Voting rights bills and lawsuits megathread (Updated: April 27th 2020)

[jimrtex]

The idea was to repeal straight-ticket voting to both cause lines (and thus discourage would-be voters) in areas with heavy amounts of Democratic voters, notably African American communities as they were identified to heavily use straight ticket voting. Another idea suggested when this bill was passed was that Republicans wanted this tweak to hopefully give them a leg up in the statewide offices they haven't been able to take yet. I'm not exactly sure how this would have worked, but when Republicans repeal things meant to make voting faster or easier, they generally have partisan politics in mind. This much we know based on the wave of restrictions passed since a black man had the audacity to win a presidential election.

At any rate, good for Michigan.

Straight-ticket was never intended to make voting faster or easier. It was intended to coerce voters to vote a certain way.

Before the Australian (government-printed) ballot was adopted in the late 19th Century, elections were write-in. Voters could write out the names of candidates in advance, and take it the polling place and put it in the ballot box. If they wanted secrecy, they would keep it in their vest pocket. Political parties would print ballots with their candidates printed on it. They might use red or blue print so that observers could see who they were voting for. Instead of lawyers trying to keep candidates or parties off the ballot, parties would use toughs to disrupt distribution of ballots. Voters might be given a free lunch in exchange for taking a ballot. If you had a bunch of ballots you could fold them inside each other and stuff them in the ballot box.

Since elections were still nominally write-in, voters could edit printed ballots, and write the name of an alternative candidate.

When the Australian Ballot was adopted, it was often done by literally piecing the partisan ballots together. You could tear off the section for your favored party, and if you wanted to split your ticket could cut out a particular candidate.

Instead of toughs keeping other parties from distributing their ballots, there were laws that made it hard to get on the ballot, as a party or an independent (it used to be impossible to run as an independent in Michigan).

In Texas, parties were arranged in columns, with offices in rows. Choices were made by crossing off names. if you wanted to vote a straight ticket, you would just draw a vertical line down the column.

Under a straight ticket system, you can still vote for individual candidates. When the Texas legislature was considering eliminating the straight ticket, a longtime Representative recalled being told to be sure to mark the Republican party candidate for every office, because the Democrats would switch votes by marking down-ballot races.

If you decide to vote for individual candidates, and this takes longer, and this makes the line for your neighbors longer, should you be charged with an election law violation? Should this be a misdemeanor or felony? State or federal law or both?

[jimrtex]

==================================================================================
NEW PRELIMINARY TEXAS VOTER ID RULES ISSUED
==================================================================================

http://www.sacurrent.com/the-daily/archives/2016/07/22/federal-judge-lays-out-framework-to-fix-texas-discriminatory-voter-id-law

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

So basically:

1. Anyone without an ID will be able to use their voter registration card
2. State must engage in a meaningful education campaign so voters know the rules
3. Poll workers must be educated on new rules so they don't turn people away.

* New rules/adjustments may be submitted prior to November

Personally I think a voter registration card should have always been acceptable, as it proves you are registered to vote at the very least (not that they can't look your name up either way, but meh)

Finally, the judge is going to decide if this law was made with intent to discriminate, which would make it eligible to be put back on federal preclearance for 10 years. As the article stated, the same judge actually already decided that was racially discriminatory in 2014. I suppose he is going over it again in light of the new rulings.

A voter registration certificate doesn't prove that you are who the card says you are, and it may have been obtained under false pretenses. For example, imagine you are canvassing a neighborhood and find a small bungalow with 20 people registered at it. You mention it to the candidate you are supporting, and he tells you that is where his opponent lives.

Friends and relatives had registered at the address so that they could vote for the candidate. Most people would be unwilling to use an incorrect address on their driver's license to help out a politician. There will be more stringent eligibility tests for things like driver's licenses.

Texas permitted voters to vote with their driver's license for several years before they required it. Most voters preferred it because they carry their driver's license. There is a good chance that you misplaced your certificate, or perhaps it was lost in the mail. Driver's licenses can be scanned which simplifies lookup when you vote.

What will likely happen is the affidavit will show that there are very few would-be voters who don't actually have ID, and even fewer who couldn't obtain ID. The training requirement will ensure that poll workers actually come in for training before the election. Democrat election judges in particular belief they know about the election law because they have been doing it for decades.

The appeals court overturned Judge Ramos finding on intentional discrimination by a 13-2 vote. The two dissenters would have deferred to her as the trier of the evidence. The overwhelming majority said that she considered inappropriate evidence. They also overturned her opinion that the Voter ID requirement was a poll tax.

