GOP Halts Voter Sign-Up in 5 States

Because of a shady consulting firm now under investigation in Florida, Republicans have stopped registering voters in five swing states. This is almost too good to be true - Rachel Maddow called it "the reverse of an October surprise" because it is such a gift to the Democrats.



Rachel Maddow made the point that usually each party would remain in a state until the deadlines, which you can see from the graphic below are a week away in some cases. So this is premature, uh, pull out . . . ahem . . . for the Repubs.





NBC News: RNC Cuts Ties with Firm Over Voter Fraud

Out of 304 Republican voter registration forms recently dropped off by a Strategic Allied employee at a small "satellite office" of the Palm Beach elections office, 106 were flagged as potentially fraudulent-- including "a lot" with "similar looking" signatures and others with apparently phony addresses, Susan Bucher, the Palm Beach elections supervisor, said in an interview.

Among the suspect home addresses were those that matched a gas station in Miami, a medical building in Boca Raton and a Land Rover automotive dealership in Palm Beach County, she told NBC News. Bucher said she called in the political director for the Palm Beach Republican Party and the GOP official agreed that the registration forms were a problem. She then took the forms to the Palm Beach County State's Attorney's office on Monday and requested the investigation.

In a statement issued Tuesday night, Mike Grissom, executive director of the Florida Republican Party, said: "When we learned today about the instances of potential voter registration fraud that occurred in Palm Beach County, we immediately informed the Republican National Committee that we were terminating the contract with the voter registration vendor we hired at their request because there is no place for voter registration fraud in Florida."

From the first video below, the discussion between Chuck Todd and Michael Isikoff:  

Chuck Todd: Mike, you can't help but sit there, Republican Party has been pushing this line, Acorn, all of this, and the only evidence this year comes from their side.  

Michael Isikoff: Exactly. I should say I spoke last night to Nathan Sproul, he says he is the victim. He says he has strict quality control measures. . . . He is furious at the Florida Republican Party for suggesting his firm was involved in voter fraud. You could see lawsuits here which would make it even messier.

The Immigration Ruling Affects Alabama and Other States

Everyone is focused on Arizona because the Supreme Court ruling obviously applied specifically to their laws. But there are several other states with similar or identical laws on the books. In Alabama on the night before the ruling, there were protest marches and vigils in Birmingham. After the ruling, opponents in that state were optimistic that the "crackdown" on illegals would have to stop:

TPM story

Alabama’s law, critics say, goes further than Arizona’s when it comes to potential racial profiling. The Alabama law makes it illegal to rent property to illegal immigrants and forces state universities and schools to check the citizenship status of their students.

Advocates opposed to the Alabama law were elated by the ruling. It represents, in their view, a death blow to the legislation they believe is discriminatory and crippling to businesses that rely on immigrant labor.

“I’m jubilant,” said Shay Farley, legal director at Alabama Appleseed, a group that is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit aimed at to throwing out Alabama’s immigration law.  

“The Supreme Court today makes it clear that with respect to immigration enforcement schemes and regulation, that is the federal government’s job.”
Beyond the implications the ruling has on the law itself, Hispanic advocates told TPM Monday that the ruling could drive Hispanic voters to turn out against Republican legislatures like the one in Alabama.

“Any state legislature that is considering [Arizona-style immigration laws] like this will hear very loudly from the community,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.

Mother Jones Story and Map

Along with Arizona, five other states—Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Utah—have similar "show your papers" laws on the books. Meanwhile, from 2010 to 2011, 30 state legislatures rejected bills modeled after Arizona's.

Graphic from MotherJones.com

The Supremes Rule on Immigration, Juvenile Parole, and Montana Corporations

Wow - news is still coming in after an intense morning.
You can read my collection of Pre-Ruling Tweets at Snark Amendment

No Health Care Ruling today ~ we must wait till Thursday. *sigh*

Today they ruled on three things:

1. Juveniles cannot be given life in prison without parole. Good all around.

2. The Court refused to hear an appeal from the State of Montana about corporations buying elections, therefore they upheld their previous Citizen's United decision. That's good for Mitt Romney, because as he says "corporations are people, my friends." But the decision will only get the Democratic base more fired up.

3. The biggest deal today - they threw out most of Arizona's state immigration law, except for the right to check someone's papers under "reasonable suspicion." Sheriff Joe Arpaio will be so happy about that, but it's also a win for the Obama Administration because Arizona lost everything else.

