Advocacy groups who won a suspension of Pennsylvania’s voter ID requirement earlier this month have filed a motion seeking to curb Pennsylvania’s dissemination of misinformation about the photo ID law.

The motion alleges that in the wake of the court ruling that photo ID would not be required to vote Nov. 6, the state failed to inform voters of the change and instead delayed correcting information in existing ads and other materials, sent out mailings with the false indication that photo ID was required to vote, and issued new and misleading ads, such as the one below, which features an image of a photo ID with the tiny words “This election day, if you have it,” followed by the huge and capitalized phrase “Show it”:

The motion laments that the “sum total of the Commonwealth’s educational efforts to alert people that the onslaught of pre-injunction news telling voters they need ID to vote is no longer true” is to add the small lettering “if you have it” to the “Show it” campaign that was in effect before the court order.

In contrast, the state’s public information campaign prior to the court ruling was extensive, including the issuance of 11 press releases, several mailers indicating residents would not be able to vote without an ID, and regular public appearances and media commentary by public officials.

Bolstering this confusion is a mailing by the state’s largest utility to 1.3 million customers containing the outdated voter ID information. But while the mailing may have been a mistake, PECO’s spokesperson said the utility plans to continue distribution of the mailer through October 28.

The plaintiffs ask that Pennsylvania take affirmative steps to ensure voters are not deterred from going to the polls, by launching a campaign as aggressive as the one before the court ruling that includes sending corrective notices to those who received misinformation, issuing new press releases, re-wording scheduled robocalls, and immediately pulling any misleading ads.

h/t Alliance for Justice

Pennsylvania resident Colin Small was arrested Thursday after he was caught illegally destroying voter registration forms in Virginia. Smalls worked for a firm hired by the Republican Party of Virginia to register voters, but was spotted throwing away 8 voter registration forms in a dumpster on Monday, the deadline for registering to vote in Virginia.

The 31-year-old man was charged with four counts of destruction of voter registration applications, eight counts of failing to disclose voter registration applications and one count of obstruction of justice. Small was spotted by the owner of a store in Harrisonburg, Virginia, who became suspicious when he saw Small’s Pennsylvania license plate.

The Los Angeles Times has the details of the discarded forms:

Three of the voters turned out to be already registered, according to Donald Palmer, secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections. The other five were not registered, and have since been added to the voter roll. Registration closed on Monday.

In Virginia, and other states, it’s a crime to accept a voter registration form and not turn it in. Small is charged with destroying voter registration applications and obstruction of justice.

“There is no indication this activity was widespread in our jurisdiction,” said a statement from the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office. The investigation is continuing, the sheriff’s office said.

Small worked for Strategic Allied Consulting, a registration firm now being investigated for submitting fraudulent registration forms in Florida. The Republican National Committee paid more than $3 million to SAC but quickly cut ties once the fraud came to light. As for Small, Virginia Republican Chairman Pat Mullins said he was fired as soon as the allegations surfaced. RNC spokesman Sean Spicer said Small had “made a mistake” and that the RNC “fully supports” the charges against him.

Though this is now the second criminal investigation against voter registration employees hired by the Republican Party, it hasn’t halted the shady registration practices still operating in at least ten states.

Under Alabama’s harmful immigration law, applicants for professional licenses have to prove that they are either a citizen or living in the U.S. legally. In order to verify a person’s status, non-U.S. residents have to be cleared through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. State officials have asked the federal government to let the state use SAVE more widely, but federal officials have not responded and only a few of the professional licensing boards are even close to being able to use the system.

As a result, nurses and other professionals who must be licensed have to prove that they are legal residents are stuck in limbo:

Nursing board director Genell Lee said she applied for SAVE approval in October 2011, and got a letter earlier this month saying the board had been approved to use the system.

She said there’s still some paperwork to be done before the state can use the system. While she waits, Lee said, she’s been holding on to foreign nurses’ license applications.

“I’ve got a couple of applications from nurses who aren’t citizens,” she said. “I’m not permitted by law to determine whether they’re legal, so I’m waiting for SAVE.”

She said those nurses are working in other states now.

“But they want to work here,” she said.

In Georgia, applicants for professional licenses are trapped in a paperwork nightmare as well. The state’s immigration law has a similar provision to Alabama’s anti-immigrant measure that requires that anyone in Georgia who is applying for or renewing a professional license to prove they are in the U.S. legally. As a result, applications are delayed for weeks or months instead of days.

The moment President Obama took office, the NRA’s primary product became paranoid theories about how Obama plans to seize gun owners’ guns. Even after Obama served as president for nearly three full years without signing a single new gun regulation — his primary contribution to gun law is a minor bill allowing gun owners to bring loaded guns into national parks — NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre claimed that Obama’s lack of interest in guns is actually a “massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country.”

