National: ‘Ballot Selfies’ Clash With The Sanctity Of Secret Polling | NPR

From Pope Francis and President Obama to the kid down the block, we have, for better or worse, become a world full of selfie-takers. But as ubiquitous as they are, there are some places where selfies remain controversial — like the voting booth. The legal battle rages over so-called “ballot selfies” in the state that holds the first presidential primary. This may be a fight of the digital age, but according to New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, it involves a very old American ideal — the sanctity of the secret ballot. “If somebody wants to go out and say that they voted for this person or that person they can do it. They can do it, but that ballot is sacred,” he says. Gardner has been the state’s top election official since 1976. To say he views ballot selfies with suspicion would be an understatement. He backed a change in law last year that made New Hampshire the first state to ban them explicitly.

Kentucky: Judge throws out election results in 2014 Magoffin judge-executive race | Lexington Herald-Leader

There were so many violations of election rules in last November’s election for Magoffin County judge-executive that the results must be thrown out, a judge has ruled. Circuit Judge John David Preston declared the office vacant, creating a question about Judge-Executive Charles “Doc” Hardin’s status. Hardin, a Democrat seeking a third consecutive term, defeated Republican challenger John P. Montgomery by 28 votes in the disputed election, 3,281 to 3,253. On Saturday, one of Hardin’s attorneys, James L. Deckard, said Hardin is disappointed with the ruling and will appeal. In Preston’s decision, he cited a raft of improprieties, including a lack of required information on applications for absentee ballots; precinct officers failing to document how they identified voters and improperly helping people vote; and residents casting early ballots at the county clerk’s office when there was no Republican election commissioner present as required.

New Hampshire: Is A Ban On ‘Ballot Selfies’ Overkill? | NPR

It started out as a seemingly harmless act: voters posting photos of their completed ballots on the Internet. One wrote in his deceased dog’s name for senator because he didn’t like any of the candidates, then shared his message of frustration on Facebook. A state legislator, and another a candidate for the state House, also publicly published photos of their ballots. Now they’re under investigation by the New Hampshire attorney general’s office. The reason? It turns out the act of photographing or sharing a marked ballot is illegal under state law — and in 43 other states.

New Hampshire: Lawsuit Challenges New Hampshire Ban on “Ballot Selfies” | State of Elections

In a recent lawsuit, the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union challenged a law that prohibits the posting of photos of marked ballots on social media. TheNHCLU states, “there is no more potent way to communicate one’s support for a candidate than to voluntarily display a photograph of one’s marked ballot depicting one’s vote for that candidate.” NH RSA 659:35(I) bans a person from displaying a photograph of a market ballot, including on the internet through social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. A willful violation of this statute may be punishable by a fine up to $1,000. House Bill 366, which took effect September 1, 2014, was meant to update a century-old law against vote rigging.  According to Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan, the original law dates back to the 1880s when vote-buying was rampant and votes were bought with money, liquor, and other enticements. According to Scanlan, digital technology is opening the door again for vote buying and voter coercion, and HB 366 attempts to ensure that door remains shut.

Taiwan: Smartphones Vs. Politicians In Taiwan Vote Buying Game: See Who’s Ahead | Forbes

A guy running for head of a borough in Taipei gave me a sack of napkins even though I’m a foreigner without voting rights. Had I attended his rally in the park that day, I could have scored a free minced pork bun. Another candidate in the neighborhood gave away wooden back scratchers. These people are frugal. In the southern city Tainan, a candidate was passing out women’s cosmetic kits. News reports cite banquets, discounted air tickets and cash handouts. The potential booty is boundless with 19,762 people running for borough heads, city councils, mayoral posts and their county-level equivalents in most of Taiwan. It’s expected to grow next week in the final approach to elections Nov. 29. Vote-buying has long fit as snugly into Taiwan’s colorful, volatile politics as campaign banners and rallies. The China-friendly Nationalists and their opponents, who are less keen on tie-ups with old foe Beijing, need whatever they can get to win the island’s notoriously close elections.

Bulgaria: Interior Ministry has ‘information’ on politicians involved in vote-buying | The Sofia Globe

Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry has information about certain politicians involved in vote-buying ahead of the country’s early parliamentary elections on October 5, but lacks sufficient evidence to make statements about it, according to caretaker Interior Minister Yordan Bakalov. Speaking to public broadcaster Bulgarian National Radio on October 1, Bakalov said that this stage the ministry had no concerns about security on election day but said that in terms of the fight against vote-buying “things are little more complex”. He said that the ministry had to work on evidence that could put those involved in vote-buying in court, or at least prevent it happening.

California: Can paying people to vote increase voter turnout? L.A.’s looking into it and the answer is yes. | The Washington Post

Just 23.3 percent of Los Angeles voters cast ballots in last year’s mayoral election, the lowest figures in 100 years. Turnout was “embarrassingly down,” Herb Wesson, the city’s council president said, and he’s looking at how to change that. “Someone brought up what would it be like if we had some sort of incentive program,” Wesson said. “It’s just an idea.” The Los Angeles Ethics Commission voted Thursday for Wesson to look into various ways to increase turnout, including cash incentives like a lottery. The idea is just in the “incubation process,” Wesson said, with nothing approaching even an actual proposal, but there’s data to suggest paying people to vote increases turnout. A study conducted in 2010 in Lancaster, Calif., in northern Los Angeles County, by Fordham University professor Costas Panagopoulos found nominal incentives like a few bucks don’t do much to increase turnout, but a few more dollars is enough of an incentive to convince a larger percentage of people to vote.

Mississippi: McDaniel lawyer: Expect runoff challenge within 10 days | Clarion-Ledger

Lawyers for Chris McDaniel say they expect to file a challenge of McDaniel’s June 24 GOP runoff loss to incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran within the next 10 days. Attorney Mitch Tyner said that despite “roadblocks” to access of voting records that have required lawsuits against county circuit clerks, the campaign has uncovered widespread illegal voting. He said it’s already enough to support a legal challenge of the Republican runoff, but the campaign is still gathering evidence and will not yet provide specifics. As has become the paradigm for the nasty, bitter battle between the six-term incumbent Republican and the tea party challenger, the Cochran campaign responded with a news conference shortly after the Wednesday McDaniel camp news conference.  “Almost a month ago, Mississippians chose their Republican nominee,” said Cochran adviser Austin Barbour. “… They have still not presented one shred of evidence. … Sadly, with their lack of evidence, they fill that gap with rhetoric, grandstanding and fundraising appeals.”

Mississippi: Challenger offers bounty for vote fraud evidence | USA Today

Challenger Chris McDaniel is offering $1,000 rewards for voter fraud evidence as he moves to overturn results of the June 24 Republican Senate primary he lost to incumbent Thad Cochran. McDaniel is asking supporters for donations to fund up to 15 such bounties for evidence that leads to arrests and convictions and for help financing his challenge of the vote. He claims Cochran and others stole the primary through vote buying and other skullduggery. The Cochran campaign says the claims are baseless.

Mississippi: Cochran campaign denies vote-buying reports | Clarion-Ledger

The U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran campaign is denying reports from a conservative blogger that it was trying to buy votes in Lauderdale County. Blogger Charles C. Johnson of GotNews.com is reporting that Stevie Fielder says the Cochran campaign told him to offer black voters in the Meridian area $15 each to vote for Cochran in the June 24 GOP primary runoff against Chris McDaniel. Cochran campaign spokesman Jordan Russell called the accusations of illegal vote buying “baseless and false. It comes from a blogger who in the last 24 hours has accused a Mississippi public official of being responsible for an individual’s death and had to retract other outlandish accusations regarding another Mississippi elected official,” Russell said. “The author of this article admits he paid his source for the story.” The report comes as McDaniel continues to examine records from the June 24 runoff which he narrowly lost and consider a challenge of the results.

