to parliament. The whole electorate is a whopping 815m people, the populations of America and the EU combined. A decade of rising incomes, on the back of a growth spurt, has improved many lives. Yet opinion polls show that voters everywhere are grumpy. One released this week by the Pew Research Centre found 70% dissatisfied with India’s prospects and more than eight out of ten bitterly gloomy about economic matters. “Everything is a problem for the Indian voter,” concludes Bruce Stokes of Pew.

Indonesia: Military Officers Have No Role in Indonesian Elections: Experts | The Jakarta Globe

In recent years, the Indonesian political scene has come alive with a host of old and new faces introducing themselves to the public. But ahead of the elections, analysts have raised concerns over the participation of former members of the military in politics, which they warn could have negative implications for the country’s democratic process. Edy Prasetyono, a researcher with the University of Indonesia’s Center for International Relations Studies (CIReS), said the participation or support of several military retirees on the political stage may negatively impact the public’s perception of the institution and prompt them to conclude that the military was failing to abide by the principle of political neutrality. “Their contributions to various parties could cause ruptures in the military,” Edy said at a discussion on Tuesday, adding that this form of support might violate the military’s obligation to maintain its neutrality during elections. This year’s elections sees People’s Conscience Party (Hanura) founder and retired Army general Wiranto, who was the last military commander under then-president Suharto, running for president, as well as another former Army general, Prabowo Subianto, the founder of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra).

Turkey: ‘No Opposition, No Democracy’ in Turkey’s elections | The Washington Post

After local elections on March 30, Turkish opposition figures are up in arms, claiming to have incontrovertible evidence of widespread voting fraud and calling into question the institutional integrity of Turkey’s electoral system for the first time in recent history. While criticized for many other democratic deficiencies since the establishment of the republic in 1923, Turkey has generally been recognized by the international community as holding free and fair elections. The majoritarian victories and even consistent electoral gains of the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, or AKP) over the last three general elections were accepted as legitimate. Unprecedented as they were, these election wins were understood mainly as approval of the tangible benefits available to AKP supporters during Turkey’s period of sustained economic growth and general political apathy or lack of a credible alternative among its opposition rather than as any kind of electoral foul play.

National: Election Assistance Commission seeks stay of order in voter citizenship case | Associated Press

Federal election officials have asked a judge to temporarily suspend his own order that they help Kansas and Arizona enforce state laws requiring voters to prove their U.S. citizenship, arguing that the case “implicates the fundamental right to register to vote.” The court filing late Monday comes in response to U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren’s decision on March 19 requiring the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to immediately modify a national voter registration form to add special instructions for Arizona and Kansas residents about those states’ proof-of-citizenship requirements. More than a dozen voting rights groups, which had previously intervened in the litigation, made a similar joint request for a stay last week. Project Vote Inc. filed its own motion Tuesday seeking the same thing. Kansas and Arizona had asked the federal agency for state-specific modifications, but it refused. Secretaries of State Kris Kobach of Kansas and Ken Bennett of Arizona, both conservative Republicans, sued the agency last year.

District of Columbia: Problems Plague Tallying Of Results On Night Of D.C. Primary | WAMU

A number of technical glitches delayed the posting of full and accurate results of the D.C. primary on Tuesday, leaving voters frustrated and campaign workers unsure of where their candidates stood in relation to the competition. The polls closed at 8 p.m., but it wasn’t until almost 2 a.m. the next morning that full results for the primary were posted on the website of the D.C. Board of Elections. In between, reports provided to media on-site and those posted on the website showed significant discrepancies, while other reports listing results only included paper ballots, not electronic ones. Election officials also reported problems with electronic voting machines at five polling places, though they did not specify what the problems were or where they occurred until after most precincts had reported their results. The problems started at 10 p.m., when the results of early voting were posted. A printed report provided at the board showed just over 10,000 early votes cast, while the same report posted on the board’s website put the number at 9,000. Election officials were unable to explain the discrepancy at the time, nor were they able to say why the numbers were less than the 14,000 early votes announced Monday.

North Carolina: Voter fraud in North Carolina? Not so fast | MSNBC

Conservative supporters of voting restrictions think they’ve found the holy grail in North Carolina: A genuine case of massive voter fraud that can be used to justify efforts to make it harder to vote. The reality, of course, is far less clear. Non-partisan election experts are already pouring cold water on the claims, noting that other recent allegations of major voting irregularities have fizzled upon closer scrutiny. In a report released Wednesday, North Carolina’s elections board said it had found 35,570 people who voted in the state in 2012 and whose names and dates of birth match those of voters in other states. The board said it also found 765 North Carolinians who voted in 2012 and whose names, birthdates, and last four digits of their Social Security number match those of people in other states. The board said it’s looking into all these cases to determine whether people voted twice. There’s a lot riding on what the board finds. North Carolina Republicans last year passed a sweeping and restrictive voting law, which is currentlybeing challenged by the U.S. Justice Department. The law’s voter ID provision would likely have done nothing to stop the double voting being alleged here, but solid evidence of illegal voting could still bolster the state’s case that the measure is justified. It could also make it easier for the state to remove from the rolls voters who are thought to be registered in two states—raising concerns that legitimate voters could wrongly be purged.

Ohio: Ed FitzGerald’s ‘voting rights’ legislation clears Cuyahoga council committee; Republicans dissent | Cleveland Plain Dealer

A Cuyahoga County Council committee voted along party lines Tuesday to advance “voter rights” legislation that conflicts with a new state law, a move which takes the county closer to what Republican council members said could end up being a costly legal fight. The eight Democrats on council’s committee of the whole – which is made up of all 11 council members — voted to move forward with legislation introduced last month by county Executive Ed FitzGerald, a fellow Democrat, while the council’s three Republicans dissented. The move indicates council is poised to approve the legislation, which would assert the county’s right to mail out unsolicited early voting applications and addressed envelopes with pre-paid postage to all its registered voters, at an upcoming meeting. The legislation is a response to a new state law, passed by Republicans in Columbus in February, that forbids counties from mailing out the applications. The new law allows the Ohio Secretary of State to send them out, statewide, if lawmakers appropriate money to pay for it — Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted says he plans to do so this November. Republicans say the new law promotes voting equality across all Ohio’s 88 counties.

Texas: Hidalgo County grand jury to hire forensic analyst for voting machines | The Monitor

An Hidalgo County grand jury Thursday took a step toward investigating possible criminal tampering with voting machines in the recent Democratic primary, District Attorney Rene Guerra said. The grand jury signed an order to hire a forensic analyst to inspect the voting machines used during early voting in late February and Election Day on March 4. The order is “requesting that experts be hired to look at the machines and determine if they were properly functioning during the primary election,” Guerra said. “I think it’s necessary and I think we can do it real quick-like,” he added.

National: Supreme Court strikes down limits on federal campaign donations | The Washington Post

A split Supreme Court Wednesday struck down limits on the total amount of money an individual may spend on political candidates as a violation of free speech rights, a decision sure to increase the role of money in political campaigns. The 5 to 4 decision sparked a sharp dissent from liberal justices, who said the decision reflects a wrong-headed hostility to campaign finance laws that the court’s conservatives showed in Citizens United v. FEC , which allowed corporate spending on elections. “If Citizens United opened a door,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer said in reading his dissent from the bench, “today’s decision we fear will open a floodgate.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the opinion striking down the aggregate limits of what an individual may contribute to candidates and political committees. The decision did not affect the limit an individual may contribute to a specific candidate, currently $2,600. But Roberts said an individual should be able to contribute that much to as many candidates as he chooses, which was not allowed by the donation cap.

Editorials: Supreme Court ruling: As if we don’t have enough money in politics already | Jessica A. Levinson/Los Angeles Times

Thank you, Supreme Court. Before your decision Wednesday in McCutcheon vs. FEC, Americans were confined to giving a measly total of $48,600 in campaign contributions to federal candidates (enough for about nine candidates) and a total of $74,600 to political action committees. That means individuals were subject to aggregate contributions limits totaling a mere $123,200. Of course, individuals could, and still can, give unlimited sums to independent groups, such as so-called super PACs and other nonprofit corporations. Much of this giving remains undisclosed. For instance, super PACs such as Restore Our Future, American Crossroads, Priorities USA Action and others spent almost $830 million in the 2012 election. Talk about constraints on one’s ability to participate in our electoral processes. And how many people were handcuffed by these limits? Well, fewer than 600 donors, or 0.0000019% of Americans, gave the maximum amount under those oh-so-restrictive limits, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And 0.1% of 310 million Americans give $2,500 or more in political campaigns. Well, good news for you big donors: no more pesky aggregate contribution limits. Sure, you are still limited to giving only $5,200 per federal candidate ($2,600 for the primary and $2,600 for the general) and $5,000 annually per PAC. But now you can directly support as many candidates as you want.

