ACRU Commentary Archives - Page 24 of 39 - Voting Integrity Institute

Former AG Mukasey Hits Obama Justice Department Voting Section

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey delivered a sharp criticism of the Obama Justice Department, particularly the DOJ Voting Section in a speech republished in Hillsdale College's Imprimis. In a broadside aimed at the Obama-era DOJ, Mukasey hits the Department's biased and partisan law enforcement policies. Mukasey's speech should be required reading for every Presidential campaign. Mukasey revisits the dismissal of the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party by Eric Holder and other political appointees shortly after the 2009 inauguration: During the 2008 election, two members of the New Black Panther Party showed up at a polling place in Philadelphia dressed in black battle fatigues . . . In the waning days of the Bush administration, the DOJ's Voting Section filed a lawsuit and won a default judgment. But in the spring of 2009, after the Obama administration took over, those handling the case were directed to drop it. The only penalty left in place was a limited injunction that barred the person with the nightstick from repeating that conduct for a period of time in Philadelphia. And when the Office of Professional Responsibility looked into the matter, their finding criticized the bringing of the case more than the dropping of it. As one "handling the case," the benefit of hindsight has revealed the New Black Panther dismissal as a sign of things to come. By 2015, we've grown used to outcome-driven law enforcement from the Justice Department. Laws are mere suggestions, not commands to this administration. If the Obama administration disagrees with a law, they simply refuse to enforce it. In the New Black Panther case, the incoming Obama administration found it reprehensible that the civil rights laws would be used to protect anyone other than Democrat party constituencies. While the Office of Professional Responsibility behaved as General Mukasey described, the Justice Department Inspector General issued a report that documented the pervasive hostility inside the Voting Section to equal enforcement of the law to protect all Americans. Simply, if the victims of civil rights violations are white, they don't receive protection. This outcome is no accident. It is a result of beliefs held by civil servants working inside the Justice Department. If a Republican wins the Presidency, he or she would be well advised to listen to General Mukasey and implement fundamental changes to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, particularly the Voting Section. Step One may well be remedial training on what the Rule of Law means. (PJ Media coverage of the New Black Panther dismissal can be found here, here and here.)

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:02+00:00October 5th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Voter ID|

