Uganda: Opposition Disputes Election Tally | Wall Street Journal

Opposition supporters stormed out of a tallying center on Friday amid mounting allegations of vote rigging, as an early count from this week’s disputed election showed Uganda’s authoritarian President Yoweri Museveni on track to extend his three decades in office. Opposition supporters said the partial results showing 62% of the vote going to Mr. Museveni didn’t match results collected at individual polling stations by their operatives. “We know how Ugandans voted, and what is being announced is not what is on the ground,” said Ingrid Turinawe, a spokeswoman for the main opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change. “We will not be party to this fraudulent process.” Electoral Commission head Badru Kiggundu rejected the allegations. “We are announcing results as sent to us from the districts,” he said, with about 15% of votes from Thursday’s contest counted. FDC leader Kizza Besigye was in a distant second with about 34% of the vote.

Uganda: Ugandans start voting for president amid long delays | Reuters

Ugandans started casting their votes on Thursday to decide whether to give Yoweri Museveni, in power for three decades, another term in office. Voting at most polling stations in the capital, Kampala, was yet to start 90 minutes after the official opening of polling at 7 am local time (0400 GMT), leading to concerns among some voters. “If the voting time is reduced like this there will be many people who will not be able to vote,” said Dickson Mamber, a 34-year-old history teacher, who had been waiting in line for two hours at Muyembe polling station in Kampala. Voting at the station still had not started by 0545 GMT. All sides contesting the election accuse each other of stoking tensions and assembling vigilante groups, and the leading opposition candidates have predicted vote rigging.

Uganda: Opposition Candidate: Only Intimidation, Vote Buying Can Prevent Victory | VoA News

One week before Uganda’s February 18 presidential and parliamentary elections, main opposition candidate Kizza Besigye of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), says he fears voter bribery could be one of the obstacles to his victory. Besigye ran against President Museveni in three previous elections: 2001, 2006, and 2011. Earlier this week, Ugandan government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said the ruling party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM), will once again deflate what he called the Besigye “bravado” on election day. Besigye said given the extremely high enthusiasm Ugandans have shown toward his campaign, perhaps Opondo was referring to the three previous elections that, he said, the government stole from him.

Serbia: MPs Duel Over Danger of Election Fraud | Balkan Insight

Opposition and ruling party MPs clashed in Serbia’s parliament on Tuesday about potential wrongdoings in the forthcoming parliamentary elections broadly scheduled for late April. Zoran Zivkovic, president of the opposition New Party, said that his party, like most citizens in Serbia, feared electoral fraud. “We thought the period of election frauds ended on October 2000 [with the fall of Slobodan Milosevic] but election theft was already registered in the local elections… and new symptoms of the same disease are obvious,” Zivkovic said.

Central African Republic: Candidates call for halt in Central African Republic vote count | Reuters

Two thirds of the 30 candidates standing for president of Central African Republic on Monday demanded the authorities halt the vote count because of what they said were irregularities in the ballot. Many voters hope the Dec. 30 poll will restore peace after three years of conflict between Muslim rebels and Christian militias in which thousands of people have died and around 1 million have fled their homes. The protest by the candidates could mean the final result is contested, but it may be seen by some voters as a last cry by people who see their chances of winning the election slipping away.

Haiti: Presidential vote plagued by irregularities, report finds | Miami Herald

A commission charged with evaluating Haiti’s Oct. 25 presidential and legislative elections has found that egregious irregularities and a high presumption of fraud plagued the vote, while the electoral machine requires sweeping changes in order to hold a postponed runoff. According to official results, government-backed candidate Jovenel Moïse received 32.76 percent of the votes while Jude Célestin, the former head of the state construction agency, garnered 25.29 percent. Célestin, however, called the results a “ridiculous farce” and refused to campaign. Alleging vote-rigging and ballot-stuffing, Célestin and other opposition candidates called for an independent Haitian-led commission to probe the disputed balloting. The commission was created by President Michel Martelly on Dec. 22, five days before the postponed second round. On Sunday morning, members issued their findings, which critics say do not resolve the political crisis despite pointing out a series of major systemic problems besieging Haitian society.

Haiti: Electoral Commission Seeks to Discover If Presidential Elections Were Fraudulent | teleSUR English

An independent electoral commission in Haiti is due to deliver its report on the first round of the presidential election this Thursday amid fervent claims of electoral fraud, while it seems highly unlikely that the second round of voting will take place Jan. 3 as originally planned. Five representatives from varying religious groups and nongovernmental organizations were appointed to the commission by electoral decree in December to investigate the claims of foul play. However it seems unlikely the second round of voting will go ahead Sunday. Rosny Desroches, spokesperson for the independent electoral commission, said the commission had established a sample of 2,000 ballot tallies out of 13,000 local counts and was working to analyze them. He admitted that it would be difficult to complete the task by Wednesday, as had been mandated by presidential decree.

Venezuela: Voters set to call time on Chávez’s ‘Bolivarian revolution’ | The Guardian

Venezuela’s self-styled socialist experiment faces its toughest test yet this weekend in a parliamentary election held amid crippling inflation and spiralling crime that appear to have turned the tide against the late Hugo Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution”. Polls show the opposition stand to win a majority of seats in the country’s unicameral National Assembly but President Nicolás Maduro, Chávez’s handpicked successor, has said that he would “not hand over the revolution” if the ruling party loses at the polls. Opposition candidates are leading by 25-30% in most races, despite what critics say has been a campaign skewed by government intervention on behalf of ruling party candidates, a lack of access to media and incidents of violence. “Barring some very large election fraud, the opposition will win by a wide margin. The ruling party majority is almost certain to get wiped out,” predicted Michael Henderson, an analyst with Verisk Maplecroft, a risk consultancy.

Georgia: Suspended election official griped about faulty gear | WXIA

The DeKalb County election official placed on administrative leave complained about a faulty piece of equipment turned in from Tuesday’s election, according to elections director Maxine Daniels. Daniels said she suspended Leonard Piazza following a conflict he’d had with a subordinate. She declined to say if the conflict with the subordinate was related to the faulty equipment. Friday, DeKalb county officials certified the LaVista Hills cityhood vote now under investigation by the state. 11Alive news first reported the investigation into the election Wednesday. The state is investigating complaints of fraud.

Haiti: Government candidate advances to presidential runoff | Reuters

Ruling party candidate Jovenel Moïse and former government executive Jude Célestin led voting in Haiti’s Oct. 25 presidential election and will face each other in a run-off next month, according to official results announced on Thursday. The winner will succeed President Michel Martelly next February at the head of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. Moïse, representing the…

Colombia: Violence and Fraud Put Colombian Elections at Risk | teleSUR

Political developments are heating up in Colombia as the country prepares for another election, with at least seven candidates killed and 30 municipalities uncovering cases of voter fraud. Seven politicians have been killed since February this year, with the most recent murder victim Giraldo Ojeda, a conservative leader and mayor of San Jose de Alban who was killed Sept. 30. According to Colombian daily El Tiempo, 157 other candidates have also reportedly received threats, just days ahead of the Oct. 25 legislative elections. Most of the threats have been made in the states of Valle del Cauca, Narino and Antioquia, considered some of the most dangerous regions of the country.

Haiti: First election in four years marred by sporadic violence | Reuters

Haitians voted Sunday for the first time in four years in a test of stability for an impoverished country continually rocked by political turmoil. Men armed with rocks and bottles attacked polling stations in the capital of Port-au-Prince and two dozen voting centers around the country were forced to close due to violence, according to officials. Voting was extended two hours at some polling stations that opened late or were forced to suspend voting. The Caribbean nation of about 10 million people has struggled to build a stable democracy ever since the overthrow of the dictatorship of the Duvalier family, which led Haiti from 1957 to 1986, and ensuing military coups and election fraud. The country was also devastated by an earthquake in 2010 that flattened large parts of the capital, including the presidential palace, killings tens of thousands of people.

