[Snow-i]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Boo hoo, this will get used to bring more lawsuits against gerrymandering. Boo hoo, states rights.

This isn't a states rights' issue, IMO. This is a citizens rights' issue against the ruling class.

Sorry, I don't mean to nitpick. Forgive me if I do come across that way.

[OAW]

^^^



OAW

[The Final Dakar]

Tangentially related: WSU statistician sues seeking Kansas voting machine paper tapes | The Wichita Eagle The Wichita Eagle

A Wichita State University mathematician sued the top Kansas election official Wednesday, seeking paper tapes from electronic voting machines in an effort to explain statistical anomalies favoring Republicans in counts coming from large precincts across the country.

While it is well-recognized that smaller, rural precincts tend to lean Republican, statisticians have been unable to explain the consistent pattern favoring Republicans that trends upward as the number of votes cast in a precinct or other voting unit goes up. In primaries, the favored candidate appears to always be the Republican establishment candidate, above a tea party challenger. And the upward trend for Republicans occurs once a voting unit reaches roughly 500 votes.

“This is not just an anomaly that occurred in one place,” Clarkson said. “It is a pattern that has occurred repeatedly in elections across the United States.”

The pattern could be voter fraud or a demographic trend that has not been picked up by extensive polling, she said.

Clarkson became more interested in the issue after reading a paper written by statisticians Francois Choquette and James Johnson in 2012 of the Republican primary results showing strong statistical evidence of election manipulation in Iowa, New Hampshire, Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma, Alabama, Louisiana, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Clarkson said she couldn’t believe their findings, so she checked their math and found it was correct and checked their model selection and found it appropriate. Then she pulled additional data from other elections they hadn’t analyzed and found the same pattern.

Voting machine password hacks as easy as 'abcde', details Virginia state report | US news | The Guardian

Touchscreen voting machines used in numerous elections between 2002 and 2014 used “abcde” and “admin” as passwords and could easily have been hacked from the parking lot outside the polling place, according to a state report.

Anyone within a half mile could have modified every vote, undetected, Epstein said in a blog post. “I got to question a guy by the name of Brit Williams, who’d certified them, and I said, ‘How did you do a penetration test?’” Epstein told the Guardian, “and he said, ‘I don’t know how to do something like that’.”

“There are no logs kept in the systems,” Epstein said. “I’ve examined them.” In order to determine anything about the machines’ histories, in fact, a very high level of technical sophistication would be required, on a level with the FBI looking at images of deleted files on a suspect’s hard drive.

“Bottom line is that if no Virginia elections were ever hacked (and we have no way of knowing if it happened), it’s because no one with even a modicum of skill tried,” Epstein wrote on his blog.

[OAW]

Voting rights advocates and Ohio’s top election official have settled a lawsuit over controversial cuts to the pivotal presidential state’s early voting period.

The deal, announced Friday morning between Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, and the ACLU, undoes some but not all of the damage to voting access caused by last year’s cuts. It restores one day of Sunday voting and adds weekday evening hours, but lets stand the elimination of a week when Ohioans had been able to register and vote all in one day.

It also ensures that all counties will have the same voting schedule — something Husted had named as a priority and that voting rights advocates too say will reduce confusion.

Both sides called it a win.

“This agreement is a victory for Ohio voters,” said Husted. “With the issues that accompany the 2016 presidential election drawing nearer it is important that we resolve these lingering questions now. Ohio has been and will remain a state where it is easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

Dale Ho, the director of the ACLU’s voting rights project, also considered it to be a move in the right direction. “Thousands of Ohioans rely on early voting opportunities as their only chance to cast a ballot in an election,” Ho said. “This is a victory for all those who know that a healthy democracy depends on the participation of its people.”

But the elimination of same-day voter registration is a setback to ballot access in Ohio. In 2012, more than 90,000 Ohioans voted during that period, according to the ACLU’s complaint.*

In February 2014, Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law that eliminated the week of same-day registration. Known as “Golden Week,” it had been established after all-day lines at the polls in 2004 made Ohio the poster child for voting problems. Soon afterward, Husted followed up by eliminating all Sunday voting, which had the effect of ending the “Souls to the Polls” drives that many black churches undertake. Husted also required that weekday voting end at 5 p.m.

In the 2012 election, 157,000 Ohioans — disproportionately minorities — voted on the days that were cut.

The ACLU challenged both moves in a lawsuit filed last May, alleging that the cuts violated the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against racial minorities.

Specifically, the agreement adds a Sunday of early voting, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., for presidential elections. That means that next fall there will be a total of two Sundays of early voting, since a district court judge last year reinstated voting on the Sunday directly before the election.

The deal also extends weekday voting hours during the final week of primary and general elections by two hours, until 7 p.m. Evening hours are especially useful for people who work low-wage jobs and often have trouble taking time off to get to the polls. And the agreement adds a Saturday of early voting — something some but not all counties had previously offered.

In a phone interview Friday, Freda Levenson, the legal director for the ACLU of Ohio, acknowledged that the settlement was far from perfect. Allowing the elimination of Golden Week, she said, “was the concession that we made in order to obtain the days and hours of early voting.”

