News
Federal Lawsuits Stay Alive over North Carolina Voter ID Law
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- A federal judge has refused to dismiss portions of federal lawsuits challenging North Carolina's upcoming voter identification requirement, setting up a likely trial early next year. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Schroeder denied the motion from attorneys for the state during a court hearing Oct. 18 in Winston-Salem. The state wrote that the voter ID claims filed in 2013 by civil rights groups, voters and the federal government are moot because the legislature eased the photo identification requirement that begins in 2016. The plaintiffs argued the modified voter ID mandate still threatens to burden black and Hispanic voters, who are less likely to have qualifying IDs. Photo ID is supposed to begin with the March 15 primary.
Tough Kansas Voter ID Laws Trigger Lawsuits
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - Secretary of State Kris Kobach's successful push to require new Kansas voters to document their U.S. citizenship has spawned three lawsuits, including one he pursued against a federal agency in trying to enforce the policy. Kansas is one of only four states that make new voters show a birth certificate, passport or other citizenship papers. The Kansas requirement took effect in 2013, and Kobach has directed county election officials to cancel more than 31,000 incomplete registrations, most from people who've failed to comply with the requirement.
ACLU Loses Bid to Expand Wisconsin Voter IDs
A federal district court on Tuesday refused to expand the kinds of identification voters can use, rejecting the arguments made by a special interest group that aimed to make voting easier for students, veterans and people with out-of-state driver's licenses. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against Wisconsin's voter ID law earlier this year, claiming the law was unconstitutional due to its limitations. The ACLU asked the court Oct. 5 to expand the law to include IDs for veterans, IDs for technical college students and out-of-state driver's licenses. They argued the law arbitrarily excluded those classes of people. District Judge Lynn Adelman rejected the ACLU's arguments in his decision. Adelman explained that a line must be drawn between acceptable and unacceptable forms of ID, otherwise the state would have to create and maintain an infinite list. Adelman believed the logistics of expanding the list of acceptable forms of ID could hinder the state's capability of administering the law, but also conceded the state could have added veteran's IDs to the list. "To be sure, Wisconsin probably could have included veteran's ID on the list ... without significantly increasing its administrative burden," Adelman said in his opinion. "However ... the state had to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable forms of ID somewhere."
Texas: Birth Certificate Lawsuit a Ruse to Validate Foreign ID’s
Attorneys for the state of Texas argued in federal court in Austin on Oct. 2 that a lawsuit joined by dozens of undocumented Texans has nothing to do with their U.S.-born children being denied birth certificates by the state vital statistics unit. Instead, the attorneys claimed, the suit is a ruse to compel the state to accept Mexican consulate-issued identification. "This is more about the legitimacy of the matricula, I'm just throwing that out there," argued Thomas Albright, an assistant attorney general for the state, referring to the contested form of photo identification that Department of State Health Services (DSHS) says it will not accept, and has never accepted, as proof of identity for undocumented parents seeking birth certificates for their American-born kids. Oct. 2 was the first time attorneys have appeared in court over the lawsuit, which was originally filed in May by four undocumented women from the Rio Grande Valley who allege that the state has wrongly denied them access to their children's documents. They allege that in previous years, the state accepted the matricula consular for their now-older children as part of a selection of documents parents could use to prove their relationship. The matricula is a photo ID that the Mexican consulate issues to Mexican nationals living in the United States.
Nevada GOP Activist Files for Voter ID Ballot Measure Petition
CARSON CITY - Conservative activist Sharron Angle wants Nevada voters to decide whether to abolish the state health insurance exchange and require photo identification at the polls. The Republican former assemblywoman and former U.S. Senate candidate filed two petitions last week with the Nevada Secretary of State. Proponents would need to gather more than 55,000 signatures from all over the state to get either measure on the 2016 ballot. Each would need to pass two consecutive elections to become a constitutional amendment. One proposes banning the exchange created as part of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. The other proposes requiring proof of identity before casting a vote, and requiring the government to issue ID cards to those without one.
ACLU Moves to Strike Down Kansas Citizenship Voting Rule
The American Civil Liberties Union and Secretary of State Kris Kobach jockeyed for legal advantage Friday in a court case challenging Kobach's implementation of the state's voter proof-of-citizenship law. Representing Kansas voters who can cast ballots in federal races, but not state and local elections, the ACLU filed a motion for summary judgment that would strike down Kobach's two-tier voting system without a trial. Nearly simultaneously, Kobach filed a motion that would allow him to immediately appeal a judge's ruling that he overstepped his authority by dividing voters into two voting camps, those who registered using a state form and those who registered using a federal form. The case is important because it could let people work around a state law - authored by Kobach - that requires prospective registrants to show documents proving their citizenship before they are granted voting privileges. The proof-of-citizenship requirement is separate from the requirement that voters have to show photo ID when they cast a ballot. While a driver's license is sufficient for Election Day voter ID, the state's voter-registration form requires a higher level of documentation. That can usually be met only with a birth certificate, passport, or special papers issued to foreign-born and tribal citizens. The federal registration form accepts a sworn statement from the voter, signed under penalty of perjury, as proof of citizenship. At Kobach's direction, only voters who can document proof of citizenship are allowed to vote in all federal, state and local elections. Voters who register with the federal form without providing their citizenship papers are only allowed to vote in federal races for president and members of Congress.
