RIP Vot­ing Rights Act:

TPM Edi­tor’s Blog
Open Sea­son On Non-White Vot­ing

Josh Mar­shall June 25, 2013, 11:44 AM

I still remain gen­er­al­ly hope­ful, over the medi­um term, cer­tain­ly the long term that the chang­ing nature of the elec­torate will prove too strong to be bri­dled by Repub­li­can vot­er sup­pres­sion efforts which will undoubt­ed­ly redou­ble in response to this wild­ly activist rul­ing by the Supreme Court. In the short term, it’s not so clear, though, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regards to 2014. Indeed, the 2012 elec­tion and this deci­sion fit togeth­er like two pieces of a puz­zle.

Repub­li­can state gov­ern­ments pushed through numer­ous laws to thin the elec­torate and par­tic­u­lar­ly to reduce minor­i­ty vot­ing. It wasn’t total­ly suc­cess­ful because of a mix of ener­gized minor­i­ty vot­ers who turned out in droves in response to these attacks and also because a small band of civ­il rights and vot­ing rights attor­neys who fought the laws across the coun­try, mak­ing ample use of the Vot­ing Rights Act.

Com­ing out of the 2012 defeat, the GOP made brief nois­es about reform­ing the par­ty to increase its appeal to non-whites. But as we’ve seen over the past six months, the will to do that has dimin­ished rapid­ly. And the House GOP now appears poised to solid­i­fy and con­firm its sta­tus as the par­ty of white peo­ple by pre­vent­ing a vote on and thus killing immi­gra­tion reform.

This deci­sion means it’s back to open sea­son on minor­i­ty vot­ing. And as the Repub­li­can par­ty sig­nals a strate­gic aim of dou­bling down on max­i­miz­ing the white vote (see the debate on immi­gra­tion reform), the imper­a­tive to reduce the minor­i­ty vote as much as pos­si­ble only grows greater.

Well that did­n’t take long.

The new meme: ‘The court rec­og­nized that our states no longer pass racist elec­toral laws. Now check out all these new racist elec­toral laws. And it’s total­ly legal! Woooohooo!’:

Repub­li­cans Across The South Promise Quick Action After SCOTUS Rul­ing
BILL BARROW June 26, 2013, 7:01 AM

ATLANTA (AP) — Across the South, Repub­li­cans are work­ing to take advan­tage of a new polit­i­cal land­scape after a divid­ed U.S. Supreme Court freed all or part of 15 states, many of them in the old Con­fed­er­a­cy, from hav­ing to ask Washington’s per­mis­sion before chang­ing elec­tion pro­ce­dures in juris­dic­tions with his­to­ries of dis­crim­i­na­tion.

After the high court announced its momen­tous rul­ing Tues­day, offi­cials in Texas and Mis­sis­sip­pi pledged to imme­di­ate­ly imple­ment laws requir­ing vot­ers to show pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion before get­ting a bal­lot. North Car­oli­na Repub­li­cans promised they would quick­ly try to adopt a sim­i­lar law. Flori­da now appears free to set its ear­ly vot­ing hours how­ev­er Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP Leg­is­la­ture please. And Georgia’s most pop­u­lous coun­ty like­ly will use coun­ty com­mis­sion dis­tricts that Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tors drew over the objec­tions of local Democ­rats.

Chief Jus­tice John Roberts wrote the 5–4 opin­ion that struck down as out­dat­ed a key pro­vi­sion of the land­mark 1965 law cred­it­ed with ensur­ing bal­lot access to mil­lions of black Amer­i­cans, Amer­i­can Indi­ans and oth­er minori­ties. Roberts’ opin­ion gives Con­gress an oppor­tu­ni­ty to retool the law’s so-called pre­clear­ance sec­tions that give the U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment veto pow­er over local elec­tions. But the prospects of a quick fix seem uncer­tain, at best, giv­en stark ide­o­log­i­cal divides on Capi­tol Hill on a host of mat­ters.

South­ern Repub­li­cans large­ly hailed Roberts’ opin­ion as recog­ni­tion of racial progress since Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son signed the law at the apex of the civ­il rights move­ment.

“Over the last half-cen­tu­ry, Geor­gia has reformed, and our state is a proud sym­bol of progress,” Gov. Nathan Deal said. “Today’s deci­sion guar­an­tees that Geor­gia will be treat­ed like every oth­er state — a right we have earned.” In neigh­bor­ing Alaba­ma, where the case orig­i­nat­ed, Gov. Robert Bent­ley said, “We have long lived up to what hap­pened” in the Jim Crow era, “and we have made sure it’s not going to hap­pen again.”

Democ­rats and civ­il rights attor­neys lam­bast­ed the rul­ing as a set­back for the very advance­ment Repub­li­cans high­light­ed, and the dis­senters pre­dict­ed a pro­lif­er­a­tion of laws designed to cur­tail minor­i­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion in elec­tions.

Rep. John Lewis, an Atlanta Demo­c­rat and civ­il rights activist who was beat­en as he advo­cat­ed for vot­ing rights in the 1960s, called the rul­ing a “dag­ger.”

Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma said he was “deeply dis­ap­point­ed” in the court over­turn­ing “well-estab­lished prac­tices that help make sure vot­ing is fair.”

At Obama’s Jus­tice Depart­ment, offi­cials opt­ed for cau­tion. They said the agency, which enforces fed­er­al vot­ing laws, has in hand 276 sub­mis­sions from state and local gov­ern­ments seek­ing pre­clear­ance. The depart­ment will issue guid­ance on those pend­ing laws and pro­ce­dures in the next few days, they said.

For five decades, the law required that cer­tain states and local­i­ties with a his­to­ry of dis­crim­i­na­tion sub­mit all of their elec­tion laws — from new con­gres­sion­al dis­trict maps to the precinct loca­tions and vot­ing hours — to Jus­tice Depart­ment lawyers for approval. Con­gress reau­tho­rized the law mul­ti­ple times, the lat­est in 2006 with over­whelm­ing bipar­ti­san­ship capped by a 98–0 Sen­ate vote.

Elec­tion offi­cials in Alabama’s Shel­by Coun­ty, a sub­ur­ban enclave nes­tled between civ­il rights hot spots Birm­ing­ham and Sel­ma, brought suit ask­ing the courts to inval­i­date Sec­tions 4 and 5, which set pre­clear­ance para­me­ters.

The Roberts major­i­ty, which includ­ed con­ser­v­a­tives Samuel Ali­to, Antho­ny Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, side­stepped whether the advance approval require­ment is con­sti­tu­tion­al, osten­si­bly leav­ing Sec­tion 5 on the books. But the jus­tices, all appoint­ed by Repub­li­can pres­i­dents, threw out the Sec­tion 4 for­mu­la that deter­mined what juris­dic­tions must have the advance fed­er­al over­sight. Roberts rea­soned that the orig­i­nal for­mu­la — extend­ed through reau­tho­riza­tions — is obso­lete because Con­gress based it on 1960s vot­er reg­is­tra­tion and turnout data. The chief jus­tice empha­sized, how­ev­er, that Con­gress can rewrite the for­mu­la to reflect “cur­rent con­di­tions,” though he didn’t offer rec­om­men­da­tions or acknowl­edge the inher­ent polit­i­cal chal­lenges involved.

Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg dis­sent­ed on behalf of the court’s lib­er­al bloc, all of them Demo­c­ra­t­ic appointees. Gins­burg argued that con­tin­ued dis­crim­i­na­tion, which Roberts him­self not­ed in the major­i­ty opin­ion, demands con­tin­ued fed­er­al over­sight.

Crit­ics of the major­i­ty also chid­ed court con­ser­v­a­tives for strik­ing down con­gres­sion­al action, giv­en that the 14th and 15th amend­ments autho­rize Con­gress to enact laws enforc­ing the amend­ments’ pro­tec­tions against dis­crim­i­na­tion.

Before the rul­ing, the for­mu­la required reviews for all of Alaba­ma, Alas­ka, Ari­zona, Geor­gia, Louisiana, Mis­sis­sip­pi, South Car­oli­na, Texas and Vir­ginia; and parts of Cal­i­for­nia, Flori­da, Michi­gan, New York, North Car­oli­na and South Dako­ta.

Jus­tice Depart­ment attor­neys have used Sec­tion 5 in mul­ti­ple cas­es to block vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion laws, say­ing they dis­crim­i­nate against minor­i­ty and poor vot­ers who are less like­ly to have the required gov­ern­ment-issued doc­u­ments. Over the law’s exis­tence, many South­ern states have end­ed up watch­ing courts draw­ing leg­isla­tive and con­gres­sion­al dis­trict lines after fed­er­al author­i­ties used Sec­tion 5 to inval­i­date what state law­mak­ers did.

South Car­oli­na has suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed a vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion law, but only after revis­ing its pre­ferred pol­i­cy after Gov. Nik­ki Haley and oth­er Repub­li­cans nego­ti­at­ed with the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. Under the court’s rul­ing, no nego­ti­a­tions would’ve been nec­es­sary.

With­in hours of Tuesday’s deci­sion, Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Greg Abbott declared on Twit­ter, “(U.S. Attor­ney Gen­er­al) Eric Hold­er can no longer deny VoterID in Texas.” The Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safe­ty announced lat­er in the day that on Thurs­day it would begin dis­trib­ut­ing pho­to IDs under a 2011 law that Holder’s lawyers had blocked under Sec­tion 5.

In Mis­sis­sip­pi, the sec­re­tary of state said her office would begin enforc­ing a pend­ing vot­er ID law for pri­maries in June 2014. North Car­oli­na Repub­li­cans said they plan swift action on a pend­ing vot­er ID bill.

Laugh­lin McDon­ald, who heads the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union’s vot­ing rights office, said he agrees that pend­ing sub­mis­sions to the Jus­tice Depart­ment are now moot. It’s less clear what hap­pens to scores of laws that the feds have already denied since the 2006 reau­tho­riza­tion. McDon­ald said he believes a state or oth­er cov­ered juris­dic­tion would have a strong case to argue that it could imple­ment any affect­ed law it has passed since the reau­tho­riza­tion.

That could be an issue in some dis­putes over at-large vot­ing dis­tricts. The Jus­tice Depart­ment denied some pro­pos­als where the pop­u­la­tion of an entire coun­ty or city would elect all rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a gov­ern­ing body, poten­tial­ly dilut­ing the influ­ence of a minor­i­ty that would oth­er­wise be able to influ­ence out­comes with­in sin­gle dis­tricts.

...

Future redis­tric­ing fights are going to be real­ly inter­est­ing.

And the zom­bie sham­bles on...

Nik­ki Haley Takes Heat After Report Blows Up ‘Bogus’ Vot­er Fraud Claims In South Car­oli­na

The Huff­in­g­ton Post | By Nick Wing Post­ed: 07/09/2013 9:44 am EDT | Updat­ed: 07/09/2013 4:34 pm EDT

For years, South Car­oli­na Repub­li­cans have com­plained about the names of dead vot­ers being used to cast bal­lots in a broad vot­er fraud scheme. Now that a recent report by the State Law Enforce­ment Divi­sion has blown up those claims, unable to find a sin­gle exam­ple of a “zom­bie vot­er” com­mit­ting fraud, one Demo­c­rat is demand­ing that Gov. Nik­ki Haley ® apol­o­gize for her par­ty’s “bogus” cru­sade.

...

For months, state Repub­li­cans high­light­ed a report from DMV direc­tor and Haley appointee Kevin Shwe­do that claimed a review of state records had deter­mined around 950 dead peo­ple might have vot­ed in the 2010 elec­tion. While Shwe­do admit­ted that report­ing errors could have led to the dis­crep­an­cy, the GOP sug­gest­ed that the iden­ti­ties had been assumed to com­mit vot­er fraud, a pos­si­bil­i­ty that was used to bol­ster con­tro­ver­sial vot­er ID leg­is­la­tion in the state.

After SLED’s report, it turns out that non-mali­cious errors were ulti­mate­ly to blame for the DMV num­bers. In a state­ment released in response to Ruther­ford’s attack, how­ev­er, Haley spokesper­son Rob God­frey said that vot­er ID was still impor­tant, despite the fail­ure of Repub­li­can vot­er fraud com­plaints to pan out.

“No mat­ter what kind of dis­trac­tions, rhetoric, or law­suits have come from oppo­nents of vot­er ID, the truth is it has always been about one thing and one thing only — secur­ing the elec­toral process,” he said, accord­ing to WIS-TV. “It’s a shame to see Democ­rats like Todd Ruther­ford con­tin­ue to oppose sim­ple mea­sures like show­ing a pic­ture ID to vote, mea­sures that make sure those who are eli­gi­ble to vote do vote, and those who aren’t don’t.”

The hits keep com­ing:

Char­lotte Observ­er
Sen­ate Repub­li­cans unveil stricter NC vot­er ID bill

By John Frank
jfrank@newsobserver.com
Post­ed: Thurs­day, Jul. 18, 2013

RALEIGH Res­ur­rect­ing one of the leg­isla­tive session’s most con­tentious issues, Sen­ate Repub­li­cans unveiled a new vot­er ID bill Thurs­day that would fur­ther restrict the forms of pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion accept­ed at the polls.

The new mea­sure would require vot­ers to show one of sev­en types of pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion issued by the gov­ern­ment, such as driver’s licens­es, pass­ports, non-dri­ver IDs and mil­i­tary or vet­er­an cards.

It elim­i­nates about half the types of pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion allowed under the House ver­sion, includ­ing cards from UNC sys­tem col­leges, state com­mu­ni­ty col­leges, local gov­ern­ments, pri­vate employ­ers and law enforce­ment agen­cies. The bill would take full effect in the 2016 elec­tions.

“We want a state-issued ID or a fed­er­al-issued ID,” said Sen. Tom Apo­da­ca, the bill’s chief sup­port­er, express­ing con­cern that col­lege IDs “could be manip­u­lat­ed” and allow out-of-state stu­dents to vote in two states.

“We want it suc­cinct, and we are will­ing to pay for it,” he added, not­ing that the bill would pro­vide free pho­to IDs to peo­ple with­out them.

The major rewrite came two months after the House approved its vot­er ID bill and a week before the session’s sched­uled end. The dis­agree­ment is the lat­est exam­ple of the legislature’s major­i­ty par­ty end­ing up divid­ed over how to deliv­er on a major cam­paign promise.

The pro­hi­bi­tion on col­lege IDs will draw the most atten­tion – par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s reliance on the youth vote to win North Car­oli­na in 2008. The large num­ber of col­lege stu­dents in the Tri­an­gle area helped push him to vic­to­ry and kept the mar­gin of defeat close in 2012.

Emmie Horadam, a ris­ing senior at Queens Uni­ver­si­ty and a Demo­c­rat, helped reg­is­ter Char­lotte-area stu­dents to vote in the last elec­tion. On col­lege cam­pus­es, she said, many stu­dents are more like­ly to car­ry their school ID instead of a driver’s license. “That’s what we all car­ry,” she said. “It’s just a lot eas­i­er.”

Nei­ther the House ver­sion nor Sen­ate ver­sion would allow pri­vate school col­lege IDs, but Horadam said that should change. “It’s just one thing Repub­li­cans are try­ing to push through to dis­cour­age col­lege stu­dents from vot­ing,” she said.State Rep. David Lewis, who spon­sored the House bill, said the pro­vi­sion allow­ing col­lege IDs at the polls is “impor­tant and should remain in the ulti­mate bill.”

...

Repub­li­can law­mak­ers are embold­ened in their effort to push a pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ment for in-per­son vot­ing after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key part of the 1965 Vot­ing Rights Act. The rul­ing means the bill would no longer need Jus­tice Depart­ment approval before it becomes law.

Oth­er changes in the Sen­ate bill would cut some mea­sures designed to edu­cate vot­ers about the changes. It elim­i­nat­ed a House pro­vi­sion to cre­ate a new advi­so­ry board tasked with edu­cat­ing the pub­lic, instead shift­ing that respon­si­bil­i­ty to the State Board of Elec­tions.

The new bill also seeks to add assis­tance to help vot­ers in nurs­ing homes and empha­sizes warn­ings that fil­ing a false bal­lot is fraud­u­lent.

...

If at first you don’t suc­ceed, try and fail again:

Sun­day, 08.04.13
The Mia­mi Her­ald
Gov­er­nor to launch new purge of Flori­da vot­er rolls

BY STEVE BOUSQUET and MICHAEL VAN SICKLER

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott will soon launch a new hunt for nonci­t­i­zens on Florida’s vot­er roll, a move that’s sure to pro­voke new cries of a vot­er “purge” as Scott ramps up his own re-elec­tion effort.

Sim­i­lar search­es a year ago were rife with errors, found few inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers and led to law­suits by advo­ca­cy groups that said it dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get­ed His­pan­ics, Haitians and oth­er minor­i­ty groups. Those search­es were han­dled clum­si­ly and angered coun­ty elec­tion super­vi­sors, who lost con­fi­dence in the state’s list of names.

“It was slop­py, it was slap­dash and it was inac­cu­rate,” said Polk Coun­ty Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions Lori Edwards. “They were send­ing us names of peo­ple to remove because they were born in Puer­to Rico. It was dis­gust­ing.”

The state’s list of sus­pect­ed non‑U.S. cit­i­zens shrank from 182,000 to 2,600 to 198 before elec­tion super­vi­sors sus­pend­ed their search­es as the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion drew near.

“That was embar­rass­ing,” said elec­tions chief Jer­ry Hol­land in Jacksonville’s Duval Coun­ty. “It has to be a bet­ter scrub of names than we had before.”

Elec­tion super­vi­sors remain wary of a new removal effort, which the U.S. Supreme Court effec­tive­ly autho­rized in June when it struck down the heart of the Vot­ing Rights Act. That rul­ing nul­li­fied a fed­er­al law­suit in Tam­pa that sought to stop new search­es for nonci­t­i­zen vot­ers, and Scott quick­ly renewed his call for action.

“If there’s any­body that we think isn’t vot­ing prop­er­ly, from the stand­point that they didn’t have a right to vote, I think we need to do an inves­ti­ga­tion,” Scott said the day of the high court deci­sion. Last fall, Scott joined the Repub­li­can Par­ty in a fundrais­ing appeal that accused Democ­rats of defend­ing the right of nonci­t­i­zens to vote.

Scott’s top elec­tions offi­cial, Sec­re­tary of State Ken Det­zn­er, is now cre­at­ing a new list of sus­pect­ed nonci­t­i­zen vot­ers by cross-check­ing state vot­er data with a fed­er­al data­base man­aged by the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty.

Detzner’s direc­tor of elec­tions, Maria Matthews, sent a let­ter to elec­tion super­vi­sors Fri­day, promis­ing “respon­si­ble mea­sures that ensure due process and the integri­ty of Florida’s vot­er rolls” and vow­ing to include super­vi­sors “in the plan­ning and deci­sion-mak­ing.”

Sen. Rene Gar­cia, R‑Hialeah, chair­man of the Flori­da His­pan­ic Leg­isla­tive Cau­cus, said Det­zn­er told him the state would resume its purge of poten­tial nonci­t­i­zens with­in 60 days.

“I’ve been told that they will go slow,” Gar­cia said. “I’m com­plete­ly con­fi­dent that the process will work.”

Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty halt­ed its purge last year after sev­er­al vot­ers on a list of 72 flagged by the state proved their cit­i­zen­ship.

...

Rand Paul just assert­ed that there’s no “objec­tive evi­dence” that there’s any sys­tem­at­ic effort to dis­en­fran­chise black vot­ers. Rand’s counter-evi­dence is the fact that blacks actu­al­ly vot­ed in a high­er per­cent­age in the 2012 elec­tion than whites. Hmm­m­mm....

It’s not vot­er sup­pres­sion. It’s non-vot­er defense against pro-vot­ing harass­ment:

The Mad­dow Blog
How not to defend vot­er sup­pres­sion in North Car­oli­na
By Steve Benen
-
Mon Aug 26, 2013 10:10 AM EDT

Two weeks after North Car­oli­na Gov. Pat McCro­ry ® approved the most sweep­ing vot­er-sup­pres­sion law seen in the Unit­ed States in a gen­er­a­tion, the polit­i­cal world is tak­ing note of the dis­as­ter in grow­ing num­bers. Last week, for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Col­in Pow­ell con­demned the state’s new vot­ing restric­tions, and yes­ter­day, pun­dit Cok­ie Roberts said, “[W]hat’s going on about vot­ing rights is down­right evil.”

But don’t wor­ry, the Eagle Forum’s Phyl­lis Schlafly, a promi­nent leader of the reli­gious right move­ment for decades, has a new defense. In a World­Net­Dai­ly col­umn, the right-wing activist offered an unex­pect­ed expla­na­tion of why some of North Car­oli­na’s new restric­tions are worth­while.

The reduc­tion in the num­ber of days allowed for ear­ly vot­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant because ear­ly vot­ing plays a major role in Oba­ma’s ground game. The Democ­rats car­ried most states that allow many days of ear­ly vot­ing, and Oba­ma’s nation­al field direc­tor admit­ted, short­ly before last year’s elec­tion, that “ear­ly vot­ing is giv­ing us a sol­id lead in the bat­tle­ground states that will decide this elec­tion.”

The Oba­ma tech­nocrats have devel­oped an effi­cient sys­tem of iden­ti­fy­ing prospec­tive Oba­ma vot­ers and then nag­ging them (some might say harass­ing them) until they actu­al­ly vote. It may take sev­er­al days to accom­plish this, so ear­ly vot­ing is an essen­tial com­po­nent of the Democ­rats’ get-out-the-vote cam­paign.

Have you ever heard a polit­i­cal fig­ure acci­den­tal­ly read stage direc­tion, unaware that it’s not sup­posed to be repeat­ed out loud? This is what Schlafly­’s pub­lished col­umn reminds me of.

For North Car­oli­na Repub­li­cans, the state’s new vot­er-sup­pres­sion mea­sures are osten­si­bly legit­i­mate — GOP offi­cials are sim­ply wor­ried about non-exis­tent fraud. The response from Democ­rats and vot­ing-rights advo­cates is mul­ti-faceted, but empha­sizes that some of these mea­sures, includ­ing restric­tions on ear­ly vot­ing, have noth­ing what­so­ev­er to do with fraud pre­ven­tion and every­thing to do with a par­ti­san agen­da.

And then there’s Phyl­lis Schlafly, writ­ing a piece for pub­li­ca­tion effec­tive­ly say­ing Democ­rats are entire­ly right — North Car­oli­na had to dra­mat­i­cal­ly cut ear­ly vot­ing because it’s not good for Repub­li­cans.

Remem­ber, Schlafly­’s piece was­n’t intend­ed as crit­i­cism; this is her defense of vot­er sup­pres­sion in North Car­oli­na. Pro­po­nents of vot­ing rights are argu­ing, “This is a bla­tant­ly par­ti­san scheme intend­ed to rig elec­tions,” to which Schlafly is effec­tive­ly respond­ing, “I know, isn’t it great?”

You mean all these new vot­er id laws were being advo­cat­ed by peo­ple with ulte­ri­or motives? No way!

TPM Muck­rak­er
Researchers Find Fac­tors Tied To Vot­ing Restric­tion Bills Are ‘Basi­cal­ly All Racial’
Eric Lach – Decem­ber 20, 2013, 4:02 PM EST

The debate over vot­ing rights has gone to col­lege.

Two Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts Boston aca­d­e­mics — Kei­th G. Ben­tele, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of Soci­ol­o­gy, and Erin O’Brien, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence — recent­ly pub­lished a paper look­ing at the pro­pos­al and pas­sage of restric­tive vot­er access leg­is­la­tion from 2006 to 2011. In the paper, titled “Jim Crow 2.0? Why States Con­sid­er and Adopt Restric­tive Vot­er Access Poli­cies,” the authors con­clude that restric­tive vot­er mea­sures are con­nect­ed to both par­ti­san and racial fac­tors.

“We looked at pro­posed and pas­sage over this peri­od, and we looked at just 2011 specif­i­cal­ly,” Ben­tele told TPM in an inter­view this week. “And you have this con­sis­tent emer­gence — over and over and over — these par­ti­san and racial fac­tors are the most strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with these out­comes.”

The paper focused on a range of restric­tive vot­er access leg­is­la­tion. That means not just vot­er ID bills, but also the reg­u­la­tion of groups who reg­is­ter vot­ers, the short­en­ing of ear­ly vot­ing peri­ods, and oth­er issues. And these efforts were not lim­it­ed geo­graph­i­cal­ly. Restric­tive vot­er access leg­is­la­tion was pro­posed in near­ly every state in the coun­try dur­ing the six-year peri­od looked at, and at least one restric­tive change passed in half the states.

Accord­ing to Ben­tele, the most strik­ing find­ings came when ana­lyz­ing only the pro­posed restric­tive access leg­is­la­tion. There were a “hand­ful” of fac­tors asso­ci­at­ed with the pro­pos­al of more bills in recent years, Ben­tele said, and “they’re basi­cal­ly all racial.” States that saw high­er minor­i­ty turnout in the pre­vi­ous pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, and states that had more African Amer­i­can and non-cit­i­zen res­i­dents, saw more bills pro­posed.

What about the great Repub­li­can specter of vot­er fraud?

“If you want to be extra­or­di­nar­i­ly gen­er­ous, you could say alle­ga­tions of vot­er fraud may have been a very, very small con­tribut­ing fac­tor,” Ben­tele said, speak­ing more gen­er­al­ly about vot­er restric­tion efforts. “But in gen­er­al, these par­ti­san and racial effects seem to be real­ly, real­ly strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with this out­come.”

...

In relat­ed news...

With vio­lence-prone anar­chists, Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Com­mu­nists, and the Ku Klux Klan descend­ing on Fer­gu­son, MO, here’s a nice sto­ry about a very dif­fer­ent approach to start­ing the heal­ing process: empow­er­ment via vot­ing:

Think Progress
This Is The Most Impor­tant Reform Fer­gu­son Can Enact To Give Its Black Res­i­dents A Voice

by Ian Mill­his­er Post­ed on August 18, 2014 at 9:00 am

If you com­pared the racial make­up of Fer­gu­son, Missouri’s pop­u­la­tion as a whole to that of its gov­ern­ment, it would be easy to mis­take the city for an enclave of Jim Crow. Although near­ly 70 per­cent of Fer­gu­son is black, 50 of its 53 police offi­cers are white. So are five of Ferguson’s six city coun­cil mem­bers. The may­or, James Knowles, is a white Repub­li­can.

Fer­gu­son can help ensure that its lead­ers more close­ly resem­ble its pop­u­la­tion, how­ev­er. They just need to hold their elec­tions at a time when vot­ers are actu­al­ly like­ly to show up.

To explain, a major con­trib­u­tor to the dis­par­i­ty between Ferguson’s pop­u­la­tion demo­graph­ics and that of its lead­ers is Ferguson’s unusu­al elec­tions cal­en­dar. Under the Fer­gu­son City Char­ter, “[t]he reg­u­lar city elec­tion shall be held annu­al­ly on the first Tues­day fol­low­ing the first Mon­day in April,” and these elec­tions are held in odd-num­bered years. Thus, Fer­gu­son choos­es its lead­er­ship at a time when there is no state or nation­al-lev­el gen­er­al elec­tion, and it is unlike­ly that there are even any major pri­ma­ry can­di­dates on the bal­lo­to. Mis­souri, like the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, holds its guber­na­to­r­i­al and state leg­isla­tive elec­tions in even-num­bered years.

The fact that Ferguson’s elec­tions are held at a time when few, if any, high-pro­file can­di­dates are on the bal­lot con­tributes to an almost com­i­cal­ly low vot­er turnout rate in these elec­tions. In 2013, for exam­ple, just 11.7 per­cent of eli­gi­ble vot­ers actu­al­ly cast a bal­lot.

Turnout is espe­cial­ly low among Ferguson’s African Amer­i­can res­i­dents, how­ev­er. In 2013, for exam­ple, just 6 per­cent of eli­gi­ble black vot­ers cast a bal­lot in Ferguson’s munic­i­pal elec­tions, as com­pared to 17 per­cent of white vot­ers.

As Zachary Roth explains, there are a num­ber of rea­sons for this dis­par­i­ty. Ferguson’s white pop­u­la­tion tends to be old­er than its black pop­u­la­tion, and old­er vot­ers tend to turnout at high­er rates than younger vot­ers. Sim­i­lar­ly, Ferguson’s black res­i­dents are less like­ly to have long­stand­ing roots in the com­mu­ni­ty, and are more like­ly to rent than to own their homes. Both home own­er­ship and long­stand­ing res­i­dence cor­re­late with high­er vot­er turnout.

Dimin­ished turnout, how­ev­er, appears to be a much greater prob­lem in Ferguson’s munic­i­pal elec­tions than it is in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Though Ferguson’s whites turned-out at near­ly three times the rate of African Amer­i­cans in 2013, black turnout dur­ing the 2012 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was almost equal to that of white turnout. Fifty-four per­cent of Ferguson’s African Amer­i­can vot­ers turned out in Novem­ber of 2012, as opposed to 55 per­cent of whites. Admit­ted­ly, 2012 may have been an unusu­al­ly high year for African Amer­i­can turnout in Fer­gu­son, giv­en Pres­i­dent Obama’s pres­ence on the bal­lot, but even if black turnout typ­i­cal­ly fell 20 points behind white turnout in a pres­i­den­tial year, that would still be bet­ter than the 3 to 1 dis­par­i­ty dur­ing the April munic­i­pal elec­tions.

So the solu­tion to the fact that Ferguson’s black major­i­ty is near­ly unrep­re­sent­ed in its gov­ern­ment could be as sim­ple as resched­ul­ing its munic­i­pal elec­tions so that they are held in Novem­ber of even-num­bered years — the same time that fed­er­al elec­tions are held. Ferguson’s City Char­ter can be amend­ed through a bal­lot mea­sure ini­ti­at­ed by the city’s vot­ers. Under that Char­ter, “[a]mendments may also be pro­posed by the coun­cil or by ini­tia­tive peti­tion of not less than ten per­cent of the reg­is­tered qual­i­fied vot­ers of the city, filed with the clerk, set­ting forth the pro­posed amend­ment.” Once a pro­posed amend­ment is sub­mit­ted along with the required sig­na­tures, “[t]he coun­cil shall at once pro­vide by ordi­nance that any amend­ment so pro­posed shall be sub­mit­ted to the vot­ers at the next elec­tion held in the city not less than six­ty days after its pas­sage, or at a spe­cial elec­tion held as pro­vid­ed by the con­sti­tu­tion and law of the state for a char­ter.”

If the res­i­dents of Fer­gu­son wish to amend their char­ter to give the city’s African Amer­i­can major­i­ty a greater voice in gov­ern­ment, they could start col­lect­ing sig­na­tures now at a time when the town’s black res­i­dents are par­tic­u­lar­ly aware of the short­com­ings of their local gov­ern­ment. Absent a spe­cial elec­tion, that would allow Ferguson’s res­i­dents to vote on the amend­ment next April, at a time when black turnout is like­ly to be high­er than it usu­al­ly is due to lin­ger­ing con­cerns over the Brown shoot­ing. And, should the amend­ment pass, the next munic­i­pal elec­tion would then be held in Novem­ber of 2016, dur­ing a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion when far more of Ferguson’s res­i­dents are like­ly to turn out then in the off-year April elec­tions of the past.

...

Well, it may not solve all of the prob­lems plagu­ing Fer­gu­son but it’s a start! And maybe there could even be some vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves while they’re col­lect­ing sig­na­tures for a resched­uled elec­tion day. Who could argue with that?

Good news!

Think Progress
This May Be The Strongest Vot­ing Rights Deci­sion Since The Jus­tices Hob­bled The Vot­ing Rights Act

by Ian Mill­his­er Post­ed on Sep­tem­ber 4, 2014 at 4:44 pm

Ohio’s attempt to reduce the num­ber of days vot­ers may cast an ear­ly bal­lot is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and vio­lates the Con­sti­tu­tion and the Vot­ing Rights Act (VRA), accord­ing to a deci­sion hand­ed down Thurs­day by a fed­er­al court in that state. Though the deci­sion has a dif­fi­cult road to trav­el before Ohio vot­ers can be cer­tain that it will stand — it will appeal to the Sixth Cir­cuit, which has a con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty, and ulti­mate­ly to the same Supreme Court that struck down a key pro­vi­sion of the VRA — Judge Peter Econo­mus’ deci­sion may be the strongest vot­ing rights deci­sion hand­ed down since the jus­tices’ attack on the VRA. Or, at least, it may be the strongest deci­sion in the sense that it calls for a very strong shield to be erect­ed around the right to vote. If his rea­son­ing is ulti­mate­ly upheld by a high­er court, that would be a seri­ous blow to efforts by many state law­mak­ers to enact laws restrict­ing the fran­chise.

Much of Judge Econo­mus’ opin­ion is devot­ed to explain­ing how lim­its on ear­ly vot­ing dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact African-Amer­i­can vot­ers. Many black church­es, for exam­ple, con­duct “Souls to the Polls” events that encour­age church­go­ers to vote after attend­ing Sun­day ser­vices — as an Ohio NAACP leader explained, “Sun­day was a focal point also because many church­es already pro­vide trans­porta­tion to take peo­ple to church, and car­pools are also arranged so that every­one is togeth­er” — yet the new restric­tions on ear­ly vot­ing lim­it these church­go­ers’ oppor­tu­ni­ties to vote on Sun­day. Addi­tion­al­ly, the new ear­ly vot­ing sched­ule elim­i­nates “Gold­en Week,” a peri­od when vot­ers can reg­is­ter and vote on the same day. The same NAACP leader tes­ti­fied that African-Amer­i­cans are espe­cial­ly like­ly to take advan­tage of this peri­od because “peo­ple in the African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty in [his com­mu­ni­ty] move fre­quent­ly, espe­cial­ly since the 2008 reces­sion.”

Empir­i­cal data also demon­strates that black vot­ers are more like­ly to take advan­tage of ear­ly vot­ing. Indeed, accord­ing to Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da Research Pro­fes­sor Daniel Smith, an expert wit­ness who tes­ti­fied in this case, the rate of ear­ly vot­ing in areas that are entire­ly African-Amer­i­can is more than twice the rate in areas that are entire­ly white. Addi­tion­al­ly, Smith explained that “there is strong empir­i­cal evi­dence in Ohio that a greater pro­por­tion of blacks not only cast [ear­ly] bal­lots than whites but do so on ear­ly vot­ing days that have been elim­i­nat­ed by” the new vot­ing sched­ule.

This data mat­ters because, under one of the pro­vi­sions of the Vot­ing Rights Act that was not struck down by the Roberts Court, “[n]o vot­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tion or pre­req­ui­site to vot­ing or stan­dard, prac­tice, or pro­ce­dure shall be imposed or applied by any State or polit­i­cal sub­di­vi­sion in a man­ner which results in a denial or abridge­ment of the right of any cit­i­zen of the Unit­ed States to vote on account of race or col­or.” More­over, as a prece­dent cit­ed by Judge Econo­mus explains, this pro­vi­sion of the VRA “does not require proof of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry intent. Instead, a plain­tiff need show only that the chal­lenged action or require­ment has a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry effect on mem­bers of a pro­tect­ed group[.]”

...

Yet, while this is the strongest argu­ment pre­sent­ed by Econo­mus’ opin­ion, that doesn’t mean that it will be upheld on appeal. For one thing, as Sean Trende, a polit­i­cal ana­lyst for the news site Real Clear Pol­i­tics explained in expert tes­ti­mo­ny on behalf of the state, “’Ohio main­tains one of the most expan­sive sys­tems of ear­ly vot­ing in the coun­try,’ with an ear­ly-vot­ing peri­od twice the nation­al medi­an.” Though reduc­ing the num­ber of ear­ly vot­ing days in Ohio reduces the oppor­tu­ni­ties for African-Amer­i­cans to vote from its pre­vi­ous base­line, it is far from guar­an­teed that a Supreme Court which has been hos­tile to the Vot­ing Rights Act in the recent past will hold that Ohio is required to main­tain its pri­or base­line.

Indeed, just last month a George W. Bush-appoint­ed judge in North Car­oli­na refused to sus­pend cuts to ear­ly vot­ing in that state, argu­ing that it was “spec­u­la­tive” to assume that black vot­ers will not shift their vot­ing pat­terns to oth­er days when vot­ing is allowed. This argu­ment could res­onate with a con­ser­v­a­tive Supreme Court.

Nev­er­the­less, it this deci­sion stands it will be a very impor­tant vic­to­ry for vot­ing rights. Among oth­er things, as Attor­ney Gen­er­al Eric Hold­er not­ed in a press con­fer­ence Thurs­day after­noon, Econo­mus’ deci­sion uses some of the “same legal rea­son­ing that under­lies the Department’s pend­ing chal­lenges to vot­ing mea­sures” to states like Texas and North Car­oli­na, where law­mak­ers and state offi­cials are aggres­sive­ly tak­ing advan­tage of the Supreme Court’s deci­sion to strike down much of the VRA.

Good news indeed! Well, hope­ful­ly the rul­ing will end up being good news. We still have to wait and see how it pro­gress­es through the courts. But as the arti­cle below high­lights, if this rul­ing does­n’t end up being good news, it’s basi­cal­ly back to the bad news:

TPM Livewire
Vot­ing Com­plaint: I Pre­fer ‘Edu­cat­ed Vot­ers’

By Daniel Strauss
Pub­lished Sep­tem­ber 9, 2014, 5:56 PM EDT

The Geor­gia state sen­a­tor who rant­ed about exces­sive black vot­ing and vowed to fight a move to expand ear­ly vot­ing in DeKalb Coun­ty defend­ed his remarks on Face­book, say­ing that he would rather have more edu­cat­ed vot­ers than an increase in the total num­ber of vot­ers.

The Repub­li­can state sen­a­tor, Fran Mil­lar (pic­tured), wrote that in a com­ment respond­ing to oth­ers on his post where he vowed to end Sun­day bal­lot­ing in DeKalb Coun­ty because that area is “dom­i­nat­ed by African Amer­i­can ship­pers” and has “large African Amer­i­can mega church­es.”

“I do agree with Gal­loway and I nev­er claimed to be non­par­ti­san,” Mil­lar wrote. “I would pre­fer more edu­cat­ed vot­ers than a greater increase in the num­ber of vot­ers. If you don’t believe this is an efort [sic] to max­i­mize Demo­c­ra­t­ic votes pure and sim­ple, then you are not a real­ist. This is a par­ti­san stunt and I hope it can be stopped. Fur­ther­more I don’t con­trol where peo­ple are allowed to vote but am glad Brookhaven has been added for the last week.”

...

Fol­low­ing a fed­er­al appeals court rul­ing last week that blocked an attempt by the Ohio sec­re­tary of state to remove the first week of ear­ly vot­ing (the “Gold­en Week” when new vot­ers can reg­is­ter and vote on the same day), Ohio’s sec­re­tary of states and Attor­ney Gen­er­al asked the US Supreme Court to reverse the rul­ing and reim­pose the cuts that are clear­ly tar­get­ing minor­i­ty vot­ers. Their argu­ment? “States’ Rights!”:

MSNBC
Husted wants Supreme Court to back Ohio’s ear­ly vot­ing cuts
09/26/14 11:17 AM—Updated 09/26/14 01:39 PM
By Zachary Roth

Jon Husted, Ohio’s Repub­li­can sec­re­tary of state, is going to the mat to impose cuts to ear­ly vot­ing, and he’s ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on his behalf. His office is fram­ing its fight for the cuts – which already been found to dis­crim­i­nate against blacks and His­pan­ics – as a mat­ter of “pro­tect­ing states’ rights.”

Late Thurs­day, Husted and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Mike DeWine filed doc­u­ments ask­ing the nation’s high­est court for an emer­gency stay to reverse a rul­ing by a fed­er­al appeals court pan­el on Wednes­day. The deci­sion ear­li­er in the week upheld an injunc­tion block­ing the cuts from tak­ing effect dur­ing this fall’s elec­tions. Ear­li­er on Thurs­day, Husted and DeWine filed a sep­a­rate appeal for a rehear­ing of the case by the full appeals court.

The cuts are being chal­lenged by a coali­tion of civ­il and vot­ing rights groups led by the ACLU. A full tri­al on the cuts is sched­uled for next year.

In an email to reporters announc­ing the Supreme Court brief, Matthew McClel­lan, a spokesman for Husted, por­trayed the con­tro­ver­sy as a bat­tle over state sov­er­eign­ty. “There are big­ger issues at play that whether Ohioans vote over 35 or 28 days,” McClel­lan wrote. “[T]his is anoth­er step in pro­tect­ing state’s rights.”

The brief itself makes that states’ rights argu­ment, among oth­ers. “The Court has also not­ed that our con­sti­tu­tion­al struc­ture requires Con­gress to include a clear state­ment if it intends to take away tra­di­tion­al state pow­ers,” lawyers for Ohio wrote. “State law, of course, has long gov­erned elec­tions.”

In Feb­ru­ary, Ohio’s Repub­li­can-con­trolled leg­is­la­ture cut the ear­ly vot­ing peri­od from 35 to 28 days, cit­ing the need for uni­for­mi­ty across the state. The peri­od that was cut was known as “Gold­en Week,” when Ohioans can reg­is­ter and vote on the same day. Same-day reg­is­tra­tion is among the most effec­tive ways to bring new vot­ers into the process, experts say. Days lat­er, Husted issued a direc­tive that end­ed Sun­day vot­ing and week­day vot­ing past 5 p.m. Many African-Amer­i­can church­es have in past years con­duct­ed “Souls to the Polls” dri­ves on Sun­days after ser­vices.

The cuts were orig­i­nal­ly blocked ear­li­er this month by U.S. Dis­trict Court Judge Peter Econo­mus, who ruled that they vio­lat­ed the Vot­ing Rights Act’s ban on racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, in part because minori­ties are more like­ly to take advan­tage of ear­ly vot­ing and same-day reg­is­tra­tion.

Econo­mus had ear­li­er ordered Husted to restore ear­ly vot­ing on the last three days before the elec­tion, after the sec­re­tary of state had tried to cut those days as well. The judge had also blocked Husted’s efforts to cut those days in the lead­up to the 2012 elec­tion. Husted appealed to the Supreme Court at that time, too. It declined to get involved.

If the Supreme Court — no friend of vot­ing rights con­sid­er­ing its recent record — decides to inter­vene this time, it could be bad news for minor­i­ty vot­ers. This poten­tial case could even give the court a chance to nar­row the scope of the Vot­ing Rights Act (VRA) with respect to oth­er restric­tions like vot­er IDs. Despite the dis­trict court’s rul­ing, the case that the cuts vio­late the VRA is by no means open and shut.

...

Yes, “If the Supreme Court — no friend of vot­ing rights con­sid­er­ing its recent record — decides to inter­vene this time, it could be bad news for minor­i­ty vot­ers. This poten­tial case could even give the court a chance to nar­row the scope of the Vot­ing Rights Act (VRA) with respect to oth­er restric­tions like vot­er IDs”. Guess what just hap­pened:

The New York Times
The Par­ti­san Court Blocks Extend­ed Vot­ing in Ohio
By Jesse Weg­man
Sep­tem­ber 29, 2014 5:42 pm

On Mon­day after­noon the Supreme Court jus­tices decid­ed 5–4, on par­ty (of-the-pres­i­dent-who nom­i­nat­ed-them) lines, to block extend­ed vot­ing hours and days in Ohio, 16 hours before vot­ing was to begin there. The deci­sion affects every­one in the state but will dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly harm poor­er and minor­i­ty vot­ers, who rely on week­end and evening hours to avoid for­bid­ding­ly long lines on Elec­tion Day.

