Florida has reversed the rules imposed by ex-Governor Charlie Crist that made it easier for felons to restore their voting rights.  Governor Scott has reversed them and has not sent them to the Justice Department for preclearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.  The NAACP and the Advancement Project are demanding he do so.

This is one submission some in the DOJ might not want to see either.  A preclearance will anger friends.  An objection will infuriate everyone else.

Here.

Ohio Voter ID is a “solution in search of a problem” in this Columbus Dispatch piece.

Voter ID was a “solution in search of a problem” in a number of other states also.  They include Tennessee, Wisconsin, Texas, Colorado, Mississippi and Minnesota.

Ruth Colker, the author of the Op-Ed, is the “Heck-Faust Memorial Chair in Constitutional Law at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.”   She is also, according to her website, “a nationally recognized expert in constitutional law, disability discrimination, feminist theory and gay rights.”

A portion of her article: “When I raised this issue at the hearing and suggested that college students are often busy and might not have the time to make a special trip merely for the purpose of getting a state ID to vote, some Republican members of the committee smirked and scoffed at the notion that college students are busy.”   Basing opposition to voter ID on the idea that the public will consider college kids too busy to get an ID is an argument best left in back in the ivory tower.  The GOP members of the committee, half of whom have advanced degrees, spent plenty of time absorbing what really happens on campus.

Colker adds: “As a university professor, this was the low point of the hearing for me. These state legislators seem out-of-touch with the rising costs of a college education and the need for many students to balance work and school while being dependent on public transportation.”   

Someone needs to send better talking points to Ohio State, and quick. 

The deep divide between the American people versus the media and their content providers in academia provides yet another example why the old media models are dying.   Nowhere is this more obvious than with the overwhelming public support for photo voter identification requirements compared with the media blitzkrieg against it.  Reporters who are quick to swallow the hook offered up by places like the Brennan Center and Tova Wang at Demos should think twice before throwing their newspapers in front of a wave of public support for the policy.  This is what is causing outlets like McClatchy to flirt with bankruptcy.  A Wall Street Journal poll found that 81 percent of Americans support photo identification requirements.  Other polls consistently back up this finding.  The numbers transcend race, income and education.  These are huge numbers.  So how do you explain the daily drumbeat of media accounts adopting the wildly unpopular storyline that voter id is a bad thing?  Either the newspaper writers are content to antagonize the sensibilities of their readers – a dangerous business model – or are gullible enough to accept the organized spin of a few activist groups and their fellow travelers in academia, or both.  Here is a sample of today’s organized efforts against Voter ID, and the overwhelming support of the American people:

Voter ID a waste of time and money. The “money” part of the argument is a recent invention from the voter fraud deniers spin factory.

We don’t need voter exclusion act.

A short history of poll taxes to voter ID.

Disenfranchising the poor and religious.

One Voter ID critic results in TV news story.

Across country, GOP pushes voter ID! – (maybe they read the polls).

Restrictive Voter ID bills advance.

Solve the real problems!

Voter ID is actually voter “suppression”!!

Voter ID bill raises flags!!!

Local taxpayers may bear the cost of voter ID.

Voter ID comes in Texas at too high a cost.  – complete with this falsehood: “Federal law states you can’t deny the person the right to vote,” said Ramirez.

Voter ID in North Carolina too costly.

Voter ID in North Carolina too costly, says a tv station that got the same talking points.

Voter ID in Minnesota too costly, says a tv station that got the same talking points, with the name of the state replaced.

Alas, here is a measured sensible viewpoint, at odds with the spin from the well funded organized opponents of the measures. 

Bryan Preston has this report on Day One of the True the Vote National Summit in Houston including an amusing story of a TPM Muckraker “reporter” trying to con his way into the event by hook or crook.  Senator Norm Coleman provided fascinating details how a lead on election night turned into a loss.

Warner Todd Huston also covers Day One of the Summit here at Chicagonow.com.

Tonight at the True the Vote National Summit, Senator Norm Coleman spoke, as did Hans von Spakovsky and Anita Moncrief.  The summit is sold out with people from 27 states.  Great to see Stewart Mayper and everyone from Texas working so hard.

A move is afoot to bail out as many jurisdictions as possible before the Supreme Court hears arguments on the constitutionality of Section 5.  Obama political appointees have turned the volume to 11 to get as many bailouts done as possible before the Supreme Court hears the case, probably from Shelby, Alabama.  One problem with Operation Bailout – it isn’t going well.

Fredericksburg, Virginia residents oppose the bailout. 

Merced County, California isn’t going well either.

Perhaps someone at DOJ can send the disgruntled citizens in Fredericksburg and Merced The Memo about why this is so important.

From the Washington Post:   Maryland voters would cast ballots in the 2012 presidential primary election in April and the 2014 gubernatorial primary would move from September to June, under legislation moving through the General Assembly….the bill is partly a response to a federal law passed in 2009 designed to ensure that military and overseas voters have sufficient time to receive absentee ballots and participate in elections.  Moving the primary to June in gubernatorial years would be a major change in Maryland politics — effectively extending the general election campaign by a few months.

Hats off to the MVPProject for its intervention on behalf of military voters in Maryland.  This Foxnews article quoted the ruling of the District Court saying the “manner in which Maryland is conducting absentee voting for state offices in the Nov. 2, 2010, election deprives absent uniformed services and overseas voters of their fundamental right to vote.”  As the article indicates, the Voting Section of the Department of Justice declined to intervene to protect that fundamental right to vote.  However, facts continue to dribble out on why Maryland took the peculiar steps of submitting a waiver request to the Department of Defense and then suddenly withdrawing that request when it was clear they would not be able to meet the requirements of the MOVE Act.   Not only had DOJ, the agency responsible for enforcing the MOVE Act, undercut the Department of Defense during the waiver process but now much more damage had been done to the principles set forth in the MOVE Act. 

The testimony of Eric Eversole (the attorney who brought the Maryland case) to the Committee on House Administration reveals that the Voting Section not only declined to intervene on behalf of military members and deployed National Guardsman but actually provided advice to Maryland on how to avoid the MOVE Act and provide less than a full ballot to military voters, a position that a federal district court judge ultimately declared unconstitutional. 

After the dust had settled on the litigation, it became clear that that DOJ had advised Maryland that they would be able to avoid a potential violation of the MOVE Act by mailing, at least 45 days before the election, a ballot that only contained federal races and no state races – a half ballot.  When Maryland decided to take DOJ’s “unconstitutional” advice, a deployed member of the Maryland National Guard was not going to take it laying down.  He filed a lawsuit arguing that this scheme would not provide military voters in Maryland (like himself) with sufficient time to vote in multiple state races, such as the race for Governor, and that he would be deprived of his fundamental right to vote. The federal judge agreed and ordered the state to provide additional time for the regular ballots to be returned.  In the end, over 600 military and overseas voters were finally able to vote a full ballot with adequate time for return.  If the advice of DOJ has been followed, deployed National Guardsmen in Iraq or Afghanistan would have been forgotten and their votes ignored. 

In Texas, Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas and Wisconsin, the Voter ID debate reaches a crescendo.

The American Independent provides a discussion on the Shelby County, Alabama challenge to Section 5 and 4b of the VRA and its potential implications on Texas Voter ID and other covered jurisdiction’s voting changes if the federal judge finds part of the VRA unconstitutional.  The same question can be asked about the pending court opinion’s potential impact on the redistricting process across the nation as the cost of submission of redistricting plans and litigation by states and counties covered by Section 5 loom ahead.  These litigation costs would argue for quick resolution by the courts before such expenses are incurred in the redistricting cycle.  If the 46 year old coverage formula and Section 5 preclearance requirement is found unconstitutional, it is only fair the issue be resolved with some finality before millions are spent in submission and litigation costs.

The Fredericksburg Patch quotes civil rights attorney Gerry Hebert as stating the preclearance process skirts the limits of the Constitution: “This process raises serious constitutional concerns via the concept of federalism and the separation of federal and state powers,” said Herbert, who cited recent court cases challenging the constitutionality of preclearance winding their way through appeals courts. “It will likely be held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court we have now because the formula has never been updated since 1964. If your state had a poll tax and if in 1964’s presidential election, if less than 50 percent who were registered to vote, or 50 percent of the voting age population didn’t vote in that election, then you’d be subject to [preclearance]”