THE VOTER SUPPRESSION CHRONICLES

[Reginald Hudlin]

This is, sad to say, probably going to be a very long thread.  Here's an interesting entry because it's from Iowa.

MOTHER JONES:

In Iowa, Paying Your Debt to Society Isn't Quite Enough
—By Kevin Drum| Tue Jun. 26, 2012 9:09 AM PDT

Via Ed Kilgore, we learn today that voter suppression is alive and well in Iowa. On his first day in office after winning the 2010 election, Gov. Terry Branstad reinstituted a long and laborious process that prevents most released felons from voting:

Henry Straight, who wants to serve on the town council in the tiny western Iowa community of Arthur, is among those whose paperwork wasn't complete. Straight can't vote or hold office because as a teenager in Wisconsin in the 1980s, he was convicted of stealing a pop machine and fleeing while on bond.

Straight spent a year on the effort and hired a lawyer for $500 to help. Yet he was notified by the governor's office last month that he hadn't submitted a full credit report, only a summary, or documentation showing he had paid off decades-old court costs. They make the process just about impossible," said Straight, 40, a truck driver. "I hired a lawyer to navigate it for me and I still got rejected. Isn't that amazing?"

Iowa's process also includes a 31-question application that asks for information such as the address of the judge who handled the conviction. Felons also must supply a criminal history report, which takes weeks and costs $15. Then the review can take up to six months.

Felons, of course, tend to be poorer, blacker, and younger than the general population, which means they're more likely to vote for Democrats than the general population. So who cares if they've paid their debt to society? A tendency to vote for Democrats is mighty suspicious behavior all on its own, no? Surely anyone foolish enough to belong to one or more of these demographic groups should expect to have a hard time voting whenever a Republican machine is in charge.

Ed adds this: "A credit report to regain the right to vote? That's about the most revealing reflection of latter-day Republican values I've seen in a while....There's not a question in my mind that these people would reinstitute poll taxes if the courts and Grover Norquist would let them."

[Tanksleyd]

Actually with the signature system the state can investigate election integrity to a massive extent after the fact to prosecute and investigate, again to a massive degree.

Now they are only stopping old ladies from voting.

[Curtis Metcalf]

Pennsylvania Republican: Voter ID Laws Are Gonna Allow Governor Romney To Win

[Reginald Hudlin]

THE ATLANTIC:

Florida. Again.
Politics

Jul 10 2012, 11:00 AM ET 77

Dave Weigel reports from Florida on the fiasco in the making:

Here's the paradox of the new voter ID crackdown, of the 38 states that have debated or passed legislation that puts more demands on voters. The new laws--and in Florida, new executive campaigns--ask voters to show driver's licenses at the polls, or prove their eligibility with birth certificates, or prove that they've never had a felony, or prove that they are citizens of the United States.


Doing that involves navigating your state's bureaucracies. Those bureaucracies have been shrunk or frozen by years of belt-tightening. They rely on data from other cost-cutting organs of the state. Imagine giving some endomorphic amateur athlete a low-calorie diet and limited access to a gym. He's training for a mile-long fun run, so there's no pressure. All of a sudden, you panic about the threat of Sprinting Fraud or something, and you inform the runner of his new task: Run a timed 3.5-mile circuit, tomorrow.


Weigel leads with a guy who the state insists is a felon, but isn't. Better one Florida agency is clear the gentleman isn't a felon, but it's having trouble convincing Florida's Department of State. I think I'd have much less of a problem with voter ID laws, if I knew the state's were going to make sure getting the proper ID was no problem. Instead you get this:

State officials are running into problems with the new voter-identification law even before the federal government has approved or rejected it. Voters without a photo ID are facing a circular problem: They need a certified birth certificate to get the voter ID, and they need a photo ID to get the birth certificate.


Pamela Weaver, spokeswoman of the Mississippi Secretary of State's office, today confirmed the catch-22 problem, which the Jackson Free Press learned about from a complaint posted on Facebook. One of the requirements to get the free voter ID cards is a birth certificate, but in order to receive a certified copy of your birth certificate in Mississippi, you must have a photo ID. Not having the photo ID is why most people need the voter ID in the first place.

