United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (Photo: Flickr/World Economic Forum)

The tea party has added another item to its list of reasons to fear the United Nations: Some in the movement say the U.N. is planning to intervene in the United States’ upcoming elections.

This week, when Attorney General Eric Holder announced his speech on voting rights, the Texas group True the Vote called for a protest of the event because “Holder is for NAACP Plans to involve the United Nations in US Elections.” [Their emphasis.]

True the Vote, a voter integrity initiative launched by the Houston tea party group King Street Patriots, held a national summit this year featuring some of the right’s most incendiary speakers, such as Andrew Breitbart, The Texas Independent reported. According to the Independent, “representatives from more than 25 states attended the two-day national summit in Houston to receive training and information about the conservative organization’s efforts to combat voter fraud.”

The Independent reported back in March that the group was a 501(c)4 nonprofit and had applied for 501(c)3 nonprofit status.

Catherine Engelbrecht, the president of King Street Patriots, said during the group’s summit that she was hoping to mobilize teams of three people to oversee each voting precinct in the country. That would add up to roughly 1 million right-wing tea party volunteers nationwide by the 2012 general election, the Independent reported.

Tea Party Manatee, based in Southwest Florida, sent out an email newsletter this week, echoing the King Street Patriots’ latest fight and warning that the U.N. is “trying to Intervene in 2012 Elections.”

According to group’s email:

• In November 2012 Foreign bureaucrats will appear at your polling station to ensure you adhere to their vision of a ‘fair’ election.
• Local polling officials who dare to enforce state clean election laws will be subject to lawsuits and arrest.
• Conservative political speech will be deemed hateful and be suppressed.
• Just enough voter fraud will be allowed to ensure a second term for Barack Hussein Obama.

This is not a fantasy – next week it will start to become reality when a delegation of leftist Obama supporters will meet with the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. And there they will lay the groundwork to ensure the United Nations takes action in time to save Barack Obama.

You see, the Democratic Left is terrified of the new clean election laws being passed across America. These laws have cleared our voter lists of the dead and the ineligible, require voter identification for everyone and insist that our military be allowed to vote.

And clean elections are the single greatest weapon we have to ensure an honest vote in 2012 and a single term for Barack Obama. And the Left can’t allow that to happen.

So they will make their case for action to the UN Human Rights Council – an international government origination so biased that even Hillary Clinton has denounced it.

Council members like Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Mexico and China will review your election laws and judge if you measure up to their idea of democracy. How can we accomplish any of our goals, like repealing health care rationing, securing the borders and balancing our budget if we can’t even control our own elections?

That’s why we need to send a clear message to the UN – stay out of America’s elections and abandon Barack Obama to the judgment of the American people. I need you to tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to send that very message to the United Nations – by any means necessary.

It’s difficult to trace the exact origin of this particular hysteria, but one of the earliest mentions of the NAACP’s plan to involve the U.N. came in a report by Fox News.

According to Fox:

The NAACP is calling on the United Nations to intervene as it claims state governments are colluding to “block the vote” for minority communities ahead of the 2012 election — a charge those governments vehemently deny.

The nation’s biggest civil rights organization this week released a report that claimed a raft of new voting laws at the state level would disenfranchise minority voters. The report said 14 states passed 25 measures “designed to restrict or limit the ballot access of voters of color.”

…

Supporters of the laws describe them as common-sense measures meant to ensure the integrity of elections. In Tennessee, which is implementing a new photo ID law, elections coordinator Mark Goins dismissed the criticism and questioned why the NAACP would flag the United Nations over its concerns, calling that effort “a bit extreme.”

“I don’t know what the benefit of going to the U.N. would be,” he said. “I can’t imagine any authority whatsoever that they would have here in Tennessee.”

But the NAACP described the new measures as part of a “concerted” effort to drive down minority turnout and is planning a multi-stage campaign to attract international attention.

