Japan's opposition party, The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), is projected to win a landslide victory tomorrow, ending the 52-year reign of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Furthermore, according to a survey conducted by the popular Asahi Shimbun newspaper, the DPJ could win a two-thirds majority, enabling them to roll legislation through the Diet unabated. Despite the projections, the two parties are still battling hard. Washington is following these elections very closely, because of the man who could be the next prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama. [more inside]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on Aug 29, 2009 - 46 comments

In 2008, Nokia Siemens’ Networks sold Iran a program called Monitoring Centre, which allows the government not only to monitor all mobile communications, but also to alter their contents, possibly for disinformation purposes. Implementation of the deep-packet inspection technology that the program uses may be to blame for the halt in mobile service that occurred after the June 12th election. According the BBC, Nokia Siemens markets the Monitoring Center product to 150 countries around the world.
posted by HylandErickson on Jun 22, 2009 - 34 comments

The European elections results 2009 website will open on June 7 at 18.00 CET. While waiting for the results, check out the issues, the EU 30 years ago and now and the EU Parliament twitter feed.
posted by ruelle on Jun 7, 2009 - 97 comments

NRW 1946—2006. Short articles chronicling North Rhine-Westphalia. The site has one rather large shortcoming though, the video clips cannot be accessed (only available on VHS within the State!).
posted by tellurian on May 12, 2009 - 10 comments

Between 16 April - 13 May the worlds largest democracy will go into action. Being India the logistics are mind boggling. Over 700 million eligible voters who will vote in over 700,000 polling stations for 1,055 political parties. The BBC goes on to explain what makes Indian elections special. University of Maryland has Forecasts and Analysis and Trends in Indian Election Politics has both insight and an interesting blog roll. As Indian Politics are more than usually corrupt and thuggish there is website dedicated to information about candidates with a criminal history. Sadly in spite of this great democratic exercise, repression of speech and miscarriage of justice will probably still be around for a while.
posted by adamvasco on Apr 3, 2009 - 6 comments

EU Profiler: the authors of Kieskompas, a "Vote-O-Mat"-style tool for the undecided Dutch voter, following up on their adaptation for the US Presidential election (previously on MeFi), will launch an EU-wide version for the European Parliament elections upcoming in June. So Europeans, urge your political parties to register! The tool itself will launch in May.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Mar 29, 2009 - 6 comments

GOP 2.0 There's no doubt that the internet operation of President-Elect Obama was a key part of his success. While it appears that he is attempting to turn that success into an engine for keeping citizens and supporters engaged with the revolutionary Change.gov,(Previously), the other side also is looking to harness the wave of internet electioneering. [more inside]
posted by Ironmouth on Nov 10, 2008 - 163 comments

There hasn't been much coverage about this in the major media, so you probably aren't aware that there is a presidential election today. After two terms, the current president cannot seek reelection. The next president could be a military man or an attorney. There could also be changes in the Senate. All of this means a lot for the country's relations with other countries, its independence from foreign energy sources, and for the future, in general, of this great country.
posted by twoleftfeet on Nov 4, 2008 - 41 comments

There is a litmus test that has predicted the winner and loser of every presidential election over the past 100 years. If the Dow has risen 3.3 percent or more in October, the incumbent party has never lost. If the Dow has dropped 0.5 percent or more, the incumbent party has never won. That is, until 2004. Perhaps a more reliable test is the relative popularity of halloween masks; track your favorite candidate at Amazon or BuyCostumes.
posted by twoleftfeet on Oct 11, 2008 - 31 comments

Anti-Conservative site Vote For Environment, has had over a million hits in just 12 days. Previously.
posted by gman on Oct 6, 2008 - 33 comments

Project Vote 2008 aims to repair "vote caging" [discussed previously] by compiling Google spreadsheets of affected households. Check your own status, and alert friends or neighbors you find there that their voter registration status is at risk for "alleged or actual deficiencies." [more inside]
posted by jayCampbell on Oct 3, 2008 - 27 comments

Newfoundland's Progressive Conservative Premier registered his Anything But Conservative campaign today with Elections Canada. The same agency also deemed that the online vote swap on Facebook is in fact legal. They're hiring.
posted by gman on Sep 17, 2008 - 62 comments

The Attorney General of Wisconsin, JB Van Hollen, is suing the state Elections Board to remove from voting rolls all voters whose registered names & addresses don't match the records at the Department of Transportation. [more inside]
posted by echo target on Sep 11, 2008 - 103 comments

