National: Backlash Swells Against Voter Laws | The Daily Beast

Another symbol of just how quickly the political calculus can change ahead of Election Day: crucial swing states Ohio and Florida, along with Texas, South Carolina, and Wisconsin, have won significant—albeit possibly temporary—victories against restrictive voting laws over a span of mere weeks. Voting laws, including the requirement that people carry photo IDs to the ballot box, have became a major source of controversy as the presidential race remains close less than two months ahead of the election.  “The tide has clearly turned,” says Diana Kasdan, counsel for the Democracy Program of Brennan Center, a public policy institute affiliated with New York University. “The results are coming in, court after court is rejecting these restrictive laws.” The next crucial decision will come out of Pennsylvania. The state’s law requiring all voters to show identification is currently being debated by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court; a decision is forthcoming.

National: Study of US campaign ads finds growing role of outside groups | Reuters

Unlimited spending driven by Republican groups is responsible for an outsized share of advertising in the 2012 campaign season that feeds the markedly negative stream of ads, according to an academic analysis released on Wednesday. Super PACs, or political action committees, and tax-exempt advocacy groups accounted for nearly a third of all the ads aired in the U.S. presidential race, according to a study by the Wesleyan Media Project that analyzed broadcast and national cable spots run between April 26 and Sept. 8. “The key dynamic of this campaign is the increased presence of these outside groups in all key races across the federal landscape,” said Michael Franz, co-director of the project and associate professor of government at Bowdoin College in Maine. Republican outside groups are largely responsible for this year’s trend. Of 302,580 ads backing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, outside groups funded 54 percent, spending $117.5 million. Meanwhile, the official Romney campaign spent $37.8 million for 30 percent of the pro-Romney ads. “We’ve never seen that big of a share of outside group spending in presidential races before,” Franz said.

National: Underfunding of voter registration: a guarantee that 25 percent or more of Americans won’t participate | Remapping Debate

Non-partisan voter registration organizations, while proud of their efforts, are conscious of their limited ability to reach the still-large unregistered population. They say that a critical problem they face in doing their work is a lack of available money. According to Michael Slater, executive director of Project Vote, a national organization that submitted 1.3 million registration applications, “I don’t see any sorts of funding that would allow a coalition of organizations working together to get…registration to the level that we need. I mean could we really boost registration in Ohio working together? Absolutely. But [all] across the country? No. No one’s in that position.”  Caitlin Baggott, the executive director of the Bus Project Foundation, a smaller non-partisan group that seeks to engage young people in politics, and whose work includes registering young voters in Oregon, described “non-profit organizations and community groups [as] scrap[ing] together meager funds to register what truly ends up being a drop in the bucket [among younger] voters each election cycle, while literally millions of Americans are eligible to vote but don’t know how, where, or when to register or vote in an election.” That system, she said, “is fundamentally broken and unsustainable for the health of our democracy.”

National: 3 Electoral College members may pass on Romney | The Associated Press

At least three Republican electors say they may not support their party’s presidential ticket when the Electoral College meets in December to formally elect the next president, escalating tensions within the GOP and adding a fresh layer of intrigue to the final weeks of the White House race. The electors — all supporters of former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul — told The Associated Press they are exploring options should Mitt Romney win their states. They expressed frustration at how Republican leaders have worked to suppress Paul’s conservative movement and his legion of loyal supporters. “They’ve never given Ron Paul a fair shot, and I’m disgusted with that. I’d like to show them how disgusted I am,” said Melinda Wadsley, an Iowa mother of three who was selected as a Republican elector earlier this year. She said Paul is the better choice and noted that the Electoral College was founded with the idea that electors wouldn’t just mimic the popular vote. The defection of multiple electors would be unprecedented in the last 116 years of U.S. politics. It also would raise the remote possibility that the country could even end up with a president and vice president from different parties.

