Paper: The Left’s Army of Election Law “Experts”: They Are Getting Ready for the 2012 Election

 A paper published by the Capital Research Center.  A portion of:

“Liberal foundations, public interest law firms and advocacy groups have created a permanent network of experts and organizations devoted to an arcane but critical task: monopolizing the narrative on election laws and procedures. Cloaking their actions in the rhetoric of civil rights and the right to vote, they seek to affect the outcome of the election. They challenge any effort to protect the integrity of the ballot box by denying the possibility of vote fraud and crying “Jim Crow.”


Americans used to believe their elections ran smoothly: You left the voting booth, the votes were counted and reported. Although voters lacked first-hand knowledge, they had faith that whomever gets the most votes wins. The presidential election of 2000 changed all that. The 36-day battle for the presidency revealed mechanical flaws in the electoral system; it showed elections can be decided in courtrooms instead of at the ballot box. In 2000 competing teams of highly paid lawyers argued over hanging chads, military ballots, and uniform statewide counting standards. Like a 15-round heavyweight prize fight, one team of election lawyers eventually knocked the other out.


These days Americans have grown accustomed to elections that end in legal maneuvering, but they assume both sides are evenly matched and similarly funded. Even if today’s electoral fights aren’t front page news, the public expects each contender to have a battery of lawyers and experts, equally prepared to tangle in court or before the media over the rules and procedures of the election.


That assumption is false. With the 2012 national election fast approaching, it’s important to understand that the Left is fully engaged. It is ready to dispute how the next election is organized and administered by state and local election officials. The conduct of that election has genuine consequences—and the battle over the interpretation of election law next year is already taking place.”



 

Rhode Island Sen. Metts: Why is Voter Integrity Still Being Ignored?

In the spirit of former U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, Rhode Island State Senator Metts, who happens to be a Black American, speaks from the heart of the disenfranchishment caused by vote stealing and the need for photo voter identification.

For those still questioning my motivation and loyalty, I sponsored the Voter I.D. legislation in the Senate on behalf of Black and Latino constituents concerned about voter fraud. They want the integrity of the system to be above reproach, and so do I.

For decades many of us have heard complaints about voter fraud. My State Representative, Anastasia Williams, and her daughter, whom I represent in the Senate, had their vote stolen one election.  There have been numerous anecdotal complaints that have spanned the last two decades that have been ignored.  My question is, why are some so willing to sacrifice the voter integrity of our system on the altar of fear, while only being concerned about what may potentially happen?

and concludes:  For me it is not about red or blue states, or who is on the right or who is on the left.   It’s about doing the right thing!  I would unashamedly and unabashedly take the same action, knowing that God knows my heart and my efforts on behalf of my constituents.  It’s time to stop crying wolf and make the voter I.D. law work for those on both sides of this issue who want to insure the integrity of the system, while guarding against disenfranchisement. This is the goal that we all should have and now the challenge is to move beyond talk and take action.

GA Representative John Lewis threatens to ban voter ID in federal elections

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that Lewis and 195 House colleagues wrote to all 50 secretaries of state, urging them to “serve as advocates for enfranchisement” and oppose laws that would make voting more difficult. He also raised the prospect of Congressional intervention to standardize voting laws in federal elections, though Lewis did not offer specifics and he acknowledged the effort would not go far in the Republican House.

Ohio congressional map stalls as ‘unholy alliance’ falters


The Hill reports that Republicans in Ohio fell eight votes short of fast-tracking a new congressional map through the state House on Thursday, leaving the future of redistricting efforts in limbo.


The new map will instead go through the committee process, the Columbus Dispatch reported, and Democrats have already been working to overturn a previous GOP map passed earlier in the year through a voter referendum.

Democrats choose chaos over compromise.  But there is this silver lining:

One unlikely advocate who was supporting the initial Republican-drawn map was Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who shocked Democrats by launching robo-calls over the weekend to urge state lawmakers to back the map, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

If Kuchinich was for it, perhaps it was best to die on the vine.

It’s almost 2012 and New York still trying to comply with MOVE

At the link… the Justice Department has taken New York to court to force it to move up the Congressional primaries to no later than mid-August. A 2009 federal law, the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, requires that ballots be mailed to military and overseas voters at least 45 days in advance of regularly scheduled federal elections. It would be very difficult for even an efficient state holding primaries near the middle of September to get its act together to send out the ballots in time. As you may have noticed, Albany and efficiency rarely appear in the same sentence.

