Tag: voting

Surfin’ U.S.A.

Back in the Spring, a pollster was detailing his findings to a group of us. The Democrats were none too popular, he informed. And informed. And further informed. But at one point, the pollster stopped to remind: “Don’t get me wrong, that’s not to suggest the public is fond of Republicans.”

“We have the worst inflation in four decades, the worst collapse in real wages in 40 years, the worst crime wave since the 1990s, the worst border crisis in U.S. history, we have Joe Biden who is the least popular president … since presidential polling happened,” Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen explained on Fox News, “and there wasn’t a red wave.”

Barely a ripple.

Voters, he continued. “looked at all of that and looked at the Republican alternative and said, ‘No, thanks!’”

Calling it “an absolute disaster,” Thiessen advised the GOP to do a “a really deep introspective look in the mirror right now.”

Watch for cracks.

More than the abortion issue or the mixed blessing of Mr. Trump’s omnipresence, I think the GOP’s problem was the lack of any serious, cohesive and positive agenda. We are indeed facing massive inflation, crime, cultural revolution … but what are you going do ’bout it?

Answers aren’t coming from the Republican Party.

In last year’s red wave across my home state of Virginia, it wasn’t now-Governor Glenn Younkin who made respecting the rights of the parents of public education students a cataclysmic issue. Parents did that.

The Republican Revolution of 1994 rode a tsunami produced in no small part by the term limits movement. With term limits measures on the ballot throughout the country, the GOP gained 52 seats to secure a majority after 40 consecutive years in the minority — even defeating the Democratic House Speaker.

Want candidates to ride a popular, pro-freedom wave?

Better start splashing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with DALL‑E

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Tags democracy, election, red wave, voting

ballot access national politics & policies partisanship

Launch a Thousand Lawsuits

In the last couple of years, the Republican National Committee has launched 73 lawsuits in twenty states to challenge slack, lax, state-law-defying election rules and prepare for further lawsuits if the elections in November are afflicted by any shenanigans. A good start.

The litigation pertains to things like treatment of poll watchers, how absentee ballots should be counted, and whether noncitizens may be allowed to vote. The RNC has achieved some important successes.

In June, a New York court ruled that a new law giving almost a million noncitizens the right to vote in New York City is unconstitutional. The RNC has also sued to block noncitizen voting in two Vermont towns.
A court ruled that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson violated the law when imposing new restrictions on poll watchers.
Nevada and Arizona must now provide poll-worker data to ensure that both major political parties are represented at voting sites.

A lot of electoral hanky-panky in 2020 was never adequately investigated. Many of us were blindsided by the brazenness with which foes of one-citizen-one-honest-vote exploited COVID-19 fears to undermine election integrity. (It was an emergency. Safeguards just had to be scuttled, supposedly.)

Until the time machine gets invented, though, we’re stuck with the electoral results of that year. We can no longer contest the 2020 election.

But we can darn well contest the 2022 election if and when we espy dubious electoral doings.

And the 2024 election too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags citizenship, democracy, voting

ballot access judiciary

Zombie Vote Protected

A few weeks before the election, a federal judge has blocked Arizona legislation to combat voter fraud.

Opponents routinely characterize efforts such as this Arizona measure to ensure election integrity as “voter suppression.” Charges of racial discrimination often get tossed in to allow for the customary level of hysterical partisan denunciation.

According to Jon Sherman of the Fair Elections Center, even if HB2243 is “not discriminatory on its face . . . it is an open invitation. It declares open season for discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, dress, English proficiency, anything else.”

Of course,HB2243 extends no such invitation.

The legislation states that registration forms shall contain such things as a statement “that if the registrant permanently moves to another state after registering to vote in this state, the registrant’s voter registration shall be canceled.”

It also authorizes the county reorder to cancel a registration when he “is informed and confirms that the person registered is dead.”

Sounds like it could certainly suppress the zombie vote.

Legislation should be as carefully worded as possible. But no degree of precision in a law designed to prevent persons from voting who are not entitled to vote will prevent opponents from charging that it’s really, deep down inside, about “declaring open season for discrimination.”

Had the Arizona legislature passed the new law in plenty of time to grapple with legal challenges, the reformmighthave been in place for the mid-terms. Let’s hope HB2243 is in place and free of judicial encumbrance by 2024.

Enacting this kind of legislation is of many things that need to be done to safeguard elections.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies

The 7 Percenters

voting machine, term limits, democracy, voters, voting

Forget “the one percent.” I want to know about the seven percent.