Texas: Attorney General’s Office Probing Valley Election Fraud Claims | The Texas Tribune

The Texas attorney general’s office has opened an investigation into a contested election in the Rio Grande Valley won by a client of Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa two years ago, according to a lawyer for the losing candidate. Houston attorney Jerad Najvar said Thursday that Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office is acting on a criminal complaint filed by his client, Letty Lopez. She lost to Lupe Rivera, Hinojosa’s client, by 16 votes in a November 2013 election for a spot on the Weslaco City Commission. More than a year ago, a visiting judge ruled that some of the votes for Rivera were illegally cast and ordered a new election held as soon as possible, according to local media. Legal wrangling has kept the new election from taking place, and Rivera has remained in office while Hinojosa has defended him in court.

Texas: In Rio Grande Valley, Some Campaign Workers Are Paid To Harvest Votes | NPR

A new FBI anti-corruption task force is trying to clean up the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. According to the Justice Department, in 2013, more public officials were convicted for corruption in South Texas than in any other region of the country. One of the practices the task force is looking at is vote-stealing. They’re called politiqueras — a word unique to the border that means campaign worker. It’s a time-honored tradition down in the land of grapefruit orchards and Border Patrol checkpoints. If a local candidate needs dependable votes, he or she goes to a politiquera.

Kansas: Lawmakers advance bill to boost secretary of state’s power | Associated Press

Secretary of State Kris Kobach would gain the power to prosecute election fraud under a bill that the Kansas House narrowly gave first-round approval Wednesday. The measure would stiffen penalties for an array of election crimes and add the secretary of state and attorney general to a list of officials allowed to prosecute the offenses. The House expected to take a final vote Thursday. Kobach has pushed to gain the authority since taking office in January 2011 and if approved by the House, the bill would go to Gov. Sam Brownback for his possible signature.

Turkey: Security of ballot boxes and voter lists main concern before June elections | Today’s Zaman

While there are only two months left until the general election in June, vote-rigging incidents during previous elections have increased concerns over the security of the ballot boxes and the fate of the votes on the Supreme Election Board (YSK) list as millions of citizens failed to check whether they will be able to vote or not. Rigging claims were frequent during past elections, although no major vote-rigging has been made public yet which might change the results. Some unused ballots were found in the trash, some people were claimed to have voted twice and there were claims that some voted using the names of dead people. Still others were not able to vote as their names were not on the list specifically drawn up for voters. Power outages took place in 41 provinces on the night of the local elections on March 30, 2014. Allegations of election fraud were rampant following the local elections, with observers documenting many discrepancies between the numbers recorded at polling stations and those finally entered into the YSK’s computer-based Elector Record System (SEÇSİS). More interestingly, a cat that allegedly got inside an electrical transformer was held responsible by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government for at least one of the power cuts that occurred in 22 provinces during vote tallying on the evening of March 30.

Macedonia: Opposition claims government manipulated elections | Associated Press

Macedonia’s main opposition party on Tuesday published what it says is new evidence of government vote-manipulation in three recent elections, following up on accusations of a massive wire-tapping scandal. At a party rally, Zoran Zaev’s Social Democrats released what they said were recorded conversations between conservative government officials and Macedonia’s intelligence chief. Addressing more than 2,000 party supporters, Zaev repeated calls for conservative Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski to immediately hand over power to an interim government that would ensure “free and fair elections.”

New York: Feds: Ex-Spring Valley mayor sought to ‘bury’ abstentee ballots | The Journal News

Former Spring Valley Mayor Noramie Jasmin did more than sell her political influence for kickbacks — she also tried to rig a village election, federal prosecutors said in court papers filed in her corruption case this week. Prosecutors allege in a 20-page motion filed in U.S. District Court in White Plains that Jasmin met with developer Moses “Mark” Stern, who was cooperating with the FBI, and asked him if he could help eliminate dozens of absentee ballots in that year’s village elections to ensure “favorable” candidates would win.

Tajikistan: Leader’s party ahead in election, Western monitors cry foul | Reuters

Tajikistan’s veteran President Imomali Rakhmon looked set on Monday to dominate parliament for another five years after his party took a strong lead in an election Western observers said was stacked in his favor. The central election commission, announcing first results from Sunday’s general election, said on Monday his People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan had won 65.2 percent of the party list votes, which account for about one-third of the seats in the lower house of parliament. No information was available yet on results from direct mandate constituencies, which make up the rest of the 63-seat lower house, but observers expect Rakhmon loyalists to win most of those races as well.

