National: Study: If you are Latino, you may not get help from election officials | NBCLatino

Three graduate students from Harvard University have set out to study how election officials deal with information requests from voters. The result: E-mails sent from Latino-sounding names were less likely to receive any response from local officials than non-Latinos and received less informative responses. Julie K. Faller, Noah L. Nathan and Ariel R. White contacted close to 7,000 local election administrations in 46 states to observe how they provided information to different ethnicities on the basis that voter identification requirements raised concerns over minority voter turnout. “We show that emailers with Latino names were roughly five percentage points less likely to receive a reply to a question about voter ID requirements than non-Latino whites,” states the study.  The authors explained their experiment was done via e-mail to mimic reality, since Americans are increasingly likely to contact government officials via e-mail.

Editorials: IRS and Scrutiny: Reviewing Review | Ellen Aprill/Roll Call

IRS employees who review applications for exemption have a duty to ask follow-up questions of applicants, including groups affiliated with the tea party. In the current controversy, IRS reviewers wrongly singled out conservative groups for unusually exacting follow-up. In a number of these cases, they also asked inappropriate questions, such as the identity of donors. Some media reports, however, imply that the IRS cannot and should not ask any questions of applicants for exemption, that any inquiry invades privacy and violates the First Amendment. That implication is wrong. An organization that seeks an IRS acknowledgment of its exempt status subjects itself to scrutiny — scrutiny designed to ensure that the group in fact qualifies for the benefit of tax exemption. Twenty-nine categories of organization are exempt from income tax under section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code. A few of these categories require an application for recognition of exemption. For example, section 501(c)(3) exempts charities and entitles organizations satisfying its requirements to receive tax-deductible contributions. Most entities seeking to qualify as 501(c)(3) exempt charities must file an application. (Churches and very small organizations are not subject to the application requirement.)

Arizona: Impact of early voting list plan distributed | NewsZap

Maricopa County officials say that about 20,000 registered voters would be removed from the permanent early voting list under proposed legislation aimed at reducing the number of provisional ballots. No particular demographic group would be hit harder than another, according to an analysis by the Maricopa County Elections Department. Sen. Michele Reagan, R-Scottsdale, developed SB 1261 with input from county election officials. As approved by the Senate, it would remove people from permanent early voting lists if they fail to vote in four consecutive federal elections and fail to respond to notice from the county elections office. “No other other state that I found who has a permanent early voting list has no ability to clean up their list,” Reagan said.

Colorado: Gessler repays state for political trips, mulls governor's race | The Denver Post

Secretary of State Gessler reimbursed the state nearly $1,300 for a political trip to Florida last year, renewing speculation he plans to run for governor in 2014. His political director, Rory McShane, said Gessler’s decision to reimburse the money — which led to an ethics complaint against the Republican office-holder — has nothing do with his election plans. Gessler on Thursday also filed a candidate affidavit for governor, which his office said was a campaign finance requirement after he publicly revealed last week he was thinking of taking on Gov. John Hickenlooper. Affidavits must be filed with 10 days of making a formal announcement or even signifying a possible run.

Florida: Florida Enacts Election Law to Ease Long Voter Lines | Governing.org

Gov. Rick Scott has finished the fix of the flawed election law that relegated Florida to a late-night joke in 2012 by signing an elections clean-up bill passed on the final day of the legislative session. The measure, signed by Scott late Monday before he left for a trade mission to Chile, reverses several provisions implemented in 2011 by GOP lawmakers in anticipation of the 2012 presidential election. Those changes, criticized by Democrats as an attempt to suppress votes for President Barack Obama, limited the early voting that the president’s campaign capitalized on in 2008. The 2011 law also prevented early voting on the Sunday before Election Day and prohibited voters, particularly students, from changing their voting address at the polls. Scott, who had previously signed the 2011 bill into law and refused to use his executive powers to extend early voting in 2012 despite numerous requests, acknowledged the system needed a fix.

