The 2010 Census is providing what must be the most sophisticated real-time data on participation rates of any Census in history. Through the Census Bureau’s online portal, you can check your community’s participation rate and compare it to other states, other counties, and even nearby zip codes.

Every 1% of American households that complete their Census questionnaires and mail them back saves the American taxpayers about $85 million in Census costs, and every individual who completes the form provides about $1,400 in federal funding to his or her local community.

As of 11AM Wednesday morning, the top states in participation rate were the Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Much of the Midwest, Plains States, and Mountain West were well above the national average for participation, while much of the South and Southwest lagged behind.

Visit http://2010.census.gov/2010census/take10map/ to check your state or neighborhood.

The Deseret News recently noted a trend that we overlooked in our post about the close of legislative candidate filing: part of the Democrats’ success fielding candidates was driven by Republicans (including some local office-holders) fleeing the GOP:

Linnea Barney, a two-term member of the State Board of Education and lifelong Republican, is running for the Utah Senate as a Democrat this year.

Barney said she turned to the Democrats when she attempted to get involved in local politics and found her moderate views weren't welcome in the conservative climate of the Utah County Republican Party.

"It wasn't long before I realized that the moderate, mainstream resident of Utah County didn't have a voice in the state Legislature," she said. "When the Democrats called me they convinced me that if they could field high-quality candidates, then they could make a difference in this county."

"Just because I call myself a Democrat, I haven't changed any of my family values," she said.

There are many more Democratic candidates for legislature and county offices this year who were Republicans a short time ago – and it’s no surprise why. Utah’s unique nominating system makes it nearly impossible for moderates and even some strong conservatives to be nominated as Republicans.

The fact of the matter is, true people of faith should be offended by the Utah lawmaker who called gay citizens “the greatest threat to America;” it’s OK for fiscal conservatives to think one lawmaker’s proposal to abolish the 12th grade is a terrible idea; and someone who’s pro-business and anti-regulation can still think it’s foolish for the state legislature to declare climate change a hoax.

But that kind of extremism is now practically a requirement to win a Republican nominating contest. So to all the moderates and conservatives out there who just want a party where mainstream ideas aren’t ridiculed -- welcome.

Of all the states where conservative lawmakers are trying to block the new health reform law, Georgia stands out. The Republican sponsor of a state constitutional amendment blocking the individual mandate proposed his own health reform bill three years ago, and it included an individual mandate.

We at the DLCC were shocked, just shocked to discover that there is hypocrisy in the Republican Party:

First they tried to pass a constitutional amendment in the state Senate to declare that no Georgian could be mandated by government to buy health insurance, as if Georgia law could somehow supercede federal law. The amendment failed.

(The amendment was sponsored by state Sen. Judson Hill, who three years earlier had introduced legislation that would have — wait for it — forced Georgians to buy health insurance, even giving state officials the power to garnish wages of those who refused. At the time, Hill attributed the legislation to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is now one of the sternest critics of “Obamacare”. In other words, mandated health insurance was a good idea until it became part of the Democratic health-reform bill, at which point it became unconstitutional and the most dire threat to American liberty since General Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown.)

Frustrated in the Senate, Republicans then tried to pass a similar constitutional amendment in the House.

They failed. Again.

The reason the mandate is so crucial is because it makes it possible to ban exclusions for pre-existing conditions without sending premiums sky-rocketing. That’s why these Republicans thought mandates were such a brilliant idea just a few years ago.

Georgia Democrats saw right through the Republican double-talk and voted against it, preventing the proposed amendment from getting the 2/3 vote necessary to pass. That was a risky thing to do in a conservative state like Georgia, but kudos to both caucuses for standing up for health care for 32 million Americans.

The GOP-led Arizona legislature offers a perfect illustration of why national, comprehensive health care reform is such an important priority.

While conservatives in other states are trying to gut President Obama's plans, Arizona lawmakers are busy rolling back coverage for their own citizens:

The budget passed earlier this month eliminates KidsCare, which provides health coverage to children from low-income families, as well as reduces eligibility for the state's Medicaid program. The reduction will cause 310,000 adults to be kicked off the rolls of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.

The cuts are so drastic that they actually disqualify the state from receiving $7 billion in federal funds for Medicaid. The new health care law requires states to demonstrate a "maintenance of effort" to qualify for fed dollars.

