Arizona: U.S. Supreme Court could toss out voting boundaries | Arizona Republic

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up the Arizona Legislature’s argument that only state lawmakers have the authority to draw congressional boundaries. The court also wants to hear arguments on why the Legislature believes it has the legal standing to get involved in the case. Arguments could happen early in the new year. At issue is the ongoing dispute over the nine congressional districts the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission drew in 2011. Arizona lawmakers argue that the U.S. Constitution gives only the legislature the power to draw those boundaries.

Arkansas: State Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments In Voter ID Case | Times Record

An Arkansas judge erred when he struck down Arkansas’ voter identification law, an official with Secretary of State Mark Martin’s office argued Thursday before the Arkansas Supreme Court. A lawyer for a group of voters challenging the law argued that the Supreme Court should uphold Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox’s May 2 ruling that the law imposes new qualifications for voting in Arkansas, in violation of the state constitution. The state’s highest court heard oral arguments but did not immediately issue a ruling in the state’s appeal of Fox’s ruling striking down Act 595 of 2013, which requires Arkansas voters to show photo identification at the polls. Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe vetoed the Republican-backed measure last year, but the Republican-led Legislature overrode the veto. Fox stayed his ruling pending the state’s appeal, so Act 595 was in effect for the May 20 primary election. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas has said more than 1,000 ballots went uncounted in that election because of the law.

Mississippi: High court mulls McDaniel appeal | Jackson Clarion-Ledger

Losing at the state high court may not end Chris McDaniel’s months-long challenge of his election loss to Sen. Thad Cochran, his lead attorney said after arguing before the Mississippi Supreme Court on Thursday. McDaniel attorney Mitch Tyner said the erstwhile candidate could still file a challenge of his loss in federal court, on First Amendment grounds. He said McDaniel still hasn’t had a trial to prove the election was stolen from him and “the merits have never been heard on this case.” The state Supreme Court heard nearly two hours of arguments Thursday in McDaniel’s appeal of a circuit court’s dismissal of his election lawsuit. The court gave no indication when it might rule. Cochran attorney Mark Garriga said McDaniel’s challenge needs to end. “They blamed everybody in the world for losing the election,” Garriga said. “They blamed the trial court for losing the lawsuit, and if they lose today they want to blame other people. This has been a long ordeal for the Cochran campaign, for the circuit clerks and for all the people who have been accused of wrongdoing.”

Mississippi: High Court Hears McDaniel v. Cochran Arguments | Jackson Free Press

Today, the Mississippi State Supreme Court heard arguments from the legal teams of state Sen. Chris McDaniel and U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran regarding the 20-day deadline to file election challenges. A lower court previously ruled that McDaniel missed the deadline to file a challenge by 21 days, thus nullifying his attempts to prove that he is the rightful winner of the June Republican primary and therefore deserves to compete in the general election as the Republican nominee. Arguments from both campaigns raised serious questions about the current state of Mississippi’s election law and who gets to decide the state’s election process. Mitch Tyner, an attorney who is cited in McDaniel’s challenge as having cast an irregular vote and who argued on behalf of McDaniel, asked the judges to look solely at the statute in question. It is under this statute that a candidate is allowed to challenge the results of a statewide election. The statute itself, Tyner argues, is enforceable on its face without needing to draw upon rules from other statutes. No time frame or deadline is outlined in its language.

Missouri: Voter registration in Ferguson surges after Brown killing | USA Today

More than 3,000 people have registered to vote in Ferguson, Mo., since the death of Michael Brown — a surge in interest that may mean the city of 21,000 people is ready for a change. Since a white police officer shot the unarmed black 18-year-old on Aug. 9, voter registration booths and cards have popped up alongside protests in the city and surrounding neighborhoods. The result: 4,839 people in St. Louis County have registered to vote since the shooting; 3,287 of them live in Ferguson. The city’s population is two-thirds African American; five of its six city council members are white, as is its mayor. The St. Louis County Election Board does not record the races of eligible voters, but many believe the increase is a sign that Brown’s death has spurred renewed interest in politics and might mean more blacks will vote in the upcoming election. “It’s a great move when people come out and register in mass like that,” said Anthony Bell, St. Louis 3rd Ward committeeman. “They are sending a signal that we want a change. It doesn’t give justice to the Michael Brown family, but it will in the future give justice to how the administration is run in a local municipality like Ferguson.”

Rhode Island: New voter ID requirements spur complaints of disenfranchisement | Brown Daily Herald

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island is leading a drive to educate eligible voters on the state’s new voter ID law in time for the general election, after errors made in the law’s implementation during the Sept. 9 primary led to voter disenfranchisement, said Hillary Davis, RIACLU policy associate. As of Jan. 1, 2014, the voter ID law requires people to show photo identification in order to vote. In the past, state requirements had called for either photo ID, bank statements or government-issued documents. Voters who do not have a valid photo ID can either cast a provisional ballot or obtain a free voter ID upon request. Votes submitted using these provisional ballots are counted only after signatures are matched with voter registration records. RIACLU poll watchers positioned at various polling sites throughout the state on primary day noted cases in which poll workers mistakenly dismissed voters due to misunderstandings about the new policy, Davis said.

Texas: Criminal Appeals Court Judge Files Suit Over Voter ID | The Texas Tribune

While a federal judge in Corpus Christi mulls whether the state’s requirement to show photo ID to cast a ballot violates the federal Voting Rights Act, a judge on the highest criminal appeals court in Texas is taking another approach: He’s suing the state over its relatively new voter ID law. Judge Lawrence “Larry” Meyers’ lawsuit, filed in Dallas County, claims the voting law enacted last year violates the Texas Constitution because it attempts to “prevent” voter fraud, something he says the state’s governing charter never intended.  Meyers’ lawsuit states that “the Texas Constitution gives the Texas Legislature power solely to ‘detect and punish’ election fraud when it has already occurred.” In an interview on Wednesday, Meyers said the Constitution says nothing about preventing election fraud.  “It’s legally unconstitutional and it’s an affront to every voter in the state of Texas,” Meyers said.

West Virginia: Justices say replacement candidate should be on ballot | West Virginia Record

The state Supreme Court has ruled that a replacement House of Delegates candidate will be on the Nov. 4 general election ballot in Kanawha County. The Justices ruled Wednesday that Marie Sprouse-McDavid should be on the ballot for the 35th House district after sitting Delegate Suzette Raines withdrew as a candidate this summer. The Kanawha County Republican Executive Committee and Sprouse-McDavid had filed a petition with the court last week to hear the case. Because of the impending election, the case was heard Tuesday and ruled upon quickly. In Wednesday’s decision, the Justices rule that the KCREC “has demonstrated sufficient grounds to warrant issuance of the requested writ of mandamus.”

Wisconsin: Voting rights advocates want Supreme Court to block voter ID law | The Washington Post

Opponents of a strict new voter identification law set to go into effect for the first time in this year’s elections are asking the Supreme Court to block the law, arguing there isn’t enough time to properly implement the law before Election Day. Two voting rights groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Advancement Project, which represents a number of other Democratic-leaning groups, filed a petition with Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan seeking an emergency stay halting the new law’s implementation. The petition comes after an en banc panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago on Friday split evenly on whether to hear a challenge to the law. The 5-5 decision leaves an earlier three-judge panel’s ruling in favor of the law intact, reversing an order from a federal judge in Wisconsin this spring to strike it down as unconstitutional.

Brazil: Gauging Brazil’s election: Crunch time | The Economist

IT IS hard to make predictions, the old saying goes, especially about the future. When future involves Brazil’s presidential race, the first round of which takes place on October 5th, the task is harder still. That has not stopped number-crunchers trying. Neale El-Dash of PollingData.com.br, a website, has made a valiant attempt at “tropicalising” Nate Silver, a statistician and blogger who rose to stardom during the 2012 US election. Mr Silver took polls released each week, then aggregated and weighted them to come up with a prediction, framed in terms of probability of victory for the main contenders. Our chart shows how Brazilian hopefuls’ chances, calculated in a similar fashion by Mr El-Dash, have shaped up since the campaign was upended by the tragic death in a plane crash in mid-August of Eduardo Campos, a centrist candidate.

Bulgaria: Groundhog Day in Bulgaria as new election looms | Reuters

Weary Bulgarians will vote in a general election on Sunday for a fifth government in under two years, a vote that could produce another fragile coalition struggling to root out corruption and revive growth in the eastern European state. Led by a former bodyguard, the centre right GERB party is tipped to win but will probably fall short of a majority. It could turn to smaller parties and also reach out to its main Socialist opponents for support for legislation. But there is widespread disillusion with the political class and Bulgarians are fed up with voting for the same faces again and again without their lives improving. Tens of thousands took to the streets last year to voice their anger.

