The timesfreepress.com reports: Senate Republicans’ first redistricting effort in state history also provides some surprises.

It pits two GOP incumbent senators in Middle Tennessee against each other in a redrawn Senate District 25. The seat, now held by Sen. Jim Summerville, R-Dickson, adds Robertson County, which is home to Sen. Kerry Roberts, R-Springfield, who represents Senate District 18.

And Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, will have to deal with Senate Democratic Leader Jim Kyle of Memphis, who suddenly finds himself drawn into what is expected to be a GOP-leaning district.

Republicans say in the description of what they call their “regional integrity plan” that the new map pairs four current incumbents into two districts “to meet equal population guidelines — three of these four paired incumbents are Republicans, an indication of the fairness of the overall plan.”

The GOP says minority voting strength “is enhanced to an historic level in this proposed Senate map, increasing from three majority-minority Senate districts in the Democrats’ drawn map of 2002 to four majority minority districts.”

In Wisconsin, the public outreach over photo ID is escalating with an all-out blitz of informational ads using all different types of media.    

The Government Accountability Board will begin blanketing the state with TV, radio and billboard ads this week, reminding people about the new voter ID law.

GAB spokesman Reid Magney says the state will spend about $436,000 on the ads heading into the February 21st. primaries.

the full link.

The story out of Mississippi here and here is the voter ID constitutional amendment that Mississippi will soon send to the feds for approval – the evidence seems to point to Mississippi going to the Voting Section of the Department of Justice for review.  *Sigh* 

Sid Salter correctly believes that the fight will be long and expensive, even more so if the state continues on this course.  Because of the importance of the amendment, Mississippi officials have a duty to play the voter ID issue smart by allowing federal court review.  Instead, if the comments below are a true representation of their approval strategy, Mississippi is set to run off the cliff like South Carolina by allowing DOJ to delay and obstruct implementation of the law. 

Mississippi officials are confident the state’s new voter ID constitutional amendment will pass muster despite the Justice Department’s rejection of a similar South Carolina law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. “The Supreme Court has ruled that voter ID is constitutional and we believe that Mississippi’s plan for implementing voter ID will be constitutional as well,” Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, said Saturday.

If Mississippi wants to overcome the political opposition of the Holder DOJ, the state needs to be patient and smart by going to Court and request expedited review if they have any hope of having the law in place prior to the 2012 election.  Even then, it may be too late because DOJ will try to stall the litigation until after the election cycle. 

Mississippi should rationally make its case and allow the DOJ to defend why they are contradicting the Supreme Court by requiring evidence of voter impersonation fraud, and finding speculative burdens on voters that the highest Court dismissed as non-existent and non-discriminatory. 

Let DOJ defend why they continue to make the leap in logic that simply because some registered voters might need to obtain a free ID, then these voters will not be able to cast a ballot.  Many courts have already thrown out that leap of logic as voter ID opponents fruitlessly look for plaintiffs.  DOJ will not be able to hide behind their internal secret memorandums and will have to explain why the increase in voter turnout in other photo ID states was simply ignored.   

 BigGov has more on the statistical foundation for the South Carolina Voter ID objection. This will not be good news for Section 5 when the Supreme Court gets a peek inside what the basis of this Section 5 objection was.  From Lee Stranahan:

What if the numbers of voters with no DMV-issued ID was REALLY small? Let’s say we discovered that the number of blacks with no DMV-issued ID was 1.4% but the number of whites with no DMV-issued ID was 1%. Now we’re down to a .4% difference and only dealing with a very small slice of the population. It doesn’t matter, thanks to the miracle of Holder Math!

 Marianas Variety op ed.

Details to follow, but I speak January 12, at 12 noon in Tampa Florida before the Federalist Society Lawyers Chapter.  The event will be at the Tampa Club in the Bank of America Plaza.  100 East Kennedy Blvd. 



I’ll post links as soon as I can find them. 

 Pacific Daily News.

I am one of the speakers at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Charleston, South Carolina the week of the South Carolina primary.  I will have books at the event also.  More details to follow.

You can debate the issue until the proverbial “cows come home.” But, as of this New Year in the state of Tennessee possessing voter photo I-Ds for elections is the law of the land in the Volunteer State.

But, is what is at stake a fair and equal method of insuring election integrity or an opening partisan ploy aimed at securing political power through selected voter disenfranchisement?

“There was a recent poll that in Tennessee 86 percent of Tennesseans agreed with photo ID…majorities in both the white and black communities,” said City Councilman Kemp Conrad

MyFoxMemphis at the link

 Link here.