National: Campaigns prepare for post-election court fights on voting laws | Reuters

The campaigns of President Barack Obama and his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, are preparing for what could be a series of legal battles over new U.S. voting laws after the Nov. 6 election – especially if the result of the presidential race is close. The campaigns and political parties are lining up lawyers for what would amount to a new wave of litigation surrounding election laws that have been approved by Republican-led legislatures in more than a dozen states since 2010. Some of the laws involve requiring voters to produce photo identification. Others curtail early-voting periods that are designed to help working-class people cast ballots if they can’t make it to the polls on Election Day. Still others have imposed strict requirements on groups that conduct voter-registration drives.

National: Study Shows Voter ID Laws Could Disenfranchise 1 Million Young Minority Voters | Huffington Post

An estimated 700,000 young minority voters could be barred from voting in November because of photo ID laws passed across the country in recent years, according to a new study. The number of minority voters under the age of 30 likely to be disenfranchised by these new voting laws — passed overwhelmingly by Republican-led legislatures across the country — is a conservative estimate, according to the study’s authors. The actual number of voters in that category who could be disenfranchised is probably closer to 1 million, they said. The projections include African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders. “It’s a reminder that our voting rights have always been under attack and probably always will be,” said Cathy Cohen, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who co-authored the report, Turning Back the Clock on Voting Rights: The Impact of New Photo Identification Requirements on Young People of Color.

National: Who’s The Boss? The Worst Post-Citizen’s United Ruling Yet | The New Republic

On August 14, several hundred coal miners joined Mitt Romney at the Century Mine near Bealsville, Ohio, to cheer the Republican nominee as he denounced a “war on coal” by the Obama administration. Two weeks later, an official of the company that owns the mine, Murray Energy Corp. (which has given more than $900,000 to Republican candidates in the last two years, far more than any other coal company) admitted that the miners were not all there by choice. “Attendance at the Romney event was mandatory,” Rob Moore, the chief financial officer of Murray Energy told radio host David Blomquist. Mandatory, but unpaid. Because the mine was closed for the Romney event, miners lost a day of pay. Is this legal? Is this right? Interestingly, just a few days after the rally, the F.E.C. decided a case involving an employer in Hawaii that required its employees to campaign, on their own time, for Democratic congressional candidate Colleen Hanabusa. (The employer happened to be a union, but the case had to do with its staff, not its members.) In what might seem like a reversal of partisanship, the Commission’s three Democrats supported the general counsel’s judgment that such coercion violated the Federal Election Campaign Act, which  forbids employers from coercing workers to contribute to a campaign. But its three Republicans argued that because the work was part of an independent effort by the union, and didn’t involve contributions to the campaign itself, the law didn’t apply: A union or corporation’s “independent use of its paid workforce to campaign for a federal candidate post-Citizen’s United was not contemplated by Congress and, consequently, is not prohibited by either the Act or Commission regulation.” Without a majority on the Commission, it was unable to act.

National: Voting Laws In Several States Remain Unsettled | NPR

Eight weeks before the presidential election, new laws passed by Republican legislatures that concern who can vote and when remain in the hands of federal and state judges. Among the cases: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court this week will hear an appeal to overturn that state’s new voter ID law. An appeal is expected in a case involving early voting in Ohio. And a federal court is still considering whether South Carolina can go ahead with its new voter ID law. On Aug. 28, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley drew huge applause during her Republican National Convention speech when she promoted the state’s new law, which — if upheld — would require a state-approved photo identification at the polls. “We said in South Carolina that if you have to show a picture ID to buy Sudafed, if you have to show a picture ID to set foot on an airplane, then you should have to show picture ID to protect one of the most valuable, most central, sacred rights we are blessed with in America — the right to vote,” said Haley.

