The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for August 17-23 2015

A USA Today analysis shows donations of $1 million or more account for nearly half of the money channeled into candidate-aligned super PACs and other outside groups during the first six months of the Presidential election cycle. In a Washington Post editorial, E.J. Dionne writes about the continuing importance of the Voting Rights Act, 50 years after it was signed. After meeting in a two-week special session, Florida’s House and Senate adjourned without agreeing on what the maps should look like, leaving it to a state judge to draw new maps for the state’s 27 congressional districts. Virginia’s legislature was similarly unable to agree on a map and now the same federal three-judge panel that has twice ruled the state’s congressional map unconstitutional will now be responsible for remedying the injustice it found. Senator Rand Paul has offered to personally finance a separate Presidential caucus for the Kentucky Republican Party to get around a state law disallowing a candidate’s name to appear twice on the same ballot. In court documents submitted Monday, attorneys representing the NAACP and other plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the ID provision and other parts of 2013 North Carolina election law overhaul said their pending claims “may be able to be resolved through discussion and negotiations with Defendants.” A Federal Appeals Court ruled that Texas must pay more than $1 million in legal fees to groups that challenged the state’s redistricting plans. The Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has announced he is stepping down to pave the way for snap elections next month and one of the candidates for the Labour Party leadership has called an emergency meeting over concerns of “large scale” infiltration of Conservative supporters in the leadership race.