National: ALEC Disbands Task Force Responsible for Voter ID, ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws | The Nation

Pressured by watchdog groups, civil rights organizations and a growing national movement for accountable lawmaking, the American Legislative Exchange Council announced Tuesday that it was disbanding the task force that has been responsible for advancing controversial Voter ID and “Stand Your Ground” laws. ALEC, the shadowy corporate-funded proponent of so-called “model legislation” for passage by pliant state legislatures, announced that it would disband its “Public Safety and Elections” task force. The task force has been the prime vehicle for proposing and advancing what critics describe as voter-suppression and anti-democratic initiatives—not just restrictive Voter ID laws but also plans to limit the ability of citizens to petition for referendums and constitutional changes that favor workers and communities. The task force has also been the source of so-called “Castle Doctrine” and “Stand Your Ground” laws that limit the ability of police and prosecutors to pursue inquiries into shootings of unarmed individuals such as Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. The decision to disband the task force appears to get ALEC out of the business of promoting Voter ID and “Stand Your Ground” laws. That’s a dramatic turn of events, with significant implications for state-based struggles over voting rights an elections, as well as criminal justice policy. But it does not mean that ALEC will stop promoting one-size-fits-all “model legislation” at the state level.

Alaska: Assembly postpones certifying election | adn.com

The ACLU asked for one last week. Then it was the NAACP. And if a young voter named Laura Herman doesn’t get one, she says, oh, there will be trouble. The Anchorage Assembly better launch an investigation into the city’s trouble-plagued April 3 election, the 23-year-old told Assembly members Tuesday night, or she’s going after their jobs. “There’s a bunch of you that I support on this Assembly, but I will actively be involved in revoking all of you because my voice is being taken away when you decide not to investigate,” she said. It’s not that the Assembly isn’t going to trigger an inquiry into the election, during which ballots temporarily ran dry at about one of every three precincts. Several Assembly members say they’ve made up their minds to do just that. Just not yet.

Voting Blogs: Wisconsin Supreme Court Declines to Hear Appeals of Both Injunctions on GOP Polling Place Photo ID Law | BradBlog

On Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued two one-sentence orders declining to hear both appeals filed by Republican state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen in two different polling place Photo ID cases. In both, judges in lower courts had blocked the controversial voting rights restrictions passed by Republicans last year, finding that the law violated…

Florida: Senate Argues for Its New Redistricting Map | Sunshine State News

The second draft of the Legislature’s redistricting plan for the state Senate answered all of the objections of the Florida Supreme Court to the first proposal and should get justices’ approval, according to a Senate brief in the case. The brief, filed in response to complaints by the Florida Democratic Party, a coalition of voting-rights groups and the NAACP, came a week before oral arguments on the plan before the court. Also on Friday, the justices issued an order dividing two hours of arguments among the Senate and the groups opposing the plan. Lawyers for the upper chamber argued in the 100-page filing that the new plan, approved by the Legislature after justices rejected the first draft, “addressed each of the flaws this court found.”

Wisconsin: Trial in Wisconsin voter ID lawsuit begins | Channel3000

A trial began Monday in a case challenging Wisconsin’s law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. Also on Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said that it won’t be taking up two cases pertaining to the state’s controversial voter ID law. That means the trial starting Monday in one of the two lawsuits is proceeding. The news came as lawyers made opening arguments in connection to a lawsuit brought by the Milwaukee chapter of the NAACP and Voces de la Frontera, an immigrants’ rights group. Both groups argue the law disenfranchises voters. NAACP attorney Richard Saks said testimony will show there are hundreds of thousands of voters who don’t have the required ID necessary to vote. “As such, this law needlessly imposes an onerous and unreasonable burden on otherwise qualified voters from participating in elections in the state of Wisconsin,” Saks said.

Michigan: Federal court dismisses redistricting case | The Detroit News

A federal court has tossed out a challenge to Michigan’s redistricting plans for the state Legislature. An order last week from a three-judge panel says the legal opposition to the new districts was “too factually underdeveloped” to proceed. The new boundaries are based on Census counts and begin with this year’s elections. Civil rights groups and Democrats sued late last year to challenge new boundaries for Detroit seats in the state House.

Pennsylvania: ACLU, NAACP will sue over voter-ID law | philly.com

Critics of the month-old voter-identification law are poised to challenge it in the courts and General Assembly. The American Civil Liberties Union says it will file suit over the law’s constitutionality by the end of April, and two Philadelphia Democrats are set to introduce a bill Tuesday that would repeal the controversial measure. “There is no basis for the law in the first place. No clear fraud across the state was ever demonstrated,” said Rep. Dwight Evans, who is to appear with Rep. John Myers at a news conference Tuesday at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation office at 7121 Ogontz Ave. in West Oak Lane.

Wisconsin: Top election official says he did not want immediate appeals of photo ID law | JSOnline

The state’s top election official said Tuesday he told the state Department of Justice he did not want to immediately appeal two decisions blocking the state’s new law requiring photo IDs at the polls because voters should have plenty of advance knowledge of what rules will be in place for the April 3 election. Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen did not heed that request and on Thursday appealed both decisions. “We advised the attorney general’s office that it would be better if nothing changed before April 3,” said Kevin Kennedy, director of the state Government Accountability Board. “We don’t want the public in a yo-yo type situation.” Dana Brueck, a spokeswoman for Van Hollen’s Department of Justice, said in a statement the best way to prevent voter confusion would be for the appeals courts to quickly reinstate the photo ID requirement.

Editorials: How Voter ID Laws Are Being Used to Disenfranchise Minorities and the Poor | Andrew Cohen/The Atlantic

First, let’s call it what it is. The burgeoning battles over state redistricting and voter ID laws — and the larger fight over a key part of the Voting Rights Act itself — are all cynical expressions of the concerns many conservatives (of both parties) have about the future of the American electorate. The Republican lawmakers who are leading the fight for the restrictive legislation say they are doing so in the name of stopping election fraud — and, really, who’s in favor of election fraud? But the larger purpose and effect of the laws is to disenfranchise Hispanic voters, other minorities, and the poor — most of whom, let’s also be clear, vote for Democrats. Jonathan Chait, in a smart recent New York magazine piece titled “2012 or Never,” offered some numbers supporting the theory. “Every year,” Chait wrote, “the nonwhite proportion of the electorate grows by about half a percentage point — meaning that in every presidential election, the minority share of the vote increases by 2 percent, a huge amount in a closely divided country.” This explains, for example, why Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona are turning purple instead of staying red. “By 2020,” Chait writes, “nonwhite voters should rise from a quarter of the 2008 electorate to one third. In 30 years, “nonwhites will outnumber whites.”

Wisconsin: Wisconsin Attorney General Van Hollen files appeals in 2 voter ID cases | JSOnline

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced Thursday that his office had filed appeals in two challenges to Wisconsin’s voter photo ID law. “Both of these cases involve novel constitutional challenges to the voter ID law,” Van Hollen said in a news release. ” Due to the important statewide legal and policy issues at stake, defendants are suggesting in their filings today that certification of both cases to the Supreme Court would be appropriate.” Judges in Dane County had ruled against the law in both cases one brought by the NAACP’s MIlwaukee branch and Voces de la Frontera, and the other by the League of Women Voters.

National: UN Rights Council Delves Into US Voter I.D. Laws | Fox News

The controversy over requiring voters to provide photo IDs has reached the world stage. The United Nations Human Rights Council is investigating the issue of American election laws at its gathering on minority rights in Geneva, Switzerland.. This, despite the fact that some members of the council have only in the past several years allowed women to vote, and one member, Saudi Arabia, still bars women from the voting booth completely. Officials from the NAACP are presenting their case against U.S. voter ID laws, arguing to the international diplomats that the requirements disenfranchise voters and suppress the minority vote. Eight states have passed voter ID laws in the past year, voter ID proposals are pending in 32 states and the Obama administration has recently moved to block South Carolina and Texas from enacting their voter ID measures. “This really is a tactic that undercuts the growth of your democracy,” said Hillary Shelton, the NAACP’s senior vice president for advocacy, about voter photo ID requirements.

Pennsylvania: House passes voter ID bill | philly.com

Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives has approved the so-called Voter ID bill, setting the stage for Pennsylvania to become the 16th state to require voters to show photo identification at the polls. The House on Wednesday voted 104-to-88 – and almost strictly along partisan lines — to pass the measure, which would be in effect in time for the fall presidential election. Gov. Corbett has said he will sign it “right away.” Democrats, civil liberties groups, labor unions, the NAACP and others have complained that the bill will disproportionately hurt the elderly, the poor and the disabled, who make up the lion’s share of voters who typically do not have photo IDs. Those groups also tend to vote Democratic. Other states with voter ID laws have been facing legal challenges. In Texas, the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil right division on Monday objected to a photo voter identification law because it found it would have a greater impact on Hispanic voters. As a state with a history of voter discrimination, Texas is required under the Voting Rights Act to get advance approval of voting changes from either the Justice Department or the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

Editorials: GOP War on Voting Targets Swing States | Rolling Stone

On March 7, 1963, civil rights activists were brutally beaten by police in Selma, Alabama, during the infamous “Bloody Sunday” march, for advocating for the right to vote. This week, forty-seven years later, today’s civil rights leaders retraced the march from Selma to Montgomery, protesting what NAACP President Ben Jealous calls “the greatest attack on voting rights since segregation.” Since the 2010 election, Republicans have waged an unprecedented war on voting, with the unspoken but unmistakable goal of preventing millions of mostly Democratic voters, including students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly, from casting ballots in 2012. More than a dozen states, from Texas to Wisconsin and Florida, have passed laws designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process, whether by requiring birth certificates to register to vote, restricting voter registration drives, curtailing early voting, requiring government-issued IDs to cast a ballot, or disenfranchising ex-felons.

Editorials: Voter ID effort is a ruse | Philadelphia Inquirer

Here’s hoping that expected legal challenges of a requirement that Pennsylvania voters show photo identification at the polls will occur before the ink is dry on Gov. Corbett’s signature on legislation racing through Harrisburg. A Wisconsin judge has halted implementation of that state’s voter identification law before its April primary, responding to an NAACP lawsuit that contends voters without driver’s licenses are “disproportionately elderly, indigent, or members of a racial minority.” Likewise, the Republican proposal in Pennsylvania is nothing more than a new form of a poll tax, similar to those imposed to turn away black voters in the old, segregated South. So-called voter-ID rules would hit the old, young, poor, and minority voters the hardest — a slice of the electorate least likely to have government-issued identification of the type required under the measure approved Wednesday by the state Senate. The fact that this group of voters disproportionately leans toward Democratic candidates, particularly in Philadelphia and other urban areas, uncovers the voter-ID proposal for what it is — a blatant bid for a GOP advantage at the polls.

Delaware: How city and county councils are handling redistricting in the first state | State of Elections

Hurricane Irene was not the only thing to shake up Delaware this year. The 2010 Census has sent County and City Councils scrambling to create redistricting plans that reflect the changes in their districts’ populations and comply with regulations. According to Antonio Prado, Staff Writer for the Dover Post, the Dover Election Board sent a redistricting plan to the Dover City Council that complies with a 1988 consent decree that requires “a minority district with at least 65 percent black voters 18 years old and older.” This consent decree settled a lawsuit between the NAACP and the city of Dover, in which “the NAACP successfully argued that Dover’s at-large system of council elections was detrimental to the equal representation of the city’s minority voters.”

Wisconsin: Judge bars Wisconsin voter ID law temporarily | Journal Sentinel

A Dane County judge has granted a temporary injunction against Wisconsin’s new voter identification law, which he called “the single most restrictive voter eligibility law” in the country. Circuit Judge David Flanagan’s ruling Tuesday means the voter ID requirement would not apply for the April 3 presidential primary and local general election. A spokesman for Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said the state likely would appeal, and other state election officials pointed out that other aspects of the law will remain in effect, such as having to sign a poll list.

Pennsylvania: Voter ID bill heads toward final Senate vote | Cumberlink.com

Republicans pressed ahead Monday with a bill to require voters in the state to show certain photo identifications before their votes can be counted, lengthening the list of acceptable IDs and scheduling the bill for a final floor vote later this week. The bill would make Pennsylvania the 16th state to require a voter to show photo ID, and the concept has support from the Republican-controlled House and Republican Gov. Tom Corbett.
But Democrats intensely oppose it, as do the AARP, labor unions, civil liberties advocates and the NAACP, and accused Republicans of working to suppress the votes of the elderly, minorities, the poor and the disabled ahead of a presidential election. Republicans pointed to the wide use of photo IDs for things like prescription drugs or boarding airplanes and public polls that support such a requirement.