Editorials: Justice Roberts Hearts Billionaires: Justice Roberts doesn’t believe in money’s power to corrupt, so there’s that | Dahlia Lithwick/Slate

Five years ago, when the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, polls showed that the American public—or at least a mere 80 percent of them—disapproved. Now of course public approval hardly matters when it comes to interpreting the First Amendment, but given that one of the important issues in the case was the empirical question of whether corporate free speech rights increased the chance of corruption or the appearance of corruption in electoral politics, the court might care at least a bit about what the public thinks constitutes corruption. Or why the public believed Citizens United opened the floodgates to future corruption. Or why it is that campaign finance reform once seemed to be a good idea with respect to fighting corruption in the first instance. Now, in a kind of ever-worsening judicial Groundhog Day of election reform, the Supreme Court has, with its decision in McCutcheon v. FEC, swept away concerns over “aggregate” campaign finance limits to candidates and party committees in federal elections, finding in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts—who wrote the plurality opinion for the court’s five conservatives—that the “aggregate limits do not further the permissible governmental interest in preventing quid pro quo corruption or its appearance.” In other words, since bajillionaires should be able to give capped amounts to several candidates, they should be allowed to give capped amounts to many, many, many candidates, without raising the specter of corruption.

Editorials: Another blow to campaign finance law | BBC

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday took another big bite out of current campaign finance law, striking down a nearly 40-year-old measure capping the total amount of money individuals could donate to political campaigns and parties. Hanging over today’s court ruling in McCutcheon v FEC is the spectre of the 2010 Citizens United v FEC decision, which allowed corporations and labour unions to make unlimited donations to independent political action committees (super PACs) and fund issue advocacy advertising. This contributed to a general mood on the left and among campaign finance advocates of resigned outrage. “The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling on Wednesday striking down aggregate limits on political campaign contributions is no less destructive for being so widely predicted,” writes Jesse Wegman in the New York Times. “This latest outburst of judicial activism in the struggle to render campaign finance laws completely toothless is merely accelerating a historical process that is coming to seem almost inevitable,” he writes.

California: State Experiments with Open-Source Voting | PublicCEO

After spending tens of millions of dollars in recent years on ineffective voting systems, California election officials are planning to experiment with an “open source” system that may prove to be the cure-all for secure, accessible balloting – or just another expensive failure. Most computer programs, such as the Microsoft Windows or Apple OS X operating systems, are “closed source” programs. That means the original computer code only can be examined by the program’s owners, in these cases Microsoft and Apple. “Open source” means the original computer code is made public so it can be used and examined by anyone, in particular to find security holes. According to Damicon, “True-open-source development requires that a community of software engineers band together to work on the software. The idea is that more minds create better software.”

Connecticut: Merrill, state’s top voting official, wants early voting | New Haven Register

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill wants as many people to vote as possible; among those ways are early voting or no-fault absentee balloting. Both of those methods, she believes, will draw in those under 35, who are least likely to vote. “Most other states, you don’t need an excuse to get an absentee ballot,” she told the New Haven Register’s editorial board Wednesday. However, both single-day voting and requirements for absentee balloting are enshrined in the state Constitution. The General Assembly has approved the changes twice, as is required, and now the constitutional question will be on the 2014 state ballot. Then the issue goes back to the legislature to figure out how to set it up.

Florida: Online Voter Registration Likely Years Away After Florida Senate Bill Dies | WFSU

At the same time Florida election supervisors are looking at how to bring online voter registration to the state, the chance of legislative action on the issue went from tiny to nonexistent this week. The senator pushing online registration withdrew his bill amidst doubts it could pass the full Legislature. Ask the question “Should Florida voters be able to register online?” and you’ll get different answers from different people. Sen. Jeff Clemens (D-Lake Worth) says yes. “With 19 other states already doing this, we’re already behind the ball,” he told the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee Monday. But incoming Senate President and Orlando Republican Andy Gardiner, says not yet. “It may be a bill that’s just not ready for prime time,” he said, referring to Clemens’ bill.