Kentucky: Vote-buying complaints made in 18 counties | Lexington Herald-Reader

Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes predicted early this week that voter turnout for Tuesday’s primary election would be less than 30 percent. She was right: Statewide voter turnout was about 26 percent among a record number of registered voters at 3,105,349. … By 7 p.m., Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway’s office reported 205 calls to the Election Fraud Hotline, including almost 50 involving vote buying or selling, or bribery. The vote-buying complaints were from 18 counties, mostly in Eastern Kentucky. There were multiple allegations involving vote-buying from Bell, Breathitt, Clay and Pike counties.Breathitt County had the most calls to the hotline, 16 in all, including eight involving vote buying or selling, two calls about disruptions at polls, and one complaint about electioneering within 300 feet of the polls. The Attorney General investigates and prosecutes election-law violations and conducts random post-election audits in six counties 30 days after the election.

India: Votes for Sale: India’s Election Problem | Wall Street Journal

The big question for some voters as India’s marathon national election reaches its final stages isn’t who will win, it is how much candidates will dole out in cash, alcohol and other goodies to bag their support. Residents and election officials alike say vote-buying has long been a problem in the world’s largest democracy, even though it is against the law. Early reports suggest it may be widespread again in the current round, which began April 7 and ends Monday. Results are expected four days later. In the northern state of Punjab, for instance, election-monitoring teams have seized over 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of heroin, 50 kilograms of opium and thousands of liters of illicit alcohol that they believe may have been meant for buying votes. In the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, police are investigating possible criminal charges against the wife of a candidate who was caught carrying $75,000 in cash in a computer bag while traveling on a public bus to her husband’s constituency. The woman denied any wrongdoing.

India: Voters lured by cash handouts, drugs, bootleg liquor | Reuters

Indian election officials have seized a record $36 million (21.52 million pounds) dollars of cash concealed in cars, private planes and even ambulances that they say was destined to buy off voters and pay for expenses over and above the spending limit. Opinion polls show the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies coming to power thanks to the popularity of Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi and widespread disgust with the Congress party, whose last years in power have been dogged by corruption scandals and a sharp economic slowdown. Despite the dramatic political change it could bring, the 2014 election would appear to be the same grubby game of cash-for-votes that has marred previous ballots in the world’s largest democracy, only this time on a far bigger scale. Cash seized in the three weeks since the staggered election was announced has already surpassed the 1.9 billion rupees for the whole of the 2009 ballot period, the commission said. Voting in this year’s election began on April 7 and winds up on May 12.

Kentucky: Ex-judge, three others sentenced in vote fraud | The Courier-Journal

A former judge and three other officials in Eastern Kentucky have been sentenced to time served after pleading guilty to charges alleging widespread vote fraud. A federal judge said during a sentencing hearing Tuesday that three of the defendants — former Clay County Circuit Judge R. Cletus Maricle, former school superintendent Doug Adams and former election officer William Stivers — must serve 100 days of home incarceration. The Lexington Herald-Leader reports they were also place on supervised release for two years, along with the fourth defendant, former county clerk Freddy W. Thompson.

Indonesia: Indonesia wrestles with election logistics | Financial Times

Fears about vote buying and poll manipulation are widespread as Indonesia prepares to hold one of the world’s most complicated elections at a crucial juncture for the third-biggest democracy after India and the US. But Ronny Irawan, a local election official, is more concerned about the weather forecast. More than 40 per cent of the 1,130 polling stations in his district of Ketapang, on the island of Kalimantan, are in remote areas that can only be reached by jungle rivers and crumbling roads. “The weather will determine the smoothness of the logistics process because heavy rain might prevent our boats from navigating the rivers but low tide could strand our craft if it is too dry,” he says. Mr Irawan’s travails are a snapshot of the immense logistical challenge that infrastructure-poor Indonesia faces to organise parliamentary and presidential elections in the world’s biggest archipelago nation, with 186m voters spread across thousands of islands that stretch for 3,000 miles from east to west.

