My editorial in the Pacific Daily news about Davis v. Guam, the Section 2 case challenging the racially discriminatory status election which does not allow whites or Asians to participate.  A portion:

“The plaintiff in the lawsuit is a United States citizen who was denied the right to register to vote in the status election solely because he is white. Even in the Jim Crow south of the 1950s, blacks were legally allowed to register to vote if they could run the nasty gauntlet of character exams, citizenship quizzes and registration business hours which seemed to change anytime a black person went to the registration office.

While very few black citizens successfully navigated these racially motivated barriers to the ballot box, some did. In Guam, however, unless you are a member of the select racial group, you aren’t even allowed to register to vote in the status election. This is simply wrong. . . .

Camouflaging the racial discrimination in the Chamorro-only plebiscite does not change the fact it is racial discrimination. All citizens must be allowed to participate, or the political status election cannot take place under the law. . . .

Equality under the United States Constitution is a bedrock principle found wherever the American flag flies. Guam is no different. . . .

Eliminating any racially discriminatory component to the status election is about more than legal violations. It is also about treating your neighbors how you wish to be treated. Every person has individual dignity and should be treated equally by the law. No person has the right to say their opinions are more important than someone else’s opinion just because of their skin color, or the skin color of a grandparent. The human dignity of each person not permitted to participate in the status election is violated by the racially restrictive law challenged by the lawsuit.

Fox News reports:  It took a few years, but prosecutors are rolling out charges in response to accusations of felons voting in one of the tightest elections in the state.

Looking back, it’s clear that the 2008 election was significant for many reasons.
“Actually, that was my first time voting,” said Dwayne Thomas, of St. Paul.

Now, Thomas is facing two felony charges. He was not supposed to vote on Nov. 4, 2008, because he was still on probation for a previous felony.

Three years later, just before the statute of limitations would run out, Washington County prosecutors sent him back to jail.
 
“I just think it’s not right that they are doing this,” said Thomas. “I don’t really understand how they feel like I knew about it. I didn’t know about it.”
 
Prosecutors say they don’t buy that claim.

“That’s the same defense I’ve heard on other people who violate their probation,” said Rick Hodsdon, assistant Washington County Attorney. So far he’s charged 25 felons with illegally voting in the 2008 election and another seven for voting in 2010.
 
“Like many other crimes, this may have been going on for some time, but no one was ever able to sit down and track it and match it,” he said.

Artur Davis unfiltered on Daily Call. A must see video. 

The former Congressman is not happy at the way his fellow Black Americans are taken advantage of by the fraudulent means of a corrupt few.  Davis essentially argues that the progressives, comfortable in their D.C. offices, look the other way in the name of racial politics and the illusion of racial progress. 

This similar point was directly at issue in the Bush voter protection case in Noxubee County, Mississippi.   The point of the litigation was not to disrupt the electoral majority of Blacks; instead, it was to protect individual citizens and voters – Black and white – from the illegal exercise of power of those corrupted and willing to engage in intimidation and fraud to retain that power.  

Courageous.   

…former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis told The Daily Caller that anti-fraud measures are needed to protect African-Americans from corrupt political bosses — many of them African-Americans themselves — who run Democratic Party machines in the South.
On Nov. 14, progressive Democratic Reps. John Conyers, Steny Hoyer, Jerrold Nadler, Keith Ellison, Steve Cohen, Marcia Fudge and Emanuel Clearer, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus — along with representatives from several advocacy groups — held a meeting to complain about what they say is the danger posed by laws that require voters to identify themselves.

Artur Davis is unimpressed.

“What I have seen in my state, in my region, is the the most aggressive practitioners of voter-fraud are local machines who are tied lock, stock and barrel to the special interests in their communities — the landfills, the casino operators — and they’re cooking the [ballot] boxes on election day, they’re manufacturing absentee ballots, they’re voting [in the names of] people named Donald Duck, because they want to control politics and thwart progress,” he told TheDC.

“People who are progressives have no business defending those individuals.”

Full story here.

From the Orlando Sentinel:  Republican lawmakers say voters who last year endorsed the anti-gerrymandering Fair Districts constitutional reforms may be in for a rude awakening when the first drafts of congressional and legislative maps are released in the coming weeks.

Something akin to: Meet the new maps, same as the old maps. To protect minority groups, the once-a-decade redrawing may not look that different from today —with jagged, oblong, or geometrically challenged districts zigzagging across the landscape, irrespective of municipal and county lines.

and more:  The NAACP maps show congressional, House and Senate districts that look a lot like today’s — except for two new congressional districts gained through reapportionment, one a Hispanic-access seat east and south of Orlando.  And though a few more congressional and legislative districts might vote Democratic, based on 2010 and 2006 election results, the maps stop well short of major reforms. Consider:

•The number of congressional districts with majority-black voting-age populations would remain at two: the South Florida districts now held by Democrats Alcee Hastings and Frederica Wilson.