Fear and Loathing in Denver, Colorado - August 24-28, 2008.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Aug 29, 2008 - 56 comments

Many people are up in arms (heh) over the Supreme Court's decision regarding gun control, but rather less press is being given to another opinion handed down today: Davis v. FEC. The issue was the constitutionality of the "Millionaire's Amendment", which allowed for political candidates facing self-funding challengers who intended to spend more than $350,000 to raise more money from individual donors than they would otherwise be allowed to do. In a 5-4 decision, the court found the law unconstitutional. [more inside]
posted by Bromius on Jun 26, 2008 - 16 comments

Zimbabwe: Holds diplomats (after threatening to burn them), suspends aid, bans opposition rallies.
posted by Artw on Jun 6, 2008 - 70 comments

April 18, 1980: Rhodesia is renamed Zimbabwe after it is granted black majority rule. [more inside]
posted by allkindsoftime on Apr 18, 2008 - 60 comments

"It's ethnic cleansing happening." Fully ten days after elections that most are speculating were indeed won by the opposition party (Movement for Democratic Change), Robert Mugabe still clings to power in Zimbabwe. The voting results have still not been released, and 5 election officials have been arrested, "accused of tampering with the vote to the detriment of Mugabe's tally." Its been a tense time for Zim, and now the violence and land seizures have started again. [more inside]
posted by allkindsoftime on Apr 9, 2008 - 67 comments

The Misery Circle An article about the remaining 13 also-rans in past US presidential elections.
posted by idiomatika on Mar 29, 2008 - 17 comments

Mapping the election conditions in Zimbabwe - A project of Sokwanele , the Zimbabwe Civic Action Support Group. Zimbabweans vote in presidential and parliamentary elections on March 29th.
posted by PenDevil on Mar 27, 2008 - 17 comments

This year's elections in Malaysia are historic due to the major wins by the Opposition/People's Front and the National Front's loss of 5 states and the 2/3 majority in parliament (one they've held since 1969) (comparisons). Two of the newly elected Members of Parliament are bloggers Tony Pua and Jeff Ooi; another blogger, Elizabeth Wong, has won a seat in the state assembly of the now-Opposition-run Selangor. This is significant, as Malaysian bloggers had been under attack by the government. (last link YouTube video in Malay with subtitles).
posted by divabat on Mar 9, 2008 - 16 comments

Had enough election coverage this year? If not-- or if you forgot that countries besides the USA have elections too-- you can see details of elections the world over via Electoral Geography 2.0. Browse elections in chronological order or by country, or read scholarly articles on various elections. Not comprehensive (yet!); in general, the more recent, the more coverage.
posted by Rykey on Mar 9, 2008 - 4 comments

Meghan McCain's blog. Just another political blog, by another candidate's daughter. O! what the internet has wrought. [more inside]
posted by OmieWise on Feb 13, 2008 - 81 comments

A little lost coming up to the Presidential Primary? The Electoral Compass is a brief set of questions that matches your choices with the candidate whose positions are the closest to yours. Discover your position in the political landscape for the US presidential election 2008. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Feb 4, 2008 - 125 comments

Who would the world elect for President of the United States?
posted by augustweed on Nov 18, 2007 - 117 comments

"Ron Paul and the Sex Pistols!" Never thought I’d hear the words “Ron Paul and the Sex Pistols” in the same phrase.
posted by augustweed on Nov 3, 2007 - 62 comments

Pennsylvania polling places regarding September 08 elections to have everything but voters.
posted by duende on Oct 26, 2007 - 31 comments

The Soapbox is a collection of photographs, texts of speeches, transcripts of debates and political ads from Australian election campaigns (both State and Federal) from 1901 to the present day. More materials will be added when they become available.
posted by Effigy2000 on Oct 25, 2007 - 3 comments

Going After Gore "Al Gore couldn't believe his eyes: as the 2000 election heated up, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other top news outlets kept going after him, with misquotes ("I invented the Internet"), distortions (that he lied about being the inspiration for Love Story), and strangely off-the-mark needling, while pundits such as Maureen Dowd appeared to be charmed by his rival, George W. Bush. For the first time, Gore and his family talk about the effect of the press attacks on his campaign—and about his future plans—to the author, who finds that many in the media are re-assessing their 2000 coverage."
posted by chunking express on Sep 4, 2007 - 168 comments

