Category: Voting

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election law Voting

California’s Electoral Saboteurs

voter ID, immigration, election fraud, citizenship

Thou shalt not check the ID of a person showing up to vote.

California lawmakers — apparently eager to help noncitizens vote — have banned local voter ID laws like that of Huntington Beach.

Attorney General Rob Bonta says that requiring ID to vote “flies in the face” of the principle that “the right to cast your vote is the foundation of our democracy.”

But Huntington Beach didn’t impair “the right to cast your vote.”

Opponents of ID requirements say that the problem is the terrible hardship of presenting a valid ID or perhaps of obtaining one. These may be chores, but they’re hardly ventures into the unknown. If you’re a citizen, you can get ID showing you are. And almost everyone is capable of pulling an ID out of a pocket and displaying it.

Here’s a tell: “An amendment to Senate Bill 1174 that would have explicitly banned illegal migrants from voting was rejected.”

Is there evidence of fraud in American elections? 

Is it major — not a marginal issue having to do with one or two wayward ballots per decade?

Could lawmakers like California State Senator Dave Min, who asserts that “voter ID laws only subvert voter turnout,” be wrong?

Yes. 

The evidence can be found in John Fund’s books, such as Our Broken Elections, Stealing Elections, and Who’s Counting? A more recent report of attempts to undermine the vote and prevent the same is Elizabeth Nickson’s article “The 2024 Cheat and What’s Being Done About It.”

Voter IDs don’t subvert voter turnout, they subvert fraudulent voter turnout.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law general freedom Voting

Jugglers & Clowns

immigration, voting, democracy, rigged election

“Shall the City of Santa Ana City Charter be amended to allow … noncitizen City residents, including those who are taxpayers and parents, to vote in all City of Santa Ana municipal elections?”

In November, this question about voting will be presented to voters. 

It is true that noncitizens in the city include both “taxpayers and parents,” of course. Still, by this same logic, why not change the ballot language to read “including the childless and the destitute”? Those noncitizens would also get to vote. 

Or get away from one’s tax status and childbirth proclivities altogether and change the wording to “including those who speak French and drink coffee.” Or maybe voters could be made aware that noncitizens will include “shopaholics and known thespians.”

All these statements are the truth and nothing but the truth. How could anyone object?

But object they did. Opponents of the measure filed suit, asking a California court to strike the “taxpayers and parents” wording from the ballot — as prejudicial in favor of the change. 

The court agreed, ordering the city to remove that language “sugarcoating” the proposition. 

But the city refuses (I didn’t know cities could tell courts No!*) and is keeping its current biased language to push a Yes vote on the proposition. 

Rule of law be damned.

My last suggestion to Santa Ana officials is to edit the wording after noncitizens to say, “including jugglers and clowns.” No, wait — that particular identification might be confusing, since it applies far less to noncitizens than to Santa Ana’s city council.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* Unusual, indeed, for a local government to ignore a court order. It likely means the proposition, even if passed, will ultimately be blocked in court as improperly enacted. 

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media and media people national politics & policies Voting

The Non-​Citizen Dodge

After telling Meet the Press viewers that non-​citizen voting is “exceedingly rare” and “already against the law,” NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger what he thought about “efforts to prevent non-​citizens from voting.”

“I believe only American citizens should be voting in our elections,” replied Raffensperger. “I’m the first secretary of state in Georgia to ever do 100 percent citizenship verification,” adding that Georgia officials discovered “about 1600 people that attempted to register, but we couldn’t verify citizenship, so they weren’t put on the voter rolls.”

The Secretary also explained that his office “just won a court case which came from the left, the Coalition of the People’s Agenda and the New Georgia Project, which was founded by Stacey Abrams.”* Raffensperger points out that the lawsuit “tried to stop us from doing citizenship verification before people were put on the voter rolls.”

“Good news, good news for everyone,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson chided, dismissively. “All of us want to make sure only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections. And all of us follow the law, ensure the federal provisions are protected, and that we’re ensuring that only valid votes are counted in our state.”

Democrat Benson reiterated that “regardless of our party affiliation, we’re doing all that we can and more to ensure, as the facts show, in all of our states, that only U.S. citizens are voting.”

“What you just said there was ‘federal provisions,’” responded Raffensperger, noting that non-​citizens have been given the vote — legally — at the local level in a number of states. 

He argued that states should place in their constitutions “that only American citizens are voting in any election in your state.”**

Still, Welker inquired, “Is it a red herring?”

No, Raffensperger answered, arguing that “already there’s the left-​wing groups trying to get noncitizens voting in local elections in Washington, D.C., New York City and in other places.” And he asked, “Why are we getting sued by the left to stop us from doing citizenship verification?”

Many Democrats and much of the media continue to dodge such questions. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

*In her first run for Governor, Abrams said her “blue wave” was “comprised of those who are documented and undocumented” and specifically acknowledged that she “wouldn’t oppose” allowing non-​citizens to vote at the local level. 

** Americans for Citizen Voting has worked closely with the Georgia Secretary of State to place such constitutional amendments on six state ballots this November: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Wisconsin. North Carolina may soon become the seventh state to do so. 

