I am scheduled to moderate a panel at CPAC next week in Washington D.C.  It should be an interesting one, and frankly, a fascinating one for legal historians.  Here is the schedule as it now stands:

Friday at 2:50 p.m.

Obama vs. The Constitution: How a Harvard Law Graduate President Is Shredding the Constitution – Marshall Ballroom

The most unfortunate effect of the hyperbole comparing “Jim Crow” to voter ID is that it diminishes the evil of Jim Crow.  Reasonable people simply do not believe that requiring a photo ID to vote compares with almost total disenfranchisement of the black minority and de jure segregation across the South.  Reasonable people do not find equivalency in laws prohibiting blacks from using the same water fountain as whites with a law which verifies identity at the polls.   But today’s Washington Post repeats the nonsense without question, with an outlandish side order of Ben Chavis:

 “What kind of governor, what kind of lieutenant governor, what kind of senator, what kind of delegate would lynch democracy?”said Benjamin Chavis, former director of the NAACP.

There was a time when the civil rights movement appealed to the moral core of reasonable Americans.  Those who have inherited the legacy now appeal to irrational fears and zealots.

I recently represented three presidential campaigns in federal court in Virginia in a case seeking to have Virginia’s ballot access law declared unconstitutional.  The judge ruled that the law was unconstitutional, but ruled against the plaintiffs on laches.  I don’t normally listen to NPR, but many of my friends do and kept telling me about this story that mentions my response to Judge Gibney.  It involves a bright moment in the hearing when the court asked about activist judges and whether ruling in the plaintiff’s favor would lead to being hauled before Congress.

Audio here.

A powerful Republican legislative leader has proposed that Arizona hold a May special election for voters to consider alternative redistricting maps to use in the 2012 elections instead of ones drawn by the Independent Redistricting Commission.

House Speaker Andy Tobin’s proposed legislation introduced late Thursday would put alternative congressional and legislative maps on a May 15 special election ballot.
One of the five measures would ask voters in November to amend the Arizona Constitution to revamp the makeup of the independent redistricting commission.

“The voters need a clear choice,” Tobin said. “The IRC process was stolen from the voters and I’m giving it back to the voters.”

Full story at the link.

A “culture of corruption” exists in southern West Virginia, GOP Chairman Mike Stuart said.

“Lincoln County’s election system is a cesspool of corruption. Today’s admissions are only a scratch on the surface,” Stuart said. “How about the stuff these criminals did for which we are not yet aware? What about the Senate race in 2010 or the election for governor last year?”

Bowman admitted to falsifying more than 100 absentee ballot applications for voters who did not have a legal basis to vote absentee, U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin said.

Full story here.

Nebraska State Sen.Charlie Janssen, 15th Legislative District, Fremont, writes a letter to the Editor of the JournalStar.com

The letter ends:  LB239 protects our right to vote.  Thirty-one states have passed voter ID laws, and the U.S. Supreme Court has expressly ruled them constitutional.  It is time for  Nebraska to strengthen our election process as well.

Full story at the Examiner.com

John Tully has voted in every Lincoln County election for the past 53 years.

Tully, 73, said county elections have been a corrupt system for as long as he can remember. He’s hopeful now that all future votes will count after federal prosecutors investigated and charged two county officials in connection to rigging the county’s 2010 Democratic primary election.

Lincoln County Sheriff Jerry Bowman and County Clerk Donald Whitten agreed to plead guilty Monday to charges they illegally manipulated absentee votes.

Tully said at this point in the county’s political history, no one should be surprised by corruption.

The most recent case of election fraud was discovered during an investigation in 2005, and two former Lincoln County officials, circuit clerk Greg Stowers and assessor Jerry Allen Weaver, were each sentenced to a year in prison for buying votes.

Full story here.

Yesterday Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez told NASS that the Voting Section was enormously busy with “roughly” 100 investigations.  Rough indeed (more on how rough later).  Earlier at NASS AAG Perez indicated that the DOJ Voting Section needs more attorneys.  One might assume that will be a nonstarter with Congressman Frank Wolf who oversees the DOJ budget.

Consider today’s Morning Report, the document which indicates who is and who is not in the office.  Today’s morning report has “roughly” twenty attorneys leaving the office to go watch as spectators arguments in a Texas redistricting case.  Note that these attorneys are not working on the case being argued.  They are there for the show.  In addition to these 20 named individuals who are spectators at the show, other attorneys are listed as “late,” which means they too are likely to be at the show across town, though they didn’t come into work first.  These include managers.

This is just one small example how the stories we hear from the political appointees about a section abuzz with activity (those “roughly” 100 investigations in particular) don’t square with reality. The reality is that the Obama run Voting Section has an enforcement record that is a shadow of that accomplished during the Bush administration.  This wouldn’t be a concern if the 2008 political campaign wasn’t characterized by complaints about a lack of DOJ voting enforcement.  Naturally, the loud critics from 2008 have fallen silent, as I detail in my book Injustice.  Not a [public] peep from Wade Henderson.  [But plenty of griping within the family, you can be sure].

We’ll learn more about how rough (and hardly ready) some of these 100 “investigations” are shortly.  Well learn the roughly 100 investigations are their own sort of show, a show for an election year.

 Pleas.  More at Fox News.

“Lincoln County Sheriff Jerry Bowman and Clerk Donald Whitten will plead guilty to charges that they attempted to flood the 2010 Democratic primary with fraudulent absentee ballots, becoming the latest southern West Virginia officeholders ensnared by an investigation into election fraud, federal and state officials announced Monday.”

Someone alert Tova Wang.