“It’s going to pass,” State Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr., D-Brownsville said.   “The votes are
there.”

Sources in Austin tell me that the Senate may ad an amendment requiring Texas to bypass DOJ preclearance and go straight to United States District Court for approval. This is smart, wise and prudent
if Texas wants to save money, time, and make it more likely that the law will become effective under the Voting Rights Act. Its something every state subject to Section 5 preclearance of
redistricting plans should copy.

…

Arizona’a "FONT-SIZE: 14px">Statebrief.

“The federal government dealt noteworthy blows to local self-government and direct democracy earlier this week, when a district court in D.C. dismissed LaRoque v. Holder, a case that
challenged the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, a law enacted by Congress to prohibit racial discrimination in elections. While racial prejudice in the voting process is, as a
matter of principle, a social evil that ought to be exorcised by appropriate and lawful means, the problem is that this particular law, in actual practice, is subject to abuse by public officials in
the federal government who can—and do—exploit it for undue political gain.  To be sure, one significant political pretext for the lawsuit was that the Obama Administration used Section 5 to
advance an agenda that has no plausible connection to the prevention of racial discrimination in the democratic process.”

…

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 "FONT-SIZE: 14px">here. …

ENC.com on why Kinston, North Carolina is subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
Kinston is challenging Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. …

"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_GsvbKPdsPCo/Sojpb0VT3GI/AAAAAAAAC3E/3axfL5rCO70/s400/Unitedwayofcentralohio-JenniferBrunnerOhioSecretaryOfStateLIVEUNITED246-180.jpg">

Ohio law gives the Secretary of State enormous power to decide local election issues. Outgoing Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is one of the most partisan Secretaries of State in the nation. She
has been willing to advance an agenda through her office whether it was  "http://electionlawcenter.com/2010/09/01/secretary-of-state-jennifer-brunner-casts-deciding-vote--cuyahoga-county-oh-goes-all-spanish-ballots-for-next-election.aspx" target=
"">forcing Cuyahoga County to use Spanish ballots countywide instead of the few areas they were actually needed, or, to  "http://articles.cnn.com/2008-10-17/politics/ohio.voting_1_voter-registration-elections-officials-state-jennifer-brunner?_s=PM:POLITICS" target="">interfere with removing ineligible voters
from the rolls on the eve of the 2008 Presidential election. On the eve of her departure from office, Brunner will likely decide an election outcome.

In Cincinnati, a vacant juvenile court judge seat is up. At issue are 849 rejected provisional ballots. The Democrat Tracie Hunter trails by 23 votes. Ohio law requires voters to cast provisional
ballots in their correct precinct. 284 of the 849 rejected provisional ballots were cast at the wrong precinct table. Hunter is arguing poll workers made a mistake by not sending those voters to the
correct precinct table location. The federal court ordered Hamilton County to reexamine whether the provisional ballots should be counted.

This ruling is subject to appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Republicans on the Hamilton County board want to appeal. Democrats don’t. It is a tie.

Guess who gets to cast the deciding vote on whether to appeal the potentially incorrect decision? Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. Rather than defend Ohio law which requires provisional ballots
to be cast at the correct precinct, based on her past partisan plays, expect Brunner to vote not to appeal the federal court opinion. Cincinnati.com has "http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20101123/NEWS0108/311230041/Cincinnati-federal-judge-orders-probe-in-juvenile-judge-race" target="">more .
…

An article in the Daily Press discusses the Virginia redistricting to take place in 2011.  As has been posted repeatedly at Election Law Center, states like Virginia should consider bypassing Department of Justice preclearance procedures and go straight to United States District Court in D.C., as they have the right to do under the Voting Rights […]

The New York Times has this  "http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/politics/14shuler.html?_r=1&ref=politics" target="">piece  on redistricting in
North Carolina after the Tsunami of November 2. One casualty of the Tsunami may well be former Redskins QB turned Congressman Heath Shuler. He won his reelection on November 2, but may well be
redistricted out by a state government turned entirely Republican.

