Tag: Voter Suppression

Progressive Activists, Officials Work to Extend Voting to Prisoners, Noncitizens to Expand Base

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by Fred Lucas   Inmate voting, noncitizen voting, and even mandatory voting have been among the initiatives pushed in Democrat-led jurisdictions this year to expand their voting base. “The Left wants to normalize voter classes that nobody took seriously a generation ago—criminals, foreigