North Carolina: Don Yelton not so out of step with GOP on NC voter ID law | Facing South

By now you probably have heard about the reckless, racially insensitive comments Republican Party precinct chair Don Yelton of Buncombe County, N.C. made this week on The Daily Show. During an interview with correspondent Aasif Mandvi, Yelton defended North Carolina’s voter ID law while acknowledging evidence of voter fraud is flimsy. He also referred to African Americans as “lazy blacks” and even uttered the word “nigger,” leading Mandvi to remark, “You know that we can hear you, right?” …  Yelton’s comments about black and student voters, voter fraud and kicking “the Democrats in the butt” are also in line with the work of the Civitas Institute, the conservative think tank founded and largely funded by North Carolina’s Republican mega-donor and state budget director Art Pope, which helped build public support for the elections bill. One of the consequences of Civitas’ crusade against nonexistent voter fraud is that black college students have been purged from voter rolls and faced challenges to their right to vote and run for office where they live and go to school. Yelton’s remarks are also in line with what was said during state Senate hearings in April, when dozens of GOP county representatives testified in favor of the legislation. Jonathan Bandy of the N.C. Federation of Young Professional Republicans said voter ID laws weren’t racist but claimed that racism is “the notion that an African-American and an Hispanic voter who don’t have an ID are incapable of getting one” — ignoring the fact that the law creates additional barriers for voters of color given that they are more likely than white voters to lack the ID needed to vote.

Texas: Voter ID Law May Cause Problems for Women Using Maiden Names | KiiiTV3

The state’s new voter ID law is meant to prevent voter fraud, but it may be causing some delays at your neighborhood polling place, especially if the name on your driver’s license differs from the name on your voter registration card, even a little bit. Nueces County election officials say it is often a problem for women who use maiden names or hyphenated names. The problem came to light Monday, when a local district judge had trouble casting a ballot. “What I have used for voter registration and for identification for the last 52 years was not sufficient yesterday when I went to vote,” 117th District Court Judge Sandra Watts said. Watts has voted in every election for the last 49 years. The name on her driver’s license has remained the same for 52 years, and the address on her voter registration card or driver’s license hasn’t changed in more than two decades. So imagine her surprise when she was told by voting officials that she would have to sign a “voters affidavit” affirming she was who she said she was. “Someone looked at that and said, ‘Well, they’re not the same,'” Watts said.

Virginia: Judge denies injunction in voter lawsuit | Associated Press

A federal judge on Friday rejected a request from Virginia Democrats who sought an injunction requiring the State Board of Elections to reinstate nearly 40,000 registered voters who were recently purged from the rolls. County registrars conducted the purge recently on orders from the Republican-controlled elections board in Richmond, based on evidence from a multi-state database that the voters had subsequently registered in other states. The Democratic Party of Virginia says the list used to conduct the purge was riddled with errors. At Friday’s hearing in U.S. District Court, the party argued that local officials were using different standards to determine whether a voter’s name should be purged, and the disparities violate requirements for uniformity that the U.S. Supreme Court outlined in its landmark 2000 Bush v. Gore decision. Lawyer Marc Elias said local jurisdictions received a list of more than 57,000 voters currently registered in Virginia who had subsequently registered out of state. The registrars were told the list’s accuracy had been verified but they should use their “best judgment” in making the ultimate determination of whether to purge a voter. Elias said some registrars took the list and purged everyone. At least one county registrar refused to purge anyone. Other counties made their own determination. The process “leads to the weighing of some people’s votes and the discounting of others on a geographical basis,” Elias told Judge Claude Hilton.

Canada: B.C. electoral panel opposes online voting | The Globe and Mail

British Columbia should not adopt online voting because it won’t necessarily improve voter turnout and is less secure, a report from an electoral panel says. The 106-page report, released Wednesday, makes four recommendations for municipal and provincial elections. Chief among them is that online voting not be used at this time. “There’s no consistent relationship between the use of Internet voting and increased voter turnout in those jurisdictions that have used Internet voting,” Keith Archer, the chief electoral officer and panel chair, told reporters. “Sometimes turnout goes up, sometimes it stays the same, and sometimes it has gone down.” Online voting advocates have argued such a system would engage younger voters. But Mr. Archer said the five-person panel – which formed last year, after being invited by the provincial government to study the issue – found the people most likely to use online voting were middle-aged or older. “Those findings led the panel to conclude that moving towards Internet voting in British Columbia is likely not the panacea for the challenges of declining voter turnout that we’ve seen in the last generation or so,” he said. Mr. Archer described the report as “cautionary” and said it’s important to maintain the integrity of the electoral process. Although traditional voting is not without risk, the report said, “it is much harder to perform and conceal large-scale fraud in traditional voting than in Internet voting.”

