Ann Althouse reminds us: “Since the reports were made in a manner and at a time when it served the interests of Walker opponents, I always suspected Walker opponents of either faking the reports or generating the calls to cause the reports. I’m even more suspicious now that the subject has been dropped. If the calls were real and really made by Walker supporters, the opponents who claimed they got the calls or claimed they heard complaints about the calls would have an interest now in laying out the evidence. The silence is telling.” “It was battlespace preparation, intended to provide shouting points in the event of a close enough election to spur a recount. Since it wasn’t close, the shouting points weren’t needed and the whole thing became inoperative.”
Instapundit concludes:
A warning for the fall. Deceptive tactics such as concocting phony calls are likely to be used again.
Does Voting Rights Act Permit “Coalition Suits” by Different Minority Groups?
While the public’s attention may be focused on Section 5 for the time being, a lesser known issue involving Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act may soon steal the Court’s attention. Last week in Pope v. County of Albany, the Second Circuit called attention to a circuit split over Section 2 of the Act. . . Under Section 2, members of minority groups may bring claims of vote dilution where multimember voting districts “submerge” minority voters into the majority masses. To bring an actionable claim in such cases, a plaintiff must show, among other things, that the members of their protected class form a “politically cohesive” minority group. As the Second Circuit pointed out last week, however, “[t]he circuits are split as to whether different minority groups may be aggregated to establish a Section 2 claim.” . . . Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has expressly reserved decision on the issue, while at the same time indicating that a plaintiff relying on an aggregated minority group would have to demonstrate that its members are politically cohesive.
Star Parker: Voting Shouldn’t Be Easy
Star Parker makes the argument in the Washington Examiner that voters should be sufficiently motivated to participate that a Voter ID or a long line won’t stop them:
“A free society will soon not be free if the citizens in it see their freedom as something that should arrive effortlessly, free of personal responsibility, like the appearance of the morning sun. Black leaders do damage to our nation, and to our black citizens, to call requirements for a modicum of personal responsibility in order to vote “racism.”“
Overdue: House Sets Contempt Vote on Holder
“Democrats’ Dangerous Efforts to Rekindle Comparisons of Voter ID to Jim Crow” Continue
Democratic Congressmen on the conference’s Voter ID panel reiterated claims that Republican-led efforts to enact laws requiring American citizens to present a valid photo ID in order to vote are inherently racist and intended to keep minorities, specifically blacks and Hispanics, from exercising their right to vote. “This is about them trying to snatch our power away,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn), who is a co-chair of the House progressive caucus. Ellison predicted that Voter ID would be the most important issue in the 2012 election. . . Maryland Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, who repeated the debunked smear that Voter ID laws are “the new Jim Crow laws of our time,” is the second Democrat in the last 10 days to reassert claims that that Voter ID laws – which aim to ensure that only American citizens vote in American elections – are similar to segregationist era laws that required African Americans to take complicated literacy tests and pay unreasonable “poll taxes” to vote.
Reporting from this weekend’s progressive activist conference Netroots Nation:
“Photo ID, the Left, and Voter Fraud”
..the Left’s main reason for opposing voter ID laws is an exaggeration.
Obtaining a photo ID is not an undue burden and is actually not
something out of reach for those Americans interested in voting. Since
voting generally takes place every two years, there is adequate time to
obtain a photo ID before it is needed at a polling place. And, if those
on the Left are concerned that some have a difficult time obtaining
photo IDs, they should help them gather the necessary documentation and
help them obtain the ID, just as they assist people in other areas of
need.
So what’s the real reason behind the Left’s opposition to voter ID laws? Undermining America’s electoral process is something those on the Left know how to do since it advances their agenda. They do not want laws to prevent this activity. Breaking a law has consequences.
More from ACLJ
“California’s election reforms flop”
Good-government types promised their reforms — redistricting
and a top-two primary system — would fix things. They were wrong.
Hollywood produced “Ishtar” and, more recently,
Disney’s “John Carter.” But it has never made a bomb quite like
Tuesday’s California elections.
Expectations were high. California’s political reformers
told us that this would be the year everything changed. After a decade and a
half of reform efforts, a new system of less partisan elections was finally in
place, and fairly drawn legislative districts and a new top-two primary system
would usher in a new era of democracy. Voters would be engaged, competition
would be spurred, independents would get a boost and California would see the
kind of big policy debates necessary to find solutions to the state’s
persistent governance crisis.
Oh, well.
Link to full story
Tweet of the Day
Fred Thompson tweets: “Despite the blowout, some WI Democrats crying voter fraud. Apparently
some Republicans had been going around locking cemetery gates.”
New Texas Dem Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa claims “Voter ID is unAmerican”
Right out the gate the slurs begin. Activists attending the Democratic State Party Convention tweet that Gilberto Hinojosa, the new Chair of the Texas Democratic Party, smeared a majority of Texans and Democrats (who overwhelmingly support voter identification laws) by calling voter ID laws “unAmerican.” Yes, Texas Democrats want to go back to the banana republic vote stuffing of the Tammany Hall era.