As I'm on the road and largely off the grid this week, I was about to post the following video from last night's Rachel Maddow Show, thanking her for covering so much of what we've been covering here at The BRAD BLOG, for so long, in one nice long top-of-show segment.

I'm still going to do that, but below that, I'm happy to post a press release just sent out by the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, breaking the news that a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction blocking the "key provisions of a restrictive voting law in Florida today." The Brennan Center describes the ruling as "a breakthrough victory for Florida voters and voting rights advocates nationwide."

The new law, H.B. 1355, had included onerous criminal restrictions on third-party voter registration workers. The new rules were so onerous, in fact, that the League of Women Voters of Florida was forced to call off their registration drive in the state for the first time in 70 years. In the wake of the FL GOP's new law, high school teachers had been charged with crimes for registering their own students to vote, and a registration worker had received a threatening letter from the Sec. of State for turning in voter registrations one hour late after a holiday weekend.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert L. Hinkle blocked most of the FL law's new registration requirements today, finding they accomplished little more than suppressing the registration of new voters without serving any legitimate state interest. "If the goal is to discourage voter-registration drives and thus also to make it harder for new voters to register, this may work," wrote Hinkle in his frequently scathing decision [PDF].

The Brennan Center quotes from Hinkle's ruling this way: "Together speech and voting are constitutional rights of special significance; they are the rights most protective of all others, joined in this respect by the ability to vindicate one's rights in a federal court. … [W]hen a plaintiff loses an opportunity to register a voter, the opportunity is gone forever ... And allowing responsible organizations to conduct voter-registration drives --- thus making it easier for citizens to register and vote --- promotes democracy."

See the Brennan Center's full release today posted below. It's very good news, as once again another law passed by the GOP with the intention of nothing more than suppressing the vote of largely Democratic-leaning voters is found to be in violation of the Constitution and/or federal law, as has been the case with almost every single one of these GOP-passed laws over the past year --- at least when someone (too often not the U.S. Dept. of Justice, unfortunately) bothers to go to court to challenge them.

Yesterday, at Rolling Stone, Ari Berman had calculated that some 35,000 Florida voters stand to be purged this year if the Republicans' new voter suppression efforts there are carried out in full.

As to Rachel Maddow last night, here's some of the very important coverage she offered at the top of the show, including details on the state of Florida's current effort to purge thousands of legal voters from the rolls by claiming, inaccurately, that they are non-citizens. (NOTE: That effort is a separate voter suppression measure by Republicans in the state of Florida, and is not related to today's federal court ruling blocking the earlier voter suppression measure by Republicans in the state of Florida)...

For more on Charlie White, Indiana's Republican Sec. of State found himself to be guilty of three counts of felony voter fraud earlier this year, as mentioned by Maddow, start here. We've been covering that case for the past year or so. In that same article, you can also read a round up of some (though not all) of the latest high-profile Republicans who appear to have committed voter fraud themselves, including folks as high-profile as Mitt Romney, the GOP's presumptive nominee for President of the United States this year.

The story, mentioned by Maddow in the report above, of some 90% of Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI)'s signatures on his petition to be on the ballot this year being entirely fraudulent was new to me. But, as we noted when Newt Gingrich's campaign failed to qualify for the Virginia Presidential Primary ballot thanks to thousands of fraudulent signatures on his petitions, that is the exact same thing that the GOP has, for years, disingenuously described as "massive voter fraud" by ACORN when a handful of its tens of thousands of registration workers had turned in fraudulent signatures. The act was fraud of ACORN, not by it. Similarly, both McCotter and Gingrich were probably defrauded by the petition gatherers they hired. When it happens to them, of course, they are victims. But when it happens to ACORN, somehow, it amounts to Democrats stealing elections.

The percentage of fraudulent signatures turned in by ACORN workers was never as high as that turned in by the Gingrich and McCotter campaigns. Moreover, in the case of ACORN, the four-decade old community organization had verified and flagged most of them themselves as fraudulent before turning both them, and the names of the criminals over to authorities.

Like McCotter's campaign in Michigan, Gingrich's is also being investigated for criminal fraud violations in the state of Virginia by the state Attorney General there, as The BRAD BLOG reported exclusively earlier this year.

As to Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott's new, blatant attempt to remove thousands of legal voters from the rolls by claiming they are non-citizens, Think Progress has done a great job covering the issue over the past week since we've been on the road and unable to cover here. You can start here for more on the 91-year old WWII vet told last week that he was a non-citizen and that he'd be removed from the rolls, despite his decades of voting, service to the country, and the Bronze Star he was awarded for his service during the Battle of the Bulge.

Scott's blatant efforts at a massive voter purge in the Sunshine State before the 2012 general election are so outrageous that, as the Miami Herald reported last week, the former Republican Sec. of State would not take part in it, after he had been unable to verify that the 182,000 names he was given by Scott himself were actually non-citizens.

And now, as promised, here's the breaking good news from the Brennan Center on the today's federal court ruling which blocks the bulk of the Florida law --- passed by the Republican legislature and signed by the Republican governor --- putting severe restrictions on both voter registration and early voting in the Sunshine State [emphasis in the original]...

CORRECTION: The initial headline for this article indicated that the court's ruling also dealt with Florida's new restrictions on early voting which decrease the days for early voting, and outlaw it all together on the Sunday before Election Day when many black church goers are said to vote. Today's ruling did not speak to that part of the new law.

                 

Article Categories: Election Irregularities, Florida, Election Reform, Indiana, Virginia, Election Fraud, Voter Registration, Vote Caging/Intimidation/Suppression, Election 2012, Rachel Maddow, Newt Gingrich, Charlie White, Rick Scott