The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing yesterday regarding S.1945, a bill that would amend the Voting Rights Act in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder. In that case, the Court held Section Five of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, a section that subjected many Southern states to prescreening by the Justice Department on legislation relevant to voting rights.

According to numerous reports yesterday and the days before voter intimidation was going to occur in yesterday’s Mississippi primary because of a conservative group’s poll watching program.  MSNBC, the New York Times and even liberal election blog sites were filled with rhetoric of how “voters are going to be reminded of the state’s violent racist past.”  Medgar Evers name came up multiple times yesterday and typical of the rhetoric on MSNBC was the statement that it is “unconscionable to send poll watchers” as poll watching is “about keeping black voters from potentially voting.”

Today, the small election law community is going crazy over the Republican Senate runoff in Mississippi.  Unlike the rest of the political world that is concerned with the result, the liberal election law community is concerned with intimidation in the Republican primary.

An Alabama grand jury indicted the girlfriend of Dothan commissioner Amos Newsome on 23 counts of vote fraud in the campaign to re-elect Newsome last August. After absentee ballots favored Newsome by a 119-5 margin, his opponent filed a complaint, because Newsome won by only 14 votes. Prompted by the wide discrepancy, the county sheriff conducted a thorough investigation over several weeks, interviewing more than 100 witnesses.

Newly chosen House Majority Whip Steve Scalise vehemently defends the First Amendment, despite Senate Democrat’s efforts to repeal a portion of the Bill of Rights. Before his promotion to Majority Whip, Scalise presented House Resolution 621 with co-sponsor Texas Congressman Ted Poe. The resolution is a direct response to the proposed Political Equality Amendment Senate Democrats are pushing which would remove political speech from First Amendment protection.

Successful Plaintiff Shaun McCutcheon participated in a panel discussionat the Cato Institute Wednesday to discuss the practical implications his case involving federal campaign donations. The 2013 Supreme Court decision in McCutcheon v. FEC eliminated aggregate limits restricting how much money a donor may contribute to federal candidates.

Hans von Spakovsky of The Heritage Foundation has co-authored a book with National Review Columnist John Fund entitled Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department. The book is a careful examination of the Holder Justice Department’s egregious violations of the law and relentless pursuit of the Obama political agenda.

A Texas judge has invalidated a city commissioner election as the result of vote fraud. The judge called for a new election after, “Lupe Rivera won the election against Letty Lopez by 16 votes.” Lopez contested the results of the November 2013 election and claimed that 44 votes were illegally cast.

"Do you believe in the Easter Bunny? Do you believe in Santa Claus? Do you believe that Lois Lerner's emails just suddenly went poof?" Those are the words of CNN’s John King stating his skepticism of recent claims by the IRS that all e-mails sent to and from disgraced IRS official Lois Lerner between January 2009 and April 2011 were deleted as the result of a “computer crash.”

In response to the Democrat’s proposed Political Equality Amendment, Republican Congressman Steve Scalise is proposing a House Resolution in support of the First Amendment. As Harry Reid and Senate Democrats aim to cull free political speech out from First Amendment protection, Congressman Scalise seeks to reaffirm the nation’s commitment to these protections.