Massachusetts: State to investigate election irregularities – recounts to be held next week | South Coast Today

The state Elections Division is investigating “irregularities” in the town election April 1 and the way the ballots were handled in the days afterward. “As you are aware, serious problems have been reported in connection with the town election,” wrote Michelle K. Tassinari, director and legal counsel, in a letter to Town Clerk Eileen Lowney April 10. Ms. Tassinari said “certain matters concerning standards, practices and procedures of election officials during the administration of the Town Election may be contrary to election laws.”

Venezuela: Election Officials Agree to Full Recount | Latin American Herald Tribune

Amid persistent political tension in Venezuela, the CNE election authority accepted opposition candidate Henrique Capriles’s request for a review of 100 percent of the ballots cast in last weekend’s special presidential election. CNE chair Tibisay Lucena said in a televised statement late Thursday that authorities would proceed to audit the 46 percent of ballot boxes that were not subject to a recount on election day. The Venezuelan electoral system relies on electronic voting backed up by paper ballots and the CNE automatically reviews a random sample of 54 percent of the votes to detect discrepancies between the electronic tabulation and the paper records.

Venezuela: Maduro threatens oil trade in row with US over disputed presidential election | AFP

Venezuela stepped up attacks on the United States, threatening retaliatory measures affecting trade and energy if Washington resorts to sanctions in a row over the country’s disputed presidential election. Vowing not to go back on the late Hugo Chavez’s revolution, President Nicolas Maduro said at a swearing-in ceremony for his new cabinet, “There will be no pact here of any kind with the bourgeoisie. Make no mistake.” He accused the United States of threatening Venezuela, and spoke with approval of the warning to Washington leveled earlier in the day by Foreign Minister Elias Jaua in Guayaquil, Ecuador. “If the United States takes recourse to economic sanctions, or sanctions of any other kind, we will take measures of a commercial, energy, economic and political order that we consider necessary,” Jaua said in a television interview.

Venezuela: New Venezuela President Sworn In, but Vote to Be Audited | NYTimes.com

In the carnival-mirror world of Venezuelan politics, Nicolás Maduro was sworn in as president on Friday, just hours after election officials agreed to carry out a partial recount of the vote result, which opponents hoped could lead to its being overturned. Women with fake mustaches showed support for Mr. Maduro during the swearing-in ceremonies. His win is being contested. Mr. Maduro was elected Sunday by a narrow margin less than six weeks after the death of his mentor, Hugo Chávez, the charismatic socialist. He beat Henrique Capriles Radonski, who refused to recognize the results and called for a recount, claiming that he was the true winner. Tensions ran high afterward, with protests, scattered violence and both sides blaming the other for several deaths. The inauguration was delayed for hours because Mr. Maduro had been in Lima, Peru, until well past midnight at a special meeting of the Union of South American Nations, which had been called to discuss the situation in Venezuela.

Venezuela: Election council to audit vote in Venezuela | Post Bulletin

Venezuela’s electoral council announced Thursday night that it would audit the 46 percent the vote not scrutinized on election night in a concession to opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, who said he believes it will prove he is the president. “We are where we want to be,” a satisfied but cautious-looking Capriles told a news conference after the announcement. “I think I will have the universe of voters needed to get where I want to be.”

Venezuela: Maduro relents, offers full election audit | Sydney Morning Herald

Venezuela’s President-elect Nicolas Maduro has agreed to a full audit of the votes cast as the opposition continues to contest the country’s closest election in 45 years. Mr Maduro’s campaign chief, Jorge Rodriguez, made the announcement after opposition leader Henrique Capriles called off a march on Wednesday to protest against the results of Sunday’s presidential election. Mr Capriles, who requested a manual recount of the 15 million votes, acted after Mr Maduro said he would come down with a ”firm hand” on opposition supporters and violence led to eight deaths.

Venezuela: Manual recount not possible in Venezuela, chief justice says | CNN.com

A manual recount of votes isn’t possible in Venezuela, the head of the country’s Supreme Court said Wednesday, suggesting there is no legal basis for the opposition’s push for a ballot-by-ballot audit of the narrow presidential election results. In nationally televised remarks, Venezuelan Chief Justice Luisa Estella Morales said Venezuela’s 1999 constitution eliminated manual recounts in favor of a “system audit.” “In Venezuela the electoral system is completely automated. Therefore, a manual count does not exist. Anyone who thought that could really happen has been deceived,” she said. “The majority of those who are asking for a manual count know it and are clear about it. Elections are not audited ballot by ballot but through the system.”

