Tag: democracy

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ballot access partisanship Voting

Are You Suppressed Yet?

Texas, voting, suppression, elections, democracy

Last August, the Texas Legislature considered changes to the state’s election process. Republicans called these changes “election integrity” while Democrats . . . well, they fled the Lone Star State for six weeks — even hanging out in the Washington swamp — to deny the majority party the quorum it needed to conduct legislative business.

Democratic Rep. Chris Turner said he left “because we are in a fight to save our democracy” against what he dubbed “nationwide Republican vote suppression efforts.”

Eventually, however, Democrats returned home and legislation was passed that The New York Times reported would “cement Texas as one of the most difficult states in the country in which to vote.”

Fast-forward to this year’s March 1 Primary Election, which The Hill reminds us “came amid the state’s new, more restrictive voting laws.” 

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to democracy’s grand destruction . . . Democratic turnout went not down but up! On the Republican side, the number of votes increased dramatically — by roughly 33 percent — “nearly 400,000 more than were cast in the 2018 primary, and more votes than had ever been cast in a midterm GOP primary.”

But there’s more.

In Harris County, the new voting law triggered an audit, which just so happened to find approximately 10,000 “mail ballots” that “were tabulated but not counted,” informs The Associated Press. 

Oops! Those Houston-area Democrats and Republicans (roughly 6,000 and 4,000 respectively) would have had their votes obliterated . . . save for the legislation roundly attacked as “anti-voter.”

So much for suppression.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: A week after the election, Harris County Election Administrator Isabel Longoria announced her resignation.

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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 national politics & policies

The Other Big Lie

Joe Biden

“Let me be clear,” President Joe Biden told a Georgia crowd yesterday, addressing changes proposed by the Democrats to election laws nationally, “this is not about me or Vice-President Harris or our party.”

Of course not. Who would even suggest such a thing? 

On this same “voting rights” subject six months ago, Biden called Republicans “bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies” who “are threatening the very foundation of our country.” Though less colorful, yesterday’s address was merely more of the same. 

“Pass the Freedom to Vote Act! Pass it now!” the president shouted, arguing that it “would prevent voter suppression.”  

How? Well, that’s less than clear. 

For years, Democrats slammed laws requiring voters to show photo identification as “racist,” contending the requirement disproportionately suppressed black voters. But then, when polls demonstrated that voters “of color” are even more supportive of Voter ID laws than are whites, Democrats quickly insisted they had always been for such laws.

Now — keep up! — voter ID laws are back to being suppressive. And the very purpose of the Dems’ Freedom to Vote Act is to strike down all such state laws.

When Georgia’s Secretary of State called for photo ID requirements last Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, host Margaret Brennan offered, “The Freedom to Vote Act actually does promote a national standard for states that have an ID requirement for in-person voting,” adding, “You could use a bank statement or utility bill.”

Neither of which constitutes a photo ID, as the secretary pointed out.

Democrats battling former President Trump’s so-called Big Lie have concocted one of their very own.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Sore Losers Lumped

Stacey Abrams, voter fraud, elections, democracy, power

“[R]ight now,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger expressed to Margaret Brennan, host of CBS’s Face the Nation, last Sunday, “we need to restore trust wherever we can.”

Having “stood up to” pressure from President Trump after the 2020 election, and now persona-non-grata in his own party, Raffensperger has become a popular guest on progressives’ legacy media . . . though, not always providing the soundbites they crave.  

“In Georgia, we’ve been fighting this — this theme of, you know, stolen election claims — from Stacey Abrams about voter suppression [in 2018], and then 2020 it was about voter fraud,” explained the secretary. 

“Both of them undermine voter trust.”

“They may both undermine voter trust,” Brennan quickly countered, “but I’m sure you draw a distinction between someone who doesn’t hold any kind of office and the president of the United States actively putting pressure on you to find and manufacture votes. They’re not equivalent,” she added.

Raffensperger acknowledged that the president’s “positional power is just much higher than a candidate running for governor. But be that as it may,” he continued, “when people lose races, I think the proper thing to do is admit that you lose. And if you want to run again, by all means do so.”

Partisans will debate whether Abrams’ claims of voter suppression are more right or wrong, defensible or incredible, honest or dishonest than Trump’s charges of vote fraud. But both have been blindly accepted not only by their own political side, but by the rah-rah crowd in the respective partisan corners — er, halves — of the media as well.

Leaving other elected officials to grab their midnight trains to somewhere else, the lonely Georgia Secretary of State stands his ground, making a non-partisan, principled point.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Reforms from Ground Zero

Margaret Brennan, Face the Nation, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, voting, elections, democracy, citizenship

“Georgia has become ground zero in the fight over election integrity,” Margaret Brennan, host of Face the Nation on CBS, alerted her audience on Sunday, introducing the state’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who, she reminded, “became known nationally in the wake of that election because [he] refused to succumb to pressure from President Trump.”

Given the walk that Mr. Raffensperger has walked, his talk should carry some street cred with media outlets that are truly non-partisan and interested in election reform. 

Raffensperger proposed three reforms to secure elections: (1) No ballot harvesting, wherein a person gathers up or “harvests” many mail-ballots not his or her own; (2) “a constitutional amendment . . . that only American citizens vote in our elections,” and (3) “photo I.D. for all forms of voting.”

