Tag Archives: Topic: Elections

National Review: IRS scandal notwithstanding, on Tuesday, the (Republican-dominated) Texas legislature passed S.B. 346, a bill to force non-profit organizations and trade associations to disclose the names of the people who support them financially. The law exempts unions, but covers groups that spend more than $25,000 or more in independent expenditures about political candidates. This applies even if those expenditures are a tiny fraction of the group’s overall spending . . .

Weekly Standard: “[I]f this fact came out in September 2012, in the middle of a presidential election? The terrain would have looked very different.”

Rasmussen Reports: Voters are now evenly divided when asked if elections in the United States are fair today, and a solid majority continues to believe that the U.S. government does not have the consent of the governed. But the Political Class strongly disagrees.

But that would have meant the organization would have to be a political committee under New York law, just as candidate committees and political parties are. The organization would then have to register with the state board of elections, comply with recordkeeping requirements, and comply with extensive, periodic reporting requirements.

FoxNews: An IRS campaign to apply additional scrutiny to conservative groups went beyond targeting “Tea Party” and “patriot” groups to include those focused on government spending, the Constitution and several other broad areas.

The Hill: The Republican National Committee urged the Supreme Court on Tuesday to strike down certain limits on campaign contributions, saying they’re a violation of the First Amendment. The RNC filed its opening brief in a case challenging limits on the total amount one person can donate in a single election cycle.

AP: In a story of political redemption, Mark Sanford is headed back to Congress after his career was derailed by scandal four years ago.

Christian Concern: The local election results are showing massive losses for the Conservative party. This was by no means inevitable but David Cameron’s insistence on pursuing the same sex ‘marriage’ agenda has undoubtedly contributed to this dramatic result.

Anchorage Daily News: The Alaska Supreme Court Friday unanimously upheld a lower court decision that a voter initiative banning all abortions could not appear on the Alaska ballot because it was unconstitutional. | Desjarlais v. Alaska

These aggregate limits restrict how much an individual may spend on political contributions over a two-year election cycle, even though the contributions are at levels otherwise legal.

Blog of the Legal Times: If you give money to the Socialist Workers Party, your name won’t show up in Federal Election Commission records.

Washington Post: A gay couple married under state law cannot give a joint contribution to a federal candidate if they make it from an individual banking account, the Federal Election Commission voted unanimously Thursday.

McConnell, Michael W., In Defense of Citizens United (March 29, 2013). Yale Law Journal, Vol. 123, No. 2013. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2241682

LA Times: Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts who supports gay marriage has asked the Federal Election Commission to determine whether gay couples have the right to make joint contributions to political candidates.

“We are pleased that the court got part of it right: the First Amendment prohibits the government from funding candidates based upon their opponent’s speech,” said James Bopp, Jr., counsel for the plaintiffs.

Milwaukee Sentinel Journal: Roggensack’s victory gives her a second 10-year term on the bench and preserves the court’s conservative majority. On the most controversial issues and cases in recent years, the court has often split 4-3, with Roggensack in the majority.

The Hill: Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) has won his House primary runoff, setting up a high-profile special election against businesswoman Elizabeth Colbert Busch (D), the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert.

Scott Cooper at PennLive: In the last week, there’s been another push to change the way Pennsylvania selects judges for the three appellate courts – Commonwealth, Superior, and Supreme — moving from direct election to an appointment system. Proponents argue a switch would take the politics out of the system by removing the need to raise funds to win election.

Wall Street Journal (via Google): On a conference call in March with the George Soros-funded Justice at Stake, former Governors Ed Rendell, Tom Ridge and Dick Thornburgh said they want judicial selection taken away from voters and given to a judicial nominating commission. The state’s current system of judicial elections, Mr. Ridge said, “casts a dark shadow, a heavy cloud over the integrity and independence of the judicial system.”

LifeSiteNews: Uruguayan pro-life activists have gathered more than 68,000 signatures requesting a referendum over recent legislation legalizing the killing of the unborn, forcing a national vote on the issue, according to local media sources.

NRO: Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, acknowledges that reforming the GOP’s presidential primary is one of his top priorities. But he doesn’t want to be heavy-handed about it, he says, in a briefing at National Review’s Washington, D.C., office. “Making those decisions and amending the calendar is a decision the entire RNC has to make,” he says. “That takes 75 percent of the voting body.”

CNSNews: As for Senator Portman, his announcement hasn’t exactly been popular with either Ohio party, so far. Reports suggest that the calls flooding into his office are 60 percent opposed to the Senator’s new position.

Pocono Record: Voters may not know as much as they should about statewide judicial candidates. But the common sense of ordinary citizens inspires more confidence than savvy, politically motivated power brokers in smoke-filled rooms. Pennsylvanians need judges who are willing to face the voters, not who owe their appointment to insider fat cats.

Daily Caller: Why are GOP presidential hopefuls agreeing to meet for a debate hosted by an outlet like MSNBC, a cable network that has increasingly grown hostile to Republicans as it self-identifies as a liberal news network?

SCOTUS Blog: At 10 a.m. Monday, the Supreme Court will hold one hour of oral argument on state power to require would-be voters to show proof of citizenship to register. Arguing for state and local officials in Arizona v. The Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (docket 12-71), will be Arizona Attorney General Thomas C. Horne, with thirty minutes of time.

ABC News: Abortions are becoming illegal in America at a rapid clip.

Washington Post: Which is why we were very excited to see a new and comprehensive study from Nonprofit Vote, a nonpartisan origination that works with nonprofits to encourage voter participation. The study, which you can read in its entirety on the group’s Web site, includes a breakdown of 2012 turnout rates in all 50 states and the District. The percentages were calculated by dividing the number of ballots cast by the voting eligible population.

Cronkite News: To Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, the state law requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration is “common sense,” not a burden. To opponents, Arizona’s Proposition 200 is just another obstacle that would restrict access to the polls for the young, elderly and minorities.

Karen E. Crummy and Allison Sherr at the Denver Post(11/8/2012): How did Colorado go from the reddest of red to consecutively blue so quickly?
The answer may lie partly in the state’s changing demography. Colorado’s Latino population has grown 42 percent in 12 years, helping to transform once-reliable Republican areas into swing counties now leaning toward Democrats.

National Review: Washington’s statement could easily have been aimed at the anti–Electoral College National Popular Vote effort, which is currently working to win support in several states. The measure has been approved by committees in Minnesota and Oklahoma and is pending on the Minnesota House and Oklahoma Senate floor. NPV is still pending in and could soon be approved by Connecticut, Maine, and Rhode Island legislative committees.

QC Times: Two years after voters served the Iowa Supreme Court with a shocking blow, the judicial selection process continues to be debated, as witnessed at a forum Saturday with Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Waterman.

Amanda Becker at Roll Call: Some of the more conservative justices on the Supreme Court weren’t shy about assessing their neighbors across the street Wednesday during oral arguments in a closely watched Voting Rights Act case.

Texas Tribune: Roberts and his colleagues are off the leash. Their counterparts in Texas are not so lucky. Elected judges have to hope the politics work out — that voters will understand unpopular decisions and blame the people who write the laws and not the people who interpret them.

World Net Daily: They’re targeting 12 key states: Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Alaska, Arkansas, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia. The strategy was profiled Monday by David Brody of CBN News. Brody said the groups – led by the American Renewal Project – are planning briefings for evangelical pastors, voter-registration drives and other events in an attempt “to restore American to its Judeo-Christian heritage.”

Election Law Blog: Via SCOTUSBlog comes the news that the Supreme Court, without comment, has denied cert. in Danielczyk v. U.S.,The decision not to hear the case is significant, because it means the Supreme Court majority, which has shown hostility to campaign finance limits, has decided not to move as aggressively as it could in further deregulating the campaign finance system.

NPR: The Supreme Court says it won’t hear a case that would have let candidates solicit money from corporations. By doing so, the court is reaffirming one strict ban on corporate political money, three years ago after easing other limits in its controversial Citizens United ruling.

Breitbart: The Supreme Court has taken McClutcheon v. FEC for arguments this fall. McClutcheon is a challenge to the part of the current version of FECA that limits how much money an American citizen can give to one of the national political parties in a two-year period. Although the overall limit is slightly over $100,000, that’s beside the point of asking what empowers the federal government to tell a citizen how much communication he can have with his fellow citizens in the political process.

USA Today: In a move that could signal the end of a key restriction on political giving, the Supreme Court announced Tuesday it will consider a case challenging the limit on how much individuals can donate directly to federal candidates and political parties.

Oregon Public Radio: Oregon voters could decide next year whether to legally recognize same-sex marriages. Supporters of gay marriage submitted an initiative Monday aimed at putting such a question on the Oregon ballot in November of 2014.

National Review Bench Memos: North Carolina is an important front in the ongoing battle over our nation’s state courts, as I’ve written about before.  Last Thursday, Republican North Carolina state senators Jerry Tillman and Thom Goolsby presented legislation to introduce partisan affiliations to judicial elections.

NY Times: The biggest donors in the Republican Party are financing a new group to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s efforts to win control of the Senate.

Christian Post: A U.S. District Court judge ruled that a major pro-life organization is not guilty of defamation against a politician who sued the group two years earlier over losing a re-election bid.

LA Times: GOP lawmakers in several battleground states have proposed a proportional method for awarding votes, rather than the current winner-take-all system. But some within the party object.

Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review: The biggest political problems for pro-lifers remain what they have been for many years: They are in coalition with economic conservatives who have not found a way to translate their principles into a popular program, and they have not found a way to form a coalition with blacks and Hispanics who agree with them. Solving or mitigating those problems will require a massive effort not limited to the pro-life movement alone. In the meantime, pro-life politicians cannot afford to make avoidable mistakes.

Emirates247.com: A well-known Saudi Islamic scholar has issued a new fatwa (edict) saying holding elections for a president or another form of leadership is prohibited in Islam.

WCFCourier.com: State Court Administrator David Boyd said Wednesday he believes the Iowa Supreme Court has weathered a “perfect storm” of anti-judicial sentiment that brewed in 2010 following a controversial same-sex marriage decision and disruptive state budget cuts.

SCOTUS Blog: The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a plea by the national Republican party to free it from a three-decades-old court order that limits its right to challenge voters’ qualifications.

CNN: An anti-abortion group will not get a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court on its appeal of federal law designating it as a political nonprofit that must disclose information about its financial donors.

Christian Post: Christian voters were not permitted to cast ballots in some polling places during the December 15 constitutional referendum, the Associated Press and BBC reported.

James Gill at Times Picayune: The case for an appointed state judiciary just got much stronger. No jurist under any system is likely to be apolitical, but convention has always required some pretence of impartiality and restraint. Not in the recent Supreme Court election. From the get-go, the winner of the race, Jeff Hughes, declared himself a pro-lifer who loves guns and favors capital punishment. As for marriage, he is for the traditional kind, and you can take him at his word on that because, at 60, he is about to try it for the third time.

The Spectator: A showdown between the government and the European Court of Human Rights over prisoner votes drew that bit closer today. The government hoped that having parliament vote to uphold a blanket ban on prisoners voting would buy it some time, as the European Court of Human Rights would then have to start examining the issue all over again.

Mona Charen at National Review: It in’t a matter of urgent national importance when non-parents choose to live together without benefit of clergy (I love the old-fashioned expression). When children come into the picture, it is. There is simply no controversy about the data: Two-parent married families are best for children — and best for society.

Stillwater Gazette: Rob Boston of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State said that his group doesn’t think churches should serve as polling places unless absolutely necessary.

The Hill: McConnell met with the House Republican Study Committee last week to warn conservatives in the lower chamber not to sign on to any bipartisan initiative requiring super-PACs to disclose their donors.

Religion Clause Blog: In Torres v. Davis, (3d Cir., Dec. 4, 2012), the court rejected free speech, free exercise and equal protection challenges to the refusal by the Board of plaintiff’s requests made over a ten-year period to place items on the ballot.

Daily Caller: The poll found Hispanics in the conservative camp on social issues in particular. Fifty-one percent said they opposed legalizing gay marriage, compared to just 40 percent who favored legalization. Fifty-six percent called themselves pro-life, while just 33 percent said they were pro-choice.

Robert Knight at Townhall: Pawing through the ashes of the Romney defeat, it’s clear that if the Republican Party wants to compete nationally, it has to do several things, such as re-message timeless traditional values, attract more young and minority voters, particularly Hispanics, and do a better job of getting out the vote. But this will be moot if the integrity of the voting process is not restored.

AP: The fissures within the Republican Party that some say cost the GOP control of the Senate have resurfaced just three weeks after the election. This time conservatives are targeting a popular veteran congresswoman from a storied West Virginia political family making a bid for Democrat Jay Rockefeller’s Senate seat in 2014.

