Ohio

There’s nothing like ERIC

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Be careful what you seek to destroy, Republicans.

With some Texas Republicans pushing the state to abandon one its best tools for preventing voter fraud — a coalition of states that share voting roll data to weed out duplicate and suspicious registrations — the secretary of state’s office is trying to discern if it can build a replacement.

But the effort could easily stall or take years, experts say. Similar efforts in other states over the past two decades have not worked, or have been shut down, because they lacked bipartisan support from multiple states and access to the kind of national data that produces accurate cross-state voter list matching — all of which the Electronic Information Registration Center, or ERIC, spent years developing.

The push to have Texas become the latest state to withdraw from ERIC, a long-standing effort by nearly 30 states, is rooted in a yearlong misinformation campaign that spread through right-wing media platforms and advocacy groups.

If the state decides to leave the program but fails to produce a similar tool, Texas’ voter rolls will inevitably be less accurate, which could fuel claims of voter fraud, experts say. That could increase costs for counties who’d be more likely to send election mailers to voters who have moved out of state or died, because outdated information would linger on the voter rolls. And the state, too, would spend more than it would save by leaving the program because it would need to build the technical infrastructure and meet the federal security requirements needed to protect sensitive data in order to make an alternative viable.

Sam Taylor, a spokesperson for the Texas secretary of state’s office, declined to comment on the feasibility of developing a new alternative to ERIC. He told Votebeat, however, that at least Georgia and Nevada — states that are currently members of ERIC and supportive of the program — and Oklahoma have expressed interest in working with Texas on the project. Taylor said research is also underway on the cost of developing such a system.

In no small part, experts note, the coalition ERIC built over many years worked, because member states — led by both Democrats and Republicans — agreed to come together in a good-faith effort to share the necessary data and information to help maintain voter rolls across state lines. But in recent months, political pressure on Republican-led states has put the coalition at risk. Last year, Louisiana, then Alabama, followed by Florida, West Virginia, Missouri, and most recently Ohio and Iowa, announced they would depart. Texas could be next: The Texas Legislature is already considering various bills to leave ERIC.

And the state’s attempt at replacing the program both would not be an efficient solution and could have implications for the states that remain in ERIC by making it harder for states to join together across party lines, said Marc Meredith, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on election administration. Meredith has also done research on voter list maintenance.

“It would be incredibly disappointing to end up with basically two versions of the same thing because the value of data grows exponentially as you can make more and more comparisons between states,” he said, and added that by leaving the program, Texas will deprive itself of all the other states’ data while preventing the other states from obtaining data on more than 16 million registered voters in the state. “It’s not like if you split the world and have 25 states in one [program] and 25 states in another, [it] would be equally good. It’s actually more than double the bad.”

See here and here for the background, and read the rest for more. To be clear, there are plenty of worse and more damaging things that the Republicans have teed up for this session. It’s just that this is such a clear example of a perfectly working thing that Republicans want to destroy because a few reality-denying crackpots hate it for completely unhinged reasons and none of the rest of them has the guts to push back. In its place there is nothing that comes close to matching what it does, there are no tangible plans for even a stopgap solution at hand, and the most likely long-term solution is something that will be measurably worse. And this is a thing that furthers one of their supposed top priorities! It’s like being a fossil fuels advocate and also seeking to pass laws to ban fracking and refineries. I got nothin’.

Oklahoma Supreme Court upholds abortion rights

Mar 22nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

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Of interest, for obvious reasons.

A divided Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a portion of the state’s near-total ban on abortion, ruling women have a right to abortion when pregnancy risks their health, not just in a medical emergency.

It was a narrow win for abortion rights advocates since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

The court ruled that a woman has the right under the state Constitution to receive an abortion to preserve her life if her doctor determines that continuing the pregnancy would endanger it due to a condition she has or is likely to develop during the pregnancy. Previously, the right to an abortion could only take place in the case of a medical emergency.

“Requiring one to wait until there is a medical emergency would further endanger the life of the pregnant woman and does not serve a compelling state interest,” the ruling states.

In the 5-4 ruling, the court said the state law uses both the words “preserve” and “save” the mother’s life as an exception to the abortion ban.

“The language ‘except to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency’ is much different from ‘preserve her life,'” according to the ruling.

“Absolute certainty,” by the physician that the mother’s life could be endangered, “is not required, however, mere possibility or speculation is insufficient” to determine that an abortion is needed to preserve the woman’s life, according to the ruling.

The court, however, declined to rule on whether the state Constitution grants the right to an abortion for other reasons.

The court ruled in the lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood, Tulsa Women’s Reproductive Clinic and others challenging the state laws passed after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

I trust the parallel to the Texas lawsuit is clear. Slate adds some details.

Oklahoma outlaws abortion through multiple statutes, both civil and criminal, and these bans became enforceable after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. One of the statutes contains an ostensible exception for the “life of a pregnant woman.” But as the court explained on Tuesday, this exception is extraordinarily narrow: It permits termination only when the patient is “in actual and present danger” of death. According to the statute, it is not enough for a doctor to determine that the pregnancy will kill her at some point in the future; that peril must be imminent. If a doctor provides an abortion before the patient is at sufficient risk of death, they face a $100,000 fine and 10 years’ imprisonment.

Reproductive rights advocates challenged this ban under the Oklahoma Constitution. Their lawsuit was risky: Five justices of the Oklahoma Supreme Court were appointed by Republicans while four were appointed by Democrats. But GOP appointee James R. Winchester crossed over to create a 5–4 majority in support of “a limited right to an abortion.” The majority found that this right was supported by two provisions of the state constitution that grant “all persons” the right to “life” and “liberty.” Reviewing Oklahoma’s history, the majority explained that the state’s abortion regime had always “recognized a woman’s right to obtain an abortion in order to preserve her life,” from before statehood through admission to the union and right on up until 2021, when the present law was enacted.

Because the right to abortion to preserve the patient’s life is “deeply rooted” in Oklahoma history, the majority held, any restriction on that right is subject to strict scrutiny, bolstered by a compelling state interest. “Requiring one to wait until there is a medical emergency,” however, “does not serve a compelling state interest” because it “would further endanger the life of the pregnant woman.” The majority therefore declared that portion of the law “void and unenforceable” and announced a new standard: Abortion is permitted whenever a doctor has “determined to a reasonable degree of medical certainty or probability that the continuation of the pregnancy will endanger the woman’s life.” That danger may arise from “the pregnancy itself” or “a medical condition that the woman is either currently suffering from or likely to suffer from during the pregnancy.”

The scope of this standard is not entirely clear, but it suggests that a patient can undergo an abortion if the doctor determines there will be a threat to her life at some future point “during the pregnancy.” This standard is different from that in Texas, where doctors are waiting until pregnant patients are on death’s door rather than terminating when conditions emerge that could be fatal later in the pregnancy. As the majority noted, “absolute certainty” that the condition would kill a patient if untreated “is not required,” though “mere possibility or speculation is insufficient.” In a long concurrence, Justice Yvonne Kauger, joined by Justices James Edmondson and Doug Combs, tried to clarify the new rule. A physician, she wrote, need not “wait until their patient has a seizure, a stroke, experiences multiple organ failure, goes septic, or goes into a coma” before terminating a dangerous pregnancy. The reasonable likelihood of life-threatening conditions justifies an immediate abortion.

Kauger pointed to a new Texas lawsuit to illustrate what this standard does not require. The plaintiffs in that case were forced to wait until they suffered sepsis, hemorrhage, and other horrific ailments before doctors would terminate. Such a narrow exception, Kauger wrote, affords women “fewer rights than a convicted murderer on death row,” imposing “a death sentence” without “due process or any provision for clemency or pardon.” (Kauger also included a long overview of women’s near-absolute denial of rights through most of American history, noting that Oklahoma’s historical abortion laws were passed at a time when men could legally beat their wives and women could not vote or serve in office.)

As that story notes, the Supreme Court of North Dakota allowed a block on its state’s abortion ban to remain in place while a lawsuit over it plays out. It too concluded that the state constitution provided for “a fundamental right to an abortion in the limited instances of life-saving and health-preserving circumstances”. Note that these are narrow exceptions to those states’ bans, but they do represent a step forward for abortion access post-Dobbs. Just having doctors not feel like their own lives are at risk when making this decision should make a difference.

There’s an irony here in that Oklahoma was one of five states to pass an anti–Obamacare “health care freedom” amendment to their state constitution, which has now been used to argue against state abortion bans in Ohio and Wyoming as well. (Wyoming just passed a law to ban abortion pills; we’ll have to see what happens when that inevitably gets challenged.) A lot of this litigation is still ongoing so it’s hard to say exactly where we’ll end up, and these states could always try to amend those amendments to craft an abortion exception. But for now at least, there’s a path forward in some red states to at least allow for minimal access.

None of this bears directly on Texas, of course. Each state has their own laws, Texas did not amend its constitution as those five other states did, and as we well know Supreme Court justices of all stripes can be and are political animals. I make no prediction about what will happen with the litigation here. What we do know is that similar lawsuits have found success elsewhere. I’ll take my hope where I can get it.

There’s a wave of hoax school shooting reports around the country

Oct 18th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Weird and scary.

When Emmi Conley first heard in September about a rash of hoax calls reporting active shooters in schools, she dismissed it. Conley, an extremism researcher who studies groups and people behind public displays of violence, said she found no indication that these calls were connected to fringe online spaces where these pranks often originate.

But as the number of these reports swelled over time, Conley said she began to discern some very strange patterns — including the possibility that the calls may have come from overseas, and perhaps specifically from Africa.

“The scale and the timeline of the events is highly, highly unusual,” she said. “The calls are consistent. They are coordinated. They are grouped state-by-state and district-by-district, and they’re also sustained. So somebody is putting significant effort to keep these going.”

As Conley began digging further, more questions emerged. Elements of these calls were notably different than what she has typically seen in school-based threats. Nobody has taken credit for these calls, even as they stretched over several weeks, and the technological planning and research behind the calls betrayed a level of sophistication not typically seen.

In a statement, the FBI has said it is aware of the incidents, but has “no information to indicate a specific and credible threat.”

The agency said it is working with law enforcement at every level to investigate the cases. But some news reports, including in Minnesota and Louisiana, have cited local authorities who said the calls may be originating in Africa or, specifically, Ethiopia. The FBI would not comment on this detail.

For Conley, particulars around these calls suggest that the people or person behind them are, indeed, overseas.

“Our big questions now are whose attention are they after?” she said. “Is it the public? Law enforcement? Media? Something else? And why they’re after it?”

The story notes that schools in multiple states have been receiving bomb threat calls since March, and in five states there was more than one such call on the same day in April. This is a form of “swatting”, which is a term that refers to calls that falsely report an act of violence in progress or about to occur. Such calls have themselves sometimes resulted in violence as part of the police response. I’ve written about some recent local examples of similar hoax reports, and while Texas is not mentioned in that NPR story, there’s no reason to think whoever is behind this couldn’t target our state as well. As I said before, this is a grim reminder to school districts and police forces that they need to be thinking about this kind of situation and make sure they have plans in place to respond. Unfortunately, it looks like they need to have a plan in place for dealing with false alarms as well.

If your advocacy includes convincing children to carry their rapist’s baby to term, your advocacy is bad

Aug 18th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Towards the end of this overall infuriating story about “crisis pregnancy centers” in Texas, we come to a quote that stunned me so hard I had to step away from the computer for a few minutes.

If they can get an “abortion-minded” woman to have a conversation, Pinson feels confident that the center’s staff can change her mind. In their counseling sessions, Pinson says, they “pour into girls,” persuading them that, no matter the obstacles in their lives, they can become successful mothers.

Pinson welcomes even the most devastating cases.

“I’ve seen a lot of 13-year-olds do phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be a negative thing.”

She closely followed the case of the 10-year-old rape victim who was denied an abortion in Ohio last month. If that girl came into her center, Pinson would suggest she consider adoption, she said, adding that abortion would not fix the girl’s problems.

“That life is still a life and, even at 10, she knows a life is inside her.”

The level of disregard for the lives of these children utterly took my breath away. Let’s be clear that every one of these children has been raped, most likely by someone close to them – family member, friend, teacher, coach, clergyman, neighbor. Let’s also be clear that the health risks of carrying a pregnancy to term for young girls is significantly higher than it is for adult women, partly because these girls are smaller and less developed than adult women. Because, you know, they’re children. Let’s be clear that the trauma and adverse mental health effects on these children is something all of us who have not had any personal experience with is far greater than we think. To sweep all of that aside because your “values” tell you that an embryo is of greater value than that child and its interests must be put above those of that child, I struggle to form the words in response. I just know that I would never want to let you near any child I have ever known.

This is a long and detailed story about a phenomenon that has plagued us for a long time and is now going to get worse, with more and greater adverse health effects brought to more women and girls. You should read it, though I warn you it will make you very angry. Use that anger, and make more people like you angry in the same way, because this is what we’re fighting.

Quinn Ewers

Dec 9th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

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This story caught my eye.

They got played by an 18-year-old.

Depending on your sports acumen, hearing the name Quinn Ewers either makes your ears perk up or leads you to ask, “Who?”

The former Ohio State quarterback’s name is back in the news – again – after announcing that he’s leaving the school to enter the transfer portal. Just a few months ago, Ewers made national news when he skipped his senior year of high school to enroll early at Ohio State so that he could capitalize on NIL money. It’s been reported that he’s made over $1 million.

“If I enroll at Ohio State, obviously I’d be able to make money off the deals, and I feel like it’d be a big advantage of learning the playbook and getting comfortable with the campus and all my teammates,” he told Yahoo Sports in July. “But if I stay and don’t get paid, I may be able to win a state title.”

Because Texas, where Ewers is from, is a terrible place run by a litany of unintelligent Republicans, the state’s University Interscholastic League has a rule that won’t let high school athletes like him profit off NIL – even though he was the state’s biggest recruit, wanted to stay home and play, and was the No. 1-ranked player in his class.

So, since the system wanted Ewers to leave over $1 million on the table, Ewers finessed them by graduating early and enrolling at Ohio State in a glorified redshirt season that put a lot of money in his pocket, while also getting him acclimated with being a college athlete. And after only taking two snaps all season, Ewers is back on the market, and it’s expected he will wind up on a roster in Texas next season a whole lot richer than when he was when he left.

The Texas connection and the mention of a rule about NIL for high school athletes intrigued me, so into the Google rabbit hole I went. First, I found several stories about Ewers’ pending transfer, which may be to UT, A&M, Texas Tech, or who knows where else, but none filled in the blanks for me about that “rule”. I searched more specifically about the Lege and “name image likeness”, and found this Trib story.

College athletes in Texas will soon be able to receive compensation from outside businesses that want to use their name, image or likeness under a new law Gov. Greg Abbott signed Monday evening.

State Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said he sponsored the bill to keep Texas collegiate athletic programs competitive as other states have passed similar legislation. At least 15 states have passed bills lifting the ban on allowing student athletes to be paid by outside parties since California was the first state to approve the change in 2019.

NCAA rules ban athletes from receiving any kind of compensation other than scholarships for playing college sports. This law would not change that ban on direct payment by a college or university, but would allow college athletes to receive payment elsewhere.

The bill overwhelmingly passed the Texas House and Senate, though some lawmakers expressed concern it would negatively affect college sports, which multiple lawmakers said should “be played for the love of the game.” Supporters said college athletes deserve to benefit from the industry in which they play a major role.

“The biggest winner in this needs to be all of the student athletes,” said state Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, on the Senate floor in April. “We gain entertainment. Universities gain revenue, and they need to share in that because of their hard work.”

The NCAA Board of Governors voted to allow players to be paid for their name or likeness in October 2019, but the Division I Council postponed a vote on specific rules in January as it continued discussions with the federal government over rules.

I did not blog about that at the time, though I did note the California law and its potential effect on Texas back in 2019. The bill in question is SB1385, but it’s about allowing college athletes to get paid, not preventing high school athletes from doing the same. Still, it’s the most likely vehicle for such a restriction, and in reading the text of the bill, we see the following:

No individual, corporate entity, or other organization may:
(1) enter into any arrangement with a prospective student athlete relating to the prospective student athlete’s name, image, or likeness prior to their enrollment in an institution of higher education

That right there appears to be the prohibition on high school athletes making the same kind of arrangement for themselves, and indeed a visit to the UIL webpage confirms that:

It is the opinion of UIL staff that a transaction in which a student-athlete is engaged “to promot[e] a product, plan or service related to a UIL sport or contest” using the student-athlete’s NIL in exchange for compensation received by or on behalf of the student-athlete would be in violation of Section 51.9246 of the Education Code and Section 441 of the UIL Constitution and Contest Rules.

It is the opinion of UIL staff that the student-athlete would be in violation of this section if an agreement was executed prior to the student being enrolled in an institution of higher education, even if the student, or a third-party receiving compensation on behalf of the student, does not receive compensation “until all athletic competitions are completed in the 12th grade.” Section 441(a)(2) prohibits the receipt of “valuable consideration,” which covers any inducement, including a promise of future compensation.

They are referencing the section of the Education Code that was revised in SB1385, so that’s that. I strongly suspect that the supporters of this law did not envision the Quinn Ewers scenario, but now that it’s happened I wonder if there will be a push to amend the law to close that loophole. The Texas college that gets him on their team will be happy for this (though one could argue they’d have gotten him a year sooner if the law hadn’t been in place in this form), but his high school can’t be too happy about it. I’ll be interested to see which of those 800-pound gorillas can prevail if they disagree about the unintended side effects of this law.

