With 60,000 members, the Reserves Officers Association (ROA) is the largest military reserve officers association in the country and the Service Members Law Center was established by ROA as the legal arm related to military voting and employment issues.  In a recent law review article focusing on the military voting failures in Wisconsin, the Service Members Law Center has come to the same conclusion that the Military Voter Protection Project, commentators and newspapers have recognized for some time:  DOJ is not adequately investigating or enforcing the MOVE Act and the efforts of private citizens and even students are necessary to fill the enforcement gap.

In recognition that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is simply not up to the job, the Service Members Law Center specifically called on citizens to play the role of neighborhood watchmen to investigate and call local election officials to determine whether overseas military ballots have been timely mailed by applicable federal deadlines under the MOVE Act. 

However, there is much more to this story.  It is intriguing why the powerhouse ROA would recommend that “citizen investigators” directly contact the Director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) when that Department of Defense agency has no actual enforcement authority.  Note the total absence of referral requests to the Department of Justice.   

So we asked the question why?  Our sources (close to DOJ and FVAP) indicate that the two federal agencies may not be playing well with each other.  While we are aware of simmering tensions between the two agencies over the last few years, their apparent feud has grown to the point where DOJ has started to exclude FVAP entirely from the enforcement process.  For example, in the most recent military voting case in Wisconsin, our sources stated that DOJ did not consult at all with FVAP about the case or the remedies settlement. 

This apparent conflict between FVAP and DOJ does not bode well for military voters in 2012.  Rather than working together to ensure that military voters are able to vote, these two federal agencies appear to be locked in an internal power struggle over the enforcement of these cases.  If the ROA is now involved in that conflict, it very well may escalate in the coming months.  Stay tuned.

A proposed new map for the Mississippi Senate includes more majority-black districts and fewer split precincts statewide.

…The map includes 15 majority-black Senate districts. When districts were drawn by federal judges a decade ago, there were 12 majority-black districts. With some population changes, there were 13 majority-black districts by the time this round of redistricting started.

Mississippi has a 37 percent black population and a 35 percent black voting-age population. Under the proposed map, 29 percent of the Senate districts would be majority-black.

Sen. Derrick Simmons, a black Democrat from Greenville, said he believes the Delta gets a fair shake.

link here.

Desperate columns by liberal commentators in a concerted coordinated effort to resist election integrity measures.  Content:  Democrats are good and Republicans are bad evil. Now, add horror shock and zombie movie headlines to Jim Crow, poll taxes, literacy tests and segregation.  The only limit to the rhetoric on the issue is their imagination. 
With the hockey mask, we definitely want to see some photo ID.

There is this laugher story in the Nation about the True the Vote Summit.  The tone is frustrated and the content is inaccurate.  I won’t waste space detailing all the inaccuracies by Bretin Mock.  One is enough.  Mock writes:

Topping it off, former Congressman Artur Davis (yes, that one) had some kind words for the protesters outside the conference. But if there were actual protesters they must have been invisible. The only people gathered outside the conference hotel were a bunch of African-American motorcycle clubs on their bikes, a few of whom told me they had no idea who True the Vote was or that they had a conference going on.

Mock claims the protesters were invisible.  Mock apparently doesn’t read Election Law Center or PJ Media.  Bryan Preston at PJ Media has an Invisible Protester Detecting Camera, because he took these photos.  (Don’t expect Rick Hasen’s election blog to update his post of Mock’s story pointing out his inaccuracies.  Inaccuracies aren’t important in some places.)

The invisible protesters:

A WSPA video report shows the President of the Spartanburg, South Carolina NAACP going door-to-door “making sure voters know about the new Voter ID law, offering free rides to get one, even finding sponsors for people who can’t afford it.  The voter response?  ‘We haven’t seemed to have nobody interested in going out to get a picture ID.’”

The mayor of Austin and a city employee are charged with violating Indiana Election Law by unlawfully taking custody of absentee voter ballots, and are each charged with two counts of vote fraud and conspiracy.  Did four people just get struck by lightning?

 National Review: “As long as the Justice Department turns a blind eye to unethical and biased behavior within its ranks, citizens can have no expectation of just treatment. Any state that submits its voter-ID law for administrative review by the Voting Section — instead of going straight to federal court in Washington — is making a very foolish mistake.”

 Redistricting.

“That’s because minorities, be they black, Hispanic or Asian, tend live in areas where voter fraud is more prevalent, ]John] Fund explained. Liberals who invoke false allegations of racism in an effort to block ID laws are actually doing minorities a great disservice, Fund argued.

‘I believe the biggest victims of voter fraud today are minorities,’ he said. ‘They obviously support it [voter ID], they think voter fraud is a more serious problem than anyone…Their leadership has failed them by yelling racism in a crowded little theater, and by dividing us rather than uniting us. Their entire edifice is built on fraud and misrepresentation.’