Well, not exactly.  But she captures the some of the reasons states have decided to bypass the DOJ and go straight to United States District Court for election law changes in covered jurisdictions.  North Carolina is ready to bypass DOJ’s Section 5 monopoly also.  Earls:

“From a public point of view, if you go to the D.C. District Court, it makes it harder for individual people who want to comment on the plan to have a role. Because the Justice Department process at least allows for pretty easy public comment, whereas if it goes to court you would have to intervene, you know, have legal representation. It becomes a very different process. “

NPR.   “In one of the most closely watched tests of the reach of the Voting Rights Act this year, Texas has just submitted its proposed redistricting changes to a federal court — not the U.S. Justice Department — for approval. Some Republican governors and attorneys general have advocated bypassing the Obama administration, arguing that they will get a less politicized answer from the courts, even though a Justice Department spokeswoman says the Attorney General has objected to only about “1 percent” of the proposals since the law was enacted.”

The ACLU has sued the New Mexico Secretary of State to obtain documents regarding a voter fraud investigation.  The ACLU says:  “Without offering any proof, the secretary of state has undermined the public’s confidence in our elections system while hiding the evidence for her claims .”

This has nothing to do with elections, but is historic.  Today Space Shuttle Atlantis landed and America no longer leads the world in space exploration. 

I have this piece at Pajamas Media: Obama pulls the plug on a great run in space.

Bryan Preston has this piece at Pajamas also: What’s Next for America in Space?

And Hans von Spakovsky provides some personal stories about growing up around the space program in Hunstville, Alabama in “Archiving the Space Program.”:

“Growing up in Huntsville allowed me to witness the development of an epic project that testified to the can-do spirit of America, our innovative talent and technological prowess, and our reach into the future. As Christian very aptly says, it is nations at the vanguard of exploration that determine the course of human history. Our endeavors to conquer the final frontier were not just symbolic of America’s push to advance; it was a key part of our rise as a world power. Now it seems like our formerly active space program, like the shuttle Atlantis, will end up in a museum.”

Washington Times, Hans von Spakovsky.

The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights is going after South Carolina’s voter ID law, and they are turning to an internet campaign to generate pressure on the Justice Department.  Of course South Carolina could file in district court and avoid this political campaign and obtain a decision from a neutral and detached magistrate.  The email campaign reads:

Yesterday members of the U.S. House of Representatives took to the floor to decry the voter suppression legislation that is being debated and passed in states across the country and urge the Department of Justice (DOJ) to take action against them.

Now that South Carolina has submitted the photo voter ID law it adopted this year to DOJ for preclearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, you have a chance to stand with these members and speak out for voting rights.
Please send a letter to DOJ now urging them to block South Carolina’s photo voter ID law!

What are the basic problems with these new voter ID bills that require government-issued photo identification in order to vote?

-  Studies consistently estimate that approximately 11 percent of voting-age citizens, including one out of every four African Americans, in the country (more than 21 million citizens!) currently lack a government-issued photo ID.

-  A study by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law found that 18 percent of eligible voters nationwide over 65 lack an ID that would be suitable for voting.  

-  There may be evidence of isolated instances of alleged voter fraud, but proponents of these photo ID bills cannot point to substantial convictions. In addition, the laws already in place to punish voter fraud are sufficiently severe to deter potential criminals

Please join the Lawyers’ Committee and our leaders in Congress in the fight against this voter suppression activity by telling the Department of Justice to deny preclearance to South Carolina’s voter ID legislation.

Time is running out, the Department of Justice will be making its decision soon.  It is time that we said that “enough is enough.”  Our right to vote is too important for us to allow these assaults to continue.  Instead of debating costly and restrictive measures that are simply unnecessary and unfair, we need to come together and encourage our legislators to genuinely fix our system of elections and expand access to the ballot box.

Click here to submit a letter to the Department of Justice urging them not only to deny preclearance to South Carolina, but to carefully scrutinize other photo voter ID laws as well.

We appreciate your assistance in the fight against voter suppression.

Sincerely,

Tanya Clay House
Public Policy Director
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

Washington Times:  “A key Senate Republican on Tuesday pressed the Justice Department to step up its enforcement of a 2009 law that requires states to provide absentee ballots to military service members and their families 45 days before elections.”

I learned yesterday that Senator Cornyn has yet to receive from the Justice Department the state-by-state breakdown of which states were in compliance with the MOVE Act and which were not.  Cornyn requested the basic information last summer, and never got a reply.  Simply, silly screw ups like this are the sort of things that are bound to cause fiery scrutiny of everything DOJ does in 2012 on military voting, and potentially will result in holds of future DOJ nominees.    This was discussed in “Obama’s bumblers damage military voting rights.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky along with Eric Eversole release this report on military voting rights.  “The MOVE Act, like previous voting rights laws, was supposed to help military members exercise their right to vote. The MOVE Act, however, cannot succeed in delivering on its promise until it is fully implemented and enforced. President Obama has a clear opportunity to help deliver the promise of the MOVE Act, but his Administration must be willing to make the issue a priority. It must address the shortcomings from the 2010 election and ensure a top-down commitment from the President’s agencies to promote and protect U.S. service members’ voting rights. At a time when members of America’s military are in harm’s way in remote parts of the world, this nation should spare no expense or effort in making sure that the MOVE Act’s promise is realized.”

More:

To make matters worse, the Voting Section once again appeared to be unwilling or unprepared to enforce the MOVE Act aggressively. From day one, the Voting Section appeared to drag its feet when implementing the new law and lacked a clear strategy to enforce it.[17] For nearly a year, the Voting Section and DOD promised to provide states with detailed implementation guidance on the MOVE Act, but that guidance never came, and the states were forced to guess how the Voting Section would enforce the new law. This failure left several states with no choice but to file last-minute waiver applications and, when DOD denied half of those applications, caused a rash of last-minute litigation on the eve of the election.[18]

More problematic was the Voting Section’s attempt to dispose of waiver cases by advising jurisdictions that it was permissible to send federal-only ballots to military voters—that is, a ballot that contains federal races, but not state or local races.[19] This federal-only ballot presumably would allow the state to meet the strict requirements of UOCAVA (which applies only to federal elections) but would affect the military voter’s right to vote in state and local races and could lead to other violations of the law.[20] In Maryland, for example, a federal judge found a violation of a military member’s fundamental right to vote in state and local elections when Maryland sent federal-only ballots, based on ill-advised guidance from the Voting Section, during the 2010 election.

Texas joins Virginia and Louisiana in going to district court for a more favorable venue on redistricting compared with the Eric Holder Justice Department.  By now, it’s rather obvious that DOJ can count on court oversight of any redistricting review of a covered Section 5 state with GOP leadership.  Texas won’t be the last state to go to court.  Other states will certainly avoid putting the fate of their redistricting plans solely in Eric Holder’s hands. 

The link below takes you to a PJ Tatler piece about today’s military voting forum at the Heritage Foundation in which I participated.  Senator John Cornyn spoke before my panel and had things to say about DOJ and DOD’s enforcement of military voting rights which the link below will provide more details. 

He also sent a letter to Eric Holder today about the Voting Section’s enforcement prowess (“grossly inadequate”) in 2010.  The full letter is here.