Voting Blogs: Thorny Issue – or Briar Patch? South Carolina Counties Drive a Hard Bargain on Presidential Primary | Doug Chapin/PEEA

This week, Stateline.org has been running a series looking at the relationship between states and localities in the current fiscal environment. Monday’s story paints a fairly bleak picture, noting that localities are going to have to learn “to do less with less” as funds traditionally available from the state begin to disappear.

A subsequent story looked at ways to rethink the state-local partnership – including efforts in Indiana and New York to reduce or eliminate local government functions entirely. Such changes would have a tremendous impact on election administration, which is still predominantly controlled by officials at the smallest levels of government. Consequently, you might expect local officials to fight any effort to relieve them of their traditional responsibilities.

Voting Blogs: How We Got Into The Primary Calendar Mess — And Why We Can’t Get Out | TPM

Amidst the ongoing controversies surrounding the Republican primary calendar — with Florida moving its contest to late January, and triggering a move up by the officially sanctioned early states — some people have probably wondered if it might be possible to come up with better ways to pick a presidential nominee. But is there, really? Already every cycle, the parties review the rules of their primary processes, and often make small or large adjustments. But can they produce major change?

New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner told TPM: “Well, would another commission be successful, when we’ve had a commission almost every four years going back for 30 years?” (For the history of the New Hampshire primary, see our post in which we interviewed Garder.)

And for his own part, Florida GOP chair Lenny Curry told TPM that the state is not trying to challenge New Hampshire’s spot as the first primary. “No way,” said Curry, explaining that “there’s a tradition there, there’s a history there. It’s important, and it matters, and it works. So by no means do we want to — that was never the intent.” So what does Florida want?

Voting Blogs: What The Justice Department Can Actually Do About Voter ID Laws | TPM

President Barack Obama last week told a radio audience that he’s made sure the Justice Department is reviewing restrictive voting laws passed across the country. But as a practical matter, DOJ’s reach is limited.

Sure, federal officials with DOJ’s Civil Rights Division are reviewing voter ID laws passed in South Carolina and Texas because both states have a history of discrimination and are covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. DOJ told South Carolina last month that they need more info before making a decision and in September told Texas they have more questions.

Voting Blogs: Colorado Absentee Ballot Fight: Data Can Help This! | Election Updates

In the ongoing battle over absentee ballots in Colorado, we’ve heard the claims about disenfranchised military voters and we’ve heard the charges about partisanship.

Unfortunately, what we haven’t heard is some hard factual information that compares ballot return rates among active and inactive voters. Andrew Cole, spokesperson for Secretary of State Scott Gessler is quoted as saying “there were thousands of ballots mailed out to inactive voters in 2010 that were unaccounted for.”

I’ve tried to answer this question at the Denver County elections office. Total registration, active and inactive, was 297,558 according to the spreadsheet available here: Of that total, 22,696 are “Inactive – Fail to vote”, or 7.63% of the total.

Voting Blogs: College Students and Voter Fraud: Charlie Webster’s Maine Problem | State of Elections

Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster is “on a mission to make Maine a better place.” The trouble is, the “better place” he envisions lies on the other side of what may be an insurmountable controversy.

Since famously brandishing a list of 206 alleged voter frauds—all college students—a few weeks ago, Webster has been branded the leader of a witch hunt. The chairman maintains that Maine law is very clear that residency must be established before voting. This is true, but Webster’s opponents on this issue are quick to point out that doing so is almost trivially easy, and certainly not beyond students’ ability. Webster insists on implementing several harsher residency requirements, such as paying income taxes.

He intends to prevent students attending schools away from their hometowns from voting in communities where their interests may run counter to the residents’. At the center of this issue is Maine’s Election Day registration law, which was repealed in June but may be on its way back from the grave. Webster contends that students—especially out-of-state students—who register and vote on their Maine campuses on a day-of basis may be committing fraud. Few such students think to notify their original place of registration of their new voting locale, and many are registered in two places at once. However, dual registration alone is not voter fraud, and Webster’s critics claim that Maine has virtually no issues with voter fraud, that voting machines are designed to protect against this issue, and that voter registries are routinely updated to account for changes of address.

