Missouri: Senate Democrats hope for compromise on voter photo ID proposal | Missourinet

Senate Democrats say Republicans wouldn’t compromise this session on a proposed constitutional amendment involving same-sex marriages, but Minority Leader Joe Keaveny (D-St. Louis) hopes they will on proposed voter photo ID legislation. It’s an issue that creates a strong divide between Democrats and Republicans – so much of a divide that Democrats have already threatened a filibuster.“I think that both sides have seen that when you have a controversial bill, it needs to be vetted, it needs to be discussed and there has to be some push and take. With SJR 39, none of that happened,” said Keaveny.

Editorials: “Soft” Voter-ID Laws Are Supposed to Make Strict Voting Requirements Constitutional. They Don’t. | Richard Hasen/The Atlantic

A recent lawsuit accuses the state of Wisconsin of disenfranchising an eligible voter who had lost the use of her hands, because she could not sign a government document to get a voter ID. Another voter, who was born in a German concentration camp and could not produce a birth certificate, had to go to extraordinary lengths at the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles in order to vote. Strict state voter-identification laws are proving disconcerting on the ground. So why are the courts bending over backward to uphold them? In 2014, the Wisconsin Supreme Court considered whether Wisconsin’s stringent voter-ID law violated the Wisconsin constitution’s right to vote. The court found that the law would impose severe burdens on voters who could not afford to pay for underlying documents, like an out-of-state birth certificate, to prove identification, and on those voters who, through no fault of their own, could not establish their identity under the exacting rules established by the state.

North Carolina: Long lines, confusion over voter ID reported in primary | News & Observer

Long lines forced some voters in Wake and Durham counties to wait three or four hours to vote Tuesday night in the North Carolina primaries. At a precinct in Raleigh at Pullen Park, where many N.C. State students vote, the university bused students in every 15 minutes, and more than 1,700 people voted there on Tuesday. By 7 p.m., a line of hundreds of people stretched into the parking lot. Polls had been scheduled to close at 7:30 p.m. “We were voting there until around 11 o’clock last night,” said Nicole Shumaker, Wake County’s deputy elections director. “And the reason for that was the early voting period for this primary coincided exactly with North Carolina State University’s spring break. So all those students were out of town during early voting.” Democracy NC, a group that advocates for more voter participation, blamed many of the delays statewide on confusion surrounding the state’s new voter ID laws.

Colorado: GOP voter ID bill advances in Colorado Senate | Associated Press

Colorado’s Republican-led Senate has advanced a bill requiring photo IDs for residents voting in person. Other GOP attempts to pass more stringent voter ID laws have failed here in recent years. That likely happens this year, too, once the bill gets formal Senate approval and goes to the Democrat-led House. Under the bill, voters no longer could…

North Carolina: North Carolina’s Voter ID Law Could Block 218,000 Registered Voters From the Polls | The Nation

Ethelene Douglas, an 85-year-old African-American woman who grew up in the segregated South and first registered to vote in 1964, was one of them. Her struggle to obtain the necessary ID vividly illustrates the problems with the law. In September 2012, Douglas’s niece, Clara Quick, took her to the DMV in Laurinburg, North Carolina, to get a state photo ID. Douglas was told she needed a copy of her birth certificate to get an ID. So they traveled across the state line to Dillon, South Carolina, where Douglas was born, to find her birth certificate. But the government office there said she needed a photo ID to get a birth certificate, and Douglas was caught in a seemingly unresolvable catch-22. (This account comes from an affidavit Quick filed in federal court.) Her niece called the South Carolina’s Vital Records office, paid $17 for an expedited birth certificate, but still couldn’t get one. Instead, she was told to find her aunt’s marriage certificate, which was in Bennettsville, South Carolina. After getting that, they made a second trip to the North Carolina DMV, but were once again told Douglas couldn’t get a photo ID because she didn’t have a birth certificate. They were so frustrated that they gave up trying for a time. In the fall of 2013, after North Carolina passed the voter ID law, they made a third trip to the DMV. An employee told Quick to get a census report to confirm her aunt’s identify, which she purchased for $69. Quick brought her aunt’s census report, marriage certificate, Social Security card, and utility bill during a fourth trip to the DMV in September 2014 and was finally able to get her the photo ID needed to vote.

