The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for Feb. 8-14 2016

A coalition of voting rights groups has sued EAC Executive Director Brian Newby who decided that residents of Alabama, Kansas and Georgia can no longer register to vote using a national form without providing proof of U.S. citizenship. Despite a sharp decline in the number of people participating in the $3 tax return check-off that funds the FEC’s Presidential Public Funding Program (down from a high of 28 percent in 1977 to less than 6 percent last year), the fund has been growing steadily – because candidates don’t want the money anymore. Attorneys filed a petition requesting that the Supreme Court review the decision of a lower court denying citizenship to people born in American Samoa and other U.S. territories. After a close count left doubts about which Democratic candidate actually won the Iowa caucuses, there are fresh calls for the party to mirror the simple, secret-ballot method that Iowa Republicans use. The Maryland legislature narrowly overturned Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto of a bill to extend voting rights to felons before they complete probation and parole. Less than an hour after a three-judge panel refused to delay its order from last week that found two North Carolina congressional districts unconstitutional, lawyers for Gov. Pat McCrory and other state officials filed an emergency request asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case in hopes of protecting next month’s primary election. Central African Republic’s long awaited presidential runoff vote will go forward Sunday alongside a second attempt at credible legislative elections, while human rights advocates are concerned about increasingly violent rhetoric coming from Uganda’s leaders ahead of elections next week.