Editorials: DMV Voter Registration Great — If Agency Can Handle It | Hartford Courant

In theory, Secretary of the State Denise Merrill's proposed legislation to set up an "automatic, permanent" voter registration system in Connecticut sounds great — if the state is ready to take it on. In a democracy, the more people registered and voting, the better. Under Ms. Merrill's plan, eligible people who interact with the Department of Motor Vehicles would be automatically registered to vote unless they don't want to be. With 600,000 eligible but unregistered citizens in Connecticut, there is a fertile field to plow. As Ms. Merrill explains, the information a person gives at the DMV would automatically "populate" a voter registration form. An "e-signature" program would permit an electronic signature to be collected so that the person could certify U.S. citizenship, accept or refuse to register to vote (it's an opt-out system), and affiliate with a political party, or not. The registration applications would then be electronically transmitted to the appropriate registrars of voters.

Editorials: The rise and fall of public campaign funding | Kathy Kiely/Washington Post

Sometimes, prosperity can be a sign of failure. Take the $292 million pot of taxpayer dollars that politicians are refusing to touch. For years after the public fund for presidential candidates was established in 1974, the biggest worry for its minders at the Federal Election Commission was whether there would be enough money for all the candidates. Now, despite a sharp decline in the number of people participating in the $3 tax return check-off that funds the program (down from a high of 28 percent in 1977 to less than 6 percent last year), the fund has been growing steadily – because candidates don’t want the money anymore. Former president George W. Bush began the exodus from the public finance system in 2000, when he refused to take matching funds for the primaries and caucuses. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first candidate to decline public financing in the general election. This year, only one presidential contender sought and qualified for public financing: Martin O’Malley, who has already dropped his bid for the Democratic nomination. Even Bernie Sanders, who has made limiting the political influence of the wealthy a central tenet of his campaign, has no intention of taking public financing. Under questioning by NBC’s Chuck Todd at a debate in New Hampshire last week, he called the program “a disaster,” adding: “Nobody can become president based on that system.”

Editorials: The redistricting case: Dump the districts, but not until after elections | Winston-Salem Journal

North Carolina’s congressional map belongs in the trash. But practical necessity argues for keeping it for one more election. A panel of federal judges ruled Friday that the legislature violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause when it, in 2011, drew the 1st and 12th congressional districts [the latter of which takes in a large part of our area]. It ordered the legislature to fix them by Feb. 19. With absentee voting already begun ahead of the March 15 primary, and because changes to one district affect districts that border it, the remedy is disruptive. Yet the judges were right to point to the harm done by partisan politicians’ cynical manipulations. “Unfettered gerrymandering is negatively impacting our republican form of government,” Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr. wrote in a concurring opinion. “Elections should be decided through a contest of issues, not skillful mapmaking.”

Editorials: A Victory for Voting Rights in Maryland | The New York Times

The state laws that will bar nearly six million people with felony convictions from voting in this year’s presidential election are the shame of the democratic world. Virtually all disenfranchised Americans would be free to vote were they citizens of countries like Australia, Spain, France, Ireland or Germany. Indeed, many nations around the world view voting rights as so fundamental to citizenship that they bring the ballot box right into prison. By contrast, three quarters of this country’s disenfranchised voters live outside the prison walls: Some have actually completed their sentences, while others are on probation or parole.

Editorials: Racial Gerrymandering and North Carolina’s Tainted 2016 Primary Election | Brentin Mock/CityLab

Voters in North Carolina are caught in a heap of confusion as they approach their state’s March 15 primary election. A federal court ruled on February 5 that congressional district lines drawn in 2011 are invalid because they packed African American voters into two districts without just cause. A three-judge panel for the U.S. District Court in North Carolina has since charged the state’s general assembly with creating new district lines by February 19. Problem is, thousands of ballots have already been mailed out for the upcoming primary, which include both U.S. House and Senate races. Some of those ballots have already been cast under the state’s early absentee voting rules. The state filed an emergency appeal today asking the court to suspend the ruling until after after the primary elections, and is expected to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