Because Golden Week was eliminated via legislation rather than executive action, Levenson added, it was more difficult to restore. “It’s hard to compel the legislature to do something,” she said.

The case has been through twists and turns. A federal district court judge struck down the cuts, and an appeals court upheld that ruling. But last September, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay, ensuring that the cuts were in place for last November’s midterms.

The settlement means the case won’t be the one that gives the Supreme Court a chance to rule broadly on the scope of the Voting Rights Act. Many observers expect the justices to issue such a ruling before next fall’s election.

Husted has gained a national reputation as a supporter of tough voting restrictions. Earlier this year, he wrote to President Obama to warn that the White House’s executive order on immigration could make it easier for non-citizens to cast ballots. Husted was re-elected easily last fall, defeating state Sen. Nina Turner, a Democrat and staunch voting rights advocate.

Settlement reverses some cuts to Ohio early voting | MSNBC

OAW

[The Final Dakar]

I can live with that. The removal of the Golden Week is still transparent as hell, though.

[OAW]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

I can live with that. The removal of the Golden Week is still transparent as hell, though.

Agreed.

OAW

[subego]

You know, I'd never run for office as a Democrat, but if my campaign goes down in flames for any of the following:

My district is rationally shaped.
Illegal immigrants slipped through the cracks.
Ex-convicts were allowed to vote.
People weren't required to have IDs to vote.
We had more voting days available.

Then so ****ing be it. I deserve to go down in flames.

[The Final Dakar]

The ends justify the means, subego. (And yeah both parties think that way)

[subego]

I know I'm in this crazy minority who think voting is sacrosanct.

[OAW]

^^^



OAW

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by subego 

I know I'm in this crazy minority who think voting is sacrosanct.

You're in the crazy minority that feels democracy should take its course.

[subego]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

You're in the crazy minority that feels democracy should take its course.

There's a fundamental issue it's only the rare right winger who chooses to address it in any way other than behaving like an utter slimebag.

If your philosophy is there are more losers than winners in life, guess which of the two is going to have the larger voting bloc.

[The Final Dakar]

Another state gets called out
Supreme Court tosses NC court decision on GOP-drawn voting district maps | The Charlotte Observer The Charlotte Observer

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling that had upheld the state’s Republican-drawn legislative and congressional districts.

The nation’s highest court ordered the state’s highest court to reconsider whether legislators relied too heavily on race when drawing the 2011 maps, which shape how state and federal elections are decided.

Rep. David Lewis, a Republican from Harnett County, and Sen. Bob Rucho, a Republican from Mecklenburg County, chairmen of the legislative redistricting committees that led the map drawing, speculated that the N.C. Supreme Court would come to the same conclusion it did in December, when upholding the unanimous ruling of the three-judge panel that heard the case in N.C. Superior Court.

[The Final Dakar]

Unexpected reason to bump the thread – Hillary Clinton has decided to make this a campaign issue. Shrewd.
Hillary Clinton Calls for Automatic Voter Registration - WSJ

Hillary Clinton proposed Thursday that Americans be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18, unless they opt out, one of a series of voting-law changes she said would expand access to the ballot box.

…

The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination also proposed expanded in-person early voting, called on Congress to restore parts of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013 and said felons who have served their sentences should have voting rights restored.

Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the Clinton plan wouldn’t succeed in expanding voter turnout and could result in people being put onto the rolls more than once.

Scaremongering!

“Americans feel one of their rights is the right to be left alone by the government,” he said. “People should be able to make the voluntary decision as to whether they want to participate or not.”

No one said they have to vote, dipshit. Still as voluntary as before.

Mrs. Clinton also called for a national standard of at least 20 days of early, in-person voting in every state, with early polls open on some weekends and evenings. She said this standard would reduce wait times at polling places and give more people the chance to vote, particularly those who work or have family obligations on Election Day. The campaign said that a third of states have no early voting.

WHy do Democrats need 20 days to vote, but Republicans only need one? /checkmateliberals


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us...=top-news&_r=2

Democrats allied with Hillary Rodham Clinton are mounting a nationwide legal battle 17 months before the 2016 presidential election, seeking to roll back Republican-enacted restrictions on voter access that Democrats say could, if unchallenged, prove decisive in a close campaign.

In the same way, even if the lawsuits are unsuccessful, Democratic strategists say, they serve an important political purpose for Democrats by highlighting Republicans’ responsibility for the statutes that are being challenged. Democrats will also remind their base that Republicans have tried to mobilize their own core voters by warning, as Mitt Romney did in 2012, against the possibility of widespread voter fraud by Democrats.

Democrats acknowledge the political value of the lawsuits. Mrs. Clinton badly needs to turn out minority voters in numbers similar to those Mr. Obama drew in his 2012 re-election.

[BadKosh]

Imaging voting and your vote isn't countered by that of an undocumented illegal or other fraud. I guess the Democrats still have the money to pay low IQ voters some of that walking around money.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by BadKosh 

Imaging voting and your vote isn't countered by that of an undocumented illegal or other fraud.

Imagine actually finding evidence that this happens on a large (or even medium) scale.

[OAW]

Automatic voter registration sounds great in theory. I wonder how that would be implemented in practice though? Especially for someone who doesn't have a driver's license. What address would they use? How would they know the person turned 18? Etc.

