Consent Decree e) deals with racially “created” (I think) districts...that is exactly why he was redistricted when the state added new districts, to meet the criteria.
The consent decree deals with RNC-initiated voter registration anti-fraud programs, and involves programs that appear targeted at minority voters. The decree doesn’t ban the RNC from doing anything. It requires pre-certification for any voter fraud programs that might aversely impact minorities.
The decree has NO RESTRICTIONS on election day poll watching programs, or post-election contestations.
BTW, the RNC has never had a program rejected in pre-clearance, because the RNC has NEVER implemented a program to have it submitted for clearance. The RNC doesn’t choose to involve itself in voter registration fraud.
Individual state groups and local groups handle this work. They are not covered by the decree (the RNC is covered even if it just works with the locals, and has to tell the locals that the RNC is covered by the decree, but the locals are not covered by it, and can spend their own money on these programs).
Anyway, my point was that we are talking about evaluating election results, and the consent decree had nothing at all to do with evaluating results, and the GOP is able to be involved, and in fact IS involved, along with some other closer races.
More generally, the blog that people keep quoting as claiming that THIS is why the democrats steal elections was poorly researched, and had both faulty facts and faulty conclusions.
For example, it claimed that Romney was leading in polls in Virginia, FLorida, Colorado and Michigan before the election — but Obama was leading in three of those states. It claimed that some places had 140% turnout, because it mistook a column on a report that said “total ballots” for the other column that was “total counts” — and there were 2 ballots for each voter.
I know that we all were more or less hopeful that Romney would win, and took more or less encouragement from polling data, massaged by our own preconception of what the electorate would REALLY look like. But we were wrong. Nate Silver was right (50 out of 50). Intrade was right. The polls were largely correct.
It would have been a pleasant surprise if Romney had won on election night. But it wasn’t a surprise that he didn’t, not according to the state-by-state polling data.