Voting Blogs: Get them while they’re young California 16- and17-year-olds can now pre-register online | electionlineWeekly

According to a study by the Pew Research Center, 92 percent of teens report going online daily — including 24 percent who say they go online “almost constantly.” With that in mind, California is bringing Muhammad to the mountain by allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote using the state’s online voter registration portal. “Online pre-registration will help more young people vote as soon as they are eligible. Whether they’re at school or at home or hanging out with friends, young Californians can pre-register to vote in just minutes in their smartphone, tablet or laptop,” said Secretary of State Alex Padilla. California is one of 10 states and the District of Columbia that allows 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote and also one of 34 states and the District of Columbia that allows people to register online to vote. As far as we know, it’s the only state that allows those pre-registrants to use the online portal. [Update: Massachusetts and Utah also allow pre-registrants to do so online. Thanks to our alert readers for letting us know!]

Voting Blogs: The Demise of North Dakota’s Voter Identification Law | State of Elections

In one sense, North Dakota’s voting laws are lax as North Dakota is the only state without voter registration requirements. In another sense, North Dakota’s voting laws are anything but lax as a federal district court recently found North Dakota’s voter identification law (also referred to as “HB 1332”) to be unduly burdensome. In his opinion in Brakebill v. Jaeger, District Judge Daniel L. Hovland determined HB 1332 to be unduly burdensome to North Dakota’s Native American population, writing that “[t]he public interest in protecting the most cherished right to vote for thousands of Native Americans who currently lack a qualifying ID and cannot obtain one, outweighs the purported interest and arguments of the State.” Judge Hovland granted a motion for a preliminary injunction against the law, barring North Dakota from enforcing the law (but not striking the law down).

Voting Blogs: 15 States File Amicus Brief Seeking Clarification on NVRA, Non-Voting and List Maintenance | Election Academy

Fifteen states have filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to hear a case in order to clarify if and how states may use evidence of non-voting as a factor in removing voters from the rolls. The question stems from an Ohio case I wrote about last April. There, plaintiffs challenged the state’s “supplemental process” for list maintenance, which uses failure to vote over a two-year period as a trigger for mailings seeking confirmation that the voter still wishes to vote. The allegation is that the use of non-voting as a trigger violates the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which expressly prohibits the removal of voters simply for failure to vote.

Voting Blogs: Is election observing in Central Asia a lost cause? | Anne Rennschmid/openDemocracy

To varying degrees, the post-Soviet states of Central Asia are governed by autocrats. These ruling elites have little to no interest in democratic governance, monopolising politics helping those in power to stay in power – in some cases, for life. Last month, Turkmenistan’s president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov was re-elected with 97% of the vote. In neighbouring Uzbekistan, acting president Shavkat Mirziyoyev won elections held in December 2016 with 89% of the vote. In cementing his position, Mirziyoyev slammed the door on hopes for a more pluralist approach to politics than his late predecessor, Islam Karimov who has ruled the state since it had started to exist. These political systems concentrate lawmaking and executive powers in the office of the president. From Tajikistan to Turkmenistan, political parties represented in parliaments are pro-regime and far from providing political alternatives. Any form of meaningful opposition has been extinguished by a policy of intimidation by powerful state security apparatuses. Consequently, the public mostly remains passive, and with no democratic structures, elections are a sham.

Voting Blogs: The FEC and the Draining of Swamps | More Soft Money Hard Law

Former FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel left a lengthy note as she left town to explain how bad things had gotten at the FEC. Her agency would not help drain the swamp; a bloc of Commissioners had scuttled the agency’s mission to enforce campaign finance disclosure and limits. Republicans promptly disagreed. So the Democrats and Republicans, at odds over enforcement policy, also disagree about the extent and seriousness of their disagreements. With the agency down to 5, and most of the Commissioners’ terms having expired, the question is what happens post-Ravel. There has been talk that the Trump Administration may make a full round of nominations and look to reshape the agency. Speculations have included the possibility that the Administration would end the long-standing deference to the other party in the nomination of half of the Commission and perhaps stack the deck, maybe by putting Independents in place of the Democrats. The law limits parties to half the seats; it does not guarantee a party any of the seats.

