As voter suppression laws spread across the country, voting rights advocates can take heart: the biggest state in the nation is on the cusp of passing a major voter protection initiative.

Election Day Registration (EDR), which allows citizens to register up to and on Election Day, passed the California State Senate today by a party-line vote of 23-13. AB 1436 had passed the State Assembly in May 47-26.

Under current law, Californians cannot register to vote in the final two weeks before an election, just as many Americans are beginning to tune in. EDR will eliminate that deadline, ensuring that no citizen is disenfranchised because he or she wasn’t registered beforehand.

This won’t just benefit slackers. Historically-disenfranchised citizens like minorities and poorer Americans, will particularly benefit from EDR. On average, studies have found that EDR boosts voter turnout by seven percentage points. Common Cause’s Phillip Ung told ThinkProgress he “expects voter turnout to increase by the hundreds of thousands” solely as a result of EDR.

Eight states currently allow their citizens to register on Election Day: Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. California is poised to become the latest, and by far the largest, state to enact EDR.

California’s version of EDR differs slightly from the way it’s employed elsewhere. Rather than allowing citizens to register at regular polling stations, as they do in Maine, for instance, California will have Election Day registration at a county registrar’s office, where citizens will be able to vote as well.

The bill now returns to the Assembly for a concurrence vote — which is all but assured of passage — due to a small change in the Senate version before reaching Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D) desk. Brown has not commented publicly on the bill, but has been very supportive of election reform efforts in the past and advocates expect he will sign the legislation.

AB 1436 also increases the fine for voter fraud to $50,000, one of the highest penalties in the country.

Assuming Brown signs the bill, it will not take effect until the next presidential election in 2016.

Indiana GOP U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock thinks that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional. We know this because there is video of Mourdock expressing his incredulity at the idea that the Constitution permits the safety net for seniors to exist — in Mourdock’s words, “I challenge you in Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution. where those so-called enumerated powers are listed, I challenge you to find words that talk about ‘Medicare’ or ‘Medicaid’ or, yes, even ‘Social Security.’”

You can watch Mourdock mock the very idea that Social Security and Medicare are constitutional here:

Naturally, a group allied with Mourdock’s opponent is now running an ad informing Indiana’s voters of his belief that Medicare and Social Security offend our nation’s most fundamental principles — and Mourdock suddenly wants to pretend that he believes something else:

Titled “Unconstitutional,” [the ad] starts with World War II-era footage, and then shows several elderly people. “They earned it,” a narrator says. “But Richard Mourdock thinks Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional.” . . .

Mourdock shot back that the ad is a Democratic effort to “buy this seat with big, out-of-state dollars and sad distortions.”

“In typical Washington fashion, this ad scares seniors by distorting the truth,” Mourdock said. “I won’t support reform that cuts entitlements for folks 55 years and older.”

For the record, Mr. Mourdock, if you don’t want to give people the impression that you want to eliminate Medicare and Social Security, you might not want to call them unconstitutional while the camera is rolling.

Tea Party activist Kerry Bentivolio, the Republican nominee to replace Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), is known for being a Santa Claus impersonator. But a Detroit Free Press examination of Michigan public records shows that during his career as an educator paints an image of an abusive school teacher who terrorized students and resigned after multiple administrative reprimands.

According to the Free Press:

On the first day of school last year, Kerry Bentivolio told students in his English class at Fowlerville High School that he had one goal: to make each one of them cry at least once.

Bentivolio, now the Republican candidate in Michigan’s 11th Congressional District — which includes western Wayne and Oakland counties — also told the students that they were “just a paycheck to me,” according to a description of incidents in his personnel file. The Free Press obtained his records under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act. Bentivolio didn’t return calls Tuesday.

Bentivolio’s declarations earned him a verbal reprimand from his assistant principal and a formal letter demanding that he correct his behavior. Nine months later, school administrators reprimanded him for intimidating and threatening students by grabbing their desks and yelling in their faces or for slamming his fists on their desks.

Bentivolio won the nomination earlier this month after McCotter was disqualified for submitting invalid ballot petitions and a write-in campaign by establishment party figures failed.

