Tag Archives: voter identification laws

Why We Need Voter Identification Laws

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As of January 2024, 34 states required voters to present identification in order to vote at the polls on Election Day. The states vary on exactly what that identification should be, but some identification is required.

On Tuesday, Hot Air posted an article that illustrates why requiring voters to show some form of identification is a good idea.

The article reports:

Here’s a story that shows a political prank can turn into a good case for the need for voter identification when registering to vote. It involves five recording artists and a house in Katy, Texas.

Katy is a city west of Houston, in the Houston metro area. Katy’s population at the time of the 2020 census was 21,894. The point is that it is a small city, most often thought of as a suburb of Houston. There is a story out today that recording artists  Drake, 50 Cent, Chris Brown, Trey Songz, and The Game are all registered to vote with the same address in Katy. 

The house is described as “a beige, $300,000 house in a modest new development in Katy.” The homeowner had no idea why the men were registered to vote at that address. Neighbors said they had not seen the performers. 

It’s a prank that uses a federal loophole in voter ID laws. 

…The apparent prank shines a spotlight on a potential loophole in federal voting registration law that allows virtually anyone to register friends, enemies or celebrities to vote. Whether the intent is malicious or not, experts say it is still illegal.

The article concludes:

What is this federal loophole that allows people to register to vote without an ID? It is the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Eligible voters without a driver’s license or a Social Security number are able to take advantage of it. There are some people who are eligible to vote but don’t have either. It might be someone born outside the United States who never applied for a Social Security number. 

When they go to vote, they have to show some other form of identity, like a utility bill. For example, Drake wouldn’t be able to do that. 

Don’t worry. This doesn’t pose a threat to the singers’ actual voter registrations if they are registered in Texas. 

This story, odd as it is, is a good example of the need to close the federal loophole that allows voter registration applications to be presented without identification. It invites shenanigans and creates extra work for election officials.

It is particularly urgent to get voter identification in place because of the number of illegal aliens currently in America that may be encouraged to vote.

Why Elections Matter

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In North Carolina, judges are elected. In the last election in North Carolina, the North Carolina Supreme Court flipped from a 4-3 Democratic majority to a 5-2 Republican majority. The consequences of that election are already becoming apparent.

The Epoch Times reported the following on Saturday:

The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday handed a victory to the state’s Republican legislators by siding with a petition that asked the high court to rehear cases involving election maps and voter identification laws.

In a vote along partisan lines, the state’s Supreme Court voted 5–2 to rehear the two cases in March—ones that North Carolina’s Republican legislature had previously lost.

Two Republicans running for seats on the North Carolina Supreme Court in the November midterm election beat their Democrat opponents, flipping the composition of the court red for the first time since 2016.

The partisan switch of the court revived Republican hopes to revisit the cases.

In one of the cases, Holmes v. Moore, the state Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 16, 2022, to strike down a law requiring photo voter identification. The justification for that decision was supposed discrimination against minorities.

Justice Trey Allen wrote in an order Friday that the criteria for adjudicating the request by GOP legislative leaders for the case to be reheard have been met.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Michael Morgan questioned whether the decision to rehear the case would call into question the court’s impartiality.

Does Justice Morgan believe the court was being impartial when it threw out the legal redistricting by the mostly Republican legislature and a Constitutional Amendment voted for by the majority of North Carolina voters?

The article concludes:

A separate filing by Republican lawmakers argued that the correct legal standard was not applied in a decision that the state Supreme Court upheld on voter ID.

“Holmes was wrongly decided based on a predetermined outcome. We now have a chance to right this wrong and deliver on voter ID, which the voters of this state overwhelmingly support,” said Sam Hayes, general counsel for the House speaker, according to Spectrum News 1.

For more than a decade, North Carolina Republicans have been seeking to pass a law that would require voters to present photo identification. The state legislature passed voter ID laws in 2013, but they were struck down by a federal court. A similar law adopted in 2018 was struck down by the state Supreme Court in December.

The citizens voted. Their voices need to be heard.

 

Good Idea

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The cancel culture often hurts the people it claims to want to help. Well, some of the people recently cancelled have decided to fight back.

Just the News posted an article on Monday about a lawsuit brought against Major League Baseball by a group of Atlanta business owners.

The article reports:

A small business group on Monday evening sued Major League Baseball, its commissioner Rob Manfred and the head of professional baseball players union Tony Clark alleging their efforts to move this summer’s All-Star game from Atlanta to protest Georgia’s new election integrity law unlawfully inflicted “staggering” damages on businesses in the region.

The suit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan by the Job Creators Network alleges MLB violated the Klu Klux Klan Act of 1871 and committed “tortious interference” in business by canceling the game over a political matter.

It seeks damages of at least $100 million for the businesses of Atlanta as well as an order to restore the game this summer to the Atlanta Braves home stadium, Truist Park.

“MLB Defendants intended to punish Georgians because their state enacted a reasonable ballot-integrity statute and to coerce Georgia and its duly elected government to surrender Georgia’s sovereignty in our federal system,” the lawsuit charged.

It said the true victims were small businesses who spent money and made plans for two years to host the All-Star Game based on MLB’s promise, only to see it canceled.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article which includes a link to the complaint. The decision by Major League Baseball was based on faulty information and should be met with a lawsuit.

Exactly What Does ‘Expanding Voter Rights’ Mean?

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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

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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.

Bad News For Election Integrity

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WNCN (CBS) is reporting that a federal court has overturned North Carolina’s voter identification law.

The article reports:

A federal appeals court has found that a North Carolina voter ID law was enacted “with discriminatory intent” and must be blocked.

How in the world does the appeals court know the intent of the people who passed the law? The law required photo identification to vote. The law also provided a way for people who did not currently have photo identification to obtain it free of charge. I few political groups in the state offered to provide transportation to those seeking photo identification. The supposedly ‘disenfranchised voters’ are the same people who use photo identification to cash checks, buy alcohol, enroll in government programs, etc. No one is being disenfranchised.

The article includes a quote from Francis De Luca, president of the Civitas Institute:

North Carolina’s common-sense voter ID law was passed to preserve the security and integrity of our elections process. North Carolina’s voters deserve the confidence that their votes will not be diluted by fraud. Just before a crucial presidential election, the liberal judges of the Fourth Circuit are once again legislating from the bench and seem to be looking for opportunities to overturn North Carolina law at every turn. The continual overreach of the courts like the Fourth Circuit undermines the belief in self-government through elected representatives and our democratic republic.

It is simply outrageous that the court cites race as a reason for overturning North Carolina’s voter ID law. No one has been able to point to a single example of a voter being disenfranchised as a result of this law. In fact, voter turnout has increased since the law was enacted.”

If voter fraud is prevented in North Carolina, Donald Trump wins. If voter fraud is allowed, Hillary Clinton wins. It seems as if the court has already voted.

The following quote from the article echoes that sentiment:

Rep. Tim Moore, N.C. Speaker of the House and President Pro Tempore Sen. Phil Berger also disagreed with the ruling and issued a joint statement saying that the ruling will allow “Democrat politicians” to steal the upcoming election.

Since today’s decision by three partisan Democrats ignores legal precedent, ignores the fact that other federal courts have used North Carolina’s law as a model, and ignores the fact that a majority of other states have similar protections in place, we can only wonder if the intent is to reopen the door for voter fraud, potentially allowing fellow Democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton and Roy Cooper to steal the election. We will obviously be appealing this politically-motivated decision to the Supreme Court.”

Stay tuned.

 

 

You Only Get To Vote Once

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Yesterday Hot Air posted an article about voter registration in Ohio. Marc Elias is the general counsel for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Earlier this year he represented the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a group challenging the state’s new voter identification law. The purpose of the group was to register voters to increase voter participation in elections. Well, some of the people they registered to vote were amazing.

The article reports:

Marc Elias, an attorney at Perkins Coie who has become the go-to fixer for Democrats and is now general counsel for Clinton’s presidential campaign, became involved with the Ohio Organizing Collaborative this May when he filed a lawsuit on its behalf to challenge the state’s voter identification laws.

Now the group is being investigated by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal investigation after a local board of elections alleged that 25 to 30 of the voter-registration applications that the group submitted appeared to be fraudulent…

“They have turned in roughly 530 voter registrations, of which five of them were dead people,” said Johnson. “They actually had the dead people’s drivers license numbers and Social Security numbers, and of course they forged the signatures of these dead people.”

It seems that Attorney Elias has an interesting history in supporting voter participation. In 2010 in the gubernatorial election in Minnesota, there were more votes that the total number of people who showed up and signed in to vote. One estimate puts the number at about 12,000, greater than the margin of victory claimed by Democrat, Mark Dayton. Attorney Elias argued the case, and Marc Dayton become the governor.

In making the case that going back and checking the ballots would be a waste of time, Attorney Elias stated:

“Once the ballots are opened and once you know the vote total, courts should be skeptical about procedural challenges that could have been brought earlier,” Elias said. “The time to challenge the voting process is before the election when the veil of ignorance still stands as to whether this process or that process benefits one candidate or another.”

Another example of the need for voter identification laws.

 

Stopping Non-Citizens From Voting

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People who are not American citizens do not have the right to vote in American elections. Sounds pretty logical to me. Well, it isn’t logical to everyone.

Fox News reported Saturday that the Federal Government will allow Florida access to a federal database to prevent voter fraud. The Department of Homeland Security maintains a Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database that would allow Florida to cross-check its voter registration in order to eliminate people who are not qualified to vote.

The article reports:

Voting rights groups, while acknowledging that non-citizens have no right to vote, have expressed alarm about using such data for a purpose not originally intended — purging voter lists of ineligible people. They also said voter purges less than four months before a presidential election might leave insufficient time to correct mistakes.

Democrats say that the government’s concession is less troubling than Texas and other GOP-run states pushing to require voters to show photo identification at polling places.

The Texas case was heard in federal court this week by a three-judge panel, and a decision is expected by the end of August.

Colorado and other states have asked for similar access to SAVE.

The article reports some of the history of this issue in Florida:

In June, the Justice Department sued the Scott administration on grounds that the state’s voter-purge efforts violated voting rights laws.

The suit against the state and Secretary of State Ken Detzner alleged Florida violated its obligations under the federal National Voter Registration Act by conducting a “systematic program to purge voters from its rolls within the 90-day quiet period before an election for federal office.”

The Obama Administration seems to make a habit of suing states that pass laws that the Administration does not like. It seems to me that purging voter rolls before an election is a good idea–there should be time to correct mistakes, but I suspect that, with access to a federal data base, those mistakes should be infrequent.
 

There’s Something Rather Ironic Here

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John Hinderaker at Power LIne reported today on a speech Attorney General Eric Holder gave at the LBJ Library on election reform. Attorney General Holder denounced the Texas voter id laws as discriminatory and said that he would use the power of his office to enforce civil rights protections during the 2012 elections.

The article reports:

One last bit of irony — if not hypocrisy — was experienced as people lined up to enter the LBJ Library to hear AG Holder rail against voter ID laws. As each person entered the library they were required to present their photo IDs in order to be allowed in to hear the speech.

If Attorney General Holder feels a photo ID is necessary to hear him speak, why isn’t a photo ID necessary in order to vote?

 

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