Brazil: Presidential election: Winning hearts and likes | The Economist

In June Brazil’s elites received a rude introduction to the power of social media. Protests, many convened via Facebook, saw millions take to the streets to air disaffection with politicians. Those same politicians now want to harness social networks for their election campaigns. Just before Dilma Rousseff was elected president in 2010, 6m Brazilians used Facebook at least once a month. As they gear up for a presidential poll in October, 83m do. Only the United States and India have bigger Facebook populations. One Brazilian in ten tweets; one in five uses Whatsapp—part messaging service, part social network. Cyberspace is seen as a crucial battleground for the election, even before campaigning officially starts on July 6th. In September, shortly after the protests petered out, Ms Rousseff reactivated her Twitter account, dormant since the 2010 election. She has also joined Instagram and Vine, two image-sharing sites, and revamped her Facebook profile. Last month Ms Rousseff’s Workers’ Party (PT) held its first workshop for activists on how best to use social networks. It plans 13 more in the coming months.

National: Expanding high-tech voting for ’14 | Politico.com

It may be a while before Americans can tweet their ballot or text their vote, but states are making strides to move elections from the voting booth into the hands — and even mobile devices — of voters. Across the country, states are gearing up to implement new voter technologies for 2014, as they attempt to advance the ballot-casting experience to catch up with the Facebook generation. The efforts range from bringing tablets to disabled voters to providing ballots through email and secure online systems to allowing voters to register online. One of the most significant recent leaps forward came in Pima County, Ariz., where voters for the first time used tablets (the Sony Tap 20 Windows 8), to mark their ballots at polling locations last November. … Although voters in places like Oregon and Pima County are using tablets, it’s not considered “online voting,” because the ballot is still printed out on paper to be counted just like those cast in machines. Online voting would mean the ballot is cast and counted solely online without a physical ballot ever being recorded. No state has yet gone as far as full online voting.

National: I Flirt and Tweet. Follow Me at #Socialbot. | New York Times

From the earliest days of the Internet, robotic programs, or bots, have been trying to pass themselves off as human. Chatbots greet users when they enter an online chat room, for example, or kick them out when they get obnoxious. More insidiously, spambots indiscriminately churn out e-mails advertising miracle stocks and unattended bank accounts in Nigeria. Bimbots deploy photos of gorgeous women to hawk work-from-home job ploys and illegal pharmaceuticals. Now come socialbots. These automated charlatans are programmed to tweet and retweet. They have quirks, life histories and the gift of gab. Many of them have built-in databases of current events, so they can piece together phrases that seem relevant to their target audience. They have sleep-wake cycles so their fakery is more convincing, making them less prone to repetitive patterns that flag them as mere programs. Some have even been souped up by so-called persona management software, which makes them seem more real by adding matching Facebook, Reddit or Foursquare accounts, giving them an online footprint over time as they amass friends and like-minded followers. Researchers say this new breed of bots is being designed not just with greater sophistication but also with grander goals: to sway elections, to influence the stock market, to attack governments, even to flirt with people and one another.

Norway: Prime Minister turns secret cabbie in election drive | Reuters

Norway’s prime minister worked secretly as a taxi driver in central Oslo for a day in June, leaving his passengers wondering whether their elected leader had quit the day job. Wearing a taxi driver’s uniform and sunglasses, Jens Stoltenberg drove passengers around the streets of the Norwegian capital for several hours, confirming his identity only after his passengers realized who he was. The stunt, dreamed up by an ad agency as part of Stoltenberg’s campaign for re-election, was filmed on hidden cameras. A video of the event was published on Sunday by daily newspaper VG and on the PM’s Facebook page. Stoltenberg told the newspaper he had wanted to hear people’s honest views on politics. “If there is one place where people say what they really mean about most things, it is in a taxi. Right from the gut,” he told VG.

