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Gov. Pat McCrory says Attorney General Roy Cooper could wind up a witness against the state of North Carolina in a lawsuit the US Department of Justice filed against the state’s new voter ID law. “Political statements by an attorney general of any lawyer can have a detriment(al) impact on their ability to defend our state,” McCrory said. During a visit to Cape Fear Community College, McCrory, a Republican, was asked if he agrees with the opinion of one of his legal advisers that Cooper, a Democrat, compromised his ability to represent the state in the lawsuit.

Azerbaijan: The Challenges of Electoral Competition in an Oil Rich State | Washington Post

Azerbaijanis will go the polls on Oct. 9 in an atmosphere marked by a general sense of fear combined with deep apathy. Although there were signs of discontent earlier this year with a riot in a provincial town – as well as occasional unsanctioned opposition rallies in the capital Baku – these expressions of discontent with corruption and power abuse as well as grievances over rising material inequalities did not develop into a sustained popular mobilization movement. Most experts predict that the outcome of the upcoming vote is predetermined in favor of the incumbent president, Illham Aliyev, who has been in office for 10 years already. If elected, this will be his third term – a term made possible through a controversial 2009 constitutional amendment. What makes President Aliyev’s reelection an almost foregone conclusion is a reflection of the resources held by the current regime, the uncompetitive nature of the electoral process, and repression and intimidation used against regime critics.

Germany: Black-Red, Black-Green? German party coalitions and the new left majority | openDemocracy

Before the September 22 parliamentary elections, much of the foreign coverage of German politics described Angela Merkel, the incumbent candidate for chancellor, as widely tipped to win reelection. Her broad popularity among German voters seemed to exceed many observers’ ability to understand her appeal, but Merkel’s conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union, won a sweeping 41.5% of the vote, appearing to confirm pre-election predictions of success. However, the reporting on her and her opponents’ campaigns often deployed a rather simplified account of the German electoral system that has obscured the actual election outcome. It is true that Merkel won big. Her party even came close to an absolute majority in the Bundestag, which has only ever happened during the tenure of Konrad Adenauer, Germany’s first post-war chancellor and another three-term conservative legend. Merkel and her party were not expecting to reach an absolute majority, so falling short of it was not a loss for her. The disastrous defeat of her coalition partner over the last four years, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), however, will have a real effect on her next term. The FDP’s belly-flop, which resulted in its expulsion from the Bundestag for the first time in post-war history having failed to reach the necessary 5% threshhold, must have been hugely disappointing for Merkel. Then again, during the campaign season there was hushed, and sometimes explicit, speculation about the FDP’s weakness, and what political compromises Merkel would prefer to make if that party did not make it into the Bundestag. Now, Merkel’s CDU and its potential coalition partners have each held internal meetings, and while Merkel’s party is still ostensibly considering whether it would rather govern with the Social Democrats (SPD) or the Greens, it will begin preliminary discussions with the SPD this Friday.

Ireland: Voters Keep Senate Open | Wall Street Journal

Irish voters decided to retain the upper house of the country’s legislature, dealing a surprise blow to Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who had called for its closure on the grounds that it cost too much to run and did too little. At the completion of a count of votes cast in a referendum held Friday, referendum officials said 51.7% of voters decided to reject the government’s proposal to close the Senate. Mr. Kenny had cast the closure of the body as a way of ensuring politicians shared the pain of addressing Ireland’s economic problems after six years of austerity that have involved pay cuts for many public-sector workers, as well as tax hikes and a reduction in benefits and services provided by the state. It was a rare opportunity for voters in a euro-zone country to add politicians to the numbers of those who had lost their jobs, since closure of the body would have affected 60 senators. But with all declarations made late Saturday, the populous Dublin City region and eastern districts had mostly voted to reject Mr. Kenny’s proposal, with only some western electoral districts voting decisively to back the proposition. The turnout, at 39.2%, was lower than the 50% vote recorded in other major referendums.

