Kansas: House members seek to strip Kobach of power to appoint election commissioners | The Topeka Capital-Journal

A fresh effort surfaced Wednesday in the House to transform election commissioners into locally elected positions instead of appointments by the Secretary of State — a change that would affect Shawnee County. Members of the House Elections Committee tacked an amendment onto a Senate bill that proponents say would make election offices in the state’s largest counties accountable to the people they serve. Rep. John Alcala, D-Topeka, said he supports the change and sees it as a matter of local control. “To me, it all falls back on local control,” Alcala said. “And I think that’s where it should be.” The Topeka Capital-Journal contacted Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office seeking comment. Kobach has previously told The Capital-Journal lawmakers should leave the appointing system as it is.

Montana: Supporters: Mail ballot bill for special election must pass before Apr. 10 | KTVH

Republican Greg Gianforte and Democrat Rob Quist are already campaigning in the special election to replace Rep. Ryan Zinke in Congress. But less than 80 days before that election is held, a bill that could change the way it’s conducted is still making its way through the Montana Legislature. County clerks and recorders around the state are already rushing to get ready for the May 25 special election.

Vermont: Voting Misstep Means New Election| NECN

The small Vermont community most famous as the birthplace of President Calvin Coolidge abruptly canceled its Australian ballot vote on Tuesday’s Town Meeting Day, and is now readying for a do-over. “This was an honest mistake,” said Russ Tonkin of the Plymouth Select Board. “And we will make it right.” Tonkin said about 90 of Plymouth’s nearly 500 registered voters had cast their ballots in the local election when the select board shut down the process midday, voiding those votes. “We didn’t want to waste anybody else’s time,” Tonkin added.

Montana: Election administrators struggle to prepare for special election | Ravalli Republic

The decision to set the election date for Montana’s lone congressman on the Thursday just before Memorial Day weekend has sent election administrations scrambling. Ravalli County Clerk and Recorder Regina Plettenberg said the governor selected one of the three worst dates possible for the election to fill the seat vacated by now Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke. “I know the train of thought was to get it done as quickly as possible so the state can have a replacement in Congress,” Plettenberg said. “Election administrators across the state did ask for June 6, but unfortunately that wasn’t the date selected.” Instead, Gov. Steve Bullock selected Thursday, May 25 to hold the special election.

North Carolina: Court rulings mean North Carolina is without an elections board and ethics commission | News & Observer

A N.C. Court of Appeals order means that the state doesn’t have a board that oversees elections and ethics laws, Senate leader Phil Berger said Thursday afternoon. Berger made a rare visit to the room in the Legislative Building reserved for reporters to announce the latest news in an ongoing lawsuit over a December law combining the ethics and elections boards into a new State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement. “You still have all of the laws that folks are required to comply with, but we don’t have an Ethics Commission and we don’t have a Board of Elections based on this order,” Berger said.

Arkansas: Senate rejects election board’s shift to secretary of state | Arkansas Online

The Senate on Wednesday rejected legislation that would transfer the state Board of Election Commissioners into the secretary of state’s office. With a dozen senators not voting, Senate Bill 368 by Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, failed 7-15. The vote came after King made a pitch for the bill and no senator spoke against it. The Senate later expunged the initial vote on the bill to open the door for King to ask for another.

Montana: County administrators gear up for special election after Zinke confirmed | NBC

Gov. Steve Bullock announced Wednesday the special election to fill Ryan Zinke’s U.S. House seat will be held May 25. The U.S. Senate confirmed Zinke as the Secretary of Interior in President Donald Trump’s cabinet Wednesday. Zinke submitted his resignation as a Montana representative hours later. Elections offices across the state are preparing to hold a special election to replace Zinke. Missoula County Elections Administrator Rebecca Connors says the process could be extensive. “A special election like this is fairly unprecedented for Montana, so a lot of the elections administrators are all in the same boat of trying to coordinate on such short notice and make sure that we’re ready for a federal election,” Connors said. She says elections take at minimum five months to coordinate, but as of March 1 they only have about three.

Arkansas: Bill assigns election board to secretary of state | Arkansas Online

The state Board of Election Commissioners would be shifted to the secretary of state’s office under legislation that cleared an Arkansas Senate committee on Tuesday. The board would be under the direction and supervision of the secretary of state’s office but would exercise its powers, duties and functions independently of the office under Senate Bill 368 by Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest. The board would no longer be allowed to appoint a director, who could hire staff. The board’s mission is to improve the conduct of elections by promoting fair and orderly procedures through education, assistance and monitoring, according to the board’s website. The board is chaired by Republican Secretary of State Mark Martin and composed of six other members — two appointed by the governor and one each appointed by the chairman of the state Democratic Party, the chairman of the state Republican Party, the Senate president pro tempore and the House speaker. King told the Senate Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee that his bill would make state government more efficient by saving money while still getting the election duties executed.

Texas: Flawed voting in Texas likely the result of confusion — not fraud, official says | San Antonio Express-News

After confusion over whether several hundred Texans voted improperly in the November election, local election officials say that the ballots in question likely were cast by eligible voters who got caught up in the chaotic scramble to implement a court order loosening the state’s strict voter identification law. The law, adopted in 2011 by the GOP-controlled Legislature and mired in a yearslong court battle, requires voters to show one of seven forms of government-issued photo ID. After federal courts found the law to be discriminatory, a judge in August ordered Texas officials to soften its requirements for the Nov. 8 election by allowing registered voters without one of the required photo IDs to cast ballots if they signed affidavits swearing that they had a “reasonable impediment” to obtaining ID and showed other documentation, such as a birth certificate, utility bill, bank statement or government pay stub.

Illinois: GOP board members defend DuPage election commission merger process | Chicago Tribune

Republican members of the DuPage County Board defended the proposed merging of the county election commission with the office of county clerk’s office in the face of criticism leveled at last week’s board meeting. During public comments made at the Feb. 14 meeting, several people expressed concern over such issues as new election commissioner salaries and the merger provision that allows board Chairman Dan Cronin, a Republican, to nominate the Democrat serving on an expanded five-member election board.

North Carolina: State Supreme Court halts legislature’s elections board revamp | News & Observer

The state Supreme Court has restored a block on the legislature’s overhaul of the state elections board and ethics commission while Gov. Roy Cooper’s lawsuit awaits resolution. The court sided with Cooper in an order released Monday. It did not explain its reasoning. The decision is the latest legal twist in a power struggle between Cooper, a Democrat, and the Republicans at the helm of both General Assembly chambers. Cooper sued Phil Berger, the leader of the state Senate, and Tim Moore, the state House speaker, earlier this year over a December law that called for the merger of the five-member elections board and the state Ethics Commission, which administers ethics laws governing lobbyists, elected officials and government employees. At issue is whether the General Assembly overstepped its state constitutional authority when it adopted a law that establishes an eight-member board to oversee elections and consider ethics complaints and issues. The governor would appoint four members and legislative leaders would appoint the other four, with the board split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

North Carolina: Judges hear arguments over restricting governor’s powers | Associated Press

North Carolina’s new Democratic governor and the entrenched Republican-led legislature battled in court on two fronts Friday over efforts to restrict the chief executive’s ability to alter the state’s recent conservative direction. A panel of three state trial court judges spent three hours listening to arguments over whether to continue blocking a law requiring Senate confirmation of Gov. Roy Cooper’s Cabinet secretaries. The judges did not say when they would decide whether to continue blocking the law. Any order would be in effect until after a full hearing next month. Meanwhile, a revamped state elections board met for the first time Friday, hours after an appeals court temporarily reinstated a law stripping Cooper of his oversight of elections. Cooper’s attorneys are asking the state Supreme Court to step in and again block that law. The General Assembly passed the law requiring Senate consent to Cooper’s top appointees in December. It came in a surprise special session barely a week after Republican incumbent Pat McCrory conceded to Cooper in their close gubernatorial race and just before the Democrat took office.

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.

Michigan: Detroit clerk addresses troubled election; state audit shows no proof of voter fraud | Michigan Radio

Detroit city clerk Janice Winfrey has broken her public silence about irregularities in the city’s November’s election results. Michigan’s presidential recount was halted mid-process. But the partial recount revealed that more than half of Detroit precincts were legally ineligible to be recounted, because reported vote counts didn’t match the actual number of ballots. That prompted the state to launch an audit, which is still wrapping up. Winfrey has said very little during that time. But state elections officials have now said there is no evidence of fraud, a finding Winfrey reiterated that at a press conference Friday. Instead, she said it mostly revealed a lot of “human error” at the “precinct level.”

