Category: Voting

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partisanship Voting

Gerrymandering Proceeds Apace

Gerrymandering, voting, democracy, elections, New York

An “independent” redistricting commission established in New York State by constitutional amendment has failed. That means state lawmakers get to draw political districts after all.

And boy, are they drawing them. 

The maps just proposed by the dominantly Democratic legislature may reduce the number of GOP congressional districts from eight to three. But as Adele Malpass explains, these maps “are filled with districts that are shaped like snakes [and] cross multiple bodies of water.”

Although the failed New York State Independent Redistricting Commission sports that imposing moniker, it is really just a bipartisan commission. Not so independent. The commission was set up in such a way allowing either group of partisan members to obstruct things until there is no alternative but to let state lawmakers draw the districts.

That’s what happened here.

Both Republican and Democratic commission members argue that a legislature-​mandated compromise to reconcile clashing sets of maps — a GOP-​preferred set and a Democrat-​preferred set — was thwarted by the other partisan team. The Republican claim is more plausible; they had nothing to gain by letting districts be squiggled by Democrats in the legislature.

Last November, the commission survived a Democrat-​favored ballot measure to kill it, but that victory wasn’t enough to prevent the commission from collapsing.

Perhaps this grotesque gerrymandering will be stymied by courts. It would be great if Empire State voters had the power to enact a more robust district-​drawing commission. But sadly, New Yorkers have no statewide right of citizen initiative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access Voting

Our Elections — How Broken?

ballot fraud, democracy, cheating, elections, finger, ink

Election fraud didn’t suddenly disappear during the 2020 presidential election.

Or so observes John Fund, co-​author of Our Broken Elections: How the Left Changed the Way You Vote, in a wide-​ranging interview with Jan Jekielek, Wall Street Journal reporter and elections expert.

The list of problems is long. One example is what happened in New York City during the last days of the Bloomberg administration.

Testing the election system, the Department of Investigations sent 63 inspectors to try their hand at fraudulent voting. The inspectors used names of dead people, jailed people, people who had moved out of state. All they had to do to immediately get a ballot was supply a name and address. There was no double-checking.

In almost every case, the inspectors had no problem putting over the fraud. (Fake fraud; they didn’t follow through.)

In one case, an inspector was merely sent from one precinct to another precinct, only a temporary delay.

In another case, an inspector was rebuffed only because he had used the name and address of an imprisoned person who happened to be the son of the poll worker the inspector was trying to con.

In response to an exhaustive and damning report, furious Board of Elections officials demanded that the inspectors be criminally prosecuted for impersonating people. The officials testing the system were so widely savaged for this temerity that they backed off.

We must not back off, though. Ballot fraud is an insidious enemy of democracy. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access Voting

Citizenship Not Required

voting, democracy, alien, illegal, immigrant, noncitizen

Noncitizen voting is coming to New York City.

Tomorrow, the city council is expected to approve a measure permitting more than 800,000 noncitizens to vote in city elections.

Noncitizens will need to have a green card or the right to work in the United States, and will need to have been resident in the city for at least 30 days.

Opponents include Councilman Rubén Díaz, a Democrat. He observes that the requirements for becoming a naturalized citizen and thereby earning the right to vote, which include “understanding the basics of [our history] and how our government functions,” would thus be bypassed.

Whether the granting of American citizenship to newcomers has been too lax or too cumbersome is a separate question. But if a particular noncitizen deserves to vote, he or she surely deserves citizenship. Why not start with citizenship?

Opt in. Become an American before you vote in America. This seems basic.

Which is why de-​linking voting from formal citizenship conjures up two worrisome questions: 

What agenda does this serve? and What’s next?

Next steps could include extending the franchise to those who do not “have the right to work” (as is already the case in San Francisco) and extending this new right, noncitizen voting, to state and federal elections.

That many Democratic congressmen are eager to obliterate any practical distinctions between citizen and noncitizen is shown by their support for HR1, the misnamed “For the People Act,” an assault on state-​level laws intended to ensure that only (living) citizens are voting (only once) in elections.

Fortunately, that federal legislation has been blocked. For now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access national politics & policies Voting

Ballots, Barriers and Buncombe

voting, citizenship, democracy, immigration

“The right to vote is a sacred civil right that empowers naturalized citizens to participate in our democracy,” LaVita Tuff, policy director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-​Atlanta, informed the media.