Voting Blogs: Pennsylvania County Begins Exam of Failed ES&S Touch-Screen Systems; Will Vote on Paper Instead in November | The Brad Blog

“What is a vote worth?” Venango County, PA Election Board Chairman Craig Adams asked last week. “If the vote is counted it is priceless. If it is not counted, I don’t care what it costs. Let’s get a right.”

“After months of legal wrangling,” Marybeth Kuznik of the non-partisan Election Integrity advocacy group VotePA told The BRAD BLOG last week, Venango County’s landmark independent forensic examination of the notoriously unreliable and 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, most often touch-screen) e-voting system finally got under way. Kuznik explained that the study comes in the wake of the county having experienced “numerous reports of vote-flipping, candidates missing from screens, write-ins missing, and high undervote rates in their May 17 Primary.”

Voting Blogs: States Ignore the Impact Photo ID Laws Could Have on Their Citizens | Project Vote Blog

“The U.S. Supreme Court upheld voter ID requirements in concept three years ago, but justices said then that they might reconsider if opponents could produce actual voters who had been turned away because they could not get ID,” the Tennessean reports. This may not be far off as more and more reports of voters without photo ID begin to emerge. Although officials in at least three states have attempted to help voters adhere to the law, voters and advocates caution that it’s not enough if voters are not “plugged in” in the first place.

To prevent the disenfranchisement of Tennessee’s 230,000 senior citizens who have non-photo IDs, state officials are planning a campaign to teach them about the new photo ID law that goes into effect during the 2012 election. The new voting law essentially overrides another law that makes it more convenient for drivers over age 60 to renew their driver’s licenses. That law allows seniors to renew driver’s licenses—without a photo—online through the mail.

Transportation for elderly people in assisted living homes as well as long waiting periods at the DMV for seniors with disabilities are major concerns for groups like Tennessee Citizen Action, reports Chas Sisk at the Tennessean.

Voting Blogs: New North Dakota Data from Pew Asks: What Does the “Cost of Elections” Mean? | Doug Chapin/PEEA

Yesterday, my friends and colleagues on Pew’s Election Initiatives team released the first of a series of Election Data Dispatches, which will be dedicated to examining “what data exist, what they say about elections in America and how states and localities use data to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their election systems.”

You don’t need to go very far back in this blog’s short archives to see how excited I am to see this site make its debut. Take a moment right now and bookmark the page for future reference – I already have.

The first Dispatch looks at cost data collected by the State of North Dakota. For years, the Pew team and I have referred to cost data as the “white whale” of election administration – extremely valuable and eagerly sought, but elusive. Imagine our excitement when we discovered that North Dakota regularly collects such data – and had been doing so for 30 years!

Voting Blogs: A primary cause for concern – 2012 primary questions worry election administrators | electionlineWeekly

While the national parties work to shore up their bases and GOP candidates jockey for position and those on the fringe just try to take it all in, local elections officials are busy preparing for the 2012 election season. Some of these officials have numerous concerns about when the primary will be held, how much it will cost and whether or not new laws will impact part of the preparation equation.

In 2008 states across the country jockeyed to be among the first to hold presidential primaries with some of the primaries being held before some people had even taken down their up-too-long Christmas decorations. Four years later, while the race to be first may not be as frenzied, the battle over when to hold primaries still has some local election officials in a holding pattern for preparations for 2012.

Voting Blogs: Arizona and sham candidates — comparing different recall set ups | The Recall Elections Blog

Some interesting discussion by the Election Law Blogger himself, Professor Rick Hasen, focused on Olivia Cortes, the alleged sham candidate in the Russell Pearce. As I’ll explain below, because of the particularities of Arizona law, I don’t find the sham candidate problem that offensive.

For contrast, Hasen notes how California law works. California’s law eliminates sham candidates run to protect the targeted official. It provides for two concurrent votes, one on whether to actually recall the official, and the second (non-partisan) on the replacement. The removed official cannot run in the replacement race (which I believe was the source of debate during the adoption of the recall itself).

I think this is the best system, mainly because it limits costs and provides some contrasts between the official being recalled and the possible replacement. Though not a benefit, I believe the ability to draw a contrast with a successor actually benefits the elected official — as the official has somebody to attack rather than the potentially nebulous recall proponents.