Obama Is Importing a New Electorate

By Robert Knight The White House has doubled down on its efforts to use massive immigration for political advantage. On September 17, traditionally known as Constitution Day, the White House chose to highlight it as Citizenship Day, announcing a national campaign by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to naturalize legal immigrants and turn them into millions of new voters by 2016. That's right. Tax dollars allotted to the agency responsible for safeguarding our borders and ensuring national security are being spent to facilitate a permanent political sea change next year. Reporting on the campaign, The New York Times noted that "about 60 percent of immigrants eligible to naturalize are Latino and about 20 percent are Asian, both groups that voted overwhelmingly for President Obama. Nearly a third of legal permanent residents eligible to naturalize are Mexican." Since 1980, the Hispanic vote differential for Democratic presidential candidates has never been less than 18 percent (Democrat John Kerry v. President George W. Bush in 2004) and has averaged 33 percent. With Hispanics making up more than 10 percent of the electorate and growing fast, this is no small advantage. Asian voters, who once were typically anti-communist, Southeast Asian refugees who voted overwhelmingly Republican, now heavily favor Democrats. In 2012, nearly three-quarters of Asian-American voters, who represent 3 percent of the electorate, voted for President Obama. These demographic trends bode well for Democrats, but for a White House looking to establish permanent, one-party rule, it is never enough. Hence, Homeland Security's campaign to naturalize 8.8 million green card holders as fast as possible. Last November, President Obama created the White House Task Force on New Americans "as part of a series of executive actions to fix our broken immigration system." J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department Voting Section attorney and a Policy Board member of the , wrote on April 23rd in PJMedia.com that, "DHS sources report that racial interest groups such as La Raza (translated to "The Race") and the American Immigration Lawyers Association have been playing a central and influential role in rewriting the administration's immigration policies - both the public policies as well as internal and largely unseen guidelines." The National Council of La Raza's former Senior Vice President for the Office of Research, Advocacy and Legislation, Cecilia Munoz, an assistant to the president and director of the Domestic Policy Council, co-chairs the Task Force on New Americans. "Her particular area of expertise is immigration policy, which she covered at NCLR [La Raza] for twenty years," says her White House web page. Her co-chair is Leon Rodriguez, who Mr. Adams said was "a central player in the radicalization of Eric Holder's Civil Rights Division." With the country divided almost equally between the two major parties, a massive voter infusion of newly coined citizens could easily tip the balance, which is why Democrats relentlessly press for immigration amnesty while their media allies label any resistance to unlimited immigration as "hate," "bigotry" and "xenophobia." DHS is funneling millions of tax dollars to groups that back amnesty and naturalization. The agency's Citizenship and Integration Grant Program has awarded $53 million through 262 competitive grants since 2009 to organizations in 35 states and the District of Columbia, according to its website. Major grant recipients include Catholic Charities in several cities as well as various ethnic pressure groups in major urban areas all over the country. One perennial $250,000 grantee, Make the Road New York, recently sponsored the Fourth Annual TransLatina March to protest "Homotransphobia." Over the past week, DHS's United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) offered practice tests on cellphones for citizenship tests, 70 workshops and 200 naturalization ceremonies. America is a land of immigrants. Even Native Americans probably emigrated from Asia. And America has benefited from millions of legal immigrants who play by the rules and seek better lives. Mr. Obama is importing and bribing a new electorate with government largesse in order to fundamentally transform the United States. Immigration per se is not the issue. The combination of lawless immigration with ruthless political calculation, is. * Robert Knight is a senior fellow for the and a Washington Times contributor.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:02+00:00September 28th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Early Voting, Proof of Citizenship, Voter ID|

