Illinois: Voter ID Bill, Pushed By Republican State Senators, Held Up In Committee | WSOY

A group of nearly 20 Republican state senators in Illinois have quietly thrown their support behind legislation that would require the state’s voters to present a government-issued photo identification card to an election judge upon voting — a requirement that currently only applies to early voters. State Sen. Kyle McCarter (R-Lebanon) last fall filed Senate Bill 2496 and in the months since then, fellow Republican state senators have also signed onto the measure. Earlier this month, the bill was assigned to a subcommittee but has failed to gain much additional traction.

Minnesota: Voter ID sponsor promises answers to come next year | StarTribune.com

As the photo ID constitutional amendment made an emotional passage through another committee Thursday, its Senate sponsor had a simple answer to queries about what will happen to absentee voters, mail-in voters, students voting away from home and provisional voters. Wait till next year, said Sen. Scott Newman, R-Hutchinson. Before the Senate Finance Committee approved his bill, Hutchinson recited his mantra: If voters approve the photo ID constitutional amendment in November, it will be up to the 2013 Legislature to decide how to implement the requirement that all voters at polling places “present an approved form of government-issued photo identification.”

New Hampshire: Senate reconsiders voter ID bill | The Portland Press Herald

New Hampshire’s Senate is voting next week on whether voters must show photo identification at the polls before casting ballots, but unlike a bill vetoed last year, the latest measure does not contain a provision that would delay the counting of some votes. The New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union says the bill is unnecessary but is not opposing it, and Senate Republican Leader Jeb Bradley expects the Senate to pass it to the House. “There is no need for this bill, but since something is going to pass, this is the most responsible and we believe it is constitutional,” said Claire Ebel of the civil liberties union.

Minnesota: Voter ID issue advances in Minnesota Senate | TwinCities.com

A bill that would ask Minnesotans whether to amend the state constitution to require voters to present a photo ID at the polls cleared its first hurdle at the Capitol on Wednesday. All eight Republicans on the Local Government and Elections Committee voted for the bill; all six Democrats voted against it. The bill heads next to the State Government Innovation and Veterans Committee. Eight other states have such legislation. Proponents say it’s a way to safeguard the integrity of the electoral system and reduce fraud, but critics argue it’s unneeded and will make it harder for the elderly, college students, the disabled and others to vote.

Editorials: All Quiet on the Voter Fraud Front – ACLU Offering Reward for Evidence of Voter Impersonation | Andrew Rosenthal/NYTimes.com

The Minnesota ACLU has offered a $1000 reward for an example of voter impersonation, which a proposed amendment requiring photo ID at the Minnesota polls would have prevented. Anyone looking to compete for the cash should know the following restriction:  the case must have been prosecuted in Minnesota within the last 10 years. I’m eager to see if the ACLU will have to start issuing checks. My guess is they won’t.

The proposed Minnesota amendment, and the ACLU challenge, is part of a larger story, which I’ve written about many times Let’s review this history so far. There is a campaign around the country to impose ID requirements on voters. Opponents of these measures, including me, say they are onerous and unconstitutional since they discriminate against the elderly, minorities, rural populations and poorer, less educated voters. It just so happens that many of these groups vote Democratic.

Minnesota: Voter ID to deter fraud? Prove it, ACLU says | TwinCities.com

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota offered a $1,000 reward Monday to anyone who can prove a case in which someone in the state has been charged or convicted of impersonating a voter. State ACLU Executive Director Charles Samuelson said his organization put up the bounty to show a Republican-proposed constitutional amendment to require voters to show photo identification at the polls is not needed. Samuelson said ACLU attorneys have not been able to find a single case of voter impersonation in the past 10 years.

Minnesota: Voter ID measure passes first state Minnesota Senate committee | mndaily.com – The Minnesota Daily

A state Senate committee passed legislation Wednesday that would allow voters to decide the voter ID debate. If added to the November ballot and approved by voters, the state constitutional amendment would require voters to show photo identification at the polls. The amendment passed the Local Government and Elections Committee along party lines 8-6 — Republican supporters claimed it would prevent voter fraud, while opponents said it would make it harder for some people to vote. It will move to the Senate State Government Innovation and Veterans Committee.

Virginia: Voter ID Bill A Solution In Search Of A Problem | TPM

There are no reports of anyone ever signing an affidavit claiming they were another person in order to vote in Virginia. But that isn’t stopping Republican Virginia Del. Mark Cole from pushing legislation that would prevent such a scheme from taking place. His bill — which would make voters who lack an accepted form of identification cast provisional ballots — has passed the House. It’s raised the ire of Virginia Democrats who say it’s just one in a line of legislative measures proposed by Republicans in states across the country who are trying to suppress Democratic turnout.

