National: Why Voting Machines Are About To Wreak Havoc On Another Election | ThinkProgress

In 2012, hundreds of thousands of people across the U.S. waited, at first patiently and then with growing frustration, in lines that ventured out the doors and wrapped around street corners. They weren’t waiting more than seven hours in line to buy the new iPhone — they were waiting to vote on an electronic touch-screen machine. Technology has made life easier, simplifying common tasks such as banking, publishing a book, talking to friends and paying for things online. But when it comes to voting, technology is stuck in 2002. And with the decade-old electronic voting machines that states use falling apart — creating long lines that cause some not vote at all — voters are slowly losing access to their voting rights. There’s been renewed emphasis on voting rights in the last year, since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act. … But even without ID laws, voters face obstacles at polling centers having to wait hours to vote in some regions partly because of outdated and too few electronic voting machines.

Kansas: Kobach intervenes in Kansas Senate election dispute | Kansas City Star

Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach jumped Wednesday into a lawsuit filed by a disgruntled voter seeking to force Kansas Democrats to name a new U.S. Senate nominee in hopes of speeding the resolution of a legal dispute shadowing a race with possible national implications. Kobach filed a motion to intervene in Shawnee County District Court and a request for a decision by Oct. 1, saying quick action is necessary so ballots can be printed in time for people to begin voting in advance on Oct. 15. Kobach, like the voter, argues that a state election law requires Democrats to replace ex-nominee Chad Taylor, who earlier this month dropped out of the race against three-term Republican Sen. Pat Roberts.

Maryland: State to appeal ruling on voting by disabled | Baltimore Sun

The state attorney general’s office is appealing a federal judge’s ruling ordering Maryland to use an absentee ballot-marking technology for the disabled that the Board of Elections had refused to certify as secure. The state will ask the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., to throw out District Judge Richard D. Bennett’s decision this month. Bennett found that the election board’s refusal to implement the program violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. The attorney general’s office filed a notice of intent to appeal Monday but did not spell out its objections to the ruling. Alan Brody, a spokesman for the office, said the state is not requesting a stay of Bennett’s ruling. The decision not to seek a stay means this year’s election will go forward with the system in place, according to Brody. Nikki Baines Charlson, deputy administrator of the elections board, said the system has been installed and is being used now by disabled absentee voters. “We will continue to use it until the court tells us otherwise,” Charlson said. She referred further questions to the attorney general’s office.

North Carolina: Appeals court hears voter suppression case | Associated Press

A federal appeals court is hearing arguments in a case challenging a new North Carolina voting law that critics say will suppress minority voter turnout in November. The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set Thursday for an expedited hearing in Charlotte. The court will consider whether the November elections can be held under the voting law approved by Republican lawmakers. In early August, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Schroeder denied a motion seeking to hold the November vote under old rules, saying the groups failed to show they would suffer “irreparable harm.” But lawyers for the North Carolina branch of the NACCP asked the appeals court to review Schroeder’s ruling.

Ohio: State goes to U.S. Supreme Court to stop expanded early voting | The Columbus Dispatch

State officials went to the Supreme Court tonight in an attempt to halt expanded early voting now scheduled to begin Tuesday. “This is another step in protecting state’s rights,” said Matt McCllelan, spokesman for Secretary of State Jon Husted. The filing by the office of Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine comes on the heels of a request to the full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier today to overturn yesterday’s unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the 6th circuit upholding increased early voting. State officials contend that the panel’s ruling is “irreconcilable” with U.S. Supreme Court rulings and thus should be reversed. The request for an emergency delay of the ruling went to Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan, who has jurisdiction over cases from the 6th circuit. The state is making two appeals at once to give the high court more time to consider the case, today’s filing said. The Supreme Court should step in “because similar suits are percolating throughout the country with conflicting outcomes.”

Texas: Federal judge takes on Texas voter ID law at heart of discrimination debate | The Guardian

The fate of Texas’ tough voter ID law moved into the hands of a federal judge this week, following a trial that the US Justice Department said exposed another chapter in the state’s troubling history of discrimination in elections. State attorneys defending the law signed by Republican Governor Rick Perry in 2011 urged the judge to follow other courts by upholding photo identification requirements. The most recent such case came this month when a federal appeals panel reinstated Wisconsin’s law in time for Election Day. Whether Texas will also get a ruling before then is unclear. US district judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ended the two-week trial in Corpus Christi on Monday without signaling when she’ll make a decision, meaning that as of now, an estimated 13.6 million registered Texas voters will need a photo ID to cast a ballot in November.