Voting Blogs: In which I help the news media | Paper Vote Canada

1) Delvinia releases a report
“Our latest DIG report examines the Town of Markham’s experience with Internet voting in the 2003, 2006 and 2010 municipal election” Source
This is good.

In 2010, with the support of Ryerson University, Delvinia secured an Engage Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to commission Nicole Goodman, a PhD candidate specializing in Canadian political institutions and alternative voting methods, to provide a scholarly perspective on the data collected following the 2010 election as well as a comparison to the data Delvinia collected in the 2003 and 2006 elections.

It is also excellent to see academic research in this field and a rigorous report.
2) However

The DIG report is available online at www.delvinia.com/dig. The full research report is available for purchase through Delvinia. Please refer to our order form to obtain a copy of the report. Source

So objective fact 1: Delvinia is selling the full report.

Voting Blogs: Minnite: Propaganda and the Voter ID Campaign | Election Law Blog

Propaganda is playing a crucial role in the fast-moving campaign to enact more onerous voter identification (ID) laws in the states.  In this short blog post I want to show how the discussions of the issue of voter photo ID exhibit some of the salient features of political propaganda to obscure the real rationale for these laws: partisan political advantage.

As an example, consider the puzzling re-emergence of a sordid tale of election shenanigans from some three decades ago.  The scene is a series of Democratic primary races, and the locale is Brooklyn, New York, circa the 1970s and early 1980s.  In a 2008 Heritage Foundation legal memo on the case and countless other reports, op-eds, blog postings, and government testimony advocating for stricter voter ID laws, Hans von Spakovsky, the controversial former Georgia GOP county leader and one-time U.S. Justice Department official, has called this story “the best-documented case of widespread and continuing voter identity or impersonation fraud” in “living memory.”  It stands as a much-cited rebuttal to the critics who reject claims of an epidemic of voter fraud as unsupported by evidence.

Voting Blogs: Arizona Needs to Change its Recall Election Laws to Stop Gaming of the System | Election Law Blog

Controversy remains over the Russell Pearce recall election in Arizona.  The claim is that the embattled Senate leader’s campaign has recruited a sham candidate with an Hispanic surname—Olivia Cortes—to run in a way to help Pearce stay in office.  To understand how a sham candidate can help, consider this description of the election:

Pearce didn’t choose the option of resigning from office to avoid facing a recall election, so his name automatically goes on the ballot. He can submit a statement that also would appear on the ballot. He and any other candidates appear on the ballot without a listing of partisan affiliation. Any challenger or challengers must submit petition signatures from at least 621 voters registered in the legislative district. There is no primary, and the candidate winning the most votes wins. Charter-school executive Jerry Lewis has said he’s been encouraged to run and that he’ll make an announcement soon. The election is canceled if there’s no opponent on the ballot to face Pearce.

Voting Blogs: Irresistible Force Meets ImMOVEable Object: DOJ vs. New York on Military and Overseas Voting | Doug Chapin/PEEA

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) asked a federal judge to order New York State to change the date of its 2012 primary election. The government argues that current September date gives military and overseas voters too little time to return their ballots and thus fails to comply with the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act enacted by Congress in 2009.

DOJ and New York are well-acquainted with the courtroom and one another; DOJ sued in 2006 for failure to implement the Help America Vote Act and the state has been operating under a consent decree virtually ever since. Indeed, it is fair to say that no state has been as reliably consistent in the last decade as the Empire State in the implementation of new federal election laws.

Voting Blogs: A Century of Direct Democracy in California | electionsmith

A century ago, on October 10, 1911, Californians adopted a legislative referendum that created the initiative (and referendum) in California.  Critics today bemoan the fact that direct legislation in California is big business.  Special interests have used the process to pass countless propositions. In recent years, Californians have approved statewide citizen-initiated ballot measures reducing property taxes, giving citizens the right to vote on local taxes, banning social services for illegal immigrants and gay marriage, ending affirmative action and bilingual education programs in the public schools, increasing the tobacco surtax for state and county childhood education and health programs, permitting gaming on Indian reservations, allowing the prescription of medical marijuana, bolstering the minimum wage, limiting the term limits of government officials, and restricting campaign contributions.  Of the 24 states that permit the initiative, California had the second most initiatives on the ballot over the past hundred years, trailing only Oregon.

