North Carolina: Federal appeals court to weigh in on voter laws before November elections | News Observer

The NAACP and others challenging the sweeping changes to North Carolina election laws in 2013 will have an opportunity to make arguments to a federal appeals court that the November elections should be held under old laws. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set Sept. 25 as the date for oral arguments on the pros and cons of an emergency appeal filed in late August by the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, registered Democrats in North Carolina and others. The hearing will be in Charlotte, according to documents filed in federal court Tuesday. Nearly a month ago, U.S. District Judge Thomas D. Schroeder rejected a similar request from the organizations and Democrats challenging the election law overhaul. Schroeder ruled the challengers had failed to make the case that voters would suffer “irreparable damages” if elections were held under the 2013 rules.

Colorado: Two down, two to go in SOS Scott Gessler’s voter fraud manhunt | The Colorado Independent

Half the voter fraud cases prosecuted in Colorado have now been dropped before trial. Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler’s office has dismissed its case against Tadesse G. Degefa, 73, of Aurora, who allegedly registered for a mail-in ballot in 2012, despite the fact that he wasn’t a U.S. Citizen. Brauchler said he couldn’t win the case beyond a reasonable doubt. Dismissal of Degefa’s case comes two and a half months after Brauchler dropped charges, also citing a lack of evidence, in another voter fraud case against canvasser Michael Michaelis. Statistically, the dismissals are significant because the two voter fraud cases were among only four being prosecuted statewide after Secretary of State Scott Gessler claimed there was an epidemic of voters cheating Colorado’s election system.

Editorials: Why the GOP is so obsessed with voter fraud | Salon

It is rare for a politician to publicly deride efforts to boost voter turnout. It is seen as a taboo in a country that prides itself on its democratic ideals. Yet, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie last week slammed efforts to simplify voter registration. Referring to Illinois joining other states — including many Republican-led ones — in passing a same-day voter registration law, Christie said: “Same-day registration all of a sudden this year comes to Illinois. Shocking. It’s shocking. I’m sure it was all based on public policy, good public policy to get same-day registration here in Illinois just this year, when the governor is in the toilet and needs as much help as he can get.” Christie was campaigning for Illinois GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner, who is challenging Democratic incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn, who signed the same-day registration bill into law in July. Christie, who chairs the Republican Governors Association, denounced the effort to boost voter turnout as an underhanded Democratic tactic, despite the Illinois State Board of Elections being composed equally of Democrats and Republicans. Referring to the same-day voter initiative, Christie said Quinn “will try every trick in the book,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Christie said the program is designed to be a major “obstacle” for the GOP’s gubernatorial candidates. The trouble with such rhetoric – beyond its anti-democratic themes — is its absurd assertions about partisan motives. After all, many of the 11 states with same-day registration laws currently have Republican governors.

Editorials: Double voting? Not necessarily: Widespread voter fraud in Maryland is unlikely | Baltimore Sun

The recent report by Election Integrity Maryland that there may be as many as 164 individuals who voted in both Maryland and Virginia in the 2012 election hasn’t exactly caused the Maryland Board of Elections to press the panic button. There’s a reason for that: The numbers don’t prove fraud and more likely point to clerical error. That’s not to suggest the Fairfax County Electoral Board should not seek criminal investigation, as officials announced last week, into 17 possible cases of duplicate voting in that Northern Virginia county — such due diligence is entirely appropriate — but the chances that such incidents will result in fraud convictions are slim. If there’s one thing experience has taught, it’s that duplicate voter registration is almost always the result of nothing more nefarious than people moving from one state to another and registration rolls not being expunged in a timely manner. Trumped up horror stories about voting irregularities have fueled a Republican-led push to enact voter identification laws that are far more likely to discourage voting, particularly by young, elderly and minority voters who are less likely to have government-approved ID, than it is to uncover organized (or even disorganized) attempts to alter election outcomes. Voter fraud is not unknown, it’s simply uncommon.