OAW

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by OAW 

Automatic voter registration sounds great in theory. I wonder how that would be implemented in practice though? Especially for someone who doesn't have a driver's license. What address would they use? How would they know the person turned 18? Etc.

OAW

I was wondering as well. Most males have to sign up for selective service, so that's one way to me. I don't see immigrants defrauding the system via that avenue, either.

(Selective service is also sexist, but I don't see that changing)

[The Final Dakar]

I know, I know, the source. The only relevant part to me is quoted:
State Employees Are Having A Hard Time Explaining Scott Walker's New Voting Restrictions | ThinkProgress

Under Wisconsin’s voter ID law, which was blocked by courts until this March, you can vote with an expired military ID, but naturalization papers and student IDs must be current. Students must bring additional proof of enrollment, such as a class schedule. All Wisconsin residents can obtain a free state ID from any DMV, but only if they have no drivers license from any state. For 18-year-olds voting for the first time, a public high school ID counts, but a private one doesn’t. A bank statement can serve as proof of residence, but not a credit card statement.

What garbage.

[Snow-i]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

I know, I know, the source. The only relevant part to me is quoted:
State Employees Are Having A Hard Time Explaining Scott Walker's New Voting Restrictions | ThinkProgress

What garbage.

What's so difficult about any of that?

I've been to bars in the last 72 hours with more stringent ID requirements than that.

You're right, that article is complete garbage.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Snow-i 

What's so difficult about any of that?

Difficult? It's arbitrary.

[Snow-i]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Difficult? It's arbitrary.

How is it any more arbitrary then no ID requirements at all? Seems to me like it's not arbitrary at all - that the state will accept many different forms of ID with varying requirements. hell, you couldn't get a checking account or even get into a bar with half of the forms of ID they're allowing. How is that arbitrary?

[The Final Dakar]

Florida Supreme Court orders new congressional map with eight districts to be redrawn | Tampa Bay Times

In a precedent-setting ruling Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court overturned the state's congressional districts drawn by the GOP-led Legislature and ordered a new map with eight districts redrawn in time for the 2016 election.

In the 5-2 ruling, with Justices Charles Canady and Ricky Polston dissenting, the court provided unprecedented and specific direction to the Legislature, such as redrawing the snake-shaped district of Congressional District 5, now held by Congresswoman Corrine Brown, in an east-west direction.

Writing for the majority, Justice Barbara Pariente said the court affirmed "the trial court's factual findings and ultimate determination that the redistricting process and resulting map were tainted by unconstitutional intent to favor the Republican Party and incumbents."

But the court reversed the trial court's order approving the Legislature's revised redistricting plan "because we conclude that, as a result of legal errors, the trial court failed to give the proper effect to its finding of unconstitutional intent, which mandated a more meaningful remedy commensurate with the constitutional violations it found."

"Through this opinion, we have provided clear guidance as to the specific deficiencies in the districts that the Legislature must redraw—Districts 5, 13, 14, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, and all other districts affected thereby," the court wrote, "and we have urged the Legislature in light of the trial court's findings in this case to consider making all decisions on the redrawn map in public view."

The decision is a victory for the plaintiffs in the case, a coalition of voter groups and the League of Women Voters, who tried and failed to get the lower court to redraw the entire map because of violations to the Fair District amendments to the state Constitution.

The amendments were approved by voters in 2010 by more than 63 percent — over the objections of the Republican-controlled Legislature — to prohibit lawmakers from intentionally drawing districts that favor incumbents or political parties.

The new rules not only created new standards but forced a trial that revealed that the once-a-decade process of redrawing political boundaries that had been touted by legislators as "historic" and "transparent" was clouded in secrecy.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Snow-i 

How is it any more arbitrary then no ID requirements at all? Seems to me like it's not arbitrary at all - that the state will accept many different forms of ID with varying requirements. hell, you couldn't get a checking account or even get into a bar with half of the forms of ID they're allowing. How is that arbitrary?

The paragraph I quoted.
Some can be expired, some can be current. A school ID from a public school is ok, but a private one is not. A bank statement is good, a credit card one is not.

[The Final Dakar]

Seems one of the dems is happy with the outcome... Rep. Corrine Brown calls redistricting ruling 'seriously flawed' | Tampa Bay Times

Overturning the current District 5 map ignores the essential redistricting principle of maintaining communities of interest or minority access districts. Certainly, minority communities do not live in compact, cookie-cutter like neighborhoods, and excessive adherence to district “compactness,” while ignoring the maintenance of minority access districts, fragments minority communities across the state. The current District 5 map is essentially the same as the previous District 3 map, which was drawn by the courts and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, in adherence to the principles of the Voting Rights Act. In particular, there is one critical section of the Voting Rights Act which strictly prohibits the fracturing of communities of minority voters into a variety of districts. This element of the Act is essential in the maintenance of minority representation not just in the state of Florida, but across the entire nation.

It appears her 'packed' district will be redrawn, making her path to reelection (D +16) harder. Is someone cutting onions in here?

