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Kansas Democrats to introduce voting rights bill at special session in Topeka
By Dion Lefler
The Wichita Eagle
On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Kansas Democrats unveiled a bill they’ll introduce to force the issue of voting rights into next week’s special legislative session in Topeka.
Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau and Rep. Jim Ward, both Wichita Democrats, said they are going to force the Legislature to take action – one way or another – on changing new proof-of-citizenship requirements that have approximately 15,000 prospective Kansas voters waiting to find out if they’ll be able to cast a ballot.
The bill would essentially add a line to the existing voter-registration form allowing Kansans to prove their U.S. citizenship by swearing out an affidavit. At present, the law requires prospective voters to provide document proof, such as a birth certificate or passport.
The revised voter registration form would warn prospective voters that swearing a false statement of citizenship would be perjury and could lead to felony prosecution ...
http://www.kansas.com/2013/08/29/2970928/kansas-democrats-to-introduce.html
How Art Pope helped turn back the clock on voting rights in North Carolina
By Sue Sturgis, with research by Marion T. Johnson
... Voters cast 3.79 million ballots in North Carolina's 2010 election cycle, and only 28 cases of voter fraud were referred to district attorneys. In 2012, North Carolina voters cast nearly 7 million ballots, and only 121 alleged cases of voter fraud were found. Going back to 2007, the N.C. State Board of Elections has reported a grand total of 80 cases of double voting, three cases involving voter residency issues, and two cases of voter impersonation, which is what the state's new photo ID law aims to prevent ...
Last year, DeLancy challenged the registrations of more than 500 voters in Wake County, N.C. -- mostly people of color -- who he said were not U.S. citizens. One voter was found to have improperly registered and was stricken from the rolls, while several others requested their own removal. Of the 18 challenges that the local election board found required further investigation, all were dismissed after hundreds of hours of work by the board. A furious DeLancy stormed out of the hearing, kicking open the building's glass doors and denouncing the board as looking "stupid" ...
Pope was an important force again in the 2012 election cycle, as he, his family, and his affiliated groups spent over $2 million on state-level races, helping Republicans win supermajorities in both chambers and putting a Republican in the executive mansion. Without the GOP in power in Raleigh, legislative proposals to limit access to the ballot box -- which disproportionately affect minorities, young people, and other Democratic-leaning constituencies -- would have gone nowhere ...
http://www.southernstudies.org/2013/08/special-investigation-how-art-pope-helped-turn-bac.html
Civil Rights Group Seeks Changes in Indiana Election Law
GOP rejects Democrat's accusation of effort to suppress minority votes
By Eric Berman
8/29/2013
... Representative Cherrish Pryor (D-Indianapolis) complains some Marion County precincts changed polling place locations last year with no notice or explanation, often in minority neighborhoods. She charges there's no explanation other than a deliberate effort to hold down minority turnout. Pryor wants legislators to lock in polling places two months before Election Day, and require local governments to specify the reason for making a change ...
The Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law says it fielded 800 election complaints from Hoosiers last year. The civil rights group classifies about 100 of the complaints as intimidation, though its examples involve disinformation rather than strongarm tactics -- for instance, a robocall falsely telling people they could vote by phone ...
And Pryor, a Democrat, questions Republicans' motives in limiting the availability of early voting in Marion County. State law requires unanimous approval from bipartisan county election boards to offer early voting anywhere other than the county clerk's office. Pryor says Republicans embraced early voting until President Obama successfully mobilized thousands of early voters en route to carrying Indiana in the 2008 election ...
http://www.wibc.com/news/story.aspx?ID=2032993
Austin Could Sue Texas Over Voter ID Law
Updated: Wednesday, August 28 2013, 08:51 PM CDT
Austin leaders are close to getting into a fight with the State of Texas over the Voter Identification Law.
Councilman Bill Spelman is sponsoring a resolution to direct the City Manager to pursue joining a lawsuit or filing separate legal action.
Early elections begin October 21 and the fear is the voter ID law could cause suppression at the polls.
"Voter ID laws are going to make it much more difficult for poor folks, for black folks and brown folks," said Spelman ...
http://www.keyetv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/austin-could-sue-texas-over-voter-id-law-12067.shtml
Hagan Asks US Attorney General To Examine NC's Voter ID Law
5:15 pm
Wed August 28, 2013
By Frank Stasio, Laura Lee and Gurnal Scott
U.S. Senator Kay Hagan says she's asked the nation's Attorney General to look into the state's new Voter ID law. The North Carolina Democrat says she wanted Eric Holder to examine the legislation signed this month by Republican Governor Pat McCrory. Hagan says the law enacts restrictions that could suppress voter turnout among minorities, as well as younger and older voters. Supporters say it's intended to prevent fraud at the polls. Hagan told WUNC's Frank Stasio those instances barely exist.
"The North Carolina Board of Elections has found that voter impersonation that would be prevented by the photo ID has occurred two times in the last ten years," Hagan says. "Two times in the last ten years. And I really think that voter fraud in that perspective is just a red herring" ...
http://wunc.org/post/hagan-asks-us-attorney-general-examine-ncs-voter-id-law
(Texas) Voter ID law a headache for officials
By Gloria Padilla : August 28, 2013
... A preliminary comparison of the 13.8 million names on the state's voter registration rolls against Texas Department of Public Safety records resulted in a match of only 7 million of those names ...
If a voting official deems the names “substantially similar” a voter is off the hook, sort of. He or she will still be required to sign an affidavit stating he/she is the person named in the two documents. However, if the voting official cannot readily make a connection between names, the voter will have to cast a provisional ballot, which takes longer to fill out and process.
The state had recommended local election administrators send out letters to voters advising them their voter cards and IDs need to match, but the postage cost has made that prohibitive. With about 890,000 registered voters in Bexar County, that mailout would have cost more than $400,000 ...
http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/columnists/gloria_padilla/article/Voter-ID-law-a-headache-for-officials-4768996.php
Well, let's look it over carefully. Assange's Wikileaks party was founded with
a reasonably democratic structure involving a governing council, but when the views of Assange and his father Shipton did not prevail regarding preferences, Assange sent an email to the governing council indicating he thought he should have veto power over the council's preference decisions. Assange's father meanwhile contacted several of the council members to propose going around the council. At about the same time, some Greens were informed that, contrary to the council's decision, Wikileaks preferences would not go to the Greens, though the council seems not to have been informed. The council only learned of the results when the preferences were posted -- and differed from those the council had chosen. Efforts to convene an emergency meeting of the council were unsuccesful. At this point there was a ruckus: a number of party members resigned, including Cannold, who would have filled Assange's seat if he had been elected and unable to serve: she cited lack of transparency and problems with democratic process in the party. The official party explanation was that the wrong preferences had somehow been submitted through administrative error, but Cannold doubted this, and at least one non-resigning candidate meanwhile announced that the actual preferences had been chosen to punish the Greens. When the "administrative error" explanation failed, the party tried promising to review the matter after the election, it being too late now to change the preferences with the election commissionThe unhappiness results in part from the fact that some parties preferenced above the Greens are marginal parties of rightwing extremists: Australia First, for example, is led by a neo-Nazi who at the height of the anti-apartheid movement attempted to kill an ANC representative in Australia. The Greens feel betrayed because one of the Green candidates give low preference was one of Wikileaks main Australian supporters, in response to which the Wikileaks party has retorted that it is not "a front for the Greens" and that is has both leftwing and rightwing goals
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