Connecticut: Connecticut House Debates Controversial Same-Day Voter Registration | Courant.com

After more than five hours of debate, the state House of Representatives voted Monday night for the controversial Election Day voter registration bill that has a long history in the state legislature. By a vote of 83-59, the House voted allow the same-day registration, despite complaints by opponents about potential fraud. Nine conservative Democrats broke with their party and voted against the bill. Only one Republican, Livvy Floren of Greenwich, voted in favor. Lawmakers have been clashing for more than a decade as the issue has been blocked by a veto by then-Gov.John G. Rowlandin 2003 and a federal court ruling in 2005 in Connecticut that rejected same-day registration.

Missouri: Bill requiring proof of citizenship at voter registration advances | KansasCity.com

People would have to prove they are U.S. citizens when they register to vote under a proposal approved by a Missouri House committee last week. But some of the bill’s most controversial provisions were stripped out after criticism emerged that they could make it more difficult for members of the military serving oversees to cast a ballot. Missouri House Speaker Pro Tem Shane Schoeller, a Willard Republican, painted the legislation as another attempt at preventing voter fraud. He sponsored legislation earlier this year that would require voters to show a government-issued photo ID, a bill that has cleared the House but has languished in the Missouri Senate. The legislation would require anyone wishing to register to vote to provide documentation — a birth certificate, passport or other document — that would show they are a U.S. citizen. It’s nearly identical to legislation passed last year in Kansas that was written by Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

National: Obama Campaign Confronts Voter ID Laws | NYTimes.com

Field workers for President Obama’s campaign are fanning across the country this weekend in an effort to confront a barrage of new voter identification laws that strategists say threaten the campaign’s hopes for registering new voters ahead of the November election. In Wisconsin, where a new state law requires those registering voters to be deputized in each of the state’s 1,800 municipalities, the campaign has sent a team of trainers armed with instructions for complying with the new regulations. In Florida, the campaign’s voter registration aides are traveling across the state to train volunteers on a new requirement that voter registration signatures be handed into state officials within 48 hours after they are collected. And in Ohio, Mr. Obama’s staff members are beginning outreach to let voters know about new laws that discourage precinct workers from telling voters where to go if they show up at the wrong precinct.

Editorials: Democracy Restoration Act Would Restore Voting Rights to Millions | Huffington Post

Despite two centuries of a national history extending the right to vote to ever more Americans, state legislatures have recently passed a flurry of laws that make voting more difficult. Some require government-issued photo identification cards; others are obstructing early voting or restricting voter registration drives. It’s time for Congress to protect the rights citizens of a democracy hold most dear and create the opportunity for greater citizen participation. Members can begin by opening up the voter rolls to the four million Americans covered by the Democracy Restoration Act.

Editorials: Virginia Voter ID bill reduces access | HamptonRoads.com

America has had a few episodes of voter registration fraud – people being paid to fake signatures to satisfy voting requirements. Election mischief, like the annual robocalls that remind people to vote on the wrong Tuesday, is much more commonplace. Voting officials also regularly find signs that election machines have been tampered with. In Virginia, as the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported recently, there’s an ongoing state police investigation into fraud by individual voters, most of them felons who hadn’t had their rights restored but tried to vote anyway. None of these problems would be addressed by the voter ID legislation passed by the General Assembly earlier this year. Last week, the legislature rejected amendments to ease restrictions that, in the governor’s words, seem specifically designed to disenfranchise certain voters.

Ghana: Police And Electoral Commission Cover Up Illegal Biometric Registration | ghanaweb.com

Acting on credible information received from a source in ododiodio that an NDC ward executive is using his tailoring shop for illegal Biometric registration, the Young Patriots made contact with the police service and some media houses to catch the culprits in the act adjacent the Barclays Bank at UTC in ododiodio. The culprit Mr Bernard Allotey with his accomplices, were arrested with biometric registration forms, scanning machines and equipments being used for registration. They also had in their possession, over 500 completed forms and biometric ID cards yet to be distributed. However in the regular mysterious fashion in which the Police handle cases related to the ‘no go area’ of Nii Lantey Vandapouye, the Police have since released the culprits who have vanished and are threatening Mr Akwasi Sarpong of Happy FM.

