The story out of Mississippi here and here is the voter ID constitutional amendment that Mississippi will soon send to the feds for approval – the evidence seems to point to Mississippi going to the Voting Section of the Department of Justice for review.  *Sigh* 

Sid Salter correctly believes that the fight will be long and expensive, even more so if the state continues on this course.  Because of the importance of the amendment, Mississippi officials have a duty to play the voter ID issue smart by allowing federal court review.  Instead, if the comments below are a true representation of their approval strategy, Mississippi is set to run off the cliff like South Carolina by allowing DOJ to delay and obstruct implementation of the law. 

Mississippi officials are confident the state’s new voter ID constitutional amendment will pass muster despite the Justice Department’s rejection of a similar South Carolina law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. “The Supreme Court has ruled that voter ID is constitutional and we believe that Mississippi’s plan for implementing voter ID will be constitutional as well,” Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, said Saturday.

If Mississippi wants to overcome the political opposition of the Holder DOJ, the state needs to be patient and smart by going to Court and request expedited review if they have any hope of having the law in place prior to the 2012 election.  Even then, it may be too late because DOJ will try to stall the litigation until after the election cycle. 

Mississippi should rationally make its case and allow the DOJ to defend why they are contradicting the Supreme Court by requiring evidence of voter impersonation fraud, and finding speculative burdens on voters that the highest Court dismissed as non-existent and non-discriminatory. 

Let DOJ defend why they continue to make the leap in logic that simply because some registered voters might need to obtain a free ID, then these voters will not be able to cast a ballot.  Many courts have already thrown out that leap of logic as voter ID opponents fruitlessly look for plaintiffs.  DOJ will not be able to hide behind their internal secret memorandums and will have to explain why the increase in voter turnout in other photo ID states was simply ignored.   

 BigGov has more on the statistical foundation for the South Carolina Voter ID objection. This will not be good news for Section 5 when the Supreme Court gets a peek inside what the basis of this Section 5 objection was.  From Lee Stranahan:

What if the numbers of voters with no DMV-issued ID was REALLY small? Let’s say we discovered that the number of blacks with no DMV-issued ID was 1.4% but the number of whites with no DMV-issued ID was 1%. Now we’re down to a .4% difference and only dealing with a very small slice of the population. It doesn’t matter, thanks to the miracle of Holder Math!

 Marianas Variety op ed.

Details to follow, but I speak January 12, at 12 noon in Tampa Florida before the Federalist Society Lawyers Chapter.  The event will be at the Tampa Club in the Bank of America Plaza.  100 East Kennedy Blvd. 



I’ll post links as soon as I can find them. 

I am one of the speakers at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Charleston, South Carolina the week of the South Carolina primary.  I will have books at the event also.  More details to follow.

You can debate the issue until the proverbial “cows come home.” But, as of this New Year in the state of Tennessee possessing voter photo I-Ds for elections is the law of the land in the Volunteer State.

But, is what is at stake a fair and equal method of insuring election integrity or an opening partisan ploy aimed at securing political power through selected voter disenfranchisement?

“There was a recent poll that in Tennessee 86 percent of Tennesseans agreed with photo ID…majorities in both the white and black communities,” said City Councilman Kemp Conrad

MyFoxMemphis at the link

 Link here.

Here is the brief in opposition to defendant’s motion to dismiss filed by Arnold Davis in Davis v. Guam.

Happy New Year to everyone.  2011 was a great year.  ElectionLawCenter.com saw record traffic.  It also saw the addition of Tabella as a regular poster, which takes much the burden off me to post the latest news.  Tabella has been particularly vigilant on redistricting issues and sometimes has even better sourcing than I do on various other matters.  See today’s post from Tabella below about the Crawford amicus brief.  News to me.

We’re always happy when we receive the tips we do.  We appreciate the thousands of readers, including the regular level of traffic we get from USDOJ.gov servers (very regular and very frequent) – sometimes even at night and on weekends!

2012 will be busier yet.  We’ve found the readership to be comprised of the predictable sort of election professionals and state officials.  But we also appreciate the many readers who come for election and voting news that they don’t usually find in places like the New York Times, McClatchy Papers or elsewhere in the media.  You are the majority readership of the site – you are the big numbers, and that’s why this website exists – so you can learn about the election process, unfiltered.  Whether it is the very real problem of voter fraud, or the DOJ “puffer fish” on SC Voter ID, this website is intended to take some of the mystery out of the mechanics of the democratic process.  Thank you all and Happy New Year.

Oh, and if you might be interested in a contributing to the site, nomme de guerres are avaiable.

                – Christian Adams

I will be on nationwide with Monica Crowley of Fox News on her radio show Wednesday afternoon.  Details shortly.