Story here.

An excerpt from the Star-Telegram:  This is all too typical of redistricting years,” said Larry Sabato, a
political analyst and director of the Center for Politics at the
University of Virginia. “The partisan wars, the Justice Department’s
decisions and the courts are ingredients in a goulash made to order for
gumming up the works.”

As lawyers, politicians, federal election
officials and a host of federal judges wade into the issue of Texas’
congressional and state legislative boundaries, the state’s conventions
— a few days set aside every other year to energize the party and
choose delegates for national conventions — hang in the balance.

“It
is indeed a mess,” said Allan Saxe, associate professor of government
at the University of Texas at Arlington. “We have had redistricting
battles in past years, but this one ranks right up there.”

Fox News link here.

Secretary of State Matt Schultz jumped into one of
the most partisan issues in electoral politics last week when he
introduced a new voter photo identification bill, but he did so
with a twist.

Unique to his proposal is the idea that one voter can vouch for
another in place of photo identification, something Schultz hopes
will blunt criticism of his plan.

He used the word “bipartisan” no fewer than 14 times during his
Statehouse news conference and in answering questions from the
media.

When pressed, however, he acknowledged that he had bipartisan
input, but not necessarily bipartisan support for his plan.

“Some of the issues we were concerned about, I do see those
addressed in the legislation,” said Scott County Auditor Roxanna
Moritz, who served on a panel of five Republicans and five
Democrats Schultz called together last year. “But I do not support
the voter ID legislation.

Full story at the link.

Undaunted by the ongoing legal tussle over voter ID, South Carolina
lawmakers are looking at two other steps that could make it more
difficult to vote here.

Republican legislators have introduced bills that would require those
holding voter registration drives to register with the state and those
registering to vote to provide proof of citizenship.

story here.

The following is the first paragraph from a recent court order from a Federal Judge lambasting the Empire State for disenfranchising military voters and refusing to set an election calendar to allow for enough time for overseas voters to cast ballots:

Nothing is more critical to a vibrant democratic society than citizen participation in government through the act of voting. It is unconscionable to send men and women overseas to preserve our democracy while simultaneously disenfranchising them while they are gone. To some extent, that is precisely what New York has done. Having had ample opportunity to correct the problem, it has failed to find the political will to do so. While matters of comity ordinarily counsel federal courts to refrain from becoming embroiled in state election schemes, New York has left the court no choice. If federally-guaranteed voting rights are to be protected, the court must act.

As a result of the order, the court set a primary election date that would allow for adequate time for New York election officials to meet the 45 day mailing deadlines of the MOVE Act.  It is an outrage that it took almost 2 1/2 years, thousands disenfranchised and a federal Court to force New York to do the right thing.

Full story here.

http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2012/01_-_January/Judge_moves_up_state_primary_date_to_comply_with_federal_law/

 National Review

“Texas recently won a major battle in its congressional and state-legislative redistricting fight. On January 20, the Supreme Court threw out interim maps that had been created out of whole cloth by a three-judge panel in San Antonio, and that, in addition to heavily favoring Democrats, basically ignored the plans drawn by the state legislature. The war goes on in federal court in Texas and the District of Columbia, but the decision was a defeat not only for the NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and other seekers of racial spoils, but also for Eric Holder’s Justice Department.”

Sources within DOJ tell ElectionLawCenter that Voting Section Chief Chris Herren will reverse course and inform election officials that enforcement of the MOVE Act will be the top enforcement priority of the Voting Section in the 2012 election.   This is a reversal of current policy where Voting Section and political appointees in the Civil Rights Division have previously indicated states should expect investigations and lawsuits over the motor voter laws.  After the 2010 debacle by DOJ, the status quo was not acceptable.   

Sources indicate that Voting Section Chief Herren has already started the process of laying out the new “priorities” in earlier meetings this year with election officials.  If this reversal turns out to be correct and made publicly, it would be quite different from the earlier speeches by Assistant Attorney General Perez and other Voting Section staff harping on motor voter law enforcement.

In those meetings with election officials, DOJ specifically undercut initial Department of Defense guidance to states on prompt implementation of the MOVE Act, causing confusion and ambiguity in how the law was to be enforced. 

So it is January 2012 and the MOVE Act was adopted in 2009.  It would have been nice to have the Holder DOJ actively enforcing the MOVE Act from day one when it was adopted.  Instead, confusion reigned for years as jurisdictions received conflicting or no guidance from DOJ.  The result was thousands of military and overseas voters being disenfranchised while DOJ viewed the mess from afar. 

Republican legislators plan to take their case for a photo ID requirement for voters directly to the voters themselves.

Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer, R-Big Lake, who oversaw Minnesota’s voting system as secretary of state from 1999 to 2007, and Sen. Scott Newman, R-Hutchinson, have introduced the photo ID concept as a proposed constitutional amendment. It would require all voters to produce an “approved form of photographic identification prior to voting.”

If it passes the Republican-controlled House and Senate, the proposal would go directly onto the November ballot for voters to decide. Unlike bills and budgets, where the governor can use his veto pen, Gov. Mark Dayton has no way of blocking or changing a proposed constitutional amendment approved by the Legislature

Full story here.

Secretary of State Matt Schultz renewed his push Thursday for a law requiring voters to show identification before they can cast ballots at polling places, but critics say such a measure isn’t necessary and would lead to disenfranchisement.

Schultz made voter identification the key issue of his 2010 campaign and supported a similar bill last session that was approved 60-40 in the Republican-controlled House but never taken up in the Democratic Senate

Full story at the Chicago Tribune