Venezuela: Options narrow for opposition as Supreme Court chief says no way for vote recount | The Washington Post

Venezuela’s opposition watched its options dwindle Wednesday after the head of the Supreme Court said there could be no recount of the razor-thin presidential election victory by Hugo Chavez’s heir, leaving many government foes feeling the only chance at power is to wait for the ruling socialists to stumble. Opposition activists and independent observers called the judge’s declaration blatant and legally unfounded favoritism from a purportedly independent body that is packed with confederates of President-elect Nicolas Maduro, Chavez’s hand-picked successor. The recount issue isn’t before the court, but its president, Luisa Morales, appeared on television at midday to declare that the opposition call for an examination of each and every paper vote receipt had “angered many Venezuelans.”

Venezuela: US calls for Venezuela election recount after narrow win for Nicolás Maduro | guardian.co.uk

The United States is hesitating to recognise Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela and has called for a recount of the vote from Sunday’s closely fought election. The procrastination is likely to embolden Venezuela’s opposition and enrage many on the left in Latin America, who have long accused the US of interfering in the region’s politics. The US secretary of state, John Kerry, said he had yet to evaluate whether the disputed result was legitimate when asked about the matter by members of the House of Representatives. “We think there ought to be a recount,” he told the foreign affairs committee in reference to Venezuelan opposition demands for a full audit of the vote.

Venezuela: Government defends election result, backtracks on recount pledge | The Washington Post

Venezuela’s government on Monday defended a presidential election that authorities said gave interim leader Nicolas Maduro a six-year term, backtracking on a pledge he had made to permit an audit of ballots demanded by the opposition after the razor-thin victory. Henrique Capriles, who had challenged Maduro in the Sunday election, which was held six weeks after President Hugo Chavez’s death, insisted that he had won the vote and called for a hand count of all the paper ballots.

Venezuela: Opposition candidate demands recount after Chavez’s heir Nicolas Maduro wins Venezuela presidency | Fox News

Hugo Chavez’s hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, won a razor-thin victory in Sunday’s special presidential election, edging the opposition’s leader by only about 300,000 votes, electoral officials announced. His challenger, Henrique Capriles, declared that he wouldn’t accept the results and called for a full recount. Maduro’s stunningly close victory came after a campaign in which the winner promised to carry on Chavez’s self-proclaimed socialist revolution while Capriles’ main message was that Chavez’s 14-year regime put Venezuela on the road to ruin.

Venezuela: Rivals rally supporters after clashes over election results | Chicago Tribune

Both sides in Venezuela’s political stand-off will hold rival demonstrations on Tuesday after authorities rejected opposition demands for a presidential election recount and protesters clashed with police in Caracas. Opposition leader Henrique Capriles says his team’s figures show he won the election on Sunday and he wants a full audit of official results that narrowly gave victory to ruling party candidate Nicolas Maduro, the country’s acting president.

Venezuela: Venezuelan opposition candidate demands recount | CNN.com

Denouncing election irregularities, Venezuelan opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski demanded a recount and said early Monday that he will not recognize the country’s presidential results “until every vote is counted.” His comments came less than an hour after officials said the man former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez handpicked to be his successor had won the country’s presidential vote. With 99% of votes counted, Nicolas Maduro won 50.66% of votes, National Electoral Council President Tibisay Lucena said, calling the results “irreversible.” Capriles won 49.07% of votes, she said.

California: Stanislaus County Clerk’s $4K recount charge includes staff prep time | Modesto Bee

Former Mayor Virginia Madueño’s supporters said the Stanislaus County election office shouldn’t charge them for staff salaries for the week before ballots were recounted in the November mayoral race. Madueño is contesting an itemized bill showing that Registrar of Voters Lee Lundrigan charged almost $4,000 for her time spent on the December recount. A Madueño supporter who asked for the recount was billed $10,217 by Lundrigan’s office for an effort that lasted 5½ hours before it was called off. In addition to a required $2,400 deposit to start the Dec. 10 recount, county elections sent a bill six weeks later seeking payment of an extra $7,817, based on staff time to prepare for the tally. According to the invoice, Lundrigan worked 30 hours preparing for and conducting the recount, at a rate of $131.42 per hour. Time sheets show a total of 108 hours worked by 11 other employees on Dec. 10 and the previous week.

