"I support responsible and cost-efficient election reform that increases voter participation because democracy works best when the most people vote," he said of the veto. "But this bill risks the integrity and orderly administration of our elections by introducing a new voting method and process."

From the Star-Ledger:

Christie, who is seeking re-election, raised the ire of unions and the Democratic Governors Association, who are backing his likely opponent, state Sen. Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex).

"The governor’s veto shamefully silences the voices of an untold number of New Jersey families," New Jersey AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech said. The Democratic Governors Association immediately issued a statement likening Christie to what it called "shameless Republican governors restricting voting rights for partisan political gain," citing Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and others.

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Up until today, you might have been able to write all that anti-democratic pathology off as one infecting only the Republican Party's politicians and institutional leadership, but not its rank-and-file voters. But then this morning Fairleigh Dickinson University released this gun control-related pollshowing that authoritarianism runs throughout the the entire party.

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Both the state House and Senate are controlled by Republicans. The House voted 52-45 to override the veto, which had earlier passed in the state Senate by a margin of 21-12.

From the Associated Press:

While Arkansas poll workers must ask for identification under current law, voters don't have to show it to cast a ballot. Under the new law, voters who don't show photo identification can cast provisional ballots. Those ballots would be counted only if voters provide ID to county election officials or, before noon on the Monday following an election, sign an affidavit stating they are indigent or have a religious objection to being photographed.

Beebe had called the bill "an expensive solution in search of a problem," but accepted the override of his veto. "He made his case as to why he thought it wasn't going to be good for Arkansas, but they have the final say and they've had that say," Beebe's spokesman, Matt DeCample, told the AP following the vote.

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At least that’s the lesson of Edward Blum, a conservative legal activist who, despite lacking formal legal education, has successfully pushed 14 cases to the nation’s highest court. Of the nearly 9,000 cased filed with the court last year, just 79 got oral arguments. Blum got two of them, and they’re both among the most-watched cases currently before the justices.

One, Shelby County v. Holder, could gut the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The other, Fisher v. University of Texas, could outlaw affirmative action in college admissions and possibly elsewhere. Progressive legal activists and civil rights groups have sounded the alarm, putting both cases at the top of their agendas and warning that a bad decision could undermine decades of protections for minorities.

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"I think we should see what they did and I think we should, if possible, figure out a way to fix the Supreme Court's objections," Sensenbrenner, who represents Wisconsin, said at CPAC. "The Voting Rights Act has been, I think, the most effective of all of the civil rights laws. It enfranchised all minorities in the south, and that includes both African Americans and Republicans."

He added: "If you look at what happened after Section 5 was amended in 1982, the number of African-American and Republican representatives in Congress and in state legislatures has gone way up."

When asked if Republicans have the political will to act if the VRA is struck down, Sensenbrenner told Salon: "I'm gonna make them fix it."

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Every year, as February turns to March, thousands return to Selma, Ala., to commemorate the moment President Lyndon Johnson later compared to Lexington and Concord, calling it “a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom.” But few know that this important event was the result of a series of accidents and almost did not occur. More important, it suggests that change in America is not inevitable and comes only when determined people risk their lives to achieve it.

On Sunday, March 7, 1965, peaceful demonstrators attempting to cross Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge were attacked by Alabama State troopers armed with bats, electric cattle prods and tear gas. “I’m going to die here,” thought John Lewis, one of the march’s leaders, as he fell to the ground, concussed by a trooper’s bat.

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From the AP:

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement reported Tuesday that the two ex-employees were charged with a third degree felony. But prosecutors back in January decided to place both of them on probation because neither has a criminal history.

Strategic Allied Consulting was hired by Republicans to do voter registration drives in Florida and other states. But last fall, the state party fired the company and took the additional step of filing an election fraud complaint against the company with state officials.

Rebekah Joy Paul submitted 20 fake voter registration applications, according to the FDLE, while Christian Davis Price submitted seven. Both alleged that they were told they would not get paid unless they submitted a certain number of applications, and Paul alleges that she was instructed not to register Democrats.

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The justices did not comment Monday in rejecting an appeal of lower court decisions that left the order in place at least until 2017.

The order stems from a lawsuit filed by Democrats in New Jersey in 1981 that objected to a "ballot security" program the RNC ran in minority neighborhoods.

Republicans said the order hampers efforts to combat voter fraud, but U.S. District Judge Dickinson Debevoise said voter intimidation remains a threat and preventing it outweighs the potential danger of fraud.

