Oklahoma: Hurry up and wait: Tulsa’s new election process frustrates candidates, voters | Tulsa World

After a frantic eight weeks of campaigning leading up to the June 11 nonpartisan mayoral election, now comes the dead of summer and the long, seemingly endless march to the Nov. 12 general election between former Mayor Kathy Taylor and incumbent Dewey Bartlett. Why, one might wonder, is there five months between the primary and the general election? Or, worse yet, seven months between the April filing period and the November general election. And then there is this possibility: If one mayoral candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote in the June primary, that candidate becomes mayor but doesn’t take office until the first week of December. How did this happen?

North Carolina: North Carolina: The Next Front In The Voting Wars | National Journal

Democrats and civil rights advocates worried last week that the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a key section of the Voting Rights Act would lead to a new round of legislation designed to make voting more difficult for minorities. And if North Carolina Republicans go ahead with ambitious plans to rejigger voting rules, those worst fears could be realized sooner rather than later. North Carolina state Sen. Tom Apodaca, the Republican chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, is working on a package of election law changes that would curb — perhaps end — early voting, Sunday voting and same-day voter registration, the Los Angeles Times reported this weekend. Before the Supreme Court’s ruling, 40 of North Carolina’s 100 counties needed to receive Justice Department pre-clearance before making changes to voting procedures. Without Section 4, which the Court said last week is unconstitutional, the state can now make many changes it wants without getting Washington’s approval.

Russia: Moscow Mayor Wants to Abolish Absentee Ballots | The Moscow Times

Acting Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has submitted a bill to the Moscow City Duma that would abolish the use of absentee ballots in city elections, but he said the proposed change would not be implemented before the upcoming mayoral election, a news report said Tuesday. Election observers say the widespread use of absentee ballots is among the techniques that made it possible for fraudsters to rig the results of several key recent elections in Russia, including the 2011 State Duma elections and last year’s presidential vote.

Florida: Election officials share suggestions | Miami Herald

Florida election officials told a presidential commission Friday that a reduction in early voting hours, a limited number of polling sites and a lengthy ballot led to the long lines and counting delays last November that again put the Sunshine State under national scrutiny. Gathered at the University of Miami, Florida’s secretary of state and a panel of a half-dozen county election supervisors spent hours performing a post-mortem of last year’s election before a bipartisan commission charged by President Barack Obama with improving the country’s electoral process. The day-long hearing was the first of four such events in battleground states. Miami was ground zero for Florida’s voting problems: Some voters waited between five and eight hours to cast ballots.

Minnesota: Most states have both early and no-excuse absentee balloting, but not Minnesota | MinnPost

Absentee balloting has made voting much easier for Bea Arret over the last decade. Arret, an election judge for 35 years, is deeply immersed in the civic side of voting and in encouraging others to vote. The engaged 84-year-old, who resides in a Moorhead-area assisted-living facility, said she encourages her fellow residents to cast absentee ballots to make sure it’s easy for them to participate in elections. “It’s just so much more convenient,” she said. “I just encourage everybody else to do the same thing.” That’s why Arret, who worked with AARP against the voting constitutional amendment last fall, is thrilled with upcoming changes in state election practices.

Florida: Online ballot fraud marks the ‘e-boletera era of Miami politics’ | Miami Herald

The election scandal dogging Congressman Joe Garcia’s campaign and two state House races makes it clear: Computer techies are supplementing old-school, block-walking ballot-brokers known as boleteras. Over just a few days last July, at least two groups of schemers used computers traced to Miami, India and the United Kingdom to fraudulently request the ballots of 2,046 Miami-Dade voters. Garcia said he knew nothing of the plot that recently implicated three former campaign workers, two employed in his congressional office. Investigators, meanwhile, have hit a dead end with a larger fraud involving two state House races. A third incident cropped up Thursday in Miami’s mayoral race, but the case appears unrelated to last year’s fraud when two groups appeared to act separately from each other. They employed different tactics to target different types of voters, a University of Florida/Miami Herald analysis of election data indicates. The ultimate goal was the same: get mail-in ballots into the hands of voters, a job that many boleteras once handled on the streets of Miami-Dade. Now, it’s electronic.