The court’s order is tech­ni­cal­ly tem­po­rary, but in prac­tice it means that the longer vot­ing hours won’t be in effect in 2014.

There are rea­son­able argu­ments to be made about why these par­tic­u­lar restric­tions are not the most bur­den­some in the coun­try, since Ohio already has four weeks of ear­ly vot­ing. Still, the plain­tiffs made the argu­ment — accept­ed by a fed­er­al tri­al court and a three-judge appeals pan­el — that the cuts vio­lat­ed both the Equal Pro­tec­tion Clause and the bat­tered-but-still-stand­ing Vot­ing Rights Act.

In case any­one is lulled into think­ing this is about any­thing oth­er than pol­i­tics and race, here is a brief refresh­er, in the form of recent quotes from play­ers on the ground in Ohio and Geor­gia, anoth­er state where Repub­li­cans are fight­ing to keep the elec­torate as small and white as pos­si­ble:

“I guess I real­ly actu­al­ly feel we shouldn’t con­tort the vot­ing process to accom­mo­date the urban — read African-Amer­i­can — vot­er-turnout machine. Let’s be fair and rea­son­able.” — Doug Preisse, chair­man of the Franklin Coun­ty, Ohio Repub­li­can Par­ty and elec­tions board mem­ber, August 2012

“You know the Democ­rats are work­ing hard, and all these sto­ries about them, you know, reg­is­ter­ing all these minor­i­ty vot­ers that are out there and oth­ers that are sit­ting on the side­lines, if they can do that, they can win these elec­tions in Novem­ber.” — Bri­an Kemp, Geor­gia Sec­re­tary of State, July 2014

“There have been six states that have been tar­get­ed, Geor­gia being one of them, that this would be a way just to wring out every last vote.” — Rin­da Wil­son, Repub­li­can Com­mis­sion­er, Bibb Coun­ty, Ga., Board of Elec­tions, Sept. 25, 2014

“Now we are to have Sun­day vot­ing at South DeKalb Mall just pri­or to the elec­tion. … this loca­tion is dom­i­nat­ed by African Amer­i­can shop­pers and it is near sev­er­al large African Amer­i­can mega church­es such as New Birth Mis­sion­ary Bap­tist.” — Fran Mil­lar, Geor­gia Sen­a­tor, Sept. 2014

Mil­lar lat­er clar­i­fied that com­ment: “I would pre­fer more edu­cat­ed vot­ers than a greater increase in the num­ber of vot­ers. If you don’t believe this is an efort [sic] to max­i­mize Demo­c­ra­t­ic votes pure and sim­ple, then you are not a real­ist. This is a par­ti­san stunt and I hope it can be stopped.”

Ah, the Roberts Court: The GOP’s gift that keeps on giv­ing. And tak­ing.

Scott Walk­er told Wis­con­sin vot­ers dur­ing a debate last week that Wis­con­sin’s new vot­er id laws are need­ed regard­less of how many actu­al ille­gal votes are actu­al­ly cast. As Walk­er put it, “It does­n’t mat­ter if there’s one, 100, or 1,000,...Amongst us, who would be that one per­son who would like to have our vote can­celed out by a vote that was cast ille­gal­ly?” Curi­ous­ly, the feel­ings of the ~300,000 Wis­con­sin vot­ers that would have their votes can­celed (by lit­er­al­ly not being allowed to vote due to Walk­er’s new vot­er id laws) were left out of Walk­er’s empath­ic plea. Imag­ine that:

The Los Ange­les Times
A con­ser­v­a­tive judge’s dev­as­tat­ing take on why vot­er ID laws are evil

Michael Hiltzik
10.13.2014 10:17 AM

In a ratio­nal world, the debate over vot­er ID laws would be end­ed by the elo­quent, inci­sive and angry opin­ion issued late last week by U.S. Cir­cuit Judge Richard A. Pos­ner of Chica­go in a case con­cern­ing Wis­con­sin.

But this isn’t a ratio­nal world. So not only will the debate con­tin­ue, but Pos­ner’s opin­ion failed even to sway his fel­low judges on the 7th Cir­cuit Court of Appeals. The court split 5–5 on Pos­ner’s request for an en banc — that is, full court — rehear­ing of the Wis­con­sin case, in which a three-judge pan­el already had cleared the state’s ID law to go into effect for next mon­th’s elec­tion. That meant Pos­ner’s request was turned down and his opin­ion was in the nature of a dis­sent.

As it hap­pens, the Supreme Court has stepped in and sus­pend­ed the Wis­con­sin law, prob­a­bly inval­i­dat­ing it for the upcom­ing polls. But Pos­ner’s 30-page dis­sent, laid out in his typ­i­cal lucid and direct man­ner, is as exact­ing an exam­i­na­tion as you’re like­ly to find of why vot­er ID laws are cor­rupt and iniq­ui­tous, and why their usu­al ratio­nale — to com­bat vot­er fraud — is a lie.

Before walk­ing through Pos­ner’s opin­ion, a few words about why he’s impor­tant. Pos­ner, 75, is no wooly-head­ed lib­er­al, but a card-car­ry­ing con­ser­v­a­tive who was appoint­ed to the cir­cuit bench by Ronald Rea­gan in 1981. He’s wide­ly regard­ed as the smartest jurist in the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry, and was iden­ti­fied in 2000 by Fred Shapiro of Yale Law School as the most-cit­ed legal schol­ar of all time. (Shapiro’s full list is here.)

...

Pos­ner’s dis­sent in the Wis­con­sin vot­er ID case is espe­cial­ly telling, because he wrote the so-called Craw­ford deci­sion in 2007 uphold­ing Indi­ana’s vot­er ID law, in which he was upheld by the Supreme Court. But he has since recant­ed. In a 2013 book, he accept­ed the view that such laws are prop­er­ly regard­ed as “a means of vot­er sup­pres­sion rather than fraud pre­ven­tion.” That’s the view that informs his lat­est opin­ion.

“There is only one moti­va­tion for impos­ing bur­dens on vot­ing that are osten­si­bly designed to dis­cour­age vot­er-imper­son­ation fraud,” he writes, “and that is to dis­cour­age vot­ing by per­sons like­ly to vote against the par­ty respon­si­ble for impos­ing the bur­dens.”. More specif­i­cal­ly, he observes, pho­to ID laws are “high­ly cor­re­lat­ed with a state’s hav­ing a Repub­li­can gov­er­nor and Repub­li­can con­trol of the leg­is­la­ture and appear to be aimed at lim­it­ing vot­ing by minori­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly blacks.” In Wis­con­sin, accord­ing to evi­dence pre­sent­ed at tri­al, the vot­er ID law would dis­en­fran­chise 300,000 res­i­dents, or 9% of reg­is­tered vot­ers.

Pos­ner sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly demol­ish­es every argu­ment mus­tered in sup­port of vot­er ID laws. Com­bat­ing vot­er fraud? “There is com­pelling evi­dence that vot­er-imper­son­ation fraud is essen­tial­ly nonex­is­tent in Wis­con­sin.” Asser­tions about vot­er fraud are “a mere fig leaf for efforts to dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers.” He adds that “some of the ‘evi­dence’ of vot­er-imper­son­ation fraud is down­right goofy, if not para­noid, such as the nonex­is­tent bus­es that accord­ing to the ‘True the Vote’ move­ment [a vot­er sup­pres­sion orga­ni­za­tion orig­i­nat­ing in the tea par­ty move­ment] trans­port for­eign­ers and reser­va­tion Indi­ans to polling places.”

Indeed, Pos­ner writes, lists of the states that impose the strictest require­ments “imply that a num­ber of con­ser­v­a­tive states try to make it dif­fi­cult for peo­ple who are out­side the main­stream, whether because of pover­ty or race or prob­lems with the Eng­lish language...to vote.”

How about the argu­ment that pho­to ID is required to board a plane and for many oth­er rou­tine actions, so what’s the harm in requir­ing it for vot­ing? Pos­ner points out that the require­ment of pho­to ID for fly­ing is “a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion.” Nor is it true, as the three-judge appeals pan­el had it, that pho­to ID is required to pick up a pre­scrip­tion (not so in Wis­con­sin and 34 oth­er states, Pos­ner observes); open a bank account (not true any­where in the coun­try) or buy a gun (not true under fed­er­al law at gun shows, flea mar­kets, or online).

Then there’s the argu­ment that get­ting a pho­to ID is easy and cheap, and there­fore that peo­ple with­out them must not care enough about vot­ing to both­er. The three-judge pan­el wrote that obtain­ing a pho­to ID mere­ly requires peo­ple “to scrounge up a birth cer­tifi­cate and stand in line at the office that issues dri­ver’s licens­es.” Pos­ner replies that he him­self “has nev­er seen his birth cer­tifi­cate and does not know how he would go about ‘scroung­ing’ it up.” Pos­ner appends a sheaf of doc­u­ments hand­ed to an appli­cant seek­ing a pho­to ID for whom no birth cer­tifi­cate could be found in state records. It ran to 12 pages.

As for its sup­pos­ed­ly neg­li­gi­ble cost, “that’s an easy assump­tion for fed­er­al judges to make, since we are giv­en pho­to IDs by court secu­ri­ty free of charge. And we have upper-mid­dle-class salaries. Not every­one is so for­tu­nate.” He cites a study plac­ing the expense of obtain­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion at $75 to $175 — which even when adjust­ed for infla­tion is far high­er than “the $1.50 poll tax out­lawed by the 24th amend­ment in 1964.”

Pos­ner places Wis­con­sin’s argu­ment for its vot­er ID law with­in a “fact-free cocoon.” Last week, the state’s gov­er­nor, Scott Walk­er, defend­ed the law by assert­ing it’s worth­while whether it stops “one, 100 or 1,000” ille­gal votes.” Leav­ing aside that the num­ber of ille­gal votes for which there’s any evi­dence is zero, the very idea of dis­en­fran­chis­ing 300,000 vot­ers in the hope of stop­ping even 1,000 ille­gal votes is beyond fatu­ous, and well into the cat­e­go­ry of hope­less­ly cyn­i­cal. Walk­er’s lawyers tried to make that case before Judge Pos­ner, his writ­ten opin­ion shows what he thought of it.

When the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of civ­il rights is in doubt some judges err on the side of cau­tion. Oth­ers err a dif­fer­ent way:

The New York Times
Texas May Pro­ceed With Vot­er ID Law, Appeals Court Finds.

By ERIK ECKHOLM
OCT. 14, 2014

A fed­er­al appeals court said Tues­day that Texas can enforce its strong vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments in the Novem­ber elec­tion, tem­porar­i­ly block­ing a low­er court’s rul­ing last week that the law was an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al effort to sup­press the votes of blacks and His­pan­ics.

The three-judge pan­el put off con­sid­er­a­tion of whether the low­er-court deci­sion, which con­demned the law, should stand per­ma­nent­ly. Rather, it said that with ear­ly vot­ing start­ing on Oct. 20, a change in the rules could cause con­fu­sion among vot­ers and poll work­ers, some­thing the Supreme Court has sought to avoid in oth­er cas­es.

“Based pri­mar­i­ly on the extreme­ly fast-approach­ing elec­tion date, we stay the dis­trict court’s judg­ment pend­ing appeal,” Judge Edith Brown Clement wrote on behalf of the pan­el of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Cir­cuit, based in New Orleans.

The con­test­ed Texas law requires that vot­ers show cer­tain types of state-issued ID, a far tighter require­ment than in the past, when vot­ers could pro­vide var­ied evi­dence, even an elec­tric bill, estab­lish­ing their iden­ti­ties. Vir­tu­al­ly no exam­ples of in-per­son vot­er fraud have been report­ed.

In a 147-page opin­ion issued Thurs­day, after a two-week tri­al, Judge Nel­va Gon­za­les Ramos had said the law “cre­ates an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al bur­den on the right to vote.” She not­ed the lack of evi­dence that vot­er fraud was a threat and cit­ed expert tes­ti­mo­ny that about 600,000 Tex­ans, main­ly poor, black and His­pan­ic, lack the new­ly required IDs.

Judge Ramos ruled that the law was adopt­ed “with an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pur­pose.” If her find­ing of inten­tion­al dis­crim­i­na­tion is upheld, it could trig­ger new fed­er­al over­sight of Texas elec­tion pro­ce­dures, some­thing the Jus­tice Depart­ment is seek­ing.

In anoth­er case last week, involv­ing Wis­con­sin, the Unit­ed States Supreme Court tem­porar­i­ly barred the impo­si­tion of new vot­er ID require­ments, with the oppo­site effect of the Texas order but for the same stat­ed rea­sons. The Wis­con­sin law took effect only last month, with lit­tle advance prepa­ra­tion by elec­tion offi­cials, and the court appar­ent­ly believed that its imme­di­ate impo­si­tion would dis­rupt vot­ing on Nov. 4.

Greg Abbott, the Texas attor­ney gen­er­al and the Repub­li­can can­di­date for gov­er­nor, made a sim­i­lar argu­ment about tim­ing to the Fifth Cir­cuit, in addi­tion to chal­leng­ing Judge Ramos’s con­dem­na­tion of the law. But in this case, oppo­nents, includ­ing a range of cit­i­zen groups as well as the fed­er­al Depart­ment of Jus­tice, said that the state could eas­i­ly revert to its long­stand­ing, loos­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments.

The oppo­nents of the law expressed con­cern about the order, say­ing the risk of dis­en­fran­chis­ing vot­ers out­weighed the poten­tial for dis­rup­tion. They were con­sid­er­ing whether to file an emer­gency appeal to the Supreme Court.

The order “places in harm’s way the votes and voic­es of more than 600,000 reg­is­tered vot­ers, a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of whom are peo­ple of col­or,” said Ryan P. Hay­good, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “This law does all harm and no good,” he said in a state­ment, adding that the appeals court order “will not stand.”

...

Note that oppo­nents of the law have referred the case to the Supreme Court in the hopes to have the rul­ing over­turned. Guess which Supreme Court Jus­tice gets to decide if the the court takes the case:

McClatchy
Texas vot­er ID case flies up to Supreme Court

By Michael Doyle

McClatchy Wash­ing­ton Bureau
Octo­ber 15, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednes­day received sev­er­al last-ditch pleas from oppo­nents of the tough new Texas vot­er ID law.

Act­ing one day after an appel­late court effec­tive­ly kept the Texas law in place, oppo­nents includ­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion filed mul­ti­ple emer­gency appli­ca­tions ask­ing the high court to remove the low­er court’s stay.

“The need to ensure that hun­dreds of thou­sands of vot­ers in Texas are able to exer­cise their right to vote, the need to stamp out inten­tion­al racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, and the need to ensure that elec­tions are admin­is­tered fair­ly, effi­cient­ly, and equi­tably, the pub­lic inter­est over­whelm­ing­ly favors vacat­ing the stay,” attor­neys wrote.

The ini­tial emer­gency appli­ca­tion, signed by Hous­ton-based attor­ney Chad W. Dunn, was sub­mit­ted to Jus­tice Antonin Scalia, who over­sees emer­gency issues in Texas and oth­er Fifth Cir­cuit states. Scalia has the option of for­ward­ing the appli­ca­tion to all nine jus­tices.

Scalia gave Texas until 5 p.m. Thurs­day to respond.

The ini­tial appli­ca­tion filed Wednes­day morn­ing was rein­forced ear­ly Wednes­day evening by an Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion fil­ing.

“With­out this court’s inter­ven­tion, reg­is­tered vot­ers across Texas will be irrepara­bly harmed,” the administration’s lawyers argued, warn­ing about “the poten­tial dis­en­fran­chise­ment of over 600,000 Texas vot­ers” as well as “wide­spread con­fu­sion at the polls.”

The Texas branch­es of the NAACP also filed an appli­ca­tion Wednes­day with the Supreme Court.

The race to the Supreme Court is the lat­est devel­op­ment fol­low­ing the injunc­tion imposed Oct. 11 by U.S. Dis­trict Judge Nel­va Gon­za­les Ramos. The Cor­pus Christi, Texas-based tri­al judge had imposed the injunc­tion fol­low­ing release of a 147-page opin­ion late Thurs­day, in which she con­clud­ed the Texas law was dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

...

Pri­or to pas­sage of the law, dubbed SB 14, Texas vot­ers only had to pro­vide a vot­er reg­is­tra­tion card or anoth­er form of iden­ti­ty proof, like a util­i­ty bill.

The Supreme Court has already inter­vened in oth­er states’ vot­ing-law fights this cam­paign sea­son, though with dif­fer­ent results.

In late Sep­tem­ber, the high court in a 5–4 deci­sion removed a judge’s order that would have restored ear­ly vot­ing in Ohio. In a 7–2 deci­sion issued Oct. 8, the court then effec­tive­ly blocked restora­tion of same-day vot­ing in North Car­oli­na.

The Supreme Court took a dif­fer­ent tack with Wis­con­sin, declar­ing in a 6–3 deci­sion issued Oct. 10 that Wis­con­sin could not imple­ment a law requir­ing vot­ers to present pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion

“Scalia has the option of for­ward­ing the appli­ca­tion to all nine jus­tices.” Good luck Texas vot­ers!

Sur­prise! The Supreme Court just ruled that Tex­as­’s new elec­tion law, which was found by a Fed­er­al Court judge to be the equiv­a­lent of a poll tax, can be used in this year’s elec­tions. Ok, maybe it’s not a sur­prise:

Supreme Court Allows Texas Vot­er ID Law To Stand

By SAM HANANEL
Pub­lished Octo­ber 18, 2014, 7:38 AM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Sat­ur­day that Texas can use its con­tro­ver­sial new vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion law for the Novem­ber elec­tion.

A major­i­ty of the jus­tices reject­ed an emer­gency request from the Jus­tice Depart­ment and civ­il rights groups to pro­hib­it the state from requir­ing vot­ers to pro­duce cer­tain forms of pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in order to cast bal­lots. Three jus­tices dis­sent­ed.

The law was struck down by a fed­er­al judge last week, but a fed­er­al appeals court had put that rul­ing on hold. The judge found that rough­ly 600,000 vot­ers, many of them black or Lati­no, could be turned away at the polls because they lack accept­able iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Ear­ly vot­ing in Texas begins Mon­day.

The Supreme Court’s order was unsigned, as it typ­i­cal­ly is in these sit­u­a­tions. Jus­tices Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg, Sonia Sotomay­or and Ele­na Kagan dis­sent­ed, say­ing they would have left the dis­trict court deci­sion in place.

“The great­est threat to pub­lic con­fi­dence in elec­tions in this case is the prospect of enforc­ing a pur­pose­ful­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry law, one that like­ly impos­es an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al poll tax and risks deny­ing the right to vote to hun­dreds of thou­sands of eli­gi­ble vot­ers,” Gins­burg wrote in dis­sent.

The law sets out sev­en forms of approved ID — a list that includes con­cealed hand­gun licens­es but not col­lege stu­dent IDs, which are accept­ed in oth­er states with sim­i­lar mea­sures.

The 143-page opin­ion from U.S. Dis­trict Judge Nel­va Gon­za­les Ramos called the law an “uncon­sti­tu­tion­al bur­den on the right to vote” and the equiv­a­lent of a poll tax in find­ing that the Repub­li­can-led Texas Leg­is­la­ture pur­pose­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ed against minor­i­ty vot­ers in Texas.

Texas had urged the Supreme Court to let the state enforce vot­er ID at the polls in a court fil­ing that took aim at the rul­ing by Ramos, an appointee of Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma. Attor­ney Gen­er­al Greg Abbott, a Repub­li­can who’s favored in the guber­na­to­r­i­al race, called Ramos’ find­ings “pre­pos­ter­ous” and accused the judge of ignor­ing evi­dence favor­able to the state.

The court had inter­vened in three oth­er dis­putes in recent weeks over Repub­li­can-inspired restric­tions on vot­ing access. In Wis­con­sin, the jus­tices blocked a vot­er ID law from being used in Novem­ber. In North Car­oli­na and Ohio, the jus­tices allowed lim­its on same-day reg­is­tra­tion, ear­ly vot­ing and pro­vi­sion­al bal­lots to take or remain in effect.

Gins­burg said the Texas case was dif­fer­ent from the clash­es in North Car­oli­na and Ohio because a fed­er­al judge held a full tri­al on the Texas elec­tion pro­ce­dures and devel­oped “an exten­sive record” find­ing the process dis­crim­i­nat­ed against bal­lot access.

Texas has enforced its tough vot­er ID in elec­tions since the Supreme Court in June 2013 effec­tive­ly elim­i­nat­ed the heart of the Vot­ing Rights Act, which had pre­vent­ed Texas and eight oth­er states with his­to­ries of dis­crim­i­na­tion from chang­ing elec­tion laws with­out per­mis­sion. Crit­ics of the Texas mea­sure, though, said the new ID require­ment has not been used for an elec­tion for Con­gress and the Sen­ate, or a high-turnout statewide elec­tion like the race for gov­er­nor.

...

Keep in mind that a recent study found that, out of 1 bil­lion votes cast in US elec­tions from 2000–2014, only 31 instances of vot­er fraud were found. So, sure, vot­er fraud does hap­pen,but the odds of some­one hav­ing cast a fraud­u­lent bal­lot from 2000–2014 is ~100 times less than the odds that that same per­son is struck by light­ning this year. And yet, thanks to the Roberts Court, vot­ing ID laws are like­ly to spread across the entire coun­try which means the phrase “vote ear­ly and often” (which vir­tu­al­ly nev­er hap­pens in US elec­tions), is prob­a­bly going to have to be replaced with “vote now, while you still can”:

Think Progress
The Dan­ger­ous Legal Rule Behind The Supreme Court’s Lat­est Vot­er Sup­pres­sion Deci­sion
by Ian Mill­his­er Post­ed on Octo­ber 18, 2014 at 2:59 pm

As a mat­ter of prece­dent, the Supreme Court’s deci­sion on Sat­ur­day to allow Texas’ Vot­er ID law to take effect is defen­si­ble. In 2006, a low­er fed­er­al court halt­ed Arizona’s vot­er ID law short­ly before an elec­tion. The Supreme Court, in a case known as Pur­cell v. Gon­za­lez, rein­stat­ed the law. “Court orders affect­ing elec­tions,” accord­ing to the jus­tices, “can them­selves result in vot­er con­fu­sion and con­se­quent incen­tive to remain away from the polls. As an elec­tion draws clos­er, that risk will increase.” Thus, courts should be reluc­tant to hand down deci­sions affect­ing a state’s elec­tion law as the elec­tion itself draws nigh.

At least on the sur­face, the Texas vot­er ID case looks fair­ly sim­i­lar. A fed­er­al judge in Texas struck down the state’s law in the Octo­ber before an elec­tion. More­over, while Texas’ vot­er ID law is the “strictest regime in the coun­try,” accord­ing to Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg’s opin­ion dis­sent­ing from the Court’s deci­sion to rein­state the law, it is, at the very least, a sim­i­lar law to the one at issue in Pur­cell.

Nev­er­the­less, there is a very impor­tant dis­tinc­tion between Pur­cell and the Texas vot­er ID case that Gins­burg also high­lights in her dis­sent. Pur­cell was hand­ed down near­ly sev­en years before theSupreme Court gut­ted the Vot­ing Rights Act in 2013. The Texas vot­er ID law, by con­trast, went into effect despite the fact that it did not sur­vive review under the ful­ly oper­a­tional Vot­ing Rights Act pri­or to the Court’s 2013 deci­sion. Saturday’s order rein­stat­ing the vot­er ID law, in oth­er words, is an ear­ly sign of how much eas­i­er it will be for states to enact vot­er sup­pres­sion laws under the Roberts Court’s nar­row vision of vot­ing rights.

The Pur­pose of Vot­er ID

Lest there be any doubt, vot­er ID laws are vot­er sup­pres­sion laws. Though the laws’ sup­port­ers often claim they are need­ed to pre­vent in-per­son vot­er fraud, such fraud bare­ly exists. From 2002 until 2011, Gins­burg explains in her dis­sent, “there were only two in-per­son vot­er fraud cas­es pros­e­cut­ed to con­vic­tion in Texas.” A Wis­con­sin study exam­in­ing the 2004 elec­tion found just sev­en cas­es of fraud out of 3 mil­lion votes cast, and none of these sev­en cas­es were the kind of in-per­son vot­er fraud that is pre­vent­ed by a vot­er ID law. The evi­dence, in oth­er words, sug­gests that Texas is like­ly to run its entire 2014 elec­tion with­out a sin­gle vot­er try­ing to imper­son­ate anoth­er at the polls.

What vot­er ID laws do accom­plish is that they dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get groups like racial minori­ties, low-income vot­ers and young vot­ers who are par­tic­u­lar­ly like­ly not to have a pho­to ID — and who also tend to pre­fer Democ­rats over Repub­li­cans on elec­tion day. As the tri­al judge who struck down the Texas law explained, approx­i­mate­ly 600,000 vot­ers are like­ly to be dis­en­fran­chised by the law.

The Usu­al Wis­con­sin Case

On the sur­face, Purcell‘s insight that courts should be reluc­tant to change a state’s elec­tion law as the elec­tion itself draws clos­er appears to be a neu­tral rule that favors nei­ther vot­ing rights nor vot­er sup­pres­sion laws such as vot­er ID. Indeed, it is notable that just last week the Supreme Court sus­pend­ed Wisconsin’s vot­er ID law law in a deci­sion that most like­ly relied on Pur­cell.

The Wis­con­sin case, how­ev­er, was unusu­al in that fed­er­al tri­al judge struck down the Wis­con­sin vot­er ID law in April, but, for var­i­ous rea­sons, a fed­er­al appeals court did not get around to rein­stat­ing the law until mid-Sep­tem­ber. It was this deci­sion to rein­state the law less than two months before an elec­tion that was reject­ed by the Supreme Court.

Typ­i­cal­ly, how­ev­er, courts move much faster. In Texas, for exam­ple, a fed­er­al tri­al court hand­ed down its judg­ment strik­ing down the Texas vot­er ID law on Octo­ber 11. The Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Cir­cuit stayed that deci­sion on Octo­ber 14, and the Supreme Court decid­ed to leave that stay in place on Sat­ur­day the 18th. As the Texas case shows, Courts are capa­ble of act­ing very quick­ly when one par­ty seeks emer­gency relief from a low­er court’s deci­sion — and they often do.

One Free Elec­tion For Vote Sup­pres­sors

As Gins­burg alludes to in her dis­sent in the Texas case, how­ev­er, the judi­cia­ry is unlike­ly to act quick­ly when it strikes down an ille­gal vot­er sup­pres­sion law. The tri­al court in the Texas case set an expe­dit­ed sched­ule to resolve that case in Novem­ber of 2013. Yet it took near­ly a year for the attor­neys chal­leng­ing the law to com­pile the evi­dence need­ed to con­vince the court to strike down the law, and for the court to ful­ly con­sid­er that evi­dence. Though that evi­dence was com­pelling — it showed, among oth­er things, that the law­mak­ers behind the law had an incen­tive to “‘gain par­ti­san advan­tage by sup­press­ing’ the ‘votes of African-Amer­i­cans and Lati­nos,’” and that they reject­ed means to reduce the law’s impact on minori­ties with­out good rea­son — it could not have been com­piled overnight.

Admit­ted­ly, the plain­tiffs in the Texas case could have sought a quick­er deci­sion by request­ing a “pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion,” an order that allows a court to halt a law pri­or to a full tri­al on the mer­its. The Roberts Court, how­ev­er, has already shown that it is will­ing to uphold vot­er sup­pres­sion laws based on very flim­sy evi­dence. In Craw­ford v. Mar­i­on Coun­ty Elec­tion Board, the Supreme Court upheld a vot­er ID law despite the fact that the lead opin­ion was only able to iden­ti­fy one case of in-per­son vot­er fraud in the pro­ceed­ing 140 years! So there is a lot of dan­ger in chal­leng­ing a vot­er sup­pres­sion law with­out first tak­ing the time to com­pile a full record laden with evi­dence demon­strat­ing why the law should be struck down. The Supreme Court has already shown that, if they can iden­ti­fy a fig leaf enabling them to uphold the law, they will.

The result is that, when a state enacts a vot­er sup­pres­sion law, it may take a year or more for a tri­al court to deter­mine that the law is ille­gal and must be struck down. By that point, the state may have already run an elec­tion under that law. And even if they haven’t, Pur­cell sug­gests that the court’s order halt­ing the vot­er sup­pres­sion law must be stayed if it is hand­ed down too close to an elec­tion.

At the very least, vote sup­pres­sors will often get one free elec­tion when they enact a law mak­ing it hard­er to vote, where the law will go into effect regard­less of whether or not it vio­lates the Con­sti­tu­tion or fed­er­al law. Texas will get to run the 2014 elec­tion under its vot­er ID law. Ohio will get to cut ear­ly vot­ing days in 2014, despite the impact these cuts will have on low-income and minor­i­ty vot­ers. And North Car­oli­na will get to run its 2014 elec­tion under what is like­ly the most com­pre­hen­sive vot­er sup­pres­sion law in the coun­try. Some or all of these laws may even­tu­al­ly be struck down, but that won’t unelect the peo­ple elect­ed because of them this Novem­ber.

The Jim Crow Prece­dent

As I explain in my book, Injus­tices: The Supreme Court’s His­to­ry of Com­fort­ing the Com­fort­able and Afflict­ing the Afflict­ed the Afflict­ed, any­one who cares about vot­ing rights should be fright­ened by a regime that allows vot­er sup­pres­sion laws to remain in place for even a sin­gle elec­tion, as vote sup­pres­sors have his­tor­i­cal­ly proven much more nim­ble than courts.

For much of the Jim Crow Era, the South was a one par­ty region. Gen­er­al elec­tions were large­ly for­mal­i­ties, and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s can­di­date was all but guar­an­teed vic­to­ry. So, in 1923, Texas tried to pre­vent African Amer­i­cans from vot­ing by enact­ing a law pro­vid­ing that “in no event shall a negro be eli­gi­ble to par­tic­i­pate in a Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty pri­ma­ry elec­tion held in the State of Texas.” When this law was struck down by the Supreme Court, Texas enact­ed a new law allow­ing the state Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty to estab­lish rules that only per­mit­ted “white democ­rats” to vote in the pri­ma­ry. When that law was struck down, the state par­ty passed a res­o­lu­tion, pur­suant to no law what­so­ev­er, pro­vid­ing that only “white cit­i­zens” may vote in a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry. This action by the state Democ­rats was ulti­mate­ly upheld by the Supreme Court, although the jus­tices reversed course nine years lat­er.

The les­son is that, if you allow a vot­er sup­pres­sion law to go into effect for just one elec­tion, then the sup­port­ers of that law are like­ly to come up with a new way to sup­press the vote if the first law is ulti­mate­ly struck down. And even if the sec­ond vot­er sup­pres­sion law is ulti­mate­ly struck down, this cycle can con­tin­ue for­ev­er so long as each law is allowed to be in effect for just one elec­tion. This is why, when Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son pro­posed the Vot­ing Rights Act to a joint ses­sion of Con­gress, he warned that “[e]very device of which human inge­nu­ity is capa­ble” was used to deny African Amer­i­cans the right to vote in the Jim Crow South. As I explain in Injus­tices,

Seg­re­ga­tion­ists were noth­ing if not cre­ative in their efforts to dri­ve African Amer­i­cans away from the polls. When the Supreme Court said Texas could not dis­en­fran­chise black vot­ers direct­ly, they tried to do so indi­rect­ly. When that failed, they let par­ty del­e­gates do it for them. And when this tac­tic failed near­ly ten years lat­er, white racists could fall back on poll tax­es, or lit­er­a­cy tests, or any of a myr­i­ad of oth­er devices intend­ed to keep black vot­ers from the polls. . . .

Vot­er reg­is­trars in the South often wield­ed absolute author­i­ty over who could or could not reg­is­ter to vote. As Pres­i­dent John­son told the nation after Sel­ma, “[t]he Negro cit­i­zen may go to reg­is­ter only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the offi­cial in charge is absent.” And should they suc­ceed in speak­ing to a reg­is­trar, a black vot­er “may be dis­qual­i­fied because he did not spell out his mid­dle name or because he abbre­vi­at­ed a word on the appli­ca­tion.”

The key to pre­vent­ing this extra­or­di­nary cre­ativ­i­ty from stand­ing in the way of the fran­chise was to stop vot­er sup­pres­sion laws before the next elec­tion took place. That was the genius of Sec­tion Five of the Vot­ing Rights Act, which required states and local­i­ties with a his­to­ry of racial vot­er sup­pres­sion to “pre­clear” any new vot­ing rules with fed­er­al offi­cials before those rules could take effect. And, yet, the Roberts Court neutered Sec­tion Five in its 2013 deci­sion in Shel­by Coun­ty v. Hold­er. Vote sup­pres­sors in Texas may once again turn “every device of which human inge­nu­ity is capa­ble” to the task of vot­er sup­pres­sion.

...

So vote now, while you still can if you still can. It might be the last vote you ever make...for a vari­ety of rea­sons.

Here’s an inter­est­ing twist on the GOP’s end­less vot­er fraud hysteria/voter sup­pres­sion dri­ve: with a week and a half left to go before the midterms the Wash­ing­ton Post’s “Mon­key Cage” blog has a post by two Old Domin­ion aca­d­e­mics (one of whom real­ly real­ly likes the Flat Tax) about their yet-to-be pub­lished study on vot­ing by non-cit­i­zens. Their con­clu­sion: if their assump­tions are cor­rect, the authors con­clud­ed non-cit­i­zen vot­ing could pos­si­bly swing extreme­ly close elec­tions, cit­ing Sen­a­tor Al Franken’s 312 mar­gin of vic­to­ry in 2008. It’s sort of a “duh” con­clu­sion since any­thing that some­how slight­ly skews the vote in an elec­tion that close could plau­si­bly swing the elec­tions. For instance, vot­er ID laws that elim­i­nate far more legal vot­ers than non-legal vot­ers (like the 9% of reg­is­tered vot­ers that would have been pre­vent­ed from vot­ing in Wis­con­sin if its vot­er ID laws were upheld) would obvi­ous­ly swing that very same close elec­tion and swing it far more than non-cit­i­zen vot­ing, although this was­n’t men­tioned in the piece.

Inter­est­ing­ly, what they do con­clude regard­ing vot­er ID laws is that they aren’t actu­al­ly effec­tive for pre­vent­ing non-cit­i­zen vot­ing. Why? Because these vot­ing non-cit­i­zens are vot­ing because they were improp­er­ly reg­is­tered, not because they’re pre­tend­ing to be some­one else. The authors instead con­clude that greater pub­lic edu­ca­tion would be more effec­tive at inform­ing the green card hold­ers that they can’t vote even if they’re acci­den­tal­ly reg­is­tered.

So it was one hel­lu­va con­fus­ing mind bomb for the Wash­ing­ton Post to drop right before the elec­tion: Yes, non-cit­i­zen vot­ers could maybe (if their assump­tions are cor­rect) swing extreme­ly close elec­tions (again, duh) but the vot­er ID laws embraced by the GOP can’t even pre­vent it:

Wash­ing­ton Post
Monky Cage
Could non-cit­i­zens decide the Novem­ber elec­tion?
By Jesse Rich­man and David Earnest Octo­ber 24 at 3:06 PM

Could con­trol of the Sen­ate in 2014 be decid­ed by ille­gal votes cast by non-cit­i­zens? Some argue that inci­dents of vot­ing by non-cit­i­zens are so rare as to be incon­se­quen­tial, with efforts to block fraud a screen for an agen­da to pre­vent poor and minor­i­ty vot­ers from exer­cis­ing the fran­chise, while oth­ers define such inci­dents as a threat to democ­ra­cy itself. Both sides depend more heav­i­ly on anec­dotes than data.

In a forth­com­ing arti­cle in the jour­nal Elec­toral Stud­ies, we bring real data from big social sci­ence sur­vey datasets to bear on the ques­tion of whether, to what extent, and for whom non-cit­i­zens vote in U.S. elec­tions. Most non-cit­i­zens do not reg­is­ter, let alone vote. But enough do that their par­tic­i­pa­tion can change the out­come of close races.

Our data comes from the Coop­er­a­tive Con­gres­sion­al Elec­tion Study (CCES). Its large num­ber of obser­va­tions (32,800 in 2008 and 55,400 in 2010) pro­vide suf­fi­cient sam­ples of the non-immi­grant sub-pop­u­la­tion, with 339 non-cit­i­zen respon­dents in 2008 and 489 in 2010. For the 2008 CCES, we also attempt­ed to match respon­dents to vot­er files so that we could ver­i­fy whether they actu­al­ly vot­ed.

How many non-cit­i­zens par­tic­i­pate in U.S. elec­tions? More than 14 per­cent of non-cit­i­zens in both the 2008 and 2010 sam­ples indi­cat­ed that they were reg­is­tered to vote. Fur­ther­more, some of these non-cit­i­zens vot­ed. Our best guess, based upon extrap­o­la­tions from the por­tion of the sam­ple with a ver­i­fied vote, is that 6.4 per­cent of non-cit­i­zens vot­ed in 2008 and 2.2 per­cent of non-cit­i­zens vot­ed in 2010.

Esti­mat­ed Vot­er Turnout by Non-Cit­i­zens
2008 2010
Self report­ed and/or ver­i­fied 38 (11.3%) 13 (3.5%)
Self report­ed and ver­i­fied 5 (1.5%) N.A.
Adjust­ed esti­mate 21 (6.4%) 8 (2.2%)

Because non-cit­i­zens tend­ed to favor Democ­rats (Oba­ma won more than 80 per­cent of the votes of non-cit­i­zens in the 2008 CCES sam­ple), we find that this par­tic­i­pa­tion was large enough to plau­si­bly account for Demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ries in a few close elec­tions. Non-cit­i­zen votes could have giv­en Sen­ate Democ­rats the piv­otal 60th vote need­ed to over­come fil­i­busters in order to pass health-care reform and oth­er Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion pri­or­i­ties in the 111th Con­gress. Sen. Al Franken (D‑Minn.) won elec­tion in 2008 with a vic­to­ry mar­gin of 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 per­cent of Min­neso­ta non-cit­i­zens could account for this mar­gin. It is also pos­si­ble that non-cit­i­zen votes were respon­si­ble for Obama’s 2008 vic­to­ry in North Car­oli­na. Oba­ma won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 per­cent of North Carolina’s adult non-cit­i­zens would have pro­vid­ed this vic­to­ry mar­gin.

We also find that one of the favorite poli­cies advo­cat­ed by con­ser­v­a­tives to pre­vent vot­er fraud appears strik­ing­ly inef­fec­tive. Near­ly three quar­ters of the non-cit­i­zens who indi­cat­ed they were asked to pro­vide pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion at the polls claimed to have sub­se­quent­ly vot­ed.

An alter­na­tive approach to reduc­ing non-cit­i­zen turnout might empha­size pub­lic infor­ma­tion. Unlike oth­er pop­u­la­tions, includ­ing nat­u­ral­ized cit­i­zens, edu­ca­tion is not asso­ci­at­ed with high­er par­tic­i­pa­tion among non-cit­i­zens. In 2008, non-cit­i­zens with less than a col­lege degree were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to cast a val­i­dat­ed vote, and no non-cit­i­zens with a col­lege degree or high­er cast a val­i­dat­ed vote. This hints at a link between non-cit­i­zen vot­ing and lack of aware­ness about legal bar­ri­ers.

There are obvi­ous lim­i­ta­tions to our research, which one should take account of when inter­pret­ing the results. Although the CCES sam­ple is large, the non-cit­i­zen por­tion of the sam­ple is mod­est, with the atten­dant uncer­tain­ty asso­ci­at­ed with sam­pling error. We ana­lyze only 828 self-report­ed non-cit­i­zens. Self-reports of cit­i­zen sta­tus might also be a source of error, although the appen­dix of our paper shows that the racial, geo­graph­ic, and atti­tu­di­nal char­ac­ter­is­tics of non-cit­i­zens (and non-cit­i­zen vot­ers) are con­sis­tent with their self-report­ed sta­tus.

Anoth­er pos­si­ble lim­i­ta­tion is the match­ing process con­duct­ed by Cat­a­lyst to ver­i­fy reg­is­tra­tion and turnout drops many non-cit­i­zen respon­dents who can­not be matched. Our adjust­ed esti­mate assumes the impli­ca­tion of a “reg­is­tered” or “vot­ed” response among those who Cat­a­lyst could not match is the same as for those whom it could. If one ques­tions this assump­tion, one might focus only on those non-cit­i­zens with a report­ed and val­i­dat­ed vote. This is the sec­ond line of the table.

Final­ly, extrap­o­la­tion to spe­cif­ic state-lev­el or dis­trict-lev­el elec­tion out­comes is fraught with sub­stan­tial uncer­tain­ty. It is obvi­ous­ly pos­si­ble that non-cit­i­zens in Cal­i­for­nia are more like­ly to vote than non-cit­i­zens in North Car­oli­na, or vice ver­sa. Thus, we are much more con­fi­dent that non-cit­i­zen votes mat­tered for the Min­neso­ta Sen­ate race (a turnout of lit­tle more than one-tenth of our adjust­ed esti­mate is all that would be required) than that non-cit­i­zen votes changed the out­come in North Car­oli­na.

Our research can­not answer whether the Unit­ed States should move to legal­ize some elec­toral par­tic­i­pa­tion by non-cit­i­zens as many oth­er coun­tries do, and as some U.S. states did for more than 100 years, or find poli­cies that more effec­tive­ly restrict it. But this research should move that debate a step clos­er to a com­mon set of facts.

...

So what does the right-wing media respond to this “rev­e­la­tion” that extreme­ly close elec­tions could be swung by the assumed sliv­er of non-cit­i­zen vot­ers? Well, the Dai­ly Caller report­ed on the sto­ry with­out men­tion­ing the part about how vot­er ID laws were inef­fec­tive. A Nation­al Review piece not­ed that the study authors nev­er spec­i­fy if the “non-cit­i­zens” are in the US legal­ly or ille­gal­ly and then pro­ceeds to won­der if 6.4% (the 2008 “adjust­ed esti­mate” of non-cit­i­zen vot­ing in the study) of all 11 undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants in the coun­try are vot­ing in US elec­tion and swing­ing more than just close elec­tions. And Red State described the find­ings as sug­gest­ing that vot­er ID laws are “insuf­fi­cient” (imply­ing you still want the vot­er ID laws in addi­tion to oth­er vot­er restric­tions) and con­cludes:

The fact that the Democ­rats will not agree to that point and take any steps to ensure that is the case sim­ply val­i­dates what we already knew. In most of the coun­try if Democ­rats are pre­vent­ed from cheat­ing they can­not win.

That’s pret­ty much the range of respons­es we should have expect­ed. But it will be inter­est­ing to see how long it takes before this study is used to tout one of the GOP’s oth­er favorite meth­ods of vot­er sup­pres­sion: scrub­bing the vot­er rolls. Aggres­sive vot­er roll purges, after all, are a vot­er sup­pres­sion gold-mine (It’s an oldie but a good­ie)!

But with a lit­tle over a week left to go before the midterms and the GOP hav­ing already placed all of its vot­er-sup­pres­sion eggs in the vot­er ID law bas­ket (ok, there are a few oth­er eggs in that bas­ket) it appears we’ll have to wait until after the elec­tions to see if the US elec­torate is in for anoth­er round of focused vot­er roll scrub­bing as the offi­cial cure all for the much feared ille­gal vote. How will those vot­er sup­pres­sion efforts man­i­fest? We’ll find out! Soon.

