Vote Fraud Archives - Page 88 of 103 - Voting Integrity Institute

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|

ACRU’s Complaint against Noxubee County, Mississippi

ALEXANDRIA, VA (Nov. 16, 2015) — The on Thursday, Nov. [...]

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:02+00:00November 16th, 2015|ACRU Complaints, In the Courts, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

Meet the Police Officer Who’s Been Charged with Voter Fraud

By Hans von Spakovsky Call the cops! It looks like someone is committing voter fraud in Indiana again! Ironically, in this case, however, the alleged fraudster who has been arrested by the Indiana State Police was a cop. Unfortunately, even officers who graduate from the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy are capable of violating the public trust by allegedly trying to steal an election. That is the case with Officer Lowell Ross Colen of the Rising Sun Police Department, a small Indiana town of around 2,300 people on the Ohio River across from Kentucky. Colen was apparently an average guy at the police department. According to his chief, Dave Hewitt, Colen was "fairly well liked and very loyal." Hewitt described Colen as the "kind of guy that would come in and put his time in." However, it seems Colen was doing more than providing for the public safety while on duty at the Rising Sun Police Department. Colen wanted individuals to vote for his father, Francis "Swede" Colen, in the 2015 May primary for city council. So, he allegedly proceeded to fill out absentee ballot applications for people who were not even eligible to vote in the election, and then voted with these ballots after he received them from election officials. According to the Indiana State Police Department, he forged the signatures of the supposed voters on some of the documents before turning them into the Ohio County, Ind. clerk's office. In some cases, Officer Colen is even believed to have been in uniform and on duty while committing the acts. In a twist of fate, the voting scofflaw was arrested in his home on charges of official misconduct, forgery, voter fraud and ghost employment. He has been charged with 13 felony counts, and is, of course, entitled to a presumption of innocence, so it remains to be seen what the final disposition will be. Nonetheless, this goes to show that, contrary to what some skeptics say, voting fraud does occur in this country. In local elections with small margins of victory, fraud is especially able to be the deciding factor.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:36:33+00:00November 12th, 2015|Absentee / Mail-in Voting, ACRU Commentary, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

Destroying Your Vote

By Walter Williams Voter ID laws have been challenged because liberal Democrats deem them racist. I guess that's because they see blacks as being incapable of acquiring some kind of government-issued identification. Interesting enough is the fact that I've never heard of a challenge to other ID requirements as racist, such as those: to board a plane, open a charge account, have lab work done or cash a welfare check. Since liberal Democrats only challenge legal procedures to promote ballot-box integrity, the conclusion one reaches is that they are for vote fraud prevalent in many Democrat-controlled cities. There is another area where the attack on ballot-box integrity goes completely unappreciated. We can examine this attack by looking at the laws governing census taking. As required by law, the U.S. Census Bureau is supposed to count all persons in the U.S. Those to be counted include citizens, legal immigrants and non-citizen long-term visitors. The law also requires that illegal immigrants be a part of the decennial census. The estimated number of illegal immigrants ranges widely from 12 million to 30 million. Official estimates put the actual number closer to 12 million. Both citizens and non-citizens are included in the census and thus affect apportionment counts. Counting illegals in the census undermines one of the fundamental principles of representative democracy --- namely, that every citizen-voter has an equal voice. Through the decennial census-based process of apportionment, states with large numbers of illegal immigrants, such as California and Texas, unconstitutionally gain additional members in the U.S. House of Representatives thereby robbing the citizen-voters in other states of their rightful representation.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:37:08+00:00November 10th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Vote Fraud, Voter ID|