National: Why The Supreme Court May Soon Strike Down A Key Section Of The Voting Rights Act | The New Republic

Six years ago, to much fanfare, Congress extended the lifespan of the Voting Rights Act’s crucial preclearance provision, Section 5, by twenty-five years. (Section 5 requires covered jurisdictions, mostly in the South, to get permission from the federal government before enacting any new electoral laws.) But Congress didn’t just renew Section 5; it also revised it. Section 5 now bars covered jurisdictions from diminishing minority groups’ “ability to elect” the candidates of their choice. The provision now also forbids these jurisdictions from passing election laws with “any discriminatory purpose.” At the time these amendments were made, their consequences were highly uncertain. No one knew whether minorities would be able to elect more or fewer candidates as a result, or whether Democrats or Republicans would benefit. As Columbia professor Nathaniel Persily wrote in 2007, “there is disagreement about . . . how one determines minorities’ ‘ability to elect,’” and “[t]he potential interpretations of the law run the gamut from entrenching either Republican or Democratic gerrymanders.”

National: Prelude to a Supreme Court Showdown: Voting Rights Rulings in Texas and Florida Offer New Evidence of Racial Discrimination in Voting | Constitutional Accountability Center

The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits racial discrimination in voting and expressly empowers Congress to enforce this guarantee, which it has done primarily through the passage and repeated reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.  Recent events only bolster Congress’ repeated invocation of its express constitutional power to protect the right to vote free from racial discrimination.  In Shelby County v. Holder, an Alabama county, joined by a host of conservative states, including Alabama, Georgia, Texas and South Carolina, and right-leaning legal groups as amici curiae, are urging the Supreme Court to review the case and strike down a key part of the Voting Rights Act as beyond the scope of Congress’ power to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment’s prohibition on racial discrimination in voting.  The core of the conservative attack on the “preclearance” requirement of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (which requires jurisdictions that have a history of engaging in racial discrimination in voting to obtain federal permission before altering their voting laws and regulations) is that this strong medicine is now outdated and unnecessary.   In reauthorizing the Act in 2006, Congress disagreed, amassing a 15,000-page legislative record demonstrating that racial discrimination in voting continues to exist and remains concentrated in jurisdictions covered by the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance requirement.

National: Legal Battles on Voting May Prove a Critical Issue in Election | NYTimes.com

The November presidential election, widely expected to rest on a final blitz of advertising and furious campaigning, may also hinge nearly as much on last-minute legal battles over when and how ballots should be cast and counted, particularly if the race remains tight in battleground states. In the last few weeks, nearly a dozen decisions in federal and state courts on early voting, provisional ballots and voter identification requirements have driven the rules in conflicting directions, some favoring Republicans demanding that voters show more identification to guard against fraud and others backing Democrats who want to make voting as easy as possible. The most closely watched cases — in the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania — will see court arguments again this week, with the Ohio dispute possibly headed for a request for emergency review by the Supreme Court.

National: Who Benefits In Money Game, Democracy Or Donors? | NPR

There’s a new stimulus plan underway in America: $5.8 billion is being injected into the U.S. economy, particularly in states like Ohio, Virginia, Colorado and Florida. We’re talking of course about campaign spending, and this year’s elections will be the most expensive in history. In fact, by the time we all head to the voting booth on Election Day, nearly $6 billion will have been spent on campaigns — big and small — all across America. Much of that money will come from superPACs and other outside groups free to spend as much as they want, mostly on Obama and Romney ads. Pro-Republican groups are way ahead of pro-Democratic ones in raising that money, thanks in part to wealthy donors. According to New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, that has been President Obama’s Achilles’ heel — his aversion to cultivating wealthy donors for his campaign.

National: Voter ID Wars | NYTimes.com

If you’ve only got 30 seconds to make your case in the debate over photo ID laws — which require voters to show up at the polls with a government-issued photo ID — it’s much easier to argue in favor of the laws.“You need a photo ID to get on an airplane or rent a movie from Blockbuster. Get over it!” While investigating voting in America for the documentary film “Electoral Dysfunction,” I heard versions of this line over and over from the laws’ backers. The message is clear: “If you’re too lazy to get a government-issued photo ID, then you probably don’t deserve to vote. And please, let’s not forget 9/11.” (The airplane reference is a handy conversation-stopper.) But voting rights are worth at least 60 seconds of our attention. So here’s why these laws hurt more than they help: The only crime these laws address is voter impersonation — someone showing up at the polls and claiming to be someone else in order to cast a fraudulent vote. (I know, sounds almost delightfully madcap.)

