Maryland: Civil penalty adds to fallout from Maryland robo-call case | The Washington Post

If criminal convictions were not enough, add $1 million in civil penalties to the list of reasons Maryland politicos may think twice about ordering another election-night robo-call that could be viewed as trying to suppress voter turnout. A federal judge on Tuesday sided with Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and ordered that a consultant to former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) should pay for each of 112,000 automated phone calls that failed to identify Ehrlich’s campaign as the one that paid for the messages. The calls were placed to homes of tens of thousands of African American Democrats in Prince George’s County and Baltimore on Election Day 2010. They told listeners to “relax” and to not worry about going to the polls, because the incumbent, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), and President Obama had already been “successful” in the day’s voting.

Florida: Florida GOP Takes Voter Suppression to a Brazen New Extreme | Rolling Stone

Imagine this: a Republican governor in a crucial battleground state instructs his secretary of state to purge the voting rolls of hundreds of thousands of allegedly ineligible voters. The move disenfranchises thousands of legally registered voters, who happen to be overwhelmingly black and Hispanic Democrats. The number of voters prevented from casting a ballot exceeds the margin of victory in the razor-thin election, which ends up determining the next President of the United States. If this scenario sounds familiar, that’s because it happened in Florida in 2000. And twelve years later, just months before another presidential election, history is repeating itself. Back in 2000, 12,000 eligible voters – a number twenty-two times larger than George W. Bush’s 537 vote triumph over Al Gore – were wrongly identified as convicted felons and purged from the voting rolls in Florida, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. African Americans, who favored Gore over Bush by 86 points, accounted for 11 percent of the state’s electorate but 41 percent of those purged. Jeb Bush attempted a repeat performance in 2004 to help his brother win reelection but was forced to back off in the face of a public outcry. Yet with another close election looming, Florida Republicans have returned to their voter-scrubbing ways.

Editorials: Voter ID Laws: Silencing the American People | John W. Whitehead/Huffington Post

“There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today. Why should we disenfranchise people forever once they’ve paid their price?” — Bill Clinton

Despite the propaganda being advanced by the government, the purpose of voter ID laws is not to eliminate voter fraud and protect the integrity of elections. Rather, their aim is to silence and suppress as many American voters as possible and increase the already widening chasm between the electorate and our government representatives. In fact, voter ID laws are the icing on the cake when it comes to public officials shutting Americans out of the decision-making process, silencing dissent, and making sure that those in power stay in power and have the last word on government policy. In other words, voter ID laws are the final step in securing the American corporate oligarchy, the unchallenged rule by the privileged and few.

Florida: Republican-backed voting laws blamed for drop in new voter registrations | ABC

81,000 fewer new voters. That’s what one researcher says is the difference from four years ago, before new, restrictive voter registration laws went into effect in Florida.   It’s just what opponents of the laws feared would happen. When Governor Rick Scott signed the law that requires volunteers registering voters in Florida to register with the state last year, the reaction was swift and angry. It was called voter suppression and “Jim Crowesque.” Even the non-partisan League of Women Voters refused to go by the new rules that gave them only 48 hours to submit registration forms to the state. “The law is vague and cumbersome and it would put our volunteers at personal risk of fines, so we decided instead to challenge it in court,” said Mickey Castor of the League of Women Voters.

Florida: The hunt for non-citizen Florida voters exposes partisan divide | MiamiHerald.com

Amid an increasingly partisan dog fight, Florida elections officials say the number of potential non-citizens they’re examining on the state voter rolls is 180,000, a figure far higher than what was initially reported. Florida’s Division of Elections said Thursday that it’s combing through this initial, mammoth list of names — which were flagged during a computer database search — to make sure its list is as clean and as small as possible. The state is then turning over smaller batches of the more-verified names to local county election supervisors, who are contacting the potential non-citizens to see if they can lawfully vote. By the end of the process, the state could send counties as many as 22,000 names to check, one election source indicated, in a state with more than 12 million total voters. Right now, local supervisors have been sent nearly 2,700 names, about 2,000 of which are in Miami-Dade, Florida’s most-populous and most-immigrant heavy county.

