Padilla v. Lever Continues....

In my LA Times oped from earlier this week, I urged the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its opinion in Padilla v. Lever, or at least indicate that the ruling does not extend to recall and initiative petitions filed at the time of the court's decision. Orange County has now filed a petition for rehearing en banc (I have the file, but it is too large to post), and Real Parties in Interest have filed a motion to petition for rehearing as well, making some very interesting arguments in their proposed petition about the Zaldivar case relied upon by the panel in Padilla. You can find that proposed petition here.

"New tests fuel doubts about vote machines"

The Miami Herald offers this report, with the subhead: "A top election official and computer experts say computer hackers could easily change election results, after they found numerous flaws with a state-approved voting-machine in Tallahassee." A snippet:

[Leon County election chief Ian] Sancho first clashed with Diebold in May, when he teamed up with a nonprofit election-monitoring group called BlackBoxVoting.org, which has made a crusade of showing that electronic voting machines are subject to fraud. BlackBox hired Herbert Thompson, a computer-science professor and strategist at Security Innovation, which tests software for companies such as Google and Microsoft.

Thompson couldn't hack into the system from the outside. So Sancho gave him access to the central machine that tabulates votes and to the last school election at Leon County High.

Thompson told The Herald he was ''shocked'' at how easy it was to get in, make the loser the winner and leave without a trace. The machine asked for a user name and password, but didn't require it, he said. That meant it had not just a ''front door, but a back door as big as a garage,'' Thompson said.

From there, Thompson said, he typed five lines of computer code -- and switched 5,000 votes from one candidate to another.

''I am positive an eighth grader could do this,'' Thompson said.

"Congress, voters, justices and lines in the sand"

Linda Campbell offers this column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on the Texas redistricting cases. See also this Houston Chronicle editorial.

"Reed proposes online registration of voters"

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer offers this report.

"No deal reached on voting measure"

A.P. offers this report from Ohio, which begins: "COLUMBUS - Republicans in the Ohio House and Senate tried to meet halfway on a bill that would dramatically change the state's elections laws, couldn't do it, then went home for the holidays. That was fine with the Democrats, who liken the changes to an attack on voting rights. The House on Wednesday rejected Senate amendments to a bill that would make major changes to Ohio election law after concerns were raised about the effect on local elections and other issues."

"The Texas Redistricting Cases and the Failure to Call for a Response"

Tom Goldstein has this post on SCOTUSBlog.

"Analysis Finds Serious Flaws With New Jersey Voter Fraud Report"

The Brennan Center has posted this press release, which begins: "A new analysis conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and Dr. Michael McDonald, an elections expert at George Mason University, found factual and methodological errors in a recent voter fraud report submitted to the state Attorney General in September. The report claimed to have uncovered deep problems of voter fraud in New Jersey. In its continuing effort to scrutinize the accuracy of claims of voter fraud, the Brennan Center enlisted Dr. McDonald’s assistance in analyzing the report’s underlying data. The analysts found serious methodological problems with the report, echoing the problems with the notoriously flawed 'suspected felon' purge lists in Florida in 2000 and 2004. They cautioned election officials not to rely on the flawed report and urged the Attorney General to follow the normal statutory procedures for maintaining the state’s voter registration rolls."

"Board Plans Fight to Deny Trustee's Seat to Inmate"

The Press Enterprise (Riverside, CA) offers this report.