Voting Blogs: Protecting the voting rights of senior citizens | electionlineWeekly

California Assemblyman Mike Gato (D-Los Angeles) had heard enough from his constituents to know that something needed to be done. So earlier this year, he introduced AB547, a measure that would protect the state’s senior citizens from voter fraud and abuse.

“I authored AB 547 after hearing stories from my constituents about their parents and grandparents having their right to vote stolen by caretakers.,” Gato said in a release. “This legislation will help preserve the voting rights of some of our most vulnerable citizens- senior citizens under the care of others.”
The law makes it a misdemeanor for anyone providing care or direct supervision to a person who is at least 65 years old to coerce or deceive that senior into voting for or against a candidate or measure contrary to the senior’s intent.

Senior citizens are the fastest growing population in the U.S., especially as the baby-boom generation continues to age. Currently there are more than 35 million people aged 65 and over in the U.S. Of that population, more than a million are currently housed in one of the at least 19,000 assisted living facilities throughout the country.

Voting Blogs: Denver’s Inactive Ballot Flap: The Difficulty of Hitting a Moving Target | Doug Chapin/PEEA

On Monday, Colorado’s Secretary of State threatened to sue the Clerk/Recorder for the City and County of Denver if it followed through with plans to mail 2011 ballots to over 55,000 Denver voters classified as “inactive” because they failed to vote in 2010.

The dispute, which is vaguely reminiscent of the recent Battle of Cuyahoga over Ohio absentee ballot applications, once again pits a state official determined to enforce state law against a local official who seeks to continue a practice aimed at assisting voters.

What’s interesting in Colorado, however, is that the law is somewhat uncertain – which means that both parties in this dispute (Donnybrook in Denver? Rocky Mountain Rumble? Mile-High Melee?) might not have the full weight of authority on their side.

Voting Blogs: Did New Jersey election officials fail to respect court order to improve security of elections? | Freedom to Tinker

The Gusciora case was filed in 2004 by the Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic on behalf of Reed Gusciora and other public-interest plaintiffs. The Plaintiffs sought to end the use of paperless direct-recording electronic voting machines, which are very vulnerable to fraud and manipulation via replacement of their software. The defendant was the Governor of New Jersey, and as governors came and went it was variously titledGusciora v. McGreevey, Gusciora v. Corzine, Guscioria v. Christie.

In 2010 Judge Linda Feinberg issued an Opinion. She did not ban the machines, but ordered the State to implement several kinds of security measures: some to improve the security of the computers on which ballots are programmed (and results are tabulated), and some to improve the security of the computers inside the voting machines themselves.

Voting Blogs: Merge Ahead? New Approach to Voter Registration Could Help Send Election Debates in a New Direction | Doug Chapin/PEEA

As partisan conflict over jobs, taxes and a host of other issues has intensified in the last several months, so too has the conflict over election policy – in particular, voter ID.

I’ve already made it pretty clear that I don’t buy the dominant narrative – namely, that election policy debates are purely partisan fights aimed at creating favorable conditions for the 2012 Presidential election. I believe that those debates are more about the different policy views held by the parties and that by recognizing this we can identify and seize opportunities to make changes to our election system that serve voters while at the same time respecting the deeply-held views of both major parties.

If that’s the least bit intriguing to you, then today is your lucky day.

At 10am this morning (Monday, September 19), the American Enterprise Institute will co-host an eventwith my former colleagues at the Pew Center on the States entitled “Bringing Voter Registration into the 21st Century.”

Voting Blogs: Merge Ahead? New Approach to Voter Registration Could Help Send Election Debates in a New Direction | Doug Chapin/PEEA

As partisan conflict over jobs, taxes and a host of other issues has intensified in the last several months, so too has the conflict over election policy – in particular, voter ID.

I’ve already made it pretty clear that I don’t buy the dominant narrative – namely, that election policy debates are purely partisan fights aimed at creating favorable conditions for the 2012 Presidential election. I believe that those debates are more about the different policy views held by the parties and that by recognizing this we can identify and seize opportunities to make changes to our election system that serve voters while at the same time respecting the deeply-held views of both major parties.

If that’s the least bit intriguing to you, then today is your lucky day.