Maldives: New dates set for presidential election 2 days after police stopped scheduled revote | Associated Press

Maldives officials on Monday set a new date for the country’s presidential election two days after police stepped in to prevent a scheduled revote, claiming that the balloting was illegal. The move comes as a breakthrough in ending a political stalemate and as a reassurance to this troubled young democracy. But questions remain over how the island nation would bypass a constitutional vacuum because the new schedule may not produce a new president before the end of the incumbent’s term. Vice Elections Commissioner Ahmed Fayaz told reporters that the new election date would be Nov. 9 and if no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote, a runoff election would be held on Nov. 16. The constitution of the Maldives requires a president to be elected by Nov. 11, when sitting President Mohamed Waheed Hassan’s term ends.

National: Judge in Landmark Case Disavows Support for Voter ID | New York Times

It is the kind of thought that rarely passes the lips of a member of the federal judiciary: I was wrong. But there was Richard A. Posner, one of the most distinguished judges in the land and a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, saying he was mistaken in one of the most contentious issues in American politics and jurisprudence: laws that require people to show identification before they can vote. Proponents of voter identification laws, who tend to be Republican, say the measures are necessary to prevent fraud at the polls. Opponents, who tend to be Democrats, assert that the amount of fraud at polling places is tiny, and that the burdens of the laws are enough to suppress voting, especially among poor and minority Americans. One of the landmark cases in which such requirements were affirmed, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, was decided at the Seventh Circuit in an opinion written by Judge Posner in 2007 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2008.

Editorials: Separate and Unequal Voting in Arizona and Kansas | Ari Berman/The Nation

In its 2013 decision in Arizona v. The Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that Arizona’s proof of citizenship law for voter registration violated the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). In 2004, Arizona voters approved Proposition 200, a stringent anti-immigration law that included provisions requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot. Last year, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked the proof of citizenship requirement, which it said violated the NVRA. Under the 1993 act, which drastically expanded voter access by allowing registration at public facilities like the DMV, those using a federal form to register to vote must affirm, under penalty of perjury, that they are US citizens. Twenty-eight million people used that federal form to register to vote in 2008. Arizona’s law, the court concluded, violated the NVRA by requiring additional documentation, such as a driver’s license, birth certificate, passport or tribal forms. According to a 2006 study by the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 7 percent of eligible voters “do not have ready access to the documents needed to prove citizenship.” The Supreme Court affirmed the lower court ruling, finding that states like Arizona could not reject applicants who registered using the NVRA form. Now Arizona and Kansas—which passed a similar proof-of-citizenship law in 2011—are arguing that the Supreme Court’s decision applies only to federal elections and that those who register using the federal form cannot vote in state and local elections. The two states have sued the Election Assistance Commission and are setting up a two-tiered system of voter registration, which could disenfranchise thousands of voters and infringe on state and federal law.

Minnesota: State feuds over online voter registration | Washington Post

A fight over online voter registration in Minnesota is becoming less about whether voters should have the ability to register over the Internet and more about whether Secretary of State Mark Ritchie (D) has overstepped his bounds. If the measure is implemented, Minnesota would become the 15th state to allow voters to register online. Both red states and blue states have set up online registration systems. But Ritchie, who has rubbed some Republicans the wrong way by pushing for new voting rules, has to get permission from the legislature before he moves forward, members in both parties say. “We don’t have concern about the policy, frankly. Other states have implemented it. We are interested in finding ways for people to register in a convenient manner,” said state Sen. David Hann (R), the Senate Republican leader.

Pennsylvania: Voter ID ads draw controversy | Republican Herald

A state-paid ad campaign to showcase Pennsylvania’s voter photo ID law is generating controversy several weeks before the municipal election. Democratic senators called Wednesday for scrapping the “Show It” campaign, saying it only misleads and confuses voters into believing they need a photo ID to vote in the Nov. 5 election. The ads started airing on TV, radio and the Internet more than one month after a state judge ruled in August that voters won’t need to show photo ID at the polls Nov. 5 while a legal challenge continues to the 2012 law. Poll workers will be able to ask voters to show a photo ID on that day, but they can’t stop someone who lacks one from casting a vote. The ad displays a photo ID with a voice-over saying if you care about the election, then show it. As the ad wraps up, it mentions that no ID is required for this election and provides information about how to obtain a photo ID.

Virginia: Election officials purging almost 40,000 voters | Washington Post

The Virginia Board of Elections has purged more than 38,000 names from its voter rolls just weeks before Election Day, despite serious concerns from local election administrators that many of those voters are still eligible to cast a ballot. The purge comes a few months after the board said it would use several databases to find voters who were now ineligible to vote, either because they had been convicted of a felony or moved out of state. But after the board sent an initial list of voters who would be purged to local election administrators, those administrators found what they said were hundreds of voters who shouldn’t be removed. On Oct. 3, the state Democratic Party filed paperwork seeking an injunction to halt the purge. But on Tuesday, the Board of Elections said it had already nixed 38,870 names from voter rolls after county registrars reviewed the initial lists. Another 11,138 eligible voters will remain active on the rolls after county registrars reviewed the state lists. And almost 7,300 will be designated “inactive,” meaning they must cast provisional ballots on Election Day, ballots that will only be counted after their eligibility is verified.

Wisconsin: Voting wars coming to Wisconsin | Washington Post

As if Wisconsin needed another debate to divide its citizens, the voting wars are coming to Madison. The state Senate last week passed four measures, three almost exclusively on party-line votes, to make minor changes to election day procedures. One measure would require two poll workers of opposite party affiliation to oversee securing ballot containers. Another would require any job that needed two or more poll workers to be performed by members of different parties. A third bill would mandate damaged or problem ballots be marked in a uniform manner. And a bill that is likely to cause the most outrage among Democrats would require election workers to record the type of documents newly registered voters use as proof of residence. That bill passed the Senate on a straight 18-15 party-line vote. The new rules are relatively minor tweaks to the state’s election rules, a far cry from a law requiring voters to show identification at the polling place the Republican House and Senate passed back in 2011. That law was blocked by a state judge, a decision that’s being appealed in federal court. The fact that even the smallest changes to state law come down to party-line votes highlights the partisan divide in a state that’s accustomed to compromise. Democrats see the Republican-initiated changes as the first step toward more regulations that will make it harder for their voters to cast a ballot.

Australia: The tech behind Western Australia’s senate recount | iTnews.com.au

For more than 95 percent of Australians, the daunting task of voting below the line in a federal senate election is too much to ask, especially for a Saturday morning. So it will come as no surprise that during the upcoming WA senate recount, as with every senate tally since 2001, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) will call upon some electronic assistance to calculate the complex system of preferences and trickle-down the redistributions that decide the seating pattern in the nation’s upper house. While Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam waits to hear whether he has won back his seat, electoral officials will be feeding ballot data into a limited network of computers running its EasyCount tally system. “The system takes the entered information for each of the votes cast in a Senate election, performs the distribution of preferences, and indicates which candidates have been elected,” an AEC spokesman explained to iTnews.

Maldives: Police halt presidential vote, supporters stage sit-in | Reuters

Maldives police forced a halt to a presidential election on Saturday, in what the leading candidate’s supporters said was a new coup as he called on them to block the streets in protest. The Indian Ocean archipelago which has been in turmoil since February 2012, when then-president Mohamed Nasheed was ousted by mutinying police, military forces and armed demonstrators. The election was due to be held on Saturday, after a vote in September was annulled over allegations of fraud. However, there had been confusion over whether it could go ahead as some candidates had still not signed a new voter register in accordance with a Supreme Court ruling early on Saturday to allow the election. Just hours before polls were due to open for the vote that Nasheed looked set to win, police surrounded the secretariat of the Elections Commission, forcing a delay condemned by the international community. Police said they could not support an election held “in contravention of the Supreme Court verdict and guidelines”.

National: Supreme Court Again Weighs Spending Limits in Campaigns | New York Times

The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed prepared to strike down a part of federal campaign finance law left intact by its decision in Citizens United in 2010: overall limits on direct contributions from individuals to candidates. The justices seemed to divide along familiar ideological lines, and they articulated starkly different understandings of the role of money and free speech in American politics. “By having these limits, you are promoting democratic participation,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. “Then the little people will count some and you won’t have the super-affluent as the speakers that will control the elections.” Justice Antonin Scalia responded, sarcastically, that he assumed “a law that only prohibits the speech of 2 percent of the country is O.K.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who probably holds the crucial vote, indicated that he was inclined to strike down overall limits on contributions to several candidates, but perhaps not separate overall limits on contributions to several political committees.

Arizona: Officials say rule may keep thousands from voting | Los Angeles Times

An Arizona plan to tighten voter registration would create a two-tiered voting system in time for next year’s elections but affect only several thousand people, some of whom could be denied participation in state and local elections, state officials said Tuesday. Voting rights activists, however, said that many more eligible voters probably would choose not to participate because of confusion over the new plan, which is expected to be challenged in court. The new system will essentially have separate voter rolls. Those who registered using a state form and documented their U.S. citizenship will receive a full ballot for federal, state and local elections, and those who registered using a federal form but whose citizenship could not be fully verified would be able to vote only in federal elections. In a practical sense, just because a potential voter registered using a federal form doesn’t automatically exclude that voter from participating in local and state elections, experts and county officials said.

Florida: Many questions, few answers on state’s voter purge plan | Miami Herald

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner’s mea culpa tour to tout the state’s revamped noncitizen voter purge led to a tense exchange Wednesday with an election supervisor miffed about the state’s botched efforts last year. Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher peppered Detzner and his staff with questions about the process and the accuracy of the data to be used in the purge. “Where does that data come from, how often is it updated: every 10 years or every 10 minutes? … I have a lot of concern that the people we got the database from are saying this is not comprehensive and definitive,” Bucher said during a meeting at Broward County’s Voting Equipment Center in Lauderhill. Bucher’s questions revolved around the federal SAVE database that the state will use this time to search for non-citizen voters. Detzner explained that state agencies currently use SAVE data to verify that Floridians are eligible for millions of dollars in entitlements. “This is the best database we have to deal with,” he said. “This is important to get it right…It can be done and it will be done correctly.” But Bucher wasn’t satisfied, nor were voting activists who egged her on at times in the audience. A Democrat elected to a nonpartisan office, Bucher continued to ask multiple questions.

Hawaii: Judge to determine if Hawaii primary election system is ‘severe burden’ to free association | Associated Press

A federal judge said at a hearing that he will likely rule in favor of a lawsuit challenging Hawaii’s open primary election if he finds there’s a “severe burden” on the First Amendment right to free association. Judge J. Michael Seabright said at Monday’s hearing that the case could ultimately end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Democratic Party of Hawaii’s lawsuit claims the primary system allowing every registered voter to participate in the party’s nomination process is tantamount to forced political association and is unconstitutional. The party wants to ensure Democrats are selected at the primary stage by those willing to identify as Democrats. “What the party does not want is anonymous persons deciding its candidates,” Tony Gill, an attorney representing the party, told the judge.

Kansas: Kris Kobach laying groundwork for two-tier voting system in Kansas | Wichita Eagle

With court action over the state’s proof-of-citizenship voting law looming, Secretary of State Kris Kobach is laying groundwork for a system that would allow some voters to vote in all elections while others could only vote for Congress and presidential tickets. Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, an opponent of the proof-of-citizenship law, said he received confirmation from the Department of Legislative Research this week that Kobach is moving forward with the plan to limit voters who follow federal registration rules to voting only in federal elections. Separately, a memo to all the state’s county election officials outlines procedures for identifying and tracking voters who use the federal form and creating a separate category for them in voting databases. “Many counties probably have had very few federal forms submitted over the years,” said the memo from state Election Director Brad Bryant, dated July 31. “Regardless of the number, beginning now you must track which voter registration applicants in your county have applied using the federal form since January 1, 2013.

Virginia: Democrats say thousands purged from voter rolls | Washington Post

A federal lawsuit filed by the Virginia Democratic Party claims that tens of thousands of voters in the state may be kept from casting a ballot in November after their names were wrongly placed on a list meant to weed out fraud. The court action names Gov. Robert McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II as defendants and alleges that there were political motivations behind a “purge list” of about 57,000 voters whose names were also found on voter rolls in other states. The lawsuit, which comes as the contentious governor’s race enters its last month, contends that the list is inaccurate and that many of those voters are eligible to vote Nov. 5 in Virginia. Filed Oct. 1 in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., the complaint seeks to stop state and local election officials from striking those names from voter rolls. The names were discovered as part of a data-sharing program with 25 other states, which the lawsuit contends is “deeply flawed.”