Editorials: A powerful argument for blocking Wisconsin’s voter ID law | Cap Times

University of Wisconsin political scientist Ken Mayer is one of the most serious and responsible analysts of the politics of the state. Widely respected as fair player, whose work is well regarded by members of both major political parties, Mayer is someone conservatives and liberals listen to for reasoned comment on the political processes of the state. So when Mayer talks about the challenges raised by Wisconsin’s new voter ID law, we should all take him seriously. In testimony this week before Dane County Circuit Court Judge David Flanagan, Mayer estimated that roughly 220,000 potential voters would be unable to cast ballots in coming elections because of the new voter identification measure.

Texas: Minority groups: New voting maps ‘total devastation for the Latino community across Texas’ | Associated Press

Disheartened and angry over the latest Texas voting maps handed down by federal judges, Democrats and minority rights groups looked Wednesday to a separate court in Washington as their last likely hope of cutting deeper into a solid Republican majority in the 2012 elections. The GOP stands poised to hardly lose any power under the latest Texas congressional and state House maps delivered this week by a San Antonio federal court, which confronted how the state’s political boundaries should be changed with more than 3 million new Hispanic residents.

Wisconsin: Judge refuses to halt new voter ID law, but trial date to be set | Wisconsin State Journal

A Dane County judge on Wednesday refused to immediately halt Wisconsin’s new voter ID law, but left the door open for two Milwaukee groups to prove their case at a trial before him. Circuit Judge David Flanagan wrote that the Milwaukee NAACP and Voces de la Frontera had not sufficiently demonstrated irreparable harm for him to issue a temporary injunction they were seeking to stop the law before the Feb. 21 primary election.

Editorials: Texas Redistricting: Deal or No Deal? | Roll Call

The Texas attorney general announced both parties reached a compromise map in the Texas redistricting case today — hours before the court-mandated deadline to keep the April 3 primary. But the majority of the plaintiffs say there’s no compromise yet, and a federal court in San Antonio suggested it agrees. Texas will pick up four House seats in 2012 because of population growth, mostly in the Hispanic community. Lone Star State GOP lawmakers passed an aggressive new Congressional map last year, but the plan has been stuck in court as the state seeks pre-clearance approval under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. State Attorney General Greg Abbott’s alleged compromise map is somewhat similar to the plan passed by the Texas GOP Legislature last year but includes an additional Hispanic-majority seat in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Texas: Behind Closed Doors – Texas Redistricting Panel | The Austin Chronicle

Monday, Feb. 6. That’s the deadline set by the San Antonio redistricting panel for all parties to agree on interim House, Senate and Congressional maps, or they’ll miss the deadline for the April 3 primary. But what will the minority voting rights groups want from those maps, and can they stay on the same page? There were rumors floating around all weekend that there could be a deal struck as early as today, but with all parties heading to DC to catch closing arguments in the preclearance hearing tomorrow, Jan. 31, that seems unlikely. The Mexican American Legislative Caucus told the Chronicle this morning that a deal is not imminent, even though they are all working towards some kind of agreement.

Florida: In Tampa, U.S. Senate Hearing to Target Florida’s Voter Rules | South Florida Times

A new state law that limits Florida’s early voting period and makes it more difficult for third-party organizations such as the NAACP and the League of Women Voters to register voters will be examined Friday at a special U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing in Tampa. Concerned state and federal lawmakers and civic leaders say they want the session to be a mandate for reversal of some of the restrictive measures passed last year by the Republican-controlled Legislature. Among the bill’s controversial provisions are tougher voter-ID requirements that critics say discourage, if not disenfranchise, minorities, the elderly, the disabled and the homeless and new and young voters.

South Carolina: Attorney General to speak on voting rights in South Carolina – chicagotribune.com

Attorney General Eric Holder plans to deliver a speech on voting rights on Monday at a Martin Luther King holiday rally in South Carolina, a state where just weeks ago his Justice Department blocked a new voter identification law. Holder plans to attend a rally sponsored by the civil rights group National Association for the Advancement of Colored People at the state capitol building in Columbia, S.C., according to a statement from the NAACP.

Florida: Early Voting Limits Could Negatively Affect Blacks, Latinos | Huffington Post

On the Sunday before the 2008 presidential election, church goers in Florida streamed from the pews to early voting places to cast their ballots. The so-called Souls to the Polls campaigns were a windfall for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and the Democrats. According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, more than 32 percent of those who voted early on that last Sunday before Election Day were African American, and nearly 24 percent were Latino. Moreover, according to a report released by the Florida State Senate, 52 percent of people who voted early in the 2008 election were registered Democrats.

