Tag Archives: Voting

Phantom voters, smuggled ballots hint at foul play in Russian vote

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the United Russia party's campaign headquarters following a parliamentary election in Moscow, Russia,

By Olga Sichkar, Jack Stubbs and Gleb Stolyarov

UFA/SARANSK Russia (Reuters) – Voters across Russia handed a sweeping victory to President Vladimir Putin’s allies in a parliamentary election on Sunday. But in two regions Reuters reporters saw inflated turnout figures, ballot-stuffing and people voting more than once at three polling stations.

In the Bashkortostan region’s capital Ufa, in the foothills of the Urals, Reuters reporters counted 799 voters casting ballots at polling station number 284. When officials tallied the vote later in the day, they said the turnout was 1,689.

At polling station 591 in the Mordovia regional capital of Saransk, about 650 km south-east of Moscow, reporters counted 1,172 voters but officials recorded a turnout of 1,756.

A Reuters reporter obtained a temporary registration to vote at that station, and cast a ballot for a party other than the pro-Putin United Russia. During the count, officials recorded that not a single vote had been cast for that party.

Election officials at the stations denied there were violations or count irregularities.

It is unlikely that any irregularities at these polling stations would have been on a scale that could have affected the result.

The incidents are only a narrow snapshot of what was happening across Russia’s 11 time zones and thousands of polling stations on an election day that was a test of whether support for Putin and his allies had held up despite a recession and Western sanctions. Reuters was unable to assess independently if such practices were widespread.

Reuters sent reporters to a random sample of 11 polling stations across central and western Russia on polling day, including in and around Moscow.

At three of them, there were large discrepancies between the number of voters Reuters reporters counted, and the number that officials recorded. At four of the other eight, there were also some irregularities, including smaller discrepancies in the voter tallies and people saying they had been paid or pressured to vote.

Ella Pamfilova, chairwoman of Russia’s Central Election Commission, told news briefings that the vote had been more transparent than the previous election, citing the use of live webcams in some polling stations.

She said the webcams had shown some cases of vote-rigging, and that they would be investigated. But she said no one had brought the commission concrete evidence of large-scale fraud.

After the last parliamentary election in 2011, which was also won comfortably by the pro-Putin United Russia party, allegations from opposition activists of widespread electoral fraud prompted large protests in the capital Moscow.

The Central Election Commission did not respond when asked by Reuters to comment on the incidents seen by reporters. Requests for comment sent to the regional election commissions for Bashkortostan and Mordovia also received no replies.

Sunday’s election was “far from anything that could be called free and fair”, Golos, a non-governmental organization that monitors Russian elections, said in a statement. “The results … of the monitoring show the practice of using illegal techniques continues.”

It said its conclusions were based on information collected by observers it posted to polling stations in 40 out of more than 80 Russian regions. It said violations reported by the observers included ballot-stuffing and people voting more than once.

VOTING TWICE

Putin, a leader many Russians credit with standing up to the West and restoring national pride, cemented his supremacy over the country’s political system when the ruling United Russia party took three-quarters of the seats in parliament, paving the way for him to run for a fourth term as president.

Latest official results from the election put the party he founded 16 years ago on 54.2 percent of the vote, with the closest runners-up far behind. Turnout was 47 percent, much lower than the last parliamentary vote.

Election officials collate two sets of turnout figures – one that includes only people who showed up at a polling station in person to vote, and a second, larger figure, that also includes votes cast at home by disabled voters. In order to make a direct comparison, Reuters compared its own count of voters with the first official figure, for people who voted in person.

On polling day, Reuters reporters operated in teams, with at least one person staying inside each station from the start of voting until the end of the count.

In Mordovia’s capital Saransk, a man dressed in a sports jacket and dark blue trousers came into polling station 591 to cast his vote, then came back again 20 minutes later and was seen once again putting his vote into the ballot box.

Asked why he came back a second time, he had no clear explanation, saying only that his wife had his keys so he could not get into his home.

Election officials at the polling station declined to explain why people were allowed to vote twice.

A woman with dyed orange hair, and a blonde man with a beard, turned up together at polling station number 424 in the village of Atemar in Mordovia, and a Reuters reporter saw each of them vote.

An hour later, they were back, and joined the queue to vote again. Asked to explain why, the woman said she was accompanying her husband who had not voted. Election officials issued the husband with another ballot paper before telling the reporter to move away from the ballot boxes.

