The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly May 14-20 2012

Voters Return to the Polls After Talks Fail in Greece

Two election-related lawsuits appear destined for Supreme Court review.The DC Circuit Appeals Court upheld Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in a case brought by Shelby County Alabama and the 4th Circuit Court heard arguments over the constitutionality of a Virginia ban on corporate campaign contributions. On Thursday, Congressional Democratic leaders introduced a sweeping election reform bill, The Voter Empowerment Act. After no candidate met the threshold of support to qualify, Americans Elect suspended their online primary. At their annual meeting, Florida county election administrators expressed skepticism at the State’s recent effort to purge thousands of voters believed to be illegal immigrants from the voter rolls. In an effort to avoid a referendum that could energize political opponents this November, Ohio Governor John Kasich signed a bill repealing controversial changes to the State’s election code that had been enacted last year. Suits and counter-suits have left the status of Texas’ Voter ID requirements in limbo and voters in Greece will return to the polls after negotiations to form a new government failed.

National: Appeals court upholds key voting rights provision | Associated Press
National: Campaign finance law before 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals | necn.com
National: House Democrats push to make voting easier | TheHill.com
National: Americans Elect Ends Online Primary After No Candidates Qualify To Run | ABC News
Florida: Election chiefs skeptical of voter purge | Palm Beach Post
Ohio: Kasich’s signing of election law ‘repeal’ doesn’t end debate | Cincinnati.com
Texas: Still No Answers in Voter ID Case | Texas Weekly
Greece: Caretaker government will take Greece to risky repeat vote | Reuters

May 19, 2012
National: Appeals court upholds key voting rights provision | Associated Press

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, rejecting an Alabama county’s challenge to the landmark civil rights law. The provision requires state, county and local governments with a history of discrimination to obtain advance approval from the Justice Department, or from a federal court in Washington, for any changes to election procedures. It now applies to all or parts of 16 states. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that Congress developed extensive evidence of continuing racial discrimination just six years ago and reached a reasonable conclusion when it reauthorized section 5 of the law at that time. The appellate ruling could clear the way for the case to be appealed to the Supreme Court where Chief Justice John Roberts suggested in a 2009 opinion that the court’s conservative majority might be receptive to a challenge to section 5.

Judge David Tatel wrote for the Court of Appeals majority that the court owes deference to Congress’ judgment on the matter. “Congress documented hundreds of instances in which the attorney general, acting pursuant to section 5, objected to proposed voting changes that he found would have a discriminatory purpose or effect,” Tatel wrote. Tatel said that in reauthorizing the law in 2006, Congress found serious and widespread intentional discrimination. The attorney general blocked discriminatory voting changes on 626 occasions, while state and local units of government withdrew over 800 proposed voting changes in response to Justice Department inquiries, Tatel said in summarizing the evidence Congress compiled.

Full Article: The Associated Press: Appeals court upholds key voting rights provision.

A government lawyer on Friday urged an appeals court to reverse a judge’s ruling that a century-old ban on corporate campaign contributions in federal elections is unconstitutional. Justice Department attorney Michael R. Dreeben told a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the prohibition serves the legitimate government interest of curbing corruption, and overturning it would run afoul of U.S. Supreme Court precedent. But attorneys for two northern Virginia executives who were charged with violating the ban argued that U.S. District Judge James Cacheris got it right when he ruled last year that the ban violates corporations’ free-speech rights. In his first-of-its-kind ruling, Cacheris said it was not logical for an individual to be able to donate up to $2,500 to a federal government while a corporation “cannot donate a cent.” The appeals court typically takes several weeks to rule.

The issue arose when William P. Danielczyk Jr. and Eugene R. Biagi, who both live in the Washington suburb of Oakton, Va., were charged with illegally funneling contributions to Hillary Clinton’s Senate and presidential campaigns. The defendants, officers with a corporation called Galen Capital Group, allegedly persuaded dozens of individuals to contribute to Clinton’s campaigns and reimbursed them with company money.

Full Article: Campaign finance law before appeals court in Va..