The Marquis de Condorcet and Admiral Jean-Charles de Borda were two men of the French Enlightenment who struggled with how to design voting systems that accurately reflected voters' preferences. Condorcet favored a method that required the winner in a multiparty election to win a series of head-to-head contests, but he also discovered that his method easily led to a paradoxes that produced no clear winners. The Borda method avoids the Condorcet paradox by requiring voters to rank choices numerically in order of preference, but this method is flawed because the withdrawal of a last-place candidate can reverse the election results. Mathematicians in the 19th century attempted to design better voting systems, including Lewis Carroll, who favored an early form of proportional representation. Economist Kenneth Arrow argued that designing a perfect voting system was futile, because his "impossibility theorem" proved that it's impossible to design a non-dictatorial voting system that fulfills five basic criteria of fairness. (more inside)
posted by jonp72 on Aug 27, 2007 - 43 comments

California Restricts Voting Machines: after a source code review of voting machines turned up "significant, deeply-rooted security weaknesses" in voting machines by Diebold, Hart, and Sequoia, the California Secretary of State decertified all three vendors' systems. These weaknesses have been well covered here at MeFi, but some are bad enough to shock even the well-jaded, including the revelation that Diebold "uses at least two hard-coded passwords -- one is 'diebold' and another is the eight-byte sequence 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8." Time to think about open voting?
posted by jacobian on Aug 5, 2007 - 48 comments

India elects the first woman President. Pratibha Patil, most recently Governer of of the western desert state of Rajasthan has just been elected The President of the Republic of India. While outgoing President APJ Abdul Kalam retains popularity he was unwilling to continue for a second term, political considerations led to a considerable struggle for who would be India's next President. Primarily a figurehead, the new head of state, Ms Patil does not have her country's unanimous support or approval diluting the landmark achievement for women in India.
posted by infini on Jul 22, 2007 - 9 comments

40 lie dead, as General Pervez Musharraf tries to quash the judiciary of Pakistan, before the elections (pdf) to be held this year.
posted by hadjiboy on May 13, 2007 - 66 comments

Network Hosting Attorney Scandal E-Mails Also Hosted Ohio's 2004 Election Results --...more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors. ...
posted by amberglow on Apr 23, 2007 - 66 comments

Maryland joins the ranks of states attempting to thwart the electoral college. Maryland's General Assembly approved a bill [PDF] to ignore the U.S. Electoral College [official website] in presidential elections, instead awarding the state's 10 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. [via | previously on MeFi | more inside]
posted by terrapin on Mar 30, 2007 - 71 comments

"I do not recall" --meet Lurita Doan, Administrator of the GSA (Our mission is to help other agencies better serve the public by meeting – at best value – their needs for products and services, and to simplify citizen access to government information and services.), and hear about the powerpoint presentation from Rove's office all about electing Republicans in 08 and how her agency should help. Her office supplied it to Congress--but it was just a (GOP) "team-building exercise" and "brown-bag lunch". (YouTube) Read up on the Hatch Act too.
posted by amberglow on Mar 28, 2007 - 54 comments

They Won’t Know What Hit Them. How a network of gay political donors is stealthily fighting sexual discrimination and reshaping American politics.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Mar 9, 2007 - 32 comments

There's about to be an election (pdf) in the British Parliament's second chamber, the House of Lords. Not an election where the public can choose their lawmakers: that's still a matter of debate. No, one of the 92 hereditary Lords has died, and those of his party colleagues that remain get to choose another hereditary peer to take his place. So the election, in which only hereditary peers registered as Conservatives can stand, will be decided by the votes of the 47 Conservative hereditary peers still clinging to the twig. And just to make sure it's properly democratic - the vote is by proportional representation.
posted by athenian on Feb 18, 2007 - 40 comments

Abu Gharib? Feh. The newest Dark Side: telemarketing abuse. The National Republican Congressional Committee has launched a $2.1 million campaign calling individuals, including those on the Federal Do-Not-Call Registry, with automated telephone messages scripted to sound as if they are coming from the Democratic candidate up for election, in the hopes of driving away support come Tuesday's elections. "Hello. I'm calling with information about [Democratic candidate]," the recording begins, and then pauses for the traditional hang-up. If the recipient does indeed hang up, they then receive repeated phone calls back. This manner of scripting violates 47 CFR 64.1200(b)(1), which requires that "the identity of the business, individual, or other entity that is responsible for initiating the call" be "state[d] clearly" "at the beginning of the message." The New Hampshire Attorney General got them to stop calling those on the Do-Not-Call Registry, at least. (In their best interests, perhaps, due to the $5,000 fine per call potentially racking up hefty fines.) This is going on at the very least in the Pennsylvania 6th, the Connecticut 4th, the North Carolina 11th,, the New Hampshire 2nd, and nationwide.
posted by WCityMike on Nov 5, 2006 - 142 comments

