Free Republic

Court allows for voter registration at all welfare offices. No citizen identity required.

The recently concluded federal trial over North Carolina’s election rules proved one thing beyond a reasonable doubt: The Obama administration and its partisan, big-money, racial-interest-group allies will stop at nothing to win elections. And using the courts to change election rules is a key part of their strategy. That was clearly evident in the federal courtroom in Winston-Salem. The plaintiffs, including the Justice Department, challenged a number of election reforms implemented in 2013 that were designed to reduce the cost and complexity of running elections and make it harder to commit voter fraud. The administration pushed a novel legal argument....

A public interest law firm is threatening to bring lawsuits against more than 100 counties across the United States that appear to have more registered voters than living residents. The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a law firm dedicated to election integrity based in Indiana, recently sent statutory notice letters to election officials in 141 counties putting them on notice of their discoveries. The group says if action is not taken to correct the questionable voter rolls, they will bring lawsuits against every single county on the list. “Corrupted voter rolls provide the perfect environment for voter fraud,” said J....

The Public Interest Legal Foundation, of which PJ Media’s J. Christian Adams is president, has done admirable work in convincing the country that voter fraud is a widespread problem and an embarrassment to the country. We need clean voter rolls and Voter ID now, and an end to this cavalier attitude towards securing our fundamental right.This morning, they circulated the following release: Scores of Counties Put on Notice About Corrupted Voter Rolls(Alexandria, VA) – August 27 The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has put 141 counties on notice across the United States that they have more registered voters than...

Elections are supposed to be color-blind, but not under Obama Black Americans today receive preferential treatment in the realm of elections and voting rights because the Left needs them to acquire and keep political power. To left-wingers it’s 1815, not 2015. Blacks today are unquestionably full citizens unhindered by officially sanctioned discrimination, but to the Left there are still crosses burning in front of black families’ houses while residents cower in terror inside.

Why the next seven weeks? Because fiscal year 2015 ends on September 30th and the settlers in the US State Department and in their contracting agencies want to hit the Obama target of 70,000 for the year and they have (as of July 31), 18,470 more to go! Actually that 70,000 figure that Obama announced in his Presidential Determination Letter to Congress last September is meant to be a ceiling, not a goal that they necessarily have to hit. However, since the contractors are paid by the head and they have salaries and office overhead to pay, they always try...

Speaking at the White House Thursday, on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, President Barack Obama said that people do not take advantage of the lack of voter ID laws to cast fraudulent votes in other peoples’ names. The president based his conclusion on government data on the number of people the government prosecutes for this crime. “Sadly, too many states are making it harder for folks to vote—instituting photo ID laws that on the surface sound good,” said Obama. “But I am certain, because we’ve actually looked at the data on this, that almost nobody wakes up...

A decision by a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel to call the Texas Voter ID law unconstitutional isn’t as big of a win as some are making it out to be. It’s true the panel upheld a previous judge’s ruling the law violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, but it’s important to look at what the panel said. They noted the law was basically unintentionally discriminatory. As such, we conclude that the district court did not clearly err in determining that SB 14 has a discriminatory effect on minorities’ voting rights in violation of Section 2 of...

A panel of judicial commissars ruled that Texas's modest voter ID law is "unconstitutional." A federal appeals panel ruled Wednesday that a strict voter identification law in Texas discriminated against blacks and Hispanics and violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 . The Texas ID law is one of the strictest of its kind in the country. The law requires voters to bring a government-issued photo ID to the polls. Accepted forms of identification include a driver’s license, a United States passport, a concealed-handgun license and a so-called election identification certificate, a card issued by the State Department of Public Safety....

A federal appeals court has struck down Texas' voter ID law, ruling that the Republican-backed measure first passed in 2011 violates the Voting Rights Act. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said Wednesday that the Texas law, one of the toughest voter ID measures in the country, violates Section 2 of the landmark civil rights law. The U.S. Justice Department had joined minority groups in a drawn-out legal battle that has stretched for years. A lower court had previously found that the voter ID was passed by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature with the intent of discriminating...

