Editorials: Reduce polarization with mandatory voting | Christopher Flavelle/Miami Herald

Data showing Americans’ increased political polarization breathes new life into an old cause: mandatory voting. If the connection between the two isn’t clear, then bear with me. A new report from the Pew Research Center shows that a growing share of Americans hold increasingly strident ideological views; those views are increasingly far apart; and the people who hold those polarized views are the most likely to vote. It seems self-evident that this is a problem. Increased polarization means voters elect lawmakers who are increasingly unwilling to compromise, which in turn means Congress can’t react to new problems or deal with old ones. It also means that whichever party wins the White House is all but guaranteed to infuriate the half of the country whose votes it didn’t get, as the demands of each party’s most strident supporters become increasingly irreconcilable.

Editorials: Playing With Fire in Afghanistan | New York Times

At this pivotal moment for Afghanistan, one of the two candidates for president, Abdullah Abdullah, is creating a political crisis by trying to interrupt the vote-counting in Saturday’s runoff. On Wednesday, he demanded that the election commission stop counting ballots and withdrew his election observers from the process. This could be catastrophic for Afghanistan, which is still very fragile and under grave threat from the Taliban. If no winner is decided, there is likely to be a protracted political struggle along ethnic lines that could make it impossible to transfer power democratically. The uncertainty would paralyze government decision-making and prevent the signing of a security agreement that would allow the United States to leave a residual force in Afghanistan after combat troops depart later this year.

Editorials: Does Supreme Court Want Truthier Elections? | Noah Feldman/Bloomberg

Was a vote for the Affordable Care Act a vote for "taxpayer-funded abortion"? Sounds like a question of opinion, doesn't it? But when a pro-life advocacy group called the Susan B. Anthony List said as much about then-Congressman Steve Driehaus’s vote during the 2010 election cycle, Driehaus filed an action charging them with making a false statement about his voting record, a crime under Ohio law. Driehaus lost the election, and the case was never decided. But the SBA folks still wanted the federal court to strike down the Ohio law as unconstitutional. Yesterday, the Supreme Court allowed their challenge case to go forward -- and that tells us something important about the future of election law. Because the Ohio court never got a chance to find SBA guilty or not guilty of making a false statement about Driehaus’s voting record, no court has yet addressed the question of whether Ohio can outlaw such false statements altogether. The Supreme Court restricted its unanimous decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, to the threshold question of whether SBA could go to court seeking to have the law overruled when there were no present charges against it. The court held that the answer was yes.

Editorials: Why Ghana Has Probably the World’s Worst Voters’ Register | GhanaWeb

On Thursday, June 5, 2014, the Chairman of Ghana’s Electoral Commission, Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, took a potentially dangerous and indefensibly stubborn position by insisting that the electoral management body would not bow to pressure from political parties and civil society groups to commission an independent audit of the biometric voters’ register. To him, there was no evidence that the register was bloated or not credible. Looking cursorily at Ghana’s 2012 voters’ list, having 56.2% of the population certified as eligible voters, may appear pretty normal. But, the picture becomes evidently disturbing upon closer scrutiny of the statistics and when compared to figures across the globe. What comes out is that Ghana has one of the most abnormal, if not the worst, electoral roll in the entire world. It is certainly the worst in democratic Africa.

Editorials: Missouri GOP: If Polls Are Open Too Long, Voters Will Commit Fraud | Mother Jones

Missouri Republicans are pushing for a measure to expand early voting in the state. The move seems like a departure from the nationwide, GOP-led effort to shrink the window of time voters have access to the polls, but Democrats say it's more of the same. The measure from Missouri's Republicans, who in May failed to amend the state's constitution to implement stricter voter ID requirements, comes at the same time as a citizen-led ballot measure that would expand early voting significantly. State GOPers say their version, which expands early voting by a much smaller amount and includes restrictions, will combat voter fraud and help voters make up their minds. But critics say the Republican-backed measure excludes days when working families and African American voters are more likely to hit the polls. The hullabaloo started after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when volunteers such as Greg Oelke, a retired pipefitter in Missouri, gathered signatures to place an initiative on the ballot that would give voters six extra weeks to get to the polls at multiple locations and provide time to vote on the weekends. Oelke, who often worked overtime on construction projects both in and out of Missouri, collected signatures around Springfield because he said it was hard for him to make it to the polls on Election Day. "Early voting is an issue that really means a lot to me," he told Missouri Jobs With Justice, a group that helped organize the petition drive.