Canada: U.S. voter fraud convict calls Canada’s robocall scandal ‘sophisticated’ | Montreal Gazette

A Republican political operative who spent three months in an American prison for making illegal political calls says that fraudulent calls in the last Canadian election are likely an American import. In his 2008 book How to Rig an Election, Allen Raymond tells the story of his 10-year political career, which ended abruptly when he was convicted of jamming the New Hampshire Democrats’ phone bank during a Senate election. When the FBI closed in, officials on the Republican National Committee cut off Raymond, and rather than face 25 years in prison, he co-operated with the investigation. Raymond, who now works in Washington as a lobbyist for a labour organization, suspects whoever made illegal voter-suppression calls in Canada in the last election likely learned their dirty tricks south of the border.

Virginia: Governor undecided on Voter ID law | WTOP.com

The arguments are far from over for a voter ID law now on the governor’s desk in Virginia. Democrats are continuing to express concern about voter suppression and are urging Gov. Bob McDonnell to veto the bill passed this past session by the Virginia General Assembly. “We’re making it harder for folks to vote, especially those who are perhaps frail or elderly or minorities,” says Senator Mark Herring, D-Loudoun. “It tends to have a disproportionate impact on them.” The bill would require voters to show identification at the polls in order for their vote to count. Otherwise, they would have to go back to the registrar at a later date to prove who they are.

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.

Canada: Poll shows Liberal, NDP supporters targeted for vote-suppression calls | canada.com

A poll being released Tuesday morning by the Council of Canadians shows a pattern of misleading election calls targeting opposition supporters in the seven ridings where the organization is seeking new elections. The poll, conducted April 13-19 by Ekos Research Associates, found that Liberal, NDP and Green party supporters in the seven ridings were more much more likely to report receiving a telephone call late in the election directing them to the wrong polling station than Conservative supporters, or opposition supporters in other ridings.

Wisconsin: Voter ID requirement: The face of voter suppression and discrimination | allvoices.com

Meet Ruthelle Frank an 84 year old woman living in Wisconsin. She is one of millions of people who are at risk of losing their right to vote in November as result of wide-ranging state by state efforts to deny people the access to vote. The good news is that after ten months of advocacy by the American Civil Liberties Union, she was able to vote last Tuesday in Wisconsin, but her fight isn’t over yet. A Wisconsin judge declared a state law requiring people to show photo ID in order to be allowed to vote unconstitutional before the primary, issuing a permanent injunction blocking the state from implementing the measure. “Without question, where it exists, voter fraud corrupts elections and undermines our form of government,” wrote Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess in his decision. “The legislature and governor may certainly take aggressive action to prevent its occurrence. But voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression. Indeed, they are two heads on the monster.”

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?

Florida: Report: Florida one of the ‘five worst states for voting rights in 2011′ | Florida Independent

The Center for American Progress released a report today on voter suppression efforts carried out by Republican-led state legislatures around the country, listing Florida as one of “five worst states for voting rights in 2011.” As we at The Florida Independent have been reporting, Florida lawmakers passed a new voting law last year that has drawn fire from federal officials, legislators, advocacy groups and voting rights experts from all over the country. The many critics of the law have said the law is a concerted effort to keep minorities, young people, the elderly and the poor from the polls on Election Day. Florida’s contentious law places prohibitive rules and restrictions on third-party voter registration groups, creates a shortened “shelf life” for signatures collected for ballot initiatives, places new restrictions on voters changing their registered addresses on election day, and reduces the number of early voting days — among many other provisions.

Editorials: Voting in America: When is Democracy not a Democracy? | Al Jazeera

Democracy. That buzzword we hear over and over again coming from powerful quarters in the US to help explain interventions across the globe, from Iraq to Central America. But while many in the world are familiar with the buzzword, few may realise that a fight over democracy is being waged on American soil as we speak, and it comes in the form of challenging brand new voting laws. Here’s a little background: In 2010 the Republican Party swept to power at the state level across the US. Today they control the senate and the House of Representatives in 25 states, and have a significant presence in a number of other state level legislatures. They’ve been using that newly acquired power to pass laws that clamp down on what they say is rampant voter fraud. To date, at least 30 new laws and bills have been introduced to change the rules of the voting game, like for example requiring voters to have a government-issued photo ID to cast their ballot. Since embarking on this story, I have had a number of people ask me “what’s the big deal with wanting people to present a photo ID when they vote?” On the surface, nothing.

