Fox and Friends Saturday. Details on Twitter.
Voter Fraud Charges in Jacksonville FL
“Two people have been charged with filling out fraudulent voter registration cards at two local universities. A two-year Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation found that two employees of Strategic Allied Consulting, Rebekah Paul and Christian Price, were filling out fake forms at the University of North Florida and Jacksonville University.”
Story here.
Voter Impersonation in Iowa Election
Story here. “Linn County Auditor Joel Miller says an unidentified individual voted in person at a polling place Tuesday. That person signed into the voting register and cast a ballot. Later in the day, the actual voter showed up to find someone had already voted under her name.”
Think Ed Shultz will cover this story?
“Racially Charged Attacks Against Justice Scalia Unfounded”
Unfortunately “racially charged” attacks are commonly the attack of choice. The Foundry.
“The inflammatory attacks on Justice Antonin Scalia after the oral arguments in the Supreme Court in the Shelby County case last week show the desperation of the supporters of the “racial entitlement” that is Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.”
New Hampshire Sec of State Questions Congruence and Proportionality of Section 4 of VRA
The Secretary of State questions the triggers in the Union Leader: “Forty-eight years ago, eight New Hampshire towns and two unincorporated places were incorrectly and unfairly subjected to the federal Voting Rights Act for discrimination,” Gardner said.
25 Days and no Enforcement of 42U.S.C.1973i(e) for 6 Obama Votes
It is now 25 days since U.S. Attorney Carter Stewart has done nothing about it, and Melowese Richardson has still not been indicted or arraigned. It wouldn’t be terribly surprising if she hasn’t even been interviewed by the FBI. One can imagine an 18 USC 1001 charge would fall out of the sky in any interview with her.
Perhaps Stewart watches MSNBC and hasn’t heard about it. If not, you can reach him at 513-684-3711 or his District Election Official Gary Spartis at 614-255-1610 or Gary.Spartis@usdoj.gov. (If that DEO contact is outdated, I’m happy to post the updated DEO if someone at DOJ wants to email me the updated phone and contact information.)
Mississippi v. Massachusetts: “Roberts and Scalia Are Right”
A posting at National Review. National Review says that “Roberts and Scalia are right.” National Review:
An obvious question that the government should have been prepared to answer was one asked by Roberts: Which state today has the worst ratio between black and white turnout? Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. either didn’t know the answer or pretended not to. The chief justice informed him that it was Massachusetts. . . .
However, while decrying the exchange between Roberts and Verrilli, and claiming his state has high voter registration, Galvin never disputed Roberts’s actual point about the disparity between black and white turnout in Massachusetts. . . .
Moreover, anyone who had read the opinion of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in the Shelby County case knows that Roberts was citing information from that opinion. As Judge Stephen Williams pointed out on page 14 of his dissent, “Most of the worst offenders — states where in 2004 whites turned out or were registered in significantly higher proportion than African-Americans — are not covered. These include, for example, the three worst — Massachusetts, Washington, and Colorado.” This point was uncontested by the Justice Department in its brief filed with the Supreme Court. . . .
Section 5 has made race a dominant factor in redistricting. Democrats like it because the majority-minority racial districts created to satisfy Section 5 provide safe seats for black and Hispanic Democrats. That is the very definition of a racial entitlement. Those same majority-minority districts drain Democratic voters from surrounding districts, creating safe Republican seats surrounding those almost challenge-proof, racially gerrymandered Democratic districts. Much of the support for Section 5 is motivated by crass, partisan objectives that both parties share, especially the entrenchment and protection of incumbents.
MSNBC’s Selective Coverage of Voter Fraud
MSNBC has discovered voter fraud. This blog reported a few days ago about the fraud committed by GOP voter registration field workers. Because the acts were committed by Republicans, MSNBC decided to cover it. Yet MSNBC has failed to once mention Melowese Richarson, the Obama campaign activist and election official who admitted on camera that she voted six times in Ohio.
When voter fraud deniers so zealously deny that vote fraud occurs, perhaps they can be forgiven, because unlike most cable news viewers, they may be tuned into (or appearing on) MSNBC, where vote fraud is only covered if a Republican is accused of committing it.
Arizona: “Preclearance of voting laws now irrational”
Arizona Republic editorial by the Attorney General of Arizona.
If, as Alabama and Arizona have urged, Section 5 is declared
unconstitutional, people can still bring lawsuits under Section 2 for
any alleged discrimination. But the huge and expensive administrative
burden of preclearance, which humiliates Arizona by making it say,
“Mother may I?” to the federal government every time it wants to change
some remarkably minor laws, will have been eliminated
“America needs fewer campaign finance laws”
Nice analogy in The Atlantic on the campaign finance zeal of the “reformers”:
Campaign-finance reform is a bit like the war on drugs: a decades-long
exercise in over-regulation that has exacerbated the problems it was
designed to solve.
And a good breakdown of the actual issue the Supreme Court will review:
It’s important to stress that McCutcheon is not challenging limits on
individual or base contributions to party committees or individual
candidates. (Candidate contribution caps were $2,500 per federal
election in 2011-2012; contributions to national party committees were
capped at $30,800 per year.) He is challenging aggregate limits on
contributions to candidates and parties. In other words, he is not
demanding a right to give more than $2,500 to any candidate; he’s
demanding a right to give as much as $2,500 to more candidates, in
excess of the aggregate cap.