State of Elections

William & Mary Law School | Election Law Society

Archives for April 2010

Weekly Wrap Up

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Every week, State of Elections brings you the latest news in state election law.

– Gerry Hebert, one of the panelists at our recent election law symposium, wrote this article about a recent legislative effort to undermine Fair Districts Florida.  Fair Districts Florida is an organization dedicated to fixing the redistricting process and the prevention of  gerrymandering.

– In Virginia, there is growing confusion about the restoration of felon voting rights.  Earlier this week, the governor’s office sent letters to 200 ex-felons, telling them that they would need to submit an essay as part of the application process for the restoration of their voting rights.  On the 14th, Governor McDonnell claimed that the letters had been sent in error, and that the essay requirement was simply a “draft policy proposal“.  Of course, this is only the third most controversial retraction the Governor has issued in the last month.

– A bill that would require voters to show photo identification before casting a ballot has received first round approval from the Missouri House. A previous photo ID law in Missouri was struck down by the Missouri Supreme Court for being a “heavy and substantial burden on Missourians’ free exercise of the right of suffrage.”

– In Cleveland, an elections board test of voting machines has produced alarming results.  About 10% of voting machines failed the test, and the state has less than a month.

– Maryland has become the first state to count prison inmates as residents of their home address, instead of counting them as residents of their prison location.  The U.S. Census considers inmates to be residents of their prison, a practice that has been criticized as distorting the population count and leading to unfairness during the redistricting process.

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Solving the Epidemic of Disappearing Poll Workers – Part 1: Young People

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poll workersThere is a disease spreading throughout our nation’s polling locations. The graying of America is seen most potently behind the polls. Poll workers in America have an average age in the 70s, significantly older than the average age of AARP members (64). The current elderly class of civic-minded individuals who have fulfilled their civic duty responsibly for decades have been leaving out of confusion with new technology and the effects of their old age. As this void continues to grow, more and more options will need to be considered by state and local legislatures in order to ensure that elections go smoothly. This is the first post in a series about what could be done to help solve the problem of disappearing poll workers.

Young people are the future leaders of this country, but some local election laws could be more conductive to this passing of the torch as poll workers. States could learn from one another in this respect. Massachusetts passed a law in 2008 which allowed poll workers as young as 16. 29 other states allow poll workers to be under the age of 18. Arizona allows 16 and 17 year old high-school students to miss the day of school to be a poll worker (with parental permission), and even pays them for their service. There may be some concerns about the ability of minors to act as competent poll workers, but the minors are usually well supervised. The immediate reaction to this legislation in most states has been positive, including in Minnesota, where Secretary of State Mark Ritchie remarked the 16 and 17 year old poll workers “have been a burst of energy” and “a big success.” [Read more…] about Solving the Epidemic of Disappearing Poll Workers – Part 1: Young People

Weekly Wrap Up

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Every week, State of Elections brings you the latest news in state election law.

– A recently filed lawsuit in North Carolina seeks to challenge Section 5 of the Voter Rights Act. Section 5 requires that certain states and municipalities “preclear” changes to their voting laws with the Attorney General.  Essentially, the Attorney General has a veto over any changes to voting laws in certain states, but not in others.  This North Carolina lawsuit (LaRoque v. Holder) claims that Section 5 exceeds Congress’s authority under the Fifth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

– The iPad has already made its mark on the election law community.  Project Vote, a voter registration and engagement organization, is teaming with Echo Interaction Group to develop a new voter registration application for the iPad. The application would allow users to instantly and accurately record, collect, and upload voter data to a secure server.  Only four states currently allow online voter registration, but the organization is optimistic that more states will follow suit.

– California State Senator Leland Yee has introduced a bill that would permit same day registration in that state.

– The Ohio House of Representatives has unanimously passed a bill that will allow overseas military forces to request absentee ballots electronically, instead of requiring the request be sent through regular mail.

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William & Mary Election Law Symposium 2010 Video

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As promised, here’s a video of William & Mary’s Election Law Symposium.

“Back to the Drawing Board: The 2010 Census and the Politics of Redistricting”

From left to right, the panelists are John Hardin Young, Gerald Hebert, Jessica Amunson, and Trevor Potter.  For brief biographies of the panelists, see this post.

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9th Circuit Panel Strikes Down Washington Disenfranchisement Law

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The unending battle over felon disenfranchisement in Washington state has taken an interesting turn, as a three-judge 9th Circuit panel ruled 2-1 that Washington’s denial of voting rights to incarcerated felons is a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

This decision is directly counter to one issued just six months ago by a panel of 1st Circuit judges reviewing a case out of Massachusetts, Simmons v. Galvin, where that panel held 2-1 that Section 2 simply doesn’t apply to felon disenfranchisement. The glaring circuit split on this question makes this case a very strong candidate for en banc review at the 9th, and possibly ripe for a Supreme Court grant of certiorari thereafter (which would likely also address the very issue of whether the VRA applies to felon disenfranchisement at all, a question still very much unsettled).

The Washington case, originally filed in the mid-90s and now known as Farrakhan v. Gregoire, was brought by a convicted felon sentenced to a five-year term who objected to being denied the opportunity to vote in elections during his incarceration. The plaintiffs’ argument is based on the idea that the criminal justice system in Washington is itself racially biased in that “minorities are disproportionately prosecuted and sentenced,” and as such a deprivation of voting rights based on that allegedly biased system would violate the VRA. In 2003, during an earlier round of appeals, another three-judge panel held unanimously that the racial biases of a criminal justice system could be considered in a “totality of the circumstances” analysis of voting conditions. (Farrakhan v. Washington, 338 F.3d 1009, 1016, 9th Cir. 2003). On remand, the district judge did not consider the evidence to be sufficient to demonstrate a denial of the right to vote based on race, and Farrakhan appealed again. [Read more…] about 9th Circuit Panel Strikes Down Washington Disenfranchisement Law