Editorials: Eric Cantor’s Last, Legacy-Burnishing Task: Update the VRA | Ron Chistie/The Daily Beast

As the fallout from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning primary defeat continues, the departing number two in the House should burnish his legacy by pushing through a bill to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). The Voting Rights Act prohibits discriminatory actions that had largely denied blacks the ability to vote in the South since Reconstruction following the Civil War. Congress has reauthorized the provisions of the VRA four times—most recently in 2006, under the leadership of George W. Bush and with bipartisan support from Congress. The House supported the measure 390-33 and the Senate unanimously approved the legislation 98-0. So why reauthorize the VRA now, and why should Eric Cantor be the driving force?

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.

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.

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.

Editorials: Eric Cantor’s Defeat Is Bad News for the Voting Rights Act | Ari Berman/The Nation

Eric Cantor’s primary defeat last night offers a good explanation for why so many Republicans are no longer willing to back efforts to protect voting rights. After the Supreme Court’s decision invalidating a key section of the VRA last year, Cantor vowed to “find a responsible path forward that ensures that the sacred obligation of voting in this country remains protected.” He was the only member of the GOP leadership to take such a position. Supporters of the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014 were counting on his support (even though he remained noncommittal to date).

Editorials: Congress mustn’t leave Alaska out of voting rights act reform | Alaska Dispatch

In an important Alaska voting rights case being tried in U.S. District Court this month, the state has asserted it isn’t required by law to translate all election materials into Native languages and that in general its language program is adequate. U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason overruled the state, saying the constitutional right to vote requires Alaska to translate all election materials into Native languages. The Alaska Federation of Natives has long endeavored to protect Alaskans' right to vote. While the state has been slow to recognize the challenges facing Alaska Native voters, the federal government – including our Alaska Congressional Delegation and the federal Department of Justice – has been quickening its pace.

Editorials: Some Kansas voters less legitimate? | Wichita Eagle

Hard as it is to believe, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is making good on his threat to implement a two-tiered voting system in which some registered voters are treated as less legitimate than others and only some of the votes on their ballot will count. Kobach told the Associated Press on Tuesday that those who registered to vote using the federal form without providing proof of citizenship will be given full provisional ballots for the Aug. 5 primary but that only the votes cast in federal races will be counted. Imagine the hassle local election officials will have trying to carry out that mandate.

Editorials: Election laws that prevent elections | Joshua Spivak/Reuters

After a half-century in the House of Representatives, Representative John Conyers (D-Mich.), now the second longest serving member of Congress, may be an unsympathetic victim to show how election laws can be unfairly used to keep potential challengers off the ballot. But recent court rulings on Conyers as well as a New Jersey recall attempt highlight how election laws are frequently designed to benefit those in power — and block potential challengers. Due to its mix of an embarrassing level of incompetence and Conyers’ long service, his failure to get enough signatures got attention. Conyers needed 1,000 valid registered voters in his district to sign his petition in order to get on the ballot. His supporters collected enough raw signatures, but many people either didn’t live in the district or weren’t registered voters. After striking these and other nonconforming signatures, Conyers only had 455 valid signatures. The county clerk struck Conyers from the ballot.

Editorials: What’s Wrong With New York? | TPM

In recent years, we've seen a topsy turvy battle over the expansion and restriction of early voting and other reforms intended to make it easier for people to vote and thus expand the number of people who vote. Democrats (favoring more voting) and Republicans (favoring less) each act out of a certain self-interest. But contrary to articles like this one that present this as a mere battling for partisan advantage, the two sides aren't equal. In a democratic society, efforts to expand the franchise have an inherent political morality on their side. And sites like TPM have routinely and rightly condemned various state GOPs who have gone to great lengths since 2010 clawing back early voting opportunities (and pushing other voting restrictions) to reduce voting by the young, the poor and the non-white. So I bash Republicans in Ohio and North Carolina for restricting early voting. And yet I live in a state in which there's no early voting at all. In fact, New York state might at best be described as living in a voting world of two or three decades ago.