Recognizing their error, albeit belatedly, GOP leaders are now scrambling to restore the cuts before KidsCare expires on June 15th.

We sometimes call the Texas House, where Democrats need just three more seats to take control, one of the biggest redistricting prizes at stake in 2010. But an article in today’s Texas Tribune explains some of the reasons why Texas -- even more than other large states -- is so crucial:

"Texas is the perfect shape for malleability," [Republican consultant Craig] Murphy says. "Perfect is a circle, and we're close." A state like California is harder to gerrymander, since you can't grab people from the north and put them in the same districts as people in the south. Texas, on the other hand, has enormous districts that stretch from San Antonio to El Paso, from Eldorado to Pampa, from Matador to Gainesville, from Seguin to Pharr, from Mentone to Burnet.

"We've done the most extreme things of any state," he says. "Drawing seats the other party can't win — we've been very good at that. It's partly our geography… and high population growth gives us lots of options."

The high population growth Murphy refers to will likely cause Texas to gain up to four new congressional districts after 2010. That combination of new seats and geographic flexibility would allow the GOP to wreak all kinds of havoc if they hold both legislative chambers and the governorship next year.

While the final maps must conform to Voting Rights Act redistricting guidelines, the Texas Legislature is responsible for drawing new congressional lines. The Speaker of the House is also a member of the state’s Legislative Redistricting Board, which draws the state legislative redistricting plan if the Legislature fails to produce a valid plan before its deadline to do so.

Democrats in dark-red states like Utah and Idaho know they have a tough road ahead of them this November, and we at the DLCC salute them for taking up the challenge. Discounting candidate home states, these were George W. Bush’s two best states in 2004, and legislative Democrats there are more outnumbered than anywhere else in the country.

But despite these challenges, Democrats in both states have successfully fielded enough legislative candidates to deny the Republicans a free ride to the majority.

The Utah Dems did quite well, in fact, fielding candidates in 60 of 75 House districts and 13 of 15 Senate Districts. Even though only half of the Senate is up for election this year, the seven Republican seats being contested are enough to flip the chamber if Democrats ran the table.

Idaho was a little bit dicier for the party, but according to the Secretary of State’s official candidate list (PDF), Democrats successfully fielded enough candidates to capture control in both chambers, and every competitive district will feature a Democratic candidate.

This is in stark contrast to the Republican recruiting performance in Arkansas and West Virginia, two states which were among John McCain’s best performers. Despite this advantage, Republicans still conceded control of both State Senates by failing to field enough candidates to win a majority. Republicans have the same problem in the Illinois Senate.

This means two things. First, it means Democrats are in better shape organizationally and at the grassroots in the two most challenging states for Democrats than the Republicans are in some states where they need to outperform this November.

Second, it means Democrats start this election cycle with a 3-1 lead in chambers where one party’s poor recruiting has made it mathematically impossible for them to take the majority. Add to that a 8-1 lead in chambers that aren’t up for election this year (Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Virginia), and it’s pretty clear Republicans have a lot of catching up to do.

The President’s reform plan hasn’t even passed yet, but right-wing state lawmakers are already trying to strip out key elements of the plan at the state level.

They’ve only managed to pass their bills in a few states like Arizona and Utah, but they’ve filed new legislation to obstruct federal health care reform in 35 states. And if reform supporters win the final showdown in Congress this week, we can expect this trend to continue.

But the stakes are just as high at the state level as they are in Congress. If Democrats fail to protect health care reform from state-level obstruction, millions of Americans who are counting on health care reform to improve -- or potentially save -- their lives will be left out in the cold:

But the $28 billion in Medicaid money is not the whole picture. These reforms will extend Medicaid coverage to nearly 8 million individuals in these states, while millions more will qualify for premium subsidies to help purchase private coverage through health insurance exchanges. This will reduce costs for employers, state governments, and insured individuals, because as these uninsured individuals and families gain coverage, the cost-shift of uncompensated care will diminish. It will also help states out because these new Medicaid eligibility levels will absorb those under 133 percent of the poverty level in state insurance programs, with full federal support for the first several years of the program.

We spend a great deal of time on this blog talking about what states are doing to reform health care. A number of states have made us proud during the last legislative session, and we expect them to continue pushing the envelope for reform, no matter what Congress decides to do.

