The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for November 24-30 2014

Election officials across the country are facing the prospect of replacing aging voting machines without the benefit of federal funding. Heading into a recount, incumbent Arizona Congressman Ron Barber lost a lawsuit seeking to force two counties to include the 133 ballots the campaign says were legally cast but have been erroneously disqualified. Previously secret testimony and documents about the 2012 redistricting process, released this week provide detailed information about an alleged plan by Republican political consultants to funnel maps through members of the public to conceal the origins. In Saline County Kansas a malfunction of ES&S iVotronic voting equipment left 5,207 votes out of the original Nov. 4 vote total. The Maine Democratic Party is calling for an investigation into ballot count discrepancies on Long Island that tipped the scales in favor of the Republican candidate in the Senate District 25 race in Portland’s northern suburbs. Ohio lawmakers from both parties are working to coalesce around a new system for drawing congressional and legislative districts with hopes they can reach the resolution they have promised the public by year’s end. Moldova’s election commission barred Renato Usatii, a populist pro-Russian candidate, from running in Sunday’s parliamentary elections after a leaked audio recording appeared to show him discussing his close connections to the Russian security service and Namibia is to become the first African country to use electronic voting machines in a general election, after the Windhoek high court dismissed a legal challenge by an opposition political party.