Tag: Voting

Tripura Assembly polls: Voting begins amid tight security

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Agartala: The polling for the Tripura Assembly elections began amid tight security on Thursday.
The voting started at 7 am and will continue till 4 pm.
According to Election Commission, over 28.14 lakh electorates of which 14,15,233 are male voters, 13,99,289 are woman voters and 62 are of the third gender, are eligible to cast their franchise. The voting is underway at 3,337 polling stations.
Adequate security arrangements have been made for the polls. The state has 97 all-women-managed police stations. It has 94,815 voters in the 18-19 age group and 6,21,505 in the 22-29 age group. The highest number of voters are in the 40-59 age group at 9,81,089.
The fate of the 259 candidates will be sealed on 60 Assembly seats today.
A triangular contest is on the cards as Congress and CPIM, which have been arch rivals for years, stitched a pre-poll alliance to defeat the ruling BJP while the BJP which is looking to retain its power is contesting in alliance with Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) and the Tipra Motha which is being seen as a kingmaker in case of a hung assembly scenario, emerged as an influential regional party floated by the royal scion Pradyot Kishore Debbarma in 2021. Meanwhile, Trinamool Congress has also put up candidates on several seats.
The BJP is contesting on 55 seats and its ally, IPFT, on six seats. But both allies have fielded candidates in the Ampinagar constituency in Gomati district.
The Left will contest on 47 and Congress on 13 seats, respectively.Of the total 47 seats, the CPM will contest 43 seats while the Forward Bloc, Communist Party of India ( CPI) and Revolutionary Socialist Party ( RSP) will contest one seat each.

Over 28 lakh voters are eligible to cast their votes in the election for the 60-member assembly in the border state.
Tripura is the first state to go to the polls this year. While polling for Nagaland and Meghalaya assemblies will be held on February 27, five more states face elections this year in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
A total of 259 candidates, including 20 women, are in the fray in Tripura. The counting of votes will be done on March 2.
This time Bharatiya Janata Party has fielded 12 women candidates.The BJP which had never won a single seat in Tripura before 2018, stormed to power in the last election in alliance with IPFT and had ousted the Left Front which had been in power in the border state for 35 years since 1978.
BJP won 36 seats in the assembly and got 43.59 per cent of the votes in the 2018 election. The CPI (M) won 16 seats with a 42.22 per cent vote share. The IPFT won eight seats and Congress could not open its account.
The BJP is exuding confidence that it will improve its performance. Party’s top leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and party chief JP Nadda campaigned in the state.
Apart from national leaders, the star campaigners, Chief Ministers of Assam and Uttar Pradesh, Himanta Biswa Sarma and Yogi Adiyanath respectively also campaigned in Tripura.
On the other hand, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, and senior party leaders Brinda Karat, Prakash Karat, Mohammad Salim and former Chief Minister Manik Sarkar campaigned for the party in Tripura.
Congress campaigners included party leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Dipa Dasmunshi and Ajoy Kumar. However, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra did not campaign in the state.
The CPI-M-led Left Front ruled the state for nearly four decades, with a gap between 1988 and 1993, when the Congress was in power but now both the parties joined hand with an intention to oust BJP from power.
Tipra Motha, which has raised demand for Greater Tipraland, could upset the calculations of both BJP and Left-Congress alliance. Tipra Motha, chaired by Tripura royal scion Pradyot Bikram Manikya Debbarma, is contesting at 42 seats.
Meanwhile, Trinamool Congress may act as a spoiler as it is contesting 28 seats and 58 independent candidates are also trying out their luck.
Chief Minister Manik Saha is contesting the polls from Town Borodowali. Congress has fielded Ashish Kumar Saha against him. Manik Saha replaced Biplab Kumar Deb as chief minister in May last year.
Deputy Chief Minister Jishnu Dev Varma is contesting from Charilam seat.
Tripura BJP state president Rajiv Bhattacharjee is contesting from the Banamalipur constituency. Biplab Deb earlier represented the seat.
CPI(M) state general secretary Jitendra Choudhury is contesting from the Sabroom constituency.
The BJP has fielded Union Minister Pratima Bhoumik from the Dhanpur constituency. Bhoumik is the first woman from Tripura to become a Union minister. Tipra Motha has fielded Amiya Dayal Noatia against Bhoumik in the seat.
BJP has fielded sitting MLA Pranajit Singh Roy from the Radhakishorpur constituency. He is pitted against CPI-ML’s Partha Karmakar.
BJP’s Papiya Dutta will face Congress candidate Sudip Roy Barman in Agartala.
In Karbook, CPI(M) candidate Priyamani Debbarma is contesting against BJP’s Ashim Tripura and Tipra Motha’s Sanjay Manik.
In the run-up to the elections, Chief Minister Manik Saha said that the demand for a “Greater Tipraland” is not possible as Tripa Motha Party is not able to define the boundary.
“Greater Tipraland, we have heard this name before also. In every Assembly election, some or other slogans like Tipraland are created and after every 5 years, new local parties emerge and raise such slogans. I have repeatedly asked where is the boundary, sometimes they say that Greater Tipraland is in Bangladesh, and sometimes they say that there are some parts of Assam and Mizoram too. This means they are in a fix. What exactly they are trying to say and want to say, we are not able to understand anything. When we talk about this matter, they say it is linguistic culturally, they are not able to define or describe properly,” Saha said during an exclusive interview with the ANI, on the demand of Greater Tipraland.
He had also termed the democratic ouster of the Left Front government in Tripura in the last assembly polls by the BJP as “historic” and something “that has barely happened in India’s history”.
“It’s a history that after 35 years of rule, BJP removed the Communist government here in a democratic way…It has barely happened in India’s history,” he said.
“Communists committed murders and violence here, so it is important that they do not return to power as violence cannot lead to development. Numerous people had to sacrifice their lives. All of us are very concerned,” Saha added.
BJP in its manifesto promised welfare proposals such as special canteen meals to the poor three times a day at Rs 5 each, a Balika Samridddhi bond of Rs 50,000 to each underprivileged family on the birth of a girl child and scooters for meritorious college girls.
The manifesto also promises smartphones to 50,000 meritorious students, two free LPG cylinders to all beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, land deeds to those without any holdings, and an annual payout of Rs 3,000 to all landless farmers.
The counting of votes will take place on March 2, coinciding with the date of the Meghalaya and Nagaland Assembly polls results.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 16, 2023
Voting for Tipra Motha is like voting for Communists: Amit Shah

