Editorials: Has SCOTUS OK’d campaign dirty tricks? | Richard L. Hasen/Politico.com An obscure procedural order issued the day after the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Barack Obama’s health care law got lost in the saturated media coverage of the health ruling and the palace intrigue over whether Chief Justice John Roberts switched his vote…
An obscure procedural order issued the day after the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Barack Obama’s health care law got lost in the saturated media coverage of the health ruling and the palace intrigue over whether Chief Justice John Roberts switched his vote and alienated his conservative colleagues. Without comment or dissent, the justices declined to hear Minnesota’s appeal of a federal appeals court ruling in 281 Care Committee v. Arneson — holding that Minnesota’s law banning false campaign speech about ballot measures is likely unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The result could be even nastier campaigns and more political dirty tricks. Minnesota had asked the Supreme Court to hold its petition until the court decided United States v. Alvarez, the so-called “Stolen Valor” case. The court decided Alvarez the same day as health care, striking down as a free speech violation a federal law making it a crime to falsely claim to be a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Alvarez casts considerable doubt over when, if ever, states can take actions to combat false campaign statements and campaign dirty tricks — including lying about the location of a polling place or the voting date. The court could have used the 281 Care Committee case to clear up the muddle next term. But it just denied the petition. Without new clarity, I expect anyone charged with making election-related lies to raise a First Amendment defense. Which they just may win.
After weeks of declining to make it public, Gov. Rick Scott’s administration now says it will release a much larger list of more than 180,000 voters in Florida whose citizenship status is in question. Secretary of State Ken Detzner said two weeks ago that he would seek an advisory opinion from Attorney General Pam Bondi as to whether the database was public record under Florida law — a political hot potato if ever there was one. Detzner did not request the opinion, and his spokesman, Chris Cate, says: “Our conclusion is that the set of 180,000 names is a public record. We are in the process of redacting it now so that it can be provided to everyone who has made a public records request.”
State lawmakers will have to consider getting rid of runoff elections in Georgia next year – at least those involving federal candidates in general elections – because of a recent ruling by a U.S. district judge requiring 45 days for ballots cast by members of the U.S. military to make their way home, Secretary of State Brian Kemp on Monday. Ballot requirements insisted on by the U.S. Justice Department and upheld by the court last week all but invalidate a current state law requiring that winners in all general elections receive 50 percent plus one vote, Kemp said – given that federal runoffs in those contests would have to be delayed until late December. “We’d be voting during Christmas. There may be people getting certified while other people are getting sworn in. It’s really a logistical nightmare,” Kemp said.
Local election officials are anxiously awaiting word from Gov. Rick Snyder on whether a special election will be held to fill the remaining time of U.S. Rep. Thad McCotter’s term of office in Congress. The timing of McCotter’s resignation on Friday, following a petition signature scandal that erupted on Memorial Day weekend, couldn’t be much worse. It’s too late to include a special election during the Aug. 7 primary election because absentee ballots already have been mailed to thousands of voters. And the resignation comes as thousands of voters already are confronted with the prospect of new congressional representation because of redrawn districts, dictated by population shifts that are reported every 10 years by the U.S. Census.
What’s in a name? Well, it may be the difference between winning and losing, according to supporters and opponents of two referenda heading for the ballot in November. Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has now renamed both of them. First, he renamed the marriage amendment “Limiting The Status Of Marriage To Opposite Sex Couples.” It had been called “Recognition of marriage solely between one man and one woman.” The most recent change came this afternoon, when Ritchie decided to rename the state’s proposed voter ID amendment, designated by its legislative sponsors “Photo Identification Required for Voting.” Ritchie decided to rename the amendment “Changes to In-Person & Absentee Voting & Voter Registration; Provisional Ballots.” Supporters quickly cried foul.
legal battle over North Carolina’s redistricting maps will reach the state Supreme Court on Tuesday but the case is far from finished, as justices must first decide how much of the correspondence between mapmaking lawmakers and their lawyers should be disclosed. The state’s highest court will hear oral arguments about whether the public should learn about legal advice outside attorneys gave to Republican legislative leaders on drawing General Assembly and congressional seat boundaries, getting them enacted and preparing for potential lawsuits. Civil rights and election reform groups as well as Democratic voters who sued in November to overturn the maps on constitutional and discrimination grounds have asked for records to attempt to buttress their case. They’ve already received hundreds of thousands of pages. Taxpayer-paid contract attorneys representing GOP lawmakers say some of their documents should remain confidential due to attorney-client privilege and other restrictions.