Fixing Elections, Automatically

By Robert Knight If you think that the politicians who now run our government are bad, how about a system with leaders chosen by people too lazy even to register to vote? That's the goal of leftist groups that are pushing "automatic registration" while opposing common-sense election safeguards like photo voter ID laws and citizenship requirements. The process got going in 1993, when Bill Clinton signed his first piece of legislation, the National Voter Registration Act, better known as Motor Voter. That law mandates ease of registry to vote at state departments of motor vehicles and other government agencies, such as welfare offices. But people still have to bother to sign up. Automatic registration, otherwise known as "universal registration" was adopted in March in Oregon, where Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and the Democratic-led legislature approved the nation's first "opt-out" registration system. On the heels of that victory, progressives in 17 states and the District of Columbia, plus both houses of Congress, introduced similar bills. In June, Hillary Clinton floated the idea of automatically registering all 18-year-olds. California's Democratically-controlled Senate enacted the California New Motor Voter Program on Sept. 10, followed by the House on Sept. 11. Gov. Jerry Brown was expected to sign it. Under the new law, all adult citizens who get a driver's license, renew a license, obtain a state identification card, or file a change of address form with the Department of Motor Vehicles will be automatically registered to vote. As with Oregon's law, people can opt out. For now. Euthanasia-loving Oregon, which is keeping one step ahead of California as a fount for progressive activism on the Left Coast, had already adopted via referendum an all-mail-in ballot system in 1998. Mandating automatic registration is just the latest wrinkle. The next inevitable "reform" - mandatory voting - was mentioned by President Obama last March during a town hall in Cleveland, where he said, "Other countries have mandatory voting. It would be transformative if everybody voted - that would counteract money more than anything." So, people who can't be bothered to register or to vote and don't have even a minimal grasp of American constitutional government would be forced to vote. Qui bono? Obviously, the party that sustains the Free Stuff Army, whose growth to a tipping point could end the American experiment in liberty and self-government. This would certainly qualify as "transformative." The national campaign for automatic registration is led by a group called FairVote, which is funded by left-leaning organizations that include the Ford Foundation, the Herb Block Foundation, the Ms. Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and George Soros' Open Society Institute. Based in the hippie town of Takoma Park, Maryland, where FairVote led a successful fight to change the law in 2013 to allow 16-year-olds to vote in municipal elections, FairVote is also pushing to destroy the constitutionally required Electoral College and replace it with a National Popular Vote in presidential elections. This would make smaller states meaningless in presidential campaigns (talk about "flyover country") and create a huge incentive for even more vote fraud in major cities like Philadelphia and Chicago, where stuffing ballot boxes is second nature. In addition to advocating a national voting age of 16, FairVote wants "a comprehensive 'voting curriculum.'" Imagine for a moment what will be served up to high school students, who are already immersed in a progressive stew of moral relativism, climate change hysteria, revisionist history, sexual "liberation" and increasingly stringent political correctness. It's not for nothing that SAT critical reading scores have hit their lowest average in 40 years, and the lowest math scores in 16 years. Teachers are too busy brainwashing kids into the New Political Order to bother much with math and English. No wonder the left wants 16-year-olds to vote before they fully develop their cautionary adult natures. For good measure, FairVote also supports the misnamed Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015, which would undo the Supreme Court's historic Shelby v. Holder decision in 2013 that struck down an outdated portion of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). FairVote employs an outrageous lie, saying that the effect of the Shelby ruling is "stripping the Justice Department of the powers it had for five decades to curb racial discrimination in voting." Nonsense. All the Shelby ruling did was to end the anachronistic system by which Southern states and several other jurisdictions were under special scrutiny of the Justice Department and a D.C.-based federal court panel. The high court noted that Jim Crow was long dead and that the VRA categories were based on now-irrelevant 50-year-old data. Meanwhile, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is still "a permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting. It bans intentional discrimination as well as discriminatory 'results' based on a court's review of the 'totality of the circumstances' under which it occurred," according to the Heritage Foundation.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:37:08+00:00September 21st, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Automatic Registration, Proof of Citizenship, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

