ACLU and LULAC lawyers in federal court fighting Wisconsin Voter ID



“A federal hearing over Wisconsin’s voter-ID law began Monday with several minority witnesses, many of whom said their efforts to obtain a state-issued ID were met with bureaucratic obstacles that took time, money and legal assistance to overcome.”


 


Time, money and legal assistance: things ACLU and LULAC lawyers could’ve provided in service to minority voters needing IDs instead of an expensive federal lawsuit.


Last Minute GOTV Effort Comes Up Short in Effort to Elect Muslim Mayor

DOJ sent monitors to Hamtramck.  The outcome from the Detroit News:

Hamtramck Mayor Karen Majewski won a narrow re-election Tuesday, a day after a last-minute rush of nearly 200 voters filled out absentee ballots.


Majewski received 52 percent of the vote, winning by 98 votes over challenger Abdul Algazali, according to unofficial results.


In the race for three city council seats, the winners were incumbent Mohammed Hassan, Andrea Karpinski and Titus R. Walters.


On Monday, Deputy City Clerk August Gitschlag counted at least 170 people who streamed into Hamtramck’s City Hall, all informing his office they would not be in town on Election Day and needed absentee ballots.


The barrage of requests startled Gitschlag and his staff of one. Typically, when he worked during election seasons in Brownstown or Commerce Township, he would see no more than a handful of folks wanting to vote absentee the day before the election.


“This office gets like three of those kinds of requests” on Mondays, Gitschlag said.


But in this densely populated, working-class community, change is afoot. While Polish Americans have traditionally dominated local politics, the city’s Muslims have taken steps in recent years to pick up political representation inside City Hall.


Monday’s last-minute absentee ballot seekers all appeared to be of Arab or Bengali descent, Gitschlag said.


Algazali, a councilman and chiropractor, might have been the nation’s first mayor from Yemen had he defeated Majewski, a Polish-American project manager who works at the University of Michigan. Algazali could not be reached for comment Tuesday.


Following the November 1999 election, the Justice Department received complaints from Arab and Bengali-American voters in Hamtramck claiming violations of the Voting Rights Act, saying their citizenship had been unfairly challenged by private citizens during the general election.


The city’s consent decree in that case ended several years ago, but the Justice Department on Tuesday was present to ensure that Hamtramck was complying with the Voting Rights Act.


In 2004, the Al-Islah Islamic Center on Caniff, just west of the city’s main commercial drag, made national headlines when it was allowed to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer daily. Earlier this year, congregants won a battle to expand to a larger building, to the dismay of some residents afraid of the proliferation of mosques in the area.

Judge Sets Hearing in Alabama Voter Fraud Case

 Link.  Perhaps another case of college students voting someplace other than where they really reside:

” A judge is considering claims that could overturn a Tuscaloosa school board election because of the involvement of fraternity and sorority members from the University of Alabama.

Lawyers for defeated school board candidate Kelly Horwitz told a judge Wednesday they want to question dozens of voters to determine whether they may have cast illegal ballots.”

Kiryas Joel?

Can’t wait to hear the backstory on this federal excursion.

“Officials in the Village of Kiryas Joel filed a number of complaints over what they say are violations of election law in Tuesday’s election. A representative of the US Justice Department was on-site observing the elections.”

Some information on Kiryas Joel:

Kiryas Joel (also known as Kiryas Yoy’l, “Kiryas Yo’el” or KJ) (Yiddish: קרית יואל (Kiryas Yoyel) is a village within the town of Monroe in Orange County, New York, United States. The great majority of its residents are Hasidic Jews who strictly observe the Torah and its commandments, and belong to the worldwide Satmar Hasidic dynasty.

Most of the village’s residents speak Yiddish as their first language. The village has the youngest median age (13.2) of any population center of over 5,000 residents in the United States.Residents of Kiryas Joel, like those of other Haredi Jewish communities, typically have large families. Kiryas Joel is the place in the United States with the highest percentage of people who reported Hungarian ancestry, as 18.9% of the population reported Hungarian ancestry in 2000.

Kiryas Joel is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area as well as the larger New York–Newark–Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA Combined Statistical Area.

According to 2008 census figures, the village has the highest poverty rate in the nation. More than two-thirds of residents live below the federal poverty line and 40% receive food stamps.
 
It is widely believed that no candidates run for the village’s board or the school board unless first approved by the grand rebbe Rabbi Aron Teitelbaum. In 2001, Kiryas Joel held a competitive election in which all candidates supported by the grand rebbe were re-elected by a 60–40% margin.

 A case against the village is currently pending in federal district court; plaintiffs, who are asking for the village to be dissolved, say that Kiryas Joel is a theocracy whose existence violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, where local government leaders abuse the laws, such as those for tax-exempt status, zoning, and sanitation, to favor members of their own sect and persecute other Orthodox Jews. They also say that the leaders commit vote fraud by intimidating dissident voters and busing in non-residents