Tag Archives: Voter suppression

One Vote Makes A Difference

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On Thursday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about the importance of one vote.

The article reports:

A new database created by the Public Interest Legal Foundation shows that one single vote has altered the outcome of hundreds of elections.

First, the fraud.

The Heritage Foundation has a unique Election  Fraud Database that provides a sampling of proven election crimes from across the country. So far, the Heritage database has found over 1,400 cases of proven election fraud , and new cases are constantly being added. You can search by state or type of election crime.

The documented cases include people voting for a deceased relative, voting in multiple states in the same election, casting fraudulent absentee ballots, and even foreign nationals casting ballots. There are many ways a person can engage in wrongdoing in connection with an election, hoping to affect its outcome. If you spend time perusing the data, it’s hard to argue credibly that fraud hasn’t had a role in American political history.

Remember, the Heritage database only includes cases that went to completed adjudication, such as a criminal conviction or finding of civil liability. It doesn’t document instances of fraud that were never reported by election officials to law enforcement or that were never pursued by prosecutors.

Part of the problem is that too many prosecutors don’t want to prosecute election fraud . There are numerous reasons why.

We saw this when we both worked in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice . With few exceptions, the attorneys we worked with were openly hostile toward prosecuting election fraud. Even raising the issue of election crimes was considered controversial and evidence of “discriminatory” conduct, because they falsely claimed any such prosecution is “voter suppression.” After all, The New York Times tells its loyal readers in the civil service that election fraud is a myth. Biased advocacy organizations that our colleagues admired, such as the Brennan Center, also told them that voter fraud  is a myth .

The article concludes:

The Public Interest Legal Foundation ’s Tied Election Database catalogs 589 elections that have ended in ties in the U.S. The vast majority of these elections were within the last 20 years, although this is by no means a complete or comprehensive list. This database just scratches the surface.

These tied elections illustrate that one vote, legal or illegal, can determine the winner of a race.

No one wants an illegal vote to stop the true will of the people from being heard on Election Day. We should all care whenever an election crime happens. It dilutes every single legal vote. And sometimes it can determine the winner of an election.

One illegal vote cast is too many. States must get serious about prosecuting election crimes. Otherwise, there is no deterrence to stop people from committing them.

This is a solvable problem. All we need is elected officials with the will to solve it.

Going To Jail For A Sense Of Humor

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Yesterday Fox News reported that Douglass Mackey, 33, of West Palm Beach, Florida, known as “Ricky Vaughn” on Twitter has been convicted of conspiring to deprive individuals of their right to vote in the 2016 presidential election. If he had actually done that, I guess the conviction would be valid, but that is not what was going on.

The article reports:

Mackey, who was arrested in January 2021, could face up to 10 years in prison. His sentencing is set for Aug. 16.

His lawyer, Andrew Frisch, said in an email that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan will have multiple reasons to choose from to vacate the conviction.

“We are optimistic about our chances on appeal,” Frisch said.

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a release that the jury rejected Mackey’s cynical attempt to use the First Amendment free speech protections to shield himself from criminal liability for a voter suppression scheme.

It wasn’t a voter suppression scheme–it was a joke!

The article notes:

The government alleged that from September 2016 to November 2016, Mackey conspired with several other internet influencers to spread fraudulent messages to Clinton supporters.

Prosecutors told jurors during the trial that Mackey urged supporters of then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to “vote” via text message or social media, knowing that those endorsements were not legally valid votes.

…Using social media pitches, one image encouraging phony votes utilized a font similar to one used by the Clinton campaign in authentic ads, prosecutors said. Others tried to mimic Clinton’s ads in other ways, they added.

By Election Day in 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or something similar to a text number that was spread by multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and co-conspirators, prosecutors said.

This says more about the voters than it does anything else. Common sense should tell a voter that this is not real. It is frightening to me that so many voters are so clueless about how to vote and would believe what he posted.

 

Putting An End To Urban Myths

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Every time that someone suggests a change in our voting laws that might make voter fraud more difficult, a group of people on the political left yell, “voter suppression.” One example was the Georgia law that was actually less restrictive than the voting laws in Delaware. No matter, the baseball all star game got moved.