“Preachers would preach a great sermon and then march to the polls with their congregations,” said Hilary Shelton, senior vice president for advocacy and policy at the NAACP.

But voting laws passed in Florida last year have limited early voting, including on the Sunday before Election Day. Opponents say the early voting limitations are part of a broader effort by Republican-led legislatures across the country to suppress the black, minority and elderly voting blocs, groups expected to be key to President Obama’s bid for reelection in 2012. The efforts include new voting laws passed in more than a dozen states, some requiring government-issued identification to vote and others limiting third-party voter registration drives.

South Carolina: Gingrich says Obama administration seeks to steal elections with voter ID ruling | MiamiHerald.com

Republican presidential hopefuls spent Saturday crisscrossing Iowa ahead of Tuesday’s caucuses, but some candidates had one eye toward South Carolina’s Jan. 21 primary and an issue that might help them gain traction in the Palmetto State. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who represented Georgia, used a stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to accuse the Obama administration of trying to “steal elections” in the wake of the Justice Department’s rejection of South Carolina’s voter identification law.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division determined that the South Carolina law requiring voters to show a photo ID at polling places was discriminatory against minorities. “… You have to ask, why is it that they are so desperate to retain the ability to steal elections, and I think that’s what it comes down to,” Gingrich said.

National: New laws in 2012: More voter ID | MJ Lee/Politico.com

Even as the feds move to block South Carolina from requiring voters to show a photo ID, a handful of other states are set to ring in 2012 with new laws mandating that voters produce picture identification cards before they are permitted to cast ballots. Beginning on Jan. 1, new laws will take effect in Kansas, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas requiring residents present a certified government-issued ID if they want to vote, according to a list of new 2012 laws compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Civil rights groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which co-authored an extensive report earlier this month detailing 25 voter restriction measures that passed in 2011 – eight of which were photo ID laws — say the measures represent a coordinated conservative effort to repress the voting rights of minority groups.

“Many surprises came out of the 2008 elections, including record turnout, registration and participation,” said Hilary Shelton, NAACP’s Washington bureau director, who called the number of voter laws that passed last year “unprecedented.”

Pennsylvania: NAACP mobilizes against Pennsylvania voter ID bill | Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

The NAACP’s Pittsburgh branch is mobilizing to oppose a bill that would require Pennsylvanians to show identification before voting. The organization on Wednesday likened the importance of the effort to ones that resulted in the abolishment of poll taxes. Members called on city residents to sign and help circulate petitions. They called on ministers to shout it down from their pulpits.

“The African-American community across the country fought long and hard to be able to vote,” said NAACP President M. Gayle Moss. “This is a tactic to reduce the number of senior citizen voters, African-American voters, who do not have cars or drive, and young voters.”

Wisconsin: More organizations agree that Wisconsin’s voter ID law is unconstitutional | Examiner.com

On December 16, 2011 the Milwaukee chapter of the NAACP and Voces De La Frontera, a Wisconsin group that fights for immigrant rights, filed a suit against the state of Wisconsin’s new voter ID law. The new law is Wisconsin Act 23 and will require voters to show photo identification at the ballots beginning in 2012.

Voces De La Frontera and the NAACP are challenging the law, saying that it is unconstitutional and is intended to marginalize voters. The two organizations’ challenges follow the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) that was announced on December 13, 2011. The ACLU is challenging the law because they say that it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment as well as the 24th Amendment which was enacted to protect against poll taxes.

National: Thousands Stage Manhattan Voting Rights Demonstration | The Afro-American

The assault on voting rights and voting practices drew loud and targeted protest in New York City Dec. 11 as a coalition made up of civil rights, organized labor and community advocacy organizations staged a march and rally they called the Stand for Freedom in midtown Manhattan. The rally, attended by approximately 25,000 demonstrators, according to one estimate, marked the vanguard of a counter-assault on the drive to erode voting rights, according to its organizers who say voting rights for minorities are under siege.

The coalition initiating the march and rally included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban League, Service Employees International Union Local 1199, and the American Civil Liberties Union, the demonstraters rallied against efforts by lawmakers in 34 states to undermine voter rights and zeroed in on 14 states where such laws have been passed. They also are trying to block attacks on early voting, Sunday voting and same-day registration.