Two weeks after Barack Obama and Sen.-elect Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) carried the state of Wisconsin with the support of minorities and young voters, Gov. Scott Walker (R) announced one of his major policy proposals for the upcoming session: ending the state’s 40-year old law that allows citizens to register to vote on Election Day.

And with Republicans now back in control of the Wisconsin state legislature, Walker may well get his way next year.

In 2008, Wisconsin enjoyed the second highest turnout of any state in the nation (72.4 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot), due largely to the fact the Badger State law allows residents who aren’t registered or have recently moved to register at the polls. That year, approximately 460,000 people used Election Day Registration, 15 percent of all Wisconsinites who cast a ballot.

Walker pressed his case for ending same-day registration during a speech at the Ronald Reagan Library in California on Friday:

“States across the country that have same-day registration have real problems because the vast majority of their states have poll workers who are wonderful volunteers, who work 13 hour days and who in most cases are retirees,” Walker said. “It’s difficult for them to handle the volume of people who come at the last minute. It’d be much better if registration was done in advance of election day. It’d be easier for our clerks to handle that. All that needs to be done.“

Wisconsin was the first state to enact Election Day Registration in 1971, followed soon by states like Minnesota and Maine. Today, eleven states have laws allowing citizens to register at the polls. These states enjoy the highest turnout in the nation not by chance, but because Election Day Registration boosts turnout by 7 to 14 percentage points. In addition, studies show that minorities, poorer voters, and students benefit the most from being permitted to register on Election Day.

Republican legislators in Maine attempted a similar move last year, repealing the state’s 40-year-old Election Day Registration law. However, a citizen backlash erupted, sending the matter to a statewide referendum where voters rebuked the legislature and restored the law by a 2-to-1 margin.

The last time Walker and his Republican allies won complete control of the legislature in 2010, they immediately passed a discriminatory voter ID law that would have disenfranchised people like 84-year-old Ruthelle Frank had it not been blocked by a state judge.

Now, with Wisconsin State Republicans riding high, they appear to again be setting their sights on chipping away at voting rights.

WASHINGTON, DC — A panelist at a leading conservative conference argued last week that new anti-discrimination guidelines will actually prompt more discrimination among racist business owners.

Gail Heriot, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law and a congressional appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, spoke on Friday at a Federalist Society panel entitled “Who Benefits from Affirmative Action and Race and Gender Consciousness?” In the middle of her speech, Heriot addressed new guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission earlier this year that under Title VII of our civil rights laws, an employer may not deny a job to someone based on a past conviction that was job-related. Over 65 million Americans have a criminal conviction, and the numbers skew disproportionately toward minorities.

Heriot blasted the new guidelines because, as she argued, business owners who cannot check an applicant’s criminal background will presumptively dismiss “high risk” pools, such as black applicants for low-skilled jobs, and only hire the African American “who is the son of a dermatologist in Bethesda.”

Watch it:

In other words, Heriot argues that guidelines combating employment discrimination will actually cause employers to become more brazenly racist in their hiring patterns. The way to fight that situation, in her estimation, is not to outlaw racist hiring practices, but to ditch anti-discrimination efforts.

Full transcript below:
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California’s ballot initiative to abolish the death penalty failed in November, but executions are nonetheless effectively on hold in California, as both the state attorney general’s office and several judges have halted executions pending litigation over the state’s lethal injection process. With what they call a “mandate” from the 52 percent of Californians who voted to defeat Proposition 34, prosecutors and other death penalty proponents are now escalating their efforts to resume executions for the 14 inmates pending on death row who are eligible for execution, taking their claims to court and threatening a counter-ballot initiative in 2014. The Associated Press reports:

They’re calling for an end-run around the legal hang ups, calling for the scrapping of the three-drug lethal injection at the center of the litigation and replacing it with a single-drug execution. […]

In recent months, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley and San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe have formally asked local judges for death warrants for three death row inmates and an order to execute them with a single, lethal dose of pentobarbital, a drug previously used to euthanize animals.

But a Los Angeles judge rejected Cooley’s motion and Wagstaffe is expecting the same treatment in San Mateo Superior Court, conceding his legal maneuver to have Fairbank’s executed soon is more symbolic than realistic.

Ironically, one of the primary arguments in favor of California’s Proposition 34 was that it would save the state billions of dollars in litigation and heightened prison expenses for capital inmates. Had the state passed the ballot initiative to legalize the penalty, it would have not only insured against any more erroneous death sentences; it would have rendered this ongoing battle over methods of execution irrelevant, along with the time and expense.

The state of Massachusetts will soon allow undocumented immigrants protected under the President’s deferred action program to pay in-state tuition at public universities.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (D) will direct the Board of Higher Education to grant in-state rates to any student who has obtained a work permit, a state official told the Boston Globe over the weekend. This applies to undocumented students who were given relief from the fear of deportation earlier this year, when the President announced a deferred action program to help such young people gain the right to work.

Patrick’s directive will take effect immediately, and will drastically lower the cost of higher education for young immigrant students:

Patrick’s announcement dramatically slashes the cost of a college education for immigrants who until now had to pay out-of-state rates.

