Kenya: Electoral Boundaries Commission Assures Back-Up System Tamper Proof, Warns Rogue Poll Officials | allAfrica.com

Voters whose biometric data will not be detected on the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (KIEMS) will have their registration documents scanned before being allowed to vote. The scanning capability of the KIEMS devices will according to Commissioner Roselyn Akombe provide a complementary mechanism for voter identification in a bid to eliminate irregularities where biometric identification fails. However, those identified using a complementary mechanism will have to fill a Form 32 which will be used to validate them in the voter turnout count.

Editorials: Puerto Rico as a Blueprint for Voter Engagement | Ann Ravel/Pacific Standard

A few weeks ago, at the San Jose airport on my way to participate in an international election observation of Puerto Rico’s statehood referendum, the airline ticket agent asked me for my passport. This request surprised me: Puerto Rico is part of the United States, so a passport isn’t required for Americans to travel there. But as I soon discovered, through my work on the election, this request shone a light not only on the complex, and at times thorny, relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico that has persisted for over a century, but also on what true voter access and democratic engagement might look like. To understand the dynamics of the referendum, which was the fifth time since 1967 that Puerto Ricans voted on their future (to be a Commonwealth, independence, or statehood), it’s helpful to look at the vote’s connection to the past. A hundred years ago, an Act of Congress provided American citizenship to Puerto Ricans and increased their democratic self-governance. But today, Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico don’t have all of the rights of citizenship. For one, Puerto Ricans residing on the mainland of the U.S. may vote for president, but the 3.5 million people who live in Puerto Rico can’t, except in the primaries. Moreover, they don’t have full voting representation in Congress.

East Timor: Election results point to new leadership | Deutsche Welle

Preliminary results from East Timor’s parliamentary election indicate that a change in leadership appears likely, as the leading member of the governing coalition has fallen behind its junior coalition partner. The National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT), led by the former independence hero Xanana Gusmao, won just 28 percent of the vote, down from 36.7 percent in the 2012 election, which it won. Fretilin, or Revolutionary Front for an independent East Timor, appears to have won the election with 30 percent – essentially the same level of support it won five years ago.

Tunisia: In post-revolution Tunisia democracy endangered by low voter registration | Middle East Monitor

In Tunis, municipal elections are on the horizon. However, democracy is at risk.  Registration to vote is very weak and there is a clear reluctance among the many Tunisian political parties to participate. The municipal and regional elections are the democratic exercise in post-revolution Tunisia since the last elections took place in 2010. And they are especially significant because these councils used to be appointed by the Head of State. … But according to Nabil Bafoun, a member of the Independent High Electoral Commission, the process suffers from the absence of political parties and a lack of seriousness regarding the involvement of civil society in the process of voter registration. In press statements, Bafoun has said that the number of registered voters in this election has so far reached 167,770 voters, including 30,252 updates for registrants who changed their residence addresses.

East Timor: East Timorese form long lines to vote in parliamentary election | Reuters

Voters in East Timor queued up on Saturday to cast their vote in the country’s fourth parliamentary elections since independence in a ballot where campaigning has focused on development and jobs in Asia’s youngest democracy. More than 700,000 East Timorese are registered to vote in the country, which has a land area slightly smaller than Hawaii and is home to 1.2 million people. Over 20 political parties are vying for 65 seats in parliament as frustration grows over the government’s failure to use the wealth generated by oil and gas sales to support development and create jobs. The parliamentary election will determine the country’s prime minister. The official results of the election is expected to be announced by Aug. 6, although preliminary results should come much earlier.

Papua New Guinea: Election leads to indecision | The Australian

Papua New Guinea’s struggle to complete its election tells the story of the country’s continuing woes. It is derived from one part corruption, one part inadequate funding, and several parts of the kind of bureaucratic incompetence that mars so many PNG institutions. This year’s election — the ninth since independence from Australia — which in theory finished last Saturday, started quietly with the most low-key campaigning period in living memory — since most candidates simply did not have the money to spend on the colourful electioneering of the past. In 2002, especially in the Southern Highlands, about 100 people died as the election campaign burst into tribal warfare.