Well, at least tech­ni­cal­ly this law­suit isn’t anoth­er clos­et case of the GOP push­ing a white suprema­cist agen­da. If any­thing it’s the oppo­site: Dal­las Coun­ty con­ser­v­a­tives are suing to give white vot­ers pro­tect­ed sta­tus

Talk­ing Points Memo DC
Con­ser­v­a­tives Accuse Texas Coun­ty Of Vio­lat­ing White Peo­ple’s Vot­ing Rights
By Dylan Scott
Pub­lished Jan­u­ary 20, 2015, 12:15 PM EST

A con­ser­v­a­tive group is suing Dal­las Coun­ty, Texas, for alleged­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ing against white peo­ple in vio­la­tion of the Vot­ing Rights Act. But the catch is that the 5‑member coun­ty body they’re suing about has a major­i­ty of white mem­bers. The prob­lem, appar­ent­ly, is that the board is major­i­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic.

“Like some­thing out of the bad old days, a south­ern elec­toral body plays naked racial pol­i­tics, inten­tion­al­ly using its pow­er to min­i­mize a dis­sent­ing race’s polit­i­cal sway,” accord­ing to the law­suit, filed last week in fed­er­al court by the Equal Vot­ing Rights Insti­tute on behalf of indi­vid­ual white plain­tiffs.

The law­suit asserts that the five-mem­ber Dal­las Com­mis­sion­er Court used its 2010 draw­ing of the coun­ty’s dis­trict­ing map to “vio­late the rights of Dallas’s Anglo minor­i­ty, deny­ing it rights pro­tect­ed by the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion and the Vot­ing Rights Act.”

The suit notes that whites lost their major­i­ty sta­tus in 2006. Accord­ing to the Cen­sus Bureau, Dal­las Coun­ty is now 32 per­cent white, 39 per­cent His­pan­ic and 23 per­cent black.

The suit argues that His­pan­ics and African-Amer­i­can vot­ers tend to pre­fer Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates, while whites favor Repub­li­cans. For the moment, the board has three white mem­bers and one black and one His­pan­ic mem­ber.

That’s the twist, as the Dal­las Morn­ing News report­ed last week: the Dal­las Coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers are most­ly white, albeit Demo­c­ra­t­ic. Four of the board­’s five mem­bers are Democ­rats. The suit alleges that the coun­ty board­’s cur­rent dis­trict­ing map is “designed to pun­ish its racial ene­mies, while pat­ting itself on the back for its adher­ence to the Vot­ing Rights Act.”

...

The case is the first to be brought by the Equal Vot­ing Rights Insti­tute, whose board includes Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tor Matt Rinal­di, per the Morn­ing News. Its exec­u­tive direc­tor, Dan Morenoff, was pre­vi­ous­ly a local chap­ter pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, a nation­al group of con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­tar­i­an attor­neys, accord­ing to his law fir­m’s web­site.

...

“Like some­thing out of the bad old days, a south­ern elec­toral body plays naked racial pol­i­tics, inten­tion­al­ly using its pow­er to min­i­mize a dis­sent­ing race’s polit­i­cal sway.” So white Repub­li­cans in Texas require pro­tect­ed racial minor­i­ty sta­tus? In Texas. This isn’t a joke:

The Dal­las Morn­ing News
Law­suit claims Dal­las County’s com­mis­sion­er dis­tricts dis­crim­i­nate against whites

By MATTHEW WATKINS
Staff Writer

Pub­lished: 15 Jan­u­ary 2015 09:38 PM
Updat­ed: 15 Jan­u­ary 2015 09:40 PM

A con­ser­v­a­tive group that lists a Texas leg­is­la­tor on its gov­ern­ing board has filed a law­suit claim­ing Dal­las Coun­ty is vio­lat­ing the Vot­ing Rights Act by dis­crim­i­nat­ing against white peo­ple.

The suit, filed in fed­er­al court Thurs­day by the Dal­las-based Equal Vot­ing Rights Insti­tute, argues that whites, a racial minor­i­ty in the coun­ty, have been unable to elect their cho­sen Repub­li­can can­di­dates to the Com­mis­sion­ers Court. It asks that the county’s dis­trict map be thrown out and a new one drawn before the 2016 elec­tions.

...

New­ly elect­ed state Rep. Matt Rinal­di, R‑Irving, is one of four peo­ple on the institute’s over­sight board, accord­ing to the group’s web­site.

...

Even though whites occu­py 60 per­cent of the court’s five seats, the law­suit argues that the polit­i­cal sway of white vot­ers has been pur­pose­ful­ly dimin­ished. Whites in Dal­las Coun­ty over­whelm­ing­ly vote Repub­li­can, the suit said, while blacks and His­pan­ics tend to vote for Democ­rats. The 4‑to‑1 Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty on the Com­mis­sion­ers Court is evi­dence that whites have been dis­en­fran­chised, it said.

The suit against the coun­ty lists five white res­i­dents as plain­tiffs. It blames a 2011 redis­trict­ing for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic dom­i­nance. Before then, there were two Repub­li­cans on the court.

One legal expert called the case unusu­al. Most of the time, the Vot­ing Rights Act is used to pro­tect non­white vot­ers.

“I haven’t seen any­thing like this,” said Guy-Uriel Charles, a Duke Uni­ver­si­ty law pro­fes­sor and found­ing direc­tor of the Duke Law Cen­ter on Law, Race and Pol­i­tics.

“Essen­tial­ly, it looks like the con­ser­v­a­tives are doing what they believe Democ­rats have done in the past,” he said. “They believe the Democ­rats have used the Vot­ing Rights Act to cre­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic dis­tricts. So now they are try­ing to use the Vot­ing Rights Act to cre­ate and pro­tect Repub­li­can dis­tricts.

“Whether this will work or not will depend on the facts on the ground.”

The pres­ence of three whites on the Com­mis­sion­ers Court prob­a­bly hurts the plain­tiffs’ case but doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly doom it, Charles said.

The insti­tute may argue that hav­ing only one Repub­li­can on the court is a sign that the white vote has been dilut­ed. That could work if the institute’s lawyers can prove that the court is divid­ed along racial lines and that whites form a cohe­sive but polit­i­cal­ly weak­ened bloc.

It’s easy to make the case that blacks vote cohe­sive­ly, with more than 90 per­cent sup­port­ing Democ­rats. It may be hard­er to make a com­pa­ra­ble case for whites, Charles said. Even though Texas white vot­ers lean strong­ly Repub­li­can, they aren’t as reli­ably tied to the par­ty as blacks are to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

Dan Morenoff, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Equal Vot­ing Rights Insti­tute, said the group’s legal strat­e­gy was still being worked out.

“We wouldn’t have brought this suit if we didn’t think this was going to be a strong case,” he said.

Morenoff declined to offer much infor­ma­tion about his non­prof­it group. He said he didn’t know who the organization’s biggest donors were and didn’t want to divulge its bud­get.

In addi­tion to Rinal­di and Morenoff, the institute’s board includes Chart West­cott, an unsuc­cess­ful 2014 can­di­date to rep­re­sent the Park Cities in the Texas House. West­cott lost in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry after he was accused — in some cas­es, by fel­low Repub­li­cans — of spread­ing false and dis­tort­ed infor­ma­tion about the oppo­nent.

The law­suit, filed on Mar­tin Luther King Jr.’s birth­day, is the first from the insti­tute, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly the last, Morenoff said. The coun­try is get­ting more diverse, and many oth­er areas soon will have white minori­ties in areas dom­i­nat­ed by Democ­rats, he said.

“It is very impor­tant that our laws are our laws and that the same rules apply regard­less of who is in con­trol of the levers of pow­er,” he said.

Is Amer­i­ca ready for a large num­ber of spe­cial­ly cre­at­ed major­i­ty white dis­tricts? We’ll see.

But this mys­te­ri­ous­ly fund­ed con­ser­v­a­tive group seems to be pret­ty con­fi­dent that it can prove the need for the courts to pro­tect white vot­ers from sys­tem­at­ic racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. Wow. Just imag­ine how bad it must be for whites liv­ing in Dal­las Coun­ty. Just imag­ine...

The Los Ange­les Times
Should stu­dents read Ayn Rand instead of a book about pover­ty?

By Michael Schaub
Jan­u­ary 19, 2015, 9:42 AM

A par­ent in the wealthy Texas town of High­land Park has chal­lenged a book about peo­ple liv­ing near the pover­ty line, and sug­gest­ed books by Ayn Rand, Ben Car­son and Karen Hesse as replace­ments, the Dal­las Morn­ing News reports reports.

The chal­lenged book, David K. Shipler’s “The Work­ing Poor: Invis­i­ble in Amer­i­ca,” was one of sev­en sus­pend­ed by the High­land Park school dis­trict in Sep­tem­ber. Those sus­pen­sions were even­tu­al­ly reversed, but the dis­trict announced in Novem­ber that stu­dents would needper­mis­sion slips from par­ents to read “The Work­ing Poor” and five oth­er books. Shipler’s book, which is being taught in an advanced place­ment class for high school juniors, will be reviewed by a com­mit­tee includ­ing school staff, stu­dents and par­ents, and will remain in use until then.

The par­ent who object­ed to the book wrote in her com­plaint: “ ‘The Work­ing Poor’ is not a great work of lit­er­a­ture or an exam­ple of rich writ­ing we want our stu­dents to emu­late. One must ask, is this the best piece of lit­er­a­ture our stu­dents can read to learn to write?” The Dal­las Morn­ing News notes the par­ent crit­i­cized the book for its “depic­tion of abor­tion, and sex­u­al abuse and ... its por­tray­al of women ‘as weak, pathet­ic, igno­rant, sex­u­al objects and inca­pable beings.’ ”

The par­ent offered three sug­ges­tions for a replace­ment book: Ayn Rand’s “We the Liv­ing,” Karen Hes­se’s “Out of the Dust,” and Ben Car­son­’s “Amer­i­ca the Beau­ti­ful.” Car­son­’s book was the sub­ject of con­tro­ver­sy ear­li­er this month after Buz­zFeed report­ed that sec­tions were pla­gia­rized from sev­er­al sources, includ­ing a web­site called SocialismSucks.net.

...

As we can see, High­land Park, in the heart of Dal­las Coun­ty, is clear­ly indoc­tri­nat­ing its school chil­dren with dan­ger­ous anti-white anti-pover­ty pro­pa­gan­da. And there’s noth­ing they can do about it! It’s no won­der vot­ers are feel­ing so dis­em­pow­ered. Although you have to won­der if a non-white Repub­li­can author like Ben Car­son would be con­sid­ered white-friend­ly enough to pro­tect Dal­las Coun­ty’s vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tion. Should his books real­ly be pushed on those young minds with­out a white repub­li­can counter-point? Car­son has a lot to teach the next gen­er­a­tion about what it takes to be suc­cess­ful, although they’ve prob­a­bly learned a lot of it from oth­er sources, so maybe it won’t be such a loss if Car­son­’s book is replaced with some­thing more appro­pri­ate.

Well look at that: The ‘vot­er ID’ laws that every­one knows is real­ly all about sup­press­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic-lean­ing vot­ers turns out to sup­press the vote of Demo­c­ra­t­ic-lean­ing vot­ers:

Think Progress
Study Reveals The True Scope Of Vot­er Dis­en­fran­chise­ment In Texas

by Ian Mill­his­er
Aug 10, 2015 12:18pm

A Texas law, which close­ly resem­bles sim­i­lar laws erect­ing obsta­cles to the fran­chise in oth­er states, does far more to keep vot­ers from cast­ing a bal­lot than pre­vi­ous­ly thought, accord­ing to a study con­duct­ed by researchers at Rice Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton.

Typ­i­cal­ly, ana­lysts exam­in­ing how vot­er ID laws affect turnout have honed in on vot­ers who lack ID as the obvi­ous vic­tims of such a law. The Rice/Houston study, how­ev­er, reveals that these laws reach far beyond the uni­verse of peo­ple with­out IDs. “[T]he most sig­nif­i­cant impact of the Texas vot­er pho­to ID law on vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion,” at least with­in the con­gres­sion­al dis­trict exam­ined by the study, “was to dis­cour­age turnout among reg­is­tered vot­ers who did indeed pos­sess an approved form of pho­to ID, but through some com­bi­na­tion of mis­un­der­stand­ing, doubt or lack of knowl­edge, believed that they did not pos­sess the nec­es­sary pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

The study sur­veyed 400 reg­is­tered vot­ers who did not cast a bal­lot in the Novem­ber 2014 elec­tion. All of these non-vot­ers reside in Texas’s 23rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict — a dis­trict the researchers describe as “the only one of the state’s 36 U.S. House dis­tricts where both the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and Repub­li­can Par­ty can­di­dates have a real­is­tic chance of vic­to­ry in Novem­ber.” In 2014, Repub­li­can Will Hurd nar­row­ly defeat­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent Rep. Pete Gal­lego in the 23rd dis­trict.

Alto­geth­er, 12.8 per­cent of the non-vot­ers sur­veyed in the study said that lack of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was a rea­son why they did not vote in the 2014 elec­tion, and 5.8 per­cent said that this was the prin­ci­pal rea­son why they did not vote. Yet, despite the rel­a­tive­ly high num­bers of vot­ers who cit­ed lack of ID when asked why they did not cast a bal­lot, the researchers deter­mined that only “2.7% of the respon­dents did not pos­sess any of the sev­en valid forms of pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion” and “only 1.0% did not pos­sess a pho­to ID and agreed that a lack of this pho­to ID was a rea­son why they did not vote.”

At best, this sug­gests that more than half of the vot­ers who did not cast a bal­lot because they believed they lacked the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion required to do so actu­al­ly did have a valid form of ID.

The study also con­firms many of Democ­rats’ worst fears about the poten­tial impact of vot­er ID. Accord­ing to the study, “five times as many non-vot­ers who list­ed the pho­to ID law as the prin­ci­pal rea­son they did not par­tic­i­pate would have vot­ed for Gal­lego rather than for Hurd.” Though the researchers are unable to state with cer­tain­ty whether the law changed the result of this elec­tion, they do con­clude that the vot­er ID law “may have pos­si­bly cost [Gal­lego] the elec­tion.” Hurd defeat­ed Gal­lego by just over 2,400 votes in 2014.

...

Although the vot­er ID law was in place for the 2014 elec­tion, it may not stay in effect in 2016. A fed­er­al appeals court held that Texas’s law vio­lates the Vot­ing Rights Act last week — although this deci­sion is like­ly to be reviewed by a Supreme Court that has shown a great deal of skep­ti­cism towards vot­ing rights claims in the past.

Hap­py anniver­sary.

Raise tax­es? Or cut vot­ing rights? What’s Alaba­ma’s GOP-con­trolled leg­is­la­ture going to do....hmm­m­mm....

Think Progress
Alaba­ma Is About To Make It Much Hard­er To Get A Vot­er ID

by Alice Oll­stein Aug 26, 2015 2:12pm

With Alabama’s Repub­li­can-con­trolled leg­is­la­ture refus­ing to con­sid­er any tax hikes, the state is prepar­ing to take dras­tic mea­sures to address its bud­get cri­sis — includ­ing shut­ting down all state parks and the vast major­i­ty of Depart­ments of Motor Vehi­cles (DMVs). The pro­pos­al to close dozens of DMVs across the state — start­ing in rur­al areas — could hurt vot­ers who need access to those offices in order to get the ID they need to cast a bal­lot.

Susan Wat­son, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Alaba­ma Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union, told ThinkProgress this could put up yet anoth­er bar­ri­er to vot­ing for the state’s low­est-income res­i­dents.

“They want to dis­en­fran­chise the most peo­ple pos­si­ble,” she said. “It seems like they work hard to try to find ways to make it hard­er to vote. We have zero days of ear­ly vot­ing. You aren’t allowed to vote absen­tee unless you’re out of the coun­ty or work­ing more than 10 hours on Elec­tion Day. It’s already hard to get an ID if you are in a rur­al place and don’t have a DMV close to you. But if they shut these offices down, I’m won­der­ing what peo­ple are sup­posed to do.”

The pro­posed bud­get leaves just four DMV offices in the state, in Birm­ing­ham, Mont­gomery, Mobile and Huntsville, mean­ing poten­tial­ly sev­er­al hours of dri­ving and long lines for the tens of thou­sands of peo­ple who live far from those cities.

“This won’t just hurt vot­ers,” said Wat­son. “I can see a lot more peo­ple get­ting arrest­ed and fined for not hav­ing a cur­rent dri­vers license, since it’ll be hard­er for them to get one.”

Alaba­ma imple­ment­ed its vot­er ID law short­ly after the Supreme Court struck down Sec­tion 4 of the Vot­ing Rights Act, which required the state get preap­proval from the Jus­tice Depart­ment every time it changed its vot­ing laws because of its long his­to­ry of racial­ly-based and often vio­lent vot­er sup­pres­sion. The ACLU and oth­er vot­ing rights groups argue the law dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly bur­dens the elder­ly, peo­ple of col­or, stu­dents, and the poor — who may have dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing trans­porta­tion to an office dur­ing the nar­row hours they are open, and who may lack a birth cer­tifi­cate or oth­er doc­u­ment need­ed to get the free iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card.

The state itself esti­mat­ed that 250,000 eli­gi­ble vot­ers lacked the prop­er ID, but gave out only about 1,000 as of last April.

...

But Ed Packard, Alabama’s Direc­tor of Elec­tions, defend­ed the law, telling ThinkProgress that if the DMVs close, vot­ers can still go to their Board of Registrar’s office in their coun­ty, or meet up with the mobile unit that trav­els around the state pro­cess­ing vot­er IDs. But he also admit­ted the Reg­is­trar offices have no evening or week­end hours, which presents dif­fi­cul­ties for those with full-time jobs or mul­ti­ple jobs. As for the mobile unit, it gen­er­al­ly vis­its just one coun­ty per day and is open for just two hours at a time. Though Packard says his office plans to keep run­ning the mobile unit through Octo­ber, he told ThinkProgress that the future of the ser­vice is uncer­tain because of the cur­rent bud­get cri­sis.

As it becomes more dif­fi­cult to get a vot­er ID, the state may demand more peo­ple obtain one. Alabama’s Sec­re­tary of State John Mer­rill told ThinkProgress ear­li­er this year that he is push­ing for the state to require a pho­to copy of an ID from those who vote absen­tee — who cur­rent­ly do not have to pro­vide one. He added that Alaba­ma res­i­dents should “for­give peo­ple” for past racial vot­er sup­pres­sion poli­cies and “move on.”

The state leg­is­la­ture will decide whether to go for­ward with the bud­get cuts and office clo­sures dur­ing a spe­cial ses­sion in the com­ing weeks.

Ok, so...

...
The pro­posed bud­get leaves just four DMV offices in the state, in Birm­ing­ham, Mont­gomery, Mobile and Huntsville, mean­ing poten­tial­ly sev­er­al hours of dri­ving and long lines for the tens of thou­sands of peo­ple who live far from those cities.

“This won’t just hurt vot­ers,” said Wat­son. “I can see a lot more peo­ple get­ting arrest­ed and fined for not hav­ing a cur­rent dri­vers license, since it’ll be hard­er for them to get one.”
...
The state itself esti­mat­ed that 250,000 eli­gi­ble vot­ers lacked the prop­er ID, but gave out only about 1,000 as of last April.

...
“As it becomes more dif­fi­cult to get a vot­er ID, the state may demand more peo­ple obtain one. Alabama’s Sec­re­tary of State John Mer­rill told ThinkProgress ear­li­er this year that he is push­ing for the state to require a pho­to copy of an ID from those who vote absen­tee — who cur­rent­ly do not have to pro­vide one. He added that Alaba­ma res­i­dents should “for­give peo­ple” for past racial vot­er sup­pres­sion poli­cies and “move on.””

...

“He added that Alaba­ma res­i­dents should “for­give peo­ple” for past racial vot­er sup­pres­sion poli­cies and “move on.””

Wow. Trolling the peo­ple that prob­a­bly won’t be able to vote you out of office because of the stuff you’re trolling them over. Impres­sive.

It’s also worth not­ing that revers­ing laws like this could be sur­pris­ing­ly easy: Con­gress just needs to pass a law that rein­states Sec­tion 4 of the Vot­ing Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down, which was exact­ly what con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats pro­posed back in June. Now all that needs to hap­pen is for the Democ­rats to take back the House and Sen­ate. Voila! Oh....right.

Back in 2013, fol­low­ing the Supreme Court’s gut­ting of the Vot­ing Rights Act, Repub­li­can offi­cials in Flori­da did exact­ly what you would expect them to do in such a sit­u­a­tion: Go on a purge binge:

Think Progress
With Vot­ing Rights Act Gut­ted, Flori­da Set To Resume Vot­er Purge

by Avi­va Shen Jul 25, 2013 9:08am

Florida’s con­tro­ver­sial ini­tia­tive to screen for sus­pect­ed non-cit­i­zens and purge them from the vot­er rolls is allowed to offi­cial­ly resume, a fed­er­al appeals court ruled Wednes­day.

A His­pan­ic civ­il rights group and two nat­u­ral­ized cit­i­zens sued last year to block the purge, argu­ing that it need­ed to be approved by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment because five Flori­da coun­ties were cov­ered under the Vot­ing Rights Act. After the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out a key sec­tion of the law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Cir­cuit had lit­tle choice but to dis­miss the suit. Sec­re­tary of State Ken Det­zn­er ® said he plans to resume the vot­er purge.

In 2012, the Depart­ment of Jus­tice warned that Florida’s vot­er purge, which tar­get­ed rough­ly 180,000 peo­ple, was ille­gal, and all of the state’s coun­ty elec­tion super­vi­sors refused to exe­cute the purge. The lists of flagged indi­vid­u­als — many of whom had Lati­no-sound­ing names — also turned out to be large­ly inac­cu­rate. These flagged indi­vid­u­als would receive noti­fi­ca­tions in the mail noti­fy­ing them that they had 30 days to con­test the purge.

...

After all the legal bat­tles and thou­sands of wast­ed tax­pay­er dol­lars, the state could not turn up vir­tu­al­ly any non-cit­i­zens who were reg­is­tered to vote.

Flori­da vot­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly in minor­i­ty-heavy urban areas, suf­fered some of the longest lines and most chaot­ic elec­tions in the coun­try last year. The may­hem was large­ly cre­at­ed by Repub­li­can law­mak­ers’ efforts to sup­press votes. Besides try­ing to purge vot­ers, Repub­li­cans cut the num­ber of ear­ly vot­ing days in half, changed bal­lot length restric­tions so they could add friv­o­lous con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments to 12-page bal­lots, and restrict­ed vot­er reg­is­tra­tion. These vot­er sup­pres­sion efforts dis­cour­aged at least 201,000 Florid­i­ans from vot­ing, and black and Lati­no vot­ers wait­ed near­ly twice as long as white vot­ers. The back­lash was so fierce that even Gov. Rick Scott ®, the pri­ma­ry defend­er of these vot­er sup­pres­sion laws, agreed to sign an elec­tion reform law undo­ing most of the dam­age.

Promi­nent Flori­da Repub­li­cans admit­ted short­ly after the elec­tion that the motive behind all these elec­tion law changes was to make it hard­er for Democ­rats to vote.

“In 2012, the Depart­ment of Jus­tice warned that Florida’s vot­er purge, which tar­get­ed rough­ly 180,000 peo­ple, was ille­gal, and all of the state’s coun­ty elec­tion super­vi­sors refused to exe­cute the purge.”
But that was, of course, in 2012, before the Supreme Court purged the fed­er­al elec­tion laws of the Vot­ing Rights Act. Nowa­days it’s ‘purge baby purge!’ Well, sort of. The 11th Cir­cuit Court of Appeals did rule last year that the 2012 vot­er purges less than 90 days before the elec­tion were ille­gal, so hope­ful­ly Flori­da’s Repub­li­cans won’t get quite so purge hap­py in the lead up to elec­tions going for­ward.

Of course, if Flori­da’s GOP does indeed some­how restrain itself from anoth­er round of ille­gal vot­er purges in 2016, that just leaves them all them the oth­er meth­ods for swing­ing an elec­tion. Like prison-cen­tric ger­ry­man­der­ing schemes, for instance...:

TPM Muck­rak­er
White GOP­er: We Can Beat Black US Rep By Adding More Pris­on­ers To Her Dis­trict

By Cather­ine Thomp­son
Pub­lished Sep­tem­ber 24, 2015, 3:10 PM EDT

A white Flori­da Repub­li­can sug­gest­ed knock­ing a black, long­time Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gress­woman out of her seat by ger­ry­man­der­ing more pris­on­ers into her dis­trict, accord­ing to audio obtained by Politi­co and pub­lished on Wednes­day.

Politi­co report­ed that state Rep. Janet Adkins ® made the sug­ges­tion regard­ing U.S. Rep. Cor­rinne Brown’s (D) dis­trict in a closed-door meet­ing of the North Flori­da Repub­li­can cau­cus.

“It’s a per­fect storm,” Adkins said on the audio record­ing. “You draw it in such a fash­ion so per­haps, a major­i­ty, or maybe not a major­i­ty, but a num­ber of them will live in the pris­ons, there­by not being able to vote.”

Adkins made sure there were no reporters in the room before she made her com­ments, accord­ing to the report.

...

When Politi­co approached Adkins, who is white, about the com­ments she made on the record­ing, she said she was hav­ing a “pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion” and not­ed that she does not serve on the state House redis­trict­ing com­mit­tee.

Adkins said in a state­ment released lat­er Wednes­day that she was sim­ply try­ing to explain what had been dis­cussed in a spe­cial ses­sion on redis­trict­ing.

“My com­ments regard­ing the pro­posed realign­ment of con­gres­sion­al dis­trict five (as rec­om­mend­ed by the Flori­da Supreme Court) were an attempt to explain some of issues that came up in debate dur­ing the redis­trict­ing spe­cial ses­sion,” Adkins wrote in a state­ment, as quot­ed by The Flori­da Times-Union. “I apol­o­gize if my state­ments offend­ed any­one. Because con­gres­sion­al redis­trict­ing is a pend­ing legal issue, I will not com­ment on this mat­ter any fur­ther.”

“It’s a per­fect storm...You draw it in such a fash­ion so per­haps, a major­i­ty, or maybe not a major­i­ty, but a num­ber of them will live in the pris­ons, there­by not being able to vote.”

Some­one should prob­a­bly inform Jeb Bush’s cam­paign, a cam­paign that declared minor­i­ty out­reach as inte­gral to its strat­e­gy, that “dog whistling” is a euphemism, and every­one can actu­al­ly hear what he’s say­ing:

Huff­in­g­ton Post

Jeb Bush’s “Free Stuff” Racial Insult Was a Shrewd Cal­cu­la­tion.

Earl Ofari

Post­ed: 09/25/2015 5:36 pm EDT

GOP pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Jeb Bush knew exact­ly what he was doing when he insult­ed African-Amer­i­can vot­ers by alleg­ing that the Democ­rats buy their votes with “free stuff.” In fact, it was no acci­dent that he hurled his slur at Democ­rats at a cam­paign stop in South Car­oli­na.

Bush is wal­low­ing in sin­gle dig­its in the polls and he need­ed some spark to get the atten­tion and touch the nerve of Deep South white, con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers. It’s not a new ploy. Three and a half decades ago then GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ronald Rea­gan kicked off his pres­i­den­tial bid by thun­der­ing about states rights to a lily white cam­paign crowd in Nesho­ba, Mis­sis­sip­pi.

In 2012, GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney punched the same famil­iar race-tinged code themes: out of con­trol spend thrift, bloat­ed gov­ern­ment to a vir­tu­al­ly lily white crowd in Nor­folk, Vir­ginia. Rom­ney lat­er dou­bled down on his sub­tle race card code mes­sage by insult­ing blacks as Bush did with the crack that Democ­rats sup­pos­ed­ly bribe them by ladling out all sorts of wel­fare and enti­tle­ment good­ies.

Bush can’t open­ly espouse states rights as Rea­gan crude­ly, and Rom­ney only slight­ly less crude­ly, did. But he updat­ed the code themes by lam­bast­ing Democ­rats, waste­ful big gov­ern­ment, run-away deficit spend­ing on enti­tle­ment pro­grams, and their full-blown assaults on the so-called Oba­macare, Medicare, Med­ic­aid, Social Secu­ri­ty pro­grams, and labor unions.

The “free stuff” to blacks dig was sim­ply etch­ing a lurid racial stereo­type graph­ic to it for con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers. And stereo­type it is. The major­i­ty of the recip­i­ents of these pro­grams have always been white seniors, retirees, women, and chil­dren, and white work­ers. But these pro­grams have been art­ful­ly sold to many Amer­i­cans as hand­outs to lazy, unde­serv­ing blacks, His­pan­ics and minori­ties.

Bush as Rea­gan and Rom­ney ripped a page direct­ly from the time test­ed South­ern Strat­e­gy play­book of Richard Nixon for GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates. The strat­e­gy has always had two hinges. One is to attack the alleged­ly lib­er­al and bloat­ed and tax-and-spend big gov­ern­ment. The sec­ond is to firm­ly lock down the major­i­ty pop­u­lar and elec­toral vote in the 11 old Con­fed­er­ate and Bor­der states. These states hold more than one-third of the elec­toral votes need­ed to bag the White House.

Bush’s blunt revival of the South­ern Strat­e­gy blunt­ly rec­og­nizes two real­i­ties. If he’s the even­tu­al GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, he will get a neg­li­gi­ble per­cent­age of the black vote, and only a slight­ly high­er per­cent­age of the Lati­no vote. Despite much talk that the white con­ser­v­a­tive vote has shrunk to the point of being mar­gin­al­ized, it isn’t. Whites make up more than 60 per­cent of Amer­i­ca’s elec­torate. That’s a huge drop from what they rep­re­sent­ed in the 1980 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. But even that does­n’t tell the white sto­ry.

In the 2012 elec­tion, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma won only a major­i­ty of white vote in four states Mass­a­chu­setts, Iowa, Con­necti­cut and New Hamp­shire. He could not even get a major­i­ty of white vot­ers in Deep Blue, heav­i­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cal­i­for­nia, New York and Penn­syl­va­nia. Over­all, Rom­ney bagged near­ly six­ty per­cent of white vot­ers. That trans­lat­ed out to a whop­ping 20 per­cent mar­gin over Oba­ma.

The raw racial vote num­bers belie anoth­er stark polit­i­cal real­i­ty: Lyn­don John­son in 1964 was the last Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date to win more than half the white vote. In every elec­tion since Nixon’s win in 1968 whites have vot­ed con­sis­tent­ly by either size­able or com­fort­able mar­gins for GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates.

Whites favored Rea­gan in 1984 by a 64–35 mar­gin. They favored George Bush Sr. in 1988 by a 59–40 mar­gin. Even when Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bents have won reelec­tion by land­slide mar­gins as in Clin­ton’s reelec­tion win in 1996, GOP Pres­i­den­tial con­tender Bob Dole still edged Clin­ton out with white vot­ers. He wal­loped Clin­ton by a dou­ble-dig­it mar­gin of white con­ser­v­a­tive protes­tant vot­ers.

...

Bush’s neo-South­ern Strat­e­gy is anchored in anoth­er polit­i­cal real­i­ty. He hopes to dupli­cate what Rom­ney did and that’s grab the major­i­ty of con­ser­v­a­tive white vot­ers. In Rom­ney’s 2012 GOP pri­ma­ry wins he got two-thirds of those that self-labeled them­selves “strong­ly con­ser­v­a­tive” or “some­what con­ser­v­a­tive. This is no sur­prise for anoth­er rea­son. Elec­tions are usu­al­ly won by can­di­dates with a sol­id and impas­sioned core of bloc vot­ers. White males, par­tic­u­lar­ly old­er white males, vote con­sis­tent­ly and faith­ful­ly. And they vote in a far greater per­cent­age than His­pan­ics and blacks.

So Bush know­ing­ly played the race card in part to boost his fal­ter­ing cam­paign, in greater part because the recent his­to­ry of pres­i­den­tial elec­tion have shown that a GOP can­di­date’s only path to the White House is get­ting an over­whelm­ing num­ber of white vot­ers in the South, the Heart­land States, and the swing states. Bush shrewd­ly cal­cu­lat­ed that in his polit­i­cal insult.

Note that while it’s true that:

...
Bush’s neo-South­ern Strat­e­gy is anchored in anoth­er polit­i­cal real­i­ty. He hopes to dupli­cate what Rom­ney did and that’s grab the major­i­ty of con­ser­v­a­tive white vot­ers. In Rom­ney’s 2012 GOP pri­ma­ry wins he got two-thirds of those that self-labeled them­selves “strong­ly con­ser­v­a­tive” or “some­what con­ser­v­a­tive. This is no sur­prise for anoth­er rea­son. Elec­tions are usu­al­ly won by can­di­dates with a sol­id and impas­sioned core of bloc vot­ers. White males, par­tic­u­lar­ly old­er white males, vote con­sis­tent­ly and faith­ful­ly. And they vote in a far greater per­cent­age than His­pan­ics and blacks.
...

one rea­son “white males, par­tic­u­lar­ly old­er white males, vote con­sis­tent­ly and faith­ful­ly” is that their voic­es were actu­al­ly allowed to be heard at the bal­lot box. Minor­i­ty vot­ers in Flori­da , on the oth­er hand, haven’t been able to do voice their polit­i­cal will quite as a wide­ly in recent elec­tions. Dog whis­tles speak loud­er than words. And votes:

The Huff­in­g­ton Post
Flori­da Vot­er Purge Fias­co May Com­pli­cate Jeb Bush’s Appeal To Minori­ties

Scott Con­roy
Post­ed: 06/25/2015 7:44 am EDT Updat­ed: 07/31/2015 10:59 am EDT

On Fri­day morn­ing, for­mer Flori­da Gov. Jeb Bush con­tin­ued to empha­size his push for a more inclu­sive Repub­li­can Par­ty in a much antic­i­pat­ed speech at the annu­al Nation­al Urban League Con­fer­ence.

Bush has cen­tered his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign around his efforts to empha­size upward mobil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties.

But Bush’s rela­tion­ship with the African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty in Flori­da dur­ing his gov­er­nor­ship was rocky, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it relat­ed to the botched felon “vot­er purge” that took place under his tenure pre­ced­ing the 2000 and 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.

In light of Bush’s speech this morn­ing, we are repost­ing our sto­ry from last month on that com­pli­cat­ed episode. Read it below.

MIAMI –- Some­thing was notice­ably dif­fer­ent about the crowd packed inside a gym­na­si­um at Mia­mi Dade College’s Kendall cam­pus last week to wel­come Jeb Bush into the ranks of the announced 2016 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates.

In a vivid depar­ture from the near­ly all-white audi­ences that typ­i­cal­ly turn out to greet GOP White House con­tenders, Bush’s racial­ly and eth­ni­cal­ly diverse sup­port­ers mir­rored the demo­graph­ics of this mul­ti­cul­tur­al city.

The scene was meant to empha­size a core Bush strength, if not send a mes­sage to fel­low Repub­li­cans, that an inclu­sive and aspi­ra­tional brand of pol­i­tics offers the GOP an oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-engage with minor­i­ty vot­ers, includ­ing African-Amer­i­cans, who long ago aban­doned the par­ty of Lin­coln en masse.

Even some Demo­c­ra­t­ic oper­a­tives acknowl­edge pri­vate­ly that Bush — a flu­ent Span­ish speak­er with a Mex­i­can-born wife — has a biog­ra­phy and demeanor that could chip away at the coali­tion that twice pro­pelled Barack Oba­ma to the White House.

Bush’s crit­ics in Flori­da, how­ev­er, scoff.

As the 2016 cam­paign heats up, an episode from his tenure as Flori­da gov­er­nor reveals why Bush’s image as a “uniter, not a divider,” as his old­er broth­er used to put it, may not stand up. The state’s deeply flawed purge of felons from its vot­ing rolls in advance of the 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion remains a scar that still has not healed for many in the state.

“I’ll nev­er the for­get peo­ple that came up to me and said, ‘You let them steal our votes,’” Rep. Cor­rine Brown (D‑Fla.), who became state’s first African-Amer­i­can elect­ed to Con­gress since Recon­struc­tion when she won her seat in 1992, told The Huff­in­g­ton Post. “So many peo­ple were just wiped off the rolls — peo­ple who’d been vot­ing for years and years. You had the oblig­a­tion to prove that you weren’t a felon.”

The felon purge wrong­ful­ly denied thou­sands of legit­i­mate vot­ers the abil­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate in a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion pit­ting Repub­li­can George W. Bush against Demo­c­rat Al Gore. Ulti­mate­ly, a few hun­dred Flori­da bal­lots would deter­mine the pres­i­den­cy, and with it, the nation’s path for the next eight years and, real­ly, well beyond.

Though it received lit­tle notice out­side of Flori­da in the election’s imme­di­ate after­math, as hang­ing chads and but­ter­fly bal­lots took cen­ter stage dur­ing the recount, the purge remains for many the most egre­gious exam­ple of vot­er dis­en­fran­chise­ment that took place dur­ing the 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, which was ulti­mate­ly decid­ed by a Supreme Court rul­ing.

“The purge was right out of one of these play­books in how you dimin­ish minor­i­ty turnout — there was absolute­ly no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for it,” said Dan Gel­ber, a for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic state leg­is­la­tor and a long­time Bush neme­sis. “It was almost a pur­pose­ful crash­ing of a car. They knew it was irre­spon­si­ble and about some­thing incred­i­bly impor­tant, and they went for­ward know­ing that the only mis­takes were going to ben­e­fit them.”

Flori­da has banned con­vict­ed felons from par­tic­i­pat­ing in elec­tions since 1868. But it wasn’t until 1998 — the year before Bush took office — that state leg­is­la­tors passed a law intend­ed to clean up the vot­er rolls after a Mia­mi may­oral elec­tion was over­turned amid wide­spread cas­es of absen­tee bal­lot fraud.

The sec­re­tary of state’s office sub­se­quent­ly award­ed Data­base Tech­nolo­gies Inc., or DBT, a $4 mil­lion con­tract to car­ry out the effort to ensure that felons, deceased vot­ers, and non-res­i­dents would be blocked from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the 2000 elec­tion.

It would not be an easy task.

Since Flori­da did not track its vot­ers by Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber, the com­pa­ny was instruct­ed to engage in a sub­jec­tive process that attempt­ed to match felon names and dates of birth with vot­er records, allow­ing for “ near match­es” that were close, but not exact.

After Jeb Bush took office in 1999, this process con­tin­ued. In the months lead­ing up to the 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, local elec­tion super­vi­sors began receiv­ing lists from state offi­cials of peo­ple DBT had iden­ti­fied as con­vict­ed felons and thus need­ed to be elim­i­nat­ed from the vot­ing rolls.

It became imme­di­ate­ly clear that the effort was gen­er­at­ing a slew of false pos­i­tives. Vot­ers in good stand­ing, who hap­pened to share names with con­vict­ed felons, but had nev­er been in trou­ble with the law, were being tak­en off the vot­ing rolls.

But elec­tion offi­cials in Tal­la­has­see — led by Sec­re­tary of State Kather­ine Har­ris, who would lat­er gain infamy over her con­tro­ver­sial han­dling of the elec­tion recount — declined to make the process more trans­par­ent and uni­form.

Charges that the purge was polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed grew loud­er when it was revealed that the man respon­si­ble for deter­min­ing the para­me­ters for vot­er removal was Emmett “Bucky” Mitchell IV — a Divi­sion of Elec­tion attor­ney who went on to become gen­er­al coun­sel for the Flori­da Repub­li­can Par­ty.

In ear­ly 1999, DBT prod­uct man­ag­er Mar­lene Thoro­good warned Mitchell of false pos­i­tives gen­er­at­ed by the guide­lines that he had set. But in an email Mitchell sent in March of that year, he instruct­ed Thoro­good not to con­cern her­self with wrong­ly elim­i­nat­ing non-felons from the vot­er rolls. It was bet­ter to purge too many peo­ple than too few, in Mitchell’s esti­ma­tion.

“Obvi­ous­ly, we want to cap­ture more names that pos­si­bly aren’t match­es and let the [coun­ty elec­tions] super­vi­sors make a final deter­mi­na­tion rather than exclude cer­tain match­es alto­geth­er,” Mitchell wrote.

This decree from Tal­la­has­see hav­ing been made clear, coun­ty-lev­el elec­tion offi­cials began receiv­ing lists of vot­ers they were told to remove from their rolls in the months lead­ing up to an Elec­tion Day that would prove to be among the most mem­o­rable in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. The local offi­cials’ respons­es to this instruc­tion var­ied. Some tossed out the lists alto­geth­er. Oth­ers used their dis­cre­tion to try to cor­rect them. Some used the lists with full knowl­edge that they were defec­tive.

...

Esti­mates vary on just how many non-felons in Flori­da were wrong­ly denied the right to vote on Elec­tion Day, but the total was at least 1,100, accord­ing to a 2001 Palm Beach Post analy­sis, and may have been much high­er.

Fol­low­ing the elec­tion recount, in which he offi­cial­ly recused him­self, Jeb Bush sought to dis­tance him­self from the botched purge, argu­ing that as gov­er­nor, he was not charged with admin­is­ter­ing the elec­tion.

A post-elec­tion inves­ti­ga­tion by the U.S. Com­mis­sion On Civ­il Rights, how­ev­er, in which Bush was sub­poe­naed, was dubi­ous about this rea­son­ing, not­ing that the actions Bush took imme­di­ate­ly after the 2000 elec­tion demon­strat­ed that he did, in fact, have the abil­i­ty to act on vot­ing-relat­ed mat­ters.

“Florida’s gov­er­nor insist­ed that he had no spe­cif­ic role in elec­tion oper­a­tions and point­ed to his sec­re­tary of state as the respon­si­ble offi­cial,” the com­mis­sion wrote in its report. “After the elec­tion, how­ev­er, the gov­er­nor exer­cised lead­er­ship and respon­si­bil­i­ty in elec­toral mat­ters in the com­mend­able action of appoint­ing a task force to make rec­om­men­da­tions to fix the prob­lems that occurred.”

The report found a “strong basis” for deter­min­ing that vio­la­tions of the 1965 Vot­ing Rights Act had occurred dur­ing the elec­tion in Flori­da. While it did not find that “the high­est offi­cials of the state con­spired to dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers,” the report sin­gled out Bush and Har­ris, say­ing their “over­all lack of lead­er­ship in pro­tect­ing vot­ing rights was large­ly respon­si­ble for the broad array of prob­lems in Flori­da dur­ing the 2000 elec­tion.”

“The state’s high­est offi­cials respon­si­ble for ensur­ing effi­cien­cy, uni­for­mi­ty, and fair­ness in the elec­tion failed to ful­fill their respon­si­bil­i­ties and were sub­se­quent­ly unwill­ing to take respon­si­bil­i­ty,” the report said.

African-Amer­i­cans were near­ly 10 times more like­ly than white vot­ers to have their bal­lots dis­count­ed in Flori­da, the report found, and it sin­gled out for crit­i­cism the felon vot­er purge’s “slop­py and irre­spon­si­ble” imple­men­ta­tion.

“The gov­er­nor, the sec­re­tary of state, or the direc­tor of the Divi­sion of Elec­tions should have pro­vid­ed clear instruc­tions to their sub­or­di­nates on list main­te­nance strate­gies that would pro­tect eli­gi­ble vot­ers from being erro­neous­ly purged from the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion rolls,” the report said.

Aides to Jeb Bush at the time crit­i­cized the report by the Com­mis­sion On Civ­il Rights, con­trolled by a Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty, as “biased” and “slop­py” in its own right — charges that did noth­ing to quell wide­spread out­rage, par­tic­u­lar­ly among African-Amer­i­cans, in Flori­da.

