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I had forgotten how bloody uncomfortable trans-Atlantic plane travel is. I might have been better off sealed into a crate.
The election observation team had its first meeting today. We meet with leaders in the Department of Constitutional Affairs (to become the Ministry of Justice in mid-May) and the Electoral Commission.
I will be leaving for Scotland on Saturday. Depending on the availability of computers and Internet connections in my hotels, I may be able to send a few posts.
Unfortunately, Tova Wang has had to bow out of the trip because of her controversy with the EAC.
To the EAC, "Free Tova Wang."
The Edinburgh Evening News reports:
THE SNP has stretched its lead over Labour in a new opinion poll out today.
The YouGov survey puts the Nationalists nine points ahead in the constituency vote with 39 per cent support, compared with Labour's 30 per cent, 15 per cent for the Liberal Democrats and 13 per cent for the Tories.
But in the regional vote, the SNP lead fell from six points to four. The Nationalists were on 31 per cent, Labour 27 per cent, the Tories 13 per cent and the Lib Dems 11 per cent. The main reason for the gap closing appears to be a leap in Green support from six to nine per cent. ...
Translated into seats, today's poll findings give the SNP 44 MSPs, five more than Labour with 39, while the Lib Dems and Tories would each have 17, the Greens nine and others three. -- Edinburgh Evening News - Politics - Nationalists stretch to a nine per cent lead poll over Labour
American Constitution Society announces: On April 6-7, 2007, ACS co-hosted a Conference on Elections and Democracy at Stanford Law School at which panelists shared perspectives of a wide variety of issues relating to voter participation (including fraud and registration requirements), voter representation (including districting and the Voting Rights Act) and lessons from a comparative analysis of voting rights in other democracies (relating to campaign finance reform, alternative voting systems and redistricting commissions). Streaming video of each panel is now available in the ACS Multimedia Library. Other organizations co-sponsoring the conference included the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, the Stanford ACS Student Chapter, the Stanford Law and Policy Review, and the Stanford Chapter of the Federalist Society.
The Vermont Press Bureau reports: A bill that would change the way Vermonters vote in congressional elections won final approval in the state Senate Thursday.
In a 16-12 vote, the Senate approved the use of instant runoff voting, a system in which voters would be asked to rank order their choices for Congress in order of preference. If no one candidate drew a majority of the first-place votes, the second choices of voters would be taken into account.
The legislation calls for the system — which was used in last year's Burlington mayoral race — to be used beginning in 2008 for Vermont's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. If approved, Vermont would be the first state in the nation to use it, officials said.
It's unclear whether the House will have time to act on the measure before the Legislature adjourns next month, said House Speaker Gaye Symington, D-Jericho. -- Senate gives OK to runoff voting bill
The New York Times reports: The Bush administration insisted Thursday that a series of meetings between senior White House political aides and officials at government agencies to discuss Congressional elections did not violate a law that prohibits the use of federal departments for political purposes.
White House officials acknowledged that aides to Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser, held about 20 briefings in the past two years with officials at 16 departments to discuss Republican political strategies, including which Congressional Democrats were being singled out for defeat and which Republicans were most vulnerable.
Included in the briefings were the Treasury, Labor, Commerce, Interior and Energy Departments.
But administration spokesmen said the discussions did not violate the Hatch Act, the law that makes it illegal for government employees to take action that could influence an election. They said the White House officials did not make any requests for the agencies to take any specific actions but were simply imparting details about political strategy. -- White House Calls Political Briefings Legal
Paul Kiel writes on TRMmuckraker: So far, Bradley Schlozman has been a minor character in the U.S. attorneys scandal. He ought to be a major one.
To put the case succinctly: Schlozman was the most aggressively political of the political appointees in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. And the administration installed him as the U.S. attorney in a key swing state in an election year. And to clinch it all, as we'll see in our next post, he delivered. ...
By the time Schlozman arrived in Missouri, he'd already left a strong imprint at the Justice Department. The career attorneys and analysts who worked under him in the Civil Rights Division's voting section describe what can fairly be described as a reign of terror.