Canada: Vote suppression takes place in Canada too | peoplesworld

The United States and Mexico have not been the only places where the right wing has committed electoral fraud to win recent elections. There is evidence to suggest the Conservative Party of Canada used voter suppression schemes to help it win the 2011 elections. While ballot boxes didn’t actually go missing, the Conservatives may have flooded ridings (electoral districts) with automated, pre-recorded phone messages designed to disfranchise supporters of rival candidates. In the Ontario riding of Guelph, it is alleged by Elections Canada, the country’s election authority, that a Conservative operative using the alias “Pierre Poutine” made automated calls to suppress votes. During the 2011 elections, there was a tight race between the leading Conservative and Liberal Party candidates. False messages, supposedly from Elections Canada, sent hundreds of rival non-Conservative voters chasing non-existent polling stations on Election Day.

Voting Blogs: Voter Fraud Claims, Voter Suppression Claims and False Equivalence in the Voter ID Debate | Rick Hasen/Election Law Blog

I have been getting a lot of pushback from Democrats and those on the left recently about some recent posts, my book chapter, and a recent oped of mine on the subject of voter identification laws.  The essence of the complaint is that I’ve drawn a false equivalence between spurious Republican claims of voter fraud offered to justify new strict voter identification laws and exaggerated Democratic claims of the extent to which such laws are likely to actually deter Democratic voters from voting.  One prominent Democrat accused me of a false evenhandedness as a “media strategy” for my upcoming book.  Another Democrat writes that there is a problem with my writing because it implies a parallel in which engaging in voter suppression and fighting voter suppression are seen as morally equivalent acts, and that I’ve just thrown up my hands and lamented how both sides are acting in a ridiculous way.

National: A.F.L.-C.I.O. Takes On Voter ID Laws | NYTimes.com

A.F.L.-C.I.O. officials on Wednesday denounced the voter identification laws enacted in a dozen states and vowed to mount their biggest voter registration and protection efforts ever to counter these laws, which they said could disenfranchise millions of voters. Union leaders, gathered here for their annual winter meeting, held a news conference to attack the laws, saying that Republican governors and Republican-dominated legislatures had enacted them to make voting harder for numerous Democratic-leaning groups, including students, minorities, elderly and the poor. “Although they’re called voter ID laws, they are in fact voter suppression laws,” said Arlene Holt Baker, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s executive vice president. “If you are able to suppress the voice and vote of these groups of people, you have in fact been able to destroy democracy.”

Maryland: Tea Party Spawns New Effort Against Voter Fraud | NPR

As part of a new campaign, dozens of citizen groups around the country are searching voter registration lists, looking for problems. They’re also training poll watchers to monitor this fall’s elections. Leaders of the effort — spawned by the Tea Party movement — say they want to make sure that elections are free from voter fraud. But critics say it’s part of a campaign to suppress the votes of minorities, students and others who tend to vote Democratic. Cathy Kelleher and Cathy Trauernicht say that’s not true. They’re founders of Election Integrity Maryland, one of the groups involved. They call themselves concerned citizens.

Pennsylvania: Corbett says he’ll sign voter-ID bill | Philly.com

Gov. Corbett said Monday he will sign a bill now on a legislative fast track that would require voters to present photo identification at the polls. The so-called “voter ID” bill could reach Corbett’s desk as early as Tuesday, when the House is to take a final vote on the controversial measure. The Republican-controlled chamber began debating the bill Monday afternoon but delayed the vote a day, citing rules regarding the waiting period for voting on legislation sent over from the Senate. The Senate approved the bill last week after a several hours of debate, during which Democrats argued that it was nothing more than a partisan attempt to suppress their side’s votes in a presidential election year. Asked about that contention yesterday, Corbett responded: “I completely disagree. This is no barrier to voting. You have to have a photo ID to go anywhere.”

Wisconsin: Voter ID Law Ruled Unconstitutional | Huffington Post

A Wisconsin judge declared a state law requiring people to show photo ID in order to be allowed to vote unconstitutional on Monday, issuing a permanent injunction blocking the state from implementing the measure. “Without question, where it exists, voter fraud corrupts elections and undermines our form of government,” wrote Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess in his decision. “The legislature and governor may certainly take aggressive action to prevent its occurrence. But voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression. Indeed, they are two heads on the monster.”