Voting Blogs: Election Assistance Commission Offers Election Technology Training Course | EAC Blog

Whether they think they are, want to be, or were trained to be, the Election Official of 2017 is also an Information Technology (IT) Manager. IT management requires a unique set of attitudes, knowledge and skills, all of which are necessary to plan, direct and control contemporary elections. The Election Assistance Commission recognizes this challenge and now has resources available for local election administrators wishing to hone their IT management skills. After the adoption of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, election officials were forced, in a matter of just a few years, to move from managing voluminous paper poll books, paper voter registration application forms and (often) paper ballots to managing electronic statewide voter registration databases, e-poll books and either DRE or optical scan voting systems with their accompanying computer-based election management and ballot building systems. The ramifications of the shift from managing paper to managing computer based systems cannot be underestimated. In less than a decade, election administration posed new demands on its practitioners, who were asked to understand and successfully implement increasingly complex technologies. A few election officials with sufficient resources were able to hire skilled computer technicians and engineers to augment their staff. The vast majority, however, were forced to become more dependent upon systems vendors to integrate new technology into their local election environment while trying as best they could to effectively manage this new paradigm.

Voting Blogs: A Closer Look at Husted’s Allegations of Non-Citizen Voting in Ohio | Project Vote

Yesterday, Ohio’s secretary of state, Jon Husted, issued a press release congratulating himself for finding 385 non-citizens who were registered to vote in 2016, 82 of whom allegedly voted. Husted then goes on to claim there may be more illegally registered non-citizens on the Ohio voting rolls, but the federal government won’t give him access to their non-citizens database to search. If you’ve been following this issue at all, you can probably guess what we have to say about it.

Scale Matters. Three hundred and eighty-five may sound like a large number in some contexts—bank fees, for example—but not when we’re talking about a state voter file. As Carrie Davis, Executive Director of the Ohio League of Women Voters, noted in a press release yesterday:

“In November 2016, Ohio had 7,861,025 registered voters and, of those, 5,607,641 cast ballots in the November election. Husted’s 385 registered amounts to 0.004898% of total registered voters, and his alleged 82 votes cast amount to 0.001462% of the 5,607,641 total votes cast in November 2016.”

So, while the tone of Husted’s announcement is troubling, the findings of the investigation seem to bear out his own saner words from just one month ago: “While we should always continue to work to improve our election system, we don’t need to perpetuate the myth that voter fraud is in the millions,” he said. “It exists, but only in isolated cases.”

Voting Blogs: New EAC Chair Matt Masterson on Priorities in 2017 and Beyond | Election Academy

Last week, Matt Masterson became the new Chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. On Friday, Chairman Masterson posted a blog entry at the EAC website (with a similar but shorter op-ed in the Hill) that lays out the priorities for the EAC in 2017 and beyond:

Today I was elected Chairman of the Election Assistance Commission. This is an honor and responsibility I do not take lightly. In their respective terms as Chair, both Commissioners McCormick and Hicks propelled the EAC towards fulfilling our mission set forth by HAVA, to better serve election officials and American voters. I hope to build on the momentum they created and push the EAC even further. In my year as Chairman, much of the EAC’s work will be influenced by two key things. First, the lessons learned and feedback from election officials as a result of the 2016 Presidential Election. The EAC’s #BeReady16 campaign received a great deal of praise from election officials from around the country and I want to build off that success with a new effort, #GamePlan17. The focus of #GamePlan17 will be to provide election officials with tangible planning strategies and information for the 2018 mid-term election and then to help turn those planning strategies into concrete actions to be taken heading into 2018. The goal being to help election officials protect their most valuable resource… time.

