On August 16, a new lawsuit was filed against Georgia’s law, requiring that voters at the polls show a government Photo-ID in order to vote. Young v Billups, 4:07-cv-163-HLM. Here is the complaint. The plaintiffs, two individuals who do not possess any such ID, and who cannot easily obtain a free state ID because of difficulty in traveling to the government office that furnishes such ID, first attempted to intervene in an older federal lawsuit on the same issue. However, the judge ruled that it was too late for them to intervene. Therefore, they filed their own lawsuit. The original federal lawsuit has a hearing in federal court in Rome, Georgia, on August 22. The original case is Common Cause v Billups, 4:05-cv-201.

Rockthedebates now has video clips of these 7 major party presidential candidates responding to the question about whether they would participate in more inclusive general election presidential debates. See here for the clips with Democrats Obama, Clinton and Richardson, and Republicans Romney, Tancredo, Huckabee, and Brownback.

The California legislature re-convenes on Monday, August 20. Interesting election laws somewhat likely to pass in the next 30 days are: SB 37, the National Popular Vote Plan for presidential elections; SB 439, which would legalize write-ins when the voter forgets to “x” the box next to the name written in; AB 1294 and AB 1662, expanding use of ranked-choice voting; and SB 408, which restricts who may circulate an initiative petition.