National: Obama announces voting rights commission to tackle broken system | guardian.co.uk

Barack Obama has ordered the creation of a non-partisan commission on voting rights in the US in an attempt to remove the hurdles to democratic participation that dogged the 2012 presidential election. The announcement of the commission on voting puts flesh on the promise Obama made in his second inaugural speech last month to fix America’s broken voting system. Last November, voters in main urban centres were inconvenienced by long lines at polling stations that in some areas forced citizens to wait for hours before casting their ballot. Florida, in particular, witnessed chaotic scenes with more than 200,000 voters estimated to have given up having waiting because the queues were so long. Obama said that the impediments to voting needed to be corrected, as voting was “our most fundamental right as citizens. When Americans – no matter where they live or what their party – are denied that right simply because they can’t wait for five, six, seven hours just to cast their ballot, we are betraying our ideals.” The president added: “We can fix this, and we will. The American people demand it. And so does our democracy.”

National: Obama’s proposed voting commission under partisan fire from both sides | The Washington Post

President Obama’s proposed commission on electoral reform, which seeks to improve voting efficiency and reduce long wait times for voters, is producing heated criticism from advocates on both the right and the left. Some conservatives view the initiative as federal overreaching on an issue that is rightly the province of states, while some voting rights advocates say that the president’s proposed commission is a too-timid response to what they see as a huge problem. “Setting up a commission is not a bold step; it is business as usual,” said Elisabeth Mac­Namara, president of the League of Women Voters. Critics of the commission say it doesn’t match the severity of the problem. “The president could have done much better by pointing to real solutions, like that in legislation already introduced on Capitol Hill to require early voting, set limits on waiting times, provide for portable voter registration and set up secure online voter registration.” Conservatives said the commission infringes on local control of the voting process. “I do not support the president’s proposal to appoint yet another national commission to study solutions to the problem of long lines at polling places that seems to be confined to very few states,” Rep. Candice S. Miller (R-Mich.) said in a statement, adding that she is opposed to national mandates.

National: Obama proposes commission to address long lines at polls | USAToday

Upset by the long lines encountered by thousands of voters in November, President Obama is creating a bipartisan panel to look into the problem and propose solutions. “When any Americans – no matter where they live or what their party – are denied that right simply because they can’t wait for five, six, seven hours just to cast their ballot, we are betraying our ideals,” Obama planned to say in his State of the Union address. “We can fix this, and we will. The American people demand it. And so does our democracy.” Obama’s response represents less than some voting rights groups had sought. But they noted it could give his eventual recommendations bipartisan cover rather than cast them as proposals designed to help Democrats at the polls.

National: Long Florida election lines prompt federal voter bill | Orlando Sentinel

Long lines on Election Day in Florida and elsewhere spurred a call from President Barack Obama Tuesday for a bipartisan commission “to improve the voting experience” and drew new support for federal legislation aimed at cutting wait times. In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Obama said that five-, six- and seven-hour voting lines – seen in Florida during the Nov. 6 election and detailed in an Orlando Sentinel analysis – “are betraying our ideals.” He said he has asked experts from his and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns to jointly lead the voting commission. Also Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida declared that he is joining fellow Democrat Barbara Boxer of California as lead sponsors of a bill that would establish a goal that “no American voter has to wait longer than an hour to cast a ballot” in a federal election.

National: On State Of The Union Voting Commission Proposal, State Lawmakers Divide Along Party Lines | Huffington Post

State lawmakers’ reactions to President Barack Obama’s announcement Tuesday night of a new bipartisan voting commission split along party lines. The announcement of the election commission during the State of the Union address was greeted positively by Democratic state lawmakers, who see the panel as a way to generate ideas to improve state and local election administration. However, Republicans said the panel violates the 10th Amendment, noting that elections are a function of state government and not a place for federal officials. Obama announced that the commission, to be co-chaired by top attorneys from his and Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaigns, would develop “common-sense, non-partisan solutions” to reduce wait times and improve voting experiences.