To start, the group is planning a “Stand 4 Freedom” rally this Saturday across from the U.N. headquarters. Supporters are being asked to sign an online pledge which, among other demands, calls on the United Nations to “investigate and condemn voter suppression tactics in the United States.”

Copies of the latest report are being sent to the United Nations, as well as attorneys general across the country and the Department of Justice. According to one newspaper report, the NAACP will follow up in March when it sends a delegation to Geneva, Switzerland, to present its case before the U.N. Human Rights Council — a group known more for its sustained criticism of Israel than its attention to voting rights.

An NAACP spokesman says the organization is just doing its duty as one of the 3,500 groups that “has consulting status” with the U.N. The group simply works with the international organization to make sure the United States is “living up to its commitment” to an initiative to eliminate discrimination, the spokesperson says.

He also says that the U.N. does not have the power to actually intervene in state matters, and can only interview people and create reports through the Human Rights Council.

“We are just working to make sure the U.S. remains a beacon of democracy,” the NAACP spokesperson says.

The NAACP will be giving a presentation in Geneva to the Human Rights Council in March 2012 as part of its consulting status.

The ACLU of Florida logo (Photo: savedade.org)

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida announced today that “along with the Brennan Center for Justice and the law firms Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, and Coffey Burlington sued on behalf of the League of Women Voters, Rock the Vote, and Florida PIRG, challenging the state’s new restrictions on voter registration.”

According to the ACLU of Florida, the “lawsuit argues that the restrictions passed this year violate the US Constitution and the National Voter Registration Act. The restrictions being challenged are part of HB 1355, the ‘Voter Suppression Act,’ a comprehensive overhaul of Florida’s election laws which is currently under review by a federal court for potential violations of the Voting Rights Act.”

The ACLU of Florida is also intervening in the state’s attempt to receive federal approval for some of the more controversial aspects of the new voting law.

Here is the entire press release announcing the lawsuit:

Today attorneys for the League of Women Voters of Florida, Rock the Vote, and the Florida Public Interest Research Group Education Fund [“PIRG”] filed suit in federal court in Tallahassee challenging Florida’s onerous new restrictions on community-based voter registration drives. The attorneys representing the civic groups are with the Brennan Center for Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Florida, and leading pro bono law firms Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, and Florida-based Coffey Burlington. The civic groups asked the court to block Florida’s new restrictions on the basis that they violate both the U.S. Constitution and the National Voter Registration Act.

This suit follows on the heels of a speech in which Attorney General Eric Holder specifically pointed to Florida’s law as an example of recent legislation that restricts Americans’ ability to cast a ballot. In reaffirming America’s commitment to our core right to vote, he stated that “protecting this right, ensuring meaningful access and combating discrimination must be viewed, not only as a legal issue but as a moral imperative.” The action by the civic groups today represents the front lines of this moral imperative.

The restrictions challenged in the suit were enacted by Florida legislators earlier this year as part of H.B. 1355, a broad package of election law changes. They include extremely burdensome administrative requirements, unreasonably tight deadlines for submission of completed forms, and heavy penalties for even the slightest delay or mistake. These restrictions are so unnecessarily harsh that they have forced the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote, among other groups, to shut down their voter registration programs in Florida.

As Deirdre Macnab, President of the League of Women Voters of Florida, explains: “For over 72 years, League volunteers have faithfully and successfully helped to register eligible Florida voters. Sadly, Florida’s anti-voter Law creates impassable roadblocks for our volunteers, who are simply trying to bring fellow citizens into our democratic process. Today, we take a stand against these unacceptable barriers to voting and voter registration.”

Heather Smith, President of Rock the Vote, states: “As the nation’s largest young voter organization, we’ve dedicated more than two decades to educating and empowering young people to participate in our nation’s democracy. Through our volunteer youth-led programs on campuses and in communities to our civics education initiatives in high schools, Rock the Vote has encouraged hundreds of thousands of young Florida residents to have a voice in their community and country. We are outraged at these new laws that will prevent opportunities for youth civic participation; it is simply un-American.”

Brad Ashwell, Advocate for Florida Public Interest Research Education Fund, added, “Our representative democracy relies on an engaged citizenry, yet voter turnout in Florida remains far too low. That’s why we work to sign up thousands of first time voters across the state each election cycle. It’s unfortunate that rather than find ways to bring new voters into the fold, the Florida Legislature is instead targeting groups that help attract new voters. This law will inevitably lead to fewer voters at the polls.”

The new law is regarded by many voter registration groups as an attempt to regulate voter registration drives out of existence by burying such efforts in red tape and threatening volunteer-based organizations with massive fines. The Brennan Center and the League of Women Voters also filed lawsuits against Florida’s two prior laws restricting community-based voter registration. “This law represents Florida legislators’ third attempt in six years to drown voter registration groups in regulation,” said Lee Rowland, counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. “It is unfortunate that we have had to represent Florida’s leading voter registration groups, not once, or twice, but three times in fighting back against the Florida legislature’s repeated attempts to stifle access to voter registration opportunities.”

According to today’s court filing, the League of Women Voters of Florida, Rock the Vote, and Florida PIRG argue that Florida’s restrictions violate the U.S. Constitution or federal law in three main ways: (1) they violate Plaintiffs’ constitutionally protected rights of speech and association; (2) they fail to give individuals and groups fair notice of how to comply with its confusing and unclear mandates; and (3) they violate the National Voter Registration Act – a federal law designed in part to encourage community-based voter registration activity.

In another ongoing suit, the State of Florida is requesting a panel of federal judges in Washington, D.C. “preclear” H.B. 1355’s controversial provisions, including the voter registration restrictions, under the Voting Rights Act. Under the Act, Florida must seek permission from the federal government before implementing changes to election laws in five of Florida’s counties, by proving that the law has neither the purpose nor the effect of harming minority voters. The League of Women Voters of Florida, other civil rights organizations, and individuals including voters and election officials, have all intervened in that suit to demonstrate that Florida will not be able to make this showing given the law’s impacts on minority voters. The League is represented in that case by the Brennan Center, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and pro bono counsel from the law firm of Bryan Cave LLP.

Today’s lawsuit argues that Florida’s law forces League of Women Voters of Florida, Rock the Vote, and Florida PIRG to scale back or eliminate their voter registration efforts – even as voter registration rates have continued to decline in Florida.

Two teachers in Florida have already gotten into possible legal trouble because they unknowingly violated the state’s strict new voter registration rules.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (Photo: Flickr/ryanjreilly)

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will be giving a speech today about laws recently enacted all over the country that some say will suppress voter turnout among minorities, young people and low-income and disabled voters.

The speech comes during a flurry of activity following restrictive voting laws passed all over the country in the past year. Policymakers in states such as Florida have maintained the laws were crafted to prevent voter fraud.

Florida’s Republican-led Legislature passed an elections law last session that reduces the number of early voting days, creates onerous regulations for third-party voter registration drives and shortens the shelf life for ballot initiative signatures, among other things. A sponsor of the bill has said the bill makes Florida’s elections more “reliable.”

Many groups have denounced the laws, saying the new rules restrict voting rights from minorities and other Democratic-leaning voters as the 2012 election looms. Those complaints are gaining traction at the state and federal level. Yesterday, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., announced that the Senate will commence with field hearings in January in Florida to investigate the effect of the state’s new law. Holder will today give a speech on the same subject.

The Washington Post reports:

With the presidential campaign heating up, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. will deliver a speech Tuesday expressing concerns about the voter-identification laws, along with a Texas redistricting plan before the Supreme Court that fails to take into account the state’s burgeoning Hispanic population, he said in an interview Monday.

Holder will speak at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Libary and Museum in Austin, Tex., which honors the president who shepherded the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law.

