Link here.  Will there be a case involving the Tim Scott seat special in South Carolina?

This article blames Senator McConnell for holding up nominations to the FEC.

It states:

“The reason there were no nominations, I think, is because the administration knows that any nominations will be blocked by Republicans in the Senate,” says Rick Hasen, an election law expert. “I think (Senate Minority Leader Mitch) McConnell is very happy with status quo, which is that the FEC does very little and often deadlocks.”

A reader replies:

Obama nominated John J. Sullivan in 2009 to the FEC. He was a lawyer for the SEIU. His nomination was stopped by Senators Feingold (D) and McCain (R), not McConnell, who put a hold on him. The WH finally withdrew his nomination in August of 2010. The president has sent no further nominations to the Senate to replace any of the five commissioners whose terms have all expired. Only one FEC commissioner has an unexpired term – Caroline Hunter, whose term expires in April 2013.

An aide to Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst is accused of stealing $600,000 from his campaign fund, including the Senate race (which is a federal felony).

Hans von Spakovsky, a Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, points out that liberal groups that push for felon voting rights have a major failing in their advocacy that reveals their true motivations. In most states, felons lose many other rights in addition to voting when they are convicted of a felony. This includes the right to own a gun, sit on a jury, be a notary public, obtain certain types of professional licenses, or engage in some kinds of public employment (like being a police officer). Yet the Left never mentions any of these other losses of civil rights. If they really believe in restoration of such an important right as voting based on the argument that the felon has paid his debt and this will help reintegrate him into civil society, why don’t they push for automatic restoration of these other rights, too? If voting is a constitutional right that should be restored, why don’t they believe that the constitutional right to own a gun should be restored at the same time? Why do they trust that a felon will responsibly exercise his right to vote but not his Second Amendment right? If they believe that a felon will make the right choices of candidates in elections, don’t they think a felon will make the right choices sitting on a jury?

According to von Spakovsky, the fact that liberals have no apparent interest in restoring any of the civil rights that felons lose other than the right to vote shows that they are engaged in this purely for partisan political reasons, not because they have any true concern over the rights of felons or their reintegration into the civil society whose laws the felons knowingly and intentionally violated.

Many Democrats (and occassionally a Republican) have tried to change laws to permit felons to participate in American elections.  Some states ban felons from voting for life, and some states roll the polling machines straight into the prison on election day. 

But why are Democrats the primary supporters of allowing felons to vote?  Maybe because more Democrats might win elections if felons were allowed to vote.  In fact, this study traces what would have happened through history if felons were allowed to vote.  The results should scare any Republican toying with the idea of allowing felons to vote.  A summary:

1984 – Kentucky – McConnell would have lost

Representative Trey Gowdy vows to get to the bottom of the South Carolina Voter ID objection.  “I promise you I am going to find out of that is true or not.”  The video of Gowdy vowing to find out about Chris Herren’s recommendation to preclear S.C. Voter ID is here.  Gowdy say that if he doesn’t get a response to his letter, he will ask Holder at the next oversight hearing – but vows that he will get to the bottom of whether or not the Voting Section recommended to Tom Perez that the law be precleared – which it did.

Of course one way to do that is to haul Chris Herren before the House Judiciary Committee.  Given that the cost to South Carolina was so high – a cost that could have been entirely avoided had Tom Perez listened to Chris Herren and Bob Berman and the other career staff – you can be sure that this one isn’t going away.  There are three million reasons why South Carolina lawmakers aren’t going to rest until DOJ comes clean.

From the story:

Gowdy doubled down Thursday on his talk of getting to the bottom of why such opposition occurred in the first place.

I reported today on the meeting which took place this week at DOJ about the potential demise of Section 5.  In reality, it will be the Section 4 triggers that lead to the demise of Section 5 enforcement.  The demise of Section 5 can be traced back to 2006 when nobody had the stomach to deal with the Section 4 triggers.  The truth of the matter is that no member of Congress from a state currently exempted from Section 5 obligations wanted to bring their state under the purview of Section 4. So nothing was done in 2006, and nothing was done since.

But there are ways for the Section 5 model to remain viable.  Instead of Section 4 triggers that use geography, turnout and tests, if Section 5 obligations were based on opt-ins, they would be more constitutional.  For example, if a jurisdiction was found to be liable for violating a provision of the Voting Rights Act (think Osceola FL or Euclid OH), then they would be subject to Section 5.  Blaine County, Montana, would be another example.  All of these jurisdictions were found to have violated Section 2.  Imposing a preclearance requirement on these jurisdictions found to have violated the Voting Rights Act would certainly be far more constitutional than the current Section 4 triggers.  It might also make sense, after all, these jurisdictions, found liable in the previous decade for violating the Voting Rights Act, went through redistricting in the 2010 cycle without any court oversight, and without any need to balance new legislative plans against those imposed after the liability findings.

Of course the predictable corners will oppose this idea because it doesn’t give enough power to the federal government.  They will point out that Section 5 coverage will be dependent on Section 2 liability.  But come June of 2013, advocates of the current Section 4 triggers might find the opt-in to be a pretty good alternative to what the Supreme Court is liable to do with the preclearance regime.

Are DOJ attorneys having discussions about substantive election issues with people at places like Columbia and elsewhere using Yahoo mail and other devices to avoid disclosure? 

This would be surprising given the extent of FOIA litigation that the DOJ has already had from private groups.  But you never know.

Coverage at PJ Media.

One staffer “suggested that all the Section 5 data that has been forcibly collected from the currently covered states over the decades, would be a ‘gold-mine’ of information to be used in future litigation by the Voting Section and that the attorneys may need to be more ‘imaginative’ in bringing vote denial cases to replace evaporating vote dilution cases.”

 Emerging partisanship at the EAC conference this week.  “The League of Women Voters’ President Elisabeth McNamara criticized voter ID as being assumed to solve many election problems. But she failed to mention how the League of Women Voters doesn’t even recognize the problems it does solve. McNamara ironically declared at the roundtable that “we are an organization based on facts.” The facts are that when the Indiana voter ID law was challenged, the League of Women Voters filed a brief with a serious factual error. They claimed that a woman was a victim of disenfranchisement, but she actually attempted commit vote fraud. Florida resident Faye Buis-Ewing tried to vote in Indiana with her Florida’s driver’s license. She was not permitted to do so, and rightfully so. This is an example of the voter ID actually solving a problem of vote fraud.”