Florida: Third-party groups are registering voters – very carefully | Orlando Sentinel

In light rain outside a south Orlando pizza shop last week, Yohan Fonseca worked the trenches in one of Florida’s most contentious political battlefields. He was registering voters. “I love this work,” Fonseca, said after convincing Ramon Morales, 26, of Orlando, to fill out a registration form. “It’s really good to help the community. We need to vote.” Fonseca, 22, of Davenport, is a paid organizer for the non-profit Hispanic group National Council of La Raza. He and others are going where some long-time voter registration organizations say they are afraid to go: anywhere in Florida. Since passage last year of a new Republican-sponsored election-law rewrite, fierce debate has raged over whether new rules make it tougher for people to register and vote this election year. Among other changes, new law requires groups and individuals to turn in voter forms within 48 hours – they previously had 10 days – or face fines of $50 per late application, up to a maximum of $1,000 per organization per year.

Voting Blogs: National Voter Registration Act vs. Voter ID and Other Voter Access Challenges | Concurring Opinions

In the ongoing battle to improve access to elections and expand the electorate, civil rights groups have often used the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (and its amendments) as the preeminent weapon.  The most transformative legislation to come out of the civil rights movement, the VRA changed the complexion of this country’s elected bodies and increased access to political power for minorities through muscular remedies.  However, it is the NVRA (National Voter Registration Act), the VRA’s lesser known, younger cousin of sorts, that has been stealing headlines this week Sandwiched between the VRA and the more recent Help American Vote Act (HAVA)d passed in 2002, the 1993 NVRA is sometimes overlooked as a significant linchpin of voter access.  Indeed, the NVRA has played an important role in securing expanded registration opportunities for marginalized populations.  And, in the face of stringent voter ID laws that suppress voter turnout and shrink the electorate, both offensive strategies and defensive tools are needed.  The NVRA continues to prove that it can be effective on both fronts.

Florida: Election law review will extend into July | AP/MiamiHerald.com

A federal court review of Florida’s new election law will extend into July, just a month before the Aug. 14 primary. A Department of State spokesman on Monday said Florida is prepared to use two election laws if the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., doesn’t rule before the primary. A judge last week issued a schedule that doesn’t require final briefs to be filed until July 9.

Michigan: New voter registration bills pass to Michigan House | The State News

Some lawmakers and student groups are worried a package of bills headed to the Michigan House could make it significantly harder for campus organizations to register voters. A package of bills slated for discussion today in the House Redistricting and Elections Committee would add more requirements for third party groups to register voters, requiring leaders to pass a government-run certification class before kicking off election drives. It also would require applicants to present photo identification and swear under oath that they are a U.S. citizen. The issue quickly has become a divisive debate in Michigan, reflecting a national partisan conflict about how to regulate democracy’s most fundamental practice.

Ghana: Ghanaian Man with 15 voter ID cards fined GHC6,000 | MyJoyOnline

Emmanuel Archibald Laryea, the 47-year-old labourer arrested with 15 biometric voter identity cards, was on Tuesday sentenced to a fine of GHc6,000 or in default would serve a two-year-jail term for engaging in multiple registrations. In addition, the Accra District Magistrate’s Court sentenced Laryea to GHc600 fine or in default would serve nine months imprisonment for causing bodily harm. It said the sentences were to run consecutively to serve as a deterrent to others. The court presided over by Mr Ali Baba Bature ordered that all the biometric voter identity cards should be destroyed in the presence of officials of the Electoral Commission and personnel of the Ghana Police Service. Soon after the court had handed down the sentence, Laryea’s brother produced a card purportedly to show that his brother was a psychiatric patient, but the court did not accept it.

National: Voter Registration: Naturalization Push Ahead Of November Election | Huffington Post

A coalition of groups supporting immigrants has recruited teams of volunteers to help push programs they hope will add thousands of new U.S. citizens to the voter rolls in several states in time for the November presidential election. The national push comes after Democratic President Barack Obama has failed to deliver on promised immigration reforms in his first years in office and his likely opponent, Mitt Romney, adopted harsh rhetoric on undocumented immigration to win support from conservatives while campaigning for the GOP nomination. The Department of Homeland Security says an estimated 12.6 million people were holding so-called green cards given to legal permanent U.S. residents in 2010, including 8.1 million people who already qualify for naturalization but have not applied for citizenship. Latinos, considered a Democratic-leaning constituency, account for the largest immigrant community. Immigrants and other minority voters helped Obama to a comfortable win over Republican John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