Editorials: Raising bars to legitimate voters is election irregularity | Roger Chesley/The Virginian Pilot

Fairfax County election officials have asked local, state and federal authorities to investigate whether 17 people may have voted twice in the 2012 general election – once in the county, and again in Maryland. Such allegations are shocking. They also need to be considered in context. Photo identification wouldn’t have thwarted the double voting, if it occurred, because voters in these cases didn’t need to impersonate somebody else. Still, Republican-controlled legislatures have passed laws in many states, including Virginia, requiring photo ID – keenly aware that the constituencies that tend to vote for Democrats are less likely to have them. Virginia’s new law took effect July 1. The Virginia Voters Alliance, a conservative advocacy group, examined full names and birthdates in data it purchased from the commonwealth and Maryland. Reagan George, president of the alliance, told me he turned over the information on suspect voters to Fairfax officials. “We’ve moved past the point of stuffing ballot boxes,” said George, who lives in the county. “Voter fraud has become sophisticated.”

Editorials: Why internet voting is a very dangerous idea | Marc Ambinder/The Week

Unless you’re one of those ornery folks who believe that only politically engaged Americans should vote, there aren’t many good reasons to oppose efforts to expand access to the ballot. Voter fraud is quite rare, and voting fraud — an organized effort to illegally disrupt elections — is hard to organize. So you might think that any restriction on the way someone can vote will unfairly marginalize potentially legitimate voters. That’s true, with one big exception: internet voting. No doubt — nationwide internet voting has an intuitive appeal. It would decrease the costs of elections. It would dramatically increase turn-out. It would allow marginalized communities to avoid harassment at polling sites. It would speed the vote count. A majority of voters regularly endorse the idea. There are two main reasons, though, why internet voting is, at best, a dream best realized 20 years in the future — if ever. The internet is not secure. It does not matter whether results are sent to an air-gapped system, because there’s plenty of technologies that jump air-gaps, and we know that big governments (like ours) use them to spy.

Virginia: Fairfax officials say some people may have crossed Va.-Md. line to vote twice in 2012 | The Washington Post

Tens of thousands of voters were registered to cast ballots in both Virginia and Maryland during the 2012 presidential election — and more than 150 appear to have voted twice, an advocacy group claims. Seventeen of those alleged instances were in Fairfax County, where election officials found the evidence so compelling that they have turned the information over to law enforcement. The situation sparked a strong reaction among some political leaders in Virginia, coming in the midst of a heated national debate over whether voter fraud is rampant or mere rhetoric.

Indiana: The revenge of ex-Secretary of State Charlie White? | Indianapolis Star

Disgraced politician Charlie White is seeking to reinvent himself — as a tell-all political blogger. His target: His Republican colleagues, among others. The former Indiana Secretary of State recently launched The Indy Sentinel, a new website about “pols and media who are fair & those who live to serve the elites in both parties to the public’s detriment,” according to his Twitter account. White, who was convicted of theft and voter fraud in 2012, said he plans to ramp up the website in the coming weeks — as soon as he finishes a reply brief for one of his ongoing legal cases. Right now, the site has just two articles, including one about campaign donations to Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann and the state’s Stellar Communities grant program.

Iowa: Defense challenges statute in voter fraud case | WCF Courier

The attorney representing five people who allegedly voted despite having felony convictions is asking the court to throw out the cases. The five — Ricco Cooper, Robert Earl Anthony, Harold Redd Jr., Rosa Wilder and Glen Tank — are charged with election misconduct for allegedly voting in the 2012 general election without having their voting rights restored. On Monday, the five watched in Black Hawk County District Court as a judge set deadlines for the legal challenges.

Virginia: State reviewing alleged voter fraud in Fairfax | Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Attorney General’s Office is reviewing evidence of alleged voter fraud in Fairfax County, where the Virginia Voters Alliance has identified 17 individuals who voted in both Fairfax County and various localities in Maryland during the 2012 General Election. “This office takes all allegations seriously even though incidents of voter fraud are statistically very rare,” Michael Kelly, spokesman for Attorney General Mark R. Herring, said in an email Tuesday. “We will review any evidence and, if further investigation is warranted, will work within our statutory authority with local or federal partners.” The Fairfax County Electoral Board has also referred the allegation to the Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney and the federal Department of Justice for further investigation.