At 10am this morning (Monday, September 19), the American Enterprise Institute will co-host an eventwith my former colleagues at the Pew Center on the States entitled “Bringing Voter Registration into the 21st Century.”

Voting Blogs: Unfair Disparities in Texas Voter ID | Brennan Center for Justice

On May 27, 2011, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed into law Senate Bill 14, which requires that voters show photo identification at the polls in order to cast a ballot. Only the following forms of ID are acceptable for purposes of voting:

  • Texas driver’s license;
  • Personal identification card issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety and featuring the voter’s photograph;
  • Election identification certificate (a new form of state photo identification created by the legislation);
  • U.S. military identification card featuring the voter’s photograph;
  • U.S. citizenship certificate featuring the voter’s photograph;
  • U.S. passport; or
  • Concealed handgun permit issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

To obtain an election identification certificate, personal identification card, or driver’s license, individuals must travel to a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) office. Texas DPS runs the state’s Driver License Offices (DLOs). If the forms of identification mentioned above are obtainable at a DLO location, then assessing whether minorities must travel longer distances to reach their nearest DLO location is relevant to understanding the effect of Texas’ voter ID law. My analysis shows that Latino voters in Texas must travel farther than white voters to reach their nearest DLO.

Voting Blogs: New Jersey election cover-up | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

During the June 2011 New Jersey primary election, something went wrong in Cumberland County, which uses Sequoia AVC Advantage direct-recording electronic voting computers. From this we learned several things:

  1. New Jersey court-ordered election-security measures have not been effectively implemented.
  2. There is a reason to believe that New Jersey election officials have destroyed evidence in a pending court case, perhaps to cover up the noncompliance with these measures or to cover up irregularities in this election. There is enough evidence of a cover-up that a Superior Court judge has referred the matter to the State prosecutor’s office.
  3. Like any DRE voting machine, the AVC Advantage is vulnerable to software-based vote stealing by replacing the internal vote-counting firmware. That kind of fraud probably did not occur in this case. But even without replacing the internal firmware, the AVC Advantage voting machine is vulnerable to the accidental or deliberate swapping of vote-totals between candidates. It is clear that the machine misreported votes in this election, and both technical and procedural safeguards proved ineffective to fully correct the error.

Voting Blogs: Kris Kobach and the Seven Dwarfs | Rick Hasen/Election Law Blog

During yesterday’s “To the Point” show, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and I went over the question whether voter identification laws actually can prevent fraud.  I pointed out that impersonation fraud rarely if ever happens, and Kobach confirmed he’s got no cases of impersonation fraud he can point to in Kansas.  But Kobach also said that a state id requirement would be necessary to prevent a different type of crime: the use of false registrations (of fictitious people) to cast votes in elections.  He gave the example of someone registering and voting ballots for the fictitious seven dwarfs.  I pointed out that I was not aware of a single case of fraudulent registrations (such as from ACORN) leading to actual fraudulent votes (the reason the ACORN-type fraud occurred was because poor people who worked to register voters made up fake names to keep their jobs, not to rig elections.)  But a reader sends along another great point about why a state i.d. is unnecessary to stop voter fraud in this instance:

I was struck by the “perfect crime” tale — the  hypothetical attempt to register the seven dwarves. He seems to have ignored that HAVA’s voter id requirements for any voter who registers to vote by mail and has not previously voted in a Federal election. (See HAVA Section 303)  That is of course, presuming that Sleepy and Grumpy are not long time registered voters. If those “voters” want to vote absentee (I doubt the fraudster would be able to produce Sleepy and Grumpy to cast an in person vote without arousing some suspicion), they are required to provide a valid photo ID or a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck or other government document that shows the name and address of the voter.

Voting Blogs: It’s Not Just Who You Are, It’s Where You Live: Domicile and the Elections Stained Glass Window | Doug Chapin/PEEA

The past week’s headlines have a number of stories about the importance of political geography:

+ In Indiana, the state Supreme Court refused (for the time being) to take a case challenging the eligibility of Secretary of State Charlie White to serve, given allegations that he had registered to vote at an address where he did not live;

+ In New Jersey, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated former Olympian and current state Senate candidate Carl Lewis to the ballot after a trial court removed him because of the state’s “durational residency” requirement for candidates; and

+ Maine’s GOP chair cited evidence that 19 medical students registered to vote in 2004 from a South Portland Holiday Inn Express in arguing that the repeal of the state’s same-day registration law should stand.