Albania: Voters Await General Elections Results | Balkan Insight

Albanians are tensely awaiting election results which will be announced only on Monday after the long process of transporting votes from the polling station to the counters has taken place. On Sunday voting for the general elections began at 7am local time and continued until 8pm – one hour later than expected as polling station closures were postponed on account of the low turnout. The Central Electoral Commission, CEC, announced at 9pm that the turnout was around 45 per cent. Calculation shows that more than 1.5 million people voted out of a potential 3.4 million in the electoral rolls. In 2013 electoral turnout stood at around 53 per cent, and more than 1.7 million people cast their ballot.

Puerto Rico: Governor pushes statehood after boycott-plagued vote | Politico

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló on Thursday demanded that the U.S. government recognize his commonwealth as the 51st state, citing the island’s overwhelming vote for statehood four days ago. He faces long odds. “The U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico have taken a stand and have pleaded a choice,” said Rossello, speaking in a small, half-empty room occupied by reporters and his own staff at the National Press Club in Washington. Yet while 97 percent of those who participated backed statehood in the June 11 vote, the nonbinding referendum was boycotted by opposition parties, who either support the current commonwealth status or independence. As a result, less than a quarter of eligible voters cast ballots. Héctor Ferrer, the head of the opposition Popular Democratic Party, called the referendum “a rigged process,” in an interview with POLITICO this month.

France: The big question in France’s parliamentary elections: Why did so few people vote? | The Washington Post

Sunday was a good day for French President Emmanuel Macron. Just weeks after his remarkable win in the French presidential election, Macron’s recently established political party took a huge lead in the first round of voting for the country’s legislature, the National Assembly. The Republic on the Move party is projected to win 390 to 430 of the French Parliament’s 577 seats, according to an Ipsos-Sopra analysis. But observers noticed an uncomfortable detail in the electoral figures: Turnout of registered voters was the lowest it has been in any parliamentary election under France’s Fifth Republic. Turnout in the first round of voting for France’s National Assembly was the lowest in the history of the Fifth Republic.

Puerto Rico: Governor to take statehood case to Washington but faces US snub | The Guardian

The governor of Puerto Rico, Ricard Rosselló, has announced that he is to visit Washington in the next phase of his campaign to turn the island into the 51st state of the United States. Rosselló will go to the US capital armed with a 97% backing for statehood from voters in Sunday’s plebiscite on the future of the stricken US colony. But he faces an uphill struggle impressing his case on the US Congress, which holds ultimate power over Puerto Rico, given the historically low turnout of the vote and the boycott staged by opposition parties. The governor, a 38-year-old member of the ruling Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP), insisted the referendum sent a clear and strong message to Washington. “From today, the federal government will no longer be able to ignore the voice of the majority of the American citizens in Puerto Rico. It would be highly contradictory for Washington to demand democracy in other parts of the world, and not respond to the legitimate right to self-determination that was exercised today in the American territory of Puerto Rico,” he said after the vote.

Puerto Rico: Governor vows statehood push after referendum win | Reuters

Puerto Rico’s governor on Monday said the island’s vote in favor of becoming a U.S. state, despite low voter turnout and widespread boycotts, was “a fair and open” process that U.S. Congress should act upon. An island-wide referendum on Sunday favored statehood in a 97 percent landslide, though voter turnout reached just 23 percent as opponents of Governor Ricardo Rossello’s push to become a state boycotted the vote. The non-binding plebiscite is not expected to sway the U.S. Congress, which would have to agree to make Puerto Rico a state. Currently a U.S. territory, the island is struggling with $70 billion in debt and a 45 percent poverty rate, and is not viewed as a priority in Washington.