Maldives: Poll marred by Supreme Court verdict, vote buying: monitors | Xinhua

Election monitors observing Maldives parliamentary polls over the weekend have pointed to a ” violation of rules” by the Supreme Court, and noted voting was undermined by vote buying, reports released on Tuesday said. The Maldives parliamentary election was preceded by a controversial Supreme Court verdict that passed prison sentences on the Election Commission chief and his deputy. The verdict also removed them from their positions leaving a virtually headless Elections Commission to head the vote. The European Union (EU) observers and the Commonwealth Observer Group (COG) have now released their interim reports.

Colombia: Congressional elections saw ‘unprecedented voter fraud and vote buying’: Electoral Observers | Colombia Reports

Colombia’s Sunday congressional elections saw an unprecedented amount of voter fraud and vote buying, though violent pressure on voters from armed illegal groups largely abated, according to electoral observers. As the dust cleared approaching midweek after Colombia’s congressional elections, candidates were crying fraud and corruption. Former President and senator elect Alvaro Uribe called the Sunday’s elections “illegitimate” in an interview with Blu Radio; defeated presidential primary candidate Camilo Romero insisted on Twitter that ballots were missing across the country; and presidential candidate Aida Avella told Colombia Reports that “money,” not votes, guaranteed candidates congressional seats this past weekend. MOE spokesperson Fabian Hernandez told Colombia Reports subsequently that “we have never received this many complaints about election fraud” since the organization’s foundation in 2007.

Colombia: Buying votes with cash, beer and bricks in Colombia’s upcoming parliamentary elections? | Reuters

In Colombia, it’s easy to tell when election season is in full swing. Potholes are suddenly filled with cement, stretches of roads are paved and local officials rush to inaugurate often unfinished public buildings. It’s one way to show that public funds have been well spent under their watch as a way of helping the political party they represent to do well at the polls. Election campaign posters and pamphlets stuffed in postboxes say “no to corruption” and “public funds are sacred”. Yet election-rigging scandals, allegations of election fraud and vote-buying are an all too common feature of the political landscape in Colombia. In Colombia’s parliamentary, local and presidential elections over the decades, local media have reported ineligible voters casting ballots, including some using fake or stolen identity cards, and tampered electoral registers that include the names of dead citizens or have names listed twice.

Texas: Vote-Buying Case Casts Glare on Tradition of Election Day Goads | New York Times

In this Rio Grande Valley town of trailer parks and weedy lots eight miles from the Mexico border, people call them runners or politiqueras — the campaign workers who use their network of relatives and friends to deliver votes for their candidates. They travel around town with binders stuffed with the names and addresses of registered voters, driving residents to and from the polls and urging those they bump into at the grocery store to support their candidates. Despite rumors that some politiqueras went over the line in encouraging voters, the tradition continued in Donna and other border towns and cities, and campaigns for nearly every local office or seat have paid politiqueras to turn out the vote in contested races. But in recent weeks, the suicide of the school board president here and accusations of vote buying against three politiqueras have rocked the system. The charges may threaten the existence of politiqueras in Donna, an impoverished community of 16,000, where politics and jobs are inseparable. The school system is the largest employer, and city government is the second largest; local politics rivals high school football as a favored pastime.

Ukraine: Canadian election monitors question Ukraine irregularities as Kiev inks $15B deal with Russia | iPolitics

Canadian election observers sent to Ukraine to monitor repeat elections in five ridings that saw election fraud in 2012 have found irregularities, the observer team said, putting in doubt the legitimacy of the ruling party’s victory in those ridings. President Viktor Yanukovich’s Party of Regions won four of the five open seats in Sunday’s election despite the vote taking place amid the biggest anti-government protests the country has seen since 2004. The election findings also came as Yanukovich signed a $15-billion loan deal with Russia, a move that protesters had been mobilizing against for weeks. The elections in the ridings — which were so marred by election misconduct in 2012 the national election commission could not even compile results — were again beset with irregularities, including vote buying, Canadem, the election observer group, said in a release Monday on their preliminary findings. The group said it was “unable” to determine whether the elections “met international democratic standards.”

