On Monday, the Pew Center on the States hosted an election post-mortem conference to discuss voting issues. During one panel focused on the long lines and voting difficulties many Americans faced this election, Republican campaign consultant Scott Tranter laughed off the idea that bipartisan support for election reform could ever be achieved. Tranter noted that, as campaign staffers, “we want to do everything we can to help our sides,” even when that means longer lines or voter ID laws:

I don’t hold out any hope that there’s going to be any grand bipartisan agreement on voter ID laws, or you know, Internet voting or whatever it may be to alleviate some of these problems, because at the end of the day, a lot of us are campaign professionals and we want to do everything we can to help our sides. Sometimes we think that’s voter ID, sometimes we think that’s longer lines, whatever it may be.

Watch it:

Tranter, whose data consulting company was hired by Mitt Romney’s campaign, conceded that he believed elections officials needed to be better prepared to minimize problems, and suggested he supports more polling locations per precincts. Still, his unguarded remark revealed that GOP campaign staffers think of voter ID laws and longer lines as simply a component in campaign strategy.

Tranter’s comments fall in line with admissions made by other Republicans that their motives for pushing new election laws are less than pristine. Florida Republicans recently conceded that new changes to election laws, which led to 6-hour lines at the polls, were intended to suppress Democratic and minority votes. Even earlier in the election cycle, Pennsylvania House Leader Mike Turzai (R-PA) championed the state’s voter ID law because it was “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.” The voter ID law was invalidated for the 2012 election, and Governor Romney did not win the state.

Watch the full clip at C-SPAN.

An immigration advocacy organization and other groups are challenging the constitutionality of a new Montana law that requires people to provide proof of citizenship before receiving state services or benefits. It allows state agencies to deny undocumented immigrants as well as anyone else without the proper documentation the ability to attend a state college, register for a professional license, access services for victims of crimes, or receive certain benefits for people with physical disabilities.

The Montana Immigrant Justice Alliance filed the lawsuit along with the state’s largest union and Alisha Blair, a 22-year-old Montana resident who was born in Canada to a mother who’s a Canadian citizen and a father who is a U.S. citizen. According to the Independent Record, Blair was accepted to the University of Montana, but the college denied her financial aid because she did not have proof of U.S. citizenship even though she is a U.S. citizen and has lived in Montana since she was 1 year old. She said she didn’t attend college because she couldn’t afford the tuition.

In 2011, a similar bill failed in the Montana legislature before the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. David Howard (R), submitted the citizenship measure as a legislative referendum. After the legislature passed it, the bill went to the voters as a ballot referendum. Eighty percent of Montana voters approved of the measure in November. As a result, “the law now places the burden on the average Montanan to prove that they are here legally, or they will be denied state services,” the Montana Immigrant Justice Alliance said in a press release.

The constitutional case for marriage equality is simple and straightforward. Under our Constitution, all people are entitled to the “equal protection of the laws,” and that includes gay couples. Moreover, under well-established Supreme Court precedent, minority groups that possess a common trait that they have no control over and who have historically been subject to irrational discrimination are entitled to heightened protection. This is why some of the most conservative judges in the country held the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.

The opinion the Supreme Court ultimately hands down in June, however, could be anything but simple. On Friday, the Supreme Court did not simply agree to hear arguments on whether DOMA and California’s Proposition 8 are constitutional, they also announced that they are uncertain whether they are even allowed to consider these cases in the first place. This announcement, in addition to a looming issue raised by a lower court, could lead the Court to turn the law into a sloppy mess.

Retroactive Vetoes:

Last year, the California Supreme Court held that the state’s governor and attorney general could not, acting without anyone else’s support, effectively kill a ballot initiative by refusing to defend it on appeal after a trial court struck it down. The Supreme Court revived a similar issue in both the Prop 8 and the DOMA cases — whether the justices are allowed to hear these appeals in light of the fact that neither the California government nor the U.S. Department of Justice will defend marriage discrimination. In DOJ’s absence, the mantle of defending discrimination has fallen on House Republicans.

If the justices decide they cannot hear the Prop 8 case, the almost certain impact is that the lower court’s order striking down the anti-gay ballot initiative would stand, and marriage equality would be restored in California. As explained below, things get quite a bit more complicated if the justices decide they cannot resolve the DOMA case, but at least some gay couples would escape the grip of federal marriage discrimination if the Court reaches this conclusion.

