Fifth Circuit Rejects Project Vote

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld Texas election integrity laws.  The laws were designed to crack down on abuses by groups like ACORN in the registration process.  The laws were passed with bipartisan support, though you will no doubt hear them referred to as GOP-supported legislation. Non-Texans were prohibited from becoming deputy registrars.  It required registrars to be from the county where they were appointed.  And it required voter registration forms to be delivered rather than dumped in the mail.  These are the provisions that Project Vote felt compelled to challenge.  The presser from the TX AG:











Federal Court Rejects Project Vote’s Challenge to Texas Election Integrity Laws


 


AUSTIN – Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected Project Vote’s challenge to the election-integrity measures passed with overwhelming bipartisan support by the Texas Legislature in 2011. The Texas Attorney General’s office released the following statement from Lauren Bean, spokeswoman for the Texas Attorney General’s Office:

“The Attorney General’s Office is pleased that the courts have once again reaffirmed the Texas Legislature’s ability to adopt common-sense election laws that are designed to instill confidence in our electoral process and prevent election fraud. Decisions like this one are reminders that these cases are nothing more than political stunts that are brought by plaintiffs—who simply oppose election integrity on political grounds—and their lawyers, who seek to reap attorneys’ fees at the taxpayers’ expense.”

Website for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration is hard down for lack of funding, but ObamaCare website is up and running

Federal Government Hypocrisy.  The Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA) website at www.supportthevoter.com is down, apparently a result of the Government slowdown with a pointed notice “Due to the lapse in federal government funding, this website is not available. We sincerely regret this inconvenience.”  Interesting, the website for the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) which has been operating in a zombie state for years, seems to be working just fine.  Of course, this is just theatrics as the White House shows off the holy national healthcare website found at www.healthcare.gov.  Clearly that website must be up and running.  No problem with funding there. 

A vote of “no confidence” of the NC Attorney General to defend voter ID law

Both the North Carolina executive and legislative branch expressed no confidence in the North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to perform his legal duties in defending the voter ID law.  Both the executive and legislative branch have hired outside representation to represent the interests of the people of North Carolina. 

Roy Cooper says the representation is a waste of money.  However, Cooper is running for Governor and his partisan criticism of the voter ID law was cited in the Department of Justice complaint.  The attorney for North Carolina should have been more careful in his comments; instead he gave his legal opponents at DOJ ammunition.

Just in Time for New Jersey Election: Section 7 Lawsuit Threats

“The letter — from the NAACP’s New Jersey state conference as well as attorneys from Rutgers Constitutional Law Clinic, Project Vote, Demos and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law — says social services agencies have bad policies and are not consistently providing registration forms when required to do so.

Since 1995, the letter says, there has been a decline in the number of voters registered at public assistance agencies in New Jersey, even as the number of people seeking assistance increased.”

Link.  A decline in the number of voters registered at public assistance agencies, even as the numbers seeking assistance has increased, can be explained any number of ways.  Here’s two. First, the number of people who want to participate in the political process is tapped out.  Plenty of people voluntarily decide not to participate, and that is their right.  Second, in the stagnating economy, those seeking public assistance are coming from the formerly-working word, and in that world, they were already registered to vote. So when they are asked to register at a government welfare agency, they don’t use the opportunity. 

But those possibilities would have muddied up the NAACP press release.