Editorials: More Voting Games in Ohio | New York Times

Someday, after they figure out how to appeal to a broader swath of the electorate, Republicans will probably be embarrassed by how much time they have spent making it harder for Americans to vote. For now, though, the beat just goes on. In a misguided effort to hold on to power despite an ever-shrinking base of older white voters, Republican lawmakers around the country continue to impose all sorts of barriers to the ballot box. One of the most egregious examples is happening in Ohio, a critical swing state in presidential elections and the scene of many recent disenfranchisement attempts.

Editorials: This idea to boost California’s voter turnout is a losing ticket | Los Angeles Daily News

KPCC radio reports that Fernando Guerra, the otherwise very smart director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, is proposing to make everybody who casts a ballot eligible for a lottery. Cast a ballot, and you could win $1 million! No doubt this would draw more people to the polls. But it’s a cheap stunt — cheap if you don’t count the $1 million — that doesn’t address the problem at its root. It won’t make people any more engaged with their communities and interested in public affairs, unless you picture apathetic citizens saying, “Well, as long as I’m planning to indulge my greed, I might as well start reading the newspaper and studying the issues.”

Editorials: Florida redistricting was politics as usual | Daytona Beach News-Journal

A Florida circuit judge will decide by the end of this month whether Republican legislators violated a state constitutional amendment in 2012 when they drew district maps for seats in the Legislature and Congress. But the recently concluded trial already has demonstrated that lawmakers at minimum violated the public’s trust with their secretive methods. In 2010 voters approved the “Fair Districts” amendments, which stipulated that when state lawmakers meet every 10 years to redraw legislative and congressional boundaries, they could no longer favor incumbents or members of a political party (a process known as “gerrymandering,” which both parties have engaged in when they held the majority).

Editorials: California’s top-two primary a failure | Timm Herdt/Findlaw

Last month, the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California published a report assessing the early effects of California's top-two primary system, first implemented two years ago. "To the surprise of many," it said, "turnout was the second-lowest on record." Time to update that report: In the top-two primary's second showing, turnout was the lowest on record. Based on Election Day returns, statewide turnout on Tuesday was 17.8 percent. That number will go up some, perhaps 6 or 7 points, after all the late-arriving mail-in ballots are counted and the provisional ballots sorted out, but the bottom line will still be dismal. In all likelihood, turnout will fall below the previous low of 28.2 percent. And then it can be reported that the first two experiments with the top-two primary resulted in the lowest and third-lowest voter turnouts on record. The problem is, it's not an experiment. It's written into the California Constitution and cannot be changed without another vote of the people. It's time to start having that discussion.

Editorials: District of Columbia attorney general election should be scheduled right away | The Washington Post

While vultures appeared on K Street, chickens were coming home to roost with the D.C. Council this week when an appeals court ruled that the council acted illegally in delaying an election for attorney general. It was not a surprising outcome, given the serial carelessness with which the council has treated this office. D.C. residents should not have to pay the price for the council’s foolishness; efforts must be made to ensure an orderly election. A three-member panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that council members did not have the authority to overrule a charter amendment, overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2010, that provided for the first election of the attorney general in 2014. The position has been a mayoral appointee. The council pushed to make it an elected office in a fit of pique with former attorney general Peter J. Nickles, but buyer’s remorse kicked in last year, and council members voted 7 to 6 to postpone the election.

Editorials: ‘Bad News Bears’ of elections | Heather Gerken/The Hill

The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) may be one of the most beleaguered administrative agencies in the country, with many a Washington politician trying to axe it. If Keith Olbermann were running a “worst agency in the world” contest, the EAC might even get more votes than its sister agency, the ever-so-dysfunctional FEC (the Federal Election Commission).  The EAC has been under attack from its inception – the National Association of Secretaries of State called for its destruction even before it was up and running. Two full years after the Help America Vote Act created the agency, the commission did not even have an office, let alone a mailing address or a phone number. The EAC’s first commissioners held their meetings in a local Starbucks. The EAC, however, has turned out to be the Bad News Bears. It had a rocky start, and still looks a bit ramshackle to the outside world, but, while almost no one was looking, the agency has initiated a major, positive shift in how American elections are run.

Editorials: Investigate Florida redistricting shenanigans | Miami Herald

A historic redistricting trial, which some have called the Sunshine State’s version of “Game of Thrones” between Democrats and Republicans, ended this week. For the first time, sitting Florida legislators took the stand — after the Florida Supreme Court ruled they could not claim legislative privilege in such a case. Now we wait for Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis to decide whether there was any underhanded scheming or deception when the Republican-led state Legislature carved up the state during redistricting in 2012. Did they violate the state’s new Fair Districts Amendment?

Editorials: Facebook could decide an election without anyone ever finding out | New Statesman

On 2 November, 2010, Facebook’s American users were subject to an ambitious experiment in civic-engineering: could a social network get otherwise-indolent people to cast a ballot in that day’s congressional midterm elections? The answer was yes. The prod to nudge bystanders to the voting booths was simple. It consisted of a graphic containing a link for looking up polling places, a button to click to announce that you had voted, and the profile photos of up to six Facebook friends who had indicated they’d already done the same. With Facebook’s cooperation, the political scientists who dreamed up the study planted that graphic in the newsfeeds of tens of millions of users. (Other groups of Facebook users were shown a generic get-out-the-vote message or received no voting reminder at all.) Then, in an awesome feat of data-crunching, the researchers cross-referenced their subjects’ names with the day’s actual voting records from precincts across the country to measure how much their voting prompt increased turnout.

Editorials: Internet voting: A really bad idea whose time has come | Larry Seltzer/ZDNet

The area on the Jersey shore where I grew up was hit very hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. It was many weeks before some of the people could even go home. Life was a mess. And then, a little over a week later, was the 2012 election day. The state made it clear that they would make whatever accommodations it could to help people vote if they were displaced by the storm. So far, so good, but my ears perked up when I heard about "email voting." Yes, the state announced that voters could email in a vote. This was part of an effort to make all non-traditional forms of voting, including mail-in and fax, easier. In fact, voters were instructed to ignore the part of the relevant web page where it says "The County Clerk cannot accept faxed or emailed copies of a Application for Vote by Mail Ballot, unless you are a Military or Overseas Voter, since an original signature is required." But certainly such circumstances were sui generis, and no sane state authority would contemplate Internet voting in the normal course of things, right? Wrong.

Editorials: Ukraine’s presidential poll: A two-tone election | The Economist

“AS I set off on a spring journey into the world, my mother embroidered my shirt with two colours: red for love and black for sorrow,” goes a popular Ukrainian song. On May 25th, as Ukrainians went to the polls to elect Petro Poroshenko as their new president, many sported the traditional shirts embroidered with red and black threads. Held in the middle of a war stoked by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and three months after a revolution in Kiev’s Maidan that led to more than 100 deaths—and cost the country Crimea, which Mr Putin annexed—Ukraine’s presidential election was an act of defiance as much as an expression of political preferences.

Editorials: Is Indiana’s strict voter ID law disenfranchising immigrant voters? | PRI

An increasing number of voters in the US are now required to show a photo ID to vote. Eight states have “strict” ID laws, and several more are considering similar rules: no proof, no vote. Critics argue that minorities, immigrants, and the poor are less likely to have photo IDs and are effectively being disenfranchised. Indiana was among the first states to pass a voter ID law back in 2005. If you ask Indianapolis attorney Tom Wheeler, who works with the Republican Party and Republican candidates, whether the law was necessary, he brings up the 2003 Democratic mayoral primary in East Chicago, Indiana. “The fraud was so bad, that the (Indiana) Supreme Court couldn’t even figure out who won the race,” said Wheeler. But ask Bill Groth, a lawyer who often represents Democratic Party interests, and he’ll give you a different slant. “The state of Indiana later stipulated that there was not a single recorded prosecution for imposter voting fraud in the history of the state,” said Groth. So which man is lying? Neither.

Editorials: Voting Online Is Not in the Foreseeable Future | Hans A. von Spakovsky/National Review

Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos recently published a commentary in the Hill claiming that “voting online is the future.” He also accused me of being against Internet voting because I want to “suppress” votes. That kind of ad hominem attack seems to always be the first refuge of those who are unable to argue substantively about a particular issue. I am against it because of the fundamental security problems presented by online voting and the fact that it could result in large-scale voter disenfranchisement. Moulitsas claims that creating a secure online voting system is “possible given current technology.” That is 100 percent wrong and shows how little he understands about the Internet or the voting process. You don’t have to take my word for it — that is the opinion of most computer scientists. In January 2004, a group of well-known computer experts issued a devastating report on the security of an Internet voting system proposed by the Pentagon for overseas military voters. As a result of that report, the project was cancelled. The vulnerabilities the experts discovered “are fundamental in the architecture of the Internet and of the PC hardware and software that is ubiquitous today. They cannot all be eliminated for the foreseeable future without some unforeseen radical breakthrough. It is quite possible that they will not be eliminated without a wholesale redesign and replacement of much of the hardware and software security systems that are part of, or connected to, today’s Internet.”

