Senator Hagan.

“He has barely voted over the past 40 years, not because he hasn’t wanted to but because it has been too difficult. The only sure way to register to vote, he says, is to make a 157-mile round trip from his home to the nearest county seat.

There is no public transport, and most people can’t afford the trip – even assuming they have a working car with valid license plates and insurance, which is rarely the case. The few who do make the journey have to run a gauntlet of racism and hostility that, they say, can often land them in jail on charges of drunkenness and public disorder.”

“That legal strategy is based on attacking states or jurisdictions for their history. In other words, Holder proposes to treat Southern states based on their supposed “profile” rather than their political realities.

Trying to institutionalize Section 5’s inherent mistrust of voters and governments in the South to protect voting rights and hold fair elections is nothing short of racial and political profiling. It engenders the same two-way-street mistrust as does individual racial profiling.

It also politicizes Section 5 to the point that it becomes nothing more or less than a partisan political issue that has nothing whatsoever to do with voting rights, but rather about the outcome of elections and partisan advantage. The undeniable interjection of partisan advantage into enforcement of the Voting Right Act is what led the court’s decision to begin to dismantle it in the first place.”

Jackson Clarion Ledger.

The Deseret News on the disgraceful North Carolina voter ID lawsuit brought by DOJ.

“A crusade in search of a cause.”

The widely read and influential World:

“Because of the statute the taxpayer-funded lawsuit is built on, Holder has a difficult task. He must prove racist intent, not just discriminatory effect. That’s what makes the accusation Holder made “with sorrow” so grave.

Other aspects of the law eliminate straight-party voting and nullify provisional ballots made in the wrong precinct. The law also ends a program for pre-registering high schooler students in civics classes. While 70 percent of North Carolinians support requiring voters to have photo identification, more than half the state is not pleased with many of the law’s other changes.

Felons signing petitions in AZ: “A group supporting a sweeping new Republican-backed election law wants the Secretary of State’s office to invalidate some petitions demanding a voter referendum.

Wednesday’s letter from lawyers for a group calling itself Stop Voter Fraud demanded that Secretary of State Ken Bennett throw out signatures on petitions collected by four circulators because they’re allegedly felons.

 Wisconsin.

St. Louis Post Dispatch.

A local story out of Nebraska discusses the voter integrity initiative of Secretary of State Gale.

Gale said his office is participating in a voter integrity project to prevent possible fraud. He said they are looking to identify categories of voters where the risk of fraud is higher.  The goal is to enhance the authenticity of each voter registration. He said there are about 16,000 voters who have registered on their honor due to no license or Social Security number (SS#). He said their goal is to upgrade those registrations. If the voter
still does not have valid driver’s license or SS#, then other means need
to be used to verify the registration. Another tool used to clean
up voter registration lists is the National Death database. By using
just the last four digits of a person’s SS#, he said they can
cross-reference their list to eliminate people who have died.  Gale
said Nebraska’s not overly susceptible to fraud but raising the bar on
authenticity will reduce that possibility even further.

A column discussing fraud in the recent election held in Detroit.