New York’s June 26 primary where Republicans chose Manhattan lawyer Wendy Long as their nominee for U.S. Senate just missed setting a record-low for voter turnout in Onondaga County, according to the final unofficial tally. A total of 4,105 people voted out of 85,374 active Republicans enrolled in Onondaga County, according to the Board of Elections. It amounts to a voter turnout of 4.8 percent. That means the record-low of 4.6 percent is safe for now. That record was set it in the 2006 U.S. Senate GOP primary when John Spencer defeated K.T. McFarland for the party’s nomination.
On July 9, U.S. District Court Judge Algenon Marbley ruled that Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted must continue to abide by a consent decree agreed to by his predecessor Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner. Husted is a Republican and Brunner is a Democrat. The consent decree provides that provisional ballots are valid when they are cast in the right building, but the wrong precinct, and if the provisional voter revealed the last four digits of the Social Security Number when voting provisionally, and if the error was made due to polling place official error. Apparently Ohio has many polling places in which multiple precincts vote in the same building. The case is Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless v Husted, 2:06-cv-896. It is not known if the Secretary of State will appeal.
epublican state Sen. Van Wanggaard decided not to go to court to challenge his recall election loss, effectively conceding the race Tuesday to his challenger and giving Democrats at least a temporary majority in the Wisconsin Senate. Wanggaard, of Racine, lost to Democrat John Lehman by 819 votes, or about 1.1 percent of the nearly 72,000 ballots cast. Wanggaard had demanded a recount, which affirmed his loss. That left Wanggaard with two choices: File a challenge by Tuesday or concede the race. His campaign chose not to challenge, clearing the way for state election officials to certify the race Wednesday morning and make the outcome official.
A consultant’s report traces problems in reporting Waukesha County election results directly to mistakes by outgoing County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus – mistakes that will cost county taxpayers more than a quarter of a million dollars to fix. Nickolaus had promised to post timely results online and update them periodically for the April 3 election. But the public didn’t learn the results of contested local races for hours, while reporters and election reporting service representatives were forced to tabulate the vote totals themselves from long paper tapes hanging on the walls of a meeting room. The embattled county clerk already was under scrutiny because of her role in the 2011 state Supreme Court race, when she left the entire city of Brookfield out of countywide vote totals. When those 14,000 votes were added in, two days after the election, Justice David Prosser had won by 7,000 votes, instead of narrowly losing to Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, as the original count showed. But the uncertainty over the Waukesha County vote led to a statewide recount that confirmed Prosser’s victory.
The voting rights of people in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke Centre were trampled by simple record-keeping errors, the Supreme Court of Canada heard Tuesday. The decision to overturn Conservative MP Ted Opitz’s win in last year’s federal election disenfranchised all the voters whose ballots were thrown out, his lawyer said. “It’s hard to think that a constitutional right of this importance can hang by so fine a thread,” lawyer Kent Thomson told the court. Opitz won the riding by just 26 votes over Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj in last year’s federal election. But Wrzesnewskyj went to court, claiming procedural irregularities. Earlier this year, an Ontario Superior Court judge found that Elections Canada officials made clerical errors at the polls. After Justice Thomas Lederer threw out 79 votes and overturned the final result, Opitz appealed the case to the Supreme Court.
Opposition leaders have suggested that parliamentary elections be delayed until next year, so that the government will have time to draft a new elections law acceptable by all. They made the remarks as political powers were still internally discussing their final stance on whether to boycott or participate in the upcoming elections, expected to be held before the end of this year. The Lower House on Sunday endorsed an amended version of the 2012 Elections Law, raising the number of House seats allocated for the national list to 27. A majority of MPs voted in favour of the government’s amendments, under which the number of seats allocated for the closed proportional list at the national level was raised to 27 instead of 17 as stipulated in the previous version.
Wartime rebel prime minister Mahmoud Jibril took an early lead in Libya’s national assembly election, according to partial tallies released on Monday that pointed to a weaker than expected showing for Islamist parties. If confirmed that trend would set Libya apart from other Arab Spring countries such as Egypt and Tunisia where groups with overtly religious agendas have done well – although Jibril insists his multi-party alliance is neither secular nor liberal and includes sharia Islamic law among its core values. Saturday’s poll was the first free national vote in six decades and drew a line under 42 years of rule under former dictator Muammar Gaddafi. International observers said it went well despite violent incidents that killed at least two people. Jibril’s National Forces Alliance (NFA) was heading for landslide victories in the Tripoli suburb of Janzour and the western region towns of Zlitan, Misalata, Tarhouna and Khoms with over three-quarters of votes counted in those areas. In Misrata, Libya’s third city, the Union for the Homeland led by a long-time Gaddafi opponent, was on course to win.
Do you consider yourself an IT hacker? Then the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission will soon be looking for you. In November, the IEBC plans to invite hackers to try tamper with the system that it will use to transmit provisional results. According to IEBC CEO James Oswago, this will help the system attract the confidence of Kenyans ahead of the planned March 4, 2013 General Elections. “We are confident that our system is tamper-proof. However, sometime in November we will invite those who think they can hack into the system to do it. We want Kenyans to have confidence in the system,” Mr Oswago said. According to Mr Oswago, this is one of the lessons that the Commission has learnt from engagement with electoral bodies that use such systems.
Mexican leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Monday he will mount court challenges against the results of the July 1 election, claiming vote-buying and campaign overspending by the winner of official vote counts, Enrique Pena Nieto. The announcement comes amid rising calls to investigate what appears to have been the distribution of thousands of pre-paid gift cards to voters before the election, and allegations by Lopez Obrador’s supporters that some state government officials passed funds to Pena Nieto’s campaign effort. Lopez Obrador finished about 6.6 percentage points behind Pena Nieto of the old guard Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
The Palestinian government in the West Bank called Tuesday for local elections to be held in the West Bank and Gaza on October 20, the first since 2006, an official said. “The Palestinian government decided today during its meeting to hold the local, municipal and district elections on October 20th throughout the Palestinian territory,” the Palestinian official told AFP on condition of anonymity. The decision followed two such calls for local elections last year, with the Palestinian government in the West Bank seeking to hold the vote first in July 2011 and then in October 2011. It was at first scheduled for July 9, but after a surprise reconciliation deal between the rival Fatah and the Hamas movements, the date was put back to October 22.
The Electoral Commission is to review whether voters should produce identification at polling stations amid continued concerns about electoral fraud. It said it was disappointed the government had not conducted its own review. The review was announced as the elections watchdog published its reports on May’s local elections, in which it highlighted voters’ concerns about the potential for fraud. Allegations of fraud in Tower Hamlets, east London, are under investigation by the Metropolitan police. Post-election polling found that about a third of voters felt that fraud had taken place in the 3 May elections, at least “a little”. The government is introducing individual electoral registration to tighten up the voting process, but the commission said it would see whether further changes were necessary.
