Many Republicans in Pennsylvania hope to add their state to the growing list of those with strict voter ID policies in place for the 2012 elections. 

Over the summer, the GOP-controlled Pennsylvania House passed HB 934, a stringent voter ID bill. Earlier this week, a Pennsylvania Senate committee finally passed the legislation out of committee. The State Government Committee amended the bill to accommodate a couple of forms of photo ID not permitted by the House version, but it still makes voting in Pennsylvania substantially more difficult for citizens who do not possess state-issued photo identification, who are often poor, minority, or elderly voters. 

Even the Republican Chair of that committee admitted that this voter ID bill addresses a nonexistent problem. 

Senate State Government Committee Chairman Charles McIlhinney said he has seen no proof that people are casting illegal ballots… "It was put upon us and asked for by the governor and by the House, who passed the bill, and they asked me to take it up," McIlhinney, R-Bucks, said after the committee vote. 

After HB 934 passed out of the State Government Committee on Monday, the bill was on track to pass the full Senate before the legislature’s final adjournment for the year. 

But instead of voting on the measure on Wednesday, December 14, the GOP-controlled state Senate punted HB 934 to another committee. 

The Pennsylvania Senate will reconvene on January 3, 2012. According to Sen. McIlhinny, “[s]ending a bill to Corbett's desk by the beginning of February would ensure the changes are in place for next year's general election.” 

Which leaves less than a month for this reprehensible legislation to pass out of the Senate Appropriations Committee, pass the full Senate, then return to the House for a full vote. 

Six states with GOP-controlled legislatures and GOP governors (Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin) passed strict voter ID laws this year, bringing the total number of states that will require a photo ID to vote in the 2012 elections to fifteen, according to NCSL. 

We’ll know by next spring whether Pennsylvania will bring that total to sixteen.

The Tennessee Republican behind the state’s new “guns in bars” law was arrested on Tuesday night on charges of drunk driving and possession of a gun while under the influence. 

Rep. Curry Todd, a Collierville Republican, was pulled over in Nashville late Tuesday, police say in court documents. He allegedly failed a roadside sobriety test and refused to take a Breathalyzer test. A loaded .38-caliber gun was found in a holster stuffed between the driver seat and the center console. 

A police affidavit said Todd was unsteady on his feet, "almost falling down at times." It concluded that Todd was "obviously very impaired and not in any condition to be carrying a loaded handgun." 

If GOP Rep. Todd’s name seems familiar, it may be because he achieved some notoriety last fall for warning that immigrants will “go out there like rats and multiply.” (He later “apologized” by saying that he meant to use the unquestionably offensive term “anchor babies.”) 

But Rep. Todd’s reckless behavior and subsequent arrest aren’t just the latest entries in his shameful hit parade. Tuesday’s events mark a sad and hypocritical chapter in a career full of law enforcement experience. 

A former University of Memphis police officer, Rep. Todd has served on the Tennessee House’s Corrections Department Oversight Committee. He served on the Criminal Justice Committee and chaired a subcommittee on development of law enforcement legislation. 

Although now he’ll be best remembered for his sponsorship of legislation permitting concealed carry permit holders to bring their firearms into bars, Rep. Todd has other noteworthy bills to his name. Specifically, just this year he introduced legislation to permit the manufacture and sale of “high alcohol content beer” in the state and to expand the hours available for beer sales at certain Tennessee locations. Rep. Todd also co-sponsored the state’s new voter ID law, the onerous effects of which were pointed out by Rachel Maddow on her show last week.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Tennessee’s House Republican Caucus has yet to comment on their member’s arrest and pending charges. We await their condemnation of Rep. Todd’s dangerous and illegal conduct. 

Since taking over a majority of the country’s state legislatures in January, statehouse Republicans have launched repeated and continuous assaults on voting rights. 

We’ve known for some time that at least 38 states have introduced legislation that would effectively restrict voters’ access to the ballot box. Twelve of those states have already enacted suppressive measures, and more may do so as state legislative sessions continue. 

We’ve also had an idea of the impact these laws will have on the electorate, but much of the available data up to this point has been five or more years old. 