In Atemar, reporters counted 669 voters at polling station number 424 while officials counted 1,261.

The station’s chief election official, Svetlana Baulina, brought in about 10 ballot papers wrapped up in a red raincoat, and mixed them up with other ballots being counted on a table.

Baulina declined to comment when asked why she had carried in ballots in a coat.

‘NO VIOLATIONS’

At all three locations where Reuters found large discrepancies in turnout figures, United Russia was the overwhelming winner in the official count.

In Saransk, when asked about the gap between the turnout counted by Reuters reporters and the official figure at station 591, local election chief Irina Fedoseyeva said: “You’re also human, you can make mistakes too.”

When asked about why the reporter’s vote for a party other than United Russia did not register in the official count, she said the reporter could recount the vote himself if he didn’t believe the result.

“If this is how things have turned out, then that’s how it’s turned out,” she said.

Election official Baulina at Atemar’s polling station 424 said of the discrepancy there: “We don’t know how you counted. Might the button (of a count clicker) get stuck?”

At station number 284 in Bashkortostan’s Ufa, election chief Fairuza Akhmetziyanova said: “We had no violations.”

Officials at polling station number 285 in Bashkortostan refused to let a Reuters reporter in, citing the need to obtain permission from local authorities. There is no such requirement for international media under Russian election rules.

During the count at polling station number 591 in Saransk, election officials drew a line on the floor in chalk and told a Reuters reporter not to cross it.

In the Bashkortostan village of Knyazevo, officials at polling station 62 ruled that the Reuters reporter should be removed after concerns were raised with them about the reporter’s mechanical counter by a voter identified as A.Z. Minsafin in a document drafted by the officials.

That voter said the reporter was making “strange manipulations” with an object which “could testify to the presence of an object of radioactive nature, which is a threat to health and life”, according to the document.

The ruling to remove the reporter was not enforced.

(Reporting by Svetlana Burmistrova in Bashkortostan, Vladimir Soldatkin and Alexander Winning in Mordovia, Andrei Kuzmin, Kira Zavyalova, Denis Pinchuk in Velikiye Luki, Anton Zverev, Darya Korsunskaya and Anastasiya Lyrchikova in Aleksin, Zlata Garasyuta, Anastasia Teterevleva, Natalya Shurmina and Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow; Writing by Maria Tsvetkova and Christian Lowe; Editing by Pravin Char)

Polling places become battleground in U.S. voting rights fight

Martin Luther King Drive that runs through Lincoln Park neighborhood in Thomaston, Georgia, U.S.

By John Whitesides

LINCOLN PARK, Ga., Sept 16 (Reuters) – Louis Brooks, 87, has walked to cast a vote at his neighborhood polling place in Georgia’s predominantly black Lincoln Park neighborhood for five decades. But not this year.

Brooks says he will not vote in the presidential election for the first time he can remember after local officials moved the polling station more than 2 miles (3 km) away as part of a plan to cut the number of voting sites in Upson County.

“I can’t get there. I can’t drive, and it’s too far to walk,” said Brooks, a black retired mill worker and long-time
Democratic Party supporter. He said he does not know how to vote by mail and doesn’t know anyone who can give him a ride.

A Reuters survey found local governments in nearly a dozen, mostly Republican-dominated counties in Georgia have adopted plans to reduce the number of voting stations, citing cost savings and efficiency.

In seven of those counties, African-Americans, who traditionally back Democrats, comprised at least a quarter of the population, and in several counties the changes will disproportionately affect black voters. At least three other counties in Georgia dropped consolidation plans under public pressure.

While polling place cutbacks are on the rise across the country, including in some Democratic-run areas, the South’s history of racial discrimination has made the region a focus of concern for voting rights advocates.

Activists see the voting place reductions as another front in the fight over Republican-sponsored statewide voting laws such as stricter ID requirements that disproportionately affect minority and poorer voters who tend to vote for the Democratic Party.

Several of these have recently been struck down by courts that ruled they were designed to hinder minority voting.

“There is a history in those states of using different strategies to cut voting in minority communities,” said Leah
Aden, senior counsel at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Education Fund.

“Hogwash,” said Robert Haney, chairman of the Upson County Board of Elections, denying that race was a factor in his board’s decision.

“Nobody is trying to keep anybody from voting,” said Haney, adding that officials would send a ballot to the home of anyone who needed it. He said the cut in polling sites from nine to four was designed to increase efficiency by closing low-turnout sites, saving about $20,000.

