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Tag: elections
Thousands attend a rally in India’s capital to challenge Prime Minister Modi ahead of elections
NEW DELHI (AP) — Thousands of people on Sunday attended a rally by an alliance of India’s opposition parties that criticized the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of stifling opponents and undermining democratic institutions ahead of a national election next month.
The “Save Democracy” rally was the first major public demonstration by the opposition bloc INDIA against the arrest of New Delhi’s top elected official and opposition leader Arvind Kejriwal on March 21.
Kejriwal was arrested by the federal Enforcement Directorate, which is controlled by Modi’s government, on charges that his party and state ministers had accepted 1 billion rupees ($12 million) in bribes from liquor contractors nearly two years ago. The Aam Aadmi Party, or Common Man’s Party, denied the accusations and has said Kejriwal would remain as New Delhi’s chief minister while the court decides on the next step.
“This battle is to safeguard the nation, democracy, constitution, future of the nation, youth, farmers and women. This battle is for justice and truth,” Deepender Singh Hooda, a lawmaker of the opposition Congress party, told reporters at the rally.
Kejriwal’s arrest is seen as a setback for the opposition bloc that is the main challenger to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, in the elections to be held over six weeks starting April 19.
Opposition leaders have criticized Kejriwal’s arrest as undemocratic and accused the BJP of using the federal agency to undermine them, pointing to a series of arrests and corruption investigations against key opposition figures.
The BJP denies targeting the opposition and says law enforcement agencies act independently.
“Narendra Modi wants to strangle democracy and take away the option from the people to choose the government of their choice,” opposition leader Rahul Gandhi from the Congress party, who took part in Sunday’s rally, wrote on X.
34 parties in the running in Germany in European elections in June
A total of the 34 parties and other political organizations in Germany are running in the European elections in June.
The Federal Election Committee approved a total of 35 parties and associations at its public meeting in Berlin on Friday.
Since the conservative CSU is only available for election in Bavaria and its sister party, the CDU, is running in all other federal states, there will be only 34 parties and associations on ballot papers.
The newly founded populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and the climate organization Last Generation are taking part in an election for the first time.
In addition to the established parties, smaller groups with special interests were also admitted, for example the Party of Reason, the Human world – For the well-being and happiness of all, or the Party for Biomedical Rejuvenation Research.
According to Federal Returning Officer Ruth Brand, 59 proposals for participation by parties or groups were submitted on time.
The Federal Election Committee checked whether the parties and political associations had submitted all the necessary documents.
Anyone who is not represented in the European Parliament, Germany’s federal parliament or a state parliament must, for example, be able to present a certain number of signatures of supporters and present a statute and a political program.
The people of Germany can elect 96 European lawmakers on June 9th. After the voting age has been lowered, 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds will be able to vote for the first time.
Georgia legislature passes broad elections bill with 2024 implications
The GOP-controlled Georgia legislature on Thursday passed a wide-ranging elections measure that would expand access for candidates to appear on the state’s presidential ballot and would broaden abilities to challenge voter eligibility.
The House and Senate passed Senate Bill 189, which combined several previously separate election bills, sending it to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk. It was passed as the state’s two-year legislative session ended Friday.
The legislation could have immediate implications for the 2024 presidential election in the crucial battleground state.
Under the bill, any political party or political body could qualify for the presidential ballot if it already has gained access to the ballot in at least 20 states or territories.
The new provision could help independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is trying to appear on the ballot in all 50 states this November. He has so far only collected enough signatures to qualify on about a handful of ballots including Hawaii, Nevada, New Hampshire and Utah.
All of Georgia’s unhoused people will need to redo their voter registrations to comply with the law, too, as a provision in the bill requires those without a permanent address to register at the registrar’s office in the county where they reside. Previously, registered voters without permanent addresses have registered at shelters or government offices, including courthouses.
The bill also includes provisions that may make it easier for amateur voter fraud hunters to successfully challenge other voters’ registrations, by listing out details on what would substantiate the “probable cause” needed to uphold such a challenge.
Probable cause can now include an elector being registered at a nonresidential address as confirmed or listed by or in a government office, database, website, or publicly available sources derived solely from such government sources. A voter’s appearance in the USPS change-of-address database is not evidence alone of a voter’s ineligibility, the law notes, but could be used to help substantiate a challenge.
In 2021, Georgia lawmakers encouraged amateur voter fraud hunters by writing into the election code that residents could make an unlimited number of challenges. Since then, a handful of individuals have challenged tens of thousands of voter registrations, overwhelming election officials with research. One man developed a database, Eagle AI, that amateur fraud hunters pore over the voter rolls and search for potentially ineligible voters, like people registered at nonresidential buildings.
