Editorials: Rigging the Game for Wisconsin’s Voter ID Supporters | Jon Sherman/Huffington Post

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has split 5-5 on whether to restore the injunction blocking Wisconsin’s voter ID law for this election. Since the full court deadlocked, the three-judge panel’s decision to stay the injunction — or let the ID law go into effect — will stand, absent intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court (which so far has not been sought). There is an 11th seat for an active judge on the court, but that tie-breaking seat has remained vacant since January 2010.  Following the 5-5 vote, the panel issued an opinion explaining its reasons for denying the request for rehearing and voting against the full court’s review, and the five judges who voted for continuing to block the ID law for this election filed a dissent. Both sides argued about the meaning of a 2006 Supreme Court opinion, Purcell v. Gonzalez. In Purcell, a district court had allowed Arizona to implement its new voter ID law, but with weeks left before the election, the Ninth Circuit issued an emergency stay, blocking the law pending its final decision. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the Ninth Circuit, finding that court orders changing the status quo so close to an election risk voter confusion and suppress participation. With the election mere weeks away and thousands of absentee ballots already mailed without ID instructions, hundreds of which have been returned without ID, the dissenting Seventh Circuit judges reasonably think Purcell requires blocking the law for this election (whatever the ultimate decision on the ID law’s legality).

Editorials: How the Supreme Court will continue helping GOP game elections | Paul Waldman/The Washington Post

The Supreme Court has granted Ohio’s request to throw out a ruling by lower courts stopping the state from implementing a law on early voting passed by the Republican state legislature. Meanwhile, cases on Republican-passed voting laws in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Texas are also working their way through the courts, and may all wind up in front of the Supreme Court in one way or another. So here’s a prediction: Republicans are going to win every single one of these cases. No matter how compelling the arguments of the opponents are, the simple fact is that there are five conservative justices who think that almost anything a state does to restrict people’s ability to vote is just fine with them. If you’re looking for the “tell” in laws like Ohio’s, you can find it on a Sunday — namely, the Sunday before the election (or sometimes every Sunday in the early voting period), which these laws almost always eliminate as a day when early voting can take place. What’s the significance of that Sunday? It’s the day when black churches conduct “Souls to the Polls” drives, organizing parishioners to head over to vote after services are over.

Editorials: Voting restrictions may reach the Supreme Court: From Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Texas. | Rick Hasen/Slate

he fights in our states over how hard or easy it is to vote have been filling the courts and are headed toward the Supreme Court. The cases range from voter ID laws to early voting rules and beyond. Already there is a case from Ohio, with ones from Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Texas potentially on the way in a matter of days or weeks. The stakes are high, not only for the lazy 2014 midterm elections but also for the 2016 presidential election and for the protection of voting rights in the next decade. The fact that the cases are making it to the Supreme Court at about the same time is no surprise. Over the past decade, in the period I have called “the voting wars,” we have seen both an increase in restrictive voting rights legislation passed by Republican legislatures, such as voter ID laws, and litigation from both Democrats and Republicans to manipulate the election system to their advantage. In 2008, the Supreme Court rejected a constitutional challenge to Indiana’s voter identification law, and in 2013, the Supreme Court in the Shelby County case struck down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act providing that states with a history of racial discrimination in voting get approval before making changes to their voting rules and procedures.

Ohio: Supreme Court Blocks Order to Restore 7 Days of Voting in Ohio | New York Times

The Supreme Court on Monday blocked an appeals court ruling that would have restored seven days of early voting in Ohio. The Supreme Court’s order was three sentences long and contained no reasoning. But it disclosed an ideological split, with the court’s four more liberal members noting that they would have denied the request for a stay of the lower court’s order extending early voting. Dale Ho, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the court’s action “will deprive many Ohioans of the opportunity to vote in the upcoming election as this case continues to make its way through the courts.” The ruling, which reflected a partisan breakdown in many court decisions nationwide on voting issues, saw the five Republican-appointed justices uphold the voting restrictions enacted by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature in February. The new limits removed the first week of Ohio’s 35-day early voting period, in the process eliminating the only week that permitted same-day registration, a feature most often used by minorities.