But if we win the vote this week for health care reform, this won’t be over. The fight will just move to the state legislatures, and we predict it will be every bit as ferocious as the fight to pass the President’s health care plan in Congress.

Here at the DLCC, we’re determined to be ready.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has been heavily featured in news reports nationwide following the release of our 2010 strategic planning memorandum.

This, of course, is the final election cycle before redistricting takes place. And with November fast approaching, local and national media are starting to take notice of the DLCC’s efforts on behalf of Democratic legislative candidates.

In addition to a lengthy Associated Press article that was picked up by many of the national papers, other media outlets have begun exploring how our strategic choices will effect local races in key states like Texas, New York, Ohio, Nevada, and North Carolina.

We’ve also been the subject of at least one local TV report, by Indianapolis-based CBS affiliate WISH TV:

The DLCC recently released a 2010 campaign strategy memo discussing what’s at stake for redistricting in this year’s elections, as well as what the DLCC is doing to put Democrats in the best possible position to influence the redistricting process:

In a memo sent to Democratic leaders and activists on Monday, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee's Executive Director Michael Sargeant highlighted 15 key battlegrounds for the 2010 election and called for the establishment of a $20 million "Redistricting Fund" to help the party win those races.

"The DLCC is determined to run the largest democratic redistricting mobilization in history this year to ensure that our state legislative candidates have the resources needed to win against well-¬heeled Republican special interests," according to the memo, which was passed by a Democratic source to the Huffington Post. "To make this possible, we have established the DLCC's Redistricting Fund to deploy $20 million to races that will have the greatest impact on reapportionment."

Republicans insist the wind will be at their backs in 2010, but as DLCC Executive Director Michael Sargeant pointed out in an interview with the Associated Press, that hasn’t stopped state-level Democrats from making gains in the past:

Democrats are more optimistic about their chances in the states, noting they gained legislative seats this year in special elections in GOP-leaning areas of Virginia and Kentucky, even as approval ratings for President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress sagged.

"We've been successful at the state legislative level whether it's a good year or a bad year for Democrats nationally," said Michael Sargeant, executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

Talk of a Republican surge also ignores the fact that GOP state legislative recruiting this year has been an absolute disaster in states like West Virginia and Arkansas, both of which were supposed to be at the epicenter of the Republican “wave.”

Ever since Barack Obama won the presidency, right-wing paranoia about the Census has run rampant. But what few people realize is that Census officials themselves are equally paranoid about protecting the privacy of the information we provide. Protection begins with a 72-year seal on personal information in our Census responses:

Doris Turner, the partnership specialist for the Census Bureau serving several counties including Coweta, emphasized the confidential nature of Census form data in a recent meeting with the Coweta County Complete County[sic] Committee.

"It's sealed for 72 years," she said of the information. Census employees take an oath "that they will not divulge anybody's information," Turner said. The nondisclosure oath is for life.

The penalty for unlawful disclosure is a fine of up to $250,000 or imprisonment of up to five years, or both.

In other words, it won’t be until 2082 that historians or genealogists will be able to use Census data, for instance, to find out if I owned or rented my home this year.

In the mean time, all data released by the Census Bureau has had personally identifiable information (e.g. phone numbers, names, etc.) struck from it. But the Bureau doesn’t stop there -- it also goes to great lengths to make sure no one can reverse-engineer a way to identify anyone through the data they release. Even if it means altering entire data sets just to protect one person:

Suppose there is only one 65-year-old married woman attending college in North Dakota, and that her response was released by the Census Bureau. Then researchers would know everything else she told the agency, including, perhaps, her income and her parents' birthplace.

To protect the privacy of such unusual individuals and households, the government manipulates data, using several techniques that were described in a 2005 Census Bureau paper. Numbers are rounded, so incomes of $80,600 and $81,400 would both be recorded as $81,000. What statisticians refer to as "noise" is added to some ages—a year or two older or younger, perhaps.

Also, outlier values are averaged together, and that average is assigned to every one of those outliers. For instance, the top half-percent of earners would each be assigned the average income of that wealthy subgroup, so that, say, Warren Buffett's census questionnaire can't be identified. And people with especially unique characteristics might be moved across the country, in a kind of statistical witness protection program, so that entry for the North Dakotan woman might be changed to show her living in Alabama.

This additional “noise” is a source of constant irritation for some economists, sociologists, and other researchers using Census data in their research, but it shows just how far the Census Bureau goes protects the information it collects.

So the next time a Republican (like the commenters on the two articles cited above) tells you he’s too scared to fill out his Census form… tell him to take off the tin-foil hat.

Today is the first day that Census questionnaires begin arriving in mailboxes around the country. And since every uncounted individual costs his or her local government nearly $1,400 in lost federal funding, filling out that form is one of the simplest ways to help your community.

Additionally, for every 1 percent of American households that fill out and return their Census questionnaires by mail, taxpayers save nearly $85 million. With so much at stake in the process, top-level Census officials are pulling out all the stops to encourage Census participation, including (for the first time) a daily online report of participation rates around the country:

It also is hoping to motivate cities, counties and local communities to get involved. In 2000, both dense urban cities and sprawling rural areas -- from Alabama and California to Michigan and New York -- faced problems with an undercount, particularly in areas with larger shares of lower-income residents.

Beginning next week, the Census Bureau will publish daily real-time data on 2010 mail-back participation rates for the U.S. broken down by state, county, city and zip code. Ron Loveridge, president of the National League of Cities and the mayor of Riverside, Calif., is challenging mayors to see who can get the highest participation rate.

These data will give us the first clues about which states will struggle to earn their fair share of congressional representation and federal funding.

At at time when states are doing all they can to try to attract new industries, many policymakers are looking to the film industry as a potential force for job creation. States across the country are attempting to lure film and television production with a mix of tax cuts and other promotions.

But Florida Republicans have potentially handicapped the economic stimulus of their program with a heavy dose of conservative censorship:

Movies and TV shows with gay characters could be ineligible for a "family-friendly" tax credit in Florida under a little-noticed provision tucked into a $75 million incentive package that Republican House leaders hope will attract film and entertainment jobs to the state.

The bill would prohibit productions with "nontraditional family values" from receiving a so-called family-friendly tax credit. But it doesn't define what "nontraditional family values" are, something the bill's sponsor had a hard time doing, too.

"Think of it as like Mayberry," state Rep. Stephen Precourt, R-Orlando, said, referring to The Andy Griffith Show. "That's when I grew up — the '60s. That's what life was like. I want Florida to be known for making those kinds of movies: Disney movies for kids and all that stuff. Like it used to be, you know?"

Much of the concern for language stems from the fact that no one knows exactly what it means.

When specifically asked about potential state money for a television show with gay characters, Precourt told reporters, "That would not be the kind of thing I'd say that we want to invest public dollars in."

But other policymakers refused to go that far, and some weren't prepared to offer a definition at all.

Already members of the Florida Senate are indicating that they will not take up the 'nontraditional family values' language, leaving the proposal's future in doubt.

After defeating scandal-plagued Republican Delegate Phil Hamilton in 2009, Virginia Democrats made ethics reform a priority in the 2010 session. Yesterday, despite their minority status in the House, Democrats successfully passed an ethics overhaul authored by DLCC Finance Chairman and State House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong.

But while Armstrong is credited with writing the legislation, it was truly a team effort among House and Senate Democrats:

Armstrong, a Democrat from Henry County, said the Hamilton case demonstrated that the Assembly's self-policing system is broken and the voters expected it to be fixed.

"The next time something like that happens - and it will - we'll have a mechanism in place to deal with it," he said.

Armstrong's bill incorporated proposals from Del. Robin Abbott of Newport News, the Democrat who unseated Hamilton. She ran on a platform that included ethics reform.

"I'm very pleased" by the Senate vote, Abbott said Wednesday. "It gives us some transparency in the process, and it also provides protection against frivolous complaints. I got everything I wanted."

The vote was a vindication of sorts for Sen. Ralph Northam, a first-term Democrat from Norfolk, who sponsored a companion bill that closely tracked the Armstrong measure and was unexpectedly shelved by a House committee last week.

Senate Republicans voted en-mass for the bill on final passage, but not before trying to kill the bill on a technicality. All 18 Republicans voted for an amendment that made a “minor wording change” that did not affect the substance of the bill. Had the amendment passed, the bill would have gone back to the House of Delegates, where the Republican majority could have quietly let the measure die.