National: Report: Half of military bases lack voting facility | Washington Times

Half of all U.S. military bases around the world lack legally required facilities where troops can register to vote and get absentee ballots, according to a report from the Pentagon’s inspector general. Advocacy groups said the report shows the military has let down its service members by failing to implement the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act. “It’s disappointing. This was the will of Congress,” said Eric Eversole, founder of the Military Voter Protection Project. “Here you have an agency [the Pentagon] that basically said to Congress, ‘We’re not going to do what you told us to do. We think we know more about voter registration than you do and we’re not going to do it.’?”

National: Defense Department inspector General questions military voting | Politico.com

Many military installations across the globe lack offices where troops can register to vote and obtain absentee ballots, the Defense Department’s inspector general concludes in a newly released report. Investigators attempted to contact 229 voting-assistance offices and were able to reach just 114 — about 50 percent. Under the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, all military installations are required to have such offices. The report could inflame tensions between the Obama administration and House Republicans, who have accused the White House of moving too slowly to implement the law, which also requires states to mail absentee ballots to service members at least 45 days before an election.

National: Ten Weeks Out From Election Day, Outside Spending Exceeds 2008 Total | OpenSecrets

With the end of the Democratic convention today, we’ve only just now reached the beginning of the traditional presidential election season, but that hasn’t stopped outside groups from unleashing a torrent of advertising on the political landscape early on in this election cycle.  The amount spent by super PACs, political non profit groups and other non-political party entities on the presidential and congressional races, about $306.2 million as of Sept. 5, is already more than such groups spent during the entirety of the last presidential election cycle, about $301.6 million.  And such estimates are surely conservative, as Center for Responsive Politics research only accounts for spending released by the Federal Election Commission, which doesn’t track so-called issue ads spent by political non-profit groups outside of 60 days of a general election or 30 days outside of a primary. Such groups are dropping tens of millions of dollars this cycle, hammering the airwaves with under the radar spending.

National: Voter registration drives adopting new methods | AP News

Some organizations are turning to sophisticated data mining, direct mail, the Internet and other strategies to register voters typically underrepresented on the rolls, including young people and ethnic minorities. Others are simply targeting those who favor their political goals, such as conservative Christians. The shift away from more traditional voter registration drives – like volunteers with clipboards in front of a supermarket – is driven as much by restrictive state laws as it is better technology. Several states including Florida have recently passed legislation setting tight deadlines for groups to turn in voter applications, so groups like the NAACP were looking for ways to get the applications directly into the hands of voters. And they also have to rely on voters to turn in the applications themselves. “This is a new effort since the 2000 election,” said University of Florida political scientist Daniel Smith. “Technology has made it more cost-effective. … When you have upwards of 40 percent of eligible populations not registered, there is a market for this kind of work.”

National: Decision 2012: Voter ID Laws Could Impact Election | NY1.com

Poll workers across the country have a new task: asking for ID. Thirty-three states now have voter ID laws. Fifteen were passed or strengthened since President Obama took office. “It’s an unfortunate and cynical attempt to undermine the voting rights of students, of elderly, of poor,” said Newark Mayor Cory Booker. The rush of new requirements was a topic of conversation at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. “If you want every American to vote and you think it is wrong to change voting procedures, just to reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority and disabled voters, you should support Barack Obama,” former President Bill Clinton said in his convention speech.

National: Voter ID and early voting cases heat up in courts across the country | CSMonitor.com

Before voters get a say in this year’s presidential race, lawyers and judges are having theirs. A series of court battles in several states may determine, over the next several weeks, everything from how people cast their votes, when polling locations will be open and what ballots will look like. Many cases have a partisan bent, with rulings potentially tipping the scales slightly in favor of Democrats or Republicans. The legal fights have entered an urgent phase, two months before the Nov. 6 election and just a few weeks before military and overseas absentee ballots must go out.

