How Many Times Do Voters Have To Pass This To Make It Law?

A 2016 article at CNN reported:

A federal appeals court Friday overturned parts of North Carolina’s 2013 voting law, including provisions that required voters to show a photo identification card, saying they were enacted “with racially discriminatory intent” in violation of the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.

“We cannot ignore the record evidence that, because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,” 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Diana Motz wrote.

This was the third federal court ruling against voter identification laws this month. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled July 20 that Texas’ voter ID law violated the Voting Rights Act, and federal judges softened a Wisconsin law on July 19.

The voters responded by passing an amendment to the North Carolina Constitution in November 2018 that required voter id.

The Carolina Journal continues the story today:

 A federal court gave North Carolinians who adopted a constitutional amendment requiring voter ID a late lump of coal.

U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Biggs and Magistrate Judge Patrick Auld issued a notice Thursday, Dec. 26, saying the court will put the law implementing the constitutional amendment on hold. They’re presiding over a lawsuit challenging the law requiring voters to present a state-approved form of identification at the polls. The court said it will issue an order next week.

…What happens next is anyone’s guess. The defendants in the lawsuit who have standing to file an appeal may choose not to, jeopardizing the voter ID requirement for the March 2020 primary.

The N.C. chapter of the NAACP filed the lawsuit a year ago, saying the 2018 implementing law was too much like earlier voter ID attempts that were ruled unconstitutional. Senate Bill 824 became law Dec. 19, 2018, over Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto.

But in its lawsuit, the NAACP didn’t include the General Assembly among the defendants, even though legislators passed the law being challenged. The only defendants are Cooper (who vetoed S.B. 824) and the members of the State Board of Elections.

Legislative leaders asked the court in January to join the lawsuit. Biggs rejected the request, saying the elections board could defend the law.

County elections boards were told Thursday the voter ID informational mailing was scrapped.

It is significant that the only defendants are Governor Cooper and the State Board of Elections. My guess is that the Governor will choose not to oppose the ruling and we will have to vote for voter id again. The legislature passed voter id laws a few years ago, and the voters amended the Constitution to require voter id last year. The court is taking away the rights of the voters and of the legislature. That should not be allowed to stand.

Exactly What Does ‘Expanding Voter Rights’ Mean?

The Washington Free Beacon posted an article today about a group called “Priorities USA” which seeks to expand voter rights. Kamala Harris’ top campaign lawyer is one of their board members. The group is planning a massive $30 million effort to “expand voter rights” leading up to the 2020 elections.

The article reports:

Priorities USA Action, a Washington, D.C.-based group that threw its weight behind Hillary Clinton throughout the 2016 presidential cycle, announced that it will put tens of millions of dollars behind an effort to “fight Republican-backed laws that restrict ballot access,” the Associated Press reports.

Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, told the AP that most of the money will go towards litigation and that the group will begin its efforts by focusing on Texas and Georgia. “We will look at where is the biggest harm being done and where our work can have the most impact,” Cecil said.

Marc Elias, a partner at the D.C. office of the Perkins Coie law firm who acted as Clinton’s top campaign lawyer, and who is now the top lawyer for the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris, quietly joined the board of Priorities USA’s nonprofit arm in early 2017 to help the group lead its voter-related efforts. Elias was brought in as the group began to shift its focus to fighting state-level voter identification laws.

It is interesting to note that one of the main people behind this effort is George Soros.

The article reports:

“We hope to see these unfair laws, which often disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in our society, repealed,” Soros told the New York Times in 2015.

Soros had identified expanding the electorate by 10 million voters at a top priority, according to hacked documents released the next year. Soros was also the first funder of a large voter mobilization effort for the 2016 elections led by a coalition of progressive organizations.

Soros was one of the top donors to Priorities USA Action throughout the presidential cycle, giving $10.5 million to the group. Soros added $5 million to Priorities during the 2018 election cycle.

