Alabama: Voter registration bill passes House | The Montgomery Advertiser

The House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday pushing back the voter registration period from 10 days prior to an election to 17. It now goes to the Senate. But even if the bill passes the Senate and is signed into law, opponents say they will file a complaint with the Justice Department in an attempt to block it. The measure was pushed by voter registrars around the state who said they need the additional time to finalize voter lists, but it drew strong criticism from Democrats saying it was an attempt to block minority voting. “We are not helping Alabamians when we start closing doors and put obstacles in their way to vote,” said Rep. James Buskey, D-Mobile.

Editorials: A Simple Plan to Drastically Improve Voting, Stop Fraud, and Save Money | Trevor Potter/The Atlantic

Bipartisan agreements seem possible on immigration and perhaps even on guns. Could election reform be next? Is there an opportunity to move past the partisan rancor of the voting wars and modernize America’s out-of-date election system? We all know it needs improvement. Long lines on Election Day are only the most visible symptom, as some voters from Florida to Virginia to Ohio waited up to seven hours to make their voice heard in last year’s election. The culprit often turns out to be the old-fashioned, paper-based registration system used across the country. According to the Pew Center on the States, approximately 51 million Americans are not registered to vote but should qualify to do so. One in eight registrations contain errors or are no longer valid. Nearly 2 million dead people appear on the voter rolls. In 2008, estimates are that at least 3 million voters who thought they were registered showed up at the polls, only to be turned away because of registration problems.

Editorials: Easing the burden of voter registration | The Washington Post

This month, Ferenc Gyurcsány, the former prime minister of Hungary, and three other members of his political party set up tents in front of the parliament building in Budapest and embarked on a week-long hunger strike. They ended it with a rally before thousands of their compatriots — all to protest a proposed law that requires Hungarians to register before voting in the upcoming election. Why so much passionate resistance to registering 15 days before the election? One ally of the protesters went so far as to say that they were doing it “to call the attention of the people to how the government is bringing down democracy.” Gyurcsány said that he believes “it is unacceptable that anyone who happens to decide two days before an election that he wants to vote cannot do so and take part in the election.”

North Carolina: Not dead, but still voting | WRAL.com

Carolyn Perry remembers voting in her first election. It was 1967 in Ohio, a municipal election, and she was 21 years old. “The people at the polls introduced me and said, ‘This is Carolyn and this is her first time to vote,'” recalled the retired special education teacher.  Perry, who has been registered to vote in North Carolina since at least 1975, according to election records, was dismayed to receive a letter this month from the Wake County Board of Elections suggesting she may no longer be qualified to vote because she might be dead.  “My initial reaction? I was mad as hell,” Perry said Monday morning. Her name was one of nearly 30,000 across the state that volunteers with the Voter Integrity Project identified two weeks ago as potentially being dead but still registered to vote. The Voter Integrity Project is a North Carolina offshoot of True the Vote, a national movement that purports to combat election fraud by challenging the voter registration of those they believe should not be on voter lists. “We’re not really interested in partisan politics,” said Jay DeLancy, a retired Air Force officer and director of Voter Integrity Project. “As an organization, we try to eliminate those kinds of biases in our research.”

Washington: State can’t use Homeland Security records to check voter lists | Spokesman.com

Washington can’t use immigrant registration records from the U.S. Homeland Security Department to verify names on its voter rolls, state elections officials said today. The reason: The state doesn’t have a system that requires proof of legal residence before issuing a driver’s license, which is necessary to use the federal system. Secretary of State Sam Reed requested access to the federal system in July as a way of checking the accuracy of the state’s voter rolls. But to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program, which is designed to determine whether a person qualifies for different social and medical programs, the state would need to issue some sort of identification card that checks for legal immigration status.

