In his victory speech on election night, President Obama noted the lines that voters faced and observed “we have to fix that.” With some people forced to wait up to seven hours just to vote, legislators and advocates are exploring an array of possible changes aimed at improving the way elections are run. And as several states reduced early voting availability, adopted strict voter photo ID laws, made registration more difficult, long lines were hardly the only form of voter suppression at play in this year’s elections.

A new Penn Schoen Berland poll of 2012 voters, conducted for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, finds broad support for election reforms. 50 percent of voters say they strongly support establishing national standards such as standardizing the hours polls are open, who is eligible to vote, and the design of ballots. Another 38 percent of voters said they were somewhat supportive. Just 12 percent said they were not very supportive or not at all supportive of such a proposal.

At least three bills have been proposed so far on this topic:

1. The Voter Empowerment Act of 2012. Offered by Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) in the House and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in the Senate, this bill would make an array of changes to the election system. Among the reforms would be national rules allowing online voter registration and same-day voter registration, automatically restoring the right to vote for felons after they serve their sentences, prohibiting elections supervisors from participating in political campaigns, and setting national standards for voting machines. The proposal, introduced earlier this year, has 140 House co-sponsors and four Senate co-sponsors — none are Republicans.

2. The Louis L. Redding Fair, Accurate, Secure and Timely (FAST) Voting Act of 2012. Offered by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) this week, the bill would reward states that make voting faster and more accessible with federal challenge grants. The grants would be available to states offering same-day registration, ample early voting, and no-excuse absentee voting. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) has introduced a House version. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI) have signed on as co-sponsors. This approach would be a carrot to encourage reforms, but would still leave the decision to the states.

3. The Streamlining and Improving Methods at Polling Locations and Early (SIMPLE) Voting Act. Offered by Rep. George Miller (D-CA) this week, would require all states to provide at least 15 days of early voting for federal elections and to ensure each voting precinct has sufficient poll workers and machines to prevent lines from ever exceeding one hour.

In addition to these bills, law professor and prominent election law blogger Rick Hasen has proposed a blue-ribbon commission on long election lines and advocates a neutral federal elections board. “Nationalize our elections,” he says, “and impose professional nonpartisan administrators. A neutral election board with its allegiance to the integrity of the voting process rather than to a political party should take on the basic tasks of voting.” Tom Perez , the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, is also exploring “national standards for counting provisional ballots for federal elections, to ensure that voters are not disenfranchised by moves close to an election, by appearing at the wrong polling place, or by simple poll workers’ errors.”

In Florida, where lines were among the longest, Gov. Rick Scott (R) and Democratic legislators are also considering state reforms.

In the first nine months of 2012, the NYPD stopped almost 400,000 New Yorkers in its aggressive stop-and-frisk program, or 1,400 every day. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, this number actually represents a 30 percent drop compared to 2011, though police continue to disproportionately target minorities with equally poor results:

The latest stop-and-frisk report shows that the NYPD stopped and interrogated New Yorkers 105,988 times between July 1 and Sept. 30. About 84 percent of those encounters did not result in arrests or tickets. About 87 percent of those stopped were black or Latino. Whites were around 10 percent of people stopped.

NYPD uses vague criteria, often stopping people for displaying “furtive movement,” and overwhelmingly targets young black and Latino men. For example, although they account for 4.7 percent of NYC’s population, young black and Latino men accounted for 41.6 percent of the stops in 2011. And the program has failed to get guns off the streets. Homicides have dropped 20.5 percent to a record low, but police rarely find a gun.

NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program has a 90 percent failure rate, says NYCLU’s Donna Lieberman. “The drop in stop-and-frisks coupled with the drop in gun violence contradicts the NYPD’s narrative that stopping and frisking every person of color in sight is necessary to reduce crime in New York City,” she said.

The following is the first in a series of posts about the annual meeting of the GOP’s most influential legal group.

No organization did more to shape our federal judiciary than the conservative Federalist Society. President George W. Bush raided their membership to identify his nominees to the federal bench. Their annual lawyers’ convention this week features 18 federal judges — plus Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito. In the same year that President Bush headlined their convention, four sitting Supreme Court justices also delivered remarks.

And the Federalists are not simply the breeding ground for new Republican judges, they are also the incubator of the conservative movement’s plans to rewrite the Constitution in the GOP’s image. In 2009 the Federalists published a white paper attacking the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act that was largely ignored by reputable scholars because its arguments were terrible. Three years later, the Supreme Court came within a hair of taking health care away from tens of millions of Americans using reasoning similar to the Federalist Society’s paper.

