Courts & Law

Pennsylvania Supreme Court to hear voter ID case this Thursday

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The suprising, and wrongly decided Pennsylvania superior court decision on voter ID, will go before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court this Thursday. Voter ID law set for review by state Supreme Court | PennLive.com:

Pennsylvania will take its place as a battleground state on a different political front this week as supporters and opponents argue the validity of the state’s new voter ID law before the state Supreme Court.

Oral arguments are scheduled for Thursday in Philadelphia. They will be televised live on Pennsylvania Cable Network at 9:30 a.m.

The six-member court — evenly split between Democrats and Republicans — will be tasked with reviewing Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson’s August ruling that permitted Pennsylvania’s new voter ID law to be implemented for the Nov. 6 election. If the justices are deadlocked, Simpson’s decisions will stand.

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Plaintiffs in this case say the state, as of Tuesday, had issued nearly 7,000 nondriver’s license photo ID cards since March, when the law was enacted. That proves their point that with at least 100,000 voters needing IDs, there’s strong evidence that “you are going to have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, without ID on Election Day,” said Witold Walczak, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania’s legal director.

Retired Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Stanley Feldman to speak against Prop. 115

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

GavelIf you are a citizen who is concerned about the independence of the judiciary and attempts by extremists to undermine the Judicial Merit Selection System and to politicize the selection of judges in Arizona, you will want to attend the Pima County Democratic Party Nucleus Club meeting this Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at the Viscount Suite Hotel, 4855 E. Broadway Blvd. in Tucson.

The featured speaker is retired Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Stanley Feldman, who will speak against Prop. 115 on the topic: ”Is our judicial system becoming over-politicized?”

I posted about Chief Justice Feldman's opposition to Prop. 115 earlier this year when it was still working its way through the judiciary committees of the Legislature. Arizona's Judicial Merit Selection System Threatened.

Prop. 115 represents an act of craven cowardice by the State Bar of Arizona, the Arizona Judges Association, and the Arizona Judicial Council who caved under threats from extremists like Cathi Herrod of the Center for Arizona Policy and Tea-Publicans in the Legislature who wanted to put the full repeal of the Judicial Merit Selection Sytem on the ballot in November.

This so-called "great compromise" is in reality a "great capitulation." It should result in the replacement of the board members of the State Bar of Arizona, the Arizona Judges Association, and the Arizona Judicial Council for such cowardice in failing to stand up to extremism. This is what lawyers and judges are supposed to do – we are the last line of defense. I am ashamed for my profession.

The Arizona Republic reports Proposition would give Arizona governor more power in judge selection:

A ballot proposition going before Arizona voters this fall would, if approved, give the governor more power and discretion in the process of selecting judges in large counties.

Maricopa County Superior Court orders ‘Top Two Primary’ back onto ballot

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports, Court says “Top Two” should be on November ballot:

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled today that an initiative
to overhaul the state’s primary system has enough valid signatures to
go on the November ballot.

Judge John Rea found that 577 signatures earlier disqualified by the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office were actually valid.

The “Top Two’’ initiative had been disqualified by the Secretary of State’s Office because of a lack of valid signatures.

Proponents of the measure, known officially as the “Open
Elections/Open Government Act,” tracked down many of the people who had
signed the petitions and demonstrated that their signatures were
legitimate.

That changed the invalidity rate in a sample that had been used to
reject the initiative. As a result, Rea concluded that the initiative
actually exceeded the number of required valid signatures to put the
initiative on the ballot by more than 6,000.

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Rea also ordered election officials to include the initiative in the
publicity pamphlet for the November ballot, which describes proposals to
be decided in the general election.

He said advocates for the “Open Elections/Open Government Act”
persuasively demonstrated that the 577 signatures disqualified by the
Maricopa County Recorder were valid.

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In his ruling, Rea noted that some signatures were disqualified
because of an invalid date: They did not contain month, date and year.

“However, the statute directs the recorder to disqualify a signature
if ‘no date of signing is provided’,” Rea said. “From context and other
clues, the Plaintiffs showed persuasively that the disqualified
signatures were made on the appropriate dates.”

GOP War on Voting: Judge blocks Ohio’s ‘wrong-precinct’ law

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Earlier this week, a U.S. District Court judge issued an injunction against Ohio’s "wrong precinct" law, which could cause a voter’s ballot not to be counted. Judge Issues Injunction Against Ohio’s ‘Wrong Precinct’ Election Law – The Daily Beast:

Until this Monday, in Ohio, if among the chaos of voting at peak hours in major elections, you were mistakenly directed to the wrong precinct at table 4 instead of your precinct at table 5 by a confused election worker, your vote could become a provisional ballot. That would mean it would likely be discounted because you voted in the wrong precinct without knowing you were doing so.

On Monday, a federal judge issued an injunction against the perennial swing state’s so-called wrong-precinct law (known to some as the “right church, wrong pew” rule), which stipulates that provisional votes cast in the wrong precincts can be discounted. According to the Advancement Project, a civil-rights group that filed the original suit against the state, 14,000 voters in Ohio had their ballots rejected in the 2008 election cycle due to the wrong-precinct rule.

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Rick Hasen, a professor of election law at UC Irvine and the author of The Voting Wars, called Monday’s decision “the most important ruling on voting rights we’ve had this election cycle.”

U.S District Judge Algenon L. Marbley, who halted the law, wrote in his decision that “recent experience proves that our elections are decided, all too often, by improbably slim margins—not just in local races…but even for the highest national offices. Any potential threat to the integrity of the franchise, no matter how small, must therefore be treated with utmost seriousness.”