Canada: Edmonton City Council turns down internet voting | Global Edmonton

On Wednesday morning, Edmonton’s city council voted against allowing internet voting in this year’s civic election.The main concern for those councillors who voted against internet voting is security and coercion. “Let’s say I have 20 friends. They don’t ever vote. I get a copy of their ID. I send them into you in some way or form from different outlets, from computers, have their passwords,” said Mayor Stephen Mandel. “So now I have the power of 25 votes, 20 votes, 15 votes, 12 votes, 3 votes. Not the ones in my house, but the ones outside my house. And that’s where I have concern with this,” added Mandel. “I don’t have a problem with internet voting. I like the idea of going in that direction. I’m worried that we may have needed more time to get this totally right so that we can say emphatically, yes, we’ve done every type of testing, and I’m not convinced yet that that’s been the case,” stated Ward 2 Councillor, Kim Krushell. Ben Henderson and Don Iveson were the only members of council who voted in favour of allowing online voting.

Editorials: If the court strikes Section 5 of Voting Rights Act | Richard Hasen/The Great Debate (Reuters)

We celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday last week in the shadow of a fight over the constitutionality of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in Shelby County v. Holder, raising the question whether Section 5 of the act, which requires that states and localities with a history of racial discrimination in voting get permission from the federal government before making any changes in election procedures, is now unconstitutional. The smart money is on the court striking down the law as an improper exercise of congressional power, although Justice Anthony Kennedy or another justice could still surprise. If the court strikes Section 5, the big question is: What comes next? Reuters has invited a number of leading academics, who focus on voting rights and election law, to contribute to a forum on this question. In this introductory piece, I sketch out what may happen and what’s at stake. One possibility is that nothing happens after Section 5 falls and minority voters in covered jurisdictions lose their important bargaining chip. Then, expect to see more brazen partisan gerrymanders, cutbacks in early voting and imposition of tougher voting and registration rules in the formerly covered jurisdictions.

Editorials: A vote cast against online voting | Edmonton Journal

Edmonton city council would be wise to exercise real caution before introducing Internet voting into the municipal election system. As tempting as it might be to blaze an electronic trail into the local democratic process, the notion of a vote that’s only a click away triggers some genuine concerns. City staff have recommended council approve online ballots in advance polls for next fall’s municipal election, following what was regarded as a successful mock vote last September that tested such a system with no discernible security breaches. That all-systems-go enthusiasm took a hit Monday when a local computer programmer informed council’s executive committee that he was able to cast two ballots in the mock election without being detected. Coun. Linda Sloan spoke for many citizens, and not just technophobes, when she expressed severe reservations about the integrity of a cyber-vote. “I’m not 100-per-cent confident in the security of the Internet and never have been, whether it’s my credit card information or my personal address or how I choose to vote,” Sloan said.

National: From Arizona to Montana, Native Voters Struggle for Democracy | The Nation

Leonard Gorman is a man of maps. He heads the Navajo Nation’s Human Rights Commission, which among other responsibilities, is charged with protecting and promoting Navajo voters’ rights to choose candidates who will reasonably represent their interests. He and his team all work out of their trailer office in Window Rick, Arizona—the Navajo Nation’s capitol—where they chart data that they’ve collected on the potential impacts of redistricting on the Navajo Nation. The first map Gorman’s team submitted to the Arizona Redistricting Commission resembled the letter J, encompassing the edge of Arizona’s eastern border and curving up towards the west. Although that map included large portions of Arizona’s Native population, the Navajo Nation later opted out of it because Arizona’s hardline anti-immigrants liked it too much. It included large southern border areas, where white conservative ranchers are more likely to vote Republican and would have infringed on Arizona’s growing Latino districts. “We immediately learned that the J map was playing into the extreme right position,” explains Gorman.

National: Program exceeds expectations in reaching overseas and military absentee voters | Fort Hood Sentinel

The Federal Voting Assistance Program exceeded congressional expectations in the 2012 election cycle by getting guidance to service members so they could vote by absentee ballot, a senior FVAP official said here, Jan. 24. David Beirne, acting deputy director of technology programs for FVAP, participated in a “MOVE and the Military” panel discussion at George Washington University during the seventh annual summit of the Overseas Vote Foundation and U.S. Vote Foundation. MOVE refers to the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, designed to help military people serving overseas and citizens who live abroad to vote in U.S. elections.

