Turkey: Merkel urges Turkey to respond to reported referendum irregularities | Reuters

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Turkey on Thursday to answer questions raised by European observers over a referendum that expanded President Tayyip Erdogan’s powers and also said the EU must reflect on what future ties it wants with Ankara. A report by observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe found that up to 2.5 million votes could have been manipulated in Turkey’s April 16 referendum, which ended in a narrow victory for Erdogan’s push for greater powers. “The Turkish government must measure itself based on this report and answer the questions raised in it,” Merkel told the Bundestag lower house of parliament. “We will very carefully follow how Turkey deals with reports of possible irregularities.”

Iraq: Electoral Commission faces no confidence vote amidst fraud scandals | Middle East Monitor

Iraqi lawmakers voted yesterday to express their lack of acceptance in the answers provided by the Iraqi High Electoral Commission, who were being accused of helping some candidates to gain an unfair advantage over others seeking election. The chief executive of the Electoral Commission, Miqdad Al-Sharifi, now faces a no confidence vote that could see him lose his job, paving the way for a new commissioner. 119 lawmakers voted to express their dissatisfaction in the commissioner’s answers to the charges that the Commission was responsible for technical failures, counterfeit votes and fraud as well as corruption whilst administering previous elections, Al Jazeera reported.

Turkey: Election board rejects calls to annul referendum result | The Guardian

Turkey’s high election board has rejected formal calls by the country’s main opposition parties to annul the result of a referendum that will grant Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sweeping new powers as president. Voters narrowly approved a set of constitutional reforms that will transform the country from a parliamentary democracy into a presidential republic, concentrating power in the hands of Erdoğan, who will be able to run for two more terms and potentially govern until 2029. The Turkish president has been handed the chance to declare himself as the only fit protector of a besieged state and its vulnerable people The two main opposition parties – the Republican People’s party (CHP) and the People’s Democratic party (HDP) – had lodged formal complaints calling for the annulment of the result, citing a controversial last-minute decision by the board to allow the counting of possibly hundreds of thousands of unstamped ballots. The constitutional amendments passed with a margin of just over a million votes. International observers had said the decision to count the ballots “contradicted the law” and removed a safeguard against fraud.

Turkey: Activists post videos of alleged poll fraud in referendum | Middle East Eye

Videos have emerged in Turkey of alleged ballot stuffing and polling station violations during the Sunday referendum that approved sweeping powers to the country’s president. Social media users circulated several videos, apparently showing violations on election day, including people voting more than once. In one video, a man who was identified by France 24 as Mehmet Koçlardan, the leader of a village in east Turkey from Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), is seen casting five votes into a ballot box. Another video shows an unidentified person stamping “yes” on five voting slips and piling them on a table.

Turkey: Videos Fuel Charges of Fraud in Erdogan’s Win in Turkey Referendum | The New York Times

A village leader shoves four voting slips into a ballot box. An unknown arm marks three slips with a “yes” vote. An unknown hand adds five more. An election official validates a pile of voting slips — hours after they were meant to be validated. These are four of the scenes captured in unverified videos that have helped stoke accusations of voting fraud in polling stations across Turkey during Sunday’s referendum to expand the powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr. Erdogan’s “yes” campaign has claimed victory by a small margin — 51.4 percent to 48.6 — in a vote that further insulates the president from scrutiny and tightens his grip on one of the most influential countries in the region. But while Mr. Erdogan has turned his claimed victory into a political reality, the legitimacy of his win is still in question.

Turkey: Observer says 2.5 million Turkish referendum votes could have been manipulated | Reuters

Up to 2.5 million votes could have been manipulated in Sunday’s Turkish referendum which ended in a tight ‘Yes’ vote for greater presidential powers, Alev Korun, an Austrian member of the Council of Europe observer mission, told ORF radio on Tuesday. The mission of observers from the 47-member Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights body, had already said the referendum was an uneven contest. Support for “Yes” dominated campaign coverage, and the arrests of journalists and closure of media outlets silenced other views, the monitors said. But Korun said there were questions about the actual voting as well.