[jimrtex]

Is there a single example of the above occurring?

What are you specifically referring to?

[jimrtex]

Straight-ticket was never intended to make voting faster or easier. It was intended to coerce voters to vote a certain way.

...

If you decide to vote for individual candidates, and this takes longer, and this makes the line for your neighbors longer, should you be charged with an election law violation? Should this be a misdemeanor or felony? State or federal law or both?

I wasn't saying it was implemented to make voting faster, I said that it was repealed to cause longer lines. Regardless of how it was implemented, straight ticket voting obviously has an ability to make voting faster, particularly for people who already intend to vote one way downballot.

Regarding your questions, I do not believe lawmakers should be allowed to tinker with election regulations / services in any way meant to discourage turnout among any group(s) of people. It's one thing to repeal a regulation because it serves no purpose, or harms elections, but to repeal or institute regulations to reduce turnout among your political opponents is wrong. It doesn't matter how simple the measure(s) seem(s). Specifically, if you repeal a service or institute a restriction with the intent of reducing turnout among a specific race, purely because they vote against you, that's discrimination plain and simple.

Republicans have never made it so clear to me why the federal government should set general voting regulations for all states, including number of polling places, voter registration rules, ID requirements, amount of poll workers, and so on. Time and time again states have shown their inability to run fair elections either out of incompetence or out of sheer corruption / political/racial discrimination.

What do you mean by the "federal government"? Do you think that the President should appoint governors, and that the President and governors should appoint 20% of legislators.

What evidence is there of discriminatory intent in Michigan?

We can probably agree that it is the intent of the Democratic party bosses in Michigan that voters should vote a straight Democratic ticket. I am assuming that you don't believe that the party bosses are indifferent (i.e. a boss says that he could care less what voters do, and that he personally carefully considers the qualifications of the candidates, and it is just coincidence that he has voted for Democrat candidates 100% of the time for the past several decades. But he has been told by certain voters that they just don't have time to consider how they are voting, and insist on the convenience of straight ticket voting.)

Should someone be able to vote for all women candidates, or all white candidates if they want to? Of course. But why should deference be given to one prejudice over another? Why should it be easier and quicker to vote for all Democrats, than all women, or all whites?

What happens if I live in an area where there are voters who go down the ballot and select all women, or all whites. When they come to a name whose race or sex is ambiguous, they ponder, as they try to determine whether Eddie Johnson is a man, and whether he is white or not. He might be "Eddie Bernice" whose parents used an unconventional spelling of Bernard. President Obama who is black, had a white mother whose first name was Stanley, so you can never be sure. What if the longer lines cause me to not vote?

[jimrtex]

Texas district and circuit courts seem to have a habit of slowing down cases regarding voting rights and redistricting, given the sluggish nature of this lawsuit and the still pending redistricting lawsuit over Texas' maps that were already found to be rigged. It has taken the panel basically half a decade and thensome, and they don't expect new maps until 2018. There is pretty much no excuse for this and one should be forgiven for thinking that the judges are purposefully stringing the case out so conservatives can benefit for as long as possible under the current maps. I've yet to hear a satisfactory explanation for such delays yet. There are no viable excuses at this point. Fixing rigged maps does not take half a decade.

In 2011, the district court made their initial ruling. The day after Thanksgiving they released their maps, which just "happened" to draw a boundary one block outside Joaquin Castro's house. Charlie Gonzalez announced that he had decided to not run for re-election in a seat that he or his father had held for the last 52 years, saying he needed to make some money. Castro, who had been planning on running against Lloyd Doggett in a newly created Austin-San Antonio district announced he was switching to the suddenly open seat (implied wink wink ...)

The US Supreme Court tossed the map the map.

The district court then delayed the 2012 primaries why they considered new maps. One hearing was recessed so that the judges could call the DC Court of Appeals who were considering the Section 5 preclearance (Texas was having to simultaneously defend their maps in two different federal courts). The San Antonio judges called another recess to take the return phone call from the judges in Washington. Apparently they were given no hint on what the other court would rule or when they would rule.

The San Antonio court drew a remedial map, including their assumptions about what the Section 5 court would rule. That remedial map imposed by the federal court in 2012, has been used for the 2012 elections, the 2014 elections, and the 2016 elections. In 2013, the Texas legislature adopted the court-imposed plans. So the allegedly unfair plans were remedied by a federal court and used for 3 elections.