As it turns out, all this paranoia has been great for gun sales:

An analysis by The Associated Press of data tracking the health of the gun industry shows that sales are on the rise, so much so that some gun manufacturers can’t make enough weapons fast enough. Major gun company stock prices are up. The number of federally licensed, retail gun dealers is increasing for the first time in nearly 20 years. . . . The poor economy, fear of crime and military veterans returning from war who want to keep their shooting skills sharp also may be driving some gun sales. But the general view of analysts and those in the industry is that Obama is the main catalyst.

“The driver is President Obama. He’s the best thing that ever happened to the firearm industry,” said Jim Barrett, an industry analyst at C.L. King & Associates Inc. in New York. . . . For the first time since 1993, the number of federally licensed retail gun dealers in the U.S. increased slightly in 2010 and 2011, as the country added 1,167 more licensed retail gun dealers, according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives records. After the assault weapons ban in 1994, the number of gun dealerships dropped annually until 2010. As of October 2012, there were 50,812 retail gun dealers – that’s 3,303 more than in 2009.

The NRA endorsed Mitt Romney for president, despite the fact that Romney signed a permanent ban on assault rifles as governor. If they were serious about boosting gun sales, however, they’d be eager to keep the target of their paranoia campaign in the White House.

The violent crime rate jumped 17 percent between 2010 and 2011 and property crimes rose 11 percent, according to a new U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report. This was the first violent crime increase in 20 years, and the first spike in property crime in more than a decade.

Experts differ on how significant this one-year spike is, with some noting that much of the increase can be attributed to simple assaults, and that it is an increase only relative to a low crime rate the previous year. But it may be a wake-up call for anyone who thought that the United States’ exorbitant incarceration rates were keeping people safe.

To the contrary, as the Brennan Center for Justice’s Inimai Chettiar points out, they are a source of our economic woes, with $70 billion spent annually on criminal justice, and much more lost in human capital from the 3.2 million people who are incarcerated – the highest rate in the world:

You would be surprised at how many people are locked up for low-level crimes like jumping a subway turnstile, nonviolent crimes, or drug crimes. Half of those in state prisons are locked up for nonviolent crimes; half of federal prisoners committed drug crimes. This zeal to imprison people squanders human capital by removing large sectors of people from society. Many of these individuals do not pose public safety risks, but are nonetheless prevented from contributing to our job force, participating in our democracy, and advancing educationally. Often, their children—and their children’s children—face similar obstacles to participating in our country. As a result, fewer people are able to contribute to our economy, intellectual leadership, and democracy.

Law enforcement officers are increasingly acknowledging that, if anything, decriminalizing drugs like marijuana would improve public safety, by enabling agencies to allocate more resources toward violent crime, and redirecting the money now going to drug cartels back to the local economies for supportive services.

Many on the far right have been convinced to let go of the facts and embrace conspiracy theories about Barack Obama. Now, these same folks are being targeted by a scheme to convince them to let go of their cash. They are told in slick TV advertisements that their money will be used to defeat Barack Obama. But according to public disclosures little, if any of the money is being used for that purpose.

Two PACs, the Conservative Majority Fund and America’s Next Generation, purport to exist to help Mitt Romney become President. But the small contributions they aggressively seek in TV advertisements appear to primarily benefit an obscure company in Ohio. The firm, InfoCision Managment, was previously accused by Ohio’s Republican attorney general of improper fundraising for charities.

This summer, the Conservative Majority Fund PAC launched its first ad — a one-minute long laundry list of anti-Barack Obama conspiracy theories. The ad asked viewers to call a toll-free number to sign a “demand to disqualify Obama” and suggests that with 10,000 signatures from every Congressional district, they could “boot this guy off the ballot.” The group reported spending $185,663.46 — paid to a consulting firm called Take 2 Direct — for production and airing of these “independent expenditure” ads. The ads referred viewers to a website — whoisbarack.com which cites Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio as having “indisputable evidence” that the president’s birth certificate is “fraudulent.” The PAC also paid InfoCision Managment Corporation, an Akron, Ohio-based firm specializing in telemarketing, hundreds of thousands of dollars for telephone fundraising and voter contact calls opposing President Obama.

In recent weeks, it has begun running new ads — though it does not appear that the group has filed disclosures of the new ads within 24 hours as required by federal election law. One, currently in heavy rotation, asks for 10 million viewers to sign a pledge to support Romney to “deliver the knockout blow” to President Obama’s re-election. Another, run in recent weeks, asked for “30 million patriots” to call and sign a pledge. But while the ads suggest the effort is about a petition, the real goal appears to be fundraising. The website in the ads — which pressures visitors to donate “$45 or more” to “help elect Mitt Romney as the 45th President of the United States of America.” The group offers a “free” Romney bumper sticker to donors only.

Watch the ad:

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