Editorials: The Partisan Court Blocks Extended Voting in Ohio | Jesse Wegman/New York Times

On Monday afternoon the Supreme Court justices decided 5-4, on party (of-the-president-who nominated-them) lines, to block extended voting hours and days in Ohio, 16 hours before voting was to begin there. The decision affects everyone in the state but will disproportionately harm poorer and minority voters, who rely on weekend and evening hours to avoid forbiddingly long lines on Election Day. The court’s order is technically temporary, but in practice it means that the longer voting hours won’t be in effect in 2014. There are reasonable arguments to be made about why these particular restrictions are not the most burdensome in the country, since Ohio already has four weeks of early voting. Still, the plaintiffs made the argument — accepted by a federal trial court and a three-judge appeals panel — that the cuts violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the battered-but-still-standing Voting Rights Act.

Editorials: Court urged to let Ohioans vote early | SCOTUSblog

Arguing that early voting is necessary to continue to deal with the “unprecedented disaster” at the polls in Ohio in 2004, several civil rights advocacy groups urged the Supreme Court on Saturday to permit Ohioans to start casting their ballots next Tuesday for this year’s general election.  Allowing that would merely keep in place what the state has been doing for the past four elections, and would not affect any other state, the fifty-four-page brief contended. Justice Elena Kagan is currently considering, and could share with her colleagues, pleas by state officials and the Ohio legislature to allow the state to cut back early in-person voting from thirty-five to twenty-eight days, to bar voting on most Sundays in the coming weeks, and to eliminate voting in the early evening on any day.   Those are the very opportunities, the advocacy groups said in their response, that tens of thousands of black and low-income voters have been able to use to cast their ballots. A federal district court judge in Columbus and a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati recently struck down the changes that the legislature and state election officials have sought to put into effect this year.  The state seeks to have those rulings delayed until the Supreme Court can settle the constitutional and voting rights law issues at stake.

Ohio: Supreme Court blocks early voting in Ohio | Cleveland Plain Dealer

The nation’s highest court on Monday granted an emergency plea from state officials to block a lower court’s order expanding statewide early voting days and times. The last-minute decision means early voting will not start Tuesday, but instead will be delayed one week. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted and Attorney General Mike DeWine asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse or delay the district court order restoring Golden Week, a week-long window when people could both register to vote and cast a ballot in Ohio, forcing Husted to add more early voting hours to the statewide schedule and allowing county boards of election to set additional hours. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who oversees the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals where the case was appealed, referred the case to the full court, which voted 5-4 to grant the stay. The court issued its order without an opinion or explanation, noting the court’s liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Kagan would not have granted the stay. Justices Samuel Alito, John G. Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy voted to grant the stay.

National: Wealthy political donors seize on new latitude to give to unlimited candidates | The Washington Post

Andrew Sabin gave Republicans so much money in 2012 that he accidentally went over a limit on how much individuals could donate to federal candidates and party committees. So Sabin, who owns a New York-based precious-metals refining business, was delighted when the Supreme Court did away with the limit in April. Since then, he has been doling out contributions to congressional candidates across the country — in Colorado, Texas, Iowa and “even Alaska,” he said. Top Republicans have taken notice: Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Florida Gov. Rick Scott have paid him personal visits this year, he noted proudly. “You have to realize, when you start contributing to all these guys, they give you access to meet them and talk about your issues,” said Sabin, who has given away more than $177,000. “They know that I’m a big supporter.”

Florida: Judge takes on gerrymandering; sets stage for Supreme Court cases in fall | The Washington Post

About 10 years ago, the justices of the Supreme Court took a good, hard look at the way politicians bend, tweak and manipulate electoral boundaries in order to protect themselves and punish their enemies — and threw in the towel. The Constitution, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for a plurality in Vieth v. Jubelirer , does not provide “a judicially enforceable limit on the political considerations that the states and Congress may take into account when districting.” In other words, politics is politics. It’s the court’s duty to decide what the law is, Scalia said, but sometimes the answer is that it is none of the court’s business. Scalia acknowledged that the Supreme Court had previously ruled otherwise. But “18 years of essentially pointless litigation” had convinced Scalia and others on the court that it was impossible to come up with a test to decide when partisan gerrymandering amounted to a constitutional violation. The political parties have been running through that green light ever since.

Editorials: The F.E.C. Lags on Campaign Finance Disclosures | New York Times

Billions of dollars are being spent in the run-up to this November’s midterm elections. The Supreme Court has struck down limits on campaign spending by corporations and unions, as well as overall caps on individual donations to candidates for federal office. More and more money is also being spent through ostensibly independent “super PACs” and nonprofit entities. Even as cash gushes through the system, though, we still have a key underpinning of our campaign finance law: the principle that the public has a right to know who finances campaigns, and how candidates, parties and other political committees are using those funds. If the Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with receiving and reviewing the reports and making the information available, falls down on the job, this principle is undermined. On May 21, about a month after reports for the first quarter of this year were filed, the research and technology teams here at the Center for Responsive Politics did a routine download of F.E.C. data, as we’ve done hundreds of times in our 30-year history. We use the information to populate a database that allows anyone to track giving by individual donors, their employers and their economic interests and to examine the links among campaign money, lobbying activity and the personal finances of politicians and key officials.

Editorials: Is there a First Amendment right to lie in politics? | David Schultz/Cleveland Plain Dealer

Should candidates or groups say whatever they want about an opponent, issue or themselves and have it protected as a form of free speech? Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a group had a right to challenge an Ohio law banning false campaign statements. While case law suggests the law will be declared unconstitutional, there is a compelling argument that electoral lies ought not to receive First Amendment protection. There should be outer limits on what can be said in campaigns in order to promote democracy and the integrity of the electoral process. Lying is wrong; even children know it. Philosopher Immanuel Kant asserted that deceivers lie to make themselves an exception to a rule that they expect everyone else to follow. We live in a world where we conform actions, make judgments and act as if others were truthful. Liars profit by taking advantage of this trust. If trust did not exist, then business would never exist. Contracts would be meaningless, promises futile.

Editorials: Does Supreme Court Want Truthier Elections? | Noah Feldman/Bloomberg

Was a vote for the Affordable Care Act a vote for “taxpayer-funded abortion”? Sounds like a question of opinion, doesn’t it? But when a pro-life advocacy group called the Susan B. Anthony List said as much about then-Congressman Steve Driehaus’s vote during the 2010 election cycle, Driehaus filed an action charging them with making a false statement about his voting record, a crime under Ohio law. Driehaus lost the election, and the case was never decided. But the SBA folks still wanted the federal court to strike down the Ohio law as unconstitutional. Yesterday, the Supreme Court allowed their challenge case to go forward — and that tells us something important about the future of election law. Because the Ohio court never got a chance to find SBA guilty or not guilty of making a false statement about Driehaus’s voting record, no court has yet addressed the question of whether Ohio can outlaw such false statements altogether. The Supreme Court restricted its unanimous decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, to the threshold question of whether SBA could go to court seeking to have the law overruled when there were no present charges against it. The court held that the answer was yes.

Alabama: Court to review Alabama’s ‘race-based’ reapportionment | The Washington Post

The Supreme Court said Monday that it will review Alabama’s legislative reapportionment plan, accepting a challenge from the state’s Democrats and African American legislators that the new plan was an attempt to limit minority effectiveness. The challengers said the state’s ruling Republicans packed too many minority voters into too few districts — ensuring minority representation in those districts but harming the chances for influence elsewhere. A three-judge federal panel had rejected the challenges filed by the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus and the Alabama Democratic Conference.

National: Supreme Court suspicious of Ohio law that criminalizes false speech about candidates | The Washington Post

Supreme Court justices across the ideological spectrum seemed deeply suspicious Tuesday of an Ohio law that criminalizes the spreading of false information about a political candidate during a campaign. Now they have to find a way for someone to bring them the proper challenge. Technically, the court was reviewing a decision by a lower court that an antiabortion group did not have the legal standing to challenge the constitutionality of Ohio’s law, which is similar to ones in more than a dozen other states. But the justices couldn’t resist giving a preview of their skepticism about what Michael A. Carvin, the Washington lawyer representing the group Susan B. Anthony List, called Ohio’s “ministry of truth” during oral arguments.

