My primer on the National Voter Registration Act published by the Heritage Foundation.  Abstract:

The National Voter Registration Act imposed sweeping changes on the conduct of American elections. These changes included significant federal mandates on state and local election officials that restricted the ability of those officials to maintain clean and accurate voter rolls while simultaneously obliging them to maintain clean and accurate voter rolls. For most of the history of the law, enforcement actions have been directed against election officials who sought to clean voter rolls and against states for insufficiently pushing voter registration among entitlement recipients. The U.S. Department of Justice, however, has refused to enforce the requirement that election officials maintain clean and accurate voter rolls. Only recently have private parties brought litigation to make up for DOJ’s failure.

The whirlwind winds up:

After meeting with top officials for the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office Monday, the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus said it still has a number of unanswered questions about the processing of about 51,000 voter registration applications turned in by the New Georgia Project. The head of the caucus said she plans to contact the U.S. Justice Department. In the meantime, a number of applications turned in by the New Georgia Project are being investigated by the Secretary of State.

“Severson said his Express Lane system would verify the identity of voters, keep felons or non-U.S. citizens from voting and speed up the process. He said the current system, which allows unregistered citizens to vote if someone vouches for them, for example, doesn’t work.”

Hans von Spakovksy has the disturbing details:

A Kansas lawyer intimately familiar with this case and the makeup of the Kansas Supreme Court told me, “This is clearly an effort by the highly partisan Kansas Supreme Court to delay the petition long enough to ultimately render it moot. It’s a real tragedy to see this sort of judicial activism taking such a prominent role in a national election but, unfortunately, this is the impact of all of these Kathleen Sebelius appointees to the high court in Kansas.”

Q: How is this not like a white’s only primary?

Q: If Mississippi did this, wouldn’t it be laughed out of court?

Q: Do you think the state can spend [the Plaintiff’s] tax dollars in manner that only allows certain races to express their opinion?

Q: That’s the least satisfactory answer to a question I’ve heard all day. … You don’t have any better answer than that?

Q: You don’t think its unconstitutional to only ask the opinion of the white people?

Link.

“Two Obama for America 20-somethings with clipboards came to our door in Northern Virginia in 2008 and asked to speak to our grown children, who, their records showed, might still be living with us. They weren’t, but they weren’t far out of the nest, either. We were stunned at the specificity of the inquiry. Catalist has data on every single voter in America. They know what you eat for breakfast. Well, maybe not, but their reach is formidable.”

Link.

On Al Jazeera’s the Stream:

National Review: We are now at five days and counting since the second writ was filed, and the Kansas Supreme Court, which is dominated by judges nominated by former Democratic governor Kathleen Sebelius, has not acted on the writ. This is in sharp contrast to its having issued a scheduling order within two days of receiving the first writ. When it issued that initial scheduling order, the court noted the “expedited nature of this case and the necessity for an authoritative ruling.”

This second writ is obviously in just as much need of expedition and an “authoritative ruling” from the court. But of course, this second writ is one that the Kansas Democratic party would like to see ignored completely or handled as slowly as possible, until it becomes too late for the court to intervene.

So the question for the Kansas Supreme Court is very simple: Are you going to handle this second writ as you should and why the delay? Are you going to avoid acting on the writ, even if doing so allows the Democratic party to violate Kansas law and manipulate the candidate-slating process for political advantage?

Ginni Thomas has this interview with James Golden, aka Bo Snerdley, which touches on voter ID.  Takeway: Golden says that opponents of voter ID are deceiving black voters and trying to scare them for political purposes.  Golden also touches on race and other civil rights issues.  The interview at the Daily Caller is here.

Anything but elections here, but this picture taken in Berlin is worth a few thousand words.  Moral clarity are but two.  West Germans stare down East Germans after she made it across the line.