On Tuesday, PJ Media posted an article headlined, “What Would Happen if They Held a Voter Suppression Election and No Voters Got Suppressed?” We now have the answer to that question.

The article reports:

Last January, Joe Biden set the Democratic base ablaze with the incendiary charge that Republicans were suppressing the votes of minorities.

“Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things: voter suppression and election subversion,” Biden told a crowd at Atlanta University. “It’s no longer about who gets to vote; it’s about making it harder to vote. It’s about who gets to count the vote and whether your vote counts at all.”

“It’s not hyperbole; this is a fact.”

At the time, it was a supposition, not a fact, to claim that the Republican election reforms would suppress the black vote. And as it turns out, it certainly was hyperbole. It was a supposition that was so pervasive that it forced Major League Baseball to cancel its all-star game set for Atlanta later that summer. And numerous corporations punished the state for its supposed efforts to suppress the vote.

So where does Georgia go for an apology?

The article ends with a bogus claim by Stacey Abrams:

“In 2018, we had record turnout,” Abrams said in a press conference Monday. “We had record turnout that shattered records for Democrats among communities of color and in that same election … we know that 85,000 Georgians were denied their right to vote due to voter suppression tactics that shut down their precincts. We know that 50,000 voters had their right to vote held hostage by the exact match process which was proven to be voter suppression tactics. We know that thousands of people stood in lines for hours because of voter suppression tactics.”

None of that is true, or it’s grossly exaggerated.

If there was record turnout, how was there voter suppression?

This Is Over The Top

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The New York Post reported today on some recent remarks by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

The article reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went off on President Trump and Republican lawmakers, describing them as “enemies of the state” who are trying to interfere with the election by hindering Americans’ ability to vote by mail this November.

“We take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And sadly, the domestic enemies to our voting system and honoring our Constitution are right at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with their allies in the Congress of the United States,” Pelosi said on MSNBC in an interview Monday.

The article includes the White House response:

“Her bizarre, baseless conspiracy theories are harmful to our democracy. President Trump is focused on ensuring a fair election as he continues to lead this Nation safely out of this global pandemic, bringing the country together with a message focused on American greatness and a safe and prosperous future for all,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.

Democrats have seized on a series of cost-cutting measures by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy as proof that he is trying to hobble the agency, leaving it unprepared for the expected onslaught of mail-in ballots from voters who fear catching the coronavirus if they go to the polls in person.

Trump, in a speech to delegates at the Republican National Convention following a roll call vote giving him the presidential nomination, turned the tables on Democrats and alleged that they trying to steal the election by encouraging voters to mail in their ballots.

The words of Speaker Pelosi are not helpful. I believe that she owes the President, the Republicans, and Trump voters an apology. Trying to prevent voter fraud does not make you an enemy of the state.

Preparing To Steal An Election

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There have been a number of people convicted of voter fraud since the 2016 election. Efforts to remove dead people and non-citizens from voting rolls have been consistently opposed by Democrats, claiming racism. Frankly, I don’t think dead people should vote–regardless of their race. On Friday, the Democrats in the House of Representatives passed an updated version of  H.R. 4, which will make it very difficult for states to require identification to vote or to purge their voter rolls of dead people or non-citizens.

PJ Media posted an article yesterday explaining the bill and its consequences.

The article reports:

While the country is being distracted by the Democrats’ bogus impeachment, House Democrats passed H.R. 4, the so-called Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019, on a mostly party-line vote. Democrats claim the legislation is about fighting voter suppression—because when Democrats lose elections it can only be because of voter suppression, obviously. “Action is urgently needed to combat the brazen voter suppression campaign that is spreading across America,” Nancy Pelosi claimed at a press event Friday before the bill’s passage.

The bill, if signed into law, would require states to obtain “preclearance” from the Justice Department in order to make changes to voter laws—a blatant infringement of states’ rights. Why would Democrats want such a law in place? According to House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019, “is a good step to right the wrongs that’ve dismantled the fundamental right to vote through Voter ID laws, purging voter rolls & closing majority-minority polling places.”

