United Kingdom: Expat standing in general election to highlight vote ban injustice | Telegraph

James Jackson, 71, does not have the right to vote in the UK, having become a victim of the rule preventing Britons from voting at home once they’ve been out of the country for 15 years. However, nothing in law stops him standing as a Parliamentary candidate in the general election, so he plans to throw his hat in the ring as a candidate for the safe Tory seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. In an interview with the getwestlondon news website, Mr Jackson said: “This Kafkaesque situation means that, theoretically, I could win a parliamentary seat and take my place in the House of Commons, despite living abroad and not having a vote.” The website reported that Mr Jackson formerly lived in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, working as treasurer of the former Colwyn Borough Council. He left the UK in 1996 to work as an internal auditor/treasurer for the Falkland Islands government and later retired to live in Narbonne, southern France.

Guam: Only electors have a vote for the president | Pacific Daily News

Due to a recent episode of John Oliver’s political satire HBO series “Last Week Tonight,” there has been renewed discussion about how the American president is elected. The episode’s premise, a premise supported by many on Guam, is that U.S. territories are not equal to the U.S. mainland because U.S. citizens in the territories are denied the right to vote for president. That premise is completely wrong and needs to be corrected. When it comes to voting for president, Guam is very much equal to the U.S. mainland in that even citizens on the mainland do not have the right to vote for the president. The U.S. Constitution has never given the people at large the right to vote for president. The only people in the U.S. who possess the constitutional right to vote for president are the people chosen to be electors (see the U.S. Constitution, Article II, section 1, clause 2, and the 12th Amendment ratified in 1804).

New Hampshire: House asks court to review bill requiring voters to abide by motor vehicle requirements | Associated Press

The New Hampshire House of Representatives is asking the state Supreme Court to weigh in on a bill requiring people registering to vote — including out-of-state students or military personnel — to also register their cars and obtain drivers’ licenses in New Hampshire. The request for an advisory opinion was made in writing Wednesday and made public by the court Thursday.

Israel: Activists vote on behalf of Palestinians who can’t | Toronto Star

Mousa Abu Maria’s vote will be counted in today’s Israeli elections — but he won’t step foot in a polling station. Instead, the 36-year-old Palestinian activist has asked an Israeli to cast a ballot for the party he thinks will fight for Palestinian rights: the Joint List, the preferred choice among many Palestinian citizens of the state. “Palestine is still under Israeli occupation; that should mean I have the right to vote. I don’t have my own country and Israel still controls everything. Israel has control of our life,” Abu Maria, who lives in the West Bank town of Beit Ommar and does not hold Israeli citizenship, told the Star. Ofer Neiman, an Israeli freelance translator who lives in Jerusalem, is casting his ballot for Abu Maria. He said he chose to give his vote in protest of what he views as undemocratic elections.

Luxembourg: Conference on foreigner voting rights | Luxemburger Wort

Specialists from all over Europe are to participate in an interdisciplinary conference on voting rights for foreigners in Luxembourg. On March 20 and 21, leading thinkers in Europe from legal, philosophical and political backgrounds will gather at Luxembourg’s Chamber of Deputies for a conference dubbed “A new horizon for democracy? Voting rights for foreigners in national elections”. This conference discussion will be conducted in French with simultaneous English translation.

National: Democrats want to add right to vote to the Constitution | MSNBC

Democrats have came out in support of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote. The proposed amendment has no realistic shot at passing for the foreseeable future. But the move points to an intensifying Democratic response to the wave of conservative efforts to restrict voting, and lays down a clear marker for the party’s long-term goal. “We have been having an expanding of the franchise in America. That’s the trajectory of history,” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who, with Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) has introduced legislation in Congress for a right-vote amendment, told msnbc in an interview. “But in recent years, folks who don’t want everybody to vote have been very busy, and they’re trying to peel back the trajectory of opportunity to vote and participate in our society.” At its winter meeting Saturday in Florida, the Democratic National Committee unanimously passed a resolution that supports “amending the United States Constitution to explicitly guarantee an individual’s right to vote.” The DNC also said it would urge state parties to push for statewide referenda backing the idea, and pledged to create a “Right to Vote Task Force” to offer ideas on how to protect voting rights. The resolution was submitted by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the DNC, as well as Donna Brazile, a vice chair and prominent figure in the party.