But any lin­ger­ing bad feel­ings about Bush were not appar­ent at his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign announce­ment last week, when R.B. Holmes, Jr. — an African-Amer­i­can min­is­ter from Tal­la­has­see — deliv­ered impas­sioned praise of the for­mer gov­er­nor in intro­duc­ing him on stage.

In an inter­view with The Huff­in­g­ton Post, Holmes not­ed that he appre­ci­at­ed Bush’s efforts to appoint more African-Amer­i­cans to judge­ships in Flori­da when he was gov­er­nor.

“Jeb Bush is a very com­pas­sion­ate per­son,” Holmes said. “I respect his core val­ues. I respect that he mar­ried a minor­i­ty, and he did that back in the day. Think of how unpop­u­lar that was for a Bush of his sta­tus to go to Mex­i­co and find a bride.”

Holmes is far from the only African-Amer­i­can in Flori­da who retains pos­i­tive feel­ings toward Bush.

After famous­ly say­ing dur­ing his failed 1994 guber­na­to­r­i­al run that he would do “prob­a­bly noth­ing” to help blacks, Bush changed his tone dra­mat­i­cal­ly when it came to engag­ing in mat­ters of race and iden­ti­ty dur­ing his 1998 cam­paign. That year, he end­ed up earn­ing the sup­port of 61 per­cent of His­pan­ics and 14 per­cent of African-Amer­i­cans — impres­sive num­bers for a Repub­li­can.

Even though he didn’t do as well with either group dur­ing his suc­cess­ful 2002 re-elec­tion bid, Bush’s rep­u­ta­tion as a bridge-builder who active­ly con­cerned him­self with lift­ing up minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties — boost­ed, in part, by his high-pro­file push for expand­ed edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties — remains a cen­tral tenet of his polit­i­cal iden­ti­ty.

Mac Sti­panovich, a Flori­da Repub­li­can lob­by­ist who advised Har­ris through­out the 2000 recount, was blunt in argu­ing that Bush had not erred in fail­ing to pro­vide any over­sight of the botched felon purge.

“Any time you attempt to pare the vot­ing rolls in Flori­da, regard­less of what the rea­son is, you are anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic with a small‑D and prob­a­bly racist,” Sti­panovich said by way of dis­count­ing those accu­sa­tions.

But crit­i­cism of how Bush and mem­bers of his admin­is­tra­tion han­dled the purge became even loud­er four years lat­er, when he and oth­er Flori­da offi­cials failed to cor­rect the prob­lems that arose dur­ing the pre­vi­ous pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year and, in fact, may have made it worse.

The 2004 iter­a­tion of the felon vot­er purge — this time car­ried out by the Depart­ment of Elec­tions itself — end­ed with a whim­per when a pecu­liar (some would say “fishy”) anom­aly was dis­cov­ered the sum­mer before Bush’s broth­er stood for re-elec­tion.

That year’s list of 48,000 felons who were to be purged from the vot­ing rolls con­tained more than 22,000 African-Amer­i­cans’ names, but just 61 His­pan­ics. (In Flori­da, His­pan­ic com­mu­ni­ties tend to be more Repub­li­can-lean­ing than they are nation­al­ly.)

Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials denied there was any par­ti­san moti­va­tion in the dis­crep­an­cy, call­ing it “unin­ten­tion­al.” But as Democ­rats scoffed and pub­lic pres­sure mount­ed, Flori­da offi­cials end­ed up scrap­ping the list entire­ly.

Some 15 years lat­er, Jeb Bush, now run­ning his own pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, has treat­ed the Flori­da vot­ing purge as a for­eign object — an episode that had lit­tle if noth­ing to do with him.

Asked dur­ing a press con­fer­ence dur­ing a cam­paign swing through Iowa last week whether he believes that African-Amer­i­cans were dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed by those efforts, he waf­fled a bit before rephras­ing the ques­tion in his own man­ner.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t think there was any — no, if you’re going to say, ‘Did the Flori­da Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment tar­get African-Amer­i­cans?’ No.”

Mean­while, Flori­da remains one of just three states where all con­vict­ed felons auto­mat­i­cal­ly lose their vot­ing rights and must peti­tion the gov­er­nor and a clemen­cy board in an ardu­ous process in order to try to get them restored.

In 2007, Gov. Char­lie Crist, then a Repub­li­can, ini­ti­at­ed a change in the clemen­cy pol­i­cy, which made it so that most con­vict­ed felons in Flori­da would auto­mat­i­cal­ly have their vot­ing rights restored after the state ensured that they had paid resti­tu­tion to vic­tims.

Those new guide­lines were then rolled back by Gov. Rick Scott ® short­ly after he took office in 2011.

Accord­ing to a 2012 study by The Sen­tenc­ing Project, a non­prof­it group advo­cat­ing for judi­cial sen­tenc­ing reform, Flori­da con­tin­ues to have the high­est rate of African-Amer­i­can dis­en­fran­chise­ment in the coun­try with 23 per­cent of the adult African-Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion in the state barred from vot­ing.

“I think that the purge sys­tem brought a real apartheid type of pol­i­tics that was going on in Flori­da,” said for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic state Rep. Tony Hill. “Look at the peo­ple who were purged — they were African-Amer­i­can. They just dis­count­ed our votes with­out any recourse.”

“Accord­ing to a 2012 study by The Sen­tenc­ing Project, a non­prof­it group advo­cat­ing for judi­cial sen­tenc­ing reform, Flori­da con­tin­ues to have the high­est rate of African-Amer­i­can dis­en­fran­chise­ment in the coun­try with 23 per­cent of the adult African-Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion in the state barred from vot­ing.”

With Alaba­ma set to to shut down 31 dri­vers license offices due to a sig­nif­i­cant bud­get short­fall (it turns out Alaba­ma is one of the states that suf­fers from Kansas-itis), now is prob­a­bly a good time to go get that dri­vers license if you’re going to need it any time soon. Espe­cial­ly if you hap­pen to live in one of Alaba­ma’s pre­dom­i­nant­ly African-Amer­i­can coun­ties:

AL.com
Vot­er ID and dri­ver’s license office clo­sures black-out Alaba­ma’s Black Belt

By Kyle Whit­mire on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2015 at 3:55 PM, updat­ed Octo­ber 01, 2015 at 5:57 PM

I still remem­ber when the lady in the uni­form giv­ing me my dri­ver’s test asked me to do a three-point turn.

Instead, I gave her a blank stare. I had no idea what a three-point turn was. It was a cou­ple of days after my six­teenth birth­day, and I knew right then that I would­n’t be get­ting a license that day, but the lady was nice about it. Polite­ly, she explained what I was sup­posed to do. Next we drove back to the Clarke Coun­ty cour­t­house, and she failed me.

A cou­ple weeks lat­er, I took the test again. That time, I passed, but my par­ents weren’t all that hap­py that we had to make a sec­ond trip.

And that trip was only 10 miles, each way. When you live in a rur­al area, 10 miles seems a lot far­ther there.

How­ev­er, today a lot of folks will have to dri­ve a lot far­ther just to be able to dri­ve.

The Alaba­ma Law Enforce­ment Agen­cy’s web­site says their office at the Clarke Coun­ty Cour­t­house is still open, but soon a lot of oth­ers near­by won’t be. On Wednes­day, the agency announced that it would close 31 offices through­out the state, leav­ing 29 coun­ties with­out a place where 16-year-olds can take a dri­ver’s test, whether they pass on the first try or not.

That’s an incon­ve­nience.

But there’s some­thing big­ger hap­pen­ing here.

In 2011, Alaba­ma law­mak­ers approved the state’s vot­er ID law, mak­ing it ille­gal to vote in Alaba­ma with­out a gov­ern­ment-issued pho­to ID.

For most folks, that’s a dri­ver’s license.

In those 29 coun­ties you might be able to reg­is­ter at the cour­t­house, but you won’t be able to cast a bal­lot there unless you have that ID.

That’s not just an incon­ve­nience. That’s a prob­lem.

But it gets worse.

Look at the list of coun­ties now where you can’t get a dri­ver’s license. There’s Choctaw, Sumter, Hale, Greene, Per­ry, Wilcox, Lown­des, But­ler, Cren­shaw, Macon, Bul­lock ...

If you had to mem­o­rize all the Alaba­ma Coun­ties in 9th grade, like I did — and even if you for­got most of them, like I have — you can prob­a­bly guess where we’re going with this.

Depend­ing on which coun­ties you count as being in Alaba­ma’s Black Belt, either twelve or fif­teen Black Belt coun­ties soon won’t have a place to get a dri­ver’s license.

Coun­ties where some of the state’s poor­est live.

Coun­ties that are major­i­ty African-Amer­i­can.

Com­bine that with the fed­er­al­ly man­dat­ed Star ID tak­ing effect next year, and we’re look­ing at a night­mare.

Or a tri­al lawyer’s dream.

When the state passed Vot­er ID, Repub­li­can law­mak­ers argued that it was sup­posed to pre­vent vot­er fraud. Democ­rats said the law was writ­ten to dis­en­fran­chise black vot­ers and sup­press the voice of the poor.

Maybe, maybe not.

But put these two things togeth­er — Vot­er ID and 29 coun­ties with­out a place where you can get one — and Vot­er ID becomes what the Democ­rats always said it was.

A civ­il rights law­suit isn’t a prob­a­bil­i­ty. It’s a cer­tain­ty.

...

What a coin­ci­dence:

...
Depend­ing on which coun­ties you count as being in Alaba­ma’s Black Belt, either twelve or fif­teen Black Belt coun­ties soon won’t have a place to get a dri­ver’s license.

Coun­ties where some of the state’s poor­est live.

Coun­ties that are major­i­ty African-Amer­i­can.
...

What a stun­ning coin­ci­dence.

Oh look, Jeb Bush final­ly found some­thing to pub­licly dis­agree about with his broth­er. While George W. actu­al­ly reau­tho­rized the Vot­ing Rights Act in 2006 for anoth­er 25 years, Jeb would­n’t sup­port reau­tho­riz­ing it “as is” since he does­n’t think there’s still a role left for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to play in over­see­ing elec­tions giv­en all the progress that’s been made since the 60’s. But he did hedge his answer in an inter­est­ing way that real­ly war­rants a fol­low up ques­tion, because Jeb did sug­gest that, although most states don’t require over­sight, “there could be some”. So Jeb­bers thinks there could indeed be some states that require fed­er­al over­sight. But he did­n’t tell us which. What a fun mys­tery!

The Huff­in­g­ton Post
Jeb Bush Oppos­es Reau­tho­riz­ing The Vot­ing Rights Act ‘As Is’
He thinks it helped 50 years ago, but isn’t nec­es­sary now.

Igor Bobic
Asso­ciate Pol­i­tics Edi­tor, The Huff­in­g­ton Post

Post­ed: 10/08/2015 12:05 PM EDT | Edit­ed: 10/08/2015 12:13 PM EDT

WASHINGTON — For­mer Flori­da Gov. Jeb Bush ® said Thurs­day that he oppos­es reau­tho­riz­ing the Vot­ing Rights Act, the land­mark civ­il rights law whose pro­tec­tions the Supreme Court watered down in 2013.

“There’s been dra­mat­ic improve­ment in access to vot­ing. I mean expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter improve­ment,” the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date said in Iowa. “And I don’t think there’s a role for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to play in most places, there could be some, but in most places where they did have a con­struc­tive role in the ’60s. So I don’t sup­port reau­tho­riz­ing it as is.”

In a 5–4 deci­sion two years ago, a con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty of jus­tices struck down a key pro­vi­sion of the 1965 law that des­ig­nat­ed which parts of the coun­try must have changes to their vot­ing laws cleared by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. This stip­u­la­tion applied wide­ly to states in the South, where changes to vot­ing laws have his­tor­i­cal­ly worked to keep low-income and minor­i­ty vot­ers away from the polls. The court, how­ev­er, wrote “things have changed in the South.”

One major issue with Bush’s state­ment is that even the law’s advo­cates don’t want to reau­tho­rize it exact­ly “as is.”

Mul­ti­ple attempts to restore the law’s pro­tec­tions have been reject­ed by Repub­li­cans in Con­gress. As a way to address the court’s objec­tions, Democ­rats have intro­duced bills in Con­gress seek­ing to update the for­mu­la used to deter­mine which states require fed­er­al approval before updat­ing vot­ing laws. But that leg­is­la­tion, too, has failed to receive a vote.

Bush’s con­tention that access to vot­ing has improved “expo­nen­tial­ly” is also ques­tion­able. Since 2010, when Repub­li­cans won a large major­i­ty of state hous­es across the coun­try, civ­il rights groups have been fight­ing a wave of new vot­ing restric­tions called up under the aus­pices of vot­er fraud. Most recent­ly, a fed­er­al appeals court ruled Texas’ restric­tive vot­er ID law vio­lates the Vot­ing Right Acts and has a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry impact on vot­ers.

Bush’s oppo­si­tion to reau­tho­riz­ing the law sets him apart from his broth­er. For­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush renewed the law in 2006 and said it “helped bring a com­mu­ni­ty on the mar­gins into the life of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy.” He fur­ther promised that his admin­is­tra­tion would “vig­or­ous­ly enforce the pro­vi­sions of this law, and we will defend it in court.”

...

“There’s been dra­mat­ic improve­ment in access to vot­ing. I mean expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter improvement....And I don’t think there’s a role for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to play in most places, there could be some, but in most places where they did have a con­struc­tive role in the ’60s. So I don’t sup­port reau­tho­riz­ing it as is.”
Yes, there could def­i­nite­ly be some states where fed­er­al over­sight is still very nec­es­sary.

Fol­low­ing a nation­al out­cry over the deci­sion by Alaba­ma’s gov­ern­ment to shut down 31 DMV offices in major­i­ty-black coun­ties after pass­es a new pho­to-ID vot­ing law, Alaba­ma’s gov­er­nor has a new plan to assuage his crit­ics. So what’s the plan? Well, it appears to cen­ter around trolling his crit­ics:

Think Progress
Alaba­ma Address­es Vot­er Sup­pres­sion Accu­sa­tions By Keep­ing Rur­al DMVs Open One Day A Month

by Alice Oll­stein
Oct 21, 2015 4:24pm

After nation­al out­cry from civ­il groups and politi­cians, Alaba­ma Gov­er­nor Robert Bent­ley announced he is some­what revers­ing his deci­sion to shut down 31 DMV offices in rur­al, major­i­ty-black coun­ties across his state. Under the new plan, the offices will remain open just one day a month, begin­ning this Novem­ber.

...

Alaba­ma offi­cials acknowl­edge that a dri­vers license or DMV-issued state ID are the most com­mon forms of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion used to vote, but argue res­i­dents who need an ID have plen­ty of ways to obtain one.

Ed Packard, Alabama’s Direc­tor of Elec­tions, told ThinkProgress that vot­ers can still go to the Board of Registrar’s office in their coun­ty, or meet up with the mobile unit that trav­els around the state pro­cess­ing vot­er IDs. But he also admit­ted the Reg­is­trar offices have no evening or week­end hours, which presents dif­fi­cul­ties for those with full-time jobs or mul­ti­ple jobs. As for the mobile unit, it gen­er­al­ly vis­its just one coun­ty per day and is open for just two hours at a time.

In a recent cam­paign vis­it to Alaba­ma, pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Hillary Clin­ton slammed the state’s Repub­li­can leg­is­la­ture for cut­ting funds for the DMV offices amid their bud­get cri­sis, call­ing it “a blast from the Jim Crow past.” Oth­er crit­ics have not­ed that both the vot­er ID law itself and the DMV clo­sures could have been pre­vent­ed had the full Vot­ing Rights Act of 1965 not been severe­ly lim­it­ed by a 2013 Supreme Court rul­ing — based on a case that also orig­i­nat­ed in Alaba­ma.

A fed­er­al bill to restore the Vot­ing Rights Act’s pro­tec­tions was intro­duced in June, but the Repub­li­can-con­trolled House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives has so far declined to take it up.

So it looks like the epic Tuba troller at the KKK march ear­li­er this year is get­ting some iron­ic “troll of the year” com­pe­ti­tion: One day a month. Just imag­ine a mon­th’s worth of DMV pro­cess­ing all in one day. Just imag­ine...

With the 2016 US elec­tion sea­son real­ly start­ing to heat up, it’s prob­a­bly a good time to ask our­selves what types of vot­er sup­pres­sion tech­niques will be the GOP’s method of choice of the 2016 race. And, sad­ly, to answer that ques­tion we sim­ply need to take a look at whichev­er vot­er-fraud witch hunts Kansas Sec­re­tary of State Kris Kobach engaged in last year that hap­pen to still be unre­solved:

The Nation

A Vot­er-Fraud Witch Hunt in Kansas

The lead­ing cru­sad­er behind the myth of vot­er fraud now has the pow­er to pros­e­cute bogus fraud cas­es.

By Ari Berman

June 11, 2015

In fall 2010, Kansas Sec­re­tary of State Kris Kobach held a press con­fer­ence alleg­ing that dead peo­ple were vot­ing in the state. He sin­gled out Alfred K. Brew­er as a pos­si­ble zom­bie vot­er. There was only one prob­lem: Brew­er was very much alive. The Wichi­ta Eagle found the 78-year-old work­ing in his front yard. “I don’t think this is heav­en, not when I’m rak­ing leaves,” Brew­er said.

Since his elec­tion in 2010, Kobach has been the lead­ing cru­sad­er behind the myth of vot­er fraud, mak­ing head­line-grab­bing claims about the preva­lence of such fraud with lit­tle evi­dence to back it up. Now he’s about to become a lot more pow­er­ful.

On Mon­day, Kansas Gov­er­nor Sam Brown­back signed a bill giv­ing Kobach’s office the pow­er to pros­e­cute vot­er-fraud cas­es if coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors decline to do so and upgrad­ing such charges from mis­de­meanors to felonies. Vot­ers could be charged with a felony for mis­tak­en­ly show­ing up at the wrong polling place. No oth­er sec­re­tary of state in the coun­try has such sweep­ing pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al pow­er, says Dale Ho, direc­tor of the ACLU’s Vot­ing Rights Project.

“It means a per­son and an office with no expe­ri­ence or back­ground in crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions is now going to be mak­ing a deter­mi­na­tion of whether there’s prob­a­ble cause to bring a crim­i­nal case against an indi­vid­ual who may have just made a paper­work mis­take,” Ho says. “There is a rea­son why career pros­e­cu­tors typ­i­cal­ly han­dle these cas­es. They know what they’re doing.”

Kobach claims there are 100 cas­es of “dou­ble vot­ing” from the 2014 elec­tion that he wants to pros­e­cute, but there’s been scant evi­dence of such fraud in Kansas in past elec­tions. From 1997 to 2010, accord­ing to The Wichi­ta Eagle, there were only 11 con­firmed cas­es of vot­er fraud in the state.

Such fraud has been just as rare nation­al­ly, even accord­ing to Kobach’s own data, not­ed The Wash­ing­ton Post:

Kansas’ sec­re­tary of state exam­ined 84 mil­lion votes cast in 22 states to look for dupli­cate reg­is­trants. In the end 14 cas­es were referred for pros­e­cu­tion, rep­re­sent­ing 0.00000017 per­cent of the votes cast.

Kobach says he needs this extra­or­di­nary pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al pow­er because coun­ty and fed­er­al attor­neys are not bring­ing enough vot­er-fraud cas­es. But Kansas US Attor­ney Bar­ry Gris­som said last year that Kobach’s office had not referred any cas­es of vot­er fraud to his office. “We have received no vot­er fraud cas­es from your office in over four and a half years,” Gris­som wrote to Kobach.

Kobach has been a lead­ing pro­po­nent of his state’s strict vot­er-ID law, which decreased turnout by 2 per­cent in 2012, accord­ing to the Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Office, with the state falling from 28th to 36th in vot­er turnout fol­low­ing its imple­men­ta­tion.

He’s also been the dri­ving force behind Kansas’s 2011 proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship law for vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, which requires vot­ers to show a birth cer­tifi­cate or pass­port to par­tic­i­pate in the polit­i­cal process. Twen­ty-five thou­sand vot­ers had their reg­is­tra­tions “sus­pend­ed” in the 2014 elec­tion because of the law; even the right-wing group True the Vote claimed that only 1 per­cent of the list were ver­i­fied non-cit­i­zens.

...

After the Supreme Court found that Arizona’s proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship law vio­lat­ed the Nation­al Vot­er Reg­is­tra­tion Act, Kansas and Ari­zona insti­tut­ed a two-tiered vot­ing sys­tem, argu­ing that those who reg­is­tered through the fed­er­al NVRA form could not vote in state or local elec­tions. That sys­tem has it roots in the Jim Crow South.

Kobach, who wrote Arizona’s “papers, please” anti-ille­gal immi­gra­tion law, alleges “in Kansas, the ille­gal reg­is­tra­tion of alien vot­ers has become per­va­sive.” That defies com­mon sense, as John­son Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney Steve Howe point­ed out. “Why would an ille­gal alien want to go to vote and draw atten­tion to him­self?” Howe asked.

Kobach has asked the Supreme Court to restore the proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship law. The Court will decide on June 25 whether to take the case. If Kobach suc­ceeds, proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship laws will spread to more states, and Kobach’s vot­er-fraud cru­sade will become even more influ­en­tial.

“After the Supreme Court found that Arizona’s proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship law vio­lat­ed the Nation­al Vot­er Reg­is­tra­tion Act, Kansas and Ari­zona insti­tut­ed a two-tiered vot­ing sys­tem, argu­ing that those who reg­is­tered through the fed­er­al NVRA form could not vote in state or local elec­tions. That sys­tem has it roots in the Jim Crow South.”
Well, that’s appears to be a prime can­di­date for at least one of this year’s vot­er sup­pres­sion meth­ods of choice: A two-tiered vot­ing sys­tem with a proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship require­ment just to vote in state elec­tions. Sure, there will be plen­ty of oth­er sup­pres­sion tech­niques tried, but this one appears to be where Kobach and oth­er like-mind­ed sec­re­taries of state are going to be invest­ing thi­er ener­gies.

Of course, they’re still going to need to get the green light from the courts:

...
Kobach has asked the Supreme Court to restore the proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship law. The Court will decide on June 25 whether to take the case. If Kobach suc­ceeds, proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship laws will spread to more states, and Kobach’s vot­er-fraud cru­sade will become even more influ­en­tial.

And that’s exact­ly where self-appoint­ed cru­sades against fic­tion­al vot­er fraud vio­la­tions tend to hit a legal wall

Roll Call

Vot­ing-Rights Advo­cates Get Win at Supreme Court

By Simone Pathé Post­ed at 3:57 p.m. on June 29, 2015

Monday’s big elec­tion law news came from the Supreme Court’s penul­ti­mate deci­sion of the term uphold­ing Arizona’s con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts.

But before hand­ing down its last three deci­sions, the court made vot­ing-rights advo­cates hap­py by decid­ing not to review a dif­fer­ent elec­tion case.

“Ari­zona cit­i­zens can con­tin­ue to par­tic­i­pate in vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves with­out wor­ry­ing about not hav­ing proof of cit­i­zen­ship doc­u­ments,” Shirley Sande­lands of the League of Women Vot­ers of Ari­zona said in a state­ment Mon­day.

The case, Kobach, et al. v. Elec­tion Assis­tance Com­mis­sion, et al., was about whether Ari­zona and Kansas could require vot­ers to prove their cit­i­zen­ship when reg­is­ter­ing to vote with the so-called fed­er­al form. Kansas Sec­re­tary of State Kris Kobach led the suit against the U.S. Elec­tion Assis­tance Com­mis­sion, which was an appeal of a low­er court deci­sion.

Both Kansas and Ari­zona have state laws that require appli­cants to prove their cit­i­zen­ship when apply­ing to vote with state forms (for state or fed­er­al elec­tions). But the U.S. EAC denied the states’ requests to have their cit­i­zen­ship laws applied when would-be vot­ers use the stan­dard­ized fed­er­al form.

The Supreme Court had already ruled in 2013 that state proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship laws couldn’t be applied when peo­ple try to reg­is­ter with the fed­er­al form. The states’ direct request to the EAC was a last-ditch effort to get around that.

By not hear­ing the case, the Supreme Court effec­tive­ly upheld the deci­sion of the 10th Cir­cuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against Ari­zona and Kansas in Novem­ber 2014, say­ing the EAC did not have to mod­i­fy its form to meet state laws. Under the fed­er­al form, would-be vot­ers need only swear under penal­ty of per­jury that they are cit­i­zens.

“This is a very big deal,” Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Irvine Law Pro­fes­sor Rick Hasen wrote on his elec­tion law blog Mon­day. “Kobach had the poten­tial to shift more pow­er away from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in admin­is­ter­ing elec­tions toward the states,” he added.

...

But Kobach still hopes states’ author­i­ty will be rec­og­nized.

“Our posi­tion in court is that we’re exer­cis­ing our state’s right to define the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of elec­tors,” Kobach told CQ Roll Call Mon­day after­noon. “By cre­at­ing this loop­hole, the fed­er­al agency is inter­fer­ing,” he said in ref­er­ence to the EAC.

Kobach empha­sized the court’s deci­sion not to review the case does not reflect its opin­ion on the issues of the case.

“The Supreme Court deci­sion not to review was not par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing giv­en the fact that there was no cir­cuit split yet,” he said.

Typ­i­cal­ly, Kobach con­tin­ued, “the Supreme Court favors review­ing deci­sions where one cir­cuit has gone one way and anoth­er cir­cuit has gone anoth­er way. It appears that the Supreme Court is wait­ing for anoth­er cir­cuit to weigh in.” He expects the 11th Cir­cuit, which he said has juris­dic­tion over two states with sim­i­lar proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship laws, to even­tu­al­ly get involved.

The Kansas and Ari­zona laws stand, mean­ing that peo­ple wish­ing to reg­is­ter to vote with state forms are required to show proof of cit­i­zen­ship. Kobach said more than 99 per­cent of Kansans use the state forms. “But because of the Supreme Court deci­sion not to review the case,” he added, “we do have a small lim­it­ed loop­hole.” The slim major­i­ty that uses the fed­er­al form can “refuse to pro­vide proof of cit­i­zen­ship,” he said, “but that will only suf­fice for fed­er­al elec­tions.”

Kobach said he’ll be send­ing anoth­er request to the EAC, but that it will be pre­sent­ed dif­fer­ent­ly from the state’s pre­vi­ous­ly denied request.

“Every time an alien votes, it may not steal an elec­tion, but it will can­cel out a vote of a U.S. cit­i­zen,” Kobach said.

“By not hear­ing the case, the Supreme Court effec­tive­ly upheld the deci­sion of the 10th Cir­cuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against Ari­zona and Kansas in Novem­ber 2014, say­ing the EAC did not have to mod­i­fy its form to meet state laws. Under the fed­er­al form, would-be vot­ers need only swear under penal­ty of per­jury that they are cit­i­zens.”

Ok, so the Supreme Court has already shot down the notion that Kansas and Ari­zona can require that vot­ers show proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship when fill­ing out fed­er­al vot­ing reg­is­tra­tion forms:

...
Both Kansas and Ari­zona have state laws that require appli­cants to prove their cit­i­zen­ship when apply­ing to vote with state forms (for state or fed­er­al elec­tions). But the U.S. EAC denied the states’ requests to have their cit­i­zen­ship laws applied when would-be vot­ers use the stan­dard­ized fed­er­al form.
...

But there’s still the open ques­tion of state elec­tions and whether or not states can set up the two-tier vot­er reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem and require proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship for state elec­tions. Although it’s a lit­tle less open a ques­tion, after a state dis­trict court just ruled it ille­gal for Kansas:

The Huff­in­g­ton Post
Kansas Sec­re­tary Of State Los­es Bat­tle For Stricter Vot­er Reg­is­tra­tion — Again
Kris Kobach’s efforts to make vot­ers prove that they’re cit­i­zens aren’t going so well.

01/19/2016 06:04 pm ET

Robert Bald­win III
Pol­i­tics Fel­low, The Huff­in­g­ton Post

A dis­trict state judge declared Fri­day that Kansas Sec­re­tary of State Kris Kobach has over­stepped his legal author­i­ty by imple­ment­ing a dual vot­er reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem.

The fed­er­al vot­er reg­is­tra­tion form only requires a sworn state­ment, under penal­ty of per­jury, that cit­i­zens who are reg­is­ter­ing are U.S. cit­i­zens. Kobach intro­duced a require­ment that res­i­dents of Kansas seek­ing to vote must pro­duce doc­u­men­ta­tion of cit­i­zen­ship, like a pass­port or birth cer­tifi­cate. The require­ment took effect in 2013.

In his rul­ing last week, Judge Franklin The­is wrote, “The Sec­re­tary is not empow­ered to deter­mine or declare the method of reg­is­tra­tion or cre­ate a method of ‘par­tial reg­is­tra­tion’ only.”

“In Kansas, a per­son is either reg­is­tered to vote or he or she is not,” he con­tin­ued. “By cur­rent Kansas law, reg­is­tra­tion, hence, the right to vote, is not tied to the method of reg­is­tra­tion.”

After intro­duc­ing the more strin­gent pro­ce­dure for reg­is­tra­tion, Kobach lost his suit to com­pel the fed­er­al elec­tion offi­cials to change the fed­er­al forms to require cit­i­zen­ship doc­u­men­ta­tion. The Supreme Court ruled against him in 2013, say­ing that states can­not impose a proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship doc­u­men­ta­tion require­ment on fed­er­al forms.

Kobach then attempt­ed to cir­cum­vent the Supreme Court’s rul­ing by argu­ing that any Kansan who reg­is­tered using the fed­er­al form could only vote in fed­er­al elec­tions. To exploit the court’s rul­ing, he cre­at­ed a two-tier vot­ing sys­tem where vot­ers who reg­is­tered using the fed­er­al forms could vote for offices like the pres­i­den­cy and U.S. Con­gress seats, but were barred from vot­ing for local and state offices. If the vot­er were to cast a local vote on the fed­er­al bal­lot, those votes would go uncount­ed.

Kobach has jus­ti­fied his state’s proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship require­ment by argu­ing that it pro­tects against fraud, even though cas­es of in-per­son imper­son­ation fraud, which such a require­ment is meant to guard against, are exceed­ing­ly rare.

...

In response to the rul­ing, Kobach said that he plans to appeal.

Well, that cer­tain­ly does­n’t bode well for Kobach’s proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship vot­ing scheme. First the Supreme Court shoots the idea down that it can be applied to fed­er­al elec­tions down (again), and then the state courts shoot down the idea for state elec­tions (again).

So does this mean Kris Kobach’s proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship scheme is off the table for wider nation­al use by the many GOP-con­trolled states? Of course not. This is the GOP we’re talk­ing about here. Vot­er sup­pres­sion schemes are always on the table, one way or anoth­er. For instance, if the new exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Elec­tion Assis­tance Com­mis­sion appoint­ed back in Novem­ber hap­pens to have been plucked from the state of Kansas, you just might see the EAC sur­prised every­one (includ­ing oth­er mem­bers of the EAC) and announce that some states (like Kansas) can impose proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship require­ments for both state and fed­er­al elec­tions:

Asso­ci­at­ed Press

Offi­cial: In Alaba­ma, Geor­gia, Kansas, vot­ers need cit­i­zen­ship proof

By ROXANA HEGEMAN
Pub­lished Feb­ru­ary 5, 2016, 3:23 PM EST

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A fed­er­al elec­tions offi­cial has decid­ed — with­out pub­lic notice or review from his agen­cy’s com­mis­sion­ers — that res­i­dents of Alaba­ma, Kansas and Geor­gia can no longer reg­is­ter to vote using a fed­er­al form with­out pro­vid­ing proof of U.S. cit­i­zen­ship.

The action by the new exec­u­tive direc­tor of the U.S. Elec­tion Assis­tance Com­mis­sion is being round­ly crit­i­cized by vot­ing rights activists, who say the “secre­tive move” will cre­ate addi­tion­al bar­ri­ers for poten­tial vot­ers, and one of the agen­cy’s own com­mis­sion­ers, who says it con­tra­dicts pol­i­cy and prece­dent.

The new instruc­tions were post­ed on the agen­cy’s web­site, accord­ing to EAC’s exec­u­tive direc­tor Bri­an New­by, who sent let­ters dat­ed Jan. 29 to the three states that had request­ed the change. Under the new rule, any res­i­dent in those states who reg­is­ters to vote using the fed­er­al form must show cit­i­zen­ship doc­u­men­ta­tion — such as a birth cer­tifi­cate, nat­u­ral­iza­tion papers or pass­port. In oth­er states, no such doc­u­men­ta­tion is need­ed to reg­is­ter; vot­ers need only sign a sworn state­ment.

The changes took effect imme­di­ate­ly, New­by said, adding that any inter­est­ed par­ty could request a review from the com­mis­sion, which is appoint­ed by the pres­i­dent and con­firmed by the Sen­ate.

That review may very well hap­pen. EAC Com­mis­sion­er Thomas Hicks, told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press that he’s weigh­ing his options so that the com­mis­sion­ers can address the issue. The Demo­c­rat post­ed a blis­ter­ing state­ment on the agen­cy’s web­site this week, and said Thurs­day that New­by’s action con­sti­tutes a pol­i­cy change that should have been tak­en up by the com­mis­sion and approved by at least three of four com­mis­sion­ers. Cur­rent­ly, there are three sit­ting mem­bers and a vacan­cy to be filled.

“I guess it is in effect, but I don’t want it to be in effect,” he said. The oth­er com­mis­sion­ers, both Repub­li­cans, did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to requests for com­ment.

New­by took over in Novem­ber and came from Kansas, whose Repub­li­can sec­re­tary of state, Kris Kobach, has been a staunch advo­cate for such cit­i­zen­ship require­ments and has fought court bat­tles over them. Kobach also had appoint­ed New­by to be a coun­ty elec­tions com­mis­sion­er.

New­by defend­ed his deci­sion as a rou­tine admin­is­tra­tive action, insist­ing it was with­in his author­i­ty and that he did­n’t look at the deci­sion to add state-spe­cif­ic instruc­tions in the con­text of the cit­i­zen­ship issue.

“I don’t think there is any dis­cre­tion that I am giv­en to make a deter­mi­na­tion on which instruc­tions sub­mit­ted are OK and which ones aren’t,” New­by said. “And that is the rub here.”

New­by said the move was prompt­ed by a Nov. 17 let­ter from Kobach’s office request­ing the addi­tion of thecit­i­zen­ship doc­u­men­ta­tion require­ments to the fed­er­al form, and he looked at sim­i­lar pend­ing requests from Geor­gia and Alaba­ma.

Hicks acknowl­edged that the com­mis­sion was aware New­by was review­ing the requests, but wrote ear­li­er this week that it had “addressed this mat­ter sev­er­al times over the last decade and vot­ed to decline requests to add con­flict­ing lan­guage to the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion form.”

lThe Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union of Kansas, which has fought Kobach in the courts over vot­ing rights, echoed Hicks.

“We think this is nei­ther appro­pri­ate, nor legal — not to men­tion sim­ply bad pol­i­cy,” ACLU exec­u­tive direc­tor Mic­ah Kubic said. “There is a rea­son EAC has held the posi­tion that it did for so many years, which is that there should be one stan­dard­ized fed­er­al form.”

...

Kansas already had moved ahead with a dual vot­er-reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem, ban­ning those who reg­is­tered through the fed­er­al form from vot­ing in state and local races. A state court recent­ly ruled Kobach did not have the leg­isla­tive author­i­ty to cre­ate such a dual sys­tem, but Kobach said Thurs­day that it’s now a moot point.

Alaba­ma was wait­ing for EAC guid­ance to imple­ment a proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship require­ment because of ques­tions of author­i­ty, state Elec­tions Direc­tor Ed Packard said Thurs­day. He not­ed that it’s unclear how soon the new rule will be imple­ment­ed, or what effect it might have.

“It’s real­ly hard to pre­dict whether there will be any dra­mat­ic or notice­able impact in terms of vot­er reg­is­tra­tion,” he said. “Cer­tain­ly we don’t see it as some­thing that’s going to increase the rate of reg­is­tra­tion ... Obvi­ous­ly there’s gonna have to be a pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign to get the word out because peo­ple are not used to hav­ing to show proof of cit­i­zen­ship to reg­is­ter to vote.”

Geor­gia has­n’t imple­ment­ed proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship require­ments, and has put no restric­tions on vot­ers who reg­is­ter through fed­er­al forms, said David Dove, a spokesman for Geor­gia Sec­re­tary of State Bri­an Kemp.

“New­by took over in Novem­ber and came from Kansas, whose Repub­li­can sec­re­tary of state, Kris Kobach, has been a staunch advo­cate for such cit­i­zen­ship require­ments and has fought court bat­tles over them. Kobach also had appoint­ed New­by to be a coun­ty elec­tions com­mis­sion­er.”

Yep, the recent­ly appoint­ed head of the fed­er­al agency that over­sees vot­ing reg­is­tra­tion rules just hap­pened to come from Kansas and just hap­pened to have been appoint­ed to his pre­vi­ous posi­tion by Kris Kobach. And fol­low­ing the Supreme Court’s rejec­tion of Kobach’s fed­er­al vot­ing scheme last June, and a state dis­trict judge reject­ing his state-vot­ing-only proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship scheme, the new head of the EAC just uni­lat­er­al­ly legal­ized Kobach’s orig­i­nal scheme to sup­press not just state but fed­er­al vot­ing too. And Alaba­ma and Geor­gia also get this spe­cial treat­ment.

So that hap­pened.

Oh look, Kansas has anoth­er ‘WTF’ moment in vot­ing rights, although in this case it’s unclear how direct­ly it involves Kris Kobach, Kansas’s Sec­re­tary of State afflict­ed with a com­pul­sion to restrict vot­er-rights over unfound­ed fears of ille­gal vot­ing or if it was just an ‘oop­sy’ from some­one in the Sec­re­tary of State’s office: It was dis­cov­ered that Kansas’s Span­ish-lan­guage vot­ing guides just hap­pen to include incor­rect vot­ing reg­is­tra­tion dates that could lead vot­ers miss­ing the reg­is­tra­tion dead­line. Also, for some rea­son the Span­ish-lan­guage guides left off infor­ma­tion about how you can use your pass­port as a proof-of-ID, a form of id par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for new cit­i­zens. While it cer­tain­ly seems like the kind of thing Kobach would like to do, it’s being attrib­uted to human error:

The Kansas City Star

Errors in Kansas’ Span­ish vot­ing guide include wrong reg­is­tra­tion dead­line

* Eng­lish ver­sion was cor­rect

* Vot­ers rely­ing on the Span­ish guide could have missed reg­is­tra­tion dead­line

* Sec­re­tary of state’s office blames admin­is­tra­tive error, works to fix prob­lems

By Dion Lefler
April 9, 2016 5:20 PM

Span­ish-lan­guage vot­er guides dis­trib­uted by the Kansas sec­re­tary of state’s office did not match the Eng­lish-lan­guage ver­sion and con­tained errors that could have result­ed in peo­ple being unable to reg­is­ter and vote.

The errors added fuel to com­plaints that Sec­re­tary of State Kris Kobach’s vot­er reg­is­tra­tion poli­cies pose hur­dles for some vot­ers, includ­ing minori­ties. Ongo­ing law­suits chal­lenge the proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship require­ments he wrote and shep­herd­ed through the Leg­is­la­ture.

Craig McCul­lah, who is in charge of the office’s pub­li­ca­tions and a spokesman for Kobach, accept­ed respon­si­bil­i­ty for the errors and said they result­ed from a cler­i­cal mis­take in updat­ing the guides for this year’s elec­tions.

“It was an admin­is­tra­tive error that I am dili­gent­ly work­ing to fix,” he said.

McCul­lah said dis­crep­an­cies in reg­is­tra­tion dead­lines were cor­rect­ed in the online ver­sion of the guide in the past 24 hours, and the rest of the text is being sent to a pro­fes­sion­al trans­lat­ing ser­vice to elim­i­nate mis­match­es between the Eng­lish and Span­ish ver­sions.

The prob­lem went pub­lic in a post on the Dai­ly Kos web­site by Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­sul­tant Chris Reeves of Over­land Park. Reeves said a native Span­ish speak­er alert­ed him to the errors when he stopped by Gar­den City to check in with local Democ­rats while on a trip to west­ern Kansas.

They found two sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences between the guides pub­lished for Eng­lish and Span­ish speak­ers:

* The Span­ish ver­sion of the guide said, in two places, that vot­ers could reg­is­ter up to 15 days before an elec­tion. The actu­al dead­line, 21 days before the elec­tion, was cor­rect in the Eng­lish guide.

* The Eng­lish guide not­ed that prospec­tive vot­ers could use a pass­port as evi­dence of cit­i­zen­ship to reg­is­ter to vote. Pass­ports, like­ly to be held by His­pan­ic nat­u­ral­ized cit­i­zens, were left off the list of accept­able ID in the Span­ish-lan­guage guide.

About half of Gar­den City res­i­dents are His­pan­ic, accord­ing to the Cen­sus Bureau.

“An indi­vid­ual there was very con­cerned and she said, ‘Well, these guides are all trash. They’re wrong,’ ” Reeves said. “I went back and I went to the VoteKS web­site. Sure enough, there they were, and they were wrong.

“It’s pret­ty easy to spot something’s wrong when they’re using the numer­al 21 (in the Eng­lish guide) and in the oth­er one, the numeral’s 15,” he said. “That doesn’t take any trans­la­tion. The num­bers are the num­bers.”

He said he con­tact­ed an attor­ney who con­firmed that fed­er­al vot­ing-rights law requires states to give the same infor­ma­tion in Eng­lish and alter­nate-lan­guage guides. The guides are used to advise vot­ers for both state and fed­er­al elec­tions.

In 2014, the state changed the dead­line for reg­is­ter­ing from 15 days before an elec­tion to 21 days, McCul­lah said. He said he’s still inves­ti­gat­ing where the errors crept in, but it appears the updat­ed guide con­tained lan­guage copied from a guide pub­lished before the 2014 change.

...

“The errors added fuel to com­plaints that Sec­re­tary of State Kris Kobach’s vot­er reg­is­tra­tion poli­cies pose hur­dles for some vot­ers, includ­ing minori­ties. Ongo­ing law­suits chal­lenge the proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship require­ments he wrote and shep­herd­ed through the Leg­is­la­ture.”
Well, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient human errors do occur. Of course, so does ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven vot­er-sup­pres­sion with sub­se­quent denials. What a fun mys­tery. Hope­ful­ly some­one gets to the bot­tom of it.

And in oth­er news, guess which GOP pres­i­den­tial cam­paign Kris Kobach is claim­ing to be advis­ing. Hint: it’s exact­ly the cam­paign one would expect him to advise.

Remem­ber how Alaba­ma com­plete­ly shut down rur­al DMV offices in its pre­dom­i­nant­ly black coun­ties and argued that doing so would­n’t unfair­ly restrict those vot­ers in those coun­ties, and then relent­ed by keep­ing the offices open one day a month last year?