Editorials: Why does Facebook want you to vote? | BBC

If you're in the UK or the Netherlands then chances are you may have seen - or be about to see - a message appear in your Facebook news feed. It reminds you that it's election day, and has a link to where you can find your local polling station. It also tells you which of your friends have hit the "I'm a Voter" button on Facebook, to show they've voted. …  Interestingly, research suggests the feature may actually increase the turnout in elections by a small, but statistically significant, percentage. A studypublished in Nature looking at 2010 congressional elections in the US concluded that 340,000 extra people voted as a result. The biggest influencer was not the message itself, but the impact of seeing close friends who had clicked the "I'm a Voter" button.

Editorials: American elections are stuck in the 20th century. Here’s how to change that. | Timothy B. Lee/Vox

In the wake of the disastrous Florida recount in 2000, Congress appropriated billions of dollars for states to upgrade their voting equipment. A lot of states used this bonanza to purchase shiny new electronic voting machines. But those machines haven't always worked out as well as their backers hoped, and a decade later they're showing their age. And Congress isn't expected to provide more billions for states to replace their aging voting systems any time soon. Aneesh Chopra, President Obama's choice to be the nation's first Chief Technology Officer from 2009 to 2012, wants to do something about the problem. He is teaming up with a group called the Open Source Elections Technology Foundation to address the problem. Their plan: develop the software necessary to run an election and release it as an open-source project. Chopra and his colleagues believe that could lead to better election systems while simultaneously saving cash-strapped states money. After every national election, you can find media reports of voting machine "glitches." Common problems include "vote flipping" (where the voter tries to vote for one candidate but the machine registers it as a vote for another), broken machines, and mis-configured ballots. These issues can cause long lines as pollworkers take malfunctioning machines offline or have to spend time trying to fix them rather than checking in voters.

Editorials: A Critical Election in Ukraine | New York Times

It is risky to see hopeful trends in the Ukrainian crisis. But a degree of calm seems to have settled over the rebellious southeast, which may bode well for the presidential election scheduled for Sunday. There are many things Moscow and its minions in Ukraine can still do to derail the election, of course, but President Vladimir Putin of Russia has refrained from publicly endorsing the “people’s republics” proclaimed by secessionists. His spokesman said on Monday that he had ordered Russian troops to pull back from the Ukrainian border, though NATO has not seen any change yet. It is crucial for the vote to be accepted by all sides so Moscow can stop referring to the interim administration as the “illegitimate regime in Kiev,” and the elected president can begin to repair the enormous economic and social damage suffered by Ukraine in recent months. But the election itself will not solve Ukraine’s problems unless a new president can also address the deep corruption and cronyism that have been a hallmark of Ukrainian government since independence in 1991. The front-runner in the presidential race is Petro Poroshenko, a 48-year-old tycoon known as the Chocolate King for his candy empire.

Editorials: How to advance voting rights through executive action | Lucy Zhou/The Hill

Voters across the country scored significant victories in the past few weeks. A federal judge struck down Wisconsin’s voter ID law, saying it violated the Voting Rights Act. A Pennsylvania ID law is dead after the governor decided not to appeal a decision ruling it unconstitutional. And two states passed laws expanding voter registration access. Still, fights continue in dozens of states, and a bill to strengthen the Voting Rights Act is stalled in Congress. At a time of historic dysfunction and congressional inaction, it is not enough to rely on the courts. It is high time for a greater executive role in safeguarding the right to vote. President Obama has the authority to act, and he must. After long lines marred the 2012 election, the president formed a bipartisan commission to identify best practices and new ideas to improve the voting experience. The commission’s final report, issued in January, contained potent recommendations for reform on the state and local level. Obama also spoke out recently on the grim reality of voting restrictions. “The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago,” the president told a group of activists in April. These efforts to restrict the right to vote will not go unchallenged, he assured the audience. But if the president’s words are to be more than mere flourishes, he must assert his leadership through executive action. The Brennan Center for Justice recently released a proposal outlining several concrete steps Obama can take to improve elections in America.