Here.

at the link.  Abbott said he and Perez agreed to handle the litigation as quickly as possible, but says the DOJ is now delaying the process in an attempt to impose upon Texas the interim maps drawn by a panel of federal judges.

“For example,” Abbott’s letter reads, ”shortly after Texas filed its petition for declaratory judgment, we filed a motion asking the district court to review this matter on an expedited basis.  Your office opposed that motion. Further, despite the fact that we promptly responded to the Civil Rights Division’s repeated requests for additional information about the State’s redistricting plans, your office nonetheless demanded extensive discovery that further delayed the process.”

 Washington Post.  Also bad news for the EAC.

The Hill reports: The House on Thursday approved a bill ending the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) that was set up to ensure states meet certain standards at the voting booth, and ending the public financing of presidential campaigns. The bill passed in a mostly partisan 235-190 vote.

On the same day that the House of Representatives voted to terminate the EAC as an agency, sources also confirm that one of the two remaining Commissioners, Donetta Davidson, will retire from the beleagured agency effective December 31, 2011.  Her resignation will leave the EAC with just one of the total four commissioners.  This retirement follows the recent resignation of Tom Wilkey, who served as Executive Director of the EAC.  

As expected, the debate was simply over the top with Democrats accusing Republicans of engaging in a voter suppression plan to in 2012 by eliminating an agency that enforces voting rights and protects voters. 

“There is no doubt that a voter suppression effort is underway in this nation,” Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) charged on the House floor. “Abolishing the Election Assistance Commission, an agency charged with ensuring that the vote of each American counts, is just another step in the voter suppression effort and would completely remove oversight of the most important process in our democracy.”  Another Democrat, Rep. William Clay (D-Mo.), said the only reason to want to end the EAC is to “suppress votes,” and said votes that would be lost are minority votes, “the same groups who were targeted by Jim Crow laws.” 

A panel of Missouri appeals court judges released new boundaries for Missouri
House and Senate districts Wednesday based on the 2010 census, saying
some “significant changes” were necessary to account for population
shifts during the past decade.

The new maps that reshaped districts across the state will take effect for 2012 elections,
potentially pitting some incumbents against each other and, in some
cases, forcing majority-party Republicans to defend some seats that now
will have a majority of Democratically inclined voters.

and this:

From a partisan perspective, Republicans appeared to keep their advantage in the new maps based on voting patterns from the 2002-2010 elections.

Republicans currently hold a 26-8 majority over
Democrats in the Senate. An analysis released with the new maps shows
that Republican-inclined voters comprise the majority of residents in 23
of the new districts, compared with 11 for Democrats. The voting-trend analysis, released along with the maps, was based on results from federal and state elections from 2002 to 2010.

House Republicans currently hold a 106-57 majority over
Democrats — a tally which includes one Democrat who was elected as an
independent. The analysis of the new House boundaries shows 102
Republican-inclined districts and 61 Democratic-inclined districts.

The full story can be found here.

An exceptionally well written article by Ray Hartwell at the Washington Times about the Section 2 lawsuit in Guam:

“Although its failure to take action against this illegal discrimination is neither the first nor the most notorious race-based law enforcement decision by the Obama Justice Department, it is significant because, unlike most others, it threatens not only the rule of law but also our national security. Justice’s Guam inaction is a “twofer,” one that advances the Obama administration’s twin strategies of assault on the rule of law at home and the weakening of America abroad.”

The Broward Republican Executive Committee released an open letter to
Brenda Snipes, the county’s Supervisor of Elections, claiming it’s
unfair that there aren’t any early voting sites in Republican State Sen.
Ellyn Bogdanoff’s district.

“Not having
early voting locations in this area serves to disenfranchise all voters
in this area, while especially disenfranchising the Republican voters,”
writes BREC chairman Richard DeNapoli.

More on the allegations here.  Don’t expect the media or some anointed election protection attorney to come to the rescue.  But what about the Florida Department of State?  This is the type of unfairness that Republican majorities in the state House and Senate should review closely and consider additional changes to early voting requirements.

Today you can follow the schedule of legislative activities to be debated in the House of Representatives and watch the live feed of the debate. Here is the link.

Fox Business video:  Artur Davis goes national on FOX to discuss voter fraud and voter ID.

In sum, Artur Davis reiterates that he has witnessed extensive voter fraud in the rural areas of his former congressional district.  He asserts that in every campaign there were always a few counties where he knew the ballots were going to be “cooked.”  He came to understand that this was simply the way politics was practiced.  Davis also discusses his support for voter ID, arguing that transparency in casting a ballot is something that progressives should be able to support. 

The stay application is at the link. 

In summary, Texas argues that the federal panel failed to provide the required deference to the legal redistricting plan enacted by the state legislature despite the fact that the state plan maintains the same number of minority opportunity districts and has not been found to violate Section 5 in the preclearance proceedings ongoing in the District Court of the District Court of Columbia. 

Texas accuses the federal panel of making unwarranted wholesale changes to the current map that included the unilateral and illegal drawing of constitutionally suspect coalition districts.  Texas asserts that the federal panel essentially ignored the Supreme Court mandate under Bartlett; a case not requiring the drawing of coalition districts or cross-over districts under the Section 2 analysis.

Texas asserts that the proposed interim plan drawn by the court so dramatically reconstructed the original plan that only 9 of the 36 congressional districts drawn by the legislature remain intact and the court has no legal justification to take such an activist role.

After reading the briefs, the interpretation of Upham v. Seamon may well determine how the Court rules.