Bob Kengle, formerly the deputy chief for the voting section, told me that Schlozman "led by power":
"What he sought to inculcate into people was a fear that if you disagreed, if you asked for reconsideration on something, if you pointed out something that was not correct in a decision that had been made, then you’d pay for it."
Kengle, who joined the division in 1984, said that Schlozman would change performance evaluations for lawyers and analysts who disagreed with him. -- TPMmuckraker April 26, 2007 02:27 PM
The Edinburgh Evening News reports:
Two new polls today showed the SNP still ahead with just a week to go until polling day.
A survey by mruk research, which last month gave Labour a four-point lead, today put the SNP four points ahead in the constituency vote - 38 per cent to Labour's 34 per cent - and one point ahead on the list vote of 37 per cent to Labour's 36 per cent.
The other poll by Progressive Scottish Opinion gave the SNP a two-point lead in the constituency vote and a three-point advantage on the list.
But it suggested a dead heat in terms of seats with both parties getting 44 MSPs elected. -- Edinburgh Evening News - Politics - SNP rules out quick replay for a 'No' vote referendum
Two stories in Friday's papers show that neither the 3rd or 4th party will join a coalition with Labour just to keep the SNP out of power. The Scotsman reported: THERE will be no Unionist coalition to keep the SNP out of office, Nicol Stephen revealed yesterday.
The Scottish Liberal Democrat leader said the largest party in the parliament would have the "moral authority" to govern.
If that party was the SNP then the Liberal Democrats would find it "very difficult" to do deals with Labour to prevent the Nationalists from taking power.
Mr Stephen said that if the SNP emerged as the biggest party he would try to do a deal with the Nationalists. But if that foundered because of divisions over an independence referendum, then it was likely he would take his party to the "opposition benches" without trying to form a coalition with Labour. -- The Scotsman - Politics - Lib Dem leader insists largest party has authority
And the Herald reported: Annabel Goldie yesterday launched a vehement defence of the Union but refused to commit her party's support for an anti-Nationalist coalition to defeat the SNP's plans for independence.
In a keynote speech in Edinburgh, the Scottish Conservatives leader said Scotland was currently able to "shape the world" through the UK's membership of Nato, the G8 and the UN Security Council - all of which independence would put under threat.
She predicted that there would be "a clear Unionist majority" in the Scottish Parliament after May 3, with the Tories, Labour and the Liberal Democrats taking most of the seats. But she stopped short of pledging to join forces with Labour and the LibDems to secure an anti-independence majority at Holyrood. -- Goldie defends Union, but won’t join coalition
Walter Shapiro writes on Salon.com:
With a record-shattering $150 million already raised by the presidential candidates, the 2008 election cycle is shaping up to be a Gilded Age for the political class. Whoever wins the White House, an elite group of ad-makers, strategists, pollsters, direct-mail mavens and fundraising arrangers will share the spoils of victory and the just as lucrative swag of defeat.
All this brings us to a dirty little secret of politics -- the murky financial arrangements between the top consultants and the campaigns they serve. The Federal Election Commission does not require detailed breakdowns of consultant expenses from the candidates. And the campaigns refuse to voluntarily release this information. The result is that political givers end up knowing far less about how wisely their money was spent than if they had donated the cash to a charity.
Back in February, Mitt Romney was the first member of the Class of '08 to hit TV sets in the early primary and caucus states, with a 60-second biographical spot in which the former Massachusetts governor solemnly declared, "This is not a time for more talk and dithering in Washington. It's a time for action." When it came time to file its first-quarter reports with the FEC, which were due last week, the campaign dutifully chronicled more than $1.8 million in payments to National Media -- the Alexandria, Va., firm in which Romney media advisor Alex Castellanos is a partner.