“We are a better nation now than we were because more people are involved in the electoral process,’’ Holder said in the interview. “The beauty of this nation, the strength of this nation, is its diversity, and when we try to exclude people from being involved in the process . . . we weaken the fabric of this country.’’

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month, Holder said his department “will be aggressive” in investigating “jurisdictions that have attempted for whatever reason to restrict the ability of people to get to the polls.”

“I think a fundamental question is raised: Who are we as a nation?” Holder said. “Shouldn’t we be coming up with ways to encourage more people to get to the polls to express their views? I am not talking about any one particular state effort, but more generally I think for those who would consider trying to use methods, techniques to discourage people from coming to the polls — that’s inconsistent with what we say we are as a nation.”

The Post reports that “a staff attorney for the ACLU Voting Rights Project … said the Justice Department could reject some laws through the pre-clearance process and file lawsuits seeking to stop others from taking effect.” According to the Post, Holder has already said that “the laws could depress turnout for minorities, poor and elderly people and those with disabilities who would have difficulty securing valid identification documents.”

Florida is currently waiting for a ruling on controversial aspects of its law from a court in the District of Columbia. Five counties in Florida require federal preclearance of voting laws per the Voting Rights Act.

Late last week, national Democrats announced they would be launching a campaign responding to laws across the country that may decrease access to the polls for many for the 2012 election.

U.S. News reports:

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz accused Republicans of launching a “full-scale attack on the public’s right to vote.” She said that GOP efforts in states to curb instant voter registration and early voting and require photo identification at the polls to fight alleged fraud could push minorities, especially Hispanics and African-Americans, away from voting. She claimed that repeated investigations into voter fraud have found very little evidence that it occurs.

…

The Republican National Committee rejected the charges, however. Officials said there is evidence of voter fraud. In just one popularized case, for example, they note that ACORN—the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now—in 2008 was accused of handling 400,000 fraudulent registrations.

The website, protectingthevote.com, states that “in 2011, a new movement to change the way we vote is under way. Unlike past reforms that sought to expand access to voting, this effort aims to restrict voting purely for partisan gain.”

The website runs through some of the most restrictive new laws in states across the country. The DNC points to laws that “target voter registration drives, cut early voting, repeal election day registration, and create citizen challenges” as the biggest culprits of voter suppression.

The website also has a link to a 73-page report written by the Voting Rights Institute, with help from the DNC. The report singled out Florida as passing some of the most restrictive voting laws, including one law that targets voter-registration drives and another that cuts early voting.

According to the report:

The GOP enacted restrictions on voter registration drives in Florida and Texas, and proposed similar measures in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, and Mississippi. The new legislation in Florida was by far the GOP’s most extensive effort. In 2010, Republican Governor Rick Scott rode a wave of Tea Party support to victory in the state’s gubernatorial race, joining Republican majorities in the Florida House and Senate. A pinnacle of their collaboration in this year’s legislative session was HB1355, a 158-page omnibus elections overhaul that—in addition to early voting cuts—enacted draconian restrictions on all nongovernmental entities that conduct voter registration.

Under HB1355, any group or individual that conducts voter registration must now (1) register their organization with the Florida Division of Elections prior to conducting registration activities and regularly file onerous reports on all their activities; (2) track and account for voter registration forms using a specially generated number for each document; (3) submit completed voter registration forms to the state within 48 hours (a significant decrease from the previous deadline of 10 days); (4) subject themselves to fines between $50 and $1,000 for registration forms returned to the state after 48 hours; and (5) submit to new enforcement authority from the Florida attorney general.

These restrictions encumber even large and experienced organizations; immediately after HB1355 was passed, the League of Women Voters of Florida suspended its voter registration activities. But these restrictions fall heaviest on small organizations that conduct neighborhood voter registration, lack the capacity to abide by the state’s reporting requirements and tight deadlines, and could be virtually bankrupted under this penalty structure. Already, there are reports of public school teachers who may face huge fines under the new law—all for the supposed offense of helping students register to vote without following each minute requirement of the new law.

