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Ohio has launched a new partnership to receive out-of-state
death records every month in an effort to accurately remove the deceased from
voter rolls.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted is working with the
National Association for Public Health Statistics. The Association has a State and Territorial
Exchange of Vital Events system with 20 state partners.
Florida
is also taking a good step to clean its voter rolls by cross-referencing it
with citizenship databases. By taking
the efforts to make sure voter rolls are more accurate, these states are helping
cut down on vote fraud and ensure the integrity of the elections in the eyes of
citizens.
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The Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) today issued
the following statement concerning the voter identification legislation signed
by Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell:
“Governor McDonnell’s signature of this voter ID bill is a step in
the right direction for the Commonwealth of Virginia and sends a message that
the integrity of each and every vote matters,” said Michael Thielen, executive
director of the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA). “The RNLA
applauds Governor McDonnell for his leadership and support for election
reform.”
In addition to signing the voter ID bill, Governor McDonnell
signed an executive order.
Thielen added, “The executive order goes above and beyond
addressing the concerns of opponents of voter ID, even though it has the
support of Democrats, Republicans and Independents. Even liberal
Democrats in Rhode Island and former President Jimmy Carter support measures
such as this. Should the Obama Department of Justice attack this common
sense law much like it has in South Carolina and Texas, it would remove any
doubt that Attorney General Eric Holder is anything but an ideologue bent on
opposing election reforms irrespective of the law.”
The order does the following:
· Send every Virginia voter an identification card before Election
Day;
· Engage in a voter outreach campaign between now and the
November general election to educate voters about the changes to Virginia’s
voter identification requirements; and
· Inform general registrars and electoral boards that they
may contact individuals voting provisionally without an ID about the need to
provide one.
For more information on this new law or voter ID generally, check
the RNLA blog at http://rnla.org/Blogs/blogs/public/default.aspx
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The Obama administration has refused
to give Florida access to records for them to determine which voters are citizens. This is part of a concerted effort by the Obama
administration to refuse to clean voter rolls, a requirement of federal law.
Former Chief of the Voting Section Christopher Coates and
Voting Section attorney Christian Adams testified before the U.S. Civil Rights
Commission that the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights told the
Voting Section that the Obama administration was not interested in enforcing provisions
of federal law which require maintenance of voter registration lists.
In 2009, the Obama administration dismissed without
explanation a lawsuit against the Missouri Secretary of State over her failure
to comply with Section 8. Maryland,
Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Tennessee did not remove any dead voters from
their rolls between 2006 and 2008, but the DOJ was not filing lawsuits against
them.
The Department of Justice is abusing its discretion by
letting political appointees decide which provisions of the law to
enforce. The Department of State is also
participating in this cherry picking scheme.
These agencies should be upholding all parts of the law, not just parts
they agree with.
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Despite the Democratic Party’s pledge to fight voter ID
laws, they themselves use them as a tool to prevent fraud. Michigan Democrats require photo
identification at their caucus.
According to an e-mail
this month from Democratic Michigan Field Director Erin McCann about the Michigan
caucus to nominate Obama for president, caucus-goers must “Bring proof that you
live in the area served by the caucus location -- photo ID is required.”
The Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman
Schultz has claimed that through voter ID laws that “Republicans across the
country have engaged in a full-scale attack on the right to vote… Democrats
refuse to stand by and watch this happen.”
Why are Schultz and other Democrats standing by and letting the Michigan
Democrats use photo identification at their caucus?
Michigan Democrats recognize the widespread fraud in their
state and know that photo identification is a tool to prevent fraud.
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As news
reports come in, the case for voter ID in Pennsylvania remains strong. A June 7, 2011 KQV Radio/Tribune-Review poll found that 86 percent of
respondents said that “voters should be required to show photo ID.” Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele stated
that 99% of Pennsylvanians already have government-issued photo ID. For the 1% without IDs, the state is working
with eligible voters to give them access to free identification. With the public support for voter ID high and
voter ID offering a way to protect the integrity of the vote, it’s no surprise
the legislature passed and the governor signed this measure.
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The Justice Department will soon be reviewing the
Mississippi voter ID law, as Governor Phil Bryant has said
he will sign the bill passed by the legislature to implement a state
constitutional voter ID amendment approved by 62% of voters. Disturbing comments by a DOJ employee suggest the
DOJ will not give it a fair hearing.