National: New voting laws prompt efforts to educate students across nation | The Marquette Tribune

Last year, changes tightening Wisconsin voter ID laws sparked controversy among college students across the state, with some students and state officials claiming the new requirements would dissuade student participation in elections. Now, advocate groups have reacted to these concerns and sought to educate students about what they need for the polls. The Campus Vote Project, an initiative started in 2012 by the Fair Elections Legal Network, aims to mobilize students on college campuses across the country to work with college administrators and election officials to educate students about voting. According to Campus Vote Project’s website, the organization hopes to “overcome barriers students often face to voting that students often mention such as residency laws, registration deadlines, and strict voter ID requirements.” Students who contact the Campus Vote Project can receive a “tool kit,” which includes information about roadblocks to student voting and how to educate colleges about voting requirements.

Editorials: The Strange Career of Voter Suppression | NYTimes.com

The 2012 general election campaign is likely to be a fight for every last vote, which means that it will also be a fight over who gets to cast one. Partisan skirmishing over election procedures has been going on in state legislatures across the country for several years. Republicans have called for cutbacks in early voting, an end to same-day registration, higher hurdles for ex-felons, the presentation of proof-of-citizenship documents and regulations discouraging registration drives. The centerpiece of this effort has been a national campaign to require voters to present particular photo ID documents at the polls. Characterized as innocuous reforms to preserve election integrity, beefed-up ID requirements have passed in more than a dozen states since 2005 and are still being considered in more than 20 others. Opponents of the laws, mostly Democrats, claim that they are intended to reduce the participation of the young, of the poor and of minorities, who are most likely to lack government-issued IDs — and also most likely to vote Democratic.

Minnesota: Two fears drive fight on photo ID | StarTribune.com

A high-stakes political struggle over requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls is erupting in Minnesota, conjuring up emotional precedents from the notorious Jim Crow poll taxes to the old Chicago admonition to “vote early and often.” The determined Republican drive to pass a photo ID constitutional amendment as a needed deterrent to fraud — and the equally strong DFL effort to oppose it as a partisan ploy to suppress votes — has turned the ordinary driver’s license into a symbol of our national divide. “It’s like we’re back in slavery, only it’s all of us this time,” said Antoinette Oloko, an African-American woman at one of several protests against photo ID and news conferences at the Capitol in recent days. “We’ve had cases of ineligible voters, convicted felons, voting when they shouldn’t be,” said Dan McGrath of the pro-ID group Minnesota Majority, who has collected pictures of voters’ given “addresses” that turn out to be empty lots.

Missouri: Voter ID at center of Missouri Secretary of State election | seMissourian.com

On Nov. 7, 2000, hundreds of St. Louis voters were unable to practice that most cherished of constitutional sacraments. They were turned away from the ballot box, told their names had been placed on the city’s list of inactive voters.
House Speaker Pro Tem Shane Schoeller, R-Willard, calls that incident pivotal in two of his recent decisions — his introduction of legislation to require voter identification and to run for Missouri Secretary of State. “I think that’s when I began to understand the importance of having a secretary of state who truly wants to make sure your elections are fair and honest,” Schoeller said Friday during a stop in Cape Girardeau.

Virginia: Virginia’s would-be folly: A voter ID law | Jeremy Epstein/The Washington Post

As a security- and risk-assessment professional who is also a Virginia poll worker, I am disappointed by pending state legislation to tighten voter eligibility [“Voter ID fight heats up in Va.,” Metro, Feb. 4]. The proposed changes won’t have the claimed effect. Poll workers receive minimal training; in Virginia, they typically get two hours. Given the complexity of running a polling place, there isn’t time to teach how to check properly for fake IDs. Unlike police officers or supermarket clerks, who use such a skill every day, poll workers would use the skill at most a few days a year, so they won’t have enough practice for proficiency. Because of this, requiring an ID will not prevent voter fraud.

Wisconsin: Voter ID law limits ability of volunteers to register voters | Capitol Report

Becoming a U.S. citizen and registering to vote in Wisconsin used to go hand in hand. But thanks to the state’s new voter ID law, that’s no longer the case.
“It was done intentionally,” says Dorothy Sherman, a Milwaukee County resident and Wisconsin League of Women Voters member who helps new citizens register to vote after their naturalization ceremony. “This administration doesn’t want to be helpful, in terms of helping people register to vote. What they’ve actually done is make the process very difficult.”
Tucked inside the state’s controversial voter ID law, which was signed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker last May, is a provision that no longer allows the state’s non-partisan election agency to train and certify what are known as special registration deputies.