North Dakota: Unlike the rest of the State, Medora voters must register to vote in North Dakota. | The Jamestown Sun

Attention Medora residents: By the time you read this article, you will have less than 12 hours to be eligible to vote for city elections. Medora is the only city in North Dakota that requires its residents to register. If they don’t register, they don’t vote — no way around it. Voter hopefuls must fill out a form, get it notarized and hand it in to the Medora City Auditor’s Office by 5 p.m. today to register to vote for city elections, according to a public notice from the city auditor. Voter registration in Medora was adopted in the early 1990s due to seasonal workers voting in the June elections, Mayor Doug Ellison said. “It’s up to the municipality to initiate (voter registration) or not, but Medora decided to do it back then just to avoid a repetition of this disputed election,” he said.

Virginia: Governor weighs options on voter ID restrictions | HamptonRoads.com

Gov. Bob McDonnell faces a tough choice on legislation to tighten requirements for voter identification: veto the bill after his attempt to soften it failed, or let it reshape election law without his preferred modifications. McDonnell has said he’s concerned that the bill, in its present form, could “disenfranchise people whose votes would have otherwise counted.” As written, the legislation would require voters without valid identification to cast a provisional ballot. They would then have to confirm their identity with election officials for the ballot to count. The General Assembly last week rejected McDonnell’s key amendments, which would have given election officials the authority to verify identities by comparing provisional ballot signatures to voter registration signatures.

Editorials: New curbs on voter registration could hurt Obama | Reuters

New state laws designed to fight voter fraud could reduce the number of Americans signing up to vote in this year’s presidential election by hundreds of thousands, a potential problem for President Barack Obama’s re-election bid. Voting laws passed by Republican-led legislatures in a dozen states during the past year have sharply restricted voter-registration drives that typically target young, low-income, African-American and Hispanic voters – groups that have backed the Democratic president by wide margins. A further 16 states are considering bills that would end voter registration on election days, impose a range of limits on groups that register voters and make it more difficult for people to sign up, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School. The new laws – many of which include measures requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls – could carve into Obama’s potential support in Florida, Ohio and a few other politically divided states likely to be crucial in the November 6 election, analysts say.

Virginia: Voter fraud investigated in Virginia | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Results of an ongoing Virginia State Police investigation of voter registration irregularities from the 2008 general election may signal a more significant voter fraud issue than some state lawmakers realized. As Virginia legislators hotly debated a voter ID bill that narrowly passed the General Assembly, many were unaware of a state police investigation that, so far, has resulted in charges against 38 people statewide for voter fraud. Warrants have been obtained for a 39th person who can’t be located. A majority of those cases already have resulted in convictions, and 26 additional cases are still being actively investigated nearly 3½ years after the state Board of Elections forwarded more than 400 voter and election fraud allegations from 62 cities and counties to Virginia State Police for individual investigation.

Ghana: Electoral Commission discovers inconsistency in voter registration | ITNewsAfrica

Ghana’s Electoral Commission (EC) has disclosed that it has detected 4,000 multiple registrations had so far been detected nationwide. The Commission has allayed fears that the problem occurred in a particular region that could favor a particular political party. The Director, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Department of EC, Gilbert Akomea, said such registrations did not follow any pattern or come from any particular part of the country, but were widespread across the country.

Georgia: State settles voter registration suit  | ajc.com

The state of Georgia has settled a lawsuit by agreeing to provide the opportunity to register to vote every time people apply for public assistance benefits, a coalition of civil rights groups said Thursday. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who signed off on the agreement, condemned the litigation. He said the settlement will cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to comply with “outdated and unneeded federal voter registration mandates and in attorneys fees paid to venue-shopping interest groups.” The lawsuit alleged the state had been ignoring its obligations under the National Voter Registration Act. The settlement details procedures the state must follow for distributing voter registration applications to public assistance clients when they arrive in person or contact the Department of Human Services by phone, over the Internet or by mail.

Voting Blogs: Arizona Case is a Vivid Reminder of Lasting Power of Motor Voter | Election Academy

Earlier this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit handed down an opinion in Gonzalez v. Arizona, a long-running case involving a challenge to Arizona’s proof of citizenship and ID requirement – two provisions enacted by Arizona voters as part of Proposition 200 in 2004. I have been following this case for several years, yet I will readily admit that I had completely forgotten about it in the wake of all the other challenges and controversies across the nation recently. The last “big news” on this case was a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2006 vacating an injunction and sending the case back to the lower courts for further disposition.

