Indonesia: Some 15,000 lose voting rights in Jakarta election | The Jakarta Post

Following months of protest by the Anies Baswedan camp concerning the possible manipulation of voter registration, the Jakarta Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) has stripped the voting rights of more than 15,000 people in the Jakarta gubernatorial election. KPU commissioner Mochammad Sidik said Tuesday that most of the 15,000 voters had been declared ineligible to vote as their identity numbers and family card numbers were not included in commission data.

Zimbabwe: Electoral Commission Still Using 2 Voters’ Rolls in By-Elections | VoA News

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) has expressed dismay over the continued use of two voters’ roll in Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections saying the electoral body should stop this practice. In its detailed report following the Mwenezi parliamentary election won by a Zanu PF candidate at the weekend, ZESN said, “ZESN observers reported that the Commission continued to use two voters’ rolls in the by-election a trend that has been previously observed in previous by-elections. “The main voters’ roll made up of voters captured during the registration process was used together with a supplementary roll based on the ward based voters’ roll used in the 2013 harmonised election. ZESN reiterates its position that use of one voters’ roll in future elections will greatly enhance the transparency and integrity of the electoral process.”

Indonesia: Election Supervisors Question Accuracy of Voters List in Gubernatorial Election Runoff | Jakarta Globe

The Jakarta branch of the Election Supervisory Agency, or Bawaslu, has questioned the accuracy of the temporary voters list, or DPS, ahead of the second round of the Jakarta gubernatorial election on April 19. Bawaslu Jakarta said 46,492 voters from the permanent voters list (DPT) were missing and identified around 13,000 duplicated voter registration cards after verifying the DPS on Thursday (06/04). The DPS list was provided by the General Election Commission, or KPU.

Indonesia: Jakarta Election Commission to Improve Voters’ Data | Jakarta Globe

Jakarta’s Regional Election Commission, the KPUD, will update its list of voters, known as DPT, ahead of the expected run-off election in Jakarta in April, the commission’s chairman has said. “We’ve had a meeting with the KPU [General Election Commission]. We will use the list of voters in the first round as a reference for the voters’ list in the run-off election,” KPUD Chairman Sumarno said in Jakarta on Thursday (17/02). The new list will include voters who were listed in the additional list, known as DPTb, as they went to polling stations and submitted their credentials despite not being listed in the initial voters’ list there. Sumarno said they will also include Jakarta residents who were listed in the DPT during the first round but failed to turn up at polling stations.

Rwanda: National Electoral Commission begins update of voters’ register | The New Times

The National Electoral Commission (NEC) has called on all citizens eligible to vote to verify their particulars on the electoral roll in their respective cells and villages to ensure they are ready to participate in the forthcoming presidential election, slated for August next year.In a statement, the commission’s executive secretary, Charles Munyaneza, said voters should check with their local government offices to ensure information about their identification is accurate while those that have recently attained voting age can be registered to ensure no one is left out of the exercise. The two-week exercise starts today and will end on November 30, according to the statement. It will be carried out at the village and cell levels. The eligibility age for voting in Rwanda is 18 years.

Indiana: Voter Group Says Dead People Likely Registered | Associated Press

A data analysis firm hired by a voter registration group said on Tuesday that its analysis of Indiana’s voter database found thousands of people over the age of 110 who would likely be deceased and are still registered to vote. TargetSmart conducted a review of the state voter file maintained by Republican Secretary of State Connie Lawson’s office on behalf of Patriot Majority, a voter registration group with deep ties to the Democratic Party, which has been the focal point of a state police probe of possible voter fraud. But Patriot Majority said the data firm’s findings show that the statewide voter database is riddled with errors and this does not mean there was fraud. The review found 837,000 voters with out-of-date addresses when compared to the United States Postal Service address database, as well as 4,556 duplicate registrations, 3,000 records without dates of birth and 31 records of registered voters who are too young to cast a ballot. “There is clearly bad, missing and incomplete data,” said Tom Bonier, the CEO of TargetSmart, which is affiliated with the Democratic Party. “So if you’re seeing a lot of names changing or dates of birth changing, that’s likely because the information she had on the file is incorrect.”

