Tag: voting

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ballot access national politics & policies

The Other Big Lie

Joe Biden

“Let me be clear,” President Joe Biden told a Georgia crowd yesterday, addressing changes proposed by the Democrats to election laws nationally, “this is not about me or Vice-President Harris or our party.”

Of course not. Who would even suggest such a thing? 

On this same “voting rights” subject six months ago, Biden called Republicans “bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies” who “are threatening the very foundation of our country.” Though less colorful, yesterday’s address was merely more of the same. 

“Pass the Freedom to Vote Act! Pass it now!” the president shouted, arguing that it “would prevent voter suppression.”  

How? Well, that’s less than clear. 

For years, Democrats slammed laws requiring voters to show photo identification as “racist,” contending the requirement disproportionately suppressed black voters. But then, when polls demonstrated that voters “of color” are even more supportive of Voter ID laws than are whites, Democrats quickly insisted they had always been for such laws.

Now — keep up! — voter ID laws are back to being suppressive. And the very purpose of the Dems’ Freedom to Vote Act is to strike down all such state laws.

When Georgia’s Secretary of State called for photo ID requirements last Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, host Margaret Brennan offered, “The Freedom to Vote Act actually does promote a national standard for states that have an ID requirement for in-person voting,” adding, “You could use a bank statement or utility bill.”

Neither of which constitutes a photo ID, as the secretary pointed out.

Democrats battling former President Trump’s so-called Big Lie have concocted one of their very own.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Reforms from Ground Zero

Margaret Brennan, Face the Nation, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, voting, elections, democracy, citizenship

“Georgia has become ground zero in the fight over election integrity,” Margaret Brennan, host of Face the Nation on CBS, alerted her audience on Sunday, introducing the state’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who, she reminded, “became known nationally in the wake of that election because [he] refused to succumb to pressure from President Trump.”

Given the walk that Mr. Raffensperger has walked, his talk should carry some street cred with media outlets that are truly non-partisan and interested in election reform. 

Raffensperger proposed three reforms to secure elections: (1) No ballot harvesting, wherein a person gathers up or “harvests” many mail-ballots not his or her own; (2) “a constitutional amendment . . . that only American citizens vote in our elections,” and (3) “photo I.D. for all forms of voting.”

“Only U.S. citizens do currently vote in elections,” Brennan critically interjected (incorrectly), “but go on.”

Raffensperger did, explaining that “cities are trying to push noncitizen voting.” A few years ago, the council in Clarkston, Ga., voted to study allowing non-citizens to vote. Just last month, the New York City Council gave the right to vote in city elections to 800,000 non-citizens (including 110,000 Chinese nationals); last year, the Vermont Legislature approved non-citizen voting in two cities; and non-citizens (documented and undocumented) have been voting in San Francisco; and in 11 more cities across the country.

The Secretary of State noted that citizen-only voting, “just like photo I.D.,” is “supported by all demographic groups and a majority of both political parties.”

Citizen-only voting belongs in our state constitutions so that any future decisions on providing the vote to non-citizens requires a vote of the people, and therefore, cannot be made by politicians alone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Illustrating the usual split between politicians and voters, the New York City Council enacted a law for non-citizen voting while a poll of New Yorkers showed more than 60 percent opposed the measure.

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ballot access Voting

Citizenship Not Required

voting, democracy, alien, illegal, immigrant, noncitizen

Noncitizen voting is coming to New York City.

Tomorrow, the city council is expected to approve a measure permitting more than 800,000 noncitizens to vote in city elections.

Noncitizens will need to have a green card or the right to work in the United States, and will need to have been resident in the city for at least 30 days.

Opponents include Councilman Rubén Díaz, a Democrat. He observes that the requirements for becoming a naturalized citizen and thereby earning the right to vote, which include “understanding the basics of [our history] and how our government functions,” would thus be bypassed.

Whether the granting of American citizenship to newcomers has been too lax or too cumbersome is a separate question. But if a particular noncitizen deserves to vote, he or she surely deserves citizenship. Why not start with citizenship?

Opt in. Become an American before you vote in America. This seems basic.

Which is why de-linking voting from formal citizenship conjures up two worrisome questions: 

What agenda does this serve? and What’s next?

Next steps could include extending the franchise to those who do not “have the right to work” (as is already the case in San Francisco) and extending this new right, noncitizen voting, to state and federal elections.

That many Democratic congressmen are eager to obliterate any practical distinctions between citizen and noncitizen is shown by their support for HR1, the misnamed “For the People Act,” an assault on state-level laws intended to ensure that only (living) citizens are voting (only once) in elections.

Fortunately, that federal legislation has been blocked. For now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall judiciary

The 6 Percent Solution

Idaho, initiative

The Idaho Supreme Court has stated the obvious.

The question was whether legislation passed by the Republican-dominated Idaho state legislature making it prohibitively difficult to run a successful initiative campaign is consistent with the state constitution.

In August, the court ruled that requiring petitioners to obtain signatures from at least 6 percent of voters in every single legislative district of the state — 35 districts — would usher in “tyranny of the minority.”

