NewChannel3: Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann wants everybody to have an easy go of it, so he’s even offering free rides to local clerk’s offices across the state for people who call the Voter ID Hotline. ”We set this up through the Mississippi Department of Transportation and they have a network already and it includes about 500 vehicles spread across the state.”
Author Archives: J Christian Adams
Lawmaker: “VRA update creates different classes of states”
Many Southern GOP lawmakers lauded the Supreme Court for removing the stigma that their states were hotbeds of racial intolerance and recognizing that these states had over the years changed their ways. These same members are less than enthusiastic about Congress putting them back in the preclearance penalty box.
One such lawmaker is Rep. Gregg Harper, R-Miss., who participated in the past week’s pilgrimage. He described the chill he felt standing in the Jackson, Miss., driveway where Medgar Evers, a black civil rights activist, was murdered in 1963 with his wife and children just inside their home — but he said that the experience didn’t change his opposition to a VRA update that would single out states like his.
“You can’t have something that creates different classes of states. And if you’re gonna do something, it’s gotta apply to everybody,” Harper said. “Why wouldn’t it be based on future events instead of pulling people back in based on something that has happened in the past? What’s your standard gonna be?”
More at Roll Call.
Letter to Editor: “Like gun rights, voter ID makes sense”
“What motivates voter ID opposition”
With Pennsylvania’s voter ID law now 2 years old, no one has a credible argument for having not obtained appropriate identification, a necessary first step on the path to ballot integrity.
More of Op-Ed at The Mercury
“New Voter ID law for North Dakotans”
Link.
Virginia: “Portsmouth felon who voted in ’08 could go to jail”
A Portsmouth woman, convicted of a felony 26 years ago, slipped through the cracks and was allowed to vote. Now, she’s won the attention of the city’s top prosecutor.
Link to story.
GOP wins key special election in Florida Congressional District 13
“Walker to call special session if courts rule against voter ID”
Apparently the Wisconsin Governor has a plan if the Court requires a tweak to the law.
Gov. Scott Walker said Tuesday he would call a special legislative session if courts this spring do not uphold the state’s voter ID law, which has been blocked since soon after it was enacted.
Link to story.
Mummified Corpse Votes
Affair Adegbile in Acedemia
I normally disregard the views of academics largely because they don’t have enough eyeballs reading them or ears hearing them to make any difference. But Michael Krauss at GMU has some insights into the failed Debo Adegbile nomination worth reading:
Reflection #2: Zealous, No-Holds-Barred Advocacy is Never Required By, and Is Sometimes Prohibited By, Legal Ethics. Not only need a lawyer not take any given prospective client’s case, but when she does take a case she is neither bound to nor allowed to employ every conceivable means to succeed. Lawyers may of course not break the law (bribe jurors, etc.), but their ethical limits do not stop there. The ethical lawyer should not offer arguments that inflame racial passions, for instance, even if those arguments are likely to produce the desired result. . . .
Adegbile’s team’s political militancy is quite properly “owned” by Adegbile when it comes time to consider him for the privilege of a high governmental office.