ACRU Staff, Author at Voting Integrity Institute

O’Keefe Releases Second Sting Video of Battleground Texas

HOUSTON, Texas -- Battleground Texas (BGTX) may have failed to take any action regarding the "admission" of an undercover volunteer with BGTX that she had broken multiple election laws, according to a new video investigation by journalist James O'Keefe's organization Project Veritas. The allegations come on the heels of sting earlier this year that busted BGTX, a group attempting to turn Texas blue, for illegally copying voters' personal data for campaign purposes.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:36:59+00:00October 7th, 2014|News, Voter ID|

Democrats Losing War against Voter ID

In one month, voters will go to the polls to elect the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate. Will the midterms be clean? Could some elections be stolen? Everyone ostensibly agrees that voters have a right to know that their decision is not being ignored. And a clear majority supports a simple way to make sure: voter ID. You would not know it if you read only the New York Times or watched only MSNBC, but the Left and President Obama are losing their fight to block the widespread introduction of voter ID cards. In courts of law and the court of public opinion, the issue is gaining traction. With few exceptions, liberal pressure groups have lost lawsuits in state after state, with courts tossing out their faux claims that ID laws are discriminatory, unconstitutional or suppress minority voting. Polls show that a large majorities including Republicans, Democrats, whites, blacks and Hispanics support voter ID as a common-sense reform. The myth that voter ID is a new Jim Crow-type effort to reduce minority voting is widely rejected for the rubbish that it is -- except by academia and the glitterati of the mainstream media. One Rasmussen poll found that 72 percent of the public believes all voters should prove their identities before being allowed to cast ballots, and also that when it comes to voter ID, "opinions have not changed much over the years."

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:34:45+00:00October 6th, 2014|ACRU Commentary, Voter ID|

Court’s Ohio Decision on Early Voting Could Affect Other States

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court delayed the start of early voting in Ohio on Sept. 27, a day before it was scheduled to begin, temporarily blocking a victory won by voting rights groups in lower courts. The decision has potential implications for other states, including Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas and Arkansas, where state efforts to tighten up voting procedures are opposed by civil rights groups who say they disproportionately affect minorities. Ohio's was the first of those cases to reach the high court, and the conservative majority blocked lower court rulings that would have jump-started early voting Tuesday. Their action, opposed by the court's four liberal justices, reversed a federal appeals court decision that had blocked the state from reducing early voting from 35 to 28 days. The lower court also had ordered the state to restore some evening and Sunday voting that the Legislature had eliminated. Those reductions remain in place as a result of the high court's order. The justices invited the state to seek a full ruling on the merits of the case. If that request is denied or the state loses in court, the expanded voting hours would be restored -- albeit too late for this year's election.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:26:46+00:00October 6th, 2014|Early Voting, In the Courts, News|

Federal Court Overturns Part of NC Voting Reforms

A federal appeals court granted a temporary order on Wednesday that will allow same-day registration and provisional ballots in this fall's North Carolina elections, but refused to intervene on changes that shortened the early voting period. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in Charlotte last Thursday in the case that came after the Republican-led N.C. General Assembly passed a series of changes in 2013. Supporters say the measures are intended to strengthen the integrity of elections. Those who sued to overturn the laws say the changes are unfair because they disproportionately hurt young voters and minorities. Wednesday's ruling means voters can register and vote on the same day during the in-person early voting period, Oct. 23-Nov. 1. The temporary order also allows voters to cast ballots even if they show up at the wrong precinct. All three of the judges who heard the arguments last week were appointed to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals by Democratic presidents.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:06+00:00October 1st, 2014|Early Voting, In the Courts, News, Same-Day Registration, Voter ID|

Connecticut Lawmaker Arrested on Vote Fraud Charges

HARTFORD -- State Rep. Christina "Tita" Ayala, D-Bridgeport, was arrested on Sept. 26 on 19 voting fraud charges. Ayala, 31, is accused of voting in local and state elections in districts in which she did not live, the Chief State's Attorney's Office said in a press release. The arrest warrant affidavit also alleges Ayala provided fabricated evidence to state Election Enforcement Commission investigators that showed she lived at an address in a district where she voted while actually living outside the district, according to the release.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:19:29+00:00September 30th, 2014|News, Vote Fraud|

