Voting
Voting underway for 6th phase of UP polls
The voting is underway for the sixth phase of local body elections to 218 Union Parishads (UPs) in 42 upazilas of 22 districts.
The voting began at 8am at 2,186 polling stations and will continue till 4pm without any break.
Read: 3 journos injured while reporting on UP polls in Thakurgaon
Out of 218 UPs, the electronic voting machines (EVMs) are being used in 216 instead of traditional ballot papers.
In the 218 UPs, there are some 42 lakh voters with 11,604 candidates contesting the elections.
Of them, 1,199 contenders are running for chairman posts, while 2,559 women for reserved seats and 7,846 for member posts.
Read:Post-polls violence: 2 killed, 20 injured in Narsingdi
Meanwhile, 12 contestants for chairman posts, 32 women for reserved seats and 100 for member posts have been elected unopposed as there were no rival candidates against their respective posts.
On December 18 last, the Election Commission announced the schedule for the sixth phase UP election.
NCC polls: Voting underway amid tight security
Balloting for the Narayanganj City Corporation election is underway using Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) on Sunday.
The voting started at 8am and will continue till 4pm without any break.
The electioneering officially ended on Friday midnight.
READ: NCC: An unprecedented hattrick, or the mother of all upsets?
Seven candidates are running for the post of the NCC mayor including ruling party nominee Selina Hayat Ivy and her principal rival Advocate Taimur Alam Khandaker, a veteran BNP who has been contesting as an independent candidate.
Selina Hayat Ivy cast her vote at Deubhog Kalrab polling center around 9:30 am while Taimur cast his vote at Masdair Islamia Fazil Madrasha around 10 am.
Besides, 148 candidates are contesting for 27 ward councilors post while 38 women are contesting for conserved seats for women in the NCC polls.
This time the NCC elections have 517,357 voters – including 257,519 females.
Voting underway for fifth phase of UP polls
Voting for the fifth phase of the union parishad (UP) polls is underway in Bangladesh, with over 36,400 candidates in the fray for different posts.
Polling began in 708 UPs across 95 upazilas in 48 districts at 8am Wednesday and will continue till 4pm.
A total of 36,457 candidates, including 3,278 contenders for the post of chairman, are contesting in the countrywide fifth-phase UP election.
Some 48 chairman candidates have already been elected unopposed. Also, 33 member candidates for reserved seats and 112 for member posts have been elected unopposed in different UPs.
There are a total of 14.2 million under 7,137 polling stations in 708 UPs. Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are being used in 40 UPs.
The Election Commission on November 27 last announced the 5th phase polls schedule for 707 UPs across 48 districts. Later, another UP was incorporated in the fifth-phase election.
Also read: UP-polls violence: 1 succumbs to injuries in Sirajganj, 1 arrested
Voting begins in 3rd phase UP polls; 2 killed in pre-dawn attacks
Two people were killed in Jashore and Khulna districts in violence a few hours ahead of the beginning of the 3rd phase Union Parishad elections in different districts on Sunday morning.
In Khulna, a 38-year-old man was beaten to death reportedly by the supporters of a rebel candidate of Awami League at Madhupur in Terokhada upazila of Khulna district on Sunday.
The deceased was identified as Babul Shikdar, 38, a supporter of Awami League-backed chairman candidate Mohammad Mohsin.
Quoting local people, Zahurul Alam, officer-in-charge of Terokhada Police Station, said the supporters of rebel candidate Kamal Hossain swooped on Babul Shikdar around 12:15 am on his way home.
READ: 3rd phase elections: Voting underway in 1000 Union Parishads
Later, they hit Babul with a hammer and stabbed him indiscriminately, leaving him critically injured.
Babul was taken to Khulna Medical College and Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries around 6:15 am.
A tense situation has been prevailing in the area following the incident. “Efforts are on to arrest the attackers as they managed to flee the scene. No one has lodged any complaint in this connection,” he said.
Besides, balloting in seven union parishads in Terokhada and Rupsha upazila is underway.
In Jashore, a 35-year-old man was killed and a dozen others injured in a clash between the supporters of two member candidates at Kaiba union in Sharsha upaizla on Saturday night.
The deceased was identified as Kutub Uddin, 35, a supporter of Iktiar Rahman, a member candidate of No 1 ward of the union and son of Mohiuddin of Rudrapur village.
Quoting local people, Rupon Kumar Sarkar, inspector of DB police, said the supporters of the current member Habibur Rahman, equipped with arms, attacked Kutub while he was pasting posters on behalf of Iktiar at Rudrapur around 6 pm on Saturday.