[The Final Dakar]

Long, in-depth article on, well, what this thread is about. Best bits:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/ma...am-undone.html

After Reconstruction, Wrenn explained, the South reverted to complete Democratic control. Elections were decided in the Democratic primaries, which were often fought between the conservative wing and a more moderate wing. The passage of the Voting Rights Act upset that status quo. “What the Voting Rights Act did was brought very quickly a group of African-American voters into those primaries, and it tilted the balance to the progressives,” Wrenn said. “It tilted the playing field so much that by the ’70s, it was very unlikely a conservative was going to win a Democratic primary.”
…
Why didn’t the Republicans, whose party was founded on outrage about racial injustice, instead try to rekindle their alliance with black voters? I posed the question to Wrenn. He sat back for a moment, reflective. In fact, he said, they thought about it. They asked their pollsters to identify some Republican positions that could appeal to black voters, and the pollsters found that some black voters might just be drawn by the party’s religiosity and its position on abortion. But the pollsters also found that, Abraham Lincoln and several generations of Jim Crow notwithstanding, black voters simply saw Democrats as more reliable allies after the passage of the Voting Rights Act. “Nothing else mattered,” Wrenn said. “Abortion didn’t matter. Religion didn’t matter. It was experience.” He sighed. “I may be dead wrong,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “Because one thing I’ve learned is that I do not understand the mind of the black voter.”

---

But as Roberts pressed his case, a powerful opponent, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, was working against him. Dole, who voted for the Voting Rights Act in 1965, thought the Reagan team’s ideological fervor put the party’s efforts to build a broad, winning coalition of voters at risk. His argument prevailed, and Reagan ultimately signed the strengthened version of the Voting Rights Act in 1982, with the new standard for bringing discrimination cases intact. “I tried to make the point to the White House that, as a party, we needed to demonstrate that we cared and were concerned about votes from African-Americans and Hispanics,” Dole, now 92, told me earlier this summer.

20 Years later... lesson still not learned.

---

Democrats were pushing for a new law to increase registration, known as the “motor-voter bill,” which would require states to provide registration forms at motor vehicle departments and other government agencies, such as public-assistance offices. Republicans resisted. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky warned that the bill would “turn every agency, bureau and office of state government into a vast voter registration machine,” resulting in “political couch potatoes” driven to polls on union buses. Bush vetoed the law when it arrived on his desk in the summer of 1992, the middle of the presidential campaign, declaring that it would “expose the election process to an unacceptable risk of fraud and corruption.”

That sounds familiar. And also was patently wrong.

In-person voter fraud — in which you impersonate someone or try to vote more than once, or at all if you are ineligible — is almost entirely nonexistent in the United States. (An exhaustive Loyola Law School study could find only 31 “credible allegations of fraud” in a one-billion-vote sample.) But election fraud — ballot stuffing, vote buying, machine rigging — is not unheard-of, and in that shade of distinction lay an important new development.
…
In 1997, the year after Clinton was re-elected, Miami was confronted with a spectacular case of genuine election fraud, when it was revealed that Xavier Suárez had clinched the mayoralty with the help of hundreds of absentee ballots bearing the names of dead people, felons and other ineligible voters. Suárez himself was never charged, but eventually more than 50 people were arrested, and an appellate court threw out the absentee ballots, forcing Suárez to step down from office.

Editors note: Suárez is a Democrat (AFAIKT). The article doesn't mention this, his wikipedia entry doesn't mention this, but his opponent at the time is listed currently as a Republican under his wiki entry. Noted for objectivity

V.I.P. [Voting Integrity Project] ostensibly offered its services to all comers, but it tended to investigate Democrats. Its first big case came in Louisiana. When the Democrat Mary Landrieu defeated the Republican Woody Jenkins by a narrow margin in the 1996 Senate race, Republicans called in V.I.P., which reported that Landrieu’s election was a result of a complex fraud scheme. A Senate committee investigated and instead found evidence that a Jenkins operative may have coached the witnesses, four of whom recanted. The Senate inquiry determined that there was “no evidence of an organized, widespread effort to secure fraudulent votes.”

The urge to clean up voter rolls is understandable, of course, but in practice it can have an undesirable effect, as the world would soon learn. DBT’s work for Florida entailed combing through the state rolls for possible felons and then forwarding the results to local election officials throughout the state. However, multiple investigations would later determine that DBT incorrectly flagged thousands of people on the lists, and that a disproportionate number of them were black voters, more than 90 percent of whom voted for Al Gore. Estimates for how many of those voters were wrongly turned away from polls range from roughly 1,000 to many times that.

---

One of Bush’s tactics was to pack the Commission on Civil Rights with a conservative majority. His administration was hardly the first to mold the commission to its ideology, but it did so in a new way: Avoiding rules barring a president from appointing more than four commissioners from his or her party, two Republican appointees re-registered as independents. The move cleared the way for Bush to add two new Republicans, effectively giving the commission a 6-2 split. Bush made Abigail Thernstrom, a respected conservative author who had been questioning the role of Section 5 since the 1980s, its vice chairwoman.

Sounds legit.