An analyst at the DOJ, Stephanie Gyamfim, wrote
that Mississippi should change its motto to “disgusting and shameful.” Mississippi
Representatives Alan Nunnelee, Gregg Harper and Steven Palazzo sent a letter
to the DOJ questioning whether Mississippi would receive a fair review of voter
ID. They wrote, “It is clear tht Ms.
Gyamfi lacks the objectivity to review matters as they relate to the state of
Mississippi.”
Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said,
“there’s a culture of prejudice there in the Justice Department against
Southern states and against Mississippi.”
The DOJ is pressured from groups who
want the federal government to block state voter ID laws. The attorney general has already pledged “aggressive”
review.
It’s no surprise the Mississippi legislature has supplied funds
in the budget for the attorney general to conduct the voter ID litigation to
get the law in place.
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Florida officials have asked Obama’s Department of Homeland
Security to give them access to databases to help determine who is a citizen,
but have been not permitted.
180,000
people on the voter rolls are being investigated by the Florida Division of
Elections to determine whether they are eligible voters as United States citizens. Nearly 1,600 of the voters identified list
their address as in Miami-Dade County.
"We've been requesting access, but have so far been
denied," a spokesman from the Florida Division of Elections, Chris Cate, said.
“Both the law and department policy requires [the Department
of Homeland Security] to provide access to the [Systematic Alienation
Verification for Entitlements] SAVE program within a reasonable time,” according
to Rep.
Jeff Miller (R-FL).
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Charges
were filed against a Los Angeles Councilman and his wife for vote fraud. Prosecutors say they were living in a house
in Panorama City so that the councilman could run for his 7th District office.
Councilman Richard Alarcon is charged with two felony counts
of filing false candidacy papers in 2006 and 2008, seven counts of voter fraud
and nine counts of perjury. His wife Montes de Oca Alarcon is charged with
three counts of perjury and three counts of vote fraud.
The case actually previously led to an indictment in July 2010
but was actually thrown out for procedural problems.
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Holder’s Department of Justice is making “endless discovery
requests seeking millions of records that have nothing to do with” the Texas
voter ID case, according
to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office.
This tactic, in addition to “needless delays,” is part of an “ongoing
effort to prevent Texas from enforcing its Voter ID law during the November
election.”
Texas produced 25,000 pages of information and millions of
records from state databases. But
apparently that’s not enough for the DOJ to build its unsupportable case.
Examples of how the DOJ has delayed the Texas voter ID law have
been in place since the beginning. The
DOJ twice extended the deadline and did not make its preclearance decision
until January. The DOJ waited a full 60
days to respond to the State's lawsuit.
Furthermore, the DOJ asked the Court to push back the July trial date
nearly two months before the discovery period was even scheduled to end.
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Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) proposed an amendment that prohibits
funds from being used by the Department of Justice to bring any action against
any State for implementation of a State law requiring voter identification. His amendment to the appropriations bill passed
232 to 190.
In a speech at the House floor, Rep. Schweikert declared, “we are
at battle with our own Justice Department.”
He explained that Texas and other states are being sued by the Justice
Department over voter ID laws and the “the American people are tired” of it.
Watch his floor speech here.
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1,251
non-U.S. citizens are on the voter rolls in Florida, and the state Division
of Elections is working to remove those ineligible to cast ballots before the
November elections. The Miami-Dade
elections supervisor is also examining
2,000 potentially unlawful voters.
NBC2 reporters discovered that one of the non-citizens on
the rolls is a Canadian who lives part of the year in Sarasota County, Florida. Another person interviewed said
she "knows non-citizens are not allowed to vote," and has no idea how
she ended up registered. CBS4 discovered
that one suspected non-citizen voter has been registered
for about 40 years.
These voters got on the rolls because people can register to
vote at the DMV and until recently did not have to show proof of citizenship.
Floridian Beth Colvin said,
"I find it a tragedy. Our votes are absolutely diluted.”
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As a primary is held in Indiana today, voters will go to the
polls, but how many of them have faith in the integrity of their vote? Recent occurrences of fraud have tainted the
elections in the state.
Four Democrats in St. Joseph County were indicted
for fraudulently submitting petitions to place Obama on the ballot for the 2008 presidential
primary. The plan to forge signatures
was apparently developed in Democratic Party headquarters.
Dr. Deb Fleming, St. Joseph County’s Republican chairwoman, said,
“They’ve just never gotten caught. Because they’ve been in control of St.