No longer: 

Restrictive voting laws in states across the country could affect up to five million voters from traditionally Democratic demographics in 2012, according to a new report by the Brennan Center [for Justice at New York University School of Law]. That's a number larger than the margin of victory in two of the last three presidential elections. 

This study breaks down the affected voters by type of law, such as voter ID laws, anti-voter registration drive laws, and laws curtailing early voting periods and absentee voting opportunities. 

Speaking of absentee voting, Virginians may want to start practicing their penmanship if they want their absentee votes to be counted by the state’s GOP-appointed elections board. 

The Republican-controlled State Board of Elections withdrew one set of rules governing absentee ballots - they gave election officials more leeway to count the ballots of voters who made mistakes filling them out - and substituted them with less-flexible guidelines…. 

Removed from the current state absentee ballot regulation is language in the previous version that made it clear that illegible voter or witness signatures on a ballot wouldn't invalidate it, and a catch-all paragraph that specified ballots wouldn't be tossed if a voter's identity could be otherwise confirmed by election officials. 

Fun fact: In the 2008 election, 13 percent of Virginia’s voters cast absentee ballots. How many of those would have been disqualified for having “illegible” signatures? 

And thus Virginia joins the ignoble ranks of GOP-governed states taking unprecedented measures to prevent citizens from exercising their right to vote—and to have those votes counted. 

The effects of all of these voting restrictions will be staggering, particularly on the elections of the very state legislators who are working so hard to make voting so difficult. 

Consider that in 2010, more than 90 state legislative races across the country were won or lost by fewer than 100 votes. Two states where newly GOP legislative chambers passed restrictive voting measures (Ohio and Maine) had sixty-four 2010 statehouse races decided by 500 votes or fewer. Two of the Wisconsin recall elections this summer were decided by only about 2000 votes. 

Even a few thousand uncast or uncounted votes have the potential to tip majority control of a legislative chamber from one party to the other… as well as affect races all the way up the ballot. 

Republicans understand that as surely as we do. And sometimes they let the true motivations behind their suppressive voting laws slip. 

Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Zellers flatly claimed voting was “not a right” during debate over a photo ID bill (a statement he later partially walked back). So, too, did Florida state Sen. Mike Bennett in a similar debate. Republican legislators and party leaders in Wisconsin, Maine and New Hampshire said all sorts of disparaging things about the civic qualifications of college students in the process of seeking to keep them from voting on campus. 

Statehouse Republicans across the country seem to feel that legitimate means of influencing elections are insufficient to maintain a right-wing domination of state governments. Their voter suppression tactics are a reflection of conservatives’ pathetic desperation. The GOP war on voting is simultaneously an assault on democracy and an outrageous power grab. Its effects are far-reaching and potentially long-lasting. And it’s far from over.

The Wisconsin recalls are over, Congress is back in session, and some may think that state legislative politics is SO yesterday. 

But you and I know better. So here’s a rundown of what’s popping. 

In this week’s edition of The Nation, John Nichols explains why things are looking pretty good for Democrats in statehouses. 

There’s a confidence level on display in the states that goes far beyond what is being heard in Washington these days. It is rooted in the fact that state-based Democrats have found winning issues in their fights to defend labor rights, public services and public education against a GOP austerity agenda that cuts taxes for billionaires and corporations while placing greater burdens on working families in a period of high unemployment and economic uncertainty. 

In New Hampshire, where Republicans scored unprecedented victories in 2010, the GOP is losing House seats in special elections that have turned on the question of whether legislators will override Democratic Governor John Lynch’s veto of an antilabor “right to work” law. 

In Maine, where Governor Paul LePage may well be the most extreme of the new Republican leaders, Democrats are not just winning special elections. They are seeing spikes of nearly 20 percent over the party’s 2010 vote totals for candidates who bluntly declare that they are determined to fight the LePage agenda, which
has extended so far as to attack child-labor protections. The national Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee notes that Democrats are running on average nine points better than they did in the same districts in 2010. And the DLCC says they are “performing as well now as they were in [the 2008] election—and in fact winning additional seats lost in that election,” as was the case with the defeat of the two Wisconsin Republican senators who survived the Obama landslide. 