In 2004, the new leadership assigned a case against the majority-black county of Noxubee, Miss., for “relentless voting-related racial discrimination” against white voters — the first case ever brought by the Justice Department on behalf of white voters. When some division lawyers chafed at the decision, Schlozman decided to try to quell the dissent by conducting an aggressive — and, an inspector general’s report later found, illegal — effort to hire like-minded attorneys and to marginalize or get rid of career attorneys the Bush team saw as too liberal. In emails, Schlozman boasted: “My tentative plan to is to gerrymander all of those crazy libs right out of the section” and to replace them with “right-thinking Americans.”

Sounds legit.

---

No witnesses had come forward to say they were dissuaded from voting; the New Black Panther Party publicly disavowed the men on its website; one of the men was a certified poll watcher who actually lived in the building that housed the polling station. In addition, the Justice Department had not brought a case in a similar situation in Pima, Ariz., when four white members of an anti-illegal-immigration group, one of them with a holstered gun, showed up at a majority-Hispanic polling station wearing military gear. But dispensing with the case would not be easy.

---

But by Election Day of 2012, most of the laws had been temporarily suspended, and some were blocked outright. In Texas, a federal court, quoting an earlier case, ruled that the state’s harsh voter-ID law was likely to “lead to a ‘retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise.’ ” Section 5, once again, had worked, and in 2012, for the first time in American history, the black turnout rate exceeded the white turnout rate, by two percentage points.

Roberts’s decision prompted an unusually fiery response from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In her dissent, she noted that in studying the law’s reauthorization in 2006, “Congress found there were more D.O.J. objections between 1982 and 2004 (626) than there were between 1965 and the 1982 reauthorization (490).” She noted that in a majority of those objections, the Justice Department cited “calculated decisions to keep minority voters from fully participating in the political process.” She pointed to a study that found that covered states and counties accounted for 56 percent of all successful discrimination cases brought under Section 2 of the law — which applies equally in all states — though they contained 25 percent of the nation’s population.

---

To justify the bill’s necessity, supporters pointed to an audit the state conducted last year under a new provision of the law that requires it to crosscheck its voting rolls with those of other states. It had identified 35,000 potential double registrations. The state’s division of elections commissioner, Kim Strach — whose husband is on the state team defending the law — told lawmakers, “It could be voter fraud,” though she acknowledged the possible duplicates could also be related to common bureaucratic errors. The commentator Dick Morris, speaking on Fox, said it probably meant there were more than one million double votes nationwide in 2012. Von Spakovsky told The Tampa Bay Times it seemed as if North Carolina had found at least several hundred people who voted twice.

A few weeks before the case was to go to trial, I stopped into the Statehouse office of State Senator Bob Rucho, a prime supporter of the bill. “When the people start losing confidence in their government, and the electoral process, then something needs to be done to restore it,” he told me. But when I called the Board of Elections recently, a spokesman told me that the number of suspicious registrations was now 11; none had so far produced a criminal fraud charge.

---

He argued that the law had no disparate effect; that blacks were no less welcome to vote than whites were during a shortened early-voting period, were treated no worse for voting at the wrong precinct than whites — the idea being that the past was the past. This, in essence, is what many of the arguments against the Voting Rights Act have always come down to.

[OAW]

^^^

Very good piece. Thanks for the link.

OAW

[The Final Dakar]

It feels like a long time since we dealt with something other than redistricting in this thread...
Appeals court strikes down 'discriminatory' Texas voter ID law | Reuters

A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday struck down a Texas voter ID law, saying it violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act through its "discriminatory effects."

The decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit was pertaining to one of a series of laws enacted in Republican-governed states requiring voters to show certain forms of identification before being allowed to vote.

"We affirm the district court's finding that SB 14 (Texas Senate Bill 14) violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act through its discriminatory effect," a three-judge panel from the New Orleans-based court said.

A U.S. district court judge wrote that the 2011 law, which was challenged by the administration of President Barack Obama and civil rights groups, was unlawful under a federal law called the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution in part because it discriminates against minority voters.

[The Final Dakar]

https://gop.com/rnc-statement-on-50t...ng-rights-act/

Today, as we enjoy more access to the polls – through early, absentee and weekend voting – than in past decades, we celebrate the sacrifice, accomplishments, and memory of those who made it possible.”

From the party trying to scale back early and weekend voting. What a piece of shit.

[OAW]

^^^

And as they sit on their hands and not reinstate key provisions of the VRA that the conservative majority SCOTUS struck down. Speaks volumes about how all of that is simply political rhetoric and not a core belief of the modern day GOP.

OAW

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Dems trying to flood the voter rolls

Under new Oregon law, all eligible voters are registered unless they opt out - LA Times

In front of a packed and cheering audience Monday, Gov. Kate Brown signed a first-in-the-nation bill to automatically register all eligible Oregonians to vote when they obtain or renew a driver’s license or state identification card.

Those who are registered through the new process will be notified by mail and will be given three weeks to take themselves off the voting rolls. If they do not opt out, the secretary of state’s office will mail them a ballot automatically 20 days before any election.

[The Final Dakar]

Florida House rejects Florida Senate redistricting map, proposes new one - Sun Sentinel

The day started with Sen. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, the Senate’s redistricting committee chair, asking his fellow senators to reject a proposed map from the House and insist the House adopt the Senate’s version of the map.

The House convened at 11 a.m., and it had two choices -- vote for the Senate map, or vote to extend the session through Tuesday.

