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- Blogs: The constitutionality
of the national popular vote: refuting challenges based on Article II, Section
One | State of Elections
- Alaska: Federal government
role in Alaska elections questioned | adn.com
- Arizona: Supreme Court’s
Split decision Keeps Issue Alive for November | Roll
Call
- Colorado: Wildfires
complicate Colorado primary elections | Colorado Springs
Gazette
- Florida:
State won’t release larger list of possible noncitizen voters | Tampa Bay Times
- Indiana: 3rd District recount
finds suspicious ballots | NWI Times
- Maine: Registration Cards in
Short Supply as Maine Voter Enrollment Drives Heat Up |
MPBN
- Maryland:
Supreme Court rules Maryland can count inmates at their home
addresses | Washington
Times
- Minnesota: Federal lawsuit
seeks to tighten Minnesota’s Election Day registration procedures |
MinnPost
- North Carolina: New voter ID
bill unlikely | WRAL.com
- Pennsylvania: State GOP
Leader: Voter ID Will Help Romney Win State | TPM
- Pennsylvania: Republican’s
voter-ID remark brings him under political fire |
philly.com
- Wisconsin: Wisconsin Senate
recount could wind up in court | JSOnline
Blogs: The constitutionality of the national
popular vote: refuting challenges based on Article II, Section One | State of
Elections
The National Popular Vote (NPV) plan
guarantees election of the presidential candidate who earns the greatest number
of votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. NPV does not dispense
with the Electoral College, and is not a constitutional amendment. Rather, the
plan is based on two clear powers given to the states under the Constitution:
the power under Article 2 Section 1 to choose how to allocate its presidential
electors, and the power under Article 1 Section 10 to enter into interstate
compacts. States in early U.S. history often exercised the power to change rules
for allocating electoral votes. While today, 48 states and the District of
Columbia award their electoral votes to the winner of that state’s popular vote,
the founders did not originally contemplate this type of system, as James
Madison explained in 1823. Read More
Alaska
election officials should not be barred from implementing the new redistricting
plan because a requirement that the plan be approved by the federal government
is unconstitutional, attorneys for the state contend. A federal three-judge
panel is scheduled to hear arguments Thursday in the case brought by several
Alaska Natives, who want the state barred from implementing the plan until the
U.S. Justice Department weighs in on it. Justice has about a month yet to do so.
Alaska's primary is scheduled for Aug. 28. A divided Alaska Supreme Court in May
approved use of the plan for this year's elections, but any plan must pass
muster both with the courts and Justice. Read More
The
Supreme Court’s split decision on Arizona’s immigration law gave President
Barack Obama an important legal victory Monday while upholding just enough of
the statute to keep the issue alive as he pursues Latino voters in advance of
the November election. Indeed, the president’s advantage on the issue was clear
given that top Republicans either declined to respond or, in the case of
presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, issued statements that vaguely
supported states rights without commenting on the specifics of the tough Arizona
law. The controversial “papers please” section of the law requiring police
officers to try to ascertain the immigration status of people they suspect to be
illegal immigrants was upheld, while the rest of the law adding state criminal
penalties for immigration violations was gutted in a 5-3 ruling written by
Justice Anthony Kennedy. With the states constrained, the onus is squarely on
Congress to fix the nation’s immigration system, but nothing beyond partisan
posturing is likely on that front before November. Read More
A
low-key primary election day in Colorado took on an even more muted tone
Tuesday: Destructive wildfires are dominating the public's attention, and
candidates were loath to campaign amid the smoke and flames. Republican Rep.
Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs, the only sitting member of Congress from
Colorado facing a primary challenge, spent the days before the election meeting
with firefighters and seeking federal resources to battle a quick-moving fire
that forced thousands to evacuate the Manitou Springs area. Lamborn's opponent,
Colorado Springs businessman Robert Blaha, canceled get-out-the-vote phone calls
for all of El Paso County, which makes up some 70 percent of the voters in the
5th Congressional District. "Now is a time to respect other priorities for
sure," Blaha spokeswoman Tamra Farah said. Read More
Gov.
Rick Scott insists Florida's voter rolls must be scrubbed carefully to remove
any non-U.S. citizens, but his administration is keeping secret a list of more
than 180,000 voters whose citizenship may be in question. Scott's
elections agency is refusing numerous requests from voter advocacy groups and
news outlets to release the list, months after the state released an initial
list targeting 2,625 potential noncitizens. Many people on the first list turned
out to be citizens. The larger list has the potential to cause a bigger
political controversy than the smaller one. "I want to be very careful," said
Scott's chief elections official, Secretary of State Ken Detzner. "It's
individuals' names on there, and I want to make sure that people are treated
respectfully. I want to be abundantly cautious about that." Read More
Officials
conducting the 3rd District Lake County Commissioner recount already have found
apparent voting irregularities in the first day of the new tally. James Wieser,
an attorney for the county elections board, said North Township Board member
Richard J. Novak is expected to contest a number of votes that apparently were
cast after regular voting hours ended during the May 8 Democratic primary. He
said the list of challenged ballots include eight cast in Dyer, two in East
Chicago and four cast in Hammond's 1st City Council District, for a total of 14
possibly questionable votes. Wieser said the recount still must proceed through
Hammond's five other City Council districts as well as precincts in Highland,
Munster, St. John and Whiting. The recount began early Monday when technicians
took the locks off of the first batch of voting machines. Novak and County
Councilman Michael Repay were present in the voting machine garage as the
three-man, court-appointed recount commission began its work to go over more
than 9,800 votes cast in the May 8 Democratic primary race. Repay was declared
the official winner by 74 votes. Novak is challenging that outcome. Read More
A
shortage of voter registration cards on hand at the Maine Secretary of State's
office is frustrating some groups and candidates who are launching drives to
enroll new voters. The Maine Democratic Party says the secretary has dispensed
up to 1,000 cards at a time in the past. Now that number has dropped to 50.