Fiji: Elections body allowed to lapse out of existence | Radio New Zealand

With an election looming in Fiji in 2018, the commission responsible for overseeing preparations has been allowed to lapse out of existence. On 9 January, the three-year term of the independent Electoral Commission, a constitutionally-mandated seven-member body tasked with supervising the Elections Office, which is responsible for preparing the vote, expired. Opposition parties say there appears to be no rush to replace the commission, which they say raises concerns about the state of Fiji’s nascent democracy as it prepares to enter its second elections since Frank Bainimarama’s 2006 coup. “There are no longer commissioners and there is no longer an Electoral Commission in place and that’s serious because it’s a constitutional office,” said Biman Prasad, the leader of the opposition National Federation Party. “It shouldn’t be allowed to remain vacant but that is exactly what has happened.”

Michigan: Johnson: Michigan may boost post-election audits | The Detroit News

Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said Thursday voting irregularities in Detroit and elsewhere in Michigan that spurred a state audit of the city’s ballots are prompting consideration of expanding post-election audits. Voting machines in more than one-third of all Detroit precincts registered more votes than they should have during the presidential election, according to Wayne County records prepared at the request of The Detroit News. The voting irregularities prompted an audit of the city’s ballots following the election. “We’ve done 1,400 of them, and we’re going to be looking at how we can broaden those audits even further,” Johnson said after a celebration of Michigan’s 180th anniversary as a state, without providing further details. “We’re looking at that right now because we’re doing some auditing of some of the communities that had some issues, and then we’ll know more exactly what we need to do because there’s nothing more important to democracy than making sure that we have great elections.” Detailed reports from the office of Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett show optical scanners at 248 of Detroit’s 662 precincts, or 37 percent, tabulated more ballots than the number of voters tallied by workers in the poll books.

Arizona: County recorders call relationship with Secretary of State ‘dire’ | ACIR

Arizona’s 15 county recorders this week delivered a letter to Secretary of State Michele Reagan in which they said communication between their offices and hers is “in a dire state” because state Election Director Eric Spencer has been “ineffective and disrespectful.” The county recorders said in the Jan. 23 letter that Spencer has been verbally abusive, “rude” and “dismissive” of questions posed to him by the recorders and their staffs. In one instance, they wrote, Spencer said the recorders were “incompetent,” and that he has refused to answer “questions of critical importance posed by those same elections officials.” The recorders also said Spencer has neglected statutory obligations and created legal and ethical conflicts with his demands that recorders remove voters from registration rolls.

Uganda: New Electoral Commission Membership, Same Age-Old Problems | allAfrica

In his inaugural speech, after being sworn in as the new Electoral Commission chairperson, Justice Simon Byabakama made a passionate plea to Ugandans especially critics to give him time to deliver on his mandate. In making the plea, Justice Byabakama was well aware of the documented lack of confidence in the electoral body and did not shy away from taking note of this, before stating his credentials of being “independent”. “I am coming from a background were being independent is a prerequisite of exercise of the judicial power. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am not about to throw off that gown and leave it in court,” he said. Unfortunately for him, Justice Byabakama has in the past been found to have thrown off that “gown” particularly during his time at the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Wisconsin: Recount raised ‘human error’ concerns among Wisconsin’s county clerks | Green Bay Press Gazette

Now that they’ve finished recounting roughly 3 million presidential election ballots, several clerks throughout eastern and central Wisconsin continue to worry about one aspect of the voting process. Human error. Some voters struggled to mark ballots correctly. Some made the correct marks, but used pens that scanning machines couldn’t read. Some forgot to have a witness sign an absentee ballot. Some election workers allowed unsigned absentee ballots to be counted. “One thing that surprised me (was) the amount of human errors that I’m still seeing with this election,” Fond du Lac County Clerk Lisa Freiberg said. Whether they might be able to improve the process, however, remains to be seen. Clerks agreed that machines used to tally votes worked as they were supposed to. But they also said the recount helped them discover human errors that, while they did not affect the overall outcome of the state’s presidential vote, might have been problematic in a local election in which fewer votes were cast.

Illinois: DuPage Looking To Merge Election Commission With County Clerk | CBS Chicago

DuPage County officials said they are fine-tuning a plan to merge their election commission with the county clerk’s office. County clerks manage election operations in Lake and Will counties, and the Cook County suburbs, as well as many other counties in Illinois, but DuPage County Board Chairman Dan Cronin said his merger proposal would preserve bipartisan oversight. “DuPage Election Commission is managed and governed by a bipartisan three-member board, and so I don’t want to simply discard that model. I want to improve that,” she said.

