“The Justice Department announced that it has reached an agreement with Wythe County, Va ., that will allow for the county and its three political subdivisions, the Wythe County School District and the towns of Rural Retreat and Wytheville, to bail out from their status as “covered jurisdictions” under the special provisions of the Voting Rights Act, and thereby exempt these jurisdictions from the preclearance requirements of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.”  

 The U.S. Department of Justice typically makes sure voting laws comply with the Voting Rights Act. President Barack Obama’s administration has already shot down voter ID laws in South Carolina and Texas.  The scuttlebutt around the Capitol is that Mississippi officials may attempt to bypass the DOJ and let the federal courts decide on Mississippi’s law.  In its recent budget, lawmakers appropriated $495,000 to Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann’s office for voter ID litigation.  link

Mississippi has prudently anticipated a half million dollar down payment for the upcoming administrative and court battle with DOJ and at least a year delay of enactment of the state constitutional amendment and implementing law, all in an effort to gain preclearance from DOJ under Section 5 of the VRA.  South Carolina similarly anticipates the cost of the entire litigation will be over one million dollars as it attempts to enact its photo ID law.  The lengthy and contentious litigation with Texas has to be reaching a million dollars.  And don’t forget the dozens of intervenors that like to insert themselves into the process and drown the states in paper and discovery requests. 

Rest assured, DOJ will treat this voter ID litigation like death penalty litigation – no expense or litigation tactic is off the table.  And that is after the Supreme Court and the 9th Circuit has ruled on photo ID, upholding the law finding no burden on minorities.  DOJ has provided no deferrence given to judicial direction.  Now compare that burdensome road to Tennessee, Kansas and Rhode Island who faced no similar delay or expensive litigation battle with the Department of Justice.   

Before and after the passage of Senate Bill 14 by the Texas Legislature in 2011, the new voter identification legislation was labeled discriminatory by its opponents (Democrats) but a necessary tool to prevent fraud by its supporters (Republicans). Now, nearly a year since Gov. Rick Perry put his signature on the “voter I.D.” law, it is still pitching and rolling in waves of court action. 

full story here.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed legislation today requiring voters to show photo identification at all elections. The constitutional amendment was approved by 62% of Mississippi voters last year.  Much like in Tennessee, those without the proper ID can  apply for a free voter ID.

“This legislation is about protecting the integrity of Mississippi’s elections,” Bryant said. “This legislation is a direct result of the majority of Mississippians expressing their desire for a constitutional voter ID requirement in the state. We want everyone to participate in the election process, and we want that process to be fair and secure.”

Link

The dusty border town minutes from El Paso, Texas, has been called “a city in chaos” by the state auditor, because a slew of public officials are facing felony charges that they ran City Hall like a personal piggy bank, tried to steal an election in order to remain in power and ruled the 14,000 residents through intimidation and fear.  link

Palm Beach Post reports that State highway officials soon will begin vetting a list of 180,000 potential non-citizens who are registered to vote against a U.S. Department of Homeland Security database. This could resolve a sticking point between the state Division of Elections and elections supervisors for the state’s 67 counties over the state’s demand that supervisors start removing some of the names from their voter rolls.

expect tyranny from the state deflating this issue…..and quick.   Voter ID is just unacceptable.

link

The plaintiff in a Section 2 Voting Rights Act case alleging intentional racial discrimination, as well as racially discriminatory results, makes a speech at a rotary club to talk about the lawsuit.  The complaint alleges the plaintiff was not allowed to register to vote because of his race, and that the law preventing him from registering to vote had a specific racially discriminatory intent to prevent his race from voting.  More here.

The plaintiff “was asked whether he has received any threats since filing the complaint. . . .
‘However, over the years, I’ve been invited to leave many, many, many times, and I’ve been called a lot of things too,’ he quipped.”

 Link to CFIF story.

“. . . And now Department officials can’t seem to make up their minds as to whether the official’s prejudiced comment was a purely private matter and thus beyond their purview or, on the contrary, defensible in its substance because of an (isolated) incident at a college basketball game. . . .

Despite the administration’s arguments to the contrary, the court insisted that voter identification is a reasonable means of ensuring “the state’s legitimate interest in assessing the eligibility and qualifications of voters.”

Indeed, most Americans would find it odd, and disturbing, to know that the Justice Department seems to reject that interest entirely. . . .

This is somewhat akin to what happened when the Justice Department overruled the black majority of Kinston, N.C., by overriding a referendum through which that black majority hoped to enact a nonpartisan system for local elections. The Obamites at Justice effectively told those black citizens that they didn’t know their own interests, which could not be well served unless they could identify and vote for candidates publicly identified as Democrats. After two years of this nonsense, the Justice Department backed down in February – tacitly being forced to accept what it has yet to understand in the EEOC case, which is that heavy-handed attempts to help black citizens can actually harm those citizens, while so grossly violating established legal principles that courts are sure eventually to overturn the Obamites’ positions.”

And the Supreme Court may smack the Montana Supreme Court down as well. 

Conservative
groups won another victory Wednesday in an ongoing challenge to Montana
campaign finance laws when a federal judge agreed that several
regulations unconstitutionally restrict free speech.

U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell mostly sided with Virginia-based
American Tradition Partnership in its federal case attacking several
aspects of state campaign finance laws. The judge determined that state
laws requiring attack ads to disclose the targeted candidates’ voting
record and ban knowingly false statements in such ads are
unconstitutionally vague.

The ruling largely matched a preliminary
determination made earlier by the judge. But Lovell went a step further
and also decided that Montana cannot ban corporations from making
contributions to political committees that make independent
expenditures.

full story