Center For Public Integrity: West Virginia races primed for super PAC activity
Newly created 'West Virginians for Results' has GOP connection
-By Michael Beckel
September 4, 2013- A newly created super PAC appears to have its sights set on West Virginia, a state where Republicans in 2014 hope to pick up both a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate.
A group called “West Virginians for Results” submitted paperwork to the Federal Election Commission on August 29, stating it “intends to make independent expenditures,” though it doesn’t specify in which races it plans to be active and the website it lists is not yet functional.
The address used by West Virginians for Results on its FEC filing is the Washington, D.C., office of the law firm Clark Hill PLC. The super PAC’s treasurer is listed as James “Jim” Tyrrell III, a Clark Hill attorney who did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Examiner: Jailed: GOP candidate hit with jail time for voter fraud
-By Robert Sobel
August 9, 2013- A Republican candidate who ran for a Massachusetts state House seat in 2012 has been sentenced to a year in jail after he plead guilty to voter fraud.
During the 2012 election, Jack Villamaino ran in the Republican primary for a state House seat in Massachusetts. Villamaino resigned last year as the scandal broke during the Republican primary and was the East Longmeadow Board of Selectmen chairman. Villamaino plead guilty to felony charges of stealing nearly 300 ballots and changing their party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in an attempt to win the election. Only a few days later, the same number of absentee ballot requests found their way to the town clerk’s office and the list was a “name-for-name match” compared to the list that Villamaino had changed.
Huffington Post: Republican Who Tossed Voter Registration Forms Let Off The Hook
-By Ryan J Reilly
July 18, 2013- The young Republican who grabbed national headlines after being arrested for throwing voter registration forms into a dumpster before the 2012 election won't be facing any legal consequences.
A judge in Virginia dropped several misdemeanor charges against Colin Small on Wednesday, meaning the 23-year-old will not face any penalties for discarding a number of voter registration forms. Felony charges were dropped back in April, but Small was still facing five misdemeanor counts until this week.
The Nation: Our Elections Really Are Rigged—by Gerrymandering and Districting Abuses
-By John Nichols
May 8, 2013- Mark Sanford’s comeback bid was never so audacious as America’s political gossip columnists would have us believe.
Yes, the conservative Republican once boomed as a presidential prospect, before drawing national headlines in 2009 when it turned out that he had not gone missing on the Appalachian Trail but had instead snuck off to visit a woman friend in Buenos Aires. Yes, revelations about the affair led to his resignation as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, to his being censured by the South Carolina General Assembly after a State Ethics Commission investigation into allegations that he had misused state travel funds and to his divorce from a popular South Carolina politico.
Think Progress: AG Holder: ‘We Will Not Sit By’ While Republicans Rig The Electoral College
-By Ian Millhiser
April 5, 2013- Attorney General Eric Holder has a solid record on voting rights, and he’s criticized Republican state lawmaker’s efforts to restrict the franchise in the past — at one point comparing voter ID laws to an unconstitutional poll tax. At a speech in New York yesterday, Holder added a new line to his previous attacks on voter suppression, suggesting that DOJ will respond with legal action if any Republican state lawmakers move forward with their proposals to rig the Electoral College: