Free Republic

OLYMPIA, Wash. Secretary of Sam Reed announced today that more than 176-thousand names were removed from the state's voting rolls last year under a new statewide voter database. The purge of illegal registrations is the result of the new system that has consolidated all 39 separate county systems into one database in January 2006. Reed said the database has helped officials find duplicate registrations and dead voters. Most of the names removed were duplicate voter registrations. Reed said these often happen when a voter moves across county lines, forgets to notify the local election office and then reregisters somewhere else....

House Republicans are looking closely at ending birthright citizenship and building a barrier along the entire U.S.-Mexico border as they search for solutions to illegal immigration. A task force of party leaders and members active on immigration has met since the summer to try to figure out where consensus exists, and several participants said those two ideas have floated to the top of the list of possibilities to be included either in an immigration-enforcement bill later this year or in a later comprehensive immigration overhaul. "There is a general agreement about the fact that citizenship in this country should not...