Turkey: Observers to guard against voter fraud in Turkey′s referendum | Deutsche Welle

Turks are voting in today’s referendum on presidential power, and tens of thousands of ballot box observers have volunteered across the country to monitor the voting process. Some are independent, while others are aligned with political parties, but all will work to deter voter fraud in what may be the republic’s most significant decision since its founding in 1923. Shortly after voting began on Sunday, there were reports that “observers detained in Diyarbakir” and “Reports of monitors being barred from their assigned polling areas in southeast Turkey” … During a phone interview on Friday, Hakan Ozturk, a board member for the opposition-affiliated Unity for Democracy (DIB), said, “We expect fraud.”

Ecuador: Defeated candidate Lasso alleges vote fraud, rejects election result | Deutsche Welle

Supporters of Guillermo Lasso protested in the capital, Quito, for a second night on Monday, echoing their candidate’s calls for votes to be recounted. “I’m warning the world that in Ecuador procedures are being violated, and they’re trying to swear in an illegitimate government,” Lasso said. “This is a clumsy fraud attempt.” Addressing a crowd of a few thousand supporters outside the National Electoral Council, Lasso said “We’re not afraid of the miserable cowards who are on the wrong side of history.” The scenes were more muted than protests on Sunday – election evening – when thousands of Lasso supporters chanted “fraud” through the night. Lasso shared images of the protests on his Twitter feed, saying: “All of you are like the majority of Ecuadoreans who voted for a change. Thank you for your support, thank you for your confidence.”

Pennsylvania: Attorney General Joins Investigation Into Special Election Fraud Complaints | CBS

The Pennsylvania Attorney General is joining an investigation of last week’s special election for a North Philadelphia state house seat. The results are also being challenged in court. It’s been a bumpy ride for this seat. The ballot featured just one name– a Republican, though the district is 85 percent Democrat. Democrat Emilio Vazquez ran a write in campaign, as did Cheri Honkala of the Green Party. Honkala and Republicans complained throughout the day about Democratic election officials violating electioneering and voter assistance laws.

Voting Blogs: NASS releases facts and findings on cybersecurity in 2016 election | electionlineWeekly

Rigged! Hacked! Tampering! Fraud! Even before one vote was cast in the 2016 election, rumors swirled about the integrity of the election. The cacophony of misinformation and innuendo has not stopped since the election and all of this has caused some Americans to lose faith in the electoral system. In the days leading up to the election a survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that only 4 in 10 Americans had a high degree of confidence that their votes would be counted correctly nearly a third of all who responded thought there was a great deal of voter fraud in the country despite the lack of evidence. This week, the National Association of Secretaries of State released the State Election Officials Report Facts & Findings on Cybersecurity and Foreign Targeting of the 2016 U.S. Election. The report is an effort by NASS to help improve voter confidence and show for a fact that the election was not “hacked”.

Russia: Pamfilova Takes Daghestan’s Leaders To Task Over Vote-Rigging | RFERL

Reporting to Russian President Vladimir Putin last September on the conduct of the State Duma elections, Ella Pamfilova, chair of Russia’s Central Election Commission, singled out Daghestan as one of the federation subjects where irregularities were most blatant and prevalent. Pamfilova elaborated on that assessment during meetings in Makhachkala two weeks ago with the republic’s leaders, journalists, and representatives of various political parties, publicly warning republic head Ramazan Abdulatipov that “we do not need inflated statistics” that undermine voters’ trust in the electoral process. Daghestan was one of several Russian regions where elections to the regional parliament and local councils were held concurrently with those to the State Duma. According to official statistical data, at all three levels voter turnout was significantly higher than for Russia as a whole, and candidates representing the ruling United Russia party won with a disproportionately large percent of the vote (88.86 percent in the State Duma election compared to 47.8 percent nationwide, and 75.51 percent in the regional parliamentary ballot.)

Kentucky: Voting Fraud vs. Election Fraud And Claims Of Chicanery In Kentucky | WFPL

In a national television appearance on Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell knocked down claims of wide-scale voting fraud in the presidential election. While tossing cold water on President Trump’s repeated (and unsubstantiated) claims of fraud impacting the election, McConnell did say that vote fraud is real, it happens, and Kentucky has a history of it. “… the Democratic myth that voter fraud is a fiction, is not true,” McConnell said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We’ve had a series of significant cases in Kentucky over the years. There is voter fraud in the country.” Our reporting pals at WAVE-3 in Louisville asked McConnell’s office for details. His office responded with a link to our newsroom’s August 2016 article on Kentucky’s history of vote buying. So, is McConnell right? Is fraud rampant in Kentucky? No, not really. The answer is complicated, though, and it boils down to semantics.

Turkmenistan: President wins elections with nearly 98 percent of vote | Daily Sabah

Turkmenistan’s Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov bagged a fresh seven-year term with nearly 98 percent of a weakly contested vote, electoral officials announced Monday following a preliminary count. The election commission claimed at a press conference in the capital Ashgabat a massive turnout for the Sunday poll in which eight other candidates, viewed as token opponents for Berdymukhamedov, also competed. The former dentist and health minister took power in 2006 after the death of Turkmenistan’s first president, Saparmurat Niyazov. Casting his vote at a school in Ashgabat on Sunday, the president said the vote would decide “the fate of the people for the coming seven years”.

Turkmenistan: President Extends Rule In Tightly Controlled Vote | RFERL

Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, the authoritarian president of gas-rich Turkmenistan, has secured a third term in office by winning 97.69 percent of the vote in the February 12 election, according to the Central Election Commission. The election commission announced the result on February 13, a day after an election whose outcome seemed certain in advance because of Berdymukhammedov’s domination of the Central Asian country and the tightly controlled campaign. The commission put the turnout at more than 97 percent of eligible voters. But RFE/RL correspondents saw only a trickle of voters at several polling stations in the capital, Ashgabat. The election hands Berdymukhammedov, 59, a new seven-year term. He maintains strict control over all aspects of society and was all but guaranteed to defeat the other eight candidates, who were widely seen as window dressing for the vote.

Haiti: Losers in Haitian election cry foul | AFP

The losers in Haiti’s presidential election insisted Wednesday they will not recognise political neophyte Jovenel Moise as the winner, calling the officially declared result a political coup. But international organisations welcomed the conclusion of a tortuously long voting process that began in October 2015 and paralysed political life in this unstable Caribbean nation that is the poorest in the Americas. Moise was declared winner of the November 20 first round Tuesday night by the Provisional Electoral Council, with 55.6 percent of the votes. To check against fraud — the reason for the scrapping of the election the first time Haiti tried in 2015 — the council said right after the election that 12 percent of the ballots must be verified. After a week of checking, the council said there was no signficant fraud.

Moldova: Pro-Western Moldovan Presidential Hopeful Warns Of ‘Massive Fraud’ In Looming Vote | RFERL

One of the leading pro-Western candidates in this month’s presidential election in Moldova has warned of “risks of massive fraud” in the vote, which has further divided the tiny post-Soviet state’s already fractious political scene. Speaking to RFE/RL on October 19 during a visit to Brussels for meetings with officials from the European Union, Action and Solidarity candidate and former Education Minister Maia Sandu said she was “here to warn the international partners of Moldova about the risks of massive fraud of the election and to ask them to help.” The presidential vote is Moldova’s first by direct election since 1996, a change whose legitimacy is being challenged by the Communist Party and other opposition elements.

Editorials: Trump didn’t invent the ‘rigged election’ myth. Republicans did. | Elizabeth Warren/The Washington Post

Cratering in the polls, besieged by sexual assault allegations and drowning in his own disgusting rhetoric, Donald Trump has been reduced to hollering that November’s election is “rigged” against him. His proof? It looks like he’s going to lose. Senior Republican leaders are scrambling to distance themselves from this dangerous claim. But Trump’s argument didn’t spring from nowhere. It’s just one more symptom of a long-running effort by Republicans to delegitimize Democratic voters, appointees and leaders. For years, this disease has infected our politics. It cannot be cured until Republican leaders rethink their approach to modern politics. Anyone with children knows that whining about imaginary cheating is the last refuge of the sore loser. But GOP leaders have served up such a steady diet of stories about imaginary cheating that an Economist-YouGov poll shows that 45 percent of Republican voters believe voter fraud is a “very serious problem,” and 46 percent have little or no confidence that ballots will be counted accurately. They hold these views even though there is literally no evidence — none, zero, zip — that widespread voter fraud is a factor in modern American elections. A recent study looked at around a billion ballots cast in the United States from 2000 through 2014 and found only 31 instances of impersonation fraud at the polls. Republican leaders — and even Trump’s running mate — have tried to tiptoe out of the room when Trump makes ever-wilder claims of a rigged election. But as much as these Republicans would like everyone to believe that this is a Trump-only problem, it’s not.