Editorials: Why Care About McCutcheon? | Mark Bittman/New York Times

In the food world, change from the ground up is all well and good. We desperately need cooks, gardeners, farmers and teachers. But we also need legislation. The recently passed and almost uniformly abysmal Farm Bill is a lesson in how legislation affects those of us working to change the chaotic so-called food “system.” Pittances were tossed at supporters of local and organic food, fortunes’ worth of agribusiness subsidies were maintained, and much-needed support for the country’s least well-off was slashed. That’s a Republican-led Congress at work, but when it comes to supporting Big Ag and Big Food, most of the Democratic representatives from states where farm income matters most are not much better: While the majority of Big Ag’s financial support for candidates goes to Republicans, Democrats are close behind. For big-time change on a national scale, we need representatives who put the needs of a sustainable food system and all that goes with it ahead of those of the chemical and processed food manufacturers who are currently running the show.

National: Supreme Court hears challenge to Ohio law that bars campaign lies | Cleveland Plain Dealer

U.S. Supreme Court justices of all ideological stripes expressed free speech concerns about an Ohio law that makes it a crime to lie about politicians during an election, making it appear likely they will back a challenge to the law launched by an anti-abortion group. The anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List told the court Tuesday that the law – which allows citizens to file complaints about untruthful statements with Ohio’s Elections Commission – chills free speech when it’s most needed – immediately before an election. Attorney Michael A. Carvin said complaints filed before the commission typically can’t be resolved before an election because of the time it takes to process them. He urged the Supreme Court to reject a lower court’s decision that his group lacks standing to challenge the law because it was never found guilty of a violation. “We’re facing a credible threat,” said Carvin. “We ask the Court to lift this yoke so that we can become full participants in the next election cycle.”

Voting Blogs: Ohio before the Supreme Court, Defending the Power to Police Political Speech: Is the End Near, or Now? | More Soft Money Hard Law

The State of Ohio is playing for time in its defense of its “false campaign statements” statute. It wants the case now before the Supreme Court decided on ripeness, win or lose; it wants to hold off a decision on the constitutionality of its law.  Some, Rick Hasen among them, believe that this might work.  But then again, it might not, and the law could well be put out to pasture without further ado.  The petitioner has argued in clear terms that the law is unconstitutional and that, on this point, the recent decision inUnited States v. Alvarez is dispositive.  Petition for Writ of Certiorari at 6-7, Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 134 S.Ct. 895 (2014) (No. 13-193).  And the Court could agree, motivated as well to spare the petitioner another expensive, time-consuming tour through the courts to win the victory that it is virtually guaranteed.

National: Supreme Court to Consider Challenge to Law Against Lying in Elections | Wall Street Journal

The Supreme Court will consider Tuesday whether two conservative groups can pursue a free-speech challenge to an Ohio false-statements law that if allowed would advance a broader push against state laws making it illegal to lie about a political candidate or ballot initiative. Although Ohio’s elections commission rarely refers complaints over false statements for prosecution, the conservative groups, including the anti-abortion organization Susan B. Anthony List, said the law discouraged them from running advertisements against a Democratic congressman. “It almost never comes to a criminal prosecution, but that doesn’t mean there’s no chilling effect on speech,” Daniel Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University who isn’t involved in the case, said of the law. More than a dozen other states have laws authorizing criminal or civil penalties for spreading falsehoods in political campaigns. The Supreme Court’s eventual ruling, expected by June, is unlikely to affect the state laws or political discourse in the current elections cycle. The case would instead likely be sent back for lower courts to consider whether the false-statement law violates the First Amendment by improperly suppressing protected speech.

National: SCOTUS hears local free speech case today | Cincinnati Inquirer

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday in a Cincinnati case that touches on free speech in elections, with an anti-abortion group seeking to challenge the constitutionality of an Ohio law that bans lying about political candidates. The case will pit two brilliant but stylistically opposite lawyers against each other, as they make competing arguments before the nine justices. Ohio’s State Solicitor Eric Murphy is an up-and-coming conservative star who will defend the Ohio law. Washington super-lawyer Michael Carvin is a seasoned Supreme Court veteran seeking to knock it down. Murphy and Carvin will face off in a legal clash that began during the 2010 congressional race between then-Democratic Rep. Steve Driehaus and his GOP challenger Steve Chabot of Westwood. An anti-abortion group, the Susan B. Anthony List, wanted to launch a billboard ad campaign accusing Driehaus of supporting taxpayer-funded abortions by voting in favor of the federal health reform law.