National: Rep. Miller opposes voting reforms | The Detroit News

President Barack Obama called Tuesday for a national commission to study ways to make it easier for Americans to vote, but one former Michigan secretary of state didn’t like the idea. Voting issues have been debated in Michigan with confusion over a citizenship checkoff on ballot applications and Gov. Rick Snyder and Secretary of State Ruth Johnson calling for changes to make it easier to register and cast absentee votes. “We must all do our part to make sure our God-given rights are protected. That includes our most fundamental right as citizens: the right to vote,” Obama said in the State of the Union. Obama said he’s appointing top members of his re-election campaign and the campaign of GOP nominee Mitt Romney to head up the commission.

National: Presidential Voting Commission To Be Chaired By Obama, Romney Campaign Lawyers | Huffington Post

The two top lawyers for the presidential campaigns of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will co-chair an independent presidential commission on election reform, the president announced during his 2013 State of the Union address. “We must all do our part to make sure our God-given rights are protected here at home,” Obama said, according to his prepared remarks. “That includes our most fundamental right as citizens: the right to vote. When any Americans — no matter where they live or what their party — are denied that right simply because they can’t wait for five, six, seven hours just to cast their ballot, we are betraying our ideals. That’s why, tonight, I’m announcing a non-partisan commission to improve the voting experience in America,” Obama continued. “And I’m asking two longtime experts in the field, who’ve recently served as the top attorneys for my campaign and for Governor Romney’s campaign, to lead it. We can fix this, and we will. The American people demand it. And so does our democracy.”

National: Fixing Long Lines At The Polls May Be Harder Than You Think | NPR

Minutes after he was re-elected in November, President Obama vowed to fix the long lines that many voters faced at the polls. He mentioned the problem again in his inaugural address. And now, the president is expected to raise it once more in the State of the Union address on Tuesday — this time with some possible solutions. When Obama made his initial vow after midnight on election night, some Miami polling places had just closed — after voters stood in line for six, seven, even eight hours to cast ballots. There were similar waits at other polling sites in Florida and elsewhere. “For me, who voted in the state of Maryland, I was in line for seven hours,” says Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of Advancement Project, a leading voting-rights group. Today, not all Americans have equal access to the polls, she says. “We have 13,000 election jurisdictions that run elections 13,000 different ways,” she says. “That is what we have to fix.”

National: State of the Union guest Desiline Victor, 102, will be the face of voting delays at address | The Washington Post

When she set out to her local library in North Miami, Fla., to cast her vote in the presidential election last year, Desiline Victor had no way of knowing the journey would lead all the way to the White House. On Tuesday night, Victor, a 102-year-old Haitian immigrant, will sit in the ornate House chamber as a guest of first lady Michelle Obama to listen to President Obama’s State of the Union address. Victor voted for the president, but it was not easy. On her first visit to the polls on the morning of Oct. 28, the first day of early voting, she waited in line for three hours. Poll workers eventually advised her to come back later, and she did. She finally cast her vote that evening. Her story spread around the polling place and inspired some would-be voters to stay in line, too, instead of being deterred by the delays.

National: FEC chairwoman warns of super PAC corruption | The Center for Public Integrity

Do candidate-specific super PACs pose a greater threat of corruption to democracy than multi-candidate super PACs, Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub asked Friday at a Willamette Law School symposium on political money and influence. The answer, Weintraub said in response to her own question, “could be yes. I would probably define corruption a little more broadly than the Supreme Court does,” Weintraub added.  Ahead of last year’s elections, candidate-specific super PACs proliferated. President Barack Obama’s allies, for instance, created Priorities USA Action, while GOP operatives launched Restore Our Future to support the presidential ambitions of Republican Mitt Romney.

National: The GOP’s electoral vote gambit: Reasonably popular, but doomed | Washington Post

Many Americans support the way that Republicans want to adjust how some states award their electoral votes. But that doesn’t mean there’s going to be any new life breathed into the dying effort. A new poll from Quinnipiac University shows that neither awarding electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis to the winner of the statewide vote nor awarding them by congressional district gains majority support. Forty-six percent prefer the winner-take-all method, while 41 percent prefer to do it by congressional district, as Republicans in some key states are proposing. The rest are unsure. But that probably says more about people’s openness to Electoral College reform than it does about how much they like the GOP’s proposal.

National: Teachers Union Pushes Voting Rights, Disclosure Ahead Of State of the Union address | TPM

The largest teachers unions in the country is pushing President Obama to prioritize a number of electoral reforms, from new protections for voters to disclosure requirements, in his State of the Union address next week, suggesting a determination not to be outgunned once again during the upcoming midterm elections. “Reactionary state laws, unequal and unethical administration of voting procedures, and the unfettered access of corporations to influence electoral outcomes has severely damaged our democracy,” wrote NEA president Dennis Van Roekel in a letter Friday to Obama.

National: U.S. Voting Flaws Are Widespread, Study Shows | NYTimes.com

The flaws in the American election system are deep and widespread, extending beyond isolated voting issues in a few locations and flaring up in states rich and poor, according to a major new study from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The group ranked 50 states based on more than 15 criteria, including wait times, lost votes and problems with absentee and provisional ballots, and the order often confounds the conventional wisdom. In 2010, for instance, Mississippi ranked last overall. But it was preceded by two surprises: New York and California. “Poor Southern states perform well, and they perform badly,” said Heather K. Gerken, a law professor at Yale and a Pew adviser. “Rich New England states perform well and badly — mostly badly.”

National: Voting Rights Act at Risk? | Congressional Quarterly

Frank “Butch” Ellis Jr. was sitting in his law office a half-hour’s drive from Birmingham, Ala., about three years ago when Edward Blum, an investment banker turned conservative legal activist, called him to discuss the Voting Rights Act. Although the two had never met, they quickly bonded over a common grievance. Blum specifically wanted to discuss a provision in the landmark civil rights law requiring localities with a history of racial discrimination to obtain U.S. Justice Department permission to make any changes to their election procedures. Ellis, during nearly a half-century practicing law in Shelby County, had watched municipal clients jump through procedural hoops to gain “preclearance” from Washington lawyers. Moving a polling place could take months, for example, and require a voluminous paper trail. When Blum suggested that Shelby County officials, with Blum’s financial support, someday might challenge the provision in court, Ellis agreed. “We knew the only way to attack it was in the courts, in Washington,” Ellis explained recently. “We had the desire to do it, we just couldn’t spend our taxpayers’ money on it.”

National: Democrats Cite Long Lines in Bid to Shift Voting Rights Debate | Businessweek

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, citing long lines and hours-long waits at polling places last November, want to change the narrative on voting rights. Democrats are urging mandatory early-voting periods and same-day registration, trying to shift the focus to making it easier to cast ballots from Republican efforts to curb alleged fraud, which studies show is virtually absent. Representative John Lewis of Georgia, a civil rights icon, is chief sponsor of legislation backed by more than 80 percent of House Democrats. “This is an attempt to change the debate away from so- called voter fraud, where little exists, to empowering people to actually get to the polls and vote,” said Jim Manley, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now at the lobbying firm Quinn Gillespie & Associates.

National: Discrepancies in voter waiting times draw scrutiny | The Bulletin

With studies suggesting that long lines at the polls cost Democrats hundreds of thousands of votes in November, party leaders are beginning a push to make voting and voter registration easier, setting up a likely new conflict with Republicans over a deeply polarizing issue. White House officials have told congressional leaders that President Barack Obama plans to press for action on Capitol Hill. House and Senate Democrats have introduced bills that would require states to provide online voter registration and allow at least 15 days of early voting, among other things. Fourteen states are considering whether to expand early voting, including the battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and Virginia, according to FairVote, a nonprofit that advocates electoral change. Florida, New York, Texas and Washington are looking at whether to ease registration and establish preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds.

