Kansas: Kobach defends suspended voter list; study shows 59 percent on list are eligible to vote | Topeka Capital-Journal

One percent of people on Kansas’ suspended voter registration list are verified noncitizens, an analysis provided to Secretary of State Kris Kobach shows. But more than half have no factors preventing verification of their voter eligibility. The data analysis, provided to the Secretary of State’s Office by the leader of a conservative group that champions tougher voter verification measures, found 41 percent of individuals on the list have one or more factors preventing Kansas from verifying their eligibility. The suspended voter registration list — which stands at 25,000 — proved a flashpoint in Kobach’s re-election race against Democrat Jean Schodorf. Individuals who register to vote but don’t submit proof of citizenship are placed on the list. Critics of the secretary and Kansas’ voting requirements say the list contains thousands of Kansans who should be able to vote. Kobach, who has devoted his time as secretary of state to championing policies he says are needed to combat voter fraud, has referenced the analysis while speaking to lawmakers — but also has declined to provide it to either them or the public. The Topeka Capital-Journal obtained the document through an open records request, however.

National: Professor says right to vote in U.S. ‘has never been intrinsically tied to citizenship’ | Providence Journal

Extending voting rights to non-citizens is a hot topic from Burlington, Vt., to New York City to San Francisco. Supporters say allowing non-citizens to vote would give members of the community, including large numbers who pay taxes and own property, a voice in local political affairs. Opponents argue that extending voting privileges to immigrants would demean the value of citizenship and effectively disenfranchise legitimate citizen voters by diluting their vote. Ron Hayduk, a political science professor at Queens College, City University of New York,  supported expanding voting rights in a commentary “Noncitizens voting? It’s only fair,” published Jan. 1, 2015, in The Providence Journal. … In stating his case, Hayduk made this provocative statement: “But what most don’t know is that the right to vote in this country has never been intrinsically tied to citizenship.”

Guam: Territories’ voting rights lawsuit to be filed | Pacific Daily News

A national civil rights group is preparing a lawsuit against the federal government in an effort to grant the millions of citizens living in U.S. territories the right to vote in presidential elections. We the People Project, a nonprofit organization advocating for equal voting and citizenship rights for U.S. territories, is developing its case and could file the lawsuit within the next few months. “At this point we have a legal team together; we’re looking to identify people interested in identifying with the case,” said WPP President Neil Weare, a civil rights attorney. “Once we’re able to identify the plaintiffs we’ll proceed to file the case over the next few months.”

India: Community divided over citizenship rights | The Hindu

The Election Commission’s recent directive allowing Tibetan refugees to register for voter identity card for Delhi Assembly elections, which will help them acquire Indian citizenship, has not been welcomed by all and created a deep chasm within the exiled community. Those against acquiring citizenship rights argue that the Tibetans living in India must remain refugees as becoming an Indian citizen would “dilute the struggle” for a free Tibet. N. K. Trikha, national convenor of Core Group for Tibetan Cause, a pan-India group which advocates Tibet’s independence from Chinese rule, said, “Acquiring Indian citizenship will knock the bottom out of their reason for living in exile with a determination to return to their motherland or see her become free at some point in time.”

National: Court won’t reconsider Arizona, Kansas citizenship lawsuit | Associated Press

A federal appeals court has refused to reconsider a decision allowing residents of Kansas and Arizona to register to vote using a federal form without providing proof of their U.S. citizenship. A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver issued a one-sentence ruling denying a request from the two states. The appeals court ruled in November that Kansas and Arizona cannot demand help from federal officials in enforcing state laws requiring new voters to submit a birth certificate or other papers documenting U.S. citizenship.

National: States seek rehearing of voter citizenship lawsuit | Lawrence Journal-World

Kansas and Arizona have asked a federal appeals court panel to revisit its decision allowing residents of those states to register to vote using a federal form without having to provide proof of citizenship. The states submitted a petition late Monday asking the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals panel to rehear the case, saying they believe the court overlooked certain legal issues when it ruled against them in November. The appeals court ruled that Kansas and Arizona cannot demand federal election officials help them enforce their state laws requiring new voters to submit a birth certificate, passport or other papers documenting U.S. citizenship. The panel overturned a March ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Eric Melgren that required the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to tailor its federal voter registration form for those states to require those proof-of-citizenship documents.

Alabama: One of last vestiges of gutted immigration law, Alabama pushes voters for citizenship proof | AL.com

One of Alabama Secretary of State Jim Bennett’s last acts will be to try to implement one of the last provisions of the state’s controversial immigration law that has not already been resolved – a requirement that voters show proof of citizenship to register. Under that provision of the 2011 law, known as HB 56, people must show a driver’s license or some other valid form of identification in order to register to vote. But the state never implemented it while lawyers fought over the legality of the law’s broader measures, which sought to crack down on illegal immigration. The federal courts invalidated most of that law, and the state last year reached a permanent settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, agreeing to permanently black enforcement of seven provisions. Bennett announced last week, though, that the state will press ahead with the citizenship requirement now that the U.S. Senate has confirmed nominees to fill long-vacant seats on the Election Assistance Commission. That is the organization that must agree to change the federal voter registration form to comply with the state requirements.

Florida: New legislation could allow former felons to vote in federal elections | Capitol News Service

Hundreds of thousands of Floridians who have served time in prison are unable to vote because of what some are calling the most restrictive rights restoration policy in the nation. But multiple efforts are underway to change the system. The restoration of civil rights includes the right to vote, serve on a jury, or hold public office. It does not included the right to own a firearm. Legislation pending in Congress could require the state to allow former felons to vote in federal elections. About 50 black-shirted protesters showed up at the quarterly Clemency Board meeting, angry over what some call the most restrictive clemency system in the nation. Over the course of four years, those getting their rights back has fallen from 30,000 to under 1,000 last year. Applicants must wait at least five years before even applying. And a single speeding ticket can disqualify someone.

Canada: Overseas voters will have to prove citizenship, residency under new rules | CBC

The government has introduced legislation to tighten the rules for Canadians who want to cast a ballot while living outside the country. Under the proposed new rules, anyone who wants to vote in a Canadian federal election while living abroad will have to provide proof of citizenship, as well as their most recent Canadian address, in order to receive a ballot. The new requirements will not apply to those serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. The chief electoral officer will also be authorized to cross-reference current voting list with citizenship and immigration data to purge non-Canadians from the voting list. A government-issued backgrounder accompanying the bill notes that in Canada, voters “cannot pick and choose their riding,” but are required to cast a ballot in the riding in which they live. “By contrast, Canadians living abroad do not have to prove any past residence in the riding in which they vote,” it notes.

Kansas: Kris Kobach to seek expanded power to fight election fraud | The Kansas City Star

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said Friday that next year he’ll revive a proposal to give his office the power to prosecute election fraud cases, although he could face bipartisan skepticism from legislators. Kobach had pushed the idea after taking office in 2011, and his efforts to win legislative approval of the idea fell just short of passage two years later, even though fellow Republicans controlled the Legislature. Kobach won a second four-year term in this month’s elections with 59 percent of the vote. He persuaded legislators to enact a 2012 law requiring all voters to show photo identification at the polls and a 2013 statute requiring new voters to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship to register. But the secretary of state’s office can’t initiate election fraud prosecutions on its own, and such decisions are left to county or federal prosecutors.

National: Voter ID Laws Scrutinized for Impact on Midterms | New York Times

In North Carolina, early voting was cut by seven days. In Kansas, 22,000 people were stopped from registering to vote because they lacked proof of citizenship. And in Texas, Democrats say the country’s toughest voter ID law contributed to a one-term congressman’s losing a tight race to his Republican rival. After an Election Day that featured a wave of new voting restrictions across the country, data and details about who cast a ballot are being picked over to see if tighter rules swayed the outcomes of any races or contributed to the lowest voter turnout in 72 years. Since 2011, a dozen Republican-led states have passed strict voter ID requirements, some blocked by courts, measures that Republicans describe as needed to increase confidence in elections and critics call the modern equivalent of a poll tax, intended to suppress turnout by Democratic voters. Few are arguing that the laws drastically affected the overall results in a year that produced sweeping Republican victories, or that they were the dominant factor in voter participation. Although some Democrats claim the new laws may have swung close elections this month, voting experts caution that it is too soon to tell.

Canada: Compulsory Voting: Better for Politics or Better for Populists? | Torontoist

Should Canada require citizens to vote or face a fine as Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and eight other countries do? Debate over the merits of compulsory voting seem to spring up every time there’s an election. Proponents see voting as an essential duty of citizenship, and no different in that respect from paying taxes. The Australian experience indicates that even a modest fine of $20 for non-compliance is enough to boost voter turnout to more than 90 per cent. By contrast, Canada’s voluntary voting system has produced an average turnout of 62 per cent over the past five Canadian federal elections. The compulsory voting debate cuts across ideological lines. Supporters include Justin Trudeau’s adviser Robert Asselin on the left and National Post columnist Andrew Coyne on the right. And, for once, good-government advocate Don Lenihan and the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute are on the same page—both opposed mandatory voting.

Kansas: Fight over voter ID law heads to state courts, Legislature after appeals court ruling | Associated Press

The fight over a voter proof-of-citizenship law that prevented about 22,000 Kansas residents from casting ballots on Election Day has shifted back to state courts and lawmakers. The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals recently overturned a federal judge’s order that would have forced federal election officials to add citizenship documentation requirements on national voter registration forms for Kansas and Arizona residents. Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach has championed the law as a way to limit fraud. Opponents planned to argue that the onerous requirements wrongfully disenfranchise voters. “Any law that denies the right to vote to over 20,000 Kansas citizens is a bad law,” state Rep. Jim Ward, a Wichita Democrat, said. “We are going to try to correct it so that we prevent fraud without denying that right to vote.”

Editorials: We need to amend constitution over vote issue | The Des Moines Register

Eligible voters in Iowa had the opportunity to exercise a privilege of democracy when the polls opened on Election Day, Nov. 4. Some of them chose not to participate, but thousands of others were denied the right to participate by a disputed provision in the Iowa Constitution. That provision excludes otherwise eligible voters who have been convicted of “any infamous crime,” which has generally been interpreted to mean felonies. Which also means that literally tens of thousands of people who have served their time and paid their debt to society are denied one of the fundamental rights of citizenship in a democracy. The latest effort to end this denial of a fundamental right came in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa three days after the election. The lawsuit on behalf of a woman with a felony record from a drug conviction seeks have her voting rights restored by a Polk County District Court judge. She argues that her criminal conviction does not meet the definition of an “infamous” crime. Beyond that, the lawsuit asks the district court to specifically define which felonies fall under the broad definition of infamous crimes for voting rights purposes.

Bahrain: Manama bans Saudi-Bahrainis from elections | Arab News

The Council of Representatives in Bahrain has decided to exclude three people with dual Bahraini and Saudi citizenship from running for seats on the body in the forthcoming elections. The 40-member council is the lower house of the Bahraini Parliament and the main legislative body. The elections take place on Nov. 22. The body reportedly said recently that the three people who were rejected first had Saudi citizenship and then later acquired their Bahraini citizenship, which disqualifies them from standing as candidates under provisions of the country’s constitution. These provisions apply to all people who have citizenship of other foreign states, it said.

Voting Blogs: Back to Two-Track? Tenth Circuit Reverses on Arizona, Kansas Proof-of-Citizenship | Election Academy

Back in August, I blogged about the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals’ apparent skepticism about the case involving proof-of-citizenship requirements and the federal registration form in Kansas and Arizona. Two-and-a-half months later, the judges handed down a unanimous decision reversing a lower court and prohibiting the two states from imposing proof-of-citizenship on the federal form. … This decision reignites a series of conflicts:

1. The ruling doesn’t invalidate the imposition of proof-of-citizenship on state forms (the court specifically notes that it is not ruling on that issue) so, for the time being, two-track registration could be back on the table in Kansas and Arizona – perhaps with those states’ courts being asked to rule on its constitutionality;

National: Federal Form for Voting Is Ruled Valid | New York Times

A federal appeals court on Friday rejected the demands by Arizona and Kansas that federal forms for voter registration used in their states require documentary proof of citizenship. The decision, by the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, is the latest step in years of legal conflict between the states and the federal Election Assistance Commission over who has ultimate power over voting procedures. Most experts say there is no evidence that significant numbers of noncitizens have registered, an act that could lead to their arrest and deportation. But the issue has become embroiled in the emotional politics of immigration.

Kansas: Appeals court overturns state proof-of-citizenship requirements on federal voting forms | The Wichita Eagle

A federal appeals court has ruled that Kansas cannot force a federal agency to add state proof-of-citizenship requirements to federal voting registration forms. The decision by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver is a significant setback to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s efforts to require documents proving citizenship – almost always a birth certificate or passport – to register to vote. Arizona has a similar requirement and Kobach argued the case on behalf of both states in conjuction with Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett. Wichita District Judge Eric Melgren had ruled that the Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency, was required to add state-specific citizenship-proof requirements to the instructions for using the federal form in Kansas and Arizona. The appeals court overturned Melgren’s ruling.