Puerto Rico: 23% of Puerto Ricans Vote in Referendum, 97% of Them for Statehood | The New York Times

With schools shuttered, pensions at risk and the island under the authority of an oversight board in New York City, half a million Puerto Ricans voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to become America’s 51st state, in a flawed election most voters sat out. With nearly all of the precincts reporting, 97 percent of the ballots cast were in favor of statehood, a landslide critics said indicated that only statehood supporters had turned out to the polls. Opposition parties who prefer independence or remaining a territory boycotted the special election, which they considered rigged in favor of statehood. On an island where voter participation often hovers around 80 percent, just 23 percent of registered voters cast ballots. Voting stations accustomed to long lines were virtually empty on Sunday.

France: Emmanuel Macron’s party set for landslide in French parliamentary elections | The Guardian

The French president Emmanuel Macron’s new centrist party looks set to take an overwhelming majority in parliament after the first round of elections held on Sunday. Official final results released early on Monday showed Macron’s one-year-old La République En Marche (Republic on the Move) and ally MoDem winning 32.32% in the first round, ahead of Les Républicains and its allies on 21.56% and the far-right Front National on 13.20%. The Socialist party – the party of Macron’s predecessor Francois Hollande – took just 9.5% of the vote with its allies. The result was however marred by a record low voter turnout of just 49%.

Malta: Election 2017: 92.07% turnout lowest since 1966 | The Malta Independent

Yesterday’s voter turnout of 92.07% was the lowest turnout figure since the 1966 election, although it was only less than one percentage point lower than 2013’s turnout figure of 92.98%. In what can be described as a very long and painstaking night in politics, both the Nationalist and Labour parties have spent hours poring over the voter turnout figures in each electoral district, closely analysing who were those who decided to not cast a vote in yesterday’s general election.

Algeria: Voters disillusioned ahead of Algeria poll | AFP

In Sidi Mhamed, a drab satellite town southwest of Algiers, residents are struggling to make ends meet, stay safe and secure a better future for their children. Few have any hope that Thursday’s legislative election will improve their lives. The sense of disillusionment with the political process is palpable. A few party billboards and some scraps of graffiti on apartment block walls are the only reminder that a nationwide election is just days away.

Montana: Clerks association chief wants ballot issue on House floor | Great Falls Tribune

The Montana Association of Clerks and Recorders and Election Administrators president sent a letter Wednesday to House Speaker Austin Knudsen, asking him to bring an amendment to the House floor as soon as possible that would allow mail-in ballots for the May 25 special election. It’s a proposal that the speaker and other top Republicans oppose, saying such an election process favors Democrats. Voters will cast ballots to fill the seat vacated by Ryan Zinke who was named U.S. secretary of the interior under President Donald Trump. Earlier attempts to get lawmakers to support a mail-in ballot have failed. On Friday, Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock used his amendatory veto powers and rewrote House Bill 83, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Bryce Bennett of Missoula. He specified that the special election to fill the vacancy for U.S. representative be conducted by mail.

Montana: Time Running Out For Mail-Only Voting In U.S. House Race | MTPR

County election officials need to know this week if a last-ditch effort to run next month’s special congressional election by mail will pass the state Legislature. Next week, counties across the state will start finalizing their list of voters who will cast absentee ballots in that election. On Friday Governor Steve Bullock revived efforts to get the Legislature to OK letting county clerks run mail-only balloting in the special election. The state Senate had already OK’d a bill to do that, but it was killed in a Republican-controlled House committee. So Bullock added mail-balloting language to a an unrelated bill, giving it what’s called an “amendatory veto,” and sent it back to legislative leaders for a vote. But House Republican leaders haven’t scheduled it for a vote, and aren’t talking to the press about Bullock’s action.

Alaska: House Majority Leader Chris Tuck pushes reforms to improve voter turnout | KTOO

In the last Legislature, a Democrat-sponsored bill aimed at increasing voter turnout in Alaska, especially in the Bush. It didn’t get a single hearing in the Republican-led House of Representatives. Now, Rep. Chris Tuck, an Anchorage Democrat, is in a powerful position leading the new House majority, and has reintroduced the legislation and the bill is making some progress. Cindy Allred works for Get Out the Native Vote, an organization that has been active registering and encouraging voting among Alaska Natives, many of whom live in rural areas.