How an Alabama Woman Used Voter Fraud to Get Her Boyfriend Elected

In Dothan, Ala., the verdict is in: it was election fraud. Last week, a jury convicted 66-year-old Olivia Reynolds on 24 felony counts of absentee ballot fraud in the contested 2013 election for the Dothan City Commission. Reynolds worked on the re-election campaign for District 2 incumbent Amos Newsome. During the tainted 2013 election, she forged and altered enough absentee ballots to guarantee victory for her boss and boyfriend. The verdict will only come as a shock to those who still insist that voter fraud simply doesn't exist in the U.S. In 2013, Newsome narrowly won reelection to his office, besting challenger Lamesa Danzey by a scant 14 votes. However, after Danzey identified at least 37 absentee ballots that she claimed were illegally cast, the Houston County Sheriff began investigating irregularities in the District 2 race. Danzey, it turned out, had won the in-person vote by a hundred votes, 343-243. But Newsome had carried a whopping 96% of the absentee vote, winning 119 of the 124 ballots cast by mail. That was enough to tip the scales in the incumbent's favor - and to raise the eyebrows of investigators given how much the margin of absentee ballots cast for Newsome differed from the margin of votes cast for him on Election Day. Interestingly, this was not the first time Newsome had lost the in-person vote but carried the absentee vote by wide margins. In 2011, he lost at the polls by 45 votes, yet won 131 absentee ballots - all but 9 cast that year. The Sheriff's investigation culminated in the arrest of Reynolds and three others. Three of the four have now been convicted in what appears to have been an organized conspiracy to deny the citizens of Dothan their right to free and fair elections. Investigators found that the defendants had fraudulently applied for and submitted absentee ballots for registered voters. During Reynolds' trial, it was revealed that she went even further. Witnesses testified that she ordered them to vote for Newsome. Four witnesses confirmed they had done so even though they intended to vote against him. In some cases, Reynolds illegally filled out part or all of voters' ballots for them. In the course of the trial, some voters discovered their ballots had evidently been cast for Newsome, even though they had never voted for him. Alabama law requires that absentee votes must be observed by two witnesses, to safeguard against fraud. But the case reveals how easy it is to circumvent that requirement - and just how insecure absentee ballots are. In fact, absentee ballot fraud is one of the most common forms of election fraud. Reynolds' attorney, Chris Capps, responded to the charges against his client with allegations of racism on the part of prosecutors and law enforcement. The city of Dothan, Capps said, was just out to get Newsome and undermine the ability of a minority district to vote absentee. Of course, Capps wanted jurors to overlook the fact that the primary victims of Reynolds' fraud were the minority residents of District 2 whom she effectively disenfranchised. Such false claims are sadly common in the debate over election fraud. Opponents characterize efforts to ensure the integrity of the electoral process, such as requiring photo ID for both in-person and absentee voting, as little more than an attempt to suppress minority votes. In reality, nothing of the kind is true. Often these claims, such as in this case, are merely an attempt to distract the public from the criminal activity of the defendants and to deter and scare prosecutors from proceeding. Analysis has revealed that minority turnout has actually increased in states with photo ID requirements. At trial, Assistant District Attorney Banks Smith reminded jurors and the public that voter fraud cases are not about political agendas or racially-motivated attacks. "This case is about the sanctity of the ballot." And jurors, it seems, paid attention. The evidence was so overwhelming it took less than an hour for the jury to return a guilty verdict. Reynolds is the third person convicted of absentee ballot fraud in connection with the Newsome campaign. Though Commissioner Newsome himself has not been directly fingered for criminal conduct, the legitimacy of his election has clearly been called into question.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:36:33+00:00September 11th, 2015|Absentee / Mail-in Voting, ACRU Commentary, Early Voting, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

One Person, One Vote: Advancing Electoral Equality, not Equality of Representation

By Hans von Spakovsky and Elizabeth Slattery The Supreme Court has held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause includes a "one-person, one-vote" guarantee requiring voting districts to be drawn "on a basis that will insure...that equal numbers of voters can vote for proportionally equal numbers of officials." So far, states have been free to choose which population category to use, such as total population, voting-age population, citizen voting-age population, citizen-eligible voting-age population, or some variant thereof, as long as the Constitution does not forbid it. Now, in what may be the most important voting case in 50 years, Evenwel v. Abbott, the Supreme Court is presented in its October 2015 term with the chance to clarify whether the "one person, one vote" principle includes a judicially enforceable right to ensure that voters are not denied an equal vote.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:03+00:00September 11th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Voter ID|

A Court Smacks Down Obama’s Justice Department

By J. Christian Adams & Hans A. von Spakovsky -- August 31, 2015 The recently concluded federal trial over North Carolina's election rules proved one thing beyond a reasonable doubt: The Obama administration and its partisan, big-money, racial-interest-group allies will stop at nothing to win elections. And using the courts to change election rules is a key part of their strategy. That was clearly evident in the federal courtroom in Winston-Salem. The plaintiffs, including the Justice Department, challenged a number of election reforms implemented in 2013 that were designed to reduce the cost and complexity of running elections and make it harder to commit voter fraud. The administration pushed a novel legal argument. In its telling, if a change in election rules might statistically affect blacks more than whites, it constitutes illegal discrimination. For example, if 98 percent of whites have a voter ID but only 97.5 percent of blacks have one, then requiring voters to present ID violates federal law. Never mind the fact that getting an ID is free, easy, and open to everyone without regard to race. And never mind if a policy change is in line with the rules of many other states, or if it's explicitly sanctioned by federal law. The mere act of changing the law in the wrong direction is discriminatory. In other words, the Obama administration would turn the Voting Rights Act into a one-way ratchet to help Democrats. The court refused to go along. None of the reforms had an obvious racial angle. For example, North Carolina required voters to vote in the precinct where they actually live. This commonsense reform -- returning to the law the state had prior to 2003 -- prevents chaos on Election Day, from overcrowded polling places to precincts' running out of ballots because election officials can't predict how many voters will show up. Thirty-one states do not allow voting outside of your precinct. The Justice Department claims that North Carolina broke the law when it returned to this policy.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:37:08+00:00August 31st, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Early Voting, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