Editorials: Trumped-Up Fears of ‘Rigged’ Elections – and How Responses Could Disenfranchise Voters | Richard Hasen/Wall Street Journal

Thanks to comments and tweets by Donald Trump and the apparent work of Russia, the news is full of allegations that next month’s vote will be stolen, “rigged,” or hacked. Most of this talk isunsubstantiated or greatly exaggerated. Here are four ways that the 2016 election won’t be stolen and one way that responses to exaggerated fears of electoral fraud could disenfranchise voters.

Flawed findings on non-citizen voting: Mr. Trump has pointed to a study arguing that non-citizen voting is a big problem and could have cost John McCain the state of North Carolina in the 2008 presidential election. Politifact rated Mr. Trump’s allegation of massive voter fraud a “pants on fire” claim, noting that this study “has been criticized by election experts for using an unreliable database of Internet respondents.” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has been given prosecutorial powers to go after this fraud, has found virtually none. The United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit concluded last month than only a “tiny fraction” of voters are non-citizens and that there is no evidence it is a serious problem.

Gabon: Bongo sworn in as Gabon president after disputed election | France 24

Ali Bongo was sworn back in as Gabon’s president Tuesday, calling for unity after a disputed election win that sparked deadly unrest and revealed deep divisions in the oil-rich country. The 57-year-old used the ceremony to appeal for unity after the deadly violence that followed the announcement of his victory last month. He pledged to ensure “equal opportunities” for all in the new government “which I will name in a few days.” Government spokesman Alain-Claude Bilie-By-Nze said Bongo wanted to install “a unity government by this week or the start of next week”.

Russia: Phantom voters, smuggled ballots hint at foul play in Russian vote | Reuters

Voters across Russia handed a sweeping victory to President Vladimir Putin’s allies in a parliamentary election on Sunday. But in two regions Reuters reporters saw inflated turnout figures, ballot-stuffing and people voting more than once at three polling stations. In the Bashkortostan region’s capital Ufa, in the foothills of the Urals, Reuters reporters counted 799 voters casting ballots at polling station number 284. When officials tallied the vote later in the day, they said the turnout was 1,689. At polling station 591 in the Mordovia regional capital of Saransk, about 650 km south-east of Moscow, reporters counted 1,172 voters but officials recorded a turnout of 1,756. A Reuters reporter obtained a temporary registration to vote at that station, and cast a ballot for a party other than the pro-Putin United Russia. During the count, officials recorded that not a single vote had been cast for that party.

Russia: Putin Puts An End To Electoral Politics In Russia | Forbes

The Sunday September 18 election for the Russian parliament has given Vladimir Putin another pro-Putin parliament (Duma) to routinely rubber-stamp his most ludicrous and repressive legislation. His United Russia party gained a majority (54 percent according to preliminary results). No opposition party crossed the five percent hurdle; instead, the reliable Communist (13 percent), Liberal Democrat (13 percent), and Just Russia Parties (6 percent) will join United Russia in the new Duma. Only sixteen candidates from the so-called small parties gained seats in regional parliaments. In a word: The Duma election was a total wipeout of legislative opposition in Putin’s Russia. This is no big deal in itself because the legislative branch has little power, but the election signaled the end of hope for change through elections in Russia. Palace coups or the streets are the only remaining options of the Russian people.