Joseph County for so long, they felt they could get away with it.”
A more recent story reveals that Austin Mayor Douglas
Campbell and a city employee illegally
accepted absentee ballots from voters and filled out a woman's incomplete
ballot.
Charity Rorie, a resident whose name was forged, said
of the vote fraud: “It’s scary. A lot of people have already lost faith in
politics . . . and that solidifies our worries and concerns.”
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Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, will be
convening a field hearing on Ohio's new voting law today. The law, HB 194, is aimed at reforming Ohio’s
voting laws in the aftermath of fraud from the 2008 election.
To give a few examples of the vote fraud: The votes of five
college student volunteers from Obama's campaign were thrown out after they registered
from a house near The Ohio State University, voted and then left the state. Thirteen
Obama campaign workers withdrew their
votes stating that they did not understand Ohio residency laws. A student journalist interviewed a voter,
who had taken a bus from Chicago to vote, stayed overnight at a homeless
shelter and registered from that address and was waiting for a ride back to the
Greyhound station.
Many of these fraud instances occurred because of relaxed voting
laws. Golden
Week was when Ohioans could register to vote and immediately cast an
absentee ballot during a five-day period when the beginning of early voting and
the end of registration overlapped. Democrat Secretary of State Jennifer
Brunner issued two advisory opinions that opened the floodgates to fraud in
Ohio in the 2008 election. The first
was an advisory opinion allowing people to register and vote on the same day,
during Golden Week. The second
found that Ohio law does not require that partisan election observers be
allowed. Without authentication measures
and monitoring, fraud was rampant in Ohio.
This is something Durbin should be discussing at his hearing today.
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Thank you, Representative Lamar Smith, for speaking out
about some of the worst Obominations.
Smith, who serves as chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, issued
a report
criticizing the ways the Obama administration has “put its partisan agenda
ahead of its Constitutional duties.”
Examples include stalling investigation of Operation Fast & Furious,
challenging voter ID laws and ignoring the Constitution’s limited recess
appointment power.
A common theme in the report is that the Department of
Justice is taking a politicized approach to what should be neutral enforcement
of the laws. With regard to voter ID,
the report indicates “The Justice Department’s partisan ideology is driving it
to waste taxpayer dollars fighting the very laws that promote fair and accurate
elections.” The report notes that even
though voter ID opponents have “lost in both the federal courts and the court
of public opinion,” the Justice Department has taken up this radical agenda and
is abusing its authority.
The politicized agenda carries over to President Obama’s appointments
to the Consumer Financial Protection Board and the National Labor Relations
Board. The report explains, “These
unconstitutional appointments represent a unilateral imposition of the
Administration’s partisan agenda on the American people, unrestrained by the
Constitution’s limits.”
Not only is the president acting in ways that are partisan,
but he is ensuring that politicized approaches in the executive branch will
continue. The DOJ is the prime example
of this. The DOJ rubberstamped Obama’s
unconstitutional behavior to put radical nominees in place; “The President,
acting upon the Department of Justice’s advice, evaded the Constitution’s
limits on his power and installed nominees who would advance his partisan
agenda.” Furthermore, the DOJ is not
likely to change under Obama; there is a “consistent focus on avoiding
responsibility rather than addressing institutional flaws.”
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Forgotten.
Ignored. Disenfranchised. That’s how our military are being treated at
the ballot box. The Department of
Justice’s Voting Section has failed to adequately enforce federal law to ensure
that the military receive absentee ballots on time from local election
officials. Not a good way to show thanks
this May for National Military Appreciation Month.
As the director of the Military Voter Protection Project wrote
in the Washington Times last month, “Time
and again, the Voting Section has been dilatory in its investigations and has
failed to take timely action… But, even when the Voting Section does act, the
negotiated settlements with states often lack meaningful relief or real
consequences for the local election officials who missed the deadline.”
Over at Election
Law Center, it was noted that in a recent law review article, the Service
Members Law Center called
on citizens themselves to complain if
military ballots are not being delivered, recognizing that the DOJ is not rightfully
fulfilling its duty to investigate and enforce the military voting laws.
The concurrent
resolution which set forth National Military Appreciation Month recognizes “the
vigilance of the members of the Armed Forces has been instrumental to the
preservation of the freedom, security, and prosperity enjoyed by the people of
the United States.” This is true, just as the DOJ should be vigilant in preserving the rights of those who
serve, this month and in all months to come.