The Washington Post

by Jeremy Leaming

During his early morning re-election speech, President Obama took note of the difficulties scores of voters faced in casting ballots this year, such as standing in lengthy, slow-moving lines for hours. Something we have to fix the president said. 

Many of the problems for voters this election year, as noted often on this blog, were created by lawmakers in a string of states apparently bent on making voting a more difficult procedure, though they cloaked the intentions in language about protecting the integrity of the vote. But a closer examination of the actions taken by those lawmakers – limiting early voting hours, clamping down on voter registration drives and implementing onerous voter ID requirements – revealed political efforts to keep certain people away from the polls, namely minorities, college students, low-income people and the elderly. See the ACS Issue Brief by Loyola law school professor Justin Levitt on many of the restrictive vote measures, which he concluded made for poor and potentially unconstitutional policy.

The Washington Post editorial board in “Repairing America’s elections,” highlighting voting difficulties in Northern Virginia, noted in part, “Poorly trained poll workers get confused by constantly changing laws and procedures. Voter registration and record-keeping are getting more high-tech, but there are still many kinks. Many states lack policies that could take some of the pressure off, such as early voting.”

The editorial reports that some in Congress, such as Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) are pushing a measure similar to the Obama administration’s educational “Race to the Top,” initiative. That measure, in part, would “dangle the possibility of grants to states that put together election reform programs” that include expansion of early voting and “more flexible registration rules ….”

by John Schachter

Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Richard Nixon was worse than we ever knew or imagined. That’s the key takeaway from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s latest work in The Washington Post, some 36 years after their last joint byline. And as more and more tapes get released from Nixon’s time in office, we continue to see the pettiness, meanness, and darkness that consumed him.

The intrepid reporting duo detail Nixon’s wars on many fronts – against the Democrats, the anti-war movement, the media, and history itself. But it’s Nixon’s war against the Constitution and the entire American system of justice that dominates his record.

As we approach the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s astounding re-election in 1972 (and the 38th anniversary of his resignation), the enormity of his crimes and heinous actions have only become clearer over time.

Former Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sam Ervin (D-N.C.) said Watergate was Nixon’s attempt to “destroy, insofar as the presidential election of 1972 was concerned, the integrity of the process by which the President of the United States is nominated and elected.” But Woodward and Bernstein say that “Watergate was far more than that. At its most virulent, Watergate was a brazen and daring assault, led by Nixon himself, against the heart of American democracy: the Constitution, our system of free elections, the rule of law.”