National: Obama Calls Out America’s Dismal Voter Turnout: ‘Why Are You Staying Home?’ | Huffington Post

President Barack Obama urged Americans frustrated with the lack of progress on immigration reform to voice their discontent at the ballot box, lamenting the dismal turnout in last November’s midterm elections. Speaking Wednesday during a town hall in Miami, Florida, hosted by MSNBC and Telemundo’s José Díaz-Balart, Obama said the immigration system won’t truly change until voters elect lawmakers who will press for reform. “Ultimately, we have to change the law,” Obama said. “And the way that happens is, by the way, by voting”

Voting Blogs: The Right to Vote Amendment is Worth At Least One Candle: A Reply to Heather Gerken | Josh Douglas/Election Law Blog

A new constitutional amendment affirmatively granting the right to vote could have a significant impact on protecting voting rights for all Americans. Most significantly – and perhaps paradoxically – we are likely to see the biggest effects of a federal amendment where we least expect it: in state courts. Professor Heather Gerken, in a characteristically eloquent and well-reasoned new article, claims that pursuing a new constitutional amendment enshrining the right to vote is “not worth the candle.” The heart of Professor Gerken’s argument is that the benefits of a new right-to-vote amendment do not justify the costs involved, particularly as Supreme Court Justices and other federal judges are unlikely to alter the scope of voting rights analysis given the likelihood that, to pass, the amendment’s language would have to be too vague. But a constitutional amendment granting the right to vote does not need federal judges, or even the U.S. Supreme Court, to have a big impact. That is because many state courts follow federal law even when construing their own state constitutions.  So a new provision in the federal Constitution, even if couched in broad platitudes, will have corollary effects on state constitutional law.

Voting Blogs: DNC Adopts Resolution Calling for ‘Right-to-Vote’ Amendment to the U.S. Constitution | Brad Blog

While Republican state legislatures around the nation have been working to limit access to the polls over recent years, Democrats moved a non-partisan initiative forward over the weekend to help expand — or, at least, to help protect — the franchise for all Americans. At their Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, the Democratic National Committee unanimously voted to adopt a resolution calling for a “Right-to-Vote” Amendment to be added to the U.S. Constitution. According to the resolution, posted in full below, the Democrats are calling for “amending the United States Constitution to explicitly guarantee an individual’s right to vote.” The resolution also calls on “state parties to work with state lawmakers and others to access the need to petition for a statewide referendum on the November 2016 general election ballot (and all states where this is possible), advocating to amend the United States Constitution to explicitly guarantee an individual’s right to vote.”

District of Columbia: D.C., other cities debate whether legal immigrants should have voting rights | The Washington Post

David Nolan and Helen Searls are a professional couple in the District, active in their children’s school and local civic associations. As taxpayers and longtime residents, they feel they have a duty to be involved in public life. But as legal immigrants who have not become U.S. citizens, they have no right to vote — even in local elections. “It’s frustrating at election time to have no say in what’s happening,” said the British-born Searls, 54, who works at a media company. “Washington has people from all over the world. If they are engaged and participating in public issues, it benefits the city.” Searls and Nolan are among 54,000 immigrants in the District — and about 12 million nationwide — who have been granted green cards that allow them to remain in the United States permanently. Most are sponsored by relatives or employers. They pay taxes and serve in the armed forces. Yet in all but a handful of localities, they have no voting rights. Last month, for the third time in a decade, a bill was introduced in the D.C. Council to allow legal immigrants to vote locally. The measure has little chance of passage, but it is illustrative of a growing movement to expand local voting rights to noncitizens that has spawned similar proposals in several dozen communities across the country.

