The Plain Dealer reports on the start of the redistricting season in Ohio.
“Once a decade, all eyes in Ohio’s political world turn to a pair of maps.
Not just any old pair of maps, but rather the process of drawing a
fresh pair outlining the road to electoral power — the new state
legislative and congressional district maps showing the terrain where
Ohio’s political campaigns are fought over the next decade.”
Steven Greenhut at the OCRegister.com, excerpts below:
After looking at the current redistricting process, and the new maps
offered by a supposedly nonpartisan and fair-minded commission that is
doing the bidding for left-wing and ethnic interest groups, I do have
some happy news: The new maps – which almost certainly will ensure a
two-thirds legislative voting majority for Democrats, who will be sure
to raise taxes early and often – are likely to be challenged and, either
way, won’t go into effect until at least 2012.
Facetiousness aside, the redistricting debacle spotlights the
far-reaching tentacles of the political Left, the impotence of the
Republican Party and the outlandish double-standards at work in the
high-stakes game of Sacramento politics.
As former California
Republican Party Chairman Shawn Steel put it, “The Democrats knew what
they were doing, and Republicans were asleep at the switch.” He said the
commission, comprised of Republicans and Democrats (and members of
third parties), features ineffective and liberal Republican members and
hyperpartisan Democrats, with the results strongly tilting the new seats
in one direction.” Furthermore, Steel notes that the commission was designed, though the
language of the initiative that created it, to devise new
ethnic-oriented gerrymanders beyond what’s required by the federal
Voting Rights Act. The one commissioner who voted “no” on the new
maps, Michael Ward of Fullerton, complained publicly. “In my opinion,
the commission failed to fulfill its mandate to strictly apply
constitutional criteria and consistently applied race and ‘community of
interest’ criteria and sought to diminish dissenting viewpoints.”
Link: When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law
in 1965, it was an antidote to Jim Crow-era efforts to suppress the
black vote in Southern states still fighting bloody battles over racial
equality.
Forty-six years later, the law has become a partisan arguing point in
several Dixie statehouses between Democrats and Republicans bent on
justifying opposing strategies to increase their respective advantages
in this year’s redistricting debates.
The Tampa Tribune complains about Secretary of State Kurt Browning’s move to a neutral forum with established rules of evidence for voting law changes.
Buried in the redistricting complaint filed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot is some interesting language:
“This complaint is filed under the assumption that Section 5 complies with the United States Constitution.”
One can almost imagine the Motions to Amend Complaint just waiting for lawyer signatures down in Austin to add constitutional challenges to Section 5 to the complaint.
The Fort Worth Star Telegram calls it Abbot’s “Kings-X”.
“That’s not just typical lawyer mumbo-jumbo. Abbott said the state “reserves all applicable legal claims” in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in an Austin case that skirted the edge of declaring the pre-clearance requirement unconstitutional. Two other cases on the same question are pending before the D.C. court.”
Ben Smith at Politio has this piece about the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee asking Justice to object to Florida’s new voting laws covered extensively at ELC. There’s only one problem, Secretary of State Kurt Browning yanked the submission from DOJ the week before. Smith doesn’t mention that in the piece.
And charges are dismissed. More at PJ Tatler.
Northwest Florida Daily News has this opinion piece today The Myth of Florida Voter Fraud.
For some other sources borrowing the characterization, see
The Myth of Voter Fraud at Amazon.com.
The Myth of Voter Fraud at the Washington Independent.
The Myth of Voter Fraud at the New York Times.
A whole FAQ devoted to the Myth at the League of Women Voter’s webpage.
The Myth goes on tour here.
The Myth of Voter Fraud at the Washington Post (the famous Sasquatch story).
Professor David Schultz has an editorial in the Minnesota Post called, you guessed it, The Myth of Voter Fraud.
Finally, an enthralling video about the Myth of Voter Fraud at a forum for books that are “unfairly ignored,” (usually a bad sign.) The Myth features prominently at minute 1:50. The Myth is, naturally, “propagated to do their thing.” Speaking of myths, the speaker discussing the Myth is introduced by 9-11 truther Mark Crispen Miller. Just to be clear, New York University Professor Mark Crispen Miller doesn’t believe in voter fraud, but he believes the U.S. Government assisted in blowing up the World Trade Centers.
Government funded radio station WMFE, fresh from correcting errors in coverage of Florida’s withdrawal of a submission to DOJ of election law changes and filing in federal court, piles on more. In the latest story critical of Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning’s decision to go to district court seeking approval of statewide election law changes, WMFE’s Nicole Creston reports:
“But it’s unclear whether any jurisdiction has ever asked for both types of pre-clearance at once for separate provisions of the same law.”
Unclear? Creston might report on Virginia, Texas, Louisiana and Georgia. More states are coming.
WMFE’s series of errors is representative of a larger problem in the media’s coverage of election law. The media frequently rely on sources that will trick them (Eg. “the myth of voter fraud”) or on sources that have no idea what they are talking about. The results are troubling. Americans are led to believe that changing early voting dates constitutes the return of Jim Crow or that there is something nefarious in Kurt Browning’s decision to bypass a biased (and ethically problematic – more on that blockbuster later) DOJ unit that reviews Section 5 submissions.