The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly January 16-22 2012

Recount of Paper Ballots Changes Iowa Caucus Result

On the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, Steven Rosenfeld considers the legal hurdles faced by opponents of the ruling. The Supreme Court rejected Texas redistricting maps that had been drawn by a State court and also heard arguments in an Alabama challenge to the Voting Rights Act. After a recount marred by incomplete returns from 8 counties, the Iowa Republican party announced that Rick Santorum had won the non-binding caucus earlier this month. Opponents of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker submitted over one million petition signatures – almost twice the amount required – to force a recall election for the Governor, Lieutenant Governor and four Republican State Senators. Attorney General Eric Holder pledged to protect voting rights at an event commemorating Martin Luther King Day. Social media played a large role in informing Chinese citizens about the democratic process in Taiwan’s elections over the weekend and Kazakhstan’s parliamentary elections were denounced as undemocratic by observers.

Editorials: The Uphill Battle Against Citizens United: Tricky Legal Terrain and No Easy Fixes | AlterNet
Alabama: Appeals Court Examines Constitutionality Of Voting Rights Act Provision | The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times
Texas: Supreme Court Rejects Judge-Drawn Maps in Texas Redistricting Case | NYTimes.com
Iowa: The Semantics and Statistics of Santorum’s Win in Iowa | 538/NYTimes.com
Wisconsin: Democrats file 1 million signatures for Walker recall | JSOnline
National: Holder vows to protect voting rights at MLK event in South Carolina | CNN.com
China, Taiwan: Taiwan Vote Stirs Chinese Hopes for Democracy – NYTimes.com
Kazakhstan: Oil-rich Kazakhstan votes in polls aimed at giving democratic air to rubber-stamp parliament | The Washington Post

Jan 21, 2012
Editorials: The Uphill Battle Against Citizens United: Tricky Legal Terrain and No Easy Fixes | AlterNet

The movement to overturn the Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United ruling and confront the doctrine of corporate personhood stands at a perilous crossroads. Across the country, two distinct strategies are converging on Congress. More than a million people have signed online petitions. State legislators, city and township governments, Democratic Party groups and unions have sponsored and passed measures in 23 states demanding that Congress pass a constitutional amendment to reassert and elevate the political speech of ordinary citizens and roll back the growing political speech and legal privileges of corporations.

The two approaches can be seen in the protest signs and sound bites proclaiming, “Money is Not Speech” and “Overturn Corporate Personhood.” But these slogans are not calling for the same remedy, especially when transformed into legal language in 10 proposals that have been introduced in the current Congress. The first would address campaign finance setbacks in a 35-year line of Supreme Court rulings, including the Citizens United ruling in 2010, which deregulated campaign spending by corporations and unions. The second would go further and seek to revoke the status of corporations as persons under the Constitution, rolling back more than a century of Supreme Court rulings under various amendments—not just those concerning political speech.

Full Article: The Uphill Battle Against Citizens United: Tricky Legal Terrain and No Easy Fixes | News & Politics | AlterNet.

A federal appeals court in Washington is reviewing the constitutionality of a provision of the Voting Rights Act that requires certain local and state governments to get permission from the U.S. Justice Department before implementing electoral changes. Bert Rein, representing Shelby County, Alabama in the suit against the federal government, today urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to strike down Section 5 of the 1965 law as unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge John Bates ruled for DOJ last September.

Congress in 2006 reauthorized the section for another 25 years in a continued attempt to minimize discrimination against minority voters. Critics contend the section puts too much power in the hands of DOJ over local election-related decisions. The appeals court heard argument in a ceremonial courtroom to accommodate the more than one hundred spectators.

Rein, name partner at Wiley Rein, told a three-judge panel that the current condition in Alabama does not justify what he called the “extraordinary remedy” of preclearance. Section 5, Rein said, is a “burden on sovereignty” that effectively puts state and local electoral authority in federal receivership.

Full Article: Appeals Court Examines Constitutionality Of Voting Rights Act Provision – The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times.

