Free Republic

Arizona and Kansas can require that those registering to vote must prove their citizenship, and the federal Election Assistance Commission cannot stop them, even on the commission’s own national voter registration forms, a judge ruled Wednesday. The ruling is a significant victory for states that have pushed to tighten voting against potential fraud. It marks a setback, however, for President Obama and other advocates who have argued that stiffer voting checks tamp down on voter turnout. Judge Eric F. Melgren ruled that the EAC, which Congress created in the wake of the 2000 Florida voting fiasco, cannot refuse to include...

It is an article of faith on the Left that voter fraud does not exist beyond the imaginations of racist right-wingers, hellbent on imposing "unconstitutional" voter ID laws fashioned to "suppress" minority turnout in elections. These objections are race-baiting nonsense; they're unsupported by both empirical evidence and Supreme Court precedent. The high court upheld Indiana's law in a 6-3 decision in 2008. The ruling was authored by uber-liberal Justice John Paul Stevens. And after Georgia implemented its own law in 2007 (which survived a legal challenge), minority voter participation increasedin the next two election cycles. ABC News has called voter...

A federal judge in Kansas on Wednesday ruled that the federal agency which oversees the federal voter registration form must include the state-specific proof-of-citizenship requirements requested by both Kansas and Arizona. The ruling was hailed by Republican officials in both states. And it also does away with the need for the "two-tier" voting systems that were proposed while the case was pending. “This is a huge victory for the states of Kansas and Arizona," Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) said in a statement. "They have successfully protected our sovereign right to set and enforce the qualifications for registering...

A judge in Wichita has ordered a federal commission to enforce Kansas and Arizona laws requiring documents proving citizenship for new voters. U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren ordered the Election Assistance Commission to immediately add Kansas- and Arizona-specific instructions to the federal voter registration form. Those instructions will say that new registrants will have to provide documents proving citizenship before being allowed to vote, as required by state law. --SNIP-- The League of Women Voters and others have said requiring the proofs essentially makes it impossible to register voters in the kind of sidewalk or shopping-center drives that were once...

Pennsylvania Democrats were caught on surveillance tape reportedly accepting cash bribes in return for opposing Voter ID in the Pennsylvania Legislature. Gifts of Tiffany’s jewelry were also given to Democrat legislators from Philadelphia, reportedly in exchange for “NO” votes on a Pennsylvania Voter ID bill that passed in 2012.Despite this evidence, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane has not charged any officials. Kane is a Democrat.Kane’s excuse for her inaction? Racism: some of the legislators caught on tape accepting bribes were black Democrats from Philadelphia. From the Philadelphia Inquirer: In a statement to The Inquirer on Friday, Kane called the...

Join us as we watch our friendly neighborhood campaign volunteer educate his classmates about vote fraud – in the context of the Crimean Referendum It was primary election day back home in Chicago, and Pavel was glad he had switched his registration to his college address. The guys back at the 51st Ward Party Headquarters sure wouldn’t be happy with the ballots he was casting these days, and the excuse that “I’m just doing a little mischief in the other party” probably sounds a bit lame the second or third time it’s tried. Pavel walked into his Comparative Political Science...

Pennsylvania Democrats reportedly were caught on tape accepting cash bribes, including one lawmaker who was paid to vote against a state voter identification law, but Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Kane shut down the investigation. "Before Kane ended the investigation, sources familiar with the inquiry said, prosecutors amassed 400 hours of audio and videotape that documented at least four city Democrats taking payments in cash or money orders, and in one case a $2,000 Tiffany bracelet," the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. "Typically, the payments made at any one time were relatively modest -- ranging from $500 to $2,000 -- but most of...

“A fool’s errand” is what Bill Tucker, chair of the political-action committee of the NAACP’s Tallahassee branch, called Florida Governor Rick Scott’s renewed efforts to purge the state’s voter rolls of non-citizens. Tucker claimed the purge would “cast another dark shadow on Florida” because it would “disproportionately affect Florida’s most vulnerable groups,” that of course being minorities. What a remarkable coincidence that Tucker should believe, just as Attorney General Eric Holder, that a crime is not NEARLY as important as the race of those who commit it. (1) And as for the “fool’s errand,” comment, Tucker might just be right....

via TCOT Report: "Grassroots Volunteers Challenge 180 ‘Missing’ Voters in North Carolina" Friday, representatives from the Voter Integrity Project and Asheville Tea Party announced they filed over 180 challenges to the registrations of so-called ‘inactive voters’ in Buncombe County, NC. The challenges trigger a compulsory investigation into the legitimacy of each voter. Law requires that at the conclusion of the investigation, the Board of Elections members vote to keep or clear that individual from the registered voter rolls. The two groups first teamed up when the Asheville Tea Party hosted a Voter Integrity Boot Camp in October 2013. Several volunteers...

A man is in custody after he tried to run over a Border Patrol agent while smuggling a load of marijuana. It happened Friday morning at 11:20 a.m. in the La Casita area near Rio Grande City. Starr County Sheriff Office investigators confirm the driver of a brown Tahoe ran into a Border Patrol unit head on. The agent then opened fire from inside his unit. Authorities said the shots went through the agents windshield and into the suspects windshield, but the suspect was not hit. The suspect, who is from the area, was arrested and is said to have...

WBBH TV in Ft. Myers, Florida has performed a public service with its investigative reporting documenting non-US citizens voting regularly in local elections. The segment can be seen below, but Judicial Watch summarizes it: The segment focused on Lee County, which has a population of about 620,000 and Collier County with a population of around 322,000. The reporter spent about two months digging around the voter rolls in the two counties and the discoveries are dumbfounding.In that short time, more than 100 people registered to vote in those two areas were proven to be ineligible by the reporter. A Cape...

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph T. Deters says Melowese Richardson, 59, who was serving a five-year prison term after being convicted of voter fraud last May, has served enough time and released her on March 12.

While the Obama Justice Department mounts a legal challenge against Florida for purging ineligible voters from its rolls, a television news station broadcasts an unbelievable segment that proves non U.S. citizens living in the Sunshine State vote regularly in elections. The investigative piece was aired this week by an NBC affiliate in southwest Florida that actually tracked down and interviewed non U.S. citizens who are registered to vote and have cast ballots in numerous elections. The segment focused on Lee County, which has a population of about 620,000 and Collier County with a population of around 322,000. The reporter spent...

We’ve been following the story out of Michigan of the woman who disappeared into her own house for more than five years, with no one noticing her absence because all of her bills were on auto-pay. As investigators try to figure out what happened to her, they’ve found another mystery: she appears to have voted in 2010, even though the evidence shows that she died in 2008.

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN--During a filibuster-style radio interview in Milwaukee Friday, senior Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner (Wisconsin) charged that the State of Texas as a whole had a tendency to discriminate against minority voters and should be placed back under Holder Justice Department supervision thanks to his proposed legislation. After the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act—a policy that held a number of southern states like Texas and other jurisdictions structurally discriminatory toward minorities until proven otherwise—Rep. Sensenbrenner vowed to revive the law. When pressed to justify his desire to again empower the...

The FBI investigates the use of politiqueras in Valley elections. In the deeply Democratic Rio Grande Valley, the primary is the election that matters. And in local races like county commissioner and district attorney a sliver of votes can make a difference between winning and losing the election. Many times, paid campaign workers called “politiqueras” deliver the votes that put a candidate over the top. Politiqueras—who are paid to turn out voters, especially in low-income neighborhoods and colonias—have been part of elections in the Rio Grande Valley for decades. But the recent suicide of a school board president in the...

Members of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) resolutions committee approved a series of platform points at the annual winter meeting, including a measure on voter ID with an eye to upcoming midterm elections. Hundreds of members from all around the country converged in D.C. last week to debate resolutions and rules as well as organize their “ground game” ahead of November elections. Among the resolutions approved were those in support of some of the major issues on the Democrats’ agenda, including women’s rights, immigration reform, and the minimum wage. […] The DNC also introduced on Thursday a new voter expansion...

A Milwaukee man was sentenced Tuesday to nine months in jail, with work-release privileges, for voting twice in the 2012 presidential election. Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Leonard K. Brown, 56, to more than a year in prison, a harsher punishment than handed down in the few other cases of double voting. "I'm shocked, to be honest, that the state thinks this is a prison case," defense attorney Christopher Hartley told Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Timothy Witkowiak. "It's outrageous." Hartley said Brown is caught in the political debate over making voters show photo ID to vote, with one...

Join our young campaign volunteer as he learns about the latest cause célèbre of the hard Left: the restoration of voting rights for felons... Pavel Syerov Jr. had been away at college, so he hadn’t stopped by the 51st Ward Party Headquarters in quite awhile. But he was home for the weekend, doing errands for his folks, when he found himself driving past Headquarters, and noticed that he had time to kill. He had a daunting essay to write for his Comparative Political Science class the next week, and writer’s block had hit; perhaps stopping by to see Pockets and...

Attorney General Eric Holder’s call to restore voting rights to felons after they’ve served their time in prison has split Senate Democrats. Liberal Democrats who are not facing tough re-elections this year say it’s the right thing to do, but vulnerable incumbents are steering clear of the proposal. Holder has become increasingly outspoken recently. This week he declared that state attorneys general are not obligated to defend laws that are discriminatory. Political experts say barring ex-felons from voting impacts African Americans disproportionately. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who faces a competitive challenge from former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, is...