It said that the new law “conflicts with the democratic ideals that form the bedrock of the constitutional republic created by the Idaho Constitution, and seriously undermines the people’s initiative and referendum powers enshrined therein.”

As the Idaho Statesman observes, the law would have enabled voters of a single district to prevent a question from reaching the ballot.

The Statesman also smashed the silly argument that the current initiative process somehow burdens specifically rural voters in any quest to post a question.

Under current law, petitioners must obtain signatures from 6 percent of all registered voters in the state and also reach that threshold in at least 18 districts, not all 35 districts. The all-35 mandate would have made the job of running a petition drive massively harder no matter what regions petitioners happen to reside in.

Foes of citizen initiative rights also tend to ignore the fact that getting a question on the ballot hardly constitutes its enactment. Every voter, from whatever part of the state, can then decide Yes or No.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access national politics & policies Voting

Ballots, Barriers and Buncombe

voting, citizenship, democracy, immigration

“The right to vote is a sacred civil right that empowers naturalized citizens to participate in our democracy,” LaVita Tuff, policy director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, informed the media.

Yet, that same news release declared, “Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta and the Asian American Advocacy Fund collectively condemn the statements made by Georgia’s Secretary of State this morning emphasizing that ‘only American citizens should vote in our elections in Georgia.’”

These groups specifically attach voting rights to “naturalized citizens,” that is, immigrants who go through the process to become American citizens . . . like millions before them. But then AAAJ-A and AAAF denounce Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for asking the Georgia General Assembly, last month, to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to clarify that only U.S. citizens can vote in all state and local elections. 

“[D]on’t disenfranchise the people of Georgia on this important issue,” Raffensperger urged. “Let’s put it on a ballot.”

No argument is offered by either AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) group opposing the substance of Sec. Raffensperger’s proposed amendment. Not a single word.

Instead, they contend that “preventing noncitizens from voting is unnecessary and misleading,” before mentioning a non-citizen voting “measure previously considered in Clarkston, Georgia” and the possibility of changes “that could expand the right to vote to include noncitizens in local elections.” Hmmm . . . thus providing a very real and recent justification for Georgia voters to weigh-in.  

The news release smears Republican Raffensperger for supposedly “using immigrants as a scapegoat to create additional barriers to the ballot.” 

But the measure is clearly designed to protect existing barriers, not prohibit any currently eligible citizen from voting. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Initiative-Crippling Law Clobbered

constitution, voting, speech, initiative, freedom

The right of citizen initiative is the right of voters to petition to get a measure on the ballot; then, if that happens, to vote on it and pass it. 

Many politicians hate this right and work to weaken it.

A few years ago, Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission considered sending a measure to the state ballot to treat voters who abstain from voting on a ballot question as having voted No. The proposal died on the vine, thankfully. But this is the kind of encroachment politicians fantasize about.

The latest attack on Floridians’ right of citizen initiative — a law to cap donations to such campaigns at $3,000 during the signature-gathering phase — has just suffered a less definitive setback.

Federal Judge Allen Winsor in the Northern District of Florida halted the new law from going into effect on the very day it was scheduled to do so. (Cutting it a little close, aren’t you, judge?) He ruled that contributions to an initiative campaign are obviously a form of political expression and that the law would inflict irreparable harm if even briefly in force.

True. 

If petition organizers can’t raise the funds needed to collect the required 891,589 signatures, it becomes enormously harder to get a measure on the ballot and let voters have their say. A say that foes of citizen initiative rights certainly do not want voters to have.

The ruling blocks the law only until the court reaches a final resolution on its constitutionality, so this legal battle isn’t over yet. 

What is most certainly determined, however, is that Florida legislators don’t care about the Constitution. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Hypocrisy ID’d

voting rights, democracy, race

“Prominent Democrats have increasingly softened their opposition to voter identification requirements in recent days,” informs The Washington Post, “signaling a new openness to measures that activists have long vilified as an insidious method of keeping minorities from the ballot box.”

Yesterday, when Republicans backed the idea, it was racist and supposedly so were they for supporting it. Not anymore. Now, Democrats favor Voter ID.

What changed? 

Not racism. And certainly not racially exploitative demagoguery. 

The catalyst may be a new Monmouth University poll showing fully 80 percent of Americans favor a photo ID requirement for voting, with support “at 62% among Democrats, 87% among independents, and 91% among Republicans.”

These progressive mutations take place as Senate Bill 1, the companion to H.R. 1, the so-called “For the People Act,” failed to break the GOP filibuster yesterday, blocked 50 votes to 50 votes along strictly partisan lines.

While Democrats scramble for a way out, some — Stacy Abrams, notably — suggest they have always been for voter ID. 

Funny, the Democrats’ legislation would have effectively gutted the 35 state voter ID laws now on the books. “But HR-1 does not ‘ban’ voter identification laws,” lectures Newsweek’s fact-checker. “Instead, it offers a workaround” — that does not require showing an ID.

Just the sort of requirement Democrats now insist upon? 