The article concludes:

It’s obvious what this legislation is really about. Democrats are fighting efforts to ensure the integrity of our elections. “This bill would essentially federalize state and local election laws when there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that those states or localities engaged in any discriminatory behavior when it comes to voting,” said Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.). “The Supreme Court has made clear that this type of federal control over state and local elections is unconstitutional, because Congress can only do that when there’s proof of actual discrimination, which is what this bill is supposed to be about,” he added. Collins also believes the problem Democrats claim to want to fix isn’t actually a problem. “Voting rights are protected in this country, including in my own state of Georgia, where Latino and African American voter turnout has soared. Between 2014 and 2018, voter turnout increased by double digits for both men and women in both of these communities.”

As scary as this legislation is, it won’t go anywhere in the U.S. Senate. But, make no mistake about it, Democrats oppose every attempt to ensure the integrity of our elections, and they won’t stop.

Any fraudulent vote cancels the legitimate vote of an American citizen. All of us need to protect voter integrity in our elections. H.R. 4 does not do that.

I Guess It’s Hard To Admit You Didn’t Win

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Some people just don’t know how to lose gracefully. Unfortunately, some of them are in the news on a fairly regular basis. Joseph Goebbels said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.” Right now the Democrat party is attempting to prove that theory.

The National Review posted an article today with the following headline, “The Stacey Abrams Myth Becomes the Democratic Catechism.” The article is referring to the fact that despite losing the election for Governor of Georgia, Stacey Abrams has been telling the media at every opportunity that the election was stolen from her. She cites various reasons–racism, voter suppression, etc. Well, that is simply not true, but she keeps repeating the lie.

The article reports:

The claims of voter suppression rest primarily on the fact that as Georgia secretary of state, Kemp enforced a statute passed by a Democratic-majority legislature and signed by a Democratic governor in 1997. It required the voting rolls to be periodically purged to remove names of voters who were dead, or who had moved away or were incarcerated. Under this law, 600,000 names of people who hadn’t voted in the last three elections were removed from the rolls in 2017 by Kemp’s office.

Those who were removed got prior notification in the mail about the impending purge, and they were given a menu of options to retain their registration. Moreover, it took four years to complete the process by which a name was removed. The reason so many names were taken off in 2017 was that a lawsuit by the Georgia NAACP had delayed the routine enforcement of the law for years before the organization eventually lost in the U.S. Supreme Court.

If you assume that most of the 600,000 were Democrats who were denied the right to vote — rather than voters who were deceased or who had moved or been jailed — that gives credibility to Abrams’s story. But there aren’t many people stepping forward since November 2018 to say they were wrongfully removed from the rolls, let alone the tens or hundreds of thousands necessary to substantiate Abrams’s claim that the election was stolen.

The other argument that purportedly backs up the stolen-election claim is that lengthy lines caused by the closing of 212 precincts in the state since 2012 deterred Georgia voters from turning out. But Kemp had nothing to do with that, since all decisions on consolidating voting stations were made by county officials. Which means if there were fewer precincts and longer lines in Democratic-majority counties in Georgia, it was almost certainly due to the decisions made by local Democrats, not Kemp or a national GOP conspiracy.

When examined soberly, Abrams’s claims evaporate. Kemp’s win was no landslide, but his 1.4 percent margin of victory didn’t even give her the right to demand a legal recount. Demographic changes may mean that Georgia is trending away from the red-state status it has had in the last decade, but Stacey Abrams lost because Republicans still can turn out majorities there even in years when the odds favor Democrats.

But by continuing to swear to the lie that the election was stolen, Biden, Buttigieg, and every other Democrat who repeats that claim while paying court to Abrams and hoping to win African-American votes are poisoning the well of American democracy.

What Stacey Abrams is doing is not constructive. If she wants to be Governor of Georgia, she needs to run until she wins or she gets tired of running. Meanwhile, she needs to admit that she lost and move on. Voter roles need to be purged periodically. In North Carolina, we have a number of people well over the age of 100 voting. I question that. I suspect before they purged the voter rolls, Georgia had the same situation.