Texas Seeks Full Court Rehearing on Voter ID Law
Texas has asked the full bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to rehear civil rights plaintiffs' case against the state's voter ID law after a three-judge panel from the same court ruled that the law discriminates. Because the state's request for a rehearing is pending, and since Texas may also seek a hearing at the U.S. Supreme Court, the Fifth Circuit in a Sept. 2 order rejected civil rights plaintiffs' proposals to have the litigation remanded to the trial court, where a judge could have ordered Texas to immediately start changing how it identifies voters. "We will get those decisions pretty quickly," Rolando Rios, of San Antonio's Law Office of Rolando L. Rios, said about the rulings on the en banc Fifth Circuit and Supreme Court hearings. Rios represents the Texas Association of Hispanic County Judges and County Commissioners, which is an intervening plaintiff in the litigation. But the U.S. Department of Justice, which has sided with the civil rights plaintiffs in the litigation, wants to avoid any wait for Texas to redo its voter ID procedures. To that end, the DOJ also filed on Sept. 2 a motion requesting that the Fifth Circuit enter an injunction directing Texas to accept as sufficient valid voter registration certificates from voters who lack the specific list of documentation required under the law SB-14, which the Fifth Circuit's three-judge panel struck down. Passed in 2011, SB-14 requires voters to show specific government-issued photo identifications. Among the identifications the law allows voters to show: driver's licenses, concealed handgun licenses, U.S. military identifications, U.S. passports or other U.S. citizenship certificates.
Vote Fraud Convictions in Alabama City Spur Call for Resignation
Three Dothan city commissioners are calling for the resignation of District 2 Commissioner Amos Newsome after a third worker from Newsome's most recent commission campaign was convicted of voter fraud. District 1 Commissioner Kevin Dorsey, District 4 Commissioner John Ferguson and District 5 Commissioner Beth Kenward told the Dothan Eagle on Friday that Newsome's presence on the commission could lead to a lack of confidence from voters toward the commission as a whole. Olivia Reynolds, who assisted Newsome's commission campaign in 2013, was convicted this week on 24 counts of felony absentee voter fraud. Lesa Coleman was convicted in April on seven counts of felony absentee voter fraud. Janice Hart pleaded guilty to several counts of misdemeanor absentee voter fraud earlier this year. Three voter fraud charges remain pending against another person, Daniel Webster III.
Fix Sought for Texas Voter ID Law Before Fall Elections
AUSTIN -- The Obama administration and several civil rights groups are urging a federal appeals court to fast-track the process of temporarily fixing Texas' voter ID law in time for the Nov. 3 elections. In court filings Thursday, the Justice Department and civil rights groups asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to allow a lower court to immediately start working on an interim remedy to the law passed in 2011 by the state's Republican-led Legislature. A three-judge panel at the 5th Circuit ruled in part earlier this month that Texas' strict voter ID measure violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The 5th Circuit bounced a portion of the case back to a federal court in Corpus Christi and instructed it to correct the law ahead of the upcoming elections while the rest of the case works through the courts. The 5th Circuit noted the lower court should craft a remedy that would "avoid election eve uncertainties and emergencies." However, the 5th Circuit is set to retain jurisdiction of the case until Sept. 28. The Justice Department and the civil rights groups argue that timeline might not allow for an interim solution to be put in place across the state for early voting, which starts Oct. 19. They've asked the 5th Circuit to allow the federal court in Corpus Christi to come up with a fix earlier.
Kentucky Judge-Executive Hires Man Convicted of Vote Buying
Magoffin County Judge-Executive Charles "Doc" Hardin has hired a man with a felony vote-buying conviction to be an administrative assistant in his office. Randy Salyer was convicted in federal court of buying votes in the November 2010 general election. A judge ordered Salyer to report to prison in January 2012. He was released in July 2013, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Hardin, whose 2014 re-election has been contested in court, announced at a fiscal court meeting Aug. 19 that he had hired Salyer. The decision didn't sit well with some. "It's a slap in the face to everyone in our county and to the judicial system," said Magistrate Matt Wireman. "It's unbelievable." Wireman said he was surprised by the decision. However, Hardin had the authority to hire Salyer without approval from magistrates, Wireman said.