Virginia: 450,000 may lack proper ID needed to vote | The Washington Post

About 450,000 voters in Virginia may lack the proper identification needed to cast a ballot in the November midterm elections, the Virginia State Board of Elections said Thursday. Under a state law that took effect this year, Virginia voters must present a driver’s license or some other form of photo identification at their polling stations before they cast a vote. Although voters who lack such proof would be allowed to fill out provisional ballots on Nov. 4, election officials hope more people will obtain state ID cards or some other valid form of identification so that their votes could be more easily counted — particularly in the event of close contests.

Wisconsin: Federal Court Declines to Take Up Wisconsin’s Voter ID Law | New York Times

With a competitive election for governor of Wisconsin less than six weeks away, a federal appeals court on Friday narrowly decided against hearing arguments on a recently instituted photo identification requirement for the state’s voters. In an order that evenly split the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit here, the judges turned down pleas for a hearing by the full court from people who argue that the requirement has created confusion and chaos. The decision came about a month before in-person early voting begins and after some in Wisconsin may have mailed in absentee ballots. The matter could ultimately wind up before the United States Supreme Court, and the Wisconsin case is seen as noteworthy among the numerous legal fights playing out around the country over voting regulations. Many of the regulations have been introduced in the last four years in states with Republican-dominated governments, like Wisconsin.

Canada: Vote-counting glitches raise concerns for municipal elections | Toronto Star

A computer glitch that marred Monday’s New Brunswick election has raised concerns about the perils of electronic voting, just as many Ontario municipalities are preparing to use the newest ballot-box technologies in next month’s elections. At least two dozen Ontario towns and cities — including Halton, Burlington, Oshawa and Markham — have signed service contracts with Toronto-based Dominion Voting Systems Corporation to let residents use Internet, telephone and vote-counting technologies when they vote for mayor, councillors, school board members and other elected officials on Oct. 27. The company, which counts former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley as chair of its advisory board, was employed to bring New Brunswick’s election agency into the 21st century through the use of vote-tabulation machines. Instead, the firm ended up taking blame for one of the most disputed Canadian elections in recent memory.

Indonesia: Right to directly elect governors lost in Indonesia | CNN

Indonesia’s parliament voted on Friday to do away with direct local elections in a move that critics say is a huge step backward for the country’s fledgling democracy. Proponents of the law change, to scrap direct elections for mayors and governors, had argued local elections had proven too costly, and were prone to conflict and corruption. The bill was backed by the coalition behind losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto. But critics disagreed, and questioned the timing of the bill, first proposed in 2012, just two months after the election of Joko Widodo. Titi Anggraini, director of the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem), said that many were upset by the law change. “I feel so disappointed. It shows how strong the opponents to democracy are. We are facing the biggest enemy of democracy.”

National: Voting’s ‘impending crisis’ | Al Jazeera

A recent presidential commission report on election administration characterizes the state of U.S. voting machines as an “impending crisis.” According to the report, created in response to a presidential order, existing voting machines are reaching the end of their operational life spans, jurisdictions often lack the funds to replace them, and those with funds find market offerings limited because several constraints have made manufacturing new machines difficult. On Election Day, these problems could translate into hours-long waits, lost votes and errors in election results. In the long term, such problems breed a lack of trust in the democratic process, reducing the public’s faith in government, experts say. According to Barbara Simons, a member of the board of advisers to the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the problem can’t be avoided any longer. “People died for the right to vote as recently as the civil rights movement,” she said. “The American Revolution was all about being able to control our own democracy, and that means voting … We know that a lot of machines were breaking in the 2012 election. It’s not that it’s an impending crisis. This crisis is already here.” Also, outdated voting machines can present security risks both in hardware deficiencies (some machines use generic keys to protect sensitive panels) and in software flaws that are difficult if not impossible to detect when compromised, according to security audits. Assessing the security of many of these systems is difficult, however, since companies insist proprietary software and hardware may not be disclosed to third parties. Government audits are often not fully public. The current problem is rooted in the short-term fixes that were implemented to solve the last major voting crisis, in 2000, when unreliable punchcard machines led to ambiguous ballots in Florida, putting the presidential election into question. After further issues in the 2002 midterm elections, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that fall. HAVA gave states millions of dollars to replace punchcard machines and created the EAC, charged with establishing standards for voting systems.

