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Manhattan Board of Elections Commissioner Alan Schulkin De Blasio demands resignation of elections official who blasted ID program. The Manhattan Democratic representative on the city’s [BOE] was caught on a secret video slamming Mayor de Blasio’s municipal ID program as contributing to “all kinds of fraud” — including at the polls. “He gave out ID cards, de Blasio. ... in lieu of a driver’s license, but you can use it for anything,”[he] said in the undercover video recorded by ... Project Veritas. “But they didn’t vet people to see who they really are. Anybody can say, ‘I am Joe Smith,...

MADISON, Wis. – Independents and so-called “anti-establishment” voters have had much to say about the presidential race so far. But could illegal immigrants and other non-citizens ultimately decide the contest? One elections expert said that is a distinct possibility. “My biggest fear in the upcoming election is people who are not U.S. citizens registering and voting and potentially making a difference … if we have a close election,” said Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. The former Federal Election Commission member pointed to cases across the country,...

California’s Governor had a busy weekend, breaking out his pen and signing nearly two dozen bills into law. Most of them centered on the voting process in the Golden State, but while liberals are taking a victory lap there are hints that these maneuvers are going to signal trouble down the line. The big ticket item in the legislative package was the “New Motor Voter Law.” This brainstorm will make voter registration automatic for any person receiving a new driver’s license or renewing an existing one. Targeting California’s recent record-low voter turnout, Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday signed a measure...

The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a challenge to Wisconsin’s voter ID law, which it had previously kept from going into effect before November’s elections. The court’s decision not to review a federal appeals court ruling that upheld the law was a victory for Gov. Scott Walker (R) and perhaps other states that have tightened voting procedures to require additional identification.

Progressive critics of electoral activism—those who question the ultimate significance of lamestream bourgeois politics—would do well to remember the 2010 midterms, a Republican victory that solidified the power of the Tea Party within the GOP and heralded a right-wing takeover of state governments that has immiserated millions of Americans. A war is being waged on democracy in America. Brazenly, with a smiling face, the Right is working to shore up the accumulated wealth and power of the 1% against any incursion by the voting hordes. With the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, the Right—that convergence of billionaire activists, corporations,...

Controversial voter identification laws are not the primary reason minority voters are failing to cast their ballots, President Obama said in a radio interview airing Tuesday. "Most of these laws are not preventing the overwhelming majority of folks who don't vote from voting," Obama said during an interview with Rev. Al Sharpton. "Most people do have an ID. Most people do have a driver's license. Most people can get to the polls. It may not be as convenient, it may be a little more difficult." The Justice Department has challenged new voter identification laws in Texas and North Carolina. Those...

CHICAGO — A federal appeals court on Friday permitted Wisconsin to restore a requirement that voters provide photo identification before casting their ballots, allowing the long-debated state law to take effect in time for a hard-fought election on Nov. 4. The order, which came surprisingly swiftly, on the same day that lawyers made their arguments before a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, was seen as a significant victory for advocates of such voting requirements. Opponents of the laws had viewed the Wisconsin case as opening a novel legal basis for their efforts in...

Last week I invited every Townhall reader to try and be the first to win $100 out of my own pocket, by giving me one legitimate reason why requiring folks to show a valid photo I.D. before voting was “unfair.” However, most of the many emails I received in response were similar to the following snarky examples: I have an answer for why requiring ID for voting is unfair. It is because it makes it harder for Progressives to win elections and wield control. And to Progressives, that is obviously unfair. You will never get a logical answer because Progressive...

Imagine that, a convicted felon carrying a gun in Connecticut, even with all those stringent new gun laws. It’s almost as if criminals don’t obey the laws or something. Police arrested a 35-year-old New Haven man on gun charges among others after an allegedly unprovoked attack on a 71-year-old man. Jorge DelaPaz was arrested on charges of assault in the third degree of an elderly person, carrying a dangerous weapon, carrying a pistol without a permit, criminal posession of a pistol and interfering with police. Police say on Sunday, Aug. 25, the elder New Haven man was eating a hamburger...

Tens of thousands of people gathered on the National Mall Saturday to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington, listening as political and civil rights leaders reflected on the legacy of racial progress over the last half-century and urged Americans to press forward in pursuit of King's dream of equality. The event, which was sponsored by the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network, Martin Luther King III and the NAACP, featured a roster of speakers, including King, Sharpton, Attorney General Eric Holder, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. They spoke...

