Virginia: Voting changes in Virginia proposed in Assembly | WTOP

Virginia voters may no longer get to wait until primary day to decide which party to vote in; absentee balloting or voter identification laws could change, and lawmakers could face term limits under a series of competing proposals in the General Assembly. The annual session runs only into late February, so action on the bills and proposed constitutional amendments must happen within weeks of lawmakers gaveling in on Jan. 11. The restoration of voting rights for felons is expected to be a significant issue in the session. Gov. Terry McAuliffe moved to restore the voting rights of more than 200,000 felons in June, but that was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court of Virginia. McAuliffe has since continued to restore rights at a smaller scale. Members of the General Assembly have introduced a series of proposed constitutional amendments that would automatically restore the right to vote for some or all felons after they have completed their sentences, or allow for a pathway to get those rights back. A proposal from a number of Democrats, including Del. Marcus Simon, D-Falls Church, would eliminate the state constitution’s restrictions on felons voting.

Editorials: Showing ID at polling stations will not end election fraud | Matthew Cole/The Conversation UK

The UK’s former communities secretary, Eric Pickles, ended 2016 by claiming the mantle of defender of British democracy. To combat electoral fraud in local government he called for new controls to guarantee the probity of voting in municipal elections. Most notably, this would mean the requirement of voters to produce photographic ID before they are allowed into a polling booth. The proposals were dismissed by some as using “a sledgehammer to crack a nut”. But that metaphor may actually be too generous. The intended target of the reforms may be missed altogether, while the collateral damage to British elections could be significant. Pickles’s sledgehammer is more like a blunderbuss.

Missouri: Jason Kander criticizes republicans over voter ID | The Kansas City Star

Secretary of State Jason Kander admonished the Republican dominated General Assembly Wednesday over legislation passed last year requiring voters to provide a photo ID before they can cast a ballot. House Republicans responded by ditching a planned resolution that would have thanked Kander for his years of service. Kander, a Kansas City Democrat, has long opposed voter ID legislation, arguing that it serves no purpose and yet could disenfranchise certain voters. After more than a decade of trying, GOP lawmakers successfully approved voter ID legislation last year, and a voter ID constitutional amendment was approved by voters in November. In a speech to the Missouri House Wednesday, Kander said he’s heard that lawmakers are considering stiffening the voter ID law. He warned against taking such actions.

Missouri: Incoming Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft working on voter photo ID | St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Although he has not formally taken office, Missouri’s next secretary of state is working to implement a new state law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. Republican Jay Ashcroft told the Post-Dispatch Friday that he was in talks with the Legislature to ensure there is enough funding for the voter photo ID law. And, he is crafting guidelines for how it will work if someone shows up at the polls without an ID card. “It’s a big thing to take care of,” said Ashcroft, who will replace Secretary of State Jason Kander, a Democrat. On Nov. 8, 63 percent of Missouri voters favored a change in the state constitution to require voters to show a photo ID before casting a ballot. For those without a valid form of photo identification, the state will be required to provide an ID for free.

Alabama: Department of Transportation: Alabama to expand driver’s license office hours after probe | AL.com

U.S. Department of Transportation officials said Wednesday that Alabama has agreed to expand driver’s license office hours after determining that black residents in the state were disproportionately hurt by a slate of closures and reductions in 2015. The federal agency launched an investigation last year after Alabama, citing budget concerns, shuttered 31 part-time offices where examiners gave driving tests about once per week. The state said the closures were aimed at the offices that issued the fewest licenses each year, but the closures also came down hard on rural and heavily minority communities. It left more than a third of Alabama’s 67 counties without a license office, including eight of the state’s 11 counties with a majority African-American population.

United Kingdom: British plan to force voters to show ID provokes a backlash | The Washington Post

The British government said Tuesday that it would begin rolling out mandatory identity checks for voters, prompting a backlash from those who say the move could effectively disenfranchise millions. The controversy, with strong echoes of one that played out across the United States this year, turns on the question of whether identity checks are a reasonable tool to combat electoral fraud or are merely an attempt at voter suppression by another name. Until now, voters in every part of Britain except Northern Ireland have been allowed to vote without presenting an ID. But that will change under a pilot program announced Tuesday by Britain’s Conservative government. A photo ID, such as a driver’s license or passport, will be required in up to 18 different areas across England for local elections in 2018. If the program is successful, it could be expanded nationwide. Britain is next expected to hold national elections in 2020.

New Hampshire: With Dozens of Election Law Bills on Deck, Here Are Five Issues to Watch in 2017 | New Hampshire Public Radio

From changes in voting registration to changes to party primaries or the Electoral College, New Hampshire lawmakers are preparing a slew of bills aimed at reforming the state’s elections. In all, at least 40 bills aimed at tinkering with the state’s election laws are in the works for 2017. At least fifteen of those bills come from just one lawmaker, Representative David Bates, a Republican from Windham who has made revising the state’s voting rules a top focus in recent terms. On one side of the aisle, Bates and other Republicans have their eyes on tightening up the rules around who can vote here, but there are lots of different, sometimes diverging, paths on what that would look like.

Texas: Elector says he couldn’t vote amid voter ID confusion | The Texas Tribune

Chris Suprun, a Texas Republican elector, caused a stir this year by raising the possibility that he would cast his Electoral College ballot for someone other than President-elect Donald Trump. Journalists bombarded the Dallas man with questions following his admission. Among them: For whom did he vote in November? He didn’t vote, it turns out. But he says he tried. “I would have voted for myself. I didn’t get that chance,” Suprun told The Texas Tribune. … In July, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ voter ID law discriminated against voters in minority groups less likely to possess one of seven accepted types of identification. The state has appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Ramos is weighing whether Texas discriminated on purpose. Ahead of the November election, Ramos ordered a temporary fix: Folks without ID could still vote if they presented an alternate form of ID and signed a form swearing a “reasonable impediment” kept them from obtaining photo ID. That’s why Suprun believed he could vote when he showed up to an early voting location in Glenn Heights on Oct. 26, even though he did not have photo ID. Suprun said his driver’s license was inside his wallet, which he had left in a family van that was away for repairs. He said he arrived at the polls carrying his city water bill, cable bill and voter registration card — documents that should have fit Ramos’ softened rules.

Editorials: Voter ID – The Smokescreen Of The Pickles Report | Michael Abberton/The Huffington Post UK

The Pickles report entitled Securing the Vote has very little to do with electoral fraud, and everything to do with vote suppression – the disenfranchisement of minorities and the poor. It also has hidden within it another insidious motive – local ‘voluntary’ registers of resident foreign nationals. The report was sneaked out right in the middle of the Xmas holidays, when parliament is not in session, obviously as the government hoped it might not get the scrutiny it warrants. The report is quite short and is based on Pickles’ involvement in the Tower Hamlets case, after the mayor was accused of electoral fraud (though no evidence of criminality was found). There are measures in the report that are based specifically on the allegations from that case; for example, electors being influenced to vote a certain way by religious leaders, something that the report recommends there should be legislation to stop (but how that would apply to bishops equally as it would to imams or other community leaders isn’t discussed).

United Kingdom: Voter ID proposal could disenfranchise millions, Labour warns | The Guardian

Millions of people may be disenfranchised by the government’s plans to trial asking for ID in order to vote, Labour has said. Cat Smith, Labour’s shadow minister for voter engagement, raised concerns that 7.5% of the electorate may not have the right kind of identification in order to exercise their right to vote. “Labour supports measures to tackle electoral fraud and will be backing a number of the reasonable proposals planned by the government,” she said on Tuesday. “However, requiring voters to produce specific forms of photo ID risks denying millions of electors a vote. “A year ago the Electoral Commission reported that 3.5 million electors – 7.5% of the electorate – would have no acceptable piece of photo ID. Under the government’s proposals, these voters would either be denied a vote entirely, or in other trial areas, required to produce multiple pieces of ID, ‘one from group A, one from group B’.

