Free Republic

A federal judge on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump from implementing an executive order that requires voters to show documentation proving their U.S. citizenship to cast a ballot in federal elections. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Bill Clinton appointee, granted a preliminary injunction stopping the Trump administration from going forward with the proof-of-citizenship requirements as a lawsuit plays out, the Associated Press reported. The lawsuit, filed by the Democratic National Committee and leftist voting rights groups, claims that Trump’s order is “an unlawful action that threatens to uproot our tried-and-tested election systems and silence potentially millions of Americans.”

A Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit alleges that Hazleton, Pennsylvania’s city council elections violate federal law because not enough “Hispanic-preferred candidates” are winning – without defining what a Hispanic-preferred candidate is. The DOJ sued the majority-Hispanic town Tuesday over its at-large election system in which voters across Hazelton vote to elect each district’s city council member, alleging it does not give Hispanics a fair chance at participation and violates a section of the Voting Rights Act that bans restricting voters based on race. The complaint fails to prove illegal discrimination and appears “meritless” on its face, legal experts told the...

The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that voting is not a fundamental right protected by the Kansas Constitution. The landmark decision on voting rights Friday is likely to weaken legal challenges to future voting restrictions in Kansas. The majority opinion reversed a 2023 appeals court decision that recognized any restrictions on the fundamental right to vote would be subject to the highest legal bar for evaluation, or strict scrutiny. Justice Caleb Stegall wrote for the majority, saying voting is instead a “political right” under the Kansas Constitution that has a lower bar for regulation than fundamental rights. [snip] Kansas Attorney...

A voting rights lawsuit that could cost Texas Democrats seats across all levels of government received a hearing Tuesday by the full Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, known as the most conservative federal appellate court in the country. The Galveston County redistricting case is challenging how the appellate court has previously interpreted the Voting Rights Act, which was passed to protect individual minority groups but has been “twisted” for political advantage. At issue is whether Section 2 of the law requires the county to create a majority-minority district by grouping a “coalition” of black and Hispanic voters....

The New York City Council is begging an appellate court to authorize more than 800,000 foreign nationals to vote in the city’s municipal elections. In January 2022, Democrats on the 51-member New York City Council approved an ordinance to give more than 800,000 foreign nationals with green cards, visas, and work permits the opportunity to vote in citywide elections so long as they have resided in the city for at least 30 consecutive days. Following lawsuits over the ordinance, the New York Supreme Court in June 2022 ruled that giving local voting rights to foreign nationals violated the state’s constitution,...

Arecent Delaware court decision shows that election lawsuits being brought by plaintiffs on both the left and right sides of the political aisle that will have significant impact on the 2024 presidential election in November. Several cases are going before courts this year regarding election statutes, procedures, and candidates as advocates across the political spectrum seek to shape the rules that guide elections. While one such case was decided last week, several others are still ongoing. The Delaware Superior Court ruled Friday that a 2019 law passed by the state legislature, which allows early voting up to 10 days before...

A New York appeals court upheld a prior ruling that struck down a New York City law giving local voting rights to nearly a million foreign nationals. As Breitbart News chronicled, Democrats on the 51-member New York City Council approved a plan in January 2022 that gave more than 800,000 foreign nationals with green cards, visas, and work permits the opportunity to vote in citywide elections so long as they have resided in the city for at least 30 consecutive days. Black New Yorkers, along with naturalized American citizens, the New York State Republican Party, the Republican National Committee (RNC),...

A Maryland suburb of the nation’s capital this week extended voting rights to 16-year-olds for local elections—expanding on a national push endorsed by Democrat politicians and donors such as billionaire George Soros. The Town Council of Cheverly—about 15 minutes outside Washington, D.C.—voted unanimously Thursday to amend the town charter to allow younger teens to participate in town elections. Cheverly, with a population of just over 6,100, joins the Maryland suburbs of Greenbelt, Hyattsville, Riverdale Park, and Takoma Park in allowing teens to vote at the same age they get their driver’s license. Another Maryland jurisdiction, Glenarden, lowered the voting age...

One of President Biden's judicial nominees reportedly disparaged various voting restrictions in the United States, including by comparing slavery to the ban on felons voting and "proof of citizenship" to "voter suppression." "When you add laws that prohibit people with a criminal conviction from voting, it’s practically the same system as during slavery – Black people who have lost their freedom and cannot vote," attorney Nancy Gbana Abudu said in a post for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). "And without access to the ballot, a victim of the system cannot elect the very officials pulling the levers to hire...

Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, caused a stir on Twitter Friday night after he said Democrats in Washington, D.C., were "ridiculous" to support a decision allowing non-citizens the opportunity to vote. "Only Americans should vote in American elections," said Jordan, prompting backlash. The Republican’s tweet concerned House Joint Resolution 24, or the "Disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022," which passed the House of Representatives on Thursday. The resolution seeks to overturn a bill that passed the D.C. Council in October, which opened the local...

San Francisco Mayor London Breed says a potential ballot measure to move citywide elections to presidential years is a democratic socialist power grab, and the proposal's author is pushing back. Breed, a Democrat, characterized Supervisor Dean Preston's proposal to hold the next mayor, sheriff, district attorney, city attorney elections and treasurer in 2024 – and every four years after that – rather than in 2023 as Preston and a "group of democratic socialists" deciding "they want to have more control and power of being able to get their people elected." Preston, the board's first democratic socialist supervisor in decades, introduced...

Masks were necessary, especially in schools, to prevent mass deaths. Or so we were told, at great and tedious length -- until suddenly, in the last 10 days, they weren't. The Democratic governors of Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut and California followed the lead of the newly installed Republican governor of Virginia and revoked mask mandates. Or until, if I may say so, my Washington Examiner column last week titled "Returning to normalcy on school masks." Let's pivot now to another subject on which liberal commentators were raising alarms. Getting rid of gerrymandering, they claimed, was necessary to preserve democracy and...

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) said on Sunday that the Biden administration has not reached out to him to discuss voting rights legislation, as the White House works to pass two key Democrat-backed bills. NBC's "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd questioned Romney on attempts to unify the country, noting that there appears to be only a few Republicans willing to work with the Biden administration, with Romney among them.

Although there are many moves being made against America, the most pressing is election integrity. Now we have Joe Biden telling us that he will "not flinch and will not waver" in his support of the Democrat's battle for "election integrity" as expressed in the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. All efforts of Democrats involving "voting rights" are to basically gain control of elections and control of America. They refuse to clear inaccurate info in the voter registration lists of the 50 states. They are against voter ID, which is merely a way of assuring that the person voting is...

There’s a sense of panic setting in among Congressional Democrats in the wake of resident Joe Biden’s inflammatory speech about passing the two currently pending bills allegedly aimed at securing “voting rights.” Over at The Hill, the pair of measures were described last night as being “on the brink of defeat.” But like a magician who remains confident that he still has a couple more rabbits stuffed in his hat, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is cooking up a new plan to try to advance the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Unable to attract...

Cries of racism are all Democrats have when it comes to appealing to black voters, and even that is getting so thin that its cries are hitting levels of pathetic so laughable they’re funnier than anything woke late-night hosts have said in the last 10 years. In this panicked push, a new line has emerged from the left – there is a massive conspiracy to prevent “people who look like me” from voting – in a desperate attempt to maintain the status quo. It’s odd that this whining about being oppressed is coming at a time when television networks and...

Just heard on ABC radio. Democrats planning a Trojan Horse to pass the Voting Rights legislation by avoiding filibuster procedures. As best as I can explain it, Ds plan to remove a provision from an unrelated piece of legislation (NASA related, iirc) and insert voting rights legislation. The radio report said if the legislation originated in the Senate, the 60 vote threshold was unneeded and could presumably move to the house.

At a speech in Georgia yesterday, President Biden charged all U.S. Senators with deciding “where they stand, not just for the moment, but for the ages.” The Senate filibuster, which Biden defended passionately in 2005 and again last year, is now apparently a neo-segregationist atrocity because it stands in the way of the president’s legislative agenda. Biden wants federal power to veto election laws in certain states, because he is on the right side of history. Of course this means if you oppose him, you are on the wrong side. “At consequential moments in history, they present a choice,” he...

In a speech on voting rights he's giving in Georgia today, Biden boasts: "I will not yield. I will not flinch."Tough guy, that Biden! Let's remember: he's the hero who single-handedly took on "bad dude" Corn Pop! But the White House press-shop moment was washed out by the news that Stacey Abrams, who's again running for governor of Georgia, has announced she won't be attending Biden's speech, citing a "scheduling conflict." That led Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist to facetiously muse that Abrams' appointment for a car tune-up and tire rotation is keeping her away. Get the rest of the...

As shocking as it may seem, the Democrats are right about something for once. Even a broken clock is right twice a day; even Eric Swalwell occasionally mates with someone who is not a Chi Com spy, shutting her eyes tight and doing her booty duty for Beijing. The Dems are right that we need election reform to save our democracy. I propose that we change how we conduct elections, good and hard.Now, the Democrats have a very different objective in reforming the election system than we do. They seek to make it easier for lazy and stupid people to...