Russia: Russian election chief criticises US democracy | guardian.co.uk

When Russian protesters took to the streets last year following allegations of mass fraud in the parliamentary elections, Vladimir Churov became a popular hate figure. Many held the head of the central elections commission responsible for massaged results that had given the ruling United Russia party up to 99% of the vote in some regions of the country. In a comment widely lampooned by protesters, the then-president Dmitry Medvedev referred to Churov as a “wizard” for his success in predicting the election’s outcome. As the presidential vote looms in the US, however, Churov has gone on the offensive with his own scathing criticism of American democracy.

Ukraine: Ukraine president’s party set for election win, OSCE unhappy | Reuters

Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich’s party was on course on Monday to secure a parliamentary majority but international monitors said flaws in the way the election was conducted meant the country had taken a “step backwards”. Exit polls and first results from Sunday’s vote showed Yanukovich’s Party of the Regions would, with help from long-time allies, win more than half the seats in the 450-member assembly after boosting public sector wages and welfare handouts to win over disillusioned voters in its traditional power bases. They will face, though, a revitalized opposition boosted by resurgent nationalists and a liberal party led by boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko.

Ukraine: Parliamentary elections face crucial accountability, transparency tests | allvoices

The pressure is on for Ukraine as it heads into their parliamentary elections today. So far, the country seems to be doing beautifully with the process. Six hundred observers – three times the normal amount – will help monitor the process along with cameras at polling stations. Ukraine should be commended for being open to international inspection of their process, while other post-Soviet states remain unwilling or unable to endure international scrutiny. One major and excellent change to Ukraine’s reformed process is the advent of the Single Mandate District. Essentially, the reform changes the old closed party list proportional system so that half the elected parliament (Verkhovna Rada) now comes from geographically defined districts, much like US congressional districts. So on Oct. 28, Ukrainians will cast two votes, electing 225 deputies proportionally from party lists and 225 representatives of their respective districts.

Iraq: New Iraqi Electoral Commission Head Promises Transparency | rudaw.net

The new head of the Iraqi High Electoral Commission IHEC, Sarbast Mustafa Rasheed Amedi says that the post he occupies is usually decided by political parties, and that he was the only contender for the position this year. “The post was in the Kurds’ share [of appointed positions],” he told Rudaw. “When I ran for the post, I met no objections and no opposition. No one else ran for the post. All seven members of the IHEC voted for me. Amedi says that as head of IHEC he has the powers of a minister and he represents the government and parliament within the commission. He also rejects claims that IHEC interferes in the election process in favor of political parties. “The results of the elections have not been manipulated and will not be manipulated,” he says. “Elections take place at the lower level, not at the top level. The IHEC only makes decisions. However, if at the lower level results [at one particular polling site] are altered, then all the ballots will be disregarded. We try to maintain the maximum transparency and integrity in our work.

United Kingdom: How British companies pour cash into the American elections | The Observer

More than one in five of Britain’s largest corporations are channelling political donations to favoured candidates ahead of next month’s elections in the US – though these sums may be only the tip of a new campaign-financing iceberg, according to leading politicians, judges and pro-transparency watchdogs. As election year reaches its climax, America is forecast to experience the most extensively corporate-influenced race for the White House, and for control of Capitol Hill, in living memory. Among the industries already well versed in bankrolling US politics are finance, pharmaceuticals, energy and defence. British multinationals such as HSBC, Barclays, Experian, Prudential, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, BP, Shell and BAE all have political action committees (PACs) that channel donations from employees to US politicians.

