"Everyone focuses on voter ID, but I don't think they realize that loss of corroboration is the bigger issue..."

Corroboration?

... the practice of allowing new or recently relocated voters to establish residency in a ward and register to vote by having someone vouch for them if they lack an acceptable document that shows their address....

Sen. Mary Lazich, the law's chief sponsor, said the corroboration ban would stop only those attempting voter fraud... Lazich said election clerks told her several years before the law passed that they worried that "chain corroboration" — large groups of people vouching for each other — was "out of hand."...

Some students and homeless people have used corroboration, but [Diane Hermann-Brown, past president and current communications chairwoman for the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association] said new brides and elderly women who move in with adult their children are most likely to be hurt by the ban when they don't have utility bills or other common proofs of residence in their names....

A River Falls man who had moved in with his girlfriend but didn't change his address or have any utilities in his name was unable to register to vote even though the chief election inspector at the polling place knew him well, said Carolyn Castore of Milwaukee, who coordinated 150 observers across the state.

"It chagrined the chief inspector because that man lived next door to her and had shoveled her sidewalk last winter," according to a league report on problems at the polls.

So... it seems that somehow Democrats have this vision of modern life where everyone knows everyone else personally and there's nothing to verify and only terrible Republican meanies — trying to disenfranchise new brides and elderly women — would expect something more than just people vouching for each other. The Dems are selling this rosy optimistic picture of community, where the fornicator next door shovels your snow, and the Repubs are troubling us with scary pessimism: hordes of who-know-who — student-y and homeless-looking characters — corroborating lies.

Absentee ballots are rejected twice as much as in-person ballots.

2% of these efforts at voting fail, writes the NYT legal correspondent Adam Liptak. Apparently, people make mistakes like failing to put their signature in the right place. Or there's a signature that insufficiently resembles the registration signature. And there's also potential for fraud — which is apparently more likely to occur by mail. It's also the case that more absentee ballots are requested and sent out than are returned.

Liptak suggests the potential for litigation if an election is close:

If the contests next month are close enough to be within what election lawyers call the margin of litigation, the grounds on which they will be fought will not be hanging chads but ballots cast away from the voting booth.

The beginning of the article nudges us to think that the problem is that honest people are tripped up and disenfranchised and that states are somehow causing more people to take the absentee approach to voting and are therefore responsible for these mistakes. Liptak doesn't sketch out any legal argument that would go with that problem. And if you read far enough down in the article, you see that the real problem is fraud:

Election administrators have a shorthand name for a central weakness of voting by mail. They call it granny farming.

“The problem,” said Murray A. Greenberg, a former county attorney in Miami, “is really with the collection of absentee ballots at the senior citizen centers.” In Florida, people affiliated with political campaigns “help people vote absentee,” he said. “And help is in quotation marks.”

Voters in nursing homes can be subjected to subtle pressure, outright intimidation or fraud. The secrecy of their voting is easily compromised. And their ballots can be intercepted both coming and going.

The problem is not limited to the elderly, of course. Absentee ballots also make it much easier to buy and sell votes. In recent years, courts have invalidated mayoral elections in Illinois and Indiana because of fraudulent absentee ballots.

In the end, Liptak shifts to the much-discussed topic of voter ID laws, which are aimed at in-person voter fraud — the less likely type of fraud. If voting in person becomes more difficult, more people may switch to absentee form of voting, and there will be more fraud, Liptak tells us, the opposite of what is supposedly intended.

I don't know if Liptak is going to change anyone's mind about voter ID laws — which I suspect is the main purpose of this article. But he did make me feel terrible about absentee voter fraud. Let's crack down on it! Making in-person voting easier isn't going to help much. Those nursing home targets aren't going to stop voting absentee. 

"The Wisconsin Supreme Court said Thursday it wouldn't hear challenges to the state's voter ID law until an appeals court hears the cases..."

"... a setback for Republicans who wanted voters to have to show a photo ID to vote in November's election."

Can the NYT stop providing phony "balance" and help readers know what to believe?

The NYT has a new "public editor," Margaret Sullivan. She introduced herself last week and explained her concept of the role: "Put readers first... Encourage conversation... Promote transparency and understanding."