Editorials: The Past is not Past – Why We Still Need Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act | Jonathan Brater/Boston Review

Today the state of South Carolina sued the Justice Department for blocking its new law requiring citizens to show government-issued photo identification to vote. This is just the latest broadside in what promises to be a protracted battle over the constitutionality of state voting laws and federal protections against discrimination. For decades, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act has been a cornerstone of civil rights law. The provision requires certain jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to get federal “preclearance” before enforcing new voting laws. Today, opponents of the law are trying to dismantle this foundation of our democracy, bringing several court challenges in recent months. They argue that, 50 years after the worst abuses of the Jim Crow era, the law should be struck down as unconstitutional, and that federal protection of minority rights in these jurisdictions is no longer needed. Do they have a point? To paraphrase William Faulkner, the past is not past.

Virginia: Newman amendment would ease voting ID requirements for Virginia students | The News & Advance

The politically charged voter identification bill passed by the state Senate this week was amended on the floor at the request of Sen. Steve Newman to make it easier for students at private colleges to vote. Newman, R-Lynchburg, asked for the list of approved voter identification to be expanded to include any valid student ID issued by a four-year college, public or private, in Virginia. Current state law only allows election officials to accept public university IDs, because state institutions issue them. Private university IDs did not make the grade. Under SB1, voters who do not present valid ID at the polls will be required to cast a provisional ballot and submit proper identification later to ensure their vote is counted. This has ignited a contentious debate in Richmond, with Democrats arguing it will suppress the vote of minorities, the elderly and poor.

Minnesota: Legislators contentious over Voter ID | Minnesota Public Radio

Several groups are ramping up opposition to a constitutional amendment that would require Minnesotans to present a photo identification to vote. GOP legislative leaders say they want to put the issue to voters this fall. It’s an issue gaining momentum across the country. There are 15 states that require people show a photo ID to vote and another 26 states with legislation to create voter ID laws or strengthen them. Mississippi passed voter ID via constitutional amendment last year, but that state’s law requires approval by the U.S. Department of Justice before it can take effect. The Justice Department last month rejected a new South Carolina law that requires people to show government-issued photographic identification when they vote in person. Groups representing minorities, seniors, disabled people and others hope to convince Minnesota lawmakers to stop it here.

South Carolina: In voter ID case, South Carolina fights back against Obama administration | CSMonitor.com

South Carolina’s attorney general is asking a three-judge panel in Washington to reverse a Justice Department decision blocking the state’s new voter ID law. Obama administration officials said the state law would discriminate against African-American voters. In court papers filed on Wednesday, Washington lawyer Paul Clement and state Attorney General Alan Wilson requested that a three-judge panel be appointed to decide whether South Carolina’s voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The litigation sets up another election-year flashpoint between the Obama administration and state governments over the balance of federal-state power.

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.

Kansas: Opponents criticize effort to move up start date of citizenship requirement for voter registration | Wichita Eagle

Kansas is ill-prepared to ensure poor, elderly, minority and transient Kansans have convenient access to documents and ID cards that will allow them to cast a ballot in elections this year, voter advocates said this morning. Louis Goseland, who represents the KanVote group fighting voter suppression, said he and others in Wichita have tested agencies to see if they’re prepared for voter ID laws now in effect and that those agencies seem uninformed and unprepared to help would-be voters. “It’s just been one thing after another,” he told the House Elections Committee this morning.

Minnesota: State Prepares For Voter ID Battle | CBS

Minnesota’s nearly three million registered voters must sign a registry when they go to their polling place, but they don’t have to produce photo identification. That, however, might change soon. The Republican controlled legislature is currently pushing a measure that would leave the question of voter ID up to voters on the November ballot. Recent contested elections have given rise to concerns about imposter voters and the potential for fraud at the ballot box.

Rhode Island: Why Did Liberal African-Americans In Rhode Island Help Pass A Voter ID Law? | The New Republic

At a Senate hearing on voting rights last fall, Democrat Dick Durbin pointed out that voter ID laws were nothing more than a coordinated Republican effort to block poor and minority voters from the ballot. It’s a familiar charge, and Hans Von Spakovsky—Heritage Foundation fellow and leading voter ID proponent—squirmed briefly, before finding an out: “I don’t believe that the Democrats in Rhode Island who control…the state legislature would agree with that.” There’s a reason voter ID supporters have turned Rhode Island into a talking point: Of the eight states to pass photo ID laws in 2011, only Rhode Island had a fully Democratic legislature and a liberal governor. What’s more, black and Latino lawmakers were among the most vocal supporters of the July bill. Since then, Republicans have been happily invoking the law to rebut liberal accusations that voter ID laws are reviving Jim Crow-era tactics to disenfranchise minorities. If voter fraud is indeed taking place in Rhode Island, it would lend some credence to GOP talking points. But does the Rhode Island law actually represent good faith electoral reform?