Stunningly, it chose to do neither.

Drawing the maps, it appears now, will be up to the courts.

Good.

[The Final Dakar]

If this is real heads should roll.
Documents reveal secret Florida Senate process to draw district maps | Miami Herald

[The Final Dakar]

Does this count as voter suppression?
Colorado Republicans cancel presidential vote at 2016 caucus - The Denver Post

Colorado will not vote for a Republican candidate for president at its 2016 caucus after party leaders approved a little-noticed shift that may diminish the state's clout in the most open nomination contest in the modern era.

The GOP executive committee has voted to cancel the traditional presidential preference poll after the national party changed its rules to require a state's delegates to support the candidate that wins the caucus vote.

My read was this was done so if someone like Trump wins they don't have to vote for him at the convention. Then I read:

In 2008 and 2012, die-hard Republican voters gathered at caucus meetings to begin the delegate-selection process of selecting delegates to the national convention and voice support for presidential candidates in a straw poll.

The votes, however, didn't require Colorado delegates to support any particular candidate at the national conventions. This allowed for delegates that supported a losing candidate to vote for the nominee and demonstrate party unity at the convention.

But the freedom also opened the door for political mischief, as Colorado saw in 2012 when Ron Paul supporters managed to win a significant portion of the delegate slots, even though Paul finished far behind other candidates in the Colorado caucuses.

So a different kind of voter suppression?

The party primary system is so ****ed.

[The Final Dakar]

Whoops
GOP Rep. Caught Proposing Gerrymandering More Prisoners into Dem’s District | Mediaite

Politico obtained audio from the closed-door Republican caucus, where Janet Adkins reportedly checked the room for reporters before proposing a re-drawing of Corrinne Brown‘s district.

“You draw [Brown’s seat] in such a fashion so perhaps, a majority, or maybe not a majority, but a number of them will live in the prisons, thereby not being able to vote,” Adkins said. She went on to describe her idea as the “perfect storm” telling an attending committeeman that it would divert a large portion of the prison population away from his county, and that he would be able to beat Brown as a result.

[OAW]

^^^^

And this is a prime example of why legislative districts should be drawn up by non-partisan independent commissions.

OAW

[The Final Dakar]

Alabama sends message: We are too broke to care about right and wrong | AL.com

Take a look at the 10 Alabama counties with the highest percentage of non-white registered voters. That's Macon, Greene, Sumter, Lowndes, Bullock, Perry, Wilcox, Dallas, Hale, and Montgomery, according to the Alabama Secretary of State's office. Alabama, thanks to its budgetary insanity and inanity, just opted to close driver license bureaus in eight of them. All but Dallas and Montgomery will be closed.

Closed. In a state in which driver licenses or special photo IDs are a requirement for voting.

Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed. Every one.

Because the same Alabama Legislature that could not raise enough money to properly run the state in three sessions this year decided in 2011 that all voters must have a photo ID. It was such a great idea that Gov. Robert Bentley signed that bill into law despite complaints that such a move would disproportionately disenfranchise black voters.

It went into effect last year. And now this.

Perhaps there's some alternative offered that's not being acknowledged. But this looks like Example 1A of something disproportionately affecting minorities even if its not being done on purpose.

[OAW]

^^^^^

Wow.

OAW

[The Final Dakar]

Jeb differentiates himself from his brother, of course in a worse way.
Jeb Bush Opposes Reauthorizing The Voting Rights Act 'As Is'

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) said Thursday that he opposes reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights law whose protections the Supreme Court watered down in 2013.

"There's been dramatic improvement in access to voting. I mean exponentially better improvement," the presidential candidate said in Iowa. "And I don't think there's a role for the federal government to play in most places, there could be some, but in most places where they did have a constructive role in the '60s. So I don't support reauthorizing it as is."

**** you, Jeb!

[The Final Dakar]

Another West Coast state adds automatic voter registration: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/us...s-to-vote.html
So, how long til there's backlash from the populace because they find out they keep getting jury duty because they were automatically registered?

[subego]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Perhaps there's some alternative offered that's not being acknowledged. But this looks like Example 1A of something disproportionately affecting minorities even if its not being done on purpose.

The story is sorta pulling a fast one.

As it notes, the voting requirement is a DL or a State ID. What's getting closed are DL bureaus. FWIU, those areas are still covered by places where you can get a State ID.

That's not saying it still isn't a problem, but it's a lesser one than is being implied.

[The Final Dakar]

How about some good news?
Ranked-choice voting could be headed for ballot - The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram

Ranked-choice voting is designed to ensure that the winning candidate receives a majority vote. Advocates say it also ensures that candidates appeal to a cross-section of voters, not just the narrow, active constituencies that often decide party primary contests.

…

Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant-runoff voting, allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the votes cast after the first tally, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Voters who chose the eliminated candidate have their ballots added to the totals of their second-ranked candidate and the ballots are retabulated. This process continues until one candidate has a majority of votes and is declared the winner.

Ranked-choice voting has been repeatedly debated – and defeated – in the Legislature, largely at the behest of party leaders who have successfully thwarted election changes, including open primaries, that could empower third-party candidates.

