Editorials: Protecting the right to vote – history demonstrates that any effort to deny citizens the ability to vote can’t be ignored | latimes.com

Since their historic victories in the 2010 midterm elections,Republicans across the country have passed an array of voting laws — to require photo identification, to make it more difficult to register, to reduce periods of early voting or to purge voter rolls — and they are considering others. The Justice Department, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, theAmerican Civil Liberties Union and other groups have challenged many of these laws in court. A federal court recently rejected Texas’ voter ID law, and similar cases from Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Wisconsin await final judicial action. Sound-bite analogies between these new laws and the fully mature Jim Crow system have been properly condemned as simplistic and misleading. But more careful study of the experience of a century ago may offer a cautionary lesson about today’s changes in election laws. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Southern Democrats used statutory and state constitutional restrictions — as well as violence, intimidation and ballot-box stuffing — to discourage and, ultimately, to disfranchise many poor whites and the vast majority of African Americans. Several popular misunderstandings about that “first disfranchisement” cloud the public’s view of recent legislation.

National: Study says voter roll purges, citizenship proof demands, photo ID may affect 10 million Hispanics | The Washington Post

The combined effects of voter roll purges, demands for proof of citizenship and photo identification requirements in several states may hinder at least 10 million Hispanic citizens who seek to vote this fall, civil rights advocates warn in a new report. Hispanic voters are considered pivotal to the presidential election this November, and are being heavily courted by both Democratic incumbent Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. If they turn out in large numbers, Hispanics could sway the outcome in several swing states. In an analysis based on government data, civil rights group The Advancement Project identified legal barriers that could deter voter registration and participation among eligible Hispanics. In some of those states, the group’s researchers said, the number of voter-eligible Latino citizens potentially blocked by those barriers exceeds the margin of victory in the 2008 election.

Florida: Revised try at purging noncitizen voters draws legal fire | www.palmbeachpost.com

Two Miami-Dade County voters and Hispanic voting groups have asked a federal judge to halt Gov. Rick Scott’s revised to purge voter rolls of non-citizens, saying it comes too close to the Nov. 6 election and remains problematic. Lawyers for Karla Vanessa Arcia and Melande Antoine and a variety of voting-rights groups including the Florida Immigrant Coalition and the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, filed the request in a federal court in Miami Wednesday night. The groups reached a settlement with Scott’s administration last week and dropped three other portions of their complaint but now are asking Judge William Zloch to stop the effort. Secretary of State Ken Detzner last month revamped the effort, the subject of multiple lawsuits, and switched to using the federal Department of Homeland Security Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or “SAVE,” database to vet a list of potential noncitizens. The list had been created by matching state driver’s licenses and voter registration records. Detzner said the federal database will result in a less problematic list than one sent to elections supervisors in April. State and local officials abandoned the purge this spring after it was discovered that many of the flagged 2,626 voters were naturalized citizens — including Arcia and Antoine — and, therefore, eligible to vote.

Iowa: Secretary of State’s voter eligibility investigation on hold after judge issues injunction | Des Moines Register

Rules governing an effort to verify the eligibility of thousands of Iowa voters cannot be enforced while a lawsuit challenging their validity goes forward, a Polk County judge has ruled. Judge Mary Pat Gunderson issued a temporary injunction to stay the implementation of the rules late Friday afternoon. The ruling casts no judgment on the merits of the case, but means Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s effort to check the citizenship status of more than 3,500 voters is on hold for the time being. Schultz has identified the potentially ineligible voters by comparing the state’s voter rolls to a Department of Transportation list of legal aliens who have obtained driver’s licenses. He’s now seeking to verify those voters’ citizenship status by cross referencing the list against a federal immigration database. The rules enjoined on Friday were passed earlier this summer through an emergency rulemaking process as part of Schultz’s effort to gain access to the federal database.

Editorials: Voter ID laws and roll purges are the real defrauding of US democracy | Ana Marie Cox/guardian.co.uk

There are three inducements of support that Americans are powerless against: the promise of whiter teeth, the suggestion of no-diet weight loss and the cause of justice. Political campaigns tend to couch their appeals in terms of the last, though parts of the Romney-Ryan economic pitch could be described as the second. In today’s truly divisive debates, both parties have usually engineered a rhetorical claim to the side of fairness: gay rights advocates propelled themselves forward when they began to argue for “marriage equality” against the outdated complaint of “special rights”. Americans rankle at unearned privileges as much as they rally, in the main, to equality. Hence the widespread, enthusiastic support of voter ID laws (they poll with about 75% in favor) makes total sense if you see the laws exactly the way their authors and promoters talk about them – as barriers to voter fraud. After all, voter fraud is when criminals unfairly manipulate voting, the most basic expression of fairness available in a democracy.

Texas: Court Halts State Attempt to Purge Voters as Dead | Bloomberg

A Texas judge temporarily barred the state from ordering county election officials to purge presumably dead voters from registration rolls, saying the initiative may violate the election code. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed today by four Texas voters who were told they would be purged from voter- registration lists as deceased. They asked state court Judge Tim Sulak in Austin to stop the state from striking about 77,000 names from the rolls, arguing the plan violates the Texas election code and the U.S. Voting Rights Act.

California: Some Question The Tactics Of The Election Integrity Project In San Diego | KPBS.org

Between now and October 6th the Election Integrity Project has scheduled at least nine training seminars in San Diego County. The national organization is known for examining voter rolls, and they were present at many polling places in San Diego during the June primary. They say they’re watching out for voter fraud. But critics say they’re trying to intimidate voters. Linda Paine, president of the group in California, said poll watchers in California found many polls where things went fine. “On the other hand,” she said, “we saw what appeared to be policies and procedures in existence that opened the door to the potential of voter fraud.”

Florida: State Loses Bid to Toss Suit Challenging Voter Purge | Bloomberg

Florida Governor Rick Scott lost a federal court bid to throw out a challenge to his initiative to purge non-citizens from voter registration rolls ahead of the Nov. 6 presidential election. U.S. District Judge James Whittemore in Tampa today ruled Mi Familia Vota Education Fund and two state residents may proceed with a complaint alleging the program requires pre- clearance under the Voting Rights Act. Florida is one of 16 jurisdictions with a history of voting rights violations that, under the act, must obtain pre-approval of some laws by either the Justice Department or a panel of federal judges.

National: Conservative Groups Focus on Registration in Swing States | NYTimes.com

It might as well be Harry Potter’s invisible Knight Bus, because no one can prove it exists. Teresa Sharp’s right to vote, as well as her family’s, was challenged by the Ohio Voter Integrity Project, which later apologized. The bus has been repeatedly cited by True the Vote, a national group focused on voter fraud. Catherine Engelbrecht, the group’s leader, told a gathering in July about buses carrying dozens of voters showing up at polling places during the recent Wisconsin recall election. “Magically, all of them needed to register and vote at the same time,” Ms. Engelbrecht said. “Do you think maybe they registered falsely under false pretenses? Probably so.” Weeks later, another True the Vote representative told a meeting of conservative women about a bus seen at a San Diego polling place in 2010 offloading people “who did not appear to be from this country.” Officials in both San Diego and Wisconsin said they had no evidence that the buses were real. “It’s so stealthy that no one is ever able to get a picture and no one is able to get a license plate,” said Reid Magney, a spokesman for the Wisconsin agency that oversees elections. In some versions the bus is from an Indian reservation; in others it is full of voters from Chicago or Detroit. “Pick your minority group,” he said.

Editorials: In-Person Voter Fraud: Not Really a Matter of Opinion | Mother Jones

After running a story about voter access laws last Sunday, the New York Times got some complaints from readers about its he-said-she-said treatment of whether voter fraud is a serious problem. Margaret Sullivan, the Times’ public editor, asked the reporter and editor of the piece for their views:

The national editor, Sam Sifton, rejected the argument. “There’s a lot of reasonable disagreement on both sides,” he said. One side says there’s not significant voter fraud; the other side says there’s not significant voter suppression. “It’s not our job to litigate it in the paper,” Mr. Sifton said. “We need to state what each side says.” Mr. Bronner agreed. “Both sides have become very angry and very suspicious about the other,” he said. “The purpose of this story was to step back and look at both sides, to lay it out.” While he agreed that there was “no known evidence of in-person voter fraud,” and that could have been included in this story, “I don’t think that’s the core issue here.”

This is a pretty remarkable response.