Azerbaijan: President’s re-election declared a day before the vote; opposition cries foul | The Washington Post

Something funny happened the day before Azerbaijan’s presidential election: The election commission announced the winner. On Tuesday, the smartphone app of the Central Election Commission released the results of Wednesday’s vote, showing President Ilham Aliyev, whose family has been at the helm of this oil-rich Caspian Sea nation for four decades, winning 73 percent of the vote. The commission explained the gaffe by saying that a software developer had released the figures as a “test” at one polling station. It apologized for the “misunderstanding.” Official results on Thursday showed Aliyev winning nearly 85 percent of the vote. His closest challenger, main opposition candidate Jamil Hasanli, trailed with less than 6 percent, followed by eight fringe candidates, according to the commission.

India: Supreme Court orders Election Commission to add ‘paper trail’ to e-voting machines | Computerworld

India’s Supreme Court has directed the country’s Election Commission to introduce a paper backup of votes cast through electronic voting machines, but allowed the commission to introduce it in stages during general elections next year. Political and civil rights groups in India have been demanding that the EVMs should be equipped with the facility to print the running record of the votes for the purpose of verification, particularly after some researchers claimed that the machines could be hacked. The court, overruling a decision by a lower court, described the paper backup or paper trail as an “indispensable requirement of free and fair elections.” As the commission has to handle 1 million polling booths during a general election, the court permitted it to introduce the facility “in gradual stages or geographical-wise” at voting booths of its choice. The commission submitted in the court that the machines could not be tampered with, but was still planning to introduce a Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail system, and had tested the systems in smaller elections.

National: The next ‘Citizens United’ is coming your way | Los Angeles Times

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a campaign finance case that could be even bigger than the last one, the infamous Citizens United case of 2010. The new case, McCutcheon vs. FEC, challenges the aggregate spending rules that limit any one campaign contributor to $123,000 in total spending to political candidates and election committees during any two-year federal election cycle. The aggregate limit long has been a check on the flow of cold hard cash into the electoral system. As a three-judge panel of federal district court in Washington, D.C., observed last year, the per-candidate contribution limits in federal law — including $2,500 per election to any given candidate, $30,800 per year to each political party — would allow an individual to spread up to $3.5 million around. That’s a lot of bunce. The $123,000 ceiling effectively limits that donor to backing no more than 18 individual candidates in any cycle, the D.C. court noted.

National: Campaign Contributions Go Into the Shadows During Shutdown | National Journal

There are four people working at the Federal Election Commission during the shutdown. There are usually 339. This is the agency that’s meant to shine a light on campaign contributions and expenditures, to let the people know who is paying for the attack ads flooding their television screens as Election Day approaches. Campaign contributions are going into the dark. Campaigns can still file electronically, but if the system breaks, there will be no one around to fix the problem. “And it is possible that technological problems may arise that would prevent filers from filing on time,” FEC’s website states.

Editorials: Quit Blaming Gerrymandering for the Shutdown | Nate Cohn/New Republic

You don’t have to look far to find people diagnosing gerrymandering as the source of all of our nation’s woes, including (but surely not limited to) the shutdown. From this perspective, Republicans are gerrymandered into districts so conservative that the GOP is held hostage by ultraconservative primary electorates. Even President Obama has blamed the GOP “fever” on gerrymandering. These concerns are not totally misplaced. Gerrymandering is undemocratic, and it did help consolidate the GOP’s House majority in 2012. But, as I’ve written before, the significance of gerrymandering is exaggerated. Republicans are in safe districts for an incredibly simple reason: Most of the country just isn’t competitive. Take Texas, a famously gerrymandered state. If you want to create competitive districts, you don’t have many great options. Of the state’s 254 counties, 244 were won by either Obama or Romney by at least 10 points. That’s not how it used to be: Back in 1996, 92 counties were within 10 points. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these non-competitive counties tend to be extremely Republican. A whopping 176 of Texas’ 254 counties voted for Romney by more than a 40 point margin (at least 70-30). 81 of those counties voted for Romney by at least 60 points (ie 80-20). So, even a fair map would create plenty of incredibly red, safe, ultraconservative districts.

Florida: Democrats say Scott’s latest voter purge driven by politics | Miami Herald

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Florida Democratic Party Chair Allison Tant said it was pure politics that was driving Gov. Rick Scott to push for a second purge of non-citizens from voter rolls. “What I say to Rick Scott is if your victory depends on a voter purge, then you’re not fit to govern and you don’t deserve a second term,” Wasserman Schultz said. “This is all about suppressing minority voters and shows how out of touch he is,” Tant said. The comments were made during a Thursday morning conference call with reporters about two hours before Scott’s Secretary of State, Ken Detzner, held the first of five public meetings with supervisors of elections and voters from around the state to discuss how the next purge will be conducted. A first attempt to remove non-citizens last year was impaired by faulty data that disqualified some eligible voters while identifying few actual non-citizens. The state’s list of suspected non-citizens shrank from 182,000 to 198 before supervisors suspended their searches, blaming shoddy data.

North Carolina: What the Federal voting rights lawsuit could mean for North Carolina | Facing South

Yesterday U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder formally announced his plans to sue the the state of North Carolina for passing what many civil rights advocates have called the worst voter suppression law in the nation. Holder is filing suit under Section Two of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits denying or abridging voting rights for people of color. Holder is also requesting a federal court to enter the state of North Carolina into preclearance oversight under Section Three of the law. If the Justice Department’s suit is successful, the state’s new preclearance status will mean it will have to submit any election changes to the federal government for review to ensure no racial discrimination will result before they can be applied.

Virginia: Democrats Sue Over State’s Voter Registration Purge | Businessweek

Virginia’s Democratic Party sued the state alleging that a plan to purge about 57,000 voters from registration lists threatens the constitutional right to vote just weeks before the Nov. 5 election. The lawsuit, which names Republican Governor Robert McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli as defendants, seeks a court order barring the state’s election board and county and city registrars from purging voters before the November election. Cuccinelli, a Republican, is running to replace McDonnell, who by law can’t stand for re-election. Members of the Democratic Party of Virginia “and thousands of other citizens will be at risk of having their voting rights unlawfully stripped away through standard-less, ad hoc determinations by county and city registrars,” according to the complaint filed Oct. 1 in federal court in Alexandria.View the formal complaint here.

Editorials: Why Germany’s Politics Are Much Saner, Cheaper, and Nicer Than Ours | Olga Khazan/The Atlantic

It’s the day before the German election, and Stefan Liebich, a member of the Bundestag for the far-left Die Linke party, is standing on the sidewalk at a busy intersection, smiling and shaking hands. He has a boombox and an assistant who fills up crimson balloons that say “Really Red” — to differentiate them from the slightly-less-red balloons being inflated by their rivals, the Social Democrats (SPD), who have a similar setup just a few feet away. He’s in peak campaigning mode, yet he takes a 45-minute break to talk to a group of foreign journalists, including me, who can’t vote and don’t speak German. Liebich’s casual arrangement seems fitting for someone running for, say, student council in the U.S., but he’s actually just a few thousand votes from losing his seat in parliament if Die Linke doesn’t garner a large enough percentage in the upcoming election. He says he is “excited” to see whether or not he makes it in. It may seem barebones, but this is a typical last-day campaign event for a parliamentarian in Germany, where campaigns get government funding, parties are allocated TV advertising time, and microtargeting of voters is unthinkable.

Guinea: Election result delayed, opposition warns against rigging | Reuters

Guinea’s electoral commission said on Tuesday results from a weekend legislative election could take days longer than expected to publish, prompting opposition leaders to warn they would not accept any attempt to rig the outcome. Voters turned out on Saturday after months of political haggling and violent protests for the poll – touted as the completion of the mineral-rich West African country’s transition to democracy after a 2008 coup. A spokesman for the national electoral commission (CENI) had originally suggested provisional results would be ready on Tuesday, 72 hours after the long-delayed legislative election. However, CENI Vice President El Hadji Ibrahim Kalil Keita said on Tuesday the commission had until within 72 hours of the arrival of the last voting sheets from polling stations to announce a result. With sheets trickling in from some 12,000 sites across the country, that could take several days.

National: The next Citizens United could affect campaign spending in the states | Washington Post

In two weeks, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in what many describe as the next Citizens United and the outcome could have major implications for campaign spending at the state level. What’s at stake in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission — for which oral arguments are scheduled on Oct. 8 — is the limit to individual political spending. The federal government sets separate limits for each election cycle on how much an individual can give to candidates, party committees and political action committees. But it also currently limits overall spending to $123,200. It’s that overall limit that the McCutcheon fight is about. Proponents say it prevents corruption; opponents say it limits speech. “When you have somebody writing a one, two or three million dollar check that greatly increases opportunities for corruption,” says Lawrence Norden, a deputy director at the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, which filed a brief in the case supporting the limit. But critics of the aggregate contribution limit say individual limits — such as the $2,600 cap on donations to a federal candidate or candidate committee per election — already provide that protection.