National: The Election Disaster That Wasn’t: America’s poorly designed ballots could have bungled the 2012 election | Slate Magazine

Inauguration weekend is as good a moment as any for Americans to celebrate the political differences between say, Ohio and Syria. But let’s not forget how narrowly, back in November, we avoided another Florida 2000-style election debacle. The shambolic state of ballot design in America remains a potent threat to our democracy. Richard L. Hasen, a leading election expert says it best in his recent book: “If you think that a dozen years later the country would have fixed its [election] problems … you’d be dead wrong.” In the 2008 and 2010 elections, by one estimate [PDF], a combined total of more than half a million votes were not counted due to voter errors that imply poor ballot design. (For numerical context, Obama’s 2012 Ohio margin was around 166,000; had around 446,000 votes been different in 2008, President McCain would have won.) But 2012’s relative dearth of cliffhanger recounts, lawsuits, and Onion-caliber open warfare doesn’t mean we’ve fixed our ballots. We just got lucky.

National: GOP eyes new election laws | Washington Times

After back-to-back presidential losses, Republicans in key states want to change the rules to make it easier for them to win. From Wisconsin to Pennsylvania, GOP officials who control legislatures in states that supported President Barack Obama are considering changing state laws that give the winner of a state’s popular vote all of its Electoral College votes, too. Instead, these officials want Electoral College votes to be divided proportionally, a move that could transform the way the country elects its president. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus endorsed the idea this week, and other Republican leaders support it, too, suggesting that the effort may be gaining momentum. There are other signs that Republican state legislators, governors and veteran political strategists are seriously considering making the shift as the GOP looks to rebound from presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Electoral College shellacking and the demographic changes that threaten the party’s long-term political prospects.

National: Democrats press vote reforms | Washington Times

Fresh from the November elections in which both parties complained that voters’ rights had been curtailed, House Democrats are pushing election reforms as a central tenet of their legislative agenda for the new Congress. The move, spurred in part by the efforts of Republican-led state governments to scale back early voting, likely will fall on deaf ears in the GOP-controlled House. And the push has gained even less traction in the Senate, although Democrats hold a majority there. But Democratic leaders in the lower chamber say they’re undeterred in their quest to make it easier for Americans to vote — an effort they say goes to the heart of democracy.

National: Black conservatives launch effort to scrap part of Voting Rights Act | guardian.co.uk

A group of prominent black conservatives is trying to help scrap a key part of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights-era legislation that enshrined the right of black Americans to have equal treatment at the ballot box. The law was signed in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson in the presence of civil rights leaders like Dr Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, and it represented one of the milestone victories in ending the Jim Crow segregation of the deep south. Now, however, a black conservative group called Project 21 has filed a legal brief before the US supreme court in support of a case aimed at overturning key provisions of the act. The bid, on which the supreme court is set to rule this summer, has been brought by the authorities in Shelby County in the southern state of Alabama.

National: Congressmen Sponsor Forum On Voting Problems | CBS Baltimore

In a way, Sandra James’ trip to the polls in November was like a trip to Disney World: interminable lines followed by a payoff that made it all worthwhile. James, one of a number of voters who waited several hours to cast a ballot, spoke Monday at a congressional forum on voting problems. The event was sponsored by U.S. Reps. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and Gerry Connolly, D-Va. Connolly is sponsoring a bill in Congress designed to encourage states to adopt early voting and same-day registration by providing funding for additional equipment, such as voting machines.

National: Internet Voting Not the Solution to Long Lines, Machine Breakdowns on Election Day | eNews Park Forest

The long lines, machine breakdowns and disputes over voter identification that marred the 2012 election will not be solved by moves to permit voting on the Internet, through email or by fax, Common Cause warned today. Susannah Goodman, director of Common Cause’s National Voting Integrity Campaign, told a congressional forum that online voting remains too unreliable and too vulnerable to hacker attacks to be implemented. “We are talking about our right to vote – a right we cannot sacrifice for what may be a great new idea, but one that is untested and not ready for prime time,” Goodman asserted. She added that “while many ideas will be fielded to alleviate the problems we saw last Election Day, some measures are just not ready for adoption.”

National: At Supreme Court, no reprieve for GOP in voting rights consent decree | CSMonitor.com

The US Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up a request by the Republican National Committee to lift a 30-year-old consent decree that restricts the political party’s ability to enforce preelection ballot security programs that critics say would result in minority voter suppression. The high court, without comment, turned aside the Republican Party’s petition. At issue was a consent decree dating from 1982 involving allegations that Republicans had attempted to intimidate and suppress black and Hispanic voters in New Jersey in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

National: Voter ID battle set to rage again | NJ.com

The national battle over voter ID laws that roiled the presidential campaign for a time then fizzled before Election Day is set to rage again in 2013. This year promises a flurry of new voter ID legislation across the country as well as reignited court battles in states where the laws were blocked last year and a Supreme Court ruling on part of the Voting Rights Act. All of the activity will bring the debate — which pits conservatives targeting potential election fraud against voting-rights groups convinced the laws are really about disenfranchising low-propensity liberal voters — to the forefront again. “There are a number of states where there’s clearly active legislative attempts to make their voter ID laws more restrictive,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which has been involved in court challenges to a handful of the voter ID laws around the country. “This is not an issue that has gone away.”

