The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for January 11-17 2016

One of the biggest applause lines from fellow Democrats in President Obama’s State of the Union address came in response to his call for an end to partisan redistricting. Lawrence Norden examined the Supreme Court’s decisions under Chief Justice Roberts that have loosened restrictions on political advertising by corporations and unions, gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, upheld the rights of states to enact restrictive voting laws, and, in the words of Justice Stephen Breyer, “eviscerate[d] our Nation’s campaign-finance laws.” This week, without comment, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to disturb lower court rulings which upheld a 2011 Arizona law that only the two parties with the highest number of adherents get to be listed on the forms. A state judge ruled that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach can’t operate a two-tier voting system that allows him to count only votes cast in federal races for voters who registered using a federal form. A U.S. District Judge denied a motion filed by the North Carolina NAACP for a preliminary injunction, saying that the plaintiffs had failed to prove the photo ID would place an undue burdens on blacks and Hispanics and had failed to prove they would likely prevail on the merits of their case in a trial set for Jan. 25. A federal judge in Virginia denied a motion by supporters of Donald Trump for a preliminary injunction to block the so-called statement of affiliation in state’s March 1 Republican presidential primary. Only one candidate is campaigning for Haiti’s upcoming presidential run-off election, as second-place finisher Jude Celestin has said he will take part in the runoff only if sweeping changes recently recommended by a special commission are adopted to improve Haiti’s much-criticized electoral machinery, while the party of Chiang Kai-shek was defeated for the first time since 1949 as voters in Taiwan elected their first female president.