Tag Archives: Voter ID Law

An Interesting Turn Of Events

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North Carolina residents have voted for some form of voter ID twice. Both times the courts have overturned the will of the people. The second time we voted for voter ID, the vote was for an amendment to the North Carolina Constitution that would require voter ID. The court struck that amendment down as unconstitutional. Wow. Well, on Tuesday there was some good news about the citizens of North Carolina’s quest for voter ID.

On Tuesday, The Carolina Journal reported the following:

North Carolina’s 2018 voter ID law complies with the state constitution and should survive a legal challenge. That’s according to briefs submitted in the N.C. Supreme Court from state legislative leaders and the N.C. Justice Department.

Both briefs urge the Supreme Court to reverse a trial court’s 2-1 ruling from September 2021 in the case titled Holmes v. Moore. Two Democratic judges overruled a Republican colleague in deciding that the law, originally Senate Bill 824, violated the N.C. Constitution.

“Election legislation in North Carolina is often contentious,” wrote attorney Nicole Moss, representing Republican state legislative leaders. “In the fall of 2018, the People of North Carolina — by a 55.49% to 44.51% margin — adopted a constitutional amendment requiring photo voter ID and directing the General Assembly to enact implementing legislation.”

“The General Assembly at that time could have enacted a voter-ID law without any Democratic votes or any Democratic input whatsoever,” wrote Moss, referencing Republicans’ veto-proof supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly in 2018. “But that is not what the General Assembly did with S.B. 824. Instead, the Republican supermajority worked closely with Senator Joel Ford, an African American Democrat, who co-sponsored the bill; adopted the majority of amendments offered by Democrats; obtained several Democratic votes for the bill; and otherwise engaged with Democrats every step of the way, garnering thanks even from the bill’s opponents.”

The article notes:

The state’s brief also criticizes the trial court. “Contrary to what Plaintiffs contend in their brief, throughout the trial court majority’s analysis in this case, it shifted the burden of proof to Defendants and failed to adhere to the presumption of legislative good faith,” Steed wrote.

Nothing presented during a trial showed that the ID law would block any eligible votes. “Plaintiffs failed to establish any of the Plaintiffs would be unable to vote under S.B. 824, and in fact, the evidence at trial showed they would have multiple ways to vote under S.B. 824,” Steed added. “Even more telling, … they have never identified a form of ID, or any combination of IDs for that matter, which would create a lesser disparate impact than S.B. 824.”

“In Plaintiff’s view, no form of a voter ID law, no matter how ameliorative, would ever be acceptable to them. This evinces a fundamental flaw with Plaintiffs’ position, given the legislature is under a constitutional mandate to pass a voter-ID law.”

Voter ID will not solve all of our voter integrity problems, but it is a step in the right direction.

Still Trying To Honor The Votes Of North Carolinians

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Voters in North Carolina have voted twice to require a photo id during elections. Both times the courts have told the voters ‘no.’  On July 9 WRAL posted an article detailing the latest effort by the North Carolina legislature to honor the wishes of the voters.

The article reports:

Legislative Republicans called on the courts Thursday to lift an injunction and require voter to present photo identification at the polls this November, saying a bill they passed earlier this year should satisfy the last arguments against the rule.

“It is past time for activist courts to stop blocking another commonsense elections policy that is required by North Carolina’s constitution and a strong majority of other states,” House Speaker Tim Moore said in a statement.

There are two lawsuits seeking – so far, successfully – to block the state’s voter ID requirement: one state and one federal. Republican lawmakers filed a motion in the state case Thursday, asking judges to drop their injunction against the state’s voter ID law.

They argued that a provision included in House Bill 1169 earlier this year should satisfy the court.

That bill dealt with a number of election issues, most of them geared toward tweaking election procedures to account for the coronavirus pandemic. It passed with broad bipartisan support.

It also included language adding a new category of IDs to the ones poll workers would accept: public assistance IDs.