National: Sandy storm exposes need for voting contingency plans | USAToday

Holding a presidential election one week after a major storm has destroyed homes and knocked out power to much of your state may seem like a worst-case scenario, but the problems New Jersey experienced after Superstorm Sandy could have been much worse, a state elections official said Wednesday. “If the storm was a week later, we would not have been able to have a presidential election in New Jersey and parts of New York,” Robert Giles, director of New Jersey’s Division of Elections, said at a hearing before the Election Assistance Commission. “There’s nothing in place to address that. It’s always been, ‘Well, we’ll deal with it if it happens.’ Well, it almost did.”

National: Congressmen Push for Shorter Voting Lines | ABC News

Two lawmakers have wasted no time in calling for the newly sworn-in Congress to extend early voting and reduce polling-place lines, after an election season that featured voting waits as long as six hours. Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn and Rep. George Miller (D-California) released a bill on Thursday that would mandate 15 days of early voting in each state and reduce wait times at polling places. The legislation is very similar to the SIMPLE Voting Act that Miller introduced in mid-November of last year. That bill died in committee. With the new Congress now in session, Miller and Clyburn have renewed what they say is a push to protect voter rights.

National: Federal Election Commission fines Obama ’08 campaign $375,000 over donations | al.com

President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign has been fined $375,000 by the Federal Election Commission for reporting violations related to a set of donations received during the final days of the campaign. The fines are among the largest ever levied on a presidential campaign by the FEC and stem from a series of missing notices for nearly 1,200 contributions totaling nearly $1.9 million. Campaigns are required to file reports within 48 hours on donations of $1,000 or more received during the final 20 days of the campaign. The fine was detailed in a conciliation agreement sent to Sean Cairncross, chief counsel for the Republican National Committee.

National: Obama facing pressure on election reform | Politico.com

President Barack Obama is already taking heat over the first promise he made after winning reelection — and he may not be able to deliver on it at all. Obama’s thank yous on election night included a special nod to the voters who “waited in line for a very long time” — some as many as seven hours in Florida, Ohio and Virginia. Then he stopped his speech to make a point: “By the way, we have to fix that.” “Fix that” has become a rallying cry for lawmakers and election reform advocates who’ve long been looking to tackle problems with voting machines, long ballots and under-prepared poll workers. And though Obama has almost no direct power to bring about changes — the mechanics of elections are largely determined by state and local governments — they’re frustrated that he hasn’t used his bully pulpit to force a conversation past election night.

National: DISCLOSE Advocates Renew Fight | Roll Call

The Democrat-authored campaign finance transparency bill known as the DISCLOSE Act failed to win approval in either the 111th or the 112th Congresses, but its backers have set out to try again in this session. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., reintroduced the legislation on Thursday, calling the bill “a first step to clean up the secret money in politics.” The bill is unchanged from last year’s version; it would require all corporations, unions and super PACs to report campaign expenditures of $10,000 or more. The bill also covers financial transfers to groups that use the money for election-related activity. At the outset of the 113th Congress, the legislation’s prospects appear no better than they were previously.

National: Obama’s re-election official: 332 electoral votes, 51.1 percent of popular vote | Pentagraph

President Barack Obama was declared the winner of the 2012 presidential election Friday in a special joint session of Congress, finally closing the book on the tumultuous and expensive campaign. Vice President Joe Biden, serving as president of the Senate, presided over the counting of Electoral College votes from the 50 states and the District of Columbia in the sparsely attended session. The vote count lacked the history of 2009, when Obama became the first black president, or the controversies of 2001 and 2005, when some lawmakers protested contested votes in Florida and Ohio, respectively. As expected, the Obama-Biden ticket received 332 votes for president and vice president, well in excess of the 270 needed to win. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., received 206 votes. There were no “faithless electors,” or members of the Electoral College who cast votes for a different candidate than the one who had won in his or her state.

National: Cynthia Bauerly, FEC Commissioner, To Resign On February 1 | Huffington Post

Cynthia Bauerly, one of six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, handed in her resignation on Friday and will officially leave the body that oversees campaign finance regulation in February. “It has been my honor and privilege to serve on the Federal Election Commission since 2008,” Bauerly, one of the three Democrats on the commission, wrote in the resignation letter obtained by The Huffington Post. “I am grateful to have had the opportunity to serve the country in this role and I will step down on February 1, 2013.”