Editorials: Delayed elections in Haiti present opportunity for real change | Jacques Jonassaint/The Hill

The runoff presidential elections in Haiti, originally scheduled for Dec. 27 and then pushed to Jan. 24, have now been postponed indefinitely. A group of eight presidential candidates, supported by many other politicians and civil society groups, refused to participate in the elections due to irregularities in the first round that took place in October. As violent protests mount, Haiti's electoral council, or CEP, determined it would be too dangerous to hold elections and canceled them without announcing a new date. This is likely for the best, as Haiti can now take the time to prepare more adequately for the elections and take steps to restore the Haitian people's faith in the process. The United States, the U.N. and the Organization of American States (OAS) have continued to push for elections to take place as soon as possible, operating under the mantra of "bad elections are better than no elections," but this is not wise; it is far better to have a transitional government for a short period of time than to be stuck with an illegitimate government for five years that does not reflect the will of the Haitian people.

Editorials: Kobach gets assist on voter registration | The Wichita Eagle

After years of trying, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach just got the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to do what he wants. All it took was an edict from the EAC’s new executive director, Brian Newby – who just happens to be the former Kobach-backed elections commissioner of Johnson County. Kobach had been fighting with the EAC in and out of court over whether Kansans who use the federal voter registration form, which only asks applicants to swear they are U.S. citizens, should be compelled to prove U.S. citizenship, as state law has required since 2013 of those using the state form. He believed he could consider federally registered voters to be partially registered, and throw out their votes for local and state elections.

Editorials: New Hampshire Voter-ID Law Could Lead to Longer Lines, Voter Intimidation | Ari Berman/The Nation

O’Brien is now the New Hampshire co-chair for Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign. He failed to block election-day registration and student voting, but New Hampshire Republicans did succeed in passing a new voter ID law—which will be fully implemented for the first time in Tuesday’s primary. New Hampshire is one of 16 states with new voting restrictions in place for the first presidential election cycle in 2016, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, accounting for 178 electoral votes. New Hampshire voters will be asked to show government-issued ID when they cast a ballot. Those without the required ID can still cast a regular ballot by signing an affidavit, but they will have to let poll workers take their pictures, which is raising alarms among voting-rights activists. “This is meant to intimidate people, there’s no question about that,” says Joan Flood Ashwell of the New Hampshire League of Women Voters. “It’s saying to voters, ‘We suspect you of being a criminal. It may seem to some like a mug shot,” says Devon Chaffee of the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union.

Editorials: Haiti avoids crisis at the last minute, but what happens next? | The Washington Post

In Haiti, it has too often been the case that what can go wrong does go wrong. That’s why it’s such a relief that Haitian leaders, with a critical assist from the Organization of American States, were able to agree on an 11th-hour deal, just before President Michel Martelly was to leave office Sunday with no successor in place, to avert a power vacuum. It’s also why there remains cause for concern, and the pressing need for international vigilance, as the impoverished Caribbean nation embarks on what is likely to be a volatile interregnum under the auspices of a caretaker government. Under the agreement struck Saturday, on the eve of the expiration of Mr. Martelly’s term, Prime Minister Evans Paul will remain in office until Haiti’s parliament selects a new president. That’s expected to take place in the next few days. Once it does, the accord calls for a new prime minister to be chosen by consensus and for a verification commission to review October’s botched elections. It was those elections that yielded weeks of escalating protests and violence, culminating in the cancellation of a scheduled presidential runoff vote last month.