But there is no way of knowing from the FEC report what portion of this money was used to purchase TV time, how much paid for production costs or how much went directly to Castellanos as a fee. To raise that $1.8 million required a minimum of 782 donors, since the maximum individual contribution for the primaries is $2,300. But what these political givers got for their money is considered confidential information by the Romney campaign. -- Are political consultants getting rich off your money? | Salon.com
Tova Andrea Wang, Co-Author of the Voter Fraud and Voter Intimidation Report for the Election Assistance Commission, Calls for an End to the Censorship
Over the last few weeks, there has been a developing controversy in the press and in the Congress over a report on voter fraud and voter intimidation I co-authored for the Election Assistance Commission ("EAC"). It has been my desire to participate in this discussion and share my experience as a researcher, expert and co-author of the report. Unfortunately, the EAC has barred me from speaking. Early last week, through my attorney, I sent a letter to the Commission requesting that they release me from this gag order. Despite repeated follow-up, the EAC has failed to respond to this simple request. In the meantime, not only can I not speak to the press or public -- it is unclear under the terms of my contract with the EAC whether I can even answer questions from members of Congress.
My co-author and I submitted our report in July 2006; the EAC finally released its version of the report in December 2006. As numerous press reports indicate, the conclusions that we found in our research and included in our report were revised by the EAC, without explanation or discussion with me, my co-author or the general public. From the beginning of the project to this moment, my co-author and I have been bound in our contracts with the EAC to silence regarding our work, subject to lawsuits and civil liability if we violate the EAC-imposed gag order. Moreover, from July to December, no member of the EAC Commission or staff contacted me or my co-author to raise any concerns about the substance of our research. Indeed, after I learned that the EAC was revising our report before its public release, I contacted the EAC, and they refused to discuss with me the revisions, or the reasons such revisions were necessary.
Stifling discussion and debate over this report and the critical issues it addresses is contrary to the mission and goals of the EAC and to the goal of ensuring honest and fair elections in this country. Commissioner Hillman stated in her defense of the EAC's actions that the EAC seeks to "ensure improvements in the administration of federal elections so that all eligible voters will be able to vote and have that vote recorded and counted accurately." I share this aspiration. But I believe that the best way to achieve that end is not by suppressing or stifling debate and discussion, but by engaging in a thoughtful process of research and dialogue that ultimately arrives at the truth about the problems our voting system currently confronts.
The Rocky Mount Telegram reports: Instant runoff voting for Rocky Mount took one step closer to becoming a reality Tuesday, but officials say a final decision is still down the line.
The Edgecombe County Board of Elections voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a request by the state to use Rocky Mount as a pilot city for the voting method. However, the board made its vote contingent on the idea being approved by the Rocky Mount City Council. ...
The experimental voting process allows voters to rank the candidates on their original ballot, which would be used to decide any runoffs.
The vote completes one of three steps needed to put the system in place for October's municipal elections. The Nash County Board of Elections will meet to discuss and possibly vote on the initiative May 9, and though not required by law, members of both boards have said they want approval from the city council. -- Edgecombe board OKs voting plan
The Burlington Free Press reports: By a slim margin Wednesday, the Senate gave preliminary approval to a bill that would have Vermonters deciding congressional elections by instant runoff voting, the method Burlington used in last year's mayoral vote.
Supporters of the method hailed the 15-13 vote. "This definitely gives it a big boost," said Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group. "Despite the closeness of the vote, this is a giant step."
Opponents criticized instant runoff voting as confusing, expensive and unnecessary. "It's a problem that doesn't exist that's going to cost us money to fix, and there's not a lot of support around the state," said Sen. George Coppenrath, R-Caledonia.
The legislation calls for using instant runoff voting starting in 2008 with the state's lone U.S. House seat. Voters would rank the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate won more than 50 percent of the first-place votes, voters' second choice would be factored in. The idea is to ensure that whoever wins has the backing of a majority of voters. -- Burlington Free Press.com | Local/Vermont
The Muskogee Phoenix reports: A recent vote by the Cherokee Nation to revoke the membership of descendants of freed slaves might not have been legal, according to the leader of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The Tahlequah-based tribe disagrees with that assessment, however, and a tribal spokesman predicted that Congress will reject an effort by one of its members to stop the tribe from receiving federal funds, the Tulsa World reported from its Washington bureau.