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Agartala: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday said that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ended the rule of ‘cadre’ and brought the rule of the ‘Constitution’ in the state of Tripura.
While addressing the ‘Vijay Sankalp Yatra’, here in Agartala, Amit Shah said, “The Congress, Communists and Motha are all together. While the first two are in coalition publicly, Motha is in alliance with them ‘under the table’. Tipra Motha wants to bring back Communist rule.”
“So, if the vote is given to Motha or Congress, it will be a vote to the Communists. So, if you want development and peace, press the ‘lotus’ button,” he added.
Shah said that the largest vaccination drive was carried out in the country under the leadership of PM Modi.
“Earlier, for every petty job, whether ration card or cheap grains, people had to go to the cadre of the Communist party. Our government has ended the rule of cadre and brought the rule of Constitution,” he said.
Further attacking the two parties, Amit Shah said that Congress and the Communist party ruled Tripura for 50 years but didn’t do development in the state.
“Once Tripura was famous for drugs, human trafficking, Bangladeshi infiltration, corruption and atrocities towards Adivasis. Under BJP rule, roads are being built, people are getting drinking water, organic farming and mainly Adivasis are enjoying their rights,” he said.
The Home Minister said that the state is progressing under the slogan of ‘HIRA’ – Highway, Internet, Railway, Airport, given by PM Modi.