Anyway. Nothing earth-shattering here – as the Deadspin story notes, Ewers comes from a well-to-do family, so this was more about the principle that he should have been able to pursue this money than the need for the money – but it’s fascinating and not something that had been on my radar. And now you know, too.

Census apportionment numbers are in

Apr 27th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

24 comments

Texas will gain two seats in Congress, which is one fewer than had been expected based on population growth estimates.

Texas will continue to see its political clout grow as it gains two additional congressional seats — the most of any state in the nation — following the 2020 census, the U.S. Census Bureau announced Monday.

Thanks to its fast-growing population — largely due to an increase in residents of color, particularly Hispanics — the state’s share of votes in the U.S. House of Representatives will increase to 38 for the next decade. The new counts reflect a decade of population growth since the last census, which determines how many congressional seats are assigned to each state. Texas is one of six states gaining representation after the census. The other five states are each gaining one seat.

The 2020 census puts the state’s population at 29,145,505 — up from 25.1 million in 2010 — after gaining the most residents of any state in the last decade. More detailed data, which lawmakers need to redraw legislative and congressional districts to reflect that growth, isn’t expected until early fall. But census estimates have shown it’s been driven by people of color.

Through 2019, Hispanics had accounted for more than half of the state’s population growth since 2010, a gain of more than 2 million residents. And although it makes up a small share of the total population, estimates showed the state’s Asian population has grown the fastest since 2010. Estimates have also shown the state’s growth has been concentrated in diverse urban centers and suburban communities.

With its gain of two seats, the state’s footprint in the Electoral College will grow to 40 votes. But Texas will remain in second place behind California for the largest congressional delegation and share of Electoral College votes. California is losing a congressional seat but will remain on top with 52 seats and 54 votes in the Electoral College. The other states losing seats are Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Florida, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon will each gain one seat.

[…]

Texas ultimately fell short of the three congressional seats it was projected to gain based on population estimates. Census Bureau officials on Monday indicated the state’s 2020 population count was slightly lower — a difference of about 1% — than the estimates.

In the lead-up to the census, Republican Texas lawmakers shot down any significant funding for state efforts to avoid an undercount in the 2020 census, leaving the work of chasing an accurate count to local governments, nonprofits and even churches. Texas is home to a large share of residents — Hispanics, people who don’t speak English, people living in poverty and immigrants, to name a few — who were at the highest risk of being missed in the count.

I’ve been blogging about this for a long time, so go search the archives for the background. We’ll never know if some effort from the state government might have yielded a higher population count, but other states with large Latino populations like Florida and Arizona did not get the apportionment gains they were expected to, while New York only lost one seat and Minnesota didn’t lose any. California grew by over two million people over the past decade, by the way, but its share of the total population slipped, and that cost it a seat. Yes, I know, it’s crazy that the US House has the same number of members it has had since 1912, when each member of Congress represented about 30,000 people (it’s about 760,000 people now), but here we are.

The Chron goes into some more detail.

“We’ll have to wait for more granular data, but it certainly looks like the Texas Legislature’s decision not to budget money to encourage census participation combined with the Trump administration efforts to add a citizenship question cost Texas a congressional district,” noted Michael Li, an expert on redistricting who serves as senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Census Bureau officials said Monday they were confident in the results, noting the state’s actual population was within 1 percent of the estimates.

The new population figures come as lawmakers in Texas prepare to redraw political boundaries, including for the state’s congressional delegation, which will remain the second-biggest in the nation as it adds two more members, for a total of 38. That trails California, which is set to lose a seat for the first time in state history, and will have 52 members.

Republicans will control the redistricting process and are expected to use it to reinforce their control of the delegation.

[Mark] Jones at Rice University said the party now just has to decide how safe or risky it wants to be with the new seats. Republicans can play it safer by tossing the new districts to Democrats while shoring up GOP votes in the 22 seats they hold now, which would keep them in control of the delegation. Or they could use the new seats to break up Democrat districts and try to gain ground.

[…]

Li expects the two additional seats to bring “demands for increased representation of communities of color, which will be at odds with the party that will control redistricting.”

Li said chances are high that the maps Texas Republicans draw will end up in court for that exact reason, something that has happened each of the last five decades.

“That’s almost a certainty,” Li said. “Every decade, Texas’s maps get changed a little or a lot because it’s never managed to fairly treat communities of color.”

Of course, we have a very hostile Supreme Court now, and no Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. It would be very, very nice if the Senate could find a way to pass the two big voting rights bills that have been passed by the House, but until that happens we’re looking at a lot of sub-optimal scenarios. I’ve been saying what Prof. Jones says here, that the approach the Republicans take will depend to a large degree on their level of risk aversion, but never underestimate their desire to find advantage. There will be much more to say as we go on, but this will get us started. Daily Kos, Mother Jones, and the Texas Signal have more.

On prosecuting the insurrectionists

Jan 9th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

30 comments

This is a good start.

While federal prosecutors in the nation’s capital will likely tackle the bulk of criminal charges for the perpetrators of Wednesday’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Ryan K. Patrick is among a growing number of U.S. attorneys around the country vowing to prosecute anyone from their regions who traveled to Washington, D.C., to participate.

More than a dozen U.S. attorneys from Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland have made statements that they’d go after people in their districts who made the trip to Washington.

Patrick, who represents the Southern District of Texas, commonly abbreviated SDTX, tweeted Wednesday, “What happened today in Washington was despicable and illegal. Storming a government building is not a protest, it’s anarchy. Arrest them, charge them, and incarcerate them.”

And he added, “And if these clowns today don’t think the capitol police, FBI, FPS and others won’t be poring over open source and other video to make cases, they’re wrong. If any of these leads points to SDTX, we’re on it.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray promised in a statement Thursday to investigate the crowds of participants: “Make no mistake: With our partners, we will hold accountable those who participated in yesterday’s siege of the Capitol.”

[…]

Reports of Capitol mob participants are already cropping up in Texas.

A Texas attorney who videos appear to show participated in the violent mob that took over the Capitol was identified by a journalist.

Paul MacNeal Davis, an attorney eligible to practice law in Texas and based in Frisco, was terminated from his position at Goosehead Insurance, a company with offices in Houston and across Texas.

The video was originally posted to Instagram by an account that appears to belong to Davis. The same account posted a message to followers Thursday morning stating, “I already lost my job because of the Twitter mob. I’m not upset. I’m thankful to be suffering for righteousness and freedom.”

The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office is investigating whether a jail lieutenant broke policy or any laws by attending the pro-Trump rally that later turned into the mob.

Sheriff Javier Salazar said 46-year-old Roxanne Mathai, an eight-year veteran with the department, posted selfies and photos of the crowd in Washington to her Facebook page, identifying herself as a BCSO employee.

Justice Department officials in Washington will likely pursue cases that involve violence, theft, property damage, criminal mischief, trespassing or knowingly entering or remaining in restricted building or grounds without permission, Patrick said. The department handles theses cases because there is no district attorney in Washington. But there are charges local districts can file as well, on their own or in coordination with “main justice” in Washington.

If someone involved in the melee lived in the sprawling 43-county Southern District, Patrick said, he would investigate whether the person planned in advance to travel to Washington to incite a riot.

Here’s another seditious chucklehead to investigate, though I’d guess she’s in a different district. These guys weren’t hiding their motives or intentions, so by all means look into all possibilities, but do keep in mind that just what was done in the Capitol will keep prosecutors and law enforcement very busy. And by all means, think big.

Supporters of President Donald Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol, breaking windows and stealing things, could face charges including sedition, insurrection and rioting, Washington, D.C.’s top federal prosecutor said on Thursday.

“All of those charges are on the table,” Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin told reporters in a call, when asked about possible charges of sedition, rioting or insurrection.

“We’re not going to keep anything out of our arsenal.”

The Justice Department has filed 55 criminal cases about events this week, Sherwin said, some pre-dating Wednesday’s assault on the seat of government, including the arrest of far-right Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio on Monday.

Sherwin repeatedly said no suspects in Wednesday’s riots would be ruled out – even when asked whether this could include Capitol Police who may have been complicit or Trump himself for urging protesters to march on the Capitol at a rally on Wednesday.

“We’re looking at all actors here and anyone that had a role, and the evidence fits the elements of a crime, they’re going to be charged.”

Oh, and did we mention that a Capitol police officer died as a result of injuries sustained during this riot? I want to see a lot of people charged with being accessories to his death. The point here is to make the price of this exercise in fascism as steep as possible for as many people as possible. It’s by far the best way to make future such events less likely.

And if all that is not enough:

.
There are multiple photographs of pro-Trump rioters carrying law enforcement-style flex-cuffs.

Rioters went looking for @VP, @SpeakerPelosi, @SenSchumer.

It raises the question of whether there was an organized plan to take hostages.

— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) 08:57 AM – 08 January 2021

As horrible as this was, this could have been so much worse. Get every last one of them arrested and convicted. Daily Kos has more.