That Republican lawmakers hadn’t included those IDs in the bill they passed in late 2018 laying out voter ID rules was part of the court’s rationale in blocking implementation this year.

“With the enactment of H.B. 1169, the General Assembly has adopted nearly every ‘ameliorative’ amendment proposed … and it also has addressed the key shortcoming identified by the Court of Appeals,” Moore’s office said in its release.

This is the exact step some Democratic lawmakers said they feared when they backed off support for House Bill 1169 earlier this year: That the snippet of voter ID language would be used in court.

“That was the poison pill when they put that in,” Rep.

Marcia Morey , D-Durham, said Thursday.

Stay tuned. After a while, you begin to wonder why some people are fighting so hard against voter id.

When Dead Cats Vote

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Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about Cody, a beloved family pet who lived in Atlanta and passed away before President Obama was elected. Cody received a voter registration form by mail on Wednesday.

The article reports:

“If they’re trying to register cats, I’m not quite sure who else they’re trying to register. I don’t know if they’re registering dogs, mice, snakes?” Tims said.

Fox 5 reported the feline was a “DemoCAT.”

The Georgia Secretary of State blamed third-party groups for such activity.

“Third-party groups all over the country are targeting Georgia to help register qualified individuals. This group makes you wonder what these out-of-town activists are really doing. Make no mistake about it, this office is dedicated to investigating all types of fraud,” Brad Raffensperger’s office said.

Cody, of course, lives in the home state of Stacey Abrams, the failed gubernatorial candidate who has since made it her mission to fight voter ID laws.

The Secretary of State’s office told Fox 5 Cody wouldn’t have been allowed to vote “since he did not have a license or state ID.”

It’s not clear if Cody would have been able to cast a ballot in a full vote-by-mail system.

Cody isn’t unique in receiving such mail long after he’s spent his 9th life.

In 2016, Benicia the border collie received an application in Raleigh, North Carolina, according to ABC 7.

“She would have been smart enough to but I don’t think a dog is probably entitled to vote,” owner John Schneider said.

Benecia received a letter from the Voter Participation Center, a nonprofit that sends out mass mailings of voter registration forms.

Unfortunately I suspect there are those among us who would register their family pets for mail-in voting. I have two cats named Abe and Ace. I am sure that they would vote for President Trump. Many of my neighbors have dogs, some of which I am sure would vote for Joe Biden. We already have places where the number of people voting is larger than the voting-age population. Can you imagine the numbers with mail-on voting?

Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste

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If you look at the people who oppose voter id laws, they tend to be Democrats. I’m not accusing them of anything, but I do wonder why they would oppose something that would protect the votes of all Americans. Well, the coronavirus crisis has caused those who oppose voter id laws to take things a step further.

Just The News posted an article yesterday with the following headline, “Democrats pushing harder for ‘Vote by mail’ in November election.” I don’t mean to be cynical, but I believe that would be the end of honest elections.

The article reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she would like to see “vote by mail” funding of up to $4 billion in Congress’ next coronavirus stimulus package for upcoming elections.

Pelosi suggested on Wednesday that the funding would to help states “expand” their vote-by-mail capabilities and allow voters to cast ballots by mail rather than show up in-person at the polls.

“Vote-by-mail is so important to our democracy so that people have access to voting and not being deterred, especially at this time, by the ammunition to stay home,” Pelosi said on a conference call. “We need at least $2 billion, $4 billion is probably what would really democratize our whole system.”

On Tuesday, Pelosi said she does not know why anyone would oppose voting by mail in the next election.

Aside from the obvious problem of voter fraud, why does Speaker Pelosi think we will still be under threat of the coronavirus in November? I realize that the disease may make a comeback in the fall, but I suspect that by that time enough Americans will have developed immunity to the disease to minimize the problem or we will have learned how to successfully deal with the disease so that ‘social distancing’ will be a distant memory.