South Korea: Court acquits 45 people over UPP election fraud scandal | Yonhap News Agency

A Seoul court on Monday acquitted 45 people on charges of proxy voting in selecting a minor opposition party’s proportional candidates ahead of last year’s April parliamentary elections. With similar cases pending in the court, legal experts expect the ruling could affect the verdicts of some 400 other people who are standing trials in connection with the Unified Progressive Party (UPP) election fraud scandal. The scandal centers around allegations that votes were cast en masse through a single Internet Protocol (IP) address in the UPP’s primary for proportional representation seats that took place in March 2012. IP addresses, the online equivalent of a street address or a phone number, should be different for each voter. Multiple or proxy voting allegedly happened with offline ballots as well.

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly September 30 – October 6 2013

October 6, 2013

Voters wearing traditional Bavarian dress cast their ballots in German general election at polling station in Gaissach The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in McCutcheon vs. FEC, which challenges the aggregate spending rules that limit any one campaign contributor to $123,000 in total spending to political candidates and election committees during any two-year federal election cycle. The disclosure of all campaign contributions has been delayed by the government shutdown. Nate Cohn considers the actual effect of gerrymandering on political polarization. Voter purges have raised controversy in Florida and Virginia. The Department of Justice has announced plans to sue the the state of North Carolina for what many civil rights advocates have called the worst voter suppression law in the nation. Olga Kazan considered the structural and cultural differences between elections in Germany and the US and claims of vote rigging followed delays in announcing the results of Guinea’s legislative election.

Editorials: The Great Gerrymander of 2012 | Sam Wang/New York Times

October 5, 2013

Having the first modern democracy comes with bugs. Normally we would expect more seats in Congress to go to the political party that receives more votes, but the last election confounded expectations. Democrats received 1.4 million more votes for the House of Representatives, yet Republicans won control of the House by a 234 to 201 margin. This is only the second such reversal since World War II. Using statistical tools that are common in fields like my own, neuroscience, I have found strong evidence that this historic aberration arises from partisan disenfranchisement. Although gerrymandering is usually thought of as a bipartisan offense, the rather asymmetrical results may surprise you. Through artful drawing of district boundaries, it is possible to put large groups of voters on the losing side of every election. The Republican State Leadership Committee, a Washington-based political group dedicated to electing state officeholders, recently issued aprogress report on Redmap, its multiyear plan to influence redistricting. The $30 million strategy consists of two steps for tilting the playing field: take over state legislatures before the decennial Census, then redraw state and Congressional districts to lock in partisan advantages. The plan was highly successful.

National: Supreme Court case could give wealthy donors more latitude in elections | The Washington Post

The very wealthy could play a much greater role in funding federal candidates and political parties if the Supreme Court rules that a key campaign finance restriction adopted after Watergate is unconstitutional. Under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the court already has junked a number of election spending limits as improper restrictions on political expression — perhaps most dramatically with its 2010 Citizens United decision, which wiped out the ban on corporate election spending. A bold and broad decision by the court in one of its first cases of the new term, Shaun McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which the justices are to hear Tuesday, could overturn decades of precedent about the remaining power the government has to limit contributions to candidates and parties.

National: The next ‘Citizens United’ is coming your way | Los Angeles Times

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a campaign finance case that could be even bigger than the last one, the infamous Citizens United case of 2010. The new case, McCutcheon vs. FEC, challenges the aggregate spending rules that limit any one campaign contributor to $123,000 in total spending to political candidates and election committees during any two-year federal election cycle. The aggregate limit long has been a check on the flow of cold hard cash into the electoral system. As a three-judge panel of federal district court in Washington, D.C., observed last year, the per-candidate contribution limits in federal law — including $2,500 per election to any given candidate, $30,800 per year to each political party — would allow an individual to spread up to $3.5 million around. That’s a lot of bunce. The $123,000 ceiling effectively limits that donor to backing no more than 18 individual candidates in any cycle, the D.C. court noted.

