Tag Archives: Topic: Elections

The Washington Post: The provision requires states and localities with a history of discrimination to get federal approval of any changes in their voting laws.

Bloomberg: This is a blatant matter of abusing the rights of church officials to be involved in local affairs,” said Joel Oster, a lawyer in Kansas for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based group that represents religious organizations. “We are excited about this case because of the precedent that could be established.”

News from The Associated Press: And that reality is undercutting his effort to cast himself as the inevitable Republican presidential nominee and prolonging a race that each day exposes deep divisions within the party.

CNN reports.

CBS News: The former Pennsylvania senator came out on top in the voting in all three contests Tuesday night, including an unexpected five-point victory in Colorado’s caucuses. Santorum also won the Minnesota caucuses, by an 18-point margin, and he won by 30 points in the Missouri primary.

Bloomberg: South Carolina sued the U.S. Justice Department over its decision to block a law requiring voters to show photo identification at polls, the state’s attorney general said.

Religion Clause: As previously reported, the Nevada Republican Party yesterday scheduled an evening caucus to accommodate Orthodox Jews who could not attend Saturday daytime caucuses for religious reasons.

Rasmussen Reports: Fewer than half of voters nationwide still believe elections are generally fair. Most think the system is rigged to benefit incumbents in Congress.

Washington Examiner: Gallup released their annual state-by-state presidential approval numbers yesterday, and the results should have 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue very worried

Scott W. Gaylord at NewsObserver.com: Since 1868, North Carolinians have elected the members of their judiciary, making our judges directly accountable to the people for these “political” decisions. The North Carolina Bar Association and other groups now seek to replace our system of elections with an appointment-based system, known in legal circles as the Missouri Plan.

National Organization for Marriage v. McKee, No. 11-1196 (1st Cir. Jan. 31, 2012)

LIPEZ, Circuit Judge. This appeal presents the second chapter of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Maine laws imposing registration and disclosure requirements on entities that finance election-related advocacy. In a recent decision, we rejected claims made by one of the appellants here, the National Organization for Marriage (“NOM”), asserting that Maine’s laws regulating political action committees (“PACs”) are unconstitutionally vague and overbroad in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. See NOM v. McKee, 649 F.3d 34 (1st Cir. 2011) (“NOM I”). We now consider similar contentions raised by NOM and co-appellant American Principles in Action, Inc. (“APIA”) concerning the law applicable to ballot question committees (“BQCs”). See Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 21-A, § 1056-B. Our decision in NOM I effectively disposes of most of appellants’ challenges to Maine’s BQC requirements. On the only substantively distinct issue — the constitutionality of the definition of “contribution” in section 1056-B — we conclude that the BQC law, like the PAC laws, is constitutional. We thus affirm in its entirety the district court’s grant of summary judgment for the defendants.

The Washington Post: Something unexpected happened on the way to North Carolina’s vote on a gay marriage ban this May: Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue decided not to run for re-election, meaning more voters who oppose the ban could turn out at the polls.

The Hill: We’re at a point in America where about half of the people are getting something from government and the other half are paying for it, and we’re on track to have 60 percent getting something from government and 40 percent paying for it,” DeMint said.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Gay rights advocates in New Jersey have been pushing for a decade to get state courts or lawmakers to recognize same-sex marriage. But last week, they demurred when Gov. Christie called for a public vote to settle the topic.

NJ.com: Steven Goldstein, chairman of the gay rights group Garden State Equality, said a public vote on the issue would not really reflect the will of the people.
“A referendum reflects which side can corrupt the political system with more money,” he said.

LaTimes.com: The California Supreme Court, faced with a possible ballot measure to scrap newly drawn election districts, decided Friday to leave the boundaries in place for this year’s state Senate races.

OneNewsNow.com: Alliance Defense Fund attorney Joel Oster was back in court this week to take on the cited law. “The appeals court in Texas heard our case about whether or not a church can speak out on local political matters. The case went really well,” he accounts. “The argument was well presented, and the court, I believe, understands that even a church has free-speech rights and has a right to petition their government for the redress of grievances.”

The Washington Post: EqualityMaine, the Maine Civil Liberties Union and the Maine Women’s Lobby have collected more than 100,000 signatures — far more than needed to seek the referendum — made their announcement Thursday at the State House in Augusta.

Eugene Volokh reports on Montana Code § 13–35-218.

National Review: I called up the Commission on Presidential Debates, which handles the general election debates, and they confirmed that audience participation has not been allowed in the past in debates, and will not be allowed this cycle either.

The Blog of Legal Times: The “occupy” movement took its campaign against corporate domination to the federal judiciary on Friday, storming the U.S. Supreme Court building and demonstrating at other federal courthouses nationwide to protest the high court’s 2010 “Citizens United” decision.

Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster will be available for media interviews following a hearing Tuesday in which he will argue that a Texas appeals court should not grant El Paso Mayor John Cook’s request to stop a recall election against him and two city council members.

IrishCentral: The American Civil Liberties Union has insisted on the right of political candidates of all kinds to walk in the Dublin Ohio St.Patrick’s Day parade.

