Presidential Commission on Election Administration Launched

The Presidential Commission on Election Administration established by President Obama after problematic 2012 elections when online this week at SupporttheVoter.gov.  Obama established the commission by executive order on March 28, "to identify best practices in election administration and to make recommendations to improve the voting experience." The co-chairs of the commission are Robert Bauer, a general counsel for the Obama campaign, and Benjamin Ginsberg, a national counsel to the Romney campaign.  First up on the new website is the following press release:

WASHINGTON, May 21, 2013 — The Presidential Commission on Election Administration was officially launched today, following President Barack Obama’s State of the Union pledge to identify non-partisan ways to shorten lines at polling places, promote the efficient conduct of elections, and provide better access to the polls for all voters.

The 10-member Commission will submit a final report to the President within six months of its first public meeting, which is expected to be held in Washington in June. Headed by Co-Chairs Bob Bauer and Ben Ginsberg, the Commissioners are experts in election administration, policy and procedures, or leaders from customer service-oriented businesses and industry.

“The President’s expectation is clear,” said Co-Chair Bob Bauer, who served President Obama as White House counsel from December 2009until 2011, and as General Counsel to the President’s re-election committee and to the Democratic National Committee. “The Commission is charged with developing recommendations based on the best information available for administrative practices that afford voters the opportunity to cast ballots without undue delay and improve their overall experience.”

“Waiting in line and facing other unnecessary obstacles to voting is not a Republican or Democratic issue,” said Co-Chair Ben Ginsberg, who served as national counsel to the Bush-Cheney presidential campaigns in2000 and 2004, and as national counsel to the Romney for President campaigns in 2008 and 2012. “This effort is aimed at assisting state and local election officials in their ongoing work to improve the voter experience under existing election laws. With extensive input from the public and through the broad knowledge and experience each Commissioner brings to the table, we hope to make a contribution to the hard work on improving election administration in which election officials are continuously engaged.”

The Commission was created by Executive Order 13639, Establishment of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. Commissioners were appointed by the President. They are:

• Robert F. Bauer, Co-Chair and member – Partner, Perkins Coie LLP
• Benjamin L. Ginsberg, Co-Chair and Member – Partner, Patton Boggs LLP
• Brian Britton, Member – Vice President, Global Park Operations and Planning at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
• Joe Echevarria, Member – Chief Executive Officer, Deloitte LLP
• Trey Grayson, Member – Director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
• Larry Lomax, Member – Clark County (Nevada) Registrar
• Michele Coleman Mayes, Member – Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary for the New York Public Library
• Ann McGeehan, Member – Assistant General Counsel of the Texas County and District Retirement System
• Tammy Patrick, Member – Federal Compliance Officer for the Maricopa County (Arizona) Elections Department
• Christopher Thomas, Member – Director of Elections in the Michigan Department of State

Nathaniel Persily will serve as Senior Research Director for the Commission. He is the Beekman Professor of Law and Political Science at Columbia Law School, and as of July 1, 2013, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School.

The Commission was created under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, with staff and support services provided by the U.S. General Services Administration. The Commission will be disbanded 30 days after it presents its final report to the President.

by Michael Handley

I haven't written about the status of Texas' Voter Photo ID law for some months. Here is a short update.

Recall that last August a panel of three federal judges for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia found the law imposes "strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor" and noted that racial minorities in Texas are more likely to live in poverty. In other words, that federal court wouldn't let Texas enforce its new voter I.D. law. Texas then started the process to appeal that court's ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court - the Supreme Court has not yet accepted the appeal, pending its decision on an Alabama case.

Sometime before the end of June, the Supreme Court will decide Shelby County (Alabama) v. Holder, a constitutional challenge to the "Section 5" preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act, one of the law’s most important guarantees against racial discrimination in voting. Enacted in 1965 and renewed by Congress in 1970, 1975, 1982 and 2006, the preclearance requirement forbids governments with a history of voting discrimination from enforcing racially discriminatory voting changes.

