MT Supreme Court Bucks U.S. Supreme Court

Thanks to Ballot Access News for this post.

The Montana Supreme Court restored the state's century-old ban, the 1912 Corrupt Practices Act passed as a citizen's ballot initiative, on direct spending by corporations on political candidates or committees in a ruling Friday that interest groups say bucks a high profile U.S. Supreme Court decision granting political speech rights to corporations.

The decision grants a big win to Attorney General Steve Bullock, who personally represented the state in defending its ban that came under fire after the "Citizens United" decision last year from the U.S. Supreme court.

"The Citizen's United decision dealt with federal laws and elections, like those contests for president and congress," said Bullock, who is now running for governor. "But the vast majority of elections are held at the state or local level and this is the first case I am aware of that examines state laws and elections."

Two members of the Montana Supreme Court dissented. Both justices Beth Baker and James Nelson said that a state can't impose an outright ban against political spending under the Citizens United decision, even if the U.S. Supreme Court may have got its decision on the matter wrong.

"Citizens United is the law of the land, and this court is duty-bound to follow it," Nelson wrote. "When this case is appealed to the Supreme Court, as I expect it will be, a summary reversal on the merits would not surprise me in the least."









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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CT Redistricting Update

Connecticut's Supreme Court on Friday appointed Columbia University law professor, Nathaniel Persily, as special master to redraw the map for five congressional districts, following the failure by lawmakers to reach agreement by a December 21 deadline.

Persily was one of two appointees named by both the Democrats and Republicans, has until January 27 to submit a new map to the court. Lawmakers will have two weeks to dispute the special master's map. The court must ensure that new congressional districts, based on the 2010 Census figures, are drawn by February 15.

The task of redrawing the state's political lines ended up in court after a nine member bipartisan commission failed to agree on new political boundaries.

Democrats who currently hold all five congressional districts, the governor's office, and the state legislature, argue that only minimal changes should be made to the map. Republicans have pushed for more drastic changes in order to smooth lines that were gerrymandered a decade ago when Connecticut removed a sixth congressional district.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Notes from the NY BOE Dec. Meeting

I have streaming access to the New York Board of Elections monthly meetings. This is from my notes.

1. The top two IT executives retired and two others were let go. But there is a hiring freeze. This is not how you run an agency. They will ask for a waiver from the freeze.

2. The agency will have to move March, 2012 to a new building to reduce their costs during the preparation for the Presidential Primary.

3. The vote audit process is so bad that a $250,000 grant was obtained to test a new automated vote audit system from a company in Boston.

4. A new expedited poll closing process is used in most counties except New York City. This explains why it takes over a month to validate and report vote results.

5. The new programming of the optical scanning systems to correct the court's new overvote process might not be done in time due to all the existing changes that require independent testing and then training of the poll workers.

After watching this year, you start to understand how hard it is to run the voting process in New York and the rest of the country. You would hope that best procedures were used and not shortcuts.

You also realize that it is time the running of our government needs more independents to be part of the process and not be partisan and closed to only the two major parties.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Redistricting in CT Heads to Court

Connecticut's Supreme Court will decide how to redraw the map for five congressional districts after lawmakers on the nine member bipartisan commission failed to reach an agreement by their deadline of 11/20/2011, extended to 12/21/2011.

The Supreme Court has several options, including the appointment of a special master, to ensure that new boundaries are drawn by February 15, 2012. It is rare for the State Supreme Court to be forced to decide how to draw the boundaries.

The impasse came after the commission couldn't agree on fundamental issues: Democrats who currently hold all five congressional districts, the Governor, and the State Legislature wanted to maintain the status quo, while Republicans wanted to substantially redraw the maps.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Independents and Structural Political Reform

Since 1965 I have registered to vote as an independent. When I moved back to NY in 2000 I registered as an Independence Party member with the thought that I would get evolved in the political process in the future. The following year I was asked to sign an Independence Party petition and this started my political career.

Besides the state and city work there was "CUIP", the Committee for a Unified Independent Party. Over time it morphed into IndependentVoting.org.