The Times’s decision to open itself to criticism from the inside, criticism that is made public, is a clear indication of its desire to keep its standards high.

It's a clear indication of its desire to clearly indicate its desire to indicate that it desires to keep its standards high. We'll see what Sullivan actually does. This week, her column is about "the journalistic practice of giving equal weight to both sides of a story" — taking cover under the appearance of balance — instead of "more aggressive on fact-checking and truth-squading." Journalists, we're told, have been feeling "pressure" recently "to be more aggressive on fact-checking and truth-squading." Recently? Why recently?

It’s all a part of a movement — brought about, in part, by a more demanding public, fueled by media critics, bloggers and denizens of the social media world — to present the truth, not just conflicting arguments leading to confusion.

Diagram that sentence. Or, don't... just rewrite it. New media is continually applying this pressure. It's not your movement. It's your reaction. The old cover of phony balance doesn't work anymore. Now, what is the NYT supposed to do? Sullivan says:

Journalists need to make every effort to get beyond the spin and help readers know what to believe, to help them make their way through complicated and contentious subjects.

Help readers know what to believe... The one recent example she gives is the conflict over voter ID laws, in which one side points to the asserted problem of voter fraud and the other contends that the new laws are really about vote suppression. NYT readers wrote to her to complain about an article that presented the statements of both sides, instead of helping readers know what to believe: "that there was little evidence of voter fraud."

The national editor, Sam Sifton, rejected the argument. “There’s a lot of reasonable disagreement on both sides,” he said.... “It’s not our job to litigate it in the paper...We need to state what each side says.”

... “Both sides have become very angry and very suspicious about the other,” [said the author of the article, Ethan Bronner]. “The purpose of this story was to step back and look at both sides, to lay it out.” While he agreed that there was “no known evidence of in-person voter fraud,” and that could have been included in this story, “I don’t think that’s the core issue here.”

Sullivan's next line is "On other subjects, The Times has made clear progress in avoiding false balance." So the accusation — stated weakly, but stated — is that the NYT falsely equated the 2 sides' assertions and has failed to make enough progress in the movement to help readers know what to believe.

There's your problem with the NYT, according to the new public editor: It's just so darned balanced and so reticent about manipulating reader opinion. And — this is the funny part — new media is pressuring the NYT to get with it and tell us who to believe. Hint: It's the Democrats. Why can't the NYT amp up their support for the Democrats? Hmm. It's what new media wants, sayeth the new promote-transparency-and-understanding editor, telling us about something a reader wrote.

Letters to the editor! That's not really new media, even if it was email. Does Sullivan understand much of anything about the pressure new media has been putting on the NYT? She thinks the solution is to be more clear about vouching for the Democratic Party's arguments? That would relieve the pressure?

"Elizabeth Warren can’t escape her Cherokee heritage controversy even at this gathering of loyal Democrats..."

"... as a contingent of skeptical American Indian delegates — including the great-grandson of Geronimo — are inviting Warren to a meeting tomorrow to explain her ancestry claims."

The delegates extended an invitation to Warren to appear at their caucus meeting tomorrow, just before she is slated to give a prime-time address on the convention stage....

Well, that timing gives her an easy way to say no, but her cause is damaged by the simple spectacle of DNC delegates questioning her openly like this.

Geronimo’s wife, Karen, also an Apache from New Mexico, said she and other Indians carry an ID card as proof of their heritage, and believes every person claiming American Indian heritage should do the same.

Asked whether she would ever vote for someone who misrepresented themselves as American Indian, she was adamant.

“No, not at all,” Karen Geronimo said.

Another ID card issue!

(Link via Instapundit, who also links to Professor Jacobson, who is pushing hard on Warren's Indian-heritage claim.)

"A federal court on Thursday rejected a Texas law that would require voters to present photo IDs to election officials before being allowed to vote..."

"... in November's election, unanimously ruling that it imposes 'strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor,' who are often racial minorities."

"Voter ID laws could swing states."

An article at Politico:

"Swing states are always much more likely to have these kinds of laws restricting voting,” said Wendy Weiser, director of Brennan’s Democracy Program. “To the extent that it’s a political tactic to try and game the system, … it does make sense that that is where we see a lot of that because that is where it could make a difference to the outcome.”