Mexico: Safran Identity & Security to Modernize Mexico’s Biometric Voter ID System | American Security Today

Safran Identity & Security has been awarded a five-year contract by the National Electoral Institute of Mexico (INE) for its multi-biometric identification system and related services. With this new contract, INE confirms its trust in Safran to conform and update the Mexican national voter registry that enables fair and efficient elections. As one of the world’s largest systems of its kind, the multi-biometric identification system ensures each voter has a unique identity by detecting false or double-identity cases in real time. It uses both fingerprint and facial recognition to help ensure that each Mexican citizen is registered only once in the national voter rolls.

United Kingdom: Voters in local elections will be required to show ID in anti-fraud trials | The Guardian

UK voters will have to take ID to the ballot box at local elections in pilot areas under new plans to combat electoral fraud. Chris Skidmore, minister for the constitution, announced the trials would start from 2018 after a report on voting fraud by Sir Eric Pickles, the anti-corruption tsar and former communities secretary. Ministers will also consider Pickles’ recommendations about measures to check nationality of voters, creating safe zones around polling stations to stop intimidation, and ending vote “harvesting”, in which postal votes are submitted in bulk. Some of the key recommendations under consideration include a ban on the handling of completed postal ballots by political campaigners, limiting it to family members or carers, and requiring people to reregister for postal votes every three years.

National: Voter ID laws contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss in crucial swing states | Salon

As the votes continue to be counted in states with Voter ID laws, it seems increasingly likely that they played a role — perhaps even a decisive one — in Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in key swing states. One city that has attracted special scrutiny is Milwaukee, Wisconsin, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times on Saturday. Wisconsin saw its lowest voter turnout in 20 years during the 2016 presidential election, with voter turnout dropping by 41,000 from the previous presidential election in Milwaukee amidst numerous reports that minority citizens were unable to vote. Trump won Wisconsin by 22,748 votes. “I believe it was voter suppression laws from the state government that crushed turnout,” said Milwaukee County Clerk Joe Czarnezki, one of two officials who oversees local elections, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “They tend to hit hardest on people who are poor, who don’t drive and don’t have a license, who are minorities.”voter id, voter suppression

National: Election officials focus on whether voter ID laws contributed to Hillary Clinton’s defeat | Los Anegeles Times

Starting with John F. Kennedy’s victory over Richard Nixon in 1960, Delia Anderson had voted in 14 straight presidential elections. She had cast her ballot at the same polling place for years, never with a glitch. This year, however, a volunteer driving her to the polls mentioned that she would be asked to show a state-approved photo ID. “Don’t these poll people already know who I am?” replied Anderson, who is 77, black and uses a wheelchair, as she frantically sifted through her purse for anything to prove her identity. It was a lost cause. She had planned to vote for Hillary Clinton. Instead, for the first time in 56 years, she did not cast a ballot. “Lord, have mercy,” she said. “What happened to voting?” Such stories abound in Milwaukee, a Democratic stronghold in a state where Donald Trump won by 22,748 votes, a key victory in his path to the presidency. Now, voting rights advocates, elections officials and political experts have zeroed in on the city as a case study of whether controversial new rules requiring ID for voting — the kind used in several states in November for the first time in a presidential election — blocked vast numbers of largely young and racial minority Democrats from casting ballots and contributed to Clinton’s defeat.