Florida: Appeals court shields lawmakers from testifying, showing draft maps in redistricting lawsuit | OrlandoSentinel.com

A divided appeals court ruled Wednesday that Florida legislators should not be questioned under oath about whether they “intended” to gain partisan advantage when they re-drew congressional maps last year. Two sets of groups have challenged the lines for Florida’s 27 U.S. House seats, including some voting-rights groups such as the Florida League of Women Voters, the National Council of La Raza, Common Cause and others. The legal fight is one front of multi-pronged litigation against both the congressonal and state Senate maps lawmakers re-drew following the 2010 U.S. Census.

Georgia: Uncounted votes | wsbtv.com

More than 10,000 Georgia voters in the last presidential election were forced to vote on paper instead of electronically. A Channel 2 Action News investigation found that thousands of votes didn’t count, though many should have. State investigators still don’t even know how many people actually voted. “Having looked forward to voting for a long time and following the election, I was very excited to go there and to cast my vote,” said 18-year-old Bailey Sumner. But when she arrived at her Sandy Springs precinct, the poll workers refused to give her a ballot. “They told me that I wasn’t on the list, and that I couldn’t vote,” Sumner told Channel 2 investigative reporter Jodie Fleischer.

Kentucky: North Kentuckians debate restoring felons’ right to vote | Cinncinnati.com

Restoring the voting rights to felons ranked among the reforms some Northern Kentuckians would like to see Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes advocate for. Dozens of Northern Kentuckians Wednesday night at Dixie Heights High School told Grimes what they like and dislike about Kentucky’s voting laws. Grimes vistied Northern Kentucky as part of five town halls she will conduct around the state this year to get input on voting laws. Many wore stickers made by advocacy organization Kentuckians for the Commonwealth that read “I voted but 243,842 Kentuckians could not. Restore voting rights to former felons.” A majority of the the 121 people polled online by the Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement at Northern Kentucky University–56 percent–”strongly” agreed with restoring voting rights to felons, while another 24 percent “somewhat” agreed. But Kentucky remains one of four states that requires a gubernatorial pardon to restore voting rights.

New Hampshire: Senate removes student IDs as indisputable ID for voting | NEWS06

The state Senate Thursday passed with strict party line votes legislation that changes the current state voter identification law by removing its clear statutory reference to student IDs as an acceptable form of voter ID. The Senate, also along party lines, changed the House-passed voter registration bill by restoring reference to motor vehicle laws that had been removed by the House. The current voter ID law allowed for the 2012 election a list of seven forms of identification acceptable at a polling place, including a student ID, and absent any of those, verification of the person’s identity by a local election official. If a voter was challenged, the voter would fill out a “challenged voter affidavit.”

Ohio: Election review finds no voter fraud epidemic | Associated Press

A first-of-its-kind statewide review found instances of voter fraud in Ohio during last year’s presidential election but not rampant abuses, the elections chief in the battleground state said Thursday. Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted said the investigation he ordered in January by Ohio’s 88 county election boards resulted in 135 substantiated cases being referred to law enforcement for further investigation out of 625 reported cases of voting irregularities. That included 20 individuals Husted was referring to Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine on Thursday who appear to have registered and cast ballots in both Ohio and another state. They included a man who voted in person in both Ohio and Kentucky on Election Day and a woman who cast an absentee ballot in Virginia then voted in person in Ohio. “Voter fraud does exist, but it’s not an epidemic,” Husted said.

Canada: Robocalls: Widespread but ‘thinly scattered’ vote suppression didn’t affect election, judge rules | Toronto Star

There was a widespread but “thinly scattered” vote suppression effort across Canada during the 2011 federal election that ultimately did not affect the outcome nor warrant annulling results, a federal court judge has ruled. Justice Richard Mosely, in a 100-page ruling released Thursday, found that “misleading calls about the locations of polling stations were made to electors in ridings across the country” including six ridings at the heart of a lawsuit brought by the Council of Canadians against the Conservative Party of Canada. He said the purpose of the calls “was to suppress the votes of electors who had indicated their voting preference in response to earlier voter identification calls.” But Mosely said he was unable to conclude the vote suppression efforts had a major impact on the credibility of the vote.