Priorities USA and Elias did not respond to inquiries on Elias’s potential upcoming involvement with the multi-million-dollar campaign by press time.

Why are they fighting voter ID laws? An article I posted back in 2011 might provide a clue.

In 2011 I reported on some of the findings of True the Vote in Houston, Texas:

“Vacant lots had several voters registered on them. An eight-bed halfway house had more than 40 voters registered at its address,” Engelbrecht said. “We then decided to look at who was registering the voters.”

“Their work paid off. Two weeks ago the Harris County voter registrar took their work and the findings of his own investigation and handed them over to both the Texas secretary of state’s office and the Harris County district attorney.

“Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Sean Caddle, who formerly worked for the Service Employees International Union. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures.”

This illustrates why we need voter ID (and why the Democrats are fighting it). Every fraudulent vote cancels out the vote of a legal voter. Eliminating voter fraud is the best way to expand voter rights.

 

This Is A Problem Voter ID Will Not Solve

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about non-citizens voting in Texas.

The article reports:

Project Veritas dropped an undercover video earlier Tuesday showing election officials admitting “tons” of non-citizens are voting in Texas.

O’Keefe’s undercover video caught the attention of Texas Governor Gregg Abbott. “This will be investigated,” Abbott said of the non-citizens being encouraged to vote by election officials.

In the video, a Project Veritas undercover journalist asked a Texas election official if her “DREAMer” boyfriend can vote as long as he is registered to vote and has a driver’s license.

“Yeah okay” the election official responded.

“If he has his ID that’s all he needs. If he’s registered,” the election official said of a potential DACA voter.

“Right. It doesn’t matter that he’s not a citizen?” the PV journalist asked, adding, “I saw some mess on the internet that it’s not legal for him to vote because…”

“No. Don’t pay any attention to that. Bring him up here,” the Texas election official said.

When the Project Veritas journalist pressed the election official about her ‘DREAMer’ boyfriend and asked if there is an “issue with DACA people voting,” the election official responded, “No, you tell him no, we got a lot of ’em.”

Texas Governor Abbott said not only will he be launching an investigation into the elections officials, the illegal votes will be tossed out and lawbreakers will be prosecuted.

Unfortunately voter identification laws will not solve this problem–the young man had an ID and was registered to vote despite the fact that he was not a citizen. I am not sure if Texas has a way to track individual voters, but all votes from non-citizens should be disqualified.

Thank you, Project Veritas, for the work that you do.

Texas Wins

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about the ongoing battle to institute a voter identification law in Texas.

The article reports:

A United States District Court judge dismissed the lawsuit which challenged the Texas voter ID law, announced Attorney General Ken Paxton late Monday.

The 2017 Texas voter ID law (SB 5) cleared its final hurdle when the Fifth Circuit honored a request made last month by the opponents of the state’s voter ID law to dismiss any remaining claims since the matter was settled and there was nothing left to pursue in this case. This marked the end of seven years of litigation over the state’s attempts to enact a voter ID law.

“I’m proud of the successful fight my office waged to defend Texas’ voter ID law,” said Paxton in a prepared statement. “With this major legal victory, voter ID requirements remain in place going forward to prevent fraud and ensure that election results accurately reflect the will of Texas voters.”

The following is from a rightwinggranny article in 2010. It is the story of True the Vote and their investigation into voter fraud in Houston:

“”The first thing we started to do was look at houses with more than six voters in them” Engelbrecht (Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote) said, because those houses were the most likely to have fraudulent registrations attached to them. “Most voting districts had 1,800 if they were Republican and 2,400 of these houses if they were Democratic . . .

“”But we came across one with 24,000, and that was where we started looking.”


“Vacant lots had several voters registered on them. An eight-bed halfway house had more than 40 voters registered at its address,” Engelbrecht said. “We then decided to look at who was registering the voters.”