Because of their recent strong turn to the left, Democrats have lost a lot of American voters. The party that was previously the party of the working man has totally forgotten its roots. The only hope for a strong Democrat party in the future is illegal aliens voting or election fraud. Until the Democrats turn back toward the center, they will be a dying party. That is the reason voting by mail looks good to them.

This Would Be The Right Answer

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North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore posted the following on this website on Wednesday:

General Assembly lawmakers requested a hearing of the full state Court of Appeals on Tuesday to review North Carolina’s voter ID law, arguing “there is no category of voters that is even theoretically prohibited from voting.” 

A liberal, activist appeals court panel recently reversed a bipartisan trial court’s approval of the state’s voter ID law that allows individuals without ID to still cast a ballot. 

Attorneys for state lawmakers noted that the bipartisan three-judge trial court panel found the plaintiffs in Holmes v. Moore were unlikely to succeed on their challenge to North Carolina’s voter ID law, but “an error-ridden decision that took a one-sided look at the record” from an appeals court panel reversed their ruling last week. 

North Carolina’s voter ID law was passed pursuant to a constitutional amendment approved by voters, was then vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper, but enacted by the state legislature in S.B. 824 Implementation of Voter ID Constitutional Amendment.

Arguing the case is of “exceptional importance” concerning “a constitutional mandate,” lawmakers’ request for a full hearing of the North Carolina Court of Appeals notes the state’s voter ID law “is exceptionally protective of voters and compares favorably with other laws that have been upheld in the face of similar challenges.” 

“The panel failed to adequately distinguish North Carolina’s voter ID law from Virginia’s and South Carolina’s laws – which were upheld despite the fact that both laws are stricter than North Carolina’s in many respects,” attorneys for state lawmakers wrote Tuesday.   

“Voters lacking ID may cast a reasonable impediment ballot that will be counted unless the declaration underlying the ballot is factually false.”

General Assembly leaders also noted in the filing that “less than 0.1% of participants in the March 2016 primary had to vote provisionally because they lacked ID under a prior law’s shorter ID list.”

“The General Assembly still exercised its discretionary authority to allow exceptions from the constitutional voter ID requirement to ensure that all registered voters will be able to vote…there thus is no category of voters that is even theoretically prohibited from voting by S.B. 824’s terms,” the motion for an en banc hearing of the state Court of Appeals said. 

North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore (R-Cleveland), who filed the proposed voter ID constitutional amendment approved by voters, said the state Court of Appeals must grant the request for an en banc hearing given that “the people’s voice in the democratic process is at stake.”

“The people of North Carolina deserve a full, fair hearing of the state Court of Appeals on voter ID,” Speaker Moore said this week. 

“This liberal, activist appeals court panel was wrong to reverse a bipartisan trial court’s ruling and tread on the will of voters in this state.  The Court of Appeals must grant the request for a full hearing on voter ID given the people’s voice in the democratic process is at stake in this litigation.” 

North Carolina voters voted for voter id twice–once outright and once as an amendment to the North Carolina Constitution. It is really annoying to vote for something twice and have the courts ignore the will of the voters.

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

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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.

Some Relevant Thoughts On Voter Fraud

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On Friday, Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial titled, “Why Do Democrats Pretend Voter Fraud Doesn’t Exist?”

The editorial begins by providing examples showing that voter fraud does exist:

In August, the Justice Department announced the prosecution of 19 foreign nationals for illegally voting in North Carolina. Some of them voted in multiple elections.

Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton decided to crack down on voter fraud before the midterm elections. So far, he’s prosecuted 33 people for 97 counts of voter fraud this year alone. Among the discoveries was a voter fraud ring that had received financial support from the former head of the Texas Democratic Party.

Pennsylvania let thousands of noncitizens register to vote, many of whom have since voted, according to reporter John Fund, who has been following this issue for years.

The Heritage Foundation has a database that now includes 1,165 cases of election fraud across 47 states. More than 1,000 of them resulted in criminal convictions.