National: Court hears arguments on voters having to prove citizenship | Los Angeles Times

One day before Arizona’s primary election, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver heard arguments Monday on the constitutionality of voters having to prove citizenship through a passport or birth certificate before they can register to vote. Arizona and Kansas have both passed laws requiring voters to prove citizenship before they can register. That is stricter than federal law, which requires a voter simply to affirm U.S. citizenship in writing. On Tuesday, Arizona voters who have not proved their citizenship to the state’s satisfaction will be able to cast ballots only for U.S. Congress — not for governor or any other state offices. Kansas held such a two-tier primary earlier this month. “The Founding Fathers didn’t want that,” said Kansas Atty. Gen. Kris Kobach, who argued the case for both states. “They are using the federal form as a lever to displace the state’s power,” he said in an interview after the hearing. Supporters contend such laws prevent voter fraud. Opponents maintain that the real motivation is to make it more difficult for minorities and the poor to vote.

Colorado: Montezuma sues itself over controversial municipal election | Summit Daily

This week, the town of Montezuma filed a lawsuit in Summit County District Court … against itself. Newly elected Mayor Lesley Davis said the lawsuit was filed Tuesday in hopes of bringing a resolution to its controversial municipal electionlast April. The suit was filed by interim town attorney Kendra Carberry, of Denver, on behalf of town clerk Helen Moorman and the town of Montezuma. The respondents listed in the suit include all of the town’s 61 registered voters. “The town is definitely not suing its residents,” Davis said. “We’re just seeking the court’s assistance to help us with a controversial election and to let us know what we should be doing.” According to the complaint, the town alleges that ballots from April’s election contained inaccurate verbiage and did not feature numbered stubs and duplicate stubs to be recorded in the poll books and that the final tally for at least one board of trustees candidate was inaccurate, among other claims. As town clerk and the election official, Moorman was responsible for overseeing all facets of the election.

National: Proof That Voter Impersonation Almost Never Happens | New York Times

An enduring Republican fantasy is that there are armies of fraudulent voters lurking in the baseboards of American life, waiting for the opportunity to crash the polls and undermine the electoral system. It’s never really been clear who these voters are or how their schemes work; perhaps they are illegal immigrants casting votes for amnesty, or poor people seeking handouts.  Most Republican politicians know these criminals don’t actually exist, but they have found it useful to take advantage of the party base’s pervasive fear of outsiders, just as when they shot down immigration reform. In this case, they persuaded the base of the need for voter ID laws to ensure “ballot integrity,” knowing the real effect would be to reduce Democratic turnout. Now a researcher has tried to quantify this supposed threat by documenting every known case of voter fraud since 2000 — specifically, the kind of impersonation that would be stopped by an ID requirement. (Note that this does not include ballot-box stuffing by officials, vote-buying or coercion: the kinds of fraud that would not be affected by an ID law.)

Virginia: Board of Elections to allow some expired IDs for voting | Daily Press

Virginians who let their driver’s licenses, passports or other photo IDs expire will still get a chance to vote, as long as those documents aren’t too old. The State Board of Elections struck a compromise Wednesday between those who argued that an expired ID was not valid and those who said a photo ID should be valid no matter how long ago it expired. “The board tried to take a middle ground … we wanted to have a grace period,” said Secretary Don Palmer. It decided that photo IDs that expired within 12 months of an election day were valid for voting purposes, as long as they look genuine.

Michigan: Wayne County judge to hear request to block absentee ballots in Dearborn Heights | The Detroit News

A Wayne County judge will hold a hearing Wednesday over a request to halt counting of absentee ballots in Dearborn Heights suspected of potential election fraud. Judge Robert Colombo Jr. scheduled a 9 a.m. Wednesday hearing after a state Senate candidate sued and sought a temporary restraining order to set aside certain absentee votes cast in Tuesday’s primary. State Rep. David Nathan, one of six Democrats running in the 5th Senate District primary, filed a lawsuit late Monday seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent Dearborn Heights Clerk Walter Prusiewicz from counting absentee ballots. Colombo’s clerk confirmed late Tuesday a hearing has been scheduled. Nathan’s attorney said the judge planned to issue an overnight injunction.