China: With 65,000 mock votes from a target of one million, does Hong Kong even care about its leadership election? | South China Morning Post

The public’s sense of powerlessness and privacy concerns might explain the low turnout for the mock chief executive election poll, according to the organisers and a pan-democrat lawmaker. The remarks came after just 65,000 people voted in the mock ballot that opened on March 10 and ended on Sunday, well short of the organisers’ target of one million votes. IT sector lawmaker Charles Mok said organisers should assess why there was such a low turnout and tackle privacy concerns so the mock vote can become a better tool to gauge public opinion in the future. After consulting computer experts and other professional organisations, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data issued a second warning on Sunday, saying it had established that the organisers, when collecting voters’ personal data, had breached information security practices.

Hawaii: Lawmakers say mail-in voting could bolster Hawaii’s abysmal vote | Hawaii News Now

Hawaii has the lowest voter turnout rate in the nation, according to a recent study released by Nonprofit VOTE and the U.S. Elections Project. And that’s not a new distinction. The 2016 “America Goes to the Polls” report reveals this is the fifth presidential election in a row in which the state has ranked dead last for voter participation. According to the study, approximately 3 out of 5 eligible voters in Hawaii did not cast a ballot during the last presidential election. The voter turnout rate for the 2016 presidential election was 43 percent. How does that compare to other states or the rest of the country as a whole?

Netherlands: Populists Appear to Fall Short in Dutch Election, Amid High Turnout | The New York Times

European populism faced its first big electoral test since last year’s “Brexit” referendum and Donald J. Trump’s election. Turnout was the highest in decades. The main exit poll indicated that the largest party in Parliament will remain the center-right party of Mark Rutte, the prime minister, with 31 of 150 seats. He has moved rightward in recent months, making tougher pronouncements on immigration but steering clear of the xenophobic and borderline racist statements of other parties. The far-right populist party of Geert Wilders gained seats, but did not perform as strongly as expected. Exit polls suggested that it was tied for second place with the conservative party Christian Democratic Appeal and the center-left pro-European party Democrats 66 — each with 19 seats. Also making a relatively strong showing were the left-leaning Greens, with 16 seats. The leftist, euroskeptic Socialist Party is projected to have 14 seats.

National: New report finds that voter turnout in 2016 topped 2012 | The Hill

More voters cast ballots in November’s elections than when President Obama won reelection in 2012, though the number of Americans who showed up to vote remains well below all-time highs set half a century ago. About 139 million Americans, or 60.2 percent of the voting-eligible population, cast a ballot in November’s elections, according to data compiled by the U.S. Elections Project. That compares with 58.6 percent of eligible voters who turned out in 2012, but it’s below the 62.2 percent who turned out to help elect Obama for the first time in 2008. Last year, President Trump won just shy of 63 million votes — enough to secure a majority of the Electoral College, even though he fell almost 3 million votes shy of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The states where Trump and Clinton battled most fiercely also tended to be those where voter turnout was highest. Nine of the 13 states where voter turnout was highest were battleground states.

Delaware: Bill would ease restrictions on absentee ballots in Delaware | Delaware First Media

A Delaware lawmaker introduced a bill this week that would make it easier to vote by mail. Representative Earl Jaques (D -Glasgow) wants to remove language in the state constitution that requires voters show a valid excuse for obtaining an absentee ballot. And that’s going to be an uphill battle. Since its a constitution change, he needs approval from 2/3 of the General Assembly in two consecutive two-year sessions, which means he needs Republican votes. And that could be a tall order. Republicans blocked Jaques’ last attempt to do the same thing in 2015, saying it would increase voter fraud.