More investment from Bloomberg

Oct 29th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Once again, better late than never.

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is funding a last-minute ad blitz on behalf of Joe Biden in Texas and Ohio, providing a boost to the former vice president as polls and a flutter of late campaign activity continue to show that the Lone Star State might be in play.

A Bloomberg spokesperson told The Texas Tribune on Tuesday morning that the former mayor of New York City and Democratic presidential candidate will use his super PAC, Independence USA, to fund $15 million worth of statewide ads in both Texas and Ohio.

The ads begin running Wednesday and will go through Election Day, or Nov. 3. In Texas, the ads will focus on “[President Donald] Trump’s mismanagement of COVID-19 crisis,” according to a Bloomberg spokesperson. The commercials will run in both English and Spanish.

[…]

The Bloomberg spokesperson confirmed earlier reports from the New York Times that the former mayor asked his team to run a round of polls across multiple states and based its spending decisions on survey results. The team came away convinced that Texas and Ohio were prime pickup opportunities for Democrats, despite both going for Trump in 2016, and Bloomberg later gave “the go-ahead to invest additional money to support Joe Biden,” the spokesperson said.

Unlike the RRC race money, which came in late September, this really is a last-minute blitz. You may, quite reasonably, think that having this kind of money earlier would have been better, and as a matter of principle I agree. I think the intent here is specifically to go after the lower-propensity voters, the handful of undecideds, and the type of Trump voters who don’t actually like him but still think that on balance he’s better – or at least not as bad – as the alternatives. The first group can be targeted with a straightforward positive pro-Biden pro-Democrats GOTV message, while the latter group gets a bunch of anti-Trump messages blasted at them. The middle group will get some of each. Because these folks are likely to not have been as engaged in the election before now, targeting them a month ago would have been less effective. It’s the same theory and application that motivated that late spending on MJ Hegar, who will also likely benefit from the Bloomberg splurge, as she will need as many of the folks in that first group to support her as well. It makes sense, and if Bloomberg sees a sound data-based reason to do this, it’s pretty encouraging.

NBA agrees to offer its arenas as voting centers

Aug 30th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Nice.

“What was the plan?” was always the wrong question to ask of striking NBA players; what they wanted was to not play basketball, and they got it. But they used that time not playing to talk, to think and to make their voices heard.

But the players did get a significant commitment from their bosses: turning as many NBA arenas as possible into voting sites for November.

The league and union announced Friday that the playoffs will resume Saturday. That announcement included a concrete promise from the league. Every team-owned arena will turn into a polling place for the November election in locations where that’s still legally possible in order for voters to have a large, COVID-safe place to vote in person.

Three teams had already committed to this earlier in the summer — Bucks, Pistons and Hawks — and the Rockets made the announcement on Thursday.

Chris Paul, the Thunder point guard and longtime union president, gave an emotional interview to bubble media after the announcement.

“In 15 years in the league, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Paul said. “Everyone expects us to go out and play. I get it. But we needed some time,” he said, adding that he had spoken to Jacob Blake’s father.

We knew about the Toyota Center. I had not been aware of the other three arenas, which was apparently something that happened in early July. Here’s some more details about what this announcement means:

On Friday, the NBA and NBPA announced a three-point plan to promote social justice and racial equality, which includes converting NBA arenas into voting centers for the 2020 presidential election. The NBA playoffs will resume on Saturday in Orlando.

“1. The NBA and its players have agreed to immediately establish a social justice coalition, with representatives from players, coaches and governors, that will be focused on a broad range of issues, including increasing access to voting, promoting civic engagement, and advocating for meaningful police and criminal justice reform.

2. In every city where the league franchise owns and controls the arena property, team governors will continue to work with local election officials to convert the facility into a voting location for the 2020 general election to allow for a safe in-person voting option for communities vulnerable to COVID. If a deadline has passed, team governors will work with local elections officials to find another election-related use for the facility, including but not limited to voter registration and ballot receiving boards.

3. The league will work with the players and our network partners to create and include advertising spots in each NBA playoff game dedicated to promoting greater civic engagement in national and local elections and raising awareness around voter access and opportunity.”

In theory, that could mean voting centers in battleground states like Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Arizona in addition the four that are already signed on. Maybe Dallas and San Antonio will join in as well. How many of these actually happen, and what kind of response the players will have if they feel the effort fell short for whatever the reason, remains to be seen. But in terms of direct action resulting from the wildcat strike the players engineered this past week, it’s pretty impressive. Well done.

(A more recent article than the NPR story I linked above suggests some other NBA teams, as well as teams in the NFL, NHL, and MLB, are taking similar action to allow their stadia to be used for voting. Not clear to me what relation these two efforts have. For sure, there are plenty of stadia, including hundreds of college stadia and arenas, that could also be used in this capacity, in all 50 states. It would be nice to say we’re just limited by our imagination, but of course we are very much limited by the ferocious opposition to this idea that those who don’t want to make voting easy and convenient would bring. What the NBA players have done is a great start. There’s a lot more that could and should be done.)

How to lose a Congressional seat

Jul 27th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

As things stand right now, Texas will gain three Congressional seats in the 2021 reapportionment, as Texas continues to be the fastest-growing state in the country. There is one thing that can stop that, however: Donald Trump.

President Donald Trump opened a new front Tuesday in his effort to keep undocumented immigrants from being counted when lawmakers redraw congressional districts next year, a move that could cost Texas several seats in Congress if it succeeds.

Trump attempted last year to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census, but was shot down by the courts. On Tuesday, he signed a memorandum directing Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to exclude undocumented immigrants who might be included in the census count from the “apportionment base,” or the base population that’s used to divide up seats in Congress.

The order, which will surely be challenged in court, is Trump’s latest effort to differentiate between citizens and noncitizens when states redraw the boundaries of political districts each decade to account for growth. Recent estimates indicate the size of the undocumented population in Texas has reached nearly 1.8 million. Excluding those residents from population counts to draw up congressional districts would likely lead to a drastic realignment of representation and power throughout the state.

The U.S. Constitution mandates that representation in Congress be divided among states based on a count every 10 years of every person residing in the country. But the Constitution, Trump wrote, does not define “which persons must be included in the apportionment base.”

“Excluding these illegal aliens from the apportionment base is more consonant with the principles of representative democracy underpinning our system of Government,” the memo reads. “Affording congressional representation, and therefore formal political influence, to States on account of the presence within their borders of aliens who have not followed the steps to secure a lawful immigration status under our laws undermines those principles.”

[…]

“The Constitution requires that everyone in the U.S. be counted in the census,” Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said in a statement. “President Trump can’t pick and choose. He tried to add a citizenship question to the census and lost in the Supreme Court. His latest attempt to weaponize the census for an attack on immigrant communities will be found unconstitutional. We’ll see him in court, and win, again.”

Litigation has indeed been filed, in multiple lawsuits and venues at this point. My interest in pointing this out was the very narrow one of showing what this would mean to Texas.

If unauthorized immigrants were excluded from the apportionment count, California, Florida and Texas would each end up with one less congressional seat than they would have been awarded based on population change alone. California would lose two seats instead of one, Florida would gain one instead of two, and Texas would gain two instead of three, according to analysis based on projections of Census Bureau 2019 population estimates and the Center’s estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population.

Alabama, Minnesota and Ohio would each hold onto a seat that they would have lost if apportionment were based only on total population change. Alabama filed a lawsuit in 2018 seeking to block the Census Bureau from including unauthorized immigrants in its population count.

[…]

The Census Bureau does not regularly publish counts or estimates of unauthorized immigrants, although the Department of Homeland Security has done so. Last year, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against including a question about citizenship on the 2020 census, the president ordered the Census Bureau to assemble a separate database, using other government records, on the citizenship status of every U.S. resident. This has also been challenged in court.

The Center’s analysis relies on assumptions about populations to be counted in the 2020 census and estimates of unauthorized immigrants. The actual figures used for apportionment will be different from these, and so the actual apportionment could differ regardless of whether unauthorized immigrants are excluded from the apportionment totals.

You might think that Texas’ political leaders would be up in arms about this. That Congressional seat belongs to Texas! State’s rights! You know the drill. And sadly, you also know that our Trump-hugging Attorney General would never, ever say or do anything that would contradict his Dear Leader. What’s a Congressional seat (or two, or even three, if our dismal failure to support a complete Census effort causes the official count to be unexpectedly low) compared to a favorable tweet from Donald Trump? That’s a question we should all be asking, loudly and often, in 2022, when they are up for re-election.

One more thing:

Texas House leaders have previously indicated to The Texas Tribune they have no plans to alter the way Texas redraws political districts even if the Legislature obtained more detailed data on citizenship.

“Bottom line, the law for the Texas House and the Senate — and frankly the courts and the State Board of Education — requires it be done by total population, as does the U.S. Constitution with regard to congressional seats,” said state Rep. Phil King, a Republican from Weatherford who chairs the House Redistricting Committee.