North Carolina: Despite budget squeeze, lawmakers poised to step up anti-voter fraud spending | Facing South

This week, North Carolina state lawmakers put forward a budget plan that calls for tens of millions of dollars in program cuts — sacrifices that Republican leaders say are necessary since the state will be collecting $1.57 billion less in revenues through 2015 due to hefty tax cuts approved last year. But at least one program is getting a boost in the plan proposed by the Senate: a request from the N.C. State Board of Elections, led by Kim Strach, to add three new investigators to tackle alleged voter fraud. While the Senate’s budget eliminates at least 12 positions from the Department of Health and Human Services, the latest budget plan released Thursday [pdf] calls for $201,657 in new funding “for three new positions to investigate fraud in elections, discrepancies in voter registration information, including duplicate registrations, and to pursue prosecution for violations of election law.” According to news reports, Strach had asked for five new investigators to focus on voter fraud. This was addition to the state board’s May 2014 hire of former FBI agent Chuck Stuber, who has been tasked with investigating voter fraud and campaign finance issues.

Wisconsin: State court’s voter ID ruling has experts confused | Associated Press

creating confusion and may even open the door to the very type of behavior Republican lawmakers were trying to prevent. Policy makers, attorneys and voter ID experts were struggling Friday with how to interpret a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling from a day earlier, which mandated a change to the law in order to make it constitutional. The court said the state can’t require applicants for state-issued IDs to present government documents that cost money to obtain, such as a copy of a birth certificate. The court left it to the Division of Motor Vehicles to come up with a solution. “We don’t know how that’s going to work,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Thursday shortly after the ruling. When asked whether obtaining photo IDs without having to present government-issued documents verifying a person’s identity could result in fraud, Vos said: “It’s got a potential for it.”

Hawaii: Absentee ballot fraud investigation underway on Kauai | KHON2

The Elections Division of the Office of the County Clerk and the Kauai Police Department are investigating a possible case of voter fraud on Kauai. Officials had received an absentee ballot by mail, but the affirmation statement on the back of the return envelope wasn’t signed. When the voter was contacted for a signature, he informed officials that he had never received the ballot in the first place. “This recent event is of great concern to our office. We wish to note that the procedures we have in place to process absentee mail ballots were able to alert both the voter and our office of the situation,” said County Clerk Ricky Watanabe. “Fortunately, this appears to be an isolated case but we ask that anyone with information on this incident to please contact the Kauai Police Department.”

Editorials: McDaniel needs to file a challenge or call it quits | Clarion-Ledger

Enough is enough. Chris McDaniel has used every excuse in the book to delay filing a challenge to incumbent Thad Cochran’s election as the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. His campaign has said filing a challenge before having all evidence will prevent him from including additional evidence. They have said they need more time to gather more data. They have said they need birthdates to verify voter identities. They have said circuit clerks have prevented them from seeing public information. However, at the end of the day, McDaniel’s campaign has been given access to everything to which they are entitled under the law. And despite their assertions, introducing a challenge to the Mississippi Republican Party will in no way prevent them from presenting new information of voter fraud to a court if indeed they discover it after their challenge is filed.

California: Alarcon conviction is the latest in string of residency prosecutions | Los Angeles Times

With their convictions this year, two Los Angeles politicians face prison time for a crime once seen as nearly impossible to prosecute. Former Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon was found guilty this week of perjury and voter fraud for lying about where he lived so he could run for city office. With state Sen. Roderick Wright convicted on similar felony charges in January, Alarcon became the ninth politician since 2002 to be successfully prosecuted by the Los Angeles County district attorney for not living in the districts they ran to represent. There was also a Vernon mayor, a West Covina school board member and a Huntington Park city councilwoman, to name just a few. “Any politician who doesn’t take this seriously is really very self-destructive,” said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles. In the past, the vagueness of the legal standard for residency has made these crimes “particularly difficult to prove,” said UC Irvine election law professor Richard Hasen.

