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.