The court action is unrelated to legal challenges to Republican-inspired voter identification laws in the 2012 campaign.

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Twelve years after the startling disarray of the 2000 election, in too many states dismally bad election administration has become the expected course. Hours-long lines, malfunctioning voting machines, and hopelessly confusing ballots are the headlines potential voters see.  How can we expect that busy citizens will not be deterred from voting by the thought of such barriers? Every botched election and new barrier to voting causes even more citizens to completely disengage from their own governance.

This year, we saw thousands of our fellow citizens still wait in those endless lines, cast provisional ballots and file complaints when they were illegally denied the opportunity to vote.  American citizens are literally fighting for their right to vote.  Now it’s time that Congress and President Obama step to that fight.

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It’s lucky that was the case, because the federal commission tasked with making elections function better has been stymied by partisan infighting that has left it with zero commissioners, with Republicans refusing to appoint new ones and blocking Democrats from doing the same.

Congress created the U.S. Election Assistance Commission with the passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which allocated over $3 billion to help states improve their election administration and enacted a number of reforms aimed at preventing another debacle like the presidential election of 2000. The act passed with rare and overwhelming bipartisan support -- the House voted 357-48 in favor and the Senate 92-2 -- but the honeymoon didn’t last long and the commission soon fell victim to the partisan bickering that has hamstrung the Federal Election Commission.

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In most cases, the margins are the large enough by this point that candidates have declared victory or conceded defeat, even if the results aren’t official. And late Friday night, the Arizona Republic newspaper declared Democrat Ron Barber the winner in the highest profile race outstanding, the one to replace Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords. That contest had been too close to call for over 10 days, with fewer than 1,000 votes separating Barber from Republican Martha McSally, but the remaining outstanding ballots come from heavily Democratic areas so the paper was able to project Barber's victory.

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With a look at affirmative action in higher education already on the agenda, the court is putting a spotlight on race by re-examining the ongoing necessity of laws and programs aimed at giving racial minorities access to major areas of American life from which they once were systematically excluded.

"This is a term in which many core pillars of civil rights and pathways to opportunity hang in the balance," said Debo Adegbile, acting president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

In an order Friday, the justices agreed to hear a constitutional challenge to the part of the landmark Voting Rights Act that requires all or parts of 16 states with a history of discrimination in voting to get federal approval before making any changes in the way they hold elections.

The high court considered the same issue three years ago but sidestepped what Chief Justice John Roberts then called "a difficult constitutional question."

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It would actually be quite easy -- logistically, not politically -- to "fix" American elections. There have been a million sober, bipartisan reports and plans to fix them that have been largely ignored. Paper ballots, universal or automatic voter registration, expanded nationwide early voting and stricter requirements for clear and concise ballots would solve many of the problems we saw this week. Lots of states already have most of these reforms in place. Most other Western nations have a much easier time of voting than we do and their systems are easy to copy and adapt.

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The basic question is whether state and local governments that once boasted of their racial discrimination still can be forced in the 21st century to get federal permission before making changes in the way they hold elections.

Some of the governments covered — most of them are in the South — argue they have turned away from racial discrimination over the years. But Congress and lower courts that have looked at recent challenges to the law concluded that a history of discrimination and more recent efforts to harm minority voters justify continuing federal oversight.

The Supreme Court took no action Monday on cases asking it to end the Voting Rights Act's advance approval requirement that has been held up as a crown jewel of the civil rights era.

The justices sidestepped this very issue in a case from Texas in 2009. In an opinion joined by eight justices, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote then that the issue of advance approval "is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today."

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Reports of Hart Intercivic’s ties to Romney first surfaced in late September, in a blog post by Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis in the Free Press, an Ohio website that reported that a key investor in Hart was HIG Capital, seven of whose directors were former employees of Bain & Co., a consulting company of which Mitt Romney was once CEO. (Romney left the company in 1984 to co-found a spinoff company, Bain Capital.) HIG Capital announced its investment in Hart on July 6, 2011, just one month after Romney formally announced the launch of his presidential campaign.

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Today, voting-rights groups are taking action, sending a letter to New Mexico Secretary of State Dianna Duran, the state’s top election official, asking for an investigation. “We are concerned that without corrective action on your part this and other incorrect information may result in disruption, delay and potentially disenfranchisement on Election Day,” the letter states.

The state’s Democratic attorney general has already said he will investigate the training.

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