The two sides are debating the tribe’s right to enforce a 2003 tribal constitutional amendment and its March 3 vote to remove the descendants of the tribe’s freed slaves, known as freedmen, from tribal rolls.
Carl Artman, who heads the BIA, told U.S. Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., in a letter that the U.S. Interior Secretary must approve the 2003 amendment before it can take legal effect. The letter also said the BIA has taken no action on the March vote. -- MuskogeePhoenix.com, Muskogee, OK - Cherokees, Feds at odds over vote
The Springfield Republican reports: A home rule bill that proposes a system of ward representation for the City Council and School Committee returns for a council vote on May 7, amended as suggested by a state senator.
City solicitor Edward M. Pikula said this week the bill still calls for changing the council from nine at-large seats, elected by citywide ballot, to a mix of eight ward seats and five at-large seats.
However, it has been amended so that each of the four ward seats proposed on the School Committee will consist of geographically connected wards. In the initial proposal, some linked wards were not physically connected.
The amendment was proposed by state Sen. Stephen J. Buoniconti, D-West Springfield, after the bill was forwarded to the Legislature for needed approval earlier this year. The School Committee will also have two at-large seats and the mayor will continue to serve as chairman, under the proposal. -- Ward representation bill changes
Joan Biscupik in USA Today
Robert Barnes in the Washington Post
AP has an unsigned story (at least in the Baltimore Sun)
Michael Doyle in the McClatchy Newspapers
Charlie Savage in the Boston Globe
Joseph Goldstein in the New York Sun
In trying to understand Supreme Court arguments, multiple heads are better than one. Here are several heads:
Rick Hasen
The Skeptic's Eye
Bob Bauer
ACS Blog (actually about a pre-argument panel)
SCOTUSblog (rounding up a few post-argument pieces, plus a bunch of pre-argument columns)
Linda Greenhouse at the New York Times
Dahlia Lathwick (discussing "duckness")
The oral argument transcript is here
.
The Washington Post reports: The Supreme Court will take up a key element of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance law in a challenge to the constitutionality of restrictions on pre-election issue ads that mention a candidate by name.
Last year a lower court relaxed the law's restrictions on issue ads that are run by corporations, labor unions and other special interest groups in the final weeks of a campaign. -- Federal Election Law Faces Challenge - washingtonpost.com
Nina Totenberg has a report on the case on NPR.
AP reports: Texans would be required to show more identification at the voting booth to prove they are who they say they are under a measure that won preliminary approval in the state House on Monday.
Existing state law allows voters to simply show their voter registration card or, if they don't have it, show identification to have their name matched to voter registry rolls.
The proposal by Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell, would require voters to produce photo identification or two other forms of non-photo identification at a polling place. Brown said she wants to prevent voter impersonation and to keep "illegal aliens, non-citizens" and other ineligible residents from voting.
"Voting is the most basic building block of our system of representative democracy," Brown said. "Voter impersonation is a serious crime."
After six hours of tense debate, the House voted 76-68 to tentatively approve Brown's proposal. It would still need a final House vote and Senate approval before it could be enacted into law. -- Times Record News: Local News
The Denver Channel.com reports: A House committee on Tuesday struck a provision that would have allowed felons on parole to vote after opponents said it was unconstitutional.
The amendment, introduced by Sen. Peter Groff, D-Denver, at the request of the American Civil Liberties Union, would have given felons on parole the right to vote.
The House Committee on State, Veterans, & Military Affairs voted to strike the amendment to a measure (Senate Bill 83), which Attorney General John Suthers had previously described as unconstitutional. -- Lawmakers Strike Plan To Allow Felons On Parole To Vote - News Story - KMGH Denver
The Nashville City Paper reports: The Davidson County Election Commission is trying to shake itself of some city lawyers.
Davidson County Administrator of Elections Ray Barrett, requested a temporary restraining order against Metro Tuesday in federal court to force the Metro Legal Department to drop its attempt to intervene, on his behalf in the lawsuit that two Jewish voters filed against Metro earlier this month.
The voters are attempting to force a rescheduling of this year’s mayoral run-off vote from the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, which falls this year on Sept. 13.
Reacting to the lawsuit, the Election Commission voted last week to reschedule the potential run-off to Sept. 11. The commission then hired local attorney Dewey Branstetter to see the rest of the lawsuit through.
But three days later, on April 19, the Metro Legal Department filed pleadings arguing that rescheduling the run-off could not legally happen because of a Metro Charter provision requiring a runoff election be held the second Thursday in September — Rosh Hashanah this year. -- City, Election Commission tussle over elections chief
The Orlando Sentinel reports: Osceola voters elected the first Hispanic county commissioner in more than a decade Tuesday, choosing former state Rep. John Quinones to represent a new Hispanic-majority district in the first election since a federal judge ordered the end to countywide elections of commissioners.
Quinones, a Republican, and political activist Armando Ramirez, a Democrat, squared off against two non-Hispanic candidates with no party affiliation in District 2 in a special election that was delayed for five months by a voting-rights lawsuit the U.S. Justice Department filed against Osceola County.
Federal attorneys claimed that at-large elections effectively kept Hispanics from winning office in Osceola, where they make up about 38 percent of the county's population.
Quinones cruised to victory in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2-to-1. He tallied 56 percent of the vote to 31 percent for Ramirez. Mark Cross received 10 percent and Joe Day 3 percent of the 3,385 votes cast. -- Osceola voters pick Quinones in new district - Orlando Sentinel : Osceola County News Osceola voters pick Quinones in new district - Orlando Sentinel : Osceola County News
The New York Times reports: State investigators here are still trying to figure out who sabotaged Scott Kleeb’s campaign for Congress last November with a barrage of automated telephone calls to voters. The unauthorized calls, officials said, distorted Mr. Kleeb’s views and even used a recording of his voice — sometimes arriving in the middle of the night — with the greeting: “Hi, this is Scott Kleeb!”
Several Nebraska state lawmakers were so outraged by the shenanigans that they are pushing legislation that would impose some of the country’s most restrictive regulations on prerecorded campaign calls, both bogus and legitimate ones. Similar bills are in the works in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin and at least a dozen other states, prompted in large part by telephone calls authorized by campaigns during last year’s elections. ...
Nearly two-thirds of registered voters nationwide received the recorded telephone messages, which as political calls are exempt from federal do-not-call rules, leading up to the November elections, according to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, an independent research group. The calls, often known as robocalls, were the second most popular form of political communication, trailing only direct mail, the group said. ...
The automated phone calls, have been popular with candidates for years because they are cheap, easy to make and often highly effective. The Federal Communications Commission has rules requiring the callers to state their identity at the beginning of the message. A spokesman, Clyde Ensslin, said the commission had taken action against violators, but it did not separate political calls from commercial ones. -- States Seek Limits on ‘Robocalls’ in Campaigns
The Scotsman reports: SCOTLAND'S postal voting system has been thrown into chaos days before polling.
Electoral Reform Services, the company employed to administer postal ballot papers for councils across Scotland, has had to delay the process.
The hold-up has been blamed on a failure to inform city officials about changes to the design of the voting slips and extra checks to ensure that the papers would be suitable for electronic counting. -- The Scotsman - Politics - Delays over postal votes
A more detailed story appears in the Edinburgh Evening News,
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports: Several prominent critics of affirmative action announced in Denver today that they would seek to place a referendum banning racial, ethnic, and gender preferences on the ballot in Colorado in November 2008. And while the chief group leading the effort — the American Civil Rights Institute — has not yet formally announced its plans for other similar campaigns, it clearly intends to put such measures on the November 2008 ballot in Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma, and one other yet-to-be-determined state as part of what it is calling a “Super Tuesday for Equal Rights.”
The Colorado effort is being overseen at the local level by a new group, called the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative. Its executive director, Valery Pech Orr, was one plaintiff in the lawsuit that led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1995 decision Adarand Constructors v. Pena, which dealt with the use of affirmative action in awarding government contracts. In a written statement issued today, Ms. Orr expressed optimism that the proposed ban on affirmative-action preferences would pass there, just as similar measures were overwhelmingly adopted by voters in California in 1996, Washington State in 1998, and Michigan last fall.