Voting Blogs: H.R. 634 puts EAC on the block, again – Despite bill, bipartisan support remains | electionlineWeekly

Like Sisyphus and his rock, Mississippi Congressman Gregg Harper has once again introduced a resolution to dissolve the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Under H.R. 634, the EAC would terminate 60-days after the enactment of the resolution. Some functions of the Commission would transfer to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The bill was introduced on Jan. 24 and approved by a 6-3 party line vote in the House Administration Committee. In a statement, Harper says that the existence of the EAC is not necessary to conduct federal elections is a “waste of taxpayer funds.” Despite Harper’s insistence that the Commission has run its course of usefulness, bipartisan support for the EAC remains. “In the days leading up to the mark-up and in the days since, we’ve receive notes from election officials and voters across the nation thanking us for our work and validating the important role we play,” said EAC Chairman Thomas Hicks. “We’ve also received widespread, bipartisan support from advocacy groups within the beltway and beyond. Anyone with questions about our value should speak directly with the election officials and voters we serve.”

Voting Blogs: The Pence Commission on Voting Fraud | More Soft Money Hard Law

President Trump’s arrangement for an inquiry into election voting fraud is fatally compromised by political self-interest. Before the November election, he insisted that voter fraud might cost him the victory. After he had won, he decided that it robbed him of success in the popular vote. He put the number of illegal voters at 3 to 5 million, all of it allegedly committed at his expense. And having taken this position, he is not only looking back. He is already a candidate for reelection, and this project would serve his purpose of reducing the risk of another popular vote disappointment. So he will establish a presidential commission to look into voting fraud, and he intends to appoint as its chair his Vice President, who was his presidential running mate in the last election and will very probably be on the ticket again 2020. This process has lacked credibility from the start, and if it were only a matter of appreciating the nature and limitations of this political project, then not much more attention would need to be paid to it. But in what happens next, once this Pence Commission is formed and launched, the long-term cost to bipartisanship in voting reform could prove high.

Voting Blogs: We Still Need the EAC | Election Academy

Tomorrow, the Committee on House Administration (CHA) will convene to markup H.R. 634, the “Election Assistance Commission Termination Act.” The bill is part of CHA Chairman Gregg Harper (MS-3)’s ongoing attempt to eliminate the EAC, a campaign he has waged for several Congresses (and about which I wrote most recently in March 2015). The bill itself is pretty simple: it dissolves the EAC, returns its NVRA (“motor voter”) regulatory authority to the Federal Election Commission (whence it came thanks to the Help America Vote Act of 2002) and directs the federal government to wind up the EAC’s affairs. The bill is silent on other key facets of the EAC’s work, like certification and testing of voting technology and data collection via the Election Administration and Voting Survey. It’s hard to believe such work would simply stop, but the bill says nothing about what would happen post-termination.

Voting Blogs: Church Speech | More Soft Money Hard Law

In a first step out on political reform (setting aside his executive order on lobbying), Donald Trump promised churches he would relieve them of the restrictions of the Johnson amendment on campaign activity. He didn’t go into any detail. But over time there have been different proposals for protecting religious institutions’ political speech. One of them is arguably sensible, while another, more aggressive reform of this nature is best avoided. Attention began to turn more widely to this topic when in the Bush 43 years there was a suggestion that IRS was monitoring sermons and prepared to act against churches where it found campaign content in speech from the pulpit. A notorious case involved a sermon that was critical of the war in Iraq and included favorable comments about Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and critical ones of his opponent George W. Bush. Nothing happened; the IRS backed off. But it remains the case that while the Service seems to have no particular appetite for regulatory action based on this kind of speech, it could, if it wished. And as the Bush/Kerry episode revealed, the issue can cut in either partisan or ideological direction.

