Category: election law

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ballot access election law judiciary

Democratic Mountain High

Donald Trump, Colorado Supreme Court, election, insurrection

How to spark a civil war?

“A divided Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot,” wrote David Knowles for Yahoo News. This will, of course, induce a “showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race.”

The idea — half plausible, I suppose — is that President Trump’s actions on January 6 spurred an insurrection attempt, therefore he is ineligible to run for any federal office.

But emphasize the half-plausible, since, no matter how often Democrats repeat it, the rally-turned-mini-riot-turned-incursion into the Capitol Building did not amount to anything like an insurrection. Capitol Hill interlopers on January 6 were neither prepared nor demonstrating a plan to overthrow the peaceful succession of power. 

They certainly didn’t try to take over the government.

Nor has Mr. Trump been convicted of any such thing.

But, as we all know, this is a controversial matter falling mostly on partisan lines (the Colorado State Supreme Court being made up entirely of Democratic appointees) . . . which makes interpretation of the third section of the 14th Amendment rather tricky.

The state-by-state lawsuits have been sponsored by progressive interest groups trying, desperately, to stop Donald Trump from pulling off a Grover Cleveland: returning to office after a fluke one-term “pause.”

Yet, even if the Supreme Court balks at putting down this too-clever-by-half-plausible scheme, the best Democrats could hope for is preventing Trump from running in blue states with blue courts. Trump might still win despite not being on some state ballots. 

Or lose in an election obviously rigged because he is barred. 

A recipe for deep distrust, resentment and anger.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access crime and punishment election law

Elections Overturned & Undermined

elections, democracy, cheating, voting, trust

Sure, democracy is a messy affair. But it does require several fine balances. One of them is that elections must be trustworthy: neither rigged nor gamed.

In recent years, many elections have been charged to be somehow “stolen.” Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of “stealing” the 2016 presidential election; Donald Trump, in turn, accused the Democrats of stealing the 2020 election, in which he was given his walking papers.

Now reports by Roman Balmakov, at Epoch TV, show that election irregularities at the local level can not only be contested, but elections overturned. 

Sans “insurrection.”

“In a shocking turn of events,” explains Balmakov, “a judge in Connecticut overturned a primary election because the evidence of fraud was just so overwhelming.” Video captured late-night ballot box stuffing, with identifiable government-employee perps. The judge overturned Bridgeport’s Democratic primary race for mayor.

In a sheriff’s race in a Louisiana parish an even more extraordinary set of events occurred. An election wherein a candidate lost by one vote was challenged; a recount adjusted the figures but the single-vote spread remained. Another challenge led the state Supreme Court to appoint a judge to look into the mess, and he found one: clear evidence of massive voting irregularities. He demanded a new election.

But Roman Balmakov’s report from yesterday may spark wider interest. It was about a thorough Rasmussen poll of 2020 voters: “1-in-5 people who voted by mail committed some type of voter fraud.” You might say they confessed as much in how they answered the poll. 

All three stories cast a dark light on the state of American democracy. But the poll may be the most troubling. 

If not how little interest the Rasmussen survey has garnered from major media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment election law initiative, referendum, and recall

Methinks the Mayor

petition, private property, taxes, schools

“So, Walmart has no rights?!”

The frustration flowed from Yakima Mayor Janice Deccio to a 911 operator. Her compassionate heart bled profusely for the long-suffering stockholders and executives of one of the world’s richest companies. 

“Hi, this is Mayor Deccio. I know that this isn’t an emergency call, but I need to talk to somebody,” she told the dispatcher. “There are far rightwing petitioners at Walmart and they are not leaving after Walmart has asked them repeatedly to do so. And the police have not taken them off the premises.”

But, as the voice at 911 explained to the distraught officeholder, Washington State law requires that commercial property must make a public accommodation for First Amendment activity such as petitioning. 

The mayor’s thirst for a police solution to these “far rightwing” petitioners went unquenched.

“Obviously, the extreme left is freaked out by these initiatives,” offers Glen Morgan on his We the Governed podcast.

He’s referring to six conservative-oriented initiatives being promoted by Let’s Go Washington and petitioned onto Washington State’s 2024 ballot.

“Four of these initiatives reduce taxes,” Morgan points out. “One of them allows the police to actually chase violent criminals once again. And the other one confirms that parents have the right to know what strangers are doing to their kids at school or in unsupervised medical settings.”