That’s good to hear, but my understanding is that while the State House is explicitly mandated to use total population in redistricting, the State Senate is not. That’s why it was the Senate map that was targeted in the Evenwel case. So, while I hope Rep. King means what he says here, the possibility very much exists that the Lege will try a different tack. (Also, it’s usually the House that draws the House map, and the Senate that draws the Senate map. I’d like to know what the relevant Senate committee chair has to say about this.)

UPDATE: From Ross Ramsey at the Trib:

In a letter urging Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to take legal action to stop the proposal, state Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, framed the idea as an attack on Texas.

“Filing suit to block the Presidential Memorandum to the Secretary of Commerce dated July 21 would be wholly consistent with your official biography that explains as Attorney General, you are ‘focused on protecting Texans and upholding Texas laws and the Constitution’ and ‘fighting federal overreach.’ Indeed, if unchallenged, the President’s actions would likely hurt Texas more than any other state.”

The partisan politics here are clear enough. Turner is the chairman of the Texas House Democratic Caucus. Paxton, a Republican, is the newly branded co-chair of the national Lawyers for Trump.

But not all that is political is partisan, even in an election year. Does anyone in elected office here think Texas should have less influence in Washington, D.C.?

Good question. Someone should ask Ken Paxton, and Greg Abbott, and Dan Patrick, and John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and all of the Republican members of Congress.

Emerson: Trump 47, Biden 41

May 16th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Next up.

The latest Emerson College/Nexstar Media polls of Texas, California, and Ohio show President Donald Trump with a slight advantage in Ohio and Texas in the general election against presumptive Democratic nominee former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump also appears to be who voters in these states expect to win in November, as a majority expect him to secure a second term.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to deeply affect the country, Governors in all three states maintain strong approval and partisan divides are stark in individual opinions on the country’s future.

[…]

In Texas, a potential new battleground state, President Trump is at 46% approval and 44% disapproval. Republican Governor Greg Abbott has 54% approval and 32% disapproval among voters in the state. n=800, +/-3.4%.

Trump leads Biden by six points among Texas voters, 47% to 41%, but when undecided voters are included, Trump’s lead tightens to four points, 52% to 48%. Despite the close ballot test, a clear majority of voters in Texas, 61%, expect Trump to be re-elected.

A slight majority in Texas, 51%, would rather vote by mail this year because of concerns about safety related to the virus.

You can see the full poll data for Texas here. For what it’s worth, FiveThirtyEight uses the 52-48 push-the-leaner total on its Texas polling page.

There are some questions about what kind of newly reopened establishments one would feel comfortable in, if you want to read more. Texas respondents were more cautious than their Ohio counterparts, which was interesting. Note that while Greg Abbott had fairly solid approval numbers, they pale in comparison to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who checked in at 71 approve/15 disapprove – California Governor Gavin Newsom was at 65/20. Both DeWine and Newsom have been generally praised for their handling of the pandemic, while Abbott has been his usual wishy-washy self. It’s not that Abbott’s numbers are terrible, but compared to his peers, they’re weak. Make of that what you will.

Vote by mail is not a panacea

Apr 26th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Let’s be clear, I very much support expanded access to vote by mail. I support the ongoing TDP lawsuit to force expanded vote by mail, and I would very much advise anyone who is at risk for COVID-19 to apply for a mail ballot. I believe allowing no-excuse vote by mail should be universal, along with a bunch of other voting rights reforms. But we need to recognize that if we do get expanded vote by mail for this year, it’s going to fit within the existing system we have now, not one that has been prepared for it in advance. There are real risks to large-scale expansion of vote by mail, and as is always the case, they fall disproportionately on minority voters.

As election officials scramble to expand their absentee programs, voter advocates are pressing them to preserve adequate in-person voting options, pointing specifically to the obstacles faced by voters of color. They are also noting the ways that vote-by-mail systems — particularly, if implemented sloppily — tend to disenfranchise minority voters at a higher rate than white ones.

Their concerns have already been borne out in the few states that have large-scale mail-in voting programs; in many of them, minority voters’ use of the options lags behind that of white voters.

“From our experience of doing voter engagement, one of the things is that there is confusion,” said Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, which mobilizes black voting around key races.

Her group recently surveyed registered black voters in swing states and found that 4-in-10 had concerns about voting by mail, a process only 36 percent had experience with. Even with the ongoing pandemic, voting-in-person was about tied with vote-by-mail when the survey-takers were asked their preferred method for November’s election.

“In some ways there’s an instinct that you have about the challenges that make them suspicious or concerned even if they don’t know the specifics,” Shropshire said. “On the reality side, we already know the challenges that black voters face when they vote by mail.”

The potential for racial disparities in how vote-by-mail systems are implemented has already become a flashpoint in upcoming primaries in Ohio, Nevada and Georgia.

Some of the resistance to absentee voting can be chalked up to historical or cultural trends, experts say, such as the longstanding “Souls to the Polls” practice of black church-goers traveling to polling places after Sunday services.

“Early voting has been really, really important for African American communities in encouraging voter participation,” said Danielle Root, an expert at the Center For American Progress who worked on a recent CAP-NAACP paper on the need for in-person voting during the pandemic. “So eliminating all in-person options obviously negatively impacts African American voters in that way.”

There are other systemic issues at play as well. African Americans change addresses more frequently, and they make up a disproportionate percentage of the homeless population. Transience can make participating in vote-by-mail elections challenging.

Given the unreliable nature of postal service on tribal lands, certain mail-in voting policies present unique challenges for Native American communities.

In-person voting is also needed for non-English speaking voters and for voters with disabilities, advocates say.

Pointing to these populations, voter advocates have criticized — and in some places, sued — election officials who have sought to all but eliminate in-person voting during the pandemic, as they have expanded absentee voting opportunities.

“For communities — and this is true for African American voters — that have higher rates of moving and lower rates of voter-by-mail usage, [election officials] need to be figuring out how to reach voters, and not looking for ways to, frankly, cut corners and in turn cut people out of the process,” said Hannah Fried, the national campaign director of the advocacy group All Voting Is Local.

There’s more, and you should read the rest. We have talked about some of these concerns, but this article goes into a lot more detail, and it addresses concerns I had not previously considered.

There are three basic takeaways here. One is that the goal here is to make voting easier for everyone, and that means giving them the best way for them to vote, whether it’s mail or in person. Two, focusing on safety and risk mitigation means considering all reasonable options to make in person voting safer as well – more locations, hand sanitizer and wipes everywhere, getting as many poll workers in place and trained as possible, etc. We can’t afford to be too focused on one method of voting at the expense of others. And three, we need to really listen to the voters who always face the hardest challenges to voting and take their feedback seriously. I’m going to be fine whatever we wind up doing. Lots of people are not in that same position. We need to accommodate those voters before we worry about voters like me.

Schlitterbahn sold

Jun 17th, 2019

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

End of an era, as another iconic family-owned Texas business is sold to a non-Texas firm.

Schlitterbahn Waterparks and Resorts — which has dealt with a gruesome death, indictments and financial troubles in recent years — is selling a chunk of its holdings.

Ohio-based Cedar Fair Entertainment Co. has an agreement with the owners of Schlitterbahn to purchase the company’s New Braunfels park and resort property as well as their Galveston park for $261 million, subject to certain adjustments.

“It’s important to know that Cedar Fair values Schlitterbahn’s character and brand promise,” the Henry family — Schlitterbahn’s owners — said in a statement. “They have committed to not only keeping Schlitterbahn awesome but helping us grow!”

Richard Zimmerman, Cedar Fair’s president and CEO, said the company is “very excited about the opportunity to bring these two award-winning Texas water parks into the Cedar Fair family.”

“These properties represent new markets for us with attractive demographics in the growing Central Texas region, and they align with our strategy to identify compelling opportunities to accelerate our growth and profitability,” he said in a statement.

That’s Schlitterbahn and Whataburger all in the same week, y’all. As we know, the Schlitterbahn has had some trouble in recent years, though at least the criminal charges that were filed have been dismissed. It sounds like the family had been looking to sell for awhile, as they were having cash flow problems that caused some planned new parks to not happen. They are retaining the South Padre park, which will be rebranded. I hope the new owners can get everything back to its old glory, and I hope the Henry family can get themselves back on their feet. The Current has more.

The Ohio voter purge case

Jun 13th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

I refer to the Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute case that was decided by SCOTUS on Monday. Here’s a long reading list if you want to get up to speed on it:

SCOTUSBlog
Pema Levy
Mark Joseph Stern
Kira Lerner

Daniel Nichanian
Josh Douglas
Dahlia Lithwick
Rick Hasen
Ian Millhiser
Ari Berman
Kevin Drum

Go ahead and peruse. I’ll wait.