Democratic senators voted unanimously to keep the decision in the Senate’s hands, and because of their narrow majority, the bill now awaits the governor’s signature.

The Iowa and Arizona Senates both took action recently to protect their states’ citizens from domestic violence, as well as to prevent violence from escalating to tragedy.

Iowa’s SF 2357, which passed on a bipartisan 36-11 vote, takes the commonsense step of prohibiting individuals with protective orders or criminal convictions against them for domestic abuse from possessing firearms. As the Democratic Caucus explains, support for this bill is based on the facts surrounding domestic violence:

Since 1995, guns have been used in more than half of all Iowa murders involving domestic abuse. Fifty-four percent of women killed by an intimate partner were shot; 50 percent of men killed by an intimate partner were shot; and 57 percent of children and bystanders killed in domestic violence attacks were shot.

Meanwhile, Arizona Senate Democrats unanimously supported two new bills aimed at making domestic violence easier to prosecute:

SB 1087, which passed 20-8, would add homicide, manslaughter, animal cruelty and sexual assault to the list of crimes that when committed against a family member or intimate partner count as domestic violence.

Given the shameful example of Republican legislators in other states on similar issues recently, it should come as no surprise that all eight of the “no” votes on this bill were cast by Republicans and included both the Senate President and the Republican Majority Leader.

A separate bill approved on the same day would upgrade the choking of a partner to a Class 4 felony. This is an important change for policymakers fighting to end the tragic outcomes that so often follow domestic violence:

[E]xperts consider choking, which can render the victim unconscious in 10 seconds, to be a serious risk factor for escalation to homicide...

Nearly half of female homicide and attempted homicide victims were choked in the past year by their male partner, according to an article in the Journal of Emergency Medicine.

All bills now move on to their respective State Houses for consideration.

West Virginia isn’t the only state where Republicans have legislative recruiting troubles. Yesterday afternoon was the filing deadline in Arkansas, and the Republicans’ field in that state is even more of a disaster than in West Virginia.

According to the Secretary of State’s list of officially filed candidates, Arkansas Republicans largely abandoned the field in three key races:

• State House: Republicans failed to field a single candidate in 44 out of 100 State House seats. That means Democrats only have to win seven of the remaining 56 seats to guarantee a majority.
  
  

• State Senate: Arkansas Republicans also left uncontested 8 of the 17 State Senate seats up for grabs in 2010. Between these and the Republican-held seats they have to defend, it is now mathematically impossible for Republicans to win control of the chamber.
  
  

• Attorney General: One of three statewide offices Republicans failed to contest, the Attorney General race is significant because the winner sits on the three-member Board of Apportionment, which will redistrict the state legislature in 2011. Democrats are now guaranteed at least one of the three seats.

For Republicans, it's embarrassing enough that this happened in a state John McCain carried by 20 percent. But more surprising still, the GOP couldn’t even find people willing to run in seats that should be at the top of their target list.

To give just one example, we had been watching House District 21, where the incumbent Democrat announced his resignation effective June 6th. McCain earned nearly 65 percent of the two-party vote in that district, but not a single Republican candidate stepped up to run for the open seat.

We all remember the long, drawn-out recount of the 2008 Senate race in Minnesota. There were issues of signature matching, spoiled ballots, proper registration… and occasionally just the bizarre (remember ”Lizard People?”).

Overall, Minnesota’s electoral system held up quite well through the counting, recounting, and legal challenges. Nevertheless, a process that lengthy will always expose weaknesses in the system, and Minnesota Democrats are working to fix them before the next major election. They’re starting with the source of much of the contention in 2008 – absentee ballots:

Two years ago, election judges rejected about 12,000 absentee ballots, more than 2,000 of them improperly. Those rejected ballots were a major bone of contention in the recount and court case that ended in Democratic Sen. Al Franken's narrow win over Republican Norm Coleman.

The legislation would reduce the number of absentee ballots that are rejected, said Sen. Katie Sieben, DFL-Newport, the bill's Senate sponsor.

"This new system will be less prone to errors," Sieben said.

In 2008, many ballot challenges stemmed from questions about voters' signatures. The bill would replace the process of matching signatures and instead require absentee voters to provide a driver's license or state identification number, the last four digits of their Social Security number or a statement that the applicant doesn't have any of those numbers.