New Zealand: Impasse over mixed-member proportional representation changes | NZCity News

The Electoral Commission’s recommended changes to MMP must be put to voters in a binding referendum. That’s the only step left now the government has decided they can’t be implemented because there isn’t a consensus among the parties represented in parliament. It’s blatant self-interest on National’s part and there’s no assurance the situation would be any different if Labour and the Greens were running the show. The commission, after a lengthy review and thousands of public submissions, recommended abolishing the single seat “coat tails” rule and lowering the threshold for list seats from five per cent of the party vote to four per cent.

Philippines: Overseas votes cost P1,310 each | Inquirer

They spent so much but showed very little for it. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) are being asked to explain where the P148.4 million they allegedly spent for the overseas absentee voting went with only 15 percent of voters abroad actually casting their ballots in the May 13 elections. Sen. Franklin Drilon, chairman of the Senate committee on finance, on Thursday said he would file the appropriate resolution for a review of the Overseas Absentee Voting Act (OAV) when the 16th Congress convenes in July. Drilon said in the weekly Senate news forum the turnout among the 737,759 registered Filipino voters abroad was “dismal to say the least.”

National: Obama appoints members to voting rights panel | The Hill

President Obama on Tuesday announced the eight new members who will round out his presidential commission on voting, jointing Bob Bauer, the general counsel to the president’s reelection campaign, and Ben Ginsberg, the former general counsel to Mitt Romney’s presidential effort, on the bipartisan panel. The appointments include Trey Grayson, Larry Loma, Michele Coleman Mayes, Ann McGeehan, Tammy Patrick and Christopher Thomas — all former state-level elections officials — as well as Brian Britton, a Walt Disney World executive, and Joe Echevarria, the general counsel for the New York Public library. Obama announced the panel in his State of the Union address, saying that with long voting lines, the country was “betraying our ideals.”

National: Democrats Strike Back at GOP Voting Measures | Associated Press

In a bitter fight, Colorado Democrats recently muscled through the Statehouse a massive elections reform bill that allows voters to register up until Election Day and still cast their ballots. It’s the latest – and most substantial – development in a nationwide Democratic Party effort to strike back at two years of Republican success in passing measures to require identification at polling places and purge rolls of suspect voters. Democratic-controlled states like California, Connecticut and Maryland also all have sought to make it easier to cast a ballot as late as possible. They recently passed versions of same-day voter registration measures, which traditionally help younger and poorer voters – the sort who lean Democratic. Undaunted, the GOP is aggressively fighting the efforts. Maine Republicans tried to roll back same-day registration in 2011 but were unsuccessful. And Montana Republicans hope to rescind their state’s same-day registration through a ballot referendum next year.

National: Election Officials Biased Against Latinos, Says Harvard University Study | The Latin Times

A Latino-sounding name could be detrimental to voters seeking election information. Harvard University political science graduates Julie Faller, Noah Nathan and Ariel White found in a study that election officials are less likely to give accurate, friendly information to Latinos as opposed to those who sound white, the Huffington Post reported Wednesday. The students conducted the study by ” . . . [contacting] every local official or election commission responsible for overseeing elections for each county or municipality at which elections are administered in 48 states.” Minnesota, Alaska, Maine and Virginia were dropped from the study due to irregularities that prevented gathering accurate data.

National: I.R.S. Official Invokes 5th Amendment at Hearing | New York Times

The Internal Revenue Service official who first disclosed that the agency had targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny, and in doing so ignited a controversy that has ensnared the White House, denied on Wednesday that she had ever provided false information to Congress. She then invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to testify at a House hearing on the agency’s actions. At the House oversight committee hearing, the chairman, Darrell Issa, seated second from right, talked with an aide. Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, was at left. As the official, Lois Lerner, appeared under subpoena before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, she sternly told her questioners that accusations that she had misled Congress in previous testimony were false.