National: Log-in problems confound Oscar electronic voting process | UPI.com

Some members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, Calif., said online voting system bugs kept them from casting Oscar ballots. Electronic voting was a new option this year in Oscar voting. In response to problems with user log-ins and passwords, the academy extended the voting deadline for Oscar nominations by one day to Friday. Amy Berg, an Oscar-nominated member of the documentary branch, said the voting website rejected her password three times before locking her out, The Hollywood Reporter said.

National: Academy Members Sound Off On Oscar Voting Issues Analysis | Hollywood Reporter

As Academy members select the nominees for the 85th Oscars — phase one voting began Dec. 17 and will close Jan. 4 — they are feeling the impact of two major changes to the voting process that were implemented by the board of governors: Nomination ballots can be cast online, but the deadline to submit them has been moved up nine days. (That number was 10 days, but the Academy extended the voting deadline by 24 hours on Dec. 31.) These might not sound like earth-shattering developments, but they have significantly altered the balloting experience of the Academy’s roughly 5,700 voting members and also might impact the sorts of nominees those members select. The Hollywood Reporter first reported on this situationDec. 27 after reaching out to a considerable number of voters and spoke a whole new crop for this follow-up story — virtually none of whom had discussed e-voting publicly.

National: E-Voting Snafu Pushes Back Oscar Nomination Deadline | Wired.com

This year, Oscar voters are getting a deadline extension, giving members an extra day to vote on the nominees for this year’s Academy Awards after technical issues plagued the first attempt by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to allow online voting. The Academy announced in early 2012 that it would be making e-voting available to members, and as is often then case in the move from analog to digital, the transition to the new voting platform hasn’t been without hiccups. In a recent Hollywood Reporter analysis, many Academy voters complained of issues with logging in to the voting site — something an Academy representative attributed to voters “forgetting or misusing passwords”  – difficulty navigating the site once they were logged in, and even the potential for hackers to infiltrate the website and influence the vote.

National: Concern over glitches with Oscar electronic voting extends deadline | Fox News

Growing concern that problems with the new electronic Oscar voting system could lead to record-low turnout has prompted the motion picture academy to extend the deadline for members to vote for Oscar nominations. But next week’s highly anticipated announcements looming, the extension is only for a day, until Friday. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Monday any votes received after the new deadline will not be counted. “By extending the voting deadline we are providing every opportunity available to make the transition to online balloting as smooth as possible,” said the academy’s chief operating officer, Ric Robertson, in a statement. “We’re grateful to our global membership for joining us in this process.”

National: E-voting causing problems for Oscar voters, report says | CBS News

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences opted to try online voting for this year’s Oscars, and with one week left in the voting period multiple sources have told The Hollywood Reporter that the new system isn’t working well. Voting started December 17 and is set to end on January 3. THR reached out to several members of the Academy and roughly half told the paper they experienced problems, or were concerned that older, less technically-savvy Academy members would simply give up. (The median age of the Academy’s 5,765 members is 62, according to a study done by the Los Angeles Times.) Some told of repeated difficulties logging in and being locked out of the system.

National: Oscar’s E-Voting Problems Worse Than Feared | Hollywood Reporter

It looks like online Oscar voting is hitting a few snags, which some Academy members worry might depress voting participation to its lowest level in years. \ Voting to determine the next set of Oscar nominees began Dec. 17 and will extend through Jan. 3. On Dec. 26, I reached out to a wide cross-section of the Academy to see if they tried to vote online (an Academy spokesperson tells me that “a great majority” of members have registered to do so) and, if so, to characterize their experience. Roughly half of the members reached said they experienced problems navigating the site; more than one described it as a “disaster.” They also worried that hackers could compromise the Oscar vote. On Dec. 26, I also spoke with an Academy spokesperson who told me most complaints about e-voting have stemmed from members “forgetting or misusing passwords.”

National: Supreme Court will revisit the Voting Rights Act | Voxxi

The New Year is likely to amass a wave of issues that will affect Latinos including a pending case in the Supreme Court that revisits a key provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). In Shelby County vs. Holder, the Supreme Court justices will be deciding whether it makes sense to pursue section 5. The provision requires that lawmakers who want to enact changes to voting laws are obligated to seek permission from the federal government in states with a history of discrimination. Advocates argue that without this key provision, federal judges would not have been able to block voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina. It also voided district maps in Texas and prevented early voting in parts of Florida. Yet, critics claim the provision is outdated.

