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“Let me be clear,” Attorney General Eric Holder emphatically declared in a 2012 speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, “we will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious rights.” Holder’s remarks were a call to arms against efforts by Republicans to require that voters show identification when they go to vote. His words reflect a belief that the right to vote is so “precious” that requiring individuals to show an ID before casting a vote is tantamount to being “disenfranchised.” However, when it comes to protecting the right to “keep...

That left-wing group called Rock the Vote has released its latest silly new video urging the youth of America to vote. But vote for what? As usual, they featured celebrities and young people urging a turnout for marriage equality, for global warming awareness and against deforestation. It comes with visual aids for their pet issues. There's a globe with an old-fashioned ice bag on it, a gun with a padlock on the trigger, and a ball-and-chain representing student loans. There are those edgy figures, like the rapper whose "song" drones throughout the video: "My name is Lil Jon and I'm...

Previously unpublished data from the last big election in Burlington, Vt., reveals a significant number of votes were cast by individuals whose names were not on the statewide checklist. In the 2012 presidential election, 17,383 votes were cast in Burlington, according to city-published data. According to data not published by the city, but made available to a reporter, 639 of those votes, or 3.7 percent, came from election day walk-in voters whose names were not on the voter rolls and whose registration status was unknown. As previously reported, votes by individuals whose names don’t appear on the checklist count whether...

Ever since the 1976 election, I've understood the importance of voter turnout. My father was running for United States Congress in rural Georgia, having lost in 1974. He realized in early 1976 that running as a republican in Georgia, while Jimmy Carter was topping the democratic ticket, was going to be a hard feat to pull off, but confident of his ability to work hard, he trudged forward. Working through the spring, my father felt good about his potential win. That is until Election Day. He drove up to the Neva Lomason Memorial Library, his polling place, and noticed there...

EATONVILLE -- Rev. Al Sharpton spoke to the congregation at the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Eatonville, invoking Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis as he urged members to vote in the upcoming election. “How do we answer Stand Your Ground in Florida? How do we answer our outrage over Trayvon Martin? How do we answer the things that we consider abusive and disrespectful and offensive? We go to the polls!" Sharpton said Tuesday. "They should not say, in the light of all that we’ve seen in Florida, that we were missing in action when we had an opportunity to do...

Don't give America to the hard left liberal progressive commie bastard democrats because you can't find purity in the Republican Party A listener to my Constitution Radio with Douglas V. Gibbs program on KCAA AM1050, and regular reader of Political Pistachio, emails me often to challenge what he considers to be my oath to the Republican Party. I have no oath to the GOP. My oath is to God, and my political ideology is that of a Classical Centrist, which is someone that, without compromise, supports the original intent of the United States Constitution. I wish, I have told Nathan,...

Many recent surveys indicate that the vast majority of Americans feel our country is moving in the wrong direction. This country was intentionally designed to be different from others in which a monarch or strong central government controlled almost every aspect of the lives of its citizens. In most other nations, the lives of the populace conform to the will of the government. In America, the government is supposed to conform to the will of the people. Also in most other countries, it was declared that the rights of the people were conferred by the government; whereas, our founding documents...

This will certainly go down as one of the last minute, whistle beating acts of the Supreme Court. Very nearly on the eve of the recently extended – and highly contentious – early voting period in Ohio, the Supreme Court has delivered a 5-4 decision overturning a lower court’s ruling and forcing the state to file a new petition if they want the case heard. SCOTUSblog has the details. With just sixteen hours before polling stations were to open in Ohio, the Supreme Court on Monday afternoon blocked voters from beginning tomorrow to cast their ballots in this year’s general...

In a move that's likely to cause heartburn for the GOP establishment and Democratic Party, a band of hardcore conservative politicos have grouped together to form a new scorecard and rating system for members of Congress. FreedomWorks’ director of minority outreach Deneen Borelli; Daniel Horowitz, a conservative who worked for Madison Project and has written columns for Breitbart News and RedState; former U.S. Senate Steering committee policy adviser Gaston Mooney; and conservative communications staffer Rachel Semmel, among others, have just launched the “Conservative Review.” “I am excited to be a part of an organization that pulls back the curtain on...

If you would like to be filled with despair for the prospects of democracy, spend a few minutes attempting to decipher the psephological musings of Lena Dunham, the distinctly unappealing actress commissioned by Planned Parenthood to share with her presumably illiterate following “5 Reasons Why I Vote (and You Should, Too).” That’s 21st-century U.S. politics in miniature: a half-assed listicle penned by a half-bright celebrity and published by a gang of abortion profiteers. It is an excellent fit, if you think about it: Our national commitment to permanent, asinine, incontinent juvenility, which results in, among other things, a million or...