Revealing Their True Motive

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For years we have been hearing the Center for American Progress say that voter ID laws are equal to voter suppression. The charge is somewhat ridiculous when you consider that the vast majority of Americans have picture ID of some sort because it is needed for so many simple things–cashing a check, entering a federal building, boarding an airplane, buying alcohol or cigarettes, opening a bank account, etc. Nevertheless, the Center for American Progress and other leftist groups claim that voter ID is voter suppression–they never mention that states that require voter ID also provide free ID cards for anyone who needs them.

Well, the motives of the Center for American Progress are showing. The Washington Times posted an article today about the Center for American Progress’s efforts to make our elections more secure.

The article reports:

After years of accusing states of “voter suppression,” the Center for American Progress wants to make it tougher for overseas military to vote in the name of election security.

The left-wing public-policy group issued Monday a report, “Election Security in All 50 States,” that called for stricter standards to prevent cyber-meddling in elections by foreign governments, including banning military stationed abroad from submitting ballots via email or fax.

One state that allows such vote-casting is Colorado. The center called on the state to “prohibit voters stationed or living overseas from returning voted ballots electronically.”

 “Regardless of the state’s secure ballot return system for electronically voted ballots, we recommend that all voted ballots be returned by mail or delivered in person,” said the 245-page report.

Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams defended the practice, saying the state has incorporated safeguards to protect the integrity of ballots cast by military personnel living overseas.

“They don’t believe someone who works on a submarine should be allowed to vote. We do,” said the Republican Williams in a statement.

The article notes:

“Perhaps they think that Navy SEALS can swim ballots ashore, hand them off to Army paratroopers who can parachute into Colorado to drop off the ballots?” asked the conservative website Colorado Peak Politics.

“You can bet that if the military historically voted Democrat instead of Republican, the Center for American Progress would not have a problem with it,” added Peak in a Monday post.

The article reminds us of some of the past activities of the Center for American Progress:

The report comes as something of a departure for the center, given its record of fighting for greater ballot access, including same-day registration and making it easier for felons to vote, and against tighter rules aimed at combating voter fraud.

Founded by former Clinton and Obama White House adviser John Podesta, who currently sits on its board, the center has opposed state efforts to require government-issued photo identification, scale back early-voting periods, and remove inactive voters from rolls.

The hypocrisy shown by the Center for American Progress is amazing.

Sometimes You Just Have To Wonder

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North Carolina recently passed some voting laws designed to prevent voter fraud. Despite what you have heard, voter fraud is a problem in America.

As I reported in 2011:

“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.”

That is just one example. I actually think 24,000 voters in one city could make a difference in the election results. That is why I believe in voter identification.

There seem to be a number of people in North Carolina protesting the new voter identification laws. Protest is their right, but one has to wonder why they would not want to be sure that only voters legally entitled to vote do so.

Yesterday ABC News (Channel 11) posted a story about the protest. It seems that many of the protesters were not from North Carolina. One man interviewed was from Boston. These are paid protesters!

The is the video posted on YouTube:

The article reports:

However, the movement’s de facto leader, NAACP head Rev. William Barber says the GOP video shows no such thing. He points out that the NAACP invited anyone who wanted to support the cause to go to Winston-Salem for that voting rights rally and says he’s not at all surprised people in other states took them up on it.

As for the GOP’s broader charge that out-of-state unions are both footing the bill and providing the foot soldiers for Moral Mondays, Barber told us he “won’t dignify the accusation.” His only comment: “I’m going to pray for them and their shameful attempt to change the subject away from voter suppression. Our fight is in the courts and with the legislature.”

The protester in the video just admitted that the unions were paying the protesters. I guess the Reverend may have missed that. As far as voter suppression goes, anytime a person who is not legally entitled to vote casts a ballot in an election, he suppresses the vote of someone who is legally entitled to vote. The voter identification law will end the current voter suppression–it will not create voter suppression.