State of Elections

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Virginia

Rahm’s Residency: Not a Problem?

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According to several news articles, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is moving back to Chicago to run for mayor.  Several news organizations and election lawyers question whether he qualifies as a resident of Chicago.  Rahm Emanuel is registered to vote in Chicago where his car is registered but leased his house to another family.  To run for mayor in Chicago, you must maintain a city residence for one year.

It is striking how similar the facts surrounding Rahm Emanuel’s residency in Chicago are to the seminal, Virginia case on voter residency: Sachs v Horan.  Daniel Sachs was registered to vote and owned a home in Fairfax County.  Sachs had a minimum, one year employment contract outside of Fairfax so he rented a house in Washington County and leased his house in Fairfax to another person.  All the while, Sachs paid property taxes to, registered his vehicle in, and had a driver’s license from Fairfax County.  He was seeking employment closer to home and hoped to return to his house in Fairfax.  In reviewing his residency for voter registration, the Supreme Court of Virginia held that Sachs did not “live in that locality with the intent to remain there for an unlimited time” nor did he have the requisite “place of abode” to establish residency for voter registration.

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Weekly Wrap-Up

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Virginia governor Robert McDonnell is outpacing his Democratic predecessors in restoring voting rights to felons. McDonnell, known as a law-and-order attorney general, has approved 780 of 889 applications — approximately 88 percent of applications — since taking office in January. His predecessors, Democrats Timothy Kaine and Mark Warner, restored the rights of 4,402 and 3,486 felons, respectively. McDonnell revamped the process for restoring voting rights to felons, reducing the wait time for nonviolent felons to two years, allowing applicants to submit documents online, and self-imposing a deadline of 60 days after the application is complete to make a decision. Even as this process continues, however, 300,000 people in Virginia remain disenfranchised.

Rahm Emanuel may be out of a job. The same day that the White House announced he was leaving his post as Chief of Staff to run for mayor of Chicago, attorney Burt Odelson pointed out a 1871 law requiring candidates to live in their jurisdiction for the year before the election. Since Emanuel leased out his house in Chicago while he was working in DC, this may block him from running for Mayor.
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Tidewater Roots Poll Project

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http://stateofelections.pages.wm.edu/files/2010/09/tidewater1.jpg

Previous articles on Stateofelections.com have mentioned the “graying” of America’s poll workers.  The average age of a poll worker is 72, and  they obviously are not getting any younger.  Even more depressingly, precincts across the nation are overworked and shorthanded.  According to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, poll worker error was responsible for over 1 million lost votes.  That’s one million voters effectively disenfranchised because of our rapidly aging poll worker population.  It is clear that America needs a new generation of voters to step up and take on this important civic responsibility.

To that end, the William & Mary Election Law Program is pleased to announce its latest initiative, the Tidewater Roots Poll Project. The goal of the Project is to recruit 240 college students from 6 schools across the Tidewater region: William & Mary, Hampton University, Regent University, Norfolk State University, Old Dominion University and Christopher Newport University.  These students will be trained as election officials and introduced to experienced poll workers to spark an appreciation for the tradition of civic involvement of the region.  The project will be documented in oral history videographies featuring the students and their interactions with experienced poll workers.

Ultimately, our mission is not just to get 240 college students to work this election day, but to inspire them to make a lifetime commitment to participatory democracy.

To learn more about the program, or if you are a student at one of those six schools who wants to get involved, visit the project’s website at Tidewaterroots.com.

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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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Weekly Wrap Up

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

– The Indiana Supreme Court heard oral arguments today regarding that state’s 2005 law requiring a photo ID at the polls.

– An Idaho bill to require a photo ID at the polls has passed that state’s House.

– Over 31,000 Californians have applied to be members of that state’s Citizen Redistricting Commission.  In 2008, California voted to transfer the responsibility of redistricting from the legislature to a citizen’s committee.  This Citizen’s Committee is unique among the states and the upcoming redistricting session will be its first test.

– A Virginia bill that would have created a bipartisan panel to prepare redistricting plans for the legislature has been shot down in a house subcommittee.  The bill was proposed by Creigh Deeds, former candidate for Virginia governor, and passed unanimously in the state senate.

– The Justice Department is investigating the merger between voting machine manufacturers Diebold and Election Systems and Software.

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