Weiser's argument doesn't prove as much as she'd like, because it's also true that it's in swing states where there's the most reason to worry about fraud. It's a corollary to the old saying "if it's not close, they can't cheat."

Dane County judge finds Wisconsin's voter ID law violates the state constitution.

This is the second case finding the law violates the state constitution. Dane County is the location of Madison, and the case will almost certainly be appealed to the state supreme court. In the meantime, the rest of Wisconsin has another opportunity to notice Dane County/Madison and feel aversion/affection/apathy.

Eric Holder "implies that Jim Crow is on the cusp of a comeback" — why?

The Wall Street Journal says it's a cynical election move.

Mr. Holder's Council of Black Churches address is merely the latest of his election-year moves that charge racial discrimination of one kind or another. These include voting-rights lawsuits to block voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina, intervention in immigration cases in Arizona, and various housing and lending discrimination suits. Whatever the legal merits of these cases, their sudden proliferation in an election year suggests a political motivation.

The courts will eventually expose much of this as meritless, but it's a shame the media won't call Mr. Holder on this strategy before the election. Imagine the uproar if a Republican AG pursued a similar strategy. It's worse than a shame that America's first black Attorney General is using his considerable power to inflame racial antagonism.

2 teachers and a busload of high school students vote — using early in-person absentee balloting — in the Walker recall election.

"A witness at the Milwaukee Municipal Building on Friday reported seeing about 30 students from Pulaski High School arrived at the polls around 10 am. About 10 or 11 of them used their class schedules to vote."

However, according to the Milwaukee Elections Commission and the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, voters do not need to provide proof of age in order to register. All they have to do is check off a box on the registration form certifying that they are a qualified elector, a U.S. citizen and at least 18 years old by the time they vote.

"The whole system relies on the honestly and integrity of the individual," Sue Edmond, Milwaukee's Election Commission director, told the MacIver News Service. "If we find after the election that they lied, they could be charged with a felony."

The new voter ID law is not currently being enforced (because of the judgment of 2 Dane County judges). Interestingly, the new Marquette Law School poll, surveying likely voters in the recall election found that "61% percent favored requiring a government-issued photo id to vote, while 37 percent opposed that." People really do worry about voter fraud. Given the polls that show Walker leading — the Marquette poll has him 7 points ahead — if Barrett wins, people should be suspicious.

Here's Reince Priebus on the subject:

"I'm always concerned about voter fraud, you know, being from Kenosha, and quite frankly having lived through seeing some of it happen," Reince Priebus said. "Certainly in Milwaukee we have seen some of it, and I think it's been documented. Any notion that's not the case, it certainly is in Wisconsin. I'm always concerned about it, which is why I think we need to do a point or two better than where we think we need to be, to overcome it."...

Lester Pines, an attorney involved in a separate legal challenge to the voter ID law, also denounced Priebus' comments, saying they were baseless.

"His statement that Republicans need to outperform Democrats by one to two percent to account for vote fraud is an absolute, total, 100% lie," Pines said. "It is a fantasy. And Reince Priebus and his ilk are saying this and they're saying it over and over and over because they're using the well-known propaganda tool called 'the big lie.' If you say it enough times, people will believe it. There's no other way to characterize this except that Reince Priebus is a liar."

"The Big Lie" is indeed a well-known propaganda tool, but it is not simply something that's repeated a lot. "The Big Lie" refers to "colossal untruths" of the sort that ordinary people don't even think of telling, which they don't suspect because "they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." I'm quoting Mein Kampf there. It's Adolph Hitler's term. Know it. Use it, but know what you're saying when you use it and only use it when you mean it, Mr. Pines. Don't make casual, vague allusions to Hitler. It's not right.

64% of likely voters think voter fraud is a problem and 74% think voter ID laws don't discriminate.

According to a new Rasmussen poll.

This includes 35% who consider it a Very Serious problem and seven percent (7%) who view it as Not At All Serious....

Eighty-two percent (82%) believe all voters should be required to prove their identity before being allowed to vote. Only 14% oppose such a requirement.

Just 21% think laws requiring photo identification at the polls discriminate against some voters. Seventy-three percent (73%) disagree and feel that such laws do not discriminate.