“4,000 people were killed in Tripura during CPI(M) rule and violence was all over the state. BJP made the Bru-Reang agreement and brought development here. In these five years, BJP has brought peace, and in the next five years, BJP will work towards making Tripura the best state in the Northeast,” Amit Shah added.
Earlier in the day, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha also addressed the event, saying that the country can’t develop until there is development in North East.
“In 35 years of the Left government rule, 69 people were murdered in the south district only. Today, they are again trying to come to the government. We are doing the work at a fast pace. Until there is no development in North East, the country will not develop,” he said.
Meanwhile, BJP is preparing itself to register another win in Tripura and has struck an alliance with its former ally Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) which has fielded its candidates at five assembly seats.
For the elections at 60 Assembly seats in the northeastern state, which are slated to be held on February 17, the BJP has fielded 55 candidates. The results will be declared on March 2.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 7, 2023
Florida eyes more changes to voting laws ahead of 2024

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“The Department recommends building on the election integrity measures adopted recently to enhance the security of the vote-by-mail process,” states the report.
Some of the recommendations could trigger another partisan firestorm from Democrats suspicious of proposals taking aim at mail-in voting.
Republicans in Florida for many years had dominated mail-in voting in the state, but that shifted over the past few cycles, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. During the 2022 elections, about 2.7 million Floridians voted by mail, with 43 percent of the ballots cast by Democrats compared with 36 percent from Republicans.
Brad Ashwell, Florida director of All Voting Is Local, a voting advocacy group, called the proposals outlined by the department as largely “unnecessary” — though he did praise a recommendation for legislators to authorize the creation of a uniform vote-by-mail ballot request form.
“The voters are already being harmed by the last changes they made,” said Ashwell, noting recent changes such as one that forces voters to request a mail-in ballot after every general election and that increased identification requirements to request a ballot.
He added that it would also be “asinine” to order up additional revisions to mail-in voting ahead of the 2024 election when turnout could be much higher than it was during the midterms. He also suggested that prohibiting ballot requests by phone could be an obstacle to elderly voters and those with disabilities.
Since the 2020 election — where mail-in voting was repeatedly criticized by former President Donald Trump — GOP legislators in the Sunshine State have pushed through several changes to mail-in voting, many of them at the insistence of Gov. Ron DeSantis. Democrats and voting rights groups widely criticized a 2021 law that place a two-ballot limit on how many mail-in ballots someone could gather for elderly or sick voters.
DeSantis and Florida Republicans have refused to go along with suggestions to eliminate no-excuse mail voting, or allowing people to vote by mail without providing a reason. But they have made key changes such as banning the collection of more than two mail-in ballots from non-family members, a practice derided by DeSantis as “ballot harvesting.” Lawmakers also put restrictions on drop boxes where people drop off their ballots and required voters to renew their ballot requests after every general election. Parts of this law is still being challenged in federal court.

Last year, legislators contemplated requiring voters to add personal information — like a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number to what they mail back to supervisors, a move that would have likely required voters to use an extra envelope. Currently, supervisors compare the signatures on the ballot envelope and what the voter has on file.
One Republican election supervisor called the initial proposal from GOP legislators a “recipe for disaster.” Legislators backed off the change and instead directed the Department of State to come up with recommendations on how to increase ID requirements.
In January, election supervisors across the state officially chimed in with their own report warning about making widespread changes.
A working group of Democratic and Republican supervisors submitted a report to the Department of State that said requiring voters to put their personal information on ballots would be a “seismic” change that would increase costs, confuse voters and potentially lead to identity theft as well as delays in counting ballots.
The final report from the department did not include any recommendations that voters be required to put identifying information on their ballot envelopes, opting instead to focus on the “ballot request process.”
Mark Earley, supervisor of elections for Leon County and head of the supervisors’ statewide association, told Department of State officials that local supervisors appreciated the “credence” given their concerns about potential identification changes. Earley, however, added that some of the recommendations could “pose challenges.”
In a brief interview Thursday, Earley said eliminating the ability to request ballots by phone “is going to hinder a lot of voters” though he said he understood the desire to create a paper trail for requests.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 3, 2023
Arizona’s new attorney general to use election fraud unit to boost voting rights