Mississippi: Judge: True the Vote lawsuit not a case of voter fraud | Clarion-Ledger

The Federal judge assigned to hear Texas-based group True the Vote and 22 Mississippians’ lawsuit against Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, the state Republican Party and election commissions in nine counties said the case is pretty cut and dry in her mind. True the Vote claims it was denied access to voting records in Copiah, Hinds, Jefferson Davis, Lauderdale, Leake, Madison, Rankin, Simpson and Yazoo counties. The group also claims records have been destroyed or tampered with. U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas of Texas said today during a hearing in Jackson that case technically is about what documents can be seen. “This is not a case of voter fraud,” Atlas said. “It’s whether the National Voter Registration Act was complied with and whether it preempts state statute. This case is about transparency of the voter process with the counter issue of voter privacy.”

Editorials: Chris McDaniel should either show evidence or concede in Mississippi’s GOP primary | The Washington Post

It took just a few words for state Sen. Chris McDaniel to stoke tea party fervor after his runoff loss in the Mississippi Republican primary to incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran. “We’re not done fighting,” he said defiantly to the June 24 election-night crowd. A messy primary was about to get worse. Mr. McDaniel, who lost by about 7,600 votes, claimed that there were voting “irregularities,” insisting that those who voted in the June 3 Democratic primary illegally cast ballots three weeks later in the Republican runoff. He also argued that many voters broke an obscure and unenforceable Mississippi law that prohibits citizens from participating in a primary unless they intend to back the party’s nominee in the general election. Because Mississippi does not register voters by party, Mr. Cochran had focused on getting more left-leaning, African American voters to the polls for the runoff.

California: Former Councilman Richard Alarcon, wife guilty of voter fraud, perjury | Los Angeles Times

Former Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon and his wife were convicted Wednesday of some but not all voter-fraud and perjury charges brought in a case that accused them of lying about where they lived so he would be qualified to run for his council seat. A seven-woman, five-man jury delivered the split verdicts to Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli. The couple was accused of claiming to live in a Panorama City house that was under repair, when they actually lived in a larger, nicer home in Sun Valley, outside his 7th District. Former Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon and his wife are convicted of voter fraud and perjury for living outside the district the councilman was elected to represent. State and city election law requires candidates to live in the district they seek to represent. Alarcon, 60, was convicted of three voter-fraud charges and one perjury charge, but acquitted on 12 other counts. His wife, Flora Montes de Oca, was convicted of two voting charges and one perjury count.

Australia: Compulsory ID a first for Queensland vote | SBS News

The state Liberal-National Party government said it introduced the law in May to reduce voter fraud. Opponents said it will deprive some of the most marginalised groups, including Indigenous and ethnic communities, of their democratic right. “Voter fraud has been an issue in the past and there does continue to be an issue of people voting multiple times or voting as other people,” said the LNP Stafford candidate Bob Andersen. “It’s not too much to ask just to produce ID and verify who they are and then give their one vote and make it count.” The LNP has presented no evidence of systematic fraud in Queensland elections. “The last time this was thoroughly looked at, the court of Disputed Returns in Chatsworth went through 20,000 votes and the instances they found of double voting were very, very minor,” said Labor’s Queensland state secretary Anthony Chisholm. “So there is no justification for this and they’re just trying to advantage themselves and stop people voting and they’re the people that need a voice the most.”

Mississippi: Hinds County GOP Chair: only 300 to 350 questionable votes | Clarion-Ledger

Hinds County GOP Chairman Pete Perry on Tuesday said only 300 to 350 questionable votes were found as the Chris McDaniel and Thad Cochran campaigns scoured records of more than 25,000 votes cast in the county in their primary runoff. Perry said he believes McDaniel’s claims of 1,500 or more potentially illegal votes — and voter fraud — in Hinds County has been “debunked.” “I guess inflation occurs in campaigns with numbers just as it does with egos,” Perry said at a press conference at the county courthouse Tuesday. McDaniel and his campaign have claimed there were widespread irregularities and voter fraud in Hinds County and statewide. They appear to be working toward a legal challenge of the runoff. Six-term incumbent U.S. Sen. Cochran defeated McDaniel in the runoff by 7,667 votes, winning 51 percent of more than 382,000 votes statewide.

