The Department of Justice is asking for more information from the City of Brookhaven, Mississippi and delaying the approaching local elections to be held on the new wards lines.  DOJ is not providing any indication on what the problem might be with the new ward lines.  According to the story, the only expressed concern to the city was not with the actual lines but the process by which the lines were drawn. 

There didn’t seem to be any vocal opposition to the new lines which passed with almost unanimous agreement on the lines, a final 6-1 vote. Yet this is politics and redistricting where elbows are thrown.  Now the Holder DOJ has now inserted a “be kind and considerate” clause into the retrogression analysis of the Voting Rights Act where any politician or activist can call up DOJ and complain of their poor treatment (“No one listened to my perfect idea”) in an effort to stop the election just as candidates are qualifying to run for office. 

If the Justice Department denies preclearance to the city’s ward map, further confusion could arise. The city would have to make revisions of some kind to the proposed redistricting plan.

Fernald said he doesn’t know how the election would be handled in such an event.  “We’ve never faced this before,” Fernald said.  Questions and requests for additional documents
by the Justice Department have focused on the process by which the city
reached its proposed ward map.  “The questions seems to be more about the
process,” Fernald said. “They’ve never said anything about the ultimate
plan to me. (They’ve) been more concerned about how we got where we
got.”

Fernald said he’s sent the Justice Department
copies of election returns going back several years, copies of minutes
of board meetings and articles from The Daily Leader about work sessions
and meetings where redistricting was discussed.  Fernald said the last packet of documents he sent was submitted about a week before Christmas.

Since then, there’s been only silence.

“It’s very, very difficult to prosecute people when you can’t even identify who they are,” Van Hollen said.

The USA Today focuses on how Arizona citizens voting in multiple states were identified and prosecuted. 

“Vote early and vote often” is a laugh line politicians often invoke as they make a pitch fo people’s support. 

But it’s no laughing matter to a half-dozen former Arizonans, who have been prosecuted for voting twice in past elections.

Thanks
to a data-sharing agreement among 20 states, Arizona can
cross-reference its voter data with other states and ferret out people
who vote more than once in the same election cycle.

In New Hampshire, the Nashua Telegraph reports that Democrats want to repeal the photo ID law which worked without incident or controversy in the 2012 election.  Even though President Obama won the state and Democrats made gains in the state legislature they are intent to repealing the ID law.  Democrats must believe they can cement their gains by eliminating the confirmation or verification of identity of voters at the polls. 

Despite Republicans negotiating and finding a bipartisan voter ID compromise last year, Democrats now continue to claim that their voters are somehow disenfranchised.  Despite the Department of Justice declaring the law void of any discriminatory or racial intent, the Democrats have to find a victim.  The victim this time:  Students.

“My students are disenfranchised by this,” said state Rep. Cynthia
Chase, a Keene Democrat and a part-time professor at Keene State College
who has signed on as a co-sponsor of the bill. “They’re smart and
they’re knowledgeable, and it’s harder for them to vote.”

Apparently, part-time Professor Chase doesn’t think her students are smart or knowledgeable enough though to get their ID.  Don’t buy it.  Democrats are simply trying to repeal the infant bipartisan voter ID law for partisan gain.   

Apparently Iowa is encountering the same resistance and delay that Florida and Colorado confirming the citizenship of voters with the Department of Homeland Security database. Despite the law explicitly allowing for such verification of citizenship, the federal agency continues to drag its feet. 

The secretary of state’s office identified 3,582 non-citizens in Iowa
who were registered to vote. Some of those may have later become
naturalized citizens. So, in order to find out who is legal and who
isn’t, Secretary Schultz attempted to gain access to the Systematic
Alien Verification and Entitlements (SAVE) database. Those efforts have
been denied, apparently in violation of federal law.

“Although federal law explicitly grants states the right to access
the citizenship information contained in the SAVE database, Iowa has yet
to gain this access despite the fact that other states have
successfully done so,” Schultz said last week while testifying before
the Senate Judiciary Committee. “There have been multiple delays in
communications attributable to that agency.”

More at the link.

 American Thinker.

The state’s top election official says he’s reluctant to tighten access
to absentee ballots, even after a Massachusetts state lawmaker agreed
to plead guilty to casting invalid absentee ballots.  More here.

An acceptable level of fraud for the Secretary of State in Massachusetts. Not one idea, proposed solution, or original thought. 

Anticipating another partisan veto of voter ID legislation by Governor Nixon, there is a proposed voter ID constitutional amendment placed on the table. 

Representative Tony Dugger filed 2 Voter Id bills: HB 48 to change the statute to mandate photo ID and HRJ1 that would amend the Missouri Constitution to allow photo ID.

Link here.

In Tennessee, a former Hardeman County politician said justice is being served, after criminal charges have been dropped against her.

Brenda
Woods was a councilwoman in Bolivar before being charged with three
counts of procuring an illegal vote in a 2009 Bolivar election. Woods
served one day in jail and two years of probation.

The date for a new trial has not yet been set.

Following up with the vote fraud conviction involving 6 months jail time and 5 year ban on running for office, the state representative involved has resigned.