Editorials: Voting Rights Act needed even with increased African-American balloting | David Gans/Fort Worth Star Telegram

Sometime before the end of June, the Supreme Court will decide Shelby County v. Holder, a constitutional challenge to the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act, one of the law’s most important guarantees against racial discrimination in voting. Shelby County has argued that the act is unnecessary and outdated and has urged the Supreme Court to hold it unconstitutional on that basis. With the court’s decision looming, a number of recent commentators have suggested that, in light of recent voter turnout data, the Voting Rights Act is no longer needed. They are wrong. For example, in The Wall Street Journal, examining what he calls the “good news about race and voting,” Andrew Kohut, founding director of the Pew Research Center, argues that in recent presidential elections very few citizens, whatever their race, have reported difficulties with going to the polls to exercise their right to vote. Kohut notes that, in the last several presidential elections, African-American voter turnout has steadily increased.

Editorials: Who's the Right Watchdog for Nonprofits' Political Activity? | Roll Call

An obvious danger of the IRS political targeting scandal is that congressional and federal investigations will produce much heat but little light. As House Ways and Means ranking Democrat Sander M. Levin of Michigan cautioned at that panel’s opening IRS hearing last week, members of Congress “must seek the truth, not political gain.” Even nonprofit sector leaders warn that recent IRS scrutiny, while long overdue, will exacerbate the agency’s many problems instead of fix them. “The thing that we don’t want to happen is for the appropriate anger of lawmakers to result in the wrong outcome,” said Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector, a coalition of nonprofits and philanthropic community leaders. While “there should be consequences for people who misused their position,” she added, the IRS should not “pull back” from curbing abuses by politically active tax-exempt groups.

Editorials: Motor Voter Made All the Difference | David Orr/Huffington Post

Twenty years ago, I stood next to President Bill Clinton as he signed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) into law. This monumental legislation made it easier for millions of Americans to register to vote by offering registration at driver’s license facilities. Before 1993, registrants had to seek out, or be sought out by, an official deputy registrar. Rules varied by state and burdensome procedures prevented so many from voting. Today, 16 million voters get registered each year thanks to the so-called “Motor Voter” law. Working to pass the legislation is among my proudest achievements, especially since we faced an uphill battle in Illinois. Then-Gov. Jim Edgar refused to offer the new registration forms. Along with the League of Women Voters and the City of Chicago, we sued Edgar and state officials to force implementation. We won.

Voting Blogs: IRS Enforcement and the Court | More Soft Money Hard Law

One theme in the narrative about the IRS is that it faces a special challenge in enforcing the (c)(4) rules in the wake of Citizens United. A (c)(4) organization, which is typically a corporation, can make independent expenditures, so long as this campaign activity and others do not make up its primary purpose. Two basic reform models have been advanced to protect against the misuse of these nonprofits to make these and other campaign-related expenditures. One is that the Service should generally employ more rigor in rooting out organizations that have exceeded their limit for political activity. Another is that the IRS should change its rules, switching the test from a “primary” social welfare purpose to an “exclusive one” without any campaign activity mixed in, and rid itself of the problem altogether: effectively, the no-tolerance option. In both cases, however, the proposed solutions may have to scale steep walls erected by Supreme Court precedent. These issues have to be taken into account in judging the role that IRS enforcement can play in campaign finance regulation.

California: With election fatigue setting in, L.A. tees up another vote | Los Angeles Times

The races for mayor and other top city offices so underwhelmed Angelenos, fewer than one-fifth of registered voters bothered to cast ballots. So, why don’t we have another election in a couple of months? Say, July 23? I’m not kidding. Because no candidate for the 6th Council District seat earned more than 50% of the votes Tuesday, residents in the district will have to trudge back to the polls for the fourth time in nine months to choose a replacement for former Councilman Tony Cardenas. The office became vacant when Cardenas won a seat in Congress last November. The runoff will pit Cindy Montañez, who collected 43.5% of the votes, against Nury Martinez, who received 23.9%.

Florida: Gov. Rick Scott signs elections bill to fix long voter lines | Miami Herald

Gov. Rick Scott has finished the fix of the flawed election law that relegated Florida to a late-night joke in 2012 by signing an elections clean-up bill passed on the final day of the legislative session. The measure, signed by Scott late Monday before he left for a trade mission to Chile, reverses several provisions implemented in 2011 by GOP lawmakers in anticipation of the 2012 presidential election. Those changes, criticized by Democrats as an attempt to suppress votes for President Barack Obama, limited the early voting that the president’s campaign capitalized on in 2008. The 2011 law also prevented early voting on the Sunday before Election Day and prohibited voters, particularly students, from changing their voting address at the polls.

