[EL] ELB News and Commentary 11/19/13
Rick Hasen
rhasen at law.uci.edu
Mon Nov 18 20:24:57 PST 2013
What Would A Complaint Look Like If We Moved Voting Rights Beyond
Race or Party? <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56823>
Posted on November 18, 2013 7:48 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56823>by Rick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
In my forthcoming essay
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2353068> (and
related oped
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/opinion/voter-suppressions-new-pretext.html?_r=0>from
this past weekend), I suggest a claim under the Equal Protection Clause
against those states which have made voting harder for no good reason.
It is not a racially based claim, nor a partisan gerrymandering claim,
nor a Bush v. Gore claim. Instead I am advocating something like
Burdick-Anderson balancing with teeth, where the state must prove with
actual evidence that there is a problem which a strict voting law is
reasonably tailored to solve.
That claim is not at issue in the Justice Department's cases against
Texas or North Carolina, and it does not appear to be at issue in the
Wisconsin voter id cases in federal court either.
But now it looks l
<http://txredistricting.org/post/67018241032/texas-league-of-young-voters-expands-voter-id-claims-to>ike
the Texas League of Young Voters may have filed just such a complaint
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxeOfQQnUr_geTJNem5hQVpSME0/edit?usp=sharing>against
the State of Texas---though I would claim it should be unnecessary to
prove a "severe" burden for this claim to succeed.
Count 4
117. Plaintiff-Intervenors reallege the facts set forth above.
118. SB 14 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §
1983, because it denies many Texas citizens, including
Plaintiff-Intervenors, their constitutionally protected right to
participate in elections on an equal basis with other Texas citizens.
119. SB 14 imposes severe, unconstitutional burdens on the right to
vote of many Texas citizens, particularly those who are poor, who
lack one of the required IDs under SB 14.
120. As a result of SB 14's particular requirements and other
factors (such as the
inaccessibility of many DPS offices), the amount of resources
(including time and money) that many eligible voters will be forced
to expend to obtain one of the required IDs will be substantial.
121. Thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands, of Texas voters
currently lack one of the required IDs and, therefore, will be
forced to bear the significant cost of obtaining the necessary ID.
122. Because the cost of complying with SB 14 will be prohibitive
for many of these
voters, SB 14 will disfranchise a significant number of registered
and otherwise eligible Texas voters.
123. Defendants have not demonstrated and cannot show an interest
sufficient to justify the severe, unconstitutional burdens that SB
14 places on many Texas voters who lack the requisite IDs.
124. Though purportedly designed to protect against in-person voter
fraud, there is no evidence that such voter fraud actually occurred
in Texas before SB 14's passage or that existing State and federal
laws did not adequately deter in-person voting fraud.
125. SB 14 thus purportedly targets a problem that does not exist in
fact. The law places a severe, unconstitutional burden on the
fundamental right to vote of many Texas citizens, including
Plaintiff-Intervenors, which is not justified by any legitimate
countervailing state interest.
I'll be watching this one closely, as well as watching whether anyone
makes a similar claim against North Carolina's new strict voting law.
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Posted in election administration <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,
The Voting Wars <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>, voter id
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=9>, voting
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=31>
"Herring lawyer: recount 'extremely unlikely' to give Obenshain win"
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56821>
Posted on November 18, 2013 7:26 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56821>by Rick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
That would be
<http://www.dailypress.com/news/politics/dp-nws-herring-recount-lawyer-20131119,0,7725373.story>Marc
Elias---most notably of the Franken-Coleman saga. This one will be an
easier commute for all the Washington lawyers.
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Posted in recounts <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=50>
Ohio Voter Integrity Project Defends Its Work
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56819>
Posted on November 18, 2013 7:24 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56819>by Rick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
See here
<http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/201311160522/EDIT02/311160040>.
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Posted in election administration <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,
The Voting Wars <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
"Anti-Obama nonprofit tells IRS it's not 'political'"
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56817>
Posted on November 18, 2013 7:23 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56817>by Rick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
CPI reports
<http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/11/18/13785/anti-obama-nonprofit-tells-irs-its-not-political>.