Voting Blogs: Hong Kong: the stakes are high | openDemocracy

The confrontation in Hong Kong between pro-democracy demonstrators and the Beijing-backed authorities has implications reaching beyond the protesters camped on the streets of the city’s business district or the administration in the official buildings beholden to the central government in Beijing. It epitomises the wider challenge facing China as it seeks economic modernisation while retaining monopolistic Communist Party political rule. Nothing could be more modern in China than the former British colony with its advanced financial system, its freedoms and its full integration into the global economy. Nor could anything be more threatening to the rulers in Beijing than the spiralling call for open direct elections, spearheaded by student protesters defying the police. The clash between the authorities and those calling for uncontrolled democracy in their “umbrella revolution” has intensified this year, as a result of Beijing’s stronger assertion of its right to control developments in the former colony and the emergence of a new, younger pro-democracy movement, which has adopted a more radical approach than the campaigners for a liberal political system in the first decade after sovereignty passed from Britain to China in 1997. The offer of talks by the chief executive on Thursday night, a striking recognition of the power of street protest, would be impossible elsewhere in China.

Latvia: Vote overshadowed by Russian questions | Deutsche Welle

As Latvia goes to the polls to electsa new parliament Saturday (04.10.2014), Russia’s Ukraine policy will likely have a strong impact on the result. The government in Riga is no longer ruling out an act of aggression from the Kremlin, which has repeatedly declared its intent to protect Russians abroad. Their share of the total population of the Baltic state is 26 percent, significantly higher than that in Ukraine, where they make up 17 percent. Latvia has a difficult relationship with Russia. In 1940 it was annexed by the former USSR. “The experience of 60 years of Soviet occupation is rooted deeply in historical memory,” says Norbert Beckmann-Dierkes, who heads the German Konrad-Adenauer Foundation in Riga. The 100 seats in Latvia’s parliament, the Saeima, will be fought for by 13 parties. Some represent Latvians only, others the Russian-speaking population, many of whom are so-called “non-citizens.” These are mostly Russians who, after Latvia became independent in 1991, were not offered passports. Nearly one in eight residents in the country is a “non-citizen.”

United Kingdom: Liberal Democrats call for more proportional parliamentary voting on English laws | The Guardian

A radical change to the voting system at Westminster, entailing parliamentary bills being passed in a more proportional way, should be introduced to resolve the row over English-only laws, the Liberal Democrats will say on Friday. In a Guardian article, the Lib Dem minister David Laws calls on the Tories to follow the example of the Labour party in setting aside “narrow partisan interest” to resolve the matter. The intervention by Laws comes as a fresh coalition row flared up after Nick Clegg accused Theresa May of making “false and outrageous” slurs against his party. She had claimed the Lib Dems were putting children’s lives at risk by blocking surveillance legislation, known by critics as the snooper’s charter.

Brazil: Fraud possible in Brazil’s e-voting system | ZDNet

Flaws found in the Brazilian electronic voting system could open up the possibility of fraud as more than 140 million people go to the polls in the general elections taking place on Sunday. E-voting was introduced in Brazil in 1996 as a means to ensure secrecy and accuracy of the election process, as well as speed: the system underpinned by about 530,000 voting machines currently in place enables results to be processed within a matter of minutes within closing of the ballots. However, a public test of the equipment conducted by security and encryption specialists from Unicamp and Universidade de Brasília, two of the top computer science universities in Brazil, suggests that it is possible to easily break the secrecy of the machine and unscramble the order of votes recorded by the device. “Brazilians unconditionally believe the [security of the] country’s electoral authority and processes. The issue is that common citizens actually have no other option because of the lack of independent checks,” says Unicamp professor and encryption specialist, Diego Aranha.

Florida: Study: In 2012, Florida voters waited the longest to cast ballots | McClatchy

Voters in Florida waited far longer than those in other states to cast their votes in the 2012 election, hampered by long ballots and cutbacks in early voting options, according to a new report by congressional auditors. Voters in the state stood in line more than 34 minutes on average, significantly longer than ballot-casters did in any other state reviewed by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ watchdog. The shortest waits? Alaska, at just 1.4 minutes. Three others states had wait times about 25 or more minutes: Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina. But most of the others fell somewhere between five minutes and 20 minutes, on average. In Florida, the GAO estimated, 16 percent of voters waited 61 minutes or more to cast their ballots – tops among the states surveyed. “People should not have to stand in line for hours to exercise their constitutional right to vote,” U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said in a statement.