The Nov. 8 election will be the first presidential contest since the Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Georgia and all or parts of 14 other states with a history of racial discrimination no longer need federal approval for election law changes like polling place consolidations.

Since the court ruling, the Reuters survey found, more than two dozen local governments in eight of those states have implemented new cuts in polling places. Two thirds of those were met with public opposition.

Four of the states – Arizona, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina – could be election battlegrounds in the fight for the White House and control of the U.S. Senate.

“IMPACT CAN BE DISASTROUS”

“This is part of the story of voting in the South,” said Willie Williams, a black small business owner from Daphne, Alabama, where polling stations were cut to two from five during last month’s municipal elections over the objections of black voters.

Williams, who still keeps his father’s receipt for his poll tax – the tax some blacks in the South had to pay to qualify to vote before civil rights laws in the 1960s eliminated it – says the reduction was “just another tool in the tool kit for shaving off minority votes.”

Daphne city officials denied any racial motivation, saying the changes were meant to improve safety and create better access and parking for voters.

Still, Isela Gutierrez, a research director at the liberal group Democracy North Carolina, says the effects of such
cutbacks can be wide ranging. “The elections boards aren’t lying when they say some of these locations have low turnout and it makes better administrative sense to close them – but the impact
can be disastrous.”

Numerous academic studies have found people are less likely to vote the farther they must travel and the longer they must wait in line, which becomes more likely with fewer voting sites.

“Some of these changes individually may affect only a small number of voters, but in the aggregate across the country it will be a very large number of voters,” said Danielle Lang, voting rights counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington-based voting rights and campaign finance group.

The issue gained prominence in a March primary in Arizona’s Maricopa County, where more than 30 percent of residents are Hispanic. A decision to slash polling places left voters in lines for up to five hours. Republican county officials said they misjudged turnout.

CONSOLIDATIONS

Georgia has been an epicenter for efforts to reduce polling places since the Supreme Court decision. And in that state, which has not backed a Democrat in a presidential election since 1992, polls show Republican Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in a close battle for the presidency that could be decided by turnout of minority voters.

“If you want to restrict voter turnout in minority and disadvantaged communities, a good way is to move a polling place somewhere they can’t get to,” said Stacey Abrams, Democratic leader in the Georgia state legislature.

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said race was being unfairly inserted into the debate on polling place changes.

“It’s election officials making adjustments based on the changing ways people are voting,” he said.

A Reuters analysis, using voter registration lists for 2012 and 2016, found at least two Georgia counties where the changes disproportionately affect blacks.

A consolidation plan in Macon-Bibb County closed six polling places in black-majority neighborhoods, and only two in white majority areas. McDuffie County’s decision to eliminate three polling places means two-thirds of the county’s black voters, and one-third of its white voters, will now vote in one location.

Other changes have had little impact on minority voters. In Georgia’s Lumpkin County, for example, where blacks are just 2 percent of the population, officials consolidated seven polling locations into one to make the county compliant with federal disability laws.

Voting rights groups in several states have tried to form patchwork networks to track the changes, which are not well publicized, and then fight back where necessary with threats of lawsuits, petition drives or complaints to federal officials.

In Upson County, Haney said, the elections board dropped a proposal to close a polling site in heavily black Salem, a sparsely populated rural area, after residents pointed out the hardship of traveling an extra 10 miles (16 km) or more.

But the Lincoln Park site, which had just 230 voters cast a ballot in person on Election Day 2012, was more easily combined with a polling place in the center of the nearby town of Thomaston, he said.

Kay King, the only African-American member of the elections board in Upson County and the only one to vote against the voting site closures, said she knew it meant some Lincoln Park residents would not be able to vote.

“They walk to the store, they walk to church – when you don’t have transportation to get to something like this, it makes you not want to do it, you just throw your hands up,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan in Washington; Editing
by Jason Szep and Ross Colvin)

 

Missouri lawmakers override gun, voter ID vetoes

Handguns for sale

By Kevin Murphy

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Reuters) – Missouri lawmakers pushed through bills on Wednesday eliminating the need for permits to carry concealed weapons and requiring voters to show a photo identification before casting a ballot, overriding Democratic Governor Jay Nixon’s vetoes of the bills.

Both votes by the Republican-controlled state House and Senate reached the two-thirds majority required to enact legislation over the governor’s veto.