National: Voter ID 2013 | The Thicket at State Legislatures

In Voter ID: Five Considerations – the lead story in the November / December issue of The Canvass – we predicted that interest in photo voter ID laws would remain high in 2013. This prediction has already been borne out. When we drafted the article, lawmakers in Arkansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin had revived discussion of their states’ photo ID proposals. Since then, a number of other states have jumped in the mix. Here’s a quick rundown of some recent developments on the photo ID front. We’ll be back shortly with the second half of the list. Republican Representative Bob Lynn’s photo ID proposal (HB 162) failed to make it to a vote in Alaska last session, when Democrats and Republicans split control of the Legislature. With Republicans holding their lead in the Alaska House and newly in charge of the state Senate, the proposal is sure to get another airing in 2013. Lynn told the Anchorage Daily News that photo ID will “be one of the first bills we hear.”

National: Parties at odds over more election changes | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

On election night, President Barack Obama thanked voters who braved long lines at polling places throughout the country. People waited as long as seven hours in some precincts in Florida, with some still waiting to cast a ballot long past midnight. In other states, such as Virginia and Maryland, lines also stretched into hours. “By the way, we have to fix that,” Mr. Obama said. But with the presidential election over, comprehensive overhauls to the patchwork of state election laws remain a distant goal. More than a decade after the 2000 Florida vote-count debacle, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee last week spotlighted complaints about the casting and counting of votes that persist despite a package of post-2000 adjustments.

National: Senate committee debates if voter-ID, early voting effectively curbed voter fraud | TribLIVE

Senate Democrats and Republicans sparred on Wednesday over whether voter ID laws, attempts to purge voter rolls and restrictions on early voting were legitimate efforts to stop fraud or were Republican strategies to hold down Democratic votes. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and former Gov. Charlie Crist — a onetime Republican who recently turned Democrat — said Florida Republicans aimed their efforts at Hispanics and blacks. They cited as one example the elimination of early voting on the Sunday before the Nov. 6 election. He said members of those groups historically vote after church services.

National: Democrats Set Stage for Supreme Court Defense of Voting Rights Act Provision | PBS NewsHour

With the Supreme Court set to hear a challenge to a main provision of the Voting Rights Act in February, advocates argued Wednesday that the November elections only underscored the need for the law and its protections of minority voting rights. The high court will hear a challenge by Shelby County, Ala., that the so-called “pre-clearance” portion of the act, which requires jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to get approval of the Justice Department before making changes to their voting rules, is unconstitutional. But opening a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he was concerned even before Election Day about a “renewed effort in many states to deny millions of Americans access to the ballot box through voter purges and voter identification laws,” adding, “what we saw during the election shows that we were right to be concerned. Purges of voter rolls, restrictions on voter registration, and limitations on early voting…led to unnecessary and avoidable problems.”

National: Obama wins Electoral College vote; Republicans seek changes in state rules | Boston Herald

Despite predictions that the presidential election could end in an electoral vote tie, or that the winner of the popular vote could again be denied the White House by the Electoral College, President Barack Obama won his anticipated 126-vote landslide Monday as the 538 electors officially voted in statehouses. But 12 years after Al Gore’s defeat prompted some Democrats to call for changing to the constitutionally prescribed method of choosing the president, Republicans are now mounting efforts in key states to end the winner-take-all method that most states employ. Some Republican strategists believe that could counter the advantage Democrats have gained on the path to the needed 270 electoral votes.

National: Senate hearing on voting rights turns partisan | MiamiHerald.com

Senate Democrats and Republicans sparred Wednesday over whether voter ID laws, attempts to purge voter rolls and restricted early voting were legitimate efforts to stop fraud or mainly Republican strategies to hold down Democratic votes. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a onetime Republican who recently turned Democrat, said the state GOP aimed its efforts at Hispanics and African-Americans. They cited as one example the elimination of early voting on the Sunday before the election, when members of those groups historically vote after church.

National: Florida Sen. Nelson: GOP disenfranchised voters | UTSanDiego.com

Senate Democrats and Republicans are sparring over whether voter ID laws and restricted early voting are attempts to disenfranchise African-American and Hispanic voters. Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, and former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who recently became a Democrat, said their state’s Republican Party deliberately tried to suppress the vote from those groups.

National: Electoral College vote affirms Obama re-election | US News and World Report

Tradition trumped suspense Monday as members of the Electoral College cast the official, final votes in the 2012 presidential election, a constitutional formality on President Barack Obama’s march to a second term. The rite playing in state capitols involved party luminaries and tireless activists carrying out the will of each state’s voters. The popular vote from state-to-state dictates whether Democratic or Republican electors get the honor, but the outcome wasn’t in doubt. Obama had well more than the 270 votes required to win the White House. Obama was on course to get 332 votes to Republican Mitt Romney’s 206, barring defectors known as “faithless electors.” California’s 55 electoral votes — the largest cache in any state — helped put the Democratic president over the top by late Monday afternoon. Electors also were affirming Joe Biden for another term as vice president. “Everybody votes for president, but nobody gets a real vote except a presidential elector,” said elector Mike Bohan of Oregon, which was in Obama’s column.