So when a legal argument — even a bad one — is featured in a Society publication or at their national convention, the whole country should take heed. The misreading of the Constitution floated by the Federalists today is likely to wind up in an opinion by Justice Scalia tomorrow.

The Federalists picked an inauspicious moment for their annual lawyers’ convention this year — barely a week after President Obama vanquished a man who would have passed out even more black robes to their membership. So there was no lack of bitterness at their meeting this week. When one of the liberal speakers the Federalists invite as sparring partners for their conservative Illuminati suggested that state lawmakers should work with the federal government to provide health care for the least fortunate, an audience member audibly called out “she’s a fascist.”

The biggest loser in last week’s election was probably the religious right, however, which not only saw their hated president reelected but also witnessed what is likely the beginning of the end of anti-gay discrimination by American governments. So the convention’s panel yesterday morning on “The Future of Religious Liberty” opened with a barbaric yawp at social conservatives’ recent defeat. George Mason law Professor Helen Alvaré, a speaker who literally travels the globe speaking out against the dangers of “sexual expression by empowered women,” opened the panel by complaining about how President Obama’s reelection campaign convinced the nation that the religious right’s priorities are anti-woman — “women were invited to vote as if their ladyparts depended on it, but the last time I checked . . . Christians are not looking to excise those.”

Yet sitting just a few feet away from Alvaré was conservative scholar Michael Uhlmann, who suggested during the panel that current law, which exempts religious employers from parts of federal anti-discrimination law, should go much farther and exempt many for-profit companies as well. After the panel, ThinkProgress spoke with Uhlmann to give him a chance to clarify what he meant by his claim that far more companies should be able to ignore laws banning discrimination in the workplace. His response did far more to justify fears that conservatives desire a war on women than anything President Obama said during the campaign:

MILLHISER: The Catholic Church has a First Amendment right to say “we will not hire women for certain positions.” If I start an HVAC company, I do not have a right to say I will not hire a woman.

UHLMANN: Maybe not. Maybe, maybe not.

MILLHISER: Do you think I should [have the right to not hire a woman]?

UHLMANN: Presumptively, yeah. Why not? If, in fact, as it appears to be in the case of Hercules or Hobby Lobby, these are in fact rather religiously-devoted people that are running these enterprises.

To be fair to Uhlmann, he was unwilling to say that employers absolutely have a right to refuse to hire women — only that they “presumptively” have that right — but his proposed rule would, at the very least, require women unjustly fired for being women to jump over some very high legal hurdles before they could get their job back.

If the Federalist Society does not want people to think conservatives are anti-women, they should stop promoting speakers and policies that are anti-women. A good start would be disavowing the idea that companies have a constitutional right to fire someone for having a vagina.

A week after the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio survived a reelection campaign that spotlighted his flagrant anti-Latino practices and misuse of government funds, the Maricopa County enforcer is back to work making “every effort” to target undocumented immigrants.

In a press release issued by his office yesterday, Arpaio touted several recent operations to chase down ”suspected illegal aliens” that involved violence, injuries and some smuggled marijuana. And he is pledging to escalate this effort by arming all of his deputies with automatic weapons:

During one of the investigations on Wednesday of this week, Sheriff’s deputies tried to approach a vehicle they had observed at a high rate of speed, when the vehicle sped away, going off road driving through a barb-wire fence into the desert. The suspect vehicle sustained damage to include flat tires but continued to drive for about one mile before eight occupants, including the driver, fled on foot into the thick brush. Immediately deputies created a perimeter and with the use of the Sheriff’s helicopter and K-9 units, they located one suspect hiding in a backyard of a residence and all others hiding in a wash. [...]

Sheriff Joe Arpaio says, “Once again the entry into Maricopa County from Mexico by illegal aliens does not seem to have subsided by evidence of numerous arrests made by my deputies. Aside from their determination to get away we will continue to make every effort to pursue and apprehend human smugglers as well as drug traffickers. More and more illegal aliens are attempting to escape which places my deputies in dangerous positions. In the near future I will be issuing automatic weapons for all my deputies”.

Setting aside the savage tone of the press release, Arpaio’s boast of expending vast county police resources to chase down individuals in the desert is misplaced at best. While Arpaio continues to “make every effort” to snag these individuals through violent means, less local police resources are available for addressing violent and property crimes. Instead, he is increasing the risk of violence going forward by pledging to arm all of his deputies with automatic weapons.