Editorials: Kansas has a serious Voter ID problem, and needs to fix it | Journal Times

We have editorialized in support of the concept of Voter ID. If you want to cast a ballot with regard to the future of your government — at the local, state or federal levels — it doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask that you prove you are who you say you are. Needless to say, we think any state-issued or military-issued form of identification should be sufficient to vote in that state. If you’re 18 and eligible to have that ID, that should be all you need to vote. Which is why the reports out of Kansas are a disturbing affront to citizenship. There, as of September, about 37,000 people were unable to vote.

North Carolina: Voter ID law hinders some college students | News & Observer

Williams Foos, a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill, registered to vote in Orange County in 2012 and voted in the presidential election that year. But when he showed his Pennsylvania license at an early voting site in this year’s primary, he had to cast a provisional ballot. His vote may not count. In the state’s first use of the voter ID law, some college students’ ballots may end up filling the discard piles. As of Friday, 717 people had cast provisional ballots because they didn’t have acceptable photo identification. Four of the five counties with the highest concentrations of provisional ballots from voters without approved ID were Durham, Orange, Watauga and Wake, where those voters had home addresses on or near campuses. Robeson County was the fifth. Robeson is home of UNC Pembroke, but the county’s elections director couldn’t say why it landed in the top tier of counties with voter ID questions. Durham and Orange were the leaders, by far. Each county had more than 100 voters without acceptable photo ID.

West Virginia: Senate passes voter ID bill | Register Herald

The State Senate passed a bill Friday that will require voters to present identification before they can cast a ballot in the 2018 election. HB 4013 passed the upper chamber on a 20-14 vote, with two Democrats supporting the measure. The bill differs from the original version which required photo identification at the polls. The Senate Committee on the Judiciary amended the bill to include 15 different forms of identification, including a voter registration card, pay stub, SNAP benefits card, TANF card, credit or debit card and a utility bill. If poll workers recognize the voter, no identification is required, the bill says.

North Carolina: North Carolina Exemplifies National Battles Over Voting Laws | The New York Times

The stakes are high here and nationwide. The four lawsuits over the Republicans’ 2011 redistricting plans make their case on racial grounds. But some scholars are wondering whether the challenge to the congressional districts, and cases like it, might prompt the Supreme Court to take a new look at blatantly partisan gerrymandering. Advocacy groups and the Justice Department brought the federal lawsuit challenging Republican-backed legislation that established a voter identification provision and cut or curtailed provisions that had made it easier to register and vote. Those provisions were adopted over the last 15 years and championed by Democrats. The Justice Department argues that black and younger voters were especially likely to take advantage of them. The law included a reduction in early-voting days and ended same-day registration and preregistration that added teenagers to voting rolls on their 18th birthday. If the case is decided before November, it could have an effect on turnout in a tight presidential contest here — President Obama won North Carolina by a hair in 2008, and lost it by a hair in 2012 — as well as what is likely to be a difficult re-election fight for Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican.

Texas: A Voter-ID Battle in Texas | The Atlantic

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday it would rehear a case on Texas’s voter-ID law with its full complement of judges, setting up a major voting-rights battle ahead of the 2016 elections. Wednesday’s order underscores the increased power of the federal appellate courts while Justice Antonin Scalia’s former seat remains vacant on the U.S. Supreme Court. A potential 4-4 deadlock between the justices for the foreseeable future means the Fifth Circuit’s full ruling “may be the final word on Texas’s law,” Rick Hasen, a professor at UC Irvine law, wrote Wednesday. A three-judge panel in the Fifth Circuit ruled last August that the state’s voter-ID measure violated the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, which banned racial discrimination in election laws. Texas officials then sought a rare en banc review of that ruling, meaning the case would be reheard by the Fifth Circuit’s entire 15-judge bench. The circuit judges granted the request more than six months after it was made.

North Dakota: ID law may complicate voting for students | Bismarck Tribune

McKinley Theobald has volunteered in Fargo-Moorhead and canvassed in Iowa for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders. But the North Dakota State University junior still doesn’t know where or how she will vote for Sanders in November, should he become the nominee. “I wanted to register in North Dakota because this is where I live now. I spent the entire school year; it’s where I’ve invested my life,” Theobald, 23, said Tuesday. “But my parents are now moving to Illinois, and I have no connection to Illinois, but it’s easier for me to vote in Illinois, and that’s just kind of absurd to me.”

