Thank God.
As I pointed out a couple days ago, Bobby Orrock’s original version of HB 2642 was a monstrosity which required that anyone, who distributed a voter registration form to a citizen, register with the State Board of Elections (SBE) and provide quarterly reports to the SBE about who conducted voter registration activities and where such activities were conducted at.
Thankfully, the Elections Subcommittee of the of the Privileges and Elections Committee in the House of Delegates unanimously voted to remove that provision, along with a lot more of the bill, leaving only the requirement that registrars check the people currently on the voter rolls with those that are listed as being dead with the Social Security Administration. The subcommittee version of the bill also retains the prohibition on paying people on a per signature basis to solicit signatures on candidate forms or for voter registration forms, which was also part of Orrock’s original bill.
Nice to see that some folks in the General Assembly have some sense.
Some sense, yes, but not much.
The prohibition on payment per signature is facially unconstitutional. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a similar Ohio law as unconstitutional last year in the case Citizens for Tax Reform v. Deters.
Orrock is going to cost the taxpayers a lot of money when someone sues to overturn this law.
Unfortunately, opinions from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals don’t apply in Virginia since Virginia is part of the 4th Circuit.
Technically the decision out of OH wouldn’t necessarily apply to laws in KY, MI, or TN (the other states in the 6th) until the court heard cases from those states. Fortunately, the Constitution holds in every state, what is unconstitutional in one state is likewise unconstitutional in another. That you would defend something that has been shown to violate and restrict free speech leads me to question your motives. If the SCOTUS had any belief that the 6th’s determination that these bans are unconstitutional was flawed, they would have taken the case; their refusal to hear certiorari in that case essentially affirmed the 6th circuits decision.
You are correct in that a challenge would have to be brought through a VA court and then through the 4th Circuit. Hopefully this bill dies prior to that happening.
I was not defending the bill, I was just stating a legal fact. I also pointed out that the Supreme Court obviously agreed with the Sixth Circuit’s opinion in the matter since they denied the state of Ohio’s writ of certiorari:
https://www.imsurroundedbyidiots.com/2009/02/10/why-is-bobby-orrock-supporting-legislation-that-has-been-declared-unconsitutional-in-ohio/