[The Final Dakar]

In what can only be described as wild coincidence, GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie vetoed a bill that would provide more early voting, online and automatic voter registration. He claims signing the bill would increase fraud.

[OAW]

OAW

[OAW]

The shenanigans continue ...

In 2013, North Carolina drew national attention when it passed the nation’s most restrictive voting law—currently the subject of a challenge in federal court. The Republican-backed measure likely kept tens of thousands of voters, disproportionately minorities, from the polls last fall. But a subtler maneuver—and one that, until now, has largely flown under the radar—could throw up another major roadblock for non-white would-be voters next year, when the state figures to once again be a presidential battleground.

Last year, North Carolina’s county election boards, which are controlled by Republicans, moved the location of almost one-third of the state’s early voting sites. Those changes, according to new data analysis by a consulting firm that was shared with MSNBC, will significantly increase the distance African-Americans have to travel to vote early, while leaving white voters largely unaffected.

In total, black voters will now have to travel almost 350,000 extra miles to get to their nearest early voting site, compared to 21,000 extra miles for white voters. That’s even though white voters make up 71% of the state’s electorate and blacks are just 22%. The average white voter will now have to travel just 26 feet further to vote early. For blacks, the equivalent figure is a quarter of a mile.
“We never expected we would see such an enormous disparity,” said Bill Busa of insightus, a non-profit data analysis firm that produced the findings.

Local election administrators move the location of polling sites frequently, in order to better accommodate changing voting habits and serve voters more effectively. No one is alleging that the counties coordinated on a plan to make it harder for blacks to vote.

And, importantly, even after the changes, black voters are still closer to early voting locations on average than white voters (though blacks are more likely not to have a car, so they may still face a longer journey by time). Before the changes, blacks were 2.90 miles away while whites were 3.77 miles away, on average, according to Busa’s numbers. After the changes, blacks were 3.14 miles away while whites remained 3.77 miles away.

But Busa’s analysis underscores how even minor changes to election systems that might have been intended to be neutral can nonetheless have the effect of hurting racial minorities more than whites. In this case, that might have been because white neighborhoods are more likely to have amenities like parking, leading election administrators to put polling locations in those areas.

Whatever the cause, the disparity underlines what was lost when the Supreme Court invalidated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder case. Before that ruling, the federal government didn’t need to show that an election change was intended to hurt minorities—only that it had that effect. So changes like those insightus analyzed could have been more easily blocked. But since Shelby, local and state governments across the country can make election changes without getting pre-approval from the federal government.

Busa and insightus make little effort to hide which side they’re on. The report says the firm intends “to fight—in both the court of law and the court of public opinion—for redress of North Carolina’s obviously unlawful shell game of electoral apartheid.” It’s also worth noting that many of the counties that moved their polling places created shorter or unchanged average distances for both black and white voters. And the impact of the changes on the average voter, regardless of race, was fairly small, insightus found. In 2012, she had to travel 3.5 miles to vote early, compared to 3.6 miles in 2014.

In addition, it’s difficult to say what effect the changes to polling locations had in last fall’s midterms, because that was also the first major election under the state’s restrictive voting law passed in 2013, known as the Voter Information and Verification Act (VIVA). That measure ended same-day voter registration and cut a week of the early voting period (though most counties must offer the same total numbers of hours). It also established a photo ID requirement, and banned out-of-precinct voting, among other provisions. In July, a federal court heard a challenge to the law brought by voting rights groups and the U.S. Justice Department, who allege it discriminates against blacks and Hispanics. A study by the progressive group Democracy North Carolina found that VIVA kept around 30,000 would-be voters from the polls.

Still, the changed early voting locations likely added another hurdle for minorities. All told, an increased distance of a quarter mile to vote, played out across the state’s roughly 1.5 million registered black voters, could have a significant impact. A 2011 study of Los Angeles County voting found that for every one-tenth of a mile increase in the distance to a polling place up to 0.4 of a mile, voting declines by 0.5 percent. By those numbers, North Carolina’s changes might have kept nearly 19,000 black voters from the polls.

And courts have recognized that the distance a person must travel to cast a ballot or to get qualifying documents is a key factor in determining whether their right to vote has been unfairly burdened. Texas’ voter ID law was struck down by a federal judge last year—the state’s appeal is pending—after experts testified that minorities would need to travel much further than whites, on average, to get to state offices that issue IDs. In North Carolina, the U.S. Department of Justice twice objected under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to efforts by counties to move a polling place, citing the impact on minority voters.

The early voting location changes have until now attracted little attention, perhaps because they’ve played out as a series of separate, apparently minor local-level tweaks. Last year, North Carolina’s counties, each acting independently, moved the locations of 114 of the state’s 363 early voting locations, and added three new locations.

Those changes were approved and conducted by Republican elected officials: Each county board of elections has three members, two appointed by the governor’s party, and one by the other party. Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, has been in office since 2013.

Insightus found that in a few counties, the impact on black voters was especially stark. For instance, in predominantly Democratic Orange County, an early voting site was moved off the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and into the city of Durham. Another polling location in what insightus describes as a multi-ethnic area was moved to what it says is a sparsely populated, affluent location. Thanks to these changes, Orange County blacks had to travel an average of 0.4 miles further to vote early, while whites had to travel less than a tenth of a mile further. In other counties, both black and white voters ended up further from the polls. Poor, rural Hereford County closed two of its three early voting sites, with the result that both blacks and whites had to travel just over five miles further, on average, to vote early.

