National: Backlash Swells Against Voter Laws | The Daily Beast Another symbol of just how quickly the political calculus can change ahead of Election Day: crucial swing states Ohio and Florida, along with Texas, South Carolina, and Wisconsin, have won significant—albeit possibly temporary—victories against restrictive voting laws over a span of mere weeks. Voting laws,…
National: Challenges to Voting Laws May Play Havoc On and After Election Day | Roll Call Democratic Rep. Mark Critz’s chances of hanging onto his seat representing Southwestern Pennsylvania could hinge on a lawsuit filed by a 93-year-old great grandmother over the state’s new voter identification law. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is hearing Viviette Applewhite’s…
National: Who’s The Boss? The Worst Post-Citizen’s United Ruling Yet | The New Republic On August 14, several hundred coal miners joined Mitt Romney at the Century Mine near Bealsville, Ohio, to cheer the Republican nominee as he denounced a “war on coal” by the Obama administration. Two weeks later, an official of the company that…
National: Voting Laws In Several States Remain Unsettled | NPR Eight weeks before the presidential election, new laws passed by Republican legislatures that concern who can vote and when remain in the hands of federal and state judges. Among the cases: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court this week will hear an appeal to overturn that state’s new…
National: Legal Battles on Voting May Prove a Critical Issue in Election | NYTimes.com The November presidential election, widely expected to rest on a final blitz of advertising and furious campaigning, may also hinge nearly as much on last-minute legal battles over when and how ballots should be cast and counted, particularly if the race…
National: Ten Weeks Out From Election Day, Outside Spending Exceeds 2008 Total | OpenSecrets With the end of the Democratic convention today, we’ve only just now reached the beginning of the traditional presidential election season, but that hasn’t stopped outside groups from unleashing a torrent of advertising on the political landscape early on in this…
Blogs: Voting rights cases: Made simple | SCOTUSblog Nearly a half-century ago, Congress decided that the government could not end racial discrimination in voting simply by suing one state, county, or city at a time, because officials who were determined to keep minorities away from the polls were quickly shifting to new tactics. The only way…
National: Voter ID Wars | NYTimes.com If you’ve only got 30 seconds to make your case in the debate over photo ID laws — which require voters to show up at the polls with a government-issued photo ID — it’s much easier to argue in favor of the laws.“You need a photo ID to get…
National: Defense Department inspector General questions military voting | Politico.com Many military installations across the globe lack offices where troops can register to vote and obtain absentee ballots, the Defense Department’s inspector general concludes in a newly released report. Investigators attempted to contact 229 voting-assistance offices and were able to reach just 114 — about 50 percent. Under…
National: Voter ID and early voting cases heat up in courts across the country | CSMonitor.com Before voters get a say in this year’s presidential race, lawyers and judges are having theirs. A series of court battles in several states may determine, over the next several weeks, everything from how people cast their votes, when polling…
National: Pre-Election Legal Battles Target Voting Rules | NPR If you vote, you might very well be confused about what the rules will be when you go to cast your ballot this fall. There’s been a flood of new laws on things such as voter identification and early voting, and many of them are now…
Blogs: Ending the Voting Wars | Rick Hasen/TPM Over the last few days I’ve been describing some of the major problems with our elections which I cover in The Voting Wars. Too many U.S. jurisdictions allow our elections to be run by political partisans. Local officials have too much control, and often lack adequate training and resources. Political rhetoric has…
National: Voting Rights Advocates Gear Up For 2012 Election | TPM Two bloc ks from the White House, in a conference room on the fourth floor of a nondescript office building, voting rights advocates are fighting on the front line of the voting wars. Welcome to the headquarters of Election Protection, a program run by the…
National: Flurry of Voter ID laws tied to conservative group ALEC | Open Channel A growing number of conservative Republican state legislators worked fervently during the past two years to enact laws requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. Lawmakers proposed 62 photo ID bills in 37 states in the 2011 and 2012 sessions,…
Editorials: The Fake Voter Fraud Epidemic and the 2012 Election | TPM Of all the developments in The Voting Wars since 2000, the lead story has to be the successful Republican effort to create an illusion of a voter fraud epidemic used to justify a host of laws, especially tough new state voter identification requirements, with the…