In late summer of the 2012 the DC court finally made their ruling, and the San Antonio court decided not to delay the 2012 elections. The DC court's decision was vacated after Shelby County.

So now the San Antonio court is stuck with considering whether they should have evaluated the Section 5 evidence which they didn't consider or would have considered differently, even though Section 5 is no longer in force, but was 5 years ago. They also have to consider whether Texas should be lassoed in to preclearance. They also have to consider the Corpus Christi case which the 5th Circuit has recently rejected in large part. Any decision they make will be appealed to the US Supreme Court, which they can't avoid. They may also have wanted to wait on the Supreme Court's decision in Evenwel.

Executive summary: The court fixed the boundaries before the 2012 election. The plaintiffs are dragging the case out.

[jimrtex]

Regarding straight-ticket voting repeal - Why remove this? What is wrong with people who are going to vote Democratic downballot anyway from being able to check a box? Even more so, why is it so important to get rid of it? In fact, why are Republicans so obsessed with making voting more difficult? It doesn't matter how difficult each little change makes it - Why can't they do things to encourage turnout?

Most States have removed it. Jim Matheson and Charlie Dent introduced a bill in Congress that would require all states to remove it. If your beloved diktat from the top came from Washington, do you think they would require the 42 states without straight ticket voting to institute it, or eliminate it in the 8 states where it still continues?

The straight-ticket option causes confusion, and increases roll off for non-partisan races and ballot propositions. It is hard to implement on voting machines. It is harmful to independent candidates and minor parties.

It is coercive:

Imagine this scenario:

18 YO voter: I've been studying the ballot so I can make an informed decision for every office.

Older relative: You don't want to do that. Don't you know about the Reverend Martin Luther King, Junior and the Selma March? If you fritter your time away considering each race, it will make the lines longer. Think about your Aunt Louise, who has to use a walker and is on oxygen. Do you want to make her stand in line for hours. And think about that no good shiftless Walter Johnson. It is hard enough to get him to show up to vote. If you're in their holding up things, he might just turn around and go home. That would suit The Man fine.



It must be OK to blindly vote for every candidate of one party, because there wouldn't be that option if it wasn't OK. And they even put it first on the ballot.

Just remember, "Two Legs Bad, Four Legs Good".

Executive summary: The court fixed the boundaries before the 2012 election. The plaintiffs are dragging the case out.

I don't really care whose fault it is, jimrtex. It shouldn't take this long. If it does, then something has to change. It's really that simple to me. We shouldn't have people rigging maps to begin with, but if this is how it is going to be, then lawsuits need to be handled much faster.

What is "it" in "It shouldn't take this long"? You don't appear to have a clue, and moreover don't want to have a  clue.

Edit: As for the interim CD map - From some reading I get the impression that the current map is still gerrymandered and still being decided over the courts, right? If that is so, then again, it has taken too long.

The remedial map was imposed by the federal court. It has been used for three election cycles. The state has accepted the map. The plaintiffs associated with the Democratic Party want a do-over.

[jimrtex]

The straight-ticket option causes confusion, and increases roll off for non-partisan races and ballot propositions. It is hard to implement on voting machines. It is harmful to independent candidates and minor parties.

Whatever one may say about the problems with straight ticket voting, this isn't one of them. Even back in the day of mechanical voting machines, the necessary logic to implement it was fairly easy to design and build, tho it was a maintenance hassle, and that was mainly due to the mechanics needed to ensure that only one candidate was selected for each office. Mechanically, an OR gate is simple.  Now that everything is being tabulated electronically, be it by touchpad screen or Scantron sheet, it's pathetically easy to implement

Modern electronic voting machines are expected to give feedback while a voter votes.

In Texas, a voter may override the straight ticket vote on individual races. I have personally overridden the straight ticket on every race, but one, on a ballot.

The voting devices that are used in much of Texas, including Harris, Dallas, and Travis counties, there is a dial wheel used to scroll through the ballot, and a button that is used to select a candidate, a party, or a Yes or No on a ballot proposition.

Once a candidate is selected his name is highlighted.

So let's imagine you select a Green Party straight ticket. You scroll to Green and press the select button. You scroll down to the the presidential race, and decide that you don't want to vote for Jill Stein, or anyone. So you click on Jill Stein, and your vote for Stein is cancelled.