Zimbabwe: Electoral Commission Compiles New Voters’ Roll | VoA News

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) says it is setting up a new biometrics voters’ roll, which is expected to be in place by May next year and ready for the crucial 2018 general elections in which 92-year old President Robert Mugabe is the sole candidate for the ruling Zanu PF party. According to ZEC mapping has already started for the new voters’ roll and all Zimbabweans are expected to register to vote in any national election starting next year.

Texas: Attorney General’s office questions state’s authority in maintaining voter lists | The Monitor

A representative from the Texas Attorney General’s office appeared her in court Monday to argue that the state should not be held responsible in the lawsuit by the American Civil Rights Union against the Starr County elections administrator. Assistant Attorney General Adam Bitter said the office was contacted by the ACRU about the case and proceeded to submit a brief arguing that, in this case, the state did not have the authority to ensure that Starr County maintain proper voter lists. However, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa appeared confused as to why the attorney general’s office had gotten involved and said it was the Texas Secretary of State that should be held responsible. “I really don’t understand why you refuse to bring in the proper party,” Hinojosa told the attorneys representing the ACRU.

Zimbabwe: Electoral Commission Set to Implement Sweeping Reforms | VoA News

Zimbabwe Electoral Commission chairperson, Justice Rita Makarau, says the election management body is implementing a raft of measures aimed at making the Zimbabwe’s electoral system more transparent and credible. Makarau told a stakeholders’ conference organised by the Elections Resource Centre that the reforms include a robust and efficient biometric voter registration exercise that would eliminate the dead and absent from the voters roll. She said the polling station-based voter registration exercise would, among other issues, result in the reduction in the number of ballot papers per polling station and reduce chances of double voting.

Ghana: Angry mob besieges Electoral Commission’s office in Cape Coast | Ghana Web

Angry residents surrounded the Electoral Commission (EC)’s office in Cape Coast on Monday threatening to halt the on-going exercise to re-register National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) registrants whose names were deleted. The exercise, which commenced on Monday, is to enable NHIS registrants whose names were expunged from the electoral roll in accordance with a court order to be re-registered. The angry mob accused the EC of scheming to disenfranchise them by deleting their names as part of NHIS registrants even when they never registered with the NHIS cards in 2012. They demanded answers from the regional officials.

Thailand: Regime blames opponents for pre-referendum disorder | Bangkok Post

The National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) has blamed opponents of the government for stepping up disorder ahead of the draft charter referendum following the destruction of a copy of eligible voters’ lists in the North over the weekend. NCPO spokesman Piyapong Klinpan said that the destruction of the lists put up on a notice board was unprecedented. It was not an act of sabotage between conflicting political parties or persons but an act against the government who was inviting people to cast their votes in the Aug 7 charter referendum. “It is believed that it was an act of those with different stances from the government’s,” Col Piyapong said.

United Kingdom: Nearly 800,000 names axed from voter register, official figures show | The Guardian

Almost 800,000 potential voters were deleted from the electoral register under government changes to the system, official figures have confirmed. The Electoral Commission said about 770,000 names were removed from the register as the government introduced the requirement that people sign up as individuals rather than as households. Figures from the Office for National Statistics showed the overall register in December 2015 had shrunk by 600,000 names in the preceding 12 months, suggesting a voter registration drive over the same period was successful in getting people to sign up. But Labour said the huge number of deletions meant hundreds of thousands of people were at risk of disenfranchisement, highlighting a particular problem in university towns and among younger people who are almost eligible to vote. Overall, the electoral register is smaller by 1.6 million names than at its peak in 2012 when 46.4 million people were on the list.

Mississippi: State Supreme Court denies Chris McDaniel request to revisit ruling on poll books access | Associated Press

The Mississippi Supreme Court said Thursday that it won’t reconsider its ruling that voters’ birthdates must be redacted before poll books are opened for public inspection. State Sen. Chris McDaniel had asked the nine justices to hold a hearing and reconsider the ruling they issued last week. On Thursday, the court said no. Two justices did not participate in the ruling and three said they would have granted a hearing. McDaniel wants to see full information in poll books, including birthdates, as he prepares to challenge his 7,667-vote loss to U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in the June 24 Republican primary runoff. McDaniel campaign spokesman Noel Fritsch said Wednesday that the campaign was still gathering evidence of potential wrongdoing to prepare to file an election challenge. During a July 16 news conference, McDaniel attorneys said a challenge could be filed within the following 10 days.