Mississippi: GOPers Prep For McDaniel Lawsuit To Contest Mississippi Race | TPM

Establishment Republicans and allies of Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) have scoffed at state Sen. Chris McDaniel’s (R) claims of rampant voter fraud in the runoff election between the two for U.S. Senate. But, ahead of a press conference on Wednesday where McDaniel plans to discuss the evidence he’s found, Cochran’s campaign and the Mississippi Republican Party have also taken steps to prepare for some kind of lawsuit. Since the runoff, McDaniel and his supporters have been poring over poll books in search of proof that Cochran only won the runoff through Democratic votes. McDaniel’s lawyers claim that if the state senator can prove that Cochran’s margin of victory was only through votes that shouldn’t have been counted in a Republican primary, a new election is automatically triggered (legal experts are skeptical of this). McDaniel, according to Mississippi College School of Law Professor Matthew Steffey, needs the state Supreme Court to order a new election so a legal challenge seems to be the next step.

Minnesota: West Bank voter fraud allegations dismissed | The Minnesota Daily

More than a hundred absentee voters who registered at the address of a mailbox center in Cedar-Riverside will have to re-register under their home addresses — a decision that follows a stir in the Somali community regarding legal voting practices. At an administrative hearing on Thursday, the Hennepin County Attorney’s office announced that the case of 141 improperly registered voters was not an intentional or organized effort, dismissing allegations of voter fraud. The hearing came about two weeks after the attorney’s office was prompted to investigate the incident by a petition filed by a lawyer for Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis.

Mississippi: Could Chris McDaniel Get A Do-Over In The Mississippi Senate Race? | The Daily Beast

Could there be yet another election in the Republican Senate primary in Mississippi? More than two weeks after six-term incumbent Thad Cochran won the GOP runoff against Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel, campaign workers are still swarming county courthouses in the Magnolia State trying to find evidence to overturn the election. Although Cochran won by 7,667 votes on election night, McDaniel’s campaign alleges that enough votes were improperly cast to call the result into question. McDaniel has hired Mitch Tyner, a prominent Mississippi trial lawyer who was a long-shot Republican candidate for governor in 2003, to lead his legal team. In a press conference this week outside a courthouse in Jackson, McDaniel’s lawyer claimed that there were lots of allegations and reports of voter fraud in the race. At the time, when the margin between the two was only 6,700, Tyner said that the McDaniel campaign didn’t need to find that many illegal votes to force a do-over of the runoff but thought they would find ample evidence.

Editorials: 7 papers, 4 government inquiries, 2 news investigations and 1 court ruling proving voter fraud is mostly a myth | Christopher Ingraham/The Washington Post

Voter ID laws are back in the news this week after a group of college students joined a lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s new restrictive rules. And as Catherine Rampell pointed out earlier this week, it’s not just ID laws – Republican state legislatures have been busy devising all manner of creative ways to make voting more difficult for traditionally Democratic-leaning groups. All of these restrictive measures take their justification from a perceived need to prevent “voter fraud.” But there is overwhelming scholarly and legal consensus that voter fraud is vanishingly rare, and in fact non-existent at the levels imagined by voter ID proponents. That hasn’t stopped many Republican lawmakers from crying “fraud” every time they’re faced with an unfavorable election outcome (see also: McDaniel, Chris).

Editorials: Do voting restrictions prevent fraud or cause disenfranchisement? | Al Jazeera

Lawyers from the Justice Department and a variety of civic groups appeared at an Asheville, North Carolina, federal courthouse this week, seeking an injunction that would delay portions of a state voting law from going into effect before the midterm elections this November. At issue are a reduction in days for early voting, the elimination of same-day voter registration and a prohibition on counting provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct. (The most controversial provision, a photo ID requirement, does not go into effect until 2016.) Now a judge will decide if those elements should be delayed or implemented at all.