Voting Blogs: We Need The PCEA More Than Ever | Election Academy

Over the weekend – a little more than three years after its initial release – the report of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA), and the rest of its work, was no longer available online after the new Administration decided to remove it from its home at supportthevoter.gov. The removal of the PCEA materials comes at a time when the White House is increasingly signalling that it will take steps to re-examine the 2016 election for evidence of fraud, despite no credible evidence that such fraud existed anywhere other than isolated cases, if at all. That’s unfortunate, because the PCEA is the kind of wide-ranging, bipartisan and thorough effort that any attempt to understand the American voting system needs.

Voting Blogs: Why Michigan should remove restrictions on who may cast an absentee ballot | State of Elections

Michigan voters are voting via absentee ballot in increasingly high numbers. In the November 2016 election, approximately one-fourth of Michigan voters used an absentee ballot to case their votes. In the August 2016 primary election, that number was even higher in many counties. In Kent County, 43 percent of votes were cast via absentee ballots; in Grand Rapids, 40 percent of votes were absentee; in Ottawa County, roughly one-third of voters voted via an absentee ballot. Though absentee voting in Michigan is increasingly more common, Michigan requires voters to check off on their absentee application and ballot a reason they cannot vote in person at a polling station on Election Day. According to Michigan Election Law §168.758 and the Michigan Secretary of State, a voter registered in Michigan may only vote via absentee ballot if the voter is: (1) sixty years old or older; (2) unable to vote without assistance at the polls; (3) expecting to be out of town on election day; (4) in jail awaiting arraignment or trial; (5) unable to attend the polls due to religious reasons; or (6) appointed to work as an election inspector in a precinct outside of his or her precinct.

Voting Blogs: Where has supportthevoter.gov gone? | Center for Civic Design

“We have got to fix that.” On Election Night in 2012, six words by newly re-elected President Obama set a chain of events in motion. He was talking about the long lines at many polling places. A little over a year later the Presidential Commission for Election Administration (PCEA) presented their recommendations to help local and state elections officials improve all voters’ experience in casting their ballots. There were many amazing things about the PCEA. That it existed at all. Most of the time, the roughly 8,000 election administrators around the country do their jobs with little fanfare and little public attention. It was pretty exciting to see so many people working on fixing problems and offering best practices to support these officials as they support the voter. That it was bipartisan. In fact the chairs had been general counsel to opposing candidates in both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. But most of all, that their recommendations — a set of practical, useful guidelines addressing real issues — have made a real and measurable difference, upping the game of election officials around the country.

Voting Blogs: Virginia Election Bill Could Stop Thousands of Eligible People From Voting | Project Vote

Project Vote submitted testimony in opposition to Virginia’s “no match, no vote” bill, SB 1581. The Senate Privileges and Elections Committee is scheduled to hear it today. The bill proposes an unpredictable, costly, and burdensome process as a prerequisite to voter registration that is prone to errors. In essence, SB 1581 would reject any voter application if the name, Social Security number, and date of birth do not match information on file with the Social Security Administration or other database approved by the State Board of Elections, and would subject existing voters’ registrations to the same scheme.

Voting Blogs: It’s Time to Investigate ‘Voter Fraud’ | Brennan Center for Justice

The scary part of the still-developing “voter fraud” story isn’t that President Donald Trump evidently buys into a conspiracy theory that supports both his worldview and his ego. The scary part is that a majority of his fellow Republicans, and a significant number of Democrats, also evidently buy into the myth. Those peddling the fiction that 3-5 million people illegally voted in the 2016 election will use the charge to justify additional voter restriction efforts across the country in the coming years. And those who don’t buy into the myth will be faced with the practical dilemma of proving a negative without the sort of sweeping national investigation that would put the allegation to rest at last. So long as the White House is peddling this nonsense, and so long as it can be used for partisan purposes, the story is here to stay, further poisoning what already is a poisoned political atmosphere.