The Supreme Court on Friday instructed a lower court in Texas to take a fresh look at election maps it had drawn in place of a competing set of maps from the Texas Legislature. The justices said the lower court had not paid enough deference to the Legislature’s choices and had improperly substituted its own values for those of elected officials. The court’s unanimous decision extends the uncertainty surrounding this major voting-rights case, which could help determine control of the House of Representatives.

“To avoid being compelled to make such otherwise standardless decisions,” the Supreme Court’s unsigned decision said, “a district court should take guidance from the state’s recently enacted plan in drafting an interim plan. That plan reflects the state’s policy judgments on where to place new districts and how to shift existing ones in response to massive population growth.” Justice Clarence Thomas issued a concurring opinion, saying he would have instructed the elections to proceed under the Legislature’s maps.

The justices acted just 11 days after hearing arguments in the case. Primaries in Texas had already been moved back to April. For those primaries to proceed, officials there said, an answer from the courts was needed by Feb. 1. The two competing sets of maps set out the borders of election districts in Texas for the State Legislature and the House of Representatives on the basis of the most recent 10-year census.

Full Article: Supreme Court Rejects Judge-Drawn Maps in Texas Redistricting Case – NYTimes.com….

Amid the swirl of developments on Thursday came word from the Iowa Republican Party that it had certified the results from the state’s Jan. 3 caucuses — and that Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney, had gotten more votes. Mr. Santorum received 29,839 votes in the state’s certified tally, 34 more than Mr. Romney, who had 29,805. Iowa Republicans were hesitant to deem Mr. Santorum the winner, however. Early Thursday morning, the state party chairman, Matt Strawn, instead described the result as having been “too close to call.” Later, Mr. Strawn was somewhat clearer. “One thing that is irrefutable is that in these 1,776 certified precincts, the Republican Party was able to certify and report Rick Santorum was the winner of the certified precinct vote total by 34 votes,” he told reporters, He cautioned, however, that there was ambiguity in the outcome because the results from eight other precincts were unaccounted for and had never been certified. How safe is it to assume that Mr. Santorum in fact won? And does any of this matter, other than to historians and data geeks?

There is a series of roughly six questions that are pertinent to the vote count. Some of them cannot be answered definitively, but we will give it our best shot. Just how much doubt is there about the real winner of the caucuses? Here is one way to think about the outcome: although the certified vote totals showed an extremely close results, it was not quite as close in percentage terms as some other famous elections, including one that determined the winner of a presidential election. According to the state’s certified results, Mr. Santorum won by 34 votes out of 121,503 ballots that were tallied — a margin of victory of 0.028 percent. By contrast, George W. Bush’s victory margin in Florida in 2000 is officially listed at 537 votes — but this was out of nearly 6 million votes cast. In percentage terms, Mr. Bush won by 0.009 percent, making it about three times as small.

Full Article: The Semantics and Statistics of Santorum’s Win in Iowa – NYTimes.com….

Democrats seeking to recall Gov. Scott Walker filed more than a million signatures Tuesday, virtually guaranteeing a historic recall election against him later this year. It would mark the first gubernatorial recall election in Wisconsin history and only the third one in U.S. history. Organizers Tuesday also handed in 845,000 recall signatures against Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, as well as recall petitions against four GOP state senators, including Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald of Juneau. The sheer number of signatures being filed against Walker – nearly as many as the total votes cast for the governor in November 2010 and about twice as many as those needed to trigger a recall election – ensure the election will be held, said officials with the state Democratic Party and United Wisconsin, the group that launched the Walker recall.

“It is beyond legal challenge,” said Ryan Lawler, vice chairman of United Wisconsin. “The collection of more than one million signatures represents a crystal-clear indication of how strong the appetite is to stop the damage and turmoil that Scott Walker has brought to Wisconsin.” Walker has said for weeks – and reiterated again Tuesday – that he expects a recall election. Some supporters have echoed that sentiment, and said Tuesday they also considered an election inevitable.

