Author Archives: ELECTIONLAWCENTER.COM

“Eric Holder’s Keystone State Voter ID Shakedown”

PJ Media Rule of Law:

“This letter was a highly irregular and purely partisan exercise designed to stoke Obama’s electoral base in Philadelphia. It is also designed to placate the civil rights industry which has quietly simmered about the lack of enforcement of the Voting Rights Act to help minorities over the last three years. (See, Wade Henderson – Cat Got Your Tongue?) . . .

Note that Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez signed the letter. Normally, when I worked on cases involving 42 U.S.C. 1974, either the trial lawyer or Section Chief would sign the letter. It may be that Chris Herren, the current Section Chief, would do neither what the career partisans below him wanted, nor what the political gangsters above him wanted. Internal dissent may be afoot, and with good reason.”

Top Election Integrity Panel at Heritage Thursday

The Heritage Foundation is hosting an event in conjunction with True the Vote on Thursday July 26 bringing together some of the nation’s top advocates for election integrity.  Speakers:


Catherine Engelbrecht
Founder, True the Vote


The Honorable Artur Davis
Former Congressman, 7th District of Alabama


The Honorable Alan Wilson
Attorney General, State of South Carolina


The Honorable Scott Gessler
Secretary of State, State of Colorado


The Honorable Kris Kobach
Secretary of State, State of Kansas

Registration is here.

DOJ and PA Voter ID

 CNN on DOJ demanding information from Pennsylvania in a 1974 letter.  It goes without saying that the demand letter goes well beyond what DOJ is entitled to have under the law.  The engineer of the letter is Daniel Freeman.   It is hard to imagine what a J-Memo would look like if Pennsylvania simply did not provide anything to DOJ, particularly the requests not covered by 1974.

Norm Ornstein Calls for “New Voting Rights Act” in Error-Filled Article

Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute calls for a “new” Voting Rights Act in a Roll Call column infested with errors.  A sample:

Ornstein flat-out lies when he writes: “Florida’s first efforts here resulted in widespread embarrassment, with longtime voters — and native-born citizens — notified they were being barred from the rolls.”

Poppycock.  Florida did no such thing.  Florida took no such action.  No letter from Florida to a potential non-citizen said the voter was being “barred from the rolls.”  Norm Ornstein is not being truthful, period.

Then Ornstein gets his facts wrong about Texas. “The Texas law has been challenged by the Justice Department as discriminatory, and a federal court heard the case earlier this month.” 

Wrong again.  The DOJ did not challenge the law in federal court.  DOJ played defense.  Texas brought the challenge in federal court as a plaintiff to get the law approved.  Ornstein’s error ascribes an offensive attack by DOJ that never occurred.

Then this AEI “scholar” gazes clumsily into his crystal ball:

“Do not be surprised if the court, on a 5-4 vote, demolishes preclearance once and for all, in the heat of the presidential campaign.”

Actually, be surprised, be very surprised if that happens.  The Supreme Court hasn’t even granted cert yet in any Section 5 challenge.  That would be quite an accelerated schedule, to grant cert, brief the case, conduct oral arguments and decide the case all in the next 100 days. 


Finally, without a lick of evidence, Ornstein says Voter ID laws represent “a wave of new laws in states designed to curb and suppress voting.”  Really?  I’ve participated in multiple discussions involving Voter ID legislation in multiple states and the design of the laws is simply to ensure that the person voting is who they say they are.  There is never any discussion on this nonsensical conspiracy theory unbecoming of someone working at the American Enterprise Institute. 

What does Ornstein suggest as a cure?  Of course a big federal power grab – creating a national ballot and changing election day to the weekend.

Naturally, none of these errors in this Roll Call piece will prevent it from being called thoughtful and interesting in some circles.  Roll Call’s editor John Bicknell was negligent in publishing this slop.  It also demonstrates the deception endemic to opposition to voter ID laws.

Two challenges to “outdated” preclearance sections of Voting Rights Act


 


Will SCOTUS hear Kinston, NC and Shelby County, AL cases, or will Constitutional issues “continue to fester”?

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court received two petitions to hear cases challenging the Constitutionality of certain sections of the Voting Rights Act and is expected to add at least one to its docket for next term. 


 


The Shelby County case challenges Section 5 as it existed before the 2006 reauthorization, as well as Section 4(b), which lays out the formula for coverage under Section 5.   The Kinston case challenges Section 5 as it now reads.  Both petitioners note that Congress has taken no action in the three years since Northwest Austin v. Holder in response to the Constitutional concerns expressed by the Court in that 2009 opinion.  Thus, Shelby County argues, a new assessment is necessary to judge “whether Section 5′s current needs justify its current burdens.” 


 


SCOTUSBlog summarizes:


 


When Congress in 2006 renewed Section 5 for an additional 25 years, it imposed added requirements on state and local governments covered by that section.  The challengers in the Kinston litigation argued that those new burdens prove even more convincingly that Section 5 is now unconstitutionally broad as it applies to the state and local governments that remain the only ones targeted by Section 5. 


. . .


“This Court should grant review of both cases,” the North Carolina petition argued, in order “to facilitate a timely and definitive resolution of the exceptionally important question whether the 2006 version of Section 5 is facially valid.” 


 


In its petition, Shelby County said that Section 5 interferes directly in “the basic operation of state and local government,” which has the practical effect of barring “the implementation of more than 100,000 electoral changes unless and until they are pre-cleared by federal officials in Washington, D.C.”


. . .


Shelby County did not file its lawsuit after having a voting change vetoed by the Justice Department or by a federal court.  Instead, it filed a lawsuit seeking to strike down the 2006 renewal as written, so that, if this challenge succeeded, the law could not be validly applied in any factual situation.


 


 


Edward Blum, director of the Project on Fair Representation, tells AL.com,  “This case presents the Supreme Court with an opportunity to strike down an outdated and unnecessary portion of the Voting Rights Act that punishes some states for voting transgressions that are long gone.”