Tag Archives: Virginia

Virginia Felon files lawsuit
to regain voting rights

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A felon and former Richmond, Va., councilman who wants his voting rights restored, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the Commonwealth of Virginia, Gov. Bob McDonnell, the secretary of the commonwealth and one other election official.

Sa’ad El-Amin, 72, a political activist, lost his voting rights after a 2003 tax evasion conviction. He was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release, which he completed in August 2009.

Virginia is one of four states in which the governor must approve felons’ applications to restore voting rights. Virginia felons must wait two or five years – depending on the crime – after serving their sentences and complete restitution and other legal costs before they can apply to McDonnell, who decides. There is no appeals process and applicants who are denied must wait a year before reapplying.

The lawsuit argues that the review process is not transparent and violates due process. El-Amin also argues the law is unconstitutional because he claims it was created to suppress black votes.

A spokesman for the Virginia Attorney General’s Office told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that he couldn’t comment on pending litigation.

By Maryann Batlle, News21

Coffee Break Ballot June 21: Current Trends in Voting Rights

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You may not have noticed, but Twitter broke today.

Three times.

That doesn’t mean we weren’t busy reporting, reading the news and building our project, but it does mean that our usual analysis of social media trends in voting rights is a little sparse today.

Still, a Virginia house cat named Scampers did receive voter registration material today, which fits with our post from Tuesday on the dead dog in Virginia. The story didn’t get as much bounce online this morning. That could be related to the Twitter outage and the inclusion of a quote from the Voter Participation Center president who said that stories like the cat and dog items distracted from the center’s real mission.

More on the Twitter outage after these stories.

What We’ve Been Reading

“Walter Mondale, Arne Carlson: Reject voter ID measure,” (Walter Mondale and Arne Carlson, 06/20, Minneapolis Star-Trbune)

“Pelosi: GOP’s contempt move vs. Holder about suppressing voter rights,” (Jake Sherman, 06/21, Politico)

“UPDATE: Governor vetoes four bills, including voter ID,” (Mike Cousineau, 06/20, New Hampshire Union Leader)

“Why sloppy drafting will kill the photo ID amendment,” (David Schultz, 06/21, MinnPost.com)

“The Real Crisis: 35% of Americans Not Registered to Vote,” (Voter Participation Center, 06/21)

“The Supreme Court Speaks, Yet DOJ Won’t Listen,” (David Almasi, 06/21, National Center for Public Policy Research)

Twitter Trends

As mentioned above, Twitter had some technical troubles today. The hour-long outage wreaked havoc on our normal Topsy.com searches, but we were able to notice an interesting spike in mentions of “voter suppression” – which is directly correlated to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s press conference on the Republican opposition to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The California representative accused the Republican Party of using a contempt vote to distract Holder from his attempt to battle voter suppression. Voter suppression is used more infrequently than our more general search terms (“voting rights,” “voter ID” and the charged “voter fraud”), so it was fascinating to see the sharp spike in mentions.

We’ll keep tabs on how long that mention lasts, so follow @WhoCanVote.

Coffee Break Ballot, June 19: Current Trends in Voting Rights

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We’ve noticed in the News21 newsroom how certain stories in our search fields stay hot. Part of this is probably the naturally viral nature of Internet news, but we’ve enjoyed seeing which stories pop up and keep buzzing.

Today, that story is a minor item from the Roanoke, Va., NBC affilate, WSLS. It’s a story about voter registration and dead dogs. Or, more specifically, one particular dead dog whose owner received forms inviting the pet to register to vote.

The story went viral for a variety of reasons, and it was picked up by such diverse sources as conservative blog RedAlert Politics and political news site, Politico. It also is a story about supposed voter fraud — even though this actually is an example of registration fraud, and not voter fraud — which gets a wide segment of the conservative Twittersphere riled.

It is also a story about a cute dog with a cute name, and nothing goes viral like stories about small animals, especially when those animals are given anthropomorphic qualities and get all mixed up in human activities like voting.

A coalition of civil rights organizations also filed a lawsuit against Florida this afternoon, alleging that the state’s removing voters from rolls violates section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but wouldn’t you rather read about the cute dog who would have been eligible to vote in Virginia if he was a human and hadn’t died two years ago?

What We’ve Been Reading

“Citizenship mandate challenged,” (Lyle Denniston, 06/19, SCOTUSBlog)

“Voter Purges,” (Myrna Pérez, 09/30/08, Brennan Center for Justice)

“Civil Rights Groups Sue Florida Over Voter Purging Lists,” (Brentin Mock, 06/19, The Nation / Colorlines)

“E-Voting: Trust but Verify,” (Steve Schneider and Alan Woodward, 06/19, Scientific American)

“St. Paul jumps in to VoterID fray,” (Patrick Thornton, 06/19, MinnLawyerBlog)

“JW Sues Obama Justice Department for Records Regarding South Carolina’s Voter ID Law,” (Tom Fitton, 06/19, Breitbart.com / BigGovernment)

“Punch-Card Voting in Idaho,” (Pew Center on the States, 06/19)

“Joe Walsh, GOP Congressman, Introduces New Federal Voter ID Bill,” (Nick Wing, 06/19, The Huffington Post)

Twitter Trends

As mentioned above, that story about the voting-age eligible dog in Virginia bounced around Twitter this morning, particularly after Politico picked it up. At that point, several journalists released a collective Twitter yell complaining about the item’s lack of news value.

(While we wrote this post, North Carolina’s conservative Civitas Institute wrote a blog post warning about the dangers of pet voting. The story has legs, apparently.)

There are still some latecomers to the Mitt Romney/#VotingRights party, as users continue to ask the GOP presidential candidate what he thinks about the Florida voter roll removal.

The #voterID hashtag also has spiked on social media search engine Topsy.com, as users mention a recently introduced federal voter ID bill by U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., and the aforementioned voting-eligble dog.

We’ll be sure to tell you if Mitt Romney replies to all these tweets, and if the dog is ever enfranchised. Follow us at @WhoCanVote.