Editorials: Afghanistan votes on its future | Reuters

The coverage on the impending Afghan presidential elections has been filled with death and chaos — the tragic shooting at the Serena hotel where an international election monitor was killed, the shocking attack on the Afghan Election Commission’s headquarters, the killing of a provincial council candidate and the news that several international monitoring groups are pulling out. These tragedies, however, shift the focus from the major news in Afghanistan this week: Election fever has gripped the nation. I hear from Afghans as well as many foreigners now working in Afghanistan that the excitement about the coming April 5 presidential election is palpable and encouraging. If this election goes relatively smoothly, it will mark the first democratic handover of power in Afghan history. Potential large-scale fraud and violence will be substantial obstacles to overcome, but there are also some positive signs. Voters, observers and security personnel are gearing up with a mixture of enthusiasm and trepidation. Why be optimistic?

Florida: Court rules Florida voter purge illegal, but will it stop GOP voting tweaks? | Christian Science Monitor

A panel for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on Tuesday deemed illegal a 2012 attempt by Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) to purge the state’s voter rolls of noncitizens and other ineligible voters. The ruling, which the justices said was intended to thwart future questionable roll purges, comes amid a new wave of pitched battles between Republicans who say they want to make voting fairer by curbing voting-booth shenanigans and Democrats who say adding restrictions to voting is a blatant attempt to keep poor people and blacks – many of whom are Democrats – from casting ballots. Since the US Supreme Court unshackled most Southern states from the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act last year, Republican-led legislatures have launched efforts to create what they say are more uniform election systems to ensure that each vote is equal. Republicans in Ohio and Wisconsin have curbed weekend voting, which critics say would most affect blacks who often carpooled to polling places from church on Sunday. In North Carolina, Republicans have stiffened early-voting and registration rules.

North Carolina: State Board of Elections proposes ways to improve N.C. voter rolls | The Voter Update

Staff from the N.C. State Board of Elections discussed ways to improve the maintenance of voter rolls before a legislative committee on Wednesday and said they were investigating possible cases of voting irregularities. Kim Strach, director of the elections board, presented the findings of a recent crosscheck of voter registration information among 28 states, including North Carolina, comparing some 101 million records. The result of that analysis found 765 exact matches of name, date of birth and the last four digits of Social Security numbers for voters who may have cast a ballot in North Carolina and another state in the 2012 general election. The report found an additional 35,750 potential matches of name and date of birth – but not Social Security number – of people who possibly voted in North Carolina and one other state in 2012.

Utah: Will Internet voting ever be a reality? | Deseret News

Sure, someone in the Philippines is probably working on a virus that will make Imelda Marcos our president. But Internet voting will be here some day, and probably sooner than we expect.Are we finally ready to begin choosing our political leaders on the Internet? Is it time to do our civic duty in our pajamas? Will we at last be able to message our friends, watch a Youtube video and cast a ballot at the same time, trying hard not to accidentally “like” a presidential candidate and “vote” for “Charlie bit my finger,” instead of the other way around? It’s been nearly 14 years since I first wrote about this. That was in the context of the 2000 presidential election, in which rooms full of Florida election judges tried to decide the fate of the presidency by examining punch cards that hadn’t been punched very well. At the time, I interviewed Scott Howell, a Democratic state senator who worked for IBM. He predicted Internet voting would be a reality within two years.

Afghanistan: Youth Hold Key to Election in Afghanistan | Wall Street Journal

For Afghanistan’s “Generation America,” Saturday’s presidential election marks a vital rite of passage. Almost two thirds of Afghans are younger than 25, and millions have come of age during the 12 years since U.S. troops and development dollars arrived. Despite a violent Taliban insurgency and rampant corruption, young Afghans have enjoyed unprecedented freedoms and opportunities, and many of them will be voting for the first time to preserve them. A smooth election is hardly assured. On Wednesday, a Taliban suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest at the entrance to the ministry of interior, killing six officers in one of central Kabul’s most heavily guarded spots. An election critically disrupted by the Taliban—or stolen through fraud—could push Afghanistan into renewed civil war, reopening old ethnic fissures and imperiling many gains of the past decade. As Afghanistan prepares for the first transfer of power since the U.S. installed President Hamid Karzai in 2001, the vote will determine whether the gains of the American era will be sustained after most U.S. troops go home in December.

Australia: Dozens to recast vote due to ballot box problem in Western Australia Senate election | ABC

Dozens of people at an aged care facility in Perth will have to vote again in the WA Senate election re-run because of a problem with a ballot box. The latest voting bungle comes despite the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) promising improved security and counting procedures. The election re-run is being held because 1,370 votes were lost in the September poll and the High Court declared the election void. The AEC has now investigated the handling of about 75 ballot papers cast earlier this week at the Merriwa Estate RAAF retirement village in Perth’s northern suburbs.