Washington: Yakima council drops bid to stay election, but OK’s limited appeal of $1.8M awarded to ACLU | Yakima Herald

The Yakima City Council on Tuesday formally abandoned its effort to stay this year’s elections under a new court-ordered system. However, the council did vote to file a limited appeal of the $1.8 million in legal costs awarded by the same court to the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, which sued to change city elections under the federal Voting Rights Act. The appeal only seeks to preserve Yakima’s right to challenge the award or seek its own costs if the city wins its appeal in the 9th Circuit Court. Both motions were passed unanimously.

District of Columbia: DC Statehood Bill a ‘Take That’ to Republicans | Roll Call

Despite the uphill battle for District of Columbia statehood, Sen. Thomas R. Carper, D-Del., has reintroduced a statehood bill noting that the District’s unique political status is contrary to the American values celebrated on Independence Day. “These Americans serve in our military, die defending our country, serve on our juries, and pay federal taxes,” Carper said of District residents in a statement. “Yet, despite their civic contributions, they are not afforded a vote in either chamber of Congress. This situation is simply not fair, and it isn’t consistent with the values we celebrate as a country on July 4th every year.”

Washington: ACLU hiring voter engagement advocate in Yakima | Yakima Herald

After successfully suing to change city elections, the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington is now hiring someone to turn out the vote in Yakima this year. The ACLU of Washington is advertising for a full-time voter engagement advocate to lead an education campaign in the city during the 2015 elections. ACLU spokesman Doug Honig said the search may be expanded to include a second hire. The campaign will be primarily directed at Latinos, a growing part of the community that was at the heart of the ACLU’s voting rights lawsuit against the city. “We want to make sure people take advantage of this new system and vote,” said Honig, based in Seattle. “Who they vote for is obviously up to them.”

Massachusetts: MassHealth settles lawsuit with voting rights organizations | MassLive.com

A coalition of voting rights organizations has reached a settlement with the state, in which public assistance organizations including MassHealth will provide voter registration forms to their clients. The settlements with Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders, Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin and Director of the Office of Medicaid Daniel Tsai, signed on Tuesday, mark the conclusion of a lawsuit that was partially settled with the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance in March.

Washington: Despite pleas, Yakima council stands by appeal of ACLU case | Yakima Herald

More than 100 people filed into the Yakima City Council chambers Tuesday, calling for an end to the city’s appeal of a voting rights case that changed Yakima’s elections system to give Latinos a greater voice. But none of the four council members who supported both the appeal and a request to stay this year’s elections offered a motion to reconsider the issue. The protest was in response to the council’s surprise vote June 2 to seek an emergency stay more than a month and a half after the city said it would allow elections to proceed, despite appealing the judge’s ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court.

Washington: Yakima’s cost in fighting ACLU case tops $1 million | Yakima Herald

Yakima has now spent more than $1 million defending a voting rights case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union that upended the city’s elections system. Assistant City Attorney Helen Harvey said Wednesday the city has spent $1,074,062 to date — and costs will continue to rise. Yakima’s attorneys on Tuesday filed a request with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking a stay of this year’s elections, and the city expects to file a friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court by early August in a Texas case that could effectively reverse the outcome of the ACLU ruling.

Editorials: Why should some Native Americans have to drive 163 miles to vote? | Natalie Landreth/The Guardian

Imagine if, in the 2016 elections, you had to drive 104 miles (167 km) to your nearest polling station, like National Congress of American Indians research found those people living in the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada do, or 163 miles (262 km), like residents of the Goshute Reservation in Utah do. Or imagine if you had to take a plane flight to the nearest polling place because you cannot get to it by road, which was the case for several Native communities in 2008, when the state of Alaska attempted a “district realignment” to eliminate polling places in their villages. That’s just half the trip. In those circumstances, can you really be said to be enjoying full voting rights? Consider, too, that many reservations do not have access to early voting, so they will have just one day on which to make that astonishingly long journey. You can imagine the line at that polling place: either it will be very long because everyone is forced to go on that same day, or very short because not many people could afford an entire day off work to vote – that is if they even have a car and a driver’s license.

Washington: Yakima council OKs options for elections stay | Yakima Herald

The Yakima City Council will ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to consider a full or partial stay of this year’s elections. In a 4-3 vote Monday, the council approved a resolution asking for a stay and cited the city’s old elections system as the preferred method for voting this year. Under that system, only the positions now held by Maureen Adkison, Thomas Dittmar, Rick Ensey and Kathy Coffey would be up for a citywide vote during the November general election. Dittmar and Ensey have said they would not run this year.

US Virgin Islands: Voting rights group seeks V.I. plaintiffs Appeals court: No birthright citizenship for American Samoa | Virgin Islands Daily News

The attorneys behind a series of lawsuits that will seek federal election voting rights for the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam are continuing their efforts to find plaintiffs and are now developing their legal strategy, according to Neil Weare, founder of the voting rights group We the People Project. Weare would not give a specific date when his group would file the suits but said they would take place “in the next few months.” Semaj Johnson, a St. Croix attorney who is working with Weare on the cases, said that the group is taking its cues from the African-American civil rights movement, using legal action as a spark for wider social change. “With litigation, oftentimes it’s setting just a piece of precedent to move forward, and for our cause, it really is essentially about the incremental movement,” Johnson said. “We believe that it won’t only happen through the courts, most likely. It will happen through a combination of the courts, legislation, and of course public support.”

Washington: State AG’s opinion on ACLU case could have wide reach | Yakima Herald

Reverberations from Yakima’s voting rights lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union are being felt across the state and in Olympia, where the state Attorney General’s Office is expected to release an opinion related to the issue. The opinion won’t have much, if any, impact in Yakima’s case. But it’s likely to be studied carefully in many other cities, especially Pasco. When Pasco officials saw how poorly Yakima fared in the ACLU lawsuit, they began drafting plans earlier this year to revamp their city’s election process in order to avoid a similar fate. Yakima has been ordered to change its election process by a federal judge who said its old election system violated federal election law by routinely suppressing Latino interests. Under the judge’s order, which is under appeal, Yakima City Council members would be elected by voters in their districts and would no longer be subject to citywide voting.

Luxembourg: Luxembourg votes not to give foreigners national voting rights | Reuters

Luxemburgers have resoundingly rejected a proposal to let foreign residents vote in national elections, a move that would have been a first in Europe and could have expanded the electorate of the tiny but cosmopolitan Grand Duchy by as much as 50 percent. In Sunday’s consultative referendum, only about 22 percent supported the proposal, part of a modernizing agenda backed by liberal Prime Minister Xavier Bettel. There were also clear majorities against lowering the voting age to 16 from 18 and introducing 10-year term limits for ministers, following the 19-year rule of Bettel’s conservative predecessor Jean-Claude Juncker, now the EU’s chief executive.

National: Hillary Clinton Pushes for Voter Registration Overhaul | Bloomberg

Hillary Clinton called Thursday for sweeping changes to elections and voting laws, arguing that measures including universal voter registration and national early voting are necessary to counteract a tide of laws aimed at making it more difficult for some people to vote. Speaking at Houston’s Texas State University, at a ceremony honoring the late civil rights leader and Democratic Representative Barbara Jordan, Clinton set her sights squarely on some of her potential Republican opponents, who she said are “systematically and deliberately trying to stop millions of American citizens from voting.” In one of her most powerful and passionate appearances of her campaign thus far, the former secretary of state singled out four current and former governors, whose actions “have undercut [the] fundamental American principle” of the right to vote in their “crusade against voting rights.” Instead of continuing along the same path, she said, “they should stop fear-mongering about a phantom epidemic of election fraud” and work to make it easier for Americans who want to vote to go to the polls.

Editorials: Hillary Clinton, Voting Rights and the 2016 Election | New York Times

A basic fact often gets lost in the propaganda that swirls around voting laws in this country: between one-quarter and one-third of all eligible voters — more than 50 million Americans — are not registered. That alarming statistic is the backdrop to efforts by Republicans in recent years to pass state laws that restrict ballot access, a recent Democratic campaign to push back against those laws, and a bold set of proposals that Hillary Rodham Clinton laid out Thursday afternoon in a speech at Texas Southern University, a historically black college in Houston. In addition to pushing needed and long-overdue reforms, the speech highlighted the yawning gulf on voting rights between Mrs. Clinton and the Republican candidates for the White House, many of whom have been cynically committed to making voting harder for the most vulnerable citizens. “What part of democracy are they afraid of?” Mrs. Clinton asked.

Washington: Yakima’s request to halt elections brings uncertainty | Yakima Herald

The first batch of Yakima election ballots already could be in the mail by the time the city’s request to halt new elections reaches the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Yakima City Council voted 5-2 Tuesday night to seek a stay of elections under a court-ordered system that put all seven seats on the ballot in new districts. A federal judge ordered the new system in February, but there was no push for a stay until just last week, when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a Texas voting rights case that could undo the judge’s ruling in Yakima. The timing caused some council members to ask why the decision wasn’t made earlier, with one councilman saying it was the city’s own defense attorney who originally discouraged it. Another wondered openly whether the stay was merely an attempt by some to stay in office longer.