“Their work paid off. Two weeks ago the Harris County voter registrar took their work and the findings of his own investigation and handed them over to both the Texas secretary of state’s office and the Harris County district attorney.

“Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Sean Caddle, who formerly worked for the Service Employees International Union. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures.”

It is obvious from the above numbers that Texas has had a voter fraud problem. I suspect many other states have had similar problems. It will be interesting to see how election results change as voter fraud is cleaned up. That may be the reason some organizations are fighting so hard against voter identification laws.

The article at Breitbart concludes:

The president of the pro-voter ID Public Interest Legal Foundation, J. Christian Adams, praised the State’s work in defending the law over the years and suggests it can help prevent attacks from “external influences.”

“While the Office of the Texas Attorney General ably handled this case to protect against classic fraud, it also helped harden defenses against external influences and threats to our elections,” Adams said in a release. He challenged “well-funded” opponents of the law to instead “expend [their] resources to actually help people cast ballots.”

Breitbart Texas has reported on the growing number of voter fraud claims statewide which Paxton’s office has prosecuted, including in-person, mail-in ballot, and noncitizen voting cases. Also, the AG increasingly has assisted district attorneys in Texas counties and/or opened voter fraud investigations.

Let’s work together to make our elections more honest.

Supporting Election Fraud

On October 21, Judicial Watch posted an article about a preemptive strike on North Carolina’s requirement for voter identification in the 2016 election.

The article obtained a copy of a letter from a lawyer for the State of North Carolina to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The article reports:

…a speaker at a recent NAACP conference in North Carolina urged audience members to mislead the NAACP’s own members into believing they do not need to register to vote in advance, or that they do not need to vote at their assigned polling place. Why?  The letter alleges: To create confusion and animosity during the upcoming mid-term elections in North Carolina, and to use the evidence of that confusion in the ongoing litigation between Eric Holder’s Justice Department and North Carolina and to show that North Carolina’s election integrity laws are discriminatory. From the letter:

It is also our understanding that during the [NAACP conference], Rev. Barber urged those in attendance to take unregistered voters to vote during the Early Voting period and to engage in get-out-the vote activities that included transporting registered voters to vote in precincts in which they are not assigned to vote on Election Day, or words to that effect. The stated purpose for these activities, as I understand it, was to gather evidence for and thereby enhance plaintiffs prospects of success in the litigation involving [North Carolina’s Election Integrity Laws].

Why are liberal groups fighting so hard against laws that guarantee the integrity of the vote?

The article at Judicial Watch details past and present actions on behalf of voter integrity in North Carolina:

Judicial Watch has been actively involved in this sprawling North Carolina election litigation for the past two years. Judicial Watch has filed two amicus briefs in this case, one in 2013 and one in 2014, supporting North Carolina and election integrity. On both occasions, we were joined in our brief by our partner the Allied Educational Foundation and by local political activist Christina Merrill.  We also gave oral arguments and submitted an expert witness report to the trial court explaining that no one is harmed by these election integrity laws, but rather, these laws prevent fraud and ensure all Americans are confident that election results are fair and honest.

If true, the fact that the NAACP’s leaders appear willing to risk the confusion and disenfranchisement of their own members in order to deceive a Court about common sense election integrity laws speaks volumes about the intellectual bankruptcy of the left’s arguments.  The left’s weak arguments also explain why the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 7 to 2 vote, recently overruled the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’ temporary injunction and held that North Carolina’s laws comply with federal law and should be used during the November 2014 election.  The litigation between North Carolina and the DOJ is expected to proceed further in 2015.

North Carolina’s voter identification law is supposed to be in effect for the 2016 presidential election. It will be interesting to see how much of a fight the political left is going to put up to prevent North Carolina’s voter identification law from taking effect. The law is obviously needed (see previously posted video of James O’Keefe being allowed to vote twenty different times in North Carolina). The question remains, “Why is the political left fighting to preserve voter fraud?”