Category Archives: The Voting Wars

2-2 tie on whether to refer to prosecutors.

Important report from Hamilton County, Ohio.

See also Second Person Pleads Guilty to Illegal Voting.

Stateline:

Republicans several years ago seized the upper hand in the so-called “voting wars” by pushing voter ID and other measures that created new voting restrictions. But now Democrats across the country are fighting back.

See here.

Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

Voter ID was just the beginning.

A trio of bills aimed at overhauling access to the ballot box in Pennsylvania will get a hearing on Thursday, when the Senate Democratic Policy Committee meets in the Allegheny County Courthouse, Downtown, at 10 a.m.

The bills would allow voters to cast ballots up to 15 days before Election Day; vote absentee without giving an excuse; and register on the same day as voting.

TPM: “Ken Bennett, the Secretary of State of Arizona, receives a $70,000 annual salary. But he also, it turns out, receives $2,000 a month for his work as a board member of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, a for-profit company founded by a one of the key people behind the tea party group FreedomWorks.”

A ChapinBlog.

Plunderbund blogs.

NYT reports.

Gannett:

Florida election supervisors will be allowed to restore early voting up to 14 days — including the last Sunday before Election Day — and increase the kinds of locations sanctioned for early-voting, under a bill passed by the Legislature in its final hours of session Friday.HB 7013 reverses much of the changes by the Republican-led Legislature in 2011 that limited early voting down to eight days. At the time, proponents said the move was intended to reduce voter fraud, but later was acknowledged by some party leaders as a way to dampen Democratic turnout in the wake of President Barack Obama’s victory. The result was long lines on Election Day last year in large, urban counties such as Miami-Dade. Those voting problems, studies showed, disproportionately impacted minorities, registered Democrats and no-party affiliated voters.

Reid Wilson writes.

Miami Herald:

Embarrassed by an elections meltdown, lawmakers headed to the Florida Capitol this year with a pledge to undo a law that helped lead to long lines, angry voters and jeers about “Flori-duh.”

But the elections clean-up bill that the House passed on the very first day of the legislative session has yet to pass the Legislature as the last day dawns.

Lawmakers overwhelmingly support the plan to reverse a 2011 election law by expanding the number of early voting sites and days. The bill also gives people a chance to correct an absentee ballot they forgot to sign and would make it easier to prosecute people caught with multiple absentee ballots.

But there’s a major hang-up between the House and Senate: a plan to punish election supervisors deemed ineffective and “noncompliant” with the state’s election code.

This item appears at the Washington Free Beacon.

Watch.

Denver Post: “Republicans, arguing the bill is being ‘crammed’ through the legislature, asked that the 120-plus page bill be read in its entirety, taking up more than two hours of debate time.”

Colorado now ground zero in the voting wars.

Yahoo! News reports.

Brendan Fischer ponders.  I explored this potential for backlash last August in chapter 3 of The Voting Wars.

McClatchy:

Donetta Davidson and Joan Fitz-Gerald have writen this oped in the Denver Post.

The Denver Post reports. AP’s @IvanJourno: “‘Confirms’ is a stretch.”

Press release: “Today, Reps. Steve Israel (D-NY) and Louise Slaughter (D-NY) announced legislation to move Election Day from the first Tuesday in November to the first full weekend, thereby making it more convenient for voters and increasing voter turnout.”

Politifact:

Florida lawmakers are poised to pass voting law changes after being mocked for long lines and delayed results during the 2012 presidential election.

But in the waning days of the legislative session, Senate Democrats are criticizing the plan as not going far enough to address the problems at the polls last year.

“This bill mandates only two things that will address concerns from the last election,” wrote Sen. Chris Smith, the Senate Democratic leader from Fort Lauderdale, in a column in the Sun-Sentinel April 21. “It allows persons to correct an absentee ballot if they did not sign it and requires an extra two hours a day for early voting. Everything else in this bill is discretionary. Under SB 600, Broward, Dade, Palm Beach, Duval, Orange, Hillsborough, Jackson, Franklin, Dixie and all the rest of our 67 counties can do exactly what they did in 2012, with the exception of just two more hours per day for early voting. Nothing else is mandated. Nothing else is changed.”

The column left readers with the impression that the bill changed little for the better. Smith called it “an opportunity lost.”

Democrats and Republicans are split on some provisions of the bill, so there are varying perspectives as to what “concerns” came up after the last election. We wanted to fact-check Smith’s claim that the election bill “allows persons to correct an absentee ballot if they did not sign it and requires an extra two hours a day for early voting. Everything else in this bill is discretionary.”

Brennan Center blog post.

Trevor Potter: The best hope for reform is with registration reforms at the state level, says the lawyer for John McCain’s 2008 campaign and Stephen Colbert’s super PAC.