Bruce Braley is running for the Democratic nomination for US Congressman from Iowa’s 1st district, and Congressional Quarterly recently gave him a softball interview (via Drew):
CQ: Looking at your primary election, how do you feel about your position in this three-person field?
Braley: I feel very good about my position. It’s a very significant challenge — as a first-time candidate, I’ve had to work very hard to develop the resources and the name identification and the positions that will set me out from the other two candidates in the race. And I feel like over the last year we’ve made great inroads in doing that. . . .
Another news item we missed has to do with Iowa’s newer, tougher voter identity restrictions. The Register cites a NYU study to explain why up to 20% of new voters might not be able to vote on election day this year because of a law that was passed because of HAVA (The Helping America Vote Act of 2002). Here’s what the NYU study found:
Iowa’s new voter registration system is among the nation’s most restrictive and could keep as many as 20 percent of new voters from casting ballots in November, according to a national study released today.
Iowa’s requirement that new voters’ identification match exactly with government records — or be barred from voting — puts the state in league with six other states, the report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law said.
As someone whose middle name is misspelled on the voter rolls even after mailing the county the requisite correction postcard, I really hope something gets done about this before it’s too late. Especially since records “are sometimes wrong through no fault of the voter, the study’s co-author Justin Levitt said. Clerical mistakes can leave incorrect numbers in the system, or a person’s name can appear one way on a driver’s license, but differently on an application for registration after someone gets married, for instance.”
The real fun will begin when I get turned away from the polls.
We missed this column from the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier last Saturday, but then we found it. In it, Matthew Wilde (who is a staff writer, but who writes columns?) says he agrees with a bill that would impose penalties on individuals who file false environmental complaints against farms, but not before quoting opponents of the bill:
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a Des Moines-based group opposed to livestock confinements, calls the bill reprehensible and believes it puts the well being of large, corporate farmers ahead of citizens.
“The point of this legislation is obvious; it’s designed to intimidate rural Iowans who report factory farm environmental problems into silence,” said ICCI member Kurt Kesley of Iowa Falls. “… We need to start addressing the real issue — the problems factory farms are creating in our countryside.”
How does he counter this Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement organization? By attacking their unrelated beliefs:
I’ve talked with ICCI officials enough to know the group is not just out to stop large corporations like Smithfield Foods or Iowa Select Farms that raise hogs, but the use of confinements period.
So because they’re against confinements, they must not genuinely be against a law designed to discourage complaints? Such a law can’t raise pretty serious concerns?
It’s like how all of my opinions are wrong because I picked UF and Iowa to be in the Final Four this year. And let’s not pretend that Des Moines’s agriculture policy is designed to help the family farmer and not agribusiness.
The Advocate’s site features an AP story on the Iowa Senate’s debate on a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and it produced this fun little quote:
“It saddens me that Republicans have resorted to playing partisan politics with hot-button social issues rather than work to find common ground solutions to move this state forward,” said Senate Democratic Leader Michael Gronstal, of Council Bluffs. Senator David Miller, R-Fairfield, countered by saying Democrats are “stonewalling” debate on same-sex marriages.
I love it when homophobes use the word “Stonewall.” Really, it suits them. Either way, the article says that the Senate is deadlocked, and that if nothing happens now the issue won’t come up again until 2010. I’m not entirely sure why that is, but that sounds good to me. Maybe in 2010 we’ll have flying cars and everyone will be accepting of others’ differences! Maybe…
Well, this issue isn’t new (blogs have discussed it in the past, and Fallon mentioned it when he came to Grinnell last week), but the New York Times has an article today about the flaws in Iowa’s “can’t live within 2,000 feet of a school” law for sex offenders convicted of crimes involving children:
While some of the Iowa’s largest cities, like Des Moines, have become virtually off limits for those convicted of sex crimes involving children, the new rules have pushed many to live in groups away from their families, in places like the Ced-Rel, or the Red Carpet Inn in nearby Bouton, where nine offenders rent rooms.
Michele Costigan, whose driveway is right across Highway 30 from the Ced-Rel in this rural stretch just outside Cedar Rapids, said she had stopped leaving any of her four children at home alone, had told them to dial 911 if anyone they did not recognize pulled into the family driveway, and was considering moving.
“If the point of his law was to make us safer, we are not,” Ms. Costigan said.
Even more worrisome to law enforcement officials in Iowa, the restrictions appear to be leading some offenders to slip out of sight.
Of the more than 6,000 people on Iowa’s registry of sex offenders, 400 are now listed as “whereabouts unconfirmed” or living in “non-structure locations” (like tents, parking lots or rest areas). Last summer, the number was 140.
But a UPI piece (which I’m linking to through DailyIndia.com just because the fact that we get so much coverage in India is funny) has this to say:
… [S]tudies by the Colorado Department of Public Safety and the Minnesota Department of Corrections found no correlation between a predator and their living close to children.
“The bill gets sent down to my office and as I indicated I was going to sign whatever the Legislature passed,” Vilsack said from Hyderabad, India, during a telephone call with Iowa reporters.
In the interview he also explains that he’s not concerned about lawsuits from those who are hurt by the removal. Something tells me there might be a few anyway…