The man behind a company that got a big state contract to educate Pennsylvania voters on the commonwealth’s restrictive new voter ID law is a fundraiser for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Ads created by his company, a Republican lobbying group, encourage Pennsylvania residents to obtain state-issued photo identification so they don’t “miss out” on their right to vote. Republican lobbyist Chris Bravacos, who according to the Center For Responsive Politics has thus far bundled $30,000 for Romney’s campaign, is president and CEO of the Bravo Group, which received a $249,660 government contract from Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration for the ad campaign. Two ads the company created were posted online by the Bravo Group back in April (according to a Google cache) and taken down after Philadelphia City Paper’s Daniel Denvir published a story about the contract on Sunday. Occupy Harrisburg later reposted the two videos, one of which uses what looks like stock photos of a diverse cast of smiling individuals holding ID-sized cards that read “My Valid Pennsylvania Identification.” The campaign’s slogan? “Your right to vote: it’s one thing you never want to miss out on.”
National: Texas case puts voter ID laws to test | The Washington Post Voter ID laws face a high-profile test this week as the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC hears arguments about Texas’ controversial new regulations. The case pits Texas against Attorney General Eric Holder, who has earned the ire of Republicans across the country…
Voter ID laws face a high-profile test this week as the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC hears arguments about Texas’ controversial new regulations. The case pits Texas against Attorney General Eric Holder, who has earned the ire of Republicans across the country for challenging new voting restrictions. Republicans say the Justice Department should be more concerned about fraud; the DOJ counters that these laws suppress minority turnout. Gov. Rick Perry (R) signed Texas’ voter ID law in May 2011. The state already required an ID to vote; the new law requires a photo ID. Those who don’t have a valid photo ID can apply for a new “election identification certificate.” As a state with a history of voter discrimination, Texas must get preclearance from the Department of Justice for changes in election law. The DOJ blocked Texas’ law under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, declaring that it would disproportionately affect Hispanic voters.
In my recent post about the new PA voter ID law, I noted that a very, very significant number of registered voters – up to 18% of all registered voters in Philadelphia (home to half of the state’s African-American population) – may not currently possess an identification card that will allow them to vote in November. Supporters of these laws argue that requiring people to get an ID is a small price to pay in order to prevent voter fraud. It seems worth figuring out what the actual supplemental cost of voting is for those who currently lack required ID. I therefore present may totally back-of-the-envelope calculation of the poll-tax assessed by PA’s voter ID law. I use the working assumption that time is worth 7.25/hour. This is a fiction if the preparation time does not actually displace paid labor, but does allow us to monetize the cost of voting to be allocated to ID acquisition. I assume that photocopies cost .15 per page and that all mailings can be done for .45 first class postage. I also assume that this is all occuring in Philadelphia County, where there is public transportation to help you get to one of the five DMV locations in the county. In other counties, a person without a driver may have to spend even more to get cab service. Of course, some people will be able to get a ride – but given gas prices (and the cost of parking in cities), it seems unlikely that the effective cost of such travel will be less than the SEPTA public transit fare of $2 each way. More elaborate details on my calculations appear at the bottom of the post. And yes: I recognize that some people miss work, school or other activities in order to vote. I assume, however, that this cost is borne by all voters.
At first glance, it seems appropriate to require voters to show photo ID cards. But stop and think: What sort of person is unlikely to have a driver license or similar card? Answer: the poor, young blacks, the aged, Hispanics, teens — all groups who tend to vote Democratic. That’s why Republican legislators across America are waging an all-out drive to clamp restrictions on voting. They claim they’re doing it to stop “vote fraud,” but that’s a smoke screen. In reality, the new laws amount to vote fraud themselves because they’re designed to block left-leaning people from the polls. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University estimates that 5 million Americans could be prevented from voting this year because of GOP-passed state laws requiring picture IDs, halting election-day registration, curbing early and absentee balloting, etc.
Dan Hensley, an outside attorney hired to investigate Anchorage’s troubled April election delivered hisreport to the Anchorage City Assembly last week. The report highlights management issues in the municipal clerk’s office – including the clerk’s “hands off” style that led to inattention to election preparations by the deputy clerk – but Hensley found that the biggest problem contributing to the widespread ballot shortages on April 3 was the deputy clerk’s failure to anticipate voter turnout. In particular, he found that the combination of a mayoral election year and a controversial gay rights initiative should have alerted the deputy to the strong likelihood of a turnout above the levels experienced in 2010 and 2011. Moreover, he learned that other members of the staff had alerted the deputy to higher rates of absentee ballot requests – a key indicator of turnout – which she failed to take into account.