National: Waiting at the polls: Long lines and voting rights | Facing South

Every big election year, horror stories surface around the South and the rest of the country of voters having to wait for hours to cast their ballots. In 2008, reports came out of Georgia of voters having to stand in line for up to 12 hours to vote. In 2012, the battleground state of Florida garnered national headlines with accounts of voters waiting six hours at the polls. In 2013, President Obama assembled a 10-member bipartisan commission to look into the experiences of voters in the previous year’s elections and to propose solutions to help streamline the voting process. The commission found that the Florida and Georgia experiences weren’t isolated: More than 10 million people had to wait more than half an hour to vote in 2012. Arguing that “no citizen should have to wait in line for more than 30 minutes to vote,” the group outlined a series of ways election officials could make voting easier, saying that “jurisdictions can solve the problem of long lines through a combination of planning … and the efficient allocation of resources.” Yet despite a flurry of election law bills at the state level, many states have failed to act on the commission’s proposals and make improvements to ensure long wait times don’t taint the 2014 mid-term elections.

Georgia: State says 25 voter applications of 85,000 “confirmed” forgeries | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Investigators backed away Wednesday from allegations a Democratic-backed group may have organized voter registration fraud, saying they can confirm 25 applications of more than 85,000 submitted to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. Chief investigator Chris Harvey, however, said the office needed more information from the New Georgia Project to confirm no more fraudulent forms existed — already, it has identified another 26 applications as suspicious. The state has extended a deadline for the group to get investigations such information through Sept. 26. Harvey spoke after the group’s leaders said Secretary of State Brian Kemp may be ignoring more than 51,000 unprocessed voter registration applications to instead pursue what they called “a witch hunt.” With the state’s Oct. 6 registration deadline quickly approaching, state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, D-Atlanta,and more than a dozen civil rights and religious leaders who support the New Georgia Project called on Kemp —the state’s top elections official — to focus on ensuring ballot access to thousands of new voters they and others have signed up this election year.

Kansas: Court scrubs Democrat Chad Taylor from ballot for U.S. Senate | The Kansas City Star

Democrat Chad Taylor’s name won’t appear on the Kansas ballot for the U.S. Senate. The Kansas Supreme Court, dominated by Democratic appointees, ordered Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach Thursday to strike Taylor’s name from the Nov. 4 ballot. In its ruling, the court turned aside Kobach’s contention that Taylor’s Sept. 3 withdrawal letter failed to meet the standard set in state law. “The Secretary of State thus has no discretion to refuse to remove Chadwick J. Taylor’s name from the ballot,” the court said. Kobach, a Republican mired in his own tough re-election battle, had moved to keep Taylor’s name in front of voters on grounds that the Democrat had not specified that he would be legally “incapable” of serving in the Senate. Kobach was scheduled to meet with reporters late Thursday afternoon in Topeka to discuss the ruling.

Ohio: Husted directs elections boards to be ready for voting in two weeks | The Columbus Dispatch

Secretary of State Jon Husted wants a court to throw out his own directive. Under an order to county elections boards Husted issued on Friday, Ohioans could start voting a week earlier than he’d planned and cast a ballot during the two weekends before Election Day. But at the same time, the Republican is pushing for a higher court to overturn the lower-court ruling that added the days of early voting and eliminate them. Battling in court over when Ohioans can vote has become almost a biennial ritual, seemingly taking place every time the state has a gubernatorial or presidential election. This year, the dispute involves whether voters can start casting ballots on Sept. 30 or Oct. 7, and whether additional hours will be allowed on weekends and evenings.