Officials at the Secetary of State's office say they are merely updating their
forms and that new cards should be available next month. Colleen Lachowicz
showed up at the Secretary of State's office last week to pick up some voter
registration cards. As a Democratic state Senate candidate from Waterville, she
thought might use some of her campaigning time to register new voters. Although
the Secretary of State's Office commonly allows candidates such as Lachowicz to
take up to a 1,000 cards, she says that's not what she got. "I was told they
only had 250 left so they said they could give me 20," she says. "And I said,
'Could I have 50?' And so I was able to get 50 of them. And they had me sign a
paper saying they could give me 50." Lachowiscz says she can't help but wonder
about the effect the state's current rationing system is having statewide. "I'm
just concerned that if there's only 250 of these things left, I'm sure there's
more than 250 people that want to get registered to vote at this
time."
The
U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ruling Monday that allows Maryland to count prison
inmates at their last known addresses - rather than their prison addresses - for
redistricting purposes, and upholds the map approved by the General Assembly
last year. Activists had sued the state, saying that the newly drawn
congressional districting map violated the U.S. Constitution. The map was
developed by a committee appointed by Gov. Martin O'Malley and based on census
data and statewide input. It was also drawn to reflect a 2010 Maryland law that
counts prisoners at their last known addresses, which differs from the U.S.
Census Bureau’s policy of counting inmates at their prison addresses, used by
most states. Read More
Minnesota’s
current Election Day registration system lies in the hands of a federal judge,
who on Friday heard arguments from a conservative activist group seeking to
strengthen procedures for determining voter eligibility. Erick Kaardal, attorney
for the Minnesota Voters Alliance and several political candidates, argued that
state election officials are not adequately ensuring that felons and wards of
the state who are ineligible to vote are turned away from the polls. This
so-called “vote dilution” from counting allegedly ineligible ballots could have
had a significant effect on the extremely close elections in Minnesota during
the last two cycles, he said. And the alliance is concerned about voter
verification procedures for the November election, which includes the
presidential race and the fate of constitutional amendments on Voter ID and on
marriage. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and elections officials from Ramsey,
Chisago and Crow Wing counties are all named defendants in the suit, which U.S.
District Court Judge Donovan Frank heard on Friday. Read More
Lawmakers
start their last week of work for the legislative session tonight. As
legislators look to wrap up unfinished business, a key House leader says its
unlikely that a new voter ID bill will be forthcoming this year. "It's gone,"
said Rep. David Lewis, R-Harnett, who chairs the committee which oversees
election laws and would have been the point person to shepherd a new voter ID
bill through the House. Under current law, most voters do not have to show ID
when they come to the polls. Under a version of voter ID bill that Gov. Bev
Perdue, a Democrat, vetoed last year, most voter would have to provide photo
identification before casting a ballot. Proponents of the measure say voter ID
would help make sure people don't vote in the name of others or cast ballots
when they're not qualified to do so. Opponents say there is no evidence of
widespread voter fraud and ID laws would disproportionately keep poor, elderly
and college-age voters from casting ballots.
Pennsylvania
House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R) said that the voter ID law passed by the
legislature would help deliver the state for Mitt Romney in
November.
“Pro-Second
Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation - abortion
facility regulations - in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow
Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done,” Turzai said at this
weekend’s Republican State Committee meeting , according
toPoliticsPA.com.
A
spokesman for Turzai confirmed the accuracy of the quote for TPM but argued that
people were reading too much into it. “The fact is that while Pennsylvania
Democrats don’t like it to be talked about, there is election fraud,” Turzai
spokesman Stephen Miskin told TPM. “Protecting the integrity of an individual
vote is the purpose of any election reform. So was Turzai suggesting that
Democrats had won previous elections through voter fraud? Read More
Innocent
utterance or a major political Freudian slip? Either way, a top House Republican
has come under fire for comments he made over the weekend regarding
Pennsylvania's new voter-ID law - comments that critics say prove their
contention that the law was motivated by the GOP's desire to skew presidential
elections in its favor. At a state Republican Party meeting in Harrisburg
Saturday, House Majority Leader Mike Turzai of Allegheny County listed
legislative victories since Republicans regained control of both chambers and
the governor's office. Among them, he said: requiring voters, starting in
November, to show an acceptable form of identification at the polls. Turzai then
framed the effort in the context of November's presidential election. "Voter ID,
which is going to allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania - done,"
Turzai told the crowd, which promptly broke into applause. His comments swiftly
began made it onto YouTube, and since then have called into question his - and
his party's - motives in supporting the measure. Read More
The
odds of Racine's recall recount winding up in court increased Tuesday, as
Republican Sen. Van Wanggaard's campaign said it may challenge canvassers'
decision to accept ballots from voters who did not sign the poll book. The
recount is in its second week after Wanggaard's campaign requested canvassers
review an 834-vote victory that favored Democratic challenger John Lehman in the
June 5 recall. Republicans' latest contention of voting irregularities in Racine
targets election workers who failed to ask voters to sign poll books as required
by state law. The Wanggaard campaign also disputes the Government Accountability
Board's recommendation that canvassers accept the votes. Once canvassers certify
the recall, the campaign could challenge the recount in court, potentially
delaying Democratic control of the state Senate for weeks. The results of the
recount will determine whether Republicans keep the majority or if Democrats
take control of the Senate between now and the November general election. Since
2011, a new voting law requires that poll workers have voters sign a poll book.
Read More
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