Fewer voter registration drives mean fewer voters. But cutting back on voter registration drives does not have the effect of limiting the political participation of all citizens equally. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau demonstrates that African American and Hispanic voters are more than twice as likely to register through voter registration drives as are white voters in Florida.

Democrats have also sought congressional investigations in order to address these laws. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.,requested congressional field hearings into the new laws, asking Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to schedule them. Nelson also sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder requesting that the Justice Department launch an investigation into whether the “new state voting laws resulted from collusion or an orchestrated effort to limit voter turnout.”

Florida is currently waiting for a ruling on the most controversial aspects of H.B. 1355 from a court in the District of Columbia.

Photo: Flickr/hjl

The decision by leadership in a small Iowa town to provide the public additional information on write-in municipal candidates has raised a few eyebrows, but state officials indicate that there is nothing inherently unethical or unlawful regarding the instance.

Tim Box, Linn County’s deputy commissioner of elections, said his office was alerted to information posted on the website for the City of Ely, which he described as being “odd” and “unusual.”

Staff at the city, posted announcement on the website for the Nov. 8 elections that included not only names and profiles of individuals who had filed papers to seek public office, but residents who had expressed interest in being write-in candidates for city office.

“We referred the issue to the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board,” Box said by phone Tuesday. “This was definitely a unique situation for me and I felt it fell more into their area of expertise and authority.”

Ely City Administrator Aaron Anderson told The Iowa Independent that he placed the information on the website Friday, after he was approached by people within the community who asked him to do so. While he’s been a city administrator, he added, the city has offered candidate profiles to the public for information purposes and he viewed this as an extension of what was already being done.

“The candidate profiles are written by each of the candidates. The City of Ely or I do not do anything to them, but post them as they are given to us. … [I saw this] as being along the lines of a freedom of speech or freedom of the press issue. If it was being allowed for one group of people, a similar opportunity should be provided to other people.”

The situation in Ely is somewhat unusual, however, because all but one of the write-in candidates are running predominantly as a bloc and being endorsed by a group called “Citizens for Responsible Government in Ely,” which has not registered with the state. When asked if the same courtesy would have been provided to any other citizen also seeking election as a write-in candidate, Anderson said it already had.

“I had someone phone me yesterday, and I did [put that person's profile onto the website],” he said.

A spokeswoman with the Iowa Secretary of State’s office said that because there is no formal process for declaring a write-in candidate, she agreed with the Linn County Auditor’s Office that the question was of campaign ethics and not election law.

Meghan Tooker, executive director and legal counsel for the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board, checked Ely’s website and also had a conversation with Anderson.

“There are two things that I see, two separate issues,” Tooker told The Iowa Independent by phone Tuesday. “One is whether it is a good idea for the city to provide information about write-in candidates. That doesn’t fall under our jurisdiction. I think that is a judgment call that is best left to the city and, ultimately, its residents. The second issue is whether any of the information the city provided violates … the Iowa Code.”

Iowa law states that a public body cannot expend taxpayer dollars to expressly advocate for or against a candidate or a ballot issue. Basically, general profiles or biographies of candidates are permitted. Within those profiles, however, candidates are prohibited from asking for a citizen’s vote or campaign contributions.

Tooker said there were at least two profiles on Ely’s website — one from a write-in candidate and another from a traditional candidate — that violated the rule. In addition, a phrase used at the bottom of a document (PDF) that provided profiles of several write-in candidates was questionable. That statement reads, “A good election is when you have a choice and a write-in space is there to gives [sic] you that choice!”

“I think that’s getting awfully close,” Tooker said, “but I don’t think it completely crosses the line. But, you know, it is getting awfully close.”

Anderson said he isn’t sure how Ely will address the issue in the future or if the city would continue to provide information on write-in candidates.

A similar situation involving a tiny town in Lucas County, located in south-central Iowa, had three city officials pooling their private funds to create a flier showing four individuals who were willing to serve on the local council if elected through write-in votes.

