The Washington Post reports that the congressional map continued to shift toward red states based on new apportionment data.  Texas and Florida gained 4 and 2 seats respectively and New York loses 2.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the impact on the electoral college map. 

tweet take-away: Census shifts 6 from Obama states to McCain states. 

Washington Post has more.

The petitions were being collected for a group seeking to change Arlington County government’s form.  It was a coalition of firefighters, Green Party and Republican Party members.  The person who collected more than a third of the signatures was a convicted felon, ineligible to do so.  More from another Washington Post story:

“Then Lindberg found that Cheryl Simmons, a felon and therefore not a registered voter by Virginia law, had collected the third-most signatures for the group.  Simmons was convicted in 2006 of felony embezzlement, having given friends and family members discounts at the Hecht’s department store where she worked, police said.”

The Wisconsin attorney general is asking an appeals court to ponder if laws barring felons from voting are discriminatory.

“A brief filed by the [Wisconsin] DOJ this month accuses the men of trying to do an end run around the justice system by claiming their initial convictions for bail jumping were also racist. The men claim the felon disenfranchisement law is racist because the majority of people on probation or parole in the state are African-American.”

“The men created a scheme where they filed falsified applications for absentee ballots, obtained the ballots and then illegally voted.”

Full story at St. Louis Today.

A challenge to the outcome of Texas House District 48 has been filed in Travis County.  The contest was decided by 12 votes.  The complaint is here.

Dan Neil, the Republican filed the lawsuit attacking the certification on a wide range of very interesting matters. Included among these is a claim that over 1,900 ineligible voters are on the rolls, including dead people that voted.  This will be a rather elementary matter to prove if in fact people voted in the names of the dead.  Score one for Texas Voter ID if true, also. 

Next, the complaint alleges that overseas ballots were treated, shall we say, very poorly.  In particular, overseas and military voters were told in written instructions that they could vote a straight party ticket, and did in fact vote a straight party GOP ticket, only to learn that their votes for some contests were thrown out.  On the other hand, straight part Democrat votes on overseas ballots were counted. 

If the plaintiff finds any ineligible votes cast, the Texas Voter ID legislation may have found a contemporary rational basis to support the law.

Here.

“So the Kinston case says: ‘blacks are no long suffering from historical voter discrimination’ and thus Section 5, as applied to such a situation, is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U. S. Constitution.”

The full article in the Beaufort Observer.

Tabella has this excellent posting here about the soon-to-be-law in Texas requiring a photo identification to vote.  ELC has repeatedly explained why states and jurisdictions are better off going straight to court than they are subjecting themselves to the behind closed doors process at the DOJ.  More here and here.

You must be registered to vote to run for election.  But if you are a felon in Texas, you cannot be registered to vote.  But there is a loophole, if you are elected, but are a felon, then you can continue to serve in the Texas Legislature.  Sort of hard to believe.  But the story is here at the Austin American Statesman.

“Rep. Kino Flores, D-Palmview, who, despite recent felony convictions, is still state Rep. Kino Flores, D-Palmview. Travis County jurors convicted him on six charges — four felonies, two misdemeanors — of not properly disclosing his income on required state forms.”