National: Supreme Court weighs limits on campaign donations | USAToday

Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon says he doesn’t want to give gobs of money to a single politician. Instead, he hopes to spread smaller contributions to as many candidates as possible. If he has his way in a case headed to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, however, a single donor could contribute more than $3 million to a political party, its state and federal chapters and all of its federal candidates to shape next year’s midterm elections for Congress, campaign-finance watchdogs warn. His case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, is the latest round in the bitter national battle over the role of money in American politics and the biggest challenge to campaign-finance rules since the court’s bombshell 2010 Citizens United decision ended restrictions on independent political spending by corporations and unions. The new legal fight targets a cornerstone of election rules: the ability of the government to regulate the amount of money individuals can give to presidential and congressional candidates and political parties.

National: Government Shutdown May Mean No Disclosure Of Campaign Finance Before Special Elections | ThinkProgress

As the government shutdown continues to prevent all “non-essential” federal employees from doing their jobs, the Federal Election Commission’s operations have been particularly hard hit. With all but four of the agency’s employees furloughed until the shutdown’s end, voters in Alabama, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and New Jersey may not have any opportunity to see who is contributing to and running ads in support of the candidates. According to a Center for Public Integrity report, only the four currently-serving FEC Commissioners are considered essential. While parts of the agency’s electronic campaign finance disclosure system are automated, FEC Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub noted that no one will be around to resolve any glitches, computer crashes, or other parts of the disclosure process that require human action. “I don’t know how to personally post the reports — I’m a little out of my league there,” she noted, adding, “The public will have to go without disclosures until we open back up.”

National: Study: Curbing Voting Rights Act could reverse black voters’ gains | Al Jazeera

The Supreme Court’s decision to restrict the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 legislation that prohibits discrimination against voters on the basis of race or color, could harm African-American political representation at the city council level, a new study says. The study found that municipalities with the strongest gains in black political representation were those protected by a provision of the Voting Rights Act that was invalidated by the Supreme Court in June. Some experts say the new study shows that the Court’s decision could reverse the gains that black voters have made as a result of the act, or at least impede further progress. The study, to be published this month in the upcoming issue of The Journal of Politics, is among the first on the act’s effectiveness on black political representation, according to researchers at Rice University, Ohio University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Its conclusion is clear: The Voting Rights Act explains much of the electoral success of black candidates in city elections – and those gains could be at risk.

National: Campaign Contributions Go Into the Shadows During Shutdown | National Journal

There are four people working at the Federal Election Commission during the shutdown. There are usually 339. This is the agency that’s meant to shine a light on campaign contributions and expenditures, to let the people know who is paying for the attack ads flooding their television screens as Election Day approaches. Campaign contributions are going into the dark. Campaigns can still file electronically, but if the system breaks, there will be no one around to fix the problem. “And it is possible that technological problems may arise that would prevent filers from filing on time,” FEC’s website states.

National: Mitch McConnell Will Ask Supreme Court To Scrap Campaign Contribution Limits Entirely | Huffington Post

On Oct. 8, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will argue to the Supreme Court that all campaign contribution limits should be eliminated and that candidates should be able to accept unlimited donations. Although McConnell is not a party in the case of McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court has granted the Senate minority leader time during oral argument to present his views: that campaign contribution limits are an unconstitutional burden on free speech and that the court should give contribution limits a higher level of scrutiny than it has in the past. McConnell will be represented by lawyer Bobby Burchfield. McCutcheon v. FEC challenges the aggregate limit on donations to federal candidates, political parties and political action committees, which bars an individual donor from giving more than $123,200 in total during the 2014 election cycle. McConnell wants to go much further by forcing courts to treat all campaign contribution limits as they treat campaign expenditure limits, which were found to be an unconstitutional burden on First Amendment rights in the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision.