But party officials, frustrated for weeks by reports of people signing petitions multiple times, said they’ll still deploy thousands of volunteers to analyze the signatures for irregularities or problems. ”We may want to make sure that Wisconsin voters are not disenfranchised,” state Republican Party spokesman Ben Sparks said.

Democrats said they removed an undisclosed number of signatures that were duplicates, illegible or seemingly fake. They acknowledged other problem signatures likely will still turn up, but they expect the effort to hold up easily.

Full Article: Democrats file 1 million signatures for Walker recall – JSOnline.

Attorney General Eric Holder joined NAACP leaders on the steps of the South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia on Monday, with the Confederate flag fluttering overhead, to promise he will aggressively protect federal voting rights for minorities. NAACP National President Ben Jealous said he had chosen to be at the Columbia ceremonies honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., declaring South Carolina is “ground zero” in the battle for African-American voting rights.

As the NAACP speakers denounced the banner of stars and bars that the state continues to display, Holder focused on defending provisions of the Voting Rights Act that he claims are under assault by South Carolina.

The Justice Department has refused to grant the needed approval of a law passed by the legislature requiring most voters to present a government-issued photo ID at the polls. ”After a thorough and fair review, we concluded that the state had failed to meet its burden of proving that the voting change would not have a racially discriminatory effect,” Holder said.

Full Article: Holder vows to protect voting rights at MLK event in South Carolina – CNN.com….

There was another winner in the election this weekend that handed President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan a second term in office — the faint but unmistakable clamor for democracy in China. Thanks in large part to an uncharacteristically hands-off approach by Chinese Internet censors, the campaign between Mr. Ma and his main challenger was avidly followed by millions of mainland Chinese, who consumed online tidbits of election news and biting commentary that they then spit out far and wide through social media outlets.

As the election played out on Saturday, a palpable giddiness spread through the Twitter-like microblog services that have as many as 250 million members. They marveled at how smoothly the voting went, how graciously the loser, Tsai Ing-wen, conceded and how Mr. Ma gave his victory speech in the rain without the benefit of an underling’s umbrella — in contrast with the pampering that Chinese officials often receive.

“It’s all anyone on Weibo was talking about this weekend,” said Zhang Ming, a political science professor at Renmin University in Beijing, referring to Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblog service. Users expressed barbed humor about their own unelected leaders — and envy over Taiwan’s prodigious liberties — but also deeply felt pride that their putative compatriots pulled off a seamless election free of the violence that marred previous campaigns in Taiwan, including a 2004 assassination attempt against the president at the time, Chen Shui-bian.

Full Article: Taiwan Vote Stirs Chinese Hopes for Democracy – NYTimes.com….

Voters headed to polling stations in large numbers Sunday in the oil-rich Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan in elections that look to have slightly broadened democratic representation in parliament’s rubber-stamp lower house. The high turnout, which reached 75 percent, is perhaps more an outcome of habit than hope, however, since the legislature will likely only undergo cosmetic changes.

An exit poll by Kazakh think tank Institute of Democracy published late Sunday showed three parties possibly entering parliament. According to data compiled from a survey of around 50,000 voters across the whole country, President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan party easily pushed aside its competition with 81 percent of the vote.

All the seats up for grabs in the 2007 election in the former Soviet nation’s parliament were won by Nur Otan. A 2009 election law ensured at least two parties would enter the 107-member chamber, by automatically granting seats to the party with the second-highest number of votes even if it did not receive the 7 percent share that is the threshold for proportional allotment of seats.

Nine deputies will be nominated Monday by a presidential advisory body that represents the country’s many ethnic communities. Opposition parties that were most likely to pose a robust challenge to Nur Otan have been either disqualified from competing or rendered largely powerless. Institute of Democracy said its survey showed the pro-business Ak Zhol party, which avoids confrontation with the government, and the People’s Communist Party of Kazakhstan claiming 7.3 percent. Two other exit polls pointed to a similar outcome.

Full Article: Oil-rich Kazakhstan votes in polls aimed at giving democratic air to rubber-stamp parliament – The Washington Post.

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The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly January 16-22 2012

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