Editorials: Will you have the right to vote in 2016? | Ari Berman/Los Angeles Times

As Iowa voters headed to their caucus sites Monday, 94-year-old Rosanell Eaton sat in the first row of a federal courtroom in Winston-Salem, N.C., to witness the closing arguments of a trial challenging North Carolina's new voter identification law. Eaton, who is African American and grew up in the Jim Crow South, had to recite the preamble to the Constitution from memory to register to vote. She had been participating in elections for 70 years when North Carolina passed its strict voter ID law in 2013. Lawyers for the North Carolina NAACP played a videotaped deposition during the trial of Eaton recounting how the names on her driver's license and voter registration card did not match. To get her paperwork in order, Eaton had to make 11 trips to different state agencies in 2015, totaling more than 200 miles and 20 hours. “I'm disgusted,” Eaton told the Raleigh News & Observer as she left the courtroom. North Carolina is one of 16 states that have new voting restrictions in place since the last presidential contest, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, accounting for 178 electoral votes, including in crucial swing states such as Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia.

Editorials: Making validly cast absentee ballots count in Ohio | Cleveland Plain Dealer

A recent directive to Ohio's county boards of elections by Secretary of State Jon Husted, Ohio's chief election officer, should reduce the possibility that mailed-in absentee ballots might not get counted because of confusion or questions over postmarks. During the 2015 general election, an unusually large number of absentee ballots were not counted in Summit County and other counties because they lacked a postmark. Ohio's 88 county boards of elections must count absentee ballots returned by mail for up to ten days after Election Day. But such ballots must have been postmarked no later than the day before Election Day. Trouble is, the U.S. Postal Service doesn't necessarily postmark envelopes much larger than a No. 10, or "letter size," envelope. And some elections boards use bigger courtesy-reply envelopes. Meanwhile, it's been unclear whether barcodes the post office adds during mail-sorting or Postage Validated Imprint (PVI) postage -- imprinted, label-like postage, sold at post office counters and kiosks -- are postmarks. PVI postage and barcodes include dates (although a scanner is needed to read barcodes).

Editorials: Something smells in the Democratic Party | Des Moines Register

Once again the world is laughing at Iowa. Late-night comedians and social media mavens are having a field day with jokes about missing caucusgoers and coin flips. That’s fine. We can take ribbing over our quirky process. But what we can’t stomach is even the whiff of impropriety or error. What happened Monday night at the Democratic caucuses was a debacle, period. Democracy, particularly at the local party level, can be slow, messy and obscure. But the refusal to undergo scrutiny or allow for an appeal reeks of autocracy. The Iowa Democratic Party must act quickly to assure the accuracy of the caucus results, beyond a shadow of a doubt. First of all, the results were too close not to do a complete audit of results. Two-tenths of 1 percent separated Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. A caucus should not be confused with an election, but it’s worth noting that much larger margins trigger automatic recounts in other states. Second, too many questions have been raised. Too many accounts have arisen of inconsistent counts, untrained and overwhelmed volunteers, confused voters, cramped precinct locations, a lack of voter registration forms and other problems. Too many of us, including members of the Register editorial board who were observing caucuses, saw opportunities for error amid Monday night’s chaos.

Editorials: Donald Trump Becomes the GOP’s Newest Voter-Fraud Fraudster | Ari Berman/The Nation

I knew something like this was coming and quite frankly I’m surprised it took Trump so long to play the voter fraud card. It’s a logical extension of his demonization of Hispanics, Muslims, refugees and all the other people he believes are preventing America from being great again. It’s become an article of faith among Republicans that Democrats must cheat to win elections. The only difference here is that Trump is accusing another Republican of doing so. The GOP’s fraud crusade goes back to the George W. Bush administration. The 2000 election in Florida, which was marred by a disastrous voter purge of alleged ex-felons, empowered a new right-wing voter fraud movement, which hyped the threat of fraud in order to restrict access to the ballot for partisan gains. The Justice Department was taken over by ultra-conservatives like Attorney General John Ashcroft who made combating fraud a top priority. US Attorneys in states like New Mexico and Washington were fired for not undertaking new prosecutions, and new voting restrictions, like Georgia’s voter ID law, were approved by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division over objections from career lawyers. Rick Hasen dubbed these people the “fraudulent fraud squad.” (I write extensively about this in my book Give Us the Ballot Though little fraud was ever found, the fraud craze grew much louder when Barack Obama ran for president. John McCain alleged in 2008 that ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history.” After the election, one poll found that 52 percent of Republicans believed that ACORN had stolen the election for Obama.