Kentucky: Judge throws out election results in 2014 Magoffin judge-executive race | Lexington Herald-Leader

There were so many violations of election rules in last November’s election for Magoffin County judge-executive that the results must be thrown out, a judge has ruled. Circuit Judge John David Preston declared the office vacant, creating a question about Judge-Executive Charles “Doc” Hardin’s status. Hardin, a Democrat seeking a third consecutive term, defeated Republican challenger John P. Montgomery by 28 votes in the disputed election, 3,281 to 3,253. On Saturday, one of Hardin’s attorneys, James L. Deckard, said Hardin is disappointed with the ruling and will appeal. In Preston’s decision, he cited a raft of improprieties, including a lack of required information on applications for absentee ballots; precinct officers failing to document how they identified voters and improperly helping people vote; and residents casting early ballots at the county clerk’s office when there was no Republican election commissioner present as required.

Maine: Panel’s chairman promises thorough review of contentious Senate race recount | The Portland Press Herald

The Republican chairman of a committee that will pick the winner of a disputed state Senate race in Portland’s northern suburbs said Monday that the panel will thoroughly review 21 ballots from Long Island that showed up during the recount of the contest but weren’t recorded on Election Day. Sen. Roger Katz, R-Augusta, also said that the panel expects to hear testimony from the Long Island town clerk, who oversaw the election and signed off on the Election Day count. “Obviously it’s political, but the most important thing to Senate Republicans is that the right person who was duly elected gets seated and we maintain the integrity of this institution,” Katz said. “And we intend to do that.” The 21 ballots are at the center of the contested Senate District 25 race between Republican Cathleen Manchester of Gray and Democrat Cathy Breen of Falmouth. Unofficial results on the night of Nov. 4 showed Breen beating Manchester by 32 votes, 10,930 to 10,898. Manchester challenged the results, and after a recount, Manchester appeared to be the winner by 11 votes, 10,927 to 10,916.

Voting Blogs: ‘Phantom’ Ballots in Maine State Senate Recount Reverse Result From Democratic to Republican | BradBlog

An election fraud mystery has emerged in Maine’s tiny Town of Long Island. The strange case has not only changed the previously announced “winner” of the election, but the contested results affect the entire state Senate and are now the subject of an investigation demanded by the Maine Democratic Party. On Election Night this year, Democrat Catherine Breen reportedly won the race for state Senate by a very slim 32 votes in Maine’s Senate District 25, according to the then-unofficial tally. However, during a hand recount of the votes last week, 21 previously unaccounted-for ballots were discovered to be in the locked Long Island ballot box. All of the “new” ballots included votes for Cathleen Manchester, the Republican candidate who had requested the recount. Those 21 “new” ballots were above and beyond the 171 votes counted by hand on Election Night (which proved to be an otherwise perfect count) and the 171 voters listed as having voted on the “voter manifest” at Long Island’s only precinct. The “new” votes, combined with a few other adjustments to the tallies in the 25th District’s six other towns, were enough to reverse the results, giving an 11-vote victory to the Republican candidate after the recount, even as neither party is able to explain the appearance of the “phantom ballots” in Long Island.

Poland: Kopacz Rebuffs Polish Vote Rerun After Protesters Ejected | Bloomberg

Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz rejected what she said were “irresponsible” calls by opposition parties to rerun a local ballot after police ejected protesters from election offices and vote-counting resumed. “I absolutely rule out new elections,” Kopacz said today in an interview on Radio Zet. “The State Electoral Commission wasn’t up to its task, but let’s not confuse institutional failure with election fraud.” Twelve people were detained early today and charged with illegally occupying the electoral commission in Warsaw, police spokeswoman Edyta Adamus said by phone. Another eight protesters may face the same charge, which carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison, Adamus said.