Virginia: Chesterfield registrar delays purge of voter rolls | Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Democratic Party of Virginia is seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the State Board of Elections and the commonwealth’s 132 local registrars from purging names from their voter registration lists. The move, less than a month before statewide elections, comes ahead of the Oct. 15 deadline to register to vote. A judge will hear the injunction request Oct. 18 in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. The purge list of 57,000 voters — broken down by locality and provided to local registrars by the State Board of Elections — is “replete with errors” and includes thousands of voters who reside in Virginia and who are lawfully registered to vote, according to a memorandum filed late last week in support of the Democratic Party’s motion. The State Board of Elections said in a statement that it is required by federal law to “conduct list maintenance activities to ensure the accuracy of the voter rolls.” It says it does not cancel voters by itself but directs local registrars to “carefully review all data” to ensure it properly cancels registrations.

Oregon: No License To Vote: A bill tying voter registration to driver’s licenses is stuck in neutral | Willamette Week

A bill that could register as many as 600,000 new Oregon voters is in danger of dying without a vote. The state’s top elections official, Secretary of State Kate Brown, wants anyone who gets a new driver’s license, or renews an existing one, to be automatically registered to vote. Brown argues that more registered voters promotes a stronger democracy: 2.8 million Oregonians are eligible to vote but only 2.2 million are registered, a registration rate Brown calls “mediocre.” Supporters say the bill should be zinging its way through the Legislature, appealing to citizens who want to limit their dealings with bureaucracy. “It’s a great concept,” says Paul Gronke, chairman of the political science department at Reed College. “Why would anybody want citizens to appear in government offices twice instead of just once?”

Florida: Judge says voter purge can go on | MiamiHerald.com

A federal judge in Fort Lauderdale ruled Thursday that Florida’s purge of potential noncitizens on the voter rolls can go on. U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch said federal law does not prohibit the state from removing voters who were never lawfully eligible to register in the first place. Florida has identified 198 voters as potential noncitizens — among an estimated 11.4 million registered voters — and sent the names to independent county elections supervisors for their review. A coalition of liberal-leaning voting-rights groups had asked the court to halt the purge, arguing in a hearing Monday that federal law prohibits purging the voter rolls 90 days before an election. Attorneys for Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner countered that the state could purge noncitizens at any time because they should have never been on the voter rolls. “We’re very pleased another federal court has ruled that Florida’s efforts to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls are lawful and in the best interest of Florida voters,” Detzner said in a statement Thursday. “Ensuring ineligible voters can’t cast a ballot is a fundamental aspect of conducting fair elections.”

Editorials: Should partisans be in charge of our elections? | CBS News

Imagine that the umpire in a baseball game was affiliated with one of the teams on the field. Would you trust him to call the game fairly? You most likely would not. Yet when it comes to elections, Americans trust officials from the two political parties to oversee the process in a fair way. There are 36 states in which elections are overseen by an elected, partisan secretary of state or lieutenant governor, according to the National Association of Secretaries of State. In another three states – Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas – partisan secretaries of state appointed by the governor oversee elections. These officials vow to carry out their duties in an impartial manner. The Constitution of the National Association of Secretaries of State says that members commit to “practicing fair and unbiased election administration that recognizes each eligible citizen’s right to cast his or her vote, and for that vote to be counted with the highest regard to constitutional foundations.”

National: RNC Platform Committee Officially Endorses Proof Of Citizenship, Voter ID Laws | Huffington Post

The GOP’s platform committee convened in Tampa, Fla., on Tuesday, expanding the party’s official endorsement of state voter ID laws to include support for similarly divisive proof of citizenship laws. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) submitted an amendment calling for the addition of language to the draft GOP platform expressing support for state legislation that requires voters to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote. The amendment would build on a prior backing of “true, robust photo ID laws,” Kobach said. “We support state laws that require proof of citizenship at the time of voter registration to protect our electoral system against a significant and growing form of voter fraud. Every time that a fraudulent vote is cast, it effectively cancels out the vote of a legitimate voter,” the amendment, later adopted by the committee, read. Kansas and Georgia are the only states that currently have such laws on the books. Measures passed in other states remain mired in legal challenges.