Editorials: Supreme Court could weaken voting rights — again | Zachary Roth/MSNBC

With four major voting rights cases currently before the courts, access to the ballot for the upcoming midterms hangs in the balance. But the stakes could be much higher still. If one of the cases winds up before the Supreme Court, as looks likely, it could give Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative colleagues a chance to decisively weaken safeguards against race bias in voting. And with the Republican-controlled Congress unlikely to pass new voting protections, that could usher in a bleak new era for voting in America — half a century after the issue looked to have been put to rest. “I’m very worried that the Supreme Court will take a case on the merits, and write an opinion that drastically constricts the right to vote,” said Daniel Tokaji, an election law scholar at Ohio State University. “I think that is a very real danger, given the conservative composition of this court, which has shown itself to be no friend to voting rights.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg this week named the Shelby County v. Holder ruling, which neutered the Voting Rights Act’s strongest provision, as one of the current court’s three worst. But Shelby  left open a key question: What kinds of voting restrictions is the post- version of the VRA strong enough to stop? Any of the four pending cases could give the court a chance to provide an answer.

Arizona: Supreme Court to weigh Arizona redistricting challenge | Reuters

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a challenge by Arizona’s legislature to a voter-approved plan that stripped state lawmakers of their role in drawing congressional districts in an bid to remove partisan politics from the process. The state’s Republican-controlled legislature is objecting to a 2000 ballot initiative endorsed by the state’s voters that set up an independent commission to work out the U.S. House of Representatives districts in Arizona. The legislature contends that the amendment to the state constitution violated a provision of the U.S. Constitution that requires state legislatures to set congressional district boundaries.

California: Gov. Brown vetoes bill to expand California’s Voting Rights Act | Associated Press

An effort to expand California’s Voting Rights Act to allow claims of racial discrimination in the configuration of election districts has been vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown. The legislation, SB1365 by state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima (Los Angeles County), was passed in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that weakened the federal Voting Rights Act. That law had required state and local governments with a history of racial discrimination — including Monterey, Yuba, Kings and Merced counties in California — to obtain approval from the Justice Department or a federal court before making any changes in their voting rules. California’s Voting Rights Act, signed by Gov. Gray Davis in 2001, allows minority groups to challenge “at-large” elections. All candidates in at-large elections compete for votes in an entire city, county or special district, increasing the likelihood of control by a white majority that votes cohesively. Suits filed under the law have prompted more than 100 local governments and agencies to switch to district elections, with a better chance of minority representation.

Florida: Judicial Campaign Solicitations Get Supreme Court Review | Bloomberg

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether candidates for judgeships have a constitutional right to solicit campaign contributions, agreeing to hear a case that tests the balance between free speech and judicial integrity. The justices today said they will hear an appeal from Lanell Williams-Yulee, a former Florida state judicial candidate who was disciplined after signing a mass-mail fundraising letter. The case will have ramifications across the country. At least 38 states have judicial elections in some form, and 30 of those states ban candidates from making personal solicitations. Spending on state judicial elections has soared in recent years, topping $56 million in the 2011-12 election cycle, according to a study by three groups, including Justice at Stake, a Washington organization that works to protect the courts from political pressure.

North Carolina: 4th Circuit Court of Appeals hands NAACP partial victory on voter ID law | Associated Press

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a federal district court’s denial of a preliminary injunction on some parts of North Carolina’s controversial new voter ID law. The higher court will delay elimination of same-day registration and prohibition on counting out-of-precinct ballots. “The court’s order safeguards the vote for tens of thousands of North Carolinians. It means they will continue to be able to use same-day registration, just as they have during the last three federal elections,” said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, in a statement.