Texas: Court to re-examine decision striking down of Texas voter ID law | Reuters

A Texas law previously struck down requiring voters to show authorized identification before casting ballots will be re-examined, the U.S. Court for Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said on Wednesday. The court, which said its full bench of judges will participate, did not set a date or elaborate on why it will hold the review of the law a three-judge panel from the court said in an August 2015 decision violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act through its “discriminatory effects.” The measure was signed into law in 2011 by then Texas Governor Rick Perry, a Republican, and has been in effect since even as the legal challenges have wound their way through the courts. Plaintiffs have argued the law hits elderly and poorer voters, including minorities, hardest because they are less likely to have such identification. They contend the measure is used by Republicans as a way suppressing voters who typically align with Democrats. The measure, which supporters say will prevent voter fraud, requires voters to present a photo identification such as a driver’s license, passport or military ID card.

Virginia: Trial on voter ID law wraps up | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Social scientists testified for the defense Wednesday in the last day of a trial over the state’s voter identification law, attesting that they could not definitively say that the law was intended to blunt the influence of minority voters. A lawsuit filed by the Democratic Party of Virginia and two voters contends that the law that went into effect in 2013 was enacted by the Republican-controlled state legislature to suppress votes from minorities and youth who are more likely than other voters to support Democrats and tend to be less likely to have a valid photo ID. After the last witness in the more than weeklong trial in Richmond finished testifying Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson directed lawyers for the plaintiffs and the defendants — the Virginia State Board of Elections, the Virginia Department of Elections and officials from those offices — to file memorandums in lieu of making closing arguments. The memos are due March 25 and the rebuttals a week after.

National: Voting restrictions could offer warning signs for November | MSNBC

The first presidential election in more than half a century without the protections of the Voting Rights Act kicks into even higher gear over the next 12 days. And voters in several of the states with upcoming contests could face barriers to the polls. North Carolina, Kansas, Mississippi and Ohio are all among the states that hold primaries or caucuses between Saturday and March 15, and all have new voting restrictions in place. Nominating contests tend to attract fewer voters, and a more engaged crowd, than the general election, so the immediate impact may be limited. But what happens could offer warning signs about problems that could arise on a much larger scale in November. Already, voting restrictions and administrative snafus in Texas, Alabama, Georgia and Virginia, among other states, appear to have disenfranchised would-be voters.

Colorado: House panel kills measure requiring photo ID to vote | Grand Junction Sentinel

A House committee rejected a measure Wednesday to require Coloradans to show a picture identification card if they are registering to vote immediately before an election. Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose, who introduced HB1111, said it makes sense to require photo IDs to guard against anyone from fraudulently casting a ballot, especially that close to an election. But opponents of the idea, which has been a controversial one nationwide, said such a requirement only serves to turn people away from the polls because not everyone has a photo identification card, and oftentimes it takes some time to get one.

National: US elections 2016: Anger over new voter ID laws | Al Jazeera

In many ways, Alabama is the cradle of the voting rights movement, a place where Wilcox County circuit clerk Ralph Ervin says “stumbling blocks” have been turned into “stepping stones”. But on Super Tuesday civil rights activists say those stumbling blocks are preventing black voters from going to the polls. The issue in this state, where a quarter of the population are African-American, is voter ID laws. In 2014, the state changed the law and now requires all voters to produce government-issued photo IDs. At first glance that does not seem like an unreasonable request and those who back the law say it prevents voter fraud. But in sparsely populated poor communities, like Wilcox County, public transport is virtually non-existent -compounding the problem is the partial closure of more than 30 drivers license offices, many in predominantly black counties.

Editorials: Kansas’s restrictive voter-ID law keeps citizens from exercising a fundamental right | The Washington Post

The American Civil Liberties Union went to court last month to challenge an egregious Kansas law that requires residents to provide proof of citizenship — such as a birth certificate — to register to vote. The requirement seems contrary to the intent of the federal Motor Voter law, which was supposed to make registration simple. But legal or not, this state law and others like it are truly awful public policy. The case for the Kansas law is that noncitizens might be able to get driver’s licenses and register to vote at the department of motor vehicles, potentially allowing them to skirt the fraud prevention that more conventional voter-ID laws provide. But there is scant evidence of such voter fraud, and certainly not enough to justify demanding that people jump through even more hoops to cast a ballot.

Missouri: Voter ID laws again are gaining traction in the Missouri legislature | The Kansas City Star

It seemed that Missouri Republicans scored a big win when they passed a voter ID law in 2006, but the cheers were short-lived. The Missouri Supreme Court struck down the law on grounds that requiring voters to present photo IDs to vote was at odds with the constitutional right to vote. Every year since, Republican lawmakers sought to amend the state constitution and pass voter ID, yet came up short every time. This year, Republican leadership fast-tracked voter ID, and a pair of bills have cleared the House with an overwhelming majority and await debate in the Senate. “It has been a priority for us in the past, but not to the level it has been a priority this year,” said Sen. Will Kraus, a Lee’s Summit Republican who has sponsored sponsored voter ID bills for several years.

