“A record 27,000 provisional ballots were cast in Philly’s 2012 election, more than double the number cast in the 2008 presidential election. Many of those voters were forced to vote provisionally for legitimate reasons: 9,000 went to the wrong polling place, and 7,600 were ineligible voters.”  Philly.com.

Austin, Texas.

Washington Free Beacon has the story.

In the midst of the IRS scandal, Robert Bauer, Obama’s top pick to lead the new Presidential Commission on Election Administration launched an attack on Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, calling his opposition to new campaign finance disclosure legislation “Disclosure Games” and no more than rhetoric and fancy that misleads our forgetful and easily duped American populace. Below is a key excerpt from the volley against McConnell:

“It is enough to say for purposes here that the charge he makes, and that the like-minded scribe repeats, is smoking with rhetoric and flights of fancy, and it depends for its force on a a failure of the audience’s long –term memory.“

Now Mitch McConnell has thick skin and this attack will have no impact on the Senator’s deliberation or decisions on such constitutional issues.  The bigger question is how can Obama’s former White House Counsel serve on a non-partisan commission and expect to offer non-biased recommendations when he free-lances on his blog with political attacks against individuals who disagree with him, including questioning the integrity of the position.  Regardless of the wisdom of the post, it is fair to conclude that congressional adoption of election reform recommendations from Bauer just became more unlikely.  

I’ll be on Hannity tonight to talk about the political speech regulators like Tova Wang who were visiting the White House just before the harassment of Tea Party groups began.

UPDATE: Moving to June 14.

Washington Times reports: The Supreme Court is expected this month to announce rulings on two key voting rights cases that could reshape how Americans nationwide cast ballots in federal elections.  The more high-profile of the two pending rulings — which could come as early as this week — involves an Alabama county that is pushing back against federal oversight of its election procedures. The other centers on an Arizona law that requires voters to submit documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

J.Ray Kennedy writes on the Hill that the President should revive the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and simply appoint all members of the commission without the consent of the Congress. Of course, a committee in the House of Representatives recently voted to abolish the EAC, so this action would certainly set up another constitutional battle with the Congress.  You hear similar sentiment from the free speech regulators with regards to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) when they don’t get what they want. Ignoring the nuclear nature of such a power play, Kennedy writes that if the Republicans don’t play ball soon, the President should start the game without them. 

After re-reading key portions of HAVA, I believe the following could help get the EAC back to work:

 

• The president’s role is to appoint EAC members “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate”, similar to ambassadors, judges, and Cabinet members. 

• Congressional leaders — the Speaker, the House minority leader and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate — are obliged by HAVA to “recommend” candidates for EAC vacancies. But it does not say that the president must accept — or wait for — those recommendations beyond the time given for filling vacancies.

• If vacancies on the commission are to be filled “in the manner in which the original appointment was made and … subject to any conditions which applied with respect to the original appointment” and if one of those conditions (203.a.4) was that appointments were to be made within 120 days following enactment of the act, I would argue that replacements should be appointed within 120 days of the vacancy they are filling.

 

Thus, if he has not received recommendations within 120 days, the president should forward nominations to the Senate for confirmation. In doing so, he should nominate at least two individuals who are well regarded within the other party in a good-faith effort to give the EAC the balance that it was intended to have, just as he has done in naming his Commission. 

As the Journal’s Kimberley A. Strassel has noted, in the summer of 2008 Obama campaign General Counsel Bob Bauer urged the Justice Department’s criminal division to investigate the officers and donors of a group called the American Issues Project after it ran a negative ad about Mr. Obama.

The organization was a client of Ms. Mitchell’s, so she learned firsthand about the tactics of the Obama campaign and Mr. Bauer: “He would send a letter to the Justice Department demanding that my clients be criminally prosecuted for exercising their First Amendment rights. And then I would write a response, and then he’d write another letter, and I’d immediately write a response.”

Mr. Bauer was named White House counsel in late 2009, shortly before the IRS appears to have begun its harassment of conservatives. Now in private practice, he seems like the kind of former official that conservatives might want to question under oath. Could it happen?

“We’d have to find that there was some communication between him and the IRS or something like that,” says Ms. Mitchell. Though much may remain to be discovered, she says, the targeting of conservatives in recent years has been remarkably open: “The communications were all pretty public. That’s one of the things that I don’t think has gotten enough attention, is the use of the IRS as a political tool. There are 17 Democratic senators who will literally sign anything put in front of them going after conservative organizations.”

She is referring to letters sent during the last election cycle by various Democrats urging IRS investigations, some of the letters even referencing specific conservative organizations. But Ms. Mitchell might just as easily mention the many speeches in which Mr. Obama has vilified groups opposing his policies and denounced them as threats to democracy or foreign-backed front groups.