Popular Minnesota voter ID amendment on path to passage

The Voter ID amendment is very popular in Minnesota.  According to our new poll, 62 percent of Minnesotans support the idea of requiring photo ID’s to vote on Election Day, while 31 percent oppose. Just 7 percent are undecided. A huge majority of Republicans, 87 percent, favor the amendment along with 65 percent of independent voters. Democrats oppose the measure by a 53 percent to 39 percent margin. 

The only surprise in this survey is that the Democrats have finally talked themselves out of support for voter ID.  In most surveys, support for voter ID is significant even among Democrats with only hard core liberals opposing it.

“Maryland Democrat quits congressional race amid vote fraud allegations”

“The Maryland Democratic Party has discovered that Ms. Rosen has been registered to vote in both Florida and Maryland since at least 2006; that she in fact voted in the 2006 general election both in Florida and Maryland; and that she voted in the presidential preference primaries held in both Florida and Maryland in 2008,” wrote Yvette Lewis, the state party chair. “This information is based on an examination of the voter files from both states.”

 


Once again, the key to finding voter fraud is actually looking for it.


 


More here.

“Early Voting in Florida wasn’t hurt by new law”

The Daytona Beach News-Journal provides its opinion on how early voting under the new law increased turnout and resulted in a victory for Florida Republicans:

Lost in the heated rhetoric and debate on early voting in Florida
is the fact that the Sunshine State has already had a big election in
2012 — and early-voting turnout was great.  Early voting in the
August 2012 primary was up 52 percent from August 2008. This impressive
showing followed the Republican-dominated Legislature’s passage of a
controversial election law that, among other things, decreased the
number of days in which in-person early voting was allowed.

Voters, apparently, can find their way to thepolls
— when real issues motivate them. Issues and hot elections drive
turnout. The length of the early-voting period — now eight days —
matters less. Previously,
election supervisors could offer up to 14 days of early voting. That
was changed in 2011 to eight days. State officials said 367,000 people
took advantage of early voting in the Aug. 14 primary. In the August
2008 primary, 240,000 voters cast ballots early, over more days.

…On Wednesday, Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP won a battle in federal court, when Eric Holder, the U.S. attorney general, said he would accept the state’s eight-day early voting plan
in five counties that the federal government regulates because of past
racial discrimination. Those counties are Monroe, Hillsborough, Collier,
Henry and Hardee. Because of the federal regulation, those counties
were exempted from new rules in August — but they now have to follow
most of Florida’s 2011 election law. …

The
Justice Department is asking the state to still offer 96 hours of early
voting, in the eight days, which Scott plans to do. Scott’s plan also
has voting on a Sunday that previously did not have voting, according to
the Associated Press.

But
that doesn’t satisfy critics who believe black voters use early voting
more on the Sunday immediately preceding the general election. Florida
won’t be offering it then. Instead, according to the Florida Division of
Elections website, early voting begins 10 days before an election and
ends on the third day before any election in which there is a state or
federal office race.

“The Bitter Failure of the MOVE Act”

The Virginia-Pilot opines:  Congress passed a law in 2009 designed to make voter registration easier
for the nation’s service members. The Pentagon defied that law, and the
results are obvious. So is the military’s decision to abandon its
obligation to protect the rights of its soldiers, sailors, airmen and
Marines.

Of course, there are the apologists at the Overseas Vote Foundation (@https://twitter.com/overseasvote) who are looking for a different word than the extremist word “failure.” 


overseas Vote
‏@overseasvote

VA-Pilot slams on MOVE Act. “Failure” is extreme. But yes, MOVE needs balance of online & in-person outreach


Failure must be too harsh a term for the organization that purports to represent overseas citizens.  How about disappointment, fiasco, disaster, miscarriage, breakdown, malfunction, or ruin?  Pick one.

NAACP and DOJ

As discussed in my book Injustice and now part of an NAACP press release “NAACP Urges Blacks To Support the Justice Department”:

““Across the U.S., the NAACP and our partners are working with key state officials and the Department of Justice to fight laws that deny some voters a voice in our democracy. And slowly battles are being won,” Jotaka L. Eaddy, NAACP Senior Director, Voting Rights Initiative, said in a statement.

USS FVAP: A Sinking Ship

As ELC has been reporting, there have been
serious storm clouds brewing at the Federal Voting Assistance Program
(FVAP). Those clouds have resulted from reports about expected low
military voter participation in 2012, a blistering DOD IG report
identifying widespread failures to comply with the MOVE Act and data reliability issues, and questions related to the waste of $75 million
in congressional appropriations.  Surprisingly,
several current and former FVAP employees are quietly blaming this mess
on Bob Carey, the former Director of FVAP.   Perhaps this explains his
unexpected jump from the ship in May.  Or it may be a convenient scapegoat for those now responsible for supporting our military and overseas voters.  We will have more on this in the
future.