Editorials: Lying is free speech too | Los Angeles Times

Does the 1st Amendment allow states to make it a criminal offense to disseminate false statements about a political candidate? Should citizens who fear that their free speech will be chilled by such a law be permitted to challenge it even if they aren’t in danger of imminent prosecution? Only the second question will be argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, but it is inextricably linked to the first one. If the court rules that the Susan B. Anthony List, an antiabortion group, may not challenge Ohio’s criminalization of false political speech, that law and similar ones in other states will remain on the books. Ohio’s law prohibits false statements about a candidate if they are made knowingly or with reckless disregard of whether they might be false. If the Ohio Elections Commission decides the law was violated, it “shall refer” the matter to prosecutors.

National: Supreme Court to consider challenge to law barring campaign falsehoods | Los Angeles Times

The Supreme Court next week will consider for the first time whether states may enforce laws that make it a crime to knowingly publish false statements about political candidates. The justices will hear an antiabortion group’s free-speech challenge to an Ohio law that was invoked in 2010 by then-Rep. Steve Driehaus, a Democrat. He had voted for President Obama’s healthcare law and was facing a tough race for reelection. The antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony List launched a campaign to unseat Driehaus, preparing to run billboard ads saying, “Shame on Steve Driehaus! Driehaus voted for taxpayer-funded abortion.” The statement was false, Driehaus said, since under the law no federal funds can be spent to pay for abortions. He threatened to sue the billboard company, which decided against running the ad.

National: IRS rules to close campaign loopholes are slammed from multiple sides | The Boston Globe

The Internal Revenue Service, one of the most beleaguered federal agencies, is seeking to assume a new role in regulating election financing. And the reaction, perhaps predictably, has been critical. Many of the nearly 67,000 comments following the IRS’ proposal to rein in politically active nonprofits urge the organization to focus on its day job: tax collection. “It sounds to me like the IRS is making law, not enforcing it. Leave rule-making to the buffoons in Congress,” one comment reads. Another puts it more bluntly: “Stick to taxes.” The public opposition comes from both liberals and conservatives, who are blasting draft regulations released by the Treasury Department in November that would tighten restrictions on political spending by nonprofit “social welfare’’ organizations, formally called 501(c)(4) groups under a section in the tax code.

Editorials: Voter ID cases could let John Roberts destroy Voting Rights Act | MSNBC

After the Supreme Court wiped out the most important plank of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) last summer, a broad range of experts told msnbc that the law’s key remaining pillar may now be at risk from the court’s conservatives. And lately there’s concern that efforts to stop strict voter ID laws could, perversely, give Chief Justice John Roberts and co. the chance they’ve been looking for.  Striking down or significantly narrowing that key pillar, known as Section 2, would essentially render the most successful civil-rights law in U.S. history a dead letter. In a nutshell, Section 2 prohibits racial discrimination in voting. Though it’s a less effective tool than Section 5—which, until it was neutered by the Supreme Court, required certain regions to get federal approval before their election laws could go into effect—it’s still an important protection. The Justice Department is using it to challenge Texas’ voter ID law, as well as North Carolina’s sweeping voting law.

Montana: Officials ask high court to review party endorsements in judicial races | The Missoulian

The state’s attorney general and political practices commissioner have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a 2012 federal appeals court decision that struck down Montana’s ban on political party endorsement of candidates in the state’s nonpartisan judicial races. The case involves an attempt by the Sanders County Republican Central Committee in 2012 to endorse candidates for an open Montana Supreme Court race and in a contested race for district judge in the district that includes Lake and Sanders counties.

Editorials: The Constitution in 2014: Election rules | Lyle Denniston/Constitution Daily

America enters the election year 2014 with considerable uncertainty about two major constitutional issues: what will the rules be for financing the federal campaign, and what is the outlook for minority and poor voters at the ballot box?  Two controversial Supreme Court decisions will have a continuing impact: the ruling four years ago in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and the decision last June in Shelby County v. Holder. It is not too much to say that the money side of national politics has been turned upside down by the Citizens United decision – a ruling that, after a century of restrictions on political financing by corporations and labor unions, turned them loose to spend as much as they liked as long as they did so independently from candidates running for Congress and the Presidency.

