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Ohio: ThinkProgress:
In a dramatic move, Ohio Secretary of State John Husted immediately suspended two Democrats on a county election board after they voted to allow weekend voting.
Earlier, Husted issued a directive canceling weekend voting statewide. In 2008, Ohio offered early voting on the weekends and thousands of voters cast their ballot during that time.
Husted issued an ultimatum to Dennis Lieberman and Tom Ritchie Sr., members of the Montgomery County Eleciton Board, to withdraw their resolution to maintain weekend hours or face suspension….
The Obama campaign has filed a law suit in federal court to restore weekend voting.
Florida: Truthout
Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) has been relentless in his push to restrict the right to vote. He’s advanced an illegal voter purge that would have disproportionately impacted the minority citizens in his state. And a federal court blocked his effort to suppress voter registration last May. On Thursday, a federal court in Washington, DC concluded that another part of Scott’s anti-voting agenda cannot take effect because the state’s new restrictions on early voting negatively impact minority communities.
Last year, the Republican-controlled legislature cut Florida’s number of early voting days down from 8 to 12. However, because minority communities tend to utilize early voting days, the federal court ruled that fewer options for early voting “would make it materially more difficult for some minority voters to cast a ballot.” The court rejected the state’s early voting changes based on their discriminatory impact..
Minnesota: MinnPost
A federal judge denied a complaint Friday that would have enacted sweeping changes to Minnesota’s election system, including Election Day voter registration.
The high-profile Photo ID and marriage amendment lawsuits, under consideration by the Minnesota Supreme Court, had overshadowed a federal lawsuit brought by conservative groups that sought to tighten procedures used to ensure the eligibility of Election Day registrants….
The order was a victory for opponents who are similarly engaged in a fight against the Photo ID amendment set to appear on the November ballot. That measure also is embroiled in state litigation.
“The federal ruling is a big victory for Minnesota voters,” Luchelle Stevens, campaign manager of the Our Vote Our Future campaign, wrote in a statement. “The same people pushing this lawsuit are the ones working to pass the voter restriction amendment …. They lost in federal court today and they will lose on the ballot because our system works here in Minnesota.”
The state Supreme Court is expected to rule shortly on whether the proposed Photo ID ballot question is misleading — a lawsuit brought forward by opponents of the amendment — and if it and the so-called marriage amendments’ titles are misleading.
Pennsylvania: New York Times
The real reasons for voter ID laws are quite clear. The desire to dampen the Democratic vote after 2006 — and particularly in the wake of President Obama’s election — prompted six states to decide, virtually simultaneously, to pass voter ID laws. Their stated reason — combating voter fraud — is easily dismissed because there are virtually no documented cases of impersonation fraud that could be reduced with an ID card. Mr. Turzai was simply indiscreet; most Republicans know better than to speak the truth out loud…
The voter ID requirement does not specifically single out any class or group and applies uniformly to all, he wrote. But what Republicans know, and what the judge should have realized, was that many voters won’t be able to participate in the democratic process any longer. Some won’t show up at the polls, unwilling to leap the hurdle placed before them, while others will try to vote and find their ballots rejected. This lawsuit was an opportunity to sweep away barriers to full citizenship. Judge Simpson should have placed his court on record supporting the country’s first principles.
Nationally: ThinkProgress
Rep. Todd Akin, the GOP’s candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri, suggested in an interview that it was time to “look at or overturn” the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Asked directly if seminal federal civil rights legislation that prohibits discriminatory voting procedures needed to be modified or scrapped, Akin said that states — not the federal government — should set voting rules. According to Akin, elections “have historically always been a state thing” and that’s a “good principle.”
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