All right. The coverage and analysis of this ruling focuses on Ohio, for the obvious reason that this is where the case came from, and also because, as Dahlia Lithwick puts it, Ohio is the “purgiest of all the purgey states”. There’s some discussion about how this ruling paints a roadmap for other states that are inclined to do what Ohio has been doing to follow, though as the Rick Hasen piece notes there’s also a potential roadmap for blocking such efforts in the courts. What I want to know, of course, is how this will and may affect Texas. To the best of my knowledge, this kind of voter roll updating/purging is done at the county level. We certainly saw various underhanded tricks here in Harris County, like sending notices to update one’s voter registration information to known old addresses, back in the Paul Bettencourt/Leo Vasquez/Don Sumners days, but with Ann Harris Bennett in office now it’s less of a concern.

So my question is, what role does our Secretary of State play in all this, and what opportunities does our SOS have to “assist” the county election admins/voter registrars in “cleaning up” their voter rolls? What does the SOS do now, and what could our Lege enable or direct it to do now that Husted is law? I don’t have the expertise to say, and the election law-minded folks on Facebook that I rely on have not had anything to say about this. It sure would be nice if one of our professional news-gathering organizations put someone on to this question.

Wait, who supports paper ballots now?

Nov 3rd, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

10 comments

I have three things to say about this.

Following repeated allegations by Republican Donald Trump that the election may be rigged to ensure a win for Democrat Hillary Clinton, Texas lawmakers are actively considering ways to boost confidence in the state’s elections during next year’s legislative session.

Among the ideas drawing interest: adding paper trail backups to thousands of electronic voting machines.

The idea was brought up in a tweet Saturday by Gov. Greg Abbott.

“That’s a great idea & we are considering it as an election reform measure. Election integrity is essential,” Abbott tweeted in response to a voter who tweeted that he wanted printed proof of how he cast his ballot.

Over the last decade, several Texas lawmakers have filed bills to require paper trails on electronic voting machine. The proposals often include adding a printer in a sealed case to the state’s electronic voting machines so voters could check their votes against the receipt. The paper trail could be consulted in the event of a recount.

During the 2007 legislative session, interest in the idea stalled following estimates that adding the printers to all of the state’s voting machines could cost $40 to 50 million, according to a Fort Worth Star-Telegram article from the time.

One of the 2007 bills was authored by then-state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham. Now a state senator, she said she may re-introduce her previous legislation.

“I agree with Governor Abbott’s call for election reform,” Kolkhorst said Tuesday in an emailed statement. “I have personally spoken with his office about re-introducing my legislation from 2007 to strengthen ballot integrity by requiring a paper record be printed of a person’s vote on an electronic voting machine. Texans have the right to inspect and verify that their vote was accurately recorded.”

[…]

The move toward election reform comes amid an election season in which Texans have expressed concerns about election rigging and voter fraud. Last week, Trump highlighted reports of voting machines in Texas changing votes for president from voters casting straight-ticket ballots. Those reports, however, have been largely debunked by election officials, who have stated that alleged instances of “vote flipping” were the result of user error.

1. I’m old enough to remember when suspicion of electronic voting machines and faith that only paper ballots could ensure the integrity of our electoral system was a shibboleth on the left, largely having to do with dire conspiracy theories about the Diebold corporation and vote counting in Ohio in 2004. Here’s a little blast from the past for those of you who have blocked this out or weren’t there for it the first time. Who knew that a sociopathic sore-losing narcissist could spark such an interest in voting machine integrity among Republicans? For that matter, who knew that so many Republican voters could be that suspicious of the electoral process in a state whose elections they have been dominating for over 20 years? Clearly, all these Republican County Clerks and Republican-appointed elections administrators can’t be trusted.

2. Travis County has already done a lot of the heavy lifting on building a better mousetrap. Maybe we should just emulate their work and save us all a bunch of time and effort.

3. Putting aside the question of paper ballots for a moment, perhaps we should take a moment and contemplate the fact that the electronic voting machines we use now are all a decade or more old, and are generally past their recommended lifespan. If we do nothing else, spending a few bucks to upgrade and replace our current hardware would be an excellent investment.

SCOTUS will take up same sex marriage

Jan 17th, 2015

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

This is it.

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will take up four cases challenging state bans on same-sex couples’ marriages — a long anticipated move that could lead to nationwide marriage equality.

The cases ask the justices whether Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee bans on same-sex couples’ marriages and bans on recognition of same-sex couples’ marriages from out of state violate the Constitution’s due process and equal protection guarantees.

The two questions granted by the court for argument are: 1) “Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex?” and 2) “Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?”

There will be 90 minutes of argument on the marriage question and 60 minutes of argument on the marriage recognition question, per the court’s order.

The coming showdown before the justices over same-sex couples’ marriage rights has quickly become seen as inevitable following the Nov. 6, 2014, decision of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The ruling set up a disagreement with other appeals courts to have considered the issue; the 4th Circuit, 7th Circuit, 9th Circuit, and 10th Circuit courts of appeals all have struck down such bans on various grounds.

[…]

The same-sex couples plaintiffs’ briefs will be due by 2 p.m. Friday, Feb. 27. The states’ briefs will be due by 2 p.m. Friday, March 27. The reply briefs from the plaintiffs will be due by 2 p.m. Friday, April 17.

Then, likely in late April, the justices will hold arguments over the issue — which would mean a decision, and possible nationwide resolution of the issue, would be expected by late June.

Freedom to Marry has reactions from many of the people that have been directly involved in the litigation, while TPM reports that the Obama administration will formally ask SCOTUS to rule in favor of same sex marriage. This is what we’ve been waiting for, and while I suppose it could all go horribly wrong it’s hard not to feel optimistic. I look forward to seeing the analyses of the case as the briefs get filed and replied to and whatnot. In the meantime, I wonder if this will spur the Fifth Circuit to issue its ruling prior to SCOTUS, or if they’ll be happy to let the Supremes take that task out of their hands. The Trib lists some possibilities:

At the very least, the Supreme Court’s ruling — which will likely come in June — will make the 5th Circuit’s decision in the Texas case less consequential, said Aaron Bruhl, an associate law professor at the University of Houston. The 5th Circuit could issue its decision in the case in a few weeks.

The Supreme Court’s action on Friday could also delay the 5th Circuit’s decision in the Texas case. “It is possible that at this point [the 5th Circuit] could say, ‘Whatever we say, the authoritative decision is going to come not too much later than we would rule anyway. Maybe we should just wait,'” Bruhl said.

Lawyers for each side in the Texas case have said they hope the 5th Circuit rules before the U.S. Supreme Court. Bruhl said it’s possible the parties in the case will ask the court to issue a ruling even though the Supreme Court has taken up the issue again.

I also wonder what the backlash from the bad guys will look like. If all goes well, this ruling could do a lot of good for a lot of people in Texas, but as we have seen, marriage is only a piece of the puzzle. There’s a lot more to be done, and it’s not clear yet who will be more energized by a nationwide defenestration of anti-gay marriage laws. But that’s a thought for another day. For now, let’s celebrate coming this far. SCOTUSBlog and Hair Balls have more.

Sixth Circuit stands up for inequality

Nov 7th, 2014

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

It was bound to happen eventually.

Remember the big no-decision decision the Supreme Court issued on same-sex marriage just a month ago? The justices were asked — in five separate cases no less — to weigh in on whether same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage. The Supreme Court demurred on the question, which was a significant move in and of itself.

By declining to review any of the cases before it, the justices effectively blessed lower-court rulings that had struck down state gay marriage bans in five states. Circuit courts had been unanimous on the subject. So what more was there to say? Barack Obama even told Jeffrey Toobin recently that he thought this was the best Supreme Court decision of his tenure: a silent statement on the importance of letting cultural change spread across the country, one state at a time.

Well, so much for the power of silence. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit just reversed rulings striking down gay-marriage bans in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. This means that four circuit courts have now struck down gay marriage bans, while one has upheld them. We no longer have unanimity. The Supreme Court, eventually, will have to step in.

The 6th Circuit decision is here. A lot of people had been waiting to see what the Fifth Circuit would do, if they would be the court that provided the circuit split that forced SCOTUS to act, but they took too long. They will still get a chance to have their say, of course, and perhaps now that they wouldn’t have to be the trailblazer for upholding this particular injustice they’ll feel more free to let their colors show. One hopes that in the end neither this ruling nor the one the Fifth Circuit is expected to make will matter. Daily Kos and Freedom to Marry have more.

Court strikes down Texas voter ID law

Oct 11th, 2014

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Boom.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Less than two weeks before the start of early voting, a federal judge ruled the state’s photo voter ID law unconstitutional late Thursday and ordered state officials to drop the new requirements.

“The Court holds that SB 14 creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans, and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose,” U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi wrote in a 147-page opinion. “The Court further holds that SB 14 constitutes an unconstitutional poll tax.”

