The President’s reform plan hasn’t even passed yet, but right-wing state lawmakers are already trying to strip out key elements of the plan at the state level.

They’ve only managed to pass their bills in a few states like Arizona and Utah, but they’ve filed new legislation to obstruct federal health care reform in 35 states. And if reform supporters win the final showdown in Congress this week, we can expect this trend to continue.

But the stakes are just as high at the state level as they are in Congress. If Democrats fail to protect health care reform from state-level obstruction, millions of Americans who are counting on health care reform to improve -- or potentially save -- their lives will be left out in the cold:

But the $28 billion in Medicaid money is not the whole picture. These reforms will extend Medicaid coverage to nearly 8 million individuals in these states, while millions more will qualify for premium subsidies to help purchase private coverage through health insurance exchanges. This will reduce costs for employers, state governments, and insured individuals, because as these uninsured individuals and families gain coverage, the cost-shift of uncompensated care will diminish. It will also help states out because these new Medicaid eligibility levels will absorb those under 133 percent of the poverty level in state insurance programs, with full federal support for the first several years of the program.

We spend a great deal of time on this blog talking about what states are doing to reform health care. A number of states have made us proud during the last legislative session, and we expect them to continue pushing the envelope for reform, no matter what Congress decides to do.

But if we win the vote this week for health care reform, this won’t be over. The fight will just move to the state legislatures, and we predict it will be every bit as ferocious as the fight to pass the President’s health care plan in Congress.

Here at the DLCC, we’re determined to be ready.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has been heavily featured in news reports nationwide following the release of our 2010 strategic planning memorandum.

This, of course, is the final election cycle before redistricting takes place. And with November fast approaching, local and national media are starting to take notice of the DLCC’s efforts on behalf of Democratic legislative candidates.

In addition to a lengthy Associated Press article that was picked up by many of the national papers, other media outlets have begun exploring how our strategic choices will effect local races in key states like Texas, New York, Ohio, Nevada, and North Carolina.

We’ve also been the subject of at least one local TV report, by Indianapolis-based CBS affiliate WISH TV:

The DLCC recently released a 2010 campaign strategy memo discussing what’s at stake for redistricting in this year’s elections, as well as what the DLCC is doing to put Democrats in the best possible position to influence the redistricting process:

In a memo sent to Democratic leaders and activists on Monday, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee's Executive Director Michael Sargeant highlighted 15 key battlegrounds for the 2010 election and called for the establishment of a $20 million "Redistricting Fund" to help the party win those races.

"The DLCC is determined to run the largest democratic redistricting mobilization in history this year to ensure that our state legislative candidates have the resources needed to win against well-¬heeled Republican special interests," according to the memo, which was passed by a Democratic source to the Huffington Post. "To make this possible, we have established the DLCC's Redistricting Fund to deploy $20 million to races that will have the greatest impact on reapportionment."

Republicans insist the wind will be at their backs in 2010, but as DLCC Executive Director Michael Sargeant pointed out in an interview with the Associated Press, that hasn’t stopped state-level Democrats from making gains in the past:

Democrats are more optimistic about their chances in the states, noting they gained legislative seats this year in special elections in GOP-leaning areas of Virginia and Kentucky, even as approval ratings for President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress sagged.

"We've been successful at the state legislative level whether it's a good year or a bad year for Democrats nationally," said Michael Sargeant, executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

Talk of a Republican surge also ignores the fact that GOP state legislative recruiting this year has been an absolute disaster in states like West Virginia and Arkansas, both of which were supposed to be at the epicenter of the Republican “wave.”

Ever since Barack Obama won the presidency, right-wing paranoia about the Census has run rampant. But what few people realize is that Census officials themselves are equally paranoid about protecting the privacy of the information we provide. Protection begins with a 72-year seal on personal information in our Census responses:

Doris Turner, the partnership specialist for the Census Bureau serving several counties including Coweta, emphasized the confidential nature of Census form data in a recent meeting with the Coweta County Complete County[sic] Committee.

"It's sealed for 72 years," she said of the information. Census employees take an oath "that they will not divulge anybody's information," Turner said. The nondisclosure oath is for life.

The penalty for unlawful disclosure is a fine of up to $250,000 or imprisonment of up to five years, or both.

In other words, it won’t be until 2082 that historians or genealogists will be able to use Census data, for instance, to find out if I owned or rented my home this year.

In the mean time, all data released by the Census Bureau has had personally identifiable information (e.g. phone numbers, names, etc.) struck from it. But the Bureau doesn’t stop there -- it also goes to great lengths to make sure no one can reverse-engineer a way to identify anyone through the data they release. Even if it means altering entire data sets just to protect one person:

Suppose there is only one 65-year-old married woman attending college in North Dakota, and that her response was released by the Census Bureau. Then researchers would know everything else she told the agency, including, perhaps, her income and her parents' birthplace.

To protect the privacy of such unusual individuals and households, the government manipulates data, using several techniques that were described in a 2005 Census Bureau paper. Numbers are rounded, so incomes of $80,600 and $81,400 would both be recorded as $81,000. What statisticians refer to as "noise" is added to some ages—a year or two older or younger, perhaps.

Also, outlier values are averaged together, and that average is assigned to every one of those outliers. For instance, the top half-percent of earners would each be assigned the average income of that wealthy subgroup, so that, say, Warren Buffett's census questionnaire can't be identified. And people with especially unique characteristics might be moved across the country, in a kind of statistical witness protection program, so that entry for the North Dakotan woman might be changed to show her living in Alabama.

This additional “noise” is a source of constant irritation for some economists, sociologists, and other researchers using Census data in their research, but it shows just how far the Census Bureau goes protects the information it collects.

So the next time a Republican (like the commenters on the two articles cited above) tells you he’s too scared to fill out his Census form… tell him to take off the tin-foil hat.

Today is the first day that Census questionnaires begin arriving in mailboxes around the country. And since every uncounted individual costs his or her local government nearly $1,400 in lost federal funding, filling out that form is one of the simplest ways to help your community.

Additionally, for every 1 percent of American households that fill out and return their Census questionnaires by mail, taxpayers save nearly $85 million. With so much at stake in the process, top-level Census officials are pulling out all the stops to encourage Census participation, including (for the first time) a daily online report of participation rates around the country:

It also is hoping to motivate cities, counties and local communities to get involved. In 2000, both dense urban cities and sprawling rural areas -- from Alabama and California to Michigan and New York -- faced problems with an undercount, particularly in areas with larger shares of lower-income residents.

Beginning next week, the Census Bureau will publish daily real-time data on 2010 mail-back participation rates for the U.S. broken down by state, county, city and zip code. Ron Loveridge, president of the National League of Cities and the mayor of Riverside, Calif., is challenging mayors to see who can get the highest participation rate.

These data will give us the first clues about which states will struggle to earn their fair share of congressional representation and federal funding.

At at time when states are doing all they can to try to attract new industries, many policymakers are looking to the film industry as a potential force for job creation. States across the country are attempting to lure film and television production with a mix of tax cuts and other promotions.

But Florida Republicans have potentially handicapped the economic stimulus of their program with a heavy dose of conservative censorship:

Movies and TV shows with gay characters could be ineligible for a "family-friendly" tax credit in Florida under a little-noticed provision tucked into a $75 million incentive package that Republican House leaders hope will attract film and entertainment jobs to the state.

The bill would prohibit productions with "nontraditional family values" from receiving a so-called family-friendly tax credit. But it doesn't define what "nontraditional family values" are, something the bill's sponsor had a hard time doing, too.

"Think of it as like Mayberry," state Rep. Stephen Precourt, R-Orlando, said, referring to The Andy Griffith Show. "That's when I grew up — the '60s. That's what life was like. I want Florida to be known for making those kinds of movies: Disney movies for kids and all that stuff. Like it used to be, you know?"

Much of the concern for language stems from the fact that no one knows exactly what it means.

When specifically asked about potential state money for a television show with gay characters, Precourt told reporters, "That would not be the kind of thing I'd say that we want to invest public dollars in."

But other policymakers refused to go that far, and some weren't prepared to offer a definition at all.

Already members of the Florida Senate are indicating that they will not take up the 'nontraditional family values' language, leaving the proposal's future in doubt.

After defeating scandal-plagued Republican Delegate Phil Hamilton in 2009, Virginia Democrats made ethics reform a priority in the 2010 session. Yesterday, despite their minority status in the House, Democrats successfully passed an ethics overhaul authored by DLCC Finance Chairman and State House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong.

But while Armstrong is credited with writing the legislation, it was truly a team effort among House and Senate Democrats:

Armstrong, a Democrat from Henry County, said the Hamilton case demonstrated that the Assembly's self-policing system is broken and the voters expected it to be fixed.

"The next time something like that happens - and it will - we'll have a mechanism in place to deal with it," he said.

Armstrong's bill incorporated proposals from Del. Robin Abbott of Newport News, the Democrat who unseated Hamilton. She ran on a platform that included ethics reform.

"I'm very pleased" by the Senate vote, Abbott said Wednesday. "It gives us some transparency in the process, and it also provides protection against frivolous complaints. I got everything I wanted."

The vote was a vindication of sorts for Sen. Ralph Northam, a first-term Democrat from Norfolk, who sponsored a companion bill that closely tracked the Armstrong measure and was unexpectedly shelved by a House committee last week.