Myanmar: White card vote prompts call for ministry resolution | Myanmar Times

The status of holders of temporary IDs – widely known as white cards – should be clarified as soon as possible, a leading MP said last week, as parliament voted to give them voting rights in an upcoming national referendum. Meanwhile, the head of an ethnic Rakhine party said he plans to submit the issue to the Constitutional Tribunal. U Zaw Myint Pe, chair of the Amyotha Hluttaw National Planning Affairs Committee, urged the Ministry of Immigration and Population to settle the matter without delay. “If the problem persists into the next generation, it will be rather difficult to settle it. White card holders should not be allowed to vote. They should be recognised as citizens or foreigners,” said U Zaw Myint Pe said. He made the comments on February 4, two days after the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw voted 328 to 79 to approve a proposal from President U Thein Sein that people who voted in the 2010 election should have the right to vote in a referendum scheduled for May.

Puerto Rico: Governer Proposes Voting Rights for All, Regardless of Immigration Status | Good Magazine

Puerto Rico governer Alejandro Garcia Padilla has announced plans for legislation that would grant the right to vote to all of its estimated 200,000-400,000 undocumented immigrants. The statements came at a recent public meeting with the president of the Dominican Republic, Danilo Medina, during which the two politicians signed various agreements to tackle economics, education, security, and environmental issues together. “Today, we would like to break down the barriers that prevent immigrants from contributing all that they truly can to economic recovery and social progress in Puerto Rico,” said Padilla earlier this month.

New Zealand: No prisoner voting rights a ‘dangerous precedent’ | NZ Herald News

Not allowing prisoners to vote is being labelled a dangerous precedent, with claims it could be extended to other groups considered unfavourable. Prisoner Arthur Taylor is representing himself in the High Court at Auckland today, arguing Prime Minister John Key shouldn’t have been elected in Helensville, as Auckland Prison inmates were denied their right to vote. Taylor says a 2010 amendment to the law which stopped them voting is dangerous, as parliamentarians shouldn’t decide who can and can’t elect them. He said there was no telling who the amendment could be extended to, alleging refugees, beneficiaries, or those who earn less than $28,000 could all be on the list.

Nigeria: After fleeing Boko Haram, many in Nigeria without documents to vote | The Globe and Mail

When the Boko Haram fighters swept into her town, Salamatu Billi fled for her life, running so fast that she didn’t even think about her identification documents. Today, after five months of homelessness, she has learned that she cannot cast a ballot in Nigeria’s crucial election next month, the most closely contested in the country’s history. Having already lost her life’s possessions when Boko Haram captured her town in northeastern Nigeria, she has now also lost the right to vote. … Many displaced people, such as Ms. Billi, cannot get voting cards because they lack documents, missed the chance to be registered when they fled, or are too frightened to return to their home state, where they must vote under election rules. As much as 20 per cent of Nigerian territory is under Boko Haram’s control, and voting will be virtually impossible there.

National: Professor says right to vote in U.S. ‘has never been intrinsically tied to citizenship’ | Providence Journal

Extending voting rights to non-citizens is a hot topic from Burlington, Vt., to New York City to San Francisco. Supporters say allowing non-citizens to vote would give members of the community, including large numbers who pay taxes and own property, a voice in local political affairs. Opponents argue that extending voting privileges to immigrants would demean the value of citizenship and effectively disenfranchise legitimate citizen voters by diluting their vote. Ron Hayduk, a political science professor at Queens College, City University of New York,  supported expanding voting rights in a commentary “Noncitizens voting? It’s only fair,” published Jan. 1, 2015, in The Providence Journal. … In stating his case, Hayduk made this provocative statement: “But what most don’t know is that the right to vote in this country has never been intrinsically tied to citizenship.”