Click here to read the full opinion (.pdf)

Editorials: Voting Rights Victory in North Carolina | Ari Berman/The Nation

Last year, North Carolina passed the most sweeping voting restrictions since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Civil rights groups like the North Carolina NAACP and ACLU asked the courts for an injunction against three major parts of the law before the midterms—a reduction in early voting by a week, the elimination of same-day registration during the early voting period and a prohibition on counting ballots accidentally cast in the wrong precinct. In early August, District Court Judge Thomas Schroeder denied the injunction, saying the plaintiffs had not proven “irreparable harm.” Two of three judges on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled parts of Schroeder’s ruling today, reinstating same-day registration and the counting of out-of-precinct ballots for 2014. In not-so-good news for voting rights, the appeals court also upheld: “(i) the reduction of early-voting days; (ii) the expansion of allowable voter challengers; (iii) the elimination of the discretion of county boards of elections to keep the polls open an additional hour on Election Day in ‘extraordinary circumstances’; (iv) the elimination of pre-registration of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds who will not be eighteen years old by the next general election; and (v) the soft roll-out of voter identification requirements to go into effect in 2016.”

Wisconsin: U.S. Supreme Court is asked to block Wisconsin’s voter ID law | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Opponents of Wisconsin’s photo ID requirement for voters took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, seeking an emergency halt to the state’s implementation of the law ahead of the fast approaching Nov. 4 election. … In their petition, voter ID opponents told the Supreme Court that there’s not enough time to properly implement the law ahead of the tight election between GOP Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic challenger Mary Burke, which is five weeks away. On Sept. 12, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled that the law could be put in place for the election while a lawsuit over the requirement grinds on, leaving state officials and local election clerks sprinting to put the law in place. “Thousands of Wisconsin voters stand to be disenfranchised by this law going into effect so close to the election. Hundreds of absentee ballots have already been cast, and the appeals court’s order is fueling voter confusion and election chaos. Eleventh-hour changes in election rules have traditionally been disfavored precisely because the risk of disruption is simply too high,” said Dale Ho, director of the Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the voters suing the state.

Editorials: Rigging the Game for Wisconsin’s Voter ID Supporters | Jon Sherman/Huffington Post

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has split 5-5 on whether to restore the injunction blocking Wisconsin’s voter ID law for this election. Since the full court deadlocked, the three-judge panel’s decision to stay the injunction — or let the ID law go into effect — will stand, absent intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court (which so far has not been sought). There is an 11th seat for an active judge on the court, but that tie-breaking seat has remained vacant since January 2010.  Following the 5-5 vote, the panel issued an opinion explaining its reasons for denying the request for rehearing and voting against the full court’s review, and the five judges who voted for continuing to block the ID law for this election filed a dissent. Both sides argued about the meaning of a 2006 Supreme Court opinion, Purcell v. Gonzalez. In Purcell, a district court had allowed Arizona to implement its new voter ID law, but with weeks left before the election, the Ninth Circuit issued an emergency stay, blocking the law pending its final decision. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the Ninth Circuit, finding that court orders changing the status quo so close to an election risk voter confusion and suppress participation. With the election mere weeks away and thousands of absentee ballots already mailed without ID instructions, hundreds of which have been returned without ID, the dissenting Seventh Circuit judges reasonably think Purcell requires blocking the law for this election (whatever the ultimate decision on the ID law’s legality).

Brazil: Election swings between hope and fear | Financial Times

Financial markets in the developed world do not seem to care. For the most part, they have shrugged off chaos in the Middle East, Russian incursions into Ukraine and democracy protests in Hong Kong. In the emerging world, however, political events can still move markets big time. This year the Indian and Indonesian stock markets have risen more than 20 per cent thanks to the electoral victory of more market-friendly governments. A similar pattern is taking shape in Brazil, only in reverse. Over the summer local markets soared on hopes the opposition would unseat Dilma Rousseff of the governing Workers party at the presidential election, which kicks off on Sunday. But this week opinion polls showed President Rousseff widening her lead, dashing hopes of an end to another four years of her interventionist policies. Investor gloom is now such that Brazil’s currency fell more last month than Russia’s rouble.

Latvia: Election under shadow of assertive Russia | Reuters

Latvians look likely to back their hawkish centre-right ruling coalition in a parliamentary election on Saturday amid increased tensions with giant neighbor Russia, Riga’s communist-era ruler, over the Ukraine crisis. Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma has taken a tough stance towards Moscow over its policies in Ukraine, boosting defense spending and joining Baltic neighbours Estonia and Lithuania in pressing for a bigger NATO presence in their region. Among her main opponents in the election is the traditionally pro-Moscow Concord party, which draws support from the ethnic Russians who make up about a quarter of Latvia’s two million-strong population. “I think that most likely we will have the same centre-right coalition as we see now. And the main reason is Russia’s aggression in Ukraine,” said Andis Kudors, executive director of the Center for East European Policy Studies. “Latvian parties will have a hard time convincing voters why they would go (into a coalition) with a Concord party which does not condemn Russia’s aggression enough.”

