Editorials: Virginia Bucks the Trend on Voting Rights | The New York Times

In a major executive order, Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia on Friday restored voting rights to more than 200,000 people who have completed their sentences for felony convictions. Virginia was one of four states, along with Iowa, Kentucky and Florida, that placed a lifetime bar on voting for anyone convicted of a felony. All other states except Maine and Vermont impose lesser restrictions on voting by people with felony convictions. To people who have served their time and finished parole, Mr. McAuliffe said in a statement: “I want you back in society. I want you feeling good about yourself. I want you voting, getting a job, paying taxes.” It is the largest restoration of voting rights by a governor, ever. Felon disenfranchisement laws, which currently block nearly six million Americans from voting, were enacted during the Reconstruction era in a racist effort to make it harder for newly freed African-Americans to vote — a reality Mr. McAuliffe acknowledged on Friday. “There’s no question that we’ve had a horrible history in voting rights as relates to African-Americans — we should remedy it,” he said. In Virginia, one in five blacks have until now been unable to vote because of a felony conviction.

Editorials: Insufficient electoral reform | The Japan Times

The plan put forward by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling coalition to reform the Lower House electoral system is only a partial step that shelves the fundamental overhaul needed to close the sharp disparity of votes across electoral districts, as proposed by a panel of experts advising the speaker of the chamber, for several more years. The bill to amend the Public Offices Election Law to cut 10 Lower House seats and redraw some electoral districts will likely clear the Diet during its current session on the strength of the Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito alliance. But the administration and the coalition still need to explain why voters have to wait longer for the more fundamental reform.

Editorials: Are voter ID laws the next hanging chads? | Andrew Gumbel/Los Angeles Times

Molly McGrath is laser-focused on a job no advanced democratic society ought to require: Making sure properly registered voters do not lose their right to cast a ballot on election day because of new, stringent ID requirements they may not even know exist. McGrath is the national campaign coordinator for VoteRiders, a nonprofit founded by two Los Angeles attorneys that devotes itself to ensuring citizens are not tripped up by the voter ID laws, many of which are being introduced this year. Since last summer, McGrath and her team have been visiting food pantries, churches, university centers and high-end condo complexes in Wisconsin, one of the states with the strictest requirements. Some of the people the team helps are transient, poor or elderly; they not only may have no driver’s license or state-issued photo ID, but they also may have difficulty getting their hands on the underlying documentation required to get one.

Editorials: The Battle Over “One Person, One Vote,” Has Just Begun | Carl Klarner and Dan Smith/The American Prospect

After the Supreme Court’s politically consequential decision in Evenwel v. Abbott this month, supporters of the principle of “one-person, one vote” breathed a sigh of relief. The Court unanimously ruled that states may continue to draw legislative districts based on total population, instead of on a new standard—the number of registered or eligible voters—that would have excluded non-citizen immigrants, youth under 18, people who are or were incarcerated, and anyone else not registered to vote. The ruling stymied a challenge brought by conservative activists in Texas who set out to upend the practice of apportioning legislative districts based on population, which had been settled law for five decades. A ruling in the challengers’ favor could have triggered mass redrawing of legislative district lines around the country, most likely to the advantage of Republicans.

Editorials: Why is Ottawa still defending disenfranchisement of expats? | Semra Sevi & Gillian Frank/The Globe and Mail

Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed to hear a case about whether Canadians living abroad should regain their right to vote in federal elections. Over the past four years, the Conservatives sought in the courts and through legislation to prevent expatriate Canadians from regaining their voting rights. The Liberals, however, promised a different path. “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,” Justin Trudeau repeatedly said during the 2015 election campaign when he repudiated the Conservatives’ narrow vision of citizenship and democracy. To understand what’s at stake, it’s necessary to understand the history of expat voting rights. According to a study by Asia Pacific Foundation, 2.9 million Canadian citizens – equivalent to 9 per cent of Canada’s population – study, live and work abroad.