News from The Associated Press: The race to replace Rep. Gabrielle Giffords begins in earnest Monday as the Arizona congresswoman’s planned resignation sets up a free-for-all in a competitive district.

NBC Politics: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who just a few days ago seemed poised to capitalize on his New Hampshire primary victory to win South Carolina, failed to appeal to conservative, lower-income, and evangelical Christian voters in the state, which led to Saturday’s victory for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

CBS Atlanta 46 (includes video): A judge has ordered President Barack Obama to appear in court in Atlanta for a hearing on a complaint that says Obama isn’t a natural-born citizen and can’t be president.

News from The Associated Press: The Supreme Court on Friday threw out electoral maps drawn by federal judges in Texas that favored minorities.

The district court granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the State of Washington from enforcing its limitation on contributions to political committees supporting the recall of a state or county official.

Des Moines Register: There are too many holes in the certified totals from the Iowa caucuses to know for certain who won, but Rick Santorum wound up with a 34-vote advantage.

Reuters: South Carolina will sue the administration of President Barack Obama over its rejection of the state’s new requirement that voters provide a photo ID, Attorney General Alan Wilson said on Tuesday.

Chicago Tribune: Organizers of a drive to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said they have far more signatures than they need to file on Tuesday to force the
controversial Republican to defend his seat in a special election barely a year into his first term.

Black Box Voting: In a major step towards global centralization of election processes, the world’s dominant Internet voting company has purchased the USA’s dominant election results reporting company.

In October 2011, the New Mexico Republican Party filed a lawsuit challenging the
constitutionality of New Mexico’s new state campaign finance laws.

Yesterday, the political advocacy group American Tradition Partnership, along with two other corporate plaintiffs, Champion Painting and the Montana Sports Shooting Association, have asked the Montana Supreme Court to not enforce its decision to uphold Montana’s law that bans corporations from independently spending money to support or oppose candidates for public office.

Bloomberg: Maria Woodbury has called hundreds of voters in Maine (STOME1) since March to talk about making same-sex marriage legal. Some hang up, others say they’re too busy. One man, who said he grew up as a Catholic, stuck out.

News from The Associated Press: Sonja O’Brien heard from the hecklers as she collected signatures in a final push to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

News from The Associated Press: Rep. Jerry Lewis of California became the latest Republican to announce his retirement from Congress after new boundaries drawn through redistricting promised to make the road to re-election more difficult.

The Washington Post: You’ll recall that last year a D.C. rabbi, Shmuel Herzfeld, sued the city after it scheduled a special election for April 26 — the final day of Passover, a high Jewish holy day.

The Guardian: Alex Salmond has revealed he plans to stage his independence referendum in the autumn of 2014 after he resisted UK government demands to set an early date for the historic poll.

The Union Leader has posted this page.

Politico: But one point is already clear: Political Islam is moving from being the dominant opposition voice in the largest Arab country to being a dominant voice of government.

News from The Associated Press: The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal seeking to expand the ability of foreigners to contribute to American political campaigns.

Robin Bravender at POLITICO.com: The conservative group American Tradition Partnership announced plans Thursday to appeal a Montana Supreme Court ruling that upheld a state law banning corporations from spending to directly support or oppose candidates.

InsideNova: The Republican Party of Virginia recently announced that it would require a loyalty oath from Virginia voters who wish to vote in the March 6 primary.

Richard Land at WSJ.com: Polling from CNN shows that 57% of Iowa’s caucus participants were self-identified evangelicals, as in 2008, and they voted 32% for Rick Santorum. Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry each received 14% of evangelical votes, with Ron Paul (18%) and Michele Bachmann (6%) taking all but a smattering of the remainder.

KCCI Des Moines: Edward True, 28, of Moulton, said he helped count the votes and jotted the results down on a piece of paper to post to his Facebook page. He said when he checked to make sure the Republican Party of Iowa got the count right, he said he was shocked to find they hadn’t.

CNSnews.com: Had voting in the Iowa Republican caucuses been restricted to voters under the age of 40, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas would have won easily, according to an entrance poll published by CNN.

Rasmussen Reports: The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows that 49% are pro-choice when it comes to abortion, while 43% say they are pro-life.

WSLS 10: “It was just a mistake,” Gingrich told CNN while campaigning in Iowa Wednesday night. “We hired somebody who turned in false signatures. We turned in 11,100; we needed 10,000 and 1500 of them were by one guy who frankly committed fraud.”

How Appealing links to several reports and the opinion.

Judge James E. Wilson granted an injunction to stop a group called Personhood Nevada from going forward with its initiative petition, the so-called personhood amendment. Wilson said he expects his ruling to be appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court.

JSOnline: The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign filed a second ethics complaint Wednesday against Justice Michael Gableman. This complaint, charging that the justice had received free legal services . . .

A district judge today ruled against pro-choice advocates seeking to stop an initiative petition that proposes to outlaw abortion by declaring that life begins at conception.

