Schumer wants states sued over voter registration

Happy Dance!! Cue wingnut screams of "Acorn! Voter Fraud! Mickey Mouse will be registered!" Wish Holder had done this before letting Stevens off.

The chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee pressed Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday to “pull out all the stops” and sue states that do not provide voter registration materials at public assistance agencies.

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires state agencies to offer voter registration materials to people when they are distributing aid, such as food stamps and unemployment benefits. It was designed as a way to increase voter registration opportunities.

But the compliance of nearly 20 states was brought into question last year by a senior Justice Department official, though the agency did not specify which states were being looked into.

(snip)

“The Bush administration essentially condoned this flouting of the law, but with new leadership at the Justice Department, we hope states will be made to meet their obligations. Attorney General Holder should pull out all the stops to ensure the law is followed. If that means taking certain states to court, so be it.”

Court ruling: Thousands of flagged voters can vote in Georgia

By GottaLaff

Great news! My favorite kind of story. Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel is a Republican and is not happy. Tsk, tsk, tsk:

Georgia must allow thousands of people whose citizenship was questioned by the state's new voter verification system to vote in the upcoming election, a panel of federal judges ruled Monday.

The court ruling will affect about 4,500 people in Georgia who had been "flagged" by the new voter verification system and faced being denied a chance to vote Nov. 4 because their citizenship was questioned.

It could also affect more than 50,000 other registered Georgia voters also flagged by the new system because of mismatches in their personal identification information, such as discrepancies in addresses. [...]

The issue was raised in a lawsuit filed on behalf of a Georgia college student who claimed that the secretary of state's voter verification system violated the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act and caused an illegal purge of voters in the weeks before the election.

Federal law prohibits widespread voter purges within 90 days of the election. In Georgia, that has become a heated issue with some calling the purge "voter suppression."

Handel, a Republican who began working on purging voter rolls from the time of her election in 2006, said the act of verifying voters is not voter suppression.

I hope there are more happy endings like this one. So far, we've done well with these court cases. Too bad Bush is sticking his nose into one of them... Ohio no less. Big surprise.