Kenya: Court to Recount Ballots, Scrutinize Forms in Vote Case | Businessweek

Kenya’s Supreme Court ordered a recount of ballots at 22 polling stations in this month’s presidential election and said it will analyze return forms as it decides on a challenge to the outcome of the vote. Raila Odinga, the outgoing prime minister, filed a petition in the nation’s highest court after he lost the March 4 election to Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya’s first president. Odinga has asked the court to overturn the result, saying the balloting was riddled with fraud and irregularities. “The re-tally shall aim at establishing whether the number of votes cast in each of these 22 polling stations exceeds the number of registered voters,” Justice Smokin Wanjala said at a pretrial hearing today in Nairobi, the capital. Turnout was a record 86 percent of 14.3 million registered voters across about 31,000 polling stations.

Voting Blogs: First Person Singular: Data is a useful tool for elections officials | Steve Weir/electionlineWeekly

There are two major observations that I have had during my 24 years as County Clerk-Recorder. First, the people who work in elections are extremely dedicated and ethical. Second, we have in our hands access to a wealth of data that we should use to tell our story. However, many of us miss the opportunity to review and to “own” our data. I slowly found out in my early days as Clerk, that our elections information management system had TONS of reports on virtually every aspect of our operations. From simple over-under reports (that can identify individual precinct problems) to rejected vote-by-mail ballots, patterns of problems could be easily identified and tracked. In 1996, we had a close contest for a California State Senate seat. Out of about 300,000 votes cast, the spread was about 700 votes, not close. However, the losing party asked for a recount. After 25,000 ballots were hand counted, the spread had hardly changed and the recount was called off. As part of this process, I noticed that 3,200 vote-by-mail ballots had been rejected, almost 4 percent of the total vote-by-mail ballots cast. Most of these arrived after election day. No one seemed bothered by this statistic. No one except me. These were voters who did not have their ballots counted.

Kenya: Court orders a partial recount of presidential votes | Reuters

Kenya’s Supreme Court on Monday ordered a partial recount of ballots from the March 4 presidential election after losing candidate Raila Odinga alleged there were more votes cast at some polling stations than there were registered voters. A swift and transparent resolution of the dispute that has unnerved the stock market is seen as critical to restoring the reputation of Kenya as a stable democracy after violence following the 2007 election left more than 1,200 dead. This year’s election passed peacefully though and went a long way to restoring Kenya’s image. International observers said the voting was broadly credible, but the count then went for five days and monitors did not follow the entire process. Odinga has said there was “rampant illegality” in the first-round victory of his long-term rival Uhuru Kenyatta. The son of Kenya’s founding president, Kenyatta said the voting was “free and fair”. Adjudicating between the two political heavyweights is seen as a major test for the country’s reformed judiciary.

South Carolina: Grooms concedes, but recount set in GOP House race | Rock Hill Herald

Former Gov. Mark Sanford will likely face former Charleston County councilman Curtis Bostic in a GOP runoff for an open congressional seat, after state Sen. Larry Grooms conceded second place Wednesday to Bostic. Grooms conceded in the crowded GOP primary in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District even though a recount of the votes, required by state law, will be held later this week. In unofficial returns Tuesday, Bostic edged out Grooms for second place by 493 votes. Sanford was the top vote-getter among Republicans. “The margin is too big to recover from, but state law will still govern the mandatory recount,” Grooms said Wednesday. “It’s highly, highly unlikely that any errors could overturn a 400-vote margin.”