Russia: Local elections: a sign of things to come in Russia? | The Washington Post

On Sept. 14, Russia held a spate of local elections. Thirty of 85 Russian regions held gubernatorial elections, residents of Crimea elected a new regional legislature, and Muscovites voted in municipal elections. These elections are interesting because they provide a bellwether for current protest sentiment levels and perhaps even an early preview of parliamentary elections that are due to take place in 2016. Furthermore, this is also the first time that Crimea has voted as part of Russia since being annexed in March. Gubernatorial elections were reinstated in 2012 as a major concession to a mass protest movement that for a time sent tremors through Russia’s political establishment in 2011-2012 and seemed to threaten the very stability of Vladimir Putin’s regime. The current round of elections confirms once again that the level of protest sentiment remains low across Russia and that the federal government is able to keep a firm lid on inter-elite conflict in the provinces, which back in the 1990s threatened the country’s territorial integrity. First, local elections failed to generate much public interest or discussion even in the country’s capital where many residents pay close attention to politics. Turnout was low—rarely exceeding 40 percent—and candidates nominated by the ruling United Russia party won in 28 of the 30 provinces that held gubernatorial elections (an independent won in Kirov oblast and a Communist in Orlov). Notably, incumbents won in all 30 provinces, and all of them won in the first round with levels of voter support ranging from 50.6 percent in Altai to Soviet-style 91.3 percent in Samara oblast. In other words, government candidates ran almost unopposed; all of them had been endorsed by president Putin personally shortly in the run up to the election.

National: As Dark Money Floods U.S. Elections, Regulators Turn a Blind Eye | Newsweek

With apologies to the cast of Cabaret, dark money makes the political world go round. Confusing rules and a regulatory void in campaign finance have unleashed a tsunami of cash from anonymous donors that is expected to have unprecedented influence over the midterm elections in November. As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission judgment in 2010, individuals—and big corporations—received a carte blanche to make unlimited anonymous financial donations to “nondisclosing” organizations, increasingly nonprofit groups whose primary mission is defined as “social welfare.” There are some guidelines: Such groups, categorized as 501(c)(4), can devote no more than half of their funds to political spending if they want to retain their nondisclosing tax-exempt status. The trouble is, who is holding them to account? Since the Internal Revenue Service got hammered for oversight activities that were at best overzealous, at worst partisan, many of these groups can essentially do whatever they want, unchallenged.

Editorials: Why early voting is about so much more than convenience | The Washington Post

This was supposed to be “Golden Week” in Ohio, a prime window one month from the midterm election when the state’s residents could both register to vote and cast their ballots at the same time. In theory, political participation doesn’t get much easier than that. Monday, however, the Supreme Court halted the start of the state’s early voting in another 5-4 order along ideological lines that civil rights advocates fear will harm minority and poor voters in particular. The decision is a win for Republican officials in Ohio who had moved to curtail the state’s early voting with a law passed in February. Civil-rights groups including the ACLU and the NAACP had sued the state to block the law, and the Supreme Court’s order on Monday sets aside a lower-court ruling in their favor. Now, as a result, voting in Ohio that was supposed to start today won’t begin until Oct. 7. And Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, reacting swiftly to the Supreme Court order, has also rolled back evening hours and a day of Sunday voting that had been required by the earlier court decision.

Editorials: How the Supreme Court will continue helping GOP game elections | Paul Waldman/The Washington Post

The Supreme Court has granted Ohio’s request to throw out a ruling by lower courts stopping the state from implementing a law on early voting passed by the Republican state legislature. Meanwhile, cases on Republican-passed voting laws in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Texas are also working their way through the courts, and may all wind up in front of the Supreme Court in one way or another. So here’s a prediction: Republicans are going to win every single one of these cases. No matter how compelling the arguments of the opponents are, the simple fact is that there are five conservative justices who think that almost anything a state does to restrict people’s ability to vote is just fine with them. If you’re looking for the “tell” in laws like Ohio’s, you can find it on a Sunday — namely, the Sunday before the election (or sometimes every Sunday in the early voting period), which these laws almost always eliminate as a day when early voting can take place. What’s the significance of that Sunday? It’s the day when black churches conduct “Souls to the Polls” drives, organizing parishioners to head over to vote after services are over.