Editorials: Congress must act to restore voting rights | Los Angeles Times

A federal court could rule soon on challenges to North Carolina's photo ID requirement for voters, which plaintiffs claim undermines the voting rights of racial minorities under the pretext of combating fraud. A federal appeals court held last year that a similar requirement in Texas violated the Voting Rights Act. But even if these and other judicial rulings roll back photo ID laws and other restrictions that disproportionately burden racial minorities, the real solution lies with Congress. Republicans who control the House and Senate need to look beyond partisan self-interest and join with Democrats to reinstitute the requirement that, in jurisdictions with a recent history of discrimination, the federal government must “pre-clear” changes in election laws that could needlessly make it harder for minorities to vote.

Editorials: Loosening money’s grip on elections | Rick Hasen/New York Daily News

Forty years ago today, the Supreme Court decided Buckley vs. Valeo, a case that has distorted our thinking and talking about money in politics for nearly two generations and that has taken this country down a perilous path on campaign finance. We should no longer mince words about the consequences for our representative government. Buckley, and its better-known offspring, 2010’s Citizens United vs. FEC, are leading us to plutocracy, a country in which those with the greatest wealth have a much better chance to influence elections and public policy than the rest of us. Despite that bleak assessment, there’s a small window for change opening.

Editorials: ID-ing the problem in North Dakota’s Voter ID law | Tom Dennis/Grand Forks Herald

For the past week in North Carolina, that state's new Voter ID law has been argued in federal court. Among those testifying against the law was Rosanell Eaton, a black woman who, at 94, still can remember having to recite the preamble to the U.S. Constitution before voting under the state's old Jim Crow laws, and who last year had to make 10 trips to various state offices to get an ID that complies with North Carolina's new law. But guess what? North Carolina's Voter ID law—the one that landed the state in federal court, in a case that's being called a national Voter ID battleground—is less restrictive than is North Dakota's Voter ID law. In North Carolina, among other differences, a voter can sign an affidavit swearing that he or she faced a "reasonable impediment" to getting an acceptable ID. In North Dakota, a voter in that situation is out of luck.

Editorials: Could the 2016 Election Settle the Voter ID Debate? | Sarah Childress/Frontline

As the 2016 election season officially kicks off next week, beginning with the Iowa caucus on Monday, voters in several states are preparing to cast ballots under stricter laws for the first time. Over the past five years, more than 18 states have passed laws to impose restrictions on voters’ access to the ballot, according to a FRONTLINE analysis of voting laws nationwide. Even as at least six states have expanded access to the ballot, introducing automatic voter registration and online voting, these states have cut early-voting hours, limited felons’ ability to vote and imposed strict voter ID laws. That includes several key swing states, such as North Carolina, which passed a comprehensive voting bill in 2013, and Ohio, which passed a law to reduce early-voting days one year later. The most controversial of these laws are those requiring identification at the polls — usually a photo ID. That’s largely because support is split along partisan lines. Republicans tend to favor them, arguing the laws guard against voter fraud. Democrats, meanwhile, have pointed out that new restrictions are more likely to prevent some voters, in particular African-Americans and Latinos, from casting ballots.

Editorials: Ted Cruz’s Iowa Mailers Are More Fraudulent Than Everyone Thinks | Ryan Lizza/The New Yorker

… On Saturday, Twitter came alive with pictures from voters in the state who received mailers from the Cruz campaign. At the top of the mailers, in a bold red box, are the words “VOTING VIOLATION.” Below that warning is an explanation:

You are receiving this election notice because of low expected voter turnout in your area. Your individual voting history as well as your neighbors’ are public record. Their scores are published below, and many of them will see your score as well. CAUCUS ON MONDAY TO IMPROVE YOUR SCORE and please encourage your neighbors to caucus as well. A follow-up notice may be issued following Monday’s caucuses.