North Carolina: Judges decide to keep North Carolina election law blocked | Associated Press

A law North Carolina Republicans approved scaling back the new Democratic governor’s control over election boards won’t be enforced until his legal challenge to it is resolved, state judges decided Thursday. A panel of trial court judges is granting the request by Gov. Roy Cooper to extend a temporary 10-day block on the law, which Cooper argues is unconstitutional because it shifts appointment powers from him to legislative leaders. Cooper sued GOP legislative leaders just before his New Year’s Day swearing-in, challenging a law the General Assembly approved in a surprise special session barely a week after Republican incumbent Pat McCrory conceded to Cooper in their close race. Barring any appeals, the incremental victory for Cooper keeps separate the State Board of Elections and the State Ethics Commission and halts what his allies considered an illegal power grab by Republicans. But GOP legislators said the blocked law would promote bipartisanship in carrying out elections. “We’re pleased with the result,” Cooper spokeswoman Noelle Talley said in an email.

North Carolina: Judges block elections board overhaul as Roy Cooper’s lawsuit pends | News & Observer

A three-judge panel Thursday upheld Gov. Roy Cooper’s request to block a revamp of the state elections board while his lawsuit makes its way through the courts. In the first hearing before the panel of judges assigned to the case this week, Greensboro attorney Jim Phillips argued for Cooper that a law adopted by the General Assembly in one of its special sessions last month violates the constitutional separation of powers. It was a similar argument to one made last week by Phillips on the eve of the date the law would have disbanded the five-member state Board of Elections and passed its duties to the state Ethics Commission. The merger was set to happen on Jan. 1, but Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens temporarily blocked the law from taking effect. His restraining order was set to expire Monday. The three-judge panel – assigned to the case because of the constitutional questions the new law raises – heard from the lawyers for nearly three hours before retreating behind closed doors. The panel contacted attorneys in the case several hours later, letting them know that they had granted Cooper’s request. They instructed Phillips to write an order, circulate it among the legislators’ lawyers and return it to them by Friday.

Arizona: Secretary of State floats election law overhaul; Pima County incredulous | ACIR

Secretary of State Michele Reagan has begun circulating a memo detailing a proposed overhaul of the laws governing virtually every aspect of how elections are conducted in Arizona, from data protocols and recount procedures, to “sore loser” candidates and voter fraud investigations. Matt Roberts, a spokesman for Reagan’s office, said the proposal only begins the conversation about ways election practices can be improved. He said there are two main motivations to Reagan’s proposition: digitizing records and processes, and fixing issues that have come up in recent years. Parts of the proposal, such as requiring counties to report election data in uniform formats, would lead to faster and more detailed results for the public on election night, Roberts said.

Editorials: The Assault on Democracy in North Carolina | Michael Dorf/Newsweek

A recent special legislative session in North Carolina failed to result in the repeal of House Bill 2—the infamous “bathroom law” that has made the Tar Heel State synonymous with anti-trans/anti-gay intolerance and thus cost businesses and workers millions of dollars. Yet that was only the second-most appalling legislative news from Raleigh in the past couple of weeks. The even bigger story is the state GOP’s effort to override the popular will. In November, North Carolina voters chose Democrat Roy Cooper to replace incumbent Republican Pat McCrory as their governor. McCrory took a month to concede, raising bogus voter-fraud allegations. Then, in a special session just two weeks before Cooper’s inauguration, the GOP-controlled North Carolina Legislature passed new measures that strip the governor of many of the position’s powers. As a lame-duck governor, McCrory signed those bills into law.

North Carolina: Judge puts GOP elections board makeover on hold after Roy Cooper sues | News & Observer

Governor-elect Roy Cooper filed a lawsuit Friday challenging the General Assembly’s special session law that revamps the state elections board. The lawsuit was the second filed in the waning days of Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration that challenge changes that were adopted by the General Assembly in a special session in December and signed into law by the Republican governor. On Thursday, the state Board of Education sued legislators over a law that would transfer their power to set education policy to the new state superintendent, a Republican. An attorney representing Cooper said at a court hearing Friday that more challenges could be filed next week by the new Democratic governor contesting other changes to his appointment powers – setting the stage for a contentious beginning between the state’s chief executive officer and the Republican lawmakers at the helm of both General Assembly chambers. Cooper is scheduled to be sworn in as governor as soon after midnight on Jan. 1 as possible, though his public inauguration is not taking place until Jan. 7.

