More than 170,000 people have been purged from New Mexico’s voter rolls — and among them are a prominent voting rights activist, as well as the wife of a Democratic state representative.

State Rep. Brian Egolf (D) told the AP that his wife received a letter saying that the state government considered her an inactive voter, and that she would need to, essentially, re-register before she could vote in the fall.

In an even more ironic move, a woman whose job is to ensure voting rights for New Mexicans was rendered an “INACTIVE” voter by the state. Diane Wood, the Voting Rights Director for Common Cause New Mexico, has been an active voter since 1971, and has dedicated her life to making sure other people have the same right.

Wood released a video expressing her disappointment:

Yesterday, I got a postcard… telling me I had to maybe confirm my address when I went to vote. I’m not even sure what I would need to confirm my address, because I’ve looked over the statute, since I do voting rights, and it doesn’t even have anything in the statute telling me how I would confirm that. I’m just shocked that I took my job to fight for other people’s right to get their vote counted, and now I’m having to fight for my own.

About 14 percent of New Mexico’s registered voters were mailed the same letter that Wood and Egolf’s wife received, because, according to New Mexico’s Secretary of State Dianna Duran, the state is required to begin the voter purge and will send the mailing to anyone whose address bounced back since 2005.

Those people will still be able to vote without verifying their information until 2014, though many may be confused by the letter, which is arriving right before the 2012 elections.

Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas continue to investigate the mysterious shooting of 21-year-old Chavis Carter, who police officers said killed himself while handcuffed in the back of a squad car. Media attention and community tensions have escalated since Carter’s death on July 28th. Early in the investigation on August 1st, Police Chief Michael Yates admitted that the alleged suicide seemed “bizarre” and “defied logic at first glance” but maintained that witnesses and a dashboard camera backed up the officers’ account. A week later, Yates seems to have doubled down, telling CNN’s Randi Kaye that, in fact, it could be “very possible” and “quite easy” for someone who is experienced with being arrested:

CNN: Is it even possible physically to be handcuffed behind your back and somehow pull the trigger on a gun that you weren’t holding when you were handcuffed?

YATES: For the average person that’s never been in handcuffs, that’s never been around inmates and people in custody would react exactly the same way that you just did, about how can that be possible. Well the fact of it is, it’s very possible and it’s quite easy.

It’s not clear how familiar Chavis Carter was with handcuffs or inmates, but the outstanding warrant that originally raised the cops’ suspicions was for a first time offense of selling marijuana.

Watch the CNN segment:

The police have said repeatedly that the dashboard camera and witnesses place the officers outside the car at the time of the shooting. But Yates told CNN that the dashboard video does not actually show the moment the gun was fired, nor does it capture Carter sitting in the back seat.

Carter’s mother says she has hired an attorney from the Johnnie Cochran law firm because police won’t tell her anything while the investigation is open. The autopsy, which could help shed light on the angle and distance at which the bullet entered Carter’s head, is expected to be released soon.

Part five of ThinkProgress’ profiles of right-wing groups that are taking advantage of the Citizens United ruling to flood the airways with independent attack ads. See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

American Future Fund is a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organization.

Founded in 2007 by Nick Ryan, a longtime aide to former George W. Bush Office of Management and Budget ex-Rep. Jim Nussle (R-IA), and a consultant for Rick Santorum’s 2012 campaign, AFF says it aims to “provide Americans with a conservative and free market viewpoint to have a mechanism to communicate and advocate on the issues that most interest and concern them.”

The group’s president, Sandra Greiner, is also a Republican Iowa state senator.

AFF’s original seed money came from Iowa ethanol executive Bruce L. Rastetter, according to the New York Times.

Sample AFF ad:

Affiliates:

• American Future Fund Political Action, a traditional PAC formed in 2008.

YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/AmericanFutureFund
Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/#%21/amfuturefund

Graphics by Adam Peck. Christina Lewis and Ellie Sandmeyer contributed to this report

Ohio has introduced a new tactic in their broader attempts to make it even harder for Democratic voters to get to the polls this year. Early voting stations in Ohio’s heavily Democratic counties will only be open between 8 am and 5 pm, while Republican counties have expanded their hours to allow voting on nights and weekends.

