Tag: elections

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ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers

The Kill Western Civilization Caucus

democrat, socialism, communism, democratic party, elections, democracy

“These are not social democrats,” President Trump declared on Truth Social. “These are hardcore, godless communists.”

Unfortunately, the president is on target. 

He was referring to the three members of the Democratic Socialists of America who won Democratic Party primaries last week in deep-blue New York City congressional districts.

November’s General Election being a mere formality in the Big Apple, the trio will undoubtedly be joining the next Congress. All three — State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez (NY-7), former City Comptroller Brad Lander (NY-10), and professional “left-wing activist” Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY-13) — were endorsed and assisted by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

They’ll be just three out of 435 members of Congress, while the mayor is in a position to do more harm. Still, sprinkling a few Stalinists into Washington’s brew won’t help. 

Darializa Avila Chevalier worries me the most. Before launching her political campaign, CNN reports that she deleted “thousands of posts and reposts expressing support for abolishing police, prisons and borders, as well as seizing private property and nationalizing major industries and calling into question Israel’s right to exist.”

Her pursuit of a surely democratic-no-doubt-benevolent dictatorship of the proletariat to, you know, seize the means of production is . . . mighty concerning. What’s worse, however, is her hatred. 

Of America. 

In a 2019 tweet, Chevalier posted a smiley face emoji to say loud and proud: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” 

“We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization,” explained a group she co-founded, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD). 

Shouldn’t we take them at their word?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law Voting

Who & What in LA?

Los Angeles, City Council, voting, elections, non citizen, immigration, democracy

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council voted to place a charter amendment on the November 3 ballot to facilitate giving noncitizens a vote in city elections.

“The measure, introduced by Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, will give immigrants who live, work, pay taxes and raise families in Los Angeles a voice in decisions that directly affect their lives,” The New York Post reported.

Of course, “immigrants” who have become United States citizens already have the vote; this effort is about giving voting rights to immigrants who have not become citizens.

“I believe it’s a simple principle that should guide us: If you live in the city, contribute to the city, raise your family in the city and are impacted by the decisions made in the city, you deserve to have a voice in the city,” Soto-Martínez said.

First, citizen or not, the First Amendment gives everyone a voice. 

Just not necessarily a vote.

Second, these suggested criteria by which non-citizens will gain the vote are simply made-up talking points, not part of the law at all. You don’t have to “work” to be eligible to vote. Nor must one bear children and rear them in LA to qualify. Lastly, no, you don’t have to be a net taxpayer, either.*

“The amendment would modify the city charter so that the council can later adopt an ordinance authorizing eligible noncitizens to vote in municipal contests,” explained Daily49er.com. Who would be “eligible”? Those in the country illegally, as in San Francisco and Oakland?

Worst of all, voters could know the answers to those questions only after they decide to give the city council the power to expand the electorate — to whatever part of LA’s over 680,000 noncitizens it settles upon.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Plus, as standards go, “impacted by the decisions made in the city” is true for anyone who ever drives through Los Angeles. Will license plate readers be used to track down those motorists traveling through to send them mail-in ballots instead of photo enforced speeding tickets?

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national politics & policies partisanship

King & Kingslayer

Donald Trump, Thomas Massie, revenge, Republican, endorsement, elections

Two weeks ago, five incumbent Indiana state senators “weren’t just defeated,” as NBC’s Steve Kornacki explained, “they were defeated in landslides.” 

The five had bucked President Trump’s call to redraw the state’s congressional map, blocking the creation of two additional Republican-leaning districts and drawing the ire of the president and his supporters, who got behind their opponents. 

On Saturday in Louisiana, Sen. Bill Cassidy, a 12-year Republican incumbent, became the first elected U.S. Senator to lose in a primary since 2012. Again, Dr. Cassidy wasn’t simply eclipsed by a challenger; he came in a distant third place with less than 25 percent of the vote. Cassidy was one of seven GOP Senators who found Mr. Trump guilty in his second impeachment trial, following the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.*

I cannot recall a president of either party ever wielding so much electoral clout within his own party — perhaps partly because other presidents did not attempt to reshape their party as aggressively as Trump has, and partly because no president has enjoyed the outsider status required to mobilize the disgruntled grassroots.