Below that, a chart appears with the names of the recipient of the mailing as well as his neighbors and their voting “grade” and “score.”

… After looking at several mailers posted online, I was more curious about how the Cruz campaign came up with its scores. On all the mailers I saw, every voter listed had only one of three possible scores: fifty-five per cent, sixty-five per cent, or seventy-five per cent, which translate to F, D, and C grades, respectively. Iowans take voting pretty seriously. Why was it that nobody had a higher grade?

Editorials: Hosemann’s ideas fine but incomplete | The Greenwood Commonwealth

Delbert Hosemann is back at it, trying to convince the Mississippi Legislature that there is still much work to be done to bring Mississippi’s voting procedures into the 21st century while also taking steps to reduce the potential for fraud or dirty tricks. The secretary of state, now beginning his third term, did an admirable job implementing voter ID, an oversold and overemotional issue that distracted this state from addressing where its biggest problem with voter fraud lies — absentee ballots. Hosemann’s newest proposals don’t tackle absentee-ballot fraud head-on either, although his pitch for allowing voters to cast their ballots in person at the courthouse for up to 21 days before Election Day should reduce the number of absentee ballots cast overall. Still, if you are a candidate inclined to cheat, you’re going to use mail-in absentee ballots anyway, since the fraud becomes much harder to catch that way. Even with that said, though, allowing no-excuse early voting is a good idea that should, if nothing else, increase voter turnout. It certainly eliminates one of the main excuses of people who don’t get to the polls. … A glaring omission in what is otherwise a good package of proposals is Hosemann’s silence on a disturbing trend in this state to eliminate the paper trail on voting. More than three-fourths of the 77 counties in Mississippi with touch-screen voting machines have disconnected their external printers, by which voters could previously verify on paper that their vote has been accurately recorded.

Editorials: North Carolina’s voter ID shenanigans | The Washington Post

As a legal proposition, it’s difficult to prove that a government policy was devised with the deliberate intent of racial discrimination. But make no mistake: North Carolina’s highly restrictive voting rights law, enacted in 2013, is meant to suppress votes, in particular votes cast by minorities for Democrats. Even the federal judge who refused to suspend implementation of the law’s obnoxious voter ID rules acknowledged it was “highly suspect” that the GOP-dominated legislature had excluded public-assistance IDs from among acceptable forms of identification at the polls; they are disproportionately held by African Americans, who vote heavily for Democrats. U.S. District Judge Thomas D. Schroeder has not yet ruled on the merits of the overall law or the voter ID part of it, which is being separately challenged by the NAACP and other groups. Nonetheless, in refusing to immediately suspend the voter ID requirements, he cited the state’s own estimate that roughly 5 percent of registered voters in North Carolina, about 218,000 people, appeared to lack suitable photo IDs when they voted in 2014, before the law was fully implemented.

Editorials: Paper trail is simply prudent | Tim Kalich/The Greenwood Commonwealth

Elmus Stockstill and Edward Course surely have no devious intentions in wanting to get the external printers off Leflore County’s touch-screen voting machines. But the county’s two top election officials are just wrong — and obviously not well-schooled — on how susceptible electronic voting machines are to hacking and why these printers are the only safeguard against it. Just 10 minutes on the Internet will turn up a decade worth of studies and reports showing that all it takes is access, a basic knowledge of electronics and a few minutes to rig voting machines like those used in Leflore County. I recommend the Board of Supervisors spends 30 minutes reading the study summaries or watching the videos produced by university and government researchers demonstrating the vulnerabilities of so-called “direct recording electronic” (DRE) voting equipment made by Diebold or any of the other touch-screen manufacturers. If the supervisors educated themselves the tiniest bit on this subject, they would see how comical it was of Stockstill, the circuit clerk, to talk — in response to a column I wrote last Sunday — of the memory card inserted in the machines as some kind of fail-safe against hacking. The memory card is actually one likely conduit for introducing a vote-stealing virus.

