” A panel of federal judges on Tuesday refused to throw out Arizona’s new state legislative district maps, finding that the state’s redistricting commission did not violate the Constitution’s equal-protection clause when they put more voters in some districts.”  Link.  Republicans had complained the redistricting was partisan.  The usual foes of partisan gerrymandering are silent. Arizona is a great example of the opposition to partisan gerrymandering being loudest when the Democrat ox is gored.

Critics of tough voter ID laws are running out of time and options in their efforts to knock down those barriers ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

…Instead, Democrats, advocates and other voter ID critics see their best hope in passing an update to the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the 1965 civil rights law that the Supreme Court gutted last summer.

Sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), the 2014 Voting Rights Act Amendment (VRAA) explicitly empowers states to adopt tougher voter ID requirements — an inclusion designed to attract conservative support — but it could also force some of those states to scale back those ID laws, a possibility being cheered by liberal voting rights advocates.

The Leahy-Sensenbrenner bill remains a long shot, but on the issue of voting rights, voices on all sides of the debate say it’s the only game in town.

The debate over voter ID laws took off in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court’s VRA decision in June, when several states were empowered to implement previously passed photo ID mandates that would have required federal “preclearance” approval under the VRA provisions rejected by the court.

The Hill:  If Democrats see voter ID laws standing between them and gaining the majority in the House of Representatives or keeping the Senate, they are deluding themselves.    

Listening to the media and civil rights groups, you might think the sky was falling and early voting was ended in North Carolina. Any reform not originated by Democrats must be bad.  According to media reports, early voting has increased and remains one of the many options for voters.  

 Fox News.

“If the available evidence suggests that the amount of voter fraud is understated, the evidence that voter-ID laws suppress voting is nonexistent. In elections held after new voter-ID laws were enacted in Georgia and Tennessee, for instance, minority turnout either was stable or increased. In Tennessee, the turnout among Hispanics of voting age rose to 34.7% in 2012 from 19.2% in 2008, according to surveys by the U.S. Census Bureau, even though a strict new photo ID law was in effect in 2012.”

“When it comes to the subject of voter suppression, it is revealing that Mr. Obama avoided statistics earlier this month and relied entirely on conditional verbs: voters “could be turned away from the polls . . . may suddenly be told they can no longer vote . . . may learn that without a document like a passport or a birth certificate, they can’t register.”

Wall Street Journal today.

The Hill

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Robert Popper, former DOJ senior attorney deconstructs Obama’s bogus statistics and arguments in his latest speech with an article entitled “Political Fraud About Voter Fraud. – The president’s selective statistics are red meat to supporters, but still bogus.”  Journalists are not paying attention or reporting on basic information.  The President is playing loose and fast with the facts while engaging in such an discussion on race.

Mr. Obama also cited an “analysis” showing that only 40 voters “were indicted for fraud” from 2002 to 2005. That number is drawn from an Aug. 2, 2005, Justice Department news release—which describes the department’s “Ballot Access and Voting Integrity” initiative—and from a related list of federal cases. The release mentioned 120 pending election-fraud investigations, 89 prosecutions and 52 convictions.

It is preposterous to cite that news release as proof that voter fraud is rare. The release contains no information concerning prosecutions in any of the 50 state court systems for violations of state voting laws, even though these are far more common than prosecutions for violations of federal voting laws. Even as a list of federal offenses, the news release is inadequate. Justice did not claim to have compiled all convictions, prosecutions or investigations—let alone all known or unsolved cases—involving federal voter fraud. The release was only a list of legal actions relating to what was then a three-year-old initiative.

Inaccurate voter rolls in Texas: