Democrats want to block the Indiana Secretary of State race winner Charlie White for voter fraud.  More here.

A former ACORN worker is going to jail for 10 months for submitting false voter registration forms ahead of the 2008 Presidential election.  More at WAOW-TV.

“Twenty-7-year-old Kevin Clancy of Milwaukee was sentenced on Thursday in Milwaukee County Circuit Court. According to a criminal complaint, Clancy worked for the community organizing group ACORN.

He submitted multiple voter registration applications for the same people and was part of a scheme in which ACORN registration deputies registered each other multiple times to meet ACORN’s quotas.”

The King Street Patriots, through their True the Vote project, have developed a savvy and effective private sector poll monitoring and election integrity operation.  I have profiled them at Pajamas Media.   The Houston Press offers this largely accurate profile.   As the article states, the model that True the Vote deployed in Houston is going to go national in 2012.  What is the model?  It all starts with involved citizens.  Add election law knowledge, and a command of their rights under state law.   

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied cert in the Section 2 Voting Rights Act case of Cottier v. City of Martin.  This was a case where the full Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the City of Martin did not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.  The District Court had found a violation of the Voting Rights Act in a case brought by the ACLU.  An en banc panel of the Eighth Circuit reversed the plaintiff’s victory and the Supreme Court today denied cert.  Game, set, match.  Many more details are included in the press release from Martin’s lawyer, Sara Frankenstein.

My latest at Pajamas Media here.

“The military voting mess of 2010 isn’t over. In some states, ballots continue to roll in. Whether or not these late ballots will be counted remains to be seen.

I have learned that voters deployed across Iraq and Afghanistan received ballots far too late to be effective. The MOVE Act of 2009 was designed to fix this problem, but may have failed. One reason for the failure: open contempt inside the Department of Justice to the mandates of the new law.”

Full article.

Story here.   Every state should follow Georgia’s lead and go directly to federal court with voting changes instead of submitting them to the Department of Justice.  They will have a more favorable forum, a fairer forum, and the DOJ is ill equipped to handle dozens of simultaneous cases seeking Section 5 preclearance.  There are many more reasons why and others will be writing more about this in the future.

Op-ed here.

The United States has filed this brief opposing the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment in Shelby County v. Eric Holder.  Shelby County is challenging the 45 year old Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act which requires some states, but not all, to obtain federal government approval of any change involving voting or elections.  Two challenges are working their way through the courts and more are likely to follow. 

One peculiar thing about the brief is the citation to a law review article by Peyton McCrary.  Peyton McCrary knows a great deal about the Voting Rights Act and is a fine and dedicated historian of civil rights.  The peculiar part, however, is Peyton is a historian for the Defendant in the case; he is a DOJ historian.  I’m not suggesting the citation to his law review article on pages 12 and 39 of the brief is untoward.  Rather, it seems peculiar in light of the recent case of Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 128 S. Ct. 2605, 2626 n.17 (2008).   The Supreme Court said that studies funded by the litigant would be discounted entirely.

More on the Shelby case and the briefs another day.  In the other challenge to Section 5, Laroque v. Holder arising out of Kinston North Carolina, Michael Carvin is piloting a more aggressive attack on Section 5 – namely challenging the reauthorization itself and not just the triggers.  The plaintiffs have asked the court to speed up their decisions so the Shelby and the Laroque case can be heard simultaneously by the Supreme Court.

In the November election, a variety of dead candidates won.  In the California 28th Senate District, the Democratic candidate Jenny Oropreza was dead.  Her name could not be removed from the ballot.  Presumably this gave the Republican a distinct advantage in the election.  After all, who would vote for a dead candidate?  Not so fast.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen sent a letter to registered voters in the district:

“Jenny Oropreza name is on the ballot.  You have the right to vote for her.  If you do and she wins, there will be a special election called.  You will then be able to thoughtfully consider who will represent you in the Senate in the next four years.”

How nice of her. 

This is just the tip of the iceberg in California.  All sorts of other shenanigans took place and Hot Air has a story on them here.