Gabon: Opposition leader challenges vote as mediation mission postponed | Reuters

Gabon’s opposition leader lodged a constitutional court challenge on Thursday against a presidential election he narrowly lost, hoping to overturn a result whose validity has been questioned at home and abroad. Former foreign minister Jean Ping lost the Aug. 27 election to President Ali Bongo by fewer than 6,000 votes, an outcome that sparked days of riots in which at least six people were killed. Ping’s spokesman said in a statement he would seek a recount in the province of Haut-Ogooue, a stronghold of the Bongo family, who have ruled the central African oil-producing nation of 1.8 million for nearly half a century.

Editorials: The Disputed Vote in Gabon | The New York Times

For nearly 42 years, Omar Bongo ruled Gabon, presiding over a system of patronage that funneled much of the country’s oil wealth to his family, his clan and his cronies, while leaving most Gabonese short of housing, education, hospitals and hope. When Mr. Bongo died in 2009, his son, Ali Bongo Ondimba, succeeded him, winning an election marred by allegations of fraud and followed by violence. Many Gabonese hoped a new presidential election held on Aug. 27 would be different. That hope has been dashed. After election results last Wednesday gave Mr. Bongo a slim victory over his main challenger, Jean Ping, violence erupted in Libreville, the capital. Mr. Bongo responded by sending in the army and temporarily suspending the internet. At least six people died and more than 1,000 were arrested.

Gabon: EU Observers Note Anomaly in Gabon Voter Turnout Results | Associated Press

The European Union observation mission in Gabon said Tuesday it noted an anomaly in voting results from President Ali Bongo Ondimba’s stronghold province that pushed him over the edge to win re-election by a slim margin. Election commission results showed Mr. Bongo beat opposition contender Jean Ping in Gabon’s Aug. 27 presidential vote by 1.57 percentage points. Clashes quickly broke out in the Central African country after the results were announced last week, with opposition supporters claiming fraud and burning buildings and looting stores. Mr. Ping on Friday declared himself the rightful winner of the vote.

Gabon: President Balks at EU Suggestion of Election Recount | VoA News

Gabonese President Ali Bongo, who has been accused by opposition politicians of voter fraud, resisted calls Wednesday for a recount of votes cast in the country’s presidential election, saying he has no power to order one. European Union observers in Gabon have said there was an “obvious anomaly” in election results that showed Bongo narrowly defeating challenger Jean Ping. The EU observer mission to Gabon is questioning results from Upper Ogooue province, a Bongo stronghold where the incumbent president officially won 95 percent of the votes amid 99 percent voter turnout. The opposition has said the vote tallies in the province were vastly inflated. In a statement Tuesday, the EU mission noted that turnout was significantly lower in Gabon’s eight other provinces, averaging just 48 percent nationwide. “An analysis of the number of non-voters and blank and spoiled ballots reveals an obvious anomaly in the final results of Upper Ogooue,” it said. “…the integrity of the provisional results in this province is consequently compromised.”

Gabon: Chad’s president set to mediate in disputed Gabon election | The Guardian

An African strongman accused of rigging elections in his own country is preparing to mediate between the two sides contesting the result of last week’s poll in Gabon. Chad’s president, Idriss Déby, who has ruled his country for 26 years, is expected to lead an African Union delegation that is preparing to go to Libreville to try to resolve the crisis. Both sides claimed victory, and post-election clashes between protesters and Gabon’s security forces have left up to 100 people dead, according to the opposition. Hundreds of people been have arrested, the national parliament was torched and the opposition headquarters stormed.