This rule is the latest in a broader attack on voting rights in Ohio, which often comes down to a tiny margin of votes. Ohio Republicans are currently ensconced in a legal battle with the Obama campaign over another new rule that would limit early voting in the three day period before the election exclusively to military families. Mitt Romney falsely claims Obama’s lawsuit is meant to take away voting rights from military families, when in fact he is simply trying to restore voting rights to all Ohio residents. Early voting was introduced to mitigate Ohio’s notoriously chaotic elections, in which thousands of votes are tossed due to clerical errors and bureaucratic confusion.

Starting October 1st, voters in Democrat-leaning urban centers including Cleveland, Columbus, Akron and Toledo will now only be allowed to vote between 8 am and 5 pm on weekdays, when the majority of people are at work. The board of elections in these counties, which are split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, was gridlocked over a Democratic effort to expand hours. The Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted stepped in to deny expanded hours in these counties. But Republican-heavy counties have actually expanded early voting hours on nights and weekends, when most people have time to go to the polls. The Nation reports:

According to the Board of Elections, 48% of early voters in Franklin County voted early on nights or weekends, which Republicans have curtailed. The number who voted on nights or weekends was nearly 50% in Cuyahoga County.

“I cannot create unequal access from one county board to another, and I must also keep in mind resources available to each county,” Husted said in explaining his decision to deny expanded early voting hours in heavily Democratic counties. Yet in solidly Republican counties like Warren and Butler, GOP election commissioners have approved expanded early voting hours on nights and weekends.

Besides historically favoring Democrats, these urban centers comprise Ohio’s most populous and diverse counties. 28 percent of Cuyahoga County is African American, as is 20 percent of Franklin County. President Obama won the African American vote by 95 points in Ohio.

Voters in these cities already have to surmount many challenges to get their votes counted. A recent study by the Cincinnati Enquirer found urban counties are particularly vulnerable to the clerical errors that lead to thousands of discarded ballots. An investigation into Ohio’s chaotic 2004 election by the Government Accounting Office confirmed Democratic districts’ complaints of a shortage of voting machines, along with malfunctioning equipment that incorrectly registered the voter’s choice. George W. Bush narrowly won the state, putting him over the top for a second term.

In 2010, Arizona’s voters enacted the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, which permits patients to use and clinics to provide medical cannabis without having to fear state prosecution, provided they obtain a permit from the state. The state began the process of distributing permits to clinics via lottery this week.

Yet, despite the fact that Arizona law no longer authorizes lawful marijuana dispensaries to be targeted by state officials, Attorney General Tom Horne (R-AZ) doesn’t seem to have received the memo:

Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a waiver which will allow Attorney General Tom Horne to try to close down the marijuana dispensaries that her state health department is in the process of licensing.

The move comes in the wake of Horne’s formal legal opinion that the state cannot legally permit anyone to sell marijuana, even only to those who have a doctor’s recommendation to use the drug. Horne said as long as the drug remains illegal under federal law, the state is powerless to authorize anything to the contrary.

But the governor said Thursday she does not intend to block Health Director Will Humble from continuing the process of issuing state permits. And Humble, who conducted a lottery Tuesday to see who gets to serve each of the 126 health districts in the state, said the first of those shops could be open by the end of the month.

So one state agency will continue to issue permits to dispensaries telling them they are legally authorized to distribute marijuana to patients, while another state agency has vowed to shut these dispensaries down. If nothing else, this arrangement is tremendously cruel to the people who work in these dispensaries. When a state agency issues someone a permit saying their actions will not be subject to state prosecution, the permit holder should be able to rely on that promise.

Moreover, Horne’s claim that he is required to go after state dispensaries because marijuana is illegal under federal law is questionable at best. While it is true that state laws are “preempted” by federal laws that conflict with them, a fact that Horne relies upon in his anti-dispensary memo, nothing in Arizona’s medical marijuana law presents a genuine conflict with federal law. Rather, the Arizona law ensures that dispensaries who have valid state permits will not be targeted by state officials for providing medical marijuana. If the federal government wants to bring prosecutions, that’s up to them.