Well, it looks like Wis­con­sin’s GOP dis­cov­ered a new way to troll democ­ra­cy in our post-Vot­ing Rights Act era that’s sort of the inverse of what Alaba­ma did: Kath­leen Novack, the coun­ty clerk for Waukasha coun­ty which con­tains a num­ber of Mil­wau­kee’s sub­urbs, tes­ti­fied in fed­er­al court in a law­suit over a series of restric­tive vot­ing laws Wis­con­sin has passed in recent years. And while Novack assert­ed in her tes­ti­mo­ny that “from the start, we have had vir­tu­al­ly no prob­lems at all,” and the new laws haven’t neg­a­tive­ly affect­ing vot­ing in her coun­ty, she still argued that ear­ly vot­ing should­n’t be allowed on week­ends in Wis­con­sin’s big cities like Mil­wau­kee. Why? Because oth­er­wise inner city vot­ers would have too much access to the vot­ing rel­a­tive to sur­round­ing sub­urbs. And if tak­ing away week­end vot­ing means there are long lines on elec­tion day at those urban vot­ing, those long lines are evi­dence of how easy it is for vot­ers to vote:

The Cap­i­tal Times

Wauke­sha coun­ty clerk: Week­end vot­ing gave ‘too much access’ to Mil­wau­kee, Madi­son

JESSIE OPOIEN | The Cap­i­tal Times | jopoien@madison.com | @jessieopie May 24, 2016

A series of changes to Wis­con­sin elec­tion laws includ­ing a vot­er ID require­ment has­n’t neg­a­tive­ly affect­ed vot­ing in sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties near Mil­wau­kee, city and coun­ty clerks tes­ti­fied in fed­er­al court Tues­day.

“From the start, we have had vir­tu­al­ly no prob­lems at all,” said Wauke­sha Coun­ty clerk Kath­leen Novack.

Their tes­ti­mo­ny came as the state began its defense in a tri­al chal­leng­ing vot­ing poli­cies signed into law by Gov. Scott Walk­er between 2011 and 2015 includ­ing restric­tions on ear­ly vot­ing hours and loca­tions, the elim­i­na­tion of straight-tick­et vot­ing and the pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ment.

The law­suit con­tends those changes place a dis­pro­por­tion­ate bur­den on non-white vot­ers. Tues­day marked the sev­enth day of the tri­al, which is expect­ed to last almost two weeks.

...

Cedar­burg city clerk Con­stance McHugh tes­ti­fied that a pol­i­cy lim­it­ing in-per­son absen­tee vot­ing to one loca­tion allows her to have more con­trol over the process, and said she believes more than one loca­tion would be con­fus­ing for Cedar­burg vot­ers.

McHugh said she has­n’t seen long lines or oth­er com­pli­ca­tions as a result of the pho­to ID require­ment, and said vot­ers in her com­mu­ni­ty have been pleased to have it in place.

Port Wash­ing­ton city clerk Susan West­er­beke agreed that the pro­vi­sion bar­ring munic­i­pal­i­ties from hav­ing more than one loca­tion for in-per­son absen­tee vot­ing is a good pol­i­cy.

West­er­beke also spoke favor­ably of a pro­vi­sion lim­it­ing ear­ly vot­ing hours and elim­i­nat­ing week­end vot­ing, argu­ing statewide con­sis­ten­cy can lim­it vot­er con­fu­sion.

Vot­ers in Port Wash­ing­ton gen­er­al­ly receive their news from Mil­wau­kee media, she said, and might be con­fused if Mil­wau­kee offered week­end vot­ing while Port Wash­ing­ton did­n’t.

Cedar­burg and Port Wash­ing­ton are both cities of about 11,000 in Ozau­kee Coun­ty, not far from Mil­wau­kee’s pop­u­la­tion of 600,000. Cedar­burg is 96 per­cent white, and Port Wash­ing­ton is 95 per­cent white, com­pared to 45 per­cent of Mil­wau­kee.

Ozau­kee Coun­ty as a whole is about 95 per­cent white and neigh­bor­ing Wauke­sha Coun­ty is about 94 per­cent white. With Wash­ing­ton Coun­ty — 96 per­cent white — they make up the state’s deep-red “WOW coun­ties.” The deeply con­ser­v­a­tive coun­ties form an arc around Demo­c­ra­t­ic Mil­wau­kee Coun­ty, which is 65 per­cent white.

Novack said she believes elim­i­nat­ing week­end vot­ing “level(s) the play­ing field” between large urban areas and small­er sub­ur­ban and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties that lack the resources to staff week­end hours.

“If there’s an office open 30 days ver­sus an office that’s only open 10 work days, there are obvi­ous­ly vot­ers that have a lot more access than some­one else,” Novack said. “There has to come a point where it’s just giv­ing over-access … to par­tic­u­lar parts of the state.”

Asked whether she thought vot­ers in Mil­wau­kee and Madi­son — com­mu­ni­ties that pre­vi­ous­ly used week­end vot­ing — had too much access, Novack said, “too much access to the vot­ers as far as oppor­tu­ni­ties.”

If long lines start to form at a polling place, Novack said, it would make more sense to add more staff and open more lines with­in that loca­tion rather than open­ing a sec­ond one.

“For instance if you’re in the gro­cery store and there’s a long line, they open up anoth­er line,” she said.

She also argued long lines could be evi­dence that access is not an issue in urban areas.

“Appar­ent­ly access is an easy thing or they wouldn’t have long lines,” she said.

Plain­tiffs in the case include One Wis­con­sin Insti­tute, Cit­i­zen Action of Wis­con­sin Edu­ca­tion Fund and six indi­vid­u­als. The first week of the tri­al includ­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from elec­tions experts, DMV employ­ees, a for­mer Repub­li­can leg­isla­tive staffer and sev­er­al wit­ness­es who faced dif­fi­cul­ties obtain­ing pho­to IDs.

“Appar­ent­ly access is an easy thing or they wouldn’t have long lines,” she said.
Con­grats Wis­con­sin. Your long statewide night­mare of hav­ing some of the short­est wait times and high­est vot­er turnout in the nation will final­ly be com­ing to an end. Well done. Let the cel­e­bra­tions com­mence, although if you’re an elect­ed GOP offi­cial you might not want to cel­e­brate too loud­ly:

Salon

Wisconsin’s vot­er ID sham: Repub­li­can rep admits the law tar­gets Democ­rats — it’s time for the rest of the GOP to say it, too
The truth comes out — a Repub­li­can con­gress­man boasts that vot­er ID laws are an asset to his par­ty

Simon Mal­oy
Wednes­day, Apr 6, 2016 12:10 PM CST

Tuesday’s pres­i­den­tial pri­maries in Wis­con­sin were the first big elec­tions held in the state fol­low­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of the vot­er ID law signed by Gov. Scott Walk­er in 2011, and ear­ly indi­ca­tions are that a lot of peo­ple were denied their right to cast a vote. As the Nation’s Ari Berman writes, the strict ID require­ments and lack of pub­lic edu­ca­tion about the law result­ed in mas­sive reg­is­tra­tion lines and dis­en­fran­chise­ment among younger vot­ers and minori­ties – demo­graph­ics that typ­i­cal­ly vote Demo­c­ra­t­ic. From a civic health stand­point, that’s not great news. But from the Repub­li­can stand­point, the law worked exact­ly as intend­ed.

The pur­pose behind vot­er ID laws like the one in Wis­con­sin is, accord­ing to Repub­li­cans and con­ser­v­a­tives, to fight the scourge of vot­er fraud. But that offi­cial line is non­sense: vot­er fraud is van­ish­ing­ly rare in Wis­con­sin and else­where, and in those rare instances in which vot­er fraud does occur, it’s almost always done via absen­tee bal­lot, which in-per­son vot­er ID laws don’t affect. The true pur­pose of these laws to do exact­ly what Wisconsin’s law achieved on Tues­day: sup­press the votes of tra­di­tion­al­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­er groups. The evi­dence points to that truth, but even if you’re unwill­ing to believe the observ­able impacts of erect­ing bar­ri­ers to bal­lot access, you can trust the words of Repub­li­can politi­cians who freely admit as much.

Speak­ing to a local TV sta­tion on Tues­day night, Wis­con­sin Repub­li­can Rep. Glenn Groth­man boast­ed that the state’s vot­er ID law will help who­ev­er the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee is to win Wis­con­sin in the gen­er­al elec­tion. “I think Hillary Clin­ton is about the weak­est can­di­date the Democ­rats have ever put up,” Groth­man said. “And now we have pho­to ID, and I think pho­to ID is going to make a lit­tle bit of a dif­fer­ence as well.”

This com­ment is being treat­ed as a Kins­ley gaffe, but it’s actu­al­ly pret­ty stan­dard fare for Groth­man, who has been a hard-charg­ing pro­po­nent of vot­er ID laws and the polit­i­cal ben­e­fit they con­fer on Repub­li­cans. Back in 2012, when Groth­man was a state sen­a­tor, he was asked by ThinkProgress if the Wis­con­sin vot­er ID law could help Mitt Rom­ney win the state, and he said yes, explain­ing that only Democ­rats com­mit vot­er fraud. “I think if peo­ple cheat,” he said, “we believe the peo­ple who cheat are more like­ly to vote against us.”

These remarks are part of a grow­ing num­ber of com­ments from Repub­li­can offi­cials and con­ser­v­a­tive activists stat­ing in plain terms that vot­er ID laws are fan­tas­tic at sup­press­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote. It’s impos­si­ble to ignore the par­ti­san moti­va­tion here, just as it’s impos­si­ble to ignore the actions Repub­li­can-led states are tak­ing in con­junc­tion with vot­er ID laws to make it more and more dif­fi­cult for Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­stituen­cies to vote. In Mis­sis­sip­pi, the state passed a law requir­ing a pho­to ID to vote, and then announced that it was clos­ing driver’s license offices in “pre­dom­i­nant­ly black and poor” coun­ties across the state (the state’s actions are under fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion). In Wis­con­sin, they’ve dis­man­tled the inde­pen­dent board in charge of super­vis­ing elec­tions, devot­ed lit­tle resources to edu­cat­ing vot­ers about the new laws, and made it more dif­fi­cult to con­duct vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves.

...

“These remarks are part of a grow­ing num­ber of com­ments from Repub­li­can offi­cials and con­ser­v­a­tive activists stat­ing in plain terms that vot­er ID laws are fan­tas­tic at sup­press­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote. It’s impos­si­ble to ignore the par­ti­san moti­va­tion here, just as it’s impos­si­ble to ignore the actions Repub­li­can-led states are tak­ing in con­junc­tion with vot­er ID laws to make it more and more dif­fi­cult for Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­stituen­cies to vote. In Mis­sis­sip­pi, the state passed a law requir­ing a pho­to ID to vote, and then announced that it was clos­ing driver’s license offices in “pre­dom­i­nant­ly black and poor” coun­ties across the state (the state’s actions are under fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion). In Wis­con­sin, they’ve dis­man­tled the inde­pen­dent board in charge of super­vis­ing elec­tions, devot­ed lit­tle resources to edu­cat­ing vot­ers about the new laws, and made it more dif­fi­cult to con­duct vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves.”
One of the inter­est­ing legal ques­tions regard­ing the grow­ing num­ber GOP­ers from states all over the coun­try open­ly admit­ting that they’re attempt­ing bla­tant par­ti­san vot­er sup­pres­sion is that the ele­ments of the Vot­ing Rights Act that the Supreme Court over­turned in 2013 that helped fuel this flood of vot­er sup­pres­sion laws only required a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of south­ern states to sub­mit their vot­ing laws to fed­er­al “pre-clear­ance”. But is there a any state where where the GOP isn’t some­how try­ing to pass a vot­er sup­pres­sion law?

So, let’s say a future Supreme Court revers­es that 2013 deci­sion and we get the full VRA back in force. Should it real­ly be lim­it­ed to just those orig­i­nal south­ern states when all these offi­cials from oth­er states like Wis­con­sin keep admit­ting that their ini­tia­tives that just hap­pen to pri­mar­i­ly tar­get minor­i­ty vot­ers are part of par­ti­san vot­er sup­pres­sion effort? What if it’s no long spe­cif­ic states that are intent are intent on sup­pres­sion their cit­i­zens’ right to vote but a nation­al par­ty that’s been doing it for decades?

It’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion regard­ing poten­tial Supreme Court vot­ing rights rul­ings. Of course, giv­en the real­i­ty that exist­ing vot­er sup­pres­sion laws could end up giv­ing us Pres­i­dent Trump with a GOP-con­trolled House and Sen­ate, it’s a ques­tion that could soon be moot.

Remem­ber how North Car­oli­na’s vot­er ID laws, among the most aggres­sive in the nation, only pro­ceed­ed ahead after the Supreme Court shot down the Vot­ing Rights Act and removed the require­ment that the state not get “pre-clear­ance” and prove that its laws won’t dis­crim­i­nate against minor­i­ty groups? Well, here’s a good exam­ple of why some state gov­ern­ments sad­ly and clear­ly still need that “pre-clear­ance” require­ment:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

Repub­li­cans tried to dis­en­fran­chise black vot­ers

By Christo­pher Ingra­ham
July 29, 2016

Today, a fed­er­al court struck down North Car­oli­na’s vot­er-ID law, one of the strictest in the nation. In addi­tion to requir­ing res­i­dents to show iden­ti­fi­ca­tion before they can cast a bal­lot, the law also elim­i­nat­ed same-day vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, elim­i­nat­ed sev­en days of ear­ly vot­ing and put an end to out-of-precinct vot­ing. The fed­er­al court rul­ing rein­states these pro­vi­sions, for now.

Sup­port­ers of the law, like North Car­oli­na Gov. Pat McCro­ry, have ldong main­tained that require­ments like these were nec­es­sary to pre­vent vot­er fraud. But time and time again, schol­ars and legal experts have found that the type of fraud these laws are meant to com­bat is large­ly nonex­is­tent.

One of the most com­pre­hen­sive stud­ies on the sub­ject found only 31 indi­vid­ual cas­es of vot­er imper­son­ation out of more than 1 bil­lion votes cast in the Unit­ed States since the year 2000. Researchers have found that reports of vot­er fraud are rough­ly as com­mon as reports of alien abduc­tion.

The fed­er­al court in Rich­mond found that the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of North Car­oli­na’s was­n’t to stop vot­er fraud, but rather to dis­en­fran­chise minor­i­ty vot­ers. The judges found that the pro­vi­sions “tar­get African Amer­i­cans with almost sur­gi­cal pre­ci­sion.”

In par­tic­u­lar, the court found that North Car­oli­na law­mak­ers request­ed data on racial dif­fer­ences in vot­ing behav­iors in the state. “This data showed that African Amer­i­cans dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly lacked the most com­mon kind of pho­to ID, those issued by the Depart­ment of Motor Vehi­cles (DMV),” the judges wrote.

So the leg­is­la­tors made it so that the only accept­able forms of vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion were the ones dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly used by white peo­ple. “With race data in hand, the leg­is­la­ture amend­ed the bill to exclude many of the alter­na­tive pho­to IDs used by African Amer­i­cans,” the judges wrote. “The bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Car­olini­ans were more like­ly to pos­sess.”

The data also showed that black vot­ers were more like­ly to make use of ear­ly vot­ing — par­tic­u­lar­ly the first sev­en days out of North Car­oli­na’s 17-day vot­ing peri­od. So law­mak­ers elim­i­nat­ed these sev­en days of vot­ing. “After receipt of this racial data, the Gen­er­al Assem­bly amend­ed the bill to elim­i­nate the first week of ear­ly vot­ing, short­en­ing the total ear­ly vot­ing peri­od from sev­en­teen to ten days,” the court found.

Most strik­ing­ly, the judges point to a “smok­ing gun” in North Car­oli­na’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the law, prov­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry intent. The state argued in court that “coun­ties with Sun­day vot­ing in 2014 were dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly black” and “dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic,” and said it did away with Sun­day vot­ing as a result.

“Thus, in what comes as close to a smok­ing gun as we are like­ly to see in mod­ern times, the State’s very jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for a chal­lenged statute hinges explic­it­ly on race — specif­i­cal­ly its con­cern that African Amer­i­cans, who had over­whelm­ing­ly vot­ed for Democ­rats, had too much access to the fran­chise,” the judges write in their deci­sion.

This is about as clear-cut an indict­ment of the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry under­pin­nings of vot­er-ID laws as you’ll find any­where. Stud­ies have already shown a sig­nif­i­cant link between sup­port for vot­er ID and racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, among both law­mak­ers and white vot­ers in gen­er­al.

“Faced with this record,” the fed­er­al court con­cludes, “we can only con­clude that the North Car­oli­na Gen­er­al Assem­bly enact­ed the chal­lenged pro­vi­sions of the law with dis­crim­i­na­to­ry intent.”

...

“Most strik­ing­ly, the judges point to a “smok­ing gun” in North Car­oli­na’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the law, prov­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry intent. The state argued in court that “coun­ties with Sun­day vot­ing in 2014 were dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly black” and “dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic,” and said it did away with Sun­day vot­ing as a result.”

Yep, North Car­oli­na’s vot­er ID law was specif­i­cal­ly designed to min­i­mize the black vote and the state admit­ted it. Thus the “smok­ing gun” and the sub­se­quent court inval­i­da­tion of the law. Ok, great. But what about all the oth­er vot­er ID laws passed in recent years in oth­er GOP states that were basi­cal­ly the same law, but where the state gov­ern­ment isn’t stu­pid enough to admit dis­crim­i­na­tion was the intent? Are the­ses laws still con­sti­tu­tion­al with­out the open admis­sion or do we just have to wait for law­mak­ers to spill the beans? It’s a pret­ty impor­tant and urgent ques­tion.

With Don­ald Trump’s lat­est attempt at minor­i­ty vot­er out­reach look­ing more like an attempt to rebrand dehu­man­iz­ing hate speech as ‘out­reach’(in keep­ing with the larg­er goal to main­stream the ‘Alt-Right’ and white suprema­cy), while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly claim­ing the vot­ing and polls are all rigged against him, it’s going to be increas­ing­ly impor­tant to keep in mind that that one of the many rea­sons the Trump cam­paign isn’t both­er­ing to engage in minor­i­ty out­reach is because the GOP already has a wild­ly suc­cess­ful minor­i­ty vote-sup­pres­sion project already in place and ready to go for the 2016 elec­tion:

Rolling Stone

The GOP’s Stealth War Against Vot­ers

Will an anti-vot­er-fraud pro­gram designed by one of Trump’s advis­ers deny tens of thou­sands their right to vote in Novem­ber?

By Greg Palast
8/24/2016

When Don­ald Trump claimed, “the elec­tion’s going to be rigged,” he was­n’t entire­ly wrong. But the threat was not, as Trump warned, from Amer­i­cans com­mit­ting the crime of “vot­ing many, many times.” What’s far more like­ly to under­mine democ­ra­cy in Novem­ber is the cul­mi­na­tion of a decade-long Repub­li­can effort to dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers under the guise of bat­tling vot­er fraud. The lat­est tool: Elec­tion offi­cials in more than two dozen states have com­piled lists of cit­i­zens whom they allege could be reg­is­tered in more than one state – thus poten­tial­ly able to cast mul­ti­ple bal­lots – and eli­gi­ble to be purged from the vot­er rolls.

The data is processed through a sys­tem called the Inter­state Vot­er Reg­is­tra­tion Cross­check Pro­gram, which is being pro­mot­ed by a pow­er­ful Repub­li­can oper­a­tive, and its lists of poten­tial dupli­cate vot­ers are kept con­fi­den­tial. But Rolling Stone obtained a por­tion of the list and the names of 1 mil­lion tar­get­ed vot­ers. Accord­ing to our analy­sis, the Cross­check list dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly threat­ens sol­id Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­stituen­cies: young, black, His­pan­ic and Asian-Amer­i­can vot­ers – with some of the biggest pos­si­ble purges under­way in Ohio and North Car­oli­na, two cru­cial swing states with tight Sen­ate races.

Like all weapons of vote sup­pres­sion, Cross­check is a response to the imag­i­nary men­ace of mass vot­er fraud. In the mid-2000s, after the Flori­da-recount deba­cle, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion launched a five-year inves­ti­ga­tion into the alleged­ly ram­pant crime but found scant evi­dence of wrong­do­ing. Still, the GOP has per­pet­u­at­ed the myth in every nation­al elec­tion since. Recent­ly, North Car­oli­na Board of Elec­tions chief Kim Stra­ch tes­ti­fied to her leg­is­la­ture that 35,750 vot­ers are “reg­is­tered in North Car­oli­na and anoth­er state and vot­ed in both in the 2012 gen­er­al elec­tion.” Yet despite hir­ing an ex-FBI agent to lead the hunt, the state has charged exact­ly zero dou­ble vot­ers from the Cross­check list. Nev­er­the­less, tens of thou­sands face the loss of their abil­i­ty to vote – all for the sake of pre­vent­ing a crime that rarely hap­pens. So far, Cross­check has tagged an aston­ish­ing 7.2 mil­lion sus­pects, yet we found no more than four per­pe­tra­tors who have been charged with dou­ble vot­ing or delib­er­ate dou­ble reg­is­tra­tion.

...

In our effort to report on the pro­gram, we con­tact­ed every state for their Cross­check list. But because vot­ing twice is a felony, state after state told us their lists of sus­pects were part of a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and, as such, con­fi­den­tial. Then we got a break. A clerk in Vir­ginia sent us its Cross­check list of sus­pects, which a let­ter from the state lat­er said was done “in error.”

The Vir­ginia list was a rev­e­la­tion. In all, 342,556 names were list­ed as appar­ent­ly reg­is­tered to vote in both Vir­ginia and anoth­er state as of Jan­u­ary 2014. Thir­teen per­cent of the peo­ple on the Cross­check list, already flagged as inac­tive vot­ers, were almost imme­di­ate­ly removed, mean­ing a stun­ning 41,637 names were “can­celed” from vot­er rolls, most of them just before Elec­tion Day.

We were able to obtain more lists – Geor­gia and Wash­ing­ton state, the total num­ber of vot­ers adding up to more than 1 mil­lion match­es – and Cross­check­’s results seemed at best deeply flawed. We found that one-fourth of the names on the list actu­al­ly lacked a mid­dle-name match. The sys­tem can also mis­tak­en­ly iden­ti­fy fathers and sons as the same vot­er, ignor­ing des­ig­na­tions of Jr. and Sr. A whole lot of peo­ple named “James Brown” are sus­pect­ed of vot­ing or reg­is­ter­ing twice, 357 of them in Geor­gia alone. But accord­ing to Cross­check, James Willie Brown is sup­posed to be the same vot­er as James Arthur Brown. James Clif­ford Brown is alleged­ly the same vot­er as James Lynn Brown.

And those promised birth dates and Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers? The Cross­check instruc­tion man­u­al says that “Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers are includ­ed for ver­i­fi­ca­tion; the num­bers might or might not match” – which leaves a cru­cial step in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion process up to the states. Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers weren’t even includ­ed in the state lists we obtained.

We had Mark Swed­lund, a data­base expert whose clients include eBay and Amer­i­can Express, look at the data from Geor­gia and Vir­ginia, and he was shocked by Cross­check­’s “child­ish method­ol­o­gy.” He added, “God for­bid your name is Gar­cia, of which there are 858,000 in the U.S., and your first name is Joseph or Jose. You’re prob­a­bly sus­pect­ed of vot­ing in 27 states.”

Swed­lund’s sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis found that African-Amer­i­can, Lati­no and Asian names pre­dom­i­nate, a sim­ple result of the Cross­check match­ing process, which spews out lit­tle more than a bunch of com­mon names. No sur­prise: The U.S. Cen­sus data shows that minori­ties are over­rep­re­sent­ed in 85 of 100 of the most com­mon last names. If your name is Wash­ing­ton, there’s an 89 per­cent chance you’re African-Amer­i­can. If your last name is Her­nan­dez, there’s a 94 per­cent chance you’re His­pan­ic. If your name is Kim, there’s a 95 per­cent chance you’re Asian.

This inher­ent bias results in an aston­ish­ing one in six His­pan­ics, one in sev­en Asian-Amer­i­cans and one in nine African-Amer­i­cans in Cross­check states land­ing on the list. Was the pro­gram designed to tar­get vot­ers of col­or? “I’m a data guy,” Swed­lund says. “I can’t tell you what the intent was. I can only tell you what the out­come is. And the out­come is dis­crim­i­na­to­ry against minori­ties.”

Every vot­er that the state marks as a legit­i­mate match receives a post­card that is col­or­less and cov­ered with minus­cule text. The vot­er must ver­i­fy his or her address and mail it back to their sec­re­tary of state. Fail to return the post­card and the process of tak­ing your name off the vot­er rolls begins.

This post­card game ampli­fies Cross­check­’s built-in racial bias. Accord­ing to the Cen­sus Bureau, white vot­ers are 21 per­cent more like­ly than blacks or His­pan­ics to respond to their offi­cial requests; home­own­ers are 32 per­cent more like­ly to respond than renters; and the young are 74 per­cent less like­ly than the old to respond. Those on the move – stu­dents and the poor, who often shift apart­ments while hunt­ing for work – will like­ly not get the mail in the first place.

At this point, there’s no way to know how each state plans to move for­ward. If Vir­gini­a’s 13 per­cent is any indi­ca­tion, almost 1 mil­lion Amer­i­cans will have their right to vote chal­lenged. Our analy­sis sug­gests that wind­ing up on the Cross­check list is hard­ly proof that an indi­vid­ual is reg­is­tered in more than one state. Based on the data, the pro­gram – whether by design or mis­ap­pli­ca­tion – could save the GOP from impend­ing elec­toral anni­hi­la­tion. And not sur­pris­ing­ly, almost all Cross­check states are Repub­li­can-con­trolled.

The man behind cross­check is Kansas Sec­re­tary of State Kris Kobach, a Yale-edu­cat­ed for­mer law pro­fes­sor. After 9/11, U.S. Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Ashcroft tasked Kobach with cre­at­ing a sys­tem to track for­eign trav­el­ers. (It was lat­er shut down over con­cerns about racial pro­fil­ing.) He is best known as the author of Ari­zon­a’s “Dri­ving While Brown Law,” which allowed cops to pull over dri­vers and ask for proof of their legal sta­tus. He co-wrote the ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive 2016 RNC par­ty plat­form, work­ing in a rec­om­men­da­tion that Cross­check be adopt­ed by every state in the Union. He’s also the Trump advis­er who came up with a pro­pos­al to force Mex­i­co into pay­ing for Trump’s wall.

In Jan­u­ary 2013, Kobach addressed a gath­er­ing of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of State Elec­tion Direc­tors about com­bat­ing an epi­dem­ic of bal­lot-stuff­ing across the coun­try. He announced that Cross­check had already uncov­ered 697,537 “poten­tial dupli­cate vot­ers” in 15 states, and that the state of Kansas was pre­pared to cov­er the cost of com­pil­ing a nation­wide list. That was enough to per­suade 13 more states to hand over their vot­er files to Kobach’s office.

In bat­tle­ground-state Ohio, Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State John Husted’s Cross­check has flagged close to half a mil­lion vot­ers. In Day­ton, we tracked down sev­er­al of the sus­pects on our lists. Hot spots of “poten­tial dupli­cate” vot­ers, we could­n’t help but notice, were in neigh­bor­hoods where the streets are pocked with run­down hous­es and board­ed store­fronts. On Otter­bein Avenue, I met Don­ald Web­ster, who, like most in his neigh­bor­hood, is African-Amer­i­can.

Cross­check lists him reg­is­tered in Ohio as Don­ald Alexan­der Web­ster Jr., while reg­is­tered a sec­ond time as Don­ald Eugene Web­ster (no “Jr.”) in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia. Web­ster says he’s nev­er been a “Eugene” and has nev­er been to Char­lottesville. I explained that both he and his Vir­ginia dop­pel­gänger were sub­ject to los­ing their abil­i­ty to vote.

“How low can they go?” he asked. “I mean, how can they do that?”

I put his ques­tion to Robert Fitrakis, a vot­ing-rights attor­ney who exam­ined our Cross­check data. I showed him Don­ald Web­ster’s list­ing – and page after page of Ohio vot­ers. Fitrakis says that the Ohio sec­re­tary of state’s enthu­si­asm for Cross­check fits a pat­tern: “He does­n’t want to match mid­dle names, because he does­n’t want real match­es. They’re tar­get­ing peo­ple with clear­ly defined eth­nic names that typ­i­cal­ly vote for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. He wants to win Ohio the only way he knows how – by tak­ing away the rights of cit­i­zens to vote.”

Kobach refused to speak for this sto­ry. So I went to New­ton, Kansas, where he was head­lin­ing an ice-cream-social fundrais­er in a pub­lic park. I approached Kobach with the Cross­check list he had refused me, and asked, “Why are these lists so secret?”

“They aren’t,” Kobach answered, con­tra­dict­ing what his attor­ney had told me.

I point­ed to a ran­dom match on the Cross­check list and asked him why it iden­ti­fied James Evans John­son as the same vot­er as James P. John­son.

Kobach denied the name could be on the list. “Our sys­tem would not yield this match,” he said. (And accord­ing to the rules of his pro­gram, it should­n’t have.)

“This is the list you gave [Vir­ginia], and they knocked off 41,000 vot­ers,” I said.

“That is false!” he said, as he hur­ried away. “You know why? Fed­er­al law pro­hibits that.”

Kobach is cor­rect that fed­er­al reg­u­la­tion typ­i­cal­ly would com­pli­cate such a sweep­ing purge, but some­how tens of thou­sands of vot­ers in Vir­ginia got knocked off the rolls any­way.

Kobach’s Cross­check purge machin­ery was in oper­a­tion well before Trump arrived on the polit­i­cal scene – and will con­tin­ue for elec­tions to come. Low vot­er turnout of any kind tra­di­tion­al­ly favors the GOP, and this is the par­ty’s long game to keep the rolls free of young peo­ple, minori­ties and the poor. San­ti­a­go Juarez of New Mex­i­co, an attor­ney who has done work for the League of Unit­ed Latin Amer­i­can Cit­i­zens, has spent years sign­ing up His­pan­ic vot­ers in the face of sys­temic efforts to sup­press their vote. He scoffed at the idea of a mas­sive con­spir­a­cy among Lati­nos to vote in two states. “Hell,” he said, “you can’t get peo­ple to vote once, let alone twice.”

“Kobach is cor­rect that fed­er­al reg­u­la­tion typ­i­cal­ly would com­pli­cate such a sweep­ing purge, but some­how tens of thou­sands of vot­ers in Vir­ginia got knocked off the rolls any­way.”

Oh wow, so the GOP’s anti-vot­er-fraud ini­tia­tive that has already purged half a mil­lion vot­ers in Ohio and over 7 mil­lion vot­ers nation­al­ly from the vot­ing rolls is not just fraud­u­lent designed to max­i­mize dis­crim­i­na­tion but also fraud­u­lent­ly imple­ment­ed. What a total shock­er. It’s almost as shock­ing as iner­tia.

So that’s hap­pen­ing. But also keep in mind that this vot­er-sup­pres­sion pro­gram could end up get­ting extra-tur­bo-charged if Trump does win (due in part to a mys­te­ri­ous­ly low minor­i­ty vot­er turnout in key states like Ohio in a year when an open white suprema­cist is run­ning) now that Trump is appar­ent­ly “soft­en­ing” his stance on deport­ing 11 mil­lion undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants. Why? Because if Trump wins but the mass depor­ta­tions don’t hap­pen for what­ev­er rea­son, a mas­sive crack­down on minor­i­ty vot­ers (under the pre­tense of pre­vent­ing undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants from vot­ing) is prob­a­bly going to be one of the “com­pro­mise” poli­cies the Trump admin­is­tra­tion uses to pla­cate his white nation­al­ist base. So the bar­gain GOP will make with its base is “Sure, we won’t get rid of all those Mex­i­cans we know you hate, but we’re going to con­tin­ued pres­ence as an excuse to sup­press minor­i­ty vot­ers of all types every­where. How’s that sound instead? Please don’t be too upset with us!”

Whether or not that kind of ‘dump the depor­ta­tions for extra vot­er sup­pres­sion’ com­pro­mise would be enough to sat­is­fy a base that’s been sali­vat­ing over the prospects of mass depor­ta­tions for over a year now remains to be seen, but if the mass depor­ta­tions real­ly have been dropped from the Trump plat­form the GOP is going to have increase its minor­i­ty-bash­ing some­where, and mass minor­i­ty vot­er sup­pres­sion is a pret­ty big deal for the GOP’s white nation­al­ist base too. So it might be enough. Still, with the hard core Alt-Right/white nation­al­ist core that’s become Trump’s biggest base of sup­port, it could be a tough sell.

Imag­ine that: The GOP Sec­re­tary of State in Geor­gia, a state that still uses paper­less elec­tron­ic vot­ing machines and has unex­pect­ed­ly become a bat­tle­ground state in 2016, is refus­ing an offer from the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty to help find and fix vot­ing sys­tem vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. Why? Because, Sec­re­tary of State Bri­an Kemp asserts, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is attempt­ing to “sub­vert the Con­sti­tu­tion to achieve the goal of fed­er­al­iz­ing elec­tions under the guise of secu­ri­ty.”:

ThinkProgress

State That Exposed 6 Mil­lion Vot­ers’ Pri­vate Data Says It Doesn’t Need Elec­tion Secu­ri­ty Aid

Alice Oll­stein
8/29/2016

Georgia’s aging, paper­less vot­ing machines have been called a “sit­ting duck” for hack­ers. Six mil­lion Geor­gia vot­ers had reams of per­son­al infor­ma­tion exposed by a data breach in Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State Bri­an Kemp’s office ear­li­er this year.

Yet Kemp is refus­ing an offer from the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty to help shore up the cyber-secu­ri­ty of the state’s vul­ner­a­ble vot­ing machines. Instead, he accused the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment of attempt­ing to “sub­vert the Con­sti­tu­tion to achieve the goal of fed­er­al­iz­ing elec­tions under the guise of secu­ri­ty.” He said the state is capa­ble of han­dling its own elec­tion secu­ri­ty, and opined a hack is “not prob­a­ble at all.”

Less than a year ago, Kemp’s office acci­den­tal­ly mailed out a dozen discs con­tain­ing the pri­vate infor­ma­tion of more than six mil­lion Geor­gia vot­ers, includ­ing Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers, birth dates, and driver’s license num­bers. At the time, Kemp told state law­mak­ers that while he is “no expert on data secu­ri­ty,” he was con­fi­dent that no infor­ma­tion “made it out to the bad guys.”

A year before that, tens of thou­sands of new vot­er reg­is­tra­tions went miss­ing from the state’s data­base — the vast major­i­ty of them belong­ing to low-income peo­ple of col­or.

Once solid­ly Repub­li­can, a mas­sive effort to reg­is­ter vot­ers of col­or and a major immi­gra­tion influx have helped put Geor­gia on the cusp of becom­ing a swing state. Don­ald Trump’s polar­iz­ing cam­paign is not help­ing the GOP’s cause, and polls for both the pres­i­den­tial and Sen­ate races are tight. This makes Geor­gia an even more attrac­tive tar­get for hack­ers, who could flip votes in just a few coun­ties to change the out­come statewide.

Geor­gia is also one of the few states to still use elec­tron­ic vot­ing machines that have no paper trail, mak­ing a post-elec­tion audit to check for hack­ing or vote-flip­ping near­ly impos­si­ble. The decade-old soft­ware the machines use — Win­dows 2000 — also makes the sys­tem a “sit­ting duck” for hack­ers, cyber-secu­ri­ty experts told NPR.

...

Still, Geor­gia and oth­er states are refus­ing the fed­er­al government’s offer to inspect their vot­ing sys­tems for bugs and oth­er vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as a sneaky fed­er­al intru­sion on state sov­er­eign­ty under the guise of trumped up hack­ing con­cerns. Cur­rent­ly, only 12 states require full fed­er­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of their vot­ing machines.

Instead, Kemp and oth­er Repub­li­can sec­re­taries of state have focused most of their efforts on com­bat­ing in-per­son vot­er fraud, the rate of which is “infin­i­tes­i­mal” accord­ing to a recent nation­al, mul­ti-year study. The study, con­duct­ed by a team at the Wal­ter Cronkite School of Jour­nal­ism in Ari­zona, found just 10 proven cas­es of vot­er imper­son­ation since 2000?—?out of 146 mil­lion votes cast.

“Geor­gia is also one of the few states to still use elec­tron­ic vot­ing machines that have no paper trail, mak­ing a post-elec­tion audit to check for hack­ing or vote-flip­ping near­ly impos­si­ble. The decade-old soft­ware the machines use — Win­dows 2000 — also makes the sys­tem a “sit­ting duck” for hack­ers, cyber-secu­ri­ty experts told NPR.”

Yep, Geor­gia’s vot­ing sys­tems are a “sit­ting duck” for hack­ers, but the Sec­re­tary of State is still pret­ty sure that a hack is “not prob­a­bly at all” and that this is real­ly all part of a fed­er­al plot to sub­vert the Con­sti­tu­tion. So this is prob­a­bly a good time to remind our­selves that if fed­er­al involve­ment in vot­ing sys­tems is part of a fed­er­al plot to sub­vert the Con­sti­tu­tion, Geor­gia is already one the most sub­vert­ed state in the union since 88 per­cent of its vot­ing machines are from 2002, when the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment paid for new (often inse­cure) elec­tron­ic vot­ing machines around the nation as a response to the 2000 Flori­da recount:

PBS New­shour

Should pri­ma­ry vot­ers be wor­ried about aging vot­ing machines?

BY Phil Hirschko­rn

Feb­ru­ary 28, 2016 at 12:41 PM EDT

NEW YORK – As this year’s pres­i­den­tial pri­maries move beyond the First Four states of Iowa, New Hamp­shire, Neva­da, and South Car­oli­na, and into the dozen “Super Tues­day” states vot­ing on March 1, mil­lions of Amer­i­cans will find them­selves exer­cis­ing their right to vote on com­put­er­ized machines from the pre-iPhone era run­ning on soft­ware like Win­dows 2000 with hard­ware like 512 kilo­byte mem­o­ry cards.

“It’s con­cern­ing because this is the infra­struc­ture for our elec­tions,” said Lawrence Nor­den, co-author of America’s Vot­ing Machines at Risk, a recentBren­nan Cen­ter for Jus­tice report found 43 states have coun­ties using vot­ing equip­ment 10 to 15-years-old.

“The most imme­di­ate short-term con­cern is that we get more fail­ures on elec­tion days – that machines crash or shut down or have to be tak­en out of ser­vice, because they’re not work­ing like they’re sup­posed to,” Nor­den said. “That can cre­ate chaos at the polling place and long lines.”

An ‘impend­ing cri­sis’ on Elec­tion Day?

His con­cern is bol­stered by what hap­pened in the 2012 gen­er­al elec­tion, when an esti­mat­ed 500,000 to 700,000 peo­ple did not vote because of long lines, accord­ing to a study by the Caltech/MIT Vot­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Project, Wait­ing in Line to Vote.

The study found aver­age vot­er wait times on Novem­ber 6, 2012, ranged from a minute-and-half in Ver­mont to 39 min­utes in Flori­da, though reduced ear­ly vot­ing days and long bal­lot ref­er­en­da text con­tributed to the lines.

With 8,000 sep­a­rate elec­tion juris­dic­tions using equip­ment of their own choos­ing, the rec­om­men­da­tion that states increase the num­ber of vot­ing machines and poll work­ers is eas­i­er said than done.

The CalTech/MIT study was com­mis­sioned by the bipar­ti­san Pres­i­den­tial Com­mis­sion on Elec­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, which issued its own report in 2014 fore­cast­ing “an impend­ing cri­sis” with vot­ing machines.

In a Jan­u­ary 22 pre­sen­ta­tion updat­ing the commission’s work, Repub­li­can co-chair Ben Gins­berg said there is a “cri­sis of tech­nol­o­gy that our machines are about to fall apart on us.”

The machines in need of replace­ment were pur­chased fol­low­ing the dis­put­ed 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion between George W. Bush and Al Gore, when a recount of the Flori­da vote was stymied by the state’s use of punch cards at the polls.

After the elec­tion was set­tled, in 2002, Con­gress passed the Help Amer­i­ca Vote Act (HAVA) which appro­pri­at­ed $3.6 bil­lion for states to buy new elec­tron­ic vot­ing equip­ment.

Ini­tial­ly, about 70 per­cent of the machines pur­chased were ATM-style touch screens, but by 2008 shrink­ing con­fi­dence in their reli­a­bil­i­ty led to states like Iowa, New Mex­i­co, Mary­land and Flori­da to pull the plug on them.

Now touch-screens facil­i­tate less only one-third of reg­is­tered vot­ers, with two-thirds of reg­is­tered vot­ers using opti­cal scan­ner­sthat read vot­er-marked paper bal­lots, accord­ing to a Novem­ber 2015 sum­ma­ry by Elec­tion Data Ser­vices.

“Due to aging machines, we are see­ing some strong move­ment away from the elec­tron­ic sys­tems to the opti­cal scan sys­tems in the past six months,” said EDS pres­i­dent Kim­ball Brace.

Decade-old vot­ing machines to be used on Super Tues­day and beyond

In Texas, the biggest Super Tues­day prize, more than 40 per­cent of the coun­ties will use vot­ing machines that are 10 or more years old, accord­ing to the Bren­nan report, while Travis Coun­ty – Austin – bought its machines in 1999.

Geor­gia pur­chased 88 per­cent of its machines in 2002. In Arkansas, machines in 80 per­cent of the coun­ties are a decade old, as are the machines in 95 per­cent of Tennessee’s coun­ties.

Look­ing ahead to the March 15 pri­maries, around 90 per­cent of Ohio’s and North Carolina’s coun­ties use touch screen machines that are 10 or more years old. In Flori­da, one-third of the coun­ties use decade-old machines.

...

“Geor­gia pur­chased 88 per­cent of its machines in 2002. In Arkansas, machines in 80 per­cent of the coun­ties are a decade old, as are the machines in 95 per­cent of Tennessee’s coun­ties.”

That’s right, 88 per­cent of Geor­gia’s vot­ing machines were pur­chase in 2002, thanks to a con­gres­sion­al act that allo­cat­ed bil­lions of dol­lars to the states specif­i­cal­ly so they could buy elec­tion vot­ing machines:

...
After the elec­tion was set­tled, in 2002, Con­gress passed the Help Amer­i­ca Vote Act (HAVA) which appro­pri­at­ed $3.6 bil­lion for states to buy new elec­tron­ic vot­ing equip­ment.
...

So the the fact that the vast major­i­ty of Geor­gia’s cur­rent vot­ing machines are increas­ing­ly out of date and prone to fail­ure and pur­chased as part of a big fed­er­al ini­tia­tive to push elec­tron­ic vot­ing machines across the coun­try does­n’t appear to have raised sus­pi­cions among Geor­gia’s state offi­cials that their exist­ing machines are part of some fed­er­al plot. But now that the DHS is offer­ing to help secure these sys­tems, it’s a fed­er­al plot. A plot to sub­vert the con­sti­tu­tion.

It’s fun­ny how that works. It’s fun­ny how a lot of things work.

The Flori­da Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty filed a law­suit against Flori­da Gov­er­nor Rick Scott over his refusal to extend the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dead­line (which is today) as Hur­ri­cane Matthew was bar­rel­ing down on the state. And while it remains to be seen how that law­suit will pan out, it’s unfor­tu­nate­ly worth keep­ing mind that if the rest of the var­i­ous suc­cess­ful court orders against GOP’s vot­er sup­pres­sion efforts this year are any indi­ca­tion of how suc­cess­ful the Democ­rats will be in their law­suit, it’s prob­a­bly the case that a suc­cess­ful law­suit won’t actu­al­ly mat­ter. Why? Because the GOP isn’t just great at devel­op­ing vot­er sup­pres­sion schemes. It’s also great at devel­op­ing schemes to sup­press the court-ordered over­turn­ing of its vot­er sup­pres­sion schemes:

Talk­ing Points Memo DC

States Keep Weasel­ing Around Court Orders Block­ing GOP Vot­ing Restric­tions

By Tier­ney Sneed
Pub­lished Octo­ber 6, 2016, 6:00 AM EDT

After a spree of favor­able court rul­ings that soft­ened or blocked Repub­li­can-passed vot­ing restric­tions, vot­ing rights advo­cates are engaged in a new phase of trench war­fare with a mere month left before November’s elec­tion and ear­ly vot­ing in some places already under­way. There was no time for civ­il rights groups to rest on their lau­rels after win­ning the high-pro­file legal chal­lenges. In many states, such rul­ings were met with attempts to under­mine or cir­cum­vent court orders meant to make it eas­i­er to vote.