National: U.S. voters contend with new voting rules in 14 states | Reuters

U.S. voters in 14 states are navigating new laws that critics say make it harder for lower-income and minority voters, who typically back Democrats, to cast ballots in the midterm elections. Advocacy groups across the country are gearing up to help voters contend with cutbacks in early voting and new state requirements for voter identification, which the mostly Republican sponsors say are necessary to combat voter fraud. Democrats and civil rights groups counter there is scant evidence of fraud, and say the measures are a Republican effort to depress turnout by Democratic-leaning demographic groups such as the young, poor and minorities. The laws are the latest in a wave of voting restrictions instituted by Republican-controlled legislatures and Republican governors since the party’s big election gains in 2010. Many are being used for the first time in a national election on Tuesday, after the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2013 invalidated a section of the Voting Rights Act that required areas with a history of racial discrimination, mainly in the U.S. South, to get federal approval for changes to voting laws.

Georgia: 40,000 ‘Missing’ Voters in Georgia Are Unlikely to Regain their Ballot | New Republic

ver the past few months, upwards of 40,000 voter registrations from three counties in Georgia have reportedly gone missing. The groups that registered most of these voters, the Georgia chapter of the NAACP and the New Georgia Project, filed a lawsuit against Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, alleging that most of those missing registrations are from “members of the underrepresented classes of voters.” The lawsuit went before the court on Friday October 24. By the following Tuesday, the judge had dismissed the case, writing that “there has been no failure of clear legal duty,” and asserting that there was still time for the missing registrations to appear. The stakes in Georgia are high. The Senate contest between David Perdue and Michelle Nunn has hovered within a couple of percentage points. The Governor’s race between Nathan Deal and Jason Carter is just as close. The loss of tens of thousands of voter registrations is a big deal. In the four years that Brian Kemp has served as Georgia’s secretary of state, most of the issues that various voting rights activist groups have flagged have been about voter identification. This isn’t the first time, or the second, or even the third that Kemp has clashed with civil rights groups over voter registration. In 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court found that a Georgia law requiring first-time voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship (that went above and beyond federal requirements) violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, Kemp called the decision “disappointing.” Last Monday, on the eve of the dismissal of the lawsuit, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that eight protestors were arrested because they refused to leave Kemp’s office after breaking off from a larger rally and sit-in at the state Capitol.

Kansas: More than 21,000 voter registrations in suspense because of proof of citizenship | The Wichita Eagle

De Anna Allen has served on a jury. She has served her country. So she was surprised when she couldn’t vote. Allen went to cast a ballot in the primary election in August and poll workers couldn’t find her name among the list of registered voters. She did cast a ballot, but it was provisional and did not count. Allen was among 27,131 people statewide who had signed up to vote but whose registrations were considered in suspense, or limbo, as of Oct. 14, the last day to register before the midterm election. Most of them – 23,026, including Allen – had not yet provided proof of citizenship. By Friday, the state had whittled that number to 21,473. The numbers of Kansans with incomplete registration because of citizenship are highest among the young and unaffiliated, an Eagle analysis found. Statewide, 12,327 people who identified as unaffiliated had their registrations suspended because of lack of proof of citizenship, compared with 4,787 who identified as Republicans, 3,948 who identified as Democrats and 361 who identified as Libertarians. Not all who applied identified a party, records requested by The Wichita Eagle from the state show. The number of men and women with suspended registrations was split pretty evenly. “It just caught me off guard that I was not registered,” Allen said. “I served for a week on a jury trial, which basically told me I was a registered voter. I’m a disabled veteran, so it’s particularly frustrating. Why should I have to prove my citizenship when I served in the military?”