Editorials: Preventing votes, Romanian-style | Robert Schwartz/Deutsche Welle

The ruling socialists’ approach has paid off for the time being. Their candidate, incumbent Prime Minister Victor Ponta, won the first round of voting. Whether his roughly ten percent head start will be enough for the second round is doubtful, however. Klaus Johannis, the ethnic German candidate for the liberal alliance, has a real chance of moving into the presidential palace, and not just in numbers. What matters now is who gets the votes of the 12 candidates from the first round. It’s just as crucial whether the largest political group – the non-voters – will exercise their democratic right in two weeks’ time. For the first round, about half of Romania’s eligible voters chose to stay at home. Just like five years ago, it might be expatriate Romanians yet again who end up tipping the scales. In 2009, a clear majority voted for outgoing President Traian Basescu – to the great chagrin of the Socialists, who cried election fraud. This time, however, the Socialist government appears to have made sure that situation won’t be repeated. After hours of standing in line, thousands of Romanians hoping to cast their ballot in West Europe had to return home without having voted. Not enough polling stations had been set up for the estimated two to three million Romanians who live and work abroad. Disastrous planning permitted voting at nothing but a snail’s pace. When the polling stations closed right on schedule, many thousands still waiting to vote were turned away. In a European democracy, that’s not what fair elections look like.

National: Is It Voter Fraud or Voter Suppression in 2014? | New York Times

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court upheld a move by Texas lawmakers to implement voter identification checks at polls during the midterm elections this November. “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a six-page dissent saying the court’s action ‘risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters,’” reports Adam Liptak for The New York Times. “The law, enacted in 2011, requires voters seeking to cast their ballots at the polls to present photo identification like a Texas driver’s or gun license, a military ID or a passport,” he explains. “Those requirements, Justice Ginsburg wrote, ‘may prevent more than 600,000 registered Texas voters (about 4.5 percent of all registered voters) from voting in person for lack of compliant identification.’” At the heart of the voter-ID debate is the specter of voter fraud. Right-leaning pundits have expended hours upon hours of airtime persuading viewers of its widespread existence and insidious growth. “Voter fraud will occur” during the 2014 midterm elections, claims Hans von Spakovsky, writing for The Wall Street Journal. “Many states run a rickety election process, lacking rules to deter people who are looking to take advantage of the system’s porous security. And too many groups and individuals — including the N.A.A.C.P., the American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder — are doing everything they can to prevent states from improving the integrity of the election process.” “Democrats want everyone to vote: old, young, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, citizen, non-citizen,” Mona Charen writes at National Review. “Voter-ID laws, passed by 30 states so far, are efforts by legislatures to ensure the integrity of votes. Being asked to show a photo ID can diminish several kinds of fraud, including impersonation, duplicate registrations in different jurisdictions, and voting by ineligible people including felons and non-citizens,” she says.

Mozambique: Polls close with opposition crying foul | AFP

Mozambicans voted Wednesday in a closely-fought test for the ruling Frelimo party, which has run the southern African country since independence from Portugal in 1975, with opposition parties crying foul. Frelimo is facing growing discontent over a wealth gap that persists despite huge mineral resources, with fast economic growth sidestepping the bulk of a population that is among the world’s poorest. But members of the two opposition parties later claimed they had discovered attempts to stuff ballots by the ruling party. “A young man was shot (in the feet). He tried to stop the Frelimo (local) secretary from stuffing boxes,” in central Sofala province, said Sandes Carmona, spokesman for the fledgling MDM opposition party.  In northern Nampula province, riot police used teargas to disperse a crowd that had gathered at a polling station to watch the counting, claimed the MDM representative in the area, Elias Nquiri. Main opposition Renamo spokesman, Adriano Muchunga, claimed police opened fire in Nampula, the largest electoral province.

