According to media reports, Rhode Island’s voter ID law has gone into effect in the overwhelming Democratic controlled state as it did earlier this year with Union elections.

Two America’s in the Holder DOJ:  Democrats and their Union allies who can freely implement voter ID laws and then Republicans who will be pilloried as racists and Jim Crow.

Stumping in Iowa, Gingrich became the third presidential candidate in the last week to directly criticize Attorney General Holder and his objections to voter ID laws.  Earlier this week Santorum and Romney similarly blasted President Obama for blocking the South Carolina voter ID proposal.  

The Washington Post/AP characterizes the Gingrich blast:  

During a campaign stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the former House speaker questioned why Attorney General Eric Holder is “so determined not to identify if people are not eligible to vote”   Gingrich went on to say that, “you have to ask, why is it that they are desperate to retain the ability to steal elections and I think that’s what it comes down to.”

And the Miami Herald quotes Santorum:

On Thursday, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania also blasted the Justice Department ruling, accusing the administration of pursuing “common-sense anti-fraud measures that states have put in place all because they believe it’s a partisan advantage for them to get people who probably shouldn’t be voting to help them and their political cause.”

CBS News reports that Occupy protests are interfering with the Republican Party’s attempt to conduct an primary election for federal office.  The protests are forcing GOP vote counters to find a secret location.  It is clear that Occupy protesters will try to disrupt the 2012 elections.

The Iowa Republican party is moving its caucus night vote counting operation to an undisclosed location because of planned “Occupy Iowa Caucus” protests. State GOP chair Matt Strawn was critical of the protests and said it’s ironic that the Occupy movement is focusing on the Iowa caucuses.

“There’s really no more grassroots process in American politics than the Iowa caucuses,” Strawn said in an interview. “So it’s a little puzzling why they’d choose to disrupt that process.”  Strawn said the party is coordinating with local law enforcement to ensure smooth operations next Tuesday at the 1,774 precincts around the state.

“We’re taking additional safeguards when it comes to the counting and tabulating and reporting of the caucus night results to make sure they’re done in a timely and accurate fashion,” he said

I wonder what federal agency is charged with protecting the fundamental right to vote without threat of violence or interference.  It appears that the Obama DOJ is ignoring the escalating violence.  The Occupy protesters must fall within the same “off-limits” category as the Black Panthers as they look for voter ID laws to object to. 

Question to ponder:  Will there have to be actual violence in the polling place before the FBI and DOJ act decisively?  Waiting until election day is too late.

At the Wall Street Journal:

Millions more Americans will be required to show photo identification when they head to the polls in four states in 2012, headlining the welter of new laws across the nation that take effect with the turn of the year.

Kansas, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas will require voters to prove their identities at the ballot box, bringing the total number of states that require some form of voter identification to 30, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan group that provides research and data to state governments.

…”Voter ID was definitely a hot issue, and the debate around it was close to boiling over,” says Meagan Dorsch, the NCLS’s director of public affairs. “I think that in 2012 we could be looking at a flurry of lawsuits over voter ID laws passed in 2011.”

Washington Times: The most consequential election in our lifetime is still 10 months away, but it’s clear from the Obama administration’s order halting South Carolina’s new photo ID law that the Democrats already have brought a gun to a knife fight. How else to describe this naked assault on the right of a state to create minimal requirements to curb voter fraud.

Illegal double voting.  Story here.

Link.  But it now seems pretty likely that the South Carolina case will leapfrog over those others, and ask the Supreme Court to consider the constitutional question soon, in the same term that the court is likely to decide on the constitutionality of health care legislation, Texas’ new redistricting plans, and Arizona’s controversial immigration measure.

It is surprising that the Holder DOJ would risk the constitutionality of Section 5 over the bad facts of the South Carolina photo ID submission as the Court has already upheld the fundamentals of the concept years ago.  South Carolina’s voter ID law is much more forgiving than the Indiana law.  Apparently. DOJ is resting the future of Section 5 on the recently discovered discriminatory nature of photo ID laws. Why “recently?”

Well, just a few years ago, DOJ filed an amicus brief in the Crawford case informing the Supreme Court that photo ID requirements were not a severe burden on voters and did not have a discriminatory burden on the right to vote.  In 2011, DOJ has reversed itself abruptly despite the Court essentially agreeing with its major amicus arguments in 2007.  It resulted in the first objection to voter ID laws in 20 years.  The abuse of the preclearance process under Section 5 by the Civil Rights Division and the recent politicization of the issue by Holder will not sit well with the Court.

Here at link.  Santorum also calls Attorney General Holder “biased” in its review of voter ID laws.  Now, voter identification is quickly becoming a political issue with the presidential candidates.  It appears both camps are preparing for quite a year in the voter ID wars.

 Former OH Secretary of State at the Bigs.

To date, the voter outreach campaign on the photo ID law has included events hosted by election administrators in all 95 counties, more than a million pieces of literature being distributed and hundreds of public talks presented. Many of the presentations have been personally conducted by Hargett or Goins. The division has partnered with groups as diverse as AARP and the Tennessee Intercollegiate State Legislature to target specific groups that might be affected by the new law. Media tools ranging from billboards to social networks have been used to spread information about the law. 

Full story at the link