The Justice Department actually argued to the federal court that South Carolina was NOT the prevailing party in the Voting Rights Act lawsuit to approve Voter ID.  Remember, career staff at the Voting Section recommended that the South Carolina voter ID law be precleared.  But radicals in the front office, including Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, demanded that the law be objected to, and that decision forced South Carolina to go to court.  Now the federal court has ruled clearly that South Carolina was the “prevailing party” and the Justice Department will be liable for the state’s costs.  From the State paper:

“The state Attorney General’s Office blamed the U.S. Department of Justice for the high cost of the case. They accused the federal government of delaying the case by 120 days by filing numerous frivolous motions, including challenging the 12-point font size on a document the state filed.

 Read all about it.

The actual headline: “Criticisms of proposed voter fraud rules aired at hearing.”

Once upon a time, Americans would have applauded efforts to contain criminality in our elections.  Now they organize to enable it.

The state Democratic Party has agreed to pay a fine of more than
$42,000 for allegedly breaking campaign finance law by making in-kind
contributions to former Gov. Jon Corzine’s 2009 re-election campaign.

The bulk of the contributions, which totaled $227,120, were spent on
controversial automated phone calls in Republican areas that slammed
then-Republican candidate Chris Christie and promoted independent Chris
Daggett.

Link to full story.

The Deming Headlight.

Below at ELC is a piece about the Boston Globe-Democrat article and the potential of the Stat Smith voter fraud scandal widening in Massachusetts.  The post also has a clip from the Everett Independent’s declaration in 2006 of Stat Smith as “Man of the Year.”  The piece was written by Augustine Parziale, and it doesn’t seem very “independent.”  In fact, it reads like campaign literature. In hindsight, it is an ode to a vote fraudster, stuffed full of laugh lines.

Among them:

* After barely losing to a popular incumbent, Smith “pulled up his bootstraps” and fought back to win.  It was a “triumph of the American values of hard work and determination.”  Except it wasn’t.

* “Week after week Smith became the target of a brutally negative media campaign against . . .  his character and integrity.”  Wonder why.

* But Smith “rose above it all” and proved “living well is the best revenge.” 

Heavily sanctioned election lawyer Gerry Hebert knows a thing or two about “lacking facts to back up a claim.”  Just ask the defendants in United States v. Jones, where Hebert lacked the facts to back up his claims of racially discriminatory intent in a voting case brought against an Alabama jurisdiction.  Naturally, Ryan Reilly at Huff Post makes no mention of Hebert’s history of court imposed sanctions when he decided to use Hebert as a source for this article about New Hampshire bailouts. 

I discussed Heberts sanctions in my New York Times bestseller Injustice thusly:

“In United States v. Jones, the Voting Section was sanctioned $86,626 for bringing a frivolous case in Alabama. The DOJ brought the suit under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to block over fifty white voters from participating in an election in a majority black district. The appeals court ruled that the lawsuit was filed “without conducting a proper investigation of its truth [and was] unconscionable.… Hopefully, we will not again be faced with reviewing a case as carelessly instigated as this one.”  The 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals did not mince words in its scolding of DOJ lawyers including then-Voting Section attorney Gerald Herbert, who would later become a vociferous critic of the Bush DOJ:

According to two articles out of West Virginia here and here, voter ID will be an issue in the coming state legislative session.  As Republicans make political gains in West Virginia and the state is hit with multiple voter fraud scandals, photo ID legislation is again on the agenda and hiding from the issue is not an option. West Virginia Democrats risk losing credibility with voters by killing the popular legislation for partisan reasons. 

Of interest, the Democrat Secretary of State Natalie Tenant seems to endorse the need for confirmation of identity of a voter at the polls by insisting the current ID requirement serves its purpose.  She also endorses the use of digital photos in precincts to confirm the identity of voters at the polls.  However, she is less enthused on having the voter bring a license or other photo ID to the polls.  Of course, that is the easiest and least expensive alternative. 

Democrats really give the voters no credit at all. 

Link

The Alaska Dispatch reports that the state supreme court has ordered another redistricting round for the 2014 election as the state tries to find a way to comply with both state constitutional parameters and federal requirements under the Voting Rights Act – in the order the court wants.

Alaska’s newly redrawn political districts, which sent the 2012
elections into a frenzy — with 59 of 60 seats up for re-election —
will have to be redone. Again. This time before the 2014 election.

On Friday the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the plan, authored by
the state’s redistricting board, had violated court-ordered procedures
by adhering to the U.S. Voting Rights Act first, with compliance with
the Alaska State Constitution a secondary consideration.

This article in the Anchorage Daily News provides a similar explanation of why the process was ultimately overturned by the Alaska high court and sent back to the map-drawing board despite meeting voting rights requirements under the VRA.  Alaska Republicans will be unhappy as they had been very successful this cycle on the lines as drawn.