Massachusetts: ‘Welfare-voter’ spat part of larger political duel | CSMonitor.com

A controversy over voter registration in Massachusetts is serving up a reminder: Election 2012 revolves not just around a messaging war but also around efforts by both parties to affect voter turnout. Republican Sen. Scott Brown has complained that, in an unusual move, state officials have used taxpayer money to mail voter-registration forms to welfare recipients. The move is such a blatant effort to boost Democratic support, he argues, that his Senate-race opponent should pick up the mass-mailing tab. Officials for the state, politically dominated by Democrats, say the mailing to welfare recipients was a logical response to legal pressure. The move is part of an interim settlement with plaintiffs who argue that the state has failed to comply with a 1993 federal law designed to ensure better voting access for Americans – including the opportunity to register while renewing a driver’s license or signing up for welfare. The mailing went out to nearly half a million Massachusetts residents, which the Brown campaign characterizes as about one-third the number of votes that will end up winning the Senate race between Senator Brown and his rival, Elizabeth Warren.

Iowa: Activists, some Democrats criticize Iowa’s voter purge process | The Des Moines Register

The revelation this week of Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s move to drop ineligible names from the state’s voter rolls and change the process for voter-fraud investigations ushers Iowa into a national debate over ballot security and voter suppression. The rules enacted by Schultz, a Republican, lay out a process for his office to compare the names of Iowa’s 2.1 million registered voters to state and federal lists of foreign nationals who live in Iowa, with the goal of singling out those ineligible to vote. They also add procedures for filing voter fraud complaints that critics say remove a requirement in Iowa law that the person complaining must file a sworn statement. In a statement, Schultz said the new rules would strengthen ballot integrity in Iowa and improve due process for voters suspected of being ineligible.

Florida: DoJ says Florida’s voter purge violates federal law | MiamiHerald.com

The U.S. government wants to block Florida from resuming its purge of suspected noncitizens from the voter rolls, saying it would violate federal law. The Justice Department filed papers in U.S. District Court in Tampa accusing the state of ignoring a requirement that it first obtain approval for such action because five Florida counties are subject to federal pre-clearance of changes in voting procedures: Hillsborough, Collier, Hardee, Hendry and Monroe. The removal of noncitizens in a presidential election year has mushroomed into a major controversy, with Democrats and left-leaning voter advocacy groups accusing Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican Party of using the purge to suppress voter turnout in a state widely seen as a must-win for both presidential candidates.

Florida: Will Voter Purge Cost Obama the Election? | The Atlantic

It is November 7, the day after the 2012 presidential election, and Barack Obama has narrowly lost his bid for reelection. What clinched it: a photo-finish defeat in Florida — a few thousand votes in a state of more than 11 million voters. And then the reports start to trickle in from Floridians who say they were disenfranchised. Shortly before the election, they got an official letter telling them they couldn’t vote, even though they’re U.S. citizens. Most of them are Hispanic and say they would have voted Democratic. This is the nightmare scenario envisioned by Florida Democrats: The Republican voter purge has cost them the election. But could it really happen? Could Republican Governor Rick Scott’s push to cleanse the voter rolls of noncitizens — viewed by Democrats as a suspiciously timed, partisan attempt to suppress Hispanic voter turnout — end up swinging the presidential race to the GOP? Scott, in a recent interview, insisted that was the furthest thing from his mind. “I never think about that,” the governor told me. “I just think about what my job is, which is to make sure we enforce the laws of my state. Non-U.S. citizens do not have the right to vote in my state.”

Editorials: A Case Study in How Kris Kobach’s Cabal Aims to Remake Election Law | The Nation

 “Some 1,500 people voted under dead people’s and prisoners’ names from 2008-11, according to Michigan’s auditor general. Many might be clerical errors, but this illustrates the need to ensure accurate voter rolls.” Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson wrote this in a July 2 Times-Herald column, and she lied. Johnson is a member of a fifteen-state consortium of right-wing elections officials that’s hellbent on purging voters. And her dishonest jousting in Michigan this week offers a window into how that consortium works—playing fast and loose with facts in order to create the impression of a problem that would justify their hardline solutions, and flouting the law themselves when necessary. Johnson’s Monday column was a last-ditch effort to persuade Governor Rick Snyder to sign into law herSecure and Fair Elections (SAFE) initiative, including the bills HB 5061 and SB 803, which respectively would force voters to reaffirm their citizenship before receiving a ballot and would require photo ID for absentee voting. Another bill, SB 754, would put onerous restrictions on third-party registration organizations, much like a Florida law that was recently blocked by a federal judge. On Tuesday, Governor Snyder vetoed those three bills, but preserved the rest of Johnson’s SAFE package. Despite Johnson’s constant refrain on dead people voting, her own Bureau of Elections has already established that there was no actual voter fraud in the auditor general’s report she referenced in her July 2 column.