Texas: Years After Voter ID Law, Alternative IDs Confuse Texas County Officials | Texas Observer

More than four years have passed since the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature passed a controversial voter ID law, one of the strictest in the nation. At the time, civil rights groups and Democrats pointed out that hundreds of thousands of Texans lacked a driver license or other government-sanctioned forms of photo ID, and that cost and access could be a barrier to acquiring them. In one of the few concessions to opponents, Republicans agreed to create a new form of ID, the election identification certificate (EIC). The EIC is free to any qualifying voter as long as you can produce some combination of an array of underlying documentation, such as a birth certificate, Social Security card and proof of residence. But years into the voter ID experiment, the EIC has been all but forgotten — by voters and by elections administrators alike.

Wisconsin: Federal complaint filed over voter ID law | Wisconsin Gazette

Voter rights advocates, in a federal complaint, allege serious flaws at the Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles in the process for providing the photo IDs needed to vote in the state. As part of the voter ID law signed by Gov. Scott Walker, people are supposed to be able to request a free photo card from the DMV under certain circumstances. However, according to One Wisconsin Institute, bureaucratic delays and improper denials are preventing people from obtaining the IDs they need to vote. “There has been a comprehensive, systematic effort in Wisconsin to make voting harder and more complicated for targeted populations by Republican politicians attempting to gain an unfair partisan advantage,” Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Institute executive director, said in a news release. “The documented failures of the DMV to provide legal voters with the ID they now need to exercise their right to vote is yet another sad episode in the assault on democracy underway in Wisconsin.”

Texas: More than half a million registered Texans don’t have the right ID to vote on Super Tuesday | The Washington Post

As voters go to the polls on Super Tuesday, many will be casting ballots in states that have passed strict election laws that didn’t exist during the last presidential race. Out of the 13 states holding primaries or caucuses, there are five where voters will face new rules: Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. The laws range from asking voters to present photo IDs at the polls to requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Voting experts say that primary voters tend to be of demographics relatively unaffected by such requirements, as they are typically older and wealthier. The primaries also tend to attract more white voters. Still, Super Tuesday could serve as an early test of how the new laws will play out in the general election in November. This presidential race will be the first since a divided Supreme Court invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act and triggered a number of states to pass stiffer requirements for voting.

Missouri: Partisan divisions are clear as Missouri Senate takes up Voter ID | St. Louis Post-Dispatch

If you drive a car or buy alcohol, you probably need a photo ID. So shouldn’t you have one to vote? It depends on whom you ask. Partisan divisions are clear as the Missouri Senate takes up a proposal to require photo ID at the polls. The bill passed out of the GOP-dominated House in January on a party-line vote. While Republicans say requiring photo identification is necessary to ensure integrity at the ballot box, Democrats characterize the proposals as an attack on minorities, students and poor people — voters less likely to have a valid ID and more likely to support Democrats. The Missouri Secretary of State’s office estimates that 225,000 registered voters in the state lack a photo ID.

Virginia: State election official says he’s unaware of any voter impersonation in past 20 years | Richmond Times-Dispatch

The commissioner of the Virginia Department of Elections, one of the defendants in a lawsuit challenging the state’s photo voter ID law, testified Friday that he was not aware of any case of voter impersonation in Virginia over the past 20 years. Edgardo Cortés also said on cross-examination Friday, the fifth day of the trial before U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson in Richmond, that he believes the only form of voter fraud requiring photo voter identification might prevent would be someone trying to impersonate someone else.
The law took effect in 2014, and Cortés acknowledged there was some confusion and mistakes made by local election officials that year and in 2015. He expects to see more problems this year because it is a presidential election and turnout in the state could be 70 to 80 percent, compared with the 20 percent who might vote in an off-year.

Missouri: Voter ID bill clears last hurdle before Senate floor debate | St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A bill to require photo ID at the polls passed one last test Wednesday before heading to the Senate floor — where St. Louis Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, a Democrat, has vowed to lead a filibuster to stop it. The Senate Governmental Accountability and Fiscal Oversight Committee unanimously approved the bill, though its two Democratic members were absent. It would cost an estimated $16.6 million to advertise the new law and pay for the IDs and underlying source documents needed to acquire them. The Missouri Secretary of State’s office estimates that about 225,000 Missourians are registered to vote but don’t have a photo ID. This year’s proposal comes in two parts. The first would put the question on the ballot in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment. If passed, another bill that needs to win passage of its own would dictate how the law would be enforced.