National: A comprehensive investigation of voter impersonation finds 31 credible incidents out of one billion ballots cast | The Washington Post

Voter ID laws are back in the news once again, with two new opinions from the Wisconsin Supreme Court late last week dealing with the state’s ID requirement, which would allow people to vote only if they provide certain forms of government-issued ID. The Court made some minor changes to the law but otherwise upheld it. However, the ID requirement is still on hold pending a federal lawsuit. Part of this litigation — and any rational debate about the issue generally — hinges on two things: costs and benefits.  The costs of these sorts of laws vary, because the laws themselves differ from state to state (some are far more burdensome than others). The ostensible benefits, though, are all the same. And in addressing these purported benefits, the Wisconsin Supreme Court blew it.  Twice. … I’ve been tracking allegations of fraud for years now, including the fraud ID laws are designed to stop. In 2008, when the Supreme Court weighed in on voter ID, I looked at every single allegation put before the Court. And since then, I’ve been following reports wherever they crop up. To be clear, I’m not just talking about prosecutions. I track any specific, credible allegation that someone may have pretended to be someone else at the polls, in any way that an ID law could fix. So far, I’ve found about 31 different incidents (some of which involve multiple ballots) since 2000, anywhere in the country. If you want to check my work, you can read a comprehensive list of the incidents below.

Michigan: Judge dismisses lawsuit over disputed absentee ballots in Dearborn Heights | The Detroit News

A Wayne County judge dismissed a lawsuit Wednesday that raised suspicions of election fraud involving hundreds of absentee ballots in Dearborn Heights. Judge Robert Colombo Jr. lifted an injunction Wednesday morning that halted the counting of absentee ballots after state Rep. David Nathan, a state Senate candidate, sought a temporary restraining order to set aside certain absentee votes cast in Tuesday’s primary. “There is absolutely no evidence in this case that there has been one fraudulent ballot submitted by absentee ballot,” Colombo said. Nathan, one of six Democrats running in the 5th Senate District primary, filed a lawsuit late Monday seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent Dearborn Heights Clerk Walter Prusiewicz from counting absentee ballots.

Editorials: The Fragile Future Of Democracy In Afghanistan | Eurasia Review

Afghanistan’s ongoing presidential election, if successful, will mark the first transfer of power via an election in that country’s history. Election does not necessarily imply democracy. Afghanistan’s previous two presidential elections, both won by incumbent Hamid Karzai, saw ubiquitous election fraud and there are legitimate questions about how representative one leader or political party can be in a country so fraught with sectarian and tribal divisions. Nowhere are these divisions more apparent than in the central challenge of selling the whole process of democracy to the Afghan people. Afghanistan’s divisions are manifested partly in the readiness of many Afghans to pursue other avenues when the State looks less than functional, which is its usual condition. Presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah who withdrew from the 2009 election to protest Karzai’s election fraud has threatened to create a “parallel state,” by force if necessary, if the currently disputed outcome cannot be resolved. This willingness on Abdullah’s part is suggestive of many things, most important of which may be a lack of confidence that the central government can effectively represent more than one of Afghanistan’s many groups at a time. Abdullah nominally represents Tajik interests—the northern part of the country—despite his own mixed ancestry. Ashraf Ghani, the other candidate, has more widespread support among Pashtuns. The challenge all parties face is in trying to make this election more than a contest to see which ethnic group has more voters.

Indonesia: Courts to decide on election fraud allegations | The Malay Mail Online

An attempt by ex-general Prabowo Subianto to overturn the Indonesian vote that elevated Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo to the presidency is set to hinge on nine justices in a test of the highest court for election matters. Prabowo’s lawyer said the Suharto-era commando will file a suit with the Constitutional Court tomorrow questioning the validity of about 30 million votes after Widodo, known as Jokowi, won by 8.4 million ballots. Prabowo, 62, pulled out of vote counting after calling the July 9 poll “undemocratic” and riddled with fraud. Prabowo’s last-minute effort to swing the result will raise pressure on the court to issue a decision rooted in the law. Failure to deliver a clean result would be a setback for a young democracy still emerging from decades of rule by dictator Suharto, and may risk street protests that could destabilise Asia’s fifth-largest economy. “Voters believe the election was fair and from the perspective of the public it’s doubtful there’s been massive fraud,” according to Dodi Ambardi, executive director of polling agency Lembaga Survei Indonesia and a member of Persepi, an organisation of survey companies. A ruling changing the outcome “will result in unrest in Indonesian society because there will be so much evidence showing the election commission’s vote-counting process, which was done in the public eye, is being overturned.”