Voting Blogs: Kansas 0-3 in Voter ID Lawsuits | State of Elections

Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, narrowly avoided contempt charges in September 2016 which would have been the cherry on top for those in opposition to Kansas’s proof-of-citizenship requirement. The requirement, which requires anyone registering to vote in Kansas provide proof of citizenship via one of thirteen documents, was enacted under the Secure and Fair Elections Act of 2011, and was enforced beginning in 2013. The law became the center of a national controversy in January 2016, when Brian Newby, executive director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, granted Kansas, Georgia, and Alabama the ability to alter the federal registration form to satisfy the state identification requirements (Georgia and Alabama have passed similar proof-of-citizenship requirements but have not yet enforced them).

Voting Blogs: Why Was South Carolina’s Voter ID Law Approved in 2012? Will It Remain? | State of Elections

Prior to Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, South Carolina was a covered jurisdiction under Section Five of the Voting Rights Act. In 2011, during Legislative Session 119, the South Carolina legislature passed, and the Governor signed, an act that made voting-related changes. Section Five of Act R54 (A27 H3003) (2011) dealt with voter identification. Because this happened prior to Shelby County v. Holder, pre-clearance was required. The State asked for pre-clearance from the Attorney General of the United States, but it was denied. South Carolina then sought a declaratory judgment in the D.C. District Court. Act R54 was pre-cleared by the court, in an opinion filed on October 10, 2012. However, due to concerns about the ability of South Carolina to effectively implement the law before the elections of November 2012, the court delayed the law’s effect until any elections in 2013.

Voting Blogs: Voting with Risk-Limiting Audits: Better, Faster, Cheaper | EFF

After extensive ups and downs, the election recount efforts in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have concluded. The main lesson: ballot audits should be less exciting and less expensive. Specifically, we need to make audits an ordinary, non-partisan part of every election, done efficiently and quickly, so they are not subject to emergency fundraising and last-minute debates over their legitimacy. The way to do that is clear: make risk-limiting audits part of standard election procedure. After this year’s election, EFF joined many election security researchers in calling for a recount of votes in three key states. This was partly because of evidence that hackers affected other parts of the election (not directly related to voting machines). But more than that, it was based long-standing research showing that electronic voting machines and optical scanners are subject to errors and manipulation that could sway an election. In response to that call, Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s campaign raised more than $7 million to fund the recounts.

Voting Blogs: Decision Suspending Michigan ‘Recount’ Threatens What’s Left of American Democracy | Brad Blog

If allowed to stand, the reasoning behind U.S. District Court Judge Mark A. Goldsmith’s December 7, 2016 decision [PDF] in Stein v. Thomas to halt the Michigan presidential “recount” is flawed, at best. Issued, ironically enough, on the day we commemorate what President Franklin D. Roosevelt described as “a date which will live in infamy”, it is by no means an exaggeration to suggest that Judge Goldsmith’s reasoning could inflict greater harm on the very foundations of our constitutional form of democracy than that inflicted by the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The halt to the “recount” came just two days after Judge Goldsmith issued a temporary restraining order (“TRO”) directing the MI Canvassing Board to immediately commence the “recount” and one day after a U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal decision, upholding that TRO. Under that 6th Circuit appeals ruling, Judge Goldsmith was obligated to revisit the issue if “the Michigan courts determine that Plaintiffs’ recount is improper for any reason.” Separately, on Dec. 6, the Michigan state appellate court ruled that, under MI law, only a candidate who has a reasonable chance of winning has a right to initiate a post-election count. But that state court ruling, by three Republican judges, did not justify Judge Goldsmith’s decision to halt a “recount” that had been predicated on Dr. Jill Stein’s rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Voting Blogs: Election Administration Woes and Not Just “Hoping for the Best” | More Soft Money Hard Law

For all the talk about weaknesses in the electoral systems–about voter fraud or hacking or machine failure, or all of the above–experience with these types of claims or concerns suggests that, as matters of general public debate, they will soon fade. The rhetoric may linger, but little of use, such as practical reforms, is likely to follow. This does not have to be the way the story ends. Six years ago, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration suggested at least two potentially helpful measures, one very concrete and urgent, and the other pressing but more politically complicated and so harder to execute. These reforms won’t satisfy everyone: they offer only so much to those with the darkest suspicions. But they would make a major difference in preventing a calamitous breakdown in the voting process and an even greater collapse of public confidence.