National: GOP electoral vote changes going nowhere | Politico.com

Republican proposals in swing states to change how electoral votes are allocated have set off alarms that the party is trying to rig future presidential elections. But the plans are going nowhere fast. In the majority of states where such measures are being considered – Virginia, Florida, Ohio and Michigan, all states that voted for President Obama in 2012 but have Republican-controlled legislatures – proposals to split Electoral College votes proportionally have either been defeated or are strongly opposed by officials in those states. The only remaining states are Pennsylvania, where an electoral vote change was unsuccessful in 2011, and Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker has expressed hesitance about any changes to the system. “I just said I hadn’t ruled it out. I’m not embracing it because it’s a double-edged sword,” Walker said in a recent interview with POLITICO. “What may look appealing right now depending on who your candidate was might, four or eight years from now, look like just the reverse. And the most important thing to me long term as a governor is what makes your voters be in play. One of our advantages as a swing state is that candidates come here … that’s good for voters. If we change that that would take that away and would largely make us irrelevant.”

Indiana: Scrapping electronic voting machines proposed | Journal and Courier

Senate Bill 357 would get rid of electronic voting machines by the end of 2015, and its proposal caught Tippecanoe County Clerk Christa Coffey’s eye and her ire. All of those relatively new and expensive electronic voting machines Tippecanoe County taxpayers bought to avoid an incident similar to Florida’s 2000 presidential election would have to be scrapped under the bill, Coffey said. “I have concerns to the cost to change all our equipment to comply with that legislation,” Coffey said. … The bill’s author, state Sen. Mike Delph, said the bill isn’t going anywhere. Its sole purpose was to stir up a debate about electronic voting machines and election integrity. “I’m concerned that election outcomes could be manipulated,” Delph said Thursday afternoon during a telephone interview.

Virginia: Slew of election reforms clear Virginia Senate | Washington Examiner

The Virginia Senate moved Monday to ease restrictions for presidential candidates to get on the ballot after a handful of Republican hopefuls failed to qualify for the state’s GOP primary last year. Presidential candidates need 10,000 petition signatures, including 400 from each congressional district, to make Virginia’s presidential primary ballot, some of the toughest standards in the country. Under a bill now headed to the House, candidates would need only 5,000 signatures. The bill, which passed 23-17, was backed by Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who criticized the current system after former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas were the only two candidates to qualify for Virginia’s Republican primary last year. Texas Gov. Rick Perry handed in only about 6,000 signatures, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich fell shy of 10,000. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann didn’t hand in any petitions.

Armenia: Assassination attempt on presidential candidate may delay Armenian elections | RT

An Armenian presidential candidate from the Union for National Self-Determination party has been shot and wounded in the center of Yerevan, the country’s capital. The attempt on Paruyr Hayrikyan’s life may delay the election. Following the incident, the 64 year-old Hayrikyan was rushed to the Saint Gregory the Illuminator medical center with two gunshot wounds, in the shoulder and in the chest. The chest wound is considered serious, but not immediately life-threatening, medics said. Hayrikyan is conscious but has not yet been operated on. A number of high-profile figures visited the politician in his ward, including Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan, Yerevan Police Chief Vladimir Gasparyan and Speaker of Parliament Hovik Abrahamyan. Abrahamyan told the press that the presidential elections may be delayed because of the attempted assassination.

Editorials: Election Reform Should Be a Top Priority for New Congress | The Nation

On two major occasions – during his election night speech and second inaugural address – President Obama has highlighted the need for election reform. “By the way, we have to fix that,” he said on November 6 about the long lines at the polls in states like Florida. Shortly thereafter, the cause of election reform seemed to fall by the wayside, with more pressing events, such as the Sandy Hook shooting and the fiscal cliff, dominating the news. But Obama returned to the issue on January 21, saying “our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.” Now the question is whether the Obama administration and Congress will actually do something to fix the shameful way US elections are run. There are smart proposals in Congress to address the issue. The most comprehensive among them is the Voter Empowerment Act, reintroduced today by Democratic leaders in the House, including civil rights icon John Lewis, and Kirsten Gillibrand in Senate.

National: ‘Perception’ Of Voter Fraud Poses Challenge For Elections Officials | Huffington Post

The perception that America’s electoral system is rife with voter fraud presents a challenge for elections officials, several secretaries of state said Thursday. “I think perception is a problem. You have to work aggressively to try to deal with perception irrespective of whether or not voter fraud occurs in any degree of significance,” Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller (D) said at a D.C. panel on modernizing the election process hosted by the Brennan Center on Thursday. Miller said his approach was to form an election integrity task force made up of a variety of local officials and law enforcement personnel. “What it has allowed us to do is say, look, this isn’t just one partisan official that’s burying these allegations under the rug, this is a multi-jurisdictional approach. If there were any evidence of it, we’d investigate it.”