National: Late court decisions may impact 2012 election | The Associated Press

Before voters get a say in this year’s presidential race, lawyers and judges are having theirs.A series of court battles in several states may determine, over the next several weeks, everything from how people cast their votes, when polling locations will be open and what ballots will look like. Many cases have a partisan bent, with rulings potentially tipping the scales slightly in favor of Democrats or Republicans. The legal fights have entered an urgent phase, two months before the Nov. 6 election and just a few weeks before military and overseas absentee ballots must go out. Pennsylvania lawyers recently filed briefs arguing whether an appeal on the state’s strict voter ID law should be held in September or October. Opponents won a mid-September court date, which is late even by their standards. “This is by no means impossible, but certainly the closer you get a decision to Election Day the harder it is to make changes,” said Vic Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. Wisconsin’s attorney general is making a late push in the courts to reinstate voter ID requirements.

National: On Cyber Guard At The Voting Booth | AOL Government

As we approach the 2012 presidential election, concerns are being raised about the likelihood of cyber attacks leading up to and during that event. There are many individuals, groups and rogue nation states that would like nothing better than to disrupt this year’s election. Remember back in 2010 there were reports of a cyber attack that allowed hackers to gain access to online voting system in the District of Columbia. Now add to that the activity of hackers during last year’s elections in Russia, as well as the cyber fire exchanged during the last Iranian elections. We shouldn’t forget the cyber attacks back in 2008 that targeted the Obama and McCain campaigns. With all this activity it is easy to see why cyber security practitioners have a heightened state of awareness and are on cyber guard. In an election that looks like it will be too tight to call, all they have to do is to create a reason for the results to be called into question.

National: Counting Votes Is a Tricky Business | Discovery News

As the Presidential election nears, attention turns to voting – and counting those votes. Thanks to the Help America Vote Act of 2002, this year’s elections will be the first time that every state will have traded in their old-fashioned lever and punch-card machines for electronic voting. But computerized voting is not without its problems. Glitches arise. Paper jams. Service personnel are not always available in times of trouble. And if that weren’t bad enough, there’s always human error to add to the mix. One thing’s for certain, though. Everyone wants his or her vote to count. Despite some recent voting debacles, the country is moving to a more accurate way of tallying your vote. “What you need is a system where if something goes wrong you have a way to recover,” said Pam Smith, president of Verified Voting, a non-partisan organization that studies voting systems. “You want to be able to reconstruct what should have been the outcome without a do-over.”

National: Pre-Election Legal Battles Target Voting Rules | NPR

If you vote, you might very well be confused about what the rules will be when you go to cast your ballot this fall. There’s been a flood of new laws on things such as voter identification and early voting, and many of them are now being challenged in court. Some cases could drag on until Nov. 6, Election Day, and beyond. The outcomes will affect voters, and maybe even the results. Last week alone, a Pennsylvania judge rejected an effort to stop that state’s new voter ID law from going into effect. A federal panel blocked Florida’s plan to limit early voting hours. Another court is expected to rule on a Texas voter ID law any day now.

National: Election observers proliferate at polls | The Washington Post

As Jamila Gatlin waited in line at a northside Milwaukee elementary school to cast her ballot June 5 in the proposed recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, she noticed three people in the back of the room. They were watching, taking notes. Officially called “election observers,” they were white. Gatlin, and almost everyone else in line, was black. “That’s pretty harassing right there, if you ask me,” Gatlin said in the hall outside the gym. “Why do we have to be watched while we vote?” Two of the observers were from a Houston-based group called True the Vote, an offshoot of the Houston tea party known as the King Street Patriots. Their stated goal is to prevent voter fraud, which the group and founder Catherine Engelbrecht claims is undermining free and fair elections. The national anti-vote fraud movement represented by groups such as True the Vote is one of the most hotly debated issues of the 2012 election. Proponents say it’s about preserving the integrity of the electoral process, while critics contend that the movement is more about voter intimidation and vote suppression in Democratic strongholds and minority communities.