He is the latest in a growing series of embarrassments among Republican Congressional candidates and incumbents. In recent weeks, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) has come under bipartisan fire for his comments that “legitimate rape” rarely results in pregnancy, Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-KS) had to apologize for his behavior on a Congressional trip to Israel, and Reps. Vern Buchanan (R-FL), Michael Grimm (R-NY), and David Rivera (R-FL) continued to draw attention for alleged ethical scandals.

Hundreds of people gathered in Los Angeles Wednesday night to protest the apparent police beating of twenty year-old Ronald Weekley Jr., a young black skateboarder who alleges that Los Angeles police used excessive force when they caught him skateboarding on the wrong side of the street.

Weekley, who reportedly emerged from jail this week with a broken cheek bone, broken nose, and concussion, said that the experience was terrifying, and he thought the LA police might kill him:

“I thought I was going to die,” Weekley told Reuters during the protest on Wednesday. “The only thing going through my mind was that I was going to die on my front porch in front of my family and friends.”

Watch cellphone video of the alleged beating:

The young man is being represented by Benjamin Crump, the same lawyer hired by Trayvon Martin’s family. In a public statement after Weekley’s release, Crump asked, “Was he stopped because he was on the wrong side of the road, or was he attacked because he was the wrong color?”

A Republican running for county sheriff in New Hampshire is facing calls to leave the race after he suggested it is acceptable to use deadly force to stop a doctor from performing an abortion. He has since apologized for his comments, calling them “unacceptable,” but has made no indication that he will drop out.

In a local television interview, Hillsborough County sheriff candidate Frank Szabo said that he values the life of an unborn fetus so much that, when it came to elective and late-term abortions, he’d be willing to kill for it:

But Szabo may have inflamed the issue further when asked if he would use deadly force to prevent an abortion.

“I would respond specifically by saying that if someone is under threat, a full-grown human being, if they’re under threat, what should the sheriff do? Everything in their power to prevent them from being harmed,” he said.

When pressed about what he would do if he learned that a doctor was about to perform an elective abortion, Szabo replied he would do what it took to prevent that from happening.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Well, I would hope that it wouldn’t come to that, as with any situation where someone is in danger, but again, specifically talking about elective abortions and late-term abortions, that is an act that needs to be stopped.”

Watch it:

Toward the end of the interview, Szabo went on to compare abortion to slavery, saying that, in the case of abortion, much like slavery, “”There is a difference between legal and lawful.”

Sentiments like Szabo’s set a dangerous precedent. He is not alone in thinking that doctors should be blocked from providing legal abortion services — Republicans have proposed several bills that would create penalties for abortion providers — but his statements appear to a violent anger. Doctors have actually been killed, hurt, and stalked by anti-abortion advocates. Most famously, Dr. George Tiller, a late-term abortion provider from Kansas, was shot and killed while attending church services.

Among those calling on Szabo to step down is New Hampshire’s Republican House Speaker Bill O’Brien. In a release, O’Brien wrote, “It is our hope that Mr. Szabo will withdraw from this race and think long and hard about grounding himself in constitutional law and principles before considering political office in the future.”

Since he was elected in 2010, Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) has been under an ethics cloud. Already facing federal and state investigations, a new Miami Herald report suggests Rivera may have secretly made illegal cash payments to vendors for a primary candidate running against the Democratic Party’s favored candidate to oppose him in his re-election bid.

Political unknown Justin Lamar Sternad was accused of being a ringer during his failed primary campaign against Democratic nominee Joe Garcia. Now, Stenard campaign vendors say they received their payments from Rivera’s campaign.

According to the Miami Herald:

Interviews with campaign sources, invoices, campaign records and other documents show that Rivera personally and frequently called [vendor] Rapid Mail about Sternad’s mailers. During one call, Rivera directed an employee to walk outside, check the office mailbox for an envelope containing payment for one mailer, the sources said.

The envelope was stuffed with cash — $7,800.

Last week, [Rapid Mail President John] Borrero told The Herald that the Sternad campaign had paid cash for six of the cash mailers, which cost between $4,000 and $6,000 each. He said he was surprised by the amount of cash, which he sometimes may see from private clients and not usually campaigns.

In April, a Florida investigation found “possible criminal and ethical violations” by Rivera. The FBI and IRS are also reportedly investigating payments to Rivera by a gambling company. Rivera has denied wrongdoing.

These mounting allegations against Rivera come despite House Republican Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) promised “zero tolerance policy” for ethical scandals.