Ukraine: Expensive elections in a poor nation | Kyiv Post

As the famous Beatles song goes, money can’t buy love. But it may buy votes. At least that’s what candidates in the upcoming Oct. 28 parliamentary election seem to be banking on. With the election just a little more than five weeks away, the parties and candidates have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars officially. But many think the actual spending is much higher, just off the books, like much of Ukraine’s economy. Where the money is coming from is a tightly kept secret by political parties and leaders.  “We are a poor country with very expensive elections,” joked political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko. Four out of the top parties leading in opinion polls, including the pro-presidential Party of Regions, United Opposition, Communists and Natalia Korolevska’s Ukraine-Forward refused to provide any official information about their campaign budget and financing sources. “Go to a bank and try asking about their money. Would they tell you any numbers?” asked Communist Party Spokesman Petro Shelest, oblivious to the notion that the people who will elect or not elect communists have a legitimate interest in knowing who is backing them. His boss, Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko, promised to reveal the financial information in a formal report filed with the Central Election Commission (CEC) after the vote, an election law requirement that experts say offers little real oversight and controls. Other top parties are making the same promise, saying that the info will be released within 15 days after election.

Hawaii: League of Women Voters Weighs in on Hawaii Election Snafus | Honolulu Civil Beat

The Hawaii State League of Women Voters (LWVHI) is asking state and county elections officials to take definitive action on the primary election day mishaps that transpired on the Big Island. The blunders — including the delayed opening of 13 Hawaii County polling places — have been attributed to the poor management by Big Island elections clerk Jamae Kawauchi. “This year, we have been troubled by a number of serious issues on the island of Hawai‘i which cumulatively may have diminished voters’ confidence in the Hawai‘i County Elections Office,” reads the LWVHI press release. “We are concerned about an apparent lack of communication and transparency from the County Clerk with the press and public. Press conferences may have explained prior actions, but the time lag between actions and explanations fostered an air of mistrust.

National: Why Does Kofi Annan Criticize the US Election System? | Voice of Russia

International experts have strongly criticized the current rules regulating the presidential election in the USA. According to the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security, headed by the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the non-transparency and maximum dependence of the US election system on financial investments undermine the society’s belief in the principles of equality and democracy. In its report the commission consisting of a number of former world leaders and Nobel Prize winners says that there is an alarming tendency evident all over the world – a sharp growth of influence of the financial elite on election results.

Colorado: Scott Gessler adopts emergency rule to prevent ballots from being traced to voters | Westword

After a voter advocacy group offered proof that county clerks and other election officials could identify how specific people voted — which would violate a citizen’s basic right to a secret ballot — Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler announced an “emergency rule” effective immediately that will prevent officials from linking ballots to voters. It’s a big win for activist Marilyn Marks, who has been criticizing the system for more than a year. But at least one county clerk thinks the rule change will only create a whole host of headaches come Election Day. The rule announced late yesterday afternoon is a noteworthy move for Gessler, who has faced numerous lawsuits and considerable criticism from government watchdog groups and other political organizations as the November election nears.

Venezuela: US Carter Center: Venezuelan Electoral System one of the Most Reliable in the World | venezuelanalysis.com

The Venezuelan electoral system is the most reliable in the world, because it can be audited and verified at every stage, said Jennifer McCoy, director of the Carter Center’s Americas Program. She made the comments while visiting the Panorama publishing house, where she was welcomed by its president, Patricia Pineda. McCoy came to Venezuela a few days ago and observed the mock electoral test of last Sunday (5 Aug 2012) in Vargas state. She noted that the Carter Center is currently discussing whether it will participate as an international observer in the October 7 [presidential] election.

Colorado: Ballots are traceable, unconstitutional, voters group claims | Westward

A Colorado voter advocacy group has filed a lawsuit against the Colorado Secretary of State and six county clerks, arguing that ballots in the current system are traceable — violating voters’ right to secret, anonymous ballots. This flaw, the group says, exposes Coloradans to voter intimidation and could discourage people from casting their ballots. But the county clerks deny there are threats to voter privacy and say the allegations put forward by activist Marilyn Marks are not true. “It’s an absolutely fundamental right that we have to a secret ballot,” says Marks, the founder and president of Citizen Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that focuses on accountability and transparency in elections. “If we start thinking about what happens if we lose that right…voters can be intimidated. Voters may stay away from polls. Voters can’t vote their conscience. That’s such an undemocratic proposition. We just cannot let that happen.” Here’s the problem, according to Marks: Election staff can trace specific ballots right back to voters through unique barcodes assigned to each ballot.

Canada: British Columbia looks to e-voting to increase turnout | The Globe and Mail

In a bid to boost plummeting voter turnout rates, the B.C. government wants to introduce Internet balloting for future provincial and municipal elections. But research from Canadian municipalities and European nations has cast doubt on the power of e-voting to encourage more citizen engagement. “All of us are interested in increasing the voter turnout in elections,” Shirley Bond, Minister of Justice and Attorney General, said in a written statement asking B.C.’s Chief Electoral Officer to appoint an independent panel to examine the logistics of Internet voting. Current legislation prevents municipalities from adopting electronic voting procedures. … Governments generally consider e-voting for two reasons, said Jon Pammett, a political science professor at Carleton University. Governments want to increase accessibility and voter turnout, he said, but there is no clear evidence that it positively affects the latter.

National: Rep. Hank Johnson Introduces Legislation for Election Accuracy | Tucker, GA Patch

Congressman Hank Johnson (GA-04, which includes parts of Tucker) has introduced the bipartisan Verifying Official Totals for Elections or VOTE Act, H.R. 6246, which would require jurisdictions using electronic voting machines for federal elections to deposit the software or source code in the National Software Reference Library at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In the case of a contested election and or recount, the VOTE Act would allow qualified persons to review the source code to ensure its accuracy and reliability.

Editorials: For Political Closure, We Need Disclosure | Warren Rudman & Chuck Hegel/ NYTimes.com

Since the beginning of the current election cycle, extremely wealthy individuals, corporations and trade unions — all of them determined to influence who is in the White House next year — have spent more than $160 million (excluding party expenditures). That’s an incredible amount of money. To put it in perspective, at this point in 2008, about $36 million had been spent on independent expenditures (independent meaning independent of a candidate’s campaign). In all of 2008, in fact, only $156 million was spent this way. In other words, we’ve already surpassed 2008, and it’s July. In the near term, there’s nothing we can do to reverse this dramatic increase in independent expenditures. Yet what really alarms us about this situation is that we can’t find out who is behind these blatant attempts to control the outcome of our elections. We are inundated with extraordinarily negative advertising on television every evening and have no way to know who is paying for it and what their agenda might be. In fact, it’s conceivable that we have created such a glaring loophole in our election process that foreign interests could directly influence the outcome of our elections. And we might not even know it had happened until after the election, if at all.

Editorials: The Power of Anonymity | NYTimes.com

Two years ago, Congress came within a single Republican vote in the Senate of following the Supreme Court’s advice to require broad disclosure of campaign finance donors. The justices wanted voters to be able to decide for themselves “whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.” The court advised such disclosure in its otherwise disastrous Citizens United decision in 2010, which loosed a new wave of unlimited spending on political campaigns. The decision’s anticorruption prescription has grown even more compelling as hundreds of millions of dollars in disguise have flooded the 2012 campaigns — a great deal of it washed through organizations that are set up for the particular purpose of hiding the names of the writers of enormous checks. The ability to follow the money has never been this important since the bagman days of the Watergate scandal. But when the Democratic Senate majority made a fresh attempt to enact a disclosure bill on Monday, the measure was immediately filibustered to death by Republicans, like other versions.

National: Democrats push for campaign finance disclosure, again | Politico.com

Democrats launched another push for campaign finance transparency on Thursday, aiming to combat the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling as Republicans outraise them on the campaign trail. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) dedicated the bulk of her weekly press conference to the DISCLOSE Act — which would increase disclosure requirements for campaign contributions — and Senate Democrats held a press conference Thursday afternoon to plug the bill, which will go before the Senate next week. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who joined Pelosi at the conference, said Democrats have filed a discharge petition for the bill in the House. “This is a House of Representatives that is pretending that it is one of the most open House of Representatives in recent times, and yet they have refused to even hold a hearing on the DISCLOSE Act,” Van Hollen said. Indeed, Democrats have been banging this drum for months to no avail, and there’s nothing to indicate their latest attempt will yield a different result.