Kansas: The complicated, messy logistics of a potential special election | The Wichita Eagle

Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman says one of the main questions she gets is what her department does between elections. “I kind of laugh and say, ‘When are we between elections?’ ” she said. Sedgwick County was supposed to have a longer break before its next countywide election. Then President-elect Trump nominated 4th District Congressman Mike Pompeo to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. “We were supposed to be ‘between elections’ right now,” Lehman said at a county commission meeting this month. “We no longer are.” If Pompeo is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, his replacement will be chosen by the voters of the 4th District, which includes Sedgwick County and most of south-central Kansas. Officials will need to work quickly to set up polling locations and get workers for the polls. And if the county’s new voting machines aren’t ready in time, most voters will cast paper ballots.

Illinois: Democrats critical of DuPage merger plan | Daily Herald

The DuPage Democratic Party chairman says he wants the county to revise its proposal to consolidate the election commission and county clerk’s office to make the move “truly bipartisan.” DuPage officials plan to ask state lawmakers to return election oversight power to the clerk’s office by merging it with the election commission. If approved, the commission would become a division of the clerk’s office. In addition, a five-member board of election commissioners would be created to set policy, hold meetings and receive public comment. The county clerk would serve as the panel’s chairman. Supporters say the plan keeps the election commission board, which currently has three seats and must have representatives from both major political parties. Republicans hold two of the three seats. But Robert Peickert, the DuPage Democratic Party chairman, says he’s concerned about increasing the election commission board to five members because county board Chairman Dan Cronin, a Republican, still would have the power to appoint four of them. “Bipartisan means you have the participation of the Democratic Party, which he has ignored,” Peickert said. “This is not bipartisan.”

US Virgin Islands: St. Croix District Election Board Ends Year in Chaos | St. Thomas Source

The St. Croix District Board of Elections meeting Wednesday ended in chaos, with multiple motions made to unseat the chairwoman current at the beginning of the meeting and the subsequent chairman apparently seated during the session. Lilliana Belardo de O’Neal was board chairwoman as the meeting got underway. Glenn Webster, who initially was board secretary, moved that Belardo de O’Neal be removed from heading the board because, he said, of collusive action with her husband she had tried “to deliberately defraud the people of the Virgin Islands.” After the motion was seconded, Belardo de O’Neal said, “Hearing no objection, the motion passes.” Having no discussion on the motion seemed to upset board member Adelbert “Bert” Bryan, who said, “We cannot tell what we are talking about.” Other board members argued that there was no sense having a discussion on the motion since it passed.

Editorials: American democracy is being derailed. Can faith be restored? | Richard Wolffe/The Guardian

Now that the electoral college has formally selected the next president of the United States, it’s worth taking a deep breath and asking: what kind of democracy do we live in? The will of the people ought to be clear after an election. But as 2016 draws to a close, there are deeply troubling signs that American democracy – after 227 years of seeking a more perfect union – has left the rails. It turns out it’s possible to win the governorship in North Carolina but find the job is stripped of power before you’re sworn into office. And across the nation, we abide by the archaic rules of an electoral college that has all but renounced its first responsibility: to elect someone fit to be president. The Founders may have wanted to prevent demagogues from taking power, but party hacks ignored all that original intent. It makes you wonder why the candidates and voters abide by the rules of a game that nobody is interested in playing.

Michigan: Detroit’s election woes: 782 more votes than voters | Detroit Free Press

Whether the result of machine malfunction, human error or even fraud, the unexplained voting discrepancies in Detroit last month were not sizable enough to affect the outcome in Michigan of the presidential election, according to a new Free Press analysis of voting precinct records. In 248 precincts, there were a total of 782 more votes tabulated by voting machines than the number of voters listed as picking up ballots in the precincts’ poll books. That makes up just three-tenths of 1% of the total 248,211 votes that were logged in Detroit for the presidential election. That number was far too small to swing the statewide election results, even in this year’s especially tight race that saw a Republican win Michigan for the first time since George Bush in 1988. Donald Trump carried Michigan by 10,704 votes, or 47.5% to 47.3%, according to the final results submitted to the Michigan Secretary of State. But in Detroit, Democrat Hillary Clinton trounced Trump, winning 95% of the vote to his 3%.