ACRU Commentary Archives - Page 25 of 39 - Voting Integrity Institute

Election Reform in North Carolina and the Myth of Voter Suppression

By Hans von Spakovsky In 2013, North Carolina passed omnibus electoral reform legislation that, among other provisions, eliminated same-day registration, required that qualified persons who desire to vote in an election must register to vote no later than 25 days before Election Day, reduced the number of early voting days from 17 to 10, and created a voter ID requirement. Although opponents of this bill predicted that such reforms would disenfranchise minority voters and significantly suppress voter turnout, turnout actually increased. African-American voter turnout increased by almost 30 percent and Caucasian voter turnout increased by approximately 15 percent. Clearly, these changes did not suppress voter turnout.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:36:57+00:00August 4th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Early Voting, Same-Day Registration, Voter ID|

Revisiting the Lessons from the Voter ID Experience in Texas: 2015

By Hans von Spakovsky Critics of the Texas voter identification law claim that a voter ID requirement suppresses voter turnout. However, turnout data from elections held with the voter ID law in place show that there is no evidence whatsoever that this requirement has prevented Texans from turning out to vote. In fact, turnout increased during the 2013 state elections--despite the enactment of the new voter ID requirement. Likewise, during the 2014 midterm elections--a contest that saw voter participation plummet across the U.S.--turnout in Texas declined at a smaller rate than the national average and a smaller rate than the rates in 12 states that have no ID requirement.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:34:42+00:00August 4th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Voter ID|

Symposium: Does “one person, one vote” really mean what it says?

By Hans von Spakovsky in Scotusblog Evenwel v. Abbott may wind up being the most important voting case in sixty years. Its political ramifications could rival those of Reynolds v. Sims, the 1964 case that established the principle of "one person, one vote" under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The key question in Evenwel is what population does that principle require legislatures to use when they are redrawing legislative districts? Prior to Reynolds, states like Alabama and Tennessee had refused to redistrict for more than half a century, despite a dramatic, nationwide population shift from rural to urban areas. These state legislatures were dominated by rural legislators, who were not willing to reapportion and lose their power and control. Under the principle established in Reynolds, districts have to be drawn "on a basis that will insure, as far as is practicable, that equal numbers of voters can vote for proportionally equal numbers of officials." Within two years of the Reynolds decision, legislative districts had been redrawn in almost every state, and urban areas gained a substantial number of legislative seats. Today, lawmakers from urban areas dominate many state legislatures because of the huge influx of non-citizens, both legal and illegal, into predominantly urban settings. This greatly increases the population of non-voters who can be and are used to fill in urban legislative districts. If the Court rules for the plaintiffs, there could be a similar loss of clout by urban areas that rural districts experienced after Reynolds. In this case, Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger are contesting the state senate districts drawn by the Texas legislature in 2013. The legislature used total population in determining whether the population of each senate district met equal protection requirements. Evenwel, a registered voter in Senate District 1, and Pfenninger, a registered voter in Senate District 4, filed suit because both the number of citizens of voting age and the number of registered voters in these two districts deviate substantially - between thirty-one and forty-nine percent - from the "ideal" population of a Texas senate district.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:03+00:00July 28th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Voter ID|

No Vote Fraud? Here Are Five Cases in 2015

By Hans von Spakovsky (ACRU Policy Board member) and Brandon Johnson Despite being only six months into 2015, there have already been a slew of sometimes bizarre stories about voter fraud across the country. They show just how far some people will go to cheat the system. Here are a few of the most outlandish stories: 1. Madison County, Ga. Mohammad Shafiq of Madison County, Georgia, was none too happy with Madison County sheriff candidate Clayton Lowe. So Shafiq started campaigning for the other candidate by submitting fraudulent voter registration cards supposedly for new voters, apparently intending to eventually vote under those registrations. When the fraud was detected, he coerced a couple to sign affidavits falsely saying they had registered themselves. He was charged with two counts of voter identification fraud, two counts of perjury, and three counts of tampering with evidence. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years probation and a fine of $6,750.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:37:08+00:00July 15th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

‘Politiqueras’ and Vote Fraud in the Rio Grande Valley

In the vote-rich Rio Grande Valley of Texas, home to hundreds of thousands of legal and illegal immigrants, the is fighting a legal battle to clean up dirty voter rolls. At the same time, a left-wing campaign called Battleground Texas, funded partially by billionaire George Soros, is attempting to "turn Texas blue" by inflating voter rolls before the 2016 election. The ACRU recently won a consent order in federal court to clean up voter rolls in one border county (Terrell) and is pursuing the same in another (Zavala). In both counties, the number of registered voters exceeds the number of legal, age-eligible residents. This week, a National Public Radio report showed why the ACRU has put so much time, money, and effort into ensuring ballot integrity in South Texas. NPR shined a light on an FBI investigation into vote fraud in the region, including the widespread use of "politiqueras," who gather mail-in ballots and pay people to vote. Here's an excerpt: According to the Justice Department, in 2013, more public officials were convicted for corruption in South Texas than in any other region of the country. One of the practices the task force is looking at is vote-stealing. They're called politiqueras -- a word unique to the border that means campaign worker. It's a time-honored tradition down in the land of grapefruit orchards and Border Patrol checkpoints. If a local candidate needs dependable votes, he or she goes to a politiquera. In recent years, losing candidates in local elections began to challenge vote harvesting by politiqueras in the Rio Grande Valley, and they shared their investigations with authorities. After the 2012 election cycle, the Justice Department and the Texas attorney general's office filed charges. The NPR report prompted Republican Party of Texas chairman Tom Mechler to state that Texas Democratic Party chairman Gilberto Hinojosa "needs to come clean with the people of Texas" about whether he "personally participated in the corrupt practice of using politiqueras to commit voter fraud," according to the Houston Chronicle. Mechler asked whether Mr. Hinojosa "knowingly oversaw institutional voter fraud or if he simply turned a blind eye to fraudulent practices that were routinely committed by Democrat candidates in South Texas."