Japan: Gloves off: Japan’s upper-house election | The Economist

As the orange van cruises central Tokyo, Kan Suzuki, a politician from the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), scours the street for voters. Leaning from the window, he blares out his name through the van’s loudspeakers, and a team of white-gloved ladies known as uguisu-jo, or warbler girls, echoes him, waving starchily at a lone pensioner. Then Mr Suzuki retreats inside, to his iPad. For the first time in Japan, the law now allows him to update his home page during an election campaign. For years the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), in office until 2009 and again from late last year, resisted changing outdated laws banning digital campaigning. Its older politicians had not a clue about social media. Others feared negative smear campaigns or worried that a Barack Obama-inspired internet machine could hand victories to the more technically minded DPJ. Until this election campaign—for the upper house of the Diet, where half of the seats are up for grabs on July 21st—all online activity had to freeze just when candidates most wanted to reach voters.

Japan: Prime Minister Abe hops and flips in voter-wooing game | Stuff.co.nz

It’s a bird, it’s a plane … It’s a cartoon version of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, hopping and somersaulting his way through the sky in a smartphone game app his party hopes will lure young voters ahead of a July 21 election. A growing number of Japanese politicians are venturing into the cyber world after a legal change allowed the use of social media in campaigns, setting up Facebook pages and twitter accounts to woo voters before a July upper house election. But the app, which has the imprimatur of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), goes further in its effort to court tech-savvy youngsters, who tend to be apathetic about politics and put off by traditional campaigns featuring white-gloved politicians blaring their names and slogans over loudspeakers.

Iran: Internet in ‘coma’ as Iran election looms | AFP

Iran is tightening control of the Internet ahead of next month’s presidential election, mindful of violent street protests that social networkers inspired last time around over claims of fraud, users and experts say. The authorities deny such claims, but have not explained exactly why service has become slower. Businesses, banks and even state organisations are not spared by the widespread disruption in the Internet, local media say. “The Internet is in a coma,” said the Ghanoon daily in a report in early this month. “It only happens in Iran: the election comes, the Internet goes,” it said, quoting a tweet in Farsi. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and numerous other sites, including thousands of Western ones, have been censored in Iran since massive street demonstrations that followed the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009. Those protests — stifled by a heavy-handed crackdown that led to numerous arrests and even deaths — were instigated online and observers say the authorities are choking the Internet to prevent a recurrence.

Canada: Twitterstorm erupts during B.C. election | Windsor Star

Tech-savvy candidates prompted Elections BC to issue a warning that the province’s 17-year-old election law forbids Twitter and Facebook postings on voting day. Elections BC spokesman Don Main said the agency was alerted that Liberal candidate Richard Lee in Burnaby North had been tweeting, despite the Election Act prohibition on broadcasting or transmitting ads on election day.

Equatorial Guinea: Facebook and opposition websites blocked ahead of elections | Reuters

Reporters Without Borders condemns the government’s blocking of access to Facebook and certain opposition websites since 12 May. The targets include the site of the main opposition party, Convergence For Social Democracy (CPDS), which is fielding candidates for the 26 May parliamentary and municipal elections. At the same time, the website of the ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) continues to be fully accessible.

Malaysia: Voters warned against posting ballot papers online | Borneo Post

Voters are warned not to take photos of their ballot papers and share it through the Internet as it is a serious offence. “Voting is confidential. They are not supposed to take photograph and post it online – on Facebook, Twitter or anywhere else,” said State Elections Commission director Datu Takun Sunggah when met by The Borneo Post recently. “They should not do that. Don’t expose anything which should be confidential.” He added that this applied to all voters regardless if they were voting at the polling station or voting through post.

Italy: Ingovernabilita! Inside Italy’s Election Limbo | The Daily Beast

One doesn’t need to be fluent in Italian to understand the post-election headlines across Italy: ingovernabilita, nervosismo, miracolo Berlusconi. Italians woke up on Tuesday morning to see their worst fears realized: the country’s first-ever hung parliament. Essentially, no one has enough support to lead the country out of its dire troubles. After a bitter campaign, Pier Luigi Bersani’s center-left coalition narrowly won in the lower house of parliament and will benefit by an automatic winner’s bonus of 54 percent of the house seats, but he barely eked out a win in the Italian senate, where it counts. There, the divisions are based on regions, and his win does not translate to a majority. His chief nemesis, Silvio Berlusconi, who rose from the ashes of a scandalous resignation in November 2011, was able to steer his center-right coalition to within a hair of the majority, but with no willing partners to help him reach the threshold. The big winner of these elections was Beppe Grillo, a comedian who captured the essence of Italy’s disgruntled set and has effectively become the kingmaker in both houses. His platform, which includes holding a referendum on Italy’s continuation in the euro and rethinking its involvement in military operations abroad, including logistical support in Mali, is seen as welcome change by many disgruntled Italian voters, especially the young and newly unemployed. Grillo refused to do any campaigning on Italian television and focused instead on new media, utilizing his popular blog, Facebook, and Twitter to rabble rouse.

Iran: Iran Begins Its Election-Season Web Crackdown a Few Months Early | The Atlantic

Iran appears to be taking measures to tighten online censorship ahead of its presidential vote. In recent days, a long list of online activities has been designated as criminal, including calling for an election boycott, organizing sit-ins or protests, and insulting presidential candidates. Simultaneously, reports by Iran’s Fars and ISNA news agencies say that linking to Facebook, Twitter, and other websites that are blocked in Iran, or even promoting blocked websites, has also become a crime. Iran is already one of the world’s harshest online censors. The regime bans tens of thousands of websites it considers immoral or a threat to national security, including news websites and social-media sites. The new measures, if enforced, would put increased pressure on people who use the web or social media as platforms for online activism.

Israel: Campaigning in Israel – Facebook and YouTube play growing role | The Jewish Standard

The debate was not televised. The participants did not sit on a stage in front of an auditorium under bright lights. Israel’s major candidates were not present. Instead, five representatives of Israeli political parties sat at a folding table in a classroom of perhaps 100 students at a Haifa college. One representative was the second-ranking member of his political faction and a onetime runner-up in the balloting for prime minister. Another was a minor Israeli celebrity, the leader of last year’s social justice protests. At one point during the debate, Rabbi Shai Peron of the centrist new Yesh Atid Party criticized Amram Mitzna, the former prime ministerial hopeful, for his past defeats. “I’m not in your yeshiva,” Mitzna shot back. “I don’t need to answer your question.” Welcome to the Israeli campaign, a far more informal, intimate, and legally circumscribed affair than what unfolds in the United States.

National: Why It May Be Illegal to Instagram Your Ballot | ProPublica

Proud voters are already posting photos of their ballots on Instagram—sometimes with the names of their chosen candidates filled in. But before you snap a shot of your vote, you might want to check your state laws. As the Citizen Media Law Project points out as part of their guide to documenting the 2012 election, showing your marked ballot to other people is actually illegal in many states. Laws against displaying your ballot are motivated by concerns about vote buying, since voters being bribed might need to be prove they voted a certain way. While laws vary from state to state, the penalties for showing your ballot can be stiff.

National: Campaigns Use Social Media to Lure Younger Voters | NYTimes

In 2012, it is not enough for candidates to shake some hands, kiss a baby or two and run some TV ads. They also need to be posting funny little animations on the blogging site Tumblr. If the presidential campaigns of 2008 were dipping a toe into social medialike Facebook and Twitter, their 2012 versions are well into the deep end. They are taking to fields of online battle that might seem obscure to the non-Internet-obsessed — sharing song playlists on Spotify, adding frosted pumpkin bread recipes to Pinterest and posting the candidates’ moments at home with the children on Instagram. At stake, the campaigns say they believe, are votes from citizens, particularly younger ones, who may not watch television or read the paper but spend plenty of time on the social Web. The campaigns want to inject themselves into the conversation on services like Tumblr, where political dialogue often takes the form of remixed photos and quirky videos. To remind Tumblr users about the first presidential debate on Wednesday, Mr. Obama’s team used an obscure clip of Lindsay Lohan saying “It’s October 3” in the comedy “Mean Girls.” And on Twitter, Mitt Romney’s bodyguard posted a picture of the candidate’s family playing Jenga before the debate.