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Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, tax law
and election law <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=22>
"WI Club for Growth, Target of Walker Recall Probe, at Center of
Dark Money Web" <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56815>
Posted on November 18, 2013 7:21 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56815>by Rick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
See here.
<http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/11/12309/new-john-doe-investigation-probes-dark-money-wisconsin-recall-elections-club>
Share
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Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, tax law
and election law <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=22>
How Much Non-Citizen Voting in Colorado? Not Much
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56813>
Posted on November 18, 2013 7:20 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56813>by Rick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
As goes Arizona <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56809>, so goesColorado
<http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/articles/the-gessler-155-zero-prosecutions-so-far-of-people/>:
After years of critics demanding that Gessler forward names of
suspected non-citizens whom he said were on the voter rolls, his
office referred a list of 155 suspected non-?citizen voters in July
to 15 district attorneys across the state, recommending prosecution
and issuing a strongly worded statement saying the list was proof
the state's election system is "vulnerable."
A check by The Daily Sentinel with those district attorneys over the
past two weeks, however, revealed that none of the referrals led to
criminal prosecutions, though some still are under investigation.
The analysis also showed that although some of the non-citizen
voters did cast ballots in at least one election going as far back
as 2004, the preponderance of the other voters actually were
citizens who legally had the right to vote.
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Posted in election administration <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,
The Voting Wars <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
"Is the VRA Still Necessary?: Attitudinal Support of Electoral
Reform in a Post-Jim Crow Era" <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56811>
Posted on November 18, 2013 7:12 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56811>by Rick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
A group of researchers at the University of Maryland have postedthis
draft <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2348755> on
SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The Supreme Court's recently issued opinion in Shelby County,
Alabama v. Holder (2013) declared an important part of the Voting
Rights Act (VRA) unconstitutional, finding the 2006 reauthorized
coverage formula to be inappropriate for an era where race based
electoral discrimination has declined significantly. Interrogating
the "Bull Connor is Dead" concept, this study explores public
support for anti-democratic reforms in election law. We analyze
survey results from the 2008 and 2012 Cooperative Congressional
Election Study, newspaper content analysis, and Department of
Justice data to measure the degree to which attitudinal and
contextual determinants explain the trends in white support for
three election reform policies that affect minority voting rights.
Building on prior research, we expect that support for voter ID laws
and support for voters reading the Constitution in both periods will
be best predicted by whether a person voted for Barack Obama.
Additionally, we expect that beliefs about blacks will also
determine support for voter ID laws. Lastly, we expect that support
for Election Day Registration will be influenced by whether a person
experienced problems registering in the past and their level of
interest in the news. The implications of this study address the
benefits and consequences of considering attitudinal support for
minority voting rights in a post-Jim Crow era where some deem the
VRA unnecessary.
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Posted in Supreme Court <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>, Voting
Rights Act <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>
How Much Non-Citizen Voting in Arizona? Not Much
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56809>
Posted on November 18, 2013 9:05 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56809>by Rick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Arizona Republic:
<http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20131105arizona-immigrant-vote-fraud-rare.html>
Arizona has spent enormous amounts of time and money waging war
against voter fraud, citing the specter of illegal immigrants'
casting ballots.
State officials from Gov. Jan Brewer to Attorney General Tom Horne
to Secretary of State Ken Bennett swear it's a problem.
At an August news conference, Horne and Bennett cited voter-fraud
concerns as justification for continuing a federal-court fight over
state voter-ID requirements. And some Republican lawmakers have used
the same argument to defend a package of controversial new election
laws slated to go before voters in November 2014.
But when state officials are pushed for details, the numbers of
actual cases and convictions vary and the descriptions of the
alleged fraud become foggy or based on third-hand accounts.
An examination of voter-fraud cases in Maricopa County shows those
involving illegal immigrants are nearly non-existent, and have been
since before the changes to voter-ID requirements were enacted in 2004.
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Posted in election administration <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,
The Voting Wars <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>, voting
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=31>
--
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
949.824.0495 - fax
rhasen at law.uci.edu
http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org
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