The bill also would shift the responsibility for counting absentee ballots from the more than 3,000 precinct election judges to "ballot boards" in cities and counties. Those boards would consist of election judges trained to handle absentee ballots.

The law also begins the absentee ballot counting process before Election Day, and it requires officials to notify voters if their ballots have been rejected, giving them an opportunity to vote again.

You can’t beat somebody with nobody. And thanks to Republican candidate recruitment failures in West Virginia, Democrats in both legislative chambers are in excellent shape heading into the 2010 elections:

In a news release from Democrats, they noted the GOP failed to find any candidates for 31 of the state's 117 legislative races. (…)

"Nationally, there has been a great deal of chatter about a Republican tidal wave coming in 2010, but clearly that is not the case in West Virginia," Democratic Party Chairman Nick Casey said.

"When you do not have quality candidates stepping forward to challenge incumbents, that speaks volumes."

According to the candidate list on file with the Secretary of State’s office, 4 of those 31 uncontested Democratic seats are in the State Senate, where only half the chamber is up for re-election in 2010. But Republicans are also defending 4 seats of their own. That means even if the Republicans somehow managed to win every single race in which they have a candidate, they would still fail to take control of the chamber.

The situation is almost as bad in the House of Delegates, where 27 Democratic-held districts lack Republican candidates. It only takes 51 seats to hold an outright majority, meaning Democrats are already halfway there.

All told, across the state, Democrats filed candidates in all but eleven legislative races.

Karl Rove and the Republican Party’s road back to power runs through redistricting. That’s what Rove himself said in an editorial in this week’s Wall St. Journal:

To understand the broader political implications, consider that the GOP gained somewhere between 25 and 30 seats because of the redistricting that followed the 1990 census. Without those seats, Republicans would not have won the House in 1994.

Control of redistricting also has huge financial implications. The average winner of a competitive House race in 2008 spent $2 million, while a noncompetitive seat can be defended for far less than half that amount. Moving, say, 20 districts from competitive to out-of-reach could save a party $100 million or more over the course of a decade.

We all remember what happened after the GOP wave in 1994. Health care reform – and many other progressive priorities -- was effectively dead for another 15 years, even when Bill Clinton was still president.

Once George Bush and Karl Rove got to the White House, they and the Republican majority in Congress did more damage to this country in six short years than many of us thought possible. Wars. Torture. An economy in shambles. The list goes on and on.

The country can’t afford to go through that all over again. But that’s exactly what could happen if we don’t fight back.

The Virginia political scene was recently rocked by reports of Republican Delegate Bob Marshall’s news conference in which he said that children born with disabilities were God’s punishment for women who’ve ever ended a pregnancy:

State Delegate Bob Marshall of Manassas says disabled children are God's punishment to women who have aborted their first pregnancy. (...)

"The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children," said Marshall, a Republican.

"In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest."

Even more outrageous than the remarks themselves, Marshall used them to support a bill he sponsored to cut off state funding for an organization that provides low-cost pre-natal health care for women – exactly the sort of care that can prevent complications during pregnancy, including some birth defects.

Amazingly, Marshall still refuses to apologize for what he said. Marshall told the Washington Post that he “regret[s] any misimpression” he “may have created,” but just two days later he threw a tantrum and denied he ever said such a thing. He now claims the words “never came from my mouth,” and that the media keeps repeating the story "without anyone producing the smoking-gun tape.”

But we have the tape, provided through the Staunton News Leader website, and we think it speaks for itself.

So listen for yourself, and then sign our petition calling for Bob Marshall to resign from the legislature.

Indiana Speaker Pat Bauer -- a DLCC Board Member -- scored a major victory this week when the state House of Representatives passed his ethics reform proposal by a vote of 97-0.

House Bill 1001 is the most comprehensive ethics plan in Indiana state history:

--The bill requires legislators to report all gifts they receive worth more than $50 — a stricter standard compared with the existing reporting threshold of $100.

--It prevents lobbyists from paying for lawmakers to travel out of Indiana and establishes a one-year "cooling off" period after legislators leave office before they can work as lobbyists.

--Lobbyists who are not lawyers will no longer be allowed to represent multiple clients who might take opposite sides of an issue, and legislative liaisons for state agencies and universities will be required to report their lobbying expenses.
The ethics bill also applies to the governor, other elected state officials and candidates running for those offices.