National: Today’s voting freakout: noncitizens are coming to steal your election | Los Angeles Times

With only a few days left before election day, pretexts for panic over the sanctity of the ballot box are dwindling down to a precious few. Two political scientists from Virginia’s Old Dominion University have done their part, with an article on the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage politics website asserting that control of the Senate could be “decided by illegal votes cast by non-citizens” on Tuesday. The column by Jesse Richman and David Earnest is based on their longer paper in the journal Electoral Studies. Their methodology already has been challenged by other political scientists who argue that Richman’s and Earnest’s statistical sample doesn’t warrant their conclusions. That hasn’t kept some right-wing pundits from using it as a justification for the wholesale restrictions on voting imposed by Republican state governments across the nation. That’s because the Old Dominion researchers conclude that the noncitizens at issue tend to skew Democratic. Breitbart.com’s headline was “Study: Voting by non-citizens tips balance for Democrats.” RedState’s was “Study: Illegal votes can determine elections; Voter ID not sufficient.” Keep your eye on that RedState headline for a clue to how the study, as meager as it is, will be misused in the voter ID wars. What Richman and Earnest say isn’t that Voter ID is “not sufficient”; they say it’s not effective. In fact, they call it “strikingly ineffective” at stemming non-citizen voting.

Editorials: Methodological challenges affect study of non-citizens’ voting | Michael Tesler/The Washington Post

A recent Monkey Cage piece by political scientists Jesse Richman and David Earnest, which suggested that non-citizen voting could decide the 2014 Election, received considerable media attention over the weekend. In particular, columns such as Breitbart.com’s “Study: Voting by Non-Citizens Tips Balance for Democrats” and the National Review’s “Jaw-Dropping Study Claims Large Numbers of Non-Citizens Vote in U.S” cited results from the authors’ forthcoming Electoral Studies article to confirm conservatives’ worst fears about voter fraud in the United States. A number of academics and commentators have already expressedskepticism about the paper’s assumptions and conclusions, though. In aseries of tweets, New York Times columnist Nate Cohn  focused his criticism on Richman et al’s use of Cooperative Congressional Election Study data to make inferences about the non-citizen voting population. That critique has some merit, too. The 2008 and 2010 CCES surveyed large opt-in Internet samples constructed by the polling firm YouGov to be nationally representative of the adult citizen population. Consequently, the assumption that non-citizens, who volunteered to take online surveys administered in English about American politics, would somehow be representative of the entire non-citizen population seems tenuous at best.

Editorials: Why no vote fraud where ID is optional? | Richard Posner/Des Moines Register

The movement in a number of states including Wisconsin to require voters to prove eligibility by presenting a photo of themselves when they try to vote has placed an undue burden on the right to vote. Wisconsin’s statute permits voters to use only a Wisconsin driver’s license or Wisconsin state card, a military or tribal ID card, a passport, a naturalization certificate if issued within two years, a student ID (so long as it contains the student’s signature, the card’s expiration date and proof that the student really is enrolled in a school), or an unexpired receipt from a driver’s license/ID application. Wisconsin does not recognize military veteran IDs, student ID cards without a signature and other government-issued IDs. A recent national survey found that millions of American citizens do not have readily available documentary proof of citizenship. Many more — primarily women — do not have proof of citizenship with their current name. The survey also showed that millions of American citizens do not have government-issued photo identification, such as a driver’s license or passport. Finally, the survey demonstrated that certain groups — primarily poor, elderly and minority citizens — are less likely to possess these forms of documentation than the general population. … Consider the effect of strict voter ID laws on lawful turnout. The panel opinion does not discuss the cost of obtaining a photo ID. It assumes the cost is negligible. That’s an easy assumption for federal judges to make, since we are given photo IDs by court security free of charge. And we have upper-middle-class salaries.

Arizona: $15,000 cost for one ballot | Tucson News Now

The recent primary election chalked up a first: An unheard of cost. Every ballot cast because of the new bifurcated voting system cost taxpayers $14,867. State law says a voter can’t vote in state elections until or unless they can prove they are a United States citizen. The federal registration form does not require proof of citizenship. It asks only that the person swear upon penalty of perjury that they are indeed a US citizen. For the feds, that’s enough. For the state, it’s not. However, the federal courts have ruled that the voters who use the federal form will be allowed to vote for federal offices even if they are barred from voting for state and local officials.  So during the primary election, Pima County elections officials had to print separate ballots for those who used the federal form to register. That turned out to be for five different parties, even if there were no candidates for a federal office.