Voting Blogs: Listening and Responding To Calls for an Audit and Recount | Marc Elias/Medium

Over the last few days, officials in the Clinton campaign have received hundreds of messages, emails, and calls urging us to do something, anything, to investigate claims that the election results were hacked and altered in a way to disadvantage Secretary Clinton. The concerns have arisen, in particular, with respect to Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — three states that together proved decisive in this presidential election and where the combined margin of victory for Donald Trump was merely 107,000 votes. It should go without saying that we take these concerns extremely seriously. We certainly understand the heartbreak felt by so many who worked so hard to elect Hillary Clinton, and it is a fundamental principle of our democracy to ensure that every vote is properly counted. Moreover, this election cycle was unique in the degree of foreign interference witnessed throughout the campaign: the U.S. government concluded that Russian state actors were behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the personal email accounts of Hillary for America campaign officials, and just yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the Russian government was behind much of the “fake news” propaganda that circulated online in the closing weeks of the election. For all these reasons, we have quietly taken a number of steps in the last two weeks to rule in or out any possibility of outside interference in the vote tally in these critical battleground states.

Voting Blogs: Durham County’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Election Day | Election Academy

As I mentioned yesterday, Election Day went very smoothly for most of the nation – which is good for the country and the election community, but can be uncomfortable for any jurisdictions where problems do arise because they tend to stand out. It can be even more difficult when the problems arise in a state where results are being closely scrutinized for their political impact. Meet Durham County, North Carolina. The county election office has already seen its share of problems this year; the office is under the supervision of an acting director after the current director went out on medical leave. Before that, there was a controversy following the March primary where provisional ballots were mishandled and/or went missing – which resulted in resignations and has since been referred to the DA and now the State Bureau of Investigation. The November election didn’t go well, either.

Voting Blogs: Early Voting: Welcome to Massachusetts | State of Elections

This year’s election cycle will be the first in which Massachusetts citizens are permitted to participate in early voting in state elections. This recent development in Massachusetts’ election law is accompanied by several other changes and results from the enactment of An Act Relative to Election Laws, 2014 (HB 3788). More specifically, the reform bill provides for early voting in biennial state elections between eleven and two days before election day. All eligible Massachusetts voters are also now able to register to vote online and readily check their registration status to ensure they are all set to cast their ballot when the time comes. Additionally, this online registration now allows for the pre-registration of sixteen and seventeen year-olds so they can be immediately prepared to vote once they turn eighteen. These revisions to the registration policy represent a concerted and valiant effort to encourage young citizens to participate in the democratic process and exercise their right to vote as soon as they become eligible. This legislative development also depicts a real-life effort of the older-generations providing a form of assistance in helping society’s youth become more politically active, and is refreshing to observe given the flak that our younger generations have taken for low voter turnout.

Voting Blogs: DDOS Attacks and Election Day: What to Do? [HINT: Don’t Wait.] | Election Academy

Last Friday, Internet users across America were affected by an apparent worldwide distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack using an army of household appliances to barrage the network with data requests. … In the wake of the attack, many observers speculated on what would happen if a DDOS attack were to happen in the United States on Election Day. … If this did happen, this would be an incredibly challenging day for election officials and voters alike. And while there’s no guarantee it won’t, I think the good news is that – thanks to the routinized nature of the election process – most if not all of the information voters need to get and cast their ballots is already available.