Editorials: Preserving the right to vote in the wake of Wisconsin’s voter ID law | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

As we inch forward to the 119th anniversary of Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise speech, where “in all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress,” Wisconsin, not to mention the entire nation, is more separated than ever — like the fingers in a hand. From Ferguson, Mo., to Milwaukee and throughout all these United States, African-Americans perceive themselves to be targets of unfair treatment by our institutions. There are many issues that the African-American community must address from within (such as crime and poverty), but that cause is decidedly not helped by laws whose effect, if not intent, is to marginalize African-Americans from the political process and, thus, society. One such case, out of many, is the law requiring approved photo ID for participation in elections. The recent federal appeals court ruling on voter ID is unhelpful to Wisconsin’s poor who are disproportionately African-Americans, Latinos, women, students and the very elderly. It is also shameful to a nation that prides itself on liberty, equality and justice for all. Simply put, the courts in the U.S. have become overly politicized, as illustrated by the recent ruling by a three-judge panel, all appointed by GOP presidents, who rendered a decision that is advantageous to a governor in a tight gubernatorial campaign. We cannot say for certain that this factor weighed on the court; however, the haste in which the law just prior to an election will be executed is cause for concern.

Afghanistan: Rival Afghan Presidential Candidates Sign Deal to Share Power | VoA News

Afghan presidential rivals Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah on Sunday signed a power sharing deal to form a National Unity Government. The signing ceremony took place at the presidential palace in Kabul with outgoing President Hamid Karzai and Afghan elders as well as religious leaders present on the occasion. The two candidates shook hands and hugged each other after singing the long-awaited political deal. Karzai then briefly addressed the gathering and congratulated both Ghani and Abdullah on reaching the power sharing arrangement.

United Kingdom: Scotland Rejects Independence From United Kingdom | New York Times

Voters in Scotland rejected independence from Britain in a referendum that had threatened to break up the 307-year union between them, according to projections by the BBC and Sky News early Friday. Before dawn after a night of counting that showed a steady trend in favor of maintaining the union, Nicola Sturgeon, the deputy head of the pro-independence Scottish National Party, effectively conceded defeat for the “yes” campaign that had pressed for secession. “Like thousands of others across the country I’ve put my heart and soul into this campaign and there is a real sense of disappointment that we’ve fallen narrowly short of securing a yes vote,” Ms. Sturgeon told BBC television. With 26 of 32 voting districts reporting, there were 1,397,077 votes, or 54.2 percent, against independence, and 1,176,952, or 45.7 percent, in favor.

National: Voting rights cases may be headed back to Supreme Court | USA Today

The Supreme Court’s decision last year eliminating a barrier against voting procedure changes in mostly Southern states came with a caveat: Chief Justice John Roberts warned that the Voting Rights Act still included a “permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting.” Now federal courts from Texas to Wisconsin are on the verge of deciding whether Roberts was right — or if what remains of the 1965 law after the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling is less able to stop states from making it harder to vote. An appeals court hearing Friday in the Wisconsin case, following a two-week trial in a Texas district court, might point the way back to the Supreme Court. Cases in North Carolina and Ohio also could be headed that way. Those states and others have made voting more difficult in recent years to combat what they claim are instances of voter fraud. Texas imposed strict new photo identification rules hours after the Supreme Court ruling. North Carolina cut back on early voting, same-day registration and provisional balloting. They were among 15 states freed in whole or in part from Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires states with a history of discrimination to clear any changes with the Justice Department. The high court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder struck down the list of states dating back a half century.

Kansas: Upheaval in Kansas Senate as election official rules Dem can’t withdraw | The Hill

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) has denied Democrat Chad Taylor’s request to be removed from the Kansas Senate ballot. His Thursday decision means Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) will face three candidates on the ballot this fall — Taylor, independent Greg Orman and libertarian Randall Batson — boosting the vulnerable senator’s reelection prospects. Now, Taylor could siphon off enough anti-Roberts votes from Orman, who’s been surging in the race and is now seen by Democrats as their best shot to take Roberts down, to deliver the senator an opening for a win. Kobach told reporters that, after evaluating state election law statutes, his legal team found that Taylor did not meet the law’s requirement to provide sufficient “evidence he would be incapable of fulfilling the duties of office if elected. Short of some sort of injunction or some sort of judicial action barring the state from proceeding, the decision is made,” Kobach said. Kansas Democrats were up in arms, and Taylor himself said shortly after Kobach announced his decision that he’s going to contest it, noting the fact he was told by an elections official the document he submitted Wednesday was sufficient to remove him from the ballot. “I am planning to challenge the ruling of the Kansas Secretary of State, who serves on Pat Roberts’ Honorary Committee,” Taylor said in a statement.