District of Columbia: Primary election date change proposal appears to be dead | Washington Post

The city’s top elected officials held high hopes that next year’s primary election might be moved from its current date of April 1, via legislation introduced in April by D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) and subsequently endorsed by Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D). But with at least three of five members of the council’s Government Operations Committee currently opposing the change, it looks as though next year’s primary day will remain April Fools’. Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5), the panel’s chairman and a co-introducer of the bill, confirmed that the measure has insufficient support on his panel. He said Monday that if he can’t get two additional votes by Friday, he won’t move the bill.

Florida: Police raid Miami Commissioner Francis Suarez’s mayoral campaign in absentee ballot fraud investigation | Miami Herald

Detectives raided a political worker’s home Thursday after he submitted other voters’ absentee-ballot request forms to help Miami Commissioner Francis Suarez’s mayoral campaign, which spun into damage-control mode and said no one intentionally broke the law. The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office targeted Juan Pablo Baggini after county elections workers flagged a series of 20 absentee-ballot requests made on May 29 that were linked to Baggini’s computer. “I can’t say anything, it’s an ongoing investigation,” Baggini, 37, said at his Coconut Grove office. He is listed as the “operations director’’ for Suarez’s campaign. The raid at Baggini’s Continental Park home was the second performed by police and prosecutors since May 31, when investigators searched three locations in a separate absentee-ballot fraud case involving the 2012 campaign of U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia.

Editorials: A Modest Early Voting Rise in 2012 | Michael P. McDonald/Huffington Post

The percentage of voters who cast their ballot before Election Day modestly increased from 29.7 percent to 31.6 percent from 2008 to 2012, according to a Census Bureau survey. The Current Population Survey, November Voting and Registration Supplement asks respondents if they voted on Election Day or before Election Day. Thus, the Census Bureau counts persons who voted by any means of “early voting” as voting prior to Election Day, be it by a mail ballot or in-person at an election office or special early voting polling place. The increase of 1.9 percentage points in early voting rates in the past two presidential elections is in stark contrast to the sharp rise of 9.7 percentage points from 2004 to 2008, from 20.0% to 29.7%. The rate of increase in early voting over the past two presidential elections may have slowed since some states have nearly maxed out the pool of people who may wish to vote early. Also, fewer new states came online to offer an early voting option to their voters, beyond the traditional excuse-required absentee ballot.

Wisconsin: State committee approves revised election bill | Associated Press

Campaign donors could contribute twice as much to their favorite candidates and voters could register online under a dramatically reworked election reform bill the state Assembly’s election committee approved Monday. In a rare compromise, Republicans and minority Democrats removed language designed to reinstate voter photo identification requirements. They also dropped provisions banning in-person absentee voting on weekends and limiting local recall elections. The elections committee approved the changes 8-1, setting up a vote in the full Assembly on Wednesday. Democrats on the panel still called the bill troubling, but they thanked Republicans for changing it. The committee’s chairwoman, Rep. Kathleen Bernier, R-Chippewa Falls, still signaled the GOP plans to return to voter ID this fall. “(The compromise bill) doesn’t mean we’re not going to address other things in the future,” she told the committee.

Colorado: Judge voids Center election but finds no intentional wrongdoing | Center Post Dispatch

After winding up testimony from Town Clerk Christian Samora and hearing closing arguments from both sides Thursday, District Judge Martin Gonzales rendered a timely decision Friday morning on the March 19 Center recall election. Gonzales based his decision strictly on the ruling handed down in the 1964 Colorado Supreme Court decision Taylor v. Pile: “If any absentee ballots are “numbered in such a manner that the vote of any person thereafter may be determined by comparison with the number on the ballot and the poll registration book is contrary to the state of Colorado’s constitutional and statutory guarantee of a secret ballot and, therefore, void ab initio [from the beginning].”