Editorials: Quit Blaming Gerrymandering for the Shutdown | Nate Cohn/New Republic

You don’t have to look far to find people diagnosing gerrymandering as the source of all of our nation’s woes, including (but surely not limited to) the shutdown. From this perspective, Republicans are gerrymandered into districts so conservative that the GOP is held hostage by ultraconservative primary electorates. Even President Obama has blamed the GOP “fever” on gerrymandering. These concerns are not totally misplaced. Gerrymandering is undemocratic, and it did help consolidate the GOP’s House majority in 2012. But, as I’ve written before, the significance of gerrymandering is exaggerated. Republicans are in safe districts for an incredibly simple reason: Most of the country just isn’t competitive. Take Texas, a famously gerrymandered state. If you want to create competitive districts, you don’t have many great options. Of the state’s 254 counties, 244 were won by either Obama or Romney by at least 10 points. That’s not how it used to be: Back in 1996, 92 counties were within 10 points. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these non-competitive counties tend to be extremely Republican. A whopping 176 of Texas’ 254 counties voted for Romney by more than a 40 point margin (at least 70-30). 81 of those counties voted for Romney by at least 60 points (ie 80-20). So, even a fair map would create plenty of incredibly red, safe, ultraconservative districts.

Editorials: Time for corporations to disclose political donations | Lisa Gilbert/The Hill

Say you owned a business, and found out one of your employees was taking money out of the cash register and spending it on questionable ventures without telling you. You’d fire him, right? It’s a pretty clear-cut case of right and wrong. Now imagine that you aren’t allowed to know whether that employee is taking money out of your profits, or where the money is going. Sound unfair – and like a bad way to run a business? Sadly, that’s the case for shareholders – owners of the largest corporations in America – who’d like to know how their profits are being spent on political causes. Now Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are holding a briefing to explain why shareholders’ need this information in their hands.

Editorials: Connecticut judge keeps candidates on ballot who had been thrown for a filing technicality | Hartford Courant

A judge’s decision to keep candidates of “Save Westport Now,” a minor party, on the November ballot rings the bell for democracy, giving that town’s voters greater choice. Stamford Superior Court Judge Kenneth Povodator’s ruling is a welcome precedent for at least a dozen other Connecticut cities and towns where third-party candidates have been thrown off municipal election ballots because of a filing technicality. Those candidates should be restored to the ballot, too. In East Hampton, for example, the Chatham Party’s 16 candidates — including four incumbents who make up the town council majority — have been disqualified and are forced to run write-in campaigns. That’s a travesty.

Florida: Democrats say Scott’s latest voter purge driven by politics | Miami Herald

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Florida Democratic Party Chair Allison Tant said it was pure politics that was driving Gov. Rick Scott to push for a second purge of non-citizens from voter rolls. “What I say to Rick Scott is if your victory depends on a voter purge, then you’re not fit to govern and you don’t deserve a second term,” Wasserman Schultz said. “This is all about suppressing minority voters and shows how out of touch he is,” Tant said. The comments were made during a Thursday morning conference call with reporters about two hours before Scott’s Secretary of State, Ken Detzner, held the first of five public meetings with supervisors of elections and voters from around the state to discuss how the next purge will be conducted. A first attempt to remove non-citizens last year was impaired by faulty data that disqualified some eligible voters while identifying few actual non-citizens. The state’s list of suspected non-citizens shrank from 182,000 to 198 before supervisors suspended their searches, blaming shoddy data.

Virginia: Democrats Sue Governor, Cuccinelli; Claim Voter-Roll Purge | NBC4

In the wake of a lawsuit filed by Democrats over the purging of names from Virginia voter registries, a Loudoun County registrar has been ordered to purge names from her county’s list by the end of the week. Virginia Democrats filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, accusing them of purging — possibly in error — thousands of voters from registration lists. The Democratic Party of Virginia is accusing election officials, including Cuccinelli, of pressing forward with a plan to potentially purge up to 57,000 registered voters because an interstate database shows them registered in multiple states. The voter list was sent out from the State Board of Elections in late August, developed using a data exchange with some other states. The 57,000 names are those of voters who are registered in more than one state. Fairfax County immediately started to purge based on the list, and of the 7,934 names they were given, 7,106 were purged.