Editorials: From the front lines: A Wisconsin poll worker dreads the job | Carrie Scherpelz/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

‘m a Wisconsin poll worker. I’ve come to dread my job. After four years of experience at my busy polling place, I was surprised to find myself dreading Wisconsin’s primary election. Sadly, running elections has grown more daunting with every new voting law passed by the state Legislature, especially the new photo ID requirement and voter registration rules. The April 5 high-turnout election put even more new guidelines in place — added in the two months since the Feb. 16 election. Not surprisingly, both voters and poll workers are confused. That makes my job much harder and far less rewarding. I want voters to have confidence in my knowledge of ever more complex procedures. I want to serve them well so they enjoy exercising their right to vote. I don’t want them to stand in long lines or feel scrutinized as if they are passing through an airport security checkpoint. Most of all, I hate telling students that their student ID is not an approved voter ID. When I inform students of their options, I apologize and say, “Please promise me you’ll get the proper ID and come back. I want you to be able to vote.”

Editorials: Why Americans Can’t Vote | The New York Times

The state of the nation’s underfunded, patchwork election system and obsolete balloting machinery may not arouse voters the way candidates can with charges of rigged elections. But voters in Arizona who lined up for the state’s presidential primaries last month learned just how difficult and unfair voting can be even without criminal malfeasance. Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, had slashed the number of polling places to 60, from 200 in 2012, claiming a need for budget savings and leaving thousands of voters waiting long hours into the night, with some giving up in despair. The Justice Department is investigating this electoral disaster, including charges that minority voters were particularly harmed. Critics blame the Supreme Court for weakening the Voting Rights Act, which used to subject regions with a history of discrimination, Maricopa County among them, to prescreening by the Justice Department before they could make major changes in voting procedures. Had that provision remained operational, the Maricopa fiasco might have been averted.

Editorials: Brian Newby and Kris Kobach are tangled in a web of voter restrictions | Steve Rose/The Kansas City Star

The Brian Newby I knew in the 11 years he served as Johnson County election commissioner thought the big deal about voter fraud was blown way out of proportion. We discussed this on several occasions. I knew he had to be careful what he said because his boss — the one who appointed him — was none other than Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Kobach has a national reputation as one of the most virulent crusaders for restrictive voting because, Kobach claims, he wants to stamp out voter fraud. There has been no indication in Kansas or anywhere else that voter fraud is a major issue. Kobach pushed for laws that require Kansans who want to register to vote to come up with documents like a passport or birth certificate, which tens of thousands of Kansans — mostly poor — don’t have, and therefore they cannot vote. (Note: This is not about showing a driver’s license at the time you vote, which is a reasonable request.) Newby told me that over his entire term he came across only a couple of instances of double-voting that could technically be defined as fraud. However, Newby was clear that he thought these were mistakes, not intentional fraud.

Editorials: Is Trump right about ‘rigged’ nomination? | Richard Hasen/ CNN

Each year on April Fools’ Day I intersperse some false but plausible news stories among the real ones on my Election Law Blog. Last year, I got a number of prominent election-law attorneys and activists to believe a false report that a federal court, relying on the Supreme Court’s controversial campaign finance decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, held that the First Amendment protects the right to literally bribe candidates. This year, among false posts, was one in which I had Donald Trump declaring that he would not abide by the results of the Electoral College vote if he was the popular vote winner. The made-up story had him plotting with his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to seize power in the event of a popular vote/electoral vote conflict. Many people believed the post, and it even made aWashington Post list of debunked April Fools’ stories that people fell for. It’s not a surprise. Trump railed against what he perceived as the unfairness of the Electoral College when President Obama won re-election in 2012. And he has consistently whined about what he perceives as unfairness in the electoral process. Combine that with his inflammatory rhetoric, and the idea of a Trump coup is not so crazy.