What’s more, Arpaio’s aggressive efforts put him and his department at risk of becoming the target of yet another lawsuit. This past June, the U.S. Supreme Court made clear in striking down many of the most controversial provisions of Arizona’s immigration law that immigration enforcement is primarily the purview of the federal government. While the court left in place one controversial provisions that requires police to ask individuals about their immigration status pursuant to an otherwise lawful police stop, the five-justice majority left the door wide open for a later lawsuit challenging improper enforcement of this provision once the law went into effect.

[h/t @TedHesson]

Following a presidential election in which Latino voters overwhelmingly voted to re-elect President Obama, lawmakers have had a renewed interest in reaching a comprehensive immigration plan. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said he is “confident that the president, myself, others can find the common ground to take care of this issue once and for all,” and even conservative radio host Sean Hannity said he now supports a “pathway to citizenship.”

The Daily Caller published early details of the GOP’s proposal: the ACHIEVE Act, a GOP-backed alternative to the DREAM Act that Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) office says is based on “a working draft of what Sen. Rubio began working on over the summer.” Rubio had floated the idea of a Republican alternative to the DREAM Act last spring but dropped his plan after Obama announced his directive to provide deportation deferrals for young undocumented immigrants.

The ACHIEVE Act that is reportedly being floated by congressional Republicans is little more than a watered-down version of the 10-year-old DREAM Act without a clear path to citizenship:

Essentially, the proposal involves several tiers: W-1 visa status would allow an immigrant to attend college or serve in the military (they have six years to get a degree). After doing so, they would be eligible to apply for a four-year nonimmigrant work visa (also can be used for graduate degrees.)

Next, applicants would be eligible to apply for a permanent visa (no welfare benefits.) Finally, after a set number of years, citizenship “could follow…”

This complicated measure would add several more hoops that undocumented immigrants would have to jump through before they could possibly qualify for citizenship in an undetermined number of years rather than providing a straightforward plan to help the largest number of DREAMers. Each year, about 65,000 undocumented immigrants graduate from high school in the U.S. with uncertain futures because of their legal status, and Rubio’s proposal would do little to offer them certainty.

Even though Rubio said Thursday that he thinks Congress first should pass some version of the DREAM Act to help young undocumented immigrants who want to go to college or serve in the military before considering comprehensive, a wide majority of Americans say they want Congress to come up with an immigration reform plan that includes a clear path to citizenship. The ACHIEVE Act would not accomplish this.

Instead of debating weaker versions of the DREAM Act that would limit the number of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., Republicans would support the original bipartisan DREAM Act plan if they were serious about offering a path to citizenship for undocumented students. The immigration measure could add $329 billion and 1.4 million jobs to the U.S. economy by 2030.

But even better than the DREAM Act, though, would be for Congress to craft an immigration reform measure that would offer a path to citizenship that includes all undocumented immigrants, not a small portion of the population.

Our guest blogger is Billy Corriher, associate director of research for Legal Progress.

Spending on television ads for this year’s state supreme court races reached a record high of nearly $28 million, according to Justice at Stake. The race for the Ohio Supreme Court was one of the most expensive, with candidates reporting more than $2 million in campaign contributions and undisclosed millions in independent spending. One candidate in that race, however, refused to accept campaign cash and ran on a platform of cleaning up the state’s judicial elections. Judge Bill O’Neill won a seat on the high court with the campaign slogan, “Money and Judges Don’t Mix.”

This message, which criticized incumbent justices for accepting campaign cash from parties and attorneys before the court, did not sit well with the Ohio State Bar Association. The bar association called on O’Neill to refrain from making “statements that impugn the court’s integrity and imply that justice is for sale.” The legal industry has traditionally been the largest source of campaign contributions for high court candidates.

In an interview with ThinkProgress, O’Neill responded, “I am not implying that justice is for sale. I am stating it as a matter of fact.” As an example, O’Neill points to campaign cash from power company First Energy, which recently contributed to two justices while it had a case before the court. “If that’s not an attempt to buy the court, I don’t know what is,” he said.

The Center for American Progress issued a report in August on corporate interest groups influencing the law through campaign contributions. The report found that the high courts which have seen the most campaign cash, including the Ohio Supreme Court, are more likely to favor corporate defendants over individual plaintiffs. A 2006 New York Times article studied the correlation between campaign donations and the Ohio Supreme Court’s rulings, and it found that the justices voted for their contributors in 70% of the cases studied.