National: On Voting Rights, Justices Get an Earful From Their ‘Friends’ | Andrew Cohen/The Atlantic

In a little more than three weeks, the justices of the United States Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a case about the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act, the venerated federal law that for the past 48 years has helped eased the sting of official discrimination in the exercise of the most important of all civil rights — the right to vote. It’s the Voting Rights Act that has stopped bigoted state and local officials from ginning up new literacy tests or poll taxes. It’s the Voting Rights Act that has forced cynical legislators to limit (somewhat, anyway limit the scope of their racial gerrymandering. In Shelby County v. Holder, the court has been asked by an aggrieved Alabama county to strike down Section 5 of the statute, the provision which requires certain jurisdictions (like those in Alabama) with long patterns and practices of discrimination in voting to “pre-clear” with the Justice Department their proposed changes to voting laws. It’s a vitally important case for many reasons — not least of which that the court’s conservatives appear poised to strike down the statute just months after it was invoked, successfully and often, in the 2012 election cycle to protect the vote for millions of Americans.

National: Scholars urge Supreme Court to keep Voting Rights Act provisions ensuring equal access | UW Today

Racial discrimination and prejudice remain prevalent in the United States, so the U.S. Supreme Court should fully uphold the Voting Rights Act, complete with rules requiring certain areas, mostly southern states, to get federal approval before changing voting laws. That’s the opinion of a consortium of political science and law scholars from the University of Washington and several other institutions who have filed an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” brief in the Supreme Court case about voting rights out of Shelby County, Ala. The UW faculty are political science professors Matt Barreto and Luis Fraga. The Supreme Court is expected to review the case on Feb. 27. At issue is Section 5 of the act, which forbids any change in voting law in the selected areas unless the federal government agrees the change “does not deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.” The rule pertains to the states Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, and certain jurisdictions in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota, Michigan and New Hampshire.

National: ‘We have to fix that’: Obama will push voting rights | MSNBC

They were five simple words in a 2,000-word speech–”We have to fix that.” But for millions of voting rights supporters across the country, they were a sign that President Obama recognized one of the major struggles of the modern civil rights movement, as activists and some Democrats push back against an onslaught of voter suppression tactics that dampen turnout among Democratic constituencies. Another sign of the president’s support for voting reforms came on Inauguration Day, when he said, “Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.” The third, and perhaps most vociferous call, may be only a week away, according a New York Times report that says the president will call for voting reforms in next Tuesday’s State of the Union address. The same report included an MIT analysis of voting wait times in 2012 that is likely to bolster his push for voter equality. Democrats and Independents, on average, waited about 20% longer than Republicans. Black and Hispanic voters waited nearly twice as long as white voters. Urban voters waited more than twice as long as rural voters. The poor waited longer than the rich.

National: Voter Waiting Time Disparities Draw Democrats’ Scrutiny | NYTimes.com

With studies suggesting that long lines at the polls cost Democrats hundreds of thousands of votes in November, party leaders are beginning a push to make voting and voter registration easier, setting up a likely new conflict with Republicans over a deeply polarizing issue. White House officials have told Congressional leaders that the president plans to press for action on Capitol Hill, and Democrats say they expect him to highlight the issue in his State of the Union address next week. Democrats in the House and Senate have already introduced bills that would require states to provide online voter registration and allow at least 15 days of early voting, among other things. Fourteen states are also considering whether to expand early voting, including the battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and Virginia, according to FairVote, a nonprofit group that advocates electoral change. Florida, New York, Texas and Washington are looking at whether to ease registration and establish preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds.

