Another Jeffry Toobin article is in the New Yorker (yes, they still publish) which haphazardly mixes myth, fable and law. Among them are this gem, that long lines in Ohio conspired to rob a more splendid victory from Democrats and that somehow the Voting Rights Act has anything to do with it.
“Obama won in Florida, too, but a recent study by Theodore Allen, an associate professor at Ohio State University, found that, in central Florida alone, long lines, exacerbated by a law that reduced the number of days for early voting, discouraged about fifty thousand people, most of them Democrats, from casting ballots.”
Naturally no Toobin article would be complete without a quote from the phony Brennan Center’s phony voter ID study. Peruse, enjoy, laugh – here at the link.
New Hampshire Voter Fraud Mailings – “someone voted with your name”
New Hampshire non-profit radio has more.
SC to recoup “tens of thousands” from ID case
In Alaska, Redistricting destined for do over
The Artic-Sounder reports:
“All the disruptions of redistricting that are necessarily endured
every 10 years will be repeated in the next two,” states the final
supreme court opinion. “The cause of this drastic remedy, according to
the majority opinion, is the Board’s use of unchallenged districts in
devising a Hickel plan.”
The Hickel process requires the board to draw up voting districts
with first Alaska’s constitutional requirements in mind, and then
determine if the plan meets federal voting laws. Those requirements are
often incredibly difficult to meet simultaneously.
Deviation from Alaska constitutional requirements are then allowed only if it is the sole way to comply with federal mandate.
“Military voting bill to be Kentucky Senate’s first in session”
The Courier-Journal reports on bipartisan legislation pushed to the front burner.
A bill to make it easier for military personnel and other overseas
voters to cast absentee ballots will be Senate Bill 1 in the legislative
session that starts Tuesday.Republican
Sen. Robert Stivers, who will be elected Senate president on Tuesday,
said during a news conference with Democratic Secretary of State Alison
Lundergan Grimes Monday that the military voting bill will get the
priority designation.
Did Massachusetts Ex-Rep. Smith Act Alone in Election Fixing Case?
In exchange for his plea, prosecutors will recommend that Stat spend six months in some Club Fed, instead of the maximum two years he faces for engaging in what the US criminal code calls the Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law and what the rest of us call fixing elections. Reading the charges and the plea agreement leads to only two possible conclusions: Either Stat rolled and pointed the finger at others, or a two-year investigation by the FBI in which a staggering number of Everett residents were hauled before a grand jury has ended with a resounding thud. “No comment” from the office of US Attorney Carmen Ortiz. Smith’s plea hearing is scheduled for Friday, and his lawyers say Smith will not be implicating anyone else in the ballot fraud scheme.
More on the absentee ballot fraud case against Stephen “Stat” Smith, the now former state representative from Everett, Massachusetts forced to resign as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors:
North Carolina Voter ID Moving
WV Voter ID Gains Support
Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
In voter fraud case, man sentenced to 5 years, permanently barred from public employment
Tough sentence for a crime that to some does not exist. The ObserverOnline reports
A Belleville man, one of the final defendants in a long-running Essex
County voter fraud case, has been sentenced to five years in state
prison for submitting fraudulent absentee ballots while working for the
2007 campaign of Teresa Ruiz for the New Jersey Senate in the 29th
District.John Fernandez, 61, learned his fate Dec. 20 while appearing before
Superior Court Judge Robert C. Billmeier in Mercer County, N.J. Attorney
General Jeffrey S. Chiesa announced.Fernandez, found guilty after a jury trial in Mercer County this past
September, worked for the Essex County Department of Economic
Development. He was ordered to forfeit his job and has been permanently
barred from public employment in New Jersey.
“Miami-Dade grand jury spells out voting fixes”
The Miami Herald reports on grand jury recommendations on absentee ballot protections against fraud.
There may no longer be hanging chads to compromise the integrity of a
Florida election, as happened in 2000, but lax state laws still allow
all sorts of shenanigans — from ballot brokers who get paid by
candidates’ campaigns to hunt for absentee ballots at assisted living
facilities and other senior centers to opening up absentee ballot
request lists only to candidates and certain political campaign
committees.“Many of our legislative recommendations are easy to
implement as we are only asking that they reinstate laws that were
previously on the books,” the grand jury report notes. One of those old
laws required people who vote absentee to have a witness (with an
address and signature) on the envelope returning the ballot. That would
be one way to put so-called boleteros on notice.Another way to
help combat fraud: Expand the county’s supervised voting program which
encourages senior centers to work with the elections office so that
absentee ballots are delivered and collected by trained elections
workers. “With the supervised voting program, the voting of an absentee
ballot mirrors that of live, in-person voting . . . and the marking of
the ballot is done without any solicitations or outside influences,” the
report states.