If we are to take the complaint about "voter fraud" seriously, and not simply assume it is a right wing tribal call, then it's worth evaluating these laws like any other attempt at crime prevention. In that vein it seems reasonable to ask--What, specific, documented group of criminals are you combating? Who are the vote fraudsters? What elections have hey attempted to steal? How successful were they? How did our current defenses hold up? And, last but not least, in our efforts to improve those defenses how likely is that we will produce outcomes like this:
If anyone has figured out how to navigate the noncitizen voter problem, he has not revealed the trick. James O'Keefe, the conservative investigative journalist, has dispatched his Project Veritas reporters to multiple swing states (and D.C.) to prove that anyone can steal a voter's identity if the state doesn't ask for ID. In North Carolina, O'Keefe used jury pool lists to find noncitizens and show how they could sneak into the polls. But the lists were flawed, and two of the supposed noncitizens in the video turned out to be naturalized, eligible voters.

[Reginald Hudlin]

HUFFINGTON POST:

Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Under Investigation; Justice Department To Determine If Law Discriminates Against Minorities
Reuters  |  Posted: 07/23/2012 6:52 pm Updated: 07/23/2012 11:55 pm


WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating whether Pennsylvania's new voter identification law discriminates against minorities, according to a letter released on Monday.

In a step toward a possible federal lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department sent a letter to Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele asking for data on the state's registered voters.

Passed in 1965 during the peak of the civil rights era, the Voting Rights Act bans rules that make it more difficult for minorities to vote.

The Justice Department will analyze the Pennsylvania data to determine if voters who lack proper ID under the new law are disproportionally black or Hispanic.

Pennsylvania's law will be challenged this week in state court by civil rights groups that say the law makes it too difficult for the general public to vote. If the law is upheld, a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination may follow.

Pennsylvania is one of 11 states to pass voter ID laws since 2010. The Republican-controlled state legislature said requiring voters to present ID at the polls will prevent fraud, while opponents say the law targets minority and elderly voters. The two groups vote mostly Democratic and are less likely to have valid ID.

The Justice Department has brought Voting Rights Act challenges against several other states for their voter ID laws. Lawsuits from Texas and South Carolina are pending. (Reporting by Drew Singer; editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Mohammad Zargham)

[Reginald Hudlin]

WASHINGTON POST:

Pennsylvania admits it: no voter fraud problem
By Jamelle Bouie
A court filing by the state of Pennsylvania, ahead of a trial starting later this week on a lawsuit filed by civil rights groups against the state’s new voter fraud law, contains an astounding admission:

The state signed a stipulation agreement with lawyers for the plaintiffs which acknowledges there “have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states.”
In other words, the state knows that voter fraud is a nonexistent problem, but will nonetheless defend a law that could potentially disenfranchise a huge number of the state’s voters. Of course, it’s not hard to see why the state — and particularly its Republican governor — would continue to support the measure.

The Pennsylvania voter identification law — passed several months ago by state Republicans — is one of the strictest in the country. Under the law, voters are required to show an unexpired government-issued ID. If an ID is not issued by either the state of Pennsylvania or the federal government, then it will not be accepted (for instance, student IDs from schools outside of the state). If you do not have an ID, you can receive a free one as long as you have a Social Security card, official birth certificate, and two proofs of residency.

It’s hard to overstate the problems with this requirement. A report released by the Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this month, which compared voter registration rolls with transportation department ID databases, found that more than 758,000 Pennsylvanians lack a driver’s license. According to the report, that amounts to 9.2 percent of the state’s 8.2 million voters. This disproportionately includes students, minorities and the elderly, who tend to lack government-issued ID. According to the report, more than 21 percent of nonwhites in the state lack ID. In cities with heavy minority populations, like Philadelphia, 18 percent of the voting population lacks official identification. The ID itself is free, but when you consider the time and money involved in assembling the documents necessary to get one, this gap is likely to remain.

Given the complete absence of voter fraud, the law’s rapid implementation, and the strong support from Republican lawmakers, it’s more than clear that this is a crude attempt to suppress Democratic turnout in the election. Pennsylvania Republicans aren’t shy about this fact. State GOP House Leader Mike Turzai recently admitted the extent to which this law serves no purpose other than to elect Republicans:

“We are focused on making sure that we meet our obligations that we’ve talked about for years,” said Turzai in a speech to committee members Saturday. He mentioned the law among a laundry list of accomplishments made by the GOP-run legislature.
“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation — abortion facility regulations — in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”
It’s unclear how much of an effect this will actually have on the outcome of the election. The groups that lack voter ID are also, typically, the ones least likely to vote in the first place. Moreover, Democrats are working hard to both register voters and help them apply for ID if they don’t have it. But even if the law has a minimal effect on turnout, it’s still worth condemning. Countless Americans fought for more than a century to achieve universal suffrage. This push to keep some people from voting — simply because they disagree — is shameful and frankly, un-American.

[Reginald Hudlin]

GRIO:

Jim Greer, ex- Florida GOP chair, says party officials discussed black voter suppression
by Caryn Freeman | July 30, 2012 at 1:32 PM

Jim Greer, the former chair of the Florida Republican Party, has accused the GOP of engaging in voter suppression, in statements given under sworn testimony in a deposition surrounding a lawsuit he filed over an unpaid severance. Greer claims he became uncomfortable with leading the party when an official began to openly discuss voter suppression tactics that would keep blacks from participating in the electoral process.

The Tampa Bay Times is reporting that incident occurred, according to Greer, after he had just completed a December 2009 meeting with party general counsel Jason Gonzalez, political consultant Jim Rimes and Eric Eikenberg, ex-Florida governor Charlie Crist’s chief of staff.

“I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting. It had been one of those days,” he told the Tampa Bay Times. In the deposition Greer denounced some party officials as liars and “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies”

Rimes told the Times he recalls no discussion of suppressing votes at any meeting and Eikenberg did not return the Times’ phone calls.

Problems for Greer began when officials learned about a consulting firm he started, called Victory Strategies LLC, illegally held a $200,000 dollar contract with the party while Greer was chairman, apparently unbeknownst to party officials. According to reports, Greer initially denied ownership of Victory Strategies but later admitted his involvement to party general counsel Jason Gonzalez but threatened to sue anyone who made the accusation.

In the deposition Greer claims he filed a lawsuit against the party and two other party officials in an attempt to collect $130,000 he was promised in a severance agreement.

Back in 2009, Jim Greer made headlines when he accused the president of attempting to indoctrinate schoolchildren with socialist ideas in a speech where the president spoke to school children about the importance of getting a good education and staying in school. The speech was broadcast live on C-SPAN and via webcast in schools. Greer later recanted this comments.

Greer was also a key player in the appointment of Michael Steele as the head of the Republican National Committee. Steele became the first African-American to head the RNC in 2009. Steele held the position for just under two years and resigned amid criticism of poor leadership.

[Reginald Hudlin]

NY TIMES:



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

August 1, 2012, 10:01 pm458 Comments
Voter Suppression and Political Polls
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Polls are the best way to find out who plans to vote and for whom they plan to vote. But polls are imperfect. They ask questions of a sampling of people — often about a thousand — and use those answers to draw conclusions about the public at large.

This year there is a new wrinkle, one that complicates the picture and could throw some of the polling off: the effects of newly enacted restrictive voting laws.

Take, for instance, the results of a New York Times/CBS News/Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday. “Likely voters” were polled in the swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and President Obama led Mitt Romney in each state — by 6 points in Ohio and Florida and by 11 points in Pennsylvania. President Obama carried all three states in the last election and needs them in this one. Encouraging for him, right?

But let’s dig in a bit and look at some of the variables that could weigh on those results.

First, there are the quirks that always exist. It’s August and many voters aren’t intensely focused on the election yet. Sixty percent or less in each state say that they are paying a lot of attention to the presidential campaign at this point, and these are states that have been soaked in ads and visited often by the candidates. (On Wednesday, Obama made his 25th trip to Ohio since becoming president.)

People also tend to overstate their intention to vote. Many national and state polls show that more than three quarters of respondents say they will definitely vote in upcoming presidential elections. This is a major component of the way pollsters determine “likely voters.” But that level of voting is not supported by historical patterns. According to the United States Elections Project, the turnout rate for the voting-eligible population in Florida in 2008 was just 67 percent, in Ohio it was 68 percent and in Pennsylvania it was 64 percent.  So many of those who say that they are definitely going to vote actually won’t.

Then there are the new voter restrictions that are likely to trim the voter rolls and add tremendous voter confusion.

Pennsylvania has passed a highly restrictive photo ID requirement for its voters. A study conducted by professors from the University of Washington and the University of New Mexico found that more than a million registered voters in Pennsylvania and 757,325 people who voted in 2008 lack a valid ID under this scheme. More than a third of registered voters are unaware that a photo ID law even exists.