“In that situation, we were called to see if it would violate ethics laws,” Tooker said. “But the situation was different from Ely in that no public funds were being used to create, print or distribute the fliers.”

In both situations, she said, it appears that local officials were attempting to provide as much information as possible to voters.

Sen. Dave Robertson (R-Grand Blanc) has introduced a bill that would require the Secretary of State to create a new “inactive voter” file of those who haven’t voted in the last six years and would automatically challenge ballots from people on that list if they vote via absentee ballot.

The measure is described as a matter of “ballot security” in an overview provided by the office of Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, who supports the measure.

Robertson’s bill also creates new rules for removing voters who get drivers licenses in other states.

According to the new law, if the Dept. of State learns that a Michigan resident has received a drivers license elsewhere, it will send a notice to that voter asking her to verify that she has not moved out of state. If the voter does not return the letter she will be removed from the voter rolls if she doesn’t vote in the next two general elections.

Former Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land had a policy of automatically removing voters who get licenses elsewhere. This practice was ended under a settlement in federal court in 2010.

Voting rights groups say that this removal program had a particularly detrimental impact on students and minority and low income communities because students often have divers licenses from other states and students and poor people tend to move more, making it more difficult to reach them by mail.

At a press conference announcing the proposed reforms this week Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said they she wants the federal government to help Michigan ensure that no non-citizen can vote.

Johnson has initiated a new policy that requires branch office workers to tell people that only citizens can vote before offering voter registration materials, and although election officials have no evidence of voting by non-citizens, Johnson said that she is concerned that thousands of non-citizens may be on the voter rolls.

Other Republican reforms introduced this week include a law that makes failure to file campaign finance reports a felony if a candidate has more than $20,000 and limits the use of campaign funds for legal defense.

A bill by Rep. Sharon Tyler (R-Niles) would amend the Campaign Finance Act to require quarterly filings by approved ballot question committees that have raised or spent expended at least $500 and requires disclosure of financing for new political parties.

Spokeswoman Gisgie Gendreau said that Johnson wants to use federal Homeland Security, Social Security and immigration databases to help us remove noncitizens from the rolls but that these agencies have not responded to her requests for access to their databases.

Gendreau said that Johnson is working with U.S. Rep. Candice Miller (R-Harrison Township), a former Michigan Secretary of State, on a way to require the federal government to share citizenship status information. But in a 2004 federal court ruling, Judge David Lawson cited Miller and other officials to show that there was no evidence of voter fraud in Michigan:

Preventing election fraud and preserving the “purity of the ballot box” certainly is a legitimate State interest. However, Michigan enjoys an election history that is relatively fraud-free. In 1997, Michigan’s attorney general stated that “as the chief law enforcement official of the State of Michigan, I am not aware of any substantial voter fraud in Michigan’s elections. I have not received complaints regarding voter fraud. Moreover, the state’s chief elections official, Secretary of State Candice Miller, confirmed the fact that Michigan does not have a voter fraud problem when she stated: “We have no real evidence of voter fraud in Michigan. Michigan has historically had very clean elections.”

Last year, the Messenger contacted county and state election officials and found none who could recall even a single incident of actual voter fraud in the state of Michigan. That includes elections officials in Oakland County, where Ruth Johnson was the clerk before being elected Secretary of State. The spokesperson for the office she currently holds told the Messenger, “If you’re talking about actual in-person voting at the polls as opposed to bad registration cards, I’d have to say no. I’m happy to say we’re a very clean state.”

The absentee ballot applications told voters they needed to be returned by Aug. 11, two days after the Aug. 9 deadline set by the state. The address listed on the ballot as “application processing center” belongs to WFA not a county clerk’s office where the ballots must be returned by the deadline.

The mailing was sent out in the districts of Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls, and Rob Cowles, R-Allouez, who are facing recall challenges from Democrats Shelly Moore and Nancy Nusbaum.