National: GOP Attorneys General Target Voting Rights Act, Ask Supreme Court To Strike Down Key Section | Huffington Post

Several Republican state attorneys general called a key provision of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional and asked the Supreme Court to strike it down. The officials from Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas submitted a brief in a closely watched Supreme Court case arguing that the law oversteps federal authority and places an unfair burden on certain states. The case at issue involves a plan to reshape a district in Shelby County, Ala., a largely white suburb of Birmingham. The new district maps led to the sole black council member in one of the county’s towns losing his seat. But the Justice Department blocked the certification of the voting results, and the town eventually redrew its districts. The black council member later re-won his seat.

National: Every vote counts? For military members, only if they plan ahead | NBC

Members of the armed forces face a unique set of logistical challenges when serving in other states or countries: many lack the ability to simply go to the DMV to renew their driver’s licenses, filing taxes can be complex and voting in elections can be even more confusing. “It is critically important to ensure that every voter entitled to an absentee ballot is given every chance to receive one,” said John Conklin, a spokesman for the New York State Board of Elections.

National: Gloves come off as general election approaches – State and local election officials butt heads over variety of issues | electionlineWeekly

With only 75 days until the November 6, 2012 General Election, more and more news stories are focusing on the increasingly contentious nature of the administration of that election — especially between state and local officials. From voter purges to early voting to a general lack of confidence, state election officials seem to be clashing with local elections administrators on a more frequent basis as summer turns to fall. Interestingly enough — or not — most of these state/local clashes have occurred in swing states. One of the more high profile instances has been in Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott recently threated to remove from office Monroe County Supervisor of Elections Harry Sawyer for Sawyer’s failure to agree with the state’s early voting law. Scott and several elections supervisor butted heads over the state’s plans to review information from the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security and purge voter rolls of potential non-citizens, but it never reached the height that it has over early voting.

National: Voting Rights Advocates Gear Up For 2012 Election | TPM

Two blocks from the White House, in a conference room on the fourth floor of a nondescript office building, voting rights advocates are fighting on the front line of the voting wars. Welcome to the headquarters of Election Protection, a program run by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and a multitude of civil rights organizations that seeks to combat the wave of restrictive voting laws that have swept state legislatures in the past few years. “I was here in 2000 when the debacle happened in Florida. That really led to civil rights groups coming together and saying we have to have a paradigm shift in the way that we view elections,” Barbara R. Arnwine, President & Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law told TPM in an interview at their office, which doubles as headquarters for the Election Protection’s hotline number.

National: Exploring the Financing of Campaign Advertising | PBS

Is a low-budget online video that names political candidates, states campaign issues and includes language that could sway opinion in an election, a political advertisement subject to donor disclosure laws, or is it an expression of free speech protected by the First Amendment? That depends on who you ask. If it aims to influence federal elections, it should be subject to federal regulation, Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel for the Washington, D.C.-based Campaign Legal Center told NewsHour correspondent Kwame Holman in a recent interview about campaign ad financing, non-profits and the 2012 elections. In the first presidential election since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protects the right of corporations, unions and non-profits to spend unlimited dollars on content that expresses their political views, a whole new landscape in campaign ad financing is emerging. In addition to emergence of advertisements from super PACs, groups that can spend unlimited dollars on campaign messaging, more groups have been asking the Federal Election Commission for permission not to disclose their donors, Ryan said.

National: Swing-State Aid Agencies Denying Voter Signups Draw Suits | Bloomberg

Pennsylvania, a presidential battleground, is joining at least 15 other states that have agreed to make it easier for welfare recipients to register to vote in agency offices. The Keystone State agreed yesterday to settle a lawsuit over the so-called Motor Voter law, a 19-year-old statute that says public-assistance agencies must offer clients the chance to sign up to vote. Ohio, Michigan, Colorado and Virginia also have changed their ways after either being sued or told by advocacy groups how they could improve compliance. The changes stem from pressure by activists whose drive may aid Democrats in November. About 1.5 million people have registered since 2004 because of the drive, according to New York-based Demos, a nonprofit group involved in the Pennsylvania case. The state was sued as the presidential campaigns scrounge for every vote, making ballot access a key front as Democrats challenge restrictive steps taken by Republican-led states.