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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.” 

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.

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.” 

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.