Editorials: Tory bill raises too many barriers for expat Canadian voters | The Globe and Mail

Last year, an Ontario Superior Court judge struck down a rule that barred citizens living abroad for more than five years from voting in federal elections. The government has rightly appealed that decision, while also introducing legislation that will enshrine expats’ voting rights, but with a twist. Expats will get to vote – it will just be really, really hard. So hard, in fact, that many of the 2.8 million expats around the globe may well not bother. Others will try but won’t be able to meet the onerous new requirements in Bill C-50. Under the bill, currently in committee after second reading, Elections Canada will eliminate the international register of electors, the long-established list of expat Canadians eligible to vote federally. In future, expats will have to re-register for each election, and can only do so after the writ is dropped.

Ireland: Emigrants could get voting rights for three years, Deenihan says | The Irish Times

The Government is considering extending voting rights to Irish emigrants for three years after they leave the country without holding a referendum on the issue, the Minister for Diaspora Affairs has said. Under existing electoral legislation, Irish citizens are entitled to vote for 18 months after they leave the country, if they intend to return to live in Ireland within that timeframe. Speaking at the first Global Irish Civic Forum at Dublin Castle today, Jimmy Deenihan said there’s a possibility this could be extended to 36 months “without going to the people”.

Luxembourg: Referendum could give foreigners voting rights | Zee News

Luxembourg could blaze a trail in the EU when it votes Sunday on whether to grant full voting rights to foreigners who make up nearly half of the population, as part of an unprecedented triple referendum. The voters in the tiny but wealthy duchy of 565,000 people will also be asked whether the voting age should be lowered to 16 and whether to limit the mandate of members of the government to 10 years. They will be asked to vote “Jo” or “Nee” in Luxembourgish, “Oui” or “Non” in French and “Ja” or “Nein” in German. The most important issue on the ballot would grant the right to vote to foreigners living in Luxembourg for more than 10n years, including the high number of Europeans, led by the Portuguese who account for 16.4 percent of the population.

National: Democrats Wage a National Fight Over Voter Rules | New York Times

Democrats allied with Hillary Rodham Clinton are mounting a nationwide legal battle 17 months before the 2016 presidential election, seeking to roll back Republican-enacted restrictions on voter access that Democrats say could, if unchallenged, prove decisive in a close campaign. The court fights began last month with lawsuits filed in Ohio and Wisconsin, presidential battleground…

National: Clinton to call for at least 20 days of early voting nationwide | The Washington Post

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to call for an early voting period of at least 20 days in every state. Clinton will call for that standard in remarks Thursday in Texas about voting rights, her campaign said. She will also criticize what her campaign calls deliberate restrictions on voting in several states, including Texas. The former secretary of state’s address at historically-black Texas Southern University in Houston comes as Democrats pursue legal challenges to voting rule changes approved by Republican legislatures in several states.

US Virgin Islands: Non-profit makes case for lawsuit to restore voting rights to territories | Virgin Islands Daily News

Speaking in front of the V.I. Bar Association, We the People Project founder Neil Weare outlined the case for extending the right to vote in presidential elections to residents of the territory. He also said that his organization, a non-profit group devoted to achieving voting rights for all U.S. territories, would file a lawsuit within months featuring plaintiffs from the territory who claim that their Constitutional rights have been violated by their disqualification from casting federal ballots. Semaj Johnson of the K.A. Rames, P.C. law firm will join Weare in filling the suit. “Virgin Islanders defend the Constitution and democracy abroad while being denied democracy at home,” Weare said to a crowded banquet room Friday morning at Mahogany Run Golf Course, which included Delegate to Congress Stacey Plaskett and District Court Judge Curtis Gomez.

Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka considering passing vote to Tamil refugees | Fulton News

If Sri Lanka’s government moves a special parliamentary bill to empower Sri Lankan Tamil refugees living in South Indian in the coming weeks, over 50,000 refugees of Sri Lankan origin will be able to vote at the forthcoming parliamentary election. Officials at Sri Lanka’s Election Commission have signalled that the vote can be facilitated if Sri Lanka, together with the Indian administration, prioritize the creation of legal structures for overseas voting. “Many other countries have their expatriates voting, from their current location. Sri Lanka can also take that route,” said Additional Election Commissioner M. M. Mohamed.

Mississippi: Bryant lets suffrage bills stand without signature | Washington Times

In his first term, Gov. Phil Bryant has allowed eight bills to become law without his signature. All have been suffrage bills. Mississippians convicted of certain felonies lose the right to vote. Those who lose their vote have to be pardoned by the governor or go to the Legislature, where it takes a two-thirds majority to restore a person’s suffrage. The Mississippi Constitution lists 21 crimes that take away a convict’s right to vote: arson, armed robbery, bigamy, bribery, embezzlement, extortion, felony bad check, felony shoplifting, forgery, larceny, murder, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, rape, receiving stolen property, robbery, theft, timber larceny, unlawful taking of a motor vehicle, statutory rape and carjacking.