Virginia: Voter ID law challenged in federal trial | Reuters

A Virginia law requiring voters to show photo identification went on trial in federal court on Monday, challenged by Democratic Party activists who allege it throws up barriers to voting by minorities and the poor. Lawyers defending the 2013 Virginia law said it prevented voter fraud. The trial in U.S. District Court is one of several voting rights legal battles as Democrats and Republicans square off before November’s presidential and congressional elections. The Democratic Party of Virginia and two party activists are suing the Virginia State Board of Elections and want Judge Henry Hudson to strike down the law.

Virginia: Plaintiffs in voter ID case may wrap up case Friday | Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Democratic Party of Virginia and two other plaintiffs may wrap up their case today challenging Virginia’s 2013 law requiring photo voter identification as an attempt to curb minority voting.
Allan J. Lichtman, a history professor at American University and author of “White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement,” testified Thursday that he concludes after study that the intent of the Virginia law was discriminatory. Among other things, Lichtman said the white share of the voting electorate in the state steadily declined in the 10 years leading up to the 2012 election when Democrats, for the first time since 1948, won consecutive presidential elections in Virginia. The Republican base in Virginia is heavily white, while the Democrats count heavily on African-Americans and other minorities and things are trending against the Republicans, said Lichtman, who has testified in more than 80 voting rights cases, at times for Republicans. “It’s race — this is the most fundamental divide politically. That’s what really matters between Republicans and Democrats,” he said.

Virginia: Expert witness testifies that there is no justification for Va. photo ID law | Richmond Times-Dispatch

An expert witness testified Wednesday in a suit challenging Virginia’s photo ID law that there is no evidence voter fraud is a rational justification for such a requirement in Virginia or any other state. Lorraine C. Minnite, author of “The Myth of Voter Fraud” and co-author of “Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters,” said the sort of fraud that photo ID is meant to prevent is so uncommon there is a concern it would cause more legitimate ballots to be lost than fraudulent ballots cast. “If there is no voter fraud, the question is, what is this all about? … Why are the two parties fighting so intensely?” asked Minnite, a witness for the plaintiffs, including the Democratic Party of Virginia. Minnite contends parties can win by expanding their own base or by decreasing the other party’s. “It goes to the logic and the strategy of trying to win elections,” she said.

Wisconsin: Justice Ann Walsh Bradley: Uncle who served at Iwo Jima unable to vote | Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel

A state Supreme Court justice on Tuesday urged Gov. Scott Walker to allow people to use veterans ID cards to vote after her uncle who fought at Iwo Jima was unable to cast a ballot in last week’s primary election. “It makes no sense to me that this proud patriot with a veterans card displaying his photo would be turned away from the polls and denied the right to vote,” Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote to the Republican governor. In her letter, Bradley said her uncle had fought at Iwo Jima, the bloody World War II battle that was immortalized in a photo of the U.S. flag being raised on the tiny Pacific island. Tuesday marked the 71st anniversary of the 1945 flag raising.

Virginia: Trial begins on lawsuit challenging Virginia voter ID law | Richmond Times-Dispatch

A 69-year-old black woman who grew up in a small, segregated city wept on the witness stand Monday as she testified about the trouble she had voting in 2014 because she could not comply with Virginia’s voter identification law. Josephine Okiakpe said she plucked several forms of ID from her purse — birth certificate, Social Security card, voter registration card, even a bank statement — and handed them over to workers at her Woodbridge polling place. The only things she had with her picture on them were her North Carolina driver’s license and an expired Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles ID card. “They wouldn’t take any of that,” said Okiakpe, who earlier had described attending an all-black public school in Clinton, N.C., that got hand-me-down books when the white schools got new ones.

Alabama: You can vote without ID in Alabama if you know some election officials | Times Free Press

It helps to know someone at the polls for Alabama voters with no photo identification. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange announced Friday that a ruling last week in a lawsuit against the state challenging voter ID provisions will still allow anyone without a valid photo ID to cast a ballot as long as at least two election officials can positively identify them as a qualified voter. The suit, filed by Greater Birmingham Ministries and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, alleges Alabama violated the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in enacting the photo ID requirement to vote. The group calls Alabama’s photo ID law suppressive and contends it “imposes significant and disproportionate burdens on African-American and Latino voters in the state,” states a case update posted in December on the NAACP website.