Virginia: Voter ID law upheld by federal court after Democratic challenge | The Guardian

A federal appeals court has upheld a Virginia law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, rejecting a challenge from Democrats who argued that it suppressed voting by minorities and young people. A three-judge panel of the fourth US circuit court of appeals ruled on Tuesday that the law did not violate the Voting Rights Act or impose an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote. The ruling comes just months after a different panel of the same court struck down a North Carolina law that required voters to produce a photo ID and also scrapped same-day registration and shortened early voting periods. But the panel that issued Tuesday’s ruling found that the facts in the North Carolina case “are in no way” like those in the passage of Virginia’s bill. Virginians can obtain free photo IDs at voter registrar offices, but Democrats argued that few people knew about that option because the state had done little to spread the word.

Editorials: Virginia Cracks the Code on Voter ID Laws | Noah Feldman/Bloomberg

One of the most remarkable things about voting where I do, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is that no one asks you for identification: Who you are is based on trust. But that charming civic experience may not be long for this world. Although several voter ID provisions were struck down before the 2016 election, an appeals court has now upheld Virginia’s law — and in essence provided a road map for how states can require ID without violating the Voting Rights Act or the Constitution. The law upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit resembles the laws struck down by other courts. Enacted in 2013, the law, known as S.B. 1256, requires voters to show ID, allowing them to cast provisional ballots if they don’t have it with them and to “cure” their ballots by presenting valid ID up to three days later. The state also accepts many forms of ID. What makes the law a little different from some others is that, if a voter lacks ID, the state board of elections has to issue one free — even if the voter shows up to the board without any documentation.

Arkansas: Legislator introduces Voter ID bill for 91st General Assembly | KTHV

Before the 91st General Assembly begins on Monday, January 9, Arkansas legislators in both the House and Senate continue to introduce bills. This time, State Representative Mark Lowery has introduced a bill requiring a voter provide verification of their identity when they go to vote. … In 2014, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox ruled that Act 595, introduced in the 89th General Assembly, was unconstitutional. The Arkansas Supreme Court agreed with Judge Fox’s decision, striking down the act.

North Dakota: More than 16,000 voter affidavits filed in North Dakota election | Bismarck Tribune

More than 16,000 voter affidavits were filed in this year’s general election, according to a survey of North Dakota county auditors. Less than two months before the Nov. 8 election, a federal judge ordered North Dakota to provide the affidavit as an option to voters. The elimination of that option by a 2013 state law is part of a lawsuit brought against North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger by seven members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. Affidavits allow voters to cast a ballot even if they cannot provide a valid form of identification. The voter swears to being a qualified elector in a particular precinct, and falsely swearing to an affidavit is a Class A misdemeanor. Donnell Preskey Hushka, government and public relations specialist with the North Dakota Association of Counties, surveyed county auditors and found 16,395 affidavits were filed across the state this year.

Michigan: Strict voter ID bills stall in Senate | The Detroit News

The Michigan Senate plans to adjourn for the year Thursday without taking up a strict voter identification proposal, Republican Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof said Tuesday, prompting cheers from protesters outside the state Capitol. Telling reporters the so-called lame-duck session may go down as a “tame duck,” Meekhof added that the upper chamber is unlikely to take up House-approved legislation to boost fines for “mass picketing” or subject state legislators and the governor to public records request laws. The controversial voter ID proposal, approved last week by the Republican-led House, would have required voters to bring photo identification to their local clerk’s office within 10 days if they don’t have an ID on Election Day. Failure to do so would have voided their provisional ballot.

Texas: Paxton formally asks Supreme Court to take up voter ID | USA Today

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday formally asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the state’s controversial voter identification law, which was ruled unconstitutional this year by a federal appeals court on grounds that it harmed the voting rights of minorities. Paxton, a first-term Republican, had signaled earlier that he would ask the high court to overrule the decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and allow Texas to resume enforcing voter ID under the law as it was passed by the Legislature in 2013. “The success of American democracy hinges on whether or not voters trust the integrity of the election process,” Paxton said in a late-afternoon news release. “Voter ID laws both prevent fraud as well as ensure that election results accurately reflect the will of Texas voters. The Legislature enacted common sense reforms, which should be respected by this nation’s courts.”

Virginia: Federal appeals court upholds voter ID law | Richmond Times-Dispatch

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday turned back a challenge to Virginia’s voter photo ID law upheld by a federal judge in Richmond this year. Last year, the Democratic Party of Virginia and two voters filed a suit alleging that the Republican-controlled General Assembly enacted the law to curb the number of young and minority voters. In May, after a two-week trial in March, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson upheld the photo ID requirement, and the plaintiffs appealed. On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the Richmond-based appeals court upheld Hudson’s decision.

United Kingdom: Britain Mulls Calls for Mandatory Voter ID | CNS

After a government report this summer recommended that British voters be required to provide identification, parliament will consider such a law early in the coming year. A Labour Party critic attributed the proposed legislation to the influence of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Under a bill introduced by Chris Green, a Conservative MP from the northwestern city of Bolton, all British voters would have to show a photo ID document at polling stations. Green told the House of Commons in late November that as society changes, so traditional standards of trust have to be reassessed. He said the level of voter impersonation at polling stations is by its very nature difficult to gauge, but it appeared to be on the increase, particularly in areas with large, transient populations.

Michigan: Stricter voter identification law passes House | Detroit Free Press

Stricter voter identification laws were described Wednesday night as both a way to ensure the integrity of elections is upheld and a means to erect barriers for vulnerable and minority voters. But in the end, Republicans who sponsored and supported the bills making voter identification laws more stringent, won the day, approving the main bill in the package on mostly party line votes of 57-50. Five Republicans joined all the Democrats in opposing the bill. “This protects the integrity of every legal citizens’ right to vote and to make sure the fraudulent votes aren’t cast,” said state Rep. Gary Glenn, R-Midland. “It seems to be a common sense requirement.”

Editorials: Accuracy About Voting — Needed on Both Sides of Debate | Ned Foley/Medium

This recent tweet from Professor Larry Tribe caught my eye: “Call it what you like, but the # of voters turned away for not having required forms of ID exceeded margin of T’s victory in MI, Pa & Wis” As soon as I read it, I said to myself, “That can’t be right.” First of all, no voter ever should be “turned away” for lack of ID. Instead, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) requires that voters lacking required ID receive a provisional ballot. To be sure, some poll workers may fail to enforce the mandates of HAVA, but in volumes exceeding Trump’s margins of victory in Michigan (about 11,000), Wisconsin (about 23,000), and Pennsylvania (about 44,000)??? If there had been a massive failure of election administration on that scale, which could have accounted for the outcome of the presidential election, presumably we would have heard news reports of it by now. Just because voters cast provisional ballots does not mean, of course, that those provisional ballots will be counted. In some states, a voter who casts a provisional ballot because the voter lacked a required form of ID is not permitted simply to sign an affidavit to get the ballot counted, but instead within a limited period of time must find a way to get the required ID and show it to local election officials.

Editorials: Trump’s Lies About Voter Fraud Are Already Leading to New GOP Voter-Suppression Efforts | Ari Berman/The Nation

Less than a month after Donald Trump unexpectedly carried Michigan by 10,000 votes, Republicans in the state legislature are already pushing to make it harder to vote. The presidential recount hasn’t even finished yet and Michigan Republicans are trying to pass a strict voter-ID law through the lame-duck legislative session before the end of this year. Under current Michigan law, a voter who does not present photo ID at the polls can sign an affidavit confirming their identify, under penalty of perjury, and cast a regular ballot. Under the new bill, which passed the House Elections Commission on a 5-3 party-line vote on December 1, voters without strict ID would have to cast a provisional ballot and then return to their local clerk’s office within 10 days of the election with photo ID to have their votes counted. This change to Michigan’s election laws could make a big difference in future elections: 18,339 people without strict photo ID used the affidavit option to vote in 2016—8,000 votes greater than Trump’s margin of victory. One-third of the affidavits came from Detroit, where Hillary Clinton won 67 percent of the vote in Wayne County. Already, Trump’s discredited lie that “millions” voted illegally in 2016 seems to be impacting Republican actions. “A multitude of candidates have raised the concerns about the integrity of elections,” said GOP Representative Lisa Lyons, who sponsored the bill. “We need to respond to those questions. We are going to make sure that we’re protecting you—all voters—and the integrity of the election.”