Holder’s Legacy of Racial Politics

By Edwin Meese III and J. Kenneth Blackwell Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced his resignation on Thursday, leaves a dismal legacy at the Justice Department, but one of his legal innovations was especially pernicious: the demonizing of state attempts to ensure honest elections. As a former U.S. attorney general under President Reagan, and a former Ohio secretary of state, we would like to say something that might strike some as obvious: Those who oppose photo voter-ID laws and other election-integrity reforms are intent on making it easier to commit vote fraud. That conclusion is inescapable, given the well-established evidence that voter-ID laws don't disenfranchise minorities or reduce minority voting, and in many instances enhance it, despite claims to the contrary by Mr. Holder and his allies. As more states adopt such laws, the left has railed against them with increasing fury, even invoking the specter of the Jim Crow era to describe electoral safeguards common to most nations, including in the Third World. Ascribing racial animus to people who are trying to safeguard democratic integrity is a crude yet effective political tactic that obscures the truth. But there's something even worse than name-calling: legal interference from Washington with valid laws. Attorney General Holder has sued Texas and North Carolina since the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last year in Shelby County v. Holder. That decision invalidated Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which made inoperable Section 5, a provision requiring the Justice Department or a D.C.-based federal court panel to pre-clear all election-law changes in nine states and multiple jurisdictions. The court rightly noted that the data on which the law was based are no longer valid, and that times have changed.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:06+00:00September 29th, 2014|ACRU Commentary, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

A Primer on the Motor Voter Law and Corrupt Voter Rolls

The National Voter Registration Act imposed sweeping changes on the conduct of American elections. These changes included significant federal mandates on state and local election officials that restricted the ability of those officials to maintain clean and accurate voter rolls while simultaneously obliging them to maintain clean and accurate voter rolls. For most of the history of the law, enforcement actions have been directed against election officials who sought to clean voter rolls and against states for insufficiently pushing voter registration among entitlement recipients. The U.S. Department of Justice, however, has refused to enforce the requirement that election officials maintain clean and accurate voter rolls. Only recently have private parties brought litigation to make up for DOJ's failure.

ACRU Staff2014-09-25T12:12:18+00:00September 25th, 2014|ACRU Commentary|

‘Catalist’: Obama’s Database for Fundamentally Transforming America

The Democrats and the institutional left have a new political tool that allows them virtually to ignore moderates yet still win elections. This tool, the Catalist database, was employed in the 2012 election. That election defied conventional wisdom: Mitt Romney sought and won independent voters overwhelmingly, but still lost. If you wondered why the conventional wisdom about independents and moderates didn't seem so wise in 2012, the answer is Catalist. Beyond winning elections, Catalist also allows the Democrats to turn the policy narrative upside down and suffer no political consequence for implementing radical policies which appeal to their base. The Obama administration's lurch to the far left without consequence can be understood by understanding Catalist. Obama thrives politically by satisfying his base. Simply, Catalist is a game changer not just for politics, but for policy. It is the left's machinery for fundamentally transforming America.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:06+00:00September 18th, 2014|ACRU Commentary, Voter ID|

Court Lifts Stay on Wisconsin’s Voter ID Law

In a decision that has little substantive meaning, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction against Wisconsin Voter ID that a lower court imposed. This was not a decision on the merits. It merely means that the 7th Circuit will allow voter ID to go into effect for the November elections absent the injunction being reimposed by the full 7th Circuit or United States Supreme Court. The other significant part of the decision is that it is predictive. It gives an indication what the 7th Circuit will decide in the appeal of the lower court's injunction. The left has been hailing the lower court opinion as providing a new architecture for attacking voter ID under the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act does not provide an easy fit with voter ID laws, largely because of an absence of proof that they were enacted with a discriminatory intent.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:34:45+00:00September 15th, 2014|ACRU Commentary, In the Courts, Voter ID|

Georgia Secretary of State Probing Possible Vote Fraud

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R) said Tuesday his office was investigating allegations of voter fraud by a group led by the state's Democratic House minority leader that it believes may have forged voter registration documents and signatures and filled out voter applications with false information. Kemp said in a memo obtained by WSBTV that his office has received complaints about the group in five counties in northern Georgia outside Atlanta -- Barow, Butts, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Henry, and Muscogee -- and sent subpoenas to the New Georgia Project and Third Sector Development, its parent organization, led by Georgia Rep. Stacey Abrams (D). "We're just not going to put up with fraud," Kemp told WSBTV. "I mean, we have zero tolerance for that in Georgia, so we've opened an investigation and served some subpoenas."

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:06+00:00September 10th, 2014|News, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

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