Iowa: Judge refuses to throw out voting rules lawsuit against Secretary of State Matt Schultz | Des Moines Register

Polk County judge has refused to throw out a lawsuit against Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz, rejecting Schultz’s argument that a Latino advocacy group and the ACLU have no legal standing to try to block his imposition of new voting rules. District Judge Mary Pat Gunderson said the controversy, which stems from new rules that Schultz instituted in July under emergency rule-making procedures, falls within a special exception to legal limits on who has the ability to bring court cases in certain issues. Iowa Supreme Court justices in 2008 refused to overturn actions by the 2004 Iowa legislature, finding that the Sioux City taxpayer who sued hadn’t satisfied requirements that she 1) be personally involved in the controversy and 2) be seriously injured by the questioned action. According to a ruling filed by Gunderson late Tuesday, “The court in (that case) saw the absence of any allegations implicating ‘fraud, surprise, personal and private gain or other such evils inconsistent with the democratic process’ as diminishing the need to intervene in the activities of another branch of government.

Voting Blogs: The Nearly Non-Citizen Purges | Brennan Center for Justice

This week, Florida partially settled one of three lawsuits challenging its attempted purge of non-citizens form its voter rolls. The state has promised to send corrective letters to thousands of voters who received unfounded notices of removal and to restore to the rolls any who were wrongly removed. Across the country, Colorado recently conceded it lacks adequate procedures or time to fairly pursue a similar purge effort before Election Day and will not do so. This is good news for the thousands of eligible citizens who otherwise would have been swept up further in these purges. It also reveals a dramatically different story than the tall tale Secretaries of State Gessler and Detzner were selling to the public just a few months ago. Last year Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler declared a virtual state of emergency — possibly 11,000 non-citizens on the Colorado voter rolls. Soon after, Secretary of State Ken Detzner in Florida upped the ante by claiming he had a list of 180,000 potential non-citizens. That got attention. Numbers like that indicate a massive problem. But the numbers weren’t quite right. Not even close. The final count? According to Colorado it appears that up to 141non-citizens could be on its voter rolls. That’s .004 percent of its 3.5 million registered voters. Florida now reports that its numbers could be as high as … 207. That’s .002 percent of its 11.5 million registered voters. Error-ridden and inaccurate voter rolls are a problem, and any ineligible voter on the rolls should be removed. But playing fast and loose with numbers is not the way to do it.

Iowa: Immigrant advocates again voice concerns over new voter-registration rules | Des Moines Register

New state rules meant to identify noncitizens on Iowa’s voter rolls could have the unintended effect of intimidating eligible voters, several Iowans and immigrant advocates told a state panel on Tuesday. The rules at issue – passed this summer through an emergency process without public input – outline procedures for the Iowa Secretary of State’s office to use a federal database to verify the citizenship status of registered voters in Iowa. Secretary of State Matt Schultz has been seeking access to the database for several months, after determining using state Department of Transportation records that more than 3,500 people who are in the country legally but are not citizens are registered to vote in Iowa. Tapping the federal data would allow Schultz’s office to determine more accurately which of those voters are not citizens and thus ineligible to vote. The new rules are meant to satisfy the federal government’s demands for how the database will be used.

Editorials: Voter fraud and its discontents: Restricting the franchise | The Economist

Politico led this morning with a piece arguing that Mitt Romney’s clay feet on the subject of national security threaten to turn him into John Kerry. I don’t quite buy the comparison, however Kerry-like Mr Romney may be in his stiffness and aloofness; Mr Romney never claimed national security as a core competency, as Mr Kerry did. Yet this is part of an ongoing narrative that says this election is like 2004, in which a relatively unpopular and vulnerable incumbent won because the out-party overestimated voters’ distaste for the incumbent and nominated a dreadful candidate. The bases of both parties were gripped by a visceral disdain for the president that voters at large simply did not share. Both Mr Kerry and Mr Romney had fairly easy rides to the nomination: for all the ginned-up primary drama this year, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich stood no better chance of becoming president than did Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich. But if the campaign looks like 2004, Ethan Bronner makes a far more persuasive case that its aftermath may more closely resemble 2000. The thicket of new voting laws enacted over the past four years—mostly by Republicans, and most of them with the effect, if not the intent, of making it harder for voters who belong to Democratic-leaning blocs to cast their ballots—will likely provoke a flurry of court challenges if the election is as close as it looks as though it might be. Those challenges have already begun. Florida lost in its effort to restrict early voting, as did Ohio. A federal court ruled that Texas’s voter-ID law fell afoul of the Voting Rights Act for imposing “strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor, and racial minorities in Texas are disproportionately likely to live in poverty.” Pennsylvania’s voter-ID law, on the other hand, was upheld (the state supreme court will hear appeals on Thursday).

