This week in the War on Voting: Medgar Evers honored

This is normally the spot to keep track of the latest Republican efforts to keep Americans from voting for Democrats by keeping them from voting. There's some of that bad news to talk about, but there's also some good news from earlier this month.

In an honor bestowed on only a handful of individuals, the United States Navy selected NAACP civil and voting rights icon Medgar Evers as the namesake of their newest ship. Christened in San Diego, California on November 12 by his widow Myrlie Evers-Williams, the USNS Medgar Evers (T-AKE 13) will serve as a supply ship for the Navy starting in the first quarter of 2012.

"I am just so honored for Medgar and all of the other people who gave their lives in the civil rights movement, particularly those in Mississippi. In my humble estimation, very few of them have received rightful acknowledgment of their contributions," remarked Evers-Williams. "He was a man who did believe in this country, and he believed in his people. He wanted things to be just and fair, and he was willing to work for that."

That work, unbelievably, unfortunately, isn't done yet. But the fight is well-engaged.

In other news:

• Ohio Democrats have filed enough signatures to put House Bill 194, a repeal of a new election law on that ballot next November. Gov. Kasich's new law shortens the state's early voting period, bans in-person early voting on Sundays, and prohibits boards of election from mailing absentee ballot requests to voters. Because the referendum will be on the ballot, the new law is suspended, and won't be in effect for 2012's election.
• This is also good.

  UW-Madison has solved its ID crisis.

  University officials announced Monday the school will issue identification cards for voting purposes only to those students who do not already have valid Wisconsin IDs. It will cost an estimated $100,000 over five years.

  Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican legislature passed a strict voter ID law that would have disenfranchised many Wisconsin students. UW-Madison, at least, has figured out how to keep its students from being disenfranchised.

• And finally, just because it's pathetic, former Rep. (and rejected governor candidate) Artur Davis (D-AL) is at it again. He was last seen editorializing about rampant voter fraud the African-American community, charges for which he offered no evidence. And he's still charging fraud in his community, and still providing no evidence.

  He tells the Daily Caller:"What I have seen in my state, in my region, is the the most aggressive practitioners of voter-fraud are local machines who are tied lock, stock and barrel to the special interests in their communities—the landfills, the casino operators—and they're cooking the [ballot] boxes on election day, they're manufacturing absentee ballots, they're voting [in the names of] people named Donald Duck, because they want to control politics and thwart progress."

  Let's see some proof, or at least some names, Mr. Davis, as to voter fraud actually happening today in significant numbers aside from absentee voter fraud, which is the main source of voter fraud but one about which voter identification laws do nothing.

  Or, Davis is still full of sour grapes because he lost in the primary for the governor's seat and hasn't gotten over it yet.