“You take a step back and it’s real­ly appalling,” said Dale Ho, the direc­tor of the ACLU’s Vot­ing Rights Project who has been involved in many of the legal chal­lenges to state vot­ing restric­tions.

“I mean the Depart­ment of Jus­tice and oth­er groups, we have all won the cas­es ... you would have thought we would have been fin­ished with this whole thing, when, up until Elec­tion Day, we have to stay on these peo­ple,” Ho told TPM.

At times, it’s hard to pin down whether issues red states have faced in imple­ment­ing court orders have been moti­vat­ed by bureau­crat­ic incom­pe­tence or some­thing worse. But the pat­tern is unde­ni­able. In almost every state where vot­ing rights advo­cates have scored a major legal vic­to­ry in recent months, they have had to threat­en to drag state offi­cials back into court over the shod­dy job elec­tion admin­is­tra­tors have done fol­low­ing the rul­ings.

“There’s two things going on: One is that we have seen court-ordered soft­en­ing [of vot­er ID laws] in places like Wis­con­sin and Texas, and then either foot-drag­ging or incom­pe­tence in car­ry­ing it out, which has led to fol­low-up law­suits or threats of law­suits,” said Richard Hasen, a pro­fes­sor at UC-Irvine School of Law who also runs the Elec­tion Law Blog. “The oth­er thing that is going on is new shenani­gans in response to court rul­ings. And that’s North Car­oli­na.”

In North Car­oli­na, the par­ti­san-moti­vat­ed chi­canery has been per­haps most glar­ing.

After an appeals court rul­ing restored a week of ear­ly vot­ing -- in a mon­u­men­tal deci­sion that said pro­vi­sions of a 2013 North Car­oli­na elec­tion law were passed with dis­crim­i­na­to­ry intent — a hand­ful of GOP-led coun­ty elec­tion boards sought to lim­it vot­ing hours in the extra week to the bare min­i­mum, appar­ent­ly at the behest of a leaked memo sent by a state Repub­li­can Par­ty offi­cial. Ear­ly vot­ing is dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly pop­u­lar among Demo­c­ra­t­ic-lean­ing minori­ties.

Some of the dis­putes between coun­ty offi­cials and vot­ing rights advo­cates were set­tled by the state elec­tion board. But five coun­ties are now the sub­ject of an emer­gency motion filed last week by Marc Elias — a vot­ing rights lawyer and coun­sel to the Clin­ton cam­paign — on the behalf of North Car­oli­na vot­ers object­ing to their skimpy ear­ly vot­ing sched­ules.

...

“The trend that you’re def­i­nite­ly see­ing is that although you may win in a court, so much of what actu­al­ly mat­ters to vot­ers depends on imple­men­ta­tion of a court vic­to­ry,” said Jen­nifer Clark, coun­sel for the Bren­nan Cen­ter’s Democ­ra­cy Pro­gram. “So get­ting a rul­ing that blocks or soft­ens a restric­tive vot­ing law is real­ly only the first step in mak­ing sure that peo­ple have the right to vote.”

Vot­ing rights groups on Tues­day filed a motion, in the ongo­ing legal bat­tle over Wis­con­sin’s vot­er ID require­ment, ques­tion­ing the state’s effort to pro­vide non-ID hold­ing vot­ers a free ID card to vote in time for the elec­tion, as ordered pre­vi­ous­ly by a fed­er­al judge. The fil­ings come after reports that, at a num­ber of local elec­tions offices, admin­is­tra­tors had told poten­tial vot­ers that they would not be able to obtain the free IDs in time. Nonethe­less, Wis­con­sin Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Mark Got­tlieb said Tues­day in leg­isla­tive tes­ti­mo­ny on the mat­ter that the court-ordered process was “sound.” U.S. Dis­trict Judge James Peter­son has sched­uled a hear­ing on the motion for next week.

At the urg­ing of the Depart­ment of Jus­tice, a fed­er­al judge in Texas last month had to order state offi­cials to re-write the edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als explain­ing how their vot­er ID law — which was ruled dis­crim­i­na­to­ry in its effect by a full appeals court — had been soft­ened for non-ID hold­ers. The state had used harsh­er lan­guage in explain­ing how non-ID users could vote by affi­davit than had been agreed upon after the appeals court rul­ing.

Kansas Sec­re­tary Kris Kobach, fac­ing a con­tempt-of-court hear­ing, agreed last week to fix the imple­men­ta­tion of mul­ti­ple rul­ings block­ing the state’s proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship require­ment for vot­er reg­is­tra­tion. The civ­il rights groups that sued Kobach over the require­ment noticed that the new­ly eli­gi­ble vot­ers were not being noti­fied that they were now ful­ly reg­is­tered to vote, nor were their names com­ing up in the state’s online vot­ing reg­is­tra­tion data­base.

The list goes on.

Ohio Sec­re­tary of State Jon Husted is under fire for fail­ing to send absen­tee bal­lots to more than a mil­lion of Ohio’s 7.7 mil­lion reg­is­tered vot­ers. Among those not receiv­ing bal­lots were those vot­ers whose reg­is­tra­tions were restored after an appeals court blocked blocked a purge of them from the rolls. They were being purged because they didn’t vote in the 2012 or 2014 elec­tions and did not respond to local coun­ty boards’ mail­ers request­ing they con­firm their reg­is­tra­tions.

A key ele­ment in the slow-rolling of court deci­sions uphold­ing vot­ing rights is the 2013 Supreme Court deci­sion Shel­by Coun­ty vs. Hold­er. The rul­ing inval­i­dat­ed a for­mu­la in Sec­tion 5 of the Vot­ing Rights Act, which deter­mined which states had to get changes to their elec­tion pro­to­cols pre-approved by the feds in a process known as pre­clear­ance. The cur­rent bat­tles in North Car­oli­na and Texas would have also most cer­tain­ly been pre­vent­ed by a ful­ly-func­tion­ing Sec­tion 5.

“It’s a shame we have to keep, even after win­ning these cas­es, we have to con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor these states,” Ho, the ACLU lawyer, said. “It’s part of the rea­son why the Sec­tion 5 pre­clear­ance regime was so valu­able, why we insti­tut­ed it in the first place. Because plain­tiffs and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice would win these cas­es and then the tac­tics would shift.”

““The trend that you’re def­i­nite­ly see­ing is that although you may win in a court, so much of what actu­al­ly mat­ters to vot­ers depends on imple­men­ta­tion of a court vic­to­ry,” said Jen­nifer Clark, coun­sel for the Bren­nan Cen­ter’s Democ­ra­cy Pro­gram. “So get­ting a rul­ing that blocks or soft­ens a restric­tive vot­ing law is real­ly only the first step in mak­ing sure that peo­ple have the right to vote.””

So it looks like vot­er sup­pres­sion is here to stay, courts be damned. It’s an unfor­tu­nate hint that the Trump cam­paign’s “law and order” cam­paign theme prob­a­bly isn’t intend­ed to include things like elec­tion law after this vot­er sup­pres­sion pro­pels him into the White House and the GOP are com­plete­ly run­ning the coun­try. It’s not the only unfor­tu­nate hint.

Here’s an inter­est­ing rea­son that has noth­ing to do with Don­ald Trump’s tox­ic effects on the Repub­li­can ‘brand’ for why the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee might be going to extra lengths to dis­tance itself from the Trump cam­paign as elec­tion day approach­es: The RNC signed a legal con­sent decree in 1982 after being found ille­gal­ly using the kind of “bal­lot secu­ri­ty” meth­ods advo­cat­ed by Trump dur­ing New Jer­sey’s 1981 guber­na­to­r­i­al race. And that con­sent decree is sched­ule to expire in 2017, but won’t expire if the RNC is once again found to be ille­gal­ly tar­get­ing minor­i­ty vot­ers via “bal­lot secu­ri­ty” antics. As a result, if the RNC wants to engage in “bal­lot secu­ri­ty” schemes in the future — and there’s no rea­son to assume the RNC won’t want to do exact­ly that — it had bet­ter keep its dis­tance from the Trump­ster:

Talk­ing Points Memo DC

Why The RNC Wants Noth­ing To Do With Trump’s Poll Watch­er Call To Arms

By Tier­ney Sneed
Pub­lished Octo­ber 21, 2016, 6:00 AM EDT

Don­ald Trump’s calls for vig­i­lante poll watch­ers prompts all sorts of con­cerns — for vot­ers, for elec­tion work­ers and for oth­er law­mak­ers on the bal­lot get­ting dragged into the mess. But for the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee in par­tic­u­lar the rhetoric brings up a very del­i­cate but sig­nif­i­cant issue that has its roots in a 1981 court case that has had last­ing impli­ca­tions for its Elec­tion Day activ­i­ties.

Trump’s com­ments urg­ing elec­tions mon­i­tor­ing has drawn atten­tion to the con­sent decree the RNC signed in 1982 that banned the very sort of “bal­lot secu­ri­ty” mea­sures Trump has encour­aged from his sup­port­ers. If there’s rea­son to believe the RNC was par­tic­i­pat­ing, it could be found in vio­la­tion of the decree, which could keep the com­mit­tee under its restric­tions for anoth­er eight years. That would be a major set back for the RNC, giv­en the decree is set to expire in 2017.

To get a sense of how seri­ous the RNC is tak­ing the issue, look no fur­ther than the alarm bells that went off with a casu­al com­ment made by Trump’s cam­paign man­ag­er in the debate spin room Wednes­day night in Las Vegas.

The court decree in ques­tion stems from a 1981 law­suit filed against the RNC by Democ­rats, for actions relat­ed to a guber­na­to­r­i­al race in New Jer­sey. Accord­ing to the Dems’ law­suit, the RNC and its state coun­ter­part engaged in a num­ber of prac­tices in the name of “bal­lot secu­ri­ty” that intim­i­dat­ed, threat­ened or coerced minor­i­ty vot­ers. The alleged activ­i­ties includ­ed the hir­ing of off-duty cops to patrol near polling places in minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties, as well as a shady mail­er cam­paign the RNC used to cob­ble togeth­er a list to chal­lenge oth­er­wise eli­gi­ble vot­ers from cast­ing bal­lots at polling places. The case was set­tled with the con­sent decree, impos­ing a num­ber of lim­its on what the RNC could do at polling places on Elec­tion Day.

Fast for­ward to 2016, and the thin tightrope Trump’s rhetoric is mak­ing the RNC walk now.

Dur­ing MSNBC’s post-debate cov­er­age that spanned into the ear­ly hours of the Thurs­day morn­ing, Wash­ing­ton Post reporter Bob Cos­ta remarked on some­thing Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Kellyanne Con­way told him in the spin room about how the cam­paign was doing to crack down on “vot­er fraud.”

“She said that she is active­ly work­ing with the nation­al com­mit­tee, the offi­cial par­ty, and cam­paign lawyers to mon­i­tor precincts around the coun­try,” Cos­ta said, in a dis­cus­sion about how Repub­li­cans were han­dling Trump’s rigged elec­tion claims.

While it was easy to see the con­tem­po­rary ram­i­fi­ca­tions of Con­way tying Trump’s rigged elec­tion claims to the offi­cial par­ty appa­ra­tus, Ben Gins­berg — the staid Repub­li­can lawyer who was also on the MSNBC pan­el — jumped in to bring up the decades-old decree.

“That’s a huge prob­lem for the Repub­li­can Par­ty,” Gins­berg said. “The Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee is under a con­sent decree that severe­ly lim­its its elec­tion day activ­i­ties because of some actions back in the ‘80s.”

...

“The RNC is still under a con­sent decree, they are eager to have it come off next year when it expires and this activ­i­ty, I can promise you is going to cause the Democ­rats go back into court and extend it,” Gins­berg said.

The RNC has since denied to TPM any coor­di­na­tion on Trump’s sup­posed vot­er fraud pre­ven­tion effort.

“The RNC does not work with any cam­paign at any lev­el on so-called bal­lot secu­ri­ty efforts and will not do so,” Lind­say Wal­ters, a spokes­woman for the RNC, said in a state­ment to TPM. “We are com­plete­ly focused on get­ting out the vote for the Repub­li­can tick­et.”

Cos­ta told TPM via email that Con­way called him back lat­er to tell him she was mis­tak­en about the RNC’s involve­ment.

The RNC has faced a num­ber of legals com­plaints from Dems claim­ing vio­la­tions of the decree since 1982. A 2008 law­suit filed by Dems result­ed in a court mod­i­fy­ing the decree, but when the RNC appealed to the Supreme Court to get it lift­ed in its entire­ly, the court in 2013 declined to take the case.

There has been some debate as to whether Trump’s actions already were enough to get the RNC in trou­ble, if he was inter­pret­ed to be an agent of the RNC or act­ing on its behalf, as Rick Hasen, a pro­fes­sor at the UC-Irvine School of Law, has posit­ed on his Elec­tion Law Blog..

But the RNC as well as a Repub­li­can lawyer who is knowl­edge­able about the con­sent decree pushed back on the notion that Trump’s action could be imput­ed to the RNC. They said that the con­sent decree makes clear that it applies to the RNC specif­i­cal­ly and not to any can­di­date or inde­pen­dent cam­paign. (The New Jer­sey Repub­li­can State Com­mit­tee was also explic­it­ly cov­ered in the orig­i­nal decree.)

Nev­er­the­less, it appears the com­mit­tee is tak­ing any asso­ci­a­tion very seri­ous­ly, and mak­ing efforts to pre­vent its staff and mem­bers from doing any­thing that would give the appear­ance the RNC was involved.

Accord­ing the Wall Street Jour­nal, , RNC gen­er­al coun­sel John Ryder wrote to com­mit­tee mem­bers Wednes­day ask­ing them to avoid engag­ing in poll watch­ing.

“You are encour­aged not to engage in ‘bal­lot secu­ri­ty’ activ­i­ties even in your per­son­al, state par­ty or cam­paign capac­i­ty. If you elect to do so, please be aware that the RNC in no way sanc­tions your activ­i­ty,” the let­ter said.

“There has been some debate as to whether Trump’s actions already were enough to get the RNC in trou­ble, if he was inter­pret­ed to be an agent of the RNC or act­ing on its behalf, as Rick Hasen, a pro­fes­sor at the UC-Irvine School of Law, has posit­ed on his Elec­tion Law Blog.”

It all rais­es a ques­tion for this elec­tion: Since the RNC is scared of being asso­ci­at­ed with Trump’s cam­paign activ­i­ties this year because it might make it impos­si­ble to over­turn its con­sent decree next year and since Trump has been engag­ing in all sort of actions seem­ing­ly designed to under­mine demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions, like dog-whistling vio­lence against his oppo­nent and hint­ing at a refusal to accept the out­come of the elec­tion, aren’t there any new Trump-relat­ed con­sent decrees that the RNC might be flirt­ing with at this point or is the lift­ing of that 1982 con­sent decree the only real threat to the GOP here? Is every­thing Trump does­n’t sole­ly inter­pret­ed as the actions of that cam­paign?

And if the RNC itself isn’t cul­pa­ble, how about the state par­ties since the New Jer­sey State Repub­li­can Com­mit­tee was also part of the 1982 decree. It seems like there have to be plen­ty of GOP state orga­ni­za­tions involved in Trump-relat­ed activ­i­ties that war­rant a con­sent decree or two. Maybe even some non-Trump-relat­ed state-lev­el activ­i­ties that the GOP would be doing any­way and are obvi­ous­ly plan­ning on doing in the future.

How sur­pris­ing: A guy who could­n’t even get appoint­ed to a fed­er­al judge­ship in the 80’s due to his long record of overt racism is Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­nee for Attor­ney Gen­er­al :

Talk­ing Points Memo DC

Why Jeff Ses­sions As Attor­ney Gen­er­al Hor­ri­fies Vot­ing Rights Advo­cates

By Tier­ney Sneed
Pub­lished Novem­ber 18, 2016, 4:38 PM EDT

The announce­ment that Don­ald Trump will nom­i­nate Sen. Jeff Ses­sions (R‑AL) to be his attor­ney gen­er­al has pro­duced a pan­ic among civ­il rights groups.

The NAACP called his selec­tion “deeply trou­bling” and said Ses­sions “sup­ports an old, ugly his­to­ry where Civ­il Rights were not regard­ed as core Amer­i­can val­ues.” The Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence on Civ­il and Human Rights said Ses­sions had “no place lead­ing our nation’s enforce­ment of civ­il rights and vot­ing rights laws.” The NAACP-Legal Defense Fund said it was “unimag­in­able that he could be entrust­ed to serve as the chief law enforce­ment offi­cer for this nation’s civ­il rights laws.”

Of par­tic­u­lar con­cern is Ses­sions’ his­to­ry on vot­ing rights, which the Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence described as a “record of hos­til­i­ty.” Over the course of 30 years, Ses­sions has shown a skep­ti­cism toward the Vot­ing Rights Act, while being quick to inflame con­cerns over alleged elec­tion fraud. With Ses­sions at the helm of the Depart­ment of Jus­tice, its recent efforts to curb dis­crim­i­na­to­ry vot­ing restric­tions look to be very much in jeop­ardy.

“He has said many things to raise con­cerns and this is a time that these con­cerns are going to need to be quelled,” Wendy Weis­er, the direc­tor of Democ­ra­cy Pro­gram at the Bren­nan Cen­ter, told TPM.

As a U.S. attor­ney in Alaba­ma in the mid-1980s, Ses­sions sought to pros­e­cute African Amer­i­can activists in the state — includ­ing Albert Turn­er, a for­mer aide to Mar­tin Luther King Jr. who was also among those clubbed by police offi­cers in the march for vot­ing rights in Sel­ma — for alleged­ly com­mit­ting vot­er fraud with absen­tee bal­lots. The fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors hid behind the bush­es out­side of a post office to mon­i­tor the activists as they sent out about 500 absen­tee bal­lots they col­lect­ed from elder­ly black vot­ers, accord­ing to the Nation. The inves­ti­ga­tors took down the infor­ma­tion from the bal­lots and tracked down 20 vot­ers. The elder­ly African Amer­i­cans were bused 200 miles to be inter­ro­gat­ed and to deliv­er tes­ti­mo­ny in front of a grand jury, accord­ing to a Wash­ing­ton Post report from the time. Of the 1.7 mil­lion bal­lots cast in the elec­tion in ques­tion, the inves­ti­ga­tion was only able to turn up 14 alleged­ly tam­pered bal­lots, The New Repub­lic report­ed.

Ses­sions brought 29 charges against each of the activists relat­ed to fraud and con­spir­a­cy, accord­ing to the Nation. A jury, in delib­er­a­tions that last­ed only a few hours, acquit­ted the three activists. Even after, Ses­sions insist­ed “there was suf­fi­cient evi­dence for a con­vic­tion,” the Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed at the time. The inves­ti­ga­tion was also knocked by a pan­el of judges who object­ed to how inves­ti­ga­tors num­bered absen­tee bal­lots after they were mailed so they could col­lect the vot­ers’ infor­ma­tion, the AP report­ed in 1986, though Ses­sions con­tin­ued to stand by the prac­tice.

Civ­il rights groups warned that the probe, despite the acquit­tals, would have a chill­ing effect on cam­paigns to help African Amer­i­cans vote, accord­ing to USA Today.

The episode came up a year lat­er, when the Sen­ate was con­sid­er­ing Ses­sions’ 1986 nom­i­na­tion by Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan for a fed­er­al judge­ship. But it was soon eclipsed by alle­ga­tions that Ses­sions expressed racist sen­ti­ments among his col­leagues. Over the course of the hear­ings relat­ed to the con­tro­ver­sy, Ses­sions admit­ted to call­ing the NAACP and the Nation­al Coun­cil of Church­es “un-Amer­i­can,” though he denied he had applied the label to the ACLU, as was claimed.

“I recall say­ing that civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions, when they demand more than is legit­i­mate, it hurts their posi­tion,” Ses­sions tes­ti­fied in front of Con­gress. Ses­sions was also accused of call­ing a white attor­ney involved in major vot­ing rights lit­i­ga­tion a “dis­grace to his race.”

“The best I could recall was that I said, well, he is not that pop­u­lar around town; I have heard him referred to as a dis­grace to his race,” Ses­sions said in con­gres­sion­al tes­ti­mo­ny.

Dur­ing the nom­i­na­tion hear­ings Ses­sions also said he believed that the Vot­ing Rights Act was an “an intru­sive piece of leg­is­la­tion,” but added that it had been “effec­tive.”

J. Ger­ald Hebert, the for­mer DOJ attor­ney who came for­ward with some of the claims of Ses­sions’ racist com­ments, said in a state­ment Fri­day that his nom­i­na­tion as attor­ney gen­er­al was “a threat to vot­ing rights for all minori­ties.”

The scan­dal did not stop Ses­sions from being elect­ed in 1994 as Alabama’s attor­ney gen­er­al and then in 1996 to the U.S. Sen­ate, where he occu­pied its far-right fringe.

In the Sen­ate, Ses­sions opposed a failed bill to expand vot­ing rights for con­vict­ed felons.

“I don’t think Amer­i­can pol­i­cy is going to be bet­ter informed if we have a bunch of felons in the process,” Ses­sions said in 2002, when the leg­is­la­tion was being con­sid­ered.

In 2006, he vot­ed in sup­port for the exten­sion of the Vot­ing Rights Act, but not with­out mak­ing a stink about its Sec­tion 5, which required Alaba­ma and oth­er local­i­ties with a his­to­ry of racial vot­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion to get fed­er­al approval for elec­tion pol­i­cy changes. After the exten­sion, he signed on to a Repub­li­can brief on the new­ly extend­ed VRA that appeared to be skep­ti­cal of the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of some of its pro­vi­sions.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, he cheered the 2013 Supreme Court deci­sion in Shel­by Coun­ty v. Hold­er, stem­ming from a law­suit filed by a coun­ty in his home state, that gut­ted the pre-clear­ance pro­vi­sion. He called it “good news, I think, for the South.”

“Shel­by Coun­ty nev­er had a his­to­ry of deny­ing the vote, cer­tain­ly not now,” he said, refer­ring to the coun­ty that brought the law­suit against the VRA. “There is racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in the coun­try, but I don’t think in Shel­by Coun­ty, Alaba­ma, any­one is being denied the right to vote because of the col­or of their skin. It would be much more like­ly to have those things occur in Philadel­phia, Chica­go, or Boston.”

He also said in 2013 of his vote in favor of the VRA exten­sion in 2006 that, “In ret­ro­spect, that was prob­a­bly too long an exten­sion because there’s just huge areas of the South where there’s no prob­lem.”

He is a vocal pro­po­nent of vot­er ID laws. It’s worth not­ing that the Jus­tice Depart­ment, which Ses­sions could soon head, has been involved in a num­ber of law­suits chal­leng­ing vot­er ID laws and oth­er restric­tions for being dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, includ­ing the law­suit against Texas’ ID law, which has been appealed to the Supreme Court.

...

Addi­tion­al­ly, Ses­sions has long claimed that vot­er fraud was an urgent prob­lem, despite such cas­es being incred­i­bly rare. The claim of fraud has been used by Ses­sions and oth­ers to advo­cate for restric­tive laws that crit­ics say are veiled efforts to make it hard­er for minori­ties to votes. Ses­sions was among the Trump sup­port­ers back­ing the then-GOP nom­i­nee’s claims that the 2016 elec­tion was rigged against him.

“That’s sug­ges­tive that he is going to pur­sue an agen­da that restricts vot­ing rights in the name of vot­ing fraud,” Dale Ho, the direc­tor of the ACLU’s Vot­ing Rights Project, told TPM.

“Dur­ing the nom­i­na­tion hear­ings Ses­sions also said he believed that the Vot­ing Rights Act was an “an intru­sive piece of leg­is­la­tion,” but added that it had been “effec­tive.””

Yep, as Jeff Ses­sions acknowl­edge, the Vot­ing Right Act had indeed been effec­tive, which like­ly why Ses­sions was an oppo­nent of Sec­tion 5 of the Vot­ing Rights Act that required local­i­ties with a his­to­ry of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion get fed­er­al approval. You know, the same Sec­tion 5 that the Supreme Court shot down in 2013 and that Ses­sions was excit­ed to see shot down:

...
In 2006, he vot­ed in sup­port for the exten­sion of the Vot­ing Rights Act, but not with­out mak­ing a stink about its Sec­tion 5, which required Alaba­ma and oth­er local­i­ties with a his­to­ry of racial vot­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion to get fed­er­al approval for elec­tion pol­i­cy changes. After the exten­sion, he signed on to a Repub­li­can brief on the new­ly extend­ed VRA that appeared to be skep­ti­cal of the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of some of its pro­vi­sions.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, he cheered the 2013 Supreme Court deci­sion in Shel­by Coun­ty v. Hold­er, stem­ming from a law­suit filed by a coun­ty in his home state, that gut­ted the pre-clear­ance pro­vi­sion. He called it “good news, I think, for the South.”

“Shel­by Coun­ty nev­er had a his­to­ry of deny­ing the vote, cer­tain­ly not now,” he said, refer­ring to the coun­ty that brought the law­suit against the VRA. “There is racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in the coun­try, but I don’t think in Shel­by Coun­ty, Alaba­ma, any­one is being denied the right to vote because of the col­or of their skin. It would be much more like­ly to have those things occur in Philadel­phia, Chica­go, or Boston.”

He also said in 2013 of his vote in favor of the VRA exten­sion in 2006 that, “In ret­ro­spect, that was prob­a­bly too long an exten­sion because there’s just huge areas of the South where there’s no prob­lem.”

...

“He called it “good news, I think, for the South.””

That’s Jeff Ses­sions for you. The next Attor­ney Gen­er­al. And while it was­n’t actu­al­ly ‘good’ news for the South, it was cer­tain­ly ‘good’ for racists intent on restrict­ing minor­i­ty vot­ing rights. Oh, and, of course, ‘good’ for all the white suprema­cists who are super excit­ed about Jeff Ses­sions being the Attor­ney Gen­er­al:

The Huff­in­g­ton Post
White Nation­al­ists Are Ecsta­t­ic About Jeff Ses­sions’ Nom­i­na­tion
Not a great look for Don­ald Trump’s attor­ney gen­er­al pick.

Daniel Marans
11/18/2016 05:55 pm ET | Updat­ed

Repub­li­can Alaba­ma Sen. Jeff Ses­sions’ racial­ly insen­si­tive com­ments and hard­line anti-immi­gra­tion posi­tions are prompt­ing a host of civ­il rights groups to con­demn Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­na­tion of him for attor­ney gen­er­al.

But white nation­al­ists are over the moon about Ses­sions’ selec­tion, appar­ent­ly see­ing him as one of their own.

Lib­er­al media watch­dog Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca com­piled a list of the lead­ing fig­ures on the big­ot­ed “alt-right” who have pub­licly praised his appoint­ment.

Ses­sions’ vocal white nation­al­ist back­ers include David Duke, a for­mer Grand Wiz­ard of the Ku Klux Klan, radio host James Edwards, writer Hunter Wal­lace and video blog­ger Ramz­Paul.

Ban­non, Fly­nn, Ses­sions — Great! Sen­ate must demand that Ses­sions as AG stop the mas­sive insti­tu­tion­al race dis­crim­i­na­tion against whites!— David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) Novem­ber 18, 2016

Andrew Anglin, edi­tor of the neo-Nazi site The Dai­ly Stormer, wrote that Ses­sions’ nom­i­na­tion, along with the appoint­ment of retired Gen. Mike Fly­nn as nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er and Steve Ban­non as Trump’s chief strate­gist, is “like Christ­mas.”

“Of course, I was think­ing of Ses­sions for either Sec­re­tary of State or Defense, but I think Trump is mak­ing a point by putting an aggres­sive anti-Black racist in as AG,” Anglin wrote. “It’s a cor­rec­tive mea­sure, after Oba­ma turned the Jus­tice Depart­ment into the Black Pan­thers.”

But even Anglin acknowl­edged that the very fea­tures that make Ses­sions an attrac­tive pick to neo-Nazis might make Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion chal­leng­ing.

“The rea­son he might face trou­ble? Because he’s a racist and most of these RINOs (Repub­li­can in Name Only) in Con­gress are filthy cuck trai­tors to the White race and the GOP,” Anglin wrote.

“Andrew Anglin, edi­tor of the neo-Nazi site The Dai­ly Stormer, wrote that Ses­sions’ nom­i­na­tion, along with the appoint­ment of retired Gen. Mike Fly­nn as nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er and Steve Ban­non as Trump’s chief strate­gist, is “like Christ­mas.””

Yes, for Amer­i­ca’s neo-Nazis the Trump pres­i­den­cy is Christ­mas in Novem­ber! But don’t any­one dare sug­gest that Trump is putting togeth­er a white nation­al­ist admin­is­tra­tion. We would­n’t want to pre­ma­ture­ly jump to any con­clu­sions.

One of the many grim ques­tions raised by the prospect of a Trump admin­is­tra­tion is whether or not Trump’s embrace of Alex Jones and his post-fac­tu­al world­view would be large­ly lim­it­ed to Trump or infect the rest of the GOP, tak­ing the par­ty’s already extreme­ly loose rela­tion­ship with real­i­ty off the deep end entire­ly. Well, here’s a par­tial answer to that hor­ri­bly grim ques­tion from RNC spokesman Sean Spicer:

Talk­ing Points Memo
Livewire

RNC Spox Dou­bles Down On Trump’s Flag Burn­ing, Bogus Ille­gal Vot­ing Tweets (VIDEO)

By Kristin Salaky
Pub­lished Novem­ber 29, 2016, 6:12 PM EDT

Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee spokesman Sean Spicer backed up Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s Twit­ter mus­ings that any­one who burns the Amer­i­can flag should face loss of cit­i­zen­ship or jail time and that mil­lions of peo­ple vot­ed ille­gal­ly in this year’s elec­tion.

Spicer com­pared Trump’s tweets about flag burn­ing to Hillary Clin­ton’s intro­duc­tion of leg­is­la­tion in 2005 to crim­i­nal­ize flag burn­ing dur­ing a Tues­day inter­view with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. He also argued that a 5–4 Supreme Court deci­sion that pro­tect­ed flag burn­ing as con­sti­tu­tion­al speech went to show that four jus­tices actu­al­ly did agree with Trump that the ges­ture should be ille­gal.

“I think the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans agree with him, that burn­ing the flag should be out­lawed,” Spicer said. “That 5–4 deci­sion that the jus­tice [Antonin Scalia] was speak­ing of was some­thing that clear­ly four jus­tices also believed should be ille­gal. This is some­thing that’s bipar­ti­san. In 2005 Hillary Clin­ton intro­duced the Flag Pro­tec­tion Act that had a one-year impris­on­ment or $5,000 fine for flag burn­ing.”

Spicer went on to dou­ble down on an unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claim by Trump that “mil­lions” of peo­ple ille­gal­ly vot­ed in the elec­tion and that he would have won the pop­u­lar vote if they had­n’t done so.

The RNC spokesman was jus the lat­est Trump lack­ey to cite a flim­sy 2014 Wash­ing­ton Post op-ed that claimed 14 per­cent of nonci­t­i­zens were reg­is­tered to vote. The piece, which was based on spec­u­la­tive data, wasrebutted by three sep­a­rate pieces on the Wash­ing­ton Post site alone and addi­tion­al­ly was debunked by peer review. Trump cit­ed it in a stump speech ear­li­er this year, as have sev­er­al of his sur­ro­gates this week.

“There have been stud­ies that have shown— stud­ies that shown irreg­u­lar­i­ties but not mil­lions of vot­ers,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer told Spicer.

“Sure. If you look at the per­cent­age. There was a Wash­ing­ton Post sto­ry not too along ago that showed the num­ber could be as high as 14 per­cent,” Spicer said. “If you extrap­o­late that out, it’s clear­ly mil­lions.”

“Are you say­ing he won the pop­u­lar vote? Is that what you’re say­ing?” Blitzer asked.

“No. I am say­ing the way of elec­toral process was set up it was focused on get­ting to 270,” Spicer said.

Blitzer con­tin­ued to press Spicer as to whether he agreed that peo­ple vot­ed ille­gal­ly in the 2016 elec­tion, while Spicer kept bash­ing the Wash­ing­ton Post for not­ing Trump’s claim was untrue.

“You say there are mil­lions of peo­ple who vot­ed in the most recent pres­i­den­tial elec­tion who vot­ed ille­gal­ly? Is that what I hear Sean Spicer say as well?” Blitzer asked.

“What you are hear­ing me say is these are stud­ies pre­sent­ed in The Wash­ing­ton Post and Pew,” Spicer said.

“The Wash­ing­ton Post gave him ‘four pinoc­chios’ for say­ing that,” Blitzer point­ed out. “Said it was total­ly, total­ly false.”

“It’s inter­est­ing that The Wash­ing­ton Post gave pinoc­chios to some­one cit­ing a Wash­ing­ton Post study,” Spicer shot back.
...

“The RNC spokesman was jus the lat­est Trump lack­ey to cite a flim­sy 2014 Wash­ing­ton Post op-ed that claimed 14 per­cent of nonci­t­i­zens were reg­is­tered to vote. The piece, which was based on spec­u­la­tive data, wasrebutted by three sep­a­rate pieces on the Wash­ing­ton Post site alone and addi­tion­al­ly was debunked by peer review. Trump cit­ed it in a stump speech ear­li­er this year, as have sev­er­al of his sur­ro­gates this week.”

So that’s appar­ent­ly the view of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee: a repeat­ed­ly debunked study is not only valid, but quite pos­si­bly an expla­na­tion for why Trump lost the pop­u­lar vote by mil­lions votes. Well, at least he cit­ed a debunked study, as opposed to the recent Infowars sto­ry push­ing the same meme that was based on a GOP hack pro­vid­ing no evi­dence at all. It could be worse! Bare­ly!

Of course, if debunked stud­ies are used to imple­ment dam­ag­ing poli­cies that fur­ther the GOP’s end­less war on vot­ing rights, it’s hard to see how it’s any bet­ter than bas­ing those poli­cies on noth­ing at all. In some ways that actu­al­ly would be a worse sce­nario since there would at least be a debunked study the GOP can cling to for a decep­tive jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

So with that in mind, guess who also cit­ed that exact same debunked study: Kansas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Kris Kobach, the point man on devel­op­ing vot­er sup­pres­sion laws guy the Trump tran­si­tion who will like­ly join the Trump admin­is­tra­tion:

Wichi­ta Eagle

Kobach backs Trump’s unsup­port­ed claim of mil­lions ille­gal­ly vot­ing

By Bryan Lowry
Novem­ber 30, 2016 10:41 AM

The top elec­tion offi­cial in Kansas assert­ed with­out evi­dence that mil­lions of nonci­t­i­zens vot­ed in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion moments after he cer­ti­fied the state’s elec­tion results Wednes­day.

Kansas Sec­re­tary of State Kris Kobach, who made his first pub­lic appear­ance since meet­ing with Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump last week, backed Trump’s claims that he would have won the pop­u­lar vote were dis­count­ed.

“I think the pres­i­dent-elect is absolute­ly cor­rect when he says the num­ber of ille­gal votes cast exceeds the pop­u­lar vote mar­gin between him and Hillary Clin­ton at this point,” Kobach said imme­di­ate­ly after he and oth­er Kansas offi­cials cer­ti­fied the state’s elec­tion results.

Kobach point­ed to a wide­ly dis­put­ed study released by two Old Domin­ion Uni­ver­si­ty polit­i­cal sci­en­tists in 2014, which has been rebutted repeat­ed­ly by oth­er elec­tion schol­ars.

The study ana­lyzed data from the Coop­er­a­tive Con­gres­sion­al Elec­tion Study and found that self-report­ed nonci­t­i­zens vot­ed at a rate of 11.3 per­cent. The Old Domin­ion ana­lysts actu­al­ly low­ered the esti­mate for the total vot­ing rate by nonci­t­i­zens to 6.4 per­cent, but Kobach used the 11.3 per­cent fig­ure instead.

“If we apply that num­ber to the cur­rent pres­i­den­tial election…you’d have 3.2 mil­lion aliens vot­ed in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and that far exceeds the cur­rent pop­u­lar vote mar­gin between Pres­i­dent-elect Trump and Sec­re­tary Clin­ton,” Kobach said.

Kobach said he had no tan­gi­ble evi­dence to sup­port that state­ment.

“This is the prob­lem with aliens vot­ing and reg­is­ter­ing. There’s no way you can look at the vot­er rolls and say this one’s an alien, this one’s a cit­i­zen,” Kobach said. “Once a per­son gets on a vot­er roll, you don’t have any way of eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy­ing them as aliens so you have to rely on post-elec­tion stud­ies.”

The Coop­er­a­tive Con­gres­sion­al Elec­tion Study, the source of the raw data for the study, has dis­put­ed the Old Domin­ion ana­lysts’ con­clu­sions, call­ing their study biased and say­ing in 2014 “that the like­ly per­cent of non-cit­i­zen vot­ers in recent US elec­tions is 0.”

Kobach has repeat­ed­ly cit­ed the study in court doc­u­ments, accord­ing to Mark John­son, a Kansas City-based attor­ney who has rep­re­sent­ed sus­pend­ed vot­ers in mul­ti­ple law­suits against Kobach.

The study is based on respons­es to an online sur­vey. Patrick Miller, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas, said the data should be viewed with skep­ti­cism.

“He’s tak­ing that at face val­ue,” Miller said. “Where­as, we know that peo­ple often give trash respons­es in sur­veys all the time.”

Kobach also said he had no way to prove that the major­i­ty of nonci­t­i­zens would have vot­ed for Clin­ton rather than Trump, but said he could make that infer­ence based on the candidate’s poli­cies.

“You’re right. Can you nec­es­sar­i­ly con­clude that all of them vot­ed for Hillary Clin­ton? No. But you can prob­a­bly con­clude that a very high per­cent­age vot­ed for Hillary Clin­ton giv­en the dia­met­ric oppo­site posi­tions of the can­di­dates on the immi­gra­tion issue,” Kobach said. “So let’s assume 85 per­cent vot­ed for Clin­ton.”

State Rep. Jim Ward, D‑Wichita, a fre­quent crit­ic of Kobach, scoffed at this extrap­o­la­tion.

“Does it con­cern you that the chief elec­tion offi­cer of Kansas lives in anoth­er uni­verse?” Ward said. “I mean, (he) just makes things up and has no ver­i­fi­ca­tion or back­up, but just con­tin­ues to say them, think­ing that if I say them over and over again they must be true.”

Kobach has cham­pi­oned a Kansas law that requires vot­ers to pro­vide proof of cit­i­zen­ship, such as a birth cer­tifi­cate or pass­port, in order to reg­is­ter to vote. That law has faced numer­ous legal chal­lenges.

Dale Ho, the direc­tor of the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union’s Vot­ing Rights Project, said in an e‑mail that the study Kobach is cit­ing has been debunked. He not­ed that even one of its authors has said that it’s not plau­si­ble that ille­gal votes would have tipped the pop­u­lar vote in Clinton’s favor.

“Kris Kobach’s asser­tions about large num­bers of nonci­t­i­zens vot­ing are patent­ly false, and have been reject­ed repeat­ed­ly by fed­er­al courts,” said Ho, who rep­re­sent­ed sus­pend­ed vot­ers in a case against Kansas’ proof of cit­i­zen­ship law.

Ho point­ed to the recent rul­ing by the 10th Cir­cuit Court of Appeals, which blocked Kobach from requir­ing proof of cit­i­zen­ship from vot­ers who reg­is­ter at the DMV. Judge Jerome Holmes, an appointee of Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, called Kobach’s argu­ment about thou­sands of nonci­t­i­zens poten­tial­ly on Kansas vot­er rolls “pure spec­u­la­tion” in his opin­ion for the court.

A pho­to­graph of Kobach showed that when he met with Trump ear­li­er in Novem­ber he brought a plan for the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty that includ­ed a ref­er­ence to vot­er rolls.

Kobach, who advised Trump on immi­gra­tion through­out the cam­paign, would not say Wednes­day whether he was advis­ing the pres­i­dent-elect to pur­sue a nation­wide proof of cit­i­zen­ship require­ment.

John­son ques­tioned Kobach’s deci­sion to cer­ti­fy the elec­tion results if he believes that nonci­t­i­zens at such a high rate. Kobach did not raise it as a con­cern to Gov. Sam Brown­back before they offi­cial­ly cer­ti­fied the results.

“If the sec­re­tary seri­ous­ly believed that there was vot­er fraud in Kansas, why did he cer­ti­fy the elec­tion results?” John­son said.

Joh­son not­ed that since Kobach became the only sec­re­tary of state in the nation with the pow­er to pros­e­cute vot­er fraud last year he has not brought any cas­es against nonci­t­i­zens for ille­gal­ly vot­ing, includ­ing for elec­tions that pre­date the proof of cit­i­zen­ship law.

“He can’t find them and, believe me, I’ll bet you he’s been look­ing for them,” John­son said.

...

“The study ana­lyzed data from the Coop­er­a­tive Con­gres­sion­al Elec­tion Study and found that self-report­ed nonci­t­i­zens vot­ed at a rate of 11.3 per­cent. The Old Domin­ion ana­lysts actu­al­ly low­ered the esti­mate for the total vot­ing rate by nonci­t­i­zens to 6.4 per­cent, but Kobach used the 11.3 per­cent fig­ure instead.”

Wow, so Kobach did­n’t just cite a debunked study. He cit­ed the wrong num­bers in the study too. And this is the guy who is prob­a­bly going to be join­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. So get ready for some insane­ly unjus­ti­fied new vot­ing laws. And when the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for those laws are debunked, get ready to hear the exact same jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. Because that’s appar­ent­ly how we’re going to roll now!

Well, that’s one way to defends Jeff Ses­sions, Trump’s pick for Attor­ney Gen­er­al, against all the crit­i­cisms of his long-record of attack­ing civ­il rights groups and poli­cies: declare those crit­i­cisms a ‘war on whites’. What a com­pelling argu­ment:

CNN

Rep. Brooks: Dems’ ‘war on whites’ behind some crit­i­cism of Ses­sions

By Chris Massie, CNN
Updat­ed 5:25 PM ET, Wed Jan­u­ary 11, 2017

(CNN) Alaba­ma Rep. Mo Brooks said in a radio inter­view on Tues­day that crit­i­cism of Alaba­ma Sen. Jeff Ses­sions, who is Don­ald Trump’s pick to be attor­ney gen­er­al, is part of an ongo­ing “war on whites” by Democ­rats.

“It’s real­ly about polit­i­cal pow­er and racial divi­sion and what I’ve referred to on occa­sion as the ‘war on whites.’ They are try­ing to moti­vate the African-Amer­i­can vote to vote-bloc for Democ­rats by using every ‘Repub­li­can is a racist’ tool that they can envi­sion,” the Repub­li­can con­gress­man said on “The Morn­ing Show With Toni & Gary” on WBHP 800 Alaba­ma radio. “Even if they have to lie about it.”