This means that a lot of people who say that they are likely to vote may not actually be eligible to vote. (Arguments in a suit contesting the Pennsylvania law are being heard this week .)

Now to Florida and Ohio: both states have cut their early voting periods. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, more than a million people who voted in Florida and Ohio in 2008 did so on days that have been eliminated.

As the Associated Press reported about the Ohio restriction in July:

The state doesn’t track its early voters by party, so the stats don’t show exactly how much Obama might have benefited from early voting in Ohio. But both parties are sure he did. An extended voting period is perceived as benefiting Democrats because it increases voting opportunities for those harder to reach for an Election Day turnout — Hispanics, blacks, new citizens and poor people.

Florida has already moved to potentially purge thousands of voters from its registration rolls. In May, The Miami Herald said of the purge:

Hispanic, Democratic and independent-minded voters are the most likely to be targeted in a state hunt to remove thousands of noncitizens from Florida’s voting rolls, a Miami Herald computer analysis of elections records has found. Whites and Republicans are disproportionately the least-likely to face the threat of removal, the analysis of a list of more than 2,600 potential noncitizens shows.

The Republican governor of Florida has also made it harder for ex-felons to vote. According to a report last month in USA Today:

The Florida Board of Executive Clemency, headed by Republican Gov. Rick Scott, reversed predecessor Republican Gov. Charlie Crist‘s policy that automatically restored voting rights to non-violent offenders upon the completion of their sentences. Ex-felons must now wait five years before applying to regain rights.

The newspaper pointed out that “the Sentencing Project, a group advocating reforms in prison and sentencing policy, says 60% of the prison system population is made up of African Americans and Latinos.” It almost goes without saying that these groups traditionally vote more Democratic.

Rolling Stone reported in May that this could disenfranchise “100,000 previously eligible ex-felons” in Florida.

It’s unclear how many voters are aware of the new rules, and whether they’d be able to vote even if they were. What is clear is that fewer Democrats say that they are paying a lot of attention to the election in these three states than Republicans, by a margin of 8 to 14 percentage points. It would stand to reason that they might also be less aware of the new laws.

This year, we may have to take the polls with an even larger grain of salt than usual. The greatest margin of uncertainty may well be caused by poll respondents who think that they will able to vote for President Obama in November, but may not be allowed to do so.

And it’s all thanks to the Great Suppression of 2012.

[Reginald Hudlin]

THE ATLANTIC:

Actual Election Fraud
Aug 9 2012, 1:29 PM ET 112

This is the sort of criminality that no voter ID law is going to prevent:


Four staffers of former U.S. Rep. Thad McCotter, R-Livonia were charged today in connection with the false nominating petitions that led to McCotter's departure from Congress...


McCotter - briefly presidential candidate in a long shot, hard-to-explain bid a year ago -- was considered a shoo-in to win his sixth two-year term in the 11th Congressional District this year, especially since it was redrawn as more friendly territory for a Republican candidate.


But then, in May, news broke that McCotter's campaign had submitted false and fraudulent petition signatures to the Secretary of State's Office in support of his re-election. Officials said the vast majority of the 1,830 signatures delivered were duplicated, some with the dates changed.


It's not that no one would ever try to steal an election. It's that it doesn't happen the way the exponents of "voter fraud" tend to think.

[Hypestyle]

McCotter is bad enough.. looks like he's going to skate while the underlings take the heat.. meanwhile, the michigan state legislature have some further antics.. fun times, this..
  

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120726/POLITICS02/207260474

http://tinyurl.com/735u2b4

Just this week, the Detroit News reported that, in the weeks after the failed presidential run, McCotter began writing a TV comedy he intended as a cathartic exercise, with him as the host of "a crude variety show cast with characters bearing the nicknames of his congressional staffers, his brother and a drunk, perverted 'Black Santa.' "

http://tinyurl.com/7vlt8s2

[Reginald Hudlin]

ADDICTING INFO:

Democratic Members Of Ohio Election Board Removed For Supporting Voter Rights

If they can’t win on merits, they’ll prevent the opposition from voting – at least that seems to be the modus operandi for the 2012 Republican Party. I present exhibit number (I’ve lost count at this point). In Ohio, the Republican Secretary of State, John Husted, suspended the Democrats from the previously bipartisan Montgomery County election board because they supported weekend voting.