Texas' Voter Photo ID law is on hold pending the the Court's Shelby decision. If the court strikes down Section 5, which many think is likely on a 5-4 split decision, Texas can quickly move to enforce its Voter Photo ID law. If the court upholds Section 5, the Court will then decide to take up the question of whether Texas' Voter Photo ID law is constitutional, next term, which begins in October. Stay tuned for more updates...

Related:

• Texas’ Long History Against Voting Rights
• Texas’ Decades Long Fight Against Voting Rights

Intensity Of Extreme Weather - Climate Change?

By Michael Handley

Updated Monday, May 20,2012 @ 15:48
Heat records for the month of May were crushed in the Northern Plains and upper Midwest last week while Tornadoes as big as a mile wide and fist-sized hail battered states from Texas to the upper Midwest.  (Temperature map right)

Last week, triple-digit readings smashed long-standing May 14 daily records, with a margin as much as 7° at Norfolk, Nebraska.

At Sioux City, Iowa, the 106° high also broke the all-time May maximum temperature record.

Sioux City climate records date back to 1889. At both Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska, it was the earliest 100° temperature on record, surpassing the previous records of 5/29/1934 and 5/24/1967, respectively.

The temperature extremes were a reflection of a strongly anomalous circulation pattern along a very strong ridge of high pressure that extend from the eastern Pacific to the Great Lakes near the middle of the atmosphere, while a deep low pressure area was located off the Mid Atlantic coast.

Last week, thunderstorms tore through northeastern Texas as the result of the anomalous circulation pattern.  Warm and humid winds blowing from the Gulf of Mexico collided with hot and dry winds from West Texas, resulting in a twisting motion of the lower atmosphere. The National Weather Service in Ft. Worth, Texas issued a report saying 16 tornadoes hit Texas on Wednesday. The tornado that struck Granbury was given the rating of EF-4, with winds estimated between 166 to 200 mph.

A massive storm front swept north through the central United States on Sunday. Nineteen tornadoes touched down hitting parts of Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas and Illinois, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and local news reports. Hail stones, some as large as baseballs, were reported from Georgia to Minnesota, the NOAA said.

Again Monday afternoon, a mile-wide tornado described by the National Weather Service as “large and deadly” touched down south of Oklahoma City, in the suburb of Moore, causing widespread destruction and fatalities. Two elementary schools were completely destroyed. Those schools are Briarwood Elementary in Oklahoma City and Plaza Towers Elementary in Moore, Okla.

Scientists have long warned us that climate change would bring more extreme weather patterns, with more frequent and intense weather events. The huge tornado that tore through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on Monday had winds of up to 200 miles per hour, or more. Early data suggests this tornado may be the strongest tornado ever recorded - ever.  Is CO2-based atmospheric warming a factor in the latest Oklahoma City tornado?  Scientists can't say yes or no, with certainty.

Global warming is making the earth a more dynamic and violent place. The fossil fuels that human civilization burns worldwide dumps more than 35 billion tons of the CO2 green house gas into the atmosphere every year.

As the amount of that green house gas builds in the atmosphere year after year, it traps more and more of the sun’s energy in our narrow envelope of atmosphere. That increasing energy potential is increasingly expressing itself in many ways. We don’t know for sure that any particular tornado comes from climate change; There have always been tornadoes. But we do know that we’re seeing epic levels of thunderstorm activity, of flooding, of drought, of more wide spread EF-4 to EF-5 super tornadoes, of the things that climatologists have been warning us about.

Yet, Republicans continue to avidly reject the scientific evidence for climate change.

The type, frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are predicted to change as Earth’s climate changes. Changes in some types of extreme events have already been observed, for example, increases in the frequency and intensity of heat waves, droughts and perhaps even tornado swarm events. Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas are call tornado alley for good reason. But day after day of swarms of a dozen, two dozen or more tornadoes, some as much as a mile wide super tornadoes, seem anomalous, even for tornado alley.

In closing, we may never know whether larger global warming factors were at play in Monday's Oklahoma City storms. All we can do at this moment is react to them and give the people of Oklahoma all the help they need.