In 2010, the state obtained an exemption from the 45-day rule. It is seeking a similar waiver for 2012. No way, the Justice Department says — enough with the delays. In a few weeks, it will be up to a federal judge in Albany, Gary L. Sharpe, to offer his opinion.  If he refuses to grant the requested exemption, and the appellate courts uphold his ruling, the result could be three primary days — one for president in April, one for Congress in August and one for state offices in September.

What a disgraceful mess.  

Frustrated reformers beg Obama to scrap all current FEC Commissioners

The self-proclaimed reformer mob crowd is literally begging President Obama to scrap the fully staffed and functioning Federal Election Commision (FEC) and attempt to stack it with individuals more to their ideological ilk.  So insistent on legal resistance to the free speech direction of the Supreme Court and so very frustrated with the fact they haven’t been able to walk all over the free-speech Republican Commissioners (as they did in the past), the reformers now recommend going nuclear and resorting to full decapitation of the current Commissioners.  This may allow, at a minimum, the bureaucrats to have a run of the place without any adult supervision during the 2012 cycle.  To the link….

Craig Holman, legislative representative for Public Citizen, explained that the current FEC gridlock stems from the opposition to campaign finance laws by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The FEC is a bipartisan commission with three Democratic and three Republican members. McConnell, as the Republican leader in the Senate, is accorded the privilege of picking the Republican commissioners.  “[McConnell] has figured out that the way he can [block campaign finance law] is by appointing people to the FEC who will not enforce the law,” Holman said.

Holman further argued that the president should end the deference given to the leaders of the Senate in appointing commissioners and should himself name all five nominees for the seats held by commissioners serving expired terms. “I’d ask the president to fix this and go back to the constitutional process,” Holman said. 

More home-cooking on the DOD, FVAP military voter survey – Part I

Following the Washington Examiner’s explosive article on the alleged “Cooking of the Military Voting Books,” we find this independent analysis of the DOD-FVAP survey conducted by the Military Voting Protection Project (MVPP), a non-partisan military voting rights organization.  The analysis starts to deconstruct and reverse-engineer the slanted numbers crunching.  Due to its length, I have only posted Part I of this analysis. 

The MVPP update ends with the conclusion: “At the end of the day, there is simply no tangible evidence from the states supporting FVAP’s conclusions and it raises serious questions about the accuracy of the survey.”

Part I:  More importantly, the 2010 data (which is drastically improved) does not support the absentee military voting rates claimed by FVAP.  According to FVAP, 29% of 1.4 million active duty military members voted in 2010 and 67% (that is, 272,000 military members) voted by absentee ballot.  FVAP also claims that 34% of 1.1 million military spouses voted in 2010 and that 40% of those spouses (approximately 150,000) voted by absentee ballot.  Taken together, these totals suggest that 425,000 military members and their spouses voted by absentee ballot in 2010.  Of course, if this were true, it would mean that the EAC state data, which reported about 108,000 returned absentee ballots from military voters in 2010, misses the mark by more than 300,000 absentee military ballots.  That is simply unbelievable.


Nor can the disparity between FVAP’s and the EAC’s data be overcome by the reasons provided by FVAP.  FVAP argues that state officials make two errors that impact the total reported to the EAC: (1) some local jurisdictions do not respond to the EAC’s survey; and (2) local election officials only count military voters as UOCAVA voters when they submit a Federal Post Card Application (FPCA).


With respect to the first point, it is true that some jurisdictions fail to report data.  However, as noted above, the instances of non-reporting have decreased dramatically since 2008.  The amount of non-reporting in 2010 appears to be relatively small and, at best, would only move the needle by a few percentage points.  It certainly wouldn’t account for 300,000 missing ballots.






 

ACORN resurrects itself in the Occupy protests

link at Fox:  Officials with the revamped ACORN office in New York — operating as New York Communities for Change — have fired staff, shredded reams of documents and told workers to blame disgruntled ex-employees for leaking information in an effort to explain away a FoxNews.com report last week on the group’s involvement in Occupy Wall Street protests, according to sources.