Gabon: Tension eases in Gabon capital after riots over disputed election | Reuters

Tension eased in Gabon’s capital on Saturday after days of deadly rioting triggered by an announcement that President Ali Bongo narrowly won re-election in a vote the opposition said was stolen. More than 1,000 others were arrested in the protests that began on Wednesday and the opposition, led by Jean Ping who claims he is now president, said five people also died. Shops began to re-open on Saturday and some traffic returned to the streets as the government sought to restore stability with mass arrests and a heavy security presence. At the same time some impoverished residents of Libreville who need to buy food every day said they hoped for a return to normality given the hardship caused by closed shops and markets. “The last few days were really difficult for us. The fact that traffic has started to move is very important … because our families have really suffered,” said Alex Ndong, 42, a mechanic who lives in the Lalala suburb of south Libreville. “I hope everything goes back to normal as quickly as possible,” he said.

Gabon: Violence After Gabon Elections Leaves One Dead | The New York Times

Postelection violence in Gabon left one person dead on Thursday after officials declared the incumbent president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, the winner in a race that the opposition said had been marked by fraud. A civilian, who was not identified, died as security forces encircled the party headquarters of the opposition candidate, Jean Ping, early Thursday after hundreds of people had taken to the streets of the capital, Libreville. The protesters had set fires and insisted that Mr. Bongo had stolen the vote to claim a second term in office. Violence surged almost immediately after the release of election results Wednesday night that said Mr. Bongo, whose family has held the presidency since the late 1960s, had narrowly edged out Mr. Ping in voting on Saturday. The military was sent in to quell the demonstrations, aiming tear gas at protesters who were demanding a recount.

China: Hong Kong election ballot papers at risk of tampering in the homes of officers | South China Morning Post

Critics have urged the government to improve the handling of ballot papers after it emerged that the documents were being stored in the homes of polling station officers prior to the election. News agency FactWire reported on Thursday that, according to a handbook issued by the Registration and Electoral Office, officers were allowed to take ballot papers back to their homes a week before the Legislative Council election on Sunday. The news report said the ballot papers were sealed in plastic bags after being counted and would only be opened on the day of the election.

Gabon: Tension mounts as Gabon awaits results of presidential vote | Associated Press

Security forces fanned out across Gabon’s capital and residents stockpiled food on Tuesday as the central African country awaited results of a hotly contested presidential election. The most prominent opposition candidate, Jean Ping, was looking to defeat incumbent President Ali Bongo Ondimba and topple a family dynasty that stretches back to the 1960s. Bongo, 57, came to power after the death of his father, Omar Bongo, who ruled Gabon for more than 40 years. Ping, 73, has spent the three days since Saturday’s vote predicting victory and calling on Bongo to step down. Bongo’s camp, meanwhile, has said the president is sure to win.

Gabon: Presidential poll ‘lacked transparency’: EU observers | AFP

Gabon’s presidential election “lacked transparency”, the head of the 73-strong EU electoral monitoring team in the country said on Monday, a day before the official results were due out. Speaking to reporters in the capital Libreville, Bulgarian MEP Mariya Gabriel said Saturday’s vote in the oil-rich Central African country, was “managed in a way that lacked transparency.” “The mission condemns the lack of transparency in the electoral bodies which failed to make essential information available to the campaigns, like the electoral roll or a list of polling stations,” she said. The EU observers said that a week before the election only half of voters had received their ballot cards. The remarks came after a bitterly disputed election in which both sides accused the other of electoral fraud. Official results will not be published until Tuesday, and there are fears that the tensions may erupt into a repeat of the violence seen after the disputed 2009 election.

Gabon: Both sides in Gabon presidential election claim victory | The Guardian

Supporters of Gabon’s president and his chief rival have both said they expect to win an election that has proved to be the most serious challenge yet to the Bongo family’s half-century rule. The rival, Jean Ping, 73, traded accusations of fraud that raised the prospect of increased tension in the wake of an uncharacteristically bitter campaign. Ping distributed figures showing him easily beating incumbent Ali Bongo Ondimba in Saturday’s vote. “The general trends indicate we are the winner of this important presidential election,” Ping told reporters and a large crowd of cheering supporters gathered at his campaign headquarters in the capital, Libreville. “Despite numerous irregularities … you have managed to thwart this regime’s congenital traps of fraud.”