Israel: State May Tackle Threats on Female Haredi Party | Arutz Sheva

The new female haredi party B’Zhutan has already been threatened with excommunication and other forms of backlash by members of the haredi community, to the point that Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber has decided to get involved. Zilber on Thursday sent a letter to the Central Elections Committee chairperson, judge Salim Joubran, responding to the societal pressure being directed at the party’s three founders Ruth Kolian, Noa Erez and Karen Mozen. “One of the rabbis identified with (the haredi party) United Torah Judaism published statements about women who back a party that is not led by ‘gedolei Yisrael’ (leading rabbis – ed.),” wrote Zilber. Elaborating, she continued “according to the publication, a woman who acts in opposition to the rabbi’s orders will have her ketuba (marriage contract – ed.) removed from her, her income will be harmed (it will be forbidden to study at her educational institutions and to buy products from her), and her children will be removed from institutions of study.”

District of Columbia: Grosso Re-Introduces Bill To Allow Local Voting Privileges For Legal Non-Citizens | DCist

The D.C. Council will once again try to pass a bill allowing green card holders the right to vote in local elections. Councilmember David Grosso (I-At Large) introduced a bill yesterday that would grant permanent resident immigrants municipal voting privileges. Councilmembers Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1), Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), and Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) joined him in co-introducing the bill. “What most District residents care about are the tangible things that affect their day-to-day lives, like potholes, playgrounds, taxes, snow removal, trash collection, red light cameras and more,” Grosso said in a statement. “Unfortunately, not all of our residents have a say in choosing the officials who make these decisions. In my opinion, that is unjust.”

Ireland: Referendum on emigrant vote ‘unlikely’ this year, Deenihan says | The Irish Times

A referendum on whether to permit Irish citizens living overseas to vote in presidential elections is “unlikely” to be held this year, Minister of State for the Diaspora Jimmy Deenihan has said. The decision on whether to hold a referendum was due to be made before Christmas, but the matter has not yet been discussed by Cabinet. Speaking to The Irish Times after a round-table discussion on diaspora affairs in Dublin Castle yesterday, Mr Deenihan said two referendums, on marriage equality and the age qualification of presidential election candidates, would be put to the people next year, and “logistically it would be very difficult” to hold a third. The Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government is working on a proposal for overseas voting which will be discussed by Cabinet before the summer, Mr Deenihan said. However, this will not be included in the Government’s new plan for diaspora policy, due to be published in the coming weeks.

Editorials: The government is making it harder for Canadians to vote | Michael Pal/Ottawa Citizen

While the courts are making it easier for Canadians to exercise their right to vote, the federal government seems committed to making it harder. The Fair Elections Act elicited unprecedented condemnation for restricting access to the ballot box. The government has now introduced the Citizen Voting Act, after a court granted the right to vote to some Canadians living outside the country. The Act puts in place rules on how non-resident Canadians can exercise their constitutional right. These rules are so onerous that they will effectively prevent voting by many non-residents. The implications for the more than one million Canadians of voting age who live out of the country deserve close scrutiny.

Florida: New legislation could allow former felons to vote in federal elections | Capitol News Service

Hundreds of thousands of Floridians who have served time in prison are unable to vote because of what some are calling the most restrictive rights restoration policy in the nation. But multiple efforts are underway to change the system. The restoration of civil rights includes the right to vote, serve on a jury, or hold public office. It does not included the right to own a firearm. Legislation pending in Congress could require the state to allow former felons to vote in federal elections. About 50 black-shirted protesters showed up at the quarterly Clemency Board meeting, angry over what some call the most restrictive clemency system in the nation. Over the course of four years, those getting their rights back has fallen from 30,000 to under 1,000 last year. Applicants must wait at least five years before even applying. And a single speeding ticket can disqualify someone.