Deccio now claims that mystery constituents told her the petitioners were aggressive and threatening . . . something she didn’t mention that on the call. The fact that her 911 plea has been made public might have something to do with her change of tune.

And don’t even mention ideology! “I don’t care,” she contends, “nor even know what they were petitioning about.”

The mayor added: “No one told the group they couldn’t petition, and it was certainly not my intention to stop them.”

No, of course not — she intended for the police to stop them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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deficits and debt election law tax policy

Slasher Needs Slashing

California Assembly, tax, taxes

A perennial bill in the California Assembly, Constitutional Amendment 1, would make it harder for voters to block local tax increases in accordance with the provisions of Proposition 13, which voters passed in 1978.

ACA 1 would shrink the percentage of voters who must approve certain tax increases from two thirds to 55 percent in cases where the money would purportedly be used for infrastructure or public housing.

Passage would further erode the legacy of Prop 13, which in addition to cutting taxes, limiting tax increases, and requiring a two-thirds legislative majority to increase state taxes, also imposed a two-thirds threshold for voter approval for special local taxes.

In 2000, voters accepted a lower threshold for approval of school bonds — 55 percent instead of two thirds — enabling billions more in property taxes.

That’s bad enough, but things could easily get worse.

Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association observes that if enacted, ACA 1 would be used to raise taxes repeatedly in local elections by dint of dubbing all government spending “infrastructure.” 

The infrastructure exemption is an innovation of the 2023 version of the bill (the tricky tricksters never stop).

Moreover, if passed, the amendment would take effect immediately. “Billions of dollars in tax hikes will start that much faster.”

Coupal stresses that the new exactions would be added to property tax bills “above and beyond Prop 13’s one percent cap” on property taxes.

ACA 1 keeps getting reintroduced and, so far, keeps getting killed off, like the mad killer in a teen slasher movie. Only to be revived for the sequel.

Kill it again.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment election law partisanship

Election Challenge Criminalized?

Trump, election, indictment, votes, legitimacy

Another day, another indictment of former President Trump. This one, out of Georgia, would criminalize election challenges.

Jonathan Turley observes that in this fourth indictment, “every call, speech, and tweet appears a criminal step in the conspiracy. District Attorney Fani Willis appears to have elected to charge everything and everyone and let God sort them out.”

This is the kitchen-sink, banana-republic approach to “justice.” Facts? Plausibility? Irrelevant when the would-be one-party regime has a target in view.

In masterful understatement or point-missing, Turley writes that the “greatest challenge for Georgia is to offer a discernible limiting principle on when challenges in close elections are permissible and when they are criminal.”

But how can it ever be criminal simply to challenge election results or call for a recount or plead for further investigation of the flimsiest of allegations, even via imperfect phone call?

The “limiting principle” operative here is obvious. Is the challenger on our side or the other side? Our side, the challenge is legal. Other side, it’s illegal, prosecutable. This is Willis’s “principle.”

Per Turley, it’s important for campaigns to seek judicial review of an election “without fear of prosecution.” Yes, important. But from the perspective of those who want to prevent other-side campaigns from seeking recourse when an election is close or seems pockmarked by fraud, what’s important is making sure other-side campaigns do fully feel this fear.

The bad guys already understand what’s at stake, what Mr. Turley is so carefully explaining as if they are perhaps only a little confused.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment election law privacy

Donors Don’t Donate Their Privacy

donor, privacy, crime, law, surveillance

Alabama recently passed a law to prohibit public agencies from disclosing information “that identifies a person as a member, supporter, or donor of a 501(c) nonprofit organization . . . except as required by law.”

SB59 is comprehensive, stating that “notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary,” no public agency may compel disclosure of such information or itself publicly release such information. 

The initial delimitation “except as required by law” seems ambiguous. But SB59 goes on to specify that exceptions would pertain to things like the requirements of a “lawful warrant” or a “lawful request for discovery of personal information in litigation.”

Passage is a big deal because, until now, agencies in the state had been permitted to collect and disclose such information.

Many nonprofits are political or ideological in character, promoting causes that are controversial. When this is so, who especially appreciates unfettered access to donors’ names and addresses? Obviously, opponents of the cause who would like to target donors with propaganda or even actively harass them.

On the national level, recognition of the problem is represented by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta. The court threw out a California requirement that nonprofits in the state had to divulge the names and addresses of their biggest donors to the attorney general. The Foundation plausibly argued that the requirement would deter people from contributing.

Several other states have also enacted SB59-style legislation. The number we need is 50.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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