The Polling Place Photo Project is an experiment in citizen journalism that intends to collect photographs of every polling place in America next Tuesday.
posted by coudal on Nov 2, 2006 - 19 comments

Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist. ...A poll worker then helped Rudolf, but it took three tries to get it right, Reed said. ... Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. ... Early voting problems already in Florida.
posted by amberglow on Oct 30, 2006 - 107 comments

"Then my photography started to shift; everything had to be very clean and Republican, straight and perfect... Everything is staged and controlled... It's the complete opposite of war photography."
War photographer Christopher Morris's new exhibit and book: "My America".
posted by matteo on Sep 27, 2006 - 20 comments

The Votemaster has returned. Electoral-vote.com has been re-launched for the 2006 elections. The major focus is on the Senate but there is also some quick analysis of the hotter House races. For those who missed the phenomenon during the heady days of 2004, here is the Wikipedia article and previous MeFi discussion.
posted by rocketpup on Sep 8, 2006 - 41 comments

New York Times 2006 interactive elections map. A really impressive guide to the current House, Senate, and governor races with all of the poll data and analysis a political junky could ask for; plus the ability to modify the maps by population, ethnicity, and income levels. It also allows you to play out scenarios. [registration may be required]
posted by blahblahblah on Jul 27, 2006 - 18 comments

Mexico's election: now being recounted, but some are saying it was stolen with our help. Many countries in Latin and South America have been moving to the left lately, following in the footsteps of Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Chile. Argentina actually caught us messing with things during their election, too. Exit polls in Mexico (as in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004) showed a lead for the more leftist (relatively) candidate, and for those who scoff at using exit polls as evidence--in 2004, US Republican Senator Richard Lugar, in Kiev, cited the divergence of exit polls and official polls as solid evidence of “blatant fraud” in the vote count in Ukraine. As a result, the Bush Administration refused to recognize the Ukraine government’s official vote tally. So, honest election, or what?
posted by amberglow on Jul 3, 2006 - 65 comments

The Mexican General Elections are held tomorrow, and the campaign has been extremely fierce and dirty. Long-time favorite center-leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, who had been running with an up to 10 percentage point lead earlier this spring, is down to a 2-3 percentage point lead in the last polls before the poll blackout started on the 23rd of June. His main opponent is Felipe Calderón, of the right-wing National Action Party, whose Vicente Fox, an ex-executive of the Coca-Cola company, is the current president. But attacks against López Obrador started several years ago, when he was the head of government in Mexico City, as right-wing interests and the upper classes saw his populist rhetoric and support from the huge lower classes as a threat to their privilege and way of life. They compare him to Castro, Chavez and Morales, while his politics may in reality be closer to those of Kirchner, Lula, Vázquez and Bachelet. López Obrador has accused Calderón of corruption and nepotism, while Calderón has declared López Obrador a danger to Mexico. Meanwhile, the US would much prefer a right-wing president in Mexico, and some track that to the right wing's willingness to privatize the national oil monopoly, and of course, most of Latin America has been turning left lately.
posted by Joakim Ziegler on Jul 1, 2006 - 15 comments

A backdoor plan to thwart the electoral college Some states try to ensure that the winner of popular vote becomes president
posted by Postroad on Jun 24, 2006 - 114 comments

Have the netroots finally hit solid ground? There's been a lot of debate about how effective left-wing blogs have been in the political process, but tonight a huge factor has just been added to that debate. Fueled by net support from big-name blogs, Ned Lamont has secured the vote of nearly twice the necessary 15% of delegates in Connecticut's state Democratic convention to force a Senate primary against Joe Lieberman.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on May 19, 2006 - 78 comments

Bush out of favor in 47 out of 50 states. The SurveyUSA 50-state-poll shows some interesting details on Bush's approval rating, which has fallen to just 35% in North (and South) Carolina, 29% in Missouri, and 42% in Texas. He remains popular in only three states: Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. Could the Democrats have a shot even in Utah in the not-too-distant future? A lot of Utahns think so.
posted by insomnia_lj on May 16, 2006 - 89 comments

...his boyfriend Josh. --beautiful story, made all the more poignant at a time of more and more state constitutional amendments ensuring second-class citizenship, and a Democratic party urging us to just shut up already, but still give.
posted by amberglow on Mar 4, 2006 - 49 comments