Pennsylvania: Counties get ready to give voter ID test run | electionlineWeekly

With less than a week to go until the April 24 primary, elections officials throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are busy getting ready. They are testing voting machines, making sure that ballots are the right size and that they have enough on hand and making sure the voter registration rolls are ready to go. But this year, in addition to all the traditional primary preparations, Pennsylvania elections officials and poll workers are preparing to ask voters to show a photo ID before casting a ballot on Tuesday. On March 14, both houses of the Pennsylvania General Assembly approved House Bill 934, requiring voters in the Commonwealth to show a photo ID in order to cast a ballot. Gov. Tom Corbett signed the bill into law that night. The law, which officially goes into effect on November 6, requires voters to show a photo ID with an expiration date. Acceptable forms of ID include driver’s license, non-driver’s ID, passport, military ID, college IDs issued by a public or private school in Pennsylvania, employee IDs from county, state, local and federal governments and ID cards issued by a state care facility. County election officials are using the April 24 primary as a test run of the new law for poll workers and voters alike.

Virginia: McDonnell weighs veto of voter ID bill | Washington Examiner

The future of a controversial voter ID bill is in serious doubt after a bipartisan group of Virginia lawmakers rejected Gov. Bob McDonnell‘s proposed changes, daring McDonnell to accept their version of the legislation or veto it. In its current form, the bill requires anyone who forgets to bring proper identification to the polls to fill out a provisional ballot, which would not be counted unless the voter returns with proper ID or sends an electronic copy. McDonnell sought to weaken the bill by allowing election officials to compare the signature on the provisional ballot with a voter registration card on file. But both the House and Senate shot down McDonnell’s amendment during Wednesday’s veto session, leaving the Republican governor with a bill that creates an “unduly burden and barriers to your vote,” he said. McDonnell must now weigh whether to veto or sign a bill he considers “unreasonable.”

Arizona: Ruling on voter requirement mixed – will be appealed to Supreme Court | azcentral.com

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has struck down Arizona’s 2004 voter-approved requirement that residents show proof of citizenship when they register to vote — at least on federal registration forms. The state can still require proof from voters submitting a state registration form, which is typically the form voters get from their county recorder’s offices and through the Motor Vehicle Division’s website. The 11-judge “en banc” appeals-court panel on Tuesday upheld the portion of the law requiring voters to show identification at the polls. Attorney General Tom Horne said he would appeal the portion of the law the panel overturned to the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Sandra S. Ikuta, who wrote in the majority opinion, said the Constitution requires the court to “safeguard” certain federal powers, including regulating federal elections. Among its provisions, the National Voter Registration Act creates a standard federal registration form that all states must accept. It requires applicants to sign a statement that they are citizens, but it does not require them to show proof.

Arizona: Court Upholds Voter ID Law, Strikes Down Proof of Citizenship Requirement | Fox News

Arizona has racially polarized voting and discriminated against Latinos, but a voter identification law did not disenfranchise Hispanics, a Court of Appeals ruled. A 12-member panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a law that required voters to show ID before casting their ballots, ruling it didn’t give Latinos less opportunity to vote. The court, however, struck down a critical provision of the law, known as Proposition 200,  that required that voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. The court ruled the federal National Voter Registration Act trumps that section of the Arizona law.   MALDEF, a Latino civil rights organization, one of the organizations that challenged the 2004 law, hailed the decision.

Arizona: Appeals court upholds Arizona’s requirement that people show identification before they can vote | AP/The Republic

An appeals court upheld a requirement in a 2004 Arizona law that voters show identification before they can cast ballots. The court says there wasn’t evidence that the mandate disparately affected Latinos as the challengers of rules had alleged. A 12-member panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals says in a ruling Tuesday that there was evidence Arizona has racially polarized voting and a history of discrimination against Latinos.

Colorado: Democrats hope bill can deliver mail ballots, presidential votes | The Denver Post

In the run-up to the 2008 election, then-Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign orchestrated one of the largest voter registration efforts in history, blanketing the country to register people door-to-door, at rallies and on college campuses. The strategy paid off. In Colorado, the number of registered Democrats increased by roughly 186,000 — almost four times the number of new Republicans. Unaffiliated voters also grew more than Republicans, then broke hard for Obama on Election Day, helping him clinch a 9 percentage point victory here. The enthusiasm didn’t carry over to 2010. According to data provided by the secretary of state’s office and analyzed by The Denver Post, of voters from all parties registered in 2008, nearly one-third did not cast ballots in the midterm election two years later.

Editorials: How to Expand the Voter Rolls | NYTimes.com

A country that should be encouraging more people to vote is still using an archaic voter registration system that creates barriers to getting a ballot. In 2008, 75 million eligible people did not vote in the presidential election, and 80 percent of them were not registered. The vast majority of states rely on a 19th-century registration method: requiring people to fill out a paper form when they become eligible to vote, often at a government office, and to repeat the process every time they move. This is a significant reason why the United States has a low voter participation rate. The persistence of the paper system is all the more frustrating because a growing number of states have shown that technology can get more people on voter rolls. There’s no reason why every state cannot automatically register eligible voters when they have contact with a government agency. The most common method, now used in 17 states, electronically sends data from motor vehicle departments to election offices.

National: Voter ID laws spark heated debate before U.S. election | Reuters

Liberal activists on Wednesday criticized new voter registration requirements in dozens of states, saying millions of people could be deterred from voting in the November U.S. presidential election – a claim their opponents disputed. The Center for American Progress issued a report that said new barriers to voting have been enacted by conservative state legislatures with the aim of disenfranchising voters from among certain groups such as low-income voters, minorities and college students. Those constituencies have tended to favor Democrats. “The right to vote is under attack all across our country,” the group said in a report that launched the latest salvo in the growing war of racially tinged rhetoric over new voter ID requirements.

Editorials: Why Isn’t Voter Suppression A Protest Cause? | The New Republic

This week brought another major report on all the efforts in state capitals, almost all Republican-led, to restrict voting rights via new limits on voter registration, early voting, proof of residency and voter identification, all in the name of countering the phantom menace of voter fraud. In a conference call to announce the report, which was produced by the Center for American Progress, Rep. James Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat, noted that the new rules had led several groups to stop registering voters in that most crucial of swing states, Florida, for fear of running afoul of the law: “To see the League of Women Voters walking away from voter registration activities in the state of Florida because to do so makes it almost inevitable that they will be brought before a court of law and charged with crimes — that is not the America so many of us started, back in our pre-teenaged years, working to make possible.” This prompted me to wonder again, as I did when I first heard about the decision by the registration groups to abandon Florida, why there hasn’t been more visible pushback against the new restrictions. Back in the 1950s and ’60s, after all, people risked imprisonment and worse to protest on behalf of voting rights and civil rights. Why is the threat of penalties under an obviously unjust law now enough to discourage groups from challenging them outright?

Editorials: Florida – How Soon We Forget | NYTimes.com

Last spring, Florida made some changes to its election law. Cloaked as technical tweaks, the new laws have the potential to swing the 2012 election. When it comes to presidential elections, Florida matters. With 29 electoral votes, Florida is by far the most influential swing state in the country. Who gets to vote in Florida could determine who will win the election. There are over 11 million registered voters in the state. But after the changes put in place last spring, there may be far fewer Floridians going to the polls in 2012. President Obama and the Republican nominee will be fighting for every last one of those votes. The state is so critical to the race that there’s early talk of Floridian political stars like Senator Marco Rubio or former Governor Jeb Bush joining the Republican ticket. In 2008, Obama defeated Senator John McCain in Florida by a little more than 200,000 votes, out of more than 8 million cast. The changes enacted last spring include severe restrictions on groups that register new voters, cutting the early voting period nearly in half and rolling back voting rights for those with criminal convictions in their past.

Colorado: Republicans kill Colorado voter-registration measure | The Durango Herald

House Republicans on Wednesday killed a bill on voter registration from one of their own members, Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose. The bill was a reaction to Republican Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s effort to prevent county clerks from mailing ballots to people unless they voted in the last major election. After the vote, Democratic leaders were so angry they called for Gessler’s removal as the state’s top elections official. The House Local Government Committee killed Coram’s bill on a party-line, 6-5 vote. It had passed the Senate 24-10.