Civil & Human Rights

GOP ramps up its war on voting

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Zach Roth at MSNBC reports With eye on 2014, GOP ramps up war on voting:

Working ballot by ballot, county by county, the Republican Party is attempting to alter voting laws in the biggest and most important swing states in the country in hopes of carving out a sweeping electoral advantage for years to come.

Changes already on the books or in bills before state legislatures would make voting harder, create longer lines, and threaten to disenfranchise millions of voters from Ohio to Florida, Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, Georgia to Arizona and Texas.

Efforts underway include moving election days, ending early voting and forcing strict new voter ID laws. The results could significantly cut voter turnout in states where, historically, low participation has benefited Republicans.

In the 10 months since President Obama created a bipartisan panel to address voting difficulties, 90 restrictive voting bills have been introduced in 33 states. So far, nine have become law, according to a recent comprehensive roundup by the Brennan Center for Justice – but others are moving quickly through statehouses.

“We are continuing to see laws that appear to be aimed at making it more difficult to vote—for no good reason,” Daniel Tokaji, an election law expert at Ohio State University, said in an interview.

Legal challenges filed against Kansas, Arizona ‘two-tier’ voting system

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Eric Lach at Talking Points Memo reports Dual Attacks Take On Voting Restriction Efforts In Arizona, Kansas:

Just weeks after Kansas and Arizona made clear their intentions to move ahead with two-tier voting systems, legal efforts are being mounted to fight those plans.

On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in Kansas directly challenging the state's two-tier system, where voters who show no proof of citizenship would be allowed only to vote in federal elections, not state or local elections. At the same time, the Brennan Center for Justice and the League of Women Voters of the United States teamed up to join the ongoing federal case that prompted Kansas and Arizona to start flirting with two tiers in the first place.

The ACLU case is straightforward. Filed in the Third Judicial Circuit in Topeka, Kan., the complaint argues that two-tier voting "divides registered voters in Kansas into two separate and unequal classes, with vastly different rights and privileges." According to USA Today, nearly 18,000 voters in Kansas who registered for the first time this year can vote in federal elections but not in state or local ones because they have not submitted citizenship documents.

"It all comes back to voters' equality," the ACLU's Molly Rugg wrote in a blog post on Thursday. "Kansas cannot treat equally qualified voters unequally on the whim of the Secretary of State. If you are qualified to vote in the presidential election, you are certainly qualified to vote in Kobach's re-election bid next year."

In both Kansas and Arizona, plans for two-tier systems began in the wake of Supreme Court's June ruling in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council, the legal battle over Arizona's 2004 voter identification law. While the Supreme Court blocked the law, both Arizona and Kansas have focused on the wiggle-room the court left them. In August, the two states joined together to sue the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the agency which maintains the federal voter registration form, in an attempt to force the agency to add proof-of-citizenship language to the state-specific instructions on the federal form. (Each state has state-specific instructions on the federal form.) And in the meantime, officials in both states made preparations for two-tiered systems.

Abortion politics in the U.S. Supreme Court

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

A couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed as “improvidently granted” the case of Cline  v. Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice (docket 12-1094), an appeal from the state of Oklahoma to  revive a law that restricts doctors’ use of drugs rather than surgery to perform an abortion with the medication RU-486 and others, struck down by the federal courts.

Uterus-stateAround the same time, Planned Parenthood of Texas applied for an order setting aside the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals order permitting the Texas law requiring abortion practitioners to have admitting privilieges at a nearby hospital before they may perform abortions at a clinic or in a doctor’s office. Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas Surgical Health Services v. Abbott (13A452).

In a 5-4 decision along ideological lines, the Court declined on Tuesday to set aside the Fifth Circuit Court order. Lyle Denniston at Scotusblog.com reports, Texas abortion law left in effect:

Splitting five to four, the Supreme Court late Tuesday afternoon refused to block a Texas abortion law that critics say is forcing the closing of one-third of all clinics in the state.  The Court had been studying the issue for the past week.  The majority said that the challengers had not met the requirement for setting aside a federal appeals court’s order permitting the law to take effect on October 31.

The majority specifically included Justices Antonin Scalia, who wrote separately in a concurring opinion joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Clarence Thomas.  But Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy presumably voted with those three, because it would have taken five votes to act definitively on the plea by doctors and clinics when there were four Justices who wanted to block the law.

The specific order denying the application (13A452) was unsigned.  Both Justice Scalia’s opinion and that of the dissenters referred to the result as the action of “the Court.”

Update on status of marriage equality cases befor the Ninth Circuit

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Now that the state of Hawaii has enacted marriage equality, there is a change of status in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals cases from Hawaii (Jackson v. Abercrombie) and Nevada (Sevcik v. Sandoval), which the court had scheduled on a parallel track for briefing. Time extensions sought at Ninth Circuit for filing briefs in Nevada, Hawaii marriage equality cases:

EqualThe challenge to Hawaii’s same-sex marriage ban (Jackson v. Abercrombie) was appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals around the same time as the similar challenge in Nevada (Sevcik v. Sandoval). In both cases, the district court judges issued rulings against same-sex couples, and the Ninth Circuit initially put the cases on a parallel track, with similar briefing schedules. With Hawaii’s state legislature taking up a marriage equality bill, the plaintiffs in Jackson asked the appeals court for an extension of time. Governor Abercrombie filed his opening brief last month.

The plaintiffs in the Hawaii case have filed a new request for an extension of time to file their opening brief: from November 22 to December 22. The new unopposed request comes because, as the filing states, “the new [marriage equality] law will take effect on December 2, 2013,” and unless the law is somehow not put into effect, “the current appeal will likely be rendered moot.”

(Update) Wisconsin voter I.D. trial concluded, decision pending

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Last week the voter I.D. trial in Wisconsin federal district court concluded. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, Trial of two challenges to Wisconsin's voter ID law concludes:

The plaintiffs showed that tens to hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin residents lack one of the qualifying IDs, and many also lack the documents required to get the free ID the state supplies for voting — usually a birth certificate.

The witnesses detailed how they sometimes had to travel to other states to try to get certificates. Some voters, born in the South decades ago, never had formal birth certificates. In Wisconsin, the Vital Records division sometimes required a photo ID to get a birth certificate, a kind of Catch 22.

As evidence that the law was providing ways for everyone to vote, [Assistant Attorney General Clayton] Kawski noted that since Wisconsin began offering its free ID service, more than 217,000 have been issued, and in Milwaukee County mostly to minorities.

But plaintiffs' counsel argued that the numbers prove the disparity, that far fewer minorities have driver's licenses, passports or the other limited forms of ID that would allow someone to vote.

[John] Ulin compared the process to so-called grandfather clauses in the Jim Crow South that spared most white voters from onerous requirements meant to keep blacks from polls. Residents who have had driver's licenses probably got them, and continually renew them, without ever having to show a birth certificate, Ulin said, while minorities seeking photo ID for the first time must present one.