Editorials: “Corporate Personhood” Is Not the Problem | Garret Epps/American Prospect American politics is in trouble. A tsunami of unaccountable, untraceable political money is overwhelming the Republican race for the presidential nomination and threatens to do the same to the fall election. For many people, especially progressives, the culprit is easy to name: the Supreme…
Two voters in the disputed House District 71 election appear to have had their preferences counted twice because of human errors at separate precincts, state and local election officials say. Meanwhile, two other ballots that apparently were counted by election machines — but somehow were never transferred to the Tulsa County Election Board for safekeeping — are part of a growing legal controversy that could decide the ultimate winner in the April 3 contest between Republican Katie Henke and Democrat Dan Arthrell. On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Supreme Court stopped any further action on the election by the Tulsa County Election Board, the State Election Board or Tulsa County District Court. The high court scheduled the dispute for oral arguments before a referee April 25.
American politics is in trouble. A tsunami of unaccountable, untraceable political money is overwhelming the Republican race for the presidential nomination and threatens to do the same to the fall election. For many people, especially progressives, the culprit is easy to name: the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which swept away any limits on election-advocacy ads by corporations, unions, and “independent” political-action committees (PACs) and issue groups. Many progressives believe that Citizens United “made corporations people” and that a constitutional amendment restricting “corporate personhood” will cure this political ill. Citizens United is a bad decision. This obvious fact may even be dawning on the Court’s conservative majority, which is taking a surprisingly leisurely look at American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock, in which the Montana Supreme Court directly challenged Citizens United, in essence telling the justices that they didn’t understand the first thing about politics. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, dissenters in Citizens United, have publicly stated that American Tradition may offer an opening to limit or even overturn the malign precedent.
The super PAC mega-donors who dragged out the GOP primary are getting behind the establishment, rather than continuing to back rogue candidates and causes — as some in the Republican Party feared. Donors like Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess, who gave millions to anti-establishment presidential primary campaigns, are starting to fall in line — promising to support Mitt Romney and cutting checks to groups fighting for congressional Republicans. Casino mogul Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who donated more than $15 million to a super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign, gave $5 million to a super PAC linked to House Speaker John Boehner in February — according to newly released filings. And Adelson is hosting a fundraiser next Friday at one of his Las Vegas hotels for a Boehner umbrella group that works closely with the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, POLITICO has learned.
Anchorage election officials held a canvassing meeting Tuesday afternoon that produced more numbers from the city’s troubled elections earlier this month — as well as a nearly denied opportunity for one East Anchorage voter to challenge the rejection of her vote. The municipal Election Commission started its meeting at City Hall at 1:30 p.m., receiving a report on the election (PDF) that listed 14,043 legitimate absentee and questioned ballots yet to be counted. An additional 609 ballots were rejected for a variety of causes, including 159 from voters registered outside the city, 187 from unregistered voters and 142 who registered to vote less than 30 days before the April 3 elections.
A petition calling for an independent review of Anchorage’s botched April 3 election has been delivered to the municipal clerk’s office. Some Assembly members said they might support an independent review at this week’s meeting. The delivered petition had the signatures of 580 Alaskans, said Barbara Gazaway, an election precinct chair who began gathering signatures after experiencing her own glitches in the East Anchorage polling place where she worked. She launched the petition the day after the election as reports surfaced that numerous precincts suffered ballot shortages, forcing many people to try voting at more than one polling place or to cast votes on sample or photocopied ballots.
Arizona has racially polarized voting and discriminated against Latinos, but a voter identification law did not disenfranchise Hispanics, a Court of Appeals ruled. A 12-member panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a law that required voters to show ID before casting their ballots, ruling it didn’t give Latinos less opportunity to vote. The court, however, struck down a critical provision of the law, known as Proposition 200, that required that voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. The court ruled the federal National Voter Registration Act trumps that section of the Arizona law. MALDEF, a Latino civil rights organization, one of the organizations that challenged the 2004 law, hailed the decision.
An appeals court upheld a requirement in a 2004 Arizona law that voters show identification before they can cast ballots. The court says there wasn’t evidence that the mandate disparately affected Latinos as the challengers of rules had alleged. A 12-member panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals says in a ruling Tuesday that there was evidence Arizona has racially polarized voting and a history of discrimination against Latinos.
