[b]March 3 Neal Knox Update[/b]

The Senate will again take up
election law reform tomorrow, with Republicans continuing to
filibuster the bill.  A Friday vote to end debate -- "invoke cloture" --
was 11 votes short of the 60 necessary.

    The bill, S. 565, is the product of the election problems in
the last Presidential election.  While making it more likely that
"every vote is counted," it also makes it more difficult to cast a
fraudulent vote -- or it did.

    Our old nemesis Sen. Charles Schumer, who had helped broker a
reasonable compromise in December, threw a monkey wrench into the
anti-fraud provisions he helped write by eliminating the need for
voters to produce a picture identification document the first time
they vote by mail.   (No I.D. is required for subsequent mail votes.)

    Schumer's amendment allows the first time mail voter to be
identified simply by matching the signature on the ballot to the
signature on the mail-in registration form -- allowing crooked
voters to be registered and vote under as many names as they like.
The Washington Post thinks it a fine amendment.

    According to Friday's Wall Street Journal, the main objections
to the reform bill's December language came from the NAACP and La
Raza -- the black and hispanic organizations representing groups
most often accused of voter fraud in recent years.

    Majority Leader Tom Daschle says that if the Schumer-amended
bill doesn't pass next week it will kill the bill "for the
foreseeable future."