South Carolina: State Sues Feds For Blocked Voter ID Law | Fox News

The U.S. Justice Department was wrong to block South Carolina from requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote, the state’s top prosecutor argued in a lawsuit filed Tuesday. Enforcement of the new law “will not disenfranchise any potential South Carolina voter,” Attorney General Alan Wilson argues in the suit against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. “The changes have neither the purpose nor will they have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority.” The Justice Department in December rejected South Carolina’s law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, saying tens of thousands of the state’s minorities might not be able to cast ballots under the new law because they don’t have the right photo ID. It was the first such law to be refused by the federal agency in nearly 20 years.

Virginia: Voter ID Bill Passes Senate on Bolling Tiebreaker | NBC4 Washington

Legislation forcing voters to bring identification to Virginia polling places on Election Day won Senate passage Monday after Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling broke a 20-20 partisan deadlock. Monday’s vote in the 40-member Senate marked what opponents felt was the last chance to stop the legislation that they likened to Jim Crow-era poll taxes, claiming it would suppress votes of minorities, the elderly or disabled and students. The next stop for the bill is the House of Delegates, where Republican conservatives control two-thirds of the seats and have already passed similar legislation on largely party line votes.

Editorials: Keeping Virginians from voting | The Washington Post

For decades Virginia has allowed residents who lack proof of identification or whose IDs have been lost or stolen to vote, provided they are listed in the voting rolls and sign sworn statements attesting to their identities. Now, in response to no known problem, Republicans are backing a change already approved by the House of Delegates that would allow such citizens to cast only provisional ballots, which would be counted only if their identities were subsequently verified with IDs. Given that 11 percent of voting-age citizens nationally lack photo IDs, that would place unmanageable burdens on thousands of would-be voters in the commonwealth. The bill’s chief sponsor is Del. Mark R. Cole (R-Fredericksburg), whose previous claim to fame was a bill in 2010 banning employers from planting microchips in their workers, on the grounds that doing so might enable a surreptitious incursion by the antichrist. Yes, really.

Maine: Lawmakers reject voter ID bill but authorize study of election system | Bangor Daily News

Members of the Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee voted to direct the Secretary of State to conduct a thorough study of Maine’s election system, a move that ends a controversial carryover bill that sought to require voter identification. Two weeks ago, Secretary Charlie Summers sent an annual report to the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee on the state’s Central Voter Registration system in which he called his yearlong review of voter registration data “troubling.” Summers said although most of the problems were related to human errors by municipal officials rather than intentional fraud, those errors contributed to inaccurate and unreliable state voter data.

Editorials: Voter ID bill is an unfunded mandate | PennLive.com

It is ironic that in an era when certain elected officials rail against unfunded mandates, government waste and the lack of citizen participation in the civic life of the country, those same officials are spending their taxpayer-funded resources on wasteful, ineffective voter photo ID legislation. Every three or four years, voter photo ID legislation such as Pennsylvania House Bill 934 — introduced by Rep. Daryl Metcalfe — makes its way to the forefront of the legislative agenda, moving to the top of the queue over bills that could help taxpayers save money, create jobs or even improve schools. HB 934 offers to misuse dollars from the federal Help America Vote Act intended to remove barriers to voting for the explicit purpose of making it harder for Pennsylvanians without a photo ID to vote. The bill also calls for the waste of at least $4.3 million from the Motor License Fund.

Kansas: New Kansas voter ID regs hitting voters in nursing home | Kansas Reporter

About 50 residents at Westview Manor, an adult care facility, not only face the challenges of sickness and old age, but they could be sideswiped by strict voter identification requirements. Only nine of the residents at the Peabody center have current identification cards and two have birth certificates that can be used to obtain a state ID cards, said Bonita Robertson-Boydston, executive director at Westview Manor. The chances that the more than 35 registered voters will get sufficient identification soon seem slim, she said. Without proper identification, the residents will not be permitted to vote in the south central Kansas community where they’ve voted for years, she said. The law applies to the Aug. 7 primary and Nov. 6 general elections.

Minnesota: Opponents of Voter ID amendment pack Senate hearing | Minnesota Public Radio

A proposed constitutional amendment to require Minnesotans to show photo identification in order to vote is facing a rough road at the State Capitol. Amendment opponents packed a Senate hearing on the measure Wednesday and dozens took turns to criticize the bill, providing most of the five hours of testimony. Republicans on the Committee on Local Government and Elections appear supportive of the bill, and they have the votes to advance it. The panel recessed without taking action or saying when the debate would resume.

Oregon: Oregon Escapes Notice in Voter Photo ID Battle | Roll Call

More than 200,000 people voted in this week’s special election in Oregon’s 1st district, and none of them had to show photo identification before they cast their ballot. As the voter ID battle rages on in states across the country, the Beaver State hardly registers within the movement, even though it’s possible for an Oregonian to vote without ever having to show a photo ID. “For people arguing about photo IDs, they just haven’t even taken Oregon under consideration,” one GOP strategist said.