We are a national strategy, communications, and organizing center working to connect and empower Americans who identify themselves as independents. Our mission is to develop a movement of independent voters for progressive post-partisan reform of the American political process.

We do not aspire to be another special interest. Independents seek instead to diminish the regressive influence of parties and partisanship by opening up the democratic process. Independents in the CUIP networks are creating new electoral coalitions such as the Black and Independent Alliance, supporting new models of nonpartisan governance and striving for the broadest forms of “bottom-up” participation.

With the size of the independent voting bloc growing, the barriers that limit independent participation have become even more glaring.

I am in my 4th term as a member of the State Committee, County Committee, and New York City Executive Committee representing the Eastside of Manhattan. I also created many of the websites representing Independents nationwide.

Here is a video that represents who we are and where we are going as Independents. That's me in the middle right, on the steps of City Hall.


Open primaries allow for greater political participation, challenging partisan control over the electoral process.

Use the above link to find out more about this independent movement.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NYS Vote Probe Arrests

The Troy City Council President, a councilman and two others were arrested Tuesday and charged with felonies for allegedly forging absentee ballots in the 2009 primary to benefit Democratic candidates. Those arrested early Tuesday included City Council President Clement Campana, Councilman John Brown and political operatives Anthony Renna and Anthony DeFiglio.

So far seven elected or appointed officials and operatives have been charged in the two-year probe into allegations that scores of absentee ballots were forged to benefit Democratic candidates in the 2009 Working Families Party primary. Most voters targeted lived in Troy Housing Authority apartments and rarely, if ever, voted. They were allegedly targeted because they were unfamiliar with the process.

Campana appeared with his attorney, E. Stewart Jones, and was arraigned on an indictment charging him with first-degree falsifying business records and four counts of illegal voting, all felonies; and a count of conspiracy to promote or prevent election, a misdemeanor. He could face up to seven years on the charges.

Campana appeared before visiting Supreme Court Justice George J. Pulver Jr. and pleaded not guilty and was released on his own recognizance pending further court action. Campana, who refused comment, did not seek re-election so he will be council president only until the end of the year. "Clem has been waiting a long time for his day in court and will be found not guilty," Jones said following the court session.

Brown, a Democratic councilman, also appeared before Pulver and decided to forgo indictment and plead guilty to a felony count of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument lodged against him by Special Prosecutor Trey Smith. "I knowingly submitted a forged ballot before the election was final," Brown told Pulver when ask to explain what he did. Brown will be sentenced to 60 days in jail and five years of probation.

Also entering pleas Tuesday were Democratic operatives Anthony Renna and Anthony DeFiglio. Renna pleaded guilty to second-degree forgery and will be sentenced to community service. "I forged a ballot on Sept. 14, 2009 in the name of voter Peter Testa," Renna admitted to Pulver.

DeFiglio, a former Troy Housing Authority clerk, pleaded guilty to first-degree falsifying business records. "I solicited an absentee ballot vote from Elizabeth Montalvo and had her leave some fields blank," DeFiglio told Pulver. "You purposely left fields blank so you could falsify the vote?" Smith asked DeFiglio. "Yes, that's right," DeFiglio replied. DeFiglio's sentence is yet to be determined but Pulver told him it would not involve jail or prison time.

Brown's brother Dan Brown, a political operative, was also named as a target early on in the investigation and recently testified before the grand jury. Brown's attorney, Phil Steck, has said his client received immunity from prosecution for his testimony. Renna, a City Council aide and former city marshal, appeared Dec. 6 before the grand jury without counsel. Renna is a fixture in city Democratic campaign circles. DeFiglio, who in a statement to investigators said that absentee ballot rigging in the city was a "normal political tactic," testified before the first grand jury on Dec. 8, 2010.

Last year, the first grand jury indicted Councilman Michael LoPorto and Democratic County Elections Commissioner Edward McDonough on numerous felony forgery charges. They face trial next month. Smith also entered a decision Tuesday dropping 13 of the 42 counts against LoPorto because a handwriting expert concluded that former city clerk William McInerney forged the ballots and not LoPorto.