Minnesota: Tea party and political buttons: Supreme Court declines Minnesota case | CSMonitor.com

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a case testing a Minnesota law that bans the wearing of buttons or clothing with messages that election officials deem too political to be worn within 100 feet of any polling place. The justices took the action in a one-line order without comment. It lets stand a federal appeals court decision upholding the statute. The Minnesota law seeks to prevent campaigning and electioneering by candidates and their supporters at the locations where voters are casting their ballots. But an array of conservative groups challenging the statute said it went far beyond preventing electioneering and violated the free speech rights of voters to express broader political ideas without facing government censorship.

Wisconsin: Road to restore Voting Rights Act runs through Wisconsin | Duluth News Tribune

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, most notably the requirement that states with a history of voter suppression obtain federal permission to change their voting laws. Those states are in the South. The road to restore that act runs through Wisconsin. “I am committed to restoring the Voting Rights Act,” U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said in August, surprising attendees at a GOP luncheon commemorating the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. Though they didn’t lose their lunch, party members — whose colleagues in some states had already moved to enact strict voter restrictions — weren’t expecting that announcement. An RNC spokesman told me then that Sensenbrenner wasn’t speaking for the party. Members of the other party didn’t all jump on the bandwagon, either. A spokesman for Democratic Minnesota Rep. Rick Nolan said then that Nolan would support the idea — adding an asterisk: “assuming it’s straightforward.”

Editorials: North Carolina Shows Why the Voting Rights Act Is Still Needed | The Nation

A federal judge in Winston-Salem today set the schedule for a trial challenging North Carolina’s sweeping new voter restrictions. There will be a hearing on whether to grant a preliminary injunction in July 2014 and a full trial a year later, in July 2015. This gives the plaintiffs challenging the law, which includes the Department of Justice, the ACLU and the North Carolina NAACP, a chance to block the bill’s worst provisions before the 2014 election. Earlier this year, in July 2013, the North Carolina legislature passed the country’s worst voter suppression law, which included strict voter ID to cast a ballot, cuts to early voting, the elimination of same-day voter registration, the repeal of public financing of judicial elections and many more harsh and unnecessary anti-voting measures. These restrictions will impact millions of voters in the state across all races and demographic groups: in 2012, for example, 2.5 million North Carolinians voted early, 152,000 used same-day voter registration, 138,000 voters lacked government-issued ID and 7,500 people cast an out-of-precinct provisional ballot. These four provisions alone will negatively affect nearly 3 million people who voted in 2012.

Editorials: The Year in Preview: Post-Preclearance Voter Protection | American Prospect

Anyone concerned about voting rights will remember 2013 as the year the Supreme Court neutered one of the strongest protections against voter suppression, the “preclearance” requirement of the Voting Rights Act. Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) had required that nine states (as well as dozens of counties) – Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia – all needed to abide by Section 5 preclearance requirements. Three counties in California, Five counties in Florida, three counties in New York, 40 counties in North Carolina, two counties in South Carolina, and two towns in Michigan also needed to have new election laws approved by the Department of Justice until last June. (as well as dozens of counties) with long histories of voter discrimination get any changes in election law approved by the Department of Justice or the D.C. District Court. This preclearance requirement was an invaluable civil-rights protection. It stopped many discriminatory elections laws, including gerrymandered maps and photo-ID requirements, like those in Texas and South Carolina.

Florida: Supreme Court won’t hear challenge to Fla. political donor law | Washington Times

A Florida political activist is out of luck after the Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear his challenge to a state law that prohibited groups from donating small amounts of money without first forming a political action committee. The high court has struck down a number of campaign giving restrictions and regulations in recent years, but its decision not to hear the case from plaintiff Andrew Worley means that the 11th Circuit Court’s decision in the case will stand and the Florida restrictions will remain in place. “It is definitely a disappointment, but the fight is not over. There are other courts looking at these issues in similar cases and eventually the Supreme Court will have to take them up,” said Institute for Justice senior attorney Paul Sherman. Mr. Sherman, who was the lead attorney on the case, cited cases in Arizona and Mississippi, where the plaintiffs have won and the states have said they will appeal. He noted that the Supreme Court, which does not disclose typically why it is not hearing an individual case, may have decided not to hear Worley v. Florida Secretary of State while waiting for those other cases will play out.