During Michigan’s presidential primary in February, voters were required for the first time to affirm their U.S. citizenship when obtaining a ballot to vote. Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said she added the check-off on ballot applications to weed out legal immigrants who have been improperly — or inadvertently — registered to vote over the past two decades while obtaining a driver’s license. State election officials say they’ve received reports of a handful of noncitizens who are registered voters showing up at polls in Kent, Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties, Johnson said. Now she’s asking state lawmakers to make affirming U.S. citizenship a permanent step toward obtaining a ballot. Johnson has joined a nationwide effort to tighten up ballot box security and clean up voter rolls that sometimes contain duplicate registrations.
The election that is believed to be the longest in Hamilton County history isn’t over yet. But it’s getting close. A federal appeals court ruling Monday cleared the way to count some 300 disputed ballots in the razor-close election for Hamilton County juvenile court judge, which took place 17 months ago. The decision does not end the long court battle over the ballots, but it requires county election officials to count the ballots, declare a victor and seat the winning judge while the legal fight continues for months, or even years, in the federal courts. The Board of Elections will hold a special meeting Tuesday to discuss how the ballots will be counted and how long it might take. “I think we are all ready to try to get this thing moved to a resolution,” said Tim Burke, the county’s Democratic Party chairman and a member of the Board of Elections.
The resolution of a hotly contested special election for an Oklahoma House seat representing Tulsa moved a step closer Monday. At issue is the winner of the special election for House District 71, which pitted Democrat Dan Arthrell against Republican Katie Henke. Greg Albert, an Oklahoma Supreme Court referee, heard arguments in the case Monday. A proceeding in Tulsa County District Court was put on hold pending action by the state’s high court, which may or may not take the case. Attorneys for both sides said they can agree to a series of facts in the case.
The State Republican Party could have a lawsuit on their hands. Brian Jenkins, who is running against U.S. Congressman Jason Chaffetz, says he is upset about the possibility of electronic voting being used at the upcoming Republican state convention. Jenkins says the electronic method can be manipulated and he’s worried about the inability to check the votes after they are cast. “I actually think that if we can verify, there won’t be any skullduggery,there won’t be any kind of cheating if there is true verification,” Jenkins says. ” But if there is not verification the temptation to alter the outcome is almost irresistible.”
A state legislator wants to make it easier for Virginians who can’t go to the polls on Election Day to obtain an absentee ballot. Sen. John C. Miller, D-Newport News, whose district includes a portion of Suffolk, has proposed that voters be able to request and receive an absentee ballot by email. They still would have to return the completed ballot by regular mail or by hand. Currently, only voters who are in the military or are overseas can use email to request and receive an absentee ballot from Virginia election officials. During the General Assembly’s 2012 regular session, Miller sponsored a bill to allow any registered voter to use email to apply for an absentee ballot.
With 25 days left before the 2012 general elections and more than 172,000 Bahamians registered to vote, most of residents polled in Grand Bahama yesterday say they are simply marking time. Parliament was officially dissolved Tuesday, signaling the countdown to what is believed will be the hottest contested election in the history of The Bahamas. Up to this point, the three parties — the governing Free National Movement (FNM), the Progressive Liberal Party and the recently formed Democratic National Alliance (DNA) — have mounted an aggressive campaign to woo the electorate. Now that Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham has announced the long-awaited date, Grand Bahama residents who intend to vote say they are ready.
A move to exclude some of the more divisive contenders from Egypt’s presidential election may help moderate candidates seen as better able to forge the consensus many believe can foster a peaceful transition to democracy. Two prominent Islamists – one a hardline Salafi sheikh, the other the Muslim Brotherhood’s official nominee – as well as ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s spy chief were battling to stay in the running on Monday as a deadline approached for them to appeal against disqualification by the state election committee. All three had put their names forward late in the process in a way that reinforced an impression in recent weeks that the shaky temporary consensus of necessity between an increasingly assertive Islamist bloc and the generals ruling Egypt since Mubarak’s overthrow 14 months ago was breaking down.
Five candidates in Guinea Bissau’s aborted presidential election united to condemn last week’s coup, as West African delegates arrived for overnight talks with military and political figures. The April 12 military coup tipped the restive impoverished west African country into fresh chaos and interrupted a second-round presidential vote on April 29. UN leader Ban Ki-moon said Monday that a move by the coup leaders to declare a transitional government would only worsen the crisis in the African nation. Ban will “intensify cooperation” with international governments and bodies to deal with the situation following last Thursday’s coup, said deputy UN spokesman Eduardo del Buey. For its part the junta insisted that it was in control of the situation in the west African nation and urged the population not to panic.