Michigan: Strict voter ID bills lined up for possible passage | The Detroit News

Top Republican leaders in the Michigan Legislature are backing a strict voter identification proposal, setting the stage for potential passage in the session’s final two weeks. The House Elections Committee on Thursday advanced a three-bill package that would require voters to provide photo identification at their polling place or within 10 days of casting a provisional ballot on Election Day. “It solves the opportunity for voter fraud,” said House Speaker Kevin Cotter, R-Mt. Pleasant, who intends to put the plan up for a floor vote. “Voter fraud is something that’s very difficult to be able to identify, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t protect the right to vote.” The proposal includes provisions allowing low-income voters to obtain a free birth certificate copy for the purposes of obtaining an ID, which is “great,” said Rep. Jon Hoadley, D-Kalamazoo. “But the problem with all this is, it’s used to restrict the vote, that’s what the purpose of this is,” he said. “It’s about making sure (we) can keep certain people from the polls, folks who can’t otherwise obtain get IDs.”

Michigan: Lame duck bills would change Michigan’s voter ID requirements | MLive

Most Michigan voters would have to present an ID card for their votes to count under legislation that popped up suddenly during Michigan’s lame-duck session. Currently voters who are registered but do not have a voter ID can fill out an affidavit attesting to their identity and then vote. House Bills 6066, 6067 and 6068, introduced Tuesday, would change that. Under the bills a voter without ID would fill out a provisional ballot. That ballot would only be counted if the voter returned to their clerk’s office within 10 days to show either a photo ID or present evidence they are either indigent and can’t afford an ID or have a religious objection to having their photo taken. “I can’t emphasize how simple this is. If you want your vote to count, you must prove your identity,” said Rep. Lisa Lyons, R-Alto, who sponsored the bills. The bills also allow indigent voters to receive free birth certificates and IDs.

Australia: Voter ID: The bombshell recommendation that brings an American problem to NSW | The Canberra Times

During the final sitting week of the NSW Parliament for the year, dominated by furious debate over legislation removing Independent Commission Against Corruption chief Megan Latham from her job, a parliamentary committee tabled a report containing an equally contentious measure. The report on the 2015 state election from the joint standing committee on electoral matters suggested a range of improvements to NSW voting rules based on the most recent poll. It contains a bombshell recommendation: that NSW voters be forced to produce photo identification before they are able to cast a ballot.

North Carolina: Legislature could revisit election laws in wake of McCrory complaints, Moore says | News & Observer

N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore said Monday that the legislature could revisit voter ID requirements and other election laws in the wake of complaints filed with help from Gov. Pat McCrory’s campaign. During a news conference announcing House Republican leaders for next year’s legislative session, Moore was asked about the complaints filed amid a tight governor’s race – making claims that dead people and convicted felons voted in this year’s election. “The fact that there are a number of protests related to the election at least make it an issue that it’s something that needs to be dealt with,” Moore told reporters.

Texas: DOJ: Texas voter ID law intentionally discriminates | USA Today

Election Day has come and gone but the court battle over Texas’ controversial voter-identification law rages on. In documents filed in federal court late last week, the U.S. Justice Department argued that not only does the 2011 law violate the voting rights of minority Texans, but that the elected leaders who pushed the measure known as Senate Bill 14 through the Legislature intended to disenfranchise those voters. “This discriminatory impact was not merely an unintended consequence of SB 14,” the Justice Department said in its filing. “It was, in part, SB 14’s purpose. Compelling evidence establishes that Texas enacted SB 14 at least in part because of its detrimental effects on African-American and Hispanic voters.”