Category: election law

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election law First Amendment rights incumbents insider corruption

El-Sayed vs. The Money

campaign finance reform, Congress, voting, elections, free speech, first Amendment

“Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All” — so runs the campaign slogan of Abdul El-Sayed, who last week won Michigan’s Democratic Party nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Gary Peters.

Dr. El-Sayed, an epidemiologist, ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, later heading Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services for a few years. He calls himself a progressive, but a “capitalist” one, not a socialist. Yet, seeking a national office, his national fellow travelers are Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan’s own Rashida Talib and, last-but-not-least, the Democratic Socialists of America.

Today, let’s take the first phrase of his slogan: Money out of politics. 

Creating small legislative districts would go a long way toward making outsized campaign spending less effective. Of course, term limits would diminish the value to a special interest of “capturing” an elected official. And limit the threat of politicians forever shaking down interests, special or not. 

But that’s not the game plan of Abdul and progressives and, for many years now, congressional Democrats. 

Instead, they want to re-write the First Amendment, reversing it from “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech” to Congress shall have power to regulate the raising and spending of money insofar as it relates to campaigning. 

So far, Congress has legislated a Byzantine regulatory regime that serves only to make politics more expensive. The public benefit? Corruption diminished at all? Anyone? 

Allowing career politicians to dictate who can raise or spend money (even in the incumbents’ very own election campaigns) and without regard to whether it silences voices — how is that progress?

If you want to tear down the whole idea of America, this version of getting “money out of politics” is one big rip.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law national politics & policies Voting

A Plan to Fix Our Elections

Jimmy Carter, voter ID, fraud, elections, democracy

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the late former President Jimmy Carter. But his plan for voter ID has my vote.

I refer to the idea he defended in 2005, viewable in a video clip that’s been making the rounds lately.

The clip is from a C-SPAN broadcast of a hearing about federal election reform focusing on the Carter-Baker Commission Final Report. This report was the product of years of investigating how to fix problems in the U.S. election system highlighted by the nerve-racking Bush-Gore presidential contest in 2000.

In addition to voter ID, the report advocates other efforts to combat fraud, including auditable paper backups of electronic votes.

In the clip, Carter says that we should “have some form of photo ID required, photo ID. . . . [It would include] some very careful constraints to prevent abuse. For instance, these photo ID cards will be free.

“There’ll be a wide distribution of them. The states will be required to go around the state to issue these photo ID cards to as many people as possible, which would be a good system just for recruiting new voters. This will be very important. And so this will be, I think, a move forward in getting more people to vote. It will not restrict people from voting. It’ll be uniformly applied throughout the country. And it will be nondiscriminatory.”

Too bad Carter didn’t live to see universal implementation of the ID requirement that he proposed. It’s something we desperately need.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law

Your Fraudulent Vote Counts

voter ID, voting, elections, democracy, Virginia, fraud

Give it to ABC News host Jonathan Karl!

On This Week Without George Stephanopoulos, Karl asked U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia not about the entirety of the SAVE Act but “very narrowly” about photo ID to vote, which Americans of both parties strongly favor. 

“You know what?” the senator responded. “In Virginia, we have voter I.D. and photo I.D.” 

“That’s actually not the case,” Karl corrected. “I mean, I’m a Virginia voter. You don’t need to show a photo I.D. in Virginia. There are a wide range of things you can show for I.D., and if you don’t show one of those, you can sign an affidavit, saying —”

“You can sign an affidavit,” Warner repeated. “Those become ballots that, if you want to contest later, can be contested. But . . . we have voter I.D. of one form or another.”*

My senator is mistaken. Those ballots cannot later be contested; they count. Even if you prosecute folks for fraudulently signing the form, their ballots would still not be identifiable . . . and therefore, not contestable.

While it is a felony to falsely sign the ID Confirmation Statement, there is no one checking.

The same process exists in Michigan, where I’m involved in a ballot initiative to require voter ID. The question “Do I need an ID?” is posed for voters at the Michigan Secretary of State’s website. 

“You will be asked to show ID when you check in to vote,” explains the SOS, adding in bold type: “If you don’t have one, you can still vote.

