National: Sensenbrenner: New voting rights law should be passed before the 2014 Congress elections | The Washington Post

The House Republican sponsor of the Voting Rights Act updates said Wednesday that Congress must pass a new anti-discrimination law before the 2014 elections that restores the federal supervision the Supreme Court struck down in June. “The Supreme Court said it’s an obligation of Congress to do this. That’s a command of a separate but co-equal branch of government to do that,” Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told reporters Wednesday after urging the Senate Judiciary Committee to get moving on the issue. The law, he said, should be passed before the congressional elections. He added that House GOP leaders are open to the task, but they have to see a draft first, it must address the court’s objections and be “politically acceptable in both houses” of Congress. “The American people expect us to roll up our sleeves and get to work,” Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a veteran of the civil rights movement, said at the same hearing. The 1965 law and its extensions have historically won overwhelming bipartisan support.

National: House to hold hearing on Voting Rights Act | The Hill

House Republicans have scheduled their first hearing on the Voting Rights Act for Thursday, following a June ruling by the Supreme Court overturning a key provision of the civil rights law. The hearing, to be held by the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, comes a day after the Senate Judiciary Committee will hear testimony on the law for the first time since the ruling. The 5-4 decision found that Congress had not appropriately considered the nation’s racial progress when signaling out a set of states that required preclearance from the federal government before making any changes to election or voting laws. The states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, as well as parts of seven other states — were selected by a congressionally mandated formula examining past history of voting rights abuses.

National: IRS Employees Showed No Politics, Lawmakers’ Memo Shows | Bloomberg

Interviews with 15 U.S. Internal Revenue Service employees show no political motivation or White House involvement in targeting groups applying for tax-exempt status, House Democrats said in a memo. The 36-page memo released by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee includes excerpts from several employee interviews with congressional investigators that haven’t been distributed publicly until today. The IRS has apologized for the delays and selective scrutiny given to Tea Party groups applying for nonprofit status. Democrats in Congress have resisted Republican arguments that IRS employees used their positions to harm Republican-leaning groups. Instead, they maintain that Tea Party groups were the victims of inadequate rules and inadvertent bungling.

Editorials: Let’s enact a new Voting Rights Act | Norman Ornstein/The Washington Post

Imagine an intersection with a long history of high-speed car crashes, injuries and fatalities. Authorities put up a traffic light and a speed camera — and the accidents and injuries plummet. A few years later, authorities declare “mission accomplished” and remove the light and speed camera. No surprise, the high-speed crashes and fatalities resume almost immediately. This is the logic that animated Chief Justice John Roberts’s decision to fillet the Voting Rights Act and that had conservative pundits, including George F. Will, praising the act as they simultaneously exulted in its demise. The predictable result took less than a day: Texas reinstated its racially tilted gerrymandered redistricting plan and moved to implement its highly restrictive voter ID law, under which voters can be required to travel as far as 250 miles to get identification. The real intent, voter suppression, is clear in the legislation’s provision that a concealed-weapon permit can be used to vote but a valid student photo ID cannot.

Voting Blogs: The Chances of a Deal to Fix the VRA After Shelby County? Observations about the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing | Election Law Blog

I had a chance to watch a good part of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today. It makes me more pessimistic about the chances of a deal to improve the Voting Rights Act after the Supreme Court effectively gutted section 5 in the Shelby County case. Back in February I organized a Reuters Opinion symposium on what Congress could do if the Supreme Court struck down section 5. My thinking was that such a decision would be controversial and Republicans might jump at the chance to fix the Act to improve their position with minority voters. (It’s a point I reaffirmed in this NY Times oped.) Symposium participants offered good ideas for improvements, and after the decision Rick Pildes had an important post on increasing the use of “bail in” as another alternative. I noted in the Reuters piece that I did not expect a new coverage formula to emerge, and one question would be whether a VRA fix would look more like a race-based remedy or more like an election administration (“We’ve got to fix that”) remedy. Today’s hearing showed how far apart Democrats and Republicans are.  The Democrats seemed to be grandstanding (as when Sen. Durbin attacked ALEC) or living in a different universe (as when Sen. Klobuchar asked questions about same day voter registration). Sen. Whitehouse talked about voter fraud as a non-existent problem.  These are not the ways to get at a bipartisan compromise on new VRA legislation.

