Free Republic

The Democratic Party's top election lawyer was sanctioned by a federal appeals court Friday for intentionally drawing out a Texas election dispute. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Perkins Coie lawyer Marc Elias "unreasonably and vexatiously" drew out a legal challenge to Texas's ban on straight-ticket voting, which lets a voter cast a ballot for every candidate of a particular party with a single mark. Elias is a longtime Democratic legal hand who represents political entities like the Democratic National Committee and served as chief campaign counsel for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and John Kerry in 2004. Elias...

The Texas Democratic Party filed a lawsuit Thursday to block a state law that will end straight-ticket voting beginning with the general election in November. The federal lawsuit, filed in Laredo, argues that the law “will be a disaster for Texas elections,” worsening waiting times at polling sites and disproportionately affecting Latino and African American voters, who tend to live in urban areas with long ballots that require more time to fill out. “As a result, already lengthy polling-place lines will grow,” the suit says... ...More Democrats than Republicans tend to vote by straight ticket in the state’s larger counties......

One of every three Iowans – 37 percent – voted a straight-party ticket in the 2014 general election, statistics the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office compiled for the first time revealed. Expect those results to be part of another bid in the 2015 Legislature to eliminate straight-ticket voting, the practice that allows voters to fill one oval on the ballot for all of the candidates in one political party. State Rep. Peter Cownie, R-West Des Moines, said this week he has filed another attempt to pass the straight-ticket ban in the upcoming session. “This is one area where, if we...