A new government in the Maldives has won two by-elections, according to results on Sunday, defeating the party of former President Mohamed Nasheed who was unseated in February and, his party said, bolstering its call for an early presidential poll. The ouster of Nasheed, the islands’ first democratically elected president, dented the Indian Ocean archipelago’s reputation as a laid-back luxury tourist paradise. Nasheed and his party say the new government of President Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik is illegitimate and they have been demanding an early presidential election.
Editorials: The People vs. the “Corporate People” | The Motley Fool The Supreme Court’s Citizens United case, which helped further open the floodgates for corporate political spending in America, is about an ongoing and extremely contentious issue. Even before the ruling, there was plenty of reason to believe the deep-pocketed “corporate people” had far more…
The Supreme Court’s Citizens United case, which helped further open the floodgates for corporate political spending in America, is about an ongoing and extremely contentious issue. Even before the ruling, there was plenty of reason to believe the deep-pocketed “corporate people” had far more influence on politics than regular people, and it was a bit amazing to think that corporate interests were given the go-ahead to exert even more power over political outcomes. In California, lawmakers recently put forth a resolution to overturn the unpopular decision, further asking Congress for a constitutional amendment to that end. Obviously, many regular people simply can’t accept the “corporate personhood” argument. The fact that corporate money is equated with “free speech” for these inhuman entities is pretty hard to swallow, too.
For decades, the one piece of campaign finance reform that Democrats and Republicans agreedabout was the importance of disclosure. For example, in 2000, House Republican Amo Houghton explained that “[w]e need disclosure by section 527 organizations, but when 501(c) groups intervene in the political process, they should disclose what they are doing and who is paying for it as well.” Lately, though, the GOP has changed its mind about political transparency, and the current debate over increased disclosure requirements for independent election spending has sharply divided on partisan lines. Given the huge volumes of money being spent to swing the 2012 election — with millions being spent by non-profit 501(c) groups with secret donors — it’s long past time for a new bipartisan consensus in favor of transparency. Democrats like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who recently introduced the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 in the Senate, are leading the way, but they need a new generation of Republican leaders to join them.
The Colorado Supreme Court has agreed to hear the city of Aspen’s motion to appeal September’s state Court of Appeals ruling that favored political activist Marilyn Marks’ lawsuit challenging the city’s denial of her request to view ballot images from the 2009 mayoral race. According to the city, the Court of Appeals erred when it held that the Colorado Constitution does not protect the secrecy of ballots. On Nov. 11, the city requested a review of the case by the state Supreme Court. “In elections, there is a functional conflict between two important values: the ability to verify election results and the right of voters to a secret ballot,” the city’s motion states. “All election systems used in the United States since the introduction of the secret ballot in the (late 19th century) have sought to strike a compromise between these two values. In arriving at a compromise, election systems have uniformly given greater weight to secrecy over verifiability.” The motion goes on to say that since 1876, the Colorado Legislature has enacted numerous laws to secure the purity of elections and “guard against the abuses of the elective franchise.”
The second draft of the Legislature’s redistricting plan for the state Senate answered all of the objections of the Florida Supreme Court to the first proposal and should get justices’ approval, according to a Senate brief in the case. The brief, filed in response to complaints by the Florida Democratic Party, a coalition of voting-rights groups and the NAACP, came a week before oral arguments on the plan before the court. Also on Friday, the justices issued an order dividing two hours of arguments among the Senate and the groups opposing the plan. Lawyers for the upper chamber argued in the 100-page filing that the new plan, approved by the Legislature after justices rejected the first draft, “addressed each of the flaws this court found.”
Idaho’s May 15 primary election is fast approaching and because of some big changes, election officials around the state are expecting a challenging time. In the May primary, voters must pick their political party and vote only that ballot. “A lot of people are not going to want to declare a party choice,” said Ada County Clerk Chris Rich. “We know this from experience.” And, according to the Idaho Secretary of State’s office, 649,645 registered voters have yet to declare a party choice. But under a new idaho law, voters must declare their political affiliation unless the party says otherwise.
Ohio’s elections chief is violating the state constitution by requiring county election boards to follow a federal court decree instead of state law when it comes to counting provisional ballots, GOP lawmakers alleged in a lawsuit Monday. At issue are requirements for providing identification when a voter has to cast a provisional ballot, typically a ballot cast in the wrong precinct. A 2006 state law laid out the requirements for when such ballots are counted, starting with voters who have only the last four digits of a Social Security number as identification. In general, state law is more restrictive than the federal decree when it comes to prohibiting provisional ballots. For example, the law doesn’t allow provisional ballots for votes cast in the wrong precinct because of a poll worker’s mistake, whereas the decree would allow such votes to be counted.
Attorneys for both candidates involved in a contested special election for an Oklahoma House of Representatives seat from Tulsa asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court on Monday to take the case. Democratic candidate Dan Arthrell, whose three-vote lead in this month’s election was overturned in a recount, said he asked the court to intervene. A court referee did not immediately issue a recommendation for whether the court would take the case. The filing comes after initial returns showed Arthrell defeating Republican Katie Henke by three votes in the April 3 special election to fill the seat vacated by Republican Rep. Dan Sullivan. Henke then asked for a manual recount, which was held Tuesday. Arthrell received four fewer votes, resulting in a one-vote win for Henke. Shortly after the Tulsa County Election Board certified the results, two uncounted ballots — both for Arthrell — were found in a bin beneath an election machine.
Philadelphia city commissioners are investigating an unusual series of over-votes in last year’s primary election – 83 voting divisions citywide where the official vote totals were bigger than the recorded number of voters who showed up. In most locations, the discrepancies were small, just a handful of votes. In many instances, minor procedural mistakes could account for the anomalies. But so far, the bulk of the over-voting has not been explained. Until they understand what happened, the commissioners say, they cannot rule out the possibility of deliberate, illegal efforts to run up votes for favored candidates, with the perpetrators losing count as they tried to cover their tracks. In a situation like that, the tiny numbers of over-votes might be red flags for a much larger problem with the underlying vote totals.
Six Republicans running as Democrats in this spring’s recall elections should be allowed a place on the ballot, state election officials said Monday. The state Government Accountability Board is scheduled to vote today on whether to disqualify the candidates. Board attorney Michael Haas wrote in a memo to the board that the candidates should be allowed to run because state law doesn’t require people to prove they belong to any political party before they can run for office. Voters can condone or condemn the candidates at the polls, Haas wrote. “(The candidates’ actions) are products of political calculation and decision-making, and as such they can be rewarded or rejected during the course of the campaigns and the elections,” Haas wrote. Democrats have forced Gov. Scott Walker and five other Republicans into recall elections to punish them for passing a contentious law last year that stripped public workers of their union rights. The GAB has scheduled elections for May 8 and June 5. The state Republican Party openly recruited candidates to run as fake Democrats in every race. The move ensures a Democratic primary will be held in every race May 8. That means no Republican incumbent will have to face a general election that day, when Democrats will be out in force to pick their gubernatorial challenger.
The state Supreme Court refused Monday to immediately take up a pair of cases that struck down the state’s new voter ID law, a decision that will likely mean citizens won’t have to show identification when they cast ballots in recall elections in May and June. The court’s terse orders send the cases back to two different appeals panels, though the cases could eventually return to the Supreme Court. The justices issued their orders just three weeks before the May 8 primary for Democrats to pick a candidate to run against Republican Gov. Scott Walker in the June 5 recall election. Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan in March blocked the voter ID law for the April presidential primary, saying it likely disenfranchised voters, based on testimony that there are more than 220,000 Wisconsin residents who do not have photo IDs but who are otherwise qualified to vote. A trial in that case began Monday, and Flanagan is expected to decide whether to lift his injunction or block the law permanently after it concludes this week. The case was brought by the Milwaukee branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider the state’s appeals of two rulings blocking Wisconsin’s new voter ID law from taking effect, leaving the issue to lower courts to decide even with recall elections against the governor and five other Republican officials only weeks away.The court didn’t explain why it wasn’t taking up the state’s appeals in its two single-page orders, which it issued hours after a trial began in one of the cases. The decision means the law, which would require voters to present photo identification at the polls, will remain blocked pending a ruling by one of the appeals courts, which could come before the May 8 primary elections or June 5 general elections. Gov. Scott Walker, the lieutenant governor and three Republican state senators are facing recall elections, and the seat of another GOP senate recall target who recently stepped down is also up for grabs.
The former army chief and guerrilla fighter Jose Maria de Vasconcelos has won East Timor’s presidential elections, an election official said on Tuesday, citing provisional results. Vasconcelos, known as Taur Matan Ruak, won about 61 percent of the 452,000 votes that have been counted so far, Tomas Cabral, an election commission official, was quoted as saying on local television and radio in the capital Dili. “The tally is still being updated but it indicates that Taur Matan Ruak has gotten the majority of votes,” said Cabral.