Support for voter ID laws has increased over the years. It was 72% in June 2006 (as opposed to 82% today). The notion that these laws are discriminatory is losing ground. Last month, 67% said the laws don't discriminate, and 73% say that now.

Most voters across partisan lines express confidence in election results, but Democrats are more confident than the others. A plurality (49%) of voters in President Obama’s party consider voter fraud a serious problem in America today, but that compares to 84% of Republicans and 58% of voters not affiliated with either of the major parties.

What accounts for that split? Do people feel more confident that the voting is accurate if they think the fraudulent votes, if any, are coming in on their side? (And conversely, that people worry about fraud when they picture the bad votes counting for the other side?)

Will this poll make Democrats think they should abandon their attacks on voter ID laws? I don't think so. Whatever people think consciously when asked these poll questions, the issue works as a way to keep massaging brains with the message that racial discrimination is ever out there, ready to burst forth, unless constant vigilance is maintained, and only the Democratic Party will maintain that vigilance for you. After all, they keep talking about these terrible voter ID laws. 

Wisconsin Voter ID case goes straight to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports:

Appeals courts sent two lawsuits challenging Wisconsin's blocked new voter ID law directly to the state Supreme Court on Wednesday, determining it was imperative to resolve the cases quickly given the slate of important upcoming elections, including the state's presidential primaries next week.

If the Supreme Court agrees to take the cases, it could reinstate the state's new requirement that voters show photo identification at the polls just days before Tuesday's election. However, attorneys challenging the law said it is unlikely a decision would come that quickly.

A decision before next Tuesday's primaries? Assuming a majority of the court will uphold the new law, I find it hard to believe the minority won't at least have some power to slow the case down. But, on the other hand, you have a trial court enjoining an important new state law, interfering with an impending election, why should that be allowed to happen, if the law is, in fact, valid? 

"29 Wisconsin Judges Sign Walker Recall Petition."

"That’s 12 percent, and it’s not just abstract advocacy."

"Dane County Judge David Flanagan has been under fire for not disclosing his support of the recall before he issued a temporary restraining order against a Walker-backed voter ID law." It’s like these people don’t believe in civil society or something.

The left has often invoked the authority of law and the learned professions, but Wisconsin — from things like this to the phony doctors’ excuses for protesters — is suggesting that they’re just a bunch of partisan tools.

ADDED: Why would a judge sign a recall petition? You're just one name. It can't make that much difference. And then there you are, your reputation shot to hell. You're politicized. Biased. All those things you strive to deny when you assume the role of judge.

The linked AP article shows that "none of the state's 16 appeals court judges or seven Supreme Court justices signed the petition." That is a relief.

"The Obama administration has blocked Texas’ new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls..."

"... saying it would suppress Hispanic voter turnout, and the United Nations is now investigating the fairness of such laws in Texas and other states."

But voters in this country still overwhelmingly support voter ID laws and don’t think they discriminate.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 72% of Likely U.S. Voters believe voters should be required to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to vote.

"It's a shame activist Dane County judges continue to stand in the way of common sense."

Said a spokesman for Gov. Scott Walker, after Circuit Judge Richard Niess found that Wisconsin's voter ID law violates the state constitution.

"Today, the second time a judge has ruled against this heinous law, provides Wisconsin a moment to reflect on just what was given away by Scott Walker's tea party Republicans when, instead of focusing on the issues facing our public, they rushed instead to limit their freedoms," said [Democratic Party] chairman Mike Tate....

Here's some detail about the state constitutional provision Niess relied on. It is nothing like the arguments against voter ID laws based on the U.S. Constitution that you may be familiar with. It's about the "Suffrage" section of the state constitution that declares a big group of residents to be qualified electors, then gives the legislature the power to pare away from that group (in 2 specific categories, convicted felons and incompetent persons). To agree with the judge, I think you need to see a person without an ID as a type of person who is being excluded from the right to vote (and not within one of those 2 categories, so not within the legislature's power to exclude).

"Judge who blocked Voter ID law signed Walker recall petition."

So?

You can use "a name of your choice" to reserve a spot at the play about the Sterling Hall bombing.

And you won't need to show an I.D. at the door. I was wrong about that, I've been informed.

