Our ruling: The Lone Star Project said Abbott “converted over $1 million in federal grant money intended for use to prosecute online sexual predators and other cyber crimes and instead used it to harass and prosecute senior citizens who were assisting other senior citizens in applying for mail-in ballots.”

Actually, less than $100,000 of a grant—less than one-fifteenth of it–was spent investigating alleged violations of election law. The grant aid also wasn’t restricted, or necessarily intended for, other purposes. So there was no conversion.

Senior citizens were pursued, bur our sense is it’s an eye-of-the-beholder question whether the investigations were harassment.

We rate this claim as False.

The Arizona Capitol Times reports:

Following the guidance of a U.S. Supreme
Court justice, Attorney General Tom Horne has threatened to sue an
effectively non-existent federal commission if it doesn’t put Arizona’s
requirement of proof-of-citizenship on federal voter registration forms.  Horne
is giving the U.S. Election Assistance Commission until Aug. 19 to act,
stating in a July 26 letter to the commission’s acting executive
director, Alice Miller, that Louisiana recently got approval to put
requirements specific to the state on the federal forms.

The Supreme Court may have provided Arizona a path to place the state instructions on the federal form by referencing the state request as an alternative means or exercise of enforcing a state’s constitutional power to determine voting qualifications.

The NVRA permits a State to request the EAC to include state specific instructions on the Federal Form, see 42 U. S. C. §1973gg–7(a)(2), and a State may challenge the EAC’s rejection of that request (or failure to act on it) in a suit under the Administrative Procedure Act. That alternative means of enforcing its constitutional power to determine voting qualifications remains open to Arizona here. Should the EAC reject or decline to act on a renewed request, Arizona would have the opportunity to establish in a reviewing court that a mere oath will not suffice to effectuate its citizenship requirement and that the EAC is therefore under a nondiscretionary duty to include Arizona’s concrete-evidence requirement on the Federal Form. Pp. 13–17

and here:

Arizona might also assert (as it has argued here) that it would be arbitrary for the EAC to refuse to include Arizona’s instruction when it has accepted a similar instruction requested by Louisiana.

The Hill.  “House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) slammed Attorney General Eric Holder after an investigation by Goodlatte’s committee reported discrepancies between Holder’s congressional testimony and decision to approve a search warrant for emails from Fox News Correspondent James Rosen.”

“”I find the lack of leadership at the Department of Justice extremely alarming,” Goodlatte said in a statement on Wednesday. “The deceptive and misleading testimony of Attorney General Holder is unfortunately just the most recent example in a long list of scandals that have plagued the Department.”

Advocates of a “fix” for Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act can thank Eric Holder and his Department’s reputation for dishonesty for dooming the “fix.”  Holder and his DOJ have developed a reputation for abuse of power, dishonesty under oath, and radical legal theories.  This reputation has all but doomed any fix for Section 4 after Shelby.  Those who scream loudest for the fix are often those responsible in part for the abuse of power and reputation for dishonesty. 

Joan Walsh delivers her usual over the top blend of partisanship and racialism over at Salon while giving us a preview of the next phony narrative to emerge from the voter fraud deniers: A post Shelby wave of litigation to protect voting rights will launch shortly.

Another way of saying this is that for the last 4 years, the Eric Holder Justice Department has failed to pursue a single Section 2 case, hardly any language minority cases (and none since the staffer pushing hardest for them left) and zero efforts to clean up the voter rolls of 4,000,000 ineligible voters.

Walsh runs interference for the administration, which is nothing new.

But if you are one of the reporters getting the calls and press releases from the groups, you might ask the Office of Pubic Affairs at DOJ why the Department hasn’t filed a Section 2 case in over 4 years if voting discrimination is so rampant.

If you are one of the reporters being spun by the groups, you might ask why it is that only one or two cases have been filed under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by third party groups in the last 4 years if voting discrimination is so rampant. 

I somehow suspect these questions won’t be asked by Joan Walsh, because she isn’t interested in the answers.  She’s interested in advancing a partisan narrative on Voting Rights at odds with the enforcement records of her friends.

The Providence Journal reports: State police Supt. Steven O’Donnell said the law enforcement agency has
closed its investigation into allegations of voter fraud by the campaign
of U.S. Rep. David Cicilline leveled by his Democratic primary opponent
Anthony Gemma.

In Iowa, an apparent non-citizen resident of the state has been arrested and accused of impersonation fraud in the registration process.  According to the story, she impersonated another person and falsely claimed to be a citizen which led to her erroneously being placed on the voting rolls.  No evidence of fraudulent voting was found in the investigation.  More details at the link.

The AP reports that the state of Alaska is seeking to replace a voter registration system seen as outdated in time for next year’s elections. 

Red Alert Politics outlines some of the new anti-fraud features the Alaska Division of Elections wants to add to the system.

Alaska’s top government officials are looking for a new voter
registration system, one that would create an “electronic pollbook” that
curbs voter fraud and attempts to take on the Left’s argument against
voter ID laws. According to the state’s Request for Proposal, 
issued July 24, Alaska’s Division of Elections is seeking a new
statewide voter registration and election management system “that
includes an electronic pollbook solution.”  The system — costing $3.5
million to $5 million — would provide “real-time” updates of voter
history.

Additionally, the “electronic pollbook” would indicate whether or not
the voter has applied for an absentee ballot and the status of the
ballot, and have the ability to display the voter’s photo, imported from
the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles.

Gazette.Net reports: A Montgomery County woman and a Frederick County woman have each been
charged with voter fraud stemming from the 2012 presidential elections.  On
July 25, a Montgomery County grand jury charged Linda Earlette Wells,
69, with impersonating a voter to register in the name of the voter;
attempting to vote under a false name; and impersonating another person
in an attempt to vote.  She could face up to 15 years in prison and
fines of up to $6,000, according to a statement released Tuesday by the
Maryland State Prosecutor’s Office announcing the indictments.  Wells,
of Germantown, called the Montgomery County Board of Elections the day
before the presidential election and impersonated her dead mother,
Beatrice Wells, according to the indictment against her, which said that
her mother died in June 2011.

….On July 30, the Maryland State Prosecutor’s Office announced that a
Frederick County grand jury had indicted Elsie Virginia Schildt, 46,
with impersonating another person in an attempt to vote; attempting to
vote under a false name; and attempting to vote more than once in the
same election. That indictment was filed July 26, online court records
show. The State Prosecutor’s Office investigates corruption, election
and political crimes across Maryland. Each charge is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $2,500.

More details here.

A guilty plea in a double voting case.

A South Dakota man accused of voting twice in a school board election has pleaded guilty. Craig
Guymon, of Mitchell, pleaded guilty Tuesday to a felony voter fraud
charge. It carries a maximum punishment of two years in prison and a
$4,000 fine.The Daily Republic
newspaper reports that the 54-year-old Guymon told a judge he voted in
the polls in the morning of June 4 and voted at the auditor’s office by
absentee ballot that afternoon.

The Secretary of State, Jason Gant, has stated the fraud exposes a vulnerability in the system and called for reform.