40 million Iranians watched a "remarkable, no-holds-barred" and nationally televised debate between President Ahmadinejad (blog) and his rival, former Prime Minister Mousavi (Facebook). [more inside]
posted by msalt on Jun 4, 2009 - 48 comments

When Judges Make Foreign Policy. "In a globalized, post-9/11 age, decisions made by the Supreme Court are increasingly shaping America's international relations. When the next justice is appointed, our place in the world may well hang in the balance."
posted by homunculus on Sep 29, 2008 - 11 comments

Candidates on executive power: a full spectrum. Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on presidential signing statements, surveyed the major 2008 presidential candidates about their views on the limits of executive power. [BugMeNot, via Huffington Post.] [more inside]
posted by homunculus on Dec 26, 2007 - 18 comments

Senator On-Line (‘SOL’) is a truly democratic party which will allow everyone on the Australian Electoral roll who has access to the internet to vote on every Bill put to Parliament and have its Senators vote in accordance with a clear majority view. They will be running candidates for the upcoming federal Upper House (Senate) elections.
posted by finite on Nov 15, 2007 - 28 comments

Hacking Democracy. A frightening and well-made full-length HBO documentary.
posted by Espoo2 on Nov 5, 2006 - 40 comments

On November 7th, Americans have much to decide. While the two major parties joust for control of the Senate and House, many a ballot initiative does not recieve the scutiny required. Consider Oregon's Rainy Day Amendment, Arizona's HOPE Amendment, California's Protect Our Homes Initiative or Idaho's Proposition 2. Examine the Taxpayer Bill of Rights in Maine and Proposal 6 in Michigan - weigh them against three bills in Montana. [more inside]
posted by EatTheWeak on Nov 5, 2006 - 20 comments

Город наш! The city is ours! Belarussians are using weblogs, online communities, and text messaging to organize, share news and numerous photos, and oppose their corrupt government's fraudulent election. Patriotism, flags, and dark blue is in fashion, whether the government likes it or not.
posted by insomnia_lj on Mar 23, 2006 - 32 comments

Diebold boss resigns pending fraud investigation
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome on Dec 13, 2005 - 164 comments

Iraqi insurgents are rejecting al-Qaida in favour of the political process. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad spent 5 days with an Iraqi resistance group during the constitutional vote, and found that al-Qaida involvement in the insurgency-particularly their tactic of targetting Iraqi police and soldiers-is both unwelcome and unwanted. Instead many Sunni are looking toward using the democratic process to achieve their ends.
posted by MadOwl on Oct 27, 2005 - 42 comments

Project Censored places "Distorted Election Coverage" at number 3 on their list of ignored news stories of the last year. In more recent ignored news a Diebold insider speaks out (which security guru Bruce Schneier considers "sensationalist" but "good information") - just as Diebold shares plunge and top executives flee. In July Diebold's voting machines were rejected by the state of California after "possibly the most extensive testing ever on a voting system" revealed a high incidence of crashes and paper jams. Not to mention the undocumented backdoor in Diebold's GEMS vote tabulator. Meanwhile, in Ohio, two officials of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections have been indicted by a grand jury on charges that they "did not permit a random selection of precincts for the recount and it did not let witnesses oversee the opening of the sealed ballot cases and the first recount of the votes." And John Conyers is urging Americans to oppose a proposed national ID voting requirement, which he calls a "21st Century poll tax". Is this what democracy looks like?
posted by dinsdale on Sep 24, 2005 - 25 comments

Get to votin'. In Sydney, the first votes were cast in the Iraqi elections, 48 hours before it starts in Iraq itself. I went down to the nearest polling booth to get a feel for the turnout. It's being organised by the best in the business, but will it make a difference if nobody comes to the party?
posted by cosmonik on Jan 27, 2005 - 16 comments

While Abu Musab al-Zarqawi declares a "bitter war" against democracy, Josh Muravchik suggests that Realists—"those who are skeptical of injecting issues of freedom, democracy and human rights into the conduct of foreign policy"—have historically been less in-step than pro-democracy Idealists. Responding to Bush's Inauguration Day comments about confronting tyranny in the coming years, many Iranians cheered.
posted by jenleigh on Jan 26, 2005 - 56 comments

As Iraqis go to the polls on Jan. 30, it will be a daunting first exercise in democracy.
posted by furtive on Jan 26, 2005 - 31 comments

Racially-Based Suppression of the African-American Vote: The Role It May Play in the Upcoming Presidential Election What exactly is racially-based vote suppression? Simply defined, it is the targeting of potential voters, based on their race, in an attempt to suppress the exercise of their right to vote for the candidate of their choice.
posted by y2karl on Oct 30, 2004 - 34 comments

160 observers couldn't monitor the election in Bexar County Texas, let alone the whole US. -- National Journal's Charlie Cook. A hundred and sixty, though, isn't the half of it. [plenty more inside]
posted by dhartung on Oct 23, 2004 - 13 comments

Experiences of voting in Zimbabwe - BBC News Online has a forum where it is displaying emails from Zimbabwe about voter's experiences in the current presidential poll. I think the BBC are using their status responsibly in providing direct information about the conditions there.
posted by adrianhon on Mar 10, 2002 - 7 comments

On the same day that a date was set for elections in Zimbabwe, the Commander of Zimbabwe's Defence forces warned that the military will not support a president who "reverses the gains of the revolution".

All this comes as draconian new powers are poised to be pushed through parliament by the Zanu PF party, despite being rejected earlier this week.
The Guardian's "The Weblog" site has many good sources for background information on Zimbabwe and its political troubles.
posted by davehat on Jan 10, 2002 - 9 comments

I know it's short notice but if you're in one of these cities, and agree that the popular vote of the people should be honored and upheld, there's gonna be a lot of spontaneous protests happening tomorrow afternoon.
posted by ZachsMind on Nov 10, 2000 - 19 comments

Dem's let Nader on Ill. ballot, finally. Maybe I'll see some metafilter readers at the Oct 10 Rally at UIC. Ummm, wear a pink rose and use the secret MiFi handshake.
posted by skallas on Sep 29, 2000 - 4 comments