Georgia: Fayette County at-large elections illegal, fedeal judge rules | Associated Press

A federal court struck down Fayette County’s at-large method of electing members to certain county offices, saying in an opinion released Tuesday that the method was a violation of the Voting Rights Act. A U.S. District Court judge ruled on a lawsuit that was filed in 2011 and ordered the county to establish an alternative to the at-large election method. With Fayette County being about 70 percent white and 20 percent black, according to Census statistics from 2011, officials from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund officials said the at-large method virtually guaranteed that African-American candidates would never be elected to the County Board of Commissioners or the County Board of Education.

Maine: Early voting amendment clears first Senate hurdle | Bangor Daily News

The Maine Senate on Tuesday gave its approval to a measure that would trigger a statewide referendum on whether to allow towns and cities to offer their residents the chance to cast ballots officially in advance of Election Day. The Senate voted 24-11 in favor of sending a ballot question to voters asking whether they favor amending the constitution to allow towns and cities to offer early voting. The vote came a day after the House voted 90-50 in support of the bill, LD 156. The measure will ultimately require two-thirds support in both chambers if the question is to reach Maine voters.

Pennsylvania: Technical difficulties cause election havoc | Citizens’ Voice

An election happened in Luzerne County on Tuesday, but for two hours after the polls closed the results could only be found on a projection screen at the county courthouse. An apparent traffic overload periodically crashed the county’s usually reliable website, www.luzernecounty.org, and prevented officials from posting results. The outage forced reporters, some candidates and other interested parties to the courthouse rotunda to watch a scroll of results. The top county races, for controller and the county council, shared equal time on the screen with school board races and the campaigns for municipal councils. Some reporters used their cellphones and compact camera to take pictures of the screen to freeze the fast-moving results.

Utah: GOP weighs next step in election reforms | Daily Herald

Utah Republicans pushing reforms in their state caucus and convention system are weighing their next move after the GOP rejected efforts that would force more candidates into primaries. Former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt is among the prominent Republicans in the group Count My Vote, which wants to increase the number of votes required in a nominating convention before a candidate can forgo a primary. GOP delegates rejected proposals on Saturday to raise the current 60 percent threshold to either 66.6 percent or 70 percent.

Wisconsin: Elections board agrees to ask lawmakers for absentee voting rule changes | Associated Press

Wisconsin election officials on Tuesday agreed to ask the Legislature to revamp the state’s absentee voting regulations by streamlining request deadlines, expanding electronic ballot access for overseas voters and implementing other changes. The state Government Accountability Board agreed after only brief discussion to make the recommendations at the request of a municipal clerk task force. That panel contends the state’s absentee voting requirements have grown too complicated and confusing over the years.

Iran: Ahmadinejad protests aides disqualification from Iran election | Los Angeles Times

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has denounced as unjust the disqualification of his top aide from next month’s presidential election and says he plans to appeal to Iran’s supreme ruler. Ahmadinejad spoke a day after the Guardian Council, which vets candidates, barred the out-going president’s confidant, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, from the June 14 poll along with former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the nation’s most illustrious political figures. Tuesday’s decisions enraged the pair’s many supporters and threatened to deflate turnout. Mashaei was “unjustly treated,” the president told reporters, according to the conservative Fars News Agency. “I have presented … Mashaei as a righteous and religious person who could be useful for the country.”

Malta: AG to be involved in votes recount cases | Times of Malta

A court this morning decided that the Attorney General should be a party in a case instituted by the Nationalist Party where it demanded a recount of the votes cast in the eighth and thirteen districts in the general election. Justice Jacqueline Padovani said the Attorney General should be a party in the case to safeguard state interests. The PN had argued that the Attorney General should not be involved while the Electoral Commission requested that the AG be called into the proceedings.