Early Voting Archives - Page 20 of 25 - Voting Integrity Institute

Voter ID Age Dawns in North Carolina

Raleigh -- After years of debate and lawsuits, showing photo identification at the polls is now a fact of life for North Carolina voters. Early voting for the March 15 primary started Thursday across the state, and every voter is being asked for a photo ID, even if they've voted at the same precinct for years and the poll workers know them. "The check-in official is going to be responsible for looking for reasonable resemblance, and the only thing they're looking at is the photo on the ID - does the photo reasonably resemble the person?" said Kim Strach, director of the State Board of Elections.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:34:41+00:00March 12th, 2016|Early Voting, News, Voter ID|

Ruling May Be Weeks Away in North Carolina Photo Voter ID Case

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.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:34:41+00:00February 2nd, 2016|Early Voting, News, Same-Day Registration, Voter ID|

ACRU Wins Consent Decree in Third Mississippi County to Clean Up Voter Rolls

ALEXANDRIA, VA (Nov. 30, 2015) - The (ACRU) has settled its federal lawsuit against the Clarke County, Mississippi Election Commission, marking the third time a Mississippi county has agreed by consent decree to clean up its voter rolls. In July, ACRU, represented by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), sued the county because it has more voters on the rolls than living citizens. The lawsuit, filed by PILF and Mississippi attorney Henry Ross, alleged a violation of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which requires maintenance of accurate voter rolls. In 2013, the ACRU secured Section 8 agreements with Walthall and Jefferson Davis counties, and two weeks ago, on Nov. 12, sued a fourth Mississippi county, Noxubee, over its corrupted voter rolls. The agreement between the parties was approved by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, Hattiesburg Division, on Nov. 25. The agreement requires the Commission to begin identifying and removing voters who are no longer eligible to vote in Clarke County as early as April 2016. The ACRU originally notified the Commission by letter in June 2014 that its voter rolls were potentially in violation of federal election law. According to U.S. Census data and other public records, Clarke County, Mississippi had 12,646 registered voters, despite having a voting-age population of only 12,549. The Commission never responded to the notice letter. The agreement also requires the Commission to periodically notify the ACRU in writing about the Commission's efforts to clean up its voter rolls. "Corrupted voter rolls have been a problem in Clarke County for years," said ACRU Policy Board member J. Christian Adams, who is president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. "This settlement is a positive step towards a cure and should give Mississippians confidence that their legitimate votes will not be cancelled out by an ineligible voter." The Obama Justice Department has shut down enforcement of Section 8 of the NVRA and thus allowed voters rolls around the nation to remain corrupted and filled with ineligible registrations. The ACRU is the only private party under NVRA to successfully sue to clean up county voter rolls.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:39:00+00:00November 30th, 2015|ACRU Litigation News, Early Voting, In the Courts, News, Press Releases, Voter ID, Voter Roll Maintenance|

ACRU v. Clarke County, Miss — Consent Decree

ALEXANDRIA, VA (Nov. 30, 2015) - The (ACRU) has settled [...]

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:39:01+00:00November 25th, 2015|ACRU Consent Decrees, Early Voting, In the Courts, Voter ID, Voter Roll Maintenance|

