Japan: Political parties target internet generation with innovative campaign videos | Japan Today

As Japan’s newly enfranchised teen voters make up their minds ahead of the July 10 House of Councillors election, the country’s political parties are taking their online campaign videos beyond the mundane to appeal to the youth vote. Since internet campaigning was legalized in 2013, parties’ online election campaign videos have tended to be limited to footage of leaders’ public speeches or press conferences. But with approximately 2.4 million new voters aged 18 and 19 joining the electorate in time for the upper house race after the voting age was lowered from 20, the parties are exploring new territory as they vie to become a familiar presence on young people’s smartphones.

Africa: More African countries are blocking Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp during elections | Quartz

Last week, Ghana, widely acknowledged as one of Africa’s role models for best democratic practice, caught democracy watchdogs off guard when the country’s police chief announced the government intends to shut down social media on voting day in November. The shutdown is to take place from 5 am to 7 pm “to ensure social media are not used to send misleading information that could destabilize the country.” While it is a surprise Ghana is making this move, it has become more common for several other African countries who haven’t been as courteous as to give voters notice before curtailing the use of social media and the right to free speech around elections. Deji Olukotun of Internet freedom advocacy group Access Now, notes Ghana “was clearly looking to what other countries have done.” Citizens in Ethiopia, Congo, Chad, Uganda, and elsewhere have found elections are a particularly popular time to crack down on social media.

National: In This Snapchat Campaign, Election News Is Big and Then It’s Gone | The New York Times

Every modern presidential election is at least in part defined by the cool new media breakthrough of its moment. In 2000, there was email, and by golly was that a big change from the fax. The campaigns could get their messages in front of print and cable news reporters — who could still dominate the campaign narrative — at will, reducing what had been a 24-hour news cycle to an hourly one. The 2004 campaign was the year of the “Web log,” or blog, when mainstream reporters and campaigns officially began losing any control they may have had over political news. Anyone with a computer could weigh in with commentary, news and, often, searing criticism of mainstream reporters and politicians — “Media Gatekeepers be damned!” Then 2008: Facebook made it that much easier for campaigns to reach millions of people directly, further reducing the influence of newspaper, magazine and television journalists. In 2012, Twitter shrank the political news cycle to minutes if not seconds, exponentially adding to the churn of campaign news.

National: How Facebook tracks and profits from voters in a $10bn US election | The Guardian

If you lived in north-east Iowa, the evangelical stronghold where the battle for the soul of conservative American politics will play out in person on Monday, and happened to have given Senator Ted Cruz’s campaign your email address sometime in the last few months, you might find something especially appealing this weekend in your Facebook feed. You might see, amid the family photos, a menacing video of Donald Trump talking about how “my views are a little bit different than if I lived in Iowa”. LIKE ON ABORTION, blares the sponsored ad from Cruz’s deep-pocketed, social media-savvy digital team. And you might wonder how this campaign managed, by paying Facebook, to differentiate between Trump’s “New York values” and “OURS”. Facebook, which told investors on Wednesday it was “excited about the targeting”, does not let candidates track individual users. But it does now allow presidential campaigns to upload their massive email lists and voter files – which contain political habits, real names, home addresses and phone numbers – to the company’s advertising network. The company will then match real-life voters with their Facebook accounts, which follow individuals as they move across congressional districts and are filled with insightful data.

National: Could Pop-up Social Spaces at Polls Increase Voter Turnout? | Smithsonian

If you make voting fun, will it encourage people to cast their ballots? And once people are at the polls, can you keep them there, and get them talking about what they want from their local and national politicians? Those were some of the questions that designers at the Long Beach, California-based studio City Fabrick were pondering when they came up with the idea for Placemaking the Vote—their very own “kit for creating temporary pop-up social spaces at voting polls in historically low voter turnout areas.” While the designers are still figuring out exactly what would go into the kit, they’d likely include lights, shelter, chalk and other supplies for building a gathering place and drawing attention to it. City Fabrick would set up the brightly-colored booths outside of the polling places and provide snacks and comfortable places to sit to encourage voters to stick around and talk.

National: Can Google steal elections? Researchers say yes (in theory) | The Charlotte Observer

When President Barack Obama gives his State of the Union address Tuesday night, he’ll mention an array of programs and people. And all across America, fingers will start flying on computer keyboards as millions of curious viewers go to Google or Bing or Yahoo in search of more detail on those programs and people. It’s the way we make sense of the world around us in the Internet age. Everything’s on the web; just look it up and you’ll be enlightened, right? Not necessarily, say the authors of a 2015 study into the ways search engines can influence voter behavior, and perhaps even the outcomes of elections. Depending on how the search engine results are displayed, or if they are manipulated, you could end up misguided rather than enlightened.

Taiwan: Social media a key battleground in Taiwan election | Channel NewsAsia

With just days to Taiwan’s elections, the presidential race is heating up online. All three parties are putting everything they have into the battle to win young voters, with Facebook, Line and Instagram as the three key theatres of engagement. Eric Chu from the Kuomintang (KMT) and James Soong from the People First Party (PFP) are both using social media to get their message out to the electorate. Chu’s Facebook page not only carries his campaign commercials, it also features short videos and cartoons to illustrate his policies. And his latest video has roused the curiosity of many netizens. “The video has no sound, but you can see a ray of light moving across the chairman’s forehead over and over,” said Hsu Chiao-Hsin, spokeswoman for KMT’s presidential campaign. “It quickly got many netizens talking, asking why is his forehead shining with light? What does it mean? Many people are curious.”

Editorials: What if Going Viral Matters More Than Iowa? | Emma Roller/The New York Times

The candidates have posed next to a life-size butter cow in Des Moines, ridden motorcycles down the streets of Boone, bought 3,500 ears of sweet corn in Windsor Heights and given helicopter rides to state fair attendees. This is just what it means to run for president: ritual fun, meat-on-a-stick and all, in the great state of Iowa. “Pretty much every day in Iowa, you can go listen to somebody who wants to be president,” Cody Hoefert, the vice chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, said. But is the presidential race listening to Iowa? Well before Feb. 1, when Iowa voters head to their caucuses, the 2016 contest is already a national campaign. National polls, not early voting states, have dictated who gets stage time in the Republican debates. The candidates who did invest early in Iowa have faltered and, in some cases, left the race entirely. And some presidential hopefuls have found more success from a viral social media post than from a day out on the stump. (One notable exception may be Senator Ted Cruz, who dethroned Mr. Viral himself, Donald J. Trump, from his front-runner status in one Iowa state poll on Monday).

Taiwan: Front-runner Tsai faces off China trolls | Nikkei Asian Review

Tsai Ing-wen, the front-running opposition candidate in Taiwan’s presidential election in January, said on Wednesday that trolls from China attacking the republic’s democratic politics on her Facebook page were welcome to a taste of democracy and freedom. As chair of the main opposition pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Tsai, 59, commands a comfortable lead in the polls, and if elected has promised to uphold Taiwanese democratic values while maintaining exchanges with China. “There were a lot of ‘netizens’ from the other side of the Taiwan Strait visiting my Facebook page last night and I welcome them to do so,” Tsai said on her Facebook profile on Wednesday morning.

California: Marin’s assemblyman wants to legalize ‘ballot selfies’ in California | Marin Independent Journal

Assemblyman Marc Levine is proposing turning the secret ballot into the social ballot in California. On election eve, Levine, D-San Rafael, announced he will shortly introduce legislation to legalize the taking of “ballot selfies” — digital images of completed ballots taken in the privacy of the voting booth. “I’ve been taking ballot selfies since I began taking my children to the polls with me,” Levine said. “I and many of my friends share our ballots on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as we vote at home or are at a voting booth.” Voters’ motivations for taking ballot selfies can vary, Levine said. “It can be because they’re supporting a specific candidate, or it can be just to share the experience that they voted and that this is an important thing for Californians to do. It can be the social media version of the voting sticker, showing that you voted.”

Voting Blogs: Censorship and conspiracy theories rule the day in post-election Turkey | openDemocracy

Turkey reached the end of an early election period that saw bombings, mob violence, the burning of party offices, political arrests, a nationwide media clampdown and military curfew in the Kurdish region of the country. After failing to establish a majority government in the 7 June elections, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a landslide victory with 49 percent of the popular vote. Ranging from announcements of a “Ballot Box Revolution” to “Fear’s Triumph,” media responses differed drastically. TV coverage of joyful celebrations by AKP supporters on the streets were matched with a sense of shock and incredulity circulating through social media among the supporters of opposition parties. They have been sharply awakened from the dream of ending the AKP’s monopoly over state power and preventing the implementation of a ‘Turkish-style’ super presidency. In the wake of these general elections, what is it about Turkey’s media culture that it undergirds the formation of a society so divided, that people seem to inhabit parallel realities?

Indiana: Judge bars Indiana from enforcing ‘ballot selfie law’ | Associated Press

A federal judge Monday barred Indiana from enforcing a new law that prohibits voters from taking photos of their election ballots and sharing the images on social media. U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker issued a preliminary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the “ballot selfies law” that made it a potential felony to post photos of a marked ballot on social media. In her 20-page ruling, Barker invoked U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ 1928 warning that “the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

Myanmar: Early Voting Problems in Myanmar Election | VoA News

Myanmar Embassy officials in Singapore have extended early voting there through at least Wednesday amid criticism of alleged voting manipulation at Myanmar embassies in various countries. Officials on Sunday had told potential voters in Singapore – some camping overnight on sidewalks – that only the first 3,000 in line would be able to cast ballots. Some 20,000 Myanmar nationals in Singapore had requested to vote in advance of their country’s November 8 general election. Myanmar embassies in various countries, including Singapore and Thailand, have faced a backlash of angry voters complaining about delays and being denied the right to cast ballots. Thailand is home to an estimated several million Myanmar citizens but less than 700 were deemed eligible to cast ballots – and a number of those faced difficulties when they actually went to the embassy in Bangkok to vote.

Vermont: GOP questions neutrality of election official | Burlington Free Press

The chairman of the Vermont Republican Party called for a Vermont elections worker to be sidelined Friday because of what he called “clear bias” in the official’s online comments. Secretary of State Jim Condos replied that the issue had already been resolved internally, and that he trusted the worker to perform his duties fairly. At issue are social media posts by J.P. Isabelle, an elections administrator in the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office. In one comment on the Vermont Political Observer, a liberal blog, a user called J.P. Isabelle wrote that he attended an event for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Matt Dunne and “left feeling energized.” Isabelle also commented on gubernatorial election dynamics on Twitter. Republican Party Chairman Dave Sunderland wrote to Condos about the online comments.

Maine: Did Maine open the door to selfies in the voting booth? | Bangor Daily News

When Republicans and Democrats in New Hampshire cast their presidential primary votes in February, expect some to post photos with their completed ballots to Facebook and Twitter. They’ll be celebrating a newly recognized liberty in the Granite State: the right to post a “ballot selfie.” That’s because New Hampshire lawmakers last year attempted to take that right away, passing a law barring a voter from “taking a digital image or photograph of his or her marked ballot and distributing or sharing the image via social media or by any other means.” They attached a $1,000 fine to the violation. But a federal judge last month struck down the law.

National: Social media ready to cash in on 2016 election | The Hill

Tech firms are courting campaigns ahead of the 2016 presidential election, where budgets for digital advertising are expected to reach new highs. The election will be tweeted, googled, snapped, liked on Facebook, and shared on numerous other social media platforms. And Silicon Valley is hoping to turn that engagement into big profits. While billions will be spent on political advertising over the next year, television remains the prime mover and budgets for digital ads trail traditional media. But even by one recent estimate from Borrell Associates, 9.5 percent of political media budgets could go towards digital media — a total of $1 billion.

National: That buzzing in your pocket? A politician wanting your vote | The Kansas City Star

If you thought you couldn’t escape the onslaught of political ads in 2012, just wait until 2016. This election cycle, campaigns are expected to fully embrace mobile advertising as a way to target voters anytime, anywhere. For the first time, spending on political ads for digital media is expected to top $1 billion, rivaling the estimated amounts campaigns spend on telemarketing and radio, according to a report released this month by the research firm Borrell Associates. That’s still just a fraction of the total $11.4 billion Borrell estimates will be poured into political advertising in 2016. But it’s a big increase since 2012, when spending on digital political ads was just $159 million.

Mississippi: Gray’s Democratic Primary victory provides conspiracy theories | DeSoto Times-Tribune

There’s more than a little novelty to a political candidate who doesn’t spend a dime, doesn’t campaign, and doesn’t even vote for himself to win the gubernatorial nomination of a major party — as Terry truck driver and newly-minted Mississippi Democratic Party gubernatorial nominee Robert Gray has discovered. Gray unexpectedly and rather easily dispatched the state Democratic Party establishment-backed candidate Vicki Slater and Dr. Valerie Short on the way to winning his party’s nomination without a runoff. After the brief “who is Robert Gray?” reaction came a torrent of political conspiracy theories as to why Gray emerged from political anonymity to win the Democratic nomination.

Sri Lanka: Election Tests Pace of Postwar Reconciliation | Wall Street Journal

Voters lined up to vote in a national election Monday that will decide whether former president Mahinda Rajapaksa can stage a comeback and how fast the country moves forward with postwar reconciliation as well as economic and political revamping. Polling stations in the Indian Ocean island nation opened at 7 a.m. for Sri Lankans to choose 225 members of Parliament. Police said voting was going smoothly and there had been no major incidents as of the middle of the day. Around 75,000 police have been dispatched to ensure nothing interfered with the poll. Mr. Rajapaksa is seeking a return to power after he was ousted in presidential elections in January. The new president, Maithripala Sirisena, and his supporters accused Mr. Rajapaksa of abusing his power and building an authoritarian regime controlled by his family, which the former president denies.

New Hampshire: Selfies — yes, selfies — just won a big political and legal victory | The Washington Post

Like most good stories, this one starts with a dog. During the 2014 New Hampshire Republican primary, a voter decided he didn’t like his options. So he wrote in the name of his recently deceased dog, snapped a pic of his ballot, and then posted it to social media. Andrew Langlois got a notice a few days later from the New Hampshire secretary of state saying he was being investigated for breaking a law — the ballot selfie law. Up until Tuesday, it was illegal in New Hampshire to take a photo of a ballot in the voting booth. But on Tuesday, a federal judge struck down the state’s 2014 ballot selfie law on the grounds it limited free political speech. “What this law ignored, and what the court recognized, is that displaying a photograph of a marked ballot on the Internet is a powerful form of political speech that conveys various constitutionally protected messages,” said Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of New Hampshire’s ACLU branch, which sued on behalf of the dog’s owner and a few other ballot selfie takers in the state.

New Hampshire: A federal judge just struck down New Hampshire’s ban on ballot selfies | Boston Globe

New Hampshire primary voters rejoice! You may once again take “ballot selfies.” A federal judge Monday repealed the Granite State’s law banning photos of filled-out election ballots, ruling that it violated the First Amendment. U.S. District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro said the law was unconstitutional, because it did not meet the standards necessary for the state to restrict political free speech. “Here, the law at issue is a content-based restriction on speech that deprives voters of one of their most powerful means of letting the world know how they voted,” Barbadoro wrote in his decision.

National: 2016 Presidential Race Unfolds On Twitter, Facebook As New Social Media Trends Shape White House Campaigns | International Business Times

Social media may prove to be more crucial to the 2016 presidential race than past election cycles as voters increasingly rely on various networking platforms to keep informed. A new study released Tuesday reveals that the majority of Facebook and Twitter users consume their news on those sites. The report, which was conducted by the Pew Research Center in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, found that 63 percent of users on each of the social media platforms visit the site for news updates. These numbers are on the rise from 2013, when 52 percent of Twitter users and 47 percent of Facebook users reported finding their news on the sites. The increase was seen across all age groups. “There are many elements that can be at play with users of Facebook and Twitter when they are on these platforms,” said Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at the Pew Research Center. “It may be that they are on the platform and news ends up being something they do or the degree to which both Facebook and Twitter have put increased emphasis on news engagement and accessibility.”

Turkey: Volunteers flock to monitor knife-edge election | Reuters

In a meeting room above an upmarket restaurant in Istanbul’s Beyoglu district, some 200 people listen as a young lawyer explains what to watch for when votes are counted in Sunday’s pivotal parliamentary election. Tens of thousands of volunteers have signed up to monitor the vote, set to be the closest in more than a decade, in what organisers say is a response an erosion in the rule of law. Oy Ve Otesi (“Vote and Beyond”), was set up the aftermath of anti-government demonstrations two years ago. In last year’s presidential election, it was able to monitor six cities. This time it is targeting 70,000 volunteers in 162 towns.

National: The next political battleground: Your phone | CNN

There’s a new political battleground in 2016: your phone. Next year’s election presents a new opportunity for politicians to harness a slew of technologies — from video to demographic data — that will help them reach voters. The drive toward connecting with potential voters on their smartphones is playing out, in part, because so many people have one this election cycle. About two-thirds of Americans own a smartphone today, compared with just 35% in the spring of 2011, according to the Pew Research Center. For about 10% of Americans, their smartphone is the only form of high-speed Internet they have access to at home.