A Democratic voter who received the ballot made a video of the ballot explaining the problems with it.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, two people who have received the inaccurate ballots are in the process of filing complaints against WFA and AFP.

AFP told reporters on Monday that the group was not trying to mislead voters and that the mailing only went out to its members.

Matt Seaholm, state director of AFP, blamed the mistake on a typo, saying his group was not trying to mislead anyone.

“This just went out to our members,” the group’s head Matt Seaholm told the Journal Sentinel. “I’m sure the liberals will try to make a mountain out of a molehill in an attempt to distract voters’ attention from the issues.”

Here’s a copy of the mailings and complaint filed against AFP and WFA which was obtained by the Journal Sentinel.

One such bill, introduced in the House on Jan. 6, would only allow students to vote in their college towns if they or their parents had a previously established permanent residency there. Voters who don’t qualify under this law would be forced to vote in the towns they hale from. Another bill would cease Election Day registration. Both bills are due out of the Election Law Committee on March 10. The House has also introduced a law requiring voter identification, similar to initiatives in North Carolina.

At a recent tea party event in New Hampshire, Republican state House Speaker William O’Brien promoted these bills and their intentions, according to The Washington Post.

O’Brien’s comments -– depicting all young voters as liberals who lack life experience and “just vote their feelings” –- were, according to the Post, taped by a New Hampshire Democratic Party staffer and posted on YouTube, though TAI could not find the video, and, apparently, we are not alone.

In New Hampshire, the measure that covers college students also targets military members temporarily stationed in the state.

From the Washington Post:

Backers of the voting measures say they would bring fairness and restore confidence in a voting system vulnerable to fraud. Many states, for instance, do not require identification to vote. Measures being proposed in 32 states would add an ID requirement or proof of citizenship, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

“I want to know when I walk into the poll that they know I am who I say I am and that nobody else has said that they are me,” said North Carolina state Rep. Ric Killian (R), who is preparing to introduce legislation that would require voters to show a photo ID at the polls.

Democrats charge that the real goal, as with anti-union measures in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere, is simply to deflate the power of core Democratic voting blocs – in this case young people and minorities. For all the allegations of voter fraud, Democrats and voting rights groups say, there is scant evidence to show that it is a problem.

“It’s a war on voting,” said Thomas Bates, vice president of Rock the Vote, a youth voter- registration group mounting a campaign to fight the array of state measures. “We’d like to be advocating for a 21st-century voting system, but here we are fighting against efforts to turn it back to the 19th century.”

Legal immigrants will be allowed to vote in city elections in Portland, Maine, if a ballot initiative passes on Nov. 2.

Last Wednesday, a group of progressive volunteers gathered in Monument Square in Portland, Maine, to quiz passersby about citizenship. Could they answer sample civics questions from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services test to become an American citizen? (Most couldn’t.) Did they know how much it costs to become a citizen or how long it can take? (Most estimates were too low.) Did they know about Question 4 on the Portland, Maine, city ballot Nov. 2?

[Immigration1] In a city where legal immigrants make up about 15 percent of the population, the progressive groups Maine People’s Alliance and the League of Young Voters are working to encourage voters to extend voting rights to legal immigrants who have not yet become citizens. They argue these residents live, work and pay taxes in the city, but due to the difficulty of obtaining citizenship are unfairly denied the right to determine how the city spends its funds.

“Legal immigrants are active members of the community and shouldn’t be denied a voice because of these major barriers,” said Reva Eiferman, an organizer with Maine People’s Alliance. “There’s a disconnect between the citizenship process within the immigration system and an individual’s right to have their voice heard in their city.”

As cities and states across the country consider legislation aimed at limiting the flow of outsiders to their areas, a few municipalities are moving in the opposite direction, pushing to expand the rights of immigrants living within their borders. In Portland, Question 4 would allow legal immigrants to vote in municipal elections. A ballot proposition in San Francisco aims to take voting one step further, allowing even illegal immigrants to vote in school elections as long as they are the parents of a public school student. In New York, city council members plan to introduce legislation allowing legal residents to vote in city elections within the next few months.

