If you are within an 83 mile radius of Houston, you must see Eric Eversole live at King Street Patriots next Monday night November 7.  He will talk about military voting, and perhaps what a great job Senator John Cornyn is doing holding DOJ’s feet to the fire on military voting.  The flyer with details of the event is here.

 Here.

Tabella has this important post at ElectionLawCenter.com.  Tabella is referring to illustrative plans that the DOJ Voting Section is using internally to judge against submitted plans.  In essence, they are Max-Black plans of the sort roundly criticized by the Supreme Court and others, and often violate Shaw v. Reno.  These secret illustrative plans should be available in discovery by any plaintiff seeking federal court approval of plans, or more importantly, challenging Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

These secret illustrative plans are not the only strange tactic being employed by the Voting Section that represent a dramatic departure from the behavior of prior administrations.  A variety of unconventional investigative techniques in voting cases are also being employed.  More on that another day.

Back to the secret illustrative plans.  Tabella points out that it is high hypocrisy for the DOJ to assert that Texas inappropriately emphasized race when so many existing redistricting submissions are currently being compared to these secret internal illustrative plans that do precisely the same thing.  Were these bug-splat plans to see the light of day, the plaintiffs in the Shelby County, Kinston, Arizona, Georgia and Florida challenges to Section 5 would have a wild ride.  In any red-file
redistricting, the demographer staff at the Voting Section will be told to draw a plan with as many minority districts as possible.  These secret internal Max-Black plans become the aspirational standard for submissions.

Any submitting authority will recognize the signs of the secret plans.  DOJ staff have been instructed that they cannot ever give the illustrative plans to the submitting authority.  They, instead, are to suggest moving a district line in a certain direction, to grabbing new territory.  The instructions to DOJ staff to produce, but not disclose the secret plans, are explicit.  These instructions are yet another reason why jurisdictions should go straight to federal court for approval of redistricting plans instead of dealing with the illegal imposition of Max-Black solutions by Eric Holder’s DOJ.

 Now opposition to voter integrity seems particularly political.  The Wall Street Journal.

At the link, you find the following summary of DOJ’s objections under Section 5 to the proposed redistricting plans for Texas. 

Civil rights lawyers say they have serious reservations about the new U.S. House plan, partly because it doesn’t create a single new district that’s majority Latino. What’s more, the federal lawyers say, they’ve uncovered evidence of intentional discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity by state and federal lawmakers in Texas. Their court brief cites emails that may show people improperly took racial data into account when they drew district boundaries.

This is an amazing allegation considering that the Voting Section conducts its analysis and prepares alternative “illustrative” plans based solely on the racial demographics of a district.  Rarely, if ever, is there an racially gerrymandered district that offends the racialists in the Voting Section.  So while DOJ believes it is more than appropriate for the Voting Section to go down to census block level numbers to determine the absolute precise racial makeup of a particular district, they have the gall to accuse Texas in court pleadings of intentional racial discrimination simply because they may have used this same data in their analysis. 

Outrageous.       

At the link here, EAC diplomatically comments on the distinction between data collected from the states and the data provided by others, such as FVAP. 

EAC’s UOCAVA Data Are:

• Official numbers provided directly by every state.
  
• Only about voters covered by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) as it relates to ballots sent, returned, counted and rejected.
  
• Available for all states.
  

EAC’s UOCAVA Data Are NOT

• A sampling of military and overseas voters (a subset of these total populations used to draw conclusions about the entire population).
  
• Opinion data related to whether an individual covered under UOCAVA voted or wanted to vote, or is of a particular age group or gender, for example.

I will be on KYNO on the Bill McEwen show today in the 5pm drive time across California to discuss my book Injustice.  KYNO’s 50,000 watt signal goes from San Jose to Bakersfield and all of the central coast.  940 am.

The Supervisor of Elections in Madison County (FL) has been arrested for voter fraud.  Someone cue the Sasquatch Hunters out at Loyola Law and Mark Crispen Miller at NYU.

The Miami Herald:

“[Supervisor of Elections Jada Woods] Williams was accused by authorities of allowing the distribution of absentee ballots used in the alleged scheme to help elect school board member Abra “Tina” Johnson, who is facing 10 counts of election fraud and two counts of absentee ballot and voting violations.”

This sounds like the behavior of Ike Brown as discussed in my book Injustice:

“FDLE officials said the Johnsons asked voters to sign absentee ballot request forms, but without their knowledge the couple filled in an alternate address. The ballots were mailed to that address instead of to the voters.

The couple also is accused of unlawfully obtaining ballots directly from Williams’ office with the help of the other suspects who signed and submitted forms claiming to have been authorized by voters to get their absentee ballots for them. Agents said the voters didn’t know the suspects.”

Here is the defendant Supervisor of Elections Jada Wood Williams posing in front of a poster designed to help felons regain their right to vote.  Williams may need to call the 1-800 number shortly:


Johnson’s perp shot:

link.  It is literally the most divisive issue in the politically charged process of redrawing the face of Florida politics: dividing minority groups among new congressional and legislative districts so that their representation is not diluted.  Central Florida will be ground zero for how lawmakers acknowledge a burgeoning Hispanic population without unconstitutionally diminishing the rights of blacks and other minorities.

More than half of the state’s growth in the past decade — 55 percent — came from an increase in the Hispanic population, with a majority coming along the Interstate 4 corridor. The Central Florida counties of Orange, Osceola, Volusia, Lake and Seminole led the state in population growth.  Of the 541,000 additional people in the region, 267,000 were Hispanics.

However, two potential problems.  First, while designing an Hispanic seat may be politically and legal advantageous, is there really a concentrated population of Hispanics in Central Florida to draw an additional majority minority seat that will actually perform for Hispanics?  Any proposed district with only 43% Hispanics would actually need to be enhanced to meet the standard.

“I think this is the most fair thing to do. Also, politically it will be a very smart move for the Republican Party,”  said Emilio Pérez, chairman of the Central Florida Redistricting Council Inc. in Orlando, which has submitted a 43 percent Hispanic congressional district that cuts diagonally from near Winter Haven through Osceola County and into northern Orange County.

Second, drawing a performing and workable Hispanic seat may slightly reduce some of the minority populations in now primarily Black seats.

African-American groups such as the NAACP and black lawmakers are leery that the emphasis on drawing new Hispanic districts could be detrimental to seats held by black members.

 The Hill.