JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) Two proposals aimed at requiring Missourians to show photo ID before voting are heading to the Senate floor. Senators voted 8-2 Monday along party lines to advance a bill and a constitutional amendment out of committee. Both measures have already passed the House, though the constitutional amendment would need voter approval.
Refuting the contention that vote fraud is rare, a compilation by Discoverthenetworks.org of thousands of incidences of vote fraud shows why voter photo ID laws are needed now more than ever.
A federal judge's decision appears to be at least several weeks away in litigation over North Carolina's photo ID mandate for voters, making it likely that the new requirement will begin when early in-person voting begins March 3. Trial ended Monday in multiple lawsuits over the new statute, which is supposed to be implemented for the first time during the March 15 primary. The requirement, first approved by Republican elected officials in 2013 but eased somewhat last summer, makes North Carolina one of more than 30 states with some kind of voter ID requirement now in force. But the U.S. Justice Department, state NAACP and others challenged the requirement in a state with a history of racial discrimination and racially polarized voting. Their lawsuits also challenged other provisions in the 2013 law that in part scaled back early voting and ended same-day registration during the early-vote period. Only voter ID was considered during the six-day trial. The trial judge had refused before the trial to block voter ID from taking effect on schedule. U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder asked both sides to provide additional documentations by Feb. 24. Lawyers who oppose the law pointed in their closing arguments to their expert's report presented last week in court that up to 224,800 registrants lack proper voter ID. The expert also said black voters were more than twice as likely as white voters to lack a qualifying ID and face economic and social obstacles to obtain one. A competing database expert who took the stand Monday as a final defense witness testified that the report had several weaknesses and the number of those lacking ID was inflated. There are more than 6.4 million registered voters in North Carolina.
Closing arguments are set to begin this afternoon in the closely watched federal trial on North Carolina's photo ID requirement. Janet Thornton, a labor economist at Economic Research Services in Florida, was the last witness that state attorneys called. Plaintiffs, including the N.C. NAACP, rested their case Thursday. The photo ID requirement was passed in 2013 as part of a sweeping elections law that state Republican legislators pushed soon after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a key section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That section required mostly southern states and 40 counties in North Carolina to seek federal approval of major changes in elections laws. Voting rights activists consider North Carolina's election law, known as the Voter Information Verification Act, to be one of the most restrictive in the country. The photo ID requirement didn't take effect until this year and was amended last year just weeks before a federal trial on other provisions of the law. The N.C. NAACP, the U.S. Department of Justice and others filed a federal lawsuit in 2013, alleging that the elections law places undue burdens on blacks and Hispanics, is unconstitutional and violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Thornton was called to criticize the work of one of the plaintiffs' experts -- Charles Stewart, a professor of political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stewart testified last week that based on his analysis matching databases from the State Board of Elections and the Department of Motor Vehicles, blacks were twice more likely to lack a photo ID than whites. Thornton testified that Stewart's methodology was flawed and that it was hard to know exactly how many people did not have a photo ID. She also testified that his analysis failed to account for voters who were later removed from voter registration rolls or were considered inactive.
JEFFERSON CITY (AP) - Republicans' decade-long effort to add an ID requirement for voters won initial approval Wednesday in the Missouri House of Representatives. In a voice vote, lawmakers finalized the language of a bill and a constitutional amendment aimed at requiring a photo ID to vote. The measures still need a final vote to pass the chamber, and the constitutional amendment would need voter approval. A Senate committee heard testimony this week on a similar bill and constitutional amendment. House Republicans blocked attempts by Democrats to add more forms of acceptable photo IDs, to register people to vote automatically when they apply for driver's licenses, and to add the phrase "voter suppression" to the amendment's ballot language. Lawmakers are pursuing a constitutional change because in 2006 the Missouri Supreme Court struck down a photo ID requirement, saying such measures weren't narrowly tailored enough and were an undue burden on voters.
Fourteen Palm Beach County voters appear to have cast ballots twice in the 2014 general election -- once in Florida and once up North, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher said Wednesday. A Coral Springs database analyst brought the issue to Bucher's attention, and he says he has uncovered dozens of other instances across Florida of people voting twice. "We talk a lot about voter fraud," said Andrew Ladanowski, a data analyst and information technology consultant at AddinSolutions. "Everyone accuses everyone of it, but no one has investigated cross-state voter fraud." Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes said Wednesday her office also is looking into information Ladanowski provided that up to 18 people voted twice there. Election supervisors in Florida don't have access to a national database to check other states' voting records, making it difficult to detect people who vote twice, said Brian Corley, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections and Supervisor of Elections in Pasco County.
