Tag: elections

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election law Voting

Trump to Save Elections?

voting, ballot, democracy, elections

“Election fraud,” said the president. “You’ve heard the term? This will end it, hopefully.” 

The “This” being an Executive Order dated March 25, 2025, entitled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.”

Interestingly, the opening unfavorably compares the American ways of voting with foreign nations. 

“In tabulating votes, Germany and Canada require use of paper ballots  counted in public by local officials,” the order explains, “which substantially reduces the number of disputes as compared to the American patchwork of voting methods that can lead to basic chain-​of-​custody problems.” The document adds that “countries like Denmark and Sweden sensibly limit mail-​in voting to those unable to vote in person and do not count late-​arriving votes.”

“It is the policy of my Administration to enforce [2 U.S.C. 7 and 3 U.S.C. 1] and require that votes be cast and received by the election date established in law,” Trump’s order states.

Well, California might have to start reporting the results of congressional races in under a month.

More consequently, the EO directs “the Secretary of Homeland Security” and “the Secretary of State” to “ensure that State and local officials have … access to appropriate systems for verifying the citizenship or immigration status of individuals registering to vote or who are already registered.”

The exact opposite policy from Biden’s refusal to help those seeking to enforce citizen-​only voting policies.

In full disclosure, as chairman of Americans for Citizen Voting, I helped eight states pass Citizen Only Voting Amendments last November — and six states previously. This year, South Dakota’s legislature has already placed an amendment on the 2026 ballot and, yesterday, Kansas did likewise. 

Democrats continue to push for non-​citizen voting, which liberal courts in California and Vermont have upheld for cities, and to oppose these state amendments. But last week, New York State’s highest (and quite liberal) court struck down New York City’s noncitizen voting ordinance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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ideological culture Voting

Blood in the Streets?

voting, legislature, panic, hysteria

“When you think about how dangerous it is to raise an issue like this,” Davis Hammet, president of Loud Light Civic Action, explained to a Kansas State House committee, “whenever something doesn’t need to be addressed — because you’re going to create a lot of public attention, a lot of debate on this, and very likely — not to say that anyone here, this is their intention — but there’s [sic] almost three million people in the state, some folks will have very xenophobic and potentially violent outlooks on immigration.”

Hammet then asked legislators to “consider the Garden City bombing plot,” a 2016 case in which three Kansas men were arrested and convicted of conspiring to bomb a housing complex with many Somali immigrants.

Wait … what issue — “like this” — is he talking about? 

Mr. Hammet testified against House Concurrent Resolution 5004, a constitutional amendment introduced by Rep. Pat Procter, clarifying that only U.S. citizens are eligible voters in all Kansas elections, state and local.

“This legally and practically won’t do anything,” asserted Hammet.

Far from the truth, legally. 

Kansas has the same language in its constitution’s suffrage provision as California and Vermont, where courts have upheld the constitutionality of noncitizen voting at the local level. Plus, by placing citizen-​only voting in the state constitution, Kansans can guarantee their power to vote yes or no before any future state legislature or city council could legalize non-​citizen voting.

Twenty-​one cities across the U.S. now give the vote to noncitizens, most also allow those here illegally to vote. Meanwhile,in recent years nearly 30 million Americans in 14 states have voted by whopping margins to enact Citizen Only Voting Amendments like HCR 5004, eight of those states last November. 

“But it could create fuel on the fire for some radical groups,” speculates Hammet, “to feel like they’re motivated to take improper actions.”

Yet so far without a single fatality! No fisticuffs or riots or bombings attributed to the debate or the public vote. Not one incident. 

Hammet may sound high-​minded, throwing around words like “xenophobic,” but note his paranoia about his fellow citizens handling political issues. Moreover, he fails to recognize that the policy he sees as “anti-​immigrant” is, in actual fact, overwhelmingly supported by immigrants.

So, who’s the xenophobe?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: HCR 5004 passed that committee and then passed the House on a vote of 98 to 20. The amendment now awaits action in the Kansas State Senate in order to be referred to the voters.

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ideological culture Voting

Don’t Kill Yourself

democracy, peace, freedom, elections, voting, propaganda, hysteria

As Donald Trump appeared to be winning last night, the number of Twitterers who proclaimed a hankering or a design to kill themselves rose dramatically. Michael Malice and others found humor in it, but it’s a super-​saddening development, if you ask me.

These Kamala Harris voters are not really going to kill themselves. It is just something to say on Twitter.

I really hope I’m not wrong about this.

I’ll leave to others the counsel of life. That is the job of friends and family and emergency hotline dispatchers. My counsel is different: talking about suicide because your candidate lost is undemocratic. If the authoritarian pronouncements of both major candidates alarmed you about the danger of anti-​democratic trend, this fad should raise the alarm several decibels.

The whole point of democracy is to allow a transition of power sans bloodshed. And that requires both contenders and supporters not to shed each other’s blood … or their own. When they fail.

It’s a requirement. Not to over-react.

The losers have to accept the loss, and the winners have to refrain from using the state to punish the losers further. 

It’s sort of that simple.

