Some of the coverage of the release of the US Commission on Civil Rights report on the New Black Panther dismissal.

Washington TImes

Washington Post

AP

And I can’t pass up Weapons of Mass Discussion

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports two were sentenced today for voter fraud while working for ACORN.  They falsified voter registrations. 

An eyewitness account of the hearing in Laroque v. Holder last Friday.  ELC first reported on the email that went out to every employee inviting them to skip work and go watch the hearings. The National Review story notes:

” . . . One half of the courtroom was occupied by lawyers and staff from the Voting Section of the Justice Department on a taxpayer-paid field trip. Even Julie Fernandes, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights under an ethical cloud for her role in the New Black Panther Party scandal, was there. She apparently didn’t see the irony of her having an announced, race-based policy for enforcing the Voting Rights Act, on one hand, and her presence as the DOJ argued for the continued constitutionality of Section 5 on the other.

If where you sit is a sign of where you stand, it was probably appropriate that the DOJ staff were all sitting on the left side of the courtroom. Of course, they may have been avoiding me, sitting on the right side.

The DOJ lawyer arguing the case, Richard Dellheim, had only uttered about two sentences when Judge Bates started peppering him with questions. Bates seemed somewhat taken aback by the government’s claim that nobody in Kinston had standing to contest the constitutionality of a federal statute like Section 5.”

The Witchita Eagle reports that Voter ID will be on the agenda in Kansas but not without some opponents.  “Kobach, a Republican, made voter photo ID the centerpiece of his campaign, which ended with a decisive victory last month over Democrat incumbent Chris Biggs.”   With the new conservative resurgence and working majority in the Kansas Legislature, the likelihood of passage of a Voter ID requirement has dramatically increased.

The Advertiser has a 55th Anniversary editorial.

Atlantic City (NJ) voter fraud trial enters  fourth week. 

Enctoday.com

Wall Street Journal has more. 

Slate does a 10th anniversary article on Bush v. Gore.  It gets a little bit right, but most of it wrong.

The right part:

“Before 2000, candidates and the public were both quick to accept official election results even in close elections. Bush v. Gore taught political operatives and everyone else that there are significant problems in how we administer our elections.”

The wrong part quickly follows. The author suggests nationalizing voter registration and federalizing the process to fix poorly run elections.  As if turning anything over to the federal government tends to make things work better.  I wonder if Rick Hasen has ever gone to the U.S. Post Office to mail a 17 ounce parcel on December 22.  Thankfully only a few people in academia take seriously the idea of federalizing election adminstration, especially those who have read the Constitution.  It is a non-starter, except perhaps in the ivory tower:

“If we wanted to, we could put an end to all this fighting. We could start with a uniform national ballot and uniform rules for the casting and counting of votes in federal elections. We could nationalize voter registration or at least mandate modernization so that state voter-registration databases talk to each other.”

Maybe they can put the voter registration office in the Social Security office.  The ensuing bedlam would be a sight to see.

The wrong and preposterously hypocritical:

“We could remove partisan officials from making election decisions in which they have a vested interest (like Ken Blackwell, who served as co-chair of Bush’s 2004 Ohio re-election committee while making a series of election-law decisions as Ohio Secretary of State that seemed designed to favor Republicans).”

Really?  Ken Blackwell is the best example?  One wonders why a more recent Ohio Secretary of State’s decisions wouldn’t fall into the same category.  Current Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has a reputation of a partisan who uses the power of her office for partisan advantage.  But like so much in the world of elections, I suppose the author just doesn’t see her record the same way.  All those shady 2008 dealings, including her highly questionable list maintenance compliance, why nothing more than GOP spin, right? 

This may get interesting.  Hispanic citizens in filed a lawsuit challenging at-large elections in Compton, California.  Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is usually used by plaintiffs who are part of a national racial minority against an election law, such as at large elections, which result in an all-white or mostly all white governing body. 

Compton’s plaintiffs are challenging an all black governing body.  The case is being brought under a California version of the Voting Rights Act.