Wisconsin: Committee approves revised election bill | StarTribune.com

Campaign donors could contribute twice as much to their favorite candidates and voters could register online under a dramatically reworked election reform bill the state Assembly’s election committee approved Monday. In a rare compromise, Republicans and minority Democrats removed language designed to reinstate voter photo identification requirements. They also dropped provisions banning in-person absentee voting on weekends and limiting local recall elections. The elections committee approved the changes 8-1, setting up a vote in the full Assembly on Wednesday. Democrats on the panel still called the bill troubling, but they thanked Republicans for changing it. The committee’s chairwoman, Rep. Kathleen Bernier, R-Chippewa Falls, still signaled the GOP plans to return to voter ID this fall.

Florida: Congressman Joe Garcia’s chief of staff implicated in phantom absentee-ballot requests scheme | Miami Herald

Congressman Joe Garcia’s chief of staff abruptly resigned Friday after being implicated in a sophisticated scheme to manipulate last year’s primary elections by submitting hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot requests. Friday afternoon, Garcia said he had asked Jeffrey Garcia, no relation, for his resignation after the chief of staff — also the congressman’s top political strategist — took responsibility for the plot. Hours earlier, law enforcement investigators raided the homes of another of Joe Garcia’s employees and a former campaign aide in connection with an ongoing criminal investigation into the matter. “I’m shocked and disappointed about this,” Garcia, who said he was unaware of the scheme, told The Miami Herald. “This is something that hit me from left field. Until today, I had no earthly idea this was going on.”

Editorials: Joe Garcia’s ballot scandal | MiamiHerald.com

U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia says he’s angry — and was clueless — that his chief of staff was involved in a cockamamie absentee-ballot scheme during last year’s Democratic Party primary in Congressional District 26, which stretches from the Florida Keys north to Kendall. His chief of staff, Jeffrey Garcia (no relation to the congressman) has resigned, and a Miami-Dade state attorney’s office investigation continues. Prosecutors should pursue the truth purposefully and with due diligence. No dilly-dallying. Voters whose choice in 2012 was between two political enemies — Mr. Garcia, the former head of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, and former U.S. Rep. David Rivera, a Republican who has his own troubles with campaign and tax laws — deserve to know exactly what went down in this race and to hold their elected representative accountable if it is found he played a role in this scheme.

Florida: Congressman Joe Garcia: ‘Flawed’ absentee-voting system, ‘reckless abandon’ in politics contributed to ballot scandal | Miami Herald

Congressman Joe Garcia on Saturday attempted to control the damage inflicted on his office a day earlier, when he dismissed his chief of staff for apparently orchestrating a scheme to submit hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot requests. Meanwhile, Republicans nationwide and closer to home pummeled Garcia, questioning whether the first-term congressman was coming clean on his campaign’s involvement in the ballot scandal. In a news conference held at his West Miami-Dade office Saturday morning, Garcia, a Democrat, maintained that he had no knowledge of the failed plot during last year’s primary election. He said he learned about his campaign’s involvement only the previous afternoon from chief of staff Jeffrey Garcia, who is unrelated to the congressman and has long served as his top political strategist. “I cannot stress how angry I am at these events,” Joe Garcia said Saturday.

Wisconsin: Recount spurs voting reforms | Journal Times

Weekend absentee voting would end and voter identification requirements would return under a sweeping new election law package partially inspired by issues in Racine. The bill from Greendale Republican Rep. Jeff Stone covers a wide swath of election-related territory, including numerous procedural changes for how electoral recounts are run. Those changes are partially the product of last summer’s recall recount in Racine, where tensions ran high and allegations of election fraud repeatedly surfaced, according to Stone’s office. Speaker of the Assembly Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said his office helped shape the final bill, bringing together what he called “a bunch of different ideas regarding elections to make them hopefully easier and more fair.” The result is the wide-ranging proposal planned for committee debate Tuesday.

Philippines: President Aquino signs amendments to overseas absentee voting law | Sun.Star

President Benigno Aquino III has signed into law a consolidated bill amending the Overseas Absentee Voting Act of 2003, allowing more overseas Filipinos worldwide to cast their votes in Philippine elections. The Chief Executive signed last May 27 the Republic Act 10590 (An Act Amending Republic Act 9189, Entitled “An Act Providing for a System of Overseas Absentee Voting by Qualified Citizens of the Philippines Abroad, Appropriating Funds Therefor and for Other Purposes.”) The Act otherwise known as “The Overseas Voting Act of 2013” is a consolidation of Senate Bill 3312 and House Bill 6542. The Senate and the House of Representatives passed the consolidated measure on February 5, 2013 and February 6, 2013, respectively.