Gabon: Gabon Is Recounting Its Votes, But the Ballots Were Already Burned | Foreign Policy

Gabonese officials announced this week that the country’s Constitutional Court will recount votes from last month’s controversial presidential election, when incumbent Ali Bongo Ondimba defeated opposition leader Jean Ping by just 5,594 votes. Now they’re threatening to arrest Ping if he disagrees with the court’s results and protests in the capital of Libreville turn violent again. In an exclusive interview Wednesday with Foreign Policy, Gabonese Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Moussa-Adamo said that Ping’s goal has been “to create chaos so that the international community will step in and rule the country.” Were that to happen, he predicted, Ping would eventually try to organize new elections and take over the presidency. Moussa-Adamo’s comments, in New York, followed a Libreville press conference Wednesday where government spokesman Alain-Claude Bilie told reporters that “if [Ping] crosses the line, he will be arrested.” Gabon has garnered international attention in the past month as protesters have taken to the streets, claiming the August elections were rigged in favor of Bongo, whose family has ruled the oil-rich nation for decades. Bongo’s camp insists there was no rigging on its side, and has accused Ping of agitating his supporters in order to destabilize the country. It’s unclear how many people have been killed in the post-election violence, as the opposition claims upwards of 100 are dead and the government says the real count is a fraction of that. Around 1,000 people have been arrested.

Russia: 12 Million Extra Votes in Russia for Putin’s Party | The Atlantic

When liberal-rights activist Ella Pamfilova was named the head of Russia’s election commission in March, she promised to clean house and oversee transparent, democratic elections. “We will change a lot, and radically, in the way the Central Election Commission operates. A lot and radically—this is something I can promise you,” she said at the time. However, a statistical analysis of the official preliminary results of the country’s September 18 State Duma elections points to a familiar story: massive fraud in favor of the ruling United Russia party comparable to what independent analysts found in 2007 and 2011. “The results of the current Duma elections were falsified on the same level as the Duma and presidential elections of 2011, 2008, and 2007, the most falsified elections in post-Soviet history, as far as we can tell,” physicist and data analyst Sergei Shpilkin said to The Atlantic. “By my estimate, the scope of the falsification in favor of United Russia in these elections amounted to approximately 12 million votes.” According to the CEC’s preliminary results, official turnout for the election was 48 percent, and United Russia polled 54.2 percent of the party-list vote—about 28,272,000 votes. That total gave United Russia 140 of the 225 party-list seats available in the Duma. In addition, United Russia candidates won 203 of the 225 contests in single-mandate districts, giving the party an expected total of 343 deputies in the 450-seat house.

Editorials: Behind Mr. Putin’s Easy Victory | The New York Times

In Russia’s parliamentary election on Sunday, Vladimir Putin’s party won three-quarters of the seats outright in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, and the rest indirectly, through parties loyal to him. It apparently did so without many voting irregularities, and despite a sluggish economy, sanctions imposed by the West and unrest in some quarters over the government’s crackdown on civil liberties. What gives? What gives is the sorry degree to which Mr. Putin and his Kremlin cronies have consolidated full control over Russian politics. Twenty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia appears to have returned full circle to a pseudo-parliament whose only function is to give a semblance of legitimacy to an authoritarian ruler. The post-Soviet Russian Constitution already granted more powers to the president and cabinet than to the legislature, but at least the Duma was a platform for the opposition to question and criticize Kremlin policies. Now even this function is effectively gone.

Gabon: Polls and violent aftermath reveal a flawed electoral system | Mail & Guardian Africa

The presidential elections in Gabon have been keeping those following the outcome of the race on the edge of their seats for several days. The vote took place on Saturday 26 August, but results were only announced late on Wednesday afternoon. According to the final tally announced by the minister of the interior, the incumbent Ali Bongo won by 49.8%, while his rival, Jean Ping, got 48.23%. Just over 628 000 people took part in the vote in the Central African country of 1.8 million inhabitants. The opposition strongly disputes this outcome and says votes were manipulated – especially in Bongo’s stronghold of Haut-Ogooué, where the incumbent got over 90% of the votes. Following the announcement of the results, opposition supporters reportedly torched a part of the Parliament building in Libreville – an ominous sign of possible escalating post-election violence. Ping (73), a former foreign minister who headed the African Union Commission between 2008 and 2012, was confident earlier in the race. He told the media on Sunday, 29 August – a day after the vote and before any results were released – that he had won the elections and that his predecessor should accept it. He repeated this statement on Tuesday saying that his opponent, Bongo (57) should prepare to hand over power.

Gabon: Court to Recount Disputed Vote Results, Ambassador Says | Bloomberg

Gabon’s Constitutional Court will recount the ballots cast in presidential elections last month following days of violent protests against the outcome that showed President Ali Bongo won by fewer than 10,000 votes, according to the nation’s ambassador to the U.S. “A recount of the vote will be completed by the Constitutional Court and the winner confirmed,” Michael Moussa-Adamo said in a letter late Monday to the New York Times. “The State Department and the African Union stated that any challenge to the election results conform to Gabonese election law. The Constitutional Court’s review will also conform to the law.” He didn’t say when the recount will take place.

Russia: Monitors Report 3,600 Violations at Parliamentary Elections | Newsweek

Russia’s parliamentary election was marred by over 3,600 violations the country’s top independent monitor Golos reported after a decisive win for the government. Ruling party United Russia won a record number of seats, in an expected victory by unexpected margins. Its new electoral chief hailed the vote as the cleanest in Russia’s history and, despite monitors noting violations were fewer than in previous occasions, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) stressed the vote was still hampered by challenges to “fundamental freedoms and political rights” and “numerous procedural irregularities” during counting. Golos head Grigory Melkonyants told news site Rus2Web that the group had “spotted the full spectrum of violations” on polling day. Golos reported several incidents involving suspected mass transportation of voters to constituencies in coaches and announced that the group had received reports of “ballot stuffing” from 16 regions of Russia.

Russia: Irregularities reported at Russia’s ballot boxes as voting begins | Financial Times

Russian election monitors reported a series of irregularities as voting began in the country’s parliamentary elections on Sunday. Those complaints will test the government’s pledge to block the kind of electoral fraud that triggered street protests five years ago against president Vladimir Putin. Non-governmental election monitoring movement Golos said it had received 164 reports by phone and 335 reports via an online platform of rule violations or suspicious incidents. The largest number of complaints came from Moscow, followed by the Stavropol region in southern Russia and Altai region in southern Siberia. In Barnaul, capital of the Altai region, civil rights and opposition activists observed people being instructed to vote using ballots of pensioners who were not going to turn up — an alleged example of so-called cruisers or carousel voting. “They have little stickers on their passports,” said Alexander Lebedev, a municipal deputy of the A Just Russia party who posted videos of what he said were the preparations for illegal voting on Twitter.

Russia: Putin-backed party sweeps to victory amid allegations of election fraud | The Independent

The ruling United Russia party, which is backed by Vladimir Putin, is on track to win 343 of 450 seats in Russia’s lower house of parliament. With 90 per cent of the vote counted, the pro-Kremlin party had 54% of the vote for the 225 seats chosen nationwide by party list, the Central Elections Commission said. The three parties who were the next most popular – the Communist Party, The Liberal Democrats and the Just Russia Party – all support Mr Putin. However, there have been multiple reports of voting fraud and videos have surfaced of apparent ballot stuffing. One video shows an official appearing to take a pile of ballots and shoving them into the voting box while another person seems to stand guard.

Gabon: Cards Stacked Against Gabon’s Opposition in Election Challenge to Bongo | WPR

Most observers, myself included, expected Gabon’s incumbent president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, to win his country’s election late last month. Few, however—again including me—anticipated the degree of violence and apparent fraud that would accompany the process. Bongo is now reconsolidating power in the aftermath of an intensely contested election. If his victory stands, it will demonstrate that Gabon’s opposition has few tools with which to challenge the results, and that the international community has little will to sanction Bongo and his inner circle. When elections were held on Aug. 27, Bongo barely won. Gabon’s electoral framework stipulated that the winner needed a plurality, rather than a majority, of the vote. With the opposition surprisingly unified around one candidate, Jean Ping, a former African Union Commission chairman and Gabonese Cabinet minister, the election became a two-man race. The official results gave Bongo 49.8 percent and Ping 48.23 percent, with eight other candidates dividing the remaining roughly 2 percent of the vote.