Voting Blogs: The Russian Hack of U.S. Election Systems is About Delegitimizing, Not Changing, the Result, and It Feeds Trump Vote-Rigging Claim | Election Law Blog

The headlines over the last few weeks are suggesting Russian “hacks” of U.S. election systems. But the kinds of election systems hacked are not the ones that would change election results (at least so far). Instead, I think the Russians are playing a different, also dangerous, game involving misinformation and disruption. Let’s start with what we know. We know that it is Russia behind the hacking. Most people know about the Wikileaks revelations from the Podesta emails, with the goal of embarrassing the Clinton administration and potentially affecting the outcome of the election. Maybe if Trump were not the opponent, these leaks would have more of an effect. But beyond that there have been numerous reports of Russian hackers going after U.S. election systems, such as going after the voter registration databases of Illinois and Arizona.

Voting Blogs: 2016: The Belt and Suspenders Election | Election Academy

It’s Columbus Day – and a holiday for many election offices – so this will be a short post before we dive back in tomorrow to the last four weeks of the 2016 election. I wanted to write today about something I’ve noticed so far about this election year. While I don’t do politics here, it’s fair to say that this year’s presidential campaign has been extremely unusual, and has generated very strong emotions in voters in just about every region of the country and around the world. Some of the reactions we’re seeing as a result are typical for a presidential year; heightened focus on election procedures (with “hacking” and “rigging” as this year’s theme) plus the regular rush on litigation as campaigns seek to clarify election rules – ideally to their own benefit – before Election Day. But this year I’ve also noticed something new; many voters are casting ballots and engaging with the election process earlier and in greater numbers than I can remember. Moreover, there seems to be an intensity and urgency that is unusual in my experience. In just the last few weeks, I’ve seen colleagues in the field report overseas voters returning Federal Write-in Ballots (FWABs) as soon as voting opened rather than wait for regular ballots to reach them and multiple registration forms and/or online registration transactions from the same voters – sometimes AFTER they had been sent a vote-by-mail ballot.

Voting Blogs: A Republican Electoral College Hail Mary, and the Current State of the Campaign | Election Law Blog

By all accounts, Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign is imploding, with the latest revelations from a leaked 2005 “Access Hollywood” taping revealing not only Trump’s disrespect for women but a bragging about what amounts to a sexual assault. (Why anyone should be surprisedby this given Trump’s previous statements and actions is something hard to fathom; take the latest expressions of shock with a huge grain of salt). Hillary Clinton, who was already leading in the polls and seemed likely to continue her lead despitenew leaked revelations that she supports free trade and is cozier with banks and big business than she’s admitted (again, no surprise there for anyone paying attention), seems now likely to prevail. Donald Trump has run the worst presidential campaign in modern history, judged only by the week after his poor debate performance featuring comments taking on a former beauty contestant as too fat, complaining about his microphone, supporting the convictions of the exonerated Central Park 5, and making new irresponsible claims about vote rigging and Mexicans coming across the border to vote). And all of that came before the “grab them by the pussy” comments came out. Now, as the many members of the Republican establishment issue condemnations of him but still say they will vote for him and support his choice for the Supreme Court, a few are starting to break ranks, calling on him to withdraw. 

Voting Blogs: Narcissism vs. Charisma: Somaliland’s Presidential Election | Democracy Chronicles

In interview an HCTV, the question was, “Did you bombard Ethiopia during ’77 war?” The answer: “Yes, I brutally bombed Ethiopia”. This statement seems uttered by three old child, but it’s not. The ruling Kulmiye Party candidate Mr. Muse Bihi Abdi of Somaliland uttered this without exercising the minimum diplomatic code of ethics when he asked his greatest achievement in a life. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently said in regard to Donald Trump, that his “intellectual laziness and towering policy ignorance are in a league of its own”. Likewise, Somaliland intellectuals, if there are any, should make sure Muse Bihi, far more mediocre than anyone can imagine, fails to win. The damage to the country in the case of his election will make Somaliland look like “tribes with flags”. Tired of recycled mottos of improving their lives, voters want real change and have begun to increasingly look to the Wadani Party leadership.