You simply need to get your name on their list and then tell them your name at the door. And if you don't want your real name on their list, you can use "a name of your choice."  Like... I don't know... Robert Fassnacht... or Leo Burt.

With no I.D. requirement, appropriated names suggested, and a play whose playwright asks "why do most of us think that [those who broke the social norm] weren’t [justified]?," wouldn't you expect some theatergoers without reservations to attempt to get in using a name they think somebody else might have chosen?

"It's personal, it's my privates, it's not necessary. It's a very expensive procedure which I can't afford..."

"... and it's got complications. I'm not sexually active. If I was 21 and I could afford it, yeah, but I'm 59."

Says Joann Prinzivalli, who has male genitalia but would like to require the state of New York to amend her/his birth certificate to identify her/him as female. New York already complies with requests to amend birth certificates to change a person's sex if there has been "convertive surgery" on the genitals. If you think Prinzivalli's demands sound extreme, you should know that the transgender rights movement has already achieved successes that you may not have factored into the scheme of your traditional/antiquated thinking:

The US government and many US states, as well as the UK and Australia, have done away with the requirement for surgery to convert the genitals. That is partly in response to transgender activists who say the requirement was based on an obsolete understanding of sexual identity.

In 2011 the Transgender Law Center successfully pushed for passage of legislation ending surgery as a requirement to obtain a new birth certificate in California....

Under the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, the UK does not require genital surgery before allowing individuals to obtain official recognition of their new gender.

And in 2010, the US State Department issued new guidelines requiring only "appropriate clinical treatment" to obtain a new passport or a birth certificate for US citizens born outside the country.

"There is a purity, a simplicity..." to Eric Holder's fight for voter rights.

Asserts Jeffrey Toobin... mystifyingly. Holder is fighting against voter ID laws, and the argument that these laws violate rights isn't pure and simple, as Toobin's own article shows. So why is Toobin saying that? It's by contrast to all the other issues that Holder might want to use "to define his legacy as Attorney General — as something more than the guy who tried, and failed, to have Guantánamo Bay detainees tried in federal court in New York."

There is a purity, a simplicity, about the voting-rights fight that is sadly absent from many modern civil-rights battles. This is not about special privileges, or quotas, or even complex mathematical formulae.

Why be sad? The straightforward civil-rights battles have been won. Those that are left are questionable. That's good. Unless you define the good in terms of opportunities for Eric Holder to define his legacy.

It's about a basic right of American citizenship, which is being taken from large numbers of people for the most cynical of reasons. [Voter ID] laws are, quite literally, indefensible...

Ridiculous! They're completely defensible. The case law is clear that requiring an ID doesn't violate the Constitution. The Supreme Court said so in 2008, in a 6-3 case. Holder still has a chance to use statutory law against the states that are covered by the Voting Rights Act, but to do that he'll have to argue for a broad interpretation of congressional powers, and what's pure and simple about that?

"Next time Holder speaks, someone should run to a judge for a TRO."

"And file a race-discrimination suit against whoever’s hosting him. Every single time...."

That's mainly a joke, but this isn't:

... I anticipate that South Carolina (and Texas) will take the preclearance decisions to a three judge court in DC, with direct appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.  I further expect that in this litigation, South Carolina (and Texas) will argue, among other arguments, that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional...

If review is expedited — which seems likely — the Supreme Court will be looking at this question and perhaps striking down the provision during the 2012 campaigns. Which party would be helped by that issue? Democrats will be positioned to preen about their concern for racial equality, and that puts Republicans in the position of championing the importance of leaving states alone to do things their own way, which — for some people at least — is a reminder of the bad old days when there clearly was discrimination and some states — mainly the states that are now stuck with the preclearance procedure — pontificated about "states' rights."

Nevertheless, I think the Republicans will be better off if this becomes an issue. First, people who reflexively impose that "bad old days" template are probably already voting for Democrats. Second, huge majorities of Americans support voter ID requirements, which means that few people buy into the race pandering. Third, playing the race card backfires once people clearly see that's all that's going on. And fourth, there really is something screwy about treating a few states differently from the other states, and if if a high-profile Supreme Court case makes people notice this strangeness, they'll be suspicious of the politicians and lawyers who strain to make the argument that it's right.