National: The Other GOP Plan To Rearrange The Electoral Vote | TPM

GOP efforts to rig the Electoral College in favor of GOP presidential candidates may be close to dead, but a group of Republicans are hard at work at another plot to blow up the system: switch to the popular vote. Although more closely associated with progressive circles in recent years, the idea has a number of conservative activists behind it as well. And there are signs it’s gaining momentum. “I think there’s a growing consensus that the winner-take-all system we’re currently under is a problem, that it’s not representative, that only a small number of states benefit, and that it needs to be changed,” Saul Anuzis, a Republican national committeeman from Michigan who advocates on behalf of the nonpartisan National Popular Vote group, told TPM. The plan, as espoused by groups like NPV, is to lobby states to pass binding legislation pledging their entire slate of electors to whichever candidate wins the most votes nationwide. The bills would only take effect once enough states join in to provide a guaranteed majority in the Electoral College — 270 votes — in order to prevent individual legislatures from trying to game the system unilaterally.

National: The Great Gerrymander of 2012 | NYTimes.com

Having the first modern democracy comes with bugs. Normally we would expect more seats in Congress to go to the political party that receives more votes, but the last election confounded expectations. Democrats received 1.4 million more votes for the House of Representatives, yet Republicans won control of the House by a 234 to 201 margin. This is only the second such reversal since World War II. Using statistical tools that are common in fields like my own, neuroscience, I have found strong evidence that this historic aberration arises from partisan disenfranchisement. Although gerrymandering is usually thought of as a bipartisan offense, the rather asymmetrical results may surprise you. Through artful drawing of district boundaries, it is possible to put large groups of voters on the losing side of every election. The Republican State Leadership Committee, a Washington-based political group dedicated to electing state officeholders, recently issued aprogress report on Redmap, its multiyear plan to influence redistricting. The $30 million strategy consists of two steps for tilting the playing field: take over state legislatures before the decennial Census, then redraw state and Congressional districts to lock in partisan advantages. The plan was highly successful.

National: Why the GOP’s electoral vote gambit won’t work | Washington Post

A Republican-backed plan to change the way certain states allocate electoral votes has fizzled as quickly as it sprung onto the national consciousness. The slate of upcoming 2014 governor’s races is a major reason why that happened. Last month, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus voiced some support for the effort to award electoral votes in a handful of battleground states by congressional district. Since many of those congressional districts lean Republican, the plan, if passed in several swing states, would give future GOP presidential nominees a leg up. But for the Republican governors in these states, endorsing the idea — which Democrats can easily cast as a partisan power grab — would carry immense political risk on the eve of reelection campaigns that already promise to be challenging. So, the governors have mostly distanced themselves from such proposals.

National: From Arizona to Montana, Native Voters Struggle for Democracy | The Nation

Leonard Gorman is a man of maps. He heads the Navajo Nation’s Human Rights Commission, which among other responsibilities, is charged with protecting and promoting Navajo voters’ rights to choose candidates who will reasonably represent their interests. He and his team all work out of their trailer office in Window Rick, Arizona—the Navajo Nation’s capitol—where they chart data that they’ve collected on the potential impacts of redistricting on the Navajo Nation. The first map Gorman’s team submitted to the Arizona Redistricting Commission resembled the letter J, encompassing the edge of Arizona’s eastern border and curving up towards the west. Although that map included large portions of Arizona’s Native population, the Navajo Nation later opted out of it because Arizona’s hardline anti-immigrants liked it too much. It included large southern border areas, where white conservative ranchers are more likely to vote Republican and would have infringed on Arizona’s growing Latino districts. “We immediately learned that the J map was playing into the extreme right position,” explains Gorman.

National: Total 2012 election spending: $7 billion | Sunlight Foundation

A new estimate from the Federal Election Commission puts total spending for the 2012 election at more than $7 billion — $1 billion more than previously thought. New FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub unveiled the latest estimate of the 2012 campaign’s record-shattering cost at the agency’s first open meeting of 2013, one that saw the departure of Cynthia Bauerly, one of the three Democratic commissioners. Though campaign spending was expected to break records after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that opened the door for unlimited contributions, the latest FEC estimate exceeds earlier expectations. The FEC processed more than 11 million documents to calculate the spending for the election and the counting isn’t yet complete: New filings covering the final quarter of 2012 are due at midnight.