Now let's imagine you select a Green Party straight ticket. You scroll to Green and press the select button. You scroll down to the the presidential race, and decide that you really like Jill Stein, so you click on Stein (a "make sure" vote), and your vote for Stein  is cancelled.

You also don't have to vote the ballot in order. So imagine you have voted for 50 or so races, and decide that you want to vote straight ticket. You scroll back to the top and select a party. How is the rest of the ballot to be interpreted.

[jimrtex]

Again, pathetically easy.  I'll deal with the machines here in South Carolina since I'm familiar with them.  First off, your worry about unintentionally cancelling out a vote for Jill Stein doesn't make much sense.  There should be someway to cancel out a vote if that us what the voter wants, and if they don't want that, the disappearance of the green bordered box with a check mark in it ought to clue the voter about that.  Even if it doesn't, when one goes to cast the ballot, the machines here nag you if you have any races that don't have a vote in them and offers to take you to the first such race.

As for an idiot wasting time to go back and cast a straight ticket at the end, I'm not too terribly worried about his vote, but assuming the machine is configured properly, it'll only override races in which a vote has not been cast directly. (Assuming that's what the law in that state calls for.)

Did you vote for Alvin Greene in the primary?  If not, you may notice things that some voters do not. If you were in Palm Beach County in 2000 would you have been confused by the butterfly ballot? What about Duval County, or the other counties with confusing ballots? Many had worse performance than Palm Beach. What about the Scotland parliamentary elections in 2007?

Maybe the idiot who went back and voted straight ticket saw when he had completed the ballot on the review screen:

Straight Ticket: No Vote

You can select any race on the review screen and you will be sent back to the race in question.

Maybe the idiot thought that the computer was "nagging" him.


There is a way to cancel a vote on the voting machines.

On a paper ballot there is no way to unvote a race than to mark instructions on the ballot. Let's say that you are voting straight ticket Democrat, but the unoppose Democrat candidate for sheriff is your sister's ex-husband. You don't want to vote for him. All you can do is write on the ballot "No vote for this S.O.B." and hope your instructions are understood.

The voting machines have three controls. One is only used when you have finished voting. The other two are (1) the scroll wheel to position you on the ballot, (2) a select button.

The select works as both a select and de-select.

It is programmed to work like this:

If you have selected one candidate, and then select another, it switches your vote, rather than permitting you to overvote and then explicitly requiring you to reject the candidate after you overvote, or to deselect a candidate before selecting another.

But if you simply want to deselect a candidate you select them again. It works just like most computer GUIs would.

The Democrats sued over a close race in Dallas County, where they claimed that some votes for a legislative candidate had been "erased" by confusing voting machines. The federal court eventually ruled that the voting machines were fine and the election was fine, but that county should have precleared the machines under Section  5. The machines had been precleared two or three times, but supposedly not for that particular interaction explicitly.

One of the plaintiffs lawyers lived in Ellis County, and there was a dispute whether he actually did work on  the case (when fees were being awarded). Meanwhile, the lawyer moved to Dallas County, where he was elected county judge, likely due to straight ticket voting.

Dallas County has an election administrator. The default in Texas is for the county clerk to conduct elections and the county assessor/collector to conduct registration (vestigial role from when they collected the poll tax). Both offices are partisan. But a county may have an independent election administrator, and Dallas County had one. By all accounts he was quite competent and scrupulously neutral - going so far as to not register to vote.

He appealed the lower court preclearance decision to the Supreme Court. There is a 5-member body that can hire and fire the election administrator. It is comprised of the county judge, the county clerk, the county tax assessor collector, and the county chairs of parties that conduct primaries (eg Democrat and Republican).

The county judge called a meeting (this body had not met since the election administrator had been chosen more than a dozen years previously, and does not have an ongoing oversight role). One of the county chairs called the election administrator, and asked what the meeting was about. The administrator hadn't heard about it - the county judge would later claim it was to do a job review, but typically the person who is being reviewed participates in the process.

The election administrator tried to find out what was up, and somehow ended up in a discussion with John Wiley Price a county commissioner and not incidentally, black. The election administrator offered to resign after completing an upcoming local election (a month or to away). Price went away and came back, and said that the county judge thought he should go immediately. It is unclear (in a legal sense) why Price was involved at all.

A public hearing attended by 100s of election judges, ended up with Price shouting, "All of you are white. Go to hell" which resulted in the hearing being terminated. Eventually, the five-member body met and selected the chief deputy election administrator, who was black, to be the election administrator, but to be more responsive to Price.

Price is currently under federal indictment, but his trial keeps getting pushed back, because the defense needs to wade through the 9.2 terabytes of evidence that the government turned over.

[jimrtex]

We seem to be arguing two separate things. I'm arguing that it is easy to set up the machines to do the right thing. You're arguing that it's easy to set them up to do the wrong thing. This is one of those cases where we're both right. 😈

Straight-ticket voting is never the right thing.

[jimrtex]

==================================================================================
Federal judge orders North Carolina legislative maps redrawn by March, special election in in Nov 2017
==================================================================================

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/judges-order-legislative-maps-march-special-election-43860290

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

If this order is upheld on appeal to the USSC, it will give Democrats another chance to weaken the Republican supermajority in the legislature only 1 year from now instead of 2. This time it will be one year into Trump's presidency, where, if he finds himself embroiled in scandal and/or remains deeply unpopular, might have a negative effect on Republicans in this election.

The story is not accurate. Only 19 House districts and 9 Senate districts have to be redrawn along with any adjacent districts that are modified. I suspect it will be around 40 to 60.

North Carolina requires legislative districts to follow county lines, but OMOV decisions require county lines to to be crossed. The North Carolina courts have harmonized the two by requiring grouping of counties equivalent to a whole number of legislators, then drawing districts.

When the legislature drew the districts, they disregarded county lines in trying to maintain majority-black districts in order to get Section 5 preclearance from the Obama administration, which they did. The district court ruled that you can't violate the Constitution simply to placate an out-of-control partisan bureaucrat in Washington.

The districts are mostly in the eastern part of the state. The furthest west are in Mecklenburg and Guilford counties, where the house districts are entirely contained in a single county.

The legislature is not going to completely draw a new map. They will redo the majority black districts, which will still end up in the mid-40s. It may make an adjacent district more Democratic, but few if any districts will be flipped. Perhaps a black candidate may be tempted to run in the Democratic primary. If they win, then a Republican might have a chance in the general election.

[jimrtex]

And California approved same day registration 5 years ago, but never implemented it. Where is it? Alex Padilla is a joke.

You're right - it is a joke that it took this long. The thing is, that law (and others like automatic voter registration in '15) were passed with a provision that they only come into effect the year after the statewide voting system VoteCal is finished/comes online, and being a govt IT project which naturally is mismanaged to death, it literally took about 10+ years to get it done. Alex Padilla only took office in 2015, and the system was finished in early 2016. It's not even remotely his fault. VoteCal and SDR were passed/started long before he took office. If anything you might say he got it back on track.

The federal requirement was for the system to be operation in 2006. The USDOJ and the California SOS entered into a consent decree that permitted California to get a non-interactive database running by 2006 (counties would upload their records periodically - this might have even been daily).

This was the schedule for the 10-year late implementation. VoteCal Schedule. If anything, they started slipping after he took office. This likely was not his fault, but neither should he get credit for completing the project.

Alex Padilla is a political hack, who was term-limited from the senate, and needed a place to hang out until another position opens up.

At the single SOS debate before the primary. One candidate said that SOS was his dream job. Alex Padilla said that voters should vote for him so he could help Diane Feinstein implement the $15 wage!

Jfern is too kind to Padilla.

[jimrtex]

North Carolina special elections for redrawn districts in 2017 on hold per SCOTUS order

==================================================================================
Federal judge orders North Carolina legislative maps redrawn by March, special election in in Nov 2017
==================================================================================

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/judges-order-legislative-maps-march-special-election-43860290

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

If this order is upheld on appeal to the USSC, it will give Democrats another chance to weaken the Republican supermajority in the legislature only 1 year from now instead of 2. This time it will be one year into Trump's presidency, where, if he finds himself embroiled in scandal and/or remains deeply unpopular, might have a negative effect on Republicans in this election.

Further, given that the court is having the legislature redraw it (aka the legislature that rigged the maps in the first place), the plaintiffs may be able to file another lawsuit if the GOP tries to maintain equally awful districts.

Also, and I'm not sure if this would idea would work, but since the map is being redrawn, if the legislature continues to gerrymander in their favor, challengers may be able to bring a new lawsuit in state court, but this time under the new 4-3 Democratic State Supreme Court majority (as per Morgan's successful judicial election). I'd like to think that if this worked, they could finally force court-drawn non-partisan maps by 2018. That could open up a possible chance to take back one of the legislature chambers in time for the next round of redistricting in 2021-2022.

If anyone has any thoughts on that last idea, feel free to weigh in!

SCOTUS has issued a temporary stay on the 4th circuit's order for 2017 NC special elections. I'm not sure if this means NC doesn't have to redraw the map, or just that it has to by 2018 instead of March 2017.

It's possible this gets resolved in time for the NC special elections to still occur this year.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/011017zr_k5gm.pdf

The NC congressional case is under consideration by the SCOTUS (the hearing was last December). If the SCOTUS determines that the district court got that wrong, they may want to look at the NC legislative case.

The legislative districts were upheld by the NC Supreme Court, which had the benefit of the SCOTUS decision in the Alabama case. Technically, there is not a split since the federal court overrules the state court, but the SCOTUS may nonetheless want to consider why two courts came to different conclusions.

In addition, the federal court acted like a panel of martinets in ordering new elections so soon.

[jimrtex]

Except of course I assume the provision COMPLETELY unrelated to partisanship about not allowing student IDs as a valid form of picture ID remains?

Schools typically do not validate identity, residence, citizenship, or age.

[jimrtex]

Federal judges rule Alabama must redraw legislative districts

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Interesting to note that Circuit Judge Bill Pryor, a possible favorite for the open seat, voted in favor of the redraw.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Good to know that if he's chosen he wouldn't be horrendous on redistricting cases.

A second order indicated that there is no intent to require new boundaries before 2018. It is possible that they delayed issuing their ruling until after the election, and when Loretta Lynch was on her way outside the door.

This places the Alabama district court in conflict with the North Carolina district court.

When the SCOTUS heard the case, there was a debate between the Justices about whether the plaintiffs had actually cited any specific districts, as the conservative justices were suggesting that the liberal justices were writing the brief for the plaintiffs on the fly. The majority opinion went out of its way to list specific instances in the brief where specific districts had mentioned.

Part of the problem was the plaintiffs had put a lot of emphasis on the fact that the legislature had set a 1% deviation limit, whereas the Democrats in the 2000 era had set a 5% limit and then drew most majority black districts-majority at 4% or more below the quota. By 2010 many black-majority  districts were more than 20% below the quota. The SCOTUS was embarrassed to question the plaintiffs about their claim of discriminating by making districts equal in population, and ruled that of course the legislature was required to equalize population, and they could not use that as justification for drawing the districts.

On remand, the district court let the plaintiff's itemize the problems with each district (they challenged 36 districts). The court ruled that 14 districts had discriminatory effect by too aggressively seeking black votes, but two were OK because the representatives from the district had testified in legislative hearings that they needed 62%-black districts to be sure of being elected.

The dissent said that 24 districts were discriminatory, and the majority opinion hisses at the "dissent" and the "dissenting judge" dozens of times.

It will be interesting to see if the plaintiffs appeal the decision. If the SCOTUS takes the case, they will have to take the North Carolina legislative case.

[jimrtex]

Except of course I assume the provision COMPLETELY unrelated to partisanship about not allowing student IDs as a valid form of picture ID remains?

Schools typically do not validate identity, residence, citizenship, or age.

state schools?

In Texas it is illegal for public schools to inquire about citizenship because it might be discriminatory.

[jimrtex]

In Texas it is illegal for public schools to inquire about citizenship because it might be discriminatory.

I'm guessing they don't want the children of undocumented immigrants, whether undocumented themselves or not, to be kept out of school by parents afraid of being exposed.

See Plyler v Doe

[jimrtex]

The Supreme Court will hear a case next term challenging Ohio’s policy of removing inactive voters from the registration rolls: http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/335595-supreme-court-to-hear-ohio-voter-purge-case

The problem is how Ohio implements it. Federal law is you can only remove a voter from the voting rolls for cause - they're dead; they've moved; been convicted of a felony; been declared mentally incompetent. There has to be proof - which there generally is in the case of death, felony conviction, or mental incompetence.

When someone moves, there is not generally proof that they have moved, even if they were evicted, someone saw them move, AND the apartment burnt down. If the voter registers elsewhere in the state, they can be removed. Or if you can make contact with a voter and they confirm they have moved, they can be removed.

Federal law requires an attempt to contact the voter by mail to fail, and that they are then classified as an "inactive voter" for two federal election their registration may be purged. If they show up to vote, they can (no provisional vote is required), and they are also removed from the inactive list.