Another ACLU Attack on Election Reforms

By Robert Knight Although people in the nation's smallest state can obtain photo voter IDs with ease, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says that requiring an ID in order to vote is a hardship. The group's Rhode Island chapter has demanded an end to the photo voter ID law that a solidly Democratic legislature enacted in 2011. It's the latest attack by the ACLU and other leftist groups against state election reforms that are specifically designed to prevent vote fraud. Over the past few years, courts have struck down laws in Arkansas, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Texas, while upholding them in Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio and Wisconsin. In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana's photo voter ID law, which has been a model for other states. North Carolina's voter ID law, which also curbs early voting and ends out of precinct voting and same-day registration, went to trial in late July in a federal court.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:37:08+00:00August 17th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Early Voting, Same-Day Registration, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

Does Rhode Island Have an Identity Crisis?

By Susan A. Carleson Although Rhode Island residents can easily get a photo voter ID, requiring one at a polling place suppresses "minority, low-income, disabled, and elderly voters," according to the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). So, of course, the ACLU has demanded an end to the state's photo voter ID law enacted by a Democratic legislature in 2011. Anyone living in Rhode Island who wants to get a free voter ID can get one. All you have to do is provide an employee ID card; an ID card provided by a commercial establishment; a credit or debit card; a military ID card; a student ID card; a health club ID card; an insurance plan ID card; or a public housing ID card. Don't have one of those forms of identification? No problem!

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:36:34+00:00August 15th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Voter ID|

List of Voter Fraud Cases Keeps Growing

The Heritage Foundation's list of nearly 300 documented cases of voter fraud in the United States continues to grow. Recent additions reveal that voter fraud is not just an individual or isolated crime; in some counties and communities, election fraud is almost a way of life. These additions again reinforce the need for measures such as voter ID laws and procedures designed to verify the accuracy of voter registration information are needed to prevent these crimes in the first place. Take East Chicago, Ind., for example, a town made infamous by the extensive voter fraud that occurred there in the 2003 Democratic mayoral primary election. The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation. We'll respect your inbox and keep you informed. The fraud was so pervasive that the Indiana Supreme Court overturned the results of the primary and ordered a new special election that resulted in a different winner. A local judge found "direct, competent, and convincing evidence" that supporters of the election's apparent victor, incumbent Mayor Robert Pastrick, orchestrated an elaborate scheme of absentee ballot fraud.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:36:57+00:00August 12th, 2015|Absentee / Mail-in Voting, ACRU Commentary, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

Will Supreme Court End Political Subsidy to Illegal Aliens?

By J. Christian Adams The United States Supreme Court has been asked to end a political subsidy to aliens through the use of alien population in allocating legislative seats. In a case arising out of the decision by Texas to count aliens -- illegal and legal -- in drawing legislative districts, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether using aliens violates the principle of "one person, one vote." The case is Evenwel vs. Abbott. Currently, many states count aliens when establishing the population of legislative districts, therefore diluting the legislative clout of citizens. Legislative districts -- whether for Congress, a state legislature, or a county council -- must be more or less equal in population. The case before the Supreme Court will decide what population must be used to calculate that "population." If Texas prevails, illegal aliens and noncitizens may be counted. This means areas with high alien population will dilute the legislative clout of areas where the residents are almost all citizens.

ACRU Staff2015-08-06T11:46:12+00:00August 6th, 2015|ACRU Commentary|

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