Australia: Greens Senator Scott Ludlam appeals WA Senate recount refusal | Sydney Morning Herald

Ousted Greens Senator Scott Ludlam has not given up hope of winning back his West Australian seat, confirming he has appealed the Australian Electoral Commission’s decision to refuse his requests for a recount. “I think there’s a question of natural justice here,” Senator Ludlam told ABC radio on Friday. “The AEC should automatically support a recount as they do in the House [when fewer than 100 votes separate candidates].” On Friday morning, the AEC decided to postpone the declaration of the WA Senate poll until further notice, in light of Senator Ludlam’s appeal. The declaration had been due to take place at 1.30pm AEST on Friday. A senate result recount, which hasn’t occurred since the 1980 federal election, is estimated to cost $1 million.

El Salvador: Candidates Begin Presidential Campaign in El Salvador | Prensa Latina

Presidential candidates for the 2014 elections in El Salvador started their campaigns and set the tones of their proposals and messages to the population. The race for the citizen vote started with diverse activities organized by the parties, two of them out of the capital city. In San Salvador, Sánchez Cerén y Oscar Ortiz, presidential and vice-presidential candidates of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), walked around important avenues of the city, surrounded by thousands of supporters. “We will have a respectful campaign and we ask the other candidates to respect us”, said Vice president Sánchez Cerén.

Guinea: Opposition quits electoral commission, rejecting early vote count | Reuters

Guinea’s opposition parties pulled their delegates out of the national electoral commission on Thursday after rejecting some provisional results from Sunday’s parliamentary election, meant to cap a transition to democracy. The National Electoral Commission (CENI) began announcing election results on Wednesday, with President Alpha Conde’s ruling RPG party taking an early lead in several districts. But the opposition said it had won the Dubreka district, about 50 km (30 miles) from the capital Conakry. “We won Dubreka and categorically reject the results announced by the CENI yesterday,” said former prime minister Sidya Toure, leader of the opposition UFR party. He said the opposition was withdrawing its observers from the center where votes were slowly being tallied, saying their presence was serving no purpose. “They were not even allowed to speak,” Toure said.

North Carolina: What the Federal voting rights lawsuit could mean for North Carolina | Facing South

Yesterday U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder formally announced his plans to sue the the state of North Carolina for passing what many civil rights advocates have called the worst voter suppression law in the nation. Holder is filing suit under Section Two of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits denying or abridging voting rights for people of color. Holder is also requesting a federal court to enter the state of North Carolina into preclearance oversight under Section Three of the law. If the Justice Department’s suit is successful, the state’s new preclearance status will mean it will have to submit any election changes to the federal government for review to ensure no racial discrimination will result before they can be applied.

Editorials: It’s Not Citizens United | Charles Fried/New York Times

On Tuesday the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, potentially the most significant federal campaign finance case since Citizens United in 2010. But while the court in Citizens United struck down — correctly, in my opinion — limits on independent campaign spending by individuals or organizations, the McCutcheon case is an attack on limits that should not be struck down: those on contributions made directly or indirectly to political candidates. The McCutcheon case was brought by the Republican National Committee and a contributor, Shaun McCutcheon. If they succeed, individuals will be able, in effect, to direct unlimited amounts of cash to the election campaigns of federal candidates — inviting corruption or the appearance of corruption, which the Supreme Court has consistently held justifies contribution limits. (I have filed an amicus brief in this case on behalf of Americans for Campaign Reform.)