Editorials: GOP nomination process 101: Candidates’ remedial edition | Derek T. Muller/Reuters

Donald Trump has complained that the Republican primary process is a “rigged, disgusting, dirty system” that deprives people of the chance to vote for their preferred presidential candidate. He accuses the Republican Party of stealing delegates from him. If he thinks this system is complex, Trump should look to the GOP’s past primary elections. Now, those were complicated! As recently as 2012, for example, some states used a three-step voting process that often yielded two opposing outcomes. But the Republican National Committee worked with state parties to streamline and standardize the 2016 election to minimize confusing results. Some complexity remains because each of the 50 states can set its own rules. As the founding fathers devised, U.S. presidential elections are not national races. Rather, they occur state by state, which inevitably creates some complexity. But there are clear and now simpler rules. Candidates just need to read them.

Editorials: The Price for Obama’s Success: Voter Suppression | Jeffrey Moualim/Huffington Post

The sustaining symmetry of democracy is the right to vote. The right gives each individual, if nothing else, the belief that he or she can help shape their life and the destiny of their country. Voting is the potter’s wheel of a vibrant democratic process, it could turn the future toward a different direction, thereby reshaping what once was. Barack Obama and the Democrats swept into office on the promise of progressive ideas and remedies for the then mushrooming financial crisis and social justice inequities that gripped the nation in 2008. While having a majority in congress for two years President Obama shepherded landmark legislation in affordable health care (ACA) for the uninsured, Wall Street reform (Dodd-Frank) which helped to promote progressive culture. This would ultimately lead to declaring DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) unconstitutional, supporting gay marriage as a civil right, and a serious thrust to reform the broken immigration system without having his party having a majority in congress. And in reaction to gun massacres like Sandy Hook, Obama also battled (without success) in tightening the laws on background checks for buying guns — more specifically high-kill capacity, semi-automatic weapons.

Editorials: Republicans Hijack an Election Agency | The New York Times

For 10 years, the Election Assistance Commission, the bipartisan federal agency created after the 2000 election debacle to help make voting easier and more standardized, has made it clear that prospective voters do not need to prove that they are American citizens before they may register. Anyone registering to vote with the federal voter-registration form, which can be used for both federal and state elections, must already sign a statement swearing that he or she is a citizen. Congress rejected a proposal to require documented proof as well, finding that the threat of criminal prosecution for a false statement was enough to deter fraud. This did not satisfy some states, like Kansas and Arizona, where Republican officials have fought for years to block voting by anyone who cannot come up with a birth certificate or a passport.

Editorials: Kris Kobach offers new, lame defense for his ineptitude on voter ‘fraud’ | Yael T. Abouhalkah/The Kansas City Star

Kris Kobach should be apologizing to former Olathe resident Betty Gaedtke instead of puffing himself up over his pursuit of voter fraud in Kansas. The secretary of state offered a laughable defense Tuesday of his so-far lame pursuit of unlawful voting in the Sunflower State. “Six prosecutions in nine months is actually moving at a pretty good pace, and more will be coming in the months ahead,” he told The Star. Actually, it’s one successful prosecution, one embarrassing total strikeout and four pending cases. Last Friday, Kobach meekly gave up his pursuit of Gaedtke, dismissing all charges against her. That canceled a trial set to start in Johnson County on Monday. Kobach wound up dragging Gaedtke’s name through the mud since last October — when he announced with great fanfare unlawful voting suits against three people, including Gaedtke and her husband.

Editorials: One person, one vote: A case of surprise unanimity at the Supreme Court over voting rights | The Economist

Predicting Supreme Court rulings based on the tenor of oral arguments is notoriously hazardous, but journalists’ hunches are rewarded often enough that they keep on coming. In December, this paper averred that Evenwel v Abbott, a challenge to the way the states draw legislative districts, was a close call that would turn on Justice Anthony Kennedy’s vote. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, one of the savviest Supreme Court journalists, also came away from the hearing thinking “it’s clear that…the justices will likely break along the usual partisan lines”. So it was a surprise last week when the eight justices—from Sonia Sotomayor on the left to Clarence Thomas on the right—voted unanimously to turn back a complaint about line-drawing that would have strengthened Republican gerrymandering efforts across the country.