Nevertheless, progressives should not celebrate such an outcome. As the lawsuits challenging the Affordable Care Act proved, it is not difficult for conservatives to find purely ideological judges willing to reach any number of indefensible outcomes. The law’s best defense against lawless judges is the appeals process. If the justices allow that appeals process to be cut short if the government refuses to defend a law — an outcome Obama Justice Department has actively tried to avoid in this case — then there is little preventing a future president from killing anything from Medicare to the Affordable Care Act by finding a trial judge willing to strike the law and then refusing to defend it.

Mass Confusion

If the justices decide they lack jurisdiction to hear the DOMA appeal, things could get ugly fast. The First and Second Circuit courts, which together encompass New York and New England, both held DOMA unconstitutional, but most Americans live in a circuit where the courts have not resolved this question.

Striking DOMA only in a few states would not simply deny same-sex couples their basic constitutional rights, it would also be an administrative nightmare. A married same-sex couple that lives in New York would be taxed as a married couple, but what about a similar couple that lives in Maryland? If the New York couple winters in Florida, are they taxed as married or single people? What if they move permanently to Florida half way through the year? If the military transfers a lesbian officer and her wife from a station in New York to one in Kentucky, does the officer’s wife lose her health benefits? Does a wealthy businessman’s husband lose his estate tax exemption if their spouse dies on a trip outside the First or Second Circuit?

It is possible that the First or Second Circuit could attempt to enjoin the entire federal government from enforcing DOMA — but it is not clear this order would apply nationwide. According to Brian Wolfman, an expert on federal jurisdiction with the Georgetown University Law Center, the Reagan Administration routinely used “non-acquiescence rulings” to avoid paying disability benefits in jurisdictions where their policies had not yet been struck down. President Obama might willingly comply with a nationwide order halting DOMA, but a future president may openly defy it.

Looming Tentherism

In an otherwise excellent opinion striking down DOMA, the First Circuit also invoked an odd states-rights argument similar to one conservatives have used to attack Medicaid — essentially arguing that DOMA stands on weaker constitutional footing because it might impact state lawmakers’ decision-making. It is possible that conservative justices such as Anthony Kennedy or even Clarence Thomas could attempt to use an opinion striking DOMA as a vehicle to undermine the safety net. Simply put, the wealthiest, most powerful nation that ever existed should not have to choose between the blessings of equality and the promise that no American will die because they cannot afford health care. A justice like Kennedy, however, who has both favored gay rights and opposed access to health care, may see things differently.

Earlier today, the Michigan House passed a so-called “right-to-work” law. The anti-union legislation, which permits workers to benefit from the high salaries gained through collective bargaining without contributing to the union that negotiates those higher salaries for them, will cost both union and non-union workers an estimated $1,500 a year in wages, in addition to costing thousands of Michiganders health benefits and pensions.

Anti-union lawmakers attached a budget appropriation to the bill in order to thwart efforts to repeal it by referendum — the Michigan Constitution provides that “[t]he power of referendum does not extend to acts making appropriations for state institutions or to meet deficiencies in state funds.” This is not the end of the story, however. Under that same constitution, Michigan voters may still restore the lost wages and collective bargaining power denied by this bill through a state ballot initiative:

The people reserve to themselves the power to propose laws and to enact and reject laws, called the initiative, and the power to approve or reject laws enacted by the legislature, called the referendum. The power of initiative extends only to laws which the legislature may enact under this constitution. The power of referendum does not extend to acts making appropriations for state institutions or to meet deficiencies in state funds and must be invoked in the manner prescribed by law within 90 days following the final adjournment of the legislative session at which the law was enacted. To invoke the initiative or referendum, petitions signed by a number of registered electors, not less than eight percent for initiative and five percent for referendum of the total vote cast for all candidates for governor at the last preceding general election at which a governor was elected shall be required.

No law as to which the power of referendum properly has been invoked shall be effective thereafter unless approved by a majority of the electors voting thereon at the next general election.

By attaching the appropriations provision to the anti-union bill, its supporters accomplished two things: they increased the number of signatures necessary to place it before the voters, and they guaranteed that, if enacted, it will be in effect at least until it can be repealed in the next general election. Nevertheless, Michigan voters are far from powerless. In the last Michigan gubernatorial election, voters cast a total of 3,226,088 votes. So workers and their allies will need to collect just under 260,000 signatures to place a repeal initiative on the ballot.

