ACRU Commentary Archives - Page 26 of 39 - Voting Integrity Institute

Growing Evidence that Non-Citizens Are Voting

Noncitizens are registering to vote and at best, it seems the federal government's officials don't care about this illegal activity. At worst, it raises questions whether some in Washington support illegal voting, so long as it supports their political agenda. The exact number of noncitizens who are voting in our elections is difficult to quantify because of the bureaucratic quagmire perpetuated by federal agencies against the (very few) states that have the resolve to attempt to verify citizenship. Federal agencies responsible for immigration and naturalization routinely fight efforts to compare voter rolls with lists of known noncitizens. Yet evidence of noncitizen voting mounts. The just filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court documenting instance after instance of noncitizens registering and voting. It urges the Court to take up a petition for certiorari filed by Kansas and Arizona seeking to overturn a bad decision on this issue by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:36:58+00:00April 30th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Proof of Citizenship, Voter ID|

Making It Easy to Cheat

On a host of electoral integrity issues, the liberal position can be summarized in two words: enable cheating. You think that's too harsh? How else to explain the race-baiting rhetoric from President Obama on down against something as common-sense as voter photo ID laws, which the public supports by wide margins? Or the intense drive for Election Day registration, mail-in voting and earlier and earlier balloting, all of which make it harder to detect and prevent vote fraud? Or the opposition to any law ensuring that only citizens can vote? A case in point of the latter is the Obama administration's stiff-arming of two states that want to require proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote. Kansas and Arizona, which already require proof of citizenship on state election forms, asked the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to include a requirement for proof of citizenship on the federal form. Backed by the Obama Justice Department, the EAC declined. The two states sued, won in U.S. District Court, but saw the verdict overturned in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Now, the case is heading for the U.S. Supreme Court. In a brief submitted this past week asking the court to take the case, the provided key evidence -- federal voter registration forms -- exposing the shocking ease with which noncitizens can register to vote without any proof of citizenship.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:04+00:00April 26th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Proof of Citizenship, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

No. 3 Democrat: Voter ID Laws Helped Killer Cop Gun Down Victim

Did you know that voter-ID cards caused last week's police-involved shooting of an unarmed black man? This incredible revelation comes courtesy of the No. 3 Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, James Clyburn of South Carolina. Responding to the five bullets that North Charleston police officer Michael Slager fatally fired into the back of a black man named Walter Scott, Mr. Clyburn blamed this bloody mess on none other than the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its work for ballot integrity. The U.S. House Assistant Minority Leader, Mr. Clyburn explained to "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, thanks to "ALEX [sic] . . . a climate has been created in the country that's causing these things to occur all over." Clyburn continued: They have drawn up these legislations [sic], pieces of legislation like stand your ground, that legislation gives a license for people to be vigilantes. They are the ones that are drawing up all of these, uh, so-called voter-ID laws. They are the ones that have been drawing up these unfair redistricting plans. These people are a cancer eating at the inners [sic] of our society. So, photo-ID requirements are not just disenfranchising blacks who, supposedly, are incapable of possessing or even requesting them before they visit the polls. Now, voter ID is responsible for gunning down a black man.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:34:43+00:00April 15th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Redistricting, Voter ID|

Adams: Non-Citizens Are Registering to Vote

Local state government officials are registering non-U.S. citizens as valid voters -- even when the non-citizens say they are not Americans on their voter registration forms, a former Justice Department attorney tells The Daily Caller. J. Christian Adams, a former United States Department of Justice official in the Civil Rights Division, will show the Supreme Court in an brief later this month that non-citizens are registering to vote through the government's motor voter program. The motor voter act became law during the Clinton administration as an easier way to register voters through their local Department of Motor Vehicles offices, but Adams says the program is failing to weed out those who are not American citizens. "The bigger problem is that when they get those drivers licenses, there's a government social services agency that is compelled under motor voter to offer voter registration," Adams says. "For example, I'm representing a client -- the . We're about to file a brief to the Supreme Court that shows actual voter registrations of people who on their voter registration forms that they're not citizens, but they're still getting registered to vote."

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:04+00:00April 8th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Voter ID|

Supreme Court Deals a Blow to Racial Redistricting

The Supreme Court has dealt a heavy blow to efforts -- often by the Republican Party -- to draw legislative districts that pack black voters into majority black legislative districts in order to elect black representatives. In a case decided today arising out of Alabama state legislative plans, the Supreme Court held that the Voting Rights Act does not require the preservation and protection of legislative districts with percentages of black voters designed to produce black elected officials. Republicans and black politicians often argue that the Voting Rights Act requires line drawers to preserve proportional black representation by creating districts where black candidates are sure to win election. These plans help Republicans by bleaching out surrounding areas helping to elect Republicans. Instead, the Court ruled that what must be preserved is the "ability to elect" minority preferred candidates of choice -- who need not necessarily be minority candidates themselves. This means legislatures can dip below numeric thresholds which create majority black districts, and not necessarily offend the Voting Rights Act.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:05+00:00March 25th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, In the Courts, Redistricting, Voter ID|

Vote — Or Else: The Siren Call of Universal Suffrage

It's not enough to propose liberal ideas. Eventually, you must use force against your fellow citizens if they don't embrace them. Coercion is at the heart of the liberal enterprise. Hence, President Obama has unveiled his latest plan to fundamentally transform the United States -- mandatory voting. It comes on the heels of his unconstitutional order granting legal status to 5 million illegal immigrants. Coincidence? Ironically, it also landed the very same day that Hillary Clinton floated the idea that summer camps should be created for adults because we have a "fun deficit." Perhaps they will get together and create Camp Chicago, where "fun" activities include voting early and often. To bolster his case, Mr. Obama noted at the town hall in Cleveland on Wednesday that, "Other countries have mandatory voting." Most other countries have voter ID laws too, but I guess that doesn't fit the narrative. "It would be transformative if everybody voted -- that would counteract money more than anything," Mr. Obama said. This is the man who shunned matching funds as hundreds of millions of dollars poured into his campaign, some of it anonymously from outside of the country.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:37:08+00:00March 23rd, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Early Voting, Voter ID|

Obama’s Mandatory Voting Fantasy

There's nothing that excites someone to vote like being forced to do it. But federal force is one of President Obama's favorite things, so his recent announcement that mandatory voting might be a good idea is hardly a surprise. Normally, Americans have an aversion to being told what to do. Imagine if a president had proposed mandatory prayer for all Americans. Most previous presidents thought prayer was a good idea, so why not prayer for everybody -- by mandate? Mandatory voting is just as unappealing. After all, part of the right to vote we hear so much about also includes the right not to vote. Americans have the constitutional right to reject the political process, check out and not vote. In fact, one might argue electoral apathy is a sign of a nation's health. If things are going well enough, if people are content, then voting isn't a priority. Voting only rises in importance when the government manages to screw up people's lives enough to make voting important again. Deciding not to vote is still casting a ballot of a different kind. Or as Neil Peart put it in another context, "if you chose not to decide you still have made a choice."

ACRU Staff2015-03-23T14:38:45+00:00March 23rd, 2015|ACRU Commentary|

WSJ Writer Rejects False Narrative on Voter ID Laws

George Evans, the mayor of Selma, Ala., steered clear of playing the race card in a recent interview, writes the Wall Street Journal's Jason Riley. In his opinion piece, Riley highlights the fact that Mayor George Evans did not give in to a National Public Radio interviewer's tactic of tying Selma's history dealing with race issues to today's race relations. "Ferguson, Mo., in 2015 is not Selma, Ala., in 1965. Black people in America today are much more likely to experience racial preferences than racial slights," Riley writes. "The violent crime that is driving the black incarceration rate spiked after the civil-rights victories of the 1960s, not before. And if voter-ID laws threaten the black franchise, no one seems to have told the black electorate. According to the Census Bureau, the black voter-turnout rate in 2012 exceeded the white turnout rate, even in states with the strictest voter-ID requirements."

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:34:44+00:00March 13th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Voter ID|

Not-Great Scott in Florida

By John Fund Governor Rick Scott of Florida has doggedly pursued pro-growth policies that have helped make his state, which is the third-largest in the nation, a success story. I praised him as recently as last month for his inaugural address calling for further tax cuts and budget reform. But when Scott runs off the rails, he creates a real train wreck. In 2012, he infamously proposed expanding the state's Medicaid program to comply with Obamacare. He was rescued from that folly only by his Republican legislature, which knew that Washington couldn't be trusted with its end of the bargain. Now he has once again confounded his allies and emboldened his critics. This time, it's about his failure to block non-citizen voting.

ACRU Staff2015-02-23T14:20:03+00:00February 23rd, 2015|ACRU Commentary|

MSNBC Misleads about Woman ‘Arrested for Voting’; It Was Perjury

In his February 9 story on MSNBC's The Reid Report, headlined "Counted Out," network correspondent Zachary Roth offered viewers a misleading look at the plight of an Iowa woman -- now suing the state for restoration of her voting rights -- who "had been charged with illegal voting." "For a lot of people, this sounds insane, the idea that this woman, that people would try to jail her for thinking she could vote again," anchor Joy-Ann Reid told Roth after the conclusion of his pre-taped segment. But in point of fact, the woman in question, a convicted drug offender named Kelli Jo Griffin, was prosecuted last March for committing perjury by virtue of allegedly lying about her voting disqualification on a voter registration form.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:05+00:00February 10th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Voter ID|

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