For example, the flagship University of Massachusetts Amherst costs $26,645 this year for nonresidents, compared with $13,230 for residents, while Bunker Hill Community College costs $5,640 this year for residents, compared with $13,880 for nonresidents. And Framingham State costs $8,080 for residents this year, compared with $14,160 for nonresidents.

In the past, paying for college was exceptionally hard for undocumented students, since they were ineligible for federal student loans or programs such as Pell grants. In some states, that is likely to continue: While there are 12 states that allow undocumented students to pay an in-state rate, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, and Indiana have laws that specify such immigrants are not allowed to pay an in-state rate.

Phone calls between prisoners and their families can cost as much as $17 for a 15-minute call, reaping generous profits in many states for both the phone companies that provide the service and the states, which receive what amount to legalized kickbacks. Recognizing the drastic obstacle these costs impose on children staying in touch with their parents, a bipartisan coalition launched a campaign this past Mother’s Day calling for regulation of this industry. On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission entertained these calls, announcing at a rally that it would seek public comment on prison phone rules and rates. In a scathing September report, the Prison Policy Initiative’s Drew Kukorowski explains why the industry needs regulating:

Exorbitant calling rates make the prison telephone industry one of the most lucrative businesses in the United States today. This industry is so profitable because prison phone companies have state-sanctioned monopolistic control over the state prison markets, and the government agency with authority to rein in these rates across the nation has been reluctant to offer meaningful relief.

Prison phone companies are awarded these monopolies through bidding processes in which they submit contract proposals to the state prison systems; in all but eight states, these contracts include promises to pay “commissions” — in effect, kickbacks — to states, in either the form of a percentage of revenue, a fixed up-front payment, or a combination of the two. Thus, state prison systems have no incentive to select the telephone company that offers the lowest rates; rather, correctional departments have an incentive to reap the most profit by selecting the telephone company that provides the highest commission.

The prison telephone market is structured to be exploitative because it grants monopolies to producers, and because the consumers — the incarcerated persons and their families who are actually footing the bills — have no comparable alternative ways of communicating.

As the report and other advocates have explained, these exorbitant rates that prevent regular communication not only hurt the more than 2.7 million children who have at least one parent in prison and countless other families that been torn apart by mass incarceration; they may contribute to recidivism. Repeated studies have shown that regular family contact lowers the chances of a prisoner committing a later offense.

In light of the marijuana legalization measures passed in Washington and Colorado, 18 members of Congress are asking the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration not to take enforcement action against any individual complying with state law, while two others introduced a bipartisan bill Friday to formally exempt states with marijuana laws from the federal counterpart.

In a letter to the two agencies Friday, U.S. House members from states with marijuana legalization laws, as well as civil rights champions including Reps. Bobby Scott (D-VA), John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), implored federal officials to permit states to serve as the “laboratories of democracy” and implement a drug policy that may finally eliminate disproportionate racial impact and get to the root of public health and safety problems associated with the illicit marijuana trade:

The people of Colorado and Washington have decided that marijuana ought to be regulated like alcohol, with strong and efficient regulation of production, retail sales and distribution, coupled with strict laws against underage use and driving while intoxicated. The voters chose to eliminate the illegal marijuana market controlled by cartels and criminals and recognized the disproportionate impact that marijuana has on minorities. These states have chosen to move from a drug policy that spends millions of dollars turning ordinary Americans into criminals toward one that will tightly regulate the use of marijuana while raising tax revenue to support cash-strapped state and local governments. We believe this approach embraces the goals of existing federal marijuana law: to stop international trafficking, deter domestic organized criminal organizations, stop violence associated with the drug trade and protect children.

While we recognize that other states have chosen a different path, and further understand that the federal government has an important role to play in protecting against interstate shipments of marijuana leaving Colorado and Washington, we ask that your departments take no action against anyone who acts in compliance with the laws of Colorado, Washington and any other states that choose to regulate marijuana for medicinal or personal use. The voters of these states chose, by a substantial margin, to forge a new and effective policy with respect to marijuana. The tide of public opinion is changing both at the ballot box and in state legislatures across the country. We believe that the collective judgment of voters and state lawmakers must be respected.

In the letter, the representatives criticize the DOJ for prosecuting medical marijuana dispensaries in contradiction to statements in 2009 that the Department would not prioritize enforcement of those in compliance with state laws. The Department has since fluctuated on its official policy with respect to medical marijuana prosecutions, and said after the passage of the recreational marijuana laws only that its enforcement approach would “remain unchanged.” Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has asked Attorney General Eric Holder for clarity on the federal response “as soon as possible.”

Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) (who also signed this letter) and Ron Paul (R-TX) sent a separate letter to President Obama last week, also urging the federal government to refrain from prosecution of individuals who are following their states’ marijuana law.

Meanwhile, two Colorado House members introduced a bill Friday that would exempt states with their own marijuana laws from the Controlled Substances Act’s marijuana provisions. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), who also signed onto the letter to federal officials, and Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO), who strongly opposed Colorado’s marijuana legalization law, jointly introduced the bill.