Ohio: Early voting order stands while appeal proceeds | Cleveland Plain Dealer

A federal court judge on Wednesday denied a request to stay his order restoring early voting cuts and allowing county boards of election to set additional hours while the state makes its appeal. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Secretary of State Jon Husted are appealing the decision to the U.S. 6th District Court of Appeals and on Tuesday requested a stay to avoid confusion among county boards of election. “Changing election rules so far into the election cycle disrupts the electoral process and threatens its fairness,” DeWine and Husted argued in their request. “Any requirement that Secretary Husted issue a directive to county Boards of Elections, only to potentially issue a contravening order in a few weeks, would cause particular harm. Changing the days and hours now, only to have them potentially changed again in a few weeks, will create needless confusion that can be simply avoided by a stay of this Court’s Order pending appeal.”

Pennsylvania: State to hear electronic voting challenge | Associated Press

Pennsylvania officials crossed their fingers and hoped for no major problems in the 2006 election as voters in all 67 counties cast ballots electronically for the first time. Despite scattered glitches, that’s what they got — thanks largely to $150 million from the federal government that helped more than half the counties obtain new computerized machines that replaced lever and punch-card systems. But voter-rights advocates concerned about the security and verification of ballots cast in the 50 counties that use direct recording electronic, or DRE, machines are preparing to argue before the state’s high court Wednesday that the devices violate state law and the state constitution. Lawyers sued Pennsylvania’s secretary of state in Commonwealth Court in August 2006 on behalf of two dozen voters. A succession of rulings by that court has gone against the plaintiffs, but the state Supreme Court could overturn those — a possibility that could have wide-reaching implications for Pennsylvania’s 8.2 million voters. At the heart of the plaintiffs’ case is the fact that the 23,500 computerized DRE machines do not create a paper record of each vote as it is cast. Instead, they create electronic records that can be printed out after the election. The other 17 counties use optical scanners to read votes marked on paper ballots, or a combination of the two systems.

Editorials: Voter ID on Trial in Texas | New York Times

In April, a federal judge in Wisconsin invalidated that state’s voter-identification law, finding that it would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of eligible voters in a phony attempt to prevent a problem — in-person voter fraud — that does not exist. Last week, the spotlight turned to the federal court in Corpus Christi, where the Justice Department and several advocacy groups are fighting Texas’ absurdly strict voter-ID law. Passed in 2011 by the Republican-dominated Legislature, the law accepts as proof of identity a concealed-weapon permit but not a student ID card. Laws like these used to be blocked by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required that the federal government preapprove any voting rules enacted by states and localities with a history of discriminatory voting practices. But in a destructive ruling last year, the Supreme Court struck down Section 5 as unconstitutional. Only hours after that ruling, Texas resurrected its voter-ID law, which had been stopped by Section 5.

Wisconsin: Appeals panel reinstates voter ID law | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

A federal appeals court in Chicago Friday reinstated for now Wisconsin’s voter ID law hours after the three-judge panel heard arguments on the subject. The move by the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals clears the way for the state to implement the law for the Nov. 4 election, though it does not stop the ongoing appeal over whether the measure is unconstitutional. “The state of Wisconsin may, if it wishes (and if it is appropriate under rules of state law), enforce the photo ID requirement in this November’s elections,” the unsigned two-page order reads. The appellate court said Friday that it was satisfied by changes imposed on the law by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a separate decision earlier this year. “This reduces the likelihood of irreparable injury, and it also changes the balance of equities and thus the propriety of federal injunctive relief. The panel has concluded that the state’s probability of success on the merits of this appeal is sufficiently great that the state should be allowed to implement its law, pending further order of this court,” the order reads.

Afghanistan: Abdullah Vows to Reject Disputed Vote | New York Times

The presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah once more brought Afghanistan’s troubled electoral process to the brink on Monday, insisting that he had won the disputed vote and vowing to reject any government formed on the basis of it. An audit of 100 percent of the ballots cast in the June runoff election is expected to conclude this week, and nearly all observers expect Mr. Abdullah’s opponent, Ashraf Ghani, to be declared the winner. Mr. Abdullah’s supporters have been suggesting that he form a parallel government, which Western diplomats have worried could lead to disorder or even civil war. But Mr. Abdullah made no mention of a parallel government in a speech to his top officials, running mates and supporters, or at a brief news conference afterward, and did not ask his supporters to take to the streets to protest the results.