One case of voter fraud is too many. Any fraudulent vote cancels out the vote of a legal voter. This is an issue all of us should be concerned about. One of the foundations of a healthy republic is honest elections. Without honest elections, we could easily become a banana republic.

The editorial concludes:

The fact is that committing voter fraud isn’t all that difficult, but minimizing it is easy. Cleaning up registration rolls, enacting voter ID requirements, using paper ballots, and implementing better controls on early and absentee voting would make non-citizen voting and other forms of fraud virtually impossible.

Critics of such efforts say that they will only serve to suppress the vote of minorities and the poor — that is, voters who tend to vote Democratic. They want to make it easier and easier to register and vote.

But there’s no evidence that voter ID laws suppress turnout. In fact, of 11 states that adopted strict voter ID laws, nine either saw increased turnout in 2016, or had turnout rates higher than the national average, the Heritage Foundation notes.

Nor does cleaning up registration rolls, aggressively pursuing voter fraud cases, using paper ballots, or other measures to ensure the integrity of the ballot suppress legitimate voters.

Those who say voter fraud is no big deal should realize something. Every single vote cast fraudulently cancels out one legitimate vote. They need to ask themselves how they’d feel if it was their vote being canceled.

It is long past time to fix this.

Texas Wins

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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.

Does Voter Fraud Exist?

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The following information is from the Voter Integrity Project Website:

The Voter Integrity Project of NC was founded in 2011 by Jay DeLancy and John Pizzo.  Their mission was to ensure free and fair elections to all lawfully registered voters. Mr. Pizzo has more than 30 years private industry experience in the discipline of of quality engineering and holds a Six Sigma Black Belt. Mr. DeLancy is a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, with military experience in both conventional and nuclear operations with advanced degree work in journalism, business and political communication. His past teaching assignments include numerous community colleges, Park University, Bluefield College, Liberty University, NC State University and a temporary position at Duke.

The VIP plan was simple: Mine public data, analyze that data and let the evidence speak for itself. They fashioned themselves as a “non-partisan” organization, because election laws (like the Constitution itself) should transcend political and cultural boundaries. Open and honest elections are in our nation’s best interest.

Starting with a “voter density” study of North Carolina’s 100 counties, they began publishing their research results on-line and sharing it with media, lawmakers and with peers from other states.

Their second project copied the ground-breaking work of the Miami Herald, who obtained the names and addresses of persons disqualified from jury duty because of their non-US citizen status. This VIP effort led to the discovery of 130 people who had voted before they were disqualified from jury duty, 11 of whom became targets of criminal referrals. This research has led to legislative attempts in 2013, 2015 and 2017 to require Clerks of Court to share their data with elections officials.

Their third project, garnering national exposure, led to the discovery of almost 30,000 deceased persons who were still registered to vote, some of whom had voting records beyond their date of death. This research identified numerous “data leakage” points in the deceased-voter removal process. It also triggered consultations with election officials that resulted in process improvements for identification and removal of deceased-voters’ records.

The fourth major project involved detecting persons who voted in more than one state during the same Federal election. By matching 11 million Florida voters with the 77 million NC voters, VIP ultimately reported more than 150 voters who were highly likely to have committed this felony. Investigations are ongoing, but the work triggered five initial criminal referrals. As of January 2018, this project has spawned three felony convictions (for details, please click here and here) and numerous consultations with senior election officials in other states. This project (called “FLANC,” as in Florida and NC) also resulted in the first VIP publication that is being sold to the public through Amazon’s marketplace.

Other major research projects are currently underway that all point to identifying areas of election law that need process improvement and prevention strategies for abuses and illegal voting activities such as voter impersonation and intimidation.

A website called Secure the Vote NC has been set up to shed light on voting irregularities in North Carolina in past elections (and hopefully prevent voting irregularities in future elections).

Some basic facts about voting in North Carolina:

1. Thirty-four states have voter ID laws. North Carolina is not one of them.

2. Of the twelve Southeastern states, North Carolina is the only one that does not have voter ID laws.

3. In 2012, the Voter Integrity Project reported close to 30,000 deceased North Carolina voters to the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

4. In 2016, 498 North Carolina voters showed up to vote and were told, “You already voted.”

An illegal vote cancels out the vote of a legal voter. If you want your vote to count, you need to support voter ID laws that ensure that you are who you say you are. We also need to support laws that allow a comparison between the voter rolls and those who refused jury duty by claiming not to be American citizens. It is time to clean up our voting system.

Why We Need Voter Identification At The Polls

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Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about the voting rolls in the 12th District of Ohio. It seems that in that district there are 170 registered voters over the age of 116. It is quite possible that some of those registered have the wrong birth year listed as a result of clerical errors or computer errors, but for the sake of argument, let’s just say half of those voters have the right birth year. That is 85 voters that are not likely currently living. Troy Balderson’s current lead in that election is 1700 votes.

The article reports:

Soros pledged $5 million to fund Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias’s efforts to fight voter ID laws in Ohio and two other states ahead of the 2016 election. Elias would file that suit in Ohio on behalf of several groups, including the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, that would have an employee sentenced to prison for voter fraud.

In 2016, liberal activist groups Demos and the ACLU filed suit against the state of Ohio in an attempt to stop its efforts to remove inaccurate voter registrations from its rolls. Soros gave 1.25 million to Demos in 2016, on top of the more than $3 million he had given in previous years. And Soros has been even more generous with the ACLU, giving over $35 million for Trump related lawsuits.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ohio’s efforts in a 5-4 decision earlier this year.

The article concludes:

Consider that 170 registered voters listed as being over 116 years old still existed on the rolls of Ohio’s 12th Congressional when GAI accessed the data last August. That’s 10 percent of Balderson’s current margin of victory, pending provisional ballots. And 72 voters over the age of 116 who “live” in Balderson’s district cast ballots in the 2016 election.

But the Left hasn’t given up trying to create conditions favorable for voter fraud in Ohio. As former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has pointed out, “hyper-partisan liberals…have their eyes on Ohio.” Electing a Democrat as the state’s top elections official would undoubtedly roll back the hard-won safeguards Ohio has implemented. And as Blackwell points out, as goes Ohio, so goes the Presidency.

An illegal vote cancels the vote of a legal voter. We need to clean up the voter rolls in all states. I seriously doubt that 72 voters over the age of 116 voted. If they did, I want to know what their lifestyle is because evidently they are on to something!

The Fight For Voter Identification

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Voter identification is one of many ways to prevent voter fraud. For whatever reason, it seems that one particular political party seems to oppose voter identification even after evidence of voter fraud–non-citizens voting, dead people voting, hundreds of people claiming to live in a parking lot registering to vote, etc. In November, North Carolina will have a referendum on the ballot allowing voters to approve or disapprove of voter identification.

Civitas Institute, a North Carolina based group, posted an article last week showcasing international voter identification laws.

The article reports:

However, many countries hailed as more voter-friendly than the United States have voter ID laws in place.

Norway mandates that voters present a photo ID, including a “passport, driving license, or bank card that includes a photo,” to vote.

Voters in Northern Ireland must present an “acceptable photo identification” to cast an in-person ballot.

Germany requires that voters bring a state-issued voter identification card, but they can substitute another form of ID for that card if they fail to deliver it at the polls.

Ballots in Switzerland are issued by mail, and voters who return their ballots in person are required to show an ID and a state-issued polling card to do so.

France requires a voter ID.

Israel requires a voter ID.

Mexico requires a voter ID.

Iceland requires a voter ID.

It seems like common sense to want to know who is voting.

The article concludes:

Civitas has already pointed out that North Carolina’s constitutional amendment would bring the state into the mainstream within the country since 34 other states already require voter ID in some form.