WASHINGTON — Gov. Mike Huckabee encouraged pastors to speak out on political issues and for social conservatives to get more fellow adherents registered and to the polls. Social conservatives are not in trouble because of the actions of government, they are in trouble because social conservatives are not speaking out and are not voting in large numbers, Huckabee said Friday at the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit. Huckabee estimated that there are probably over 100 million social conservatives in the United States. Using just the example of Evangelicals, he said there are about 80 million, but only half of...

There was really no reason to think that the “Ace of Spades HQ Decision Desk” would be a hopeful sign for American democracy in 2014. The Decision Desk swings into action on primary election nights, with Brandon Finnigan, a burly 29-year-old, nailed to a busted black leather armchair at one of those cheap beige aluminum desks, halfhearted fake wood top, toward the back of a low-slung house at a truck stop crossroads deep in California’s monotonous Inland Empire. Dripping sweat every day since the air conditioner broke, Finnigan is the sole employee of a small truck dispatching company where he...

As Democrats seek to turn Texas blue, it seems they are employing a little Bolivian white to assist them in this goal. In yet another disturbing example of Democrat Party malfeasance,  Texas Democratic Party power-broker Francisco Garcia was indicted for allegedly buying votes by providing cocaine to voters in an attempt to sway control of a local School Board. Garcia, a long-time San Antonio Democrat leader was campaign manager for four candidates in the Donna School Board race of 2012, and per the indictment, offered voters in the most lower-income, minority district the option of taking $10 cash or a small vial...

Wisconsin offices that issue driver's licenses aren't open enough hours to issue photo IDs to all the voters who need them before the Nov. 4 election, a liberal group told federal judges in a brief filed Monday. Wisconsin's 2011 law requires voters to show a government-issued ID with a photo to vote. Because of legal challenges, the requirement had not been enforced since the February 2012 primary. But a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago said Sept. 12 that the law could be used for the Nov. 4 election and other elections while it considers...

The Los Angeles Ethics Commission (the term “ethics” is used rather loosely in this case) has a plan to get more voters to turn out on Election Day. Basically, they think the city should bribe people to show up at the polls. According to LA Times:Alarmed that fewer than one-fourth of voters are showing up for municipal elections, the Los Angeles Ethics Commission voted Thursday to recommend that the City Council look at using cash prizes to lure a greater number of people to the polls. On a 3-0 vote, the panel said it wanted City Council President Herb Wesson's Rules,...

Montgomery County, Maryland, is one of the wealthiest and most liberal counties in America. If there’s a dumb progressive idea that didn’t start there, it will get there sooner or later. Along those lines, the powers that be in Montgomery County are very concerned about low voter turnout. So concerned, in fact, the all Democrat County Council formed a “Right to Vote” Task Force to come up with ways to encourage more people to vote. The task force produced a 76-page report with more than a few suggestions that could raise a few eyebrows. Recommendations 1-3 are: 1. The Task...

There are about 90 to 100 million of us who claim Jesus. The problem is only half of you register to vote and out of the half of you that registers to vote, only half of that group actually goes and votes…. Therefore, when you’re looking up there and griping and complaining about what you see in Washington, D.C., you might as well shut up. The reason they’re there is we’re putting them there. If you don’t get anything else out of this, remember this — register to vote for crying out loud… If the dude or woman is for...

The Kent Black Action Commission (KBAC) plans a No Ferguson in Kent rally and march on Tuesday evening, Sept. 16 from the Maleng Regional Justice Center to City Hall. The ongoing events in Ferguson, Missouri surrounding the shooting death of Michael Brown have caused the KBAC to take pause and reflect on the likelihood of a similar incident taking place in Kent, according to a KBAC press release. "Although we all agree that community relations in Kent are a long way from being a Ferguson, we feel that we should take this opportunity to start the process of having the...

It doesn't matter that low voter turnout did not kill Ferguson Missouri's Michael Brown, any more than it killed Trayvon Martin or Troy Davis or even James Byrd back in 1998 Jasper Texas. What really matters to our black political class is not what we need but what they need. They need their perks, they need their careers, they need to constantly reaffirm and to re-legitimize their privileged status as the imaginary representatives of all the rest of us. Their answers to every question reflect what they need, and not what we need. South Carolina representative James Clyburn was on...

Michigan's primary elections were last month and for a young progressive who loves all things political, it was Christmas in August for me. As a member of LaunchProgress PAC's Candidate Advisory Board, I was excited to support our Michigan candidates Jon Hoadley, Stephanie Chang, and Kristy Pagan who won big on August 5, and Rebecca Thompson, a strong LaunchProgress candidate who was just 500 votes shy of winning her election. But still, I'm haunted by the text message I received the afternoon of the primary, "Today are elections? Wasn't Obama just re-elected?" Sadly this is the reality our country lives...