Editorials: All American citizens should have the same voting rights | Pacific Daily News

We applaud U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren for adding her voice of support to voting rights for Americans living in Guam and other U.S. territories. She said citizens in the territories are treated like “second-class citizens” because they can’t vote in presidential elections, aren’t represented in the Senate and only have a nonvoting delegate in Congress. “I just have to say this is absurd,” Warren said at a hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in Washington, D.C., earlier this week. “Four million Americans live on American soil and can only participate in our democracy, but only if they leave home. At their homes — on U.S. soil — all of their representation rights disappear.”

Editorials: Kris Kobach is incompetent in Kansas and a national disgrace, too | Yael T. Abouhalkah/The Kansas City Star

The last week has exposed the incompetence of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach at home and his standing as a national embarrassment as a public official. For a guy who wants to wipe out “voter fraud” — which national experts have shown time and time again does not exist — Kobach appears to be involved in his own fraudulent attempts to prevent people from voting. Right now, Kansas residents are left to wonder who’s minding the shop at the secretary of state’s office as Kobach gallops around the country seeking fortune and fame. There’s so much to cover, but let’s start with this. On Friday, Johnson County court records show Kobach’s office suddenly dismissed misdemeanor counts related to unlawful voting against Betty Gaedtke “without intent to refile.” A jury trial scheduled for Monday was canceled.

Editorials: Past appointee did Kobach’s bidding | The Wichita Eagle

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach loses a legal fight with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Then a Kobach appointee newly hired to lead the EAC unilaterally does what his former boss wanted. And an agency created by the 2002 Help America Vote Act is cast in the unlikely role of joining Kobach in making it harder for Americans to vote. The sequence of events looks more sketchy in light of documents obtained by the Associated Press. They indicate that the ties to Kobach helped then-Johnson County Election Commissioner Brian Newby get the job last fall as the EAC’s executive director. Once hired, Newby promptly granted Kobach’s renewed request to require that would-be voters in Kansas, Georgia and Alabama provide citizenship documents when they use the national voter registration form. According to AP, Newby had e-mailed Kobach last summer that he was friends with two EAC commissioners and that “I think I would enter the job empowered to lead the way I want to.” Newby had further advised Kobach: “I also don’t want you thinking that you can’t count on me in an upcoming period that will tax our resources.”

Editorials: Caucusing With a Disability | Rabia Belt/Stanford Law School

Like many in Iowa, Jacki O’Donnell is an avid political enthusiast. She was prepared to vote for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic caucus. Unfortunately, she had to leave before party business began. O’Donnell was in a back brace after fracturing her vertebrae, and sitting in a metal folding chair for hours while caucus-goers deliberated proved too much. Thus, she became one of thousands of U.S. citizens with disabilities unable to participate fully in the caucus process. Thirteen states use the caucus system to select 10 percent of Democratic and 15 percent of Republican delegates, who in turn vote for their party’s presidential nominee. Caucuses are the quintessential places of public accommodation. Everyone affiliated with a political party is expressly invited to attend and participate. But, whereas voters in a primary cast a secret ballot and then leave, caucus-goers cluster to listen to people speak about their chosen candidate. Attendees then vote for delegates who will carry their wishes to the national party convention.

Editorials: We Need a New Voting Rights Act | Robert Reich/Newsweek

A crowning achievement of the historic March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, was pushing through the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Recognizing the history of racist attempts to prevent black people from voting, that federal law forced a number of Southern states and districts to adhere to federal guidelines allowing citizens access to the polls. But in 2013, the Supreme Court effectively gutted many of these protections. As a result, states are finding new ways to stop more and more people—especially African-Americans and other likely Democratic voters—from reaching the polls. Several states are requiring government-issued photo IDs—like driver’s licenses—to vote even though there’s no evidence of the voter fraud this is supposed to prevent. But there’s plenty of evidence that these ID measures depress voting, especially among communities of color, young voters and lower-income Americans.

Editorials: Republicans and Voter Suppression | The New York Times

It’s become an accepted truth of modern politics that Republican electoral prospects go up as the number of voters goes down. Conservatives have known this for a long time, which helps explain their intensifying efforts to make it harder to vote, or to eliminate large numbers of people from political representation entirely. On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected one of the more extreme attempts — a lawsuit from Texas that aimed to reverse longstanding practice and require that only eligible voters be counted in the drawing of state legislative districts.

Editorials: West Virginia becomes a pioneer in voter registration | Observer-Reporter

West Virginia doesn’t have a whole lot in common with Oregon or California. The Mountain State is nestled in Appalachia, while the Beaver and the Golden states are on the Pacific coast, and would take about 35 hours to reach if you drove nonstop from Charleston, W.Va. They have different industries, vastly different heritages and wildly different demographic makeups – California is one of the most diverse states in the country, while West Virginia is one of the least. They also diverge politically: President Obama only took 35 percent of the vote in West Virginia during his successful 2012 re-election bid, while comfortably winning California and Oregon by 60 percent and 54 percent, respectively. West Virginia will almost certainly remain red in this year’s presidential contest, while it would take a seismic shift of epic proportions for either Oregon or California to take on a reddish hue.

Editorials: Bromance between Kris Kobach and Brian Newby leads to attack on voting rights | The Kansas City Star

The essential voting rights of Americans are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and multiple laws across the land. But all of this means little to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and other Republicans who want to trample on those rights and keep legal immigrants, poor people and others out of the voting booth. Because laws can be changed. The Constitution can be skirted. New rules can be imposed from on high when like-minded people are in the right place. Which brings us to Brian Newby, the recently departed leader of the Johnson County Election Office. Late last year he accepted the job as the executive director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a nonpartisan office that’s supposed to help make voting more accessible and promote good election practices throughout the country. Shortly after taking that work, Newby abruptly decided that people in Kansas, Alabama and Georgia could not register to vote by using a national form — one that doesn’t require providing proof of U.S. citizenship.

Editorials: The Federal Election Commission is worse than useless | Los Angeles Times

The first page in any handbook for creating a government regulatory commission would lay out something fairly obvious: There has to be an odd number of members. Anything else could wind up looking a little like the current post-Scalia Supreme Court, which has issued several rulings that haven’t settled anything at all because the justices have evenly split. Decisions with any actual staying power must wait until another member is confirmed and ties can be broken. What if the regulatory commission’s membership is effectively controlled by the two biggest political parties, with each faction holding half the seats? And what if the commission’s job is to enforce campaign finance laws? Then it’s not really a regulatory and enforcement commission at all, but simply another arena for the eternal duel between Republicans and Democrats. As if we didn’t already have enough of those. And what if one of those parties just doesn’t like or respect the laws that the commission is supposed to enforce, and therefore won’t enforce them?

Editorials: Is It O.K. if Your Vote Is a Lie? Ask a Canadian | Toni Monkovic/The New York Times

After an Upshot article about strategic voting — “You Say You Loathe Ted Cruz? You Still Might Want to Vote for Him”— one reader had a question: “How about the idea of being honest with your vote? Isn’t this strategy another form of telling a lie?” Perhaps Canada can offer neighborly advice, after recently living through a national debate over the ethics of voting for someone other than your first choice, as a means to an end. An article in The National Post set the scene last October. “As a Canada obsessed with strategic voting prepared to go to the polls, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May appeared on television to plead with voters to stop: ‘That’s slaughtering us; it’s disastrous. In a democracy, you should cast your ballot for what you want.’ ”

Editorials: Suppress Votes? I’d Rather Lose My Job | Jim Sensenbrenner/The New York Times