A group calling itself the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative plans to hold a news conference tomorrow in Kansas City, Mo. Similar organizations plan to hold news conferences in Oklahoma on Wednesday and in Arizona on Thursday. The American Civil Rights Institute also hopes to get such a measure on the ballot in either Nebraska or South Dakota, although it has not decided which one. -- The Chronicle: Daily News Blog: 4 States Are New Targets for Bans on Affirmative-Action Preferences
The Times Union reports: Gov. Eliot Spitzer vowed Monday to mount a new political campaign against the state Senate's Republican majority after its leader rejected the Democratic governor's plans for overhauling New York's notoriously lax campaign finance laws as "elitist."
"The Republican members of the state Senate were unwilling to break their addiction to the free flow of money," said Spitzer. "It is a narcotic to which they are beholden."
With that, Spitzer announced plans to visit Senate districts represented by "members of the temporary majority of the Senate" to berate them for their position and seek their eventual ouster if they didn't back an overhaul.
The developments came just a few hours after Spitzer drew a standing ovation from several hundred government reform activists when he said he was closing in on a possible agreement with the state Legislature to overhaul New York's campaign finance laws. -- Albany, N.Y.: Timesunion.com - Print Story
Thanks to Jeff Wice for the link.
PENNumbra has a debate on the Electoral College: Professor Sanford Levinson, of the University of Texas Law School, argues that true believers in majority rule should find it insufferable that the United States still employs a “constitutional iron cage built for us by [the] Framers,” which allows presidential candidates who lose the popular vote to win our nation’s highest office. Accordingly, he offers a challenge to his two interlocutors, Professor Daniel Lowenstein, of UCLA Law School, and Professor John McGinnis, of Northwestern Law School: “to defend the indefensible.” For his part, McGinnis argues that “majority rule in political decision making is far from sacrosanct,” and that while the Electoral College might not be the “best law that could be enacted,” it “fulfills the . . . essential criteria that any election for a president must meet in a democracy.” Furthermore, he maintains that “it [is] a virtue, not a defect, that the symbolism of the Electoral College reminds us that simple majority will is not the legitimating feature of society, but that instead popular consent is merely an instrument to protect the deep and enduring principles that make us a free people.” Similarly, Professor Lowenstein holds that “abstract majoritarianism” was never a goal of Framers like Madison; rather, the true “republican principle” is consent of the governed, and the Electoral College upholds this principle rather well. Finally, Lowenstein offers five reasons why the Electoral College should continue to receive the support of the American people, suggesting, ultimately, that “ [t]hose of us who see government as a practical enterprise will resist tearing down an institution that, however surprisingly, fits well into our system and fortifies it in numerous and diverse ways.” -- Should We Dispense with the Electoral College?
John Nichols writes in The Nation (subscription required): Election protection activists are already busy promoting legislative fixes designed to assure that all eligible Americans can vote and get those votes counted in 2008. It's vital work. But if we are serious about addressing what's wrong with our electoral system, we must look backward as well--to what happened in Florida's 13th Congressional District last year.
That contest was "decided" for Republican Vern Buchanan over Democrat Christine Jennings following a recount that put Buchanan up by 369 votes. What the recount did not resolve, however, were questions raised by apparent voting machine malfunctions in Sarasota County, a base of strength for Jennings. Machines manufactured by Election Systems & Software Inc. (ES&S) recorded 18,000 "undervotes"--ballots with votes cast for other positions but not for the House seat--in precincts that tended to favor Jennings. -- Protecting the Vote
The Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform has announced: After months of learning, consulting and deliberating, the province’s first Citizens’ Assembly decided to recommend a new electoral system for Ontario: Mixed Member Proportional.
The Assembly worked to identify the principles we value most in an electoral system and weighed the options accordingly. This process gave citizens a direct voice in determining the options we have when we vote and how our votes are translated into seats for Members of Provincial Parliament (MPPs).
This recommendation carries real weight.
