Eric Eversole at King Street Patriots in Houston

Here is a video of Eric Eversole’s appearance at King Street Patriots last night in Houston, Texas to talk about military voting (after some introduction by Bob Marley and Catherine Engelbrecht).  He talks about FVAP on-base registration, enforcement of military voting rights and voter participation by the military and military voting “being a second class issue inside the Civil Rights Division.. . .  The biggest example was there was clear evidence. . .  that it can take up to 30 days for a ballot to travel to a war zone. . .  but the DOJ took a position that as long as the county mailed out a ballot 30 days before an election, that was good enough” as far as DOJ was concerned.  Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) also makes an appearance by video.







Dems push same day registration voting

The link is here.  Ellison introduced another bill Wednesday, “The Same Day Registration Act,” which would require every state to provide same-day registration in federal elections.  Including Minnesota, just nine states have some form of same-day registration. Kiffmeyer’s bill in the state Legislature would have eliminated the Minnesota statute that allows registered voters to vouch for a person registering at the polls.

“Mailbox as ballot box gains wider favor”

At the link, we find that absentee voting by mail can be popular and cut costs.  Of course, some remind us that absentee ballots are most vulnerable to fraudulent activity.

Bottom line:  Do we really want to rely so much on the mail service to vote when you see headlines like: 

Postal Bailout Proposed 

Postal workers protest Saturday shutdown 

Funding Woes force many changes in USPS practices

Texas moves for summary judgment on state senate redistricting claims

At txredistricting.org:

The State of Texas has asked the San Antonio panel to grant judgment in its favor without a trial on the state senate claims brought by State Senator Wendy Davis and LULAC.  The motion overlaps substantially with the earlier motion to dismiss filed by the state, which remains pending with the court.


The heart of the state’s contention is the claim that SD-10 is not a protected district under the Voting Rights Act and that it is impossible to draw a version of SD-10 that would have a minority citizen voting age population majority, even if African-Americans and Hispanics are aggregated together.


The state also says that Davis and LULAC lack evidence of discriminatory intent in the drawing of the map.  The state argues that the only evidence that Davis has that the district was “effective” as a coalition district was her election in 2008, which the state says was more the result of a “perfect storm” that strongly disfavored Republicans.  


As a result, the state contends that it was free to dismantle the district and transform it into a stronger performing Republican district- something that it freely admits that it did.


Davis and LULAC are to file their responses on November 9, but have argued elsewhere that the state confuses crossover and coalition districts and that while a state is not required to draw a crossover district in the first instance, dismantling a crossover district, where one exists, raises significant legal and constitutional concerns.