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:03+00:00July 9th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

New York’s Expanding Electorate

"Start spreading the news I'm voting today " If the Democratic Party and its constituent groups have their way, the Big Apple's non-citizen immigrants will be singing that variation on the Sinatra anthem "New York, New York" at the polls next year. That's the plan, as outlined at a recent press conference announcing the "Engaging Immigrant New York City" campaign, which its organizers call "an initiative to mobilize immigrant New Yorkers in preparation for the 2016 Presidential elections." This is exactly the kind of grass-roots activism envisioned by billionaire George Soros, who has committed $5 million to expand the electorate and loosen voting requirements by getting rid of photo ID laws and other recent election reforms. Increasingly, citizenship -- a prime condition for voting -- is being treated as an annoying speed bump on the way to the election booth. President Obama's Justice Department has even sued Kansas and Arizona over their laws requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. Although New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has not publicly embraced the idea of registering non-citizens, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito has gone on record supporting legislation to allow legal residents who are not citizens to vote in city elections, according to capitalnewyork.com.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:29:05+00:00June 23rd, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Proof of Citizenship|

Justice Department Attacks States’ Power over Elections

The Obama Justice Department has quietly launched an effort to erode traditional state powers over elections. In the first instance, Attorney General Loretta Lynch has drafted and sent a bill to Congress which would force state election officials to turn over power to tribal governments to determine the location and number of polling places on Indian reservations in state-run elections. In the second instance, the DOJ is seeking to erode the power of states to prohibit the mentally incompetent from voting, as long as they express a desire to vote to their caregiver, often a unionized government worker. In both instances, the Justice Department is acting at the behest of activist groups and undermining powers the Constitution gives to the states. Given the election results of the last twenty years, it might be surprising to learn that the California constitution says that "no idiot or insane" person shall be entitled to vote. Understand that 'idiot' is a legal term used to denote someone who is literally incompetent or incoherent. Other states use the term 'imbecile' or the more modern, 'incompetent." While the terms may be anachronisms, the reasons behind the prohibition on voting are as valid today as they were in 1849. Allowing someone who is not competent or aware to vote corrupts elections and invites the patient to be victimized by someone effectively stealing that patient's vote.

ACRU Staff2015-06-04T12:41:36+00:00June 4th, 2015|ACRU Commentary|

Don’t Believe Voter Fraud Happens? Here Are More Examples

By Hans von Spakovsky In the interest of helping out the editorial writers and pundits of media outlets who don't think voter fraud occurs, I wanted to note just a few recent cases (and readers interested in seeing almost 200 more such cases can do so here.): In McAllen, Texas, two campaign workers (known as politiqueras in local parlance) who bribed voters with cocaine, beer, cigarettes and cash during a 2012 school board election have been sentenced separately to serve eight and four months in prison, respectively. U.S. District Court Judge Randy Crane called this election fraud "terrible" and said that "our country requires that our voting process be clear and free of fraud for democracy to work... it's dangerous for this to occur without consequence." A couple in Le Sueur, Minn., was charged with felony voter registration fraud for lying about where they lived so they could vote in a school bond referendum in another town. A woman in Dothan, Ala., was sentenced to six months in prison for her part in a voter fraud scheme that got a city commissioner re-elected. She was the second of the four people charged to have been found guilty of voter fraud in the case, which may have involved more than 100 absentee ballots.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:36:58+00:00May 26th, 2015|Absentee / Mail-in Voting, ACRU Commentary, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

Playing the Race Card in Court

There's more racism afoot in the land, and it fits the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. Did you know that minorities need more than a full month in which to cast a vote? And they can't be expected to show a photo ID like other voters. That would be asking too much of them. Who, you might ask, is perpetrating this libel about the missing adulthood of America's minorities? Why, the very people who claim to speak for them on all matters. The same ones who created redistributive welfare policies that destroyed inner-city families. The latest ploy that makes some citizens out to be imbeciles in need of a master is a legal attack on several election reform laws enacted in 2014. In Ohio, leftist groups have filed a lawsuit demanding that state officials restore more than a full month of voting before Election Day, plus other measures intended to eliminate the slightest inconvenience at having to register or to vote. They claim the new rules violate the First, 14th and 15th amendments and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, plus the Civil Rights Act of 1964. "This is the Left's new legal strategy to go after election reforms aimed at discouraging vote fraud," said J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department Voting Section attorney and current policy board member of the . Mr. Adams, who has successfully sued counties in Mississippi and Texas to clean up their voter rolls, added, "If they succeed in Ohio, they'll roll this out all over the country." On May 8, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative filed in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Ohio, alleging that election reforms enacted in 2014 by the Republican-led legislature that reined in the state's lax requirements were intended to burden people who tend to vote Democrat, especially minorities and young voters.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:04+00:00May 18th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

Meet the Federal Bureaucrat Who Stopped Kansas from Preventing Foreigners from Voting

The Supreme Court has been asked to allow Kansas and Arizona to verify that only United States citizens are registering to vote in those states. Unfortunately, a single federal bureaucrat refused to allow Kansas and Arizona to weed out non-citizens trying to register to vote. Meet Alice Miller, the Acting Director of the Election Assistance Commission. Walker alone, sitting in her inside-the-Beltway office, refused to amend the Kansas and Arizona version of a federal voter registration form to include state laws requiring proof of citizenship. Backed by a swarm of left wing groups, Miller, by herself, made it easier for foreigners to vote in Kansas and Arizona.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:04+00:00May 5th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Proof of Citizenship, Voter ID|

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