“If this happens, expect a poll worker to ask you to sign a form before you vote that explains you didn’t have an ID. Your ballot will be included with all others and counted.”

How “political”: a Voter ID requirement that doesn’t require ID. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Fox News reports that per ID in Virginia “acceptable forms include voter confirmation documents, utility bills, bank statements, government checks and paychecks, which do not need to include a photograph. A voter without acceptable identification can sign an ID Confirmation Statement under felony penalties and cast a regular ballot.” The story helpfully provides a link to the Virginia statute in question.

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election law fraud national politics & policies Voting

Truth Be Told

Donald Trump, non-citizen voting, democracy, voting, elections, corruption, voter ID

President Donald Trump told a prime-time national audience, last week, that the Department of Homeland Security found 278,000 noncitizens on state voter rolls after checking roughly half the states. 

“It’s a number,” as my old boss says.

The Washington Post called it “an exaggerated claim that noncitizens are registering to vote en masse.” No, noncitizens are not really registering to vote so much as being registered — without their knowledge or understanding through deliberate government policy that pretends it’s pro-democracy to throw folks on the voter list who are not legally entitled to vote.

Not that there aren’t cases of fraud. There are. But I trust the good intentions of the average non-citizen more than the intentions of the politicians in states regularly facilitating their voter registrations.

Which, incidentally, can undermine an immigrant’s ability to gain U.S. citizenship. 

Fully 250,000 of that aforementioned total were found in just four states: California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The other roughly 28,000 noncitizens were discovered on the rolls in “two dozen or so states” by running those voter files against the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database.

Of course, some of these 278,000 identified will likely turn out to be citizens. Some will turn out to be pets. Data is sometimes incorrect. Mistakes happen. But let’s find out. 

In a sensible country, every state would (1) check its voter file against the federal SAVE database (and other data at DHS and the State Department), (2) institute a sensible, respectful and lawful process to check with voters so identified to clarify the facts, and then, (3) follow the law to remove each illegal registrant.

Instead of merely arguing about the extent and severity of the problem, why not just solve it? 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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election law Voting

Who & What in LA?

Los Angeles, City Council, voting, elections, non citizen, immigration, democracy

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council voted to place a charter amendment on the November 3 ballot to facilitate giving noncitizens a vote in city elections.

“The measure, introduced by Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, will give immigrants who live, work, pay taxes and raise families in Los Angeles a voice in decisions that directly affect their lives,” The New York Post reported.

Of course, “immigrants” who have become United States citizens already have the vote; this effort is about giving voting rights to immigrants who have not become citizens.

“I believe it’s a simple principle that should guide us: If you live in the city, contribute to the city, raise your family in the city and are impacted by the decisions made in the city, you deserve to have a voice in the city,” Soto-Martínez said.

First, citizen or not, the First Amendment gives everyone a voice. 

Just not necessarily a vote.

Second, these suggested criteria by which non-citizens will gain the vote are simply made-up talking points, not part of the law at all. You don’t have to “work” to be eligible to vote. Nor must one bear children and rear them in LA to qualify. Lastly, no, you don’t have to be a net taxpayer, either.*

“The amendment would modify the city charter so that the council can later adopt an ordinance authorizing eligible noncitizens to vote in municipal contests,” explained Daily49er.com. Who would be “eligible”? Those in the country illegally, as in San Francisco and Oakland?

Worst of all, voters could know the answers to those questions only after they decide to give the city council the power to expand the electorate — to whatever part of LA’s over 680,000 noncitizens it settles upon.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Plus, as standards go, “impacted by the decisions made in the city” is true for anyone who ever drives through Los Angeles. Will license plate readers be used to track down those motorists traveling through to send them mail-in ballots instead of photo enforced speeding tickets?

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election law initiative, referendum, and recall

Democracy, Democrats & the Constitution 

Virginia, democracy, constitution, gerrymandering

Do senior Democrats not understand how our government is designed?

“Today the Supreme Court of Virginia has chosen to put politics over the rule of law by issuing a ruling that overturns the April 21st special election on redistricting,” Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones said last week.