A clash broke over the issue between the supporters of two candidates, leaving 13 people, including Kutub, injured
Of the injured, six people were taken to Jashore General Hospital where Kutub succumbed to his injuries around 9 pm.
In Cumilla, a chase and counter-chase happened among the supporters of two chairman candidates over stuffing ballots at Saifullakandi Primary School under Mathabhanga union of Homna upazila in Cumilla district.
A number of crude bombs were exploded outside the polling centre.
On information, police rushed to the spot and brought the situation under control.
The voting in 1,000 Union Parishads started at 8am and will continue till 4pm without any break.
More than two crore people will cast their votes at 10,159 polling stations.
The first and second phases of UP elections were marred by violence and irregularities.
At least six people were killed and over 100 others injured in the 2nd phase of the Union Parishad (UP) elections on November 11.
Violence was reported from different parts of the country, including Narsingdi, Cox’s Bazar, Cumilla and Chattogram.
READ: Law Minister attributes violence during UP elections to personal conflicts
Three people were killed and a number of people were injured in the first phase of union parishad election that concluded with reports of sporadic violence and clashes on September 20.
Voting begins in seven Khulna UPs
The third phase of Union Parishad (UP) elections began in seven unions of Khulna on Sunday morning.
The polling will continue in seven unions of Terkhada and Rupsha upazilas of the district from 8 am to 4 pm as the local administration has taken all the necessary measures for smooth and peaceful completion of the elections.
According to the local Election Commission office, the voting is going on in Madhupur, Azgara, Sachiadah, Chagladah, Terkhada Sadar and Barasat unions of Terkhada upazila and Ghatbhog union of Rupsha upazila.
READ: UP elections third phase set for Sunday
Thirty-one candidates are contesting the election as chairman candidates from seven unions while 276 as member candidates. Ninety female candidates are contesting the polls from the seats kept reserved for women.
READ: Law Minister attributes violence during UP elections to personal conflicts
There are some 1,23,891 voters in 68 centres of 63 wards. Of them, 62,486 are male and 61,405 women.
Biden faces growing pressure from the left over voting bill
When New York Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones was at the White House for the signing of the proclamation making Juneteenth a national holiday last week, he told President Joe Biden their party needed him more involved in passing voting legislation on the Hill.
In response? Biden “just sort of stared at me,” Jones said, describing an “awkward silence” that passed between the two.
For Jones, the moment was emblematic of what he and a growing number of Democratic activists describe as a lackluster engagement from Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on an issue they consider urgent and necessary for the health of the democracy.
Although the White House has characterized the issue as “the fight of his presidency,” Biden has prioritized his economic initiatives, measures more likely to win Republican support in the Senate. And he’s shown little interest thus far in diving into a messy debate over changing Senate rules to pass the legislation on Democratic votes alone.
Read:Adams takes fragile lead in NYC Democratic mayoral primary
But as Democrats’ massive election legislation was blocked by Republicans on Tuesday, progressives argued Biden could not avoid that fight much longer and must use all his leverage to find a path forward. The criticism suggested the voting debate may prove to be among Biden’s first major, public rifts with the left of his presidency.
“President Obama, for his part, has been doing more to salvage our ailing democracy than the current president of the United States of America,” Mondaire said, referring to a recent interview in which the former president pushed for the legislation.
The White House argues that both Biden and Harris have been in frequent touch with Democratic leadership and key advocacy groups as the legislation — dubbed the For the People Act — moved through Congress. Biden spoke out forcefully at times, declaring a new Georgia law backed by Republicans is an “atrocity” and using a speech in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to say he was going to “fight like heck” for Democrats’ federal answer, but he left negotiations on the proposal to Hill leaders.
On Monday, in advance of the vote, Biden met with Sen. Joe Manchin, D.W.Va., at the White House to discuss both voting rights and infrastructure.
But Biden didn’t use his clout to work Republicans, who have expressed staunch and unified opposition to any voting legislation, arguing Democrats are pushing an unnecessary federal takeover of elections now run by state and county officials.
Biden spent much of the month focused on foreign policy during a trip to Europe, encouraging Americans to get vaccinated and selling his infrastructure plan to the American public. He tasked Harris with taking the lead on the issue, and she spent last week largely engaged in private meetings with voting rights advocates as she traveled for a vaccination tour around the nation.