Angry scalia dissent to kennedy opinion on az sb 1070. Scalia makes harsh attack on obama dream act order at #scotus.
— Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin) June 25, 2012

Read Scalia's Dissenting Opinion on Arizona Here (PDF)

Washington Post Story:

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected much of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, but upheld other provisions, giving a partial victory to the Obama administration.
The court ruled that Arizona cannot make it a misdemeanor for immigrants to fail to carry identification that says whether they are in the United States legally; cannot make it a crime for undocumented immigrations to apply for a job; and cannot arrest someone based solely on the suspicion that the person is in this country illegally.
However, the court let stand the part of the law that requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they detain, if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person is unlawfully in the United States. Even there, though, the justices said the provision could be subject to additional legal challenges.

CNN ~ Court to Arizona: You Went Too Far

"The national government has significant power to regulate immigration," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion, adding that "Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration while that process continues, but the state may not pursue policies that undermined federal law."
Provisions struck down included:
-- Authorizing police to arrest immigrants without warrant where "probable cause" exists that they committed any public offense making them removable from the country.
-- Making it a state crime for "unauthorized immigrants" to fail to carry registration papers and other government identification.
-- Forbidding those not authorized for employment in the United States to apply, solicit or perform work. That would include immigrants standing in a parking lot who "gesture or nod" their willingness to be employed.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the minority, argued the court's ruling encroached on Arizona's sovereign powers.
"If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign state," Scalia wrote in the dissent backed by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

About the Montana ruling, Via UPI:

The challengers to the Montana law, a small group of non-profits and corporations, told the U.S. Supreme Court in their petition that the riot of independent spending following Citizens United is irrelevant.
The Supreme Court majority said there was little difference between the struck-down federal law and the Montana law.
"In Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, this court struck down a similar federal law, holding that 'political speech does not lose First Amendment protection simply because its source is a corporation ...,'" the Supreme Court majority said in a per curiam, or unsigned, opinion, Monday. "The question presented in this case is whether the holding of Citizens United applies to the Montana state law. There can be no serious doubt that it does."
Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by the court's three other liberals, dissented.

No More Juveniles Serving Life Without Parole

The high court on Monday threw out Americans' ability to send children to prison for the rest of their lives with no chance of ever getting out. The 5-4 decision is in line with others the court has made, including ruling out the death penalty for juveniles and life without parole for young people whose crimes did not involve killing.
The decision came in the robbery and murder cases of Evan Miller and Kuntrell Jackson, who were 14 when they were convicted.

Breaking Tonight ~ Dept. of Justice Sues State of Florida

Unbelievable. Today I wrote a post about Governor Scott of Florida refusing to comply with the Department of Justice request to stop purging and instead trying to sue Homeland Security for more voter records to purge.
And tonight, Think Progress is reporting that the Department of Justice is striking back with a lawsuit of their own. The letter is fascinating and lectures Governor Scott once again about the purpose of the National Voter Registration Act that protects the rights of individual voters over the rights of the states.
Letter Here on Scribd
Also from Talking Points Memo

Last Friday, June 8th, the ACLU also filed a lawsuit against the State of Florida on behalf of some voters mistakenly placed on the purge list. From the Palm Beach Post:

The ACLU, the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights Under Law and the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges asked a three-judge panel in Tampa to stop Secretary of State Ken Detzner from continuing the scrub until the Justice Department decides whether it is permissible.
. . . Murat Limage, a Haitian-American U.S. Citizen, and Pamela Gomez, who is a Dominican-American Hispanic U.S. Citizen, brought the suit along with Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to working with the Latino/Hispanic community to increase civic participation. Both Gomez and Limage are registered to vote in Hillsborough County.
Haitian-born Murat Limage, one of the plaintiffs in the case, registered to vote after becoming a naturalized citizen two years ago. Limage was one of the more than 2,000 voters who received written notice from local elections officials notifying him that he “may not be a U.S. citizen,” the lawsuit reads.

According to the lawsuit, Limage provided his U.S. passport and other citizenship documents to the Hillsborough County elections office but has not yet received confirmation that he will be allowed to vote.
“When I received the letter saying that they had information that I may not be a citizen, I was concerned that someone was taking away my citizenship,” Limage said in a press release announcing the lawsuit today. “I’m an American which means I can vote and that’s all I want to do.”

DOJ Letter to Florida 6:11:2012