Seattle Post Intelligencer: The Ohio Supreme Court let stand a newly drawn state legislative map Tuesday in a defeat for Democrats.
In a 4-3 ruling, the divided high court upheld the map approved last year on grounds that Ohio’s Constitution does not require political neutrality in the process. | Wilson v. Kasich

Joe Hallett at the Columbus Dispatch: And that’s the problem: Voters know virtually nothing about the judges they elect and are left to play the name game. The system limits judges’ ability to campaign, to raise money and even to make statements that might be construed as political. They are not permitted to be identified by party on general election ballots. In short, we make judges politicians at election time but deny them the crucial opportunities to communicate with voters the way other politicians do.

Star Paker at Townhall: The claim that somehow it is a sign of a healthy, free society that by way of the vote we can re-write our language, our dictionary, our oldest, time-tested traditions is a sign of how lost we are. Same sex marriage advocates argue that their efforts will save the embattled institution of marriage. But this takes a symptom of the disease and calls it a cure.

WorldNetDaily: Voting machines suspiciously defaulting to Barack Obama? Buses loaded with strangers appearing at polling stations? Even ballots turning out 100 percent for one candidate in precinct reports? In short, suspicions of vote fraud?

Washington Post: If you voted this election season, President Obama almost certainly has a file on you. His vast campaign database includes information on voters’ magazine subscriptions, car registrations, housing values and hunting licenses, along with scores estimating how likely they were to cast ballots for his reelection.

Washington Post: BarackOFraudo.com lists Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia as states “won by Voter Fraud.” Slate’s David Weigel talked to Chambers, who pointed to some overwhelmingly Democratic districts and the way Virginia’s votes came in as signs of voter fraud. …

Washington Post: “The moderates have had their candidate in 2008 and they had their candidate in 2012. And they got crushed in both elections. Now they tell us we have to keep moderating. If we do that, will we win?” said Bob Vander Plaats, president of the Family Leader.

AP: From California to Maine, unions used their political muscle in the recent elections to help install Democratic governors, build labor-friendly majorities in state legislatures and defeat ballot initiatives against them.

Politico: Florida Rep. Allen West — the tea party pugilist and face of the class of House Republicans that stormed to power two years ago — conceded Tuesday to 29-year-old construction executive Patrick Murphy in one of the nation’s highest-profile congressional races.

Daily Mail: Lance Gilman is a thriving businessman with dozens of employees. That those workers include a good many prostitutes didn’t faze the people of a rural Nevada county who recently elected him as a Storey County commissioner by a wide margin

Portland Press Herald: The ACLU of Maine said it plans to alert the U.S. Justice Department about some of the controversial statements by Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster, the group said Friday. But the specific issue they are raising may be a moot point.

John B. Londegran at Public Discourse: A common trope in social policy debates is to claim that the public’s changing opinion on the policy at stake, rather than the policy’s moral or substantive justifications, merits changing the platform of one’s preferred political party. This notion seems recently to have taken root on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, and several commentators have reacted.

WorldNetDaily: He noted he and a handful of other conservative leaders, including Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, Gary Bauer and Gen. William Boykin, had met with the GOP candidate to encourage him to address social issues important to Christians across the nation. “We begged him to deal with eight issues. We listed first the sanctity of life, marriage, religious life, ‘Don’t Ask,’ ENDA, on it went,” Dobson said. “We said we really are not here to jump on you, but evangelicals are not excited about your candidacy, not energized. … You could connect if you’ll even mention these things. “He nodded and he smiled and he was gracious as he always is, and he went out and was silent,” Dobson said.

WSJ (via Google): Senate Republicans hunkered down this week to reflect on their drubbing last week. Perhaps they should have invited Bama football coach Nick Saban to give them pointers on how to identify and recruit talent. A lesson in blocking wouldn’t hurt either. The GOP fumbled every opportunity to pick up a Senate seat save for in Nebraska, where political amateur Deb Fischer steam-rolled veteran Bob Kerrey

Sacramento Bee: The newly elected, 113th Congress includes the first Buddhist to serve in the Senate, the first Hindu to serve in either chamber and the first member of Congress to describe her religion as “none,” according to a new analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life of congressional data compiled primarily by CQ Roll Call.

Washington Post: Strong majorities of adults under age 30 support gay marriage and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and a majority supports legalizing small amounts of marijuana according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The fact that younger Americans are consistently more supportive of these measures than the oldest generation may signal change in the years to come. For those under age 30, about two thirds support gay marriage and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

NY Times: Mr. Obama’s more than three-to-one edge in exit polls among the 5 percent of voters who identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual was more than enough to give him the ultimate advantage, according to the study, by Gary J. Gates of the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, in conjunction with Gallup