Referendum legislation was introduced to enable Ontarians to have their say. The government will hold a referendum in conjunction with the next provincial election in October 2007 so that all voters can decide whether to accept the Assembly’s recommendation for a Mixed Member Proportional voting system. ...
The Assembly’s work is nearly done. Our final report is due to the government on May 15, 2007. -- Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform
AP reports: Former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley is racking up huge legal bills defending himself against potential criminal charges in the Internet teen sex scandal that led to his resignation and is paying them with leftover campaign contributions.
Foley spent $206,000 in campaign cash on lawyers from November to January, according to recent filings with the Federal Election Commission. The FEC has ruled in other cases that such expenditures are generally lawful.
That left about $1.7 million in the Florida Republican's campaign account on March 31, even after he returned more than $110,000 from donors. -- Foley Pays Legal Bills With Leftover Campaign Cash | theledger.com
The McClatchy Newspapers reports: For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates, according to former department lawyers and public records and documents.
The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a mid-term battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.
Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political advisor Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association. ...
Civil rights advocates charge that the administration's policies were intended to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters who tend to support Democrats, and by filing state and federal lawsuits, civil rights groups have won court rulings blocking some of its actions. -- Voter turnout limits said to be White House goal - 04/19/2007 - MiamiHerald.com
The Washington Post reports: A bill giving the District its first full seat in Congress cleared the House yesterday, marking the city's biggest legislative victory in its quest for voting rights in nearly three decades.
Democrats on the House floor burst into applause, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) grabbed the arms of the District's nonvoting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, as the 241 to 177 vote was announced. ...
But the bill faces considerable obstacles. Democrats don't appear to have enough votes in the Senate to avoid a filibuster, and the White House has threatened a veto. If the measure becomes law, it probably will be challenged in court. ...
The legislation, sponsored by Norton and Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), would add two seats to the House: one for the overwhelmingly Democratic District and another for the next state in line to pick up a representative, Republican-leaning Utah. -- House Approves A Full D.C. Seat - washingtonpost.com
AP reports: A black congresswoman is seeking to cut off funding for the Cherokee Nation after the tribe's recent vote to revoke citizenship of slave descendants.
Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., said the Bush administration has dragged its feet after the March 3 tribal referendum, which removed an estimated 2,800 black slave descendants from tribal rolls.
The tribe insists that the vote last month had nothing to do with race. But Watson and about two dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus wrote to the Interior Department last month expressing outrage over the vote and asking how the government could intervene.
The Interior Department responded in a letter to the caucus last week saying that it was concerned about the vote and was still reviewing its legality.
In an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, Watson said the agency doesn't seem willing to address the issue and is turning a blind eye to discrimination. She said she is drafting legislation, which she plans to introduce next week, to cut off the Cherokee Nation's federal funding. -- SanLuisObispo.com | 04/19/2007 | SoCal lawmaker eyes cutting Cherokee funding over ex-slave vote
Paul Kiel reports in a long and detailed article on TPMmuckraker.com: Over the past six years, the Bush administration has aggressively reshaped the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Many career analysts and attorneys have either been transferred or driven out; their replacements are long on conservative credentials and short on civil rights experience.
Here's an inside account of what it's like inside from Toby Moore, a redistricting expert with the division's voting section until the spring of 2006. Like many of his colleagues, he left due to the hostile atmosphere in the section, where he says there was a pattern of selective intimidation towards career staff.
According to Moore, his supervisor and the political appointees in the section consistently criticized his work because it didn't jibe with their pre-drawn conclusions. That was bad enough, he said, but the real trouble came after he and three colleagues recommended opposing a Georgia voter I.D. law pushed by Republicans. After the recommendation, which clashed with the views of Moore's superiors, they reprimanded him for not adequately analyzing the evidence and accused him of mistreating his Republican colleague, with whom he'd had frequent disagreements. But it got worse. Moore said that his Republican superiors even monitored his emails, eventually filing a complaint against him with the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility for allegedly disclosing privileged information in one email (he was cleared of wrongdoing). Fed up, and worried that it was too dangerous to his professional future to remain there, he left. -- TPMmuckraker April 17, 2007 03:41 PM
From an EAC press release: U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Chair Donetta Davidson today issued a formal request to the commission's inspector general to conduct a review of the commission's contracting procedures, including a review of two recent projects focusing on voter identification and vote fraud and voter intimidation. ...