--Officeholders and candidates will be prohibited from raising campaign funds during odd-numbered years when the General Assembly is writing the state budget. A similar ban already applies to state legislators.

--The bill also forbids those holding statewide office from using tax dollars to pay for radio and television advertisements featuring their likenesses to promote issues and themselves.

The Senate passed HB1001 last week, and the legislation now awaits the governor's signature.

Virginia Democrats continued their rebound last night by keeping control of the vacant 41st Delegate district in a Fairfax County special election. Like the special Senate election in January, most observers gave Republicans the edge in this race, coming so soon after the 2009 gubernatorial race. But Democrat Eileen Filler-Corn leads unofficial returns by 42 votes over Republican Kerry Bolognese:

Education was the issue that dominated this race. Filler-Corn clearly struck a chord with voters with her message of fighting back against devastating cuts to Fairfax County schools proposed by Republicans in the legislature -- cuts that would lay off hundreds of teachers and support staff in a rapidly-growing county.

Congratulations to DLCC Board member and Virginia House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong and the Virginia House Caucus for running a great campaign.

Former Texas Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby wrote a fascinating article for the Houston Chronicle last week about the history of redistricting in the United States. Hobby covers the Voting Rights Act, Baker v. Carr, and even Reconstruction-era reapportionment fights.

One of the most interesting stories to us is about how 19th Century Republicans had a near-immediate case of buyer’s remorse when they realized that freeing the slaves would up-end the infamous “Three-Fifths Compromise” that had counted each slave as only 3/5 of a person in congressional reapportionment:

The original Constitution said only three-fifths of the slaves were to be counted for apportionment. When the North won the Civil War, Congress abolished slavery by the 13th Amendment, thereby putting the other two-fifths of the slaves into the apportionment base.

That would have given the Confederate states 16 more seats in Congress and new electoral votes — enough to give the Democrats control of Congress and elect a president.

Hobby discusses several strategies Republicans tried to offset the expected Southern gains, but the situation was ultimately defused because of strong growth in Western states, severe under-counting of African-Americans and Southerners in the 1870 Census, and Civil War casualties which offset the end of the 3/5-era.

The article has a whole host of stories from later years, and it’s well-worth a read. And of course, if you’d like more information about these topics, RedistrictingFacts.com has fact sheets about the Supreme Court and Redistricting, the Voting Rights Act and Redistricting, and redistricting law in each state.

Georgia and Florida have been something of a Petri dish for Republican corruption lately. Both states’ Republican House Speakers resigned in disgrace in the last few months, and both of their replacements as Speaker are already involved in some ethically shady dealings.

We start in Florida, where the Republicans’ Speaker-Elect has lost millions of dollars in bad financial deals -- and he appears to be skimming off the top of his campaign account to make ends meet:

[Rep. Chris] Dorworth financed his bid to become speaker through his reelection campaign fund and his political committee, Citizens for an Enterprising Democracy. A good portion -- more than 30 percent, or $40,000-plus -- went to his pocket for reimbursements in the past two years, records show.

Among the recent expenses: A $600 flight to Miami for the Super Bowl and a $527 stay at the luxury Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.

In defending himself against charges that he went gallivanting around the state on his supporters' dime, Dorworth told a reporter -- and this is true -- “I clearly don't gallivant. . . . I'm not a gallivanter.''

Regardless, he really should send a letter to each of his campaign donors letting them know how much fun he had at the Big Game. They would want to know what their money is buying.

Meanwhile, over in Georgia, new Speaker David Ralston is raising eyebrows for accepting over $1,200 in free meals in the month of January, all paid for by lobbyists:

Reports to the State Ethics Commission show lobbyists spent about twice as much on Ralston in January as they did on Glenn Richardson, the man he replaced, during the same month last year.

Lobbyists disclosed spending $1,225, or about $40 a day, on Ralston in January, mostly for meals and refreshments. (…)

Last January, before he was the House leader, Ralston was treated to two lunches, worth $43.35, by lobbyists.

If Ralston maintains that pace all year, he’ll receive nearly $15,000 in free meals from lobbyists. By comparison, that’s almost as much as his base salary as a State Representative ($17,342, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures). An arrangement like that raises real questions about what these lobbyists are getting in return.