Maryland: Online ballot marking for absentee voters approved, but potential for fraud questioned | MarylandReporter.com

Thousands of absentee voters from Maryland will be the first to mark their ballots online this fall, as the attorney general gave the green light to the State Board of Elections Thursday. But at least one advocacy organization said the new online ballot marking program, along with the state’s just started online registration process, is open to voter fraud. The long-awaited formal opinion from the attorney general  gave the elections board the official OK to implement online ballot marking software without having to undergo state or federal certification, which a watchdog group opposed. The five-member board voted unanimously during their monthly meeting to proceed with the new online tool. The ballot marking “wizard” will allow military and overseas voters, also referred to as Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) voters, to mark their absentee ballots online, a step designed to make the final processing of their ballots more efficient, the state board said. After the approval, a voting rights advocate told the board about a possible security vulnerability, one she said that would not only affect the state’s new online voter registration system but could potentially extend to the November elections.

Washington: State partners with Microsoft and Facebook – voter registration app set to launch soon | electionlineWeekly

Now, in addition to letting all their friends know about what they had for dinner last night, or their political views, what they are listening to on Spotify, or their relationship status, Facebook users in Washington State will soon be able to let all their friends know that they are registered to vote. The Washington Secretary of State’s Office has teamed up with Microsoft and Facebook to offer citizens in Washington a first-in-the-nation opportunity to register to vote via the social networking site. “Our estimate [through Pew’s Electronic Registration Information Center] is that we have potentially two million eligible, but unregistered voters,” said Dave Ammons, spokesman for the secretary of state’s office. “The Facebook app is a marvelous way to prompt people onto our MyVote site for both registration and updates, as well as our voter vault of customized information.” Ammons noted that the state has had online registration since 2008 and that it is quite popular, especially with the Millennials. About a third of the state’s registration traffic is online.

Washington: State to unveil voter registration on Facebook | The Seattle Times

Facebook users in Washington state will have something else to brag about to their online friends: that they registered to vote on Facebook. The secretary of state’s office said Tuesday it will have an application on its Facebook page that allows residents to register to vote and then “like” the application and recommend it to their friends. It’s expected to launch as early as next week. “In this age of social media and more people going online for services, this is a natural way to introduce people to online registration and leverage the power of friends on Facebook to get more people registered,” said Shane Hamlin, co-director of elections. Washington state has had online registration since 2008, and since then, there have been 475,000 registrations or changes of address processed through the system. Washington is one of more than a dozen states that offer online registration. Hamlin said Washington state is the first to offer voter registration via Facebook. “We are excited that citizens in Washington state will be able to register to vote and review useful voting information on Facebook,” said Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes.

Egypt: Election Results: Guns Still Hold the Keys to Revolutions | PolicyMic

If you’re surprised by the Egyptian military’s latest power grab – well, you shouldn’t be. With well over a year having passed since the beginning of the Arab Spring, it’s time to take a look back at some of the outcome so far, and the result is not very optimistic. Despite all the mentions of how Twitter and Facebook were changing the world and how the youth of the Middle East were changing their societies in a peaceful manner, the lesson being learned again and again is that might still makes right. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the Middle East today. In Egypt, the military tacitly backed the supreme court wiping away a third of the parliament, took control of the writing of the constitution, and essentially neutered the position of the presidency. The protests of 2011 are not to be seen yet, and you may even see some silent joy from secular and leftist candidates who feared the Muslim Brotherhood sweeping into power. Even if protests do occur, there seems little incentive for the army to allow them, or they may just play a democratic charade again, perhaps more convincingly. The rest of the Middle East is no better. In Syria, the military has repeatedly crushed protesters, who have in turn taken up arms themselves. As a result, 13,000 may have already perished, and a conflict bordering on a full-scale civil-war is brewing. In Bahrain, protests have been repeatedly crushed by the government, with the timely help of patron state Saudi Arabia. While not really part of the Arab Spring, the Green Movement in Iran stirred much interest in the West. This interest was followed by the Iranian government dispersing the demonstrators, using a mixture of beatings, imprisonment, torture, and death.