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election law Voting

Voting Unbound, Democracy Unhinged

voting, democracy, elections, corruption, power

In our nation’s capital, local voting rights are expanding and metastasizing so fast it is hard to keep up.

Exhibit A, a 12 – 1 vote of the City Council last year, telling the world: It is absolutely crucial to our democracy that China’s ambassador to the United States be given the same vote on who should be mayor, council member, or decide ballot measures, that any American citizen living in the District of Columbia would be entitled. 

Hey, let’s not disenfranchise the spies working out of the Russian embassy, either. Let ’em all vote! 

After all, they pay taxes. Might have their kids in the schools. 

In the country illegally? Fuhgeddaboudit! You can vote in DC. In fact, if an invading army took Washington by military force, and then held it for 30 days, the enemy soldiers could legally vote themselves into office. 

If only this were hyperbole!

A year ago, all the Republicans — along with 1 in 5 Democrats — in the U.S. House voted to nix the District’s crazy foreign citizen voting plan, as is Congress’s constitutional authority. But the Democrat-​controlled Senate refuses to act.

Last week, Abel Amene, whose Ethiopian family was granted asylum more than 20 years ago, became the first non-​citizen to be elected to a D.C. office. Abel won one of nearly 300 seats on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission, where the average district contains roughly 2,000 residents. 

My only question: why hasn’t he become a citizen? 

While the ANC has absolutely no power whatsoever, it is likely that its commissioner, Vanessa Rubio, lusts for more power and authority. Earlier this week she was fined $500 for voting twice in the 2020 election — once in Maryland and another time in Washington, D.C. 

She originally told authorities she did not recall voting twice. Later she suggested that because D.C. isn’t a state, voting there didn’t count … as if everyone gets one vote in Washington and another where they actually live.

Rubio’s 2020 fraud reminds us that not every vote should count.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability ballot access Voting

Time and Money

voting, democracy, elections

The Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, expects the state government to automate voter registration by the 2024 election. This will “save taxpayers time and money.”

Unless they opt out, prospective voters are to be enrolled when they get a state ID or a driver’s license at the DMV.

According to the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania, it will also make it easier for “uninterested, uninformed people to wield political power.” And perhaps also make it easier for ineligible noncitizens to vote — folks whom most Democrats, at least, strongly suspect would be more likely to vote Democrat were they somehow enabled.

It’s not fair to noncitizens, however, to register them without their consent and to send them the instruments of casting a ballot, when doing so is illegal and could ruin their chance to become citizens.

And registering and confusing immigrants has been happening in Pennsylvania — under a less lax system.

Shapiro pretends that security will be improved thereby, too. Automating voter registration adds “important levels of verification to the voter registration process.” But Pennsylvania doesn’t need to register people automatically to require a photo ID for registration or voting. (Which it doesn’t, currently; a paycheck or utility bill suffices.)

Political figures often complain about the expenses involved in special elections, recall elections, citizen initiatives, and other paraphernalia of democracy that cater to motivated, informed, active citizens — it is almost as if they regard this kind of voting as coming at their expense. It does not take long dealing with incumbent politicians to intuit that they would rather we just accept everything that they do without demur.

Freedom, democratic institutions and their safeguards, sound electoral procedures, voting machines, getting to the voting booth — even acquiring, filling out and mailing absentee ballots — all such things cost time and money.

We’d save time and money by not eating, too. But that’s hardly a triumph of economy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall Voting

Sticking It to the People

democracy, representation, Memphis, term limits

Nashville’s Metro Council? I’m no fan. But I do like the people of Nashville.

That’s where I differ from Tennessee’s Republican-​dominated state legislature. 

My beef with the Metro Council (discussed in this Wall Street Journal op-​ed) is the fact that, after term limits were passed back in 1994, the council has forced voters to say “No” to five different ballot measures referred by the council (1996, 1998, 2002, 2015, 2018) to weaken or abolish their own limits. 

“No” is a tough concept for them to grasp.

One of those failed council-​sponsored measures even offered to reduce the size of the council from 40 to 27 in hopes voters might see that provision as positive — “give the public something,” said one pol — to divert from the council’s self-​servingly unpopular attack on term limits. 

The GOP-​controlled state legislature, on the other hand, is very angry at Nashville’s liberal Democratic politicians for blocking the Republican National Convention from being held next year in Music City. It sure seems a vindictively partisan move, costing people who own Nashville restaurants and hotels a sizeable bit of income.

So, back in March, the Tennessee Legislature passed a new law cutting Nashville’s council from 40 to 20 members.

That’ll teach ’em, eh?

Were only the tender feelings of Nashville’s dishonorable honorables in jeopardy, I wouldn’t complain. But the ratio of us citizens to our elected representatives is critical.

As Citizens Rising head Stephen Erickson aptly put it, “The state government of Tennessee recently decided that the people of Nashville should be less well represented.”

For the moment, thankfully, a three-​judge panel in Tennessee has paused the legislature’s anti-​representation scheme pending the outcome of a legal challenge. 

But our representatives should be working to improve representation, not hobble it. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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