In August, McInerney pleaded guilty to a charge that he signed a voter's signature to an absentee primary ballot in 2009. His sentencing is pending. Councilmen Kevin McGrath and Gary Galuski have testified before the grand juries, as have several voters and board of elections workers. McGrath cooperated and was granted immunity, but Smith said Tuesday that grand jurors failed to hear enough evidence to charge Galuski.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NYC BOE lost votes in the Bronx and doesn’t care

Either the voters who go to the polls at Public School 65 in the South Bronx have a high propensity for filing defective ballots, or the NYC Board of Elections is disenfranchising hundreds of people. Either way, New Yorkers who did their civic duty on Election Day last year have gotten the shaft and the board couldn't care less.

Data uncovered by New York University Law School’s Brennan Center reveals that up to 39% of votes cast for governor in election districts served by that polling place simply vanished. For example, 71 voters in the 23rd Election District cast ballots, but the gubernatorial votes on 28 were ruled invalid by electronic scanners.

The Brennan Center has filed a legal challenge to New York’s method of handling so-called overvotes, ballots on which a voter fills in ovals next to the names of two candidates for a single office. A scanner screen shows a confusing alert and asks the voter if he or she wants to proceed. If the voter goes ahead, the ballot in that race is disqualified. Across the city, as well as in neighborhoods surrounding PS 65, the rate of supposed overvoting was less than half of one percent. Two conclusions are possible: One, citizens at this polling place made the overvoting error 100 times more frequently than other New Yorkers. Two, the scanners there ran haywire.

The results were brought to the attention of the state and city boards of elections in October. The response was a big shrug. Properly vigilant election officials would inspect the 900 paper ballots cast at the school to determine whether they include rampant overvoting or were misread by defective scanners. The latter could point to technical flaws that may be more widespread than recognized and certainly demand fixing. Should voter error be the cause, the city board would have the duty to flood the site with voting assistance next Election Day.

As of now, though, the board refuses to check the records. Someone must. And here is another matter to be taken up by the Department of Investigation as the agency plumbs the depths of the board’s incompetence.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Mayor Bloomberg's Stolen Money in Deal

The Queens political operative, John Haggerty, convicted of stealing from Mayor Michael Bloomberg has agreed to return $750,000 to the mayor as a judge prepares to sentence him on Monday.

As part of a deal with prosecutors, the state Independence Party, the third-largest political party in New York, has also agreed to return $150,000 in funds that a jury concluded were stolen from Mr. Bloomberg in the lead-up to his 2009 re-election. The party was not charged with a crime in the case.

The agreement with prosecutors in Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.'s office comes as state district Judge Ronald Zweibel plans Monday to sentence Mr. Haggerty on two felony convictions, grand larceny in the second degree and money laundering in the second degree.

Mr. Haggerty, 42 years old, faces up to 15 years in prison. Prosecutors are recommending a sentence of between four and 12 years, Mr. Haggerty's attorney, Dennis Vacco, confirmed Sunday.

The deal with prosecutors on the return of $900,000 of Mr. Bloomberg's money is part of a civil proceeding and is technically separate from the criminal case. The two agreements, one with Mr. Haggerty and the other with the Independence Party, were signed Friday by Supreme Court Judge Martin Shulman, according to papers reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

According to the deal, Mr. Haggerty and his firm, Special Election Operations LLC, agreed to pay the district attorney's office $750,000 from the sale of Mr. Haggerty's home. Mr. Haggerty has six months to sell the house, which is valued at roughly $1.6 million, and upon closing, the money is to be placed in an escrow account by the district attorney's office. The money is to be held in escrow until an appellate court upholds the convictions in the case. Prosecutors would then send the money to the mayor. Mr. Haggerty would be entitled to the money back if an appellate court overturned the decision and he was ultimately acquitted.

As for the Independence Party, which is listed in court papers as a non-criminal defendant, officials were required to place $200,000 in escrow in February as part of a temporary restraining order. The party successfully negotiated a deal with prosecutors in which $150,000 would be returned to the mayor and $50,000 would be used to pay the party's attorneys.

Mr. Bloomberg, one of the nation's most generous philanthropists, is widely expected to donate the money to charity.