New Jersey: Appeals panel revives challenge to state’s 21-day advance voter registration | NJ.com

A state appeals panel today revived a lawsuit challenging New Jersey’s requirement that residents must register to vote no later than 21 days before an election, finding ample evidence suggesting the mandate may no longer be needed or constitutional. The challenge, filed in 2011 against the Middlesex County Board of Elections and the commissioner of registrations by several Rutgers University students and statewide advocacy groups, contended the requirement “severely burdens the right to vote” of New Jersey residents. They argued that burden outweighed any interest the county, and by extension, all counties and the state, had in maintaining the advance registration requirement, which was established in order to prevent voter fraud and ensure public confidence in the system.

Editorials: The Racist Origins of Felon Disenfranchisement | Brent Staples/New York Times

The state laws that barred nearly six million people with felony convictions from voting in the midterm elections this month date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Southern lawmakers were working feverishly to neutralize the black electorate. Poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and cross burnings were effective weapons in this campaign. But statutes that allowed correctional systems to arbitrarily and permanently strip large numbers of people of the right to vote were a particularly potent tool in the campaign to undercut African-American political power. This racially freighted system has normalized disenfranchisement in the United States — at a time when our peers in the democratic world rightly see it as an aberration. It has also stripped one in every 13 black persons of the right to vote — a rate four times that of nonblacks nationally. At the same time, it has allowed disenfranchisement to move beyond that black population — which makes up 38 percent of those denied the vote — into the body politic as a whole. One lesson here is that punishments designed for one pariah group can be easily expanded to include others as well. The history of disenfranchisement was laid out in a fascinating 2003 study by Angela Behrens, Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza. They found that state felony bans exploded in number during the late 1860s and 1870s, particularly in the wake of the Fifteenth Amendment, which ostensibly guaranteed black Americans the right to vote. They also found that the larger the state’s black population, the more likely the state was to pass the most stringent laws that permanently denied people convicted of crimes the right to vote. These bans were subsequently strengthened as the Jim Crow era began to take hold.

Ireland: Irish emigrants should have right to vote, report says | The Irish Times

Voting rights should be extended to Irish citizens living abroad, an Oireachtas committee has recommended. In its Report on Voting Rights of Irish Citizens Abroad, to be published later today, the Joint Committee on European Union Affairs said “Irish emigrants should continue to have a stake in the future of their home country”. More than 120 countries around the world have provisions for their citizens abroad to cast a ballot, but Ireland does not currently allow emigrants to vote in presidential or Dáil elections. The Oireachtas committee review was prompted by criticism from the European Commission earlier this year, which said Ireland was “disenfranchising” its citizens living in other EU member states by not providing them voting rights in national elections. “Such disenfranchisement practices can negatively affect EU free movement rights,” it said.

Editorials: We need to amend constitution over vote issue | The Des Moines Register

Eligible voters in Iowa had the opportunity to exercise a privilege of democracy when the polls opened on Election Day, Nov. 4. Some of them chose not to participate, but thousands of others were denied the right to participate by a disputed provision in the Iowa Constitution. That provision excludes otherwise eligible voters who have been convicted of “any infamous crime,” which has generally been interpreted to mean felonies. Which also means that literally tens of thousands of people who have served their time and paid their debt to society are denied one of the fundamental rights of citizenship in a democracy. The latest effort to end this denial of a fundamental right came in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa three days after the election. The lawsuit on behalf of a woman with a felony record from a drug conviction seeks have her voting rights restored by a Polk County District Court judge. She argues that her criminal conviction does not meet the definition of an “infamous” crime. Beyond that, the lawsuit asks the district court to specifically define which felonies fall under the broad definition of infamous crimes for voting rights purposes.

Alabama: Justices review racial makeup of Alabama districts | Associated Press

In last week’s elections, Alabama Republicans shrank their once-powerful Democratic opponents to just eight seats in the state Senate, all of them from districts in which African-Americans are a majority. Black Democrats say the GOP did it by misusing a landmark voting-rights law, intended to ensure the right to vote for southern blacks, to instead limit their voting strength. Republicans, they argue, relied too heavily on race to draw new electoral maps following the 2010 census. The case goes before the Supreme Court on Wednesday. Last year a conservative majority on the court effectively blocked a key component of the Voting Rights Act, and this case will be watched closely for signs that the rest of the law could be in peril. Like other Southern states, Alabama has undergone a decades-long change in its electorate. White voters now overwhelmingly back Republicans, leaving black voters as the Democrats’ only reliable voting bloc.

Namibia: Electoral Commission Makes U-Turn On Foreign Voting | allAfrica.com

The Electoral Commission of Namibia yesterday backtracked on an announcement that only voters registered at Namibia’s foreign missions would be allowed to cast their votes at polling stations outside the country on Friday next week. In a media statement issued yesterday, ECN chairperson Notemba Tjipueja denied that the ECN had taken a decision to exclude any registered voters outside Namibia from exercising their right to vote at the country’s foreign missions. “It is, and always was, the Commission’s point of view that all registered voters in possession of a valid voters’ registration card be allowed to vote in terms of Section 98 of the Electoral Act,” Tjipueja stated.

Editorials: To Guarantee Voting Rights, Enforce the Laws We Have | Richard Hasen/New York Times

We don’t need an amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing the right to vote. What we need is a Supreme Court guaranteeing that right through already existing parts of the United States Constitution, such as the right to equal protection. In recent years, the court unfortunately has not read the Constitution to guarantee a vibrant democracy committed to political equality. It effectively struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act; it gave its approval to Indiana’s strict voter identification law; it approved of laws protecting the Democratic and Republican parties from competition; and it rejected efforts to limit money in politics to promote political equality.

Kentucky: Voting law leaves many out of election | Courier-Journal

His mailbox has been stuffed with campaign letters, his TV plastered with political ads. But Brian Wright of Louisville won’t be casting a ballot Tuesday in Kentucky’s election. He’s among an estimated 7.4 percent of voting-age Kentuckians — including 22.3 percent of black voting-age residents — barred from casting ballots because of a felony conviction, a disenfranchisement rate that is third-highest in the nation, according to the Sentencing Project, a reform advocacy group. “I want to have a voice,” said Wright, 33, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to drug possession, receiving five years of probation and losing the ability to vote. Kentucky is one of only four states where all felons permanently lose their right to vote unless it is restored by the governor, said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project. He argued the state’s high exclusion rate is “quite likely to have a real impact on elections.”

Florida: Who has the right to vote? | First Coast News

By this time next week we should know which party controls the Senate, if marijuana for medical use will be legal in Florida and if Rick Scott will be governor here for another four years. Voters will help decide those things. But more than five million voting-age tax-paying U.S. citizens will not be allowed to due to felony disenfranchisement. It’s an issue that affects 1 in 10 voting age residents in the state of Florida. 12 states restrict voting rights after felons have served their time and the sunshine state tops the list of people affected. “I made some bad choices in life,” said Keith Ivey. He served 8 1/2 years in prison for fraud. Ivey was released in January of 2012 but says he feels like his past continues to dictate his future. “I pay taxes, I run a business, but I have no voice,” said Ivey, who cannot vote.

Texas: As Texas votes early, voter ID sparks frustration and motivation | MSNBC

Pastor Frederick Douglass Haynes marches across the stage of Friendship Baptist Church, a mega-congregation of 12,000 people here. It’s Oct. 26, the penultimate Sunday before the 2014 midterm elections. “This is Freedom Sunday!” Haynes shouts into a microphone, drawing out each word. The sound system plays “Jesus Walks,” an upbeat anthem by rapper Kanye West that samples “Walk With Me,” a gospel classic. The choir, about 50 teenagers clad in black t-shirts, sways. Haynes has promised a briefing on the church’s new political program, but he doesn’t say much about the candidates. His largest applause lines are about the right to vote itself. “There’s a shameful, sinful attempt to suppress the vote,” he says, criticizing Texas for “one of the most suppressive Voter ID laws in the nation.”