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election law term limits

Texas Range War

Texas, Gerrymander, voting, democracy, elections

Fifty-one Democrats have left the Republic — er, State — of Texas.

Well, 51 Democratic state legislators have run past the border, all to prevent a redistricting scheme. They constitute a minority in the House, but without them a quorum cannot be reached. 

Think of it as a form of filibuster.

Or “voting with their feet.”

“Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows announced that a quorum had not been met after roll call,” an Epoch Times article tells us, going on to say that “House members then approved a motion for the speaker to sign warrants ‘for the civil arrest’ of the members who said they would not be there.”

Since the fleeing pols are in other states, I don’t see how that can work out.

Meanwhile, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has taken her fellow Democrats’ side and said that she would re-district New York in favor of Democrats. “We’re not going to tolerate our democracy being stolen in a modern-day stagecoach heist,” she said, using a colorful metaphor.

Other Democratic states have fallen in line, upgrading the gerrymandering crisis from heist to feud.

Twenty-five years ago I wrote that “courts have struck down districts drawn to get a certain racial outcome, but have turned a blind eye to districts that arbitrarily favor one party over another. The solution to incumbents monopolizing our elections is term limits. But another key factor in promoting democracy is to stop the politicians from drawing rigged districts that squelch competition.”

Term limits sure would help, by de-stabilizing the “property rights” the two parties feel in their favored districts with old hands firmly tied to their estates.

It’s the wild, wild worst out there.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law Voting

Letting Noncitizens Vote?

illegal alien, voting, citizen, democracy, elections,

“All of us want to make sure only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told NBC’s Meet the Press before last year’s election. She assured the national audience that she and other Secretaries of State were following the law and “ensuring that only valid votes are counted in our states. 

“We are 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.”

Problem is, Secretary Benson did not ensure that only U.S. citizens voted in Michigan. Under her stewardship, we now know that noncitizens did indeed vote. 

Last November, a Chinese student at the University of Michigan registered and voted. The reason we know this is that the foreign student apparently thought better of it and asked officials for his ballot back. 

Too late, though, for Haoxiang Gao’s vote had already been counted. Last week, Gao missed a court hearing and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest. (Will Beijing send him back to stand trial?)

Since that one, lone, incredibly rare, don’t-worry-your-pretty-little-head-about-it incident, officials have discovered another 15 votes cast by noncitizens. 

Also last week in Michigan, House Joint Resolution B was defeated. This measure would have clarified only citizens as eligible voters, requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID to vote. Democrats, including Secretary Benson (now a candidate for governor), opposed it fiercely.  

Yet, you guessed it, something else happened last week: Americans for Citizen Voting-Michigan filed an initiative petition to place the Citizen Only Voting Amendment, passed overwhelmingly so far in 14 states, on the ballot in the Great Lakes State. Polling back in January showed 82 percent of likely voters favor the measure. 

“Leaving holes in the process that easily allow noncitizens to vote disenfranchises citizens,” said Kurt O’Keefe, the committee’s treasurer. “We need to make sure that only U.S. citizens can vote in our elections. This initiative does the job.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

Note: I’m the national chairman of Americans for Citizen Voting. 

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Accountability Voting

The Five Million Fix

voter rolls, democracy, voting, elections, ID

Thanks to its analyses of voter rolls and numerous lawsuits, Judicial Watch can now report that, over the last several years, about five million names have been struck from voter rolls in almost a dozen states and localities.

These names unlawfully appeared on the rolls because of invalid voter registrations, as validity is defined in the National Voter Registration Act Of 1993.

According to the Act, each application to register “must state each voter eligibility requirement (including citizenship), contain an attestation that the applicant meets each requirement, state the penalties provided by law for submission of a false voter registration application and require the signature of the applicant under penalty of perjury.”

Thanks to Judicial Watch, 735,000 ineligible names have been removed from Kentucky voter rolls since 2019; 918,139 ineligible names have been removed from New York City voter rolls since 2022; and over a million ineligible names have been removed from the voter rolls of Los Angeles County.

These efforts have also led to the removal of ineligible names from the voter rolls of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina, and outside of LA in California.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the organization. In Maryland, for example, the State Board of Elections promulgated a rule to criminalize the use of registration lists to investigate voter fraud. A district court ruled that the rule violated the law.

Voter fraud is a problem, and it hasn’t been fixed yet. Thanks to Judicial Watch for making a big dent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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ideological culture Voting

Democrats and Noncitizen Voting

Do Democrats support noncitizen voting? 

It depends. 

Which Democrats do you mean?

A clear majority of voters who identify as supporters of the Democratic Party oppose giving the vote to noncitizens. Specifically, they support the Citizen Only Voting Amendments (COVA) on the ballot this election in eight states — Idaho. Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.* 

For instance, polling shows Democratic voters in North Carolina favor the only citizen voting measure by an eight to one margin. Among Republicans the margin is a whopping 22 to one. Most Democratic legislators joined every Republican in voting to place the amendment on the ballot, but less enthusiastically: 42 yes votes, 16 no votes and ten abstentions.

In Georgia, 70 percent of Democrats supported passing a Citizen Only Voting Amendment. Republican support was 93 percent with 76 percent of independents in favor. But while every Republican in the Peach State’s House of Representatives voted in the affirmative on HR780, not one single Democrat did so. 

Though not as lopsided as Republicans or independents, 83 percent of whom favor citizen only voting, 59 percent of Kentucky Democrats are supportive, a four to one margin. Yet, while every Republican legislator voted yes, less than one in five Democratic legislators were supportive. 

In Wisconsin, 76 percent of voters like the Citizen Only Voting Amendment, including 57 percent of Democrats residing outside the legislature. Inside the legislature, every single Democrat opposed the amendment. 

In this two-year legislative cycle, votes were cast in 21 chambers in eleven states. The partisan difference between elected Republicans and Democrats was stark. Not a single Republican voted against the COVA, compiling over a thousand yes votes. Conversely, more Democratic legislators voted against COVA than for it.

Do Democrats support noncitizen voting? Most elected Democrats, yes. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Additionally, all 19 of the cities where noncitizens are now legally voting, including noncitizens in the country illegally, are very progressive. All are sanctuary cities and governed (nearly) exclusively by Democrats.

* Voters have previously passed COVAs in six other states going back to 2018: Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Ohio.

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