MILWAUKEE (WTAQ) - A judge is not buying a suburban Milwaukee man's claim that he was insane when he voted 13 times in six elections in 2011 and '12. 51-year-old Robert Monroe of Shorewood pleaded no contest Monday to six felony election fraud charges. After a two-day sanity trial, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Dennis Cimpl ruled Wednesday that Monroe knew he was voting illegally -- and he'll go to prison instead of a mental institution when he's sentenced February 26th. The judge refused to accept a doctor's claim that Monroe had a dissociative disorder when he voted five times for Governor Scott Walker in his 2012 recall election.
By Roger Clegg & Hans A. von Spakovsky -- January 15, 2016 The Maryland state legislature is back in session, and the Democrats have announced that one of their priorities is overriding Governor Larry Hogan's veto last year of a bill that would automatically re-enfranchise felons when they are released from prison, even if they are still on parole or probation (Maryland already automatically re-enfranchises felons once they are no longer on probation or parole). Governor Hogan is adamant that this is a bad bill. And Governor Hogan is right, so here's hoping that the veto-override effort fails. If you aren't willing to follow the law yourself, then you can't demand a role in making the law for everyone else, which is what you do when you vote. We don't let everyone vote -- not children, not non-citizens, not the mentally incompetent, and not felons -- because we have certain objective, minimum standards of responsibility and commitment to our laws that must be met before someone is given a role in the solemn enterprise of self-government. People who have committed a serious crime against their fellow citizens don't meet those standards. The right to vote can be restored to felons, but it should be done carefully, on a case-by-case basis after a person has shown that he or she has really turned over a new leaf, not automatically on the day someone walks out of prison -- let alone when parole and probation have not yet been served. After all, the unfortunate truth is that most people who walk out of prison will be walking back in. Deep down, the Left knows all this; that's why, though it is happy to let felons vote, it is somehow reluctant to restore their Second Amendment rights.
EFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - Republican Missouri legislative leaders, backed by veto-proof majorities, will try again in 2016 to require voters to show photo identification at the polls, despite numerous failed attempts over the past decade. Sen. Will Kraus, a Lee's Summit Republican running for secretary of state, pre-filed a proposed constitutional amendment to allow for photo identification and a bill that would require voters to present government-issued photo ID. GOP House members pre-filed similar measures. A change to the state's constitution would be necessary before implementing a photo ID law because the Missouri Supreme Court struck down a similar measure in 2006 as unconstitutional. Kraus said photo ID protects against people fraudulently impersonating other voters. Fraud has not been a significant problem in Missouri, according to Democratic Secretary of State Jason Kander, whose office supervises elections. Kraus' proposal would allow people to obtain free state photo ID cards if they don't already have a driver's license, military ID or other government-issued identification. "My goal would be to make sure that we secure the election process and then make sure we do not disenfranchise anyone," Kraus said. He cited a mayoral election in April in Kinloch, a St. Louis suburb. The city attorney served the incoming mayor, who won by 20 votes in an election in which only 58 voted, with impeachment papers after the city claimed 27 voters were illegally registered. "That just shows you that there are people that would like to cheat elections," Kraus said.
The former head of a Washington think tank specializing in immigration issues says that voter registration numbers in Texas and elsewhere may be inflated because of the presence of non-citizens on voter rolls. David Simcox, former executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, released a study Tuesday afternoon that said an estimated 1.8 million to 2.7 million non-citizen immigrants in the Unites States may be illegally registered to vote, thereby potentially influencing the outcome of the upcoming presidential and congressional elections. The report also estimated that anywhere from 161,000 to 333,000 non-citizens may be registered to vote in Texas. Calling the state's political culture "a mix of the worst of Old South Dixieland politics and Latin American politics," Mr. Simcox said Texas has a political history marked by election fraud, sometimes involving Mexican or Mexican-American voters. Using Texas population estimates from the 2000 census, Mr. Simcox said his study found a disproportionately high number of registered voters when compared to the total number of eligible voters in six major metropolitan counties and five counties near the Mexican border, all having a high percentage of non-citizen residents.