Cincy.com

“Secretary of State Jon Husted sees dead people  – on the state’s voter rolls.

In fact, he checked voter rolls against death records and found that Hamilton County has more dead people on their rolls than any of Ohio’s other 88 counties.  The county has 1,637 according to this list.

Husted, a Republican, said he was ‘trying to maintain an accurate voter database statewide, thus reducing potential voter fraud.’ His report founds 18,460 matches between death records and voter rolls, which he is asking county boards of elections to further investigate for removal.”

No mention of why Husted’s predecessor, Jennifer Brunner, didn’t manage to catch this problem.

Reports from Nashville and Raleigh on the voter ID debate. 

While the voter verification legislation in North Carolina seems poised for passage, all eyes will be on Governor Perdue and whether she will veto the bill despite support in the polls for the requirement.  As this article reveals, if there is a veto, the key will then be whether the bloc of conservative Democrats in the state House join the Republicans in overriding the veto. 

In Tennessee, the Associated Press quotes the Secretary of State as favoring the legislation: “Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett, a Republican, said he believes his state’s proposed photo ID law will increase citizen confidence in the process and combat fraud that could be going undetected.  “I can’t figure out who it would disenfranchise,” Hargett said. “The only people I can think it disenfranchises is those people who might be voting illegally.”  Hargett said the measure currently moving through Tennessee’s legislature — now controlled by Republicans — would accommodate people who don’t have IDs by having them sign oaths of identity, which provide more prominent warning to potential fakers than the standard name-signing.”

News reports from Colorado report that a bill bringing the state into compliance with the MOVE Act is making its way to through the Colorado Legislature.
 
“A bill moving Colorado’s primaries from the second Tuesday in August to the last Tuesday in June won preliminary approval in the Senate (Senate Bill 189). The change is needed to put Colorado in compliance with a new federal voting law giving overseas and military voters more time to cast ballots.”

I will be speaking Wednesday at noon at St. Mary’s University Law School in San Antonio Texas.  Topic: The Eric Holder Justice Department and election law.

Washington Post.

Every state subject to Section 5 should follow Texas (and Georgia): “A House committee on Monday heard a bill that would send any redistricting or Voter ID bills straight to a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. for “pre-clearance” under the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The law requires Texas and other states, mostly in the south, to get federal approval before making major election law changes.

The bill by GOP Rep. Phil King would require the state to get approval for redistricting and Voter ID changes from a federal court — not President Barack Obama’s Justice Department.”

Houston Chronicle.

Arlington Virginia.  Washington Post.

This blog has been reporting on a number of bailout applications around Virginia.  One thing that unites all of the bailouts, whether they be in Fredericksburg, Bedford County or Manassas Park is that they all involve the same lawyer, Gerry Hebert.  Pajamas Media has this posting at P.J. Tatler about that particular lawyer, and how the taxpayers once had to pay $86,000 in sanctions in a case.  Paging Frank Jones and Tom Tomazk.

What is interesting is how the bailout applications seem to be requiring terms which the law does not require.  In the case discussed at P.J. Tatler, the court ruled about the DOJ case:

A properly conducted investigation would have quickly revealed that there was no basis for the claim that the Defendants were guilty of purposeful discrimination against black voters…Unfortunately, we cannot restore the reputation of the persons wrongfully branded by the United States as public officials who deliberately deprived their fellow citizens of their voting rights.  We also lack the power to remedy the damage done to race relations in Dallas County by the unfounded accusations of purposeful discrimination made by the United States.

We can only hope that in the future the decision makers in the United States Department of Justice will be more sensitive to the impact on racial harmony that can result from the filing of a claim of purposeful discrimination.  The filing of an action charging a person with depriving a fellow citizen of a fundamental constitutional right without conducting a proper investigation of its truth is unconscionable.

United States v. Jones, 125 F.3d 1418, 1431 (11^th Cir. 1997).

Now that Justice David Prosser appears to have beaten JoAnne Kloppenburg, Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin wants a federal investigation by the DOJ Public Integrity Section. 

Indianapolis Star.