Editorials: Eric Holder’s Big Voting-Rights Gamble | Abby Rapoport/The American Prospect

Just about everyone who goes through a musical-theater phase at some point falls in love with Sky Masterson of Guys and Dolls. In the movie version, Marlon Brando plays the gambler who will wager “sky high” stakes and finds himself singing “Luck Be a Lady” while rolling the dice to see if he gets the girl. Going all in may be what you’d expect in a fictional singing crapshooter, but it’s a bit more surprising in a U.S. attorney general. Eric Holder’s announcement Monday that the Justice Department was going to bring a lawsuit against North Carolina’s new and wide-sweeping election law, which includes a laundry list of voter restrictions and changes making it harder to vote, showcases just how high he’s willing to make the stakes when it comes to voting rights. His department is now going to be litigating two high-profile cases—one against a voter-ID law in Texas, and the other against the omnibus bill in North Carolina. The DOJ is also involved in a case to show that Texas’s redistricting maps intentionally discriminated. Some legal advocates say he’s taking the only logical course of action. Others say he’s going double or nothing.

Editorials: Prison-Based Gerrymandering | New York Times

The Census Bureau has steadfastly resisted calls to end the practice of counting inmates as “residents” of their prisons instead of the cities and towns where they lived and to which they typically return. The bureau’s new director, John Thompson, seems at least open to ending this wrongful practice. Counting inmates at their correctional institutions encourages prison-based gerrymandering, by which state lawmakers draw legislative districts that consist partly or even mainly of prison populations, even though inmates are denied the right to vote in all but two states. This enhances the political power of the mainly rural districts where prisons are built and undercuts the influence of the urban districts where many inmates came from.

Arizona: Group opposing voter referendum on new election law wants some signatures tossed | Associated Press

A group supporting a sweeping new Republican-backed election law wants the Secretary of State’s office to invalidate some petitions demanding a voter referendum. Wednesday’s letter from lawyers for a group calling itself Stop Voter Fraud demanded that Secretary of State Ken Bennett throw out signatures on petitions collected by four circulators because they’re allegedly felons. Bennett spokesman Matt Roberts said the Secretary of State by law can’t toss the petitions. “They’re asking us to do things that we’re not statutorily able to do,” Roberts said. “Usually these things move through the courts and I expect this to be no different.” The bill was backed by Republicans and passed in the last hours of the legislative session in June over the opposition of Democrats. They called it a thinly veiled effort to keep Republicans in power by creating new hurdles for low-income voters and some candidates.

California: Halting of Palmdale election may have implications for other cities | Los Angeles Times

A judge’s halting of Palmdale’s November election could have implications for other cities facing lawsuits under the California Voting Rights Act. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark V. Mooney on Monday canceled the election after earlier finding that Palmdale’s at-large method of choosing council members deprived minority voters of the opportunity to elect a representative of their choice. Officials plan to appeal, with City Atty. Matthew Ditzhazy calling the ruling “wildly unprecedented and radical.” Some voters already have been sent mail-in ballots, he said. Activists seeking minority representation on city councils, school boards and other governmental bodies have been pushing for by-district elections throughout California. Ethnically diverse jurisdictions that hold at-large elections and have few, if any, minority officeholders are especially vulnerable under state law, experts said.

Connecticut: Judge Orders Save Westport Now Back on Ballot | Westport Now

Booted from the Nov. 5 ballot last week over a technicality, Save Westport Now (SWN) will now have ballot access on Election Day, a Stamford Superior Court judge ruled today. Judge Kenneth B. Povodator ordered Westport Town Clerk Patricia Strauss to give SWN endorsed and nominated candidates for the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z)—Democrats Andra Vebell, David Lessing and Alan Hodge—a SWN place on the ballot in addition to their names on Democratic line. The move drew praise from Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill. “Judge Povodator’s decision is good for the voters of Westport,” Merrill said in a statement. “It is always in the best interest of voters to have choices on the ballot, and I am relieved the judge resolved this issue.” Founded in the 1980s to save Gorham Island from development, a bid that failed, SWN is a third party, environmental and preservation advocacy group. It has typically endorsed and nominated Democratic candidates for the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z), although last election it endorsed Republicans.

Florida: Detzner on next voter purge: “We won’t make the same mistakes” | Tampa Bay Times