In a wide-ranging critique, commissioner Scott Freeman called his service on the panel “largely a waste of time,” complaining the process was gamed from the beginning to favor Democrats.

He had suggested the commission bypass the Obama-run Justice Department: “Are they going to give Arizona a pass because Arizona has the Democratic dream map?”

Commissioner Linda McNulty, a Democrat, said the record will show the new maps were fairly drawn and called the accusations regrettable.

“I think those are wholly incorrect, wholly inappropriate,” McNulty said.  Fellow Democrat José Herrera and Chairwoman Colleen Mathis, a registered independent, joined McNulty in approving the maps.

GOP commissioner Richard Stertz joined Freeman in rejecting the plans.  Voters in 2000 created the independent commission.

Rancor has dogged the commission almost from the start. It culminated in November, when Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, removed Mathis, saying the chairwoman was guilty of substantial neglect of duty and gross misconduct. The Arizona Supreme Court overturned Brewer’s decision and reinstated Mathis.

Full story at the Arizona Republic.

When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law in 1964, he lamented that Democrats might have lost the South for 30 years. In a sense he was wrong — the loss of the South was a slow-motion process that took more than 30 years to really get into the bones of the body politic. But Tennessee may now be seeing the final act of that transformation with the completion of the congressional and legislative redistricting processes. With this year’s process, Republicans can now fully say that they own the state.

Full story at the link

Amazing.

Republicans call for photo ID legislation and Democrats call for prosecution of activists who exposed the vulnerabilities of the system.

The state Republican Party Monday formally stated “strong opposition” to what it labeled as efforts by Gov. John Lynch and Democratic state lawmakers to defeat legislation requiring voters to present photo identification in order to register and vote.

State Democratic Chairman Raymond Buckley countered a resolution passed by the New Hampshire GOP executive committee by calling for bipartisan support for prosecuting those who used the names of dead Granite Staters to receive ballots during the presidential primary.

Full story at the link.

Politico here.

 Eric Holder v. MLK.

Link here.

It seems like a good idea. Why not move elections to the weekend in an effort to boost voter turnout?  But the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has found challenges to the proposal. It could be difficult to find workers to staff polling places on weekends and locate replacements for some of the usual voting sites like churches.

“Most election officials we interviewed expect great difficulty and costs associated with a weekend election,” the GAO said.

The report, ordered by a House committee, was drafted in response to the Weekend Voting Act, a bill by Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.). Israel has proposed holding federal elections on Saturday and Sunday. Weekend voting, he has contended, would increase voter turnout and reduce lines at the polls by eliminating the peak voting times that occur on a Tuesday.

Full story at the LA Times:

An editorial in The Post and Courier:  The credibility of the electoral process is of critical importance. Voting is a treasured right of citizens. They deserve assurance that their votes will be fairly and accurately counted, and that only registered — and living — voters are allowed to cast ballots.

It sounds like Georgia Democrats have the real problem with disenfranchising voters, using voter ID as a weapon rather than legitimate ballot integrity.  

State Rep. Stacey Evans (D-Smyrna) and state Sen. Doug Stoner (D-Smyrna) spoke to party members on Saturday morning at the Cobb Democrats’ monthly breakfast at Piccadilly Cafeteria on Cobb Parkway in Marietta. How to work through the state’s voter identification law, which some Democrats feel unjustly disenfranchises voters, was a topic of concern.

… Stoner, who faces a tough re-election bid after his 6th district was redrawn to include conservative-leaning areas, said his party is good at getting people to vote early, but must also do a better job at informing individuals about voting by mail, which happens to not require voter ID.

“The biggest fraud by the way in the state of Georgia is not at the polls; it’s vote by mail,” Stoner said.

“The Republicans do an excellent job at getting people to vote by mail. So they made sure their folks didn’t have to show ID. But we do a better job at getting people to the polls, so guess where they put the omnibus. So let’s take advantage of that. Let’s use it against them.”

Evans, who beat Republican candidate Scott McDearman in 2010 for the seat vacated by former Democratic state Rep. Rob Teilhet, agreed. Although she won 68 percent of the total vote, she said she lost the mail-in votes to her opponent by two to one. 

full story at the link