The weapons bill abolished a state law requiring a permit, training and background checks for people who want to carry a concealed weapon in the state.

The House voted 112-41 to override Nixon’s veto and the Senate voted 24-6.

Supporters of the bill said it will make the state safer by allowing more residents to carry firearms in self-defense, while still banning certain criminals and mentally incompetent people from having a gun.

In vetoing the bill in July, Nixon said the measure struck an extreme blow to sensible safeguards against gun violence.

Earlier on Wednesday, the state Senate voted 24-7 and the House 115-41 to override Nixon’s veto of a bill requiring voters to produce a government-issued ID instead of less official identification such as a utility bill or bank check.

The bill would not take effect until 2017, after this year’s presidential election, and only if voters in November pass a state constitutional amendment in support of the new law. That is necessary because the Missouri Supreme Court ruled 10 years ago that such a statute violated the existing state constitution.

Courts in recent months have blocked voter ID laws passed in several states by Republican-led legislatures after civil rights groups argued the measures were discriminatory against poor and minority voters.

In Missouri, voters without a photo ID can still vote if they sign an affidavit swearing that they lack any type of identification. However, election officials can take their picture, and steps must be taken to get a photo ID for later use, with the state covering the cost.

Supporters of the bill said it will help prevent voter fraud.

“Why not have more certainty in the election process?” Republican Representative Justin Alferman, the bill’s main sponsor, said in a statement before the vote.

Opponents had argued that the ID requirement places an undue burden on young, minority and low-income voters who tend to support Democratic candidates.

“Putting additional and unwanted barriers between citizens and their ability to vote is wrong and detrimental to our system of government as a whole,” Nixon said in explaining his veto.

(Editing by Steve Gorman and Simon Cameron-Moore)

Supreme Court leaves Ohio voting restrictions in place

Voters at the ballots

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to reinstate for the Nov. 8 general election Ohio’s “Golden Week”, which had allowed voters to register and cast ballots within the same seven-day period before it was repealed by a Republican-backed law two years ago.

Ohio Democrats had challenged the repeal on grounds that it discriminated against black voters, and had taken their case to the nation’s highest court after the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against them in August.

The law was one of numerous measures enacted in recent years in Republican-governed states that Democrats and civil rights activists have said were intended to hamper voters, including African-Americans and Hispanics, who tend to favor Democratic candidates.

“Ohio Republicans can keep trying to make it harder for people to vote, but we will continue to fight them at every turn,” Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper said.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, countered that state election laws had made Ohio less vulnerable to voter fraud and “one of the easiest states in the nation in which to register and cast your ballot.”

The appeals court had reversed a May ruling by a U.S. district judge who blocked repeal of Golden Week, finding that the 2014 law violated voters’ rights.

The Supreme Court’s brief order did not note any dissenting votes on the short-handed eight-member court, evenly divided between liberal and conservative justices.

Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature abolished Golden Week while also shortening the state’s early-voting period, during which ballots could be cast before an election, to four weeks from five weeks. Ohio often is a pivotal state in U.S. presidential elections.

In a separate Ohio voting-rights case decided on Tuesday by the 6th Circuit, a three-judge panel issued a split ruling.

Siding with a lower court, the appeals panel struck down a 2014 requirement that local election officials toss out absentee and provisional ballots if they contain an address or birth date that fails to perfectly match voting records.

But the panel reversed the lower court in upholding provisions restricting the assistance that poll workers can offer voters and reducing the number of days absentee voters have to remedy identification-envelope errors.

Golden Week was created to make it easier to vote in Ohio after lengthy lines at polling locations marred the 2004 election. In 2008, 60,000 people voted during Golden Week, and 80,000 did so in 2012.

The law erasing Golden Week was initially challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In 2014, in an earlier round of litigation, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow the repeal to take effect for that year’s election.

The case is one of several voting disputes being litigated ahead of the November election and is the third application for emergency action to reach the Supreme Court in recent weeks from three different states. The justices have rejected all three.

On Aug. 31, the court rejected a bid by North Carolina to reinstate several voting restrictions, including a requirement that people show identification at the polls.