Earlier, Husted cancelled weekend voting, which is a huge convenience for the working class. Dennis Lieberman and Tom Ritchie, Sr., the board’s only two Democrats, refused to vote with Husted. In turn, Husted suspended them from the board, saying in a letter, “You leave me no choice but to begin the process necessary to remove you as members of the Montgomery County Board of Elections.”

The Dayton Daily News reports:

Ohioans start voting Oct. 2 and the debate over hours for in-person absentee voting (commonly called early voting) has been gaining steam for weeks in county boards of election across the state, all of which are made up of two Democrats and two Republicans.

Four of Ohio’s largest counties – encompassing Columbus, Cleveland, Toledo and Akron – deadlocked along party lines on whether to offer evening and weekend voting hours. Husted is the tiebreaking vote, and he denied extra hours, citing counties’ budget constraints and saying there “is sufficient time already available” for absentee voting.

But those four counties traditionally vote heavily Democratic, and there is a national backlash from Democrats who said Republican-dominated counties would have more opportunity to vote than Democratic-leaning counties.



In response, Husted on Wednesday announced a schedule that all 88 counties would have to follow that included some weekday evening voting hours, but no weekend hours.

The GOP’s selection of candidates is fairly unpopular with the electorate. They are trying to buy the election through heavily funded SuperPACs, where Romney is leading Obama by about four to one, but even that is no guarantee of a win. So, in swing states, the emphasis is to prevent as many Democrats as possible from voting through voter suppression tactics such as voter IDs, requiring utility bills (many woman and young people have no utilities in their names) and changing the hours of voting and places of voting.

In Pennsylvania, GOP State House Leader, Mike Turzai, even admitted that his state’s voter suppression efforts were about electing Romney, not about some vague and undocumented notion of “voter fraud.”

In the meantime in Ohio, a hearing will take place on Monday to determine whether or not the board’s Democrats will be reinstated. The Obama administration is suing the State of Ohio over its attempts to cut the early voting period by three days.

Ohio, a nearly perpetual swing state, is no stranger to shady election tactics. As you may recall, in 2004, Ohio was the state that sealed George W. Bush’s reelection. Many claim it was through election fraud.

[Lion]

ALL RIGHT!!! YEAH!!! VOTER SUPPRESSION IN MY HOMETOWN!!!

For real, Husted is a condescending prick with a sense of entitlement from five miles away (in the same county). He knows all the people on the BOE well, so this was not only strategic but personal because they wouldn't bow down and worship his ass. It's dirty, but it doesn't surprise me at all.

All he HAD to do was break the f*cking tie. He decided to take it further.

[Reginald Hudlin]

ATLANTIC WIRE:

Boehner Says Out Loud He Hopes Blacks and Latinos 'Won't Show Up' This Election
 
Reuters  Share  Print article  Share on emailEmail article  Comments (94)  Elspeth Reeve Aug 27, 2012 House Speaker John Boehner is the most prominent Republican to admit, out loud, that his party's strategy for winning in November doesn't suppose that the GOP can win over some black and Latino voters, but hopes they won't vote at all. Boehner wasn't talking about voter I.D. laws, which are being pushed by Republicans and criticized as disenfranchising minority and poor voters, he did tell a luncheon hosted by the Christian Science Monitor in Tampa Monday that the Republican Party was counting on apathy from the Latinos and blacks who are choosing Democrats over Republicans by record margins in recent polls. As Talking Point Memo's Benjy Sarlin reports, Boehner said:

“This election is about economics… These groups have been hit the hardest. They may not show up and vote for our candidate but I’d suggest to you they won’t show up and vote for the president either.”

Perhaps he meant those groups would vote third-party, but it doesn't seem all that likely. Less prominent Republicans have made essentially the same case in other terms. Doug Priesse, chair of the Franklin County, Ohio, Republican Party, indicated restrictions on early voting hours and voter ID laws were meant to keep blacks from voting. In an email sent earlier this month to The Columbus Dispatch's Darrel Rowland, Priesse said

"I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine… Let’s be fair and reasonable."

Priesse is on the elections board and voted against keeping polls open in the weekends. In June, Pennsylvania House Republican leader Mike Turzai conceeded the point of voter ID is to help Republicans win when he said, "Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done."