Yet, that same news release declared, “Asian Americans Advancing Justice-​Atlanta and the Asian American Advocacy Fund collectively condemn the statements made by Georgia’s Secretary of State this morning emphasizing that ‘only American citizens should vote in our elections in Georgia.’”

These groups specifically attach voting rights to “naturalized citizens,” that is, immigrants who go through the process to become American citizens … like millions before them. But then AAAJ‑A and AAAF denounce Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for asking the Georgia General Assembly, last month, to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to clarify that only U.S. citizens can vote in all state and local elections. 

“[D]on’t disenfranchise the people of Georgia on this important issue,” Raffensperger urged. “Let’s put it on a ballot.”

No argument is offered by either AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) group opposing the substance of Sec. Raffensperger’s proposed amendment. Not a single word.

Instead, they contend that “preventing noncitizens from voting is unnecessary and misleading,” before mentioning a non-​citizen voting “measure previously considered in Clarkston, Georgia” and the possibility of changes “that could expand the right to vote to include noncitizens in local elections.” Hmmm … thus providing a very real and recent justification for Georgia voters to weigh-in. 

The news release smears Republican Raffensperger for supposedly “using immigrants as a scapegoat to create additional barriers to the ballot.” 

But the measure is clearly designed to protect existing barriers, not prohibit any currently eligible citizen from voting. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption Voting

Democrats’ Shadow Play

shadows, Democrats, Democrat Party

There is more than one way to rig an election.

Sometimes all you need is a monkey wrench. A little chaos might help you get your way.

Last February 3, Democrats voted in the Iowa caucuses, placing Bernie Sanders in the lead. But a major “foul-​up” occurred. “The state party was unable to report a winner on caucus night,” explains Tyler Pager at Politico, “the mobile app to report results failed to work for many precinct chairs, the back-​up telephone systems were jammed and some precincts had initial reporting errors.”

The chaos certainly did not help winner Bernie Sanders, disabled from making publicity hay while the sun shined. There was enough darkness for democracy to die in.

The Iowa Democratic Party commissioned an audit to throw some belated light on the brouhaha, and the results are in: the Democratic National Committee is mostly to blame. 

“According to the report, the DNC demanded the technology company, Shadow, build a conversion tool just weeks before the caucuses to allow the DNC to have real-​time access to the raw numbers because the national party feared the app would miscalculate results.” But the DNC and Shadow used incompatible database formats, spawning chaos. 

In a generous mood? Call it sheer incompetence. 

But the mess sure … smells … suspicious.

“The caucuses are a cherished tradition for Iowans,” reports Reid J. Epstein at The New York Times, “but an increasing number of national Democrats say they are outdated and undemocratic.”

Well, they are when you make them so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall Voting

Worms for Early Bird Voting?

ballot box, voting, democracy, money, pandemic

Election Day is six weeks away. Yet, in my home state of Virginia, voting began last week.

Is it responsible to cast a ballot so early? 

You may know with metaphysical certainty how you’re voting for president — even in the event of some major cataclysm — but have all the state rep and city council and ballot measure campaigns also played out fully enough for you?

Here in Virginia, we get few candidate races in our split-​up state and federal elections, much less ballot issues to decide. I could have made all my (very few) choices months ago. But I trust that in a more competitive and healthy representative democracy we would more want to hear out the candidates.

A lot can happen in six weeks. And you cannot change your vote once it’s cast.*

The new Democratic-​controlled Legislature — in reaction to the pandemic, to prevent crowding at the polls — expanded the early voting period this year. It started September 18 and ends October 31.** 

There are costs to expanding early voting — including making campaigns more expensive to run and win. Disabled from marshaling advertising into a two-​or-​three-​week period before the vote, campaigns are forced to sustain publicity for a month. Or longer. 

While better-​funded incumbents have little difficulty with the added cost, it cripples challengers. It especially handicaps grassroots ballot initiative proponents battling public employee unions or the Chamber of Commerce. 

Make the voting process comfortable and easy for citizens. But let’s be certain not to make it comfortable and easy for incumbents and special interests.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* In Sweden, you can change your early vote, informs my friend Bruno Kaufmann, a journalist and direct democracy advocate. They call it “second voting.” 

** Though several other states routinely allow more than six weeks of early voting.

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