voter id

A method to the madness of King Donald (Updated)

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Renée Graham at the Boston Globe has a great line that’s worth repeating: “President Trump never met a conspiracy theory that he wouldn’t spread like manure.” The tinfoil hat presidency (subscription required). President Trump has spent a significant portion of the past two and a half years soothing his deeply fragile ego by insisting he … Read more

The fight for fair, transparent and secure elections

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If Russian citizens can take to the streets to demand fair and transparent elections, at risk of imprisonment and their very life for doing so from Vladimir Putin’s totalitarian regime, The pro-democracy protests rocking Moscow, explained, then surely Americans who do not live under such a threat of violence can take to the streets and … Read more

Steve Gaynor raises red flags in Secretary of State race

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There has not been much good reporting on Steve Gaynor, the Republican candidate for Secretary of State who ousted Secretary of State Michele Reagan in the Arizona GOP primary, but what little I have seen reported raises red flags about this guy seeing his role as the chief elections officer in Arizona as classic GOP voter suppression in the tradition of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, both of whom are running for governor in November.

Earlier this year, Secretary of State Michelle Reagan settled a lawsuit over Arizona’s bifurcated dual voter registration system for those who use the federal voter registration form.

Gaynor focused his criticism on the aspect of the settlement that requires the state to register voters for federal elections even if they use the state form. He said Michelle Reagan should not have settled and fought the issue all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.

I covered this at length in an earlier post. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach had his ass handed to him in federal court over this same issue. So much for this litigation criticism.  Michelle Reagan is terrible, but Steve Gaynor fancies himself the next Kris Kobach. (Kansas and Arizona were the only two states who maintained this practice).

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Federal District Court for Texas again strikes down Texas voter ID law for intentional racial discrimination

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Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, on remand from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, has again ruled (.pdf) that the voter identification law the Texas Legislature passed in 2011 was enacted with the intent to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters. Federal Judge Says Texas Voter ID Law Intentionally Discriminates:

In a long-running case over the legality of one of the toughest voter ID laws in the country, the judge found that the law violated the federal Voting Rights Act.

Judge Gonzales Ramos had made a similar ruling in 2014, but after Texas appealed her decision, a federal appellate court instructed her to review the issue once more.

The appeals court — the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans — found that Judge Ramos had relied too heavily on Texas’ history of discriminatory voting measures and other evidence it labeled “infirm” and asked her to reweigh the question of discriminatory intent.

In her ruling on Monday, Judge Ramos wrote that the evidence cited by the Fifth Circuit “did not tip the scales” in favor of the state.

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En Banc Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals hears oral argument in Texas Voter ID case

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Lawyers for the state of Texas today defended that state’s discriminatory voter ID law before an en banc panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Veasey v. Abbott. Link to Oral Argument.

The Texas Tribune reports, In High-Profile Case, Texas Defends Its Voter ID Law:

VotersStanding before all 15 members of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller argued that judges were wrong to conclude in two previous rulings that the Texas Legislature discriminated against minority and low-income voters in passing a 2011 law that stipulates which types of photo identification election officials can and cannot accept at the polls.

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Lawyers representing the U.S. Department of Justice, minority groups and other plaintiffs disagreed, asking the judges to affirm what a lower court — and a three-judge panel in this same courthouse — previously concluded: that Senate Bill 14 has a “discriminatory effect” on Hispanic, African-American and other would-be voters in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Only a handful of judges asked questions at length on Tuesday, making it difficult to know where the majority stands. But the 5th Circuit is considered among the nation’s most conservative, with 1o of its members having been appointed by Republican presidents.

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