Wisconsin: Democratic, GOP officials post Facebook photos of their absentee ballots — a felony in Wisconsin | StarTribune.com

Wisconsin elections officials are reminding voters that posting photos of completed ballots on Facebook or Twitter is illegal — but high-ranking members of both political parties apparently missed the memo. Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate and St. Croix County Republican Party Chairwoman Jesse Garza said Friday they’re removing their ballot photos after finding out the postings violated state law. The law bars voters from showing their completed ballots to anyone. The intent is to prevent people from selling their votes and then showing their ballots as proof they voted as requested.

National: Campaigns mine online data to target voters | Boston.com

Voters who click on President Barack Obama’s campaign website are likely to start seeing display ads promoting his re-election bid on their Facebook pages and other sites they visit. Voters searching Google for information about Mitt Romney may notice a 15-second ad promoting the Republican presidential hopeful the next time they watch a video online. The 2012 election could be decided by which campaign is best at exploiting voters’ Internet data. The Romney and Obama campaigns are spending heavily on television ads and other traditional tools to convey their messages. But strategists say the most important breakthrough this year is the campaigns’ use of online data to raise money, share information and persuade supporters to vote. The practice, known as “microtargeting,’’ has been a staple of product marketing. Now it’s facing the greatest test of its political impact in the race for the White House. “The story of this presidential campaign will be how both sides are using data and algorithms and personalization and math in their marketing,’’ said Adam Berke, president of the digital retargeting company AdRoll. “The promise and beauty of it is that it’s highly measurable — it’s easy to collect data and see what’s resonating and not resonating with voters.’’

France: Media Question Election Reporting Rules | NYTimes.com

After months of noisy campaigning in the presidential race — rousing the crowds, pressing flesh, inundating Twitter — France’s politicians and pollsters fell silent at midnight Friday, by law. Until 8 p.m. Sunday, election day, when the last polling places close in the first round of voting, the country’s 10 presidential candidates may not give speeches or interviews, distribute fliers or update their campaign Web sites or Facebook pages. And no media outlet, pollster or citizen is to publish voting data of any kind — no leaked exit polls, no hints on Twitter — on pain of a fine of up to 75,000 euros, or $99,000. Traditionally France discovers the initial results together, all at once, at 8 p.m. on election night. This year, however, the great, borderless Internet may disrupt the best plans of the French authorities. In recent weeks, media organizations in neighboring Belgium and Switzerland — where public interest in the French election runs high, but feelings of civic duty toward France run low — have made known their intent to publish results from districts where polls close at 6 p.m. as soon as they are available, around 6:30 p.m., 90 defiant minutes before authorized by French law.

Pennsylvania: Luzerne County Elections Director Piazza fired 2 weeks before primary | Citizens Voice

With less than two weeks to go before the April 24 primary, Luzerne County fired Director of Elections Leonard Piazza. Piazza disclosed his termination on his Facebook webpage before 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, and county Solicitor Vito DeLuca confirmed a letter was delivered to Piazza at his home informing him of his termination. County Manager Robert Lawton suspended Piazza with pay after a disciplinary hearing April 5. Lawton and DeLuca have not provided a reason for the termination, claiming the decision is a private personnel matter. But the decision appears to be connected to Piazza’s attempt to audit the campaign finances of county Controller Walter L. Griffith Jr., who in December started reviewing Piazza’s attendance records as part of a payroll audit of 378 county employees.

National: EAC: Zombie Agency – Two Remaining Commissioners Resign One Year After Agency Loses Quorum | Rep. Gregg Harper Press Release

Today, Subcommittee on Elections Chairman Gregg Harper, R-Miss., issued the following statement after the resignation of the two remaining commissioners at the Election Assistance Commission (EAC):

“Exactly one year ago today, EAC Commissioner Hillman resigned from the agency leaving it without a quorum and unable to make policy decisions. In the last week, the two remaining commissioners announced their resignations, and the President nominated the general counsel and acting executive director for a position at another agency.