Colorado: Spokesman for Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler rejects voter suppression accusations against him | Denver News

​Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler claims he’s under unwarranted attacks by media and Democratic leaders like Rick Palacio, who recently accused Gessler’s proposed voting policy as an attempt at voter suppression. Palacio connected Gessler’s legislations to the 1965 civil rights movement, during which advocates protesting for African-American voting rights were beaten by police. “This time, however, Americans won’t be faced with night sticks. They’ll instead be faced with new laws written by the Republican legislature and the Secretary of State,” Palacio said at a Monday press conference. Rich Coolidge, a spokesman for Gessler’s office, replies to Palacio’s comment: “Instead of giving Colorado voters a positive message about his candidates, chairman Palacio is resorting to fear-mongering and distorted, negative attacks. I hope this doesn’t set the tone for the rest of the year.”

Canada: Elections Canada probing spending records of Conservative campaign in robocall scandal | canada.com

Elections Canada investigators probing the robocalls scandal are interviewing workers on the Conservative campaign in Guelph, Ont., and trying to determine why payments made to an Edmonton voice-broadcasting company were not declared in financial reports filed with the agency. In recent days, the agency has spoken to at least three workers from the campaign of Conservative candidate Marty Burke, including the official agent responsible for ensuring the campaign’s financial report was accurate. Elections Canada wants to know why the costs of automated calls the campaign has admitted sending out never appeared in the campaign’s expense report, as required by law. Andrew Prescott, the deputy campaign manager, said he is co-operating with the investigation and handing over bills he received from RackNine Inc. for a series of robocalls promoting Burke events during the election. The same company was used to transmit misleading Elections Canada calls on election day.

Canada: Storm brews in Canada over election ‘robocalls’ | AFP

A probe into “robocalls” that misdirected Canadian voters to fake polling stations during last year’s election, won by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Tories, is casting suspicion on the results. It is not yet clear who was behind the automated telephone calls to voters in the town of Guelph, Ontario in spring 2011 that reportedly led to a chaotic scene at a polling station, and likely led some to give up on voting. The opposition parties, whose supporters were apparently targeted, pointed fingers at the Conservatives, but the Conservatives denied any involvement while hitting back at what they claimed was a “smear campaign.” Elections Canada, after being inundated with complaints, is now investigating the rogue calls, aided by the federal police, as new allegations are raised daily. At a press conference on Tuesday, outspoken New Democratic Party MP Pat Martin described the misleading pre-recorded calls claiming to be from Elections Canada as a “heinous affront to democracy.” “How is this different from a bunch of goons with clubs blocking the door to a voter station,” he said.

Voting Blogs: New Federal Lawsuit Provides U.S. DoJ Golden Opportunity to Challenge Polling Place Photo ID Restrictions Under Section 2 of Voting Rights Act | BradBlog

Last September’s hearings before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights established that polling place photo ID restriction laws have nothing to do with eliminating “voter fraud.” They are, instead, part of what Judith Browne Dianis, a civil rights litigator at The Advancement Project, described at the time as the “largest legislative effort to roll back voting rights since the post-Reconstruction era” — part of the partisan, multi-state effort by the billionaire Koch brothers-funded, Paul Weyrich co-founded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-fueled GOP exercise in voter suppression. Her testimony established, yet again, that such laws have a disparate impact upon minorities, the poor, the elderly and students (all of whom happen to have the unfortunate tendency of voting Democratic).

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.

New Hampshire: State Deals With Voting Rights Confusion as Primary Approaches | America Votes

New Hampshire has had a proud tradition of hosting the first-in-the-nation Presidential Primary Election but this year’s election may be remembered more for voter confusion and a not-so-subtle attempt to deny the vote to targeted groups of New Hampshire voters.

There’s been a full scale war against voters going on in New Hampshire for the past year. America Votes and the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire have taken the lead in fighting back against every attempt to pass voter suppression legislation. So far, the current leadership of the New Hampshire Legislature has been unsuccessful when it comes to actually passing legislation but their obsessive efforts to suppress the vote are taking a toll on New Hampshire’s voters.

Bills that would have barred college students from the voting booth, ended same-day voter registration in New Hampshire and required already registered voters to show a photo ID to get a ballot on Election Day have all been defeated.

Florida: Legislator files bill to reverse controversial elections measures | Florida Independent

State Rep. Mark Pafford, D-West Palm Beach, has introduced a bill that would reverse some of the controversial measures in the elections law passed by the Florida Legislature last year. Groups opposed to the state’s new elections law have called it a “voter suppression” effort, arguing that the new rules could reduce turnout among young, disabled, minority and low-income voters.

