The Wall Street Journal explained the punt by the Supreme Court:

It
was a good day for Democrats and procrastinators yesterday as the
Supreme Court refused to hear Ohio’s appeal of its early voting law. But
while the Obama campaign got out the noisemakers, the decision tells us
less about the likely outcome in swing-state Ohio than it does about
Democrats’ strategy to intimidate the Justices on voting-law cases. Look
out, Chief Justice Roberts.

Passed by the Ohio legislature
in the spring, the Buckeye State’s law would have ended early voting in
the state three days before the November election day. The provision
was intended to give the state time to take account of the early votes
to prevent the possibility of early voters going to the ballot box for a
second time. To the chagrin of the Obama campaign, the law exempted
military and overseas voters who were allowed to continue their early
voting right up to Election Day.

Earlier this month, the
Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said that the final three days of voting
could not be extended as a special exception for military voters.
Democrats spent most of Monday urging the court not to hear the appeal
of the case, calling the decision a test of the Justices’ politics and
the biggest deal since Bush v. Gore. Democracy Program Director Wendy
Weiser of the liberal Brennan Center for Justice told USA Today that
“There’s a risk to the court’s reputation in getting involved in these
cases.”

Link

In his latest letter to DOD, Senator Cornyn slams the Pentagon on its failure to facilitate the express mail guarantee in the MOVE Act for overseas military voters.  He says DOD is shirking overseas ballot obligations.  Cornyn cites evidence that the DOD’s program for express mail overseas had a 1 in 10 failure rate in the previous elecion and there has been no indication of improvement of those failures.  He also accuses the Pentagon attempts to place the responsibility on the service members to find and use the express mail sticker instead of military postal and DOD.  Cornyn is justifiably upset considering the rate of disenfranchisement for the failure to return on time will exponentially increase in a Presidential election year.  One must ask the question how long would private mail carriers survive with only a 9 out of 10 guarantee to deliver ballots on time.
 

Latest at PJ Media.

The Air Force Times reports that the Secretary of Defense is demanding proof that all the installation voting assistance offices (IVAOs) are open for business. 

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has directed military officials to provide him a report by Oct. 19 verifying that each of the 221 installation voting assistance offices is appropriately staffed to meet the needs of troops.  He gave officials three days to get it done; the memo was issued Oct. 16 to the service secretaries, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, and chiefs of the combatant commands.  “We must do all we can to ensure that service members know the steps necessary to vote, particularly those service members deployed or based away from home. This issue must be addressed immediately,” he wrote.

Interesting, considering that the acting head of the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) Pam Mitchell, in her statement to Congress, challenged the findings of the Inspector General Report that over half of the installation voting assistance offices could not be contacted and the MOVE Act requirement had not been fully implemented.  In fact, she told the Congress and the public that “voting services had never been better.”

Apparently, the Secretary of Defense is not as confident as FVAP that all the installation voting assistance offices are working as designed and says he is going to get to the bottom of it.

Stars and Stripes headline.  Nearly three years after Congress passed a law to guarantee military and overseas voters receive their absentee ballots at least 45 days before a federal election, several states are still failing to comply with the law.

Now will DOJ do anything about these double voting federal crimes.  The Miami Herald has the story of the True the Vote project to uncover double voters and the referal to state law enforcement authorities for possible prosecution of the voters.

I appeared on a panel with Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote Hans von Spakovsky and Rep. Daryl Metcalfe from Pennsylvania.  Unfortunately I had a unbeatable cough I caught passing through Asia a few weeks earlier, so apologies. 

As we predicted yesterday here, Paul Thurmond is staying on the ballot for SC Senate and Chris Coates is now 2-0 this months against Democrats in Voting Rights Act litigation.  The United States District Court rejected the lawsuit brought by SC Democrats under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

 Red State