Kentucky: Military voting proposal raises fraud concerns in Kentucky | The Courier-Journal

Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes’ proposal to make it easier for members of the military to vote has been hailed by legislators of both parties and even given the honorific designation as Senate Bill 1 for this year’s legislative session. But the proposal drew opposition Wednesday from groups that say a key provision allowing electronic voting from overseas makes votes vulnerable to fraud. “We agree with almost all of the recommendations,” Richard Beliles, chairman of Common Cause of Kentucky, said in a letter he delivered to Grimes’ office Wednesday. “However, we strongly recommend against allowing ballots to be cast online via email, efax, or through Internet portals.” The letter, also endorsed by an official of a California-based public interest group called Verified Voting Foundation, argues, “Online voting presents a direct threat to the integrity of elections in Kentucky because it is not sufficiently secure against fraud or malfunction. Cyber security experts with the Department of Homeland Security have publicly warned against Internet voting.”

Editorials: Finding a way out of Virginia redistricting trap | The Washington Post

Sen. Richard L. Saslaw got wind Thursday that House Democrats might force a vote on a bill to redraw Senate lines across the state, so he dashed from his chamber to make sure that didn’t happen. Republicans had rammed the measure through the Senate on Monday in a sneak attack that Saslaw had compared to Pearl Harbor. And ever since, the Senate Democratic leader from Fairfax has been quietly pressing House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) to do away with it, according to legislators and Capitol staffers. Even though they were in close contact, Saslaw was not sure where Howell stood on the bill, which the speaker could kill with a procedural move. And with good reason.

Israel: Election ends in dramatic deadlock | The Independent

Israelis delivered the narrowest of election victories to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, but did not endorse what most analysts had predicted would be a lurch to right, instead giving their backing to a broader, centrist coalition. With almost all the votes now counted, Israel’s two political blocs – the left and the right – were level on 60 seats in the 120-member Knesset, the closest Israeli election result in history. Bibi, as Mr Netanyahu is universally known in Israel, secured 31 seats, a huge disappointment for his Likud party, and its formal coalition partner Yisrael Beiteinu, which lost a quarter of the 42 seats they held in the last Knesset.

Editorials: Jordan’s year-long vote for regime or revolt | openDemocracy

Jordan’s upcoming parliamentary elections cannot avoid marking the increasing disconnect between palace politics and public discontent. Having weathered two years of increased political unrest and protracted economic crisis, Abdullah continues to project confidence with new elections touted as his hallmark reform. Yet, instead of ushering in a period of openness, the elections will perpetuate the status quo: a closed political space dominated by an absolute monarch. In the short term and long term, this environment magnifies the kingdom’s vulnerabilities and poses an increasingly untenable situation. As tensions heighten and the economy sinks, the elections may tilt the vote towards popular revolt rather than regime reform.

Editorials: Virginia GOP blocks path to easier voting | The Washington Post

More than two-thirds of the states now allow voters to cast ballots before Election Day and to vote absentee for any reason, including convenience. But Virginia Republicans are refusing to follow suit, despite the scandal of four-hour waits to vote at overwhelmed polling places last November. Perhaps GOP lawmakers in Richmond equate easier voting with unpalatable election results. If so, that’s a flimsy foundation on which to build a political future — and it may not even be true. This week, bills sponsored by Democrats to expand absentee voting, and allow early voting, failed in the face of almost uniform Republican opposition. GOP lawmakers rejected no-fault absentee voting, which would dispense with the need for an explanation. They also refused to add parents of young children to the list of those allowed to vote absentee, which includes people traveling for business or pleasure, military service members and those suffering from illness or disability.

Florida: Scott does about-face on early voting | News-Journal

Gov. Rick Scott – who slashed early voting from 14 to 8 days, then defended the decision in court – said Thursday he thinks returning to 14 early-voting days will help ease long lines and delays in counting ballots that once again made the rest of the country question whether Florida knows how to run an election. The Republican governor also wants more early-voting sites and thinks ballots should be shorter. The 2012 ballot was unusually long after the Republican-dominated Legislature crammed 11 proposed constitutional amendments onto it and didn’t stick to the 75-word ballot summary that citizens groups must adhere to when placing a question on the ballot by petition. “We need shorter ballots. We need more early voting days, which should include an option of the Sunday before Election Day. And, we need more early voting locations,” Scott said in his statement.