<p>AUSTIN, Texas — A federal appeals court has struck down Texas' voter ID law, ruling that the Republican-backed measure first passed in 2011 violates the Voting Rights Act.</p> <p>The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said Wednesday that the Texas law, one of the toughest voter ID measures in the country, violates Section 2 of the landmark civil rights law. The U.S. Justice Department had joined minority groups in a drawn-out legal battle that has stretched for years.</p>

President Obama will call for the restoration of the Voting Rights Act on its 50th anniversary Thursday, the White House said. Obama will hold a teleconference to commemorate the landmark legislation and call for its renewal, following a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that voided one of its central provisions. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who rose to prominence in the 1960s as a civil rights leader, will participate. The event will allow Obama to draw a sharp contrast with Republicans, many of whom argue some provisions of the 1965 law went too far. It will take...

Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe and his appointees to the Virginia State Board of Elections seem determined to ensure that felons and non-citizens can illegally register and vote in elections without getting caught. In April 2015, Governor McAuliffe vetoed House Bill 1315, which would have required jury commissioners to retain information from individuals not qualified to serve as jurors for reasons that would also disqualify them from voting, such as not being a citizen of the United Statesno longer being a resident of the Commonwealthbeing a resident of another county or city in the Commonwealthhaving been convicted of a felony and...

Video at link. Reps John Lewis and Linda Sanchez deserve the littlest fiddle award. House Republican leaders are slamming the brakes on voting rights legislation, insisting that any movement on the issue go through a key Republican committee chairman who opposes the proposal. House Democrats are pressing hard on GOP leaders to bring the new voter protections directly to the floor. That would sidestep consideration in the House Judiciary Committee, where Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has rejected a bipartisan proposal to update the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted a...

Being dead may not necessarily disqualify you from voting this year in Mississippi. That’s because some voter rolls in the Magnolia State contain more people registered to vote than people who are alive.The dismal state of voter rolls in many Mississippi counties not only facilitates voter fraud, it violates federal law. Take Clarke County, for example: according the United States Census, in March 2015 Clarke County had 12,646 registered voters — despite having a voting-age population of only 12,549.That’s a registration rate of over 100 percent. That’s not only implausible, it’s impossible.On Monday, the Public Interest Legal Foundation sued [1]...

Gee, how time flies when you’re having fun. Election time again! But isn’t it always? You who follow these columns may recall that a couple of weeks ago I fearlessly predicted that Hillary would win the 2016 presidential election. Do I think she is the best qualified candidate? Of course not. But her ace in the hole — voter fraud! Oh, I’m not talking about handing out fruit jars of moonshine, as was the custom here in Tennessee and in my native state of Virginia. The “revenooers” pretty well put them out of business and the hooch runners had to...

Contrary to the assertions of many, voter fraud is not a myth. It is a stark reality that exists nationwide, from the rural counties of Georgia to the urban centers of New York. The Heritage Foundation has documented nearly 250 cases where nefarious citizens, officials, candidates and campaign operatives conspired to commit vote fraud, compromising the integrity of our elections to achieve their ideological goals. That list is just a tiny sampling of voter fraud, and it keeps growing. In May, the Heritage Foundation highlighted several recent cases. Here are some of the egregious new additions to the voter fraud...

It’s been over seven years since the Supreme Court, in a 6–3 decision that was written by liberal favorite John Paul Stevens, declared that voter-ID laws don’t constitute an undue burden on people attempting to vote. But that hasn’t stopped liberals from fighting in legislatures and courts against those laws and other efforts to promote voter integrity. The lawsuits are often brought by Marc Elias, who doubles as the attorney for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. And their efforts have paid off: Only about 18 states currently require a photo ID to vote. Last month, the New York Times reported that...

As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), this year simultaneously marks a critical moment for voting rights in the here and now. Despite the courageous efforts of trailblazers who marched, organized and even died for the ballot access made possible under the VRA, today we are witnessing the greatest assault on the right to vote since the law’s passage 50 years ago. This is partly because the Supreme Court gutted the core of the Act in their 2013 Shelby County v. Holder ruling. In this catastrophic decision, the Court struck down the formula...

Yet another rejection of constitutional principles by the Supreme Court has been overlooked in the furor over the pro-Obamacare and same-sex marriage decisions. This time, it’s not what the justices said, but what they refused to say that is noteworthy. Reuters reports that the high court’s refusal to hear an appeal of the decision in the case of Kobach, et al. v. Election Assistance Commission, et al, had the effect of upholding the ruling handed down last November by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.