Arizona: Lawmaker wants to block public vote on ballot changes | AZ Daily Sun

Calling a referendum drive misleading, a state senator has launched a campaign to keep voters from overturning extensive changes made by the Republican-controlled Legislature to voting laws. Sen. Michele Reagan, R-Scottsdale, wants to collect funds to counter the petition drive to force a public vote on the provisions of HB2305. These range from allowing election officials to stop sending early ballots to some voters to putting potential new legal hurdles in the path of people who want to propose their own state laws and constitutional amendments. Reagan said each of the sections helps ensure the integrity and fairness of elections.

Colorado: Recall efforts on hold, both sides head to court tomorrow | KOAA

Voters in both Pueblo and Colorado Springs gathered enough signatures to move forward with recall elections for Senate President John Morse and Senator Angela Giron. Those petitions are already deemed sufficient by the Secretary of State, but both camps are appealing the decision. Wednesday, that court battle will play out, with supporters of both senators and petition organizers. But those aren’t the only sides getting involved. As we first reported last week, the El Paso County Clerk and Recorders office will be there, pressing the Governor to set a date for the Morse recall election.

Florida: Voting Rights Decision Could Mean Return of Florida’s Voter Purge | Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Until Congress is able to come up with new voting rights rules, states could give some of their most controversial voting laws a second life. The U.S. Senate today is discussing the Supreme Court’s decision to throw out a section of the Voting Rights Act. That section established a formula that determined which counties nationwide would be required to clear voting laws with the federal government before implementing them. Five counties in Florida fell under that part of the civil rights-era law. However, Congress is only beginning to discuss a possible replacement of the section. Today’s Senate hearing, according to MSNBC, “will feature testimony from VRA backers in the House and some prominent VRA opponents.”

Florida: Democrat says Scott not pursuing voter registration fraud linked to GOP | Tampa Bay Times

Is Gov. Rick Scott covering up GOP voter registration fraud? The future leader of the House Democrats thinks perhaps he is and is asking Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford to hold legislative hearings on what he says could be an attempt by Scott to “stifle” a criminal investigation. “I have been following the many news media reports about rampant fraud regarding voter registration drives associated with the company Strategic Allied Consulting and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation that was tasked by Gov. Rick Scott some months ago,” states a letter that Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, sent out Tuesday afternoon.

Kansas: Regulatory board rejects Kris Kobach’s voter registration fix | KansasCity.com

A state regulatory board on Tuesday rejected Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s proposal to allow some 12,000 residents in a suspended state of voter registration to participate in upcoming elections. The change would have allowed residents who have yet to provide proof of citizenship to county election officials to cast provisional ballots in upcoming special elections. Residents would be required to show proof of citizenship before the election was certified.

New Jersey: Hudson County to state `sue us’ – balks at $2.4 million U.S. Senate special-election costs | Hudson Reporter

Saying they will likely refuse to pay the $2.4 million costs associated with the special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of Frank Lautenberg, the Hudson County Board of Freeholders said at its July 11 meeting that they may force the state to take the county to court. The county is expected to use funds dedicated to the November regular election to cover the cost of the August primary and then inform the state it does not have the revenue to cover the remaining elections that include a special election in October, and a number of state and local elections in November. Freeholder Bill O’Dea said the county will explore its options, but will likely withhold payment for additional elections now that the budget for the year has been depleted by the cost of the August primary. Representatives from various county departments dealing with the election said the primary and the special election would cost about $1.2 million each.

Pennsylvania: Elections Are Over, But Voter ID Is Not | ABC News

Pennsylvania court may rule this week on the legality of the state’s controversial new voter identification law. Passed last spring without a single Democratic vote, the law was blocked before the presidential election by a judge who said the state had not done enough to ensure people who needed IDs got them. The state offered free IDs, but there were limited locations and hours to obtain them, opponents argued. That injunction didn’t stop the state from putting up Spanish-language billboards urging people to show ID at the polls, though. The law eventually made its way to Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, which ordered the Commonwealth Court to examine its constitutionality. The trial began this week and could go either way. If the court sides in favor of the law, its opponents will likely appeal to the state Supreme Court. The issue is fraught with emotion and comes just after the U.S. Supreme Court crippled a key part of the Voting Rights Act.

Pennsylvania: Voter ID law trial focuses on statistics | lehighvalleylive.com

A statistics expert defended his estimate that “hundreds of thousands” of Pennsylvania voters lack the photo identification they need to vote under a temporarily suspended state law, which is has its constitutionality on trial in a state court. Philadelphia consultant Bernard Siskin, hired by the plaintiffs who sued over the March 2012 law, described in detail his research based on a comparison of people on the Pennsylvania Department of State’s statewide voter-registration database and a similar database maintained by PennDOT, which issues state driver’s licenses and two other IDs acceptable under the law. That analysis showed that, as of this spring, about 511,000 registered voters either lacked one of the PennDOT-issued IDs or have IDs that have expired or will expire before the Nov. 5 election.