Editorials: The cost of South Carolina’s ‘Voter ID’ law | Rock Hill Herald

South Carolina apparently will recoup “tens of thousands of dollars” spent to sue the federal government over the state’s voter ID law. But before we break out the champagne and noisemakers, we need to note that the total bill came to $3.5 million, and for what? During the 2011 legislative session, the state passed a law that ostensibly required anyone hoping to vote to produce an official photo ID of some kind. In December 2011, the U.S. Attorney General’s Office blocked the law from going into effect, saying it would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of South Carolina voters – mostly minorities and elderly residents who don’t have photo IDs. S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson then sued the government at a cost of $3.5 million, most of which was used to pay for outside lawyers to argue the case. That was roughly three times Wilson’s original estimate of what the case would cost.

Wisconsin: Battle brews over same-day voter registration | Fox11

The debate over same-day voter registration surfaced again in the area Tuesday, even though the governor has backed off the idea. Government Accountability Board reports so far show a hefty cost to stop same-day voter registration. Its report released in December showed a $5 million initial cost and $1 million a year after that. Without same-day registration, supporters claim registration sites would need to be set up at other agencies.

Editorials: Voting Rights Act: What’s lost if the Supreme Court kills it? | Richard Hasen/Slate Magazine

Odds are, the Supreme Court will strike down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act after hearing a case from Alabama that will be argued next month. If the part of the law called Section 5 does indeed go down, minority voters in Southern states and elsewhere will lose a key bargaining chip. Section 5 has enabled them to beat back some attempts to make it harder for them to vote, and helped insure that the gains they’ve made in representation and redistricting are not rolled back. As another recent fight over South Carolina’s voter ID law shows, Section 5 still serves a vital role in an era in which partisan legislatures may manipulate election laws for political gain. Like many other states with Republican majority legislatures acting over the last few years, South Carolina adopted a tough photo identification law before the 2012 election. The state’s Republican legislature likely acted out of the belief that such laws would marginally depress Democratic turnout and help Republicans at the polls. Controversy over voter ID laws also motivates the Republican base to turn out to vote. (What voter ID laws don’t do is prevent a lot of real voter fraud, though that’s the rationale their supporters cite.)

Florida: Lawmakers file bills to reinstate early voting Sunday before Election Day | Bradenton Herald

In response to the long lines that plagued South Florida polls, two Miami lawmakers have filed legislation to reinstate early voting the Sunday before Election Day. The proposals by Republican Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla and Democratic Sen. Gwen Margolis follow a recommendation from a Miami-Dade advisory group examining what went wrong in the November presidential election. The group made additional suggestions Monday, including allowing voters to return absentee ballots in person at their polling places on Election Day, and setting a goal for how long the average voter should wait in line at the polls.

Iowa: Funding of Iowa’s voting probe is under scrutiny | Omaha.com

State and federal auditors said Thursday that they’re reviewing whether it is appropriate for Iowa elections officials to use federal money meant to improve elections to fund a two-year criminal investigation into potential voter fraud. The inspector general of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and Iowa’s state auditor said they’re gathering information from Secretary of State Matt Schultz about his agreement to hire an agent to investigate and prosecute illegal voters such as felons and noncitizens.

Virginia: McDonnell calls for automatic restoration of voting rights for felons | dailypress.com

Gov. Bob McDonnell used his annual State of the Commonwealth Wednesday to tout his transportation funding package, unveil additional education reform proposals, and call for the automatic restoration of voting rights for nonviolent felons. McDonnell said he supports proposed legislation for a constitutional amendment that would automatically restore civil rights, such as voting rights, to felons convicted of nonviolent offenses who have served their time. Currently applications for rights restoration must be made directly to the governor who then decides whether to restore rights on an individual basis.

Australia: Many challenges ahead of Australia’s eVote | SC Magazine

Electronic voting isn’t likely to replace voting at the ballot box anytime soon, according to identity and security experts, despite progress in NSW and Victoria and renewed interest in Queensland. A discussion paper [pdf] on electoral reform released last week by the Queensland Government asked whether electronically assisted voting (conducted online or by phone) should be introduced for all voters in the state. While Queensland Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie said the government must review rules and processes governing the electoral system to ensure they are “right for modern times”, experts say there is a lot standing in the way of electronic voting.

Editorials: GOP v. Voting Rights Act | Reuters

The Republican Party is in danger of reaping what it has sown. Much has been written about the GOP’s problem with minority voters.  Quite simply, the party has managed to alienate every nonwhite constituency in the nation. This is not an accidental or sudden phenomenon. Ever since Republicans chose almost 50 years ago to pursue a Southern strategy, to embrace and promote white voters’ opposition to civil rights, the party has been on a path toward self-segregation. Successive Republican administrations have pursued agendas that included retreating on civil rights enforcement and opposing government programs that increase minority opportunity. That steady progression culminated in Mitt Romney’s disastrous showing among African-American, Latino and Asian voters.