Voting Blogs: Mahoning County’s Voting Machine Switch and the Growing Buyer’s Market in Voting Technology | PEEA

Mahoning County, OH (Youngstown) recently announced that it will be switching to optical scan voting machines for the November 2012 general election. The decision means County voters will no longer rely on touchscreen machines as the primary method of casting ballots, as they have since they were purchased in 2002.

The Mahoning story is a perfect example how the market for voting technology has changed in the years since passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), enacted by Congress in 2002 in response to the controversial 2000 Presidential election.

HAVA authorized almost $4 billion in federal funds for election improvements at the state and local level – much of which were earmarked for voting machine upgrades. Those funds – and the various mandates included in HAVA – made election offices motivated buyers and created a huge sellers’ market as vendors rushed to help states and localities spend their newfound dollars. In this environment Mahoning County’s $2.95 million purchase of 1100 touchscreen machines was typical.

Voting Blogs: Saguache County Case Asks: Whose Election is it Anyway? | PEEA

Lost in the national news about Congressional hearings and high-profile fights in Maine, Ohio and South Carolina is a running controversy in one Colorado county that raises fascinating questions about our system of elections and who’s ultimately in charge. Saguache County, located southwest of Denver, is huge in size (Rhode Island and Delaware could fit inside) but tiny in population (6,108 in the latest Census).

In November 2010, the County’s general election featured, in addition to federal and statewide races, a re-election contest for the County Clerk and Recorder position held by Melinda Myers. On Election Night, results appeared to show that Myers, a Democrat, had had lost to her GOP challenger Carla Gomez. A few days later, though, Myers’ office announced that her office had discovered an error and conducted a retabulation that resulted in her winning re-election.

Voting Blogs: The Treaty of Cuyahoga: Compromise on Absentee Ballots Will Yield Interesting Data | PEEA

Last week, I wrote about the looming Battle of Cuyahoga, where a dispute over absentee ballot applications pitted Ohio Secretary of Jon Husted against Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald.

Late last week, the two men met and reached a compromise: Cuyahoga agreed not to defy the state and mail absentee ballot applications in 2011, while the state agreed to allow all Ohio counties to mail such applications in advance of 2012. The compromise defuses the immediate controversy, but it also will allow the election community in Ohio and across the nation to evaluate a few key questions about absentee ballots.

Voting Blogs: Unconventional Wisdom: A Different View of the “War on Voting” | Doug Chapin

The September 15, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone features an article by Ari Berman that takes a look at recent election legislation in the states and concludes that the Republican Party is engaged in a “war on voting.”

Here’s how it begins:

As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots.

I beg to differ.

Quite simply, the current state of play in election policy can be explained by three factors that don’t require belief in some nefarious partisan conspiracy to alter the outcome of the next election.

Voting Blogs: Worth the Wait: DOJ Review of South Carolina Photo ID Could Yield First Real Data to Evaluate Claims of Disenfranchisement | PEEA

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Voting Section requested more information from the State of South Carolina regarding a new photo ID law for voters. DOJ is reviewing the new law under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires some states and jurisdictions – including SC – to submit their voting changes for approval before they can be enforced.

The request for more information – which gives the state 60 days to respond and will delay DOJ’s decision up to 60 days after the receipt of the new data – came in a letter from Section chief Chris Herren to the office of Attorney General Alan Wilson.

Voting Blogs: What More Can We Learn from South Carolina? | Election Updates

Doug Chapin’s post today on his blog digs down into the Department of Justice’s data request from South Carolina, seeking more detailed data concerning who does, and who doesn’t, have the identification required to vote in that state, as a consequence of their new voter ID law. I agree entirely with Doug’s top-line reaction — At last! Some real data.

At the same time, the request seems to miss an opportunity to find out more about whether voter identification laws will have a disenfranchising effect, and in particular, a disproportional effect on minority voters. The reason is that the disproportional effect may not be so much on whether whites and blacks have drivers licenses, but whether they have drivers licenses with the voter’s current address.