Afghanistan: Karzai endorses election commission formation, duties and authorities | Khaama Press

Afghan president Hamid Karzai on Wednesday endorsed the Afghanistan election commission formation, duties and authorities. Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, Afghan parliament house speaker on Wednesday said that president Hamid Karzai has assured regarding the endorsement of the election commission formation, duties and authorities following a telephone conversation. The parliament of Afghanistan on Monday approved the bill for Afghanistan election law following controversies which continued for several days. The law was approved by joint parliamentarian commissions after differences were resolved in the committee and was sent to president Hamid Karzai for endorsement.

Cambodia: Election council bars pardoned opposition leader from voting, running in Cambodia’s polls | Global Times

Sam Rainsy, recently-pardoned leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was ineligible to vote or run as a parliamentary candidate for the July 28 national polls, Tep Nytha, secretary general of the National Election Committee, said Thursday. “According to the law, Sam Rainsy can neither vote nor stand as a candidate for the upcoming polls because the voter lists and political party candidate lists have already been officially recognized by the National Election Committee,” he told reporters. Sam Rainsy’s name was deleted from the voter registry since November on the grounds that he was a convicted criminal with an 11-year prison sentence. On Friday last week, King Norodom Sihamoni granted the charismatic opposition leader a royal pardon, allowing him to return to Cambodia after nearly 4 years abroad in a self-imposed exile.

Mali: Nigeria Seeks $25M for Mali Elections | VoA News

West African leaders have called for $25 million in international aid to help secure the upcoming elections in Mali.  As Guinea-Bissau also prepares for elections, leaders want an end to international sanctions on that country. Heads of state from the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, are meeting this week in the Nigerian capital ahead of elections in Mali and Guinea-Bissau, two countries in turmoil. After the French-led invasion of northern Mali in January that wrested territories away from Islamist militant groups, nationwide presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for July 28.

Russia: Protest leader wins one battle and faces another | Reuters

Russian protest leader Alexei Navalny won a rare victory on Wednesday by being accepted as a candidate in a Moscow mayoral election which he sees as a stepping stone to challenging Vladimir Putin for the presidency. But his ability to contest September’s election and the next presidential vote in 2018 depend on a judge’s verdict on Thursday in the most prominent trial of an opposition figure in Russia since Soviet times. Navalny, who emerged from anti-Putin protests last year as the opposition’s most dynamic leader, could be sentenced to up to six years in jail on what he says are trumped-up charges of stealing 16 million roubles ($493,000) from a timber firm. That would bar him from running for mayor against Sergei Sobyanin, a Putin favorite, and from contesting the presidential election in 2018, in which Putin, Russia’s dominant leader for 13 years, could try to extend his rule until 2024.

Zimbabwe: Morgan Tsvangirai: Zimbabwe elections will be rigged | Telegraph

A political deal brought Mr Tsvangirai into government in 2009 after Mr Mugabe claimed victory in a bitterly disputed presidential contest that cost hundreds of lives. But in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Tsvangirai said he was not willing to repeat the experience. As he prepares to run for the presidency against Mr Mugabe for a third time, he made clear that if he lost on July 31, he would refuse any invitation to stay on as prime minister. Calling the survival of the coalition a “regressive step”, Mr Tsvangirai insisted: “The people of Zimbabwe are desperate to start on a new plate and actually give proper direction and proper policy direction to revive this economy, give people hope and actually start all over again.”

North Carolina: Senate rolls out voter ID proposal | Associated Press

The North Carolina Senate on Thursday rolled out its voter identification bill, scaling back the number of acceptable photo IDs to cast a ballot in person starting in 2016 and could make it more difficult for young people to vote. The bill sets out seven qualifying forms of photo ID. But they do not include university-issued IDs, like the House allowed for University of North Carolina system and community college students when it passed a bill three months ago. The Senate also removed from its list those cards issued by local governments, for police, firefighters and other first responders, and for people receiving government assistance. Someone who doesn’t present an approved ID could cast a provisional ballot, but would have to return to an elections office with an ID for the vote to count. “We have tweaked it, tightened (it) up some with the particular IDs that will be accepted,” said Sen. Tom Apodaca, R-Henderson and chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, which neither debated nor voted on the measure Thursday.