Editorials: The GOP war on the Voting Rights Act | William Yeomans/Politico.com

In 2006, Congress reauthorized Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act with nearly unanimous Republican support. In 2012, Republican officials declared war on minority voting and have challenged the constitutionality of Section 5 — which requires states and localities with egregious histories of voting discrimination to seek federal approval before making any election changes — in multiple court cases. What happened? Consider: Republican support among African-Americans for presidential nominee Mitt Romney finally hit zero in a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll and the GOP’s strength among Latino voters is nearly as anemic. These numbers make minority voters, sadly, irresistible targets for Republican vote suppression efforts. Legal battles over when ballots can be cast and whose votes will be counted, The New York Times reported Monday, could substantially affect the outcome of 2012 elections.In many states, only the Voting Rights Act is standing in the GOP’s way. Rather than showing respect for the voting rights of minorities and winning their votes with appealing policies, Republicans appear to have instead decided to try to expel them from the electorate and attack the biggest legal obstacle to their expulsion — the Voting Rights Act. The rights of minority voters, however, are not fair game in partisan battles. Partisanship must not be allowed to trump equal opportunity in voting. Republicans have whipped up a phony frenzy over the extent of voter fraud to justify their assault on minority voters.

Louisiana: Secretary of State defends inactive-voter list | NOLA.com

Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler is disputing Democratic allegations that state residents are being stripped from voting rolls without adequate notice. He said the state, as required by state and federal law, checks voting rolls against other databases and puts people who have moved outside their parishes on an inactive list. The state sends two separate postcards to the address listed on the voting rolls, allowing a voter who was incorrectly made inactive to correct the record and return to active voting status, Schedler said. Voters can also correct the record by filling out an online form. Even if inactive voters don’t respond to the postcards and show up to vote on Election Day, they can still cast ballots by certifying they still live at their original addresses.

Tennessee: Davidson County election commission sets aside electronic poll books for November | The Tennessean

The Davidson County Election Commission voted Tuesday not to use electronic poll books for voting in November. The poll books, which were used to replace paper poll books recently in 60 of the county’s 160 voting precincts, have been at the center of criticism in the past week because some voters received the wrong ballots during the Aug. 2 primary. The commission had originally planned to use the new poll books in all 160 precincts for the Nov. 6 general election. But four of the five commission members voted Tuesday to revert back to the paper poll books for all precincts. The electronic poll books will be used only to help assist poll workers to help look up voter lists.

Venezuela: Voting drill in Venezuela | Al Jazeera

Sunday’s unusual “mock”elections are meant to test Venezuela’s newest innovation to its electronic voting system. Coming from a country where we still have to mark ballots by hand, fold them and then stuff then into cardboard boxes, this system is really quite state of the art. A machine now verifies a voter’s identification with his or her thumb print. It must be the same thumb print that appears on a person’s national identification card. After about 15 seconds, the machine gives the green light to go to the actual voting booth. There, you find a touch screen system to select the candidate of choice: President Hugo Chavez of the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela, or his rival Enrique Capriles of the opposition United Coalition. Just touch your candidate’s photo and another screen asks you to select YES or NO. It is very fast, easy and designed to make multiple voting impossible.

Virginia: Board of Elections finds 10,000 dead voters on rolls | Richmond Times-Dispatch

The State Board of Elections has identified 10,000 dead individuals on the Virginia voter rolls. The voters were identified through a data comparison between the Social Security Administration’s death master file and the current list of registered voters in Virginia. Local registrars will now begin removing the names from the rolls, but the finding is likely the tip of the iceberg. Only 15 million of the 60 million records in the death master file have been matched against the state’s voter list thus far.

Hawaii: Hilo Elections Office audit raises questions | West Hawaii Today

County Clerk Jamae Kawauchi closed the Hilo Elections Office on Monday for an audit of the county voter registration list, an action a state elections official called unprecedented and a county councilman called “fishy.” The Kona Elections Office remained open, and people coming to the Hilo office were directed across the hall to Council Services, where clerks took names and telephone numbers and distributed elections materials. Bernice Mau, clerk for the City and County of Honolulu, which administers the statewide voter registration list, said it’s standard operating procedure to send the counties printed copies of their voter lists. “Every election we send them to all the counties,” Mau said. But closing the office just 20 days before the Aug. 11 primary to review the list raised eyebrows in Hilo, where the Elections Office has undergone a rocky six months. Rex Quidilla, a spokesman for the state Elections Office, said his office didn’t hear about the closure and audit until late Monday. “We’ve not had it happen in the past,” he said of the audit.

Florida: Voter declared dead second time; an Orlando woman has been purged from voter lists twice | Orlando Sentinel

Connie Smith is not dead, and she has a signed-and-sealed state certificate to prove it. But that’s not always enough. State and Orange County elections officials keep bumping her off voter rolls, because they think she is dead. The latest “To Whom It May Concern” certified letter arrived last Friday from the Orange County Supervisor of Elections office. “This letter is to inform you that the person named above has been removed from the Orange County vote rolls after we received notification of their death.” “I opened it up, I cried,” Smith said. They were tears of frustration. Florida has been in the news a lot lately – for seeking to purge voter rolls of non-citizens; for limiting early voting and third-party registration – with voting-rights groups screaming “intimidation.” But Smith’s case is a reminder of how upsetting run-of-the-mill screwups also can be. Constance S. Smith, 61, of College Park, had been left for dead before; she got a similar letter in 2008. She said it took her six months to clear that up, even as other government agencies picked up on word of her demise. The Florida Division of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles invalidated her driver license. Then the Social Security Administration asked her family about reports of her death. Ultimately, she had to get the Florida Department of Health to send her a “non-death” certificate she could show other agencies. It states there is no record of her death. Four years later, Smith wonders if she needs fresher proof. “That’s why I cried,” she said.

Florida: State Gains Access to Homeland Security List | NYTimes.com

In a victory for Republicans, the federal government has agreed to let Florida use a law enforcement database to challenge people’s right to vote if they are suspected of not being U.S. citizens. The agreement, made in a letter to Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s administration that was obtained by The Associated Press, grants the state access to a list of resident noncitizens maintained by the Homeland Security Department. The Obama administration had denied Florida’s request for months but relented after a judge ruled in the state’s favor in a related voter-purge matter. Voting rights groups, while acknowledging that noncitizens have no right to vote, have expressed alarm about using such data for a purpose not originally intended: purging voter lists of ineligible people. They also say voter purges less than four months before a presidential election might leave insufficient time to correct mistakes stemming from faulty data or other problems.

National: Picture proving you are who you say you are at the polling place | UPI.com

Stricter voter identification measures supporters say fight fraud and opponents counter disenfranchise groups of voters are being detoured into the U.S. court system, possibly keeping them from going into effect or being considered before Election Day. Restrictions on early voting, new photo ID requirements and efforts to purge voter lists of non-citizens have been met with opposition from the U.S. Justice Department, civil rights groups and judges who blocked the provisions. “There has been a real push-back by the courts to these widespread efforts to restrict the vote,” Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, told The Washington Post. “If those seeking to suppress the vote won round 1, round 2 seems to be going to the voters.”

Florida: Voter Registration groups relaunch drives, but state digs in on voter purge | Facing South

Florida’s ever-escalating voting wars (see hereand here) have seen two big developments recently. First: Last week, a judge blocked most of Florida’s aggressive new restrictions on how groups can register voters. In his opinion, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle argued in his opinion that the time limits and penalties thrust onto groups like the League of Women Voters, which ultimately caused them to famously shut down their voter registration drive in the state, was unconstitutional:

Together speech and voting are constitutional rights of special significance; they are the rights most protective of all others, joined in this respect by the ability to vindicate one’s rights in a federal court. … [W]hen a plaintiff loses an opportunity to register a voter, the opportunity is gone forever. And allowing responsible organizations to conduct voter-registration drives—thus making it easier for citizens to register and vote—promotes democracy.

That decision led the League and Rock the Vote to announce this week that they wereresuming their voter registration drives in the battleground state.