Read the full piece here. Check out our data on Democratic performance in special elections here. 

Meanwhile, the GOP war on voting has some fresh developments. Just today, the Maine Secretary of State certified a “People’s Veto” of the new law prohibiting the long-standing practice of Election Day voter registration. Until the GOP-controlled legislature decided to halt the practice this year, Mainers had been able to register to vote and cast ballots on the same day since 1973. Now citizens will have the opportunity to continue that practice by electing to overturn this restrictive voting law this
November. 

In New Hampshire, where the state Senate upheld the Democratic Governor’s veto of that state’s voter ID legislation on Wednesday, GOP state Rep. Kyle Tasker posted some (unrelated) reprehensible comments on the House Republicans’ Facebook page. 

On Tuesday night, Tasker wrote on the House Republican Caucus Facebook page that “When a police officer points his firearm that’s not gonna make me feel threatened? If I’ve been trained to respond to that with force am I justified in blowing a cop away because I’m quicker on the draw, and he already pointed his firearm at me? Police are just citizens with badges and all laws should apply equally.” 

The comment has since been removed, but a copy of the posting was given to WMUR. 

Rep. Tasker defended these comments as part of an “intellectual discussion” of a piece of legislation. Former law enforcement officers and current Democratic state Reps. Steve Shurtleff and Ray Gagnon blasted the comments as “appalling,” “insulting and disgusting.” 

Oklahoma GOP state Rep. Sally Kern (whose antics we’ve highlighted previously) is promoting her new book, The Stoning of Sally Kern, and doubling down on her claim that homosexuality is “more dangerous” than terrorist attacks – just in time for the 10^th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in American history. 

In an August 31 interview, she said: 

You know if you just look at it in practical terms, which has destroyed and ended the life of more people? Terrorism attack here in America or HIV/AIDS? In the last twenty years, fifteen to twenty years, we’ve had maybe three terrorist attacks on our soil with a little over 5,000 people regrettably losing their lives. In the same time frame, there have been hundreds of thousands who have died because of having AIDS. So which one’s the biggest threat? And you know, every day our young people, adults too, but especially our young people, are bombarded at school, in movies, in music, on TV, in the mall, in magazines, they’re bombarded with ‘homosexuality is normal and natural.’ It’s something they have to deal with every day. Fortunately we don’t have to deal with a terrorist attack every day, and that’s what I mean. 

So there you have the good, the bad, and the ugly in statehouse politics this week. Stay tuned for the next exciting installment!

Just after the Republicans in the Ohio House of Representatives approved legislation that effectively will restrict voters’ access to the ballot box, a report surfaced that the bill’s sponsor, GOP Rep. Robert Mecklenborg, was arrested in April on DUI charges. 

Now that copies of his arrest report and related court documents have been posted online, the story has become more interesting. 

A bit before midnight on April 23, an Indiana state trooper pulled Rep. Mecklenborg over in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, for a burned-out headlight while driving a 2004 Lexus with temporary Kentucky tags. 

After smelling alcohol on Rep. Mecklenborg’s breath and observing his bloodshot eyes, the trooper administered three separate field sobriety tests, all of which Rep. Mecklenborg failed. The Representative refused to take a Preliminary Breath Test. The trooper then placed him under arrest. 

Rep. Mecklenborg was pulled over near a Burger King and a Holiday Inn Express near the corner of Lorey Lane and US 50 in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. Two other points of interest within three- and five-minute drives, respectively, of that location are the Concepts Lounge Showgirls strip club and the Hollywood Casino. 

Rep. Mecklenborg had a passenger with him in the vehicle at the time he was pulled over. According to the arrest report, her name is Tiona Roberts, 26. Unsubstantiated sources indicate that she has connections to Concepts, but this is unconfirmed at the time of this writing. 

The Dearborn authorities required Rep. Mecklenborg to undergo a blood test to determine his level of intoxication, which was found to be 0.097%, above the legal limit in Indiana and Ohio. The blood test also revealed that he recently had ingested Viagra. 

Rep. Mecklenborg is married with three children. He is also serves on the Judiciary and Ethics Committee in the Ohio House and is an attorney by trade. 

Fun fact: Rep. Mecklenborg’s Indiana excursion and arrest occurred over Easter weekend. 

Rep. Mecklenborg is scheduled to appear in Dearborn Superior Court to face his DUI charge on July 26. No doubt he will enjoy facing his House colleagues in the interim, should they heed his request to return to the state capitol on July 12 or 13 to consider his voter ID legislation. Given that he likely is not in possession of his own drivers license (it should have been confiscated and suspended in accordance with Indiana DUI law and procedure), perhaps he will opt to arrest his drive to repress voting rights.

Republicans in the Ohio state legislature have just passed legislation that effectively reduces voters’ access to the ballot box. After contentious debate, House Bill 194 received final passage in the Ohio House on a straight party-line vote and is on its way to the desk of Republican Governor John Kasich, who will likely sign it. 

Provisions of the new law include: 

• Cuts the early voting period by more than half: instead of 35 days, voters will only be able to cast ballots on 12 of the 17 days prior to the election
• Eliminates early voting on Sundays
• Permits early voting on Saturdays from only 8 a.m. to noon
• Cuts early voting by mail from 35 days to 21
• Eliminates the weeklong period during which voters could register and cast ballots at the same time (“Golden Week”)
• Prohibits boards of elections from mailing absentee ballot forms without receiving specific requests (forms are currently mailed to all registered voters)
• Prohibits boards of elections from paying return postage to encourage completion of absentee voter forms
• Eliminates local control, preventing boards of elections from adjusting poll hours and taking other previously permissible measures to prevent long lines and other issues seen in the 2004 elections 

These new voting restrictions come on the heels of reports of a letter signed by sixteen U.S. Senators to Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to use “the full power of the Department of Justice to review these voter identification laws” sweeping through numerous GOP-controlled state legislatures. The Senators accurately note that “[s]tudies have shown that as high as 11% of eligible voters nationwide do not have a government-issued ID. This percentage is higher for seniors, racial minorities, low-income voters and students.” 

While a voter ID bill did not pass during the Ohio legislature’s regular session, GOP leaders are so bent on getting it done that they plan to try again when the legislature returns on July 12 or 13. 

Make no mistake: Although the most common voter-discouragement measure of requiring voters to present photo IDs before casting ballots was not included in this voting legislation, the bill passed by Ohio Republicans today cannot help but suppress the vote. Reducing the days and hours during which Ohioans may vote will certainly result in fewer ballots cast. Voters who have become accustomed to absentee voting forms arriving in their mailbox may not realize the extra measures they now are forced to take until deadlines have passed and they find themselves effectively disenfranchised. 

This apparently concerted effort on the part of Republicans not only in the quintessential swing state of Ohio, but also in states nationwide to effectively suppress voting is as disturbing as it is un-democratic. The restrictive voting legislation pushed by the GOP this year could affect the outcomes of elections in 2011, 2012, and beyond in every race on the ballot. 

LATE BREAKING UPDATE: A local news station has just reported that GOP Rep. Robert Mecklenborg, HB 194’s sponsor, was arrested in April on DUI charges. 

Democrat Jennifer Daler defeated her Republican opponent in a special election yesterday in what has been described as a “landslide” victory (which it was—Daler won with 58 percent of the vote, sweeping all five towns in the district). 

The seat came open in January when GOP Rep. Robert Mead resigned to accept a position in the state House Speaker’s office. This particular House district had given Republicans a 7 percentage point edge over Democrats since 2004. 

Daler’s victory is a clear rebuke of the extreme agenda Republicans have been pushing in the state legislature since coming into the majority this year. According to state Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley, 

Jen Daler's massive victory tonight is a complete and total rejection of the reckless Republican agenda that [NH House Speaker] Bill O'Brien has been forcing upon Granite Staters. In one of the most Republican districts in the entire state, New Hampshire voters turned out in historic numbers to oppose this new out of control Republican majority.