Russia: Putin’s Election Grip Is So Tight Even His Nemesis Khodorkovsky Can Take Part | Bloomberg

The last time Vladimir Putin’s political party won national elections, ballot-stuffing allegations sparked the biggest protests of his rule. Five years on, Putin appears to be so confident in his hold on power that even his most dogged adversary is welcome to challenge United Russia in next month’s parliamentary polls — Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the London-based former oil billionaire who was charged with murder in absentia in December. Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison, is back doing what he says got him jailed in the first place: supporting Putin’s opponents. All but one of the 19 candidates he’s grooming have been accepted by authorities overseeing the vote. Since being freed in 2013, Khodorkovsky has vowed to use what’s left of his fortune to hasten the end of the Putin era, though he admits the Kremlin’s grip on the electoral process is so strong it has nothing to fear, for now.

Russia: Parliamentary elections being rigged, says Russian opposition | Reuters

Russian opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov said on Thursday parliamentary elections next month were being rigged against his party, meaning it would have to win up to three times more votes than legally necessary to get into parliament. Starved of air time, vilified by Kremlin-backed media, and physically attacked on the stump, Kasyanov and his allies in the People’s Freedom party or PARNAS face an uphill struggle to break into the 450-seat lower house of parliament on Sept. 18. Despite an economic crisis, the main pro-Kremlin United Russia party is expected to comfortably win the elections, which are seen as a dry run for Vladimir Putin’s presidential re-election campaign in 2018. The crisis means United Russia’s margin of victory may be slimmer than recent years however, giving PARNAS, which currently has no seats in parliament, a glimmer of hope.

Russia: Duma election: What to expect | New Eastern Europe

Over the past few years, the Russian authorities have been gradually rolling out a strategy for managing the upcoming State Duma election. What are the elements of this strategy, and will it help the Kremlin achieve its objectives? Like most modern authoritarian regimes which organise elections, the regime in Russia aspires to be viewed as broadly legitimate while keeping political pluralism highly constrained. These two objectives, evidently, are difficult to reconcile. In order to increase legitimacy, the regime allows more electoral competition, but at the same time it has an incentive to minimise competition, to which end it resorts to heavy-handed tactics including fraud, undermining its legitimacy. Electoral authoritarian regimes such as Russia’s employ idiosyncratic strategies to balance the dual objectives of maintaining legitimacy and limiting competition. They thereby face inevitable trade-offs in crafting their strategies and must regularly adapt them to account for changing circumstances. In the previous Duma election of 2011, the authorities sought to bank on the perceived strength of the ruling United Russia party and on the administrative capacity of the authorities (at different levels) to deliver required election results. This strategy had several flaws. Fewer people than anticipated were ready to vote for United Russia. Analyses of the voting results show that in many areas where no major election fraud was committed, only a quarter to a third of votes went to the ruling party. In order to get a (slight) majority of seats in the Duma, major election fraud was necessary. It was met by significant upheaval, mainly in the form of a wave of popular protests that drew the biggest crowds in Russia since the early 1990s. The fallout from the 2011 election was viewed in Russian political circles as a serious crisis.

Zambia: President Lungu re-elected in disputed vote | Reuters

Zambian President Edgar Lungu narrowly won re-election on Monday in a vote his main rival said was rigged. Hakainde Hichilema’s United Party for National Development (UPND) said it would appeal the result at the Constitutional Court, accusing election officials of fraud during the count which began after voting ended on Thursday. Lungu faced a tough challenge from Hichilema in a campaign to rule over Africa’s second-largest copper producer which has suffered an economic slump due to depressed commodity prices. Lungu, who narrowly beat Hichilema in a vote last year to replace late president Michael Sata, won 50.35 percent of the vote against 47.63 for his opponent, the Election Commission of Zambia (ECZ) said on Monday.