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Greg Abbott said the state would immediately file an appeal to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The State of Texas will immediately appeal and will urge the Fifth Circuit to resolve this matter quickly to avoid voter confusion in the upcoming election,” Lauren Bean said in an emailed statement. “The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that voter ID laws are constitutional so we are confident the Texas law will be upheld on appeal.”

[…]

The judge heard three weeks of evidence in September and issued her opinion on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court stopped immediate implementation of a similar law in Wisconsin.

It was not immediately clear what will happen to this year’s general election. The judge said she would schedule a conference with the lawyers to discuss it, and a successful appeal by Abbott, who is also the Republican nominee for governor, could put the law back into effect for this election while the courts sort out a full appeal.

Here’s more on the Wisconsin voter ID ruling. There are two things to emphasize here. One is that in addition to striking down the law, Judge Ramos found intentional discrimination on the part of the state in passing the law. That potentially allows for Texas to be bailed back in to preclearance under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, which is something the Justice Department specifically sought. The other is that there’s a good chance that Judge Ramos’ ruling could be stayed, allowing voter ID to be implemented for this election while the appeals go forward. Rick Hasen explains.

In Ohio, the court changed the law close to the election, but more importantly, it imposed an order reestablishing 5 weeks of early voting when the state was still willing to give four. There was no significant burden on plaintiffs and so the lower courts were wrong to order this emergency relief. In North Carolina, North Carolina’s law, which I’ve dubbed the strict set of voting restrictions we’ve seen enacted as a package since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, should be found unconstitutional. But even so, under the Purcell v. Gonzalez principle, it was wrong for the 4th Circuit to make this change in the rules so close to the election (particularly where plaintiffs waited a while to seek a preliminary injunction [this has been corrected]).

That same Purcell principle applies even more strongly to Wisconsin. That is, even if the Supreme Court ultimately would say that Wisconsin’s law is constitutional and does not violate the Voting Rights Act, this is a very strong case under Purcell. (As I explained, the key question is whether Wisconsin has a strong enough state interest in its sovereignty over elections to implement a voter id law very quickly before the election, when there has been no preparation and when the undisputed evidence shows that, by the state’s own account, up to 10 percent of the state’s voters could be disenfranchised (a position the 7th Circuit en banc dissenters called shocking).

Finally, what happens now with Texas, with the huge win for challengers to Texas’s voter id law which Justin wrote about earlier? It is 4 am where I am and I may have missed it, but in all of the court’s findings—the Texas law violates the Equal Protection clause, is a poll tax, violates the Voting Rights Act, and engaged in enough intentional discrimination to be put back under preclearance–there is no discussion of whether the actual order will apply to this election and the injunction will stop its use in this election.

This order too creates a huge Purcell problem, as I’ve blogged, changing the rules so close to the election. If the district court orders an immediate stop to Texas’s id law, I expect the 5th Circuit (if not the Supreme Court) to reverse that on Purcell grounds.

He’s the expert, but I would argue that the default for the vast majority of voters has been not needing to show ID, and that it would be less disruptive to enjoin the law pending appeals. The Texas Election Law Blog, going by an earlier Justin Levitt post, thinks Judge Ramos’ decision was written to address the Purcell issue. I hope they’re right, but as always with matters involving the Fifth Circuit, I have no faith in their jurisprudence. A press release from the Brennan Center is here, the Chron story is here, and BOR, Burka, Newsdesk, and PDiddie have more.

Lots of same sex marriage appeals about to happen

Aug 8th, 2014

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Busy times in the federal appeals courts.

Federal appeals courts soon will hear arguments in gay marriage fights from nine states, part of a slew of cases putting pressure on the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a final verdict.

If the appeals judges continue the unbroken eight-month streak of rulings in favor of gay marriage, that could make it easier for the nation’s highest court to come down on the side of supporters.

If even one ruling goes against them in the four courts taking up the issue in the coming weeks, it would create a divide that the Supreme Court also could find difficult to resist settling.

“We’re going to be racking up more courts of appeals decisions, and every one we get puts more pressure on the Supreme Court to weigh in,” said Douglas NeJaime, a law professor at the University of California-Irvine. “It’s very likely the Supreme Court ultimately settles this question. Given how quickly things have moved, it’s hard for the court to avoid this in the short term.”

[…]

Arguments similar to those [that were] heard Wednesday will take place Aug. 26 in the 7th Circuit in Chicago, for bans in Wisconsin and Indiana, and for Sept. 8 in the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, for bans in Idaho and Nevada. The 5th Circuit in New Orleans is expected to soon set a date to hear arguments on Texas’ ban.

The flurry of arguments means an upcoming spate of rulings, possibly all issued this autumn, that could profoundly alter the nation’s marriage laws.

If the four federal circuit appeals courts rule in favor of gay marriage, then nine states with pending appeals stand to have their bans stricken down altogether or ordered to recognize out-of-state gay marriages: Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas, Indiana, Wisconsin, Idaho and Nevada, though the decisions likely would be put on hold for a Supreme Court ruling.

Five additional states under those four circuit courts have gay marriage lawsuits awaiting decisions by federal judges: Alaska, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana.

Observers say the 6th or 5th circuits could deliver the first victory for gay marriage opponents.

We know about the Sixth Circuit, in which arguments were heard this week. We still don’t know when the Fifth Circuit will hear arguments there, but we do know that 63 Texas legislators have signed a brief in the appeal in which they declare that same sex marriage is icky and they totally have Greg Abbott’s back. Hey, remember when something like that would have been bipartisan? This one was an all-R effort, with the TDP and these troglodytes’ two LGBT colleagues firing back. I’m so glad those days are over, even if there are still a few laggards on the issue. In any event, the national picture will almost certainly be a lot clearer, or a lot more complicated, in the next few months.

Marriage equality’s legal winning streak may be on the line this week

Aug 4th, 2014

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

And it’s not even the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that might bring a halt, however temporary, to the march of progress.

Marriage equality has had a very good run in the federal courts ever since the Supreme Court declared the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional in 2013. Every single federal court to consider the question has sided with marriage equality, although two federal appellate judges have dissented from this consensus view in the United States Courts of Appeals for the Fourth and the Tenth Circuits.

Nevertheless, equality is likely to face more skeptical judges as more of these cases advance to the court of appeals level. As ThinkProgress warned last June, “appointments to federal circuit courts have historically been much more politically charged than appointments to the lower-ranking district courts, so litigants are far more likely to encounter a judge who was selected for their loyalty to a particular ideology.” We also predicted that the Sixth Circuit, with a strong Republican majority and a history of partisan acrimony, was especially likely to treat a marriage equality case with skepticism.

Next Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit will convene in Cincinnati to hear several marriage equality cases arising out of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee — and the GOP-dominated panel that will hear these cases is unlikely to bring joy into the hearts of equality’s supporters.

If the Sixth Circuit really wants to accept a bunch of ridiculous and widely discredited arguments on behalf of discrimination, there’s not much anyone can do to stop them. History will remember them unkindly, but I suppose we’ll all be dead by then, so YOLO and all that. As the story notes, there’s a chance it might not go down this way, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In the end, even a bad decision just means that the Supreme Court will have to take it up sooner rather than later.

Inmates and Medicaid

Mar 11th, 2014

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Other states are doing what Texas has declined to do.

Being arrested in Chicago for, say, drug possession or assault gets you sent to the Cook County Jail to be fingerprinted, photographed and X-rayed. You’ll also get help applying for health insurance.

At least six states and counties from Maryland to Oregon’s Multnomah are getting inmates coverage under Obamacare and its expansion of Medicaid, the federal and state health-care program for the poor. The fledgling movement would shift to the federal government some of the more than $6.5 billion in annual state costs for treating prisoners. Proponents say it also will make recidivism rarer, because inmates released with coverage are more likely to get treatment for mental illness, substance abuse and other conditions that can lead them to crime.

“When someone gets discharged from the jail and they don’t have insurance and they don’t have a plan, we can pretty much set our watch to when we’re going see them again,” said Ben Breit, a spokesman for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.

The still-small programs could reach a vast population: At the end of 2012, almost 7 million people in the U.S. were on parole, probation, in prison or locked up in jail, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. About 13 million people are booked into county jails each year, according to the Washington-based National Association of Counties.

[…]

Medicaid expansion also enables more prisoners to have coverage when they are released. States that don’t expand it can help inmates get subsidized coverage in the insurance exchanges created under the law when they’re released.

Counties in about half the states are responsible for some level of indigent care at hospitals, so getting inmates enrolled can reduce costs, said Paul Beddoe, deputy legislative director for the National Association of Counties.

Cook County has been operating a pilot project to enroll prisoners in Medicaid since April under a federal waiver, while states including Connecticut, Illinois and Maryland and counties such as Multnomah, which includes Portland, have helped hundreds of prisoners apply for coverage under the Affordable Care Act since it took effect Jan. 1. California, Ohio, San Francisco and other jurisdictions are starting programs or considering them.