National: Voting rights enforcers shift focus after Supreme Court defeat | Reuters

he U.S. office charged with protecting the voting rights of racial minorities is changing its focus but not its commitment after the Supreme Court last month invalidated part of a federal voting rights law, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday. Speaking at a major civil rights convention in Florida, Holder said he was shifting staff within the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to emphasize enforcement of parts of the law that the high court left untouched. In June, a 5-4 conservative majority of the Supreme Court struck down a section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that allowed the Justice Department to block states and localities from enacting election laws that could be discriminatory. The court ruled that the formula for determining which states and localities were subject to the additional scrutiny was out of date. Lawmakers could update the formula, the court said, but it remains unclear whether they will.

National: Congress Recalls Watchdog to Explain IRS Audit | New York Times

The investigator who wrote a scathing report about the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative political groups is heading back to Capitol Hill as a key House Democrat says his committee’s investigation has found no evidence of political bias at the agency. IRS inspector general J. Russell George is to testify Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, along with two IRS workers who have been interviewed as part of the committee’s investigation. George has been criticized by some congressional Democrats who say his report failed to mention that some liberal groups were targeted, too. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., released a memo Tuesday saying that interviews with 15 IRS employees and reviews of thousands of emails reveal no evidence of political bias by IRS workers. The memo said there is also no evidence that anyone outside the IRS directed the targeting.

California: Student gets prison for rigged election | UTSanDiego.com

A former Cal State San Marcos student who rigged a campus election by stealing nearly 750 student passwords to cast votes for himself and friends was sentenced Monday in federal court to a year in prison. It was Matthew Weaver’s decision to try to cover up the largest student identity theft in the university’s 24-year history that seemed to irritate the judge the most. “That’s the phenomenal misjudgment I can’t get around,” said Judge Larry Burns, who rejected Weaver’s request for probation. Burns said the election rigging was a serious offense but “kind of juvenile.” Developing a scheme to deflect blame after he had been caught made it worse. “He’s on fire for this crime, and then he pours gasoline on it to try to cover it up,” the judge said.

District of Columbia: The Maryland solution to D.C. voting | Baltimore Sun

This month, Kimberly Perry, the new head of D.C. Vote, acknowledged the fatigue of past efforts to gain federal voting rights for the residents of Washington, D.C., and told The Washington Post, “there’s always been the discussion of retrocession [to Maryland] as a possible solution.” The possibility of “retrocession” has not gotten much attention, but a carefully crafted bill that permits a “legalistic” and “technical” return of the District to the state from which it was carved, for federal voting purposes alone, is made possible by a recent and largely overlooked Supreme Court case. Legislation can now be passed and approved in Maryland, D.C. and Congress to establish voting rights equality for D.C. residents, technically through the state of Maryland, but as an independent congressional district for only D.C. residents. Here’s how: After the 2010 Census, West Virginia’s legislature decided against a redistricting plan that would have created three districts that were almost precisely equal in population (they varied by only one person) and instead selected a new map that included larger population variations but did a better job of keeping communities unified. A federal court in Charleston, W.Va., had rejected the plan because of the population variance, but on September 26, 2012, in Tennant v. Jefferson County Commission, the Supreme Court approved it, contravening a perceived absolutist approach to the one-person, one-vote doctrine from the 1963 case of Wesberry v. Sanders. The Supreme Court instead based its Tennant decision on its 1983 precedent of Karcher v. Daggett, saying the lower court “failed to afford appropriate deference to West Virginia’s reasonable exercise of its political judgment.”

Kansas: County budget reflects added cost of voter ID laws | Lawrence Journal World

Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew is expecting about $32,500 in new costs for running elections next year, largely due to the state’s new voter identification laws. “I did build in some requests for anticipated costs for implementation of the new law,” Shew said. “I added additional temp employees who will be responsible for following up with voters to get documentation, additional printing for additional notices and mailings, and more postage, anticipating a large increase in mailings to voters.” Election officials are preparing for a busy 2014, when there will be races for governor and other statewide elected offices, as well as a U.S. Senate race, congressional races, and elections for the Kansas House of Representatives. The draft budget that county commissioners approved for publication last week includes about $350,000 for the clerk’s office in 2014. That’s an increase of $32,735, or about 10 percent, over the clerk’s budget in 2010, the most recent comparable election year. Most of that increase, Shew said, is related to the cost of implementing the new voter identification rule.