KIVA.com ABC 7: Brown’s lawyers said there’s a more practical explanation. “It was late in the day (when we got the subpoena), and it said that we had to produce all of these documents the very next morning. This is like an 18-paragraph request for documents. There was not enough time to file all of these documents, so we filed a motion for a protective order. Under Texas law, when you file a protective order, you don’t have to produce the documents unless the court says you have to produce the documents. Once the court said to produce the documents, we produced the documents. Where’s the controversy?” said Brown’s Alliance Defense Fund lawyer, Joel Oster.

USA Today: Attorney General Eric Holder is suggesting the Obama administration may go to court to try and block states that it believes are trying to restrict voting, particularly minority voting.

News from The Associated Press: Egyptians turned out in large numbers Wednesday for a second round of parliamentary elections, with Islamists looking to boost their already overwhelming lead and liberal voters concerned the outcome will push the country in a more religious direction.

Katrina Trinko at National Review Online: Results from Democratic firm Public Policy Polling poll of likely GOP caucus goers: Newt Gingrich (22 percent), Ron Paul (21 percent), Mitt Romney (16 percent), Michele Bachmann (11 percent), Rick Perry (9 percent), Rick Santorum (8 percent), Jon Huntsman (5 percent), and Gary Johnson (1 percent). The poll’s margin of error is 4.2 percentage points.

Lyle Denniston at Huffington Post: Hard to believe, but the controversies that followed those decisions may be more than matched in the new year, as the Supreme Court works its way toward decisions on three major constitutional controversies, from which political fallout is absolutely predictable.

Chicago Tribune: The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit arguing that Wisconsin’s new voter identification law is unconstitutional.

El Paso Times: Brown’s attorney, Joel Oster, said the document released by Walker on Monday is unimportant, calling it “a non-issue.” . . . But Oster, one of Brown’s attorneys, downplayed the document’s significance. “The minutes that you refer to are a non-issue,” Oster said in an email. “They were properly given to the other side pursuant to the subpoena and the court’s instructions. They don’t state that the church itself was involved. “In any event, the court already stated that it believes that the church circulated the petitions. … What the court held, however, was that First Amendment rights were at stake and it would not stop the election.”

NC Register: The Alliance Defense Fund and two local pro-bono attorneys are aiding petitioners. “We’re defending the church’s right to be fully engaged in the culture,” said ADF senior legal counsel Joel Oster. “Christians and their institutions are not second-class citizens who are banned from the democratic process.”

News from The Associated Press: Algeria’s Islamists, buoyed by election victories of their brethren across North Africa over the past two months, are looking to triumph themselves next spring in nationwide polls.

A federal appeals court on Monday struck down a Wisconsin law that set limits on contributions to groups that independently spend on political speech.

Yahoo! News: Russian authorities should annul the parliamentary vote results and hold a new election, ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev urged Wednesday as popular indignation grew over widespread reports of alleged election fraud.

TheHill.com: But eager to leave no stone unturned as they peruse the electorate for 2012 supporters, Democrats are setting out to court faith-based voters by connecting their policies on economic issues to the values of equality, tolerance and humanitarianism.

Religion Clause Blog: As reported by CNN, the relatively moderate Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party took 40% of the vote, while the more fundamentalist Noor Salafi Movement took 20% of the vote.

ADF attorney Joel Oster appeared on the “Pratt on Texas” show to discuss the situation. | MP3 audio 14:14 mins

Israel National News: Islamist parties are expected to control Cairo’s parliament by the spring with the Muslim Brotherhood projected to be in the driver’s seat.

News from The Associated Press: They say the Muslim Brotherhood could take 45 percent of the seats up for grabs.

ADF Attorney Joel Oster appeared on the Bott Radio Network to discuss this case. | MP3 audio 22 mins

National Catholic Register: “We’re defending the church’s right to be fully engaged in the culture,” said ADF senior legal counsel Joel Oster. “Christians and their institutions are not second-class citizens who are banned from the democratic process.”

Examiner.com: “Churches and ministries shouldn’t live in fear of being punished by the government for exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster, who argued before the court on behalf of the parties sued by Cook. “The mayor is seeking to silence those who oppose his policies because he doesn’t like their views, but that’s neither legal nor constitutional. The recall petitions were circulated and submitted in full accordance with the law, and he cannot stop the election just because he doesn’t like the fact that some groups participated in a legitimate effort that he doesn’t favor.”

Religion Clause Federal Election Commission Releases Enforcement Files On Catholic Group’s Robocalls BNA’s Daily Report for Executives [subscription required] reports that on Nov. 25, the Federal Election Commission released documents in an enforcement case against Informed Catholic Citizens (ICC), a 501(c)(4) non-profit …

News from The Associated Press: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood was leading in initial, partial results from Egypt’s parliamentary elections but it was facing stiff competition in many places both from more hard-line Islamic groups and from a liberal-secular alliance, judges overseeing counting said Wednesday.

OneNewsNow.com: Mayor Cook challenged the recall effort, arguing that Brown violated state election law by using church resources to collect signatures for the recall petition. The Alliance Defense Fund is challenging the constitutionality of that law in federal court.