National: Voter empowerment that fits in your pocket | NBC Let’s say you’re an average voter who spends his life working multiple jobs, and have limited time to watch the news, so you ignore the fact that voter ID laws have changed in your state. Or maybe you’re an elderly voter who has difficulty making…
National: The Problems with Online Voting | Wall Street Journal Two years ago, hackers gained access to an online voting system created by the District of Columbia and altered every ballot on behalf of their own preferred candidates. On the “Thank You!” page that ran at the end of the voting protocol, they left their…
Editorials: Internet voting is an idea whose time has not come | Vancouver Sun Chief electoral officer Keith Archer has announced the formation of a panel of experts to investigate whether British Columbia should adopt Internet voting. Let’s hope the panel focuses on the big picture before getting bogged down with technical details. Our democracy is…
National: You Can Now Register to Vote at 35,000 Feet | US News and World Report If on-demand movies, a 4,000 song playlist and onboard video games aren’t enough to keep guests entertained on a Virgin America flight, the airline is now offering a complimentary new service to get passengers engaged before the November election…
National: Twitter and other social media will make the next close presidential election much worse than Florida in 2000 | Slate Magazine The tweets were full of rage. As officials began to tally the results of the tight ballots, many voters suspected fraud. After all, there had been allegations of election misconduct before, as well…
National: Voter fraud found to be rare, survey indicates | KansasCity.com A new nationwide analysis of more than 2,000 cases of alleged election fraud over the past dozen years shows that in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which has prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tougher voter ID laws, was virtually nonexistent. The analysis…
National: New database of US voter fraud finds no evidence that photo ID laws are needed | News21 A new nationwide analysis of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases since 2000 shows that while fraud has occurred, the rate is infinitesimal, and in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tough…
National: Civil Rights Groups Release New Voter Protection App | Huffington Post Defenders of the right to vote have a new high-tech weapon in their arsenal. A consortium of civil rights groups unveiled a smartphone application Thursday as part of a comprehensive strategy to combat what it called a nationwide effort to disenfranchise minority and youth voters. “The Election…
National: Rep. Hank Johnson Introduces Legislation for Election Accuracy | Tucker, GA Patch Congressman Hank Johnson (GA-04, which includes parts of Tucker) has introduced the bipartisan Verifying Official Totals for Elections or VOTE Act, H.R. 6246, which would require jurisdictions using electronic voting machines for federal elections to deposit the software or source code in…
National: Voter ID lawsuits could delay election results again | CNN.com Partisan legal showdowns in battleground states over a spate of new voting laws could turn the 2012 elections into a repeat of the 2000 presidential vote recount saga, political experts say. “Whenever you change the rules by enacting new laws, it triggers a round of…
Editorials: Voting Rights Act anniversary celebrated, yet threats rising | Chicago Sun-Times When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on Aug. 6, 1965, and when President George W. Bush renewed it in 2006, they were trying to prevent barriers to voting. It is tragic that efforts to bar millions of Americans from…
National: U.S. voting rights under siege | CNN.com Viviette Applewhite, a 93-year-old African-American woman from Philadelphia, suddenly cannot vote. Although she once marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for the right to do so, and has dutifully cast a ballot for five decades, in this election year she may be denied this basic…
National: Voter ID Laws May Affect Young Voters | Fox News The same state voter ID laws that have drawn criticisms from Latino groups and immigrants are now taking heat from young voters. Gone are the days when young voters weren’t taken seriously. In 2008, they helped propel Barack Obama into the Oval Office, supporting him…
National: US election: How can it cost $6bn? | BBC The estimated price tag for the US elections in November is almost $6bn (£3.8bn). Why so much? “The sky is the limit here,” says Michael Toner, former chair of the US Federal Election Commission. “I don’t think you can spend too much.” In a time of general belt-tightening,…
National: Federal Voting Commissioners AWOL As Election Approaches | Huffington Post As local officials gear up for a national election where razor-thin margins could tip the balance of power, the federal agency established after the Florida ballot disaster of 2000 to ensure that every vote gets counted is leaderless and adrift. There are supposed to be…