By the end of the day, Governor Haley will sign the Voter ID law in South Carolina.

Update:  With music pumping, the bill is signed.

Las Vegas Sun.

Terrance Watts was sentenced to 10 years in prison for illegal voting and voter fraud in municipal elections in Canton, Mississippi.  More at ABC-WAPT.

During and after the elections, several candidates and voters complained to the district attorney’s office about widespread criminal activity that, if true, would amount to voter fraud, to include disenfranchised, convicted felons voting in the elections, Guest said. Based on the complaints, the district attorney’s office initiated and conducted an investigation into all three elections held in Canton.

Never before has a form letter caused so many news articles, so many press releases.  Florida recently enacted a variety of voting changes.  Being a Section 5 state under the Voting Rights Act, the changes had to be submitted to the DOJ for approval, or to United States District Court.  For reasons that are unclear, Florida submitted the changes to DOJ – where they will face a less friendly review than they would have in court.  Democrats, including Florida Senator Bill Nelson, are salivating and badgering DOJ for action. In response to one such badger, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote Nelson a letter saying:  “The Department of Justice will carefully consider the information you have provided in the course of our enforcement and administrative review work under the Voting Rights Act.”

News flash: this is a form letter used in countless other responses.  “Carefully consider” is what other Congressional letters on a Section 5 submission say.  But don’t tell Dara Kam at the Palm Beach Post.  Otherwise it will spoil the sizzling headline: Feds say they’ll look into FL elections law changes[!!!!!!!!]

Mark Matthews at the Orlando Sentinel also overstates the importance of the letter.  In response to the Nelson letter, he writes Nelson made “a request agency officials said this week they would consider.”

News flash:  under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the DOJ must review the submission anyhow.

This illustrates yet another benefit for states to go straight to United States District Court for approval of plans instead of to the DOJ – it removes politicians from the decision matrix.  In court, a letter from a United States Senator will be thrown into the circular file, unless the Senator intervened in the case.  If submitting authorities want to take politics out of the mix, like Senator Nelson’s involvement or the politics currently affecting the Louisiana redistricting, they would only submit plans or changes to the United States District Court.  Some state somewhere may very soon find out that court was the better route to take on controversial voting changes.

Minority language ballots are the law in many places in the country, including Los Angeles.  Some have advocated that ballots be transliterated, that is, the names be converted to sounds in characters.  Los Angeles has a perverse problem arising from the Chinese ballots – candidates are branding themselves differently than what their names really are.  Los Angeles Times:

Yee and his staff say the bill is intended to keep candidates from trying to deceive. “It is equivalent to an individual changing his name just for the ballot to Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan,” said Adam Keigwin, Yee’s chief of staff, whose Chinese name is Kai Yun, meaning “Victory Cloud.” . . .

But Eng, who does not speak or read Chinese, said he was not aware at the time that he could use his Chinese name when registering his candidacy. The Chinese-language voters guide gave him a new name meant to sound like his English one: Mai Ke En. Rough translation: “Wheat Can Kindness.”

A decision by the United States District Court in Mississippi regarding redistricting.

Boston Globe.

New York passed a law to require prisoners to be counted for redistricting purposes in the places they came from, not where their cell is.  DOJ precleared it.  This will have the effect of shifting power away from rural districts and to more urban areas.

Here and here.

Because Louisiana simultaneously submitted this plan to DOJ, and filed for preclearance in federal court, the state runs the risk of having an objection interposed before the court can take up the issue.  If that happens, as a practical matter, it will taint the court’s view of the plan. The state could always withdraw the objection before DOJ gets a chance to interpose an objection.  Even a DOJ request for more information could gum up the court process. 

The Atlantic City voter fraud saga continues:  “A campaign worker for a losing candidate in Atlantic City’s Democratic mayoral primary two years ago has been sentenced to three years probation for his role in a voter fraud case.”