Welcome back to the work week!

We, like many of you, enjoyed the tease of a midweek faux-weekend. We also enjoyed the onslaught of Independence Day-themed voting rights columns, blogs and articles (some of which we’ll sample here today).

Nothing like a national holiday to encourage talk of freedom, unity and fundamental rights.

What We’ve Been Reading

“Celebrate Our Independence By Committing to the Right to Vote,” (Eva. M. Clayton, 07/04, Huffington Post)

“Graduating from the Electoral College,” (Jaime Fuller, 07/05, the American Prospect)

“Roberts Faces Shot at Republican Redemption in Race Cases,” (Greg Stohr, 07/04, Bloomberg)

“9.2 Percent of Pennsylvania Voters Lack Valid ID,” (David Weigel, 07/05, Slate)

“8 things the U.S. election system could learn from Mexico’s,” (Robert. A. Pastor, 07/02, CNN)

Twitter Trends

If we’ve tracked anything of note this past week on social media search engine Topsy.com, it’s been the considerable bounce that progressive voting rights Twitter users have provided to a few news items.

Tuesday’s Mother Jones package on voter suppression and election administration continues to buzz, as does a telling report from Slate on what the more than nine percent of registered Pennsylvania voters lacking photo ID could mean for the November election.

Despite a series of broadcast news network pieces on possible election fraud in the federal election Sunday in Mexico, we haven’t seen as many mentions of that country’s voter ID system as we originally expected. As seems to be the case for many international stories, the American Twitter audience has moved on to other flash points, accepting that the election is largely finished there and no longer worth 140-character debate points.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on the diverse threads of progressive commentary in the coming days and weeks, with a special focus on the conservative reaction that has yet to arrive.

For more of the latest voting rights trends and links, be sure to follow us @WhoCanVote.