The GOP's War on Voting Goes to Washington

Republicans in state legislatures across the country have spent the past year mounting an all-out assault on voting rights, pushing a slew of voter ID and redistricting measures that are widely expected to dilute the power of minority and low-income voters in next November's elections. Now that effort has come to Capitol Hill, where the House passed a bill (235-190 on a mostly party-line vote) to eviscerate the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) — the last line of defense against fraud and tampering in electronic voting systems around the country.

The bill doesn't have much of a future since it isn't likely to come up in the Democrat-controlled Senate, and the White House has released a strongly worded statement against it. But that didn't stop the House from spending hours on it anyway -- and it led to Democrats charging Republicans with trying to chip away at voter protections for disenfranchised groups.

Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, "the only reason" anyone would want to eliminate the programs altogether would be to suppress votes among minorities.

"The voters are the same groups who were targeted by Jim Crow laws decades ago," Clay said. "The votes are the same groups who are now targeted by inactive voter lists, and voter ID laws and all of the other new tactics designed for a single goal: voter suppression."

The EAC was created in the wake of 2000's controversial presidential election as a means of improving the quality standards for electronic voting systems. Its four commissioners (two Republicans and two Democrats) are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The commission tests voting equipment for states and localities, distributes grants to help improve voting standards, and offers helpful guidance on proofing ballots to some 4,600 local election jurisdictions. It also collects information on overseas and military voters and tracks the return rate for absentee ballots sent to these voters.

Read the full story @ Mother Jones

NH GOP Speaker Discourages Students From Voting Because They’ll Vote ‘Liberal’

Think Progress

As ThinkProgress has been reporting, the slew of unnecessary voter ID laws passed by Republicans in many states this year are a transparent attempt to disenfranchise core Democratic voters, especially college students, the poor and minorities. But Republicans usually claim these laws are passed for the sake of curbing nonexistent voter fraud — it’s rare to have one admit their intention is to stop Democrats from getting to the polls.

But that’s exactly what New Hampshire Speaker William O’Brien (R) told a Tea Party crowd recently. As the new laws are already stifling students’ efforts to participate politically, O’Brien confessed that he wanted to make it more difficult for students to vote because they “vote their feelings” — i.e. vote as liberals:

A New Hampshire measure that ultimately failed earlier this year stoked Democratic concerns about the law’s true intentions. The law would have ended same-day registration and prohibited most college students from voting from their school addresses.

New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien, a Republican, told a tea party group that allowing people to register and vote on Election Day led to “the kids coming out of the schools and basically doing what I did when I was a kid, which is voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do — they don’t have life experience, and they just vote their feelings.”

New Hampshire’s voter ID bill failed to pass, but illegal signs nevertheless appeared on the door of a polling station in O’Brien’s own district, demanding that voters show ID before they could vote.

Under many state’s voter ID laws, student IDs and even government-issued veterans identification cards are unacceptable for use at polling stations.

Rick Perry Has Three Strikes Against Him

Rick Perry’s already lackluster presidential bid went on a deathwatch after his debate debacle. In talking to the many who have known Perry over the years, fellow Texan Bryan Burrough discovers the surprising reasons behind the campaign’s train wreck and how Perry, with an unbroken string of nine political victories, might yet stage a comeback—despite his shocking backroom dealings with big campaign donors, the rumors about gay affairs and painkiller use, and the nasty bullying tactics he has used to implement a truly radical agenda.

(Pay-to-play cronyism. Roughshod, right-wing politics. And . . . Oops, read on @ Vanity Fair)

Warren Leads Brown For Massachusetts' U.S. Senate Seat

Elizabeth Warren explains the need to hold financial institutions accountable, and responds to accusations that banking regulations are "socialism."

A new poll by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst finds Warren leading Brown 43 percent to 39 percent -- just within the poll's 4.4 percent margin of error -- in the race for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat.

Scott Brown's approval remains below 50 percent, which usually means difficulty for an incumbent, especially this far out from Election Day.

While Brown leads Warren among independents by 18 points that is likely not enough to make up for the state's overwhelming number of registered Democratic voters.

Warren leads heavily among women and among people earning under $100,000, which the pollsters say is evidence that Warren's appeal to the working and middle class is resonating.

Read the entire survey here.