[Reginald Hudlin]

NEW YORK TIMES:

August 29, 2012
‘Discriminatory Purpose’ in TexasHispanic and black voters in Texas were vindicated on Tuesday when a federal three-judge panel rejected the state’s new redistricting plans for Congressional and state legislative seats. A panel of the United States District Court in the District of Columbia properly found that the maps, based on the 2010 census, had a discriminatory purpose and effect in reducing the ability of minority voters to elect candidates they favor.

The evidence of the discrimination was stark. Almost 90 percent of the 4.3 million growth in the state’s population in the last decade came from minority residents. That growth qualified Texas for four additional Congressional seats, and it required the state to create new voting districts. Yet instead of adding districts in which minority voters could elect candidates of their choice, the Republican-controlled Legislature drew the districts in a way that reduced the number represented by members of minority groups. About some districts, the panel said, the plans maintained “the semblance of Hispanic voting power,” but the mapmakers actually diluted it.

Texas is covered under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act for its history of voting discrimination. It was in court because it had to get prior approval for any changes to its voting procedures from a federal court or the Justice Department — and it could receive permission only if it could prove that the changes would not have a discriminatory effect. The judges, sensibly, said no.

As the court’s majority opinion noted, no major surgery was performed by the lawmakers on the Congressional districts of white incumbents. But there was “unchallenged evidence” that in four minority districts, the Legislature performed surgery to cut out “economic engines” and harm the districts. In a couple of cases, the Republicans cut out the district offices of the members of Congress.

From one district in Houston, what got cut were the Astrodome, the Medical Center, Houston Baptist University and the rail line. From another in Dallas, it was the American Center where the Dallas Mavericks play basketball and the arts district, not to mention the Congressional member’s home. From a third in San Antonio, it was the Alamo and the Convention Center, which, as the court said, was “named after the incumbent’s father.”

Another federal court, in San Antonio, Tex., must decide what effect the three-judge panel’s ruling will have on this fall’s elections. Earlier this year, that court put in place interim district maps while legal challenges were being heard. It would be very difficult to alter the interim plans, which modestly improved on the Legislature’s plans, in time for the November elections.

Texas has announced that it plans to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. If the court takes the case, a critical question will be the continuing relevance and need for Section 5 preclearance for Texas, eight other states and some counties and towns with histories of severe discrimination. This case demonstrates, clearly and powerfully, that Section 5 remains essential in protecting voting rights.

[Reginald Hudlin]

HUFFINGTON POST:

Florida Voter Registration Groups Win Major Victory As Judge Prepares To Block Draconian Law
The Huffington Post  |  By Nick Wing Posted: 08/29/2012 1:52 pm Updated: 08/29/2012 1:52 pm

A federal judge on Wednesday said he was prepared to grant a permanent injunction that would block controversial restrictions on voter registration groups passed by Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) last year.

Federal Judge Robert L. Hinkle had earlier put a temporary hold on the measure, declaring that it put "harsh and impractical" restrictions on civic groups focused on registering new voters. In his latest order, Hinkle stated that he intends to permanently block the law, pending the case's dismissal from a Court of Appeals. The plaintiffs and the state of Florida have reportedly agreed not to appeal Hinkle's ruling.

“This order is a decisive victory for Florida voters,” said Lee Rowland of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, one of the attorneys who argued the case for the plaintiffs, in a statement. “The Florida legislature has tried repeatedly to stifle access to voter registration opportunities, and once again a federal court has stopped them in their tracks. We are thrilled that voter registration groups can now get back to what they do best -- expanding our democracy.”

The Florida Times-Union reported earlier this week that voter registration groups had largely shut down their operations in the wake of the new strictures, a trend that has done serious damage to registration trends of Democratic voters.

According to the Times-Union's review of state records, in the lead-up to elections in 2004 and 2008, the 13-month period between July 1 and August 1 of election year showed an average increase in registered Democrats of 209,425 voters. Over the same time between 2011 to 2012, registered Democrats increased by only 11,365 voters. It's easily enough to swing the election.

“It has without a doubt hurt registration numbers,” said Deirdre Macnab, president of the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Florida. “It really gummed up the works and made it harder for Floridians to get registered.”

The Department of Justice has also mounted a separate challenge against Florida's new voter laws, claiming that they violate the Voting Rights Act with their new limitations on early voting and third-party voter registration groups.