“What Jones didn’t say in his statement,” explained a Washington Post editorial, “is that he is the one who insisted the court wait until after the election to judge the merits of the challenge, over the objections of those who sued.”

“If the Virginia Supreme Court had legitimate concerns about this referendum, the time to stop it would have been before three million Virginians cast their ballots,” U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) declared. “But the Court let the process move forward, and Virginians sent a message loud and clear. . . .”

Come now, Senator, courts act only when a case comes before them that is ripe for adjudication. In my experience, courts rarely rule on the constitutionality of a ballot measure until after voters pass it. 

Moreover, under our system, when something violates the constitution it matters not at all whether it passed with 99.9 percent support or the slightest majority. For the record, the redistricting referendum passed “loud and clear” with 51.7 percent of the vote. That was after national Democratic groups splurged $64 million to drown out opponents. And with an “intentionally misleading” ballot title officially informing voters it would “restore fairness.”

Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also entered the fray, arguing that the “decision to overturn an entire election is an unprecedented and undemocratic action that cannot stand.”

Hard to be wrong that many times in such a short sentence. The ruling will stand and is not “unprecedented”: it did what courts have always done. 

Moreover, the democratic vote on the referendum was set aside by the constraints of Virginia’s democratically enacted constitution.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Previously:

Un-Redistricting Virginia / April 23, 2026
(On a constitutional monkey wrench thrown into the Democratic Party’s latest scheme to out-trump Trump.)

Against Fairness? / April 2, 2026
(On a dishonest ballot title being foisted on Virginia voters.)

Immoderate Bullets / Oct. 6, 2025
(On the man who should most definitely not be attorney general.)

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election law U.S. Constitution Voting

Expanding the Electorate

citizen voting, democracy, voting, elections, Washington DC

Who should vote? Ought we expand the electorate? 

To everyone . . . on the planet?

Do folks from other countries, who have come to America, legally or not, and reside in a community for 30 days, have a right to vote?

Well, they do under a crazy law in our nation’s capital. Even the ambassadors and embassy workers (and spies) that China and Russia send to represent their regimes, could, if they so desired, register and vote for the next mayor, city council-member and ballot measure in the federal capital . . . if those foreign nationals have been here (working for another country) for 30 days. 

The far-left-of-sanity Democrats on the D.C. City Council passed it — without a popular vote. 

At least in Los Angeles there will be a public vote — should the push by Democratic Socialists of America-backed Democrats on that City Council advance a measure to allow noncitizens in L.A., legally or not, to vote in local elections. 

Citizenship seems a wiser qualifier at all levels of government.*

“Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections,” The Los Angeles Times reports. “However, states are allowed to set their own local and statewide election rules.”

Note that The Times does not inform readers that states, such as California, determine who is qualified to vote in federal elections in those states. Were California to allow noncitizens to vote in its state legislative elections — not too giant a leap from noncitizen voting in L.A. and San Francisco — those noncitizens would be legally qualified to vote for California’s representatives in Congress and the U.S. Senate. 

The U.S. Constitution’s “Qualifications Clause” is clear.

This state “loophole” is something worth closing through Florida Rep. Laurel Lee’s constitutional amendment. 

Locally, statewide, nationally: let the people decide.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* I serve as chairman of Americans for Citizen Voting. We have worked to pass Citizen Only Voting constitutional amendments in 15 states and to place these measures on six more state ballots this November. We now ask Congress to consider and propose a federal constitutional amendment, HJR 152, the U.S. Citizens Vote Amendment.

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election law litigation partisanship

Un-Redistricting Virginia

Gerrymander, Virginia, Circuit Court, voting, elections, democracy

A circuit court has ruled that Virginia’s new voter-passed congressional map, gerrymandered to give Democrats in the state a prohibitive advantage in the next congressional election, is unconstitutional.

Judge Jack Hurley, of the Circuit Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia for the 29th Judicial Circuit, Tazewell County, denied a motion to stay his injunction blocking certification of the election using the new districts. Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli reports that once a final order is drafted and entered, “it will be immediately appealed.”

If the rejiggering survives the challenge, it could be the factor that tips the balance in the House of Representatives toward the Democrats next November.