America’s voter rolls are built for registration, not removal, which means they may often include outdated voter registrations. Election officials have years-long procedures for removing outdated voter registrations, too. And while there’s no evidence that bloated voter rolls lead to fraud, officials and election experts warn that amateur fraud hunters may use discriminatory strategies to search for voters or that inaccurate data or typos might knock eligible voters off the roles.
“These mass voter challenges time and again disproportionately try and throw Black and Brown voters off the rolls. They have been a strategy for a long time to have a chilling effect on voting,” said Lauren Groh-Wargo, interim CEO of Fair Fight Action.
Republicans, she said, are “looking for opportunities to shave off the votes of folks who are likely to vote for Democrat.”
State Rep. Al Williams, a Democrat, said the bill was designed to suppress voters of color, and part of the “foolishness” he fought against during the Civil Rights Movement.
“It’s straight out the old playbook of a nationally-coordinated right-wing effort to just make access to the ballot impossible,” he said.
Republicans defended the bill in the legislature, arguing it will improve voter rolls.
State Rep. John LaHood, a Republican, said the bill increases confidence in elections.
“What this bill does is ensure that your legal vote does matter,” he said.
Lawmakers also wrapped in proposals that would remove the secretary of state from Georgia’s election board, ban QR codes on voter ballots in future elections and require counties to report absentee ballot votes within one hour of polls closing.
The ACLU said in a statement Friday that it “strongly opposes this bill,” vowing to sue the governor if he signs the measure into law.
“Access to the ballot is at the heart of our democracy,” said ACLU of Georgia executive director Andrea Young. “This election ‘Frankenbill’ violates the National Voter Registration Act. We are committed to protecting Georgia voters. If the governor signs this bill, we will see him in court.”
Georgia Republicans have worked to pass new election rules in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss to Joe Biden.
Trump and his supporters have repeatedly blamed voter fraud for his loss. Their efforts to challenge the election results in Georgia led to the criminal case against him and over a dozen co-defendants.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and his co-defendants last year with violating Georgia’s RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization) Act.
A trial date has not yet been set in the case, though Willis has made clear she’s interested in an August start date.
Jacob Zuma barred from running in South Africa elections
Former President Jacob Zuma has been barred from running in South Africa’s general election in May.
The country’s electoral commission has not given a reason.
However, his 2021 conviction, and jailing, for contempt of court would appear to disqualify him.
His backing of the new uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party has been seen as a possible threat to the governing African National Congress (ANC), which has suspended Mr Zuma.
He served as president from 2009 to 2018.
His was the first name on the MK’s candidate list, but the electoral commission received objections to him potentially becoming a member of the National Assembly.
“In the case of former President Zuma, yes, we did receive an objection, which has been upheld,” said electoral commission head Mosotho Moepya on Thursday.
“The party that has nominated him has been informed,” Mr Moepya told journalists.
Mr Zuma has until 2 April to appeal against the decision.
The former president received a 15-month prison sentence in 2021 for contempt of court and the constitution says anyone who has had a prison sentence of longer than 12 months is not eligible to run for election.
The IEC said that the ruling did not prevent the MK party from taking part in the 29 May poll, News24 reports.
For the first time since the start of the democratic era in 1994, the ANC’s vote share could fall below 50%, according to several opinion polls. The MK party is seen as popular in Mr Zuma’s home region of KwaZulu-Natal.
More about South Africa’s election:
Girl Scouts quietly welcome hundreds of young migrant girls
Once a week in a midtown Manhattan hotel, dozens of Girl Scouts gather in a spare room made homey by string lights and children’s drawings. They earn badges, go on field trips to the Statue of Liberty, and learn how to navigate the subway in a city most have just begun to call home.
They are the newest members of New York City’s largest Girl Scout troop. And they live in an emergency shelter where 170,000 asylum seekers and migrants, including tens of thousands of children, have arrived from the southern border since the spring of 2022.
As government officials debate how to handle the influx of new arrivals, the Girl Scouts — whose Troop 6000 has served kids who live in the shelter system since 2017 — are quietly welcoming hundreds of the city’s youngest new residents with the support of donations. Most of the girls have fled dire conditions in South and Central America and endured an arduous journey to the U.S.
What is Troop 6000?
Launched by the Girl Scouts of Greater New York in 2017, Girl Scouts Troop 6000 is a program for girls living in the New York City Shelter System. There were 21,774 families living in the city’s homeless shelters in December 2023, according to data from the Coalition for the Homeless. Of those, 33,399 were children.
Last year, Troop 6000 opened its newest branch at a hotel-turned-shelter in Midtown Manhattan, one of several city-funded relief centers for migrants. Though hundreds of families sleep at the shelter every night, the Girl Scouts is the only children’s program offered.
Unflagging support amid anti-immigrant sentiment
Last January, the Girl Scouts expanded its Troop 6000 program to serve more than 100 young arrivals living in New York City Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center, according to a statement at the time. The group began recruiting at the shelter and rolled out a bilingual curriculum to help scouts learn more about New York City through its monuments, subway system, and political borders.