Brooks was respond­ing to a ques­tion about crit­i­cism of Ses­sions’ record on civ­il rights, which has come under renewed scruti­ny as he seeks con­fir­ma­tion to head the Jus­tice Depart­ment. Ses­sions was denied a fed­er­al judge­ship in 1986 in part because of com­ments he alleged­ly made about orga­ni­za­tions like the NAACP and the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union. Ses­sions, a Repub­li­can, also crit­i­cized the 1965 Vot­ing Rights Act as “intru­sive” in the 1980s.

In his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing on Tues­day, Ses­sions called charges of racism “damnably false,” say­ing that he had pros­e­cut­ed a vot­er fraud case in response to “pleas from African-Amer­i­can, incum­bent, elect­ed offi­cials.”

...

“Well, to get right down to it, it’s all about polit­i­cal pow­er, and the Democ­rats are not shy about lying in order to achieve their polit­i­cal goals,” he said. “And if they have to besmirch the rep­u­ta­tion of a good man, Jeff Ses­sions, in order to achieve their polit­i­cal goals, they as a group are not hes­i­tant to do so.”

Brooks pre­vi­ous­ly made head­lines in August 2014 by say­ing that Democ­rats were “wag­ing a war on whites” to AL.com and to con­ser­v­a­tive radio host Lau­ra Ingra­ham.

“Brooks was respond­ing to a ques­tion about crit­i­cism of Ses­sions’ record on civ­il rights, which has come under renewed scruti­ny as he seeks con­fir­ma­tion to head the Jus­tice Depart­ment. Ses­sions was denied a fed­er­al judge­ship in 1986 in part because of com­ments he alleged­ly made about orga­ni­za­tions like the NAACP and the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union. Ses­sions, a Repub­li­can, also crit­i­cized the 1965 Vot­ing Rights Act as “intru­sive” in the 1980s.”

Huh, so any crit­i­cism of Jeff Ses­sion­s’s record on civ­il rights, and in par­tic­u­lar vot­ing rights, is all part of a ‘war on whites’. At least accord­ing to Rep. Brooks who, one year ago, called Pres­i­dent Oba­ma the most racial­ly divi­sive pres­i­dent since slav­ery, who clear­ly feels very vic­tim­ized by all these minori­ties ask­ing for things like an end to poli­cies clear­ly designed to reduce minor­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion in gov­ern­ment. You know, like the kind of poli­cies Jeff Ses­sions has spent his whole career advo­cat­ing for...by advo­cat­ing against the Vot­ing Rights Act:

The Nation

Jeff Ses­sions Has Spent His Whole Career Oppos­ing Vot­ing Rights
Imag­ine what he will do as the most pow­er­ful lawyer in the coun­try.

By Ari Berman
1/10/2017 9:19 am

On June 27, 2013, two days after the Supreme Court ruled that states with a long his­to­ry of vot­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion no longer need­ed to approve their vot­ing changes under the Vot­ing Rights Act, the may­or of Pasade­na, Texas, pro­posed chang­ing the struc­ture of City Coun­cil elec­tions so that whites could remain in con­trol. With Lati­nos close to gain­ing a major­i­ty of seats in the racial­ly divid­ed city of 150,000 out­side of Hous­ton, May­or John­ny Isbell pro­posed switch­ing from eight City Coun­cil dis­tricts to six dis­tricts and two seats elect­ed citywide—which would give white res­i­dents, who turn out in high­er num­bers, a bet­ter shot at elect­ing their pre­ferred can­di­dates. The net effect was that one major­i­ty-Lati­no dis­trict was elim­i­nat­ed, and Lati­nos had three few­er seats on the coun­cil.

Isbell pro­posed the change “because the Jus­tice Depart­ment can no longer tell us what to do.” Vot­ers nar­row­ly approved the ref­er­en­dum in 2013, even though 99.6 per­cent of Lati­nos opposed it.

On Fri­day, a fed­er­al dis­trict court in Texas found that white offi­cials in Pasade­na “inten­tion­al­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ed against Lati­nos.” The court ordered new elec­tions under the pre­vi­ous dis­tricts and, because of the find­ing of inten­tion­al dis­crim­i­na­tion, required Pasade­na to approve all future elec­tion changes with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for at least five years. It is the first juris­dic­tion to be sub­ject to pre­clear­ance require­ments since the Supreme Court’s Shel­by Coun­ty v. Hold­er deci­sion.

In 2013, Jeff Ses­sions, Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­nee for attor­ney gen­er­al, cheered the gut­ting of the Vot­ing Rights Act, call­ing it “good news…for the South.” He claimed, “If you go to Alaba­ma, Geor­gia, North Car­oli­na, peo­ple aren’t being denied the vote because of the col­or of their skin.”

In fact, as the deci­sion in Pasade­na shows, there is ample evi­dence of ongo­ing vot­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion through­out the South (and beyond). Sessions’s home state of Alaba­ma tried to close 31 DMV offices, many in major­i­ty-black coun­ties, after insti­tut­ing strict pho­to-ID require­ments to vote. “In the 10 coun­ties with the high­est pro­por­tion of minori­ties, the state closed driver’s license offices in eight,” wrote Kyle Whit­more of AL.com. The US Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion found that the clo­sures vio­lat­ed the Civ­il Rights Act of 1964, and Alaba­ma agreed last month to increase hours as part of the fed­er­al set­tle­ment.

Else­where, North Car­oli­na passed the country’s worst vot­er-sup­pres­sion law in July 2013, which the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Cir­cuit said tar­get­ed “African-Amer­i­cans with almost sur­gi­cal pre­ci­sion.” Geor­gia was found to have ille­gal­ly purged tens of thou­sands of vot­ers, who were dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly peo­ple of col­or, from the rolls. Texas’s vot­er-ID law was judged to be dis­crim­i­na­to­ry by the very con­ser­v­a­tive US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Cir­cuit. And on it goes.

Ses­sions seemed clue­less about the details of the chal­lenge to the Vot­ing Rights Act. “Shel­by Coun­ty [Alaba­ma] nev­er had a his­to­ry of deny­ing the vote, cer­tain­ly not now,” he said. “There is racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in the coun­try, but I don’t think in Shel­by Coun­ty, Alaba­ma, any­one is being denied the right to vote because of the col­or of their skin.” In fact, Shel­by Coun­ty found itself in court after the city of Calera oust­ed the only black city coun­cil mem­ber by reduc­ing the per­cent­age of African-Amer­i­cans in his dis­trict from sev­en­ty-one to thir­ty percent—a text­book exam­ple of the type of vot­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion that the Vot­ing Rights Act was designed the stop.

Last year, Ses­sions award­ed the Con­gres­sion­al Gold Medal to the foot sol­diers of the Sel­ma move­ment, but has refused to sup­port restor­ing the Vot­ing Rights Act that many of them near­ly died to win.

As Trump’s attor­ney gen­er­al, Ses­sions could be dis­as­trous to vot­ing rights in a vari­ety of ways. He could sup­port a fed­er­al vot­er-ID law and/or a proof of cit­i­zen­ship law for vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, which would dis­en­fran­chise mil­lions of eli­gi­ble Amer­i­cans. He could pres­sure states to purge their vot­ing rolls in dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and inac­cu­rate ways and force US Attor­neys to pros­e­cute bogus cas­es of vot­er fraud, which hap­pened dur­ing the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion. He could switch sides in cas­es the Jus­tice Depart­ment is argu­ing under the Vot­ing Rights Act against states like North Car­oli­na and Texas, which are on appeal to the Supreme Court, and ques­tion the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the remain­ing parts of the VRA. He could bring reverse dis­crim­i­na­tion suits on behalf of whites instead of his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­en­fran­chised com­mu­ni­ties.

Ses­sions has received renewed scruti­ny recent­ly for his unsuc­cess­ful 1985 pros­e­cu­tions for vot­er fraud of three civ­il-rights activists from Per­ry Coun­ty, Alaba­ma, includ­ing Albert Turn­er Jr., a close aide of Mar­tin Luther King Jr. who was bru­tal­ly beat­en by police on Bloody Sun­day in Sel­ma. The pros­e­cu­tions were not an iso­lat­ed inci­dent but revealed a more dis­turb­ing pat­tern from Ses­sions, which led to him being reject­ed for a fed­er­al judge­ship in 1986.

...

Ger­ry Hebert, a lawyer in the Jus­tice Department’s Civ­il Rights Divi­sion, tes­ti­fied that Ses­sions had called the NAACP and ACLU “Com­mu­nist-inspired” and “un-Amer­i­can” orga­ni­za­tions that were “try­ing to force civ­il rights down the throats of peo­ple.” Thomas Fig­ures, who worked under Ses­sions as the first black pros­e­cu­tor in Alaba­ma, said that Ses­sions had called him “boy” and told him “to be care­ful what I said to white folks.” Ses­sions said the Vot­ing Rights Act was “an intru­sive piece of leg­is­la­tion.”

“Mr. Ses­sions is a throw­back to a shame­ful era which I know both black and white Amer­i­cans thought was in our past,” Ted Kennedy said in 1986. “It is incon­ceiv­able to me that a per­son of this atti­tude is qual­i­fied to be a U.S. attor­ney, let alone a U.S. Fed­er­al judge…. He is, I believe, a dis­grace to the Jus­tice Depart­ment and he should with­draw his nom­i­na­tion and resign his posi­tion.”

Thir­ty years lat­er, there’s lit­tle evi­dence to sug­gest that Ses­sions has changed his views. He has con­sis­tent­ly opposed efforts to enforce the country’s civ­il-rights laws, to make it eas­i­er to vote, or to bring more diverse rep­re­sen­ta­tion to his home state. He remains, unique among all attor­ney-gen­er­al nom­i­nees, an advo­cate for the Old South he grew up in.

In his Sen­ate ques­tion­naire for attor­ney gen­er­al, Ses­sions lists the Per­ry Coun­ty pros­e­cu­tions as one of the 10 most sig­nif­i­cant cas­es he han­dled. He has nev­er apol­o­gized or admit­ted he did any­thing wrong.

In an attempt to repair his rep­u­ta­tion, Ses­sions also lists four civ­il-rights cas­es he “per­son­al­ly” worked on, includ­ing lit­i­ga­tion that suc­cess­ful­ly dis­man­tled dis­crim­i­na­to­ry elec­tion sys­tems in the Alaba­ma Black Belt, includ­ing in Sel­ma, lead­ing to the elec­tion of the first black elect­ed offi­cials on the coun­ty com­mis­sions and school boards of places like Dal­las and Maren­go coun­ties. But lawyers with the Civ­il Rights Divi­sion say Ses­sions did no work on these cas­es and they put his name on the briefs sim­ply because he was US Attor­ney at the time.

“Those were my cas­es,” Ger­ry Hebert says of the lit­i­ga­tion in Dal­las and Maren­go coun­ties. “He played no role in either of them. When I filed the briefs, I put his name on them, but he nev­er saw them. He had no role what­so­ev­er in fil­ing or approv­ing these cas­es.”

After step­ping down as US Attor­ney in Mobile, Ses­sions served as attor­ney gen­er­al of Alaba­ma from 1995 to 1997. There, he opposed lit­i­ga­tion brought by civ­il-rights groups and agreed to by his pre­de­ces­sor that would have led to the first black judges being appoint­ed to the Alaba­ma supreme court, court of crim­i­nal appeals, and court of civ­il appeals.

More recent­ly, Alaba­ma State Sen­a­tor Hank Sanders and oth­er black polit­i­cal lead­ers from Alaba­ma met with Ses­sions to ask him to sup­port African-Amer­i­can judges the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion was plan­ning to nom­i­nate for vacan­cies on the fed­er­al dis­tricts courts in Mont­gomery and Birm­ing­ham and the court of appeals in Atlanta. “Noth­ing came out of it and the posi­tions are still not filled,” says Sanders. “There was no move­ment on his part. The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion didn’t want to nom­i­nate some­body that Ses­sions would just kill.” If Ses­sions had pledged not to oppose the nom­i­nees, Oba­ma would have nom­i­nat­ed three black judges to fill cru­cial vacan­cies, Sanders says.

“Dur­ing the 20 years Jeff Ses­sions has been in the U.S. Sen­ate, only one black per­son has been appoint­ed as a fed­er­al judge in a state that is 26 per­cent African Amer­i­can,” Sanders wrote in the Sel­ma Times-Jour­nal.

Time and time again, Ses­sions has tak­en posi­tions that would make it hard­er to vote, which give a dis­turb­ing pre­view of what he’d do as the nation’s top law-enforce­ment offi­cial.

Ses­sions has per­pet­u­at­ed the myth of vot­er fraud to sup­port new restric­tions like vot­er-ID laws. “We have seen fraud repeat­ed­ly and there is a prob­lem if you don’t use an ID when you go to vote, because you can vote for some oth­er name that you know is not avail­able to vote that day,” he told CNN in August, while echo­ing Trump’s bogus claim that Democ­rats were “attempt­ing to rig this elec­tion.” (There have only been four cas­es of vot­er fraud in 2016 out of 135 mil­lion votes.)

...

“In his Sen­ate ques­tion­naire for attor­ney gen­er­al, Ses­sions lists the Per­ry Coun­ty pros­e­cu­tions as one of the 10 most sig­nif­i­cant cas­es he han­dled. He has nev­er apol­o­gized or admit­ted he did any­thing wrong.”

Yep, Sen­a­tor Ses­sions cit­ed the case that helped deny him a fed­er­al judge­ship 30 years ago due to its alarm­ing par­al­lels to the Jim Crow era (and a case he lost) as one of the 10 most sig­nif­i­cant cas­es he han­dled:

...

Ses­sions has received renewed scruti­ny recent­ly for his unsuc­cess­ful 1985 pros­e­cu­tions for vot­er fraud of three civ­il-rights activists from Per­ry Coun­ty, Alaba­ma, includ­ing Albert Turn­er Jr., a close aide of Mar­tin Luther King Jr. who was bru­tal­ly beat­en by police on Bloody Sun­day in Sel­ma. The pros­e­cu­tions were not an iso­lat­ed inci­dent but revealed a more dis­turb­ing pat­tern from Ses­sions, which led to him being reject­ed for a fed­er­al judge­ship in 1986.

...

So, all in all, it should be clear that any crit­i­cism of Jeff Ses­sion­s’s stel­lar record on minor­i­ty rights, espe­cial­ly when it comes to his record of oppos­ing racial­ly-tar­get­ed vot­ing rules, is clear­ly part of a war on whites.

Either that or Rep. Brooks is wag­ing a war on empir­i­cal bio­graph­i­cal evi­dence. It’s one of those two sce­nar­ios.

With Alaba­ma Sen­a­tor Jeff Ses­sions on track to become the US Attor­ney Gen­er­al soon, it’s going to be worth keep­ing in mind going into the 2018 mid-term elec­tions that the full-spec­trum war on vot­ing rights Ses­sions is about to wage basi­cal­ly means that Democ­rats had bet­ter be psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly pre­pared to turn stolen elec­tions into a moti­vat­ing, and not demor­al­iz­ing, event after anoth­er elec­tion is stolen from them and redou­ble their efforts. No mat­ter how many elec­tions are bla­tant­ly stolen.

It’s the kind of psy­chol­o­gy that’s clear­ly crit­i­cal now. And will remain crit­i­cal for the fore­see­able future:

The Nation

Here’s How the 2018 Midterm Elec­tions Could Be Fatal­ly Under­mined

By dou­bling down on their vot­er-sup­pres­sion tac­tics, Trump and Co. could put the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives beyond the reach of even an over­whelm­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty.

By Natal­ie Reed
Feb­ru­ary 6, 2017

If you’ll per­mit an under­state­ment, these have been fright­en­ing and uncer­tain times. Every day, it seems, we wake up to find a new addi­tion on the list of dooms­day sce­nar­ios. Fac­ing a dan­ger­ous­ly intem­per­ate pres­i­dent, backed by white nation­al­ists, with vast pow­ers at his dis­pos­al and a clear will­ing­ness to dis­pense with all con­ven­tions of prop­er con­duct, it’s vital that we main­tain a sober under­stand­ing of what’s at stake, and how much could go wrong.

In try­ing to ral­ly our­selves to pre­vent these cat­a­stroph­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties from becom­ing real­i­ty, many of us have found it use­ful to visu­al­ize the oppo­site: suc­cess. Per­haps Sen­ate Repub­li­cans will ulti­mate­ly break away from their own par­ty and vote for impeach­ment. Maybe a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment will be passed pro­vid­ing for some kind of no-con­fi­dence vote that would force an ear­ly elec­tion. Maybe Steve Ban­non will be side­lined in a pow­er strug­gle inside the White House, con­vinced, some­how, to retire, per­haps to go raise sheep in the coun­try­side.

Oth­ers are train­ing their hopes on the 2018 midterm elec­tions. Giv­en the mobi­liza­tion of left-lean­ing Amer­i­cans since the elec­tion and the unpop­u­lar­i­ty of Trump—likely only to increase—it’s tempt­ing to imag­ine a Demo­c­ra­t­ic sweep that would reclaim con­trol of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, pro­vid­ing cru­cial polit­i­cal lever­age to push back against Trump and his poli­cies.

How­ev­er, in our eager­ness for such a sce­nario, we should take care to not let the ease of imag­in­ing it dis­tract us from the poten­tial threats to achiev­ing it. Stak­ing the future of our move­ment and of the country—not to men­tion the world—on win­ning elec­tions requires that we think care­ful­ly and seri­ous­ly about how we end­ed up here in the first place, with a fig­ure like Trump man­ag­ing to claim vic­to­ry despite his mas­sive unpop­u­lar­i­ty and con­tro­ver­sies that should have sunk his can­di­da­cy at every turn. Specif­i­cal­ly, we should keep in mind the recent his­to­ry of vot­er sup­pres­sion and the degree to which the out­come of the 2016 elec­tion wasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly deter­mined by vot­ers feel­ings alien­at­ed by the Democ­rats’ message—nor turned off by the myth­i­cal two-head­ed ogre of “iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics” and “polit­i­cal correctness”—but rather by Repub­li­can strate­gies to tilt the process itself in their party’s favor. The dan­ger those strate­gies pose to the Democ­rats’ chances to recov­er the House in the 2018 midterm elec­tions must not be under­es­ti­mat­ed.

In 2013, the Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Shel­by Coun­ty v. Hold­er effec­tive­ly gut­ted the Vot­er Rights Act, per­mit­ting Repub­li­cans to employ a vari­ety of vot­er-sup­pres­sion meth­ods that have since proved invalu­able to their cam­paigns. These tac­tics will not only remain a fac­tor work­ing in their favor in 2018; they are very like­ly to sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand under the lead­er­ship of a man obsessed with the specter of “mas­sive vot­er fraud,” des­per­ate to prove him­self both legit­i­mate and loved by the peo­ple, and backed by a par­ty in near-total con­trol of all branch­es of gov­ern­ment and eager to bend the rules to suit their polit­i­cal inter­ests. The 2018 midterms elec­tions could eas­i­ly end up being com­pro­mised to the point that no real­is­tic degree of pop­u­lar oppo­si­tion to incum­bent Repub­li­cans would be suf­fi­cient to over­come them.

One method we should expect to see employed, and expand­ed, is the Inter­state Vot­er Reg­is­tra­tion Cross­check Pro­gram, more com­mon­ly known sim­ply as Cross­check. This sys­tem, designed with the osten­si­ble pur­pose of com­bat­ing vot­er fraud, oper­ates by cross-ref­er­enc­ing names on the rolls of a giv­en state against those on the rolls of oth­er states. If the same com­bi­na­tion of name and birth-date occurs in two states, those votes are strick­en from the rolls. This sys­tem has been known to dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact minor­i­ty vot­ers by tar­get­ing names com­mon to spe­cif­ic demo­graph­ics, notably His­pan­ic and black vot­ers, who have tra­di­tion­al­ly vot­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic. At present there are alarm­ing­ly few restric­tions on the appli­ca­tion of Cross­check, and it would not be sur­pris­ing to see it applied more vig­or­ous­ly in blue-lean­ing or swing states in 2018.

Oth­er restric­tions are also like­ly to be expand­ed. Lim­it­ing polling loca­tions in Demo­c­ra­t­ic juris­dic­tions, cur­tail­ing their hours, and putting them in incon­ve­nient loca­tions are also like­ly to play a role in reduc­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic turnout. Long lines at out-of-the-way polling places can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the num­ber of reg­is­tered vot­ers who turn up in those juris­dic­tions, and by reduc­ing hours, the gov­ern­ment can cre­ate the impres­sion among those who do make it out that they’ve arrived too late to have their votes count­ed.

The effi­ca­cy of this means of tar­get­ed sup­pres­sion can be com­pound­ed by ensur­ing that polling loca­tions are not con­ve­nient to access via pub­lic trans­porta­tion (vital to the poor and dis­abled), and rolling back laws that require employ­ers to allow time off for vot­ing. That the lat­ter will be employed in 2018 is almost a cer­tain­ty, giv­en the GOP’s tra­di­tion­al pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of employ­ers, busi­ness­es, and cor­po­ra­tions over work­ers’ rights. Even if present laws requir­ing time off remain in place, it is far more dif­fi­cult for some­one bare­ly scrap­ing by on min­i­mum wage to sac­ri­fice their work­ing hours for an inde­ter­mi­nate­ly long wait in a delib­er­ate­ly length­ened line at a polling loca­tion oper­at­ing well beyond its capac­i­ty.

Ear­ly vot­ing and mail-in bal­lots have tra­di­tion­al­ly been a means of ensur­ing that vot­ers who might oth­er­wise not have access to polling loca­tions are still able to vote, but we can expect to see fur­ther bar­ri­ers raised here as well. A dis­turb­ing trend seen in Ohio in both the 2014 and 2016 elec­tions was to delib­er­ate­ly reduce polling loca­tions for ear­ly vot­ing on the days in which black church­es were con­duct­ing dri­ves to help bring out the vote.

Giv­en the alt-right’s pref­er­ence for mis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns as a polit­i­cal strat­e­gy, we will also like­ly see delib­er­ate attempts to under­mine the public’s under­stand­ing of where, when, and how to vote, and what will and will not be per­mit­ted. Con­sid­er the attempts in Novem­ber to con­vince vot­ers they could sub­mit their bal­lots online. This, too, has prece­dent in mod­ern West­ern democ­ra­cies, even as offi­cial cam­paign strat­e­gy, such as in the “robo-gate” scan­dal of Canada’s 2011 fed­er­al elec­tion. Auto­mat­ed voice mes­sages were sent to poten­tial Lib­er­al vot­ers false­ly claim­ing that polling loca­tions had been changed, which in sev­er­al instances led vot­ers to the wrong loca­tion. Sim­ply main­tain­ing access to reli­able infor­ma­tion on the basic process of vot­ing will like­ly prove dif­fi­cult in future elec­tions.

Under the pre­tense of the vot­er fraud that has already become a favored talk­ing point of the Repub­li­can lead­er­ship, we may also soon see leg­is­la­tion passed insist­ing that vot­ers must ver­i­fy their iden­ti­ty with mul­ti­ple forms of gov­ern­ment-issued ID. This will com­pound the dis­pro­por­tion­ate bur­den such poli­cies place on spe­cif­ic demo­graph­ics to pro­cure ID or the doc­u­ments nec­es­sary to obtain it. The poor and home­less often have dif­fi­cul­ties because of expense or lack of a fixed address. Immi­grants will espe­cial­ly face con­sid­er­able obsta­cles in pro­duc­ing valid birth cer­tifi­cates or oth­er nec­es­sary doc­u­ments, as will indi­vid­u­als who have moved fre­quent­ly and groups like­ly to use more than one name at dif­fer­ent points in their lives, such as immi­grants, women, and trans­gen­der vot­ers. Again, these groups are more like­ly to vote Demo­c­ra­t­ic, cre­at­ing a clear incen­tive for Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors to sup­press their votes.

Even if a vot­er does pro­duce the required iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, it’s pos­si­ble that those who are vis­i­ble minori­ties may be sub­ject to addi­tion­al scruti­ny by offi­cials, and per­haps even have their iden­ti­ty or doc­u­men­ta­tion treat­ed as ille­git­i­mate. This will be par­tic­u­lar­ly true if the gen­der mark­er on their ID does not match what the elec­tion offi­cial per­ceives them to be, or if their coun­try of ori­gin is con­sid­ered sus­pect, or if their name doesn’t seem “appro­pri­ate” to their appear­ance or eth­nic­i­ty, or if, for what­ev­er rea­son, elec­tion mon­i­tors decide they are not the per­son shown in the pho­to­graph.

A final con­sid­er­a­tion is that what­ev­er laws do remain to pro­tect the rights of vot­ers are effec­tive only if they are actu­al­ly enforced. Law-enforce­ment offi­cers with Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion and the Mar­shals have already demon­strat­ed a will­ing­ness to place the orders of the exec­u­tive branch above those of the judi­cia­ry, even in vio­la­tion of the law. There are no guar­an­tees that any law-enforce­ment per­son­nel or offi­cials in the posi­tion of over­see­ing the elec­tions will remain non­par­ti­san. What if they sim­ply refuse to pro­tect Demo­c­ra­t­ic or minor­i­ty vot­ers from intim­i­da­tion or harass­ment? Exam­ples of such law­less­ness have already been seen in the 2016 elec­tion, as in Loudoun Coun­ty, Vir­ginia, where a man wear­ing a Don­ald Trump shirt and open­ly car­ry­ing a .357 Mag­num approached vot­ers in line—including a woman with her 9‑year-old son—asked them whom they were plan­ning to vote for, and hand­ed out Repub­li­can sam­ple bal­lots. When com­plaints were made to the author­i­ties, they said he was well with­in his rights and was not engag­ing in vot­er intim­i­da­tion.

Con­sid­ered togeth­er, these poten­tial means of com­pro­mis­ing the fair­ness of the 2018 elec­tion could eas­i­ly pro­duce an out­come in which the Repub­li­can Par­ty is able to main­tain con­trol of the House and Sen­ate despite mas­sive, even unprece­dent­ed, dis­sat­is­fac­tion with their record in gov­ern­ment. If they are suc­cess­ful, even greater obsta­cles could be installed for the 2020 elec­tions, ensur­ing a sec­ond term for Trump—and per­haps lat­er even a third or fourth term, should they choose to use their con­sol­i­dat­ed pow­er to push for a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment.

None of this is to say that the sit­u­a­tion is hope­less, or that one should con­sid­er their vote unim­por­tant or mere­ly sym­bol­ic, or that an unfair and unfree midterm elec­tion is a fore­gone con­clu­sion. We in the oppo­si­tion must remain will­ing to employ absolute­ly every tool at our dis­pos­al, and the fight is far from lost. But it will be cru­cial to not fight blind­ly or under the illu­sion that the game is being played fair­ly. Main­tain­ing vig­i­lance, watch­ing for threats to the legit­i­ma­cy of the elec­toral process, and fight­ing against those threats when they appear is every bit as cru­cial to the con­tin­ued sur­vival of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy as the con­ven­tion­al tools of cam­paign­ing and bring­ing out the vote.

...

“Con­sid­ered togeth­er, these poten­tial means of com­pro­mis­ing the fair­ness of the 2018 elec­tion could eas­i­ly pro­duce an out­come in which the Repub­li­can Par­ty is able to main­tain con­trol of the House and Sen­ate despite mas­sive, even unprece­dent­ed, dis­sat­is­fac­tion with their record in gov­ern­ment. If they are suc­cess­ful, even greater obsta­cles could be installed for the 2020 elec­tions, ensur­ing a sec­ond term for Trump—and per­haps lat­er even a third or fourth term, should they choose to use their con­sol­i­dat­ed pow­er to push for a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment.”

Will an open cam­paign of vot­er sup­pres­sion over­whelm the vot­er back­lash that such an open cam­paign will court? That’s the big bet the GOP has been mak­ing and you can’t say it has­n’t paid off so far. Will it pay off indef­i­nite­ly or will full con­trol of gov­ern­ment by an open­ly white nation­al­ist admin­is­tra­tion final­ly trig­ger the kind of vot­er reac­tion that over­whelms the sup­pres­sion efforts? We’ll see, although even if its the lat­ter sce­nario we might not see that vot­er back­lash show up in the vote tal­lies since the GOP just made it much eas­i­er to get away with hack­ing vot­ing machines:

The Nation

House Repub­li­cans Just Vot­ed to Elim­i­nate the Only Fed­er­al Agency That Makes Sure Vot­ing Machines Can’t Be Hacked

Repub­li­cans would make it eas­i­er to steal an elec­tion by killing the Elec­tion Assis­tance Com­mis­sion.

By Ari Berman
2/8/2017 1:56 pm

In a lit­tle-noticed 6–3 vote today, the House Admin­is­tra­tion Com­mit­tee vot­ed along par­ty lines to elim­i­nate the Elec­tion Assis­tance Com­mis­sion, which helps states run elec­tions and is the only fed­er­al agency charged with mak­ing sure vot­ing machines can’t be hacked. The EAC was cre­at­ed after the dis­as­trous 2000 elec­tion in Flori­da as part of the Help Amer­i­ca Vote Act to rec­ti­fy prob­lems like but­ter­fly bal­lots and hang­ing chads. (Repub­li­cans have tried to kill the agency for years.) The Com­mit­tee also vot­ed to elim­i­nate the pub­lic-financ­ing sys­tem for pres­i­den­tial elec­tions dat­ing back to the 1970s.

“It is my firm belief that the EAC has out­lived its use­ful­ness and pur­pose,” said Com­mit­tee chair Gregg Harp­er (R‑MS), explain­ing why his bill trans­fers the EAC’s author­i­ty to the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion.

Thir­ty-eight pro-democ­ra­cy groups, includ­ing the NAACP and Com­mon Cause, denounced the vote. “The EAC is the only fed­er­al agency which has as its cen­tral mis­sion the improve­ment of elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion, and it under­takes essen­tial activ­i­ties that no oth­er insti­tu­tion is equipped to address,” says the Bren­nan Cen­ter for Jus­tice.

This move is par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ri­some giv­en reports that sus­pect­ed Russ­ian hack­ers attempt­ed to access vot­er-reg­is­tra­tion sys­tems in more than 20 states dur­ing the 2016 elec­tion. More­over, the Pres­i­den­tial Com­mis­sion on Elec­tion Admin­is­tra­tion set up by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma in 2014 out­lined an “impend­ing cri­sis” in vot­ing tech­nol­o­gy and the Bren­nan Cen­ter found that 42 states used vot­ing machines in 2016 that were at least a decade-old and at risk of fail­ing. The EAC was the agency tasked with mak­ing sure these vot­ing sys­tems were both mod­ern­ized and secure.

...

It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly iron­ic that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is prepar­ing to launch a mas­sive inves­ti­ga­tion into nonex­is­tent vot­er fraud based on the lie that mil­lions vot­ed ille­gal­ly while House Repub­li­cans are shut­ting down the agency that is sup­posed to make sure America’s elec­tions are secure. It’s more proof of how the GOP’s real agen­da is to make it hard­er to vote.

“It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly iron­ic that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is prepar­ing to launch a mas­sive inves­ti­ga­tion into nonex­is­tent vot­er fraud based on the lie that mil­lions vot­ed ille­gal­ly while House Repub­li­cans are shut­ting down the agency that is sup­posed to make sure America’s elec­tions are secure. It’s more proof of how the GOP’s real agen­da is to make it hard­er to vote.”

Yep, at the same time Trump is assign­ing Mike Pence to inves­ti­gate his base­less claim that mil­lions of peo­ple vot­ed ille­gal­ly(exclu­sive­ly in Blue states), the GOP is gut­ting the one agency that would actu­al­ly have the pow­er to stop mil­lions of fraud­u­lent­ly hacked votes.

And note that Trump’s claims that mil­lions of peo­ple vot­ed (against him) ille­gal did­n’t just pop out of his dis­in­for­ma­tion-addled brain. Nope, that was thanks to the hand­i­work of Kansas Sec­re­tary of State Kris Kobach. The same guy who came up with the “Cross­check” sys­tem that knocks (most­ly minor­i­ty) vot­ers off the vot­ing rolls if anoth­er vot­er has their same name and date of birth. And the same sys­tem that appears to have knocked more than a mil­lion most­ly minor­i­ty vot­ers off the vot­ing rolls in 2016. So it does appear there were mil­lions of improp­er votes in 2016. Specif­i­cal­ly, votes that should have been count­ed but weren’t, all thanks to the GOP’s agen­da that’s about to go on steroids.

On the plus side, the GOP’s ger­ry­man­der­ing prob­a­bly won’t get any worse in com­ing years. Although that’s large­ly because it’s almost impos­si­ble to make it any worse at this point. Almost. We’ll see. Once the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry gets com­plete­ly swamped with far-right ide­o­logues it might get worse.

With Don­ald Trump’s approvals rat­ings con­tin­u­ing to plum­met and num­ber of scan­dals swirling around the Trump White House com­pound­ing seem­ing­ly dai­ly, it’s worth not­ing just how incred­i­bly for­tu­itous it is for the increas­ing­ly unpop­u­lar Trump admin­is­tra­tion that there’s basi­cal­ly no real­is­tic mech­a­nism for him to be impeached giv­en the GOP con­trol of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. But as those plum­met­ing poll num­bers also remind us, that GOP-con­trol shield is increas­ing­ly vulnerable...due in large part to Trump’s grow­ing unpop­u­lar­i­ty. The end­less attempts to destroy the US health care sys­tem will no doubt also con­tribute to that grow­ing GOP vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, but if there’s one thing that looks like­li­est to end the GOP’s con­trol of the House it’s a his­tor­i­cal­ly unpop­u­lar GOP pres­i­dent who gets more unhinged (and seem­ing­ly senile) by the day. So what can Trump and the GOP do about main­tain­ing his House-major­i­ty impeach-shield going into the 2018 elec­tions? How about the same thing the GOP has been doing for years: vot­er sup­pres­sion. Much, much more vot­er sup­pres­sion.

So how will Trump and the GOP achieve that? Well, one option is to set up an an “elec­tion integri­ty” com­mis­sion. Make it a bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion (but with the bal­ance of pow­er tipped towards the GOP) and give it a nice sound­ing objec­tive, like inves­ti­gat­ing both claims of vot­er sup­pres­sion and vot­er fraud so the real goal isn’t total­ly obvi­ous. And then appoint Kansas Sec­re­tary of State Kris Kobach — a man who has per­fect­ed exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the art of fraud­u­lent­ly charg­ing vot­er fraud in order to sup­press the vote — to lead the com­mis­sion:

Talk­ing Points Memo
Muck­rak­er

Pence, Kobach To Lead Trump’s Bogus ‘Elec­tion Integri­ty’ Com­mis­sion

By Tier­ney Sneed
Pub­lished May 11, 2017 9:59 am

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has select­ed a GOP offi­cial with a his­to­ry of propos­ing restric­tive elec­tions poli­cies that have been bat­ted down by the courts to join Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence in lead­ing a com­mis­sion that will exam­ine “improp­er vot­ing, fraud­u­lent vot­er reg­is­tra­tions and fraud­u­lent vot­ing,” as one admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial put it to ABC News.

Kansas Sec­re­tary of State Kris Kobach will be the vice chair, and Pence the chair, of the pan­el that’s being called “Pres­i­den­tial Com­mis­sion on Elec­tion Integri­ty.” Trump is expect­ed to sign the exec­u­tive order cre­at­ing the com­mis­sion on Thurs­day, accord­ing to the ABC News report.

The com­mis­sion appears to be the result of Trump’s vows ear­li­er this year to launch an inves­ti­ga­tion into vot­er fraud – which has found to be extreme­ly rare in stud­ies – after he claimed with­out any evi­dence that “mil­lions” of peo­ple vote ille­gal­ly in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

A White House offi­cial said, via a pool report that the com­mis­sion will go beyond “review­ing alleged vot­er fraud & sup­pres­sion.”

“The Com­mis­sion will review poli­cies and prac­tices that enhance or under­mine the Amer­i­can people’s con­fi­dence in the integri­ty of Fed­er­al elec­tions — includ­ing improp­er reg­is­tra­tions, improp­er vot­ing, fraud­u­lent reg­is­tra­tions, fraud­u­lent vot­ing, and vot­ing sup­pres­sion,” the com­mis­sion said, accord­ing to the pool report.

The com­mit­tee will be bipar­ti­san, accord­ing the ABC News report, and a num­ber of Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can offi­cials are being con­sid­ered for it by Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

Kobach is the engi­neer of a num­ber of laws and pro­pos­als that were struck down by the courts, includ­ing a proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship require­ment for vot­er reg­is­tra­tion in Kansas that has been tied up in a mul­ti-year legal bat­tle. Mul­ti­ple courts have ruled against his efforts to imple­ment the require­ment, and at one point, he was threat­ened to be held in con­tempt-of-court for alleged­ly refus­ing to com­ply with a court order against it.

Arizona’s “show me your papers” law was craft­ed with Kobach’s assis­tance. While at the Jus­tice Depart­ment under Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, he also was behind the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Entry-Exit Reg­is­tra­tion Sys­tem, which essen­tial­ly func­tioned as a reg­istry for Mus­lim men enter­ing the coun­try. Kobach float­ed the idea after Trump was elect­ed that the pro­gram may be revived.

Kobach was a major Trump boost­er and lob­bied for tougher lan­guage on build­ing a wall on the Mex­i­can bor­der to be added to the Repub­li­can plat­form. In Novem­ber, Kobach was pho­tographed with Trump hold­ing a pro­pos­al sheet that includ­ed a line that said “Draft Amend­ments to Nation­al Vot­er….,” pre­sum­ably a ref­er­ence to the Nation­al Vot­er Reg­is­tra­tion Act. As part of the lit­i­ga­tion over the proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship require­ment, a judge ordered he turn over the paper, and Kobach’s appeal of the deci­sion failed just this week.

Among the oth­er can­di­dates float­ed to serve on the com­mit­tee in the ABC News report is Indi­ana Sec­re­tary of State Con­nie Law­son. She was involved in a sketchy raid of a vot­er reg­is­tra­tion group last fall, that some wor­ried would have a chill­ing effect on vot­ing while overblow­ing claims of wide­spread vot­er fraud.

...

“The com­mis­sion will also exam­ine the issue of vot­er sup­pres­sion, offi­cials said, which could encour­age Democ­rats to sign on to the effort,” the report said.

“Kobach is the engi­neer of a num­ber of laws and pro­pos­als that were struck down by the courts, includ­ing a proof-of-cit­i­zen­ship require­ment for vot­er reg­is­tra­tion in Kansas that has been tied up in a mul­ti-year legal bat­tle. Mul­ti­ple courts have ruled against his efforts to imple­ment the require­ment, and at one point, he was threat­ened to be held in con­tempt-of-court for alleged­ly refus­ing to com­ply with a court order against it.”

Behold, the GOP’s 2018 reelec­tion strat­e­gy! And 2020 reelec­tion strat­e­gy. And 2022, etc. At least it cer­tain­ly looks like that’s the plan. And it could be a pret­ty effec­tive plan except for one small prob­lem: Kris Kobach might be a pro at whip­ping up vot­er fraud fears, but he’s a com­plete fail­ure when it comes to actu­al­ly find­ing it. So what’s he going to do if that’s the case this time around? Hmmm....oh, that’s right, he’ll just fraud­u­lent­ly assert that he found a bunch of fraud any­way:

Salon

Kris Kobach’s “vot­er fraud” melt­down: Some­day he’ll have evi­dence of a prob­lem that doesn’t exist
The Kansas sec­re­tary of state, who inspired Trump’s Great Wall, is exposed on CNN as a vapid vot­er-fraud troll

Gary Legum
Tues­day, Feb 14, 2017 05:00 PM CDT

As he bla­tant­ly lied on a series of Sun­day talk shows about the extent to which ille­gal vot­ing occurs in Amer­i­can elec­tions, White House aide Stephen Miller told George Stephanopou­los to “invite Kris Kobach onto your show, and he can walk you through some of the evi­dence of vot­er fraud in greater detail.” On Mon­day, three sep­a­rate net­works gave Kobach the chance to do just that. It did not go well for him.

...

Kobach began his day on “Fox & Friends,” where Bri­an Kilmeade offered absolute­ly zero resis­tance to his eas­i­ly debunked claims about vot­er fraud. He then moved over to the Fox Busi­ness Net­work, where Neil Cavu­to, sur­pris­ing­ly enough, made it clear he thought Kobach was full of it. “I don’t think you believe it,” Cavu­to said. “I think you’re very smart in what you do and I think you find the whole thing too incred­i­ble to be believed,” he added, while Kobach help­less­ly opened and closed his lips like a gold­fish nib­bling on flakes of food sprin­kled in his tank.

But Kobach met the most resis­tance on CNN, where anchor Kate Bour­dan all but pantsed him on live TV. Bour­dan went after Kobach over Miller’s claim that last fall thou­sands of peo­ple had been bused from Mass­a­chu­setts to New Hamp­shire for the pur­pose of throw­ing that state’s elec­toral votes to Hillary Clin­ton and over the grand total of nine cas­es of vot­er fraud Kobach found in Kansas after a year and a half of look­ing. To be clear, that is nine indi­vid­u­als that Kobach appar­ent­ly found who vot­ed ille­gal­ly in the Sun­flower State. Oh, no! By the end of the seg­ment, view­ers were either cheer­ing or incred­u­lous.

The floun­der­ing on vot­er fraud by Kobach was rem­i­nis­cent of the way the GOP takes on so many issues. The par­ty is peren­ni­al­ly just about to unveil its bril­liant Oba­macare replace­ment or its amaz­ing tax reform plan some­time in the near future, just as soon as it gets its ducks in a row. Sim­i­lar­ly, regard­ing the vot­er fraud he claims occurred in New Hamp­shire, Kobach swore there would be more sol­id evi­dence by the end of this month. When Bour­dan point­ed out that Kobach had found only nine instances of ille­gal vot­ing in his state after a year and a half of look­ing, he claimed these nine cas­es were just the first in a long, long list of poten­tials that his office hasn’t quite found time to dig into. Sure­ly if the pub­lic will just give him a lit­tle more time, he’ll show more vot­er fraud than peo­ple can pos­si­bly han­dle.

“The floun­der­ing on vot­er fraud by Kobach was rem­i­nis­cent of the way the GOP takes on so many issues. The par­ty is peren­ni­al­ly just about to unveil its bril­liant Oba­macare replace­ment or its amaz­ing tax reform plan some­time in the near future, just as soon as it gets its ducks in a row. Sim­i­lar­ly, regard­ing the vot­er fraud he claims occurred in New Hamp­shire, Kobach swore there would be more sol­id evi­dence by the end of this month. When Bour­dan point­ed out that Kobach had found only nine instances of ille­gal vot­ing in his state after a year and a half of look­ing, he claimed these nine cas­es were just the first in a long, long list of poten­tials that his office hasn’t quite found time to dig into. Sure­ly if the pub­lic will just give him a lit­tle more time, he’ll show more vot­er fraud than peo­ple can pos­si­bly han­dle.”

Yes, the tiny hand­ful of vot­er fraud cas­es he’s actu­al­ly found after years of pur­suit are just the tip of a giant hid­den ice­berg and if the pub­lic will just give him a lit­tle more time, he’ll show more vot­er fraud than peo­ple can pos­si­bly han­dle! Well, he’s about to get a lot more time. Although pre­sum­ably not too much time. The clock is tick­ing...