The term "inactive voter" causes confusion, since it implies someone who just doesn't bother voting very often (e.g a 45 YO whose first vote was cast for Obama in 2008, or Trump in 2016). But so long as they keep receiving mail at their voting residence, they are fine to not vote for the next 40 years. Some states exclude "inactive voters" from the calculation of signatures needed for petitions, reasoning that you shouldn't have to get X% of signatures from voters who have probably moved, or alternatively X+% from voters who appear not to have moved.

Anyhow, Ohio appears to mail out a notice to voters who have not voted in a federal election, and if that is returned as undeliverable, the skipped election counts as the first missed election.

The case is not a constitutional issue at all, but an interpretation of a federal statute.

As a practical matter, it may not matter much. If you didn't vote in 2016, were sent a postcard asking whether you still lived at that address, and it was returned as non-deliverables, and don't vote in 2018; you are pretty unlikely to show up to vote in 2020.

[jimrtex]

Also there are probably 5 votes now to uphold the legality of partisan gerrymanders, which sucks.

Why do you say that?

The federal district court accepted the replacement non-racial maps drawn by the legislature, and which were used for the 2016 election. There are court challenges to those maps, but they were not an issue before the SCOTUS. All the SCOTUS said was that the maps which were no longer in use were unconstitutional.

[jimrtex]

==================================================================================
Abbott signs relaxed voter ID, end of straight-party voting into law
==================================================================================

http://www.statesman.com/news/abbott-signs-voter-end-straight-party-voting-into-law/5vb95W3p0406a5mRgysEyL/

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Honestly, that is a voter ID bill I could get behind, save for the absurd felony provision.

It tracks the TRO that Texas operated under in 2016. The 5th Circuit has ruled that Photo ID is OK, but that some people have a hard time getting a Photo ID, and that this has a discriminatory effect since black and Hispanic voters are less likely to have such an ID.

The main differences for actual photo ID is that an expired ID is valid for four years after it expired, and for those over age 70 for life.

The reasonable impediment declaration is only for those without a photo ID, and have a reasonable claim why they don't have one. In the 2016 election, about 3000 voters completed the declaration and were permitted to vote.

Felony prosecution would be most likely for someone who showed up to vote, said they were "Virginia" and showed a utility bill they got while dumpster diving.

[jimrtex]

The Supreme Court will hear a case next term challenging Ohio’s policy of removing inactive voters from the registration rolls: http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/335595-supreme-court-to-hear-ohio-voter-purge-case

The problem is how Ohio implements it. Federal law is you can only remove a voter from the voting rolls for cause - they're dead; they've moved; been convicted of a felony; been declared mentally incompetent. There has to be proof - which there generally is in the case of death, felony conviction, or mental incompetence.

When someone moves, there is not generally proof that they have moved, even if they were evicted, someone saw them move, AND the apartment burnt down. If the voter registers elsewhere in the state, they can be removed. Or if you can make contact with a voter and they confirm they have moved, they can be removed.

Federal law requires an attempt to contact the voter by mail to fail, and that they are then classified as an "inactive voter" for two federal election their registration may be purged. If they show up to vote, they can (no provisional vote is required), and they are also removed from the inactive list.

The term "inactive voter" causes confusion, since it implies someone who just doesn't bother voting very often (e.g a 45 YO whose first vote was cast for Obama in 2008, or Trump in 2016). But so long as they keep receiving mail at their voting residence, they are fine to not vote for the next 40 years. Some states exclude "inactive voters" from the calculation of signatures needed for petitions, reasoning that you shouldn't have to get X% of signatures from voters who have probably moved, or alternatively X+% from voters who appear not to have moved.

Anyhow, Ohio appears to mail out a notice to voters who have not voted in a federal election, and if that is returned as undeliverable, the skipped election counts as the first missed election.

The case is not a constitutional issue at all, but an interpretation of a federal statute.

As a practical matter, it may not matter much. If you didn't vote in 2016, were sent a postcard asking whether you still lived at that address, and it was returned as non-deliverables, and don't vote in 2018; you are pretty unlikely to show up to vote in 2020.

A layman like me would assume a finding for the plaintiffs in this case, then.

I messed up on what Ohio was doing.

They were using the failure to vote in a two-year period (where "voting" could also include activities such as updating a voting address) as the trigger to attempt to contact the voter. It was only when they failed to respond AND then did not vote for two federal elections that their registration was cancelled.

The federal district court sided with Ohio, the 6th Circuit overturned the decision on a 2:1 decision, and that is what Ohio is appealing.