Carson: Voter ID Laws Not Racist

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson dismissed the idea that restrictive anti-voter fraud requirements could be racist, echoing the position of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach -- a champion of such measures who has called accusations of racism a personal insult. "I've made it my personal project, every time I visit a country outside the U.S., to ask what do they do to ensure the integrity of voting? There's not one single country anywhere -- first world, second world, it doesn't matter -- that doesn't have official requirements for voting," Carson said on Oct. 16. "My question to those people who say we're racist because we apply those standards: Are all the other countries of the world racist? I don't think so. Voting is an important thing. Obviously, you want to make sure that it's done by the appropriate people." Carson made the comments in an interview with The Topeka Capital-Journal ahead of a planned appearance in Topeka. Kobach, who is also a Republican, drew fire from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who posted a tweet linking to a New York Times story on Kansas' plan to purge incomplete voter registrations older than 90 days. She commented: "We should be doing everything we can to get young people more engaged in our democracy, not putting up obstacles." The tweet was the second time Clinton has criticized Kobach in recent months. In August, Clinton called the purge of the incomplete registrations a "targeted attack on voting rights." In both cases, Kobach hit back. Last week, he said every noncitizen vote cancels out a citizen's vote. "The Hillary Clinton campaign is unhappy with the fact that Kansas has the most secure election system in the country," Kobach said.

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

How Non-Citizens Can Swing Elections

By Hans von Spakovsky In an article in Politico, Mark Rozell, acting dean of the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs at George Mason University, and Paul Goldman, a weekly columnist for the Washington Post, point out a fact that should greatly concern all Americans: that the presence of millions of noncitizens, both legal and illegal, could tilt the presidential election toward the Democrat Party and decide the election in favor of the eventual Democratic nominee. Voter Fraud Happens As I have outlined in many different articles and a recent book on voter fraud, illegal voting by noncitizens is a growing problem. Most election officials are not taking the steps necessary to detect or stop it, and many prosecutors including the current Justice Department seem reluctant to prosecute it. A study released in 2014 by three professors at Old Dominion and George Mason Universities in Virginia concluded that 6.4 percent of the noncitizen population voted illegally in the 2008 election, enough to have changed the outcome of various contests in a number of states. That includes the winner of North Carolina's electoral votes, which went to Barack Obama by a relatively small margin, since a majority of foreign-born residents favor the Democratic Party. That may also be why Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the governor of a battleground state, vetoed a bill that would have required jury commissioners to provide local election officials with the names of individuals called for jury duty from the state's voter registration list who were excused for not being U.S. citizens. Some States Have Congressional Districts They Shouldn't Have But as Rozel and Goldman accurately point out, noncitizens may be changing the outcome of presidential elections even without voting illegally. This is related to the problem of some states having more representatives in Congress than they should, and others being shortchanged unfairly due to the huge--and growing--population of illegal aliens whom the Obama administration and its political allies want to provide permanent amnesty. All of this stems from the way apportionment is conducted. There are 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Under Sec. 2 of Article I of the Constitution and Sec. 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, every ten years, after the "Enumeration" (the Census), we redistribute those 435 seats based on the "whole number of persons in each State." In other words, the number of members of the House that each state gets is based on the total population of each state relative to the total population of the U.S., which includes noncitizens. Thus, the upwards of 12 million illegal aliens present in the U.S., combined with other aliens who are here legally but are not citizens and have no right to vote, distort representation in the House.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:02+00:00October 7th, 2015|ACRU Commentary, Vote Fraud, 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|

Vote Fraud Convictions in Alabama City Spur Call for Resignation

Three Dothan city commissioners are calling for the resignation of District 2 Commissioner Amos Newsome after a third worker from Newsome's most recent commission campaign was convicted of voter fraud. District 1 Commissioner Kevin Dorsey, District 4 Commissioner John Ferguson and District 5 Commissioner Beth Kenward told the Dothan Eagle on Friday that Newsome's presence on the commission could lead to a lack of confidence from voters toward the commission as a whole. Olivia Reynolds, who assisted Newsome's commission campaign in 2013, was convicted this week on 24 counts of felony absentee voter fraud. Lesa Coleman was convicted in April on seven counts of felony absentee voter fraud. Janice Hart pleaded guilty to several counts of misdemeanor absentee voter fraud earlier this year. Three voter fraud charges remain pending against another person, Daniel Webster III.

ACRU Staff2020-05-03T23:38:03+00:00September 9th, 2015|Absentee / Mail-in Voting, News, Vote Fraud, 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|

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