Voting Blogs: Arbitrary and Outrageous Costs for ‘Recounts’ of Paper Ballot Elections in California Continue to Stymie Citizen Authentication of Results | BradBlog

Early last month, The Brad Blog offered an exclusive special report on how a single Registrar of Voters in Fresno County, CA effectively stopped a citizen-organized attempt to confirm the results of last November’s Prop 37 initiative dead in its tracks. She was able to stop an attempted post-election hand count of the paper ballots in her county by charging the proponents of the count an outrageous and seemingly arbitrary high price to carry out the count. Now, a very similar story is being reported in regard to an attempt to confirm the results of a mayoral race in another California county where the “losing” candidate is said to have lost by just 53 votes. In that case, rather than an outrageous $4,000 per day to count the paper ballots again, as was the case for Prop 37 in Fresno, the candidate has been charged $2,000 per hour for her attempt to verify that the results of her contest were accurately reported by the computer system.

Malta: Nationalist Party files fresh court application against Electoral Commission | Malta Today

The PN and two candidates Claudette Buttigieg and Frederick Azzopardi have filed a Constitutional court application against the Electoral Commission, over the 9 March election result which the PN insists “did not reflect the will of the people,” and distorted proportionality in Parliament. In its application the PN, Buttigieg and Azzopardi  are asking the Constitutional court to declare the Electoral Commission’s actions in breach of the right to free elections which uphold the will of the people and consequently address the injustice suffered by the party and the two candidates by correcting the number of MPs elected to reflect proportionality.

Malta: Court rejects vote recount requests | Times of Malta

The Constitutional Court has turned down requests by two Nationalist candidates to recount the votes in the eighth and 13th districts, saying there was no juridical need to do so. Candidates were not going to suffer any “prejudice” because they were still going to get elected, the court ruled. Under the Constitution, four seats must be credited to the Nationalist Party to achieve representation in Parliament proportional to its number one votes. One of them is going to be assigned to Fredrick Azzopardi, a candidate for Gozo, and another to Claudette Buttigieg Pace, who contested in Birkirkara.

Kenya: Kenyatta Leads in Kenyan Election as Opponent Urges Recount | Bloomberg

Uhuru Kenyatta, facing crimes against humanity charges, led Kenya’s presidential vote as the electoral commission rejected his opponent’s call to stop tallying because of flaws and alleged manipulation. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission said it had found no cases where votes cast exceeded the number of registered voters, as Prime Minister Raila Odinga’sCoalition for Reform and Democracy, or CORD, alleged earlier in the day, Chairman Issack Hassan said. “With the rigorous verification in place, there is no room to doctor the results whatsoever by any election official,” he told reporters in Nairobi, the capital. “We cannot stop tallying. This is a legal process.” Kenyatta, a deputy prime minister, received 3.13 million votes and Odinga got 2.56 million of the ballots declared from 45 percent of constituencies, according to the commission. Accusations by Odinga that he was robbed of victory in the last presidential election in December 2007 sparked two months of clashes that left more than 1,100 people dead and another 350,000 homeless.

Kenya: Fear stalks Kenya as Odinga partner calls for recount | BDlive

The political temperature rose sharply in Kenya on Thursday after one of the two camps competing for the presidency alleged the race had been rigged and that the laborious counting of votes should start again from zero. Hopes for a punctual outcome from Monday’s poll were dashed as arguments about the reasons for the failure of costly electronic voting intensified. Partial results from the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission slowed to a trickle again on Thursday, with votes from little more than a third of the 291 constituencies tallied by nightfall. Even those results are almost certain to face legal challenges, prolonging the tension in Kenya. East Africa’s biggest and most hi-tech economy is barely moving and the country is stuck in a dangerous ethnic gridlock after most voters opted for their tribal choices. Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president, was still in the lead on Thursday but the electoral commission’s numbers were bluntly rejected by the coalition backing former prime minister Raila Odinga. “We have evidence that the results we have received have been doctored,” Mr Odinga’s running mate, outgoing Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, said.

Kenya: Election Body Rejects Recount as Kenyatta Lead Narrows | Bloomberg

Uhuru Kenyatta, facing charges of crimes against humanity, saw his lead in Kenya’s presidential vote narrow, after the electoral body rejected his opponent’s call for a recount because of flaws and alleged manipulation. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission found no cases where votes cast exceeded the number of registered voters, as Prime Minister Raila Odinga’sCoalition for Reform and Democracy alleged yesterday, Chairman Issack Hassan said. Kenyatta, a deputy prime minister, received 4.42 million votes to Odinga’s 3.94 million out of the ballots declared from 68 percent of constituencies, according to the commission. “With the rigorous verification in place, there is no room to doctor the results whatsoever by any election official,” Hassan told reporters in Nairobi, the capital. “We cannot stop tallying. This is a legal process.”

Florida: No legislative push so far to crack down on election supervisors | TCPalm.com

So far, lawmakers tasked with fixing Florida’s elections issues have focused on long lines and wait times, not the administrative and equipment trip-ups that plagued counties like St. Lucie. The Legislature kicks off its two-month lawmaking marathon Tuesday, but there’s still no official push to let the state crack down harder on elections supervisors who bungle their duties. The top lawmaker delving into elections reform, Sen. Jack Latvala, has stressed the idea does warrant discussion. “I do think this is an issue that we’re going to want to debate in this committee as we put this bill together,” Latvala, a Clearwater Republican, told the Ethics and Elections Committee he chairs on Feb. 5. But Sen. President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, stressed that it’s not a top concern. “I don’t know that giving the governor or the state more authority to remove someone takes the place of having someone who can actually do the job,” Gaetz said.

Italy: Berlusconi Calls for Recount After Refusing to Concede Defeat | Bloomberg

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Liberty party refused to concede defeat in Italy’s election and called for a recount of the vote. Berlusconi and his allies trailed the Democratic Party-led coalition of Pier Luigi Bersani by less than half a percentage point, a margin of fewer than 150,000 votes, with more more than 1 million votes still to be counted at 12:45 a.m. The returns “are calculated from empirical methods that are inevitably subject to a margin of error,” PDL Secretary General Angelino Alfano said at a press conference in Rome. “Even if the margin is contained, it will certainly be more than the difference in votes, which is minimal, between the two coalitions in the Chamber.”

Guam: Election Commission presents findings of precinct handcount | KUAM.com

After five weeks of handcounting ballots from the 2010 general election, the Guam Election Commission presented its findings to commissioners that had some speculating a change in the results, not in the gubernatorial race, but for the Legislature. It took a little over one month to handcount five precincts from the 2010 general election and during its GEC meeting Wednesday night, executive director Maria Pangelinan reported the results. “The difference of the gubernatorial race was minimal,” she said. Of the hand count summary of the five precincts, results showed Gutierrez-Aguon receiving five less votes from the certified results, whereas Calvo-Tenorio received two additional votes. “Between a handcount and machine tabulation there are bound to be differences,” Pangelinan said.

Voting Blogs: Forget About Fresno: How One California County Clerk Stopped Prop 37’s Oversight ‘Recount’ | BradBlog

What happened last November in California’s Prop 37? Is it really possible that progressive California doesn’t want Genetically Engineered Foods to be labeled as such? According to the reported results of that election, that would seem to be the case. But did Californians really vote against such labeling? Unfortunately, thanks to a lack of overseeable public hand-counts on Election Night, and a gaping weakness in the state’s otherwise liberal “recount” law, we’re unlikely to ever know for certain. A weeks-long investigation by The BRAD BLOG into the months-long attempted effort to confirm the results of the Prop 37 ballot initiative last November, serves to highlight not just the weakness in California “recount” law, but also the notion that paper ballots, secretly tallied by optical-scan computers, are just fine, since, as the knee-jerk saying goes, “we can always count the paper ballots by hand afterwards if there are any questions about the results.”

Utah: Recount bill passes House | Deseret News

A bill attempting to make the requirements for a candidate to seek a recount consistent throughout the state passed the House Tuesday and now goes to the Senate. Rep. Craig Hall, R-West Valley, the sponsor of HB85, said the current law allowing recounts only if a candidate loses by no more than one vote per precinct is “bad policy.” He said that the number of precincts in legislative districts, for example, varies from 16 to 56.

Utah: Vote recount measure passes House committee | Deseret News

A measure aimed at providing consistency and fairness in election policy received a favorable recommendation Thursday from the House Government Operations Committee. HB85 would amend the state election code by changing the formula for determining when a voting recount may be requested by a losing candidate. Currently, a recount can be called for if a candidate loses by less than one vote per precinct. The proposed legislation, sponsored Rep. Craig Hall, R-West Valley City, would change the recount criteria to 0.25 percent of total number of votes cast.