•Democratic U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown’s district — the poster child for Fair Districts supporters — would still meander from Jacksonville down to Orange County. Its black voting-age population would drop from 49 percent to 48 percent.

•The three existing Hispanic-majority seats — all in South Florida — would be preserved. A new District 27, slicing from Orlando southwest to Winter Garden, would be 42 percent Hispanic.

•Despite substantial growth in the state’s Hispanic population, the maps would only increase Hispanic-majority seats in the Florida House from 13 to 14. Black-majority seats would rise from 10 to 12. The Senate map keeps two black-majority seats and three Hispanic ones.

Texas will likely argue that the three-judge federal panel failed to give the appropriate legal deference to the plan adopted by the Texas legislature.  With the dramatic changes found in the panel’s interim map, they will argue that there will be irreparable damage to the large number of incumbents that the court improperly combined into districts or drew out of existence based on their misunderstanding of the law to permit the drawing of opportunity, cross-over, or coalition minority districts.  Those influence districts (by another name) will certainly draw the negative scrutiny of the Supreme Court.  Because the plaintiff’s may argue that the interim maps would serve as the baseline for any subsequent retrogression analysis, these dramatic interim lines would cause irreparable impact on the final lines. The full article can be found here: 

Texas House Speaker Straus’ statement:

More on the Section 2 lawsuit I filed today along with the Center for Individual Rights at the PJ Media Rule of Law blog.

Pacific Daily News has more.

“Washington, DC – The Center for Individual Rights filed suit today against Guam, the Guam Election Commission and seven named Guam officials for discrimination on the basis of race and ethnic heritage under Guamanian laws that prohibit individuals who are not “native inhabitants of Guam” from voting on a plebiscite concerning Guam’s future relationship to the United States. “

Here is the filed complaint.

At the link, Sheriff deputies are accused of voting in the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff race despite living in neighboring counties.  The scandal is coming to a head.
 
The St. Bernard Parish Board of Election Supervisors is still awaiting an opinion from the state’s attorney general on whether to throw out any votes in Saturday’s election.

Sheriff candidate Wayne Landry said Tuesday that his campaign challenged 1,300 voters. That turned into 700 Thursday, and now the official count from the St. Bernard Registrar of Voters stands at 598.

“An overwhelming number of challenges made did not have evidence attached to the challenges,” said Election Supervisor Mike Bayham. “It’s for the 55 that did have evidence attached, that’s where the attorney general’s opinions will be relevant.”

Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said he wants to include opponents of voter identification as state officials work to implement Initiative 27, the state constitutional amendment passed last week calling for Mississippians to present photo identification before voting.  “My goals would not be to have people on the sidelines of the field waiting for someone to fumble the ball,” he said. “Help me implement it.” 

The response?  Opponents say they’re willing to talk, but they’re also planning to seek federal rejection of the amendment, which 62 percent of voters favored Nov. 8. “We expect to be involved in opposing the law,” said Nancy Abudu, a lawyer with the Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. Her arm of the ACLU has filed detailed letters questioning both the basis and the plans for implementing voter ID in South Carolina and Texas. The Justice Department is supposed to approve or reject both in December. Those are the first states that have sought preclearance for voter ID since President Barack Obama took office

No matter that Mississippi just passed a constitutional amendment (not merely a law), but it appears that the perceived grown-ups in Mississippi seem on the cusp of actually submitting the constitutional amendment to the Obama DOJ for a thumbs up or down. Expect a frustrating and humilitating experience. While the Supreme Court has upheld strict voter photo ID laws and the Clinton/Bush Departments have occasionally approved photo ID laws in other southern states such as Florida and Georgia, the Obama ideologues have yet to approve any voter ID law.  And they certainly do not seem willing to approve any similar voter ID laws in South Carolina or Texas.  Does Mississippi expect any better treatment? 

Memo to Mississippi Governor and Attorney General:  You are talking about an amendment to your state constitution and your state actually plans to submit the amendment to the rigged Section 5 process at the Justice Department.  Such an important addition to the state constitution should be reviewed by the federal courts who will certainly give Mississippi and the newly approved Voter ID amendment much greater deference than the Obama ideologues ever would.  It is one thing for a federal court to take such a dramatic step to stop a constitutional amendment, and do you really want some faceless bureaucrat telling Mississippi that this overwhelming-approved constitutional amendment doesn’t quite meet muster with their interpretation of discrimination.