Last night’s win was the third Democratic special election victory in as many weeks. Margins of victory ranged from a solid 54 percent in the Democratic pickup of Wisconsin’s 94^th Assembly District on May 3 to the crushing 2-to-1 win on May 10 in a Maine seat last won by a 75-vote margin.

Two victories in two weeks may have been a coincidence, but three special election wins in states with GOP-controlled statehouses clearly demonstrates a trend of voters rebuking the extreme right-wing agendas pushed by Republicans.

One of these right-wing agenda items is the assault on voting rights, which came into play as the GOP attempted to sway yesterday’s election by very un-democratic means.

The New Hampshire House is currently considering legislation that would require voters to show a photo ID before casting a ballot. Although no law inthe Granite State currently requires voters to produce such documentation, voters in yesterday’s election found themselves confronted by these signs at polling places: 

Per pending legislation you will be required to produce a photo ID in order to receive a ballot.

New Boston Town Moderator Lee Nyquist provided some context for the sign situation (and ultimately did the right thing in this one town). 

Nyquist said poll workers were instructed to ask for an ID, but that if the voter refused or didn’t have one, he or she would still be allowed to vote. 

Nyquist said the signs were brought to his attention around 10 a.m., when an unidentified Democrat who was at the polls most of the morning lodged a complaint about them. 

Nyquist said he reread the signs and, around 10:40 a.m., decided to take them down. 

“I thought, upon reading them again, the language was ambiguous in a way that could be misconstrued,” Nyquist said. “It (the signs) didn’t say what it meant. It sounded more mandatory than what I would have liked,” he added. 

Nyquist said that around 11:30 a.m., he instructed the poll workers to stop asking voters for ID’s.

Fun fact: GOP House Speaker Bill O’Brien was defending the very legislation at issue as voters were attempting to cast ballots.

But the ramifications of this attempt to diminish voters’ access to the democratic process extend beyond yesterday’s events in New Hampshire.

The use of a restriction that had not even been passed--much less signed into law—to attempt to prevent Granite Staters from voting in yesterday’s special election raises even more concerns about the impact Wisconsin’s voter suppression legislation will have on this summer’s recall elections.

Republicans in state legislatures around the country are rewriting voting laws to make exercising one’s right to cast a ballot more difficult. 

After examining the plethora of bills introduced in statehouses this year that, among other things, would reduce poll hours and require voters to show photo ID, it seems clear that Republicans are trying to make it harder for certain groups to vote. The Advancement Project, an advocacy group of civil rights attorneys, called the push “the largest legislative effort to scale back voting rights in a century.”

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), Republican legislators have introduced bills that would diminish access to the voting booth in over 40 states.* All of these Republican proposals focus on one apparent goal: restrict ballot access and shrink the electorate—often in ways that would decrease Democratic votes.

Many of the proposals are in the form of voter ID legislation, which would require potential voters to present specified forms of identification in order to cast a ballot. Republicans supporting these measures claim they’re necessary to prevent “voter fraud.”

Too bad that “voter fraud” isn’t a problem that actually exists. In New Hampshire, investigations conducted since 2004 revealed no cases of voter fraud. In South Carolina, where a voter ID bill that would become among the most stringent in the country is currently under consideration, the state Elections Commission knows of no confirmed cases of voter fraud. An elections supervisor in Florida says “there’s no evidence of a problem, none whatever.” Voter impersonation is the only type of voter fraud addressed by laws requiring presentation of a photo ID to vote, and repeated studies have confirmed this crime to be extremely rare.

Speaking of study results, here are some fun facts about groups included in the 11 percent of Americans without a current government-issued photo ID: 

• 25 percentof African American voting age citizens

• 15 percent of those earning less than $35,000 a year

• 18 percent of those age 65 and above

• 20 percent of young voters 18-29

In sum, GOP legislators may be using baseless allegations of fraud to make voting more difficult for constituencies not known for their reliable GOP vote.

The broad GOP voter discouragement push goes beyond voter ID bills.  Florida provides an example of one of the most restrictive proposals in the country.