These efforts show that while anti-immigrant sentiment is prevalent, it’s not universal, supporters argue.

“It responds to what’s happening nationwide — the new policies in Arizona included — in a positive way,” Eiferman said.

Non-citizens can already vote in six Maryland municipalities and in Chicago school elections, but the rest of the country gives voting privileges only to citizens. Early in the country’s history, non-citizens were allowed to vote in most states, but as immigration into the United States increased, residents began to restrict voting rights, state by state. (Federal elections have always limited voting to citizens.) By the 1920s, as Europeans moved to the country after World War I, states cut off legal immigrant voting rights entirely, and only a few cities have so far reinstated them.

“It was kind of like the atmosphere now: There was concern about the volume of newcomers and what it means for the nature of America and where it’s headed,” said Ron Hayduk, a political science professor at the City University in New York and a supporter of expanding New York voting rights to non-citizens.

If immigrants can vote, they will never bother to become citizens, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the anti-illegal immigration group Center for Immigration Studies. He said the citizenship process is sufficiently easy for legal immigrants that they should be required to fully commit to the country before getting the right to vote.

“It’s silly not to require that formal step of marrying America instead of just shacking up,” Krikorian said.

But supporters argue that voting would help legal immigrants become more invested in their cities and schools. The San Francisco ballot measure to give parents of public school students the right to vote, Proposition D, could dramatically increase the number of potential voters in school elections: About half of all children in the Bay area have at least one immigrant parent, according to a study by the California Immigration Policy Center.

“I really believe our schools will be better if more parents are involved in every level of school governance,” said Kathy Coll, the mother of two San Francisco Unified School District students and one of three co-chairmen of the campaign for Proposition D.

In New York, the effort to expand voting will go through the city council, not through voters directly. City council member Daniel Dromm, a Democrat, said the council plans to consider legislation to extend voting in city elections to legal immigrants with the next few months. The bill will be called the Resident Voting Rights Act — “They are residents, they’re just not citizens yet,” Dromm said — and would allow any legal resident to vote in municipal elections.

“I feel it’s a basic right: This country was founded on the premise of ‘no taxation without representation,’” Dromm said. “By denying residents the right to vote, we are forcing taxation without representation.”

The Same Day Registration Act would let people register at the polling place on Election Day rather than requiring registration weeks or months ahead of time, as most states do.

Same-day registration is already law in seven states, including Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, plus the District of Columbia. Common Cause claims those states see voter-turnout rates as much as 7 percent higher than others. North Dakota is the only state to do without voter registration altogether.

In a statement, Ellison outlined the advantage of such a system:

Minnesota routinely leads the nation in voter turnout – usually over 70 percent. … Enacting a National Election Day Registration law would do for the nation what same day registration has done for our State – give a voice to all who want to vote.

A Caltech/MIT study (pdf) published earlier this year shot down the two biggest criticisms of same-day voter registration — the potential for fraud and additional costs imposed on local election administrators.

[I]n the six states that currently use election day registration, there is not an unusually high number of cases of voting fraud.  In particular, we have interviewed local election officials in Minnesota and Wisconsin, especially in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Milwaukee areas, and have found only a handful of cases of fraud involving a very small number of votes over the last decade. This in our opinion is due not to the unique political cultures of these six states, but instead to the fact that these states have made substantial investments in minimizing the risks  associated with election day registration. [...]

We have been able to find no evidence that election jurisdictions that have election day registration have significantly higher costs per vote, so it is not clear that election day registration is necessarily more costly.  Rather, election day registration simply moves much of the pre-election burden of registration tasks to the post-election period; that is, rather than having to expend resources in the registration period before the election to update databases, most of this work can occur after the election.

Of course, the study also found that same-day registration could increase turnout among certain demographics, especially the young and minorities — which tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Smart money says Republicans will find some reason to oppose it.