One year later, with nearly 200 members and five parents as troop leaders, the shelter is the largest of Troop 6000’s roughly two dozen sites across the city and the only one exclusively for asylum-seekers.
Not everybody is happy about the evolution of Troop 6000. With anti-immigrant rhetoric on the rise and a contentious election ahead, some donors see the Girl Scouts as wading too readily into politically controversial waters. That hasn’t fazed the group — or their small army of philanthropic supporters. Amid city budget cuts and a growing need for services, they are among dozens of charities that say their support for all New Yorkers, including newcomers, is more important than ever.
“There are some donors who would prefer their dollars go elsewhere,” said Meridith Maskara, CEO of the Girl Scouts of Greater New York. “I am constantly being asked: Don’t you find this a little too political?”
But Troop 6000 has also found plenty of sympathetic supporters, “If it has to do with young girls in New York City, then it’s not political,” Maskara said. “It’s our job.”
With few other after-school opportunities available, the girls are “so hungry for more” ways to get involved, said Giselle Burgess, senior director of the Girl Scouts of New York’s Troop 6000.
New York City, charities feeling the crunch
New York City has spent billions on the asylum seekers while buckling under the pressure of an existing housing and affordability crisis. That’s left little time to court and coordinate the city’s major philanthropies.
“It’s very hard to take a step back when you’re drinking out of a fire hose,” said Beatriz de la Torre, chief philanthropy officer at Trinity Church Wall Street, which gave the Girl Scouts a $100,000 emergency grant — plus $150,000 in annual support — to help expand Troop 6000.
With or without government directives, she said, charities are feeling the crunch: Food banks need more food. Legal clinics need more lawyers.
Since asylum-seekers began arriving to the city, around 30 local grant makers, including Trinity Church and Brooklyn Org, have met at least biweekly to discuss the increased demands on their grantees.
Together, they’ve provided over $25 million for charities serving asylum seekers, from free legal assistance to resources for navigating the public school system.
“It’s hard for the government to be that nimble — that’s a great place for nonprofits and philanthropy,” said Eve Stotland, senior program officer at New York Community Trust, which convenes the Working Group for New York’s Newcomers, and itself has distributed over $2.7 million in grants for recent immigrants.
“These are our neighbors,” said Stotland. “If a funder’s goal is to make New York City a better place for everyone, that includes newcomers.”
Russian elections are ‘costly bureaucracy’ that ‘don’t have to be held,’ Putin spokesman says
A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin claims the unified coalition around the leader makes democratic elections unnecessary and irrelevant.
Press secretary Dmitry Peskov remarked to Russian media that democratic elections have become a “costly bureaucracy” that serves no purpose due to the supposed widespread support for Putin.
“Elections are what a democracy demands and Putin himself decided to hold them, but theoretically, they don’t even have to be held,” Peskov told state media outlet RBK.
RUSSIAN OPPOSITION LEADER ALEXEI NAVALNY SENTENCED TO 19 YEARS IN PRISON
He added, “Because it’s clear that Putin will be elected. That’s completely my personal opinion.”
Peskov told RBK he was seeking to clarify his statement to The New York Times earlier this week that he claims was misquoted.
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“Our presidential election is not really democracy, it is costly bureaucracy,” Peskov told the New York Times in an article published Aug. 6. “Mr. Putin will be re-elected next year with more than 90 percent of the vote.”
RETIRED FBI COUNTERINTEL AGENT REPORTEDLY INVOLVED IN TRUMP-RUSSIA PROBE ARRESTED FOR TIES TO RUSSIA
The press secretary’s comments on Russian democracy follow the conviction of political opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was found guilty of extremism by a Russian court on Friday.
Navalny, already serving a nine-year sentence on separate political charges, was sentenced to an additional 19 years.
“I understand perfectly that, as many political prisoners, I’m serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime,” Navalny told his supporters via social media.
Navalny has long been Putin’s most outspoken critic, leading anti-corruption watchdog organizations and protesting Kremlin policy.
In 2020, he sought medical attention in Germany after being poisoned with a nerve agent. He was arrested after returning to Moscow in January 2021.
U.K. election regulator says hackers had access for over a year but elections still secure
Hackers gained access to the U.K.’s election regulator, the Electoral Commission, for more than a year, the agency said Tuesday.
The Electoral Commission said the hackers were not able to access any systems related to the actual administration of elections, but they did access the agency’s email servers and personal information like names and addresses of voters who registered from 2014 to 2022.
Most of the voter information that was accessed was already public, the commission said. The hackers first gained access in August 2021 and went undetected until October 2022, the agency said.
The Electoral Commission said it doesn’t know the identity of the hackers and that none have claimed responsibility.
The agency delayed announcing the breach because it first needed to kick out the hackers, assess their access and put in additional security measures, Andreea Ghita, a spokesperson for the commission, said in an email.
Shaun McNally, the organization’s chief executive, said in a statement that the U.K.’s elections system remains secure due in part to it use of paper documentation.
“Nevertheless, the successful attack on the Electoral Commission highlights that organisations involved in elections remain a target, and need to remain vigilant to the risks to processes around our elections,” McNally said.
A spokesperson for the National Cyber Security Centre, the British government’s cybersecurity agency, said that it had helped the commission in its recovery from the incident but declined to comment further.
Since 2016 intelligence agencies from Russia and Iran have been accused of hacking election-related systems in several countries, including the U.S. and France. In 2020, the U.K. accused Russia of a cyber-influence operation designed to influence its nationwide elections the year before.
Lisa Forte, a partner at the British cybersecurity company Red Goat, said that the fact that the hackers were able to stay undetected for more than a year is noteworthy.
“This implies that they had a level of sophistication above and beyond that of the opportunistic attacker,” Forte said.
Kremlin says Russia ‘theoretically’ doesn’t need to hold elections next year because it’s ‘obvious’ Putin will win
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The Kremlin’s spokesperson said Russia “theoretically” doesn’t need to hold presidential elections next year.
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The elections don’t need to happen because “it’s obvious that Putin will be reelected,” Dmitry Peskov said.
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Putin has maintained a tight grip on power, making his 2024 re-election all but certain.
A spokesperson for the Kremlin said this week that Russia “theoretically” doesn’t need to hold presidential elections next year because it’s “obvious” that Vladimir Putin will win.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s chief spokesperson, described Russia’s presidential election as “not really democracy” but “costly bureaucracy” in an interview with The New York Times over the weekend.
“Mr, Putin will be reelected next year with more than 90 percent of the vote,” he added.
After the article was published, Peskov claimed he was misquoted by The Times and tried to clarify his comments, telling Russia’s RBK news outlet that the 2024 election “theoretically” doesn’t need to happen because “it’s obvious that Putin will be reelected.”
Putin’s reelection in March 2024 is indeed almost certain; but the Russian leader has largely maintained his grip on power by cracking down on the independent press, reportedly approving the assassinations and imprisonment of dissidents and political rivals; and approving a sweeping change to Russia’s constitution that allows him to stay in power until 2036.
Next year’s presidential election — if it happens — will also come amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Putin, who described the invasion as a “special military operation,” has characterized it as being essential to Russia’s survival as a nation, but the war is increasingly unpopular among Russian citizens and even within the Russian military.
One Russian inmate told The New York Times in June that he believed he was signing up to become an army construction worker when a government official recruited him from prison. Instead, he was sent to the frontlines in eastern Ukraine and captured by Ukrainian forces a few days later.
Other Russian soldiers said that they were “fucking fooled like little kids” and had no clue they were being sent to a war zone. In one audio recording previously obtained by The Times, a Russian soldier told his mother during a phone conversation that “no one told us we were going to war. They warned us one day before we left.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
Ex-Pakistan leader Imran Khan’s lawyers to challenge graft sentence that has ruled him out of elections
Islamabad — Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s lawyers were on Monday attempting to launch legal challenges against his three year-sentence for graft that has ruled him out of contesting national elections. The former international cricket star was arrested at his home on Saturday and taken to jail for charges he has previously said are politically motivated.
His lawyers have so far been denied access to him at Attock Jail, established 100 years ago on the outskirts of historic Attock city, around 40 miles west of the capital, Islamabad.
Betsy Joles/Bloomberg/Getty
On Monday, petitions were being filed in Islamabad and Lahore High Courts demanding power of attorney for the jailed former leader, which would allow lawyers to challenge his conviction.
A petition has also been filed to request that Khan be held in an ‘A-class’ cell, more comfortable than other quarters and usually reserved for VIP inmates.
At a court hearing Khan did not attend Saturday, a judge found him guilty of graft in relation to gifts he received while prime minister and sentenced him to three years in jail.
Anyone convicted of a criminal offence is disqualified from contesting elections in Pakistan, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Sunday that parliament would likely be dissolved on Wednesday — days ahead of the end of its natural term.
This would give the incoming interim government until mid-November to hold an election, but there is already speculation it could be delayed following the release Saturday of the country’s latest census data.
Law minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told a local television channel that constituencies would have to be redrawn according to the new census, warning there could be a delay to polls of up to two and a half months.
Khan’s arrest and detention for three days in connection with the same case in May sparked deadly violence when his supporters took to the streets in the tens of thousands, clashing with police.
But a massive crackdown by the authorities that saw thousands of PTI supporters rounded up — some still in prison — and a muzzling of the press has vastly diminished his street power, even if his popularity remains high.
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