Those efforts haven’t appeased some activists, who argue that state laws tightening election laws are designed to make it harder for Black, young and infrequent voters to cast ballots. The best way to counter the state laws is with federal legislation, they say, and Biden ought to come out for a change in the Senate filibuster rules that require 60 votes to advance most legislation.
“Progressives are losing patience, and I think particularly African American Democrats are losing patience,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne, a longtime aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “They feel like they have done the kind of good Democrat thing over the last year-plus, going back to when Biden got the nomination, unifying support around Biden, turning out, showing up on Election Day.”
“Progressives feel like, ’Hey, we did our part.′ And now when it’s time for the bill to be paid, so to speak, I think some progressives feel like, ’OK, well, how long do we have to wait?”
Read:Voting ends, wait for results begins in NYC mayoral primary
Still, there could be a silver lining for Democrats in the ongoing battle over voting rights: The issue is a major motivator for progressives and may serve to drive enthusiasm among Black voters as well, potentially driving engagement in a midterm year where Democrats are certain to face a tough political climate.
Harris is expected to continue to meet with voting rights activists, business leaders and groups working on the issue in the states, and will speak out publicly on the issue aiming to raise awareness of new voting laws and to pressure Republicans to get on board with federal legislation.
She watched the legislation fail to advance to debate on Tuesday, in her role as president of the Senate, and coming off the floor told reporters that she and Biden still support voting legislation and “the fight is not over.”
Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, a progressive grassroots group, said it’s been nowhere near the level of advocacy the public has seen on the infrastructure bill.
“The president has been on the sidelines. He has issued statements of support, he’s maybe included a line or two in a speech here or there, but there has been nothing on the scale of his public advocacy for recovery for COVID relief, for roads and bridges,” Levin said.
“We think this is a crisis at the same level as crumbling roads and bridges, and if we agree on that, the question is, why is the president on the sidelines?”
White House aides push back against any suggestion the president and vice president haven’t been engaged on the issue, and say his laissez-faire approach to the negotiations is based partly on his experience as a senator and his belief that his involvement risks undermining a deal before it’s cut.
But in private, White House advisers see infrastructure as the bigger political winner for Biden because it’s widely popular among voters of both parties, a White House official said. Passing a major infrastructure bill is seen within the White House as going further towards helping Democrats win in the 2022 midterms and beyond than taking on massive voting overhaul that had a slim chance of passage without a debate over filibuster rules, said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal talks.
Embracing filibuster changes, in particular, risks undermining Biden’s profile as a bipartisan dealmaker and could poison the delicate negotiations around infrastructure, where the White House insists it still sees opportunity for bipartisan compromise.
Read:US hits encouraging milestones on virus deaths and shots
“He does have to preserve some negotiating power, and his brand probably does not compute with being at the tip of the spear on reforming the filibuster,” Payne acknowledged.
Still, other Democrats say it’s time for Biden to get out front on the issue. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, said the proposals Republicans are looking to pass in his home state are “more explicit and more dangerous than anything I’ve ever come across.”
Allred said that the voting fight increases pressure on Biden to take the leadership on the filibuster fight.
“We do need President Biden to make that a priority, because if you’re going to talk about supporting the underlying legislation, it really doesn’t matter if we don’t have way to get past the filibuster,” he said.
Adams takes fragile lead in NYC Democratic mayoral primary
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams appeared to take a fragile lead Tuesday in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, but it could be weeks before it becomes clear who is actually on top in the first citywide election to use ranked choice voting.
As ballot counting began Tuesday, a plurality of Democrats ranked Adams as their first choice in the race.
It was tough to tell, though, whether that lead would hold. As many as 207,500 absentee ballots remained to be counted. Voters’ full rankings of the candidates have yet to be taken into account. It could be July before a winner emerges in the Democratic contest.
Adams, a former police captain who co-founded a leadership group for Black officers, was leading former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia and former de Blasio administration lawyer Maya Wiley.
Read:Voting ends, wait for results begins in NYC mayoral primary
Speaking to jubilant supporters, Adams acknowledged that he hadn’t won yet, and that under the ranked choice system there were multiple rounds of ballot counting still to go.
“We know that there’s going to be twos and threes and fours,” he said. “But there’s something else we know. We know that New York City said, ‘Our first choice is Eric Adams.’”
Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who was far behind in early returns, conceded about two hours after polls closed and vowed to work with the next mayor.
In the Republican primary, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa defeated businessman Fernando Mateo. Ranked choice voting wasn’t a factor because there were only two candidates in the race.
Several candidates in the race to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio have the potential to make history if elected. The city could get its first female mayor, or its second Black mayor, depending on who comes out on top.
