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Washington Moves Voting-Registration Bill
by Michael Martinez
Lawmakers in Washington this week sent a measure to Gov. Christine Gregoire that would allow residents to register to vote online.
After the state House easily passed the bill last month, the state Senate cleared it Monday on a 30-17 vote. The bill would make Washington only the second state to allow online voter registration, after Arizona.
Under the measure, H.B. 1528, anyone with a valid Washington driver's license or state identification card could register to vote electronically through the secretary of state's Web site. The state would have to keep an electronic copy of each registration application on file.
Democratic state Rep. Sam Hunt, the author of the bill, has described it as mechanism to make the democratic process more accessible to military families or students who live away from jurisdictions where they need to register.
"More and more people today, especially students, are doing everything online," he said in a statement. "Why not add registering to vote to that list?"
The management of Washington's voter-registration database has been a touchy issue recently. Secretary of State Sam Reed last year announced that more than 55,000 names were purged from the registry after investigators ran a search for duplicate entries and dead voters.
The Brennan Center of Justice at New York University's law school, along with a coalition of community and voting rights groups, filed a lawsuit in Washington to block the implementation of the state's database-matching rules. Those guidelines require entries on voter rolls to correspond with those managed in other states.
A settlement of that suit was reached last month. Under the terms of the deal, the state will have to provisionally register each voter whose application was rejected because their information did not match properly with that in other databases. But ballots for those voters will not be counted until they provide proper identification information.
Michigan's 'IPod' Plan Raises Questions
A pair of Michigan Democrats who are pushing a proposal to buy every student in the state the iPod digital music device made by Apple Inc. flew to California this year on a trip that was at least partly paid for by the company.
The Detroit Free Press reported this week that Reps. Andy Dillon and Matt Gillard visited Apple offices in California. Gillard told the newspaper that Apple paid for at least part of the trip.
In a statement, Dillon defended the plan to spend about $38 million on iPods and other digital music players for students, and said several other lawmakers made the trip to California. The proposal has been sharply criticized by those who believe the state's budget is too tight for it.
"I have four children, and I see how powerful technology is in their learning experience," he said. "While I believe that moving our classrooms into the 21st century is critical to the future of our children and this state, I fully understand that unless and until we solve the state's fiscal crisis we cannot pursue this initiative."
Gillard said the visit to Apple's offices was only a part of the trip the lawmakers made to California. He also noted that the proposal calls for several types of technologies to be deployed in classrooms, not just iPods. "I don't know that it has to be iPod-specific technology," he said.
Apple did not provide comment in the story.
GOP Senators Remove Colorado Seal From Site
Republicans in the Colorado Senate removed the state seal from their Web site this week amid criticism about a controversial GOP operative's involvement with it.
The Rocky Mountain News reported this week that the senators removed the seal in response to criticism about the partisan activities of one of the site's creators, political consultant Brad Jones.
Republican Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany told the newspaper that the party also removed a line about the site being hosted by Jones' company because Jones is "doing some blatantly partisan things."
Jones made headlines this past month when he posted to his personal Web log e-mails in which Democratic state Rep. Michael Merrifield blasted supporters of the state's charter school system. Merrifield since has relinquished his chairmanship of the state House Education Committee.
State Senate Republicans have denied accusations that Jones conspired with them to obtain Merrifield's e-mails and smear him. McElhany said Jones was paid $2,700 from private funds to build and host a site for state Senate Republicans. But he said that Jones had no editorial authority for content that was posted to it, and that Jones was operating independently when he posted the Merrifield e-mails to his own blog.
The seal was removed from the Senate Republican's site after Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman reminded lawmakers that it is illegal to use the seal for anything but official state documents, McElhany said.
Web-Based Lenders Must Satisfy W.Va. Subpoenas
A court in West Virginia this week granted a request by state Attorney General Darrell McGraw to enforce subpoenas against a group of companies he believes sidestepped usury laws by offering consumers short-term loans and cash advances over the Internet.
The Circuit Court of Kanawha County ordered 10 Internet "payday" lenders to comply with subpoenas. They demand information about the companies' businesses and order the firms to stop making and collecting loans in his state.
McGraw launched an investigation into the lenders in 2005 to explore complaints that they were charging consumers loan rates up to 44 percent higher than what is allowable in West Virginia. His office already has reached settlements with 17 companies targeted by the probe that canceled debts accumulated by more than 1,500 consumers.
"As for the others, my office will continue to take whatever legal measures are necessary against them until all unlawful Internet payday lending in West Virginia has been halted," McGraw said in a statement.
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