A new study by Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board, the non-partisan board that oversees the state’s elections, suggests a proposal to eliminate the state’s vaunted same-day voter registration system would carry a massive price tag. The plan — proposed by members of the Republican majorities in the state legislature and backed by Gov. Scott Walker (R) — would initially cost approximately $5.2 million and would not reduce the workload for local clerks, the report found.

The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel notes:

Wisconsin has allowed people to register at the polls since 1976. Because of the state law allowing election-day registration, Wisconsin is exempt from aspects of the federal Motor Voter Act of 1993 and the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002. Eliminating election-day registration would make those provisions kick in and require people to be given voter registration forms at Division of Motor Vehicles offices and public assistance offices.

Even if lawmakers repeal the election-day registration law, those who moved within the same jurisdiction between elections would still be able to update their voter registrations at the polls under federal law. Federal law would also require Wisconsin clerks to keep names on their poll lists for longer periods of time. Removing voters from the list would be a more costly, cumbersome process that would require sending mail to all voters in an effort to weed out those who have moved, died or otherwise should come off the rolls.

Under the current system, Wisconsin has one of the highest voter participation rates in the country. But beyond suppressing voter turnout, elimination of same-day voter registration would mean millions in new costs for a state that, according to Walker, required a massive “budget repair bill” in 2011 to cut $1.25 billion in aid to education and local governments.

Local clerks and citizens groups have strongly opposed the proposed change. Among those who took advantage of the state’s same-day voter registration last month was Walker’s own son, whom Walker personally accompanied to the polls.

A high-level executive at the nation’s second-largest private prison corporation testified under oath that it would not be wrong to give false testimony to a federal agency, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a video recently posted on YouTube. The testimony came in a case alleging that GEO Group Senior Vice President of Project Development Thomas Wierdsma threatened to use his position at GEO to have his then daughter-in-law’s immigration status investigated by ICE if she spoke out about domestic abuse.

ATTORNEY: You would agree it would be wrong to give false testimony against somebody, correct?

WIERDSMA: Um [long pause]. Yes.

ATTORNEY: Similarly, would it be wrong to give false testimony to a federal agency?

WIERDSMA: No, not at all. Happens all the time.

Watch it:

GEO runs more than 100 prison facilities around the world, and cites ICE as its largest client. Since this testimony, his former daughter-in-law, Beatrix Szeremi, won a $1.2 million jury award (later reduced by a judge) in her case against Wierdsma and his son alleging witness tampering, intimidation, and retaliation. Szeremi’s complaint said Wierdsma had engaged in “attempts to trigger a sham deportation proceeding… designed by him to interfere with her ability to testify against his son” about his attempts to beat, drown and choke her. An email quoted in the complaint from Wierdsma to Szeremi, who is a permanent legal resident born in Hungaria, says:

I understand that you currently have no plans to move out of our home. I will be copying the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement with this and other information. As you know, I funded the legal work and processing fees for you to become a citizen, but am now disappointed in your actions which now require legal proceedings.

Wierdsma continues in his capacity at GEO as a senior vice president. GEO Group and its subsidiary GEO Care have faced fines for “serious shortcomings in patient care” at its mental health facilities and has been the subject of numerous reports of juvenile abuse, deaths, and riots. A federal judge even found that the group had “allowed a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions to germinate, the sum of which places the offenders at substantial ongoing risk” at a juvenile detention facility.

[h/t Technorati]

In a Princeton University speech Monday, Justice Antonin Scalia defended his opposition to LGBT equality and his previous comments equating homosexuality with murder and bestiality.

When asked by openly gay Princeton freshman Duncan Hosie about his anti-LGBT comments, the senior Associate Justice on the high court stood by his logic as “reduction to the absurd.”

The Associated Press reports:

“It’s a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the ‘reduction to the absurd,’” Scalia told Hosie of San Francisco during the question-and-answer period. “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?”

Scalia said he is not equating sodomy with murder but drawing a parallel between the bans on both.

Then he deadpanned: “I’m surprised you aren’t persuaded.”

Scalia defended his extreme rhetoric, noting “I don’t think it’s necessary, but I think it’s effective,” and told the audience that legislatures have the right to ban that which they believe immoral. He also dismissed the importance of the Bill of Rights as an “afterthought,” compared to the U.S. Constitution’s overall structure, observing, “Every tinhorned dictator in the world has a bill of rights.”

Scalia will be required to “faithfully and impartially” consider two same-sex marriage cases this term.