The Michigan Supreme Court, in a party-line vote (with Republicans in the majority), ruled today that the state's voter i.d. law was constitutional. The law was challenged on the grounds that it amounted to a constructive illegal "poll tax" because of the difficulty that many poor and elderly (and, not coincidentally, Democratic-leaning) voters might have in obtaining suitable identification.

As a matter of constitutional law, the state is only allowed to impose a restriction on voting, such as Michigan's i.d. requirement, if there is a "compelling state interest" in requiring voters to show identification. That "interest," in this case, is the potential for vote-fraud -- a largely Republican concoction that has been shown to be largely non-existent by various studies.

As dissapointing as the ruling itself is the fact that it came down in a party-line vote, with Republican judges finding the i.d. requirement legal, and Democrats finding it illegal. While elections are inherently political, politics has no place in election ADMINISTRATION. Since the Supreme Court split along ideological lines in Bush v. Gore in 2000, the debate surrounding how this country can best conduct elections has been a partisan one, causing the public's confidence in the electoral process to dwindle.

The Supreme Court will rule definitively on voter identification at some point soon...hopefully they will rule the right way, finding that voter i.d. laws supress more votes than they protect. However they rule, let's hope it's not a 5-4 decision split along ideological lines.

Two of the biggest priorities at Common Cause are media reform and campaign finance reform. Contrary to what many people think, these two issues do not exist in a vacuum; rather, problems in each field have direct implications on problems in the other. Moreover, improvements in both campaign finance and media would have beneficial ripple effects in a host of areas.

For those of you interested in learning more about the close relationship between the media, campaign finance, and the general national conversation, Timothy A. Canova, a dean at Chapman University School of Law, has written an in-depth article that will be published in the forthcoming Nexus Journal.

In "Campaign Finance, Iron Triangles & The Decline of American Political Discourse," Dean Canova provides a readable account of the manner in which the shortcomings in campaign finance and the media contribute to shortcomings in a host of other areas, such as public schools, healthcare, and corporate governance.

To read the article, click here and download it. Below is from the abstract:

Several weeks back, embattled Justice Department official Bradley Schlozman testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he engaged in no partisanship in his role overseeing career attorneys at the department or when he was U.S. Attorney in Missouri.

Several days later, I wrote that Schlozman should be indicted for perjury when it became apparent that he lied about the role partisanship played in his handling of his duties as U.S. Attorney.

Today, I renew that call for perjury indictments, as the Washington Post reported on its front page that Schlozman was also lying to the Committee about how partisan he was in his job overseeing U.S. Attorneys at the DoJ.

You might recall the post-election controversy last November where Democrat Christine Jennings lost a Florida House race to Republican Vern Buchanan by 369 votes in an election where approximately 18,000 votes in Democratic-leaning Sarasota County were "missing."

What do you mean "missing"? you might ask. After today, we will probably never know. A three judge panel ruled today that Ms. Jennings will not be allowed to review the programming source code of the paperless electronic voting that "lost" the votes. Such codes, the the trial and appeals court ruled, should remain secret to protect the machine company's patented code.

I wrote last week about a Justice Department official testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Committee's ongoing investigation of the politicization of the Justice Department.

At the hearing, DOJ official Bradley Schlozman testified at least ten times that, when he was a U.S. Attorney in Missouri, he was "directed" by the Justice Department's Office of Public Integrity to charge four members of a liberal voter-registration group with election fraud mere days before the 2006 elections, despite the fact that Department guidelines mandate such charges be brought after the election (the suit was later dismissed by a judge due to a lack of evidence).

Almost certain that such testimony was false, and that Schlozman himself chose to file the charges for political purposes, I opined later that day that the testimony "...should result in perjury charges against the man."

Mr. Shlozman probably reached the same conslusion, and today issued a "clarification" of his testimony (i.e., complete and utter reversal of his testimony). In this "clarification," Schlozman says:

Last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it does not violate Free Speech to limit the amount that a college student can spend on an election for student-body president.

For 35 years, the University of Montana student-government has limited the amount that students can spend to $100. Despite the fact that limiting the amount a candidate running for federal office can spend on his campaign violates freedom of speech, the 9th Circuit court found that this rule does not apply to STUDENT-elections.

In explaining its reasoning, the court had this to say:

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the ongoing investigation of U.S. Attorneys being fired for political reasons. (For video clips and a nice summary of the hearing, see here). Current Justice Department official Bradley Scholzman's testimony has been widely criticized in the past 24 hours (see here, here, here, and here), and should result in perjury charges againt the man. Prior to the 2004 election, Scholzman - then a DOJ official in Washington - encouraged U.S. Attorneys across the country to prosecute more "election fraud" cases. These charges are mostly bogus, and often result in poor and minority (and Democratic-leaning) citizens being denied the right to vote.

In early 2006, well aware of the importance that elections in Missouri later that year would have in regards to which party controlled Congress, the U.S. Attorney in that state, Todd Graves (who also testified yesterday...more on that below), was asked to resign. In stepped none other that Republican hack Bradley Scholzman to take over the job.

An interesting macro-level legal comment on the Jefferson indictment. -Josh

I wrote last week about the ongoing case involving bribery allegations against Louisiana Democrat William Jefferson. In the piece, I mentioned the potential Catch-22 in the case: If Jefferson is indicted based on evidence obtained in an FBI raid of his Capitol Hill office, that could encroach upon separation of powers (in that the FBI, a department of the executive branch, would be able to peruse internal documents of members of the legislative branch charged with acting as a "check" on executive overreach); if separation of powers are preserved and evidence from the raid is not used in the case, however, Jefferson might get away scot-free.

Monday, however, Jefferson was indicted, despite the fact that a Washington, D.C. Appeals Court had yet to rule on the constitutionality of the controversial FBI raid of the Congressman's office, and whether that raid in fact violated the doctrine of separation of powers.