Voter identification is innocuous among a majority of US states and various countries across the world. There is no reason to believe North Carolina would be the exception.

Collins claimed that the United States makes voting more difficult for its citizens than its peer countries and implied that voter ID requirements compound that disparity. Since many Western democracies also implement voter ID requirements, we rate this claim as false.

I will vote to support the implementation of voter identification. It is understood that the state will provide identification cards free for anyone who needs them. Most residents would be willing to drive anyone who needs transportation to wherever they need to go to obtain a voter identification card. Works for me.

Common Sense Shows Up In A Courtroom

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The Daily Signal is reporting today that Judge Scott Coogle, a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, has ruled that the Alabama voter ID law is constitutional.

The article reports:

A federal judge in Alabama has thrown out a lawsuit against the state’s voter ID law, finding that the law doesn’t prevent anyone from voting because “nearly the entire population of registered voters in Alabama already possess a photo ID that can be used for voting.”

For those who don’t, obtaining a qualifying ID can be done “with little to no effort and no cost.”

In 2011, the Alabama Legislature passed a photo ID requirement for both in-person and absentee voting. The law was enacted in an effort to strengthen voter confidence and to reduce the potential for voter fraud in the state.

The Alabama law accepts seven different types of ID, including an Alabama driver/non-driver’s license, a photo ID card issued by any state or the federal government, a U.S. passport, a student or employee ID, a military ID card, or a tribal ID card.

Voters can obtain a voter ID card from the state for free—something that as of fall of 2017, only 33 voters in the entire state had requested. And voters who need a birth or marriage certificate to get an ID can get those for free, too.

In addition, even if voters show up at a voting booth without an ID, they can still vote if two election officials at the polling place positively identify them.

Those voting absentee are required to include a photocopy of their photo ID (in a separate envelope) when they mail in their ballot. Individuals without an ID can vote by provisional ballot, and that ballot will be counted if they show the local county registrar an ID by the Friday after the election.

Unfortunately we live in a world where showing a photo ID has become a fact of life. When I go to the doctor’s office, I have to show a photo ID. If I board an airplane, I have to show a photo ID (and soon, as license requirements change in some states, a passport will be necessary). Anyone can easily get a photo ID, and states with photo ID requirements to vote will provide them to people at no cost.

This is a common sense ruling. Hopefully it will stand and set an example for the rest of the states.

Let’s Keep Voting Until We Get It Right

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There have been some strange lower court decisions regarding North Carolina in recent years. A voter ID law, passed by the state legislature and signed by the governor was overturned, while similar laws in other states were allowed to stand. Then the states voting districts were challenged, after they had been redrawn at the request of the courts. It makes your head spin. Today the Supreme Court of the United States weighed in on the redistricting matter.

The Carolina Journal reports today:

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a lower court’s ruling striking down 28 North Carolina legislative districts as cases of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. But the high court has rejected the idea of holding special legislative elections this year.

The Supreme Court had issued a stay on Jan. 10 blocking a three-judge panel’s order of a special election. Today’s unsigned Supreme Court order chides the trial-court panel for ordering a special 2017 legislative election without making a convincing argument why that remedy is needed.

Justices say their trial-court colleagues should have used an “equitable weighing process” to determine the proper remedy for dealing with the racially gerrymandered election maps. “Rather than undertaking such an analysis in this case, the District Court addressed the balance of equities in only the most cursory fashion,” the Supreme Court order states. “As noted above, the court simply announced that ‘[w]hile special elections have costs,’ those unspecified costs ‘pale in comparison’ to the prospect that citizens will be ‘represented by legislators elected pursuant to a racial gerrymander.’

“That minimal reasoning would appear to justify a special election in every racial-gerrymandering case — a result clearly at odds with our demand for careful case-specific analysis,” the order continues. “For that reason, we cannot have confidence that the court adequately grappled with the interests on both sides of the remedial question before us.”