Kansas: Report: Kansas Election Law Suppressing Turnout | KCUR

Kansas’ “strictest in the nation” election law may have been written with the intent to discriminate against certain groups of voters and should be reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice to ensure that it doesn’t violate federal law, a civil rights panel says in a report issued Tuesday. The report, written by the Kansas Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, says that the proof of citizenship and voter ID requirements imposed by a 2011 Kansas law “may impose a substantially higher burden than that which has been previously challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court.” Download the report from the Kansas Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

National: Democrats move to give grants to states for boosting voting security, access to polls | The Hill

A pair of Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation on Tuesday that would give federal grants to states to boost voting system security and increase voter access to elections. Reps. Gerry Connolly (Va.) and Jim Langevin (R.I.) introduced the Fair, Accurate, Secure, and Timely (FAST) Voting Act to improve voter participation and voting system security and encourage automatic voter registration. “Access to the ballot is fundamental to American democracy,” Connolly said in a statement. “In recent years, several states have taken action to restrict the franchise under the guise of preventing ‘voter fraud.’ America doesn’t have a voter fraud problem; we have a participation problem. Rather than erect barriers, we should be looking for innovative ways to expand the franchise and streamline the voting process.” Connolly appeared to buck President Trump’s claim of widespread voter fraud during the 2016 presidential election.

United Kingdom: Turnout rises in Northern Ireland assembly election | The Guardian

Northern Ireland’s Electoral Office has said that the turnout in Thursday’s assembly election was higher than in last May’s contest when 55% of voters took part. The Stormont assembly collapsed in acrimony earlier this year over a botched green energy scheme that cost taxpayers half a billion pounds. The turnout increase at the second election in 10 months may be in response to voter anger at the way the largest political party in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionists (DUP), mismanaged and then stubbornly defended the renewable health incentive scheme.

Montana: Accusations Of Voter Suppression Fly Ahead Of Montana Special Election | MTPR

Accusations of voter suppression are already flying ahead of Montana’s anticipated special election. That would be held after Congressman Ryan Zinke vacates his seat, pending Senate confirmation of his appointment to become secretary of the interior. The cost of this special election falls on county governments, and many say they are too broke to set up polling places after the election last November. “We’re going to have to rob money out of another budget to pay for this election.” That’s Duane Mitchell, a Richland County commissioner, speaking in support of a Republican-sponsored bill on Tuesday that would allow counties to scrap most polling places and run the special election as a mail-in-ballot. “It would save us, we figure, $6,000 – $8,000.” It could also increase voter turnout, according to Montana GOP Chairman Jeff Essmann. And that, he says, could cost Republicans the election.

International: Millennials across the rich world are failing to vote | The Economist

The life story of Alex Orlyuk does not seem destined to lead to political apathy. Born in the Soviet Union to a family scarred by the Holocaust, he moved at the age of six to Tel Aviv, where he finished school and military service. He follows politics and prizes democracy. He thinks his government should do more to make peace with Palestinians, separate religion and state, and cut inequality. And yet, now 28 and eligible to vote in the past four general elections, he has never cast a ballot. His abstention, he says, is “a political statement” on the sorry state of Israel’s politics. He does not think any of its myriad parties is likely to bring about the change he wants. Many other young Israelis share his disaffection. Just 58% of under-35s, and just 41% of under-25s, voted in the general election of 2013, compared with 88% of over-55s. No other rich country has a bigger gap in turnout between under-25s and over-55s.

Haiti: OAS commends Haiti for concluding vote, notes low turnout | Associated Press

International monitors commended Haitian authorities on Monday for finishing an electoral cycle that started in 2015 but expressed concern over the low participation rate by voters. The Organization of American States had 77 observers monitoring a final round of legislative contests as well as long-overdue municipal elections held Sunday. In a preliminary report, the mission said holding local elections after 10 years was “an important milestone for the consolidation of democratic institutions in Haiti.”

Haiti: Low turnout in local elections | AFP

Haitians turned out in low numbers for local elections on Sunday, exhibiting little enthusiasm for the final step in an agonizing electoral marathon that is finally coming to a close. The country’s political crisis began in October 2015, when results from Haiti’s presidential election were annulled because of massive fraud. It took until November 2016 to hold another presidential election, with turnout at a dismal 21 percent.