Plans by Republicans to craft their own alternative to an open primary initiative blew apart late Friday as some party members balked. Matthew Benson, press aide to Gov. Jan Brewer, said his boss believes there is a key weakness in the proposal submitted Thursday to go on the November ballot: It would allow candidates to run for office without disclosing their party affiliation. Benson said letting people hide their true party affiliation would allow candidates to “game” the system. He said that could give a leg up to Democrats in heavily Republican areas like Mesa — and vice versa in Tucson — as many voters cast their ballots based largely on a candidate’s party. So Brewer was prepared to call a special session for this week to offer an alternative to the initiative, one that kept the essence of the “open primary” but with the disclosure requirement. But Sen. Frank Antenori, R-Tucson, said that was not the deal sought by many fellow GOP lawmakers. So they refused to go along, leaving the Brewer-preferred modification without the votes.
Gov. John Lynch let become law without his signature Friday a key change in the new requirement that voters will be asked for a photo ID at the polls this fall. The change means that those casting ballots who don’t have an ID will have to sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury that they are who they claim to be and that they live in the voting district. Legislative leaders passed this second bill, HB 1354, after Lynch had vetoed an earlier voter ID bill, SB 289, because that bill would have required those without an ID to answer many more questions on a different affidavit including about their past immigration status. Two weeks ago, the Republican-led Legislature passed the original voter ID law over Lynch’s veto.
Alarmed by the shifting vote tallies that have turned Charlie Rangel’s apparent reelection into a court battle, legislative leaders say they want to fix the way city votes are counted. The operation needs to be totally computerized, rather than having a bungle-prone process that requires the city Board of Elections to count paper ballots by hand, said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan). “That should definitely be something they do — just collect all the flash drives (from the voting machines) and bring them to [BOE] headquarters,” Silver said. “I don’t think you’ll change the outcomes as a result, but you’ll certainly know the results faster.”
Two activist organizations today announced that they have sued three state agencies, saying they have failed to do their duty to offer voter registration forms to public assistance applicants. The Pittsburgh-based Black Political Empowerment Project and the Philadelphia-based group Pennsylvania Communities Organizing for Change filed the lawsuit in the Eastern District of U.S. District Court Thursday, according to a press release. The complaint names the secretaries of the Department of State, Department of Public Welfare and Department of Health as defendants, and seeks to force them to comply with the National Voter Registration Act.
The Associated Press reports Monday that new voter identification laws could block thousands of Americans from voting this fall. As part of its investigation, the AP examined voting in the 2008 general election in Indiana and Georgia, where it found more than 1,200 votes were thrown out. But the state that could be worst affected in 2012, a voters rights group tells Whispers, is the swing state of Pennsylvania. Last week, Pennsylvania officials released new data that estimated 750,000 voters who don’t have photo IDs could be impacted by new voter identification laws. Marcia F. Johnson-Blanco, co-director of the Voting Rights Project, said that number makes sense. And she notes that the groups most affected by the law will be Pennsylvania’s minorities and elderly–voters that most often for Democrats.
The Racine County Sheriff’s Office has finished its investigation into several June 5 recall election complaints. “All the reports have been turned over to the district attorney,” Racine County Sheriff’s Lt. Steven Sikora said Monday. The sheriff’s office also on Monday turned over its investigation into allegations that a Raymond town supervisor ripped up nomination papers pertaining to a separate Raymond recall, Sikora said. Sikora couldn’t say if the sheriff’s office is recommending charges for any election related complaints. “It’s now in the DA’s hands,” Sikora said. Following the June 5 recall elections, in which former state Sen. John Lehman, D-Racine, defeated state Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, multiple allegations of irregularities at the polls have come up.