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A unit created under the former Republican attorney general of Arizona to investigate claims of election fraud will now focus on voting rights and ballot access under the newly elected Democratic attorney general.
The Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, told the Guardian that instead of prosecuting claims of voter fraud, she will “reprioritize the mission and resources” of the unit to focus on “protecting voting access and combating voter suppression”. Mayes won the attorney general’s race in November against election denier Abe Hamadah by just 280 votes, a race that went to a state-mandated recount.
“Under my predecessor’s administration, the election integrity unit searched widely for voter fraud and found scant evidence of it occurring in Arizona,” Mayes said in a statement. “That’s because instances of voter fraud are exceedingly rare.”
Mayes also plans for the unit to work on protecting election workers, who have faced threats of violence and intimidation. And she intends for the unit to defend Arizonans’ right to vote by mail, which has been attacked by Republican lawmakers and the state GOP in recent years despite being the most common way Arizonans of all political parties cast their ballots.
In 2019, the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature and then governor, Republican Doug Ducey, added about a half-million dollars in funding for an “election integrity unit” in the attorney general’s office. Since then, the unit has brought a number of legal cases, including charges against four Latina women in a rural part of the state for collecting other people’s ballots, which is illegal in Arizona.
It is not yet clear what will happen to cases currently under way, including the ballot collection charges in Yuma county, Mayes’s office said. A webpage on the attorney general’s website created to allow people to file election complaints for potential investigation is still live.
Until recently, the head of the unit under the previous Republican attorney general, Mark Brnovich, was Jennifer Wright, an attorney who had criticized Maricopa county elections and sent a letter to the county trying to investigate its elections. Wright left the office shortly before Mayes took control.
Since its inception, the unit has come under fire from Democrats who found its very existence unnecessary, called its attorneys into question, and said it played into false claims about elections. Republicans, too, criticized the unit for not going far enough on election fraud. In one notable instance, the unit investigated claims of hundreds of votes cast by people who were dead, finding just one voter among those claimed dead in whose name a ballot was actually cast.

When Brnovich sought funding for the unit, his office defended the move as a way to protect elections and debunk bogus claims of fraud.
Despite several full-time staff employees and hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding annually, the unit has not uncovered any widespread or coordinated voter fraud. Most of the 20 cases it brought over three years target individual, isolated election law violations, like people using a dead relative’s ballot or casting a ballot despite not being eligible to vote.
In an investigation published last year, the Washington Post found that the unit’s work did not strengthen people’s trust in the voting system but instead “deepened suspicions among many of those who deny President Biden won and sapped government resources”.
Brnovich could not be reached for comment on the unit and its fate under Mayes.
Other states led by Republicans have created similar voter fraud units, some with much larger staffs than Arizona’s. A Virginia unit includes more than 20 staff who were shifted from other parts of the attorney general’s office to focus on election issues, and organizations such as the NAACP have struggled to get information on what that unit is doing. In Florida, a new office tasked with election crimes launched by Governor Ron DeSantis has led to the arrest of 20 people who had felony records who erroneously cast ballots while believing they were legally able to vote.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

January 21, 2023
Himachal Pradesh Polls: Voting Begins; Will HP Keep Alternate Government Traditions Or Give Another Chance To BJP?
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Will Himachal Pradesh keep selecting alternate government tradition alive or give another chance to Bhartiya Janata Party
Voting for 68 Assembly constituencies in Himachal Pradesh begins, CM Jai Ram Thakur casts his vote
Request all voters to participate with full enthusiasm in this festival of democracy, says PM Modi
The voting for the Himachal Pradesh elections has begun, with a two-pronged contest between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress. In the hill state, over 55.92 lakh voters will decide the fate of 412 candidates.
The upper areas of Himachal Pradesh have received new snowfall, lowering the temperature by several notches. 140 polling booths are snowbound in the tribal districts of Lahaul and Spiti, Kinnaur, and Chamba.
A total of 30,000 security personnel, including 67 companies of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), have been deployed throughout the state to ensure the peaceful conduct of the election.
The state has 7,884 voting locations, with 7,235 in rural areas and 646 in urban areas. Polling will continue until 5:30 p.m. today, and votes will be counted alongside Gujarat on December 8.
The ruling BJP has expressed confidence in returning to power based on performance, while the Congress hopes that voters will continue the history of alternate governments.
In the 2017 assembly elections, the BJP won 44 seats, the Congress 21, two were won by independents, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) gained one seat by fielding candidates in 11 assembly divisions.
In its manifesto, the opposition Congress promised the restoration of the previous pension scheme, 300 units of free electricity, the establishment of a commission for the youth to look into their issues of education and job creation, as well as financial aid of Rs 1500 to women.
Meanwhile, the BJP is vying for a second term, promising to adopt the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), 33 percent reservation for women in government employment, five new medical institutes in the state, and cycles for girl students in classes 6 to 12.

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November 12, 2022