But in the Democratic contest, the initial picture could be misleading. After polls closed at 9 p.m., New York City’s Board of Elections began releasing results of votes cast in person, but the returns focused on who candidates ranked as their first choice.
The ranked choice system, approved for use in New York City primaries and special elections by referendum in 2019, allowed voters to rank up to five candidates on their ballot.
Vote tabulation is then done in computerized rounds, with the person in last place getting eliminated each round, and ballots cast for that person getting redistributed to the surviving candidates based on voter rankings. That process continues until only two candidates are left. The one with the most votes wins.
It won’t be until June 29 that the Board of Elections performs a tally of those votes using the new system. It won’t include any absentee ballots in its analysis until July 6, making any count before then potentially unreliable.
Among the votes counted on election night, Adams trailed both Garcia and Wiley when voters listed their second, third and fourth choices in the ranked choice voting system.
Besides Adams, Garcia, Wiley and Yang, other contenders in the Democratic contest included City Comptroller Scott Stringer, former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, former Citigroup executive Ray McGuire and nonprofit executive Dianne Morales.
Read:US hits encouraging milestones on virus deaths and shots
Stringer, McGuire and Morales addressed supporters after polls closed as early returns showed them trailing the front-runners but did not immediately concede.
De Blasio, a Democrat, leaves office at the end of the year due to term limits.
The candidates traveled around the city Tuesday doing a last round of campaigning.
Wiley was losing her voice greeting voters near her polling place in Brooklyn. Garcia campaigned up in the Bronx, while Sliwa and Stringer bumped into each other campaigning in Manhattan.
A still hoarse Wiley acknowledged the uncertainty of the race in a speech later. “What we celebrate today is that we have a path,” she said.
Garcia told her supporters, “I know that we’re not going to know a lot more tonight, so I want to thank everyone who is here, and everyone who has been a part of this journey.”
Concern over a rise in shootings during the pandemic has dominated the mayoral campaign in recent months, even as the candidates have wrestled with demands from the left for more police reform.
As a former officer, but one who spent his career fighting racism within the department, Adams may have benefited most from the policing debate.
He denounced the “defund the police” slogan and proposed reinstating a disbanded plainclothes unit to focus on getting illegal guns off the streets.
Wiley and Stringer, battling for progressive votes, both said they would reallocate a portion of the police department’s budget to other city programs.
Of the top contenders, either Garcia or Wiley would be city’s first female mayor if elected. Adams or Wiley would be the second Black mayor.
Yang and Garcia formed an alliance in the campaign’s last days in an apparent effort to use the ranked voting system to block Adams. The two held several joint campaign events, with Yang asking his supporters to rank Garcia as their No. 2 — though Garcia did not quite return the favor, not telling her voters where to rank Yang. Adams accused his two rivals of purposely trying to block a Black candidate.
Read:Biden and Congress face a summer grind to create legislation
Sliwa does not have much of a chance to win the November general election in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 7 to 1.
Former allies, the two Republicans Sliwa and Mateo traded personal insults and tried to shout over each other during one debate on Zoom.
Sliwa, a radio host who still wears his red Guardian Angels beret when he appears in public, got an endorsement from former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who called him “my great friend” in a robocall to Republican voters.
Flanked by Giuliani at his victory party, Sliwa promised a general election campaign focused on crime. “This is going to be a campaign clearly in which I talk about cracking down on crime, supporting the police, refunding our heroes the police, hiring more police, taking the handcuffs off the police and putting it on the criminals, and restoring qualified immunity to the police so that they can’t be personally sued,” he said.
Hard-line judiciary head wins Iran presidency in low turnout
Iran’s hard-line judiciary chief won a landslide victory in the country’s presidential election, a vote that both propelled the supreme leader’s protege into Tehran’s highest civilian position and saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.
The election of Ebrahim Raisi, already sanctioned by the U.S. in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, became more of a coronation after his strongest competition found themselves disqualified from running in Saturday’s vote.
That sparked calls for a boycott and many apparently did stay home — out of over 59 million eligible voters, only 28.9 million voted. Of those voting, some 3.7 million people either accidentally or intentionally voided their ballots, far beyond the amount seen in previous elections and suggesting some wanted none of the four candidates.
Read: Iraq Interior Ministry: 82 killed in Baghdad hospital fire
Iranian state television immediately blamed challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and U.S. sanctions for the low participation. But the low turnout and voided ballots suggested a wider unhappiness with the tightly controlled election, as activists criticized Raisi’s ascension.