Wow, that must of one hor­ri­bly big­ot­ed law: a fed­er­al judge struck down a Texas vot­er id law, SB 5, declar­ing it to be such a bla­tant an inten­tion­al act of minor­i­ty vot­er sup­pres­sion that it actu­al­ly risks get­ting Texas thrown back into the sys­tem of “pre-clear­ance” that requires the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to give pri­or approval to any vot­ing rule changes. It was the pre-clear­ance sys­tem that the Supreme Court ruled was no long need­ed back in 2013, imme­di­ate­ly giv­ing states like Texas the free­dom to pass all sorts of vot­er sup­pres­sion laws that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment would have pre­vi­ous­ly pre­emp­tive­ly block, an oppor­tu­ni­ty those states imme­di­ate­ly pur­sued with glee. So now states like Texas with a long his­to­ry of minor­i­ty vot­er sup­pres­sion are free to pass all sorts of new vot­ing restric­tions first and have them chal­lenged in the courts lat­er. And that’s what hap­pened in this case: Texas first passed SB 14 in 2011, which was reviewed under “pre-clear­ance” and found to clear­ly be a minor­i­ty vot­er sup­pres­sion attempt. So Texas was forced to go back and craft SB 5 to try to address the crit­i­cism of SB 14. And appar­ent­ly SB 5 was still so hor­ri­ble and obvi­ous­ly tar­get­ing minor­i­ty that Texas is now at risk of get­ting thrown back on the “pre-clear­ance” list. So, yeah, that must of one hor­ri­bly big­ot­ed law:

Talk­ing Points Memo
Muck­rak­er

Fed­er­al Judge Blocks The 2.0 Ver­sion Of Con­tro­ver­sial Texas Vot­er ID Law

By Tier­ney Sneed
Pub­lished August 23, 2017 6:37 pm

A fed­er­al judge Wednes­day reject­ed the changes Texas had made to its vot­er ID law in response to mul­ti­ple pre­vi­ous court rul­ings against it and said the leg­is­la­ture would need to go back to the draw­ing board if it would like to imple­ment a pho­to vot­er ID law.

U.S. Dis­trict Court Judge Nel­va Gon­za­les Ramos also said that the changes Texas sought to make to the vot­er ID law did not wipe away pre­vi­ous find­ings that the 2011 law was passed with a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry intent — find­ings that threat­en to put Texas under a scheme that requires fed­er­al approval for any changes the state makes to its elec­tion poli­cies.

The revised ver­sion of the law, known as SB 5, fell “far short of mit­i­gat­ing the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pro­vi­sions” of the orig­i­nal law, SB 14, Gon­za­les Ramos said in her order.

“SB 5 is an improve­ment over SB 14, but it does not elim­i­nate the dis­crim­i­na­tion in the choice of pho­to IDs, which dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly con­tin­ues to impose undue bur­dens on His­pan­ics and African-Amer­i­cans,” the deci­sion said.

The lit­i­ga­tion over Texas’ vot­er ID law has last­ed for years. Until recent­ly, the Jus­tice Depart­ment fought along­side the chal­lengers in oppos­ing the ID law. This sum­mer, under Pres­i­dent Trump’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions, the DOJ joined the side of Texas this sum­mer in this lat­est bout of lit­i­ga­tion.

After the very con­ser­v­a­tive, full 5th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals last year ruled against the 2011 law, Texas and the chal­lengers worked out an inter­im sys­tem for the 2016 elec­tion in which non-pho­to ID hold­ers could show anoth­er form of ID and sign an affi­davit to vote. Texas, with SB 5, sought to cod­i­fy this affi­davit sys­tem, known as Dec­la­ra­tion of Rea­son­able Imped­i­ment (DRI). Yet the judge point­ed out Wednes­day that the inter­im agree­ment was nev­er meant to be per­ma­nent, but rather “a nego­ti­at­ed stop-gap mea­sure address­ing a quick­ly advanc­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.”

“SB 5 does not mean­ing­ful­ly expand the types of pho­to IDs that can qual­i­fy, even though the Court was clear­ly crit­i­cal of Texas hav­ing the most restric­tive list in the coun­try,” the judge said.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Texas had also made some changes to the inter­im affi­davit sys­tem in the bill the leg­is­la­ture passed. The state tight­ened the cat­e­gories a non-pho­to ID hold­er could claim to jus­ti­fy using the affi­davit and beefed up the penal­ties if some­one lied on the affi­davit.

The judge said these changes “appear to be efforts at vot­er intim­i­da­tion.”

“The Court has found that SB 14 was enact­ed with dis­crim­i­na­to­ry intent—knowingly plac­ing addi­tion­al bur­dens on a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of His­pan­ic and African-Amer­i­can vot­ers. The DRI pro­ce­dure trades one obsta­cle to vot­ing with another—replacing the lack of qual­i­fied pho­to ID with an over­reach­ing affi­davit threat­en­ing severe penal­ties for per­jury,” the deci­sion said.

The judge also knocked Texas for not doing enough to edu­cate vot­ers about its revised vot­er ID sys­tem.

The judge said Wednes­day that instead of try­ing to draft a rem­e­dy plan that would make the pho­to vot­er ID law pass legal muster, she was per­ma­nent­ly block­ing both the orig­i­nal and revised pho­to ID require­ments. She cit­ed both the ongo­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry intent find­ing and the lack of evi­dence of in-per­son vot­er imper­son­ation fraud in Texas.

Her deci­sion was not just a major set­back for Texas’ efforts to imple­ment its pho­to vot­er ID law. It also raised the specter that the state may need to go back under the Vot­ing Rights Act scheme known as pre-clear­ance. Pre-clear­ance requires that a state must get either the Jus­tice Depart­ment or a fed­er­al judge to approve changes to its elec­tion poli­cies. Texas was under the pre-clear­ance scheme until a 2013 Supreme Court deci­sion inval­i­dat­ed the VRA for­mu­la that had put it and oth­er states under it.

How­ev­er, anoth­er pro­vi­sion of the VRA, Sec­tion 3, allows for states to be put under pre-clear­ance if they are found to have passed vot­ing laws with a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry intent.

The judge’s order Wednes­day gave the par­ties in the case a week to brief her on what next steps should be tak­en with regards to con­sid­er­ing sec­tion 3 in the case.

...
———-

“Fed­er­al Judge Blocks The 2.0 Ver­sion Of Con­tro­ver­sial Texas Vot­er ID Law” by Tier­ney Sneed; Talk­ing Points Memo; 08/23/2017

“The judge said Wednes­day that instead of try­ing to draft a rem­e­dy plan that would make the pho­to vot­er ID law pass legal muster, she was per­ma­nent­ly block­ing both the orig­i­nal and revised pho­to ID require­ments. She cit­ed both the ongo­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry intent find­ing and the lack of evi­dence of in-per­son vot­er imper­son­ation fraud in Texas.”

Clear dis­crim­i­na­to­ry intent com­bined with a lack of evi­dence of in-per­son imper­son­ation vot­er fraud. And SB 5 was the revised, milder ver­sion of the orig­i­nal SB 14 law. And that’s why Texas just might be the first state thrown back on the “pre-clear­ance” list:

...
Her deci­sion was not just a major set­back for Texas’ efforts to imple­ment its pho­to vot­er ID law. It also raised the specter that the state may need to go back under the Vot­ing Rights Act scheme known as pre-clear­ance. Pre-clear­ance requires that a state must get either the Jus­tice Depart­ment or a fed­er­al judge to approve changes to its elec­tion poli­cies. Texas was under the pre-clear­ance scheme until a 2013 Supreme Court deci­sion inval­i­dat­ed the VRA for­mu­la that had put it and oth­er states under it.

How­ev­er, anoth­er pro­vi­sion of the VRA, Sec­tion 3, allows for states to be put under pre-clear­ance if they are found to have passed vot­ing laws with a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry intent.
...

The law was that bad. At least in the eyes of this fed­er­al judge. In the eyes of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, on the oth­er hand, the law is just fine!

...
The lit­i­ga­tion over Texas’ vot­er ID law has last­ed for years. Until recent­ly, the Jus­tice Depart­ment fought along­side the chal­lengers in oppos­ing the ID law. This sum­mer, under Pres­i­dent Trump’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions, the DOJ joined the side of Texas this sum­mer in this lat­est bout of lit­i­ga­tion.
...

Because of course that hap­pened.

In oth­er news...

The US Supreme Court is just heard argu­ments on a case on the legal­i­ty of extreme par­ti­san gerrymandering...the kind of ger­ry­man­der­ing that’s been allow­ing the GOP to win a major­i­ty of con­gres­sion­al seats in states where the Democ­rats actu­al­ly win the major­i­ty of the vote. And in this case it was the kind of ger­ry­man­der­ing that allowed the GOP in Wis­con­sin to win 60 out of 99 State Assem­bly seats in 2012 despite get­ting only 48 per­cent of the vote.

Of course, since the Supreme Court is sort of ‘ger­ry­man­dered’ itself (metaphor­i­cal­ly speak­ing) this year after the GOP refused to Barack Oba­ma’s supreme court nom­i­nee, Mer­rick Gar­land, last year and then pro­ceed­ed to push through the far right Neil Gor­such, it’s very pos­si­ble we could see a Supreme Court deci­sion that basi­cal­ly upholds extreme par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing as con­sti­tu­tion­al. Because that’s what right-wing courts do: make it eas­i­er to abuse pow­er.

And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, while the jus­tices appeared to all express their dis­taste of ger­ry­man­der­ing, the ques­tion of whether or not the Supreme Court can inter­vene appears to revolve around the abil­i­ty of the jus­tices to devel­op a man­age­able stan­dard for deter­min­ing whether or not an instance of ger­ry­man­der­ing cross­es the line of extreme par­ti­san­ship. And the con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices just aren’t sure that man­age­able stan­dard can be found, with Chief Jus­tice John Roberts express­ing con­cerns that the court will harm its author­i­ty and integri­ty if it inter­venes in favor of one par­ty or anoth­er.

So, yes, the Chief Jus­tice is con­cerned that the Supreme Court will seem over­ly par­ti­san if it inter­feres with the extreme­ly par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing (which just hap­pens to be pri­mar­i­ly done by the GOP):

The New York Times

Jus­tices Split on Vot­ing Maps Warped by Pol­i­tics

By ADAM LIPTAK and MICHAEL D. SHEAR
OCT. 3, 2017

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court heard argu­ments on Tues­day in a case that could reshape Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy by con­sid­er­ing whether extreme par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing — the draw­ing of vot­ing dis­tricts to give lop­sided advan­tages to the par­ty in pow­er — vio­lates the Con­sti­tu­tion.

There was some­thing like con­sen­sus that vot­ing maps warped by pol­i­tics are an unat­trac­tive fea­ture of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. But the jus­tices appeared split about whether the court could find a stan­dard for deter­min­ing when the prac­tice had crossed a con­sti­tu­tion­al line.

“Ger­ry­man­der­ing is dis­taste­ful,” said Jus­tice Samuel A. Ali­to Jr., “but if we’re going to impose a stan­dard on the courts it’s going to have to be man­age­able.”

The court’s more lib­er­al mem­bers said the prob­lem rep­re­sent­ed a cri­sis for democ­ra­cy and that the Supreme Court should step in.

“What’s real­ly behind all of this?” Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg asked. She answered her own ques­tion: “The pre­cious right to vote.”

In extend­ed remarks, Chief Jus­tice John G. Roberts Jr. expressed wor­ry that the court’s author­i­ty and legit­i­ma­cy would be harmed were it to start strik­ing down vot­ing dis­tricts in favor of one polit­i­cal par­ty or anoth­er.

“That is going to cause very seri­ous harm to the sta­tus and integri­ty of the deci­sions of this court,” he said.

Paul M. Smith, a lawyer for Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers chal­leng­ing a vot­ing map in Wis­con­sin, urged the court to act. “You are the only insti­tu­tion in the Unit­ed States that can solve this prob­lem,” he told the jus­tices.

The mem­ber of the court who prob­a­bly holds the cru­cial vote, Jus­tice Antho­ny M. Kennedy, asked ques­tions sug­gest­ing that he thought the Supreme Court has a role to play in lim­it­ing par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing.

The Supreme Court has nev­er struck down an elec­tion map on the ground that it was drawn to make sure one polit­i­cal par­ty wins an out­size num­ber of seats. The court has, how­ev­er, left open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some kinds of polit­i­cal games­man­ship in redis­trict­ing may be too extreme.

The prob­lem, Jus­tice Kennedy wrote in a 2004 con­cur­rence, is that no one has devised “a work­able stan­dard” to decide when the polit­i­cal ger­ry­man­der­ing has crossed a con­sti­tu­tion­al line.

On Tues­day, lawyers for the state of Wis­con­sin urged the jus­tices to reject such a chal­lenge to that state’s redis­trict­ing map, drawn by the Repub­li­can-con­trolled gov­ern­ment, say­ing that Demo­c­ra­t­ic crit­ics were rely­ing on flim­sy and hypo­thet­i­cal social sci­ence evi­dence to prove that the maps led to the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al advan­tage of one par­ty over the oth­er.

Misha Tseytlin, the state’s solic­i­tor gen­er­al, warned that reject­ing Wisconsin’s maps would spark “a redis­trict­ing rev­o­lu­tion on these social sci­ence met­rics” and would “shift dis­trict­ing from elect­ed pub­lic offi­cials to the courts.”

But dur­ing sharp ques­tion­ing of the state’s lawyers, sev­er­al jus­tices hint­ed at the high stakes for democ­ra­cy if par­ties are per­mit­ted to use sophis­ti­cat­ed tech­nol­o­gy to devise vot­ing maps that give them a sig­nif­i­cant, long-term advan­tage over their rivals.

Jus­tice Ele­na Kagan said there is “good evi­dence” that the maps drawn by the Repub­li­cans in Wis­con­sin were designed to have “a cer­tain kind of an effect, which was to entrench a par­ty in pow­er.”

Jus­tice Kagan also pressed the state’s lawyers to explain their crit­i­cism of the social sci­en­tists who have con­clud­ed that the maps are over­ly par­ti­san. She not­ed that law­mak­ers use the same tech­nol­o­gy and social sci­ence to draw the maps in the first place.

“So, too, those same tech­nolo­gies can be used to eval­u­ate what they are doing,” Jus­tice Kagan said.

The case, Gill v. Whit­ford, No. 16–1161, start­ed when Repub­li­cans gained com­plete con­trol of Wisconsin’s gov­ern­ment in 2010 for the first time in more than 40 years. It was a redis­trict­ing year, and law­mak­ers prompt­ly drew a map for the State Assem­bly that helped Repub­li­cans con­vert very close statewide vote totals into lop­sided leg­isla­tive majori­ties.

In 2012, after the redis­trict­ing, Repub­li­cans won 48.6 per­cent of the statewide vote for Assem­bly can­di­dates but cap­tured 60 of the Assembly’s 99 seats.

...

The case is part of a larg­er debate over pol­i­tics in redis­trict­ing, one that has tak­en on new urgency with the advent of sophis­ti­cat­ed soft­ware. Both par­ties have engaged in par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing, but these days, Repub­li­cans have an advan­tage fol­low­ing a wave of vic­to­ries in state leg­is­la­tures that allowed law­mak­ers to draw elec­tion maps favor­ing their par­ty.

Some crit­ics, like Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, a Repub­li­can and the for­mer gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia, say dis­tricts should be drawn by inde­pen­dent com­mis­sions rather than politi­cians. Promi­nent Democ­rats, includ­ing for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and his attor­ney gen­er­al, Eric H. Hold­er Jr., are push­ing to undo the redis­trict­ing gains Repub­li­cans made after the 2010 cen­sus when the next cen­sus is tak­en three years from now.

Last year, a divid­ed three-judge Fed­er­al Dis­trict Court pan­el ruled that Repub­li­cans in Wis­con­sin had gone too far. The map, Judge Ken­neth F. Rip­ple wrote for the major­i­ty, “was designed to make it more dif­fi­cult for Democ­rats, com­pared to Repub­li­cans, to trans­late their votes into seats.”

The deci­sion was the first from a fed­er­al court in more than 30 years to reject a vot­ing map as par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing.

Wis­con­sin offi­cials say that the lop­sided rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Repub­li­cans in the State Leg­is­la­ture is a prod­uct of geog­ra­phy rather than ger­ry­man­der­ing. Democ­rats have packed them­selves into cities, effec­tive­ly dilut­ing their vot­ing pow­er, while Repub­li­cans are more even­ly dis­trib­uted across most states, the brief said.

Judge Rip­ple acknowl­edged that the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the pop­u­la­tion explains at least some part of the gap.

“Wisconsin’s polit­i­cal geog­ra­phy, par­tic­u­lar­ly the high con­cen­tra­tion of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in urban cen­ters like Mil­wau­kee and Madi­son, affords the Repub­li­can Par­ty a nat­ur­al, but mod­est, advan­tage in the dis­trict­ing process,” he wrote.

But he added that par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing ampli­fied that advan­tage.

———-

“Jus­tices Split on Vot­ing Maps Warped by Pol­i­tics” by ADAM LIPTAK and MICHAEL D. SHEAR; The New York Times; 10/03/2017

“There was some­thing like con­sen­sus that vot­ing maps warped by pol­i­tics are an unat­trac­tive fea­ture of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. But the jus­tices appeared split about whether the court could find a stan­dard for deter­min­ing when the prac­tice had crossed a con­sti­tu­tion­al line.”

Yep, the jus­tices all seem to agree that extreme par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing is bad for democ­ra­cy. They just can’t agree on the exact point where it becomes bad for democ­ra­cy, and that’s mak­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices ques­tion whether or not inter­ven­ing would end up dam­ag­ing democ­ra­cy even more. Because inter­ven­ing might be seen as par­ti­san:

...
“Ger­ry­man­der­ing is dis­taste­ful,” said Jus­tice Samuel A. Ali­to Jr., “but if we’re going to impose a stan­dard on the courts it’s going to have to be man­age­able.”

...

In extend­ed remarks, Chief Jus­tice John G. Roberts Jr. expressed wor­ry that the court’s author­i­ty and legit­i­ma­cy would be harmed were it to start strik­ing down vot­ing dis­tricts in favor of one polit­i­cal par­ty or anoth­er.

“That is going to cause very seri­ous harm to the sta­tus and integri­ty of the deci­sions of this court,” he said.
...

But note that Jus­tice Robert­s’s con­cerns over the court being inter­pret­ed as favor­ing one par­ty aren’t root­ed in con­cerns that it would pri­mar­i­ly be the GOP’s ger­ry­man­der­ing that would end up get­ting over-turned (which is one way it could end up being per­ceived as par­ti­san). No, the con­cerns are root­ed in fears that the pub­lic would­n’t accept the sci­ence that goes into assess­ing whether or not a dis­trict is skewed towards one part or another...the same sci­ence that, as Jus­tice Kagan point­ed out, Wis­con­sin’s GOP used to cre­ate its extreme­ly ger­ry­man­dered dis­tricts in the first place:

...
On Tues­day, lawyers for the state of Wis­con­sin urged the jus­tices to reject such a chal­lenge to that state’s redis­trict­ing map, drawn by the Repub­li­can-con­trolled gov­ern­ment, say­ing that Demo­c­ra­t­ic crit­ics were rely­ing on flim­sy and hypo­thet­i­cal social sci­ence evi­dence to prove that the maps led to the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al advan­tage of one par­ty over the oth­er.

Misha Tseytlin, the state’s solic­i­tor gen­er­al, warned that reject­ing Wisconsin’s maps would spark “a redis­trict­ing rev­o­lu­tion on these social sci­ence met­rics” and would “shift dis­trict­ing from elect­ed pub­lic offi­cials to the courts.”

But dur­ing sharp ques­tion­ing of the state’s lawyers, sev­er­al jus­tices hint­ed at the high stakes for democ­ra­cy if par­ties are per­mit­ted to use sophis­ti­cat­ed tech­nol­o­gy to devise vot­ing maps that give them a sig­nif­i­cant, long-term advan­tage over their rivals.

Jus­tice Ele­na Kagan said there is “good evi­dence” that the maps drawn by the Repub­li­cans in Wis­con­sin were designed to have “a cer­tain kind of an effect, which was to entrench a par­ty in pow­er.”

Jus­tice Kagan also pressed the state’s lawyers to explain their crit­i­cism of the social sci­en­tists who have con­clud­ed that the maps are over­ly par­ti­san. She not­ed that law­mak­ers use the same tech­nol­o­gy and social sci­ence to draw the maps in the first place.

“So, too, those same tech­nolo­gies can be used to eval­u­ate what they are doing,” Jus­tice Kagan said.

The case, Gill v. Whit­ford, No. 16–1161, start­ed when Repub­li­cans gained com­plete con­trol of Wisconsin’s gov­ern­ment in 2010 for the first time in more than 40 years. It was a redis­trict­ing year, and law­mak­ers prompt­ly drew a map for the State Assem­bly that helped Repub­li­cans con­vert very close statewide vote totals into lop­sided leg­isla­tive majori­ties.

In 2012, after the redis­trict­ing, Repub­li­cans won 48.6 per­cent of the statewide vote for Assem­bly can­di­dates but cap­tured 60 of the Assembly’s 99 seats.

...

“Jus­tice Kagan also pressed the state’s lawyers to explain their crit­i­cism of the social sci­en­tists who have con­clud­ed that the maps are over­ly par­ti­san. She not­ed that law­mak­ers use the same tech­nol­o­gy and social sci­ence to draw the maps in the first place.”

Yep, the crux of the GOP’s argu­ment is that the “social sci­ence” used to assess whether or not a dis­trict has been unfair­ly skewed can’t real­ly be trust­ed...despite the fact that the same sci­ence was used by the GOP to ger­ry­man­der in the first place. But as John Roberts sees it, if the pub­lic at large can’t trust this “social sci­ence” that could risk the rep­u­ta­tion of the court as impar­tial. In oth­er words, the pri­ma­ry defense of the GOP’s extreme par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing is the sci­en­tif­ic illit­er­a­cy, will­ful igno­rance, and extreme gulli­bil­i­ty of GOP vot­ers:

Politi­co

Supreme Court eyes par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing

Kennedy seen as swing vote that could blunt GOP’s map-draw­ing suc­cess­es.

By JOSH GERSTEIN

10/03/2017 12:40 PM EDT
Updat­ed 10/03/2017 03:35 PM EDT

The Supreme Court wres­tled Tues­day with a case that has the poten­tial to halt or even reverse an increas­ing­ly com­mon phe­nom­e­non of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal life: Repub­li­cans’ abil­i­ty to tilt the polit­i­cal play­ing field in their favor through the tedious task of redraw­ing dis­trict lines.

The polit­i­cal­ly explo­sive high court fight over so-called par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing has the poten­tial to rad­i­cal­ly reshape the polit­i­cal scene by thrust­ing courts across the coun­try into the role of vet­ting dis­trict maps for exces­sive par­ti­san bias.

Crit­ics of that idea say judges are ill-suit­ed to that com­plex task, while pro­po­nents say the prac­tice of leg­is­la­tors essen­tial­ly pick­ing their vot­ers has got­ten out of con­trol and is con­tribut­ing to extreme polit­i­cal polar­iza­tion by vir­tu­al­ly elim­i­nat­ing com­pet­i­tive or toss-up dis­tricts.

The argu­ments Tues­day were tai­lored almost entire­ly to an audi­ence of one: Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy. He’s wide­ly believed to be the only Repub­li­can-appoint­ed jus­tice who might side with the court’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic appointees to inval­i­date a redis­trict­ing plan Wis­con­sin adopt­ed for its state assem­bly in 2011.

Kennedy was cryp­tic about how he might rule in the case, but gave no sign that he has aban­doned his view that extreme par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing might—at least in theory—violate the Con­sti­tu­tion. Moments into the argu­ment, he sug­gest­ed that extra­or­di­nary efforts to pack one par­tic­u­lar par­ty into one dis­trict or break them up into sev­er­al oth­ers, could vio­late the right to free-asso­ci­a­tion.

“Sup­pose the court...decided that this is a First Amend­ment issue, not an equal pro­tec­tion issue. Would that change the cal­cu­lus?” Kennedy asked as the court debat­ed the legal­i­ty of the Wis­con­sin plan. A three-judge pan­el ruled that the GOP-led leg­is­la­ture tilt­ed the table so sharply against Democ­rats that it ran afoul of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Kennedy also seemed irked when a lawyer for GOP leg­is­la­tors in Wis­con­sin would not imme­di­ate­ly say whether a state law that explic­it­ly stat­ed a pol­i­cy to harm either Democ­rats or Repub­li­cans would be ille­gal.

“If the state has a law or con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that’s say­ing all legit­i­mate fac­tors must be used in a way to favor par­ty X or par­ty Y, is that law­ful?” he asked attor­ney Erin Mur­phy, adding lat­er: “I’d like the answer to the ques­tion.”

Mur­phy even­tu­al­ly con­ced­ed that such a law would be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, a con­ces­sion that seemed to open the door to the idea that a redis­trict­ing plan that was hope­less­ly skewed but con­tained no explic­it par­ti­san goal would also be sus­pect.

Much of the GOP’s recent suc­cess in cus­tom-tai­lor­ing elec­tion dis­tricts has been enabled by devel­op­ments in tech­nol­o­gy that allow draw­ing of dis­trict lines to attain a par­tic­u­lar par­ti­san com­po­si­tion with near-per­fect pre­ci­sion through tech­niques dubbed “pack­ing” and “crack­ing.”

How­ev­er, the same sort of num­ber-crunch­ing sys­tems can be used to pre­cise­ly iden­ti­fy the par­ti­san tilt of a pro­posed map and to cor­rect it to some­thing more balanced—if the courts are so inclined.

Chief Jus­tice John Roberts, who’s known for a desire to safe­guard the high court’s rep­u­ta­tion, was unusu­al­ly blunt about his con­cern that open­ing the door to par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing cas­es would flood the Supreme Court dock­et with lit­i­ga­tion and drag the jus­tices into a polit­i­cal morass. He said vot­ers will look askance at the notion that dis­tricts failed to meet a com­plex for­mu­la that assess­es wast­ed votes and a so-called “effi­cien­cy gap.”

“You’re tak­ing these issues away from democ­ra­cy and you’re throw­ing them into the courts pur­suant to—and it may be sim­ply my edu­ca­tion­al back­ground, [what] I can only describe as soci­o­log­i­cal gob­bledy­gook,” the chief jus­tice opined. “The intel­li­gent man on the street is going to say, ‘That’s a bunch of baloney. It must be because the Supreme Court pre­ferred the Democ­rats over the Republicans.’...That is going to cause very seri­ous harm to the sta­tus and integri­ty of the deci­sions of this court in the eyes of the coun­try.”

Both sides in the case warned of a dire future if the court sides with their oppo­nents.

“Ger­ry­man­ders now are not your fathers’ ger­ry­man­ders,” warned Paul Smith, the lawyer for Democ­rats chal­leng­ing the Wis­con­sin plan. He said data-crunch­ing is now so sophis­ti­cat­ed that there could be vir­tu­al­ly no com­pe­ti­tion in U.S. elec­tions in much of the coun­try after 2020, if the high court does­n’t impose restraints.

“These are going to be real­ly seri­ous incur­sions on democ­ra­cy if this Court does­n’t do some­thing. And this is real­ly the last oppor­tu­ni­ty before we see this huge fes­ti­val of new extreme ger­ry­man­ders all done along the mod­el of Wis­con­sin, but prob­a­bly even more seri­ous.,” Smith declared. “If you don’t do it, it is locked up.”

Wis­con­sin Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al Misha Tseytlin argued that the greater dan­ger involved the jus­tices upend­ing the tra­di­tion­al redis­trict­ing process with murky, debat­able sci­ence.

“Plain­tiffs are ask­ing this court to launch a redis­trict­ing rev­o­lu­tion based on their social-sci­ence met­rics,” Tseytlin said. “You would have fed­er­al courts engag­ing in bat­tles of the hypo­thet­i­cal experts.”

Jus­tice Ele­na Kagan jumped in to dis­agree, not­ing that com­put­er mod­els are now capa­ble of high­ly detailed analy­sis of dis­tricts and var­i­ous poten­tial maps. “This is not the kind of hypothetical…where you guess and then you guess again,” she said.

Jus­tice Samuel Ali­to was deeply skep­ti­cal of the courts wad­ing into such analy­sis. He repeat­ed­ly ques­tioned the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies and mod­els used to assess the impact of dif­fer­ent maps.

“They rely a lot on polls, don’t they? How sci­en­tif­ic have they proven to be?” Ali­to said, seem­ing to refer to the out­come of last fall’s pres­i­den­tial race.

Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg sug­gest­ed the effort to con­cen­trate Democ­rats’ votes in a few dis­tricts was as trou­bling as efforts to do the same with African-Amer­i­can vot­ers. “Max-Republican...doesn’t it have the same prob­lem of Max-Black?” she asked.

Gins­burg sug­gest­ed the par­ti­san line-draw­ing was deal­ing a fun­da­men­tal blow to Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy.

“What incen­tive is there for a vot­er to exer­cise their vote?” she asked. “Under this map, the result is preordained….What becomes of the pre­cious right to vote?”

The court’s new­com­er, Jus­tice Neil Gor­such, said he wor­ried that states would not know what stan­dard they’re sup­posed to meet with­out “hav­ing every dis­trict sub­ject to lit­i­ga­tion.” He com­pared the tests courts were con­sid­er­ing to a steak rub.

“What’s this court sup­posed to do? A pinch of this and a pinch of that?” he asked.

...

———-

“Supreme Court eyes par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing” by JOSH GERSTEIN; Politi­co; 10/03/2017

““You’re tak­ing these issues away from democ­ra­cy and you’re throw­ing them into the courts pur­suant to—and it may be sim­ply my edu­ca­tion­al back­ground, [what] I can only describe as soci­o­log­i­cal gob­bledy­gook,” the chief jus­tice opined. “The intel­li­gent man on the street is going to say, ‘That’s a bunch of baloney. It must be because the Supreme Court pre­ferred the Democ­rats over the Repub­li­cans.’...That is going to cause very seri­ous harm to the sta­tus and integri­ty of the deci­sions of this court in the eyes of the coun­try.””

The ‘intel­li­gent man on the street’ (who is pre­sum­ably blind) will inevitably have a reflex­ive “this is soci­o­log­i­cal gob­bledy­gook!” response if the Supreme Court declares these extreme­ly ger­ry­man­dered dis­tricts uncon­sti­tu­tion­al based on the same “soci­o­log­i­cal gob­bledy­gook” that was used to ger­ry­man­der the dis­tricts in the first place. And there­fore noth­ing can be done because that would dam­age the courts.

That’s seri­ous­ly Chief Jus­tice Robert­s’s argu­ment. An argu­ment that would have seri­ous­ly harmed the sta­tus and integri­ty of Chief Jus­tice Roberts the moment he made it if he still had any integri­ty left.

Uhhhh...that’s rather sus­pi­cious: So Alaba­ma has hav­ing its much anticipated/dreaded spe­cial elec­tion today between Roy Moore and Doug Jones to replace Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sion in the Sen­ate. Yes­ter­day after­noon, a Mont­gomery Coun­ty Cir­cuit Court judge issued an order direct­ing elec­tion offi­cials to pre­serve all the dig­i­tal images of the bal­lot at polling places across the state in response to a law­suit brought by four Alaba­ma vot­er argu­ing that the state is required to main­tain these dig­i­tal images under state and fed­er­al law.

But then, just a few hours lat­er, attor­neys for the Alaba­ma Sec­re­tary of State and the state admin­is­tra­tion of elec­tions filed an “emer­gency motion to stay” (stop) that order. And, sure enough, just min­utes after they filed that motion, the Alaba­ma state Supreme Court grant­ed the stay.

So the dig­i­tal images of the bal­lots in the elec­tion today can all be legal­ly destroyed. For some strange and high­ly sus­pi­cious rea­son:

AL.com

In final-hour order, court rules that Alaba­ma can destroy dig­i­tal vot­ing records after all

By Con­nor Sheets
12/12/2017 Updat­ed 10:29 AM; Post­ed 10:22 AM

Alaba­ma is allowed to destroy dig­i­tal vot­ing records cre­at­ed at the polls dur­ing today’s U.S. Sen­ate elec­tion after all.

At 1:36 p.m. Mon­day, a Mont­gomery Coun­ty Cir­cuit Court judge issued an order direct­ing Alaba­ma elec­tion offi­cials to pre­serve all dig­i­tal bal­lot images cre­at­ed at polling places across the state today.

But at 4:32 p.m. Mon­day, attor­neys for Alaba­ma Sec­re­tary of State John Mer­rill and Ed Packard, the state admin­is­tra­tor of elec­tions, filed an “emer­gency motion to stay” that order, which the state Supreme Court grant­ed min­utes after Mer­rill and Packard’s motion was filed.

By grant­i­ng the stay, the court effec­tive­ly told the state that it does not in fact have to pre­serve the dig­i­tal bal­lot images — essen­tial­ly dig­i­tized ver­sions of the paper bal­lots vot­ers fill out at the vot­ing booth — cre­at­ed today.

The court will hold a hear­ing on Dec. 21 about whether to dis­miss the case out­right. By that point the state will have had ample time to destroy the dig­i­tal bal­lot images legal­ly under the stay.

Mer­rill and Packard’s attor­neys argued in the emer­gency motion Mon­day that the two offi­cials “do not have author­i­ty to main­tain such records or to require local offi­cials to do so. Plain­tiffs there­fore lack stand­ing, the Cir­cuit Court lacks juris­dic­tion, and the order is a nul­li­ty. Although a nul­li­ty, it will, if not stayed, cause con­fu­sion among elec­tions offi­cials and be dis­rup­tive to an elec­tion sched­uled for tomor­row.”

But Priscil­la Dun­can, attor­ney for four Alaba­ma vot­ers who sued the state last week in an attempt to force elec­tion offi­cials to pre­serve the dig­i­tal records, said Tues­day that their argu­ment was “spu­ri­ous” and mis­lead­ing.

“They made a bunch of spu­ri­ous argu­ments that they don’t have the author­i­ty to tell [elec­tion offi­cials across the state] what to do — well, they’re already telling them what to do — and that it will cause a bunch of con­fu­sion at the polls, but the vot­ers would­n’t even know if they changed their reten­tion pol­i­cy,” Dun­can said.

Mer­rill declined to com­ment direct­ly on the case in a phone inter­view with AL.com Tues­day morn­ing.

...

But he did state that though the state does not pre­serve the dig­i­tal bal­lot images, it does main­tain the orig­i­nal paper bal­lots.

“The records for fed­er­al elec­tions are required by law to be pre­served for 22 months after the elec­tion occurs,” Mer­rill said.

But Dun­can said that “the paper bal­lots aren’t real­ly what’s count­ed” unless there is a statewide recount, which would be “cost-pro­hib­i­tive” if the state were ever to under­take one.

“The fact that none of their argu­ments makes any sense just makes you won­der what’s real­ly at stake here. These machines are hack-able ... That’s what wor­ried us,” she said. “It’s just all about trans­paren­cy. It’s like say­ing, ‘well, we don’t need a car because we have a horse and bug­gy.’ ”

———-
“In final-hour order, court rules that Alaba­ma can destroy dig­i­tal vot­ing records after all” by Con­nor Sheets; AL.com; 12/12/2017

“By grant­i­ng the stay, the court effec­tive­ly told the state that it does not in fact have to pre­serve the dig­i­tal bal­lot images — essen­tial­ly dig­i­tized ver­sions of the paper bal­lots vot­ers fill out at the vot­ing booth — cre­at­ed today.”

So what was the state’s basis for request­ing that emer­gency order to halt the court order to keep the dig­i­tal images? Well, they first argue that the case lacked stand­ing and is a “nul­li­ty”. Also, they argue that ask­ing elec­tion offi­cials not to destroy the dig­i­tal images would “be dis­rup­tive” to an elec­tion to be held the next day. They also assert that the keep­ing the dig­i­tal images isn’t nec­es­sary because the paper bal­lots will be kept for 22 months and can be used in case there’s a recount:

...
Mer­rill and Packard’s attor­neys argued in the emer­gency motion Mon­day that the two offi­cials “do not have author­i­ty to main­tain such records or to require local offi­cials to do so. Plain­tiffs there­fore lack stand­ing, the Cir­cuit Court lacks juris­dic­tion, and the order is a nul­li­ty. Although a nul­li­ty, it will, if not stayed, cause con­fu­sion among elec­tions offi­cials and be dis­rup­tive to an elec­tion sched­uled for tomor­row.”

...

Mer­rill declined to com­ment direct­ly on the case in a phone inter­view with AL.com Tues­day morn­ing.

“We don’t com­ment on pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion,” he said.

But he did state that though the state does not pre­serve the dig­i­tal bal­lot images, it does main­tain the orig­i­nal paper bal­lots.

“The records for fed­er­al elec­tions are required by law to be pre­served for 22 months after the elec­tion occurs,” Mer­rill said.
...

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the plain­tiff in the case responsd that these are non­sense argue­ments. First, it’s not like a last minute change to dig­i­tal image reten­tion poli­cies is going to cause con­fu­sion for vot­ers. And also, keep the paper bal­lots isn’t actu­al­ly reas­sur­ing because the paper bal­lots don’t get recount­ed unless there’s a state-wide recount which is like­ly to be “cost-pro­hib­i­tive”:

...
But Priscil­la Dun­can, attor­ney for four Alaba­ma vot­ers who sued the state last week in an attempt to force elec­tion offi­cials to pre­serve the dig­i­tal records, said Tues­day that their argu­ment was “spu­ri­ous” and mis­lead­ing.

“They made a bunch of spu­ri­ous argu­ments that they don’t have the author­i­ty to tell [elec­tion offi­cials across the state] what to do — well, they’re already telling them what to do — and that it will cause a bunch of con­fu­sion at the polls, but the vot­ers would­n’t even know if they changed their reten­tion pol­i­cy,” Dun­can said.

...

But Dun­can said that “the paper bal­lots aren’t real­ly what’s count­ed” unless there is a statewide recount, which would be “cost-pro­hib­i­tive” if the state were ever to under­take one.

“The fact that none of their argu­ments makes any sense just makes you won­der what’s real­ly at stake here. These machines are hack-able ... That’s what wor­ried us,” she said. “It’s just all about trans­paren­cy. It’s like say­ing, ‘well, we don’t need a car because we have a horse and bug­gy.’ ”

“The fact that none of their argu­ments makes any sense just makes you won­der what’s real­ly at stake here. These machines are hack-able ... That’s what wor­ried us.”

So is the Alaba­ma GOP plan­ning on a lit­tle elec­tron­ic vot­ing machine manip­u­la­tion (or elec­tron­ic bal­lot tab­u­la­tion machine manip­u­la­tion, in this case) in this key and high­ly close Sen­ate race? Well, let’s not for­get that this is a very close race and vote rig­ging is exact­ly the kind of thing that might get used in a very close race, where just a small nudge of the vote tal­lies in one direc­tion or anoth­er can make all the dif­fer­ence.

And let’s also not for­get that Alaba­ma has turned vot­er sup­pres­sion of Democ­rats, in par­tic­u­lar African Amer­i­can Democ­rats, into a sci­ence. So if the race real­ly does end up be close enough to make elec­tron­ic vote rig­ging a neces­si­ty, that’s prob­a­bly going to be seen by the GOP as a rea­son for even more vot­er sup­pres­sion to ensure there’s nev­er a close race again. Espe­cial­ly of Roy Moore wins and decides to run for reelec­tion in the future. Don’t for­get that Moor won’t get a full 6 year term if he wins and will have to run again in 2020.

In oth­er words, Roy Moore’s cur­rent­ly elec­toral woes aren’t just a wake up call for the GOP to ques­tion what’s left of its moral com­pass. It’s also a wake up call for the Alaba­ma GOP to do even more vot­er sup­pres­sion because they might have anoth­er real­ly close race involv­ing Roy Moore in four years. A wake up call the Alaba­ma GOP appar­ent­ly already hears.

Just read an arti­cle on a per­son who is appar­ent­ly THE king behind the scenes of the vot­er sup­pres­sion move­ment. Nev­er heard of him before, but appar­ent­ly very impor­tant and a Trump dead-ender.

Name is Hans Von Spakovsky, son of Ger­man-Russ­ian elite, obvi­ous­ly with a name like that. Her­itage Foun­da­tion guy, looks like the vil­lain from a Nazi movie. Born and raised in Huntsville, AL, which was the home of mul­ti­ple Paper­clip sci­en­tists. His father taught at the col­lege there, which is the anchor for all the gov­ern­ment sci­ence projects in the area.

This arti­cle is great... it also neat­ly debunks the notion that vote sup­pres­sion is some kind of “new Trump agen­da”. It is not, it is as main­stream­GOP as it comes, and cer­tain­ly not invent­ed by The Don­ald. Only excerpt­ing a few key pas­sages, whole thing should be read. Either this author is clue­less about WW2 or just decid­ed to go easy on this one aspect of Von Spakovsky’s back­ground, but I found this part very telling. Note: his father “fought against... Tito, in Yugoslavia, where he lived before head­ing to Bavaria”. It could­n’t be more clear: this guy fought on the side of the Nazis in Yugoslavia, prob­a­bly with the Ustache or sim­i­lar groups. I don’t give Oba­ma much love... but he NAILED this one and spot­ted this douchebag dur­ing his sen­a­to­r­i­al career. A nice reminder of the dif­fer­ence between Dems and GOP...

Short ver­sion: the intel­lec­tu­al mas­ter­mind of the GOP’s war on vot­ers is Son­nenkinder. Paper­clip-adja­cent. Son of Ger­man aris­toc­ra­cy whose father fought for the Nazis. Bor­mann group, in oth­er words.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/29/the-voter-fraud-myth

....Von Spakovsky is the son of a Ger­man moth­er and a Russ­ian father who met in Bavaria, just after the Sec­ond World War, at an Amer­i­can-run camp for dis­placed per­sons. They immi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States in 1951. His father, Ana­tol, was a White Russ­ian who fought Com­mu­nism twice: first against the Bol­she­viks, in Rus­sia, and lat­er against Tito, in Yugoslavia, where he lived before head­ing to Bavaria. “He escaped death many times,” von Spakovsky recalled. “He taught me to stand up for what I believe in, no mat­ter what the cost, and I have tak­en that to heart.” Von Spakovsky says that his her­itage has made him espe­cial­ly appre­cia­tive of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy and sen­si­tive to what he calls its “fragili­ty.”

In Amer­i­ca, his par­ents set­tled in Huntsville, Alaba­ma, where his father taught phi­los­o­phy at a local col­lege and wrote poet­ry. “He was the most intel­li­gent and cul­tured per­son I have ever known,” von Spakovsky said, adding that fam­i­ly din­ners were more stim­u­lat­ing than the local schools he attend­ed. Although the civ­il-rights move­ment cre­at­ed tumult in Alaba­ma dur­ing his child­hood, he says that he has no mem­o­ry of it.

After grad­u­at­ing from M.I.T. and Van­der­bilt Law School, von Spakovsky became the in-house coun­sel at a life-insur­ance com­pa­ny in Atlanta, and vol­un­teered to become a Repub­li­can poll watch­er at an inner-city hous­ing project. “I was expect­ing a very bor­ing day,” he says. Instead, he observed elec­tion offi­cials ask­ing vot­ers which par­ty they belonged to, “which, of course, you’re not sup­posed to do in a gen­er­al elec­tion. So the very first time I’m a poll watch­er, I walk in and some­thing ille­gal is going on.”

...Among the law­mak­ers who spoke out against von Spakovsky’s appoint­ment to the F.E.C. was Barack Oba­ma, then a Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor from Illi­nois. He put a hold on the con­fir­ma­tion, effec­tive­ly block­ing it. After two years in lim­bo, von Spakovsky with­drew his name from con­sid­er­a­tion, and joined the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, where he con­tin­ued to inveigh against vot­er fraud.

NOTE: I’m always cau­tious about link­ing to Wikipedia, but this was a well-researched page on him (obvi­ous­ly done by some­body who hates him) and has every­thing you need to know with links to back him up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_von_Spakovsky