Update
He was sentenced to 16 months to 4 years but might only have to serve 6 months jail time.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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New Restrictions in Voting Laws

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to enter the political waters of voting rights on Tuesday, signaling that the Justice Department will take an aggressive stance in reviewing new laws in several states that civil rights advocates say are meant to dampen minority participation in the national elections next year.

Mr. Holder is to speak Tuesday evening at the presidential library of Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The act enables the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to object to election laws and practices on the grounds that they would disproportionately deter minority groups from voting, and to go to court to block states from implementing them.

A draft of Mr. Holder’s speech urges Americans to “call on our political parties to resist the temptation to suppress certain votes in the hope of attaining electoral success and, instead, achieve success by appealing to more voters.”

Mr. Holder is also expected to make the case for overhauling elections systems, including automatically registering all eligible voters; barring state legislators from gerrymandering their own districts; and creating a federal statute against disseminating fraudulent information to deceive people into not voting.

This year, more than a dozen states set forth new voting restrictions. For example, Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin, imposed new laws requiring voters to present state-issued photo identification cards. Previously voters were able to use other forms of identification, like student IDs, bank statements, utility bills and Social Security cards.

The Justice Department is reviewing the new laws in South Carolina and Texas requiring voters to present photo identification cards. It has sought information from the states about the racial breakdown of the group of eligible voters who do not currently have such identification to see whether the rule would disproportionately deter minorities from voting.

The Justice Department is also engaged in litigation with Florida over a new state law restricting the availability of early voting, including barring it on the Sunday before Election Day, when black churches had traditionally followed services with get-out-the-vote efforts. It also imposed new rules on groups that conduct voter registration drives, including fining them each time a volunteer does not turn in a voter registration form within 48 hours. That section has prompted the League of Women Voters to stop registering new voters in Florida.

The three states are among 16 jurisdictions that must, under Section Five of the Voting Rights Act, receive clearance for any changes to their election laws because of their history of suppressing minority voting. They bear the burden of proving that their changes will not disproportionately prevent minority groups from voting, even if there was no discriminatory intent.

John Payton, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said he was traveling to Austin to attend Mr. Holder’s speech, adding it was “really important that he bring the powers that he has to bear on this challenge to our democracy.”

“Since the Voting Rights Act was signed,” Mr. Payton said, “we have not seen this much action that will have the effect of limiting people’s ability to vote. The Department of Justice has special powers under the Voting Rights Act and special responsibilities. It matters that the Attorney General is addressing democracy and voting, and the venue is obviously symbolic.”









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NYS Redistricting Update

U.S. District Court Judge Gary Sharpe said today he would issue a ruling in about a month in a federal lawsuit against the state over a law that requires setting an earlier primary date to accommodate overseas voters.

Sharpe said he doesn’t trust the Legislature to reach an agreement. Lawmakers and the governor’s administration have had two years to do so, and they have not acted. The judge, who also presided in the federal lawsuit against the state for non-compliance with the federal lawsuit, said he based his decision on past experience. “I don’t believe they’re going to, so I’m going to set it,” he said.

Instead, he gave all parties seven days to submit any additional arguments and proposals for how the issue should be resolved to his office, and another seven days to respond to those submissions. He said he would rule on the case within about two weeks after that, or early January.

The Department of Defense sued New York a year ago for not complying with the MOVE Act. The agency said in court papers that the primary could be no less than 35 days before the 45-day minimum for absentee ballots, a total of 80 days before the general election. That is, no later than Aug. 18.

Lawmakers are split on whether an August or June primary would be preferable. The Democrat-controlled Assembly wants the primary in late June. The GOP-led Senate wanted the fourth Tuesday in August, which the Justice Department has said would not be time to meet the 45-day requirement.

In papers filed with the court last week, the New York State Election Commissioners’ Association said it voted in January to recommend that the Legislature and governor move the primary date to the fourth Tuesday in June.

“A June primary allows meaningful compliance with the federal MOVE Act and ensures enough time between the primary election and general election to resolve ballot access disputes and create and test ballot accuracy,” the president and vice president of the bipartisan group told the court.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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