Hypocrisy notwithstanding, the real problem with Democrats dictating election policy from Washington is the rottenness of those policies, which include: 

  • Partisan capture of the Federal Election Commission by Democrats through 2027*
  • Taxpayer financing of congressional campaigns
  • Increased regulation of speech aimed at influencing congressmen (i.e. mobilizing citizens)

Congressional Democrats have plenty more bad policies where those came from.

And a legislative majority.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* If you can’t pack the Supreme Court, packing the FEC is the next best thing.

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general freedom international affairs

Two Strikes and You’re Out, MLB

baseball, China

Major League Baseball has renewed its contract with a Chinese telecommunications company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Professional baseball thus avoids the fate of the National Basketball Association, ejected from Chinese airwaves for a year after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey voiced support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

This doesn’t mean that the folks running MLB lack a moral compass.

It could be just a skewed one.

One day after Chinese state media confirmed that American baseball games would continue to be shown on Tencent’s streaming platform, MLB yanked its All-Star game from Atlanta, Georgia. The idea? To protest the state’s new election reform.

Baseball Commissioner Robert Manfred would have us believe that demonstrating “our values as a sport” requires 

  1. cutting deals with the tyrannical and murderous government of China while simultaneously 
  2. noisily punishing Georgia because friends of slack voting rules dislike the voter ID requirements and other provisions of Georgia’s new election law designed to limit the potential for fraud.

MLB’s press release does not bother to explain what is wrong with the law except to say that the league “opposes restrictions to the ballot box.” 

All restrictions?

MLB officials ignored the Epoch Times’s inquiry about “how continuing business with China demonstrates its values considering the recent U.S. recognition of a genocide being carried out by the CCP against the Uyghur Muslims.”

Hmm. Chinazi dictatorship or Georgia election reform: Which is worse? 

I guess for those with a skewed moral compass, that’s a tough one.

But for the rest of us the question answers itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall Voting

Worms for Early Bird Voting?

ballot box, voting, democracy, money, pandemic

Election Day is six weeks away. Yet, in my home state of Virginia, voting began last week.

Is it responsible to cast a ballot so early? 

You may know with metaphysical certainty how you’re voting for president — even in the event of some major cataclysm — but have all the state rep and city council and ballot measure campaigns also played out fully enough for you?

Here in Virginia, we get few candidate races in our split-up state and federal elections, much less ballot issues to decide. I could have made all my (very few) choices months ago. But I trust that in a more competitive and healthy representative democracy we would more want to hear out the candidates.

A lot can happen in six weeks. And you cannot change your vote once it’s cast.*

The new Democratic-controlled Legislature — in reaction to the pandemic, to prevent crowding at the polls — expanded the early voting period this year. It started September 18 and ends October 31.** 

There are costs to expanding early voting — including making campaigns more expensive to run and win. Disabled from marshaling advertising into a two-or-three-week period before the vote, campaigns are forced to sustain publicity for a month. Or longer. 

While better-funded incumbents have little difficulty with the added cost, it cripples challengers. It especially handicaps grassroots ballot initiative proponents battling public employee unions or the Chamber of Commerce. 

Make the voting process comfortable and easy for citizens. But let’s be certain not to make it comfortable and easy for incumbents and special interests.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* In Sweden, you can change your early vote, informs my friend Bruno Kaufmann, a journalist and direct democracy advocate. They call it “second voting.” 

** Though several other states routinely allow more than six weeks of early voting.

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ballot access U.S. Constitution

Pandemic Petitioning?

closed, electronic signature, voting, elections, petitions, citizen,

“Our political system, our way of life, our Constitution cannot be let go,” the Libertarian Party’s Nicholas Sarwark argued on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, “just because there is a terrible illness spreading through the country.”

His concern? Libertarians — and Greens and other parties or independent candidates — must still gather hundreds of thousands of voter signatures to put their candidates on state ballots this November. 

And so, too, must citizen-initiated ballot measures.

But who wants to petition into a deadly pandemic? Supposing you carefully made a grocery run, would you stop to chat with petitioners and grab their pen to sign? 

“That would be a public health nightmare,” explained Sarwark, “to force petitioners to go out with clipboards and gather signatures.” 

Libertarians are asking governors “to suspend these requirements that would endanger the public.” 

Cogent points, but I’m not so sure governors have lawful power to order candidates or initiatives onto the ballot. 

Much less the inclination.

Legislatures could act . . . but why help competing candidates gain access to the ballot? 

And as for green-lighting issues that haven’t gone through their sausage-maker? 

Puh-leeze.

Back in 2010, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that electronic signatures were legally valid. Rather than facilitate that process, the state legislature quickly banned it. 

But it is the obvious solution: allow voters to sign petitions online for candidates or ballot initiatives.* 

“The law has long recognized electronic signatures as legally effective where hand-signed signatures are required,” contends Barry Statford in a law review article. “As early as 1869, the New Hampshire Supreme Court acknowledged the validity of a contract accepted by telegraph.”

The courts should mandate state acceptance of electronic signatures. 

Let’s sue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Voters in Boulder, Colorado, passed an initiative allowing electronic signatures in 2018.  

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