How Democrats Suppress the Vote

By Eitan Hersh (fivethirtyeight.com) In the ongoing fight between Democrats and Republicans over election procedures like voter ID and early voting, the Democrats are supposedly the champions of higher turnout and reducing barriers to participation. But when it comes to scheduling off-cycle elections1 like those taking place today, the Democratic Party is the champion of voter suppression. Indeed, few people will vote today (Nov. 3). Many elections are taking place, but almost all are for local offices. School boards, for example, are up for election in Houston; Fairfax County, Virginia; Charlotte, North Carolina and in hundreds of other communities that oversee the education of millions of schoolchildren. But only a small number of highly engaged voters will participate in the elections for these offices. Scheduling local elections at odd times appears to be a deliberate strategy aimed at keeping turnout low, which gives more influence to groups like teachers unions that have a direct stake in the election's outcome. But before getting into the details of off-cycle elections, consider the parties' basic positions on issues of voter participation. As election law expert Rick Hasen has noted, there is a philosophical divide between the parties. Supposedly, for Republicans, small barriers to participation can help the functioning of a democracy. For instance, in recent years, Republicans have been pushing a requirement that voters present identification when they show up to cast a ballot. They argue that voter ID laws can prevent fraud and foster confidence in the electoral system. But they also argue that if an ID requirement deters people who aren't particularly well-informed or invested in the political process, this might be a net benefit for the electoral system. The Democratic philosophy is different. For Democrats, universal participation is a value: All voices ought to be represented in the electoral sphere, so the government should not put up any unnecessary barriers to participation. Debates over issues like voter ID are politically explosive because each side suspects the other of having a strategic motive, not a philosophical one, for its position. Maybe Republicans want lower turnout not because it yields an informed electorate, but because it favors their side. Maybe Democrats promote higher turnout not because of an ideological commitment to civic engagement, but because higher turnout helps elect Democrats (though there is substantial disagreement on whether that is true). Nowhere are the strategic motivations -- and the hypocritical rhetoric -- of both parties more apparent than in the timing of elections. The election calendar in the United States is an insane mess. Exhibit A is New Jersey. New Jersey holds federal elections with the rest of the country on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of even-numbered years. But elections for state office in New Jersey are held in November of odd-numbered years. School district elections are held on the third Tuesday in April or else in November. And fire district commissioner elections are held on the third Saturday in February. It isn't just New Jersey. Most states -- 44 out of 50 -- hold some state and local elections off the federal cycle. Why? Political scientist Sarah Anzia, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, gives a compelling explanation in an outstanding book published last year. The first point that Anzia makes is that the off-cycle election calendar is not a response to voter preferences; voters do not like taking multiple trips to the voting booth. Anzia asked a nationally representative sample of Americans if they prefer elections held at different times for different offices "because it allows voters to focus on a shorter list of candidates and issues during each election" or all at the same time "because combining the elections boosts voter turnout for local elections." Voters of all political stripes prefer consolidated elections, and by wide margins. But that's especially true for people who identify as Democrats, who prefer consolidated elections 73 percent to 27 percent. Consolidation is popular, and during the decade-long period between 2001 and 2011 that Anzia studied, state legislatures across the country considered over 200 bills aimed at consolidating elections. About half, 102 bills, were focused specifically on moving school board election dates so that they would coincide with other elections. Only 25 became law. The consolidation bills, which were generally sponsored by Republicans, typically failed because of Democratic opposition, according to Anzia. By her account, Democrats opposed the bills at the urging of Democratic-aligned interest groups, namely teachers unions and municipal employee organizations.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:37:08+00:00November 18th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Early Voting, Vote Fraud, 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|

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|

ACLU Moves to Strike Down Kansas Citizenship Voting Rule

The American Civil Liberties Union and Secretary of State Kris Kobach jockeyed for legal advantage Friday in a court case challenging Kobach's implementation of the state's voter proof-of-citizenship law. Representing Kansas voters who can cast ballots in federal races, but not state and local elections, the ACLU filed a motion for summary judgment that would strike down Kobach's two-tier voting system without a trial. Nearly simultaneously, Kobach filed a motion that would allow him to immediately appeal a judge's ruling that he overstepped his authority by dividing voters into two voting camps, those who registered using a state form and those who registered using a federal form. The case is important because it could let people work around a state law - authored by Kobach - that requires prospective registrants to show documents proving their citizenship before they are granted voting privileges. The proof-of-citizenship requirement is separate from the requirement that voters have to show photo ID when they cast a ballot. While a driver's license is sufficient for Election Day voter ID, the state's voter-registration form requires a higher level of documentation. That can usually be met only with a birth certificate, passport, or special papers issued to foreign-born and tribal citizens. The federal registration form accepts a sworn statement from the voter, signed under penalty of perjury, as proof of citizenship. At Kobach's direction, only voters who can document proof of citizenship are allowed to vote in all federal, state and local elections. Voters who register with the federal form without providing their citizenship papers are only allowed to vote in federal races for president and members of Congress.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:37:08+00:00September 9th, 2015|Early Voting, In the Courts, News, Proof of Citizenship, 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|

Fix Sought for Texas Voter ID Law Before Fall Elections

AUSTIN -- The Obama administration and several civil rights groups are urging a federal appeals court to fast-track the process of temporarily fixing Texas' voter ID law in time for the Nov. 3 elections. In court filings Thursday, the Justice Department and civil rights groups asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to allow a lower court to immediately start working on an interim remedy to the law passed in 2011 by the state's Republican-led Legislature. A three-judge panel at the 5th Circuit ruled in part earlier this month that Texas' strict voter ID measure violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The 5th Circuit bounced a portion of the case back to a federal court in Corpus Christi and instructed it to correct the law ahead of the upcoming elections while the rest of the case works through the courts. The 5th Circuit noted the lower court should craft a remedy that would "avoid election eve uncertainties and emergencies." However, the 5th Circuit is set to retain jurisdiction of the case until Sept. 28. The Justice Department and the civil rights groups argue that timeline might not allow for an interim solution to be put in place across the state for early voting, which starts Oct. 19. They've asked the 5th Circuit to allow the federal court in Corpus Christi to come up with a fix earlier.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:34:42+00:00August 24th, 2015|Early Voting, In the Courts, News, Voter ID|

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