Editorials: Casting Votes | Jeffrey Toobin/The New Yorker

Here’s a safe prediction for 2013: few people will pine for the Presidential campaign of 2012. Even Barack Obama’s most ardent supporters acknowledge that his victory provided little of the euphoria of four years ago. Not many Republicans have longed to hear from Mitt Romney since his swift journey to political oblivion. Anyone miss the barrage of Super pac ads? (Those, alas, will probably be back in four years.) The pseudo-candidacy of Donald Trump? (Ditto.) But in last year’s spirited competition for the nadir of our political life the lowest blow may have been the Republicans’ systematic attempts to disenfranchise Democrats. To review: after the 2010 midterm elections, nineteen states passed laws that put up barriers to voting, including new photo-I.D. and proof-of-citizenship requirements, and restrictions on early and absentee voting. In most of those states, Republicans controlled the governorship and the legislature. The purported justification for the changes was to limit in-person voter fraud, but that claim was fraudulent itself, since voter fraud is essentially nonexistent. Mike Turzai, the Republican leader of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, revealed the true intent behind most of the laws last June, when, after the House passed such a measure, he boasted, in a rare moment of candor, “Voter I.D., which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania: Done.” Turzai’s prediction was wrong, but that doesn’t mean that the Pennsylvania law and others like it weren’t pernicious. Obama won in Florida, too, but a recent study by Theodore Allen, an associate professor at Ohio State University, found that, in central Florida alone, long lines, exacerbated by a law that reduced the number of days for early voting, discouraged about fifty thousand people, most of them Democrats, from casting ballots.

Editorials: Toothless election oversight | The Washington Post

It is to identify a federal agency in Washington more dysfunctional than the Federal Election Commission. Terms have expired for five of the six commissioners, and by next spring, the entire commission will be a lame duck if nothing is done. The number of enforcement actions — at the core of the FEC’s mission — has fallen to an all-time low. Created in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the commission now behaves as an immobilized observer while campaigns are swamped with a tidal wave of hidden cash. At the heart of the trouble is the way the commission was structured when it was established in 1974, with three members from each party. To approve any action requires four votes. Political deadlock has paralyzed the commission in the past few years, leading to split votes, three-to-three, that result in no action on enforcement, auditing or advisory matters. The commission’s three Republicans have repeatedly used this tactic to undermine election laws that they oppose on ideological grounds. According to a Dec. 12 letter sent to President Obama by nine groups advocating campaign finance reform, official actions by the FEC in 2012 amount to only one-tenth the number pursued annually before 2008.

Iowa: Criticisms of proposed voter fraud rules aired at hearing | The Des Moines Register

Rules proposed by Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz to guide a new process for verifying voter eligibility weathered nearly two hours of near-universal criticism during a public hearing on Thursday. More than 40 people weighed in, variously accusing Schultz, the state-level elections administrator, of overreaching his authority, wasting state dollars pursuing non-existent voter fraud and intimidating immigrants who have a legal right to vote. The rules concern a months-long effort by Schultz, a Republican, to gain access to a federal immigration database to check the citizenship status of thousands of registered voters in Iowa that his office has tagged as potentially ineligible to vote.

Florida: Republicans rethinking election law | TBO.com

In the wake of Florida’s Nov. 6 election fiasco, Republican state legislators and Gov. Rick Scott acknowledge the massive election reform law they passed amid partisan controversy two years ago needs to be revised. Scott, who signed the new rules into law and initially defended the conduct of the Nov. 6 voting, has since said Floridians “are frustrated” and the state needs “bipartisan legislation … to restore confidence in our elections.” Republican legislative leaders who solidly backed the election reform bill two years ago now say it needs revisiting. “The only 10 laws that were divinely inspired and could never need any amendment came down from the mountain with Moses,” said state Senate President Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican.

Editorials: Czech Voters to Vote for President for First Time since Revolution | Der Spiegel

For the first time since the Velvet Revolution, citizens in the Czech Republic will have the opportunity to vote directly for their head of state in two weeks. Former Prime Minister Milos Zeman is in the pole position. His tough-talking style appeals to Czechs who are tired of back room deals and a scandal-plagued leadership. Miloš Zeman has set up his campaign headquarters close to his ultimate goal: His headquarters are in an historic building in the old town, close to Prague Castle, which also serves as the Czech Republic’s presidential palace. The candidate lights one cigarette after another, now and then pouring himself a bit more Bohemian white wine from a large carafe. As the smoke wafts around him, Zeman declares, “I want to be president.”