Texas: Voting rights group files suit over Texas registration practices | Houston Chronicle

The nonprofit Voting for America filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging Texas voter rolls have been actively suppressed by excessive restrictions on volunteers who conduct registration drives, aggressive purges of county voter rolls and poll workers who improperly requested identification from voters. “A developing body of state practices and provisions targeted at voter registration activities is endangering the rights of many Texas voters,” the lawsuit alleges. The group, affiliated with the Washington D.C.-based Project Vote, runs nonpartisan voter registration drives nationwide and has previously mounted legal challenges to state voter registration procedures in Missouri, Ohio, Indiana and New Mexico, among other states.

Colorado: Gessler: No ballots for soldiers who didn’t vote in 2010 | The Colorado Independent

Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert Ortiz gave Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler until this morning to specifically and formally address another of the charged ramifications of his new interpretation of state election law. Gessler got in under the wire. Thursday evening, he sent Ortiz a letter ordering him not to send ballots to any of the county’s “inactive voters”– legally registered voters who failed to cast ballots in the previous even-year general election– including roughly 70 soldiers on the Pueblo County inactive voter rolls serving out of state. In Pueblo as elsewhere in the state, inactive voters are now meant to visit the clerk’s office or a polling place to retrieve ballots. With the election a month away, Gessler’s directive seems likely to effectively disenfranchise the soldiers.

On Wednesday, Ortiz told the Colorado Independent he was pained by the idea of not sending out the ballots. “This is not a comfortable place to be,” he said, adding that not sending the ballots went against all of his priorities as clerk. He said he felt the clock ticking for the inactive-voter soldiers.

Colorado: Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler threatens to sue Denver over ballot flap involving inactive voters | The Denver Post

The Denver clerk and recorder said today she plans to send ballots to inactive voters for the Nov. 1 election despite a threat from the secretary of state to take her to court. The flap pits the state’s most powerful Democratic county against Colorado’s new Republican secretary of state, Scott Gessler.

“The City and County of Denver has consistently provided all eligible voters with ease of access to the voting franchise and we plan to continue to do so,” clerk Debra Johnson said today in a statement.

Gessler’s office said the law limits the mailings to active voters only. “It’s clear under state law that counties can only mail to active registered voters,” spokesman Rich Coolidge said. Coolidge cited the law’s language that says, “the designated election official shall mail to each active registered elector” to support Gessler’s threat.

Voting Blogs: Children and Dead People Are NOT Voting in Utah | Utah Data Points

In a blog post Monday, my colleague Adam Brown analyzed the publicly available Utah voter file with the catchy headline, “Are children and dead people voting in Utah?”  Later in the day he posted a follow up with this headline: “Which counties have more registration errors?” Voting by dead people and children is not a problem in Utah.  These so-called “registration errors” are better termed anomalies.

The blog posts, the brief summary on the Tribune’s Political Cornflakes blog, and the hype on KSL radio missed a lot of nuance. For example, KSL had a story during its 8-9 am drive-time show on Tuesday morning that reported on the posts.  They introduced the story with this (at 31:09 in this mp3 file): “Our top local story this hour. This is something like you’d expect from Chicago.  Dead people staying on the voter registration rolls.”  Later on in the hour (at 46:33 in the mp3 file), KSL introduced Adam for a brief interview with this: “Well, there are either a whole bunch of long-living residents in Utah or some dead people are registered to vote…So, is this like Chicago?” Adam’s actual interview wasn’t quite as dramatic, but he referred to “incomplete record keeping,” his surprise at finding “several thousand people born in the 1800s registered to vote,” and how “carelessness” creates “opportunities for abuse.”