News
Texas Poll Workers Steered GOP Hispanic Voters to Democrat Primary
SAN ANTONIO -- Two election workers at a Southwest Side polling site were chastised this week after Hispanic Republican voters complained the workers attempted to steer them to the Democratic primary. Republican officials said one GOP voter claimed she was told Hispanics are supposed to vote Democrat. The Bexar County Elections Department, responding to a complaint of voter intimidation at Collins Garden Library, said the two election workers serving as greeters were told to stop asking voters to declare their party affiliation in front of other voters.
Primaries Offer First Test of New Voter ID Laws
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In elections that begin this week, voters in 10 states will be required to present photo identification before casting ballots -- the first major test of voter ID laws after years of legal challenges arguing that the measures are designed to suppress voting. The first election is March 4 in Texas, followed by nine other primaries running through early September that will set the ballot for the midterm elections in November, when voters decide competitive races for governor and control of Congress. The primaries will be closely watched by both sides of the voter ID debate, which intensified in 2011, the year after Republicans swept to power in dozens of statehouses.
Biden Links Voter ID Laws to ‘Hatred’
Vice President Biden said new voter ID laws in North Carolina, Alabama and Texas were evidence of "hatred" and "zealotry" during a Black History Month event at the Naval Observatory on Feb. 25. "I thought it was done -- finally, finally done," Biden said of the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court recently struck down. "These guys never go away. Hatred never, never goes away," Biden said. "The zealotry of those who wish to limit the franchise cannot be smothered by reason."
Wisconsin Supreme Court Hears Arguments in Voter ID Case
MADISON - A Wisconsin law requiring voters to show identification at the polls went before the state's highest court Tuesday. The Wisconsin Supreme Court listened to arguments for more than three hours in front of a packed courtroom. Attorneys on both sides of the law faced questions from the court's justices. Justice Pat Roggensack told the state's attorney she's concerned some people have to pay $20 for a birth certificate, which they need to get an ID. "It's still a payment to the state to be able to vote. That bothers me, can you address that?" asked Roggensack. "Since the voter ID law was in place, or was going to be in place, there were some places in Wisconsin that offered free birth certificates," responded Clayton Kawski, an assistant Attorney General for Wisconsin. The law was enacted in 2011. It was in effect for a primary election in February 2012, but it was blocked soon after by a court order. It hasn't been in place since.
Why Dems Are Willing to Flout Election Laws in Texas
National Democrats and liberal activists are taking enormous legal and political risks with the lawless activities in Texas caught on the Project Veritas tapes. But they see Texas as such a strategic prize that they believe it's worth that risk, and that victory must be achieved at any cost. When registering voters, Texas law makes it illegal for a volunteer registrar to "transcribe, copy, or otherwise record a telephone number furnished on a registration application." It specifically provides that you cannot copy the name, address, or phone number. Yet the latest video James O'Keefe has made public, focused primarily on a woman named Jennifer Longoria who is designated as Field Organizer for Battleground Texas, shows them openly saying that when they register voters they copy the phone number into their database, so that they can call those people at a later date.
Justice Dept. Lawyer in Court to Oppose Kansas Citizenship Rule
Justice Department lawyer Bradley Heard was in court on Feb. 12 trying to stop Kansas from ensuring that only citizens register to vote. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, relying on a United States Supreme Court opinion of last year, asked the federal Election Assistance Commission to permit him to ensure that only citizens were registering to vote. The Election Assistance Commission said no, so Mr. Kobach went to federal court. Enter Eric Holder's Justice Department, as usual, opposing election integrity measures. Despite harping about resource concerns (which apparently means that the DOJ can do nothing about corrupted voter rolls), Holder found the time and money to send Bradley Heard to a hearing in Kansas to argue against Kobach's election integrity measures.
The ‘Voting Rights’ Partisan Power Play
In reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision last June, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R., Wis.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) have introduced the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014. The stated purpose is to prevent racial discrimination. But what it would really do is force racial gerrymandering, make race the predominant factor in the election process, and advance the partisan interests of one political party.
NAACP March against Voter Photo ID Requires Marchers to have Photo IDs
North Carolinians marching to protest voter-ID laws had to present a valid photo ID to participate in an NAACP-hosted protest against voter-ID laws in Raleigh on Feb. 8. The central claim among the protesters is that the voter-ID laws disenfranchise certain segments of the voting population, particularly minority voters and poor voters. According to official NAACP flyers passed out at the rally, protesters had to carry the precise kind of ID that they would be expected to present at the voting booth.
Voting Rights Rewind
Never underestimate Congress's ability for racial mischief. In the Jim Crow era Southerners blocked civil-rights progress. Now, 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the liberal goal is to give national politicians more power to play racial politics in a few unfavored states. Democrats and the strange bedfellow of Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner have introduced a bill to revise Section 4(b) of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down last year. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the Act's coverage formula no longer made sense in light of current racial realities, and the new proposal isn't much better. The old formula required nine states and parts of seven others to have all changes to their voting laws precleared by the Justice Department or a federal court. The new formula would reinstate preclearance for Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia for what lawmakers claim is evidence of racial bias in voting laws.
Conservative Super PAC Formed to Defend Voter ID, Election Reforms
With voter-ID laws and other reforms taking center stage, a conservative group said Wednesday it is launching a new super PAC to fund state secretary of state candidates willing to go toe-to-toe with Democrats and defend more rigorous voter roll rules and stiffer election requirements.