"The actions taken by the commission regarding these research projects have been challenged, and the commissioners and I agree that it is appropriate and necessary to ask the inspector general to review this matter," said EAC Chair Davidson.
Chair Davidson has requested that the inspector general specifically review the circumstances surrounding the issuance and management of the voter identification research project and the vote fraud and voter intimidation research project. -- 2007- 13 ( 4-16-07 ) EAC Requests Review of Voter ID, Fraud & Intimidation Research Projects.pdf (application/pdf Object)
The Washington Post reports: Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, won the commentary prize for her pieces on voting rights and black leaders. "I was very concerned that the Republicans seemed determined to shave off the votes of some minority voters," she said. "It's unconstitutional and un-American," she added, but "for middle-class folks, black and white, it seemed like a nonissue."
Among the arts awards, Gene Roberts, the veteran editor who now teaches journalism at the University of Maryland, won the history prize with Hank Klibanoff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for "The Race Beat," their book on press coverage of the civil rights era. (Story, Page C1.) ...
The investigative reporting prize went to Brett Blackledge of the Birmingham News for reports on cronyism and corruption in Alabama's two-year college system. The reports led to the chancellor's dismissal. -- Wall Street Journal Takes Two Pulitzer Prizes - washingtonpost.com
The Muskogeee Phoenix reports: Cherokee Nation councilors voted Monday to give the administration an additional $520,000 to fight the freedmen case in federal court.
A preliminary non-binding vote came in a meeting of the Executive and Finance Committee with all but three of the 17 councilors present. A full council vote will be taken in the regular council meeting in May as councilors found out the legal fund still has $360,000. The extra money will not be needed this month.
Several councilors were against funding the nation’s fight against the freedmen, saying they were using tribal funds to kick out tribal citizens.
Council attorney Todd Hembree explained the suit was about more than the freedmen — it was about tribal sovereignty because of rulings by the federal judge in the case. -- Cherokees OK money to fight case
Is there a suit already pending? I have not been able to find it mentioned in the press or in the Pacer system in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The Scotsman reports: NICOL Stephen and Alex Salmond joined forces yesterday to promote their plans for a local income tax - the latest in a series of moves which narrow the gap between the Liberal Democrats and the SNP ahead of the election.
Mr Salmond, the SNP leader, and Mr Stephen, the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, combined during a televised leaders' debate to attack Jack McConnell and his Labour Party's plans to retain the council tax.
Several times Mr Salmond not only said he agreed with Mr Stephen but once even shouted "hear, hear" during one of the Lib Dem leader's answers.
Mr Stephen then publicly praised Mr Salmond for his answers, making it clear that there was very little between the parties on this issue. Both leaders denied there had been any behind-the-scenes talks designed to facilitate a coalition after the election, but it was clear from yesterday's performance that neither has any problem, at least in principle, with working with the other on policies like council tax. -- The Scotsman - Politics - SNP and Lib Dems in old pals' act over tax
The Herald reports: Either the electorate's mood is unusually volatile, or some pollsters are in trouble. The same researcher which last week trumpeted a 12-point poll lead for the SNP found, over the past week, that Labour is three points ahead.
As these polls, carried out by Scottish Opinion, are the two most recent published, it leaves the election campaign further open than anyone had thought.
On constituency vote intentions, Labour had 35% support, the SNP 32%, LibDems 15%, the Tories 13% and others 5%. On the regional vote, Labour had 34% support, with the SNP on 31%, LibDems 13%, Tories on 12%, Greens 5% and others scoring 5%.
Part of the reasoning may be that polls continue to find high numbers of undecided Scots. An mruk research survey carried out for The Herald at the end of March found 50% of voters were undecided, and of them two-thirds were either certain or very likely to vote. That poll was the only other one to put Labour ahead, but it was not alone in finding voters unwilling to commit. -- The Herald : Politics: MAIN POLITICS