Colorado: Election watchdogs seek to block Boulder County ballot printing | Boulder Daily Camera

Boulder County Clerk Hillary Hall says a new system for numbering ballots would preserve voter anonymity as well as efficiency in tallying election results, and she expects it to pass muster with the Secretary of State’s Office. However, election integrity activists say any “distinguishing marks” on ballots violate the law and open the door to linking individual voters with their ballots. The group Citizen Center has filed a request for a restraining order in federal court to stop the printing of Boulder County’s ballots with distinguishing serial numbers. A hearing on the request is scheduled for Sept. 21. Like other counties who use the Hart Voting System, Boulder County’s ballots have three sets of numbers and bar codes — one that identifies the election, one that identifies the precinct and ballot content (which jurisdictions and ballot questions the voter is voting on) and one that identifies the ballot.

Florida: State Agrees to Let Citizens Mistakenly Purged From Rolls to Vote | NYTimes.com

In a partial victory for voter rights and immigrant groups, Florida residents who were mistakenly removed from the voter rolls this year because the state classified them as noncitizens will be returned to the rolls and allowed to vote in November. The Florida Department of State, which initiated the review of noncitizens on the voter rolls, also agreed Wednesday to inform the 2,625 people on the list who are eligible to vote that their voting rights had been fully restored. Still unresolved is whether Florida broke a federal law preventing voter purges within 90 days of an election. The agreement stems from a lawsuit brought by several groups that said the so-called voter purge was discriminatory because it singled out mostly immigrants. “There will be no purging before the election,” said Katherine Culliton-González, director of voter protection for the Advancement Project, one of the civil rights groups that sued the state. “American citizens won’t be purged, and naturalized citizens won’t be purged. For us, it’s a great victory.”

Florida: Voter Roll screening yields few non-citizens | KEYC

Florida’s attempt to screen voter rolls for non-U.S. citizens is yielding a smaller number than state officials had anticipated. The Florida Department of State announced Wednesday that it used a federal immigration database to verify 207 voters are not citizens. Earlier this year, state officials under Republican Gov. Rick Scott had said they suspected more than 2,600 voters were ineligible and had asked election supervisors to purge those on the list. State officials, however, said the screening process was still a success because it yielded some ineligible voters. Florida’s announcement came the same day that it reached an agreement with voting groups that had challenged the purge, alleging it was discriminatory because they said it mostly targeted Hispanics. The groups that work with immigrants, Haitian-Americans and Puerto Ricans had filed suit in Miami and they are dropping most of their claims “This settlement represents a historic milestone for voting rights in Florida,” said Advancement Project Co-Director Judith Browne Dianis. “It will ensure that naturalized citizens, the majority of whom are Latino, black and Asian, have the same opportunities as all Americans to participate in our political process and exercise the most fundamental right in our democracy – the right to vote.”

Hawaii: Police Open Investigation Into Possible 2010 Voter Fraud | Big Island Now

Hawaii County police say they have launched an investigation into an allegation of voter fraud on the Big Island. In a brief statement sent out at 4:26 p.m. today, Capt. Mitchell Kanehailua of the Criminal Investigation Division said the investigation is based on information provided by the Hawaii County Office of Elections involving elections conducted in 2010. According to Kanehailua’s statement, voter fraud is a class “C” felony. Such crimes carry a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

Texas: Sorting out the facts involving Texas’ dead voter “purge” | kvue.com

Some 600,000 names represent Travis County’s voting roll, and who’s on the list is the target of the latest round of election inspection.
Passed virtually unanimously during the 82nd Texas Legislature in 2011, HB 174 requires the state to verify its voter rolls against the U.S. Social Security Administration’s Death Master File. “In addition to comparing against the information submitted by local officials concerning deceased persons, the Secretary of State must also obtain death information quarterly from the United States Social Security Administration and compare against this information as well,” states the bill’s summary. As a result, some voters have received letters saying some combination of their name and date of birth potentially match someone listed by the federal government as deceased, giving them 30 days to contact the county and avoid having their registration canceled.