Editorials: Allowing transnational voting during European elections could alleviate the EU’s democratic deficit | LSE

The European Union is facing one of the most challenging moments in its recent history. While the struggle for a solution to the common challenge of migration and refugees continues, the spectre of debt, recession and high unemployment continues to haunt the countries of the southern Eurozone, with the likelihood high of another round of acrimonious negotiations between creditor and debtor countries in the near future. These crises have been toxic for public perception of the EU across the union, with trust in institutions such as the European Parliament declining to record lows in recent years (though they somewhat recovered in 2015). One common element among both of these crises is the question of whether the EU has any democratic legitimacy when making key decisions which appear to produce winners and losers among nation states. The EU’s (lack of) legitimacy as a democratic body is, of course, a classic problem in EU studies which has plagued the organisation since its inception.

Editorials: Radically Revise Campaign Laws to Give People, Not Billionaires, a Voice | Richard Hasen/New York Times

It’s not a new story: Some Americans are looking to the super wealthy to get us out of a political jam. This time, it might be billionaire Michael Bloomberg supposedly saving the country from a Donald Trump-Bernie Sanders race that could leave many voters without an acceptable alternative. Back in 1967, it was the GM heir Stewart Mott providing (what was then considered to be) lots of money to allow Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Wisconsin to challenge President Lyndon B. Johnson for the Democratic nomination. Johnson, mired in the Vietnam War and wounded by McCarthy, eventually withdrew from the race. We'd rely less on rich white knights If each voter in each election got $100 in publicly financed vouchers for political contributions.

Editorials: Buckley v. Valeo at 40 | Paul H. Jossey/The Hill

Poll Americans on the leading Supreme Court cases of the past 100 years and Buckley v. Valeo, which turns 40 this month, won’t likely place alongside Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, or even Citizens United v. FEC. But it should. Buckley, which considered the constitutionality of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974, has immeasurably impacted how we choose our leaders and discuss public affairs. Most importantly it created the “Buckley distinction,” which protected political expenditures and contributions differently. This court-created split reverberates beyond campaign electioneering to issues like how the IRS polices politics, how the Department of Justice criminalizes political activity, and how the parties influence campaigns. Four decades on, the distinction’s uneasy compromise supplies Buckley’s relevance—for better and worse.

Editorials: Ex-offenders and the right to vote in Maryland | E.R. Shipp/Baltimore Sun

These are probably frightening words to anyone who wants to maintain the political status quo: "I have a criminal record. I pledge to vote in 2016 elections because I care about my neighborhood and want to add my voice to improve everyone's quality of life." Let's just suppose that a significant barrier to voting in Maryland is removed Feb. 5th and residents with felony convictions are allowed to vote as soon as they leave prison, rather than having to wait until they complete community supervision requirements. "We're talking about infusing maybe 40,000 voters into the democratic process," says Perry Hopkins, a community organizer who has been ubiquitous on this issue as well as on the untenable conditions that led city housing officials to agree to pay up to $8 million to settle sexual harassment claims brought by some of its public housing tenants.

Editorials: How North Carolina voter ID law has become a dangerous farce | Bob Hall/News & Observer

In a matter of weeks, thousands of North Carolina voters will head to the polls unaware of what they’ll need to vote – and election officials will be hard-pressed to help them. Ironically, conservative Republicans who promoted voting changes could suffer the most. The excitement of the Republican presidential primary will motivate new voters to show up, but newbies are the most likely not to have followed the twists and turns of election rule changes. Will they be helped or frustrated at the polls? At this point, it’s up to Gov. Pat McCrory. Here’s why. The new law cuts out safety-net provisions for new voters and dumps a load of confusing regulations on poll workers. That combination is making it hard for election officials to do their jobs.

