Tag: voting

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election law

Your Fraudulent Vote Counts

voter ID, voting, elections, democracy, Virginia, fraud

Give it to ABC News host Jonathan Karl!

On This Week Without George Stephanopoulos, Karl asked U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia not about the entirety of the SAVE Act but “very narrowly” about photo ID to vote, which Americans of both parties strongly favor. 

“You know what?” the senator responded. “In Virginia, we have voter I.D. and photo I.D.” 

“That’s actually not the case,” Karl corrected. “I mean, I’m a Virginia voter. You don’t need to show a photo I.D. in Virginia. There are a wide range of things you can show for I.D., and if you don’t show one of those, you can sign an affidavit, saying —”

“You can sign an affidavit,” Warner repeated. “Those become ballots that, if you want to contest later, can be contested. But . . . we have voter I.D. of one form or another.”*

My senator is mistaken. Those ballots cannot later be contested; they count. Even if you prosecute folks for fraudulently signing the form, their ballots would still not be identifiable . . . and therefore, not contestable.

While it is a felony to falsely sign the ID Confirmation Statement, there is no one checking.

The same process exists in Michigan, where I’m involved in a ballot initiative to require voter ID. The question “Do I need an ID?” is posed for voters at the Michigan Secretary of State’s website. 

“You will be asked to show ID when you check in to vote,” explains the SOS, adding in bold type: “If you don’t have one, you can still vote.

“If this happens, expect a poll worker to ask you to sign a form before you vote that explains you didn’t have an ID. Your ballot will be included with all others and counted.”

How “political”: a Voter ID requirement that doesn’t require ID. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Fox News reports that per ID in Virginia “acceptable forms include voter confirmation documents, utility bills, bank statements, government checks and paychecks, which do not need to include a photograph. A voter without acceptable identification can sign an ID Confirmation Statement under felony penalties and cast a regular ballot.” The story helpfully provides a link to the Virginia statute in question.

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election law fraud national politics & policies Voting

Truth Be Told

Donald Trump, non-citizen voting, democracy, voting, elections, corruption, voter ID

President Donald Trump told a prime-time national audience, last week, that the Department of Homeland Security found 278,000 noncitizens on state voter rolls after checking roughly half the states. 

“It’s a number,” as my old boss says.

The Washington Post called it “an exaggerated claim that noncitizens are registering to vote en masse.” No, noncitizens are not really registering to vote so much as being registered — without their knowledge or understanding through deliberate government policy that pretends it’s pro-democracy to throw folks on the voter list who are not legally entitled to vote.

Not that there aren’t cases of fraud. There are. But I trust the good intentions of the average non-citizen more than the intentions of the politicians in states regularly facilitating their voter registrations.

Which, incidentally, can undermine an immigrant’s ability to gain U.S. citizenship. 

Fully 250,000 of that aforementioned total were found in just four states: California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The other roughly 28,000 noncitizens were discovered on the rolls in “two dozen or so states” by running those voter files against the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database.

Of course, some of these 278,000 identified will likely turn out to be citizens. Some will turn out to be pets. Data is sometimes incorrect. Mistakes happen. But let’s find out. 

In a sensible country, every state would (1) check its voter file against the federal SAVE database (and other data at DHS and the State Department), (2) institute a sensible, respectful and lawful process to check with voters so identified to clarify the facts, and then, (3) follow the law to remove each illegal registrant.

Instead of merely arguing about the extent and severity of the problem, why not just solve it? 

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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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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initiative, referendum, and recall partisanship

Gerrymandered Hypocrisy 

Virginia, referendum, fairness, voting, democracy

“Gerrymandering is detrimental to our democracy,” declared Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger . . . back in 2019.

“Let voters decide, not politicians,” former President Barack Obama offered just last month. 

The problem? They’re correct!

And Republicans are now sharing the statements by these two high-ranking Democrats with Virginia voters. Why? They oppose the April 21 constitutional referendum that, if passed, would allow the legislature to gerrymander the state’s congressional district lines to likely turn the federal delegation from its current six- to five-seat Democratic majority into a ten to one Democratic majority.

How dare opponents repeat the precise words previously uttered by Spanberger and Obama as Virginians go to the polls!

WUSA-TV in Washington, D.C., headlined its report: “Anti-redistricting mailers in Virginia are misleading, critics warn.”

“This has been misconstrued,” explained Gaylene Kanoyton, the Political Action Chair for the Virginia NAACP. “This does not pertain to these unusual, unprecedented times that we are in right now.”

“It is true they made these statements years ago,” a fellow from my hometown was quoted, “but the situation has changed.”

“They don’t like it because we’re exposing their leaders for their hypocrisy,” argues former Republican Delegate A.C. Cordoza with Justice for Democracy PAC. 

Democrats can of course blame Republican gerrymandering efforts in other states to justify their own, but it is a race to the bottom for voters. 

But, as I pointed out last week, Democrats deserve all the blame. The language on the ballot is completely slanted, telling voters the measure will “restore fairness.” This is so outrageous that even the liberal Washington Post editorialized last month that “Democratic politicians are presenting the proposed amendment to voters in the most brazenly dishonest way imaginable.”

Partisans will always be self-serving. But can’t they even try not to appear blatantly hypocritical?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall partisanship

Against Fairness?

Virginia, voting, districts, democracy, language, fairness

I’m against fairness?

Nah, it’s just Democrats who think that, because I won’t vote for their proposed constitutional amendment allowing the legislature to redraw my state’s congressional districts. 

The official question on the April 21 ballot reads: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”

What, exactly, is “fair” about this amendment? 

“If approved, Virginia’s 11 districts would likely go from six Democratic to five Republican leaning seats to 10 Democratic seats and one Republican seat,” explains WJLA, ABC’s Washington, D.C., affiliate. “The new map would draw heavily blue urban areas in Northern Virginia, with rural Republican areas far away.”

Democrat House Speaker Don Scott argues that “levels the playing field.” 

Well, it would be a fairer map if the commonwealth’s electorate were comprised of 90 percent Democrats and less than 10 percent Republican voters. Yet, in 2024, Democrat Kamala Harris garnered just 51 percent of Virginia’s vote for president. Even in last year’s blowout gubernatorial election, Democrat Abigail Spanberger won only 58 percent. During that campaign, Spanberger expressed skepticism of this district map . . . but then, as governor, signed on. 

Democrats, always selective in applying “fairness,” are outspending Republicans “by about 14 to 1 on advertising” and holding the vote for this constitutional question early, in April, with low voter turnout expected — for the first time in state history.

In the minds of Democrats, this maneuver is fair because President Trump has urged Republican states to engage is such partisan redistricting. That’s their case.

But arguments in favor of a measure do not belong in the wording voters see on their ballot as they make their decision. 

That’s unfair.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

Note: In the quoted ballot question, emphasis added.

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election law initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

Obscenely Unacceptable

voter ID

“F*ck this sh*t.”

That’s how the erudite opponents of Michigan’s Citizen Only Voting Amendment responded to supporters submitting a petition with more than 750,000 voter signatures to place the measure on the November ballot. 

Sans the asterisks, actually, which I supplied.  

Back in 2022, these oppositionists, fraudulently calling themselves Voters Not Politicians (VNP), helped politicians weaken Michigan’s voter-enacted term limits. 

Now they’re fighting an initiative that I’m promoting, which would: (1) clarify that only U.S. citizens are eligible voters at the state and local level, (2) mandate that the Secretary of State check the voter rolls to ensure it contains only citizens, and (3) require photo ID to vote.

VNP argues this measure is “voter suppression,” after actively urging their liberal activists to “disrupt circulation” of our petition in order to suppress a vote on it. “If this campaign gets enough signatures to get their proposal on the ballot,” VNP acknowledged, “it’s likely to pass.”

Why might voters support the amendment? 

“In Michigan, there have been incidents where non-citizens have not only been allowed to register but then were able to cast ballots,” explained a recent Detroit News editorial. “While the number of incidents is few, that the loophole exists at all is unacceptable.”

At a capitol news conference before delivering 199 boxes of petitions, Sen. Ruth Johnson, a former two-term Secretary of State, told reporters, “You need ID to get a library card to check out a book. You need ID to get a fishing license. And you should have an ID to vote.”

“Only citizens of the United States should be voting in our elections,” offered Rep. Ann Bollin, a former local election clerk. “It is not rocket science. It is common sense.”

This is [expletive deleted] Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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