Massachusetts: Election reform package passes in the House | Bay State Banner

The Massachusetts State House recently passed an election modernization bill that will make it easier for people to register to vote, increase the security and integrity of the vote counting process and welcome new young voters in Massachusetts. “This is a big victory. If this bill is passed by the Senate and signed into law by the governor, it will be the most significant reform to strengthen the vote-counting and voter registration processes in Massachusetts in 20 years,” said Avi Green, co-Director of MassVOTE. There are five main components of the Election Laws Reform Act. The first is mandatory training for local election officials. Municipal election officials must attend annual training given by the Secretary of State to keep current with state and federal election laws. Second, election audits will be performed in three percent of precincts, which will be randomly chosen after each election.

Indonesia: Jakarta Election Commission Will Not Change Voter List Despite Fictitious Registered Voters | The Jakarta Globe

The Jakarta election commission confirmed that there were thousands of fictitious and double-registered voters on the final voter list (DPT) for the upcoming gubernatorial election, but they insisted they would not revise the list. “Despite thousands of double-registered voters and fictitious voters, we will not change the data on the final voter list that we issued on June 2,” Dahliah Umar, chairwoman of the Jakarta Election Commission (KPU), said on Thursday. Dahliah said the solution to the problem was to hold one of the double-registered voters’ cards. She said the commission would compile a list of the double-registered voters and give the data to polling station committees. She claimed this solution would not violate regulations because the commission cannot change the number of voters listed on the final voter list. However, issuing an inaccurate final voter list leaves the KPU vulnerable to lawsuits. “The solution is we will inform the polling station committees that the voters have been registered at other polling stations,” Dahliah said. “So the committee will not allow those voters to cast their votes at that polling station.”

National: Restrictive voting laws tied up in court | The Washington Post

Stricter ID laws and other controversial voting restrictions, passed this year by several Republican-controlled legislatures, are hitting legal roadblocks that could keep many of the measures from taking effect before the November elections. Curbs on early voting, new ID requirements and last-minute efforts to rid voter lists of noncitizens have been met with vigorous opposition from the Justice Department and civil rights groups, and in some cases, the provisions have been blocked by federal or state judges. “There has been a real push-back by the courts to these widespread efforts to restrict the vote,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, which opposes the new laws. “If those seeking to suppress the vote won round one, round two seems to be going to the voters.”

Tennessee: 40,000 Memphis Voter Records Erased? | Fox 13 News

Norma Lester with the Shelby County Election Commission says the commission chair requested an investigation into recent allegations of thousands of county voter histories being purged, according to a letter FOX 13 obtained. Blogger Bev Harris with Black Box Voting originally said her research showed that 488 lifelong voters, mainly African American and democratic voters, were missing in the Shelby County registry. People on this list include political figures like Darrick Harris and Edmund Ford. “There’s 600,000 voters on the Shelby County voter list and for it just to happen to African Americans in one particular district who vote democrat is certainly not just random chance,” says Harris. Harris says after continuing her research, she found that not just 488 but 13,000 voter histories have been erased from the Shelby County voter registry. … Congressman Steve Cohen says the missing records go even deeper. The Congressman announced on Sunday that he’s contacted U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder about 40,000 missing voter histories, which Cohen says is the precursor to purging. He says he noticed the discrepancy in Dec. 2011 when he pulled records from Aug. 2010 for his election mailings.

Editorials: Verifying Pakistan’s voter lists | Dawn.com

The Election Commission of Pakistan was given the task to remove the 37 million bogus voters from the list (Dec 16) and replace them with new ones eligible to vote. The Supreme Court observed that the preparing of voter list can be delegated to National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) if the Election Commission is not able to complete the task.

Nadra has the record of all eligible voters and is also responsible for issuing the National Identity Card. It is better equipped to prepare the voter list. The Election Commission’s prime responsibility should be to ensure transparent, free and fair election, it should consider making voting compulsory and improving the system of vote casting at polling stations.

Pakistan: Voter fraud: 65% of votes in Balochistan were bogus | The Express Tribune

Balochistan had the highest rate of fake voters during the 2008 general election, according to findings from the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA).

A glance at statistics from the province do not reflect well on the electoral process. In Killa Abdullah there were total of 387,823 registered voters and only 70,820 could be verified. In Kech, of the 218,953 registered voters only 84,500 were legitimate. In Loralai there were 226,658 registered voters, of which a meagre 52,657 could be verified. Of Jaffarbabad’s 391,608 registered voters, only 98,919 were not bogus.