House Democratic leaders on Thursday introduced legislation to streamline Americans’ trips to the polls. The bill is a response to a slew of recent state legislation – some proposed, some already law – setting stricter standards for voters to register or cast a ballot. Supporters of those state efforts — including new picture ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements – say they’re necessary to weed out ineligible voters and maintain the integrity of elections. But critics contend they’re designed to suppress eligible voters, particularly minorities and low-income Americans who tend to vote Democratic.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a hero of the civil rights movement who marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King, said the state laws threaten to return the country to the same era of discrimination he fought against. “In this age of technology, our country is moving backward, not forward,” Lewis said Thursday as he introduced the bill in the Capitol. “People died for the right to vote, and some of them were people I knew. I hope and pray we do not return to the days of overt discrimination before we decide to do something about it.”

Other Democrats piled on. Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.), the assistant Democratic leader and another veteran of the civil rights struggle, said the new state restrictions would “roll back our hard fought access to the ballot boxes.” Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), the Democratic whip, said the reforms are “exactly the wrong way to go.” And Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (D-Texas), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said the rules “are usually targeted” to exclude minorities. ”We know who the victims are,” Gonzalez said.

Full Article: House Democrats push to make voting easier – TheHill.com….

Americans Elect, the group that aimed to nominate a third presidential candidate through an online primary, ended its nomination process today after no prospective candidates met their minimum requirements. To run in its online primary a candidate had to get 10,000 “clicks” of support (1,000 in at least 10 states). Buddy Roemer was the closest to reaching that goal, but he got less than 6,300 “supporters. As of this week, no candidate achieved the national support threshold required to enter the Americans Elect Online Convention in June,” the group said in a statement. “The primary process for the Americans Elect nomination has come to an end.”

The group has spent two years and millions of dollars collecting signatures to get a spot on the ballot in all 50 states in November’s general election and creating a secure online nominating convention. They succeeded in getting on the presidential ballot in 29 states, including California, which required a whopping 1.6 million petition signatures. While the group failed to entice a qualified candidate, its creators maintain that it “has achieved its operational goals.”

“We are continuing the Americans Elect mission of creating more choice in our political system, giving candidates unaffiliated with the nominating process of either major party an authentic way to run for office and giving the American people a greater voice in our political process.”

Full Article: ‘Americans Elect’ Ends Online Primary After No Candidates Qualify To Run – ABC News.

Florida’s local election supervisors on Wednesday sounded skeptical, and even distrustful, of a push by the state to remove thousands of potential non-U.S. citizens from the voting rolls just months before the critical 2012 elections. The supervisors, meeting at their annual summer conference, peppered state election officials with questions about the list of more than 2,600 people who have been identified as being in Florida legally but ineligible to vote. That list was sent to supervisors recently, but state officials have also said there may be as many as 182,000 registered voters who may not be citizens. State election officials want the state’s 67 county election offices to reach out to those on the list, determine their citizenship status and remove them from the rolls if they are not U.S. citizens. But election supervisors – including Democrats and Republicans – asked a range of questions about the level of proof that state election officials had regarding the citizenship status of voters which was culled by comparing voter registration lists to a state driver’s license database. They said they wanted more information before they purge someone from the voting rolls.

“I’m feeling really uncomfortable about this,” Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes told officials with the state’s Division of Elections. Brian Corley, the Pasco County elections supervisor, questioned the timing of the push, noting that election officials were first given a list of potential ineligible voters from the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles roughly a year ago.

Corley pointed out how two voters on the department’s list given to him wound up being born in Ohio and Massachusetts. One of the names wound up on the list of non-U.S. citizens because the driver’s license number used to check citizenship had one number wrong on it. ”We want our voter rolls to be accurate, obviously no one wants someone to vote who isn’t a citizen,” Corley said. “But at the same time we are the ones fielding phone calls from voters saying ‘Why are you questioning my citizenship?”

Full Article: Fla. election chiefs skeptical of voter purge.

Ohio’s march toward what’s expected to be a nationally watched 2012 election took an apparently unprecedented step Tuesday, one that could put election officials into court before a ballot is cast. The potential scenario emerged Tuesday when Gov. John Kasich signed a law that repeals a controversial election bill passed in 2011 by the GOP-dominated General Assembly. The 2011 bill, which created voting restrictions that Democrats and some good-government groups decried, was to go before voters in November. The gambit, apparently the first time that Ohio legislators have ever effectively killed a referendum destined for voters, sets up a possible lawsuit over a question that could impact this fall’s election: May state legislators repeal a bill that has not yet taken effect and that is up for referendum? Democrats argue the answer is no.

They and voting rights advocates complain that Senate Bill 295 isn’t a true repeal but a poison pill – because it restricts early voting by not allowing Ohioans to cast ballots at boards of elections on the three days before Nov. 6. “If the legislature had truly wanted to return the clock to where it was,… it would have eliminated that last-three-day restriction,” said Carrie Davis, executive director of the League of Woman Voters of Ohio. “But it didn’t.”

Opponents argue the GOP’s unspoken motivation is to avert a November referendum that could drive up turnout – much as occurred in 2011 with the repeal of Senate Bill 5, a contentious labor law reform that the legislature passed with solid Republican backing. “If you want to figure out why they don’t want people voting the weekend before the election, just go back and look at who stood in line on Saturday and Sunday in 2008. Those were heavily Obama voters,” said Hamilton County Democratic Party chairman Tim Burke. “The Republicans know that, and they’re trying to do anything to prevent it from happening again.”

Full Article: Kasich’s signing of election law ‘repeal’ doesn’t end debate |Cincinnati.com… | cincinnati.com….

Whether or not the state’s voter ID bill will be in place for the November general election is still a mystery. That’s because the U.S. Department of Justice — which is being sued by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office after it declined to approve the measure — is accusing the state of stalling the delivery of key data the federal government says is necessary for the trial. Late last month, DOJ asked the district court in Washington D.C. that will hear the care to postpone the trial, which is scheduled to commence July 9. The feds have argued that Abbott’s office is reluctant to turn over information because it knows it will hurt its case. Abbott has argued that the request is nothing more than political theater.

“They initially requested a later trial date, knowing full well that such a late trial would foreclose any possibility of Texas implementing SB 14 in time for this year’s general election,” the AG’s response reads. “Having lost the initial battle in this Court over the trial date, their fallback strategy is transparent: bombard the State with massive discovery requests.” In an order dated May 1, the court did not sound too receptive to the Obama administration’s request. “At this juncture, the Court is disinclined to grant the motions and is committed, if at all possible, to decide this case in time for the law, if pre-cleared, to be effective for the November 2012 elections,” the court wrote.

Full Article: Still No Answers in Voter ID Case | Texas Weekly | Vol: 29 Issue: 18.

Greek political leaders meet on Wednesday to form a caretaker government that will lead the country into its second election in just over a month, with Greece’s euro membership at stake in a mounting crisis rocking world markets. Parties deeply divided over an unpopular EU-IMF rescue plan threw in the towel on Tuesday after nine days of failed attempts to put together a coalition, hitting heavyweight financial stocks as investors worried at the prospect that the euro zone weakling would remain in limbo for at least another month. Opinion polls show that voters enraged with five years of recession, record unemployment and steep wage cuts are likely to elect a parliament as fragmented as the one they chose on May 6. But the vote, probably in mid-June, may well tip the balance of power toward leftist parties opposed to the bailout conditions.

Policymakers from European Union states and at the European Central Bank have warned that they would stop sending debt-choked Athens the cash it needs to stay afloat if a new government tears up the bailout and backs out of commitments to cut the public debt which are blamed by many Greeks for misery. But many cash-strapped Greek voters shrug off the threat and see no contradiction between their deep-rooted wish to stay in the euro and their opposition to conditions imposed to obtain the bailouts that have staved off bankruptcy but have dragged the nation into its deepest economic crisis since World War Two.

“There is a bit of schizophrenia in our society right now. People want to stay in Europe – have the cake – but they also want to eat it – by attacking the creditors,” said Theodore Couloumbis at Athens-based think-tank ELIAMEP. ”Much depends on whether the Greek people in this repeat election are going to vote with anger and passion or if they will cool off, reflect and see in effect what the real choices are. The choice is between bad and worse.” Party leaders will meet President Karolos Papoulias at 1 p.m. (6.00 a.m. EDT) to put together a caretaker government. It was not clear on Tuesday who would be part of that emergency cabinet, whose main task would be to organize the repeat election – the third in Greece in as many years.

Full Article: Caretaker govt will take Greece to risky repeat vote | Reuters.

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The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly May 14-20 2012

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