Colorado: Marks prevails in lawsuit over Aspen election ballots | AspenTimes.com

Election activist Marilyn Marks has prevailed in her quest to inspect ballots cast in the 2009 city of Aspen election. The Colorado Supreme Court has reversed its decision to hear the case, the city learned Thursday morning. That means a Court of Appeals ruling that supports Marks’ position will stand. The state’s high court had agreed in April to hear the city of Aspen’s motion to appeal the Court of Appeals decision. There was no explanation from the Supreme Court regarding its change of direction, but it means the Court of Appeals ruling in Marks’ lawsuit against City Clerk Kathryn Koch, custodian of the ballots, has been upheld. “Marks v. Koch is now clearly the law of the land,” Marks said. “I love closure,” was all Koch had to say about the latest development.

Editorials: After winning right to spend, political groups fight for secrecy | KansasCity.com

During their long campaign to loosen rules on campaign money, conservatives argued that there was a simpler way to prevent corruption: transparency. Get rid of limits on contributions and spending, they said, but make sure voters know where the money is coming from. Today, with those fundraising restrictions largely removed, many conservatives have changed their tune. They now say disclosure could be an enemy of free speech. High-profile donors could face bullying and harassment from liberals out to “muzzle” their opponents, Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a recent speech. Corporations could be subject to boycotts and pickets, warned the Wall Street Journal editorial page this spring. Democrats “want to intimidate people into not giving to these conservative efforts,” said Republican strategist Karl Rove on Fox News. “I think it’s shameful.” Rove helped found American Crossroads, a “super PAC,” and Crossroads GPS, a nonprofit group that does not reveal its donors. “Disclosure is the one area where (conservatives) haven’t won,” said Richard Briffault, an election law professor at Columbia Law School. “This is the next frontier for them.”

Mongolia: What is at Stake in Mongolia’s Election? | Brookings Institution

Amid important elections and transitions taking place this year in different parts of the world, it is easy to overlook the parliamentary election to be held in Mongolia on June 28. On that day, the country will choose its next government in one of the most consequential elections in its recent history. Consequential because―in a country with a 30 percent poverty level―the new government will be asked to manage the unprecedented revenues expected from its mining wealth in such a way as to benefit the many, not the few. As experiences elsewhere have shown, bad governance and mining wealth have rarely been a good mix for the fortunes of a developing resource-rich country. In the coming years, the challenge for Mongolia’s newly elected leaders and the country as a whole will be to rise to the occasion and not squander the opportunity presented to bring prosperity to its citizens, strengthen the economic underpinning for a sustainable democracy, and consolidate its international status.

National: House Republicans Back Down On Effort to Defund Transparency Rule | ProPublica

Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee today dropped an effort to defund a new Federal Communications Commission rule that will make political ad data available on the Internet. The FCC rule, which was OKed by the commission earlier this year and is expected to go into effect sometime this summer or fall, would require TV stations to put detailed records on political ad buys on a new Web site. The files are currently public but are kept on paper at stations. The broadcast industry has vigorously fought the rule. Earlier this month Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., chair of an appropriations subcommittee, added an amendment to a bill that would have blocked the FCC from using any funds to implement the transparency measure.