About 90 percent of inmates are uninsured, and many have never had treatment for their illness, Osher said. They have disproportionate rates of communicable and chronic diseases and behavioral disorders, he said. About 488,000 people in U.S. prisons and jails suffer from a mental illness, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Arlington, Virginia.

[…]

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, which plans to start enrolling inmates during the next two months, expects that it will save $18 million a year on hospitalization alone, said Stu Hudson, managing director of health care and fiscal operations.

Ex-prisoners who have insurance will be more likely to get treatment that would help them avoid committing crimes that got them locked up in the first place, Hudson said.

“They’re provided good continuum of care from incarceration through their release into the community and onward,” Hudson said by phone.

We’ve discussed this before. Putting aside the considerable cost savings to the state, the potential impact on the many people that regularly intersect with the criminal justice system who have treatable mental illnesses could be huge. We could save a bunch more money just from the reduced rate of recidivism. There’s really no downside to this. Unfortunately, without a change in state leadership, there’s also no chance of it happening. I don’t really care about the day to day vicissitudes of the Governor’s race. This sort of thing is the prize I keep my eyes on.

Hearing for the Texas federal same sex marriage lawsuit is tomorrow

Feb 11th, 2014

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

All eyes will be on San Antonio on Wednesday.

Like most new parents, Nicole Dimetman and Cleopatra De Leon plan their days around their small child. Theirs is an ordinary family life, they say, but it is by no means easy.

Although married in 2009 in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage is legal, they live in Texas, a state that doesn’t recognize their union. When De Leon delivered their child in 2012, Dimetman’s name wasn’t allowed on the birth certificate.

“There was that time period that I was the only parent,” De Leon said, a situation that never affects married heterosexual couples. “If something happened to me during his birth, he would have been considered an orphan.”

In October, the women, along with another couple, filed a federal lawsuit in San Antonio challenging the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. On Wednesday, they will go before U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia, who will consider a preliminary injunction, a court order that would bar Texas from enforcing the ban while the suit continues to be litigated.

As the nation’s second-most populous state, “any decision that affects the marriage equality in Texas has national implications,” said San Antonio-based attorney Neel Lane, who represents the couples.

Indeed, the implications of the Texas cases could transform the national debate over gay marriage.

[…]

To prevail on the injunction request, the couples have to show they are likely to win when the full suit is litigated, and that they “are being harmed right now,” according to attorney Lane.

“Our belief is the arc of equal protection cases … points directly to recognizing that people have the right to marry regardless of gender,” Lane said. “Gays and lesbians are not afforded access to marriage and all the benefits from it. That is a denial of equal protection of the law. It is unequal when some people are not permitted to do what most others are permitted to do. And there’s no basis for denying them that right.”

See here and here for the background on the Texas case. As you can see from the latter link, I was rather pessimistic about this at the time that the hearing date was set. Then along came the rulings in Utah and Oklahoma and Ohio, and the decision by Virginia AG Marc Herring to not defend that state’s law, and just like that things look a whole lot different. There’s still a ton of decisions to be made, by the district court in Virginia and the appeals court for Utah and Oklahoma. Ohio, the site of a narrower decision concerning death benefits, is now on the clock with its own lawsuit (via Scalzi). And I’d still bet money on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals doing something hideous when they get the opportunity to weigh in. But it’s clear that the ground has shifted, and that the plaintiffs have by far the stronger argument. I don’t know what’s going to happen in court tomorrow, but it’s mind-boggling to think that we’re at this point barely eight years after that horrible, discriminatory amendment was passed. I truly hope we can start the countdown till its final day. Lone Star Q has more.

UPDATE: And late yesterday, the Democratic Attorney General of Nevada, with the agreement of the Republican Governor of Nevada, has announced the state will not defend its ban on same sex marriage against litigation there. Another nail in the coffin.

On voter confidence

Nov 5th, 2012

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

There was one more interesting aspect to that poll of Harris County from last week, and it had to do with how confident voters were that the vote they cast would be counted. This KUHF story goes into that result.

A new KUHF/KHOU poll shows that black voters aren’t as confident as other voters that their vote will be counted accurately.

[…]

Rice University Political Science Professor Bob Stein, who conducted the poll, says confusion and possible anger over voter ID could be fueling the lower level of assurance.

“African-Americans here are actually considerably less confident that their vote will be counted accurately than other African-Americans throughout the country, with the exception of states who’ve had this controversy over photo IDs.”

Stein says the difference between the KUHF/KHOU poll and national polls is the level of confidence African-American voters expressed. While nationally 40-45 percent of black voters are very confident that their vote will be counted accurately. Stein says the numbers are different for those voters polled in Harris County.

“Among African-Americans only about 36% are very confident, compared to 50% white and 44% Hispanic.”

Here are the relevant tables from the topline data:

Dr. Stein asked me for my feedback on this, and I replied as follows:

Interesting stuff. From a Dem perspective, I would add two things that likely add to the perception of one’s vote not being counted:

1. In my experience, Dems have a much higher level of distrust of electronic voting machines. Some of that is lingering paranoia and conspiracy-mongering from Ohio 2004, and some of it is the very legitimate concern that these machines aren’t terribly secure and could well be compromised without anyone knowing it. The fact that every cycle there seems to be a story about some well-connected Republican having an ownership stake in a company that produces these machines, as is the case this year with Tagg Romney, adds to this level of distrust.

2. Every time something happens that causes a problem with voting, or that results in misinformation about voting, it seems to affect people of color in a vastly disproportionate amount. See the recent debacle with the “dead voter” purge here, and the recent story in Arizona about the wrong date for Election Day being provided in Spanish-language materials. Add in the various official and unofficial efforts to suppress minority voting – voter ID, the King Street Patriots’ “poll watchers”, efforts to curb early voting in Ohio, etc etc etc – and it’s easy to see why some folks feel like their vote is discounted.

Almost as if on cue, we had this story in Friday’s Chron:

State election officials repeatedly and mistakenly matched active longtime Texas voters to deceased strangers across the country – some of whom perished more than a decade ago – in an error-ridden effort to purge dead voters just weeks before the presidential election, according to a Houston Chronicle review of records.

Voters in legislative districts across Texas with heavy concentrations of Hispanics or African-Americans were more often targeted in that flawed purge effort, according the Chronicle’s analysis of more than 68,000 voters identified as possibly dead.

It’s unclear why so many more matches were generated in some minority legislative districts. One factor may be the popularity of certain surnames in Hispanic and historically black neighborhoods.

That’s as may be, and as noted before there were Anglo voters and known Republicans affected by this as well. But still, there are only so many times that this sort of thing can happen before people stop believing it to be a coincidence or an innocent mistake. Texans for Public Justice argued last week that this was anything but an innocent mistake, as they accused Andrade of deliberately trying to suppress the vote. You can read the report and come to your own conclusions, but again I’m not surprised by the poll numbers. I’m sure there are other reasons I didn’t come up with. Maybe this is an anomaly, maybe it’s a small sample size problem, but it’s worth keeping an eye on, because people who don’t think their vote counts are less likely to vote. What do you think about this?

Election results elsewhere

Nov 9th, 2011

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Results of interest from elsewhere in Texas and the country…

– Three of the ten Constitutional amendments were defeated, with Prop 4 losing by nearly 20 points. It drew strong opposition from anti-toll road activists, and I daresay that was the reason for the lopsided loss. The other two, Props 7 and 8, were pretty innocuous, and I have no real idea for why they went down.

– There was one special legislative election, to replace Fred Brown in HD14. Republicans Bob Yancey and John Raney will advance to the runoff for that seat.

– In New Braunfels, the can ban was upheld, and it wasn’t close.

The container ban ordinance, which goes into effect Jan. 1, was approved by 58 percent of the vote.

Ban supporters hailed the win as vindication of their claim that residents want the river protected from rowdy tourists and their litter.

“This was a landslide that can be disputed by no one,” said Kathleen Krueger, spokeswoman for Support The Ban. “New Braunfels has spoken loud and clear that we want to protect our rivers for the next generation.”

The lead spokesman for the opposition said the real issue was government transparency and vowed to continue the fight.

“I’m not disappointed,” said Mark McGonigal. “I have an opinion and so do other people. I knew one side would prevail. But the legality of this has yet to be determined.”

A lawsuit challenging the ordinance as illegal under state law, filed by a group of local business owners, is pending in state district court.

Nearly 9000 votes were cast in that referendum.

– Elsewhere in the country, there were a number of good results for progressives. Voters in Maine restored same day registration, while voters in Ohio repealed a law that would have curtailed collective bargaining rights. Each was a defeat for the state’s elected-in-the-2010-landslide Republican Governor. Mississippi voters rejected a radical “personhood amendment” that could have had far-reaching negative effects on reproductive choice. And finally, Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, the author of the anti-immigrant SB1070 and a notorious racist, was recalled by voters there. Small steps, but in the right direction.

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