Among the many controversial provisions in the last elections law were restrictions on the amount of time that a third-party registration group has to turn in a voter registration form, a provision that refers an accused third-party registrar of violating the election law to the attorney general, a limit on the shelf-life of ballot initiative signatures, a provision requiring a voter who moves within the same county to fill out an affirmation form and provisions limiting early voting days in the state. Pafford’s bill would reverse all of those.

Florida: Early Voting Limits Could Negatively Affect Blacks, Latinos | Huffington Post

On the Sunday before the 2008 presidential election, church goers in Florida streamed from the pews to early voting places to cast their ballots. The so-called Souls to the Polls campaigns were a windfall for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and the Democrats. According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, more than 32 percent of those who voted early on that last Sunday before Election Day were African American, and nearly 24 percent were Latino. Moreover, according to a report released by the Florida State Senate, 52 percent of people who voted early in the 2008 election were registered Democrats.

“Preachers would preach a great sermon and then march to the polls with their congregations,” said Hilary Shelton, senior vice president for advocacy and policy at the NAACP.

But voting laws passed in Florida last year have limited early voting, including on the Sunday before Election Day. Opponents say the early voting limitations are part of a broader effort by Republican-led legislatures across the country to suppress the black, minority and elderly voting blocs, groups expected to be key to President Obama’s bid for reelection in 2012. The efforts include new voting laws passed in more than a dozen states, some requiring government-issued identification to vote and others limiting third-party voter registration drives.

Texas: Texas voter ID law unnecessary but state AG must defend it nonetheless | Fort Worth Star Telegram

When the U.S. Justice Department last week blocked South Carolina’s new voter ID law because of possible discrimination against minorities, attention quickly focused on Texas, which passed similar legislation this year.

Tentatively set to go into effect Sunday, the Texas law requires that a valid photo ID be presented at the polls along with a voter registration card. The accepted forms of identification are: Texas driver’s license, Texas election ID (issued by the Department of Public Safety), a personal identification card from the DPS, a Texas concealed handgun license, U.S. military ID card, U.S. citizenship certificate or U.S. passport.

In rejecting South Carolina’s law, the Justice Department used the state’s own data to show that tens of thousands of residents did not possess the required photo IDs, and that nonwhite voters would be most burdened under the statute.

National: Civil Rights Groups Press Justice Department To Block Other Voter ID Laws | TPM

It wasn’t long after the Justice Department blocked South Carolina’s voter ID law on Friday that Republicans accused the Obama administration of putting the President’s reelection ahead of preventing voter fraud. “Obama’s S.C. voter ID decision shows he’s putting the 2012 election above policy by opposing efforts to protect against cheating and fraud,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus wrote on Twitter, indirectly acknowledging that voter ID laws suppress Democratic voter turnout. “Moreover, from S.C. decision looks like they just want to benefit from cheating and fraud.”

“It is outrageous, and we plan to look at every possible option to get this terrible, clearly political decision overturned so we can protect the integrity of our electoral process and our 10th Amendment rights,” Gov. Nikki Haley said in a statement.

Here’s the problem, though: In-person voter impersonation fraud is an extremely risky and ineffective way to try to steal an election and there’s been no evidence of in-person voter impersonation fraud — the only type of voter fraud that strict voter ID laws could potentially prevent — taking place in South Carolina. But Republicans have taken the position that the laws are necessary. They also strongly reject the suggestion that the laws are racially discriminatory, though South Carolina’s own data showed that non-white voters were 20 percent more likely than white voters to lack the specific type of photo voter ID required under South Carolina’s statute.

Tennessee: Court ruling on South Carolina voter ID law heartens repeal efforts in Tennessee | Nooga.com

Hamilton County Democrats heralded the first successful strike against state photo ID voting laws and pledged to step up efforts to repeal a similar Tennessee law, set to go into effect next month.

A federal judge last week rejected the South Carolina voter ID law, labeling it discriminatory against minorities. State Rep. JoAnne Favors, D-Chattanooga, said the decision gave Tennesseans “much needed leverage of our efforts to repeal the law.”

In a statement released Sunday, Favors, who founded the Tennessee Voters Assistance Coalition (TVAC) following passage of the GOP-sponsored bill, said the law was spurred by the large increase of minority voters in the 2008 election.

“Preventing voter fraud was the reason cited for passing this law, but that is absolutely not a legitimate argument for it,” Favors said. “There is no evidence of any widespread fraud. The real reason for passage of this law is voter suppression. The 2008 election turned out massive numbers of minority voters and the law is an attempt to suppress that.”