Editorials: Seeking to End Gerrymandering’s Enduring Legacy | Carl Hulse/The New York Times

Buried less than two miles from the Capitol is the man many blame for the toxic partisanship infecting Congress today even though he died 202 years ago. Elbridge Gerry was a patriot, signer of the Declaration of Independence, drafter of the Constitution, House member, governor and vice president under James Madison. Yet he is best known today for the twist on his name that now defines the twisting of legislative boundaries to give one party or candidate an electoral advantage. This “gerrymandering” is seen by many as a root cause of Washington gridlock, a point President Obama underlined anew in his final State of the Union address. Mr. Gerry, as governor of Massachusetts in 1812, signed into law a state legislative map that included an irregularly shaped district obviously drawn to benefit his party. A cartoon in The Boston Gazette archly observed that the map resembled a salamander and added a head, wings and claws to bring it to life. “Better say a gerry-mander,” retorted the waggish opposition newspaper editor Benjamin Russell, who is often credited with coining the exact term. Thus, a lasting element of America’s political lexicon was born. (Mr. Gerry’s name was pronounced with a hard “G” that has been softened in the contemporary use of gerrymander.)

Editorials: 6 Years of Citizens United | Zephyr Teachout/Huffington Post

Six years ago today, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Citizens United vs. FEC. It is not a happy anniversary. I remember waiting for the ruling and opening it up on my computer: when I finally read it, I didn't want to believe that the Court had gone as far as it had and been so careless with our democracy. Citizens United was bad history, bad logic, bad law. It was a major overreach on the part of the Court (the issue hadn't even been raised initially). In his majority decision that day, Justice Kennedy allowed billionaires and big corporations to spend limitless amounts of money to influence politicians. His description of politics was pretty out of touch. Basically, the Court held that unless there is an explicit, open deal -- "here's $5 million for a vote against banking reform" -- there's no corruption. Nobody with any common sense thinks that huge corporate expenditures don't corrupt politics, but the Court left common sense behind that day. One good thing came out of it: it has led to an extraordinary, community-by-community grassroots effort to reclaim our democracy.

Editorials: Democracy under attack | Eliza Webb/The Hill

Near the end of his final State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama lambasted the countrywide attack on voting rights, and called for Americans to stand up and fight back. He spoke of the need to make “voting easier, not harder,” and criticized “the influence of money in our politics” and the practice of redistricting “so that politicians can pick their voters, and not the other way around.” He outlined his intention “to travel the country to push for reforms,” while adding that he “can’t do these things on my own.” He invoked the concept of “a government of, by, and for the people” to ask Americans to act, saying that change “depend[s] on you,” and the future rests “on your willingness to uphold your obligations as a citizen.”

Editorials: Voter ID laws advance in Missouri, but what about the state’s need to comply with federal ID standards so residents can board flights? | Lewis Diuguid/The Kansas City Star

Missouri lawmakers on Wednesday took action on the wrong photo identification issue. People statewide are more interested in whether their driver’s license will be accepted in the next few months as a credible identification for them to be able to board commercial flights. U.S. Department of Homeland Security last year notified state officials that Missouri’s exemption from federal Real ID requirements will come to an end Jan. 10. That deadline passed last week. Missourians no longer will be allowed to flash their driver's license to get into federal facilities or a nuclear power plant. State driver’s licenses — for now — still enable people to get through airport security. But that’s not expected to last unless some corrective action is taken by state officials. So what does the Missouri House do instead? It approved two bills that will force state voters to show a photo ID to cast ballots in elections. One voter restriction bill would amend the state Constitution — with voter approval — to require a photo ID in polling places on Election Days. The Missouri Supreme Court in 2006 ruled that an earlier voter ID law was unconstitutional.