Washington: Yakima to submit amicus brief in Supreme Court voting rights case | Yakima Herald

Yakima will file a legal brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of a case that could upend the city’s new elections system, but it narrowly voted against asking for a partial stay in the upcoming elections. The City Council on Wednesday unanimously asked its attorneys to submit a friend-of-the-court brief in Evenwel v. Abbott, a Texas case that seeks to define the “one person, one vote” principle. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court announced it would hear the case sometime in the next year.

US Virgin Islands: Non-profit brings voting rights campaign to V.I. | Virgin Islands Daily News

Quirks of federal law and a century-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling about the shipment of oranges keep residents of territories like the U.S. Virgin Islands from having the right to vote in presidential elections. The We the People Project – a non-profit based in Washington, D.C. – thinks the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act is the right time for a legal challenges to change the antiquated rules. Neil Weare, president and founder of the We the People Project, said millions of Americans are denied a critical constitutional right due to the “legal fiction” created in a 1901 suit in which a Puerto Rico businessman sued the customs inspector for the port of New York, arguing that he shouldn’t have to pay import duties on oranges shipped to the city from the then newly acquired territory of Puerto Rico. The high court ruled that territories were not defined as a part of the United States in the matter of revenues, administrative efforts, and voting.

Maryland: Hogan vetoes bill allowing felons to vote sooner | Baltimore Sun

Gov. Larry Hogan took out his veto pen Friday, rejecting a bill that would allow felons to vote as soon as they leave prison rather than waiting to finish parole or probation. The veto, one of several announced by the governor’s office, quickly drew a pledge from the legislation’s sponsor to find the votes to override. “I just think Maryland should be more progressive,” said Sen. Joan Carter Conway, a Baltimore Democrat. She said she needs to line up only a handful of additional votes in each chamber to override Hogan’s veto when the General Assembly returns in January. In a letter to legislative leaders, Hogan said current law that makes felons wait to vote until completing all aspects of their sentence “achieves the proper balance between repayment of obligations to society for a felony conviction and the restoration of the various restricted rights.” The Republican governor was not available for interviews Friday, aides said.

Editorials: How the Money Primary Is Undermining Voting Rights | Ari Berman/The Nation

In November 1963, Evelyn Butts, a seamstress and mother of three from Norfolk, Virginia,filed the first lawsuit in federal court challenging her state’s $1.50 poll tax. Annie Harper, a retired domestic worker from Fairfax County, filed a companion suit five months later. In March 1966, the Supreme Court overruled two previous decisions and overturned Virginia’s poll tax, stating that economic status could not be an obstacle to casting a ballot. “Fee payments or wealth, like race, creed, or color, are unrelated to the citizen’s ability to participate intelligently in the electoral process,” wrote Justice William Douglas in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections. “We conclude that a State violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard.”

California: State probed for allegedly denying voting rights to disabled | Associated Press

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether California illegally denied voting rights to people with autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy and other intellectual or developmental disabilities, officials said Wednesday. The agency disclosed the probe in a May 15 letter to Secretary of State Alex Padilla and the California Supreme Court, in which investigators sought detailed records on how certain voters with disabilities are disqualified, an explanation of the rationale behind it and an account of how frequently it is happening.

China: Support for reform plan overwhelming | Ecns

At a press conference on Monday, the Alliance for Peace and Democracy – the organizer of a massive petition which lasted nine days – said over 1.21 million people had signed in support of the Hong Kong SAR Government’s constitutional reform package. The simple fact that more than 20 percent of eligible voters, or a seventh of the city’s populace signed their names, speaks volumes about Hong Kong society’s aspirations regarding universal suffrage. It sends a crystal-clear message that the overwhelming majority of Hong Kong people don’t want their voting rights deprived by a tiny minority of opposition lawmakers.

Washington: Bill intended to help minorities in elections | Spokesman-Review

A proposal to allow Washington cities to rearrange voting districts so minorities could have a greater voice in elections was praised Thursday as a way to avoid costly federal lawsuits; it also was denounced as a Trojan horse for more litigation. The proposed state Voting Rights Act passed the House on a partisan vote during the regular session but stalled in the Senate despite bipartisan support. It got an airing in a joint Senate committee work session Thursday though it’s unlikely to be revived for the special session, which is concentrating on budgets.

United Kingdom: Expats in uproar over missing ballot papers ahead of Thursday’s poll | Telegraph

British expats around the world have complained that they’ve not received their ballot papers in time for their postal votes to count in Thursday’s general election. Reports from as far afield as France, Brazil and the United States emerged this week of the problem, which has left expats “damn cheesed off” according to one campaigner. Brian Cave, 82, who has lived in south eastern France for 17 years, runs a blog focusing on expat voting rights.