Early voting is very popular in North Carolina, and high black turnout during the early voting period has been crucial to Democrats’ recent ability to compete there. In 2008 and 2012, 70% of black voters cast their ballots early, compared to about 50% of white voters. That allowed Barack Obama to unexpectedly carry the state in 2008, and nearly do so again in 2012.

Despite its willingness to engage in advocacy, insightus’s past work has held up. One report produced by the firm earlier this year exposed failures in the state’s voter registration system, and its findings were confirmed by an expert witness as part of the federal challenge to the 2013 voting law. For this latest project, Busa and his team used data on voters’ addresses from the state Board of Elections voter registration files, and information on early voting sites from the Voting Information Project, a well-known source of election administration data run by the Pew Charitable Trusts. They supplemented that with demographic information from the respected U.S. Census and American Community Survey.

Study: North Carolina polling site changes hurt blacks | MSNBC

OAW

[OAW]

On a more positive note ....

Kentucky is the latest state to restore voting rights to ex-felons — part of a nationwide move against felon disenfranchisement laws that affect nearly 6 million Americans.

Gov. Steve Beshear announced Tuesday morning that he’s signed an executive order that will restore the right to vote and to hold public office to ex-felons who have served out their sentences. The order does not cover those convicted of violent or sex crimes, bribery, or treason.

“The right to vote is one of the most intrinsically American privileges, and thousands of Kentuckians are living, working and paying taxes in the state but are denied this basic right,” Beshear, a Democrat, said at a press conference. “Once an individual has served his or her time and paid all restitution, society expects them to reintegrate into their communities and become law-abiding and productive citizens. A key part of that transition is the right to vote.”

Beshear’s order will immediately restore voting rights to around 140,000 Kentuckians, and another 30,000 will become eligible for rights restoration over time, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The group called the announcement “an incredible breakthrough in the movement to end criminal disenfranchisement policies nationwide.”

The governor is acting just two weeks before he’ll leave office. Matt Bevin, a Republican, is set to be sworn in Dec. 7. Bevin has said he supports restoring gun and voting rights to felons.

Kentucky’s constitution bars those convicted of a felony from voting, affecting an estimated 180,000 people, who are disproportionately poor and non-white. Felons who want to vote have to apply directly to the governor, who has sole authority to decide the issue.

Kentucky’s junior senator, Rand Paul, had pushed state lawmakers in recent years to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would restore felon voting rights. But those efforts have stalled in the legislature.

Other states, too, have seen efforts to liberalize their rules on felon voting — part of a broader reassessment of harsh criminal justice policies. Since 2014, Virginia Gov. Terry McAulliffe has announced several steps designed to make it easier to regain the right to vote. Maryland lawmakers this year passed a bill to restore voting rights to may ex-felons, but it was vetoed by Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican. In Florida, whose law disenfranchises nearly one in four African-Americans, there’s a grassroots push to get a constitutional amendment onto the 2016 ballot.

Voting rights groups cheered Beshear’s move.

“The ACLU-KY applauds Gov. Beshear for taking an important step toward breaking down barriers to ballot boxes in Kentucky,” said Michael Aldridge, Kentucky executive director of the ACLU. “We know the Commonwealth’s disenfranchisement policies, some of the harshest in the country, have negatively impacted families and communities, especially those of color, by reducing their collective political voice. Studies have shown that individuals who vote are more likely to give to charity, volunteer, attend school board meetings, serve on juries and are more actively involved in their communities.”

Kentucky restores voting rights to ex-felons | MSNBC

OAW

[The Final Dakar]

I expect that will be controversial, and pointed to as Dem ballot stuffing by more partisan voices.

[subego]

You misspelled "citizens".

[Snow-i]

Originally Posted by washington post

4. Maryland and North Carolina are essentially tied for the honor of most-gerrymandered state.

With average gerrymander scores of about 88 out of a possible 100, Maryland and North Carolina are home to some of the ugliest districts in the nation among states with at least three Congressional districts. In fact, North Carolina is home to three out of the top 10 most-gerrymandered districts in the country. Maryland is proof that gerrymandering isn't just a Republican pastime, as the state's Democrats redrew those boundaries in 2012. The standout in that state is the 3rd Congressional district, which is the nation's second-most gerrymandered and home to Democratic congressman John Sarbanes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...nal-districts/

This is not a republican phenomena, as much as you and MSNBC would like it to be. If we want it to stop, we must stop treating it as a partisan issue and start treating it for what it is, a citizen vs ruling class issue.

[OAW]

Originally Posted by Snow-i 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...nal-districts/

This is not a republican phenomena, as much as you and MSNBC would like it to be. If we want it to stop, we must stop treating it as a partisan issue and start treating it for what it is, a citizen vs ruling class issue.

Agreed! And to that end would your support the redistricting process being conducted by non-partisan commissions nationwide ... instead of by whatever political party happens to be in power every 10 years when the census is taken?

OAW