On January 13, former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards was released from federal prison. See this story. Edwards is the person who invented the “top-two” election system. He not only persuaded the Louisiana legislature to pass the idea in 1975; he also carried on a high-powered campaign to persuade the U.S. Justice Department, Voting Rights Section, to approve the idea. The Department had previously rejected the idea when Mississippi had passed it.

Edwards believed the top-two system would make it easier for conservative Democrats to continue to win elections in Louisiana. Louisiana has been using that system for state and local elections for the past 35 years. Louisiana used it for congressional elections between 1978 and 2006, and during those years, no incumbent member of either House of Congress was ever defeated for re-election (except in 1992 when, because of redistricting, incumbents had to run against each other). Washington state started using the top-two system in 2008, and no incumbent member of Congress from that state has been defeated for re-election either, since top-two has been in effect.

The ACLU Voting Rights office is fighting in the 11th circuit for the ability of persons jailed for misdemeanors to be able to vote absentee. There is no constitutionally valid reason for any state to prevent persons convicted of misdemeanors from voting. Restrictions on voting, in all states, only involve persons convicted of felonies, not misdemeanors.

Nevertheless, a combination of Georgia laws and practices prevented some persons in jail from voting in the November 2008 election. One of them sued, but lost on a technicality in U.S. District Court in October 2010. Here is the ACLU’s opening brief in the 11th circuit. The case is Swann v Kemp, 10-14901. Georgia law protects the ability of voters who are in jail for a misdemeanor to receive absentee ballots at the jail, if their home county is a county other than where they are in jail. But if they are in jail in their home county, they can’t have an absentee ballot mailed to them at the jail. Instead, the absentee ballot can only be mailed to the prisoner’s home, and the prisoner is then dependent on having someone at the home address visit him or her and deliver the ballot. Furthermore, in this particular instance, the jail authorities did not inform the prisoners of this procedure. The U.S. District Court dismissed the case because the prisoner didn’t list the jail’s address as an alternative address on his absentee ballot application, even though even if he had, nothing would have changed, because it is against state law for the ballot to have been mailed to that jail.

Andy Jacobs, a professional petition circulator, has been arrested for collecting signatures in front of a public library in Maryland. He was working on the Green Party’s ballot access petition at the time. See this story. Because the reporter talked to an American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney, it is obvious that the ACLU knows what happened to Jacobs. Hopefully, the ACLU will help him defend himself.