Washington: State can’t use Homeland Security records to check voter lists | Spokesman.com

Washington can’t use immigrant registration records from the U.S. Homeland Security Department to verify names on its voter rolls, state elections officials said today. The reason: The state doesn’t have a system that requires proof of legal residence before issuing a driver’s license, which is necessary to use the federal system. Secretary of State Sam Reed requested access to the federal system in July as a way of checking the accuracy of the state’s voter rolls. But to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program, which is designed to determine whether a person qualifies for different social and medical programs, the state would need to issue some sort of identification card that checks for legal immigration status.

Iowa: Voter fraud rules criticized as ‘chilling’ | The Des Moines Register

New state rules meant to identify noncitizens on Iowa’s voter rolls could have the unintended effect of intimidating eligible voters, several Iowans and immigrant advocates told a state panel on Tuesday. The rules at issue — passed this summer through an emergency process without public input — outline procedures for the Iowa Secretary of State’s office to use a federal database to verify the citizenship status of registered voters in Iowa. Secretary of State Matt Schultz has been seeking access to the database for several months. By using state Department of Transportation records, Schultz believes he has identified more than 3,500 people who are in the country legally and are registered to vote in Iowa, but are not citizens. Tapping the federal data would allow Schultz’s office to determine more accurately which of those voters are not citizens and thus ineligible to vote. The new rules are meant to satisfy the federal government’s demands for how the database will be used.

Texas: Harris County voter purge canceled in wake of faulty death data | Houston Chronicle

Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Don Sumners said Monday that he would not purge from the voter roll before the November election any of the 9,018 citizens who received letters from his office in recent days notifying them that they may be dead and are at risk of having their registrations canceled. However, a spokesman for the Texas secretary of state, the office that generated the statewide list of about 80,000 voters, said Sumners’ move contradicts legislative directives. “Our office has federal and state requirements to maintain an accurate and secure voter registration list. If any of those people are deceased, the law requires that they be removed from the voter registration list ,” Rich Parsons said. “Mr. Sumners’ decision would prevent that.” The letters, many of which were delivered Friday and Saturday, asked recipients to verify within 30 days that they are alive or be cut from the roll.

Iowa: Court hearing held on new voter rules | WCF Courier

A Polk County judge heard arguments Thursday in a lawsuit filed by two civil rights organizations challenging new rules enacted by Iowa’s Republican secretary of state that would purge certain voters from Iowa’s voter registration list and make it easier to report fraud. The American Civil Liberties Union and the League of United Latin American Citizens filed a lawsuit last month to block Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz from enacting the rules he quietly issued on July 20. Schultz bypassed the normal state rulemaking process claiming he didn’t have enough time before November’s general election to allow for a public hearing and comment period. Assistant Attorney General Jeff Thompson argued that the new rules are intended to provide protection to all voters by ensuring that people who are not citizens are not voting. But lawyers for the civil rights groups allege Schultz intentionally waited to pass the rules knowing it would limit time for challenges. “This is a very critical public issue affecting potentially thousands of Iowans’ right to vote in this election,” attorney Joseph Glazebrook said in asking Judge Mary Pat Gunderson to declare the rules invalid and block Schultz from enforcing them.

Pennsylvania: Voter ID Laws an Extra Challenge to Asian Americans | Asianweek

In an election year where just a handful of votes could sway a tight election, some states are enacting laws to make it more difficult for citizens to vote. Voter identification laws have been passed or modified in 10 states since 2010 when Republicans made big gains in national politics through the Tea Party movement. Critics say these voter ID laws disproportionately affect voters who come from traditional minority communities.Although much attention has been given to African American and Latino voters these laws may have an even greater affect on Asian American voters. Pennsylvania’s new voter ID law is being challenged on just that idea. Due to the diversity of language, foreign name structure and customs, voter rolls are frequently fraught with clerical errors that could cause legally registered voters to be turned away at the polls.

National: Gloves come off as general election approaches – State and local election officials butt heads over variety of issues | electionlineWeekly

With only 75 days until the November 6, 2012 General Election, more and more news stories are focusing on the increasingly contentious nature of the administration of that election — especially between state and local officials. From voter purges to early voting to a general lack of confidence, state election officials seem to be clashing with local elections administrators on a more frequent basis as summer turns to fall. Interestingly enough — or not — most of these state/local clashes have occurred in swing states. One of the more high profile instances has been in Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott recently threated to remove from office Monroe County Supervisor of Elections Harry Sawyer for Sawyer’s failure to agree with the state’s early voting law. Scott and several elections supervisor butted heads over the state’s plans to review information from the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security and purge voter rolls of potential non-citizens, but it never reached the height that it has over early voting.

Editorials: Florida election laws threaten the vote in a key swing state | The Washington Post

In 2011, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed into law a measure that imposed more than 75 restrictions on Florida voters, ostensibly to combat voter fraud. These included requirements that make it more difficult for third-party organizations to register voters, limits on early voting and a plan to purge voter rolls of non-citizens. As with many of the voter limitations imposed by Republican state governments since they won election in 2010, these measures are likely to favor Republican candidates — and Florida is the ultimate swing state. Thankfully, a federal judge in Florida has issued a preliminary injunction against the law, which would interfere with the ability of organizations like the League of Women Voters to register voters in time for the election.

Colorado: Colorado elections chief withholds names of suspected non-citizens; cites investigation | AP

Citing an ongoing investigation, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler said Tuesday he would not allow public inspection of the list of nearly 4,000 registered voters he suspects are ineligible to vote because they’re not citizens. Gessler was responding to an open record request from The Associated Press seeking to review the list to determine who the secretary mailed letters to last week, asking them to verify their citizenship or voluntarily withdraw from the rolls. “Obviously our intent is to improve the integrity of the voting rolls. It’s not to draw attention to specific individuals,” Gessler spokesman Rich Coolidge said. Coolidge said Gessler doesn’t want people who voluntarily withdraw from the voter rolls to be prosecuted. But it’s unclear what will happen to people who don’t withdraw from the list if they’re ineligible to vote. “We’re still trying to identify a path forward with that,” Coolidge said.

New York: New York Voters Crash Online Registration System | GovTech

When New York added the ability for voters to register online earlier this month, officials hoped it would add a lot of citizens to the state’s voter rolls. According to the office of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, fewer than 64 percent of eligible New York residents are currently registered to vote, which ranks the state 47th in the country in voter registration. The addition of the new online registration capability was especially timely, given the Aug. 19 deadline for those wishing to participate in the state’s primary election, scheduled for Sept. 13. “At the DMV, or in their own homes, New Yorkers will now have a convenient and secure way to ensure they are able to register and exercise their right to vote,” said Cuomo in a statement. And New Yorkers seem to have gotten the message. Twitter activity on Friday suggested that an influx of would-be voters brought the new system to its knees.

Editorials: Buckeye ballots – Ohio has a ways to go in ensuring fairness at the poll | The Washington Post

On Wednesday, Ohio’s secretary of state, John R. Husted (R), declared a uniform early-voting policy, after complaints were heard that certain liberal-leaning areas had less time to vote than some of their conservative counterparts. While this was a necessary decision that should have been made long ago, Ohio, a key swing state, still has a ways to go in ensuring fairness at the polls. In the name of combating the largely imaginary threat of “voter fraud,” Republican legislatures in nine states, including Pennsylvania and Texas, have sought to impose ID requirements that would disproportionately affect groups that typically support Democrats. But voter ID laws aren’t all that could infringe on the franchise. In Ohio, a recent battle over provisional ballots has revealed another kind of restriction, one with a less clear-cut partisan motivation that’s nonetheless decidedly anti-voter.

Iowa: Secretary of State continues voter fraud hunt despite lack of evidence | Watchdog News

Efforts by Iowa’s top election official to uncover voter fraud may prove difficult. A new study analyzed 2,068 alleged cases of voter fraud nationwide and found only 10 cases related to voter impersonation, according to the research from a national investigative reporting project funded by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative. Iowa had no such cases. Here, Republican Secretary of State Matt Schultz has vowed to put a voter ID law in place and prove fraud in the state does exist. Schultz, 33, has yet to produce such results since taking office in 2011, despite his expansive efforts to purge voter rolls, which led to a lawsuit brought by two civil rights groups. “When you enact these voter ID laws it will basically change the outcome of an election in favor of Republicans by one or two percentage points,” said Seth Masket, an associate political science professor at the University of Denver in Colorado. “Usually, it’s not enough to affect the outcome of the election. But in a close race like this year’s presidential election, it can make a difference.”