“And because the District Court’s discretion ‘was barely exercised here,’ its order provides no meaningful basis for even deferential review,” according to the Supreme Court.

North Carolina will be forced to redraw the districts until everyone is happy with them, but I am thankful that we don’t have to have another election this year. That would have been very expensive for the state and totally unnecessary.

We need national voter ID. I realize that individual states are in charge of their elections, as it should be, but there needs to be a requirement that voters identify themselves as eligible voters before they vote. Almost all free countries have some form of voter identification, and America needs to join them.

 

The Problem With Spin Is That It Doesn’t Work When There Is Actual Evidence

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I posted an article this morning about Jame O’keefe’s video showing how easy voter fraud is in Washington, D. C.  This is the link to the video at YouTube showing exactly what happened (or scroll down two articles and watch it there). Please watch until the end to hear what the person assumed to be impersonating Eric Holder says as he goes to get his identification. It’s brilliant! Anyway, enough of that.

Breitbart.com posted an article today giving the response of the Justice Department to the video.

The article reports:

Desperate to prove that voter ID should not be presented in order to obtain a ballot, the DOJ fired back at O’Keefe and Project Veritas today, with a DOJ official telling tried-and-true media ally Talking Points Memo, “It’s no coincidence that these so-called examples of rampant voter fraud consistently turn out to be manufactured ones.”

Don’t the manufactured examples show how easily the real voter fraud occurs?

Please follow the link to the Breitbart.com story and read the entire article. Also read the comments–they are also very interesting.

 

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I Love The Irony Of This

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John Hinderaker at Power LIne posted a story yesterday that I love. A reporter for PJTV went undercover to the Washington offices of the people who are protesting voter identification laws. I couldn’t figure out how to embed the video, but here is the link, PJTV. The video illustrates that the groups who are protesting photo identification requirements for voters all require photo identification to get past the receptionist. I love irony.

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I Had To Go To Pravda To Get This Story

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I am not kidding. I found the link to this information at Pravda (Russian for ‘truth”). I wonder why they are posting the story, considering that President Obama is their friend, but on the other hand, the current Russian government is not known for its pro-American feelings. How would the Russians feel about President Joe Biden? That is just a scary thought.

Anyway, the Tea Party Tribune (who knew they had a publication?) posted a memo by nine state Attorneys General listing the ways the Obama Administration has aggressively used administrative agencies to implement policy objectives that cannot gain congressional approval and are outside of the law.

This is the list of violations:

  • FCC: Regulation of the Internet in the face of a court order from Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington D.C. stating that the FCC does not have the power to regulate the Internet
  • PPACA: Individual Mandate; To be heard by Supreme Court of the United States in March
  • EPA 1: GHG lawsuit; EPA’s own Inspector General reported last September that EPA failed to comply with its own data standards; Heard in Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington D.C. in February
  • OSM: Attempting to impose regulatory requirements on the 19 states with authority for exclusive regulation of their coalmines for the first time in more than 30 years
  • NLRB: Boeing; Engaged in unprecedented behavior as described by former Chairmen under both Presidents Bush (43) and Clinton; behavior is best exemplified in South Carolina where the Board tried to muzzle over 80 percent of state voters who supported a secret ballot amendment to the South Carolina Constitution and attempted unsuccessfully to tell an employer in the state where they can and cannot base manufacturing facilities
  • EPA: Florida Water; EPA’s numeric nutrient criteria pre-empted Florida standards; U.S. District Judge upheld the state’s site-specific alternative criteria for streams and rivers
  • EPA: Texas Air; TX filed lawsuit challenging Cross-State Air Pollution Rules; application rule to TX was particularly dubious because state was included in the regulation at the last minute and without an opportunity to respond to the proposed regulation; regulation was based on a dubious claim that air pollution from TX affected a single air-quality monitor in Granite City, Illinois more than 500 miles and three states away from Texas
  • EPA: Oklahoma Air; EPA illegally usurped Oklahoma’s authority in the Clean Air Act to determine the state’s own plan for addressing sources of emissions that affect visibility, by imposing a federal implementation plan; Federal plan goes beyond the authority granted to the EPA in the Clean Air Act and will result in $2 billion in cost to install technology needed to complete the EPA plan, and a permanent increase of 15-20 percent in the cost of electricity; Obama Administration is fighting Oklahoma’s appeal, which was filed in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
  • HHS: Religious Liberty; HHS mandated religious entities such as Catholic, Baptist and Jewish schools and churches be required to provided medical services they find unconscionable to their employees; President attempted to compromise with an “accommodation” in name only that required insurance companies to provide the services for free to the religious organization employees; Accommodation made matters worse as many religious-base hospitals and schools are self-insurers; Seven Attorneys General filed suit to protect religious liberty and oppose the HHS mandate
  • DOJ: South Carolina & Voting Rights Act: Rejecting voter ID statutes that are similar to those already approved by the Supreme Court of the United States; DOJ ignored section 8 of the Voting Rights Act which calls for protections against voter fraud, and used section 5 to administratively block measures to protect the integrity of elections passed by state legislatures in preclearance states including South Carolina; South Carolina voter ID law merely requires a voter to show photo identification in order to vote or to complete an affidavit at the pain of perjury if the voter does not have a photo ID
  • DOJ: Arizona & Voting Rights Act: Rejecting voter ID statutes that are similar to those already approved by the Supreme Court of the United States
  • DOJ: Arizona Immigration; In violation of 10th Amendment, federal government to sue to prevent AZ from using reasonable measures to discourage illegal immigration within Arizona’s borders; Affects Arizona because state has a large percentage, compared to other states, of illegal immigrants and need to be able to act to reduce the number
  • DOJ: Alabama Immigration; The DOJ challenged Alabama’s immigration reform laws after parts were “green lighted” by a federal judge; DOJ appealed the ruling; parts of the AL case have been struck down in various federal courts; specific provisions of the law include collection of the immigration status of public school students, businesses must use E-Verify, prohibition of illegal immigrants receiving public benefits; the provision requiring immigrants to always carry alien registration cards; allowance of lawsuits by state citizens who do not believe public officials are enforcing the law
  • DOJ: South Carolina Immigration; DOJ challenged South Carolina’s immigration reform laws that are very similar to the AZ which is scheduled to appear before the United States Supreme Court; SC case will be heard by the 4th Circuit soon there after as the 4th Circuit granted SC motion to extend the filing time until after the US Supreme Court issues an Opinion in AZ
  • Congressional: “Recess” appointments to NLRB (three) and CFPB (one)
  • EEOC: Hosanna Tabor (MI); Sought to reinstate a minister who was discharged for her disagreement with the religious doctrine of the church
  • DOE: Yucca Mountain; In 2009, Administration arbitrarily broke federal law and derailed the most studied energy project in American history when DOE announced intent to withdraw 8,000 page Yucca Mountain licensing application with prejudice; SC and Washington State filed suit, as a result, contesting the unconstitutional action; American people have paid more than $31 billion (including interest) through percentages of electric rate fees towards the project and taxpayers have footed an addition $200 million in legal feeds and over $2 billion in judgments against the DOE for breaking contracts associated with Yucca Mountain
    1. DOI: Glendale Casino (AZ); Glendale is a violation because the Federal Government is forcing a family-oriented town, Glendale, to become another Las Vegas against its will.  Essentially, the Federal Government has granted ‘reservation status’ to a 54-acre plot in the same town, where the Tohono O’odham Nation plans to build a resort and casino.

My question is simple, “Where is the media on this?” Why did I have to go to Pravda to find the link? The current administration needs to be reminded legally in a big way what the U.S. Constitution says about the government’s power in America. If the media won’t do that, the people need to do it in November.

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