“That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran,” Amnesty International’s Secretary-General Agnes Callamard said.
In official results, Raisi won 17.9 million votes overall, nearly 62% of the total 28.9 million cast. Had the voided ballots gone to a candidate, that person would have come in second. Following Raisi was former hard-line Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezaei with 3.4 million votes.
Former Central Bank chief Abdolnasser Hemmati, a moderate viewed as a stand-in for outgoing President Hassan Rouhani in the election, came in third with 2.4 million votes. Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi was last with just under 1 million.
Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, who gave the results, did not explain the high number of voided ballots. Elections in 2017 and 2012 saw some 1.2 million voided ballots apiece. Iran does not allow international election observers.
While Iran does not have mandatory voting, those casting ballots do receive stamps showing they voted on their birth certificates. Some worry that could affect their ability to apply for jobs and scholarships, or to hold onto their positions in the government or security forces.
Read:A growing challenge for Iraq: Iran-aligned Shiite militias
Abroad, Syrian President Bashar Assad immediately congratulated Raisi’s win. Iran has been instrumental in seeing Assad hold onto the presidency amid his country’s decade-long grinding war.
Separate congratulations came from Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who also serves as the vice president and prime minister of the hereditarily ruled United Arab Emirates. The UAE has been trying to de-escalate tensions with Iran since a series of attacks on shipping off its coast in 2019 that the U.S. Navy blamed on Iran.
Also congratulating Raisi was Oman, which has served as an interlocutor between Tehran and the West.
Iran’s archrival Israel, however, slammed the new leader. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid called Raisi “the butcher of Tehran” and described him as responsible for the deaths of “thousands of Iranians.”
Rouhani, who in 2017 dismissed Raisi as an opponent in his reelection as someone only knowing about “executions and imprisoning” people, met the cleric Saturday and congratulated him.
“I hope I can respond well to the people’s confidence, vote and kindness during my term,” Raisi said.
Read: Pope visits Iraq's war-ravaged north on last day of tour
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the shah, Iran’s theocracy has cited voter turnout as a sign of its legitimacy, beginning with its first referendum that won 98.2% support that simply asked whether or not people wanted an Islamic Republic. Some, including former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called for a boycott of Saturday’s election.
A constitutional panel under Khamenei disqualified reformists and those backing Rouhani, whose administration reached the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The accord disintegrated three years later with then-President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal of America from the agreement.
Raisi’s election puts hard-liners firmly in control across the government as negotiations in Vienna continue to try to save a tattered deal meant to limit Iran’s nuclear program, at a time when Tehran is enriching uranium at its highest levels ever, though still short of weapons-grade levels. Tensions remain high with both the U.S. and Israel, which is believed to have carried out a series of attacks targeting Iranian nuclear sites as well as assassinating the scientist who created its military atomic program decades earlier.
Raisi also has become the first serving Iranian president sanctioned by the U.S. government even before entering office over his involvement in the 1988 mass executions, as well as his time as the head of Iran’s internationally criticized judiciary — one of the world’s top executioners.
The State Department said it hoped to build on the Vienna talks “regardless of who is in power.” However, it noted the election’s lowest-ever turnout and described Iranians as being “denied their right to choose their own leaders in a free and fair electoral process.”
“Iran’s restrictions on free expression and association fundamentally compromise the electoral environment,” the State Department said. “Hundreds of political prisoners remain jailed, and we join the international community in calling for their release.”
Read:A timeline of disaster and displacement for Iraqi Christians
But U.S. hopes for a longer and stronger nuclear deal from the Vienna talks may be in question.
“Raisi’s ambivalence about foreign interaction will only worsen the chances that Washington could persuade Tehran to accept further limits on its nuclear program, regional influence, or missile program, at least in Joe Biden’s first term in office,” wrote Henry Rome, an analyst at the Eurasia Group who studies Iran.
Iranian presidents have almost all served two four-year terms. That means Raisi could be at the helm what could be one of the most crucial moments for the country in decades — the death of the 82-year-old Khamenei. Speculation already has begun that Raisi might be a contender for the position, along with Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba.
AL’s candidates, rebels mostly dominate 3rd phase municipal polls
Candidates of the ruling Awami League have been unofficially elected from majority of the municipalities that went to polls on Saturday in the third phase, according to partial results.
3rd phase municipal polls: Voting ends amid violence, boycott
Balloting in the third phase elections to 62 municipalities began on early Saturday and ended amid reports of clashes, vote-rigging, polling centre domination, and boycotts.