“It also means that Republicans will hold the pencil when districts are redrawn next year.
"FONT-SIZE: 14px">Gerrymandering, Republicans say, was the reason behind the defensive stand by North Carolina’s House Democrats, who were able to bear the national
Republican tidal wave and keep seven of their eight seats and the majority among the state’s delegation. (In the other chamber, Senator Richard M. Burr, a Republican, easily won
re-election.)   When the new district lines are drawn, said Larry Ford, chairman of the Republican Party in Rutherford County, ‘Heath Shuler is
toast.’”

The big question in 2011 is whether the Department of Justice, which must preclear any redistricting plans in North Carolina, will leverage their power to protect democrats like Heath Shuler. For
the first time ever, democrats will be in charge of the Justice Department redistrcting review. Let me be specific, democrats will be in charge of the political offices that review the work of
“career” employees. This highlights a message every state subject to Section 5 needs to hear loud and clear:

Go straight to U.S. District Court to have your plans approved.

Again, go straight to U.S. District Court to have your plans approved.

I and others will be writing in more detail about why this is the most economical, and the choice most likely to result in a plan that most closely resembles what the GOP legislatures wanted in the
first place. The best advice that attorneys can give to their clients regarding redistricting plans is to go straight to U.S. District Court to have your plans
approved.

The chief reason to go to …

A Washington Post story  on the New Black Panther
dismissal. This is not what Attorney General Holder wants to see. For starters, the Post has deeper sourcing inside the Voting Section and Civil Rights Division than any other news outlet so
far. This is what happens when you dispute something that dozens and dozens of people know is the truth. If you say there is no policy or no hostility toward equal enforcement, you’ve got a
problem when the people who know the truth start to talk. They’re starting to talk.

UPDATE:  I should have mentioned, to those three, whomever you are, many thanks.

Full story here .

Dispute over New Black Panthers case causes deep divisions

By Jerry Markon and Krissah Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 22, 2010; 1:44 PM

On Election Day 2008, Maruse Heath, the leader of Philadelphia’s New Black Panther Party, stood in front of a neighborhood polling place, dressed in a paramilitary
uniform.

Within hours, an amateur video showing Heath, slapping a black nightstick and exchanging words with the videographer, had aired on TV and ricocheted across the
nation.

Among those who saw the footage was J. Christian Adams, who was in his office in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in Washington.

“I thought, ‘This is wrong, this is not supposed to happen in this country,’ ” Adams said. “There are armed men in front of a polling place, and I need to find out
if they violated the law, because in my mind there’s a good chance that they did.”

The clash between the black nationalist and the white lawyer has "http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/13/AR2010091306427.html">mushroomed into a fierce debate over
the government’s enforcement of civil rights laws, a dispute that will be aired next week when the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights unveils findings from a year-long investigation.

Two months after …

Bell (CA), the town infested with
voter fraud is the subject of a federal investigation – whether illegal towing of cars took place. More at the "http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iMcK7jSUn6TTLeVXuiL02gnLLA5QD9I598TG0">AP.

The Wall Street Journal reported "font-size: 14px;">that the voter fraud in Bell took on many different forms – including the casting of ballots for dead voters. Of course this also implicates federal jurisdiction. If dead people
are on the rolls and casting ballots, a variety of federal statutes may be implicated, including Section 8 of NVRA. Maybe they’ll get to those issues after they complete the towing
investigation. …

Nearly a quarter of all states have asked the Pentagon to grant them a waiver to a new law protecting those in the military from voting in the 2010 election. Congress passed a law last year requiring
states to send ballots overseas at least 45 days in advance. According to Fox,
these states have asked for an exemption from the new law:

Hawaii

New York

Delaware

Alaska

Washington

Maryland

Massachusetts

Wisconsin

Colorado

Rhode Island

New Hampshire

Former DOJ Voting attorney Eric Eversole noted in the article:  “There also are at least six states (Alabama, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire and New York) that have not
complied with the electronic delivery requirements under the MOVE Act.Those provisions — which are not subject to the waiver requirements — should have been in place months ago.Again, it is not
clear why the Voting Section has waited to take action.” …