Even if federal law did force Arizona to bring prosecutions against people the state does not want to prosecute — and it does not — such a law would be unconstitutional. Horne may not be aware of this fact, but the Supreme Court decided an obscure case called NFIB v. Sebelius last June which reaffirmed that “the Constitution has never been understood to confer upon Congress the ability to require the States to govern according to Congress’ instructions.” The feds do have the constitutional authority to target marijuana dispensaries, but they must use their own officials and their own resources to do so.

Of course, Horne has not hesitated to make outlandish states rights arguments in defense of Arizona’s harsh anti-immigration law or as part of an assault on the Affordable Care Act. But it’s clear now that he only believes in states rights when doing so is convenient for him. The minute Arizona’s voters passed a medical marijuana law, he suddenly believes that Arizona is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the federal government.

Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) is a magnet for ethical allegations. Most significantly, he is reportedly already under a federal grand jury investigation for allegedly accepting donations from non-U.S. citizens and donations over the legal limit, and for allegedly pressuring a New York rabbi to raise campaign funds. Grimm has denied any wrongdoing.

As that investigation proceeds, Grimm now faces new ethics allegations, this time over his repeated failure to disclose a privately funded trip to Cyprus. The New York Times reports that though Grimm did receive pre-approval for his trip from the House Ethics Committee, he neglected to file the required disclosures afterwards:

Mr. Grimm did not file required paperwork about the trip, which was paid for by a private organization, with the House clerk, according to Congressional records. Nor did he initially report the Cyprus trip on his Congressional financial disclosure filing in May, even though he did list [an] Israel trip, according to the records.

But in June, Mr. Grimm amended his financial disclosure filing to report the Cyprus trip, the records show. The amended filing came one day after his host on the trip, Peter Papanicolaou, the president of the Cyprus Federation of America, which paid for the $6,890 visit, was arrested in Brooklyn on federal corruption charges.

Despite House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) promised “zero-tolerance” policy on ethical scandals, House Republicans have taking no action against Grimm.

As the United States looks toward 2050, when people of color will make up a majority of the country’s residents, the government is changing its methods of measuring people’s racial and ethnic identities.

The Census Bureau announced yesterday that the next census will be updated to try to more accurately capture this data, adjusting the modernity and inclusiveness of its language. Particularly, it will give new options for Latinos and Middle Easterners.

The newer version of the survey will offer ‘Hispanic’ as a racial, instead of ethnic, option, and will allow for people to write in their race as Middle Eastern or North African. It will also stop using the term “Negro” and will instead give the option of Black/African-American. This change comes from an experiment on the last census — officials distributed differently-worded versions of the survey to see what kind of responses they elicited — and from focus group feedback.

Patricia Foxen, Deputy Director of Research at the National Council of La Raza, told ThinkProgress that the Census Bureau is just preparing for the eventuality that people who do not identify as white will soon be a majority of the US’s population.

“I think that [the Census bureau] is trying very, very hard to adapt to the changing demographic landscape, which is obviously getting more and more diverse, and much more complicated in terms of capturing all the different combinations,” Foxen said. “They’re making an attempt at not only doing that now, but thinking further into the future and setting up the questions so that we’re going in the right direction, and are better able to capture people of a growing range of ethnicities and races, and rapid growth in the mixed race category.”

Because the census determines federal funding allocation, it’s important to accurately capture this data, and to get the largest amount of information possible about who lives in the US.

“The main concern we have is that, if we want to reduce ethnic and racial disparities, we have to have as accurate as possible categories,” Foxen added. “If people don’t feel that their own identification and identity is being taken seriously by [the census], they’re not going to answer it in a way that very useful.”

Race will, indeed, become more complicated with the country’s shifting demographics. Recently, we reached the threshold where fewer than half of the babies born in the United States every year are white. In fact, the last census showed a huge jump in the number of interracial children — and that will rise as those children grow up and have their own families.

As that happens, the census categories will become less and less clear. People will move from checking one box to two, or three. Eventually, the labels will need to be reassessed again. For now, any changes in labels will help reflect our changing society.