Cuccinelli, who is now national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, had been saying that passage of the gerrymander would not be the last word. In their rush to get the measure to voters and enacted before November 2026, lawmakers ignored sundry constitutional requirements.

The 2024 special session that took up the redistricting measure had been convened to legislate about the budget. “Its governing resolution limited the session’s scope. Expanding it to include a constitutional amendment on redistricting required a two-thirds vote that never occurred.”

Also, says Cuccinelli, the state constitution requires that “an election must intervene between first and second passage” of a proposed constitutional amendment. “Here, first passage occurred during an election cycle — not before an intervening one.”

Among other problems is the constitutional stipulation that “every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory.” The proposed map violates this requirement “badly.”

When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go, and this partisan map must go.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law U.S. Constitution Voting

Noncitizen Voting Q&A

California, voting, democracy, elections, citizenship, ID, voter identification

Question: What stops the California Assembly from allowing noncitizens to vote in federal elections?

Answer: Nothing. 

Noncitizens are now voting in two major California cities: San Francisco and Oakland. Legally. Including those in the country illegally.

And California courts have upheld the constitutionality, after San Francisco’s law was challenged. 

Voting in the Golden State doesn’t have to be limited to U.S. citizens.

So, it’s not all that far-fetched to think California’s legislature might one day pass a statute allowing noncitizens to vote in state legislative elections. Maybe in Maryland, too, where 16 cities now have legal and illegal aliens voting. Or Vermont, where a legislative supermajority overrode the governor to say yes to three cities giving the vote to noncitizens. Legislation has been introduced in both New York and Connecticut, in recent years, to give noncitizens the vote in those states’ legislative elections.  

“The Constitution is clear,” law professor Bradley Smith wrote Monday in The Wall Street Journal, “Under Article I and the 17th Amendment, any person who is allowed to vote in a state legislative election is automatically also allowed to vote for members of Congress.” 

In other words, the federal statute that purports to ban noncitizen voting in federal elections has a hole in it big enough to drive, say, the state of California through. 

“A federal statute can’t trump the Constitution’s explicit, exclusive grant of power to each state to determine who is eligible to vote,” explained the professor. 

. . . “even if the SAVE America Act were passed. . . .

“Although no state allows noncitizens to vote for its legislature,” Smith said, “that could change.” 

We need a constitutional amendment in this 250th year of our Republic because only citizens of the United States should vote in federal elections. Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) just introduced it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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election law initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

Obscenely Unacceptable

voter ID

“F*ck this sh*t.”

That’s how the erudite opponents of Michigan’s Citizen Only Voting Amendment responded to supporters submitting a petition with more than 750,000 voter signatures to place the measure on the November ballot. 

Sans the asterisks, actually, which I supplied.  

Back in 2022, these oppositionists, fraudulently calling themselves Voters Not Politicians (VNP), helped politicians weaken Michigan’s voter-enacted term limits. 

Now they’re fighting an initiative that I’m promoting, which would: (1) clarify that only U.S. citizens are eligible voters at the state and local level, (2) mandate that the Secretary of State check the voter rolls to ensure it contains only citizens, and (3) require photo ID to vote.

VNP argues this measure is “voter suppression,” after actively urging their liberal activists to “disrupt circulation” of our petition in order to suppress a vote on it. “If this campaign gets enough signatures to get their proposal on the ballot,” VNP acknowledged, “it’s likely to pass.”

Why might voters support the amendment? 

“In Michigan, there have been incidents where non-citizens have not only been allowed to register but then were able to cast ballots,” explained a recent Detroit News editorial. “While the number of incidents is few, that the loophole exists at all is unacceptable.”

At a capitol news conference before delivering 199 boxes of petitions, Sen. Ruth Johnson, a former two-term Secretary of State, told reporters, “You need ID to get a library card to check out a book. You need ID to get a fishing license. And you should have an ID to vote.”

“Only citizens of the United States should be voting in our elections,” offered Rep. Ann Bollin, a former local election clerk. “It is not rocket science. It is common sense.”

This is [expletive deleted] Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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