Russia: Social media makes anti-Putin protests snowball | Reuters

Artyom Kolpakov used to shrug when he came across occasional appeals on social media sites to protest against Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his government. “I didn’t see the point really,” he said.

But something changed when, clicking through amateur videos and online testimonies documenting cases of ballot-stuffing and repeat voting, he saw others shared his outrage at Putin’s party’s victory in Sunday’s parliamentary election. On Monday evening, Kolpakov, 38, was among several thousand Russians who took to the streets of Moscow in the biggest opposition protest in years.

Such protests against Putin’s rule, as president from 2000 to 2008 and as prime minister since then, have rarely drawn more than about 200 people, some of them Soviet-era dissidents and others activists in marginalized opposition groups.

Morocco: Moroccan civil society monitors elections online (Magharebia.com)

From text messages to Facebook and Twitter, new resources are available to Moroccans to exercise their civil rights. To take advantage of the interactivity and ubiquity of information technology, the Moroccan Human Rights Association (OMDH) recently created a website to serve as an online monitoring centre for the kingdom’s November 25th legislative elections.

Launched September 26th in a trial version,Marsad.ma is a platform that enables people to find information on the elections. In addition, it allows citizens and observers to monitor the vote by reporting and learning about incidents, failures or irregularities associated with the election process. The full site is set to go live a month before the poll.

“This year, given the changes occurring across the region and the importance of the internet as a citizenship tool, we decided to explore digital technology and new media,” said Mounir Bensalah, an observer and member of the Marsad team.

Voting Blogs: Elections Canada and Social Media – How Tweet it Is | Edmonton Journal

If you still have any vague memories of this spring’s federal election campaign, you may be recall that Elections Canada attempted to enforce a ban on the “tweeting” and “Facebooking” of any regional election results before the polls had closed in British Columbia. It also banned mainstream media outlets from reporting such results on their commercial websites.

It was an antediluvian notion, which completely failed to grasp the way that social media and the Web have changed the way Canadians report upon and discuss the news. It was, in fact, a noxious attempt to censor political speech in the name of regional equity – as though western Canadians had a constitutional right or duty to be kept in ignorance of what was happening in the rest of their country.

It wasn’t wholly Elections Canada’s fault, of course. It was the Harper government which failed to amend the offending, and offensive legislation, despite the fact that Stephen Harper himself had railed against it back when he ran the National Citizens’ Coalition.

Oklahoma: Cherokees protest election outcome | Cherokee Phoenix

About 60 people, ranging from children to elders, gathered June 30 at the Election Commission building to protest the certified results of the Cherokee Nation’s principal chief race and support challenger Bill John Baker.

“What we’re doing today is we’re asking and praying that the Election Commission do an honest count because we have had several different stories of how the count was arrived at after the election was to be certified Sunday morning (June 26) just after 7 a.m. by the Election Commission,” Linda O’Leary, a former Tribal Councilor and one of the protestors, said.

Certified election results show Principal Chief Chad Smith with 7,609 votes to Tribal Councilor Baker’s 7,602. Unofficial results released by the EC on June 26 showed Baker leading with 7,600 votes to Smith’s 7,589.

An Internet- and Facebook-based group called Cherokees ForTruth organized the peaceful protest. According to its webpage, the protests were slated for June 30-July 1 at the EC building.

New Zealand: Politicians can tweet during campaign, but carefully | New Zealand Herald News

Politicians have been told they can tweet at will during the election campaign provided it is only their personal views they are expressing.

The Electoral Commission yesterday sent MPs a handbook of guidance on new election rules, which include a much broader definition of election advertising than previously.

It includes advice for the increasing number of MPs who use Twitter and Facebook. In its guidance, it says MPs using personal Twitter or Facebook accounts can continue to do so provided they only express personal political views. However, they should not post messages on election day itself, because of strict rules against any form of campaigning on the day.