Federal Court Requests Records On State Voter ID Law (NC)

[G_j]

Friday, March 28th 2014 @ 7am

North Carolina state senators and representatives involved in drafting the recent Voter ID law have been ordered by a federal court to turn over email and correspondence. Attorneys for 13 legislators maihntain their clients are protected by immunity. The court however says some emails were to outside parties and others are considered part of the public record. The ACLU, NAACP and the League of Women Voters have filed a lawsuit to overturn the law


Read more: http://www.880therevolution.com/articles/local-news-122546/federal-court-requests-records-on-state-12199221/#ixzz2xHBDFvGu

[TlalocW]

1. Republicans were so excited when the Supreme Court

Knocked down part of the Voting Rights Act that said certain states had to automatically submit any changes to voting laws to the Department of Justice. They were all, "Yes! We can pass laws to keep non-white people from voting again!" that they completely forgot about the rest of the VRA that lets the Department come in when you do something overtly racist/illegal.

TlalocW

[Gothmog]

2. This issue is being litigated in Texas in the Texas voter id case

Greg Abbott is an idiot and is trying to hide the communications of the members of the Texas legislature on this issue. To divert attention from his efforts, Greg actually made a discovery request for all records of each and every Department in the Executive Branch and the records of all 535 members of congress on the issue of voter fraud in Texas. Greg was laughed at by the DOJ and cut back his request to the following members of congress http://txredistricting.org/post/79922055563/state-of-texas-seeks-records-relating-to-voter-fraud

In addition, to current and former members of the Texas Democratic congressional delegation,** the state told the court that it was entitled to discovery from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, as well as Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina who “both opposed voter ID laws in their respective states.”...
** The current and former Texas members of Congress from whom the state is discovery are:

Al Green (CD-9)
Ruben Hinojosa (CD-15)
Silvestre Reyes (CD-16)
Beto O’Rourke (CD-16)
Chet Edwards (CD-17)
Sheila Jackson Lee (CD-18)
Charlie Gonzalez (CD-20)
Joaquin Castro (CD-20)
Nick Lampson (CD-22)
Ciro Rodriguez (CD-23)
Pete Gallego (CD-23)
Lloyd Doggett (CD-25 and CD-35)
Solomon Ortiz (CD-27)
Henry Cuellar (CD-28)
Gene Green (CD-29)
Eddie Bernice Johnson (CD-30)
Marc Veasey (CD-33)
Filemon Vela (CD-34)

Greg's revised request is still stupid and the DOJ had to explain to Greg why members of Congress who did not vote on Texas' voter suppression law are different from members of the Texas legislature who voted for this voter suppression law http://txredistricting.org/post/80276380877/doj-responds-to-texas-request-in-voter-id-case-to-get

The legislators whose documents the United States seeks actively and directly participated in adopting SB 14 or considering predecessor photographic voter identification bills. Plumbing the motivations of these Texas legislators goes to the very heart of this litigation. By contrast, the Members of Congress had no role in Texas’s adoption of that state legislation, and were, at most, interested bystanders to SB 14 as the legislative process unfolded in Austin … Information obtained from the targeted Members of Congress would shed no light on whether Texas enacted its voter identification law, either in whole or in part, with a discriminatory purpose.

You can expect the North Carolina AG to try the same stupid stunt

[struggle4progress]

5. The AG is elected in NC, not appointed, and the current AG is Democrat Roy Cooper

Cooper opposed the voter ID law here and urged the governor not to sign it

He will try to defend the law in court against challenge, as it is part of his job to do so, but I don't think he'll play a bunch of silly games

[Gothmog]

6. Greg Abbot is the AG in Texas and he is running for governor

Greg is playing a number of games here.

[struggle4progress]

7. You wrote "expect the North Carolina AG to try the same stupid stunt." I disagree

[Gothmog]

8. I am glad that I am wrong

I have been living in a state where our Attorney General is a complete idiot. I am glad that North Carolina's AG is more reasonable compared to Greg Abbott (which is not a high bar)

[Gothmog]

3. Here is a copy of the opinion

I scanned this opinion and it appears to be a well written opinion https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/order_2.pdf

There is a status hearing on Tuesday (yes I know that it is April 1) on this and other issues in the Texas voter id case. I just forwarded this opinion to one of the attorneys working on that case. I am pretty sure that he or one of the other attorneys would have seen this opinion but it does not hurt. The DOJ is a party to both cases and I am pretty sure that the DOJ will be aware of this opinion prior to Tuesday's hearing.

[G_j]

4. thank you

that is very interesting. Good luck to us all!