Last month, the Gallup polling outfit asked Americans about our confidence level in Congress. Did we have “a great deal, quite a lot, some or very little”?

Unlike the 93 percent of us with firing brain synapses, there appeared an enigmatic seven percent, folks who actually confessed to harboring “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of faith in that cabal of corrupt careerists legislating loquaciously in our nation’s Capitol.

It takes all kinds, I guess. The shadowy, slow-witted, and ill-informed must show up in statistics somewhere, right?

Granted, only five percent of Republicans expressed that much cockeyed confidence; it was six percent a year ago. Trusting Democrats hit double-digits, with ten percent believing congressional bull, a fall from the 17 percent hornswoggled in 2021.

Gullible independents came in at the overall average — seven percent — a decrease of five percentage points from last year, when 12 percent clutched a false sense of security regarding our federal legislature.

Among a long list of American institutions, Congress roused the absolute least confidence. Odd that we feel worse about the people we elect to represent us than those we have little if any direct responsibility for or control over.

This must change.

We desperately need term limits. And the competitive elections brought by creating smaller districts where grassroots campaigns employing shoe-leather can compete with the big money and special interest power behind professional politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration assist from DALL‑E

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general freedom ideological culture Voting

Thoughts on Nothingness

Liberty playing cards with Aristotle by DALL-E

“Democracy has nothing to do with liberty,” the Libertarian Party announced on Facebook, “just as so many of the world’s greatest minds have warned.”

Huh? Just exactly which “greatest minds” are we talking about?

Not Aristotle!

The party’s statement introduced a meme quoting Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the “Austrian school economist and libertarian/anarcho-capitalist philosopher,” Professor Emeritus of Economics at UNLV and Distinguished Fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute. It read: “Democracy allows for A and B to band together to rip off C. This is not justice, but a moral outrage.”

Dr. Hoppe has a point, of course. The ‘will of the people’ can be just plain wrong … even, at times, malevolent. A democratic vote can lead to the tyranny of the majority and even to a tyranny of the minority, as those politicians promising to serve ‘We the People’ end up serving themselves and their cronies.

I’ve not read Professor Hoppe’s Democracy: The God That Failed, where he sort of argues for monarchy over democracy, but I offer two points: (1) no one in their right mind talks of democracy without including the protections of basic individual rights, which have become the hallmark of democratic countries across the globe, and (2) no one in the real world thinks democracy is God.

Still, we won’t trade it for monarchy.

My issue with this social media post, however, is really with the Libertarian Party’s comment that “democracy” — including the democratic means the party has purportedly been employing across the country for decades — has provided no past benefit and offers no future hope for sustaining or expanding our freedom.

So, don’t vote Libertarian this November?

I’ll take that under advisement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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“Liberty Playing Cards with Aristotle” by DALL‑E (note that the AI has chosen to show Lady Liberty as bruised and beaten. Her torch appears to be made of tissue.-)

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government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

Pucker Up

“Never have so few applied so much lipstick to such a pig.”

That’s what term limits activist Kurt O’Keefe told the Michigan Board of Canvassers last week, as it considered the official title for a citizen initiative that he argues is anything but.

The Detroit attorney points out that the proposed ballot measure — sponsored by a group named Voters for Transparency and Term Limits — actually comes from “current and future politicians” and “current and future lobbyists.”

These insiders, who’ve “never been in favor” of term limits, seek to replace the 6- and 8‑year cap now in place in the House and Senate, respectively, with a 12-year overall limit in both houses. At the hearing, proponents argued that the ballot title should declare simply that their measure reduces the current term limits — even though it would double terms in the House and up the Senate cap by 50 percent.

The initiative would also allow former Speakers and previously termed-out legislators to return like the undead to their former capitol haunts.

“This is a trick,” warned U.S. Term Limits National Field Director Scott Tillman. “We know it is a trick. They know it is a trick. They had to sweeten it up with transparency.”

That’s the lipstick.

Yet, the transparency fix, instead of simply enacting a financial disclosure system, orders the legislature to do so. Of course, the legislature cannot be forced to legislate, so the measure encourages endless lawsuits against the legislature.

As if to further show just how sincere these politicians are, their “voters” front-group has raked in $5 million from “unknown sources,” according to the Michigan Information & Research Service.

They are transparent only in their self-serving insincerity.

Oink oink.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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