Zambia: Incumbent President ahead in early vote count, opposition cries foul | Reuters

President Edgar Lungu was ahead of his main rival on Saturday in early counting from Zambia’s presidential election, but the main opposition said its count showed their candidate ahead and the vote may have been rigged. Lungu faces a stiff challenge from United Party for National Development (UPND) leader Hakainde Hichilema, who accuses him of failing to steer the economy out of its slump after Africa’s second-largest copper producer was hit by weak commodity prices. He led with 262,149 votes against Hichilema’s 243,794 after 29 of the country’s 156 constituencies in Thursday’s voting had been collated, the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) told a news conference also attended by political parties. Early results announced on Saturday from only eight constituencies had put Hichilema ahead. In a statement, the UPND said data from its own parallel counting system showed Hichilema beating Lungu “with a clear margin”, based on about 80 percent of votes counted.

National: Americans have become much less confident that we count votes accurately | The Washington Post

Donald Trump’s warning that the 2016 election is likely to be “rigged” has rightfully alarmed many observers, both here and abroad. Although the GOP nominee has provided no evidence of potential fraud, our research suggests that many voters may be receptive to his far-fetched claim, which could erode faith in the electoral system. Disputes over election results aren’t new, of course. In the wake of the 2000 presidential contest, ballot irregularities and the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore — which ended a recount in Florida and effectively handed the election to George W. Bush — led some Democrats to question the legitimacy of the outcome. Following Bush’s reelection in 2004, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a 2006 article in Rolling Stone claiming that Bush’s campaign had stolen the election. The culprit for many Democrats was electronic voting machines that could be hacked to flip Democratic votes to the Republican column. Trailing in the polls to Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign, John McCain warned in a debate that the advocacy organization ACORN was engaging in voter registration fraud and was “on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” When Obama defeated McCain and Mitt Romney in 2012, Republicans became more likely to express doubts about the legitimacy of those elections.

Nauru: Government Wins Increased Majority in Elections; Opposition Cries Foul | Hawaii Public Radio

Final results are in from last weekend’s election in Nauru. The ruling party won 16 of 18 seats in voting described by outside observers as free and fair, but, as we hear from Neal Conan in the Pacific New Minute, opposition leaders disagree. President Baron Waqa was re-elected as parliament met yesterday for the first time since Saturday’s vote. His increased majority, the government said, promises more continuity and further stability. Nauru is one of the smallest countries on earth, with just eight thousand registered voters…but one of the more controversial. Once wealthy from mining the deposits left by seabirds, the impoverished island nation now relies heavily on income from Australian run camps that house asylum seekers intercepted at sea.

United Kingdom: Brexit Voters Suspect Referendum Is Rigged, MI5 Participating In Backing ‘Remain’ | International Business Times

With only two days left before polls open in the historic Brexit vote on whether the United Kingdom will remain a member of the European Union, some voters believe spies and intelligence agents are playing roles in the referendum. Approximately a third of voters from political parties that support Britain leaving the EU believe the MI5 intelligence agency, Britain’s equivalent of the CIA, is working with the government to prevent a “leave” vote from taking place. A survey of 1,656 voters conducted by YouGov from June 13-14 asked potential voters whether it was true “MI5 is working with the U.K. government to try and stop Britain leaving the EU.”

Editorials: The Democratic Primary Wasn’t Rigged | Ari Berman/The Nation

Hillary Clinton won the Democratic presidential primary by 387 pledged delegates and 3.7 million votes. Despite this large margin, some of Bernie Sanders’s most strident supporters have attributed Clinton’s lead to foul play, alleging that the Democratic Party’s nominating rules cost Sanders the nomination and the Clinton campaign deliberately suppressed pro-Bernie votes. These claims, which have circulated widely online, are false. My colleague Joshua Holland, who supports Sanders, has extensively debunked many of these conspiracy theories, but I want to add more detail now that the primary is over. (I’ve been neutral throughout the race and do not endorse candidates.) First off, the party’s rules were not the deciding factor. Sanders has rejected the idea that the nomination was “rigged” but has repeatedly criticized things like superdelegates and closed primaries, in which Independent and unaffiliated voters can’t participate.

Here’s what he told Face the Nation in late May:

What has upset me, and what I think is—I wouldn’t use the word rigged, because we knew what the rules were—but what is really dumb is that you have closed primaries, like in New York state, where three million people who are Democrats or Republicans could not participate, where you have situation where over 400 superdelegates came on board Clinton’s campaign before anybody else was in the race, eight months before the first vote was cast.

That’s not rigged. I think it’s just a dumb process, which has certainly disadvantaged our campaign.

Australia: NSW Electoral Commission investigates allegations of Labor vote-rigging | Sydney Morning Herald

Allegations that Labor party officials misused electoral roll details to rig a community preselection are being investigated by the NSW Electoral Commission. Possible misuse of electoral roll information is proving to be a headache for the party during the run up the July Federal election with former party boss Jamie Clements last month charged by the NSW Electoral Commission for disclosing protected information to his factional ally, the disgraced union boss Derrick Belan. The new investigation was prompted by Fairfax Media revelations that Labor’s community preselection for the state seat of Ballina might have involved vote rigging. A senior figure from Labor’s head office in Sussex Street recently informed Fairfax Media that a party official had used a database called “Campaign Central”, which contains detailed information on voters including electoral roll details, to influence the outcome of a preselection ballot.

Philippines: ‘VP votes may have been manipulated’ | The Manila Times

The cascade of votes for Rep. Leni Robredo that allowed her to obliterate the almost one million lead of Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on May 10 looked strange and the “movement of the votes” appeared to have been manipulated, a statistics and political science analyst said on Tuesday. Antonio Contreras, Political Science professor at De La Salle University who also previously taught quantitative analysis at another university, said it was statistically impossible for Robredo to overtake Marcos in the race with 80 percent of the returns already counted.
Marcos was leading the count on the night of May 9 but his numbers and those for his closest rival Robredo were reversed in the early hours of May 10.

Russia: Meet the woman who says she’s going to fix Russia’s rigged elections | The Washington Post

From the fringes of power, Ella Pamfilova has spent decades fighting against the odds. As Russia’s first female candidate for president, she ran on a largely symbolic ticket against Vladimir Putin in 2000, earning just 1 percent of the vote. As Russia’s human rights ombudsman, she sought compromise between harried advocates and hidebound officials. But as the newly appointed head of Russia’s Central Elections Commission, she faces an even more improbable task: ensuring that Russia’s notorious parliamentary elections this fall are free and fair. The stakes are high. Russia’s most recent parliamentary elections, in 2011, descended into farce as social media videos of ballot stuffing and accusations of mass voter fraud spawned the country’s largest pro-democracy and anti-Putin rallies in recent memory. The difference now, Pamfilova said in an interview, is that Putin has given a mandate for clean elections. And she says she is the proof.

Chad: Constitutional council upholds Deby re-election | AFP

Chad’s Constitutional Council has upheld President Idriss Deby’s re-election to a fifth term, confirming the results of last month’s vote that the opposition had challenged. In final results, the council said Chad’s leader of 26 years won 59.92 percent of the vote, compared with 12.77 percent for opposition leader Saleh Kebzabo and 10.61 percent for Laoukein Kourayo Medard, mayor of Moundou city. In announcing the results, the council rejected an appeal by eight opposition candidates to invalidate the April 10 election over voting irregularities.

Venezuela: Was the 2013 Venezuelan Election Rigged? | Pacific Standard

In the popular imagination, election fraud usually takes a few forms: stuffed or disappearing ballot boxes, hijacked electronic voting machines, voter intimidation. The latter of those four tactics is somewhat harder to detect. After all, it’s not the ballot being tampered with, but rather the voter who cast that ballot. Fortunately, researchers have now figured out a way to detect “voter rigging,” as the authors of a new paper call it. Unfortunately, their method has turned up more or less exactly what you’d expect—fraud in Russia several times over the past decade, as well as in Venezuela, where voter rigging likely swayed the outcome of the 2013 race to replace Hugo Chavez. “Many elections around the world end in controversies related to alleged frauds; even in mature democracies, such as the U.S. and Canada, where voter suppression scandals have made the headlines,” write Raúl Jiménez, Manuel Hidalgo, and Peter Klimek.

Equatorial Guinea: The world’s longest-serving president just won a sixth term with 99% of the vote | The Washington Post

Teodoro Obiang Nguema has never received less than 97 percent of the vote in an election. On Monday, with partial results indicating that 99.2 percent of the vote has gone in his favor, Equatorial Guinea’s leader was surely all set for another seven years in a seat that has no doubt molded to his figure. One-sixth of African countries have an executive who has been in power for more than 20 years — that’s nine out of 54. Obiang, who took power nearly 37 years ago in a bloody coup, is in the company of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (who turned 92 in February), Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea and King Mswati III of Swaziland. But Obiang is most similar to — and most closely followed in terms of the number of years in office by — José Eduardo dos Santos of Angola.

Equatorial Guinea: Obiang Has 99% of Equatorial Guinea Vote in Early Election Count | Bloomberg

Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang received 99 percent of the early vote count from Sunday’s election in the two most-populous areas, the government said. Obiang, 73, obtained 40,600 votes out of 40,926 in partial results tallied in the capital, Malabo, and the port city of Bata, according to a statement on the government’s website. Already Africa’s longest-serving leader, Obiang is on track to beat out six other candidates for another seven-year term.

Chad: President Deby wins fifth term, opposition cry foul | AFP

Chad’s veteran leader Idriss Deby has won a fifth term in office, the national electoral commission announced, extending his 26 years in power, as the opposition alleged widespread fraud. Taking more than 60 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential polls, Deby came far ahead of main opposition leader Saleh Kebzabo, who won just over 12 percent but said the vote was rigged. We “don’t recognise the outcome of this electoral stick-up”, a group of opposition politicians including Kebzabo said, alleging ballot-stuffing and the buying-up of voter cards. “Hundreds of ballot boxes have disappeared,” the group said, adding that soldiers who had intended to vote against Deby had also “disappeared”, alleging they had likely been “arrested and imprisoned”. African Union observers last week declared the elections free and fair. The organisation’s rotating presidency is currently held by Deby.

Syria: Ceasefire falls apart as Assad holds latest sham election | Al Arabiya

Predictable issues have derailed ongoing negotiations over the Syrian conflict, with the opposition resuming fighting against the Syrian regime, which has repeatedly broken the cessation of hostilities agreement that was implemented in February. In addition to the continued Assad regime bombardment of forces ostensibly included in the ceasefire agreement, the primary issue that continues to sabotage the latest efforts to bring some semblance of calm to the war-torn country and resolution to the never-ending conflict, remains unchanged: fierce disagreement over the future of Bashar al-Assad’s criminal regime. Sincere efforts to bring the conflict to an end, or carve out a path that will lead to such a reality, will continue to fail so long as they involve negotiating with parties that demand Assad remain in power. Such a proposal dismisses the fact that the Assad regime’s failure to step down years ago remains the chief reason why Syria has spiralled into hell and allowed barbaric actors, including ISIS, to flourish.

Chad: AU: Despite Irregularities, Chad Poll Credible | VoA News

Opposition politicians in Chad have claimed fraud during Sunday’s presidential election, but African Union (AU) observers say the poll, while flawed, was fair. Former Malian president and head of the AU observer mission to Chad, Diouncounda Traore, said issues included the late opening of polling stations in hard-to-access areas and poorly trained polling officers. He said he doesn’t know what will happen after the proclamation of the results, but the AU is urging all candidates and their followers to accept the verdict. He said those who are not satisfied with the results should contest them in the courts. Kamalloh Salifou Tourabi, leader of the Pan African Institute for Election Assistance observer mission, said that despite irregularities, voter participation was estimated at 85 percent. The opposition said there was fraud, including ballot stuffing.