Today, Kentucky’s Republican Primary offers another stop on what the media has dubbed “Trump’s revenge tour.” The Bluegrass State’s 4th congressional district sports 14-year incumbent Rep. Thomas Massie facing Trump-endorsed challenger Ed Gallrein, a businessman and former Navy SEAL, in “the most expensive House primary on record.” 

President Trump called Massie “a third rate Grandstander” in 2020 but then endorsed Massie in 2022. After Massie’s opposition to the “Big Beautiful Bill,” the Iran War, tariffs, and support for releasing the Epstein files, Trump has gone after him.

Latest polling shows “the race to be evenly deadlocked,” but if anyone can withstand the Trump onslaught, it may be Massie . . . who is so thoroughly not a Washington insider.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* Of the other six U.S. Senate Republicans, four chose not to seek reelection (Sasse, Neb.; Burr, N.C.; Toomey, Penn.; Romney, Utah), while Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski won re-election in 2022, and Senator Susan Collins of Maine is on this November’s ballot.

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election law U.S. Constitution Voting

Expanding the Electorate

citizen voting, democracy, voting, elections, Washington DC

Who should vote? Ought we expand the electorate? 

To everyone . . . on the planet?

Do folks from other countries, who have come to America, legally or not, and reside in a community for 30 days, have a right to vote?

Well, they do under a crazy law in our nation’s capital. Even the ambassadors and embassy workers (and spies) that China and Russia send to represent their regimes, could, if they so desired, register and vote for the next mayor, city council-member and ballot measure in the federal capital . . . if those foreign nationals have been here (working for another country) for 30 days. 

The far-left-of-sanity Democrats on the D.C. City Council passed it — without a popular vote. 

At least in Los Angeles there will be a public vote — should the push by Democratic Socialists of America-backed Democrats on that City Council advance a measure to allow noncitizens in L.A., legally or not, to vote in local elections. 

Citizenship seems a wiser qualifier at all levels of government.*

“Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections,” The Los Angeles Times reports. “However, states are allowed to set their own local and statewide election rules.”

Note that The Times does not inform readers that states, such as California, determine who is qualified to vote in federal elections in those states. Were California to allow noncitizens to vote in its state legislative elections — not too giant a leap from noncitizen voting in L.A. and San Francisco — those noncitizens would be legally qualified to vote for California’s representatives in Congress and the U.S. Senate. 

The U.S. Constitution’s “Qualifications Clause” is clear.

This state “loophole” is something worth closing through Florida Rep. Laurel Lee’s constitutional amendment. 

Locally, statewide, nationally: let the people decide.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* I serve as chairman of Americans for Citizen Voting. We have worked to pass Citizen Only Voting constitutional amendments in 15 states and to place these measures on six more state ballots this November. We now ask Congress to consider and propose a federal constitutional amendment, HJR 152, the U.S. Citizens Vote Amendment.

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representation

What We Want and How to Get It

Mick Jagger, government, democracy, elections, voting, initiatives, recall, referendum

British-American philosopher Mick Jagger put it best: “You can’t always get what you want.”

A universal verity.

But what about a sadder situation? “You must always get what you don’t want.”

Only the deepest pessimist thinks this pertains to our lives, our “lived experience” in even these our mixed-up times. But it does apply to one huge domain of life: our representation in Congress.

Or so says Stephen Erickson. “The American people consistently rank career politicians among the least trustworthy professions. At the same time, professional politicians are supposed to represent us, and they have more power over our lives than any other profession.”

I don’t think this needs to be argued. Though Mr. Erickson does cite evidence, the thesis hardly needs massive data sets. Or British-American philosophers. So what to do? Erickson, being a practical man, takes the bull by the bumps on its head, two of them:

“First, we need to show how representative democracy might work without professional politicians.” The basic proposal is to “Reduce all local electoral districts to no more than 10,000 residents” where “every district becomes walkable and winnable with handshakes, flyers and yard signs.” This would work because small districts turn politics into “personal reputations and relationships, not money and marketing. Special interests therefore lose their influence.”

His second show-and-tell is “a realistic path forward.” That path lies with “the citizens’ initiative and referendum.”

As readers of this column know, my support for this more direct approach is both long-standing and thorough-going. The initiative process is the only decent process for serious reforms of our representative system because our representatives will block serious reform otherwise. 

Please read Stephen Erickson’s essay, “How to Eliminate Politics as a Profession.”

No one wants to be their Beast of Burden.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law litigation partisanship

Un-Redistricting Virginia

Gerrymander, Virginia, Circuit Court, voting, elections, democracy

A circuit court has ruled that Virginia’s new voter-passed congressional map, gerrymandered to give Democrats in the state a prohibitive advantage in the next congressional election, is unconstitutional.

Judge Jack Hurley, of the Circuit Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia for the 29th Judicial Circuit, Tazewell County, denied a motion to stay his injunction blocking certification of the election using the new districts. Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli reports that once a final order is drafted and entered, “it will be immediately appealed.”

If the rejiggering survives the challenge, it could be the factor that tips the balance in the House of Representatives toward the Democrats next November.

Cuccinelli, who is now national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, had been saying that passage of the gerrymander would not be the last word. In their rush to get the measure to voters and enacted before November 2026, lawmakers ignored sundry constitutional requirements.

The 2024 special session that took up the redistricting measure had been convened to legislate about the budget. “Its governing resolution limited the session’s scope. Expanding it to include a constitutional amendment on redistricting required a two-thirds vote that never occurred.”

Also, says Cuccinelli, the state constitution requires that “an election must intervene between first and second passage” of a proposed constitutional amendment. “Here, first passage occurred during an election cycle — not before an intervening one.”

Among other problems is the constitutional stipulation that “every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory.” The proposed map violates this requirement “badly.”

When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go, and this partisan map must go.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law U.S. Constitution Voting

Noncitizen Voting Q&A

California, voting, democracy, elections, citizenship, ID, voter identification

Question: What stops the California Assembly from allowing noncitizens to vote in federal elections?

Answer: Nothing. 

Noncitizens are now voting in two major California cities: San Francisco and Oakland. Legally. Including those in the country illegally.

And California courts have upheld the constitutionality, after San Francisco’s law was challenged. 

Voting in the Golden State doesn’t have to be limited to U.S. citizens.

So, it’s not all that far-fetched to think California’s legislature might one day pass a statute allowing noncitizens to vote in state legislative elections. Maybe in Maryland, too, where 16 cities now have legal and illegal aliens voting. Or Vermont, where a legislative supermajority overrode the governor to say yes to three cities giving the vote to noncitizens. Legislation has been introduced in both New York and Connecticut, in recent years, to give noncitizens the vote in those states’ legislative elections.  

“The Constitution is clear,” law professor Bradley Smith wrote Monday in The Wall Street Journal, “Under Article I and the 17th Amendment, any person who is allowed to vote in a state legislative election is automatically also allowed to vote for members of Congress.” 

In other words, the federal statute that purports to ban noncitizen voting in federal elections has a hole in it big enough to drive, say, the state of California through. 

“A federal statute can’t trump the Constitution’s explicit, exclusive grant of power to each state to determine who is eligible to vote,” explained the professor. 

. . . “even if the SAVE America Act were passed. . . .

“Although no state allows noncitizens to vote for its legislature,” Smith said, “that could change.” 

We need a constitutional amendment in this 250th year of our Republic because only citizens of the United States should vote in federal elections. Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) just introduced it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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election law Voting

Logic Suppression

Georgia, election law, race, consequences, voter ID

“In any other area of life — boarding a plane at DSM, picking up Cyclone tickets at will-call, or even buying Sudafed — showing a photo ID is a non-event,” Luke Martz writes in the Des Moines Register. “It is the baseline of participation in a modern society.”

The Republican political consultant, who has “served as an international election observer in Europe and the Middle East,” compares Iowa’s election system with “the mess currently unfolding in Minnesota,” where “Gov. Tim Walz signed a law authorizing illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.”

Mr. Martz points out the “logical fallacy,” which he says has “effectively undermined their own arguments against voter ID.” How so? “If activists believe requiring a document to drive is reasonable,” he argues, “then their claim that requiring a document to vote is a ‘racist barrier’ collapses.”

Indeed. He notes that the idea “that certain Iowans are somehow incapable of obtaining a free state ID” is precisely the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” highlighted by President George W. Bush decades ago.

Lastly, Martz addresses the “‘voter suppression’ narrative,” which “has always had one major flaw: reality.” 

Remember the hullabaloo over Georgia’s 2021 election law? Former President Sleepy Joe Biden called it “Jim Crow 2.0” and the politicians running Major League Baseball canceled the All-Star Game in Atlanta as punishment, only to see voter turnout in Georgia’s next election “more than 50% higher than in the previous midterm election of 2018.” 

Martz shares Iowa’s story, where “doomsayers predicted a collapse in participation” after passage of voter ID. “Instead, we saw the exact opposite. In 2018, the first general election with the law, Iowa saw its highest midterm turnout in decades. In 2020, we shattered records with over 1.7 million ballots cast.”

Let’s not suppress reality.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law partisanship

Values of the DFL

Republicans and Democrats in Minnesota held party caucuses last week, featuring straw polls in the governor’s race. Grassroots politics!

“Caucus attendees can also vote on potential changes to the party’s platform,” The Minnesota Reformer informed readers before the big night, reporting afterwards that caucusgoers “approved a bevy of resolutions to alter the DFL’s party platform, including abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, defunding the Department of Homeland Security and assuring people have access to gender-affirming care.”

Then I discovered that Democrats — called the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) in Minnesota — allow noncitizens to participate and vote in their caucuses. 

Four years ago, a three-judge appeals court panel ruled that the “criminal penalties of Minnesota Statutes . . . which punish unlawful voting as a felony, do not apply to voting in precinct caucuses.” 

That led then-DFL Party Chair Ken Martin to announce: “Our party can finally live its values.” Responding to reporters, Martin had explained at the time that “we are governed under our own First Amendment freedom of association rights and we can determine whoever we want to participate in the party.”

Okay. “Immigrants who aren’t U.S. citizens can caucus and become convention delegates,” a change approved unanimously by the party’s executive committee, according to Minnesota Public Radio News.

“By opening the front door to historically excluded neighbors,” argued Emilia Gonzalez Avalos, a noncitizen union organizer from Mexico, the DFL is “making sure that those affected by the issues in our platforms have a say in the process and can grasp power to truly hold our own side accountable to our shared vision.” 

There are many things in my house, upon which I don’t let my neighbors vote. The DFL is free to do as it wishes in its own elections.* We are free to take note.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* This from the Minnesota Reformer is interesting: “As the Office of Secretary of State makes clear, these are party-run functions, but the results of the straw polls will be posted on the Secretary of State’s website.” If state law doesn’t apply because the parties are private associations, then why is the Secretary expending resources to report the votes? 

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election law

Over-Regulated or Regulations Over?

Critiques of campaign finance regulations (CFR) often focus on particularly egregious applications or expansions of the regulations.

That’s fine. When somebody who is hammering us on the head starts hammering even harder, it’s okay to object. 

We should make clear, though, that we object to being head-bashed at all, not just the latest intensification.

In an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, the Institute for Free Speech and the Manhattan Institute are tackling CFR-rationalized repression of speech (CFRRS) as such.

“By conflating election campaign speech with the mechanics of running elections,” IFS says, “the Supreme Court has allowed the government to trample the First Amendment through campaign finance laws.”

This has been going on at least since the Supreme Court’s 1976 ruling in Buckley v. Valeo.

The current case, NRSC v. FEC, pertains to federal limits on coordinated spending by political parties, which is allowed in many states. IFS punches holes in the excuses for this instance of CFRRS but also stresses the bottom line.

“The brief argues that the federal government lacks the power to regulate this type of speech in the first place. . . . The Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate the times, places, and manner of electing federal officials. But . . . speech about candidates is not the same thing as the election itself, and the Elections Clause does not give Congress authority to regulate core political speech.”

Obviously. May at least five out of nine justices grasp this also.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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