Editorials: When Duty Doesn’t Call: Voter ID laws bring out the worst in their uncivic-minded opponents | The American Spectator

Americans will cease arguing over the federal Voting Rights Act and its intricacies — oh, I imagine around the time Texas starts exporting ground water to Minnesota, or the Lord returns to judge the quick and the dead. Mandatory voter ID laws passed by Republican legislatures in Texas, Arkansas, and Wisconsin have been under legal assault by Democrats. A lower federal court order expanding statewide early voting and same-day registration in Ohio got overturned by the Supreme Court — which had before it, at the same time, an appeal from North Carolina asking affirmation of its right to eliminate same-day registration and voting, along with out-of-precinct voting. Democrats see in these various state laws an evil Republican attempt to suppress voting by minority group members likely to — duh — vote Democratic. Requirements to present photographic identification draw particular scorn. Republicans say all they want to do is make sure voting procedures are honest and reflective of actual popular will. The point commonly buried in these slanging matches over intent and results is a point little attended to in our current ideological wars. I would call that point the need for rekindled earnestness regarding the duties that come, or ought to, with exercise of the franchise.

Texas: Supreme Court ruling could thwart Texas’ appeal in voter ID case | Dallas Morning News

An unexpected U.S. Supreme Court order setting aside a voter ID law in Wisconsin could spell trouble for Texas as it tries to appeal a federal judge’s ruling striking down Texas’ own photo-identification requirement. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott was taking steps Friday to appeal the decision overturning the Texas law. But some election law experts pointed to the Supreme Court’s order blocking implementation of Wisconsin’s similar voter ID requirements before the Nov. 4 election. The high court, 6-3, handed down an emergency order in the Wisconsin case over the objections of the panel’s three biggest conservatives — Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The majority, including Chief Justice John Roberts, provided no explanation in the order. Because the Texas and Wisconsin laws are similar — with Texas’ law considered the strictest in the nation — Abbott’s appeal could run into a roadblock even if he is initially successful with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That is where he will lodge his appeal of Thursday’s decision by U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi.

Arizona: Dual Track Voting System to Affect Some First Time Voters | Arizona Public Radio

November will mark the first general election in which Arizonans use a dual track voting system. The new method prevents Arizona from imposing citizenship requirements on voters using the federal form. But it does allow the state to mandate proof of citizenship for local elections. It comes from a voter approved initiative to crack down on fraudulent voting. But, as Arizona Public Radio’s Justin Regan reports, the new system is proving difficult for some first time voters. Jason Kordosky is the campus vote organizer for the Arizona Students Association, today he’s at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff registering first time voters. “I think this is one of the most important elections so all these sort of state elections will have a huge impact on our educational system”, Kordosky said.

Texas: Justice Department, state clash over Texas voter ID law | San Antonio Express-News

Lawyers for the U.S Department of Justice and minority groups once again made the case that Texas’ controversial Voter ID law improperly discriminates against Latino and African American voters during closing arguments in federal court Monday. Attorneys for the Texas attorney general will present closing arguments later Monday. The closing arguments are scheduled to last three hours and are expected to end later Monday. The state has argued the law is constitutional, popular and essential to combat voter fraud. However, cases of in-person voter fraud, which a law like this would help prevent, are rare. Plaintiffs’ attorneys have argued that the voter fraud concerns are simply a rouse to impose new requirements that make it harder for minority voters to cast their ballots. The Voter ID law is a “serious problem in search of a solution,” said Richard Dellheim, an attorney with the Justice Department. “That problem is that it violates the Voting Rights Act.”

National: 5 States Put Voting Reform to the Voters | Governing

American election reform, where states look to either impede or assist people’s ability to influence government with their vote. Ballots in at least five states — Connecticut, Montana, Missouri, Illinois and Arkansas — focus on some kind of election reform. Most states have made voting harder in the past decade by enacting voter ID laws, ostensibly to guard against voter impersonation, a problem that the public believes to be more widespread than the evidence suggests. For example, a five-year crackdown by the Justice Department under President George W. Bush resulted in only 86 people being found guilty of voter fraud across all 50 states, according to a 2007 investigation by The New York Times. In part because many of these voter ID laws have already passed, the majority of the legislative activity in 2014 actually focused on making voting more convenient. … Based on interviews with state and local election officials in states with early voting, the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School argues that early voting brings a host of benefits, including shorter lines and less administrative burden on election day. Nonetheless, eight states have cut back on early voting since 2010. One recent example is North Carolina, where the legislature decided to cut a week of early voting, eliminate same-day registration during early voting and reduce the hours of early voting on the final Saturday before election day.