During my 10 years in the Wisconsin State Legislature, I spent significant time in Milwaukee’s majority black neighborhoods. I listened as constituents described obstructions to their constitutional right to vote. In those days I came to believe that we needed a strong Voting Rights Act. Our credibility as elected officials depends on the fairness of our elections. So after joining Congress, I supported the law’s reauthorization in 1982, and, as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, I led successful efforts to reauthorize it in 2006. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a portion of this most recent authorization. If Congress doesn’t act soon, 2016 will be the first time since 1964 that the United States will elect a president without the full protections of the law. Modernizing the act to address the Supreme Court’s concerns should be one of Congress’s highest priorities.

Editorials: Arizona Becomes Ground Zero in Fight Over Secret Political Spending | Justin Miller/The American Prospect

Arizona’s Republican-controlled legislature voted Tuesday to dismantle the state’s strict campaign-finance disclosure rules, a move critics say will unleash a flood of undisclosed political spending in an election already increasingly dominated by “dark” money. The fight over the Arizona bill, which could be signed into law as early as this week, has pitted good government activists against deep-pocketed corporate donors and political groups underwritten by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. It also spotlights a growing national debate over secret political spending, which is on pace to hit record levels in 2016. Federal enforcement agencies, most notably the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission, have done virtually nothing to police politically active tax-exempt groups that operate outside the disclosure rules. That’s prompted some states, including California, Montana, and Delaware, to pursue tougher political disclosure rules on their own.

Editorials: What if eight justices must decide election? | Joshua A. Douglas/USA Today

Imagine the worst case scenario. It is Wednesday, Nov. 9, the day after the election, and we do not yet know the winner of the presidential race. Worse still, the outcome will turn on a ballot-counting dispute in one state. A lawsuit is filed, and the courts are enmeshed in an election law contest. It’s Bush v. Gore round two: Trump v. Clinton. The case reaches the Supreme Court. Do we want to take the chance of having an even number of justices deciding that dispute, hoping that the court will not deadlock 4-4? A post-election case that reaches the Supreme Court will necessarily come from a lower court. The rule, in the case of a Supreme Court tie, is that the lower court’s decision is affirmed, without a precedential opinion. So if Trump v. Clinton does reach the Supreme Court, and if the vote is a tie, then a lower court – say an elected state supreme court in a battleground state – would essentially decide the presidential election.

Editorials: A Marred Election in the Republic of Congo | The New York Times

Opposition politicians are right to call the election on March 20 in the Republic of Congo an “electoral holdup.” President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, who has ruled the country for 32 of the past 37 years, did everything in his power to ensure he would be elected again, including ordering a cellphone and Internet blackout as voters headed to the polls — apparently an attempt to prevent information from circulating on voter turnout and possible fraud. Official results gave Mr. Sassou-Nguesso over 60 percent of the vote. The opposition complained of widespread fraud, the American State Department expressed “concerns about the credibility of the process” and the European Union lamented “a foreseeable lack of independence and transparency in the elections.”

Editorials: The Language Barrier in the Voting Booth | Terry Ao Minnis & Adam Ambrogi/Governing

During the Democratic presidential caucus in Nevada last month, the issue of language assistance in elections came up front and center — and it was not pretty. Fingers pointed in all directions about what actually happened and who was to blame, but what is clear is that there were caucus participants who needed assistance in Spanish to fully understand the process and their options and that they did not receive this essential help. This incident highlights how important language assistance in the political process is and why more must be done to ensure that language needs are being accommodated. Today in the United States, one in five people speak a language other than English at home, and of that population who are 15 or older 42 percent report having some difficulty with the English language. Despite the increases in the eligible voting populations of Latinos and Asian-Americans in recent decades, according to the Pew Research Center there continues to be a 15-20 percent gap in voting participation rates between those voters and whites. While a variety of factors can contribute to a voter’s inability to participate in the election process, in many communities language barriers are a huge obstacle.