Florida House Bill 1355 (and companion Senate Bill 2086) recently passed both GOP-controlled chambers and includes the following provisions: 

• Forces anyone updating his or her name or address on election day to fill out a provisional ballot (which often go uncounted). Since 1973, Florida voters have been able to update name or address without major issues.
• Forces any group running a registration drive to fill out paperwork for every volunteer and paid worker with the state.
• Halves the time that citizens would have to collect signatures to get an initiative on a ballot.
• The senate version of the bill (SB 2086) also reduces the early voting period from two weeks to just one week.

Indeed, reducing the length of early voting periods is a restrictive voting measure Republicans are advocating in several states. In North Carolina, for example, a GOP-sponsored bill would cut the 16-day early voting period by an entire week. 

In both Florida and North Carolina (as well as in almost every other state with early voting) the majority of early voters in 2008 voted for President Obama.  

Another strain of restrictive measures popping up in several states involves hobbling voter registration and mobilization efforts. The North Carolina bill would prevent anyone from engaging in get-out-the-vote efforts outside of his or her own voting precinct. Legislation in Maine would end the long-standing practice of election day voter registration. The Florida bill mentioned above will prompt the League of Women Voters to end their registration efforts in that state.

This apparently concerted effort on the part of Republicans in state legislatures nationwide to effectively suppress voting is as disturbing as it is un-democratic. Additionally, these restrictive measures often are costly and do nothing to balance state budgets and create jobs, which are the top priorities for voters across the country right now.

To be fair, Republican legislators in some states are working to promote voting rights among some groups: hunters and fishers.

*Research compiled by DLCC.

Ryan J. Reilly | April 1, 2011

With voter ID laws popping up in Republican-controlled statehouses across the country, could a federal bill be far off?

According to data from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, at least 27 state-level voter ID bills -- from Alaska and Arizona to Wisconsin and West Virginia -- have been proposed in recent months.

"It's unbelievable, probably half the states in the country have bills in play and more than a dozen are seriously in the pipeline," Tova Wang of the left-leaning think tank Demos told TPM in an interview. "It's really unprecedented in terms of geographic scope. I've never seen anything like it certainly since I've been working on voting rights issues that voter suppression bills would be introduced in so many places at the same time."

"Definitely students are a target here. It's totally clear to me that you saw in 2008 this unprecedented historic turnout among African-Americans, Latinos and young people -- and those happen to be the exact groups of people that are being targeted by these laws to disenfranchise them, and that's really sad," Wang said.

Wang said the most restrictive bills are in Ohio and Wisconsin, which Wang said require identification issued by the DMV. "Perhaps most interestingly, it doesn't even include student ID even from schools that are public universities," she said.

"This apparently concerted effort on the part of Republicans in state legislatures nationwide to effectively suppress voting is as disturbing as it is un-democratic," said Carolyn Fiddler, spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, an arm of the Democratic Party charged with boosting the number of Democrats in state governments. "Additionally, these restrictive measures are often costly and do nothing to balance state budgets and create jobs, which are the top priorities in statehouses across the country right now."

Jump to Talking Points Memo to read more!

If you: (A. support progressive candidates, (B. care about issues, or (C. are younger than 25; then the new GOP Speaker of the New Hampshire House doesn’t think you should have the right to vote.

Not content to show his utter contempt for the delicate separation of powers that protects all of us from tyranny, Speaker William O’Brien is now also admitting that his proposed changes to voting laws are meant specifically to disenfranchise progressive voters:

Turning to the issue of voter fraud prevention, O'Brien said his party will "tighten up the definition of a New Hampshire resident."

He said that Plymouth, a college town, experiences 900 same-day voter registrations.

"They are kids voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience," he said.

[h/t Blue Hampshire]

Rarely has a Republican leader been so transparent about his desire to game the election laws to benefit his own party. Usually, Republicans focus on the largely non-existent spectre of voter fraud, hoping no one will notice the thousands of legal, eligible voters who would be disenfranchised by the GOP proposals. That’s the pattern we’ve already seen in Wisconsin, Texas, and other states where Republicans hope to throw up as many new barriers as possible against voters.

But not in New Hampshire. In New Hampshire, GOP leaders are saying explicitly that if you vote against the GOP, your right to vote is open for debate.