Last Friday, the court rejected an effort by Michigan to reinstate a ban on “straight ticket” voting, the practice of using one mark to vote for all candidates from one party.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Kim Palmer in Cleveland; Editing by Will Dunham)

Charisma Magazine: How the Very Future of America is at Stake

As August comes to a close, we are drawing closer and closer to November, and one of the most important elections in our country’s history. As many of our guests (and numerous other prophets) have shared, this election will determine the fate of America when it comes to God’s judgment. Despite the significance of this election, it still shocks me to hear that some of our fellow Christians say that they will not vote, or they are uncertain of who to vote for. If you are one of these people, I highly encourage you to read Charisma Magazine’s latest article. This article is written from the perspective of Dr. Jim Garlow, pastor of Skyline Church in California. He provides some amazing insight concerning both candidates’ views on political issues and their plans for America’s future. I pray that after reading this article, you will have a clearer perspective on the election, the issues, the candidates, and just how important your vote is!

Love,

Pastor Jim Bakker

Read the full article at CharismaNews.com

U.S. offers states help to fight election hacking

Homeland Security Secretary

By Doina Chiacu

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The government is offering to help states protect the Nov. 8 U.S. election from hacking or other tampering, in the face of allegations by Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump that the system is open to fraud.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told state officials in a phone call on Monday that federal cyber security experts could scan for vulnerabilities in voting systems and provide other resources to help protect against infiltration, his office said in a statement.

Trump has questioned the integrity of U.S. election systems in recent weeks, but his allegations have been vague and unsubstantiated.

The attempts to sow doubts about the 2016 election results coincided with Trump’s slide in opinion polls against Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton and missteps in his campaign. His complaints have focused on fears of voter fraud – that people will vote more than once – rather than election rigging.

“I mean people are going to walk in, they’re going to vote 10 times maybe. Who knows? They’re going to vote 10 times. So I am very concerned and I hope the Republicans are going to be very watchful,” Trump said in an Aug. 3 interview.

President Barack Obama dismissed the claims as “ridiculous.” “Of course the elections will not be rigged. What does that mean?” Obama said at a news conference the next day.

In his phone call, Johnson encouraged the state officials to comply with federal cyber recommendations, such as making sure electronic voting machines are not connected to the internet while voting is taking place, the department said.

Concerns in both parties about manipulation of electronic electoral systems are not new. Hackers can wreak havoc in myriad ways, from hijacking a candidate’s website to hacking voting machines or deleting or changing election records.

An Electronic Privacy Information Center report this week said 32 of the 50 states would allow voting by insecure email, fax and internet portals in this election cycle.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool)

Supreme Court stance on North Carolina law to send signal on voting limits

Pamphlet about Voter ID Law

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court’s handling of North Carolina’s long-shot bid to reinstate its contentious voter identification law will set the tone for the court’s treatment of similar cases that could reach the justices before the Nov. 8 elections.

Voter identification laws were adopted by several states in recent years, generally driven by Republicans who said the laws were meant to prevent election fraud. Democrats have argued that the laws were meant to keep minorities, who tend to vote for Democrats, away from the polls. Civil rights groups have challenged the laws in court.

The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on July 29 invalidated the North Carolina law, ruling that it intentionally discriminated against minority voters.

Attorneys for North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican, filed court papers late on Monday with Chief Justice John Roberts, seeking restoration of parts of the law and arguing the appeals court was wrong to set it aside so close to the election.

The Supreme Court rarely grants such emergency requests, and is even less likely to do so now because it is down to only eight justices, rather than the usual nine, following the February death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

He was a likely vote to put the North Carolina law back in place for the election. But the court is now split evenly between liberals and conservatives.

“With a 4-4 court they are going to be very reticent (to intervene), whatever the topic,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at University of California, Irvine School of Law.

The vote of moderate liberal Justice Stephen Breyer could be key. Last month, he cast the deciding vote on a case involving a transgender student wanting to use the boys’ restroom at school. Saying he did so as a courtesy to his colleagues, Breyer voted to block a lower court decision in the student’s favor. This led some legal experts to say Breyer could vote this way again.

In 2014, the high court let some parts of the North Carolina law take effect for that year’s election. It acted similarly on a Texas voter identification law. Breyer did not publicly dissent in either case, unlike some of his liberal colleagues.

Opponents of the North Carolina law say the state’s argument about precipitous disruption of election law is weak, arguing that the 4th Circuit ruling left plenty of time for election workers to train on operating without voter ID in place.

Allison Riggs, an attorney for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a civil rights group that challenged the law, also noted that the state waited 17 days to file its Supreme Court application.

The North Carolina law, which also limited early voting and prevented residents from registering and voting on the same day, was enacted in 2013.

Whatever the high court does is likely to signal how it would act in any other voting controversies before the election.

In recent weeks, courts have handed wins to voting rights advocates in several states, including Wisconsin and Texas. Some of those disputes could also reach the high court before the election.

North Carolina’s application does not seek to reinstate all elements of the law prior to the election, meaning some provisions, including a ban on same-day registration, will not be in effect whatever the high court does.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Jonathan Oatis)

Looters ransack shops on third day of South African vote violence

Shell of a burnt out truck

By Dinky Mkhize

PRETORIA (Reuters) – Looters raided shops and burned-out cars blocked roads in South Africa’s capital on Wednesday, the third day of violence triggered by the ruling party’s choice of a mayoral candidate for local polls.

Police said rioters were targeting foreigners’ shops as public anger mounted over economic hardships in the build-up to Aug. 3 elections likely to become a referendum on President Jacob Zuma’s leadership.

Residents of Pretoria’s townships started setting cars and buses alight on Monday night after the ruling African National Congress’ (ANC) named a candidate in the Tshwane municipality where the capital city is located, overruling the choice of regional branches.

Violence flared again on Tuesday night and continued in parts of the capital on Wednesday, Tshwane Metro police spokesman Console Tleane said.

“There is calm in some hot spots, (but) the navigation of the streets is difficult because of the rubble and the debris,” he told eNCA television.

Protesters were continuing to clash with police and “a disproportionate part of the looting was taking place at shops owned by foreign nationals,” he added.

Foreigners, many of them from other African countries, last suffered a wave of attacks in April last year, by crowds blaming them for taking jobs and business.

Analysts warned of more unrest in the commercial hub of Gauteng province, which includes Pretoria and Johannesburg.

“Intra-ANC, election-related, factional violence is being ignored by markets trading on external factors, but is worrying,” London-based Nomura emerging markets analyst Peter Attard Montalto said in a note.

FACTIONS

The mayoral dispute flared at the weekend after an ANC member was shot dead on Sunday as party factions met to decide on a candidate for mayor of Pretoria’s Tshwane municipality.

The ANC leadership then named senior party member and former cabinet minister Thoko Didiza as its candidate for Tshwane, overriding regional branch members and refusing to back down as the violence mounted.

The ANC said it picked the candidate as a compromise between two rival factions in Tshwane. But critics say the decision by the party, which has been in power since the end of white-minority rule in 1994, showed that it is losing its touch in areas – including Pretoria – where it was once unassailable.

Zuma survived impeachment in April after Constitutional Court ruled that he breached the constitution by ignoring an order by the anti-graft watchdog to repay some of the $16 million in state funds spent renovating his home.

“Ahead of the August elections, disgruntled ANC supporters in Gauteng will be motivated by the Pretoria riots to stage further protests to demonstrate the unpopular ANC leadership’s decisions,” Robert Besseling, head of the EXX Africa business risk intelligence group said in a note.

(Writing by James Macharia; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Israelis Go To The Polls

Israelis will go the polls today to choose a new government.

Polls show that current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trailing in the polls to a group that has stated their intent to work with the Palestinian Authority and other Arab groups throughout the region to create Palestine and give up land.

However, the last polls which were released Friday had enough undecided voters to swing the election in either direction.

As much as 70% of Israel’s eligible voters will go to the polls.

The election is expected to be decided by the 20 percent of the population made up of Arabs.  The Arab community has long complained of discrimination by Israeli authorities and expressed their desires to join with groups like Hamas and Hexbollah.

One voter told the Associated Press he was backing Netanyahu because he saw it as a way to defend the nation.

“He is not great, but he is better than anything else out there,” she said. “I can’t vote for the left … It’s a Jewish country, not a Palestinian one,” Meshy Alon said.

In Israel, voters vote for party, not individual candidates.  No party has ever won a clear majority in the 120 member parliament, meaning it can take weeks to form a coalition government.

The Common Sense that God Gave Us

This week, I hope you have been enjoying our visit with Governor Mike Huckabee.  It truly was an honor to meet this kind, approachable man of God.  It felt as though Jim and I had known him for years!

Both of us had been reading his new book God, Guns, Grits and Gravy. You know it is really a good book when you can catch us reading anything at the very same time!  There were several moments that we were nodding our heads simultaneously with this feeling of relief that someone understands what America has been crying out desperately to our government for a very long time…common sense!

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