“Only U.S. citizens do currently vote in elections,” Brennan critically interjected (incorrectly), “but go on.”

Raffensperger did, explaining that “cities are trying to push noncitizen voting.” A few years ago, the council in Clarkston, Ga., voted to study allowing non-citizens to vote. Just last month, the New York City Council gave the right to vote in city elections to 800,000 non-citizens (including 110,000 Chinese nationals); last year, the Vermont Legislature approved non-citizen voting in two cities; and non-citizens (documented and undocumented) have been voting in San Francisco; and in 11 more cities across the country.

The Secretary of State noted that citizen-only voting, “just like photo I.D.,” is “supported by all demographic groups and a majority of both political parties.”

Citizen-only voting belongs in our state constitutions so that any future decisions on providing the vote to non-citizens requires a vote of the people, and therefore, cannot be made by politicians alone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Illustrating the usual split between politicians and voters, the New York City Council enacted a law for non-citizen voting while a poll of New Yorkers showed more than 60 percent opposed the measure.

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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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initiative, referendum, and recall international affairs social media

Somebody . . . to Squelch

Punjab, Paul Jacob, Facebook, censorship

I AM . . . somebody!

. . . with an officially “restricted” Facebook account.

I’d like to thank my family and friends for always believing in me — even many decades ago when it was unclear if I had what it takes to even get arrested. And now, after repeated validation per that previous metric, comes my crowning Internet-era achievement: running afoul of the information-squelching policy of massive Meta censorship. 

I’m deeply humbled by the recognition. 

“Your post didn’t follow our Community Standards” was all the information provided. It flagged a post of nearly a month earlier.

“Tomorrow is the big day for the first city — London — to take part in the Punjab Referendum organized by Sikhs for Justice,” my October 30th post read. “It will be a long day . . . but so glad to be part of the international commission advising on best practices, monitoring the actual voting and issuing a report.” Five photos of a meeting and a handout promoting the referendum adorned the post. 

An “Account Restricted” label appeared on my homepage with the note: “Only you can see this.” 

The ban stops me from personally “going live” or “advertising” for 30 days. Two things I don’t do. 

But let’s not allow the absurdity of it all to mask what’s happening: Voices that do not fit the official government-induced corporate narrative are harassed and silenced in a major avenue for communication. 

The too-often-violent situation in the Punjab region of India, what many Sikhs call “Khalistan,” is tense. The non-binding, non-governmental referendum I posted about has been outlawed by India’s government. 

Blocking and punishing posts that speak truthfully about a democratic approach to that ugly division hardly solves the problem.

It works in this case (and others) to prevent a peaceful resolution.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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political challengers

Message or Money?

Edward Durr, New Jersey

“I don’t know if I truly am fearless,” Edward Durr remarked to an NJ.com reporter, “or stupid.”

“Because who in their right mind would take on a person with that kind of power and clout?” he asked rhetorically, before he answered, “But his power, his clout, did not scare me.”

Durr, a Republican, is the 58-year-old truck driver who last Tuesday defeated one of the most powerful politicians in New Jersey, State Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat. Durr has never before held public office and spent just a smidgen over $2,000 in the entire race. His campaign video was filmed on his smartphone.

On the other hand, Sweeney was the longest serving legislative leader in the Garden State’s history. The powerful teachers’ union attempted to take Sweeney out four years ago, spending a whopping $5 million, but he still won handily by 18 percentage points.

Was it a conservative-leaning district? This southern Jersey district “has reliably elected a Democrat since its creation in 1973, save for one year when the Democratic incumbent switched parties,” reported The New York Times.

At Reason, Rob Soave called it “one of the biggest political upsets in American history,” offering this important takeaway: “Durr’s victory is another reminder that for all the pearl clutching about money in politics, contemporary American campaigns are less determined by big piles of cash — to pay for massive ad blitzes, expensive consultants, and the like — than ever.”

Clearly, message meant more than money.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people

Democracy Fail?

California, recall, democracy

“California recall fails,” The Visalla Times Delta explained. As did KSBY, the NBC affiliate in San Luis Obispo. Not to mention The New York Daily News and The Chicago Sun-Times.

FiveThirtyEight analyzed “the failed California recall” at length. Even the South China Morning Post proclaimed the apparent democratic malfunction (reprinting an Agence France-Press report).

Yet the recall did not fail.  

Sure, voters decided not to jettison Governor Newsom mid-term. But that’s not a failure of this century-old democratic check on power — not unless a whole bunch of the 64 percent voting to keep Newsom filled in the wrong oval on their ballot by mistake.

I almost wish that were so; it would be easier to correct going forward.

“In a state famous for its acts of direct democracy,” a New York Times feature informs, “detractors of this year’s special election say the recall process is democracy gone off the rails, a distraction from crises that require the government’s attention, and a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Some folks never complain about government spending until it comes to the cost of holding an election. Funny, that’s precisely when our money might actually be well spent.

“No one in the state’s Democratic leadership is suggesting the elimination of recalls,” The Times notes, merely “vowing to make it more difficult for them to qualify for the ballot.”

In other words, legislators intend to raise the cost . . . so as to fight wealthy interests, they’ll argue. With a straight face.

“In a sharp piece of political irony,” that Times’ piece bemoans, “it will take a referendum to decide whether to change this particular referendum.”

Which is a feature of the system, not a bug. That is, no fail there. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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