Word: balloter
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...acceptance by Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai that ballot fraud has stripped him of his first-round re-election victory potentially removes the last obstacle cited by the Obama Administration to sending thousands more U.S. troops into the war. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said over the weekend that reinforcements could not be sent until the allegations of electoral fraud had been resolved, because the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy depends on defending a legitimate government. But the Afghan electoral commission's ruling that, after fraudulent ballots were discarded, Karzai had failed to win an outright majority in the first...
...With support from U.N. election experts working within the commission, the IEC published safeguards to exclude obviously fraudulent ballots from the preliminary tally of election results. These guidelines were a matter of common sense. For example, they excluded results from polling centers that had never opened or that reported more votes than they had ballot papers. A week before the IEC was to announce the results, I learned that it was considering abandoning these safeguards. I called the chief electoral officer to express my concern. Within two hours, I found myself summoned to meet the Foreign Minister, who, on direct...
...controversy over DC’s gay marriage laws comes in the midst of similar fights in Maine, where the issue is on the ballot this November; Iowa, where same-sex marriage was legalized earlier this year; and California, whose infamous Proposition 8 roused passions across the nation. It is understandable, therefore, that many congressmen will see the issue of same-sex marriage in DC as yet another opportunity to use a traditional wedge issue to wage political warfare, be it to advance the prospects of progressive candidates in left-leaning districts, drive a wedge between socially conservative minorities...
...member and former mayor Marion Barry. The Democratic-controlled Congress, which can reject legislation affecting Washington, is not expected to block the bill, nor is the White House expected to object. And prospects for any referendum effort to halt same-sex marriages appear equally dim. When opponents sought a ballot initiative to halt the earlier bill, the board of elections deemed the effort illegal under Washington's Human Rights Act, a decision that was upheld in court. A pending effort to do the same with Catania's new bill will likely meet the same fate. (See a pictorial history...
President Obama's name won't be on the ballot, but the White House is plunging into the fray for 2010's elections regardless. The President and his top aides have intervened in races in at least half a dozen states, most recently urging unpopular New York Governor David Paterson not to seek re-election. (Paterson still cordially greeted Obama in Albany Sept. 21.) Congressional redistricting in 2010 makes statehouse control key, though some say the politicking looks crass. Former GOP guru Karl Rove called Paterson's treatment by the White House "ham-handed...