National: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, GOP block election ad transparency bill | iWatch News

Alexi Giannoulias “can’t be trusted,” the 2010 election ad said. His family’s bank loaned money to mobsters, he accepted an illegal tax break and he even squandered money that families were saving for college. If the charges were true, the U.S. Senate candidate from Illinois must have been a real creep. But they were bogus. Giannoulias, the Democratic candidate, lost anyway. His accuser was not his opponent. It was an anonymously funded, pro-Republican nonprofit called Crossroads GPS, a “social welfare” organization that, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens Uniteddecision, can accept unlimited donations from corporations, wealthy individuals and unions, and run attack ads. In short, it functions just like the better-known super PACs but with a major distinction — it is not required to disclose its donors, despite the high court’s consistent support for disclosure rules.

National: Will the Supreme Court Consider a Campaign Finance Mulligan? | TIME.com

The Affordable Care Act isn’t the only consequential law whose fate the U.S. Supreme Court holds in its hands. Before the end of the month, the Court is also expected to decide whether to hear a Montana campaign-finance case that may alter the landmark Citizens United ruling.  The Montana case, American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock, arose from a challenge to the state’s campaign-finance law. In 1912, when Montana’s “copper kings” routinely drew on their immense wealth to buy off local politicians, the state’s citizens approved a ballot initiative called the Corrupt Practices Act, which banned corporate money in state campaigns and imposed strict limits on individual donations. Today, state legislators can take no more than $160 from individual donors; candidates for governor can take about $1,000. The winner of a Montana Senate race spends an average of $17,000—compare that to the more than $125 million that’s been spent in Wisconsin on a series of recall elections since last winter. Montana’s insistence on transparency and the barriers it built to contain corporate spending have “nurtured a rare, pure form of democracy,” wrote Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer.

Ukraine: Yanukovych invites OSCE observers to monitor parliamentary elections | Ukrinform

President Viktor Yanukovych has invited observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor Ukraine’s parliamentary elections on October 28, 2012, the president’s press office said in a statement. “Reaffirming my particular interest in holding fair and transparent elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in full compliance with the high international standards, I am addressing you with a request to send the official observation missions to Ukraine,” reads a letter of President Viktor Yanukovych’s to the Heads of State and Government of OSCE participating states.

Editorials: A step back on Colorado election rules | The Denver Post

It was perhaps inevitable that Gov. John Hickenlooper would sign a controversial bill governing public access to voted ballots that we and many concerned observers had urged him to veto. After all, the bill was vocally supported by elected county clerks. Not only do they understand the business of conducting elections better than anyone, they claimed the sky might fall if he didn’t sign the bill. The governor obviously had reservations about House Bill 1036, which he outlined in his signing message, but they unfortunately weren’t strong enough for him to defy the opinion of the expert Chicken Littles. Too bad. Colorado now has an election system with a privileged class of people — not only candidates but also political parties and representatives of issue committees that gave money to ballot measures — who may inspect voted ballots when everyone else, including the media, is excluded. Those of us in the non-privileged majority will not have access to voted ballots until after elections are certified — too late, citizen activists persuasively argue, for effective public oversight. Many of those activists, it should be noted, have followed election issues closely for years and know a thing or two about them, too.

National: There’s More Secret Money In Politics; Justice Kennedy Might Be Surprised | NPR

Federal election law has required the public disclosure of campaign donors for nearly 40 years. But this year, outside groups are playing a powerful role in the presidential election. And some of them disclose nothing about their donors. That’s despite what the Supreme Court said in its controversial Citizens United ruling two years ago. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the Citizens Unitedopinion, which said that corporations can pay for ads expressly promoting or attacking political candidates. “Political speech is indispensable to decision making in a democracy and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual,” Kennedy said in a 9 1/2-minute summary he read from the bench. But that wasn’t the whole decision.

Colorado: Hickenlooper signs bill creating rules for public access to ballots | The Denver Post

Gov. John Hickenlooper signed legislation today that sets rules for public review of voted ballots — a bill supporters say is necessary to prevent chaos in the November election, but critics call a blow to open government. Election integrity activists, members of the Colorado Lawyers Committee Election Task Force and groups such as Common Cause and Colorado Ethics Watch had flooded the governor’s office with letters asking him to veto House Bill 1036. Several of those opponents plan to file a lawsuit to stop the law from taking effect, activist Marilyn Marks said today. “Based on our familiarity with this bill and its flawed process, we believe that those legal challenges will be successful in striking down this law,” Marks said. “We hope that the litigation will have immediate impact prior to the upcoming elections where full transparency is unquestionably required.” Hickenlooper’s office is expected to issue a statement later today explaining why he signed the bill.

National: Institutional Investors Demand Disclosure on Companies’ Political Spending | Institutional Investor

On January 21, 2010, the day the Supreme Court delivered its landmark decision on Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission that it would overturn most of a century’s worth of regulations on corporate political spending, the $140 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund corporate governance department happened to be meeting to discuss the problem of untraceable political spending by companies in its portfolio. Patrick Doherty, the fund’s director of corporate governance, was making the pitch to New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli that the political spending issue should be a central focus of New York Common’s corporate governance campaign for the coming year. The overlap was coincidental; before the court’s final decision on Citizens United, the case hadn’t attracted too much attention in the comptroller’s office or among most of the general public. That changed after January 21. Despite New York Common’s pre-Citizens United efforts to improve disclosure around corporate political spending ­— which primarily consisted of a concerted support of any shareholder resolution pushing the issue — the fund’s leaders hadn’t heard constituents express their opinions on the topic. But they spoke up after the decision on Citizens United, says DiNapoli.

Editorials: When Did Conservatives Change Their Mind About Campaign Finance Disclosure? | Mark Schmitt/The New Republic

A decade ago, when Congress was debating the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, better known as McCain-Feingold, the conservative alternative to its modest tightening of regulations on political spending bore the wonderful name DeLay-Doolittle. The name represented not just the two primary sponsors—then-Reps. Tom DeLay and John Doolittle—but also what the bill would do, or not. As an alternative to restrictions on soft money and corporate spending, DeLay and Doolittle proposed to lift all existing regulations on political contributions, and replace them with a regime of immediate and complete disclosure on the Internet. DeLay and Doolittle faced two problems, however. First, its supporters soon disappeared from Congress under murky circumstances. DeLay was indicted on campaign-finance related charges in 2006 and resigned. Doolittle, deeply implicated in the Jack Abramoff scandal, left Congress in 2007. The third major supporter of the bill, Rep. Bob Ney, served 17 months in prison connected to the Jack Abramoff scandal. The second problem with DeLay and Doolittle was that its supporters didn’t mean a word of it. They didn’t want to disclose their donors and outside backers any more than they wanted to limit them—after all, they went to great lengths to hide information such as their dealings with Abramoff. It was only a slick way of changing the subject.

Mexico: Watchdog group calls for transparency in presidential elections | Fox News

The Institute for Access to Federal Information, or IFAI, urged Mexico’s four presidential candidates to “boost transparency and accountability and make them a part of Mexicans’ political culture.” Over the past decade, since a transparency law and its implementing mechanisms were enacted during the administration of former President Vicente Fox, steps have had to be taken to “overcome resistance and attempts at regression by authorities who don’t understand that there’s no turning back,” IFAI’s president-commissioner, Jacqueline Peschard, said in a statement.

Voting Blogs: The Campaign Finance Law of Unintended Consequences | Brennan Center for Justice

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans to spend $100 million to influence this year’s elections, and it will do anything to make sure no one knows where it gets its money from. In March, a federal judge issued a decision concerning a type of political ad that the Chamber has used heavily in its attempts to influence elections, called “electioneering communications.” The decision requires that any group (or individual) that runs electioneering communications must disclose its donors. Advocates of transparency in elections praised the ruling, hoping it would increase the disclosures that allow voters to evaluate the messages they are being bombarded with this election. But the Chamber is defiant. It has announced that it will switch from using electioneering communications to another type of ad, called “independent expenditures,” which still allow spenders to avoid disclosing donors.