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.

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.

Maine: Effort to change early voting in Maine kept alive by House vote | Bangor Daily News

An effort to allow residents who vote early to place their ballots directly into a ballot box or voting machine rather than seal them in signed envelopes and submit them to a municipal clerk survived an initial vote Monday in the Maine House. The House voted 90-50 in favor of a measure that would ask voters whether they want to amend the state constitution to allow towns and cities to set up early voting. Maine residents who wish to vote early now do so by completing absentee ballots, which are sealed in envelopes that the voter signs and held at a municipal clerk’s office until Election Day, when poll workers place them in ballot boxes or voting machines. While Monday’s majority vote allows the bill to stay alive, the measure will need at least two-thirds support in future House and Senate votes in order to send a ballot question to voters.

Ohio: Senate puts brakes on plan to link in-state tuition to voting | The Columbus Dispatch

A House-passed budget provision that would have cost Ohio universities about $370 million a year in tuition payments is likely to be removed by the Senate, but that doesn’t mean the issue of out-of-state students voting in Ohio is dead. House Republicans last month put an amendment in the budget that would require universities to charge in-state tuition rates for out-of-state students who are given college documentation so they can vote in Ohio. The idea has drawn sharp criticism from university leaders, who do not want to be put in the middle of a political voting controversy, say they cannot afford the lost tuition revenue, and argue it would make the system unfair for in-state students whose families help subsidize state colleges through taxes.

California: Elections officials debunk claims of voter fraud | Bakersfield Californian

An Election Day-eve accusation by a Republican organization of massive, sweeping voter fraud in the 16th Senate District race fizzled Monday after Kern County elections officials reviewed vote-by-mail ballots cast in the race. None of the 26 vote-by-mail ballots alleged to have been hijacked were used to cast a vote. In fact, the U.S. Postal Service had simply returned them, untouched, to the Kern County elections office as undeliverable. Luis Alvarado, chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Los Angeles, had bombarded the media over the weekend with claims that his group had uncovered about 30 verified examples of voter fraud in Bakersfield. That, he said, meant that “hundreds, if not thousands, of votes were cast illegally” in the 16th District. The group’s attorney, Ashlee N. Titus, wrote in a statement to the Kern County elections office that the group was “working on a ‘get-out-the-vote’ campaign” to fill the state Senate seat when it discovered what it believed was voter fraud. Titus works for the Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk firm, which also represents the California Republican Party.

Florida: North Miami mayoral candidates dispute ballot count | Miami Herald

Three days after the North Miami election, at least two mayoral candidates are calling into question the results, saying Miami-Dade’s Elections Department can’t account for some seven hundred absentee ballots that were cast. But the elections department said that was not true. All ballots have been counted, and the candidates are mistaken because of a clerical error, a spokesperson said. According to unofficial results, including absentee ballots and all precincts reporting, the mayoral race and two council seats are headed to a runoff between the top two vote-getters because no candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote to win outright. At a press conference Friday afternoon, Dr. Smith Joseph, who came in third place in the mayoral race, called into question the numbers provided to him by the elections department on May 6.

Florida: Notes kept by accused Miami-Dade ballot broker reveal details | Miami Herald

Deisy Pentón de Cabrera kept meticulous notes on hundreds of voters, several political campaigns between 2008 and 2012 and what appear to be payments of $50 to $1,300 that are not on any candidate’s financial reports. Detectives confiscated three notebooks in which she wrote this and other information last summer. Finally, nine months after her arrest for alleged ballot fraud in Hialeah, the notebooks have been presented as evidence in the case. Cabrera, 57, wrote in a shaky hand and used abbreviations that are difficult to decipher. But her notes shed some light on the busy workload of this accused ballot broker, or boletera:

Ohio: Voter fraud, or just errors? | Cincinnati.com

Yamiah Davis was excited to vote in her first presidential election last fall. The 21-year-old Avondale woman mailed in her early ballot in October, but then realized she had forgotten to include a form. “I was excited to have my voice count,” Davis said. “When I realized what I did I thought, ‘Crap, my vote didn’t count.’ ” So, she said, she went to her polling location on Election Day and explained what happened. They told her to cast a provisional ballot, she said. Now, she could face prosecution and wonders: “Am I going to jail?” She and dozens of others – people who voted early by mail or in person at the Board of Elections, then cast a provisional ballot on Election Day – could face felony prosecution.