UPDATED: Moments after Gov. Pat McCrory left the stage, former Secretary of State Colin Powell took aim at North Carolina's new voting law Thursday, saying it hurts the Republican Party, punishes minority voters and makes it more difficult for everyone to vote. "I want to see policies that encourage every American to vote, not make it more difficult to vote," said Powell, a Republican, at the CEO Forum in Raleigh. "It immediately turns off a voting block the Republican Party needs," Powell continued. "These kinds of actions do not build on the base. It just turns people away." The retired...

The Department of Justice has served up a Texas sized lawsuit over the Lone Star State's voter identification law, something Attorney General Eric Holder has been warning about since it was signed into law in May 2011. The Justice Department said Thursday that it will file a new lawsuit against Texas to try to block the state's voter ID law. “Today’s action marks another step forward in the Justice Department’s continuing effort to protect the voting rights of all eligible Americans,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement accompanying the announcement of the lawsuit. "We will not allow the...

On yesterday’s edition of “All In with Chris Hayes” we were greeted with narrative creation at its finest as host Chris Hayes attempted to define the arguments in favor of Voter Identification laws in North Carolina as merely the spoils of victory as opposed to any type of actual reasoned position.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) HAYES: If a skeptical person looks at what’s going on in north carolina and says, look, this is why we had elections, we had elections, the republicans won, they won the governorship, they haven’t had it since 1988, they’ve got all three branches of state government for the first...

The Reverend Al Sharpton spoke words of wisdom to a Bethel Baptist Church crowd for Social Justice Awareness Sunday evening. Sharpton emphasized three reasons why he was particularly motivated to travel to Tallahassee to speak: the Champion case, the Trayvon Martin case and voter suppression – all in Florida. Among the crowd were the parents of Florida A&M Student Robert Champion and Trayvon Martin. Today marks six months since Martin’s death at the age of 17 and just over nine months since 26-year-old Champion died. “We are still recovering,” said Sybrina Fulton. Sharpton admired the fact that the Martin family’s...

It’s Friday evening. The air is cool and the sky is clear. A group of well-dressed men and women gather at Empowerment Temple in West Baltimore at an event designed to spur people to register and vote in the upcoming election and those that will follow. Inside the church, a panel of distinguished guests has their audience's full attention. CNN commentator Roland Martin asked the panel--including the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, former Rep. John Conyers, BET commentator Jeff Johnson, Bishop Vashti McKenzie and several others--what they perceived to be the biggest problem among Blacks and how that problem could be...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The organization that helped spread Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law across the country is halting its push for gun rights in the wake of the national outcry over Trayvon Martin’s shooting death. The American Legislative Exchange Council said Tuesday that it would shift focus from social to economic issues, abandoning causes like gun rights and voter identification laws. “Today we are redoubling our efforts on the economic front, a priority that has been the hallmark of our organization for decades,” ALEC national chairman and Indiana state lawmaker David Frizzell said in a statement. “We are eliminating...

Today at the Republican Party of Otter Tail County convention, we had delegates disrupting the meeting. These people were democrats, posing as Republicans. They wasted hours offering amendments to our platform, then trying to become delegates. We all knew what they were, but rules and laws prevented us from showing them the door. We finally passed a motion to require photo id to make these clowns prove they lived in the township they purported to represent. They showed us college id's. The problem we were having was that not all delegates that we were to vote to the state convention...

According to a recent report from the National Council of State Legislatures, only 24 states currently require voters to provide identification prior to voting. Seven of those states specify that voters must show a photo ID; the other seventeen states accept additional forms of identification that do not include a photo.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter identification law on Monday, concluding in a splintered decision that the challengers failed to prove that the law’s photo ID requirement placed an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote. The 6-to-3 ruling kept the door open to future lawsuits that provided more evidence. But this theoretical possibility was small comfort to the dissenters or to critics of voter ID laws, who predicted that a more likely outcome than successful lawsuits would be the spread of measures that would keep some legitimate would-be voters from the polls. Voting experts said the ruling...

Voter turnout among Democrats improved slightly last year in Indiana, despite a new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, according to a new report that comes months before the Supreme Court hears a case challenging the law. Jeffrey D. Milyo, a professor at the University of Missouri, compared the 2006 midterm elections — the first since Indiana's law was enacted — to the 2002 elections and said voter turnout increased about two percentage points. He said the increase was consistent across counties with the highest percentage of Democrats. "A lot of the claims out there about...