National: Program exceeds expectations in reaching overseas and military absentee voters | Fort Hood Sentinel

The Federal Voting Assistance Program exceeded congressional expectations in the 2012 election cycle by getting guidance to service members so they could vote by absentee ballot, a senior FVAP official said here, Jan. 24. David Beirne, acting deputy director of technology programs for FVAP, participated in a “MOVE and the Military” panel discussion at George Washington University during the seventh annual summit of the Overseas Vote Foundation and U.S. Vote Foundation. MOVE refers to the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, designed to help military people serving overseas and citizens who live abroad to vote in U.S. elections.

National: Internet and Federal Act Ease Overseas U.S. Voting | NYTimes.com

Voting from abroad continued to become easier in last year’s U.S. election, thanks to the combined effects of federal law and Internet resources, according to a new study by the Overseas Vote Foundation, a nonpartisan voter-assistance group. Whereas a full half of expatriate American voters surveyed by the group after the 2008 election reported not receiving a ballot or receiving it too late, that figure declined to one-third for the 2010 election and to just one-fifth in last year’s presidential election. “The tipping point is in the use of technology,” said Claire M. Smith, research manager for the foundation. “There’s no going back.”

National: GOP electoral vote changes going nowhere | Politico.com

Republican proposals in swing states to change how electoral votes are allocated have set off alarms that the party is trying to rig future presidential elections. But the plans are going nowhere fast. In the majority of states where such measures are being considered – Virginia, Florida, Ohio and Michigan, all states that voted for President Obama in 2012 but have Republican-controlled legislatures – proposals to split Electoral College votes proportionally have either been defeated or are strongly opposed by officials in those states. The only remaining states are Pennsylvania, where an electoral vote change was unsuccessful in 2011, and Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker has expressed hesitance about any changes to the system. “I just said I hadn’t ruled it out. I’m not embracing it because it’s a double-edged sword,” Walker said in a recent interview with POLITICO. “What may look appealing right now depending on who your candidate was might, four or eight years from now, look like just the reverse. And the most important thing to me long term as a governor is what makes your voters be in play. One of our advantages as a swing state is that candidates come here … that’s good for voters. If we change that that would take that away and would largely make us irrelevant.”

National: Online voter signup gains favor | Washington Times

If Capitol Hill Democrats have their way, every American soon will have the option to grab their laptop, plop down on the couch and register to vote. Yet unlike other hot-button voting rights issues, such as early voting and same-day registration, the idea is gaining momentum among some state-level Republicans. Online voter registration is a central provision of a voting rights bill jointly filed last week by Rep. John Lewis of Georgia and Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York, both Democrats. The measure, called the Voter Empowerment Act, collectively so far has 168 cosponsors in both chambers — all Democrats. But at the state level, the issue is largely nonpartisan, as half of all states with online voter-registration programs already in place have Republican-led state legislatures. And of the eight state legislatures with bills this year proposing the idea, five are GOP-controlled, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

National: Republicans In Key States Drop Plans To Alter How Electoral College Votes Are Awarded | TPM

Four states down, and just two remain. Key Republican officials in Virginia, Ohio, Florida, and Michigan are coming out against a RNC-backed scheme to rig the electoral vote in Democratic-leaning states in order to boost Republican presidential candidates. That leaves just Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as the remaining blue states with Republican statehouses actively considering the idea. Virginia was the first state to move on the idea in 2013, advancing a bill out of a state Senate subcommittee that would apportion its electoral votes by Congressional district rather than the winner-take-all method used in 48 of the 50 states. Had it been in place the year before, Mitt Romney would have won 9 of the state’s electoral votes to President Obama’s 4 despite losing the state’s popular vote. But after Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) and key Republican lawmakers came out against it, the bill was defeated in committee Tuesday on an 11-4 vote.