Ohio: Husted to decide on double voters | Cincinnati.com

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted will decide whether 39 Hamilton County residents who cast more than one vote in the 2012 election should be reviewed by the the prosecutor’s office. Voter fraud is a felony crime in Ohio. So far six people have been charged in Hamilton County on voting-fraud related charges. Husted, a Republican, will be needed to break a tie after the county’s Elections’ Board split 2-2 along party lines Wednesday over whether the cases needed prosecutor review. The Democratic board members said more review isn’t needed and Republicans said the board didn’t have enough information to know if a crime had been committed.

Florida: Miami-Dade GOP candidates told to avoid using ballot brokers | Miami Herald

The head of the Republican Party of Miami Dade County said on Monday that all local candidates under his wing will be given strict guidelines to avoid using ballot brokers in their campaigns. “The party will not employ people to collect absentee ballots,” said chairman Nelson Díaz. “We can’t allow people to take advantage of voters and fill out their absentee ballots.” Diaz’s announcement came as a response to stories published by El Nuevo Herald over the weekend about the contents of three notebooks that were apparently kept by Deisy Pentón de Cabrera, who was charged last summer with ballot fraud in Hialeah.

Hawaii: Lawmakers Balk At Bills Targeting 2012 Hawaii Election Flubs | Honolulu Civil Beat

Hundreds of Hawaii voters were likely disenfranchised in the 2012 elections after dozens of polling places ran out of ballots due to mismanagement and mishaps statewide. This is the same state that recorded the nation’s lowest voter turnout with a lousy 44 percent of registered voters bothering to elect their leaders. Then there was the debate over whether some candidates actually belonged to the political party they claimed or lived in the district they wanted to represent. Not to mention accusations of voter intimidation with candidates watching as voters filled out absentee ballots at home. And so Hawaii entered 2013 amid lawsuits, investigations and a blitz of bills to fix the flaws. What’s happened? Pretty much nothing. This year’s legislative session wrapped up May 2 with only one significant election-reform bill passing.

National: After Wins for Voter ID and Other Restrictive Measures, Democrats Fight Back on Elections | Stateline

Republicans several years ago seized the upper hand in the so-called “voting wars” by pushing voter ID and other measures that created new voting restrictions. But now Democrats across the country are fighting back. This week, Colorado lawmakers sent Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, a bill that allows voters in that state to register at the polls on Election Day; creates an all-mail ballot system; and ensures that voters who move within Colorado don’t have to re-register at their new address. The Colorado law is especially broad, but it is only the latest in a series of victories for those who want to streamline registration and reduce long lines at the polls. The governor is expected to sign the measure, which has overwhelming support among Democrats. During the last legislative session, Maryland expanded early voting, eased absentee voting and approved same-day registration during early voting periods. West Virginia implemented a new system to register residents using state records already on file. Delaware removed the waiting period for nonviolent felons to regain their voting rights, and made re-establishing them automatic. And this week, the Minnesota House approved a measure making absentee balloting easier.

Minnesota: State House passes elections bill | Minnesota Public Radio

The Minnesota House passed an omnibus elections bill today that would allow eligible voters to cast absentee ballots without stating a reason for not voting in person on Election Day. The vote was 74-60, with only one two Republican joining Democrats on the prevailing side. That doesn’t appear to meet the “broad bipartisan support” standard that DFL Gov. Mark Dayton has said he’ll require to sign election law changes. In addition to no-excuse absentee voting, the bill includes higher thresholds for taxpayer-funded recounts, tighter controls over felon voting rights and a reduction in Election Day vouching. There’s also a change in way statewide elections would proceed if a majority candidate dies or is incapacitated.