Ukraine: Vote buying a major problem at Dec. 15 by-elections | Kyiv Post

One vote at Ukraine’s by-election in five parliamentary single-mandate districts on Dec. 15 goes for Hr 400. Sometimes some food is thrown in. But the payment, cunningly, comes in two installments. The first half is paid when the person agrees to vote for the right candidate, and the other half is given after the voter presents photographic proof of the vote as they exit the polling station, Ukrainian observers have found. Ukraine is holding five by-elections to parliament today in those constituencies where fraud and manipulations were so high a year ago that the results could not be established. Those constituencies are located in Cherkasy, Kaniv, Pervomaisk, Obuhiv and in Kyiv. People in those voting districts are casting their votes in 649 polling stations. Political expert and pollster Iryna Bekeshkina says that vote buying cannot seriously influence the outcome of the election when there is a high turnout, but can effect the result in smaller towns and villages that get little attention. “And that’s exactly the case with today’s by-elections. People are concentrated on rallies and I expect no high turnout,” she said.

Honduras: Presidential election demands an investigation | Al Jazeera

Honduras’ contested results from its Nov. 24 election threaten to unleash civil unrest and repression that could further destabilize the country. Amid widespread allegations of fraud, vote buying and voting irregularities, the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) — Honduras’ electoral authority — announced on Nov. 26 that conservative National Party candidate Juan Orlando Hernandez had an irreversible lead. Both Hernandez and left-leaning LIBRE party candidate Xiomara Castro claimed victory on election night. Castro based her claim on LIBRE’s exit polls that showed a substantial lead. Her husband and former president Mel Zelaya – who was ousted in a 2009 coup – also contested the results, noting that the vote tally from 20 percent of the polling stations announced by the TSE contradicted the actual vote count from polling stations. Anti-Corruption party candidate Salvador Nasralla has also impugned the accuracy of the vote counting process. In the cloud of election violence and suspicions, outside pressure from the international community, especially the United States, is critical to ensure that democracy prevails in Honduras and to protect those vulnerable to state sponsored repression. However, the signals from the U.S. so far suggests that it is pleased with the results, even if they are tainted by fraud and intimidation.

Canada: Waterloo rejects online voting | The Record

City council voted unanimously Monday not to use online voting in next year’s municipal election. Council heard from the community in presentations and correspondence on the issue. Urs Hengartner, associate professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, studies secure voting systems. In a letter to council, he expressed concern about the security of an online voting system. “Internet voting introduces even more risks, such as computer viruses, denial-of-service attacks, or vote buying or selling,” he said. “On the other hand, the claimed advantage of internet voting, higher voter turnout, still needs to be proven in practice, and results so far have been mixed.”

Afghanistan: Votes sell for about $5 in Afghanistan as presidential race begins | Thomson Reuters

Sayed Gul walked into a small mud brick room in eastern Afghanistan, a bundle wrapped in a shawl on his back. With a flick, he plonked the package onto a threadbare carpet and hundreds of voter cards spilled out. “How many do you want to buy?” he asked with a grin. Like many others, Gul left a routine job – in his case, repairing cars in Marco, a small town in the east – to join a thriving industry selling the outcome of next year’s presidential elections. Gul, who had a long, black beard and was dressed in the traditional loose salwar kameez, said he was able to buy voter cards for 200 Pakistani rupees ($1.89) each from villagers and sell them on for 500 rupees ($4.73) to campaign managers, who can use them in connivance with poll officials to cast seemingly legitimate votes. From each card, Gul said, he made enough money to pay for a hearty meal like kebabs with rice, and maybe even a soda.