Kansas: Voting rights advocates fear problems with proof of citizenship requirement will mean many lost votes; board rejects Kobach modification | LJWorld.com

A state board today rejected changes to the Kansas law requiring proof of citizenship for newly registered voters as voting rights advocates voiced concerns that thousands of Kansans will be unable to vote because of implementation snags with the new law. Camille Nohe and Maryanna Quilty, both of Topeka and with the League of Women Voters, on Tuesday speak about problems with the law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. “We are putting up a barrier to voting that doesn’t need to be there,” said Maryanna Quilty, president of the League of Women Voters of Shawnee County. The proof-of-citizenship law requires people who register to vote in the state for the first time to provide a birth certificate, passport or other document. But since it went into effect Jan. 1, more than 12,000 people who have attempted to register to vote are in “suspense,” meaning they are not yet qualified to vote.

Ohio: Court makes permanent order that Ohio count provisional ballots cast in right polling station but wrong precinct | cleveland.com

A federal judge has made permanent his earlier order that Ohio must count provisional ballots cast in the right polling place but wrong precinct — so-called right church, wrong pew ballots. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley last week addresses voting errors at polling locations where more than one precinct conducts voting and a poll worker directed the voter to the wrong precinct. It makes permanent rules used in the 2012 election. The decision drew praise from voting advocates who said to do otherwise would punish voters when poll workers mistakenly sent them to the wrong place to vote. Misdirected voters could cast provisional ballots, but prior to the injunction their ballots could be rejected for being cast at the wrong precinct.

Pennsylvania: State Defends Law on ID for Voters | New York Times

Pennsylvania’s voter identification law, one of the strictest in the nation, was back before a court on Monday in a case that opponents hope will end once and for all requirements that were suspended by a judge a few weeks before last year’s presidential election. Lawyers representing a group of voters without proper ID made the case in opening arguments that by requiring people to present photo identification to obtain a ballot, Pennsylvania was taking away the right to vote from hundreds of thousands of registered voters who could not obtain the right document. In rebuttal, lawyers for the state said the United States Supreme Court had ruled that laws requiring voters to present identification were not inherently a burden. Pennsylvania’s voting procedures have drawn intense national scrutiny because Pennsylvania is a swing state whose 20 electoral votes are sharply contested in national elections.

Pennsylvania: Statistician claims hundreds of thousands lack ID to vote | PennLive.com

This morning’s session of the trial on the state’s controversial voter ID law concluded after hearing nearly three hours of testimony from a statistician who concluded hundreds of thousands of registered voters lack identification required to vote. Bernard Siskin, a Philadelphia statistical consultant, spent the morning on the witness stand in the Commonwealth Court dissecting his analysis that compared the state’s voter registration database with the state Department of Transportation database. Siskin told Judge Bernard McGinley that his comparison of the databases found 511,415 registered voters in Pennsylvania who had either no valid PennDOT or Department of State ID or one that would be expired by the upcoming November election, the first election when the law is to take effect. He said allowing for margins of error and data issues, the number of registered voters lacking ID to vote come November would still be in the hundreds of thousands.

Pennsylvania: Corbett administration officials had concerns about disenfranchising voters, memo suggests | PennLive.com

Officials from the state Departments of State and Aging recognized early on the problem that the voter ID legislation might pose to Pennsylvanians who are older, ill or disabled, according to attorneys challenging the state’s voter ID law. Those officials sent a memo to Gov. Tom Corbett’s office in November 2011, when the law was still being debated, about allowing voters in those circumstances who couldn’t get to a PennDOT center to get a photo ID to vote by absentee ballot. The governor’s office denied the request, said Michael Rubin, a Washington, D.C. attorney representing the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania-led coalition that is seeking to permanently overturn the law. In his opening arguments in the trial that began Monday in Commonwealth Court on the state’s voter ID law, Rubin noted that the memo would be introduced as new evidence to show that even members of Corbett’s administration recognized the potential it presented in disenfranchising voters.

Pennsylvania: Voter ID law back in court: Can it be enforced? | CSMonitor.com

Pennsylvania’s photo ID law returned to state court on Monday, this time for a trial on whether the new measure can be enforced by state officials without disenfranchising a significant number of voters in the state. Prior to the presidential election last fall, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the photo ID law but raised questions about whether certain voters might find it difficult to obtain the required government-issued ID in time to vote. The courts blocked strict enforcement of the law until after the November presidential election. The injunction was later extended to include Pennsylvania’s May 21 primary.