Senate Republicans voted en-mass for the bill on final passage, but not before trying to kill the bill on a technicality. All 18 Republicans voted for an amendment that made a “minor wording change” that did not affect the substance of the bill. Had the amendment passed, the bill would have gone back to the House of Delegates, where the Republican majority could have quietly let the measure die.

Democratic senators voted unanimously to keep the decision in the Senate’s hands, and because of their narrow majority, the bill now awaits the governor’s signature.

The Iowa and Arizona Senates both took action recently to protect their states’ citizens from domestic violence, as well as to prevent violence from escalating to tragedy.

Iowa’s SF 2357, which passed on a bipartisan 36-11 vote, takes the commonsense step of prohibiting individuals with protective orders or criminal convictions against them for domestic abuse from possessing firearms. As the Democratic Caucus explains, support for this bill is based on the facts surrounding domestic violence:

Since 1995, guns have been used in more than half of all Iowa murders involving domestic abuse. Fifty-four percent of women killed by an intimate partner were shot; 50 percent of men killed by an intimate partner were shot; and 57 percent of children and bystanders killed in domestic violence attacks were shot.

Meanwhile, Arizona Senate Democrats unanimously supported two new bills aimed at making domestic violence easier to prosecute:

SB 1087, which passed 20-8, would add homicide, manslaughter, animal cruelty and sexual assault to the list of crimes that when committed against a family member or intimate partner count as domestic violence.

Given the shameful example of Republican legislators in other states on similar issues recently, it should come as no surprise that all eight of the “no” votes on this bill were cast by Republicans and included both the Senate President and the Republican Majority Leader.

A separate bill approved on the same day would upgrade the choking of a partner to a Class 4 felony. This is an important change for policymakers fighting to end the tragic outcomes that so often follow domestic violence:

[E]xperts consider choking, which can render the victim unconscious in 10 seconds, to be a serious risk factor for escalation to homicide...

Nearly half of female homicide and attempted homicide victims were choked in the past year by their male partner, according to an article in the Journal of Emergency Medicine.

All bills now move on to their respective State Houses for consideration.

West Virginia isn’t the only state where Republicans have legislative recruiting troubles. Yesterday afternoon was the filing deadline in Arkansas, and the Republicans’ field in that state is even more of a disaster than in West Virginia.

According to the Secretary of State’s list of officially filed candidates, Arkansas Republicans largely abandoned the field in three key races:

• State House: Republicans failed to field a single candidate in 44 out of 100 State House seats. That means Democrats only have to win seven of the remaining 56 seats to guarantee a majority.
  
  

• State Senate: Arkansas Republicans also left uncontested 8 of the 17 State Senate seats up for grabs in 2010. Between these and the Republican-held seats they have to defend, it is now mathematically impossible for Republicans to win control of the chamber.
  
  

• Attorney General: One of three statewide offices Republicans failed to contest, the Attorney General race is significant because the winner sits on the three-member Board of Apportionment, which will redistrict the state legislature in 2011. Democrats are now guaranteed at least one of the three seats.

For Republicans, it's embarrassing enough that this happened in a state John McCain carried by 20 percent. But more surprising still, the GOP couldn’t even find people willing to run in seats that should be at the top of their target list.

To give just one example, we had been watching House District 21, where the incumbent Democrat announced his resignation effective June 6th. McCain earned nearly 65 percent of the two-party vote in that district, but not a single Republican candidate stepped up to run for the open seat.

We all remember the long, drawn-out recount of the 2008 Senate race in Minnesota. There were issues of signature matching, spoiled ballots, proper registration… and occasionally just the bizarre (remember ”Lizard People?”).

Overall, Minnesota’s electoral system held up quite well through the counting, recounting, and legal challenges. Nevertheless, a process that lengthy will always expose weaknesses in the system, and Minnesota Democrats are working to fix them before the next major election. They’re starting with the source of much of the contention in 2008 – absentee ballots:

Two years ago, election judges rejected about 12,000 absentee ballots, more than 2,000 of them improperly. Those rejected ballots were a major bone of contention in the recount and court case that ended in Democratic Sen. Al Franken's narrow win over Republican Norm Coleman.

The legislation would reduce the number of absentee ballots that are rejected, said Sen. Katie Sieben, DFL-Newport, the bill's Senate sponsor.

"This new system will be less prone to errors," Sieben said.

In 2008, many ballot challenges stemmed from questions about voters' signatures. The bill would replace the process of matching signatures and instead require absentee voters to provide a driver's license or state identification number, the last four digits of their Social Security number or a statement that the applicant doesn't have any of those numbers.

The bill also would shift the responsibility for counting absentee ballots from the more than 3,000 precinct election judges to "ballot boards" in cities and counties. Those boards would consist of election judges trained to handle absentee ballots.

The law also begins the absentee ballot counting process before Election Day, and it requires officials to notify voters if their ballots have been rejected, giving them an opportunity to vote again.