National: How Google Could Give 2016 Hopefuls an Edge | Wall Street Journal

Iowans can expect to see a lot more of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker popping up in their Google browsers, if he decides to run for president later this year. That’s because the Walker team advertised aggressively on the popular search engine during his 2014 re-election and will likely do so again, should he pursue a White House bid. They spent heavily on Google ads to raise money and target voters. The Walker campaign was so aggressive in 2014 that Google highlighted its efforts in a just-released case study about the midterm campaigns. Among the findings: Mr. Walker’s re-election team raised more money from ads pegged to Google searches than it spent to buy space above those search results, an unusually high return-on-investment for political campaigns; his team also worked with the company to reach more than 5 million targeted voters in key ZIP codes through YouTube ads in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

United Kingdom: With campaign spending limited, UK politicians vie to be ‘liked’ and ‘retweeted’ | New York Times

There is no political advertising on television or radio in Britain. Fund-raising and spending are strictly limited. Tight elections can turn on a relative handful of votes in a small number of competitive parliamentary constituencies. So as Britain’s political parties head into a tight, unpredictable election on Thursday, they are even more reliant than their American counterparts on social media as a way to mobilize supporters for a last push and disseminate their messages directly to voters. Social media makes up for “that small difference of being that tiny bit marginally better than the other party,” said Anthony Wells, director of political and social opinion polling at YouGov, a prominent polling company here. Digital technology also helps parties winnow undecided voters from the rest of the electorate, he said.

National: Casting Early Presidential Vote Through Facebook by Clicking ‘Unfollow’ | New York Times

The arguments on Facebook regarding Hillary Rodham Clinton’s announcement that she was running for president began politely at first but slowly grew more vitriolic with each back and forth. Eventually, Madison Payne, a 27-year-old from Tyler, Tex., had had enough. So she took revenge against the Clinton opponents, simply clicking “unfollow.” “If I see somebody that is just so hateful, then of course I’m going to unfollow them,” said Ms. Payne, whose “friend” count on Facebook has dwindled since Mrs. Clinton’s announcement. “I’ve lost touch with many great childhood friends of mine due to social media providing a platform for political discussion.”

National: Digital Democracy Or 21st-Century Electioneering | TechCrunch

It’s fair to say that Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential bid marked a watershed moment for political campaigners. This was a campaign covered in Silicon Valley’s fingerprints, characterized as it was by its widespread use of technology to capture and record data to deliver targeted messages to voters. As one former Obama campaign manager said: “We stopped thinking in terms of ‘soccer moms’ and started thinking instead about ‘Mary Smith at 37 Pivot Street.’” What was once done with pen and paper is now being done in real time and at a staggering pace, providing politicians and their election teams with a far richer picture of voters than previously possible. Next month will see the UK head to the polls for its first general election since 2010, which has been described as one of the most unpredictable in living memory. Throughout Westminster, political parties are putting their faith in technology to gain an edge over their rivals, defend vulnerable seats and better connect with the electorate. Both Labour candidate Ed Miliband and Prime Minister David Cameron have hired former Obama advisers to head up their campaign teams, which look to replicate the success of Democrats in securing key votes.

Nigeria: Social media helps curb Nigerian election deathtoll, paving future path | PCWorld

The dozens of deaths that marred the recent Nigerian elections would be considered shocking by the standards of most developed nations. Compared to past elections, however, the violence this time around was limited, and many observers say social media and technology such as biometric card readers played a big role in minimizing conflict. Online services are credited with keeping people informed during the runup to the elections, promoting the feeling they could communicate and express their views without resorting to violence, and other technology helped to ensure cheating would be kept to a minimum. Nigeria’s experience suggests that tech can play a role in reducing election-related violence in other countries.

Russia: Opposition coalition to contest regional polls | BBC

Russia’s main opposition groups say they will combine forces to fight for election in three regions this autumn. They are hoping for a springboard for the 2016 national parliamentary vote. The “democratic coalition” was formed last weekend to unite six parties and groups under the banner of RPR-Parnas, the party of murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. The coalition includes the party of anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, but he cannot run for office. He is serving a suspended prison sentence in an embezzlement case that he argues was fabricated.