Alabama: Secret Society Dips Toe in City Politics, Prompting Lawsuit | New York Times

The college students began arriving a little before lunch at Calvary Baptist Church, far more than usual for a local election. The poll workers knew immediately: the Machine was here. The school year at the University of Alabama has barely gotten started, and already the campus has found itself in a charged self-examination on issues of politics, power and race, with the exposure of tenacious segregation among fraternities and sororities drawing national attention. But the turmoil began some weeks earlier. It raised the specter of the Machine, a secret society representing a league of select and almost exclusively white fraternities and sororities, which has been around for a century or more. Once a breeding ground for state political leaders, the Machine (it has long been known by that nickname) today maintains a solid hold on student government through an effective, and critics say coercive, brand of old-fashioned organization politics. But the Machine’s apparent involvement in an August school board election, a rare appearance in municipal politics, has prompted a lawsuit, accusations of voter fraud and an outcry that in many ways primed the campus for the larger storm over inclusion and tradition that is now taking place.

Russia: Putin foe Navalny to challenge Moscow election defeat in court | Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent opponent, Alexei Navalny, said on Wednesday he would file hundreds of legal challenges to Moscow mayoral election results he says were rigged to give a Kremlin ally victory. Sergei Sobyanin, who was appointed mayor by the Kremlin in 2010 but called an early election to increase his legitimacy, won the vote on Sunday with 51.3 percent – enough to avoid a second-round run-off against Navalny, who had 27.3 percent. Navalny, an anti-corruption blogger who helped lead street protests against Putin in the past two years, has refused to accept the results and has cited election observers whose count put Sobyanin below the 50 percent threshold. “Everybody’s asking: Where are the lawsuits? If you’re unhappy with the results and believe there was fraud, why aren’t you complaining?” Navalny wrote on his blog. “I answer: We are preparing well-grounded legal complaints. It takes time.”

Kentucky: U.S. appeals court overturns convictions in Kentucky vote fraud case | The Courier-Journal

Eight people from southeastern Kentucky were granted new trials Wednesday after a federal appeals court overturned their convictions in what prosecutors described as a massive vote buying scheme that stretched over three elections. The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves allowed jurors to hear some evidence that should not have been admitted and erred in his handling of transcripts of secret tape recordings that an informant made during the FBI investigation. The unanimous ruling means former Clay County Circuit Judge R. Cletus Maricle, former school superintendent Doug Adams and six other defendants will get a second chance to contest the allegations stemming from the 2002, 2004 and 2006 elections.

Paraguay: OAS denounces violations in Paraguay’s presidential elections | Xinhua

Electoral violations had been detected in Paraguay’s presidential elections that put millionaire businessman Horacio Cartes in power, the Organization of American States (OAS) said Monday. Oscar Arias, head of a mission sent by the OAS to observe the presidential elections, told a press conference that members of his delegation witnessed “vote buying” at some polling stations and the “roundup” of indigenous groups before they were taken to the polls. Both represented “serious electoral violations,” said Arias, a former Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Paraguay: Horacio Cartes Wins Paraguay’s Presidential Election | New York Times

Horacio Cartes, a Paraguayan tobacco magnate, faced various challenges during his presidential bid. He was pressed to explain why antinarcotics police officers apprehended a plane carrying cocaine and marijuana on his ranch in 2000; why he went to prison in 1989 on currency fraud charges; and why he had never even voted in past general elections. Still, voters across the country seemed ready to give Mr. Cartes the benefit of the doubt, handing him a solid victory in Paraguay’s presidential election on Sunday. He took 46 percent of the vote against 37 percent for his main opponent, Efraín Alegre of the ruling Liberal Party, with about 80 percent of the voting stations reporting. Electoral authorities declared Mr. Cartes the winner.

Trinidad and Tobago: Cellphone plot to steal election | Trinidad Express

The Tobago Council of the People’s National Movement (PNM) has received reports that a State security agency acquired and shipped 10,000 cellphones to Tobago in the past week, in a bid to steal Monday’s Tobago House of Assembly (THA) election. Council officials have therefore met with the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) to voice its concerns over the reports which it believes to be credible. Council PRO Dr Denise Tsoiafatt Angus said the EBC was advised of the report that the cellphones were intended for use in a plot to steal the THA election.