The 6th Circuit construed federal law narrowly, that a voter can't be purged for not voting; even though that same paragraph has an exception saying that a voter can be purged for not voting in conjunction with the address confirmation process - which is mandated by federal law.

Georgia has a similar process to Ohio, and it has been upheld, so there is now a live conflict between two different circuits.

The complaint also said the confirmation notice did not:

(1) Tell the voter that his registration would be cancelled if he failed to respond or re-register AND didn't vote in two federal elections, instead it said it might be cancelled.
(2) Didn't state a time period for responding;
(3) And didn't tell persons who moved to another state how they continue to be eligible to vote.

The SOS changed the form with respect to the first two, and the district court accepted that mooted the legal issue. The 6th Circuit disagreed, saying that the SOS might change the form again. The 6th Circuit agreed that Ohio had failed to tell voters who had moved to other states, even Michigan, how they might continue to be eligible to vote.

[jimrtex]

I'm not sure that McCormick understands the workings of AVR. There seems to be an assumption that the voter is automatically registered and can do nothing abut it. That's not how AVR works, and in many ways it just extends the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (Motor Voter). The difference is that under the Motor Voter law the voter must opt in, and under AVR the voter opts out. Either way the voter has final control about their registration status.

In Oregon, prospective new voters are sent a notice. To opt out they have to return the card within a short period of time. They can also return the card to choose a party.

If someone returns the card after the deadline, their wishes are honored.

Most of the recipients do nothing, and party registration is plummeting. When the program started in 2016 they would send a notice immediately after they had had contact with the DMV. They also had a secondary program, sending notices to those who had contact in 2014 and 2015 but were not registered. A larger share of these were returned saying they did not want to be registered. Presumably, some of these had been asked in 2014-2015 and had said NO, and now the government was attempting to force them to register.

So what is happening is the people who would have said Yes, are getting a form that says you don't have to do anything, so they don't, and if they had been given the form, they might have picked a party. Those who are indifferent are being registered, but they are unlikely to vote.'

They could make it Opt-in by simply requiring the card to be returned. If there is no response, they could send a second notice, or send someone out in person.

[jimrtex]

Those Latino wait times are shocking. 10% of Latinos are half an hour away from a polling station and 11% wait half an hour in line? That's with the fact that Latino turnout is awful.

I can't even imagine waiting in line more than 10 minutes to vote, quite frankly.

It would be interesting to see if the respondents could indicate on a map where their polling place is and how they would travel there.

[jimrtex]

https://twitter.com/AriBerman/status/1049778552013541376

SCOTUS rules 6-2 to essentially disenfranchise Native Americans in North Dakota, and the fact that can't be said to be hyperbole says a lot.

Do those IDs include a picture and address?  I feel like there’s probably more to this than meets the eye (i.e. some sort of legitimate and important legal basis for this decision) since it was a 6-2 decision.  Some of these guys can be political hacks and I’d argue Roberts is, if not an outright racist, at least someone who is dangerously out-of-touch with and unempathetic about the challenges facing minorities in general and African-Americans in particular due to his own personal prejudices which were very clearly manifested during his time at the Justice Department during the Reagan administration.  That said, these folks are brilliant lawyers and even with the more activist Justices like Ginsberg, Kennedy (before his retirement), post-Bush v. Gore Scalia, etc, I’ll sometimes read decisions I hate for ideological reasons (ex: upholding Trump’s de facto Muslim ban) and find that there was actually a very strong constitutional basis for the court’s decision (as opposed to something like McCutcheon v. FEC or D.C. v. Heller which were simply shameless judicial activism).

North Dakota does not have voter registration. How can you tell which precinct someone lives in?

[jimrtex]

At a press conference this morning, a coalition of Democratic activists called out Dem Sec of State White for failing to comply with IL AVR. The current level of implementation means that the opt-out portions of AVR won't be ready for the Chicago and other municipal elections next Feb and Apr.

What a bum! I don't understand, is this just govt incompetence in setting up a new system, or did he not want to do it the way it was intended? Because those statements look like he didn't want to actually do AVR, as he seems to acknowledge that what is implemented right now is AVR to him.

The California DMV registered 1500 non-citizens under its AVR scheme.

[jimrtex]

The California DMV registered 1500 non-citizens under its AVR scheme.

"scheme"

n. a large-scale systematic plan or arrangement for attaining some particular object or putting a particular idea into effect