National: Voting Restrictions Are Key Variable in Midterm Elections | New York Times

Voting in midterm elections that will determine control of Congress ends this fall. But it starts in North Carolina this week. On Friday, election officials begin mailing absentee ballots there, followed soon by Alaska and Georgia — with no excuses required. Iowans can vote in person beginning Sept. 25. After decades of expansion in American voting methods, an estimated one-third of all ballots will be cast before the traditional Election Day on Nov. 4. Yet this year, the trend collides with a Republican-led pushback in some states — for reasons of cost-cutting and election integrity or, as the Obama administration and civil rights groups suggest, crimping turnout by Democrats. Various new restrictions on voting, which range from more stringent identification requirements to fewer registration opportunities to curbs on early voting, have been put into place. A key election variable is whether the new limits will tilt close races. They might not. New voting restrictions have proven to be mobilizing tools for constituencies that feel threatened by them. In 2012, President Obama won battleground states, such as Florida and New Hampshire, where new limits had taken effect.

National: California, Texas Serve as Testing Grounds for Open-Source Voting Technology | PublicCEO

With counties staring down eventual replacement of their election management systems, some in California and Texas are leading the charge for an alternative that could save counties a lot of money and change an industry.​​ Open-source voting would use software designed by counties, which could run on inexpensive computer terminals to design, print and count paper ballots. All of which purportedly increases transparency and security, Most of the savings would come from eliminating the software license fees charged for management system vendors’ proprietary programs. Twelve years after the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) mandated new voting technology, the machines and software are reaching the end of their usable lives in counties nationwide, and voting officials are feeling pressure. Travis County, Texas’ machines have generally been reliably operational — though a few have begun freezing — but County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said she is worried they won’t remain in working order for long. HAVA’s $3.5 billion that helped fund the new election management systems will likely not be replenished to help replace them. “It’s the same urgency we all feel in counties everywhere,” she said. “We all bought new voting systems at the same time and now we’re all watching them approach their ends-of-life at the same time. Counties just don’t have multi-millions to pay for new voting systems.”

Alaska: Native language speakers win lawsuit against state | Alaska Dispatch

A federal judge in Anchorage ruled Wednesday morning that the state elections division violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act by failing to provide ballot and candidate information in Native languages to Yup’ik and Gwich’in speakers in three rural regions of Alaska. In a big victory for Native rights advocates, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason rejected the state’s assertions that it had done enough in Southwest Alaska and the Interior by providing bilingual poll workers and “outreach” personnel. Gleason said the state’s effort failed to provide “substantially similar” information in Native languages as it does in English. While the plaintiffs — two Yup’ik-speaking elders and four federally recognized village tribes — had sought to have all election materials made available in Native languages, Gleason focused on the official election pamphlet sent to all residents of Alaska in English. The state didn’t do enough to help voters with limited English proficiency gain access to the information in the pamphlet, she said.

Kansas: Legal questions complicate Democrat’s exit from Senate race | The Hill

Despite filing papers with the Kansas secretary of State to withdraw from the Senate race late Wednesday, Democrat Chad Taylor could be stuck on the ballot this fall. Two election law statutes have raised questions about whether Taylor gave sufficient cause to remove himself from the ballot, and, if so, whether Democrats must ultimately choose a candidate to replace him. Kansas Republican Party Executive Director Clay Barker told The Hill that Taylor is now back on the secretary of State’s list of general election candidates while a legal team analyzes the statutes. One statute declares that, except under specific circumstances, “no person who has been nominated by any means for any national, state, county or township office may” withdraw their name from the ballot after Primary Day. Those circumstances include death and if a nominee “declares that they are incapable of fulfilling the duties of office if elected … by a request in writing.” While Taylor did submit a request in writing to the secretary of State’s office withdrawing his nomination and asking to be withdrawn from the ballot pursuant to that same statute, the letter makes no claim that the candidate would be unable to fulfill his duties if elected.