The legitimacy of our current government has been severely questioned by recent findings that almost half of the entries in voter lists at the last election were fake. The startling facts emerged as the ECP and NADRA were preparing new voter lists based on computerised national identity cards(CNICs). Discrepancies emerged between the electoral rolls used for last general election and succeeding by-polls held so far.

Pakistan: Quest of Indiscriminate Justice | PakTribune

It is alarming to read the recent development in Pakistan where The Election Commission (ECP) & the Govt of Pakistan is considering imposition of new tighter regime on overseas Pakistanis whereby their right to vote, stand election, take public office and or governmental and judicial position may be curtailed forever.

The background of anxiety is the July media reports talking about a ban announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan on the 4th of July 2011 on Overseas Pakistanis to be in the voter lists, hence disqualified to participate in any electioneering process.

The Gambia: Independent Electoral Commission’s fuzzy math and impossible numbers | Senegambia News

As the elections of 2011 draw near, speculations about the credibility of the voter register dominate the political debate, casting doubts on the entire electoral process. At issue is the possible registration of minors and non-citizens, which has created the inflated number of registered voters in this election cycle.

The number of voters registered for the 2011 election season does not support the approximate birth and deaths rates evidence. In these elections, the IEC announced the registration of a total of 869,000 voters, which is an increase of 199, 000 new voters from the 670,000 registered in the 2006 elections.

This increase represents a 3.3% population increase, which is higher than the 2.5% birth rate or population increase rate over the past several census cycles.

Egypt: Parties welcome electoral commission measures, demand more | The Daily News Egypt

Several political parties welcomed Tuesday the measures announced by the Supreme Electoral Commission concerning the next parliamentary polls, but demanded more steps. On Monday, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) formed the Commission led by the head of the Cairo Appeals Court Abdel-Mo’ez Ibrahim.

A few hours later, Ibrahim said in a telephone interview with ON TV’s Baladna Bil Masry talk show that the polls will be held in the second part of November but that the electoral process as a whole will start on Sept. 18. Earlier in March, SCAF had announced that parliamentary elections will be held in September but later in July, the polls were delayed to November.

Pakistan: Voter lists to be ready by December: Election Commission | Associated Press Of Pakistan

Secretary Election Commission (EC) Ishtiaq Ahmad has said that the process of preparing voters list for the next general election is underway and it will be completed by December this year.Talking to Pakistan Television (PTV) he said, after completing its work, the EC would foward the entire data to NADRA for scanning and printing of the voter lists.“EC had introduced many reforms in the past one and a half year while more steps were also being taken to facilitate the voters”, he said.

The Secretary EC said to resolve the issue of dual nationality of the incumbent Members National Assembly, a case had been referred to the Law Ministry to formulate modalities.

Pakistan: Whopping 37 million ‘bogus votes’ removed from voter lists in Pakistan | Daily India

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has been informed that 37 million bogus votes have been excluded from voter lists.

Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) Secretary Ishtiaq Ahmed Khan also informed the court that 36 million new voters would be included with the assistance of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA).

Earlier, ECP Joint Secretary Sher Afgan had said that 37 million votes in the electoral lists were not bogus, but unverified votes, and could not be removed until next year.

Pakistan: Azad Jammu and Kashmir polls: Tribunal formed to address complaints | The Express Tribune

The Azad Jammu and Kashmir Election Commission formed a tribunal to address what it expects will be many complaints by candidates relating to the June 26 Legislative Assembly polls, even as it denied charges of rigging in the polls.

A spokesperson for the election commission said that the tribunal would be a faster mechanism for dealing with petitions likely to be filed by many of the losing candidates. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has already begun filing cases alleging rigging in the AJK elections and the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) is reportedly considering a similar move.

However, even as it formed the tribunal, the Election Commission spokesperson denied that they had been involved in any vote rigging.“No incident of casting fake votes or any unlawful use of influence upon the polling staff was reported in any of the constituencies,” the spokesman said.