I had the pleasure of meeting a talented and inspiring songwriter during a speech in Michigan last week and haven’t had the time to post about his work.  He performed his song “We Are America” at the event where I spoke.  The song was recorded in Nashville and it was a real honor to meet Craig. His website is weareamerica.net.  In the video for the Craig’s song embedded below is a poster from WWII that has soldiers from Ft. Moultire in South Carolina.  An article about that amazing event is here.

Nationally syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock takes the DOJ military voting record to task.  He writes:

Imagine if five states announced that they lacked the money and manpower to ship ballots before the fall federal election to precincts in predominantly black rural counties. The Justice Department appropriately would shift into fifth gear to assure that those Americans could vote on November 2. Enforcement lawsuits would fly like pigeons fleeing a breezy schoolyard.

Now, convert those rural blacks into American GIs serving abroad. Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and Washington are dragging their feet on the urgent task of delivering absentee mid-term-election ballots to overseas service members. The response at Justice’s Voting Rights Division in Washington, D.C. echoes a Louis Armstrong tune: “It’s sleepy time down South.”

Full article here.
 

Washington Examiner has more.

So does the Washington Times.

And Fox.

And the AP, sort of.

This ought to be interesting.  More here.

I’ll be on the Tara Servatius show today on 50,000 watt blowtorch WBT-AM to discuss my latest Pajamas Media piece on Section 8 of Motor Voter.   I will try to post more as the are booked if I can.

Sounding like some groups who used to do good work for military voters, the state of Wisconsin is questioning whether military voters really need their ballots 45 days in advance, and whether technology might instead be an adequate remedy.  Of course Congress rejected Wisconsin’s argument and hopefully the Justice Department will also.  Electronic mitigating factors are NOT adequate work arounds under MOVE.  But you can see Wisconsin’s contempt for military voters getting a ballot on time here.

“To deny a waiver because you don’t have 45 days seems to be a misuse of waivers,” said GAB Chairman Gordon Myse.

Sorry Gordon, that’s inaccurate.  FVAP knew better.  Hopefully, so will the DOJ attorneys negotiating the case.  Frankly, one wonders why Wisconsin hasn’t been sued already.  And in a turn of events from the twilight zone, Wisconsin may be dumping thousands of military voters into he inactive category thus blocking them from voting.  Yet another reason for DOJ to launch a lawsuit immediately.  There is no reason not to as it strengthens their negotiating position and mitigates the same argument that has been used against their military voting cases in the past – the DOJ waits too long to sue states.

Pajamas TV report on military voting.  Click here.

Here is Fox News’ Megyn Kelly taking on Katie Blynn, Washington State’s election director.  The Pentagon granted Washington a waiver even though their primary is on August 17.  The bottom line in Washington is that they are slow to get ballots printed.  They are using decades old technology to get their ballots printed in time to go out 45 days in advance of the election.  Multiple vendors exist who can print the complicated ballots in 24 hours and get them shipped.   Now that Washington is exempted from the MOVE Act, they don’t have to comply with the law.  Also, it is important to understand that letting military ballots come in late and be counted is NOT a solution to the problem.  First of all, the solider might not detect a problem in time (eg. the ballot isn’t coming) if the ballot is mailed out late.  This issue is not going away.  If you want to know more about overseas military voting, go to the Military Voter Protection Project for more information.

Maryland was not granted a waiver by FVAP, but instead it withdrew its application because it decided that it would mail a federal only ballot to Maryland servicemembers at least 45 days before the election.  It is not supposed to be a write-in ballot like the one being used in Wisconsin.
 
If this is true, then Maryland believes that it can hold an election on Sept. 14 and have ballots ready 4 days later on September 18.  Maryland is rolling the dice–if any of the federal races are close, then there is no way that they are going to be able to certify the election and send out the ballots in time. 

But here is the creepy part.  If the Maryland state government actually adopts this policy, they may harm Bob Ehrlich’s surging campaign against Governor Martin O’Malley.  Why?  Because all those military voters won’t have a ballot for state contests like Governor.  The federal law does not require state contests to be on the UOCAVA ballots, but most states have the decency to include all of the contests on the ballot sent to military voters.  If Maryland indeed follows through on plans to only send a blank federal write in ballots, or federal contests only, this will be a true shame.  Some states are more decent than others.

Election Law Center has received 53,345 unique hits on our coverage of the mess at the Virginia State Board of Elections alone.  Obviously it is a story many care about.  It is a story people from around the Commonwealth are paying close attention to, even if their counterparts in the dying dead trees media are ignoring it.  (Including the Richmond Times and Virginia Pilot).

The story isn’t going to go away either.  We have obtained documents, internal emails, which show a variety of questionable activities by certain SBE employees during the 2008 Presidential election.  In general, these documents call into question the neutrality of certain employees during that election as it affected SBE policy.  They create a reasonable inference that the Virginia SBE was taking steps to aid a particular national campaign.  We have the actual internal emails and will post them in the future.

Partisanship isn’t the only lingering issue at the Virginia SBE.   More stories are to come regarding contract irregularities and a variety of other management issues involving waste, fraud and abuse.  Thanks to all of the present and former employees at the Virginia State Board of Elections who have provided internal documents, memos, budgets, RFP’s and most of all, firsthand accounts of the unresolved mess that is the Virginia SBE to Election Law Center.com.

We also have documents demonstrating the hostility of the Virginia SBE to the rights of our men and women serving overseas, our military voters.  Simply put, the Virginia SBE under Nancy Rodrigues took disgraceful legal positions in cases other than the disgraceful position it took in McCain v. Cunningham.  These disgraceful legal positions sought to and would have the effect of tossing out the votes of soldiers serving overseas.  Given that so many Virginians put their lives on the line for us all, they have the right to expect more from the Virginia SBE.

Stay tuned.