Resignation is key, as scientist Lawrence M. Krauss (@LKrauss1) indicated: “Going to bed, reasonably resigned to Trump win at this point as it seemed to me from a distance for some time. He may be a nut, a liar, and a crook, but the bright side is a likely boost free speech and due process at unis and bump in tech sector, if we survive the rest.”

We will survive. If Trump wins the Electoral Vote (I’m going to bed, too, before a final determination), or if Harris does.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies

The Battle Ahead

Tonight — or hopefully sometime before Christmas — we will know who the next president of these United States shall be. 

I’m also anxious to find out who wins control of the U.S. Senate and House — and most excited to see the outcome of 11 statewide ballot measures that I’ve been engaged in — across ten states, including eight states with Citizen Only Voting Amendments on the ballot, most critically North Carolina and Wisconsin. 

But my elation in expectation on this fine day is greatly tempered by the sobering reality that awaits on Wednesday. No matter who wins … something approaching half the country will be deeply distraught. 

I’m tired of hearing that America is “over” — that this experiment in freedom and democracy has run its course and is destined to soon fail. But on Wednesday I’ll no doubt hear that chorus again from the losing side.

No one gets a prize for predicting America’s demise — only for preventing it. 

What worries me most, however, are the challenges Wednesday’s winner will face from a world at war in Europe and the Middle East, with conflict rapidly approaching in Asia. 

“World War III,” as columnist George Will wrote weeks ago, “has begun.”*

Yet, the election has been largely devoid of serious foreign policy discussion. “The U.S. presidential campaign is what reckless disregard looks like,” quipped Will. “Neither nominee has given any evidence of awareness of, let alone serious thinking about, the growing global conflagration.”

Whoever wins today (or whenever): Buckle your seatbelts. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* Mr. Will believes history will look back to mark the beginning of the Third World War with “Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea,” during the Obama administration. 

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election law Voting

Feds Push Noncitizen Voting

Democrats, machine, voting, elections, democracy, immigration

Two states are in trouble with the federal government, which is in trouble with them.

Florida is suing the feds because the Sunshine State needs the cooperation of the federal government to check the status of certain persons on its voter rolls.

Florida is bound by law to maintain accurate registration rolls. The federal government is bound by law to cooperate with requests from state and local governments for the information required to fully assess whether a person on the rolls has the right to vote and to be registered to vote.

But when Florida asked Citizenship and Immigration Services for just this kind of information, the USCIS balked.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is suing Virginia to prevent that state from cleaning up its own voter rolls. 

Virginia Governor Youngkin castigates the federal action as “an unprecedented lawsuit against me and the Commonwealth of Virginia for appropriately enforcing a 2006 law signed by Democrat Tim Kaine to remove noncitizens from voter rolls — a process that starts with someone declaring themselves a noncitizen and then registering to vote.”

Power Line plausibly suggests that what’s happening here is that the politicized, misnamed Justice Department regards the votes of noncitizens as most likely to be votes for Democratic candidates. So why not discard established law and established procedures if this would help tilt elections in favor of Democrats?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people partisanship Voting

Spilt Ink

Iowa, voting, elections, illegal immigration, newspaper, ink

“Iowans should vote no,” argues a Des Moines Register editorial, because defeating the Citizen Only Voting Amendment on the statewide ballot would “send a message — to legislators, to our neighbors at home and to the rest of the nation and world — that Iowans reject exclusion and suspicion and instead put a premium on inclusion and trust.”

Let’s unpack.

Ballotpedia summarizes Amendment 1 as prohibiting “state and local governments from allowing noncitizens to vote and allow 17-​year-​olds who will be 18 by the general election to vote in primary elections.”

Nothing suspicious there. But there is an exclusion, of course. The measure would exclude noncitizens from voting in state and local elections.

“The context,” or what the TDS-​afflicted newspaper has apoplectically convinced themselves is the context, “is repeated assertions by President Donald Trump” and other Republicans “that immigrants without citizenship frequently register to vote and vote (more often for Democrats).”

The actual context is simply whether the state constitution should proclaim that only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote. A policy that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are unsuspiciously excluded from voting on, but which would have prevented the 19 U.S. cities now allowing noncitizens to vote, including in most cases those here illegally, from doing so.

The Register nonetheless declares that “a higher standard is called for when the enduring language of the state Constitution is involved. That document should emphasize what unites Iowans.”

Yet nothing has united legislators more than this Citizen Only Voting Amendment, which passed each chamber of the Legislature twice without a single dissenting vote. 

Bemoaning that “seven states have already, in the past six years, made identical or similar changes in their state constitutions,” The Register further complains that “this fall, Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin join Iowa in voting on similar amendments.” 

The objection? “That’s a lot of ink spilt to enshrine imaginary protections against imaginary problems.”

These imaginative editors acknowledged, in the same piece, that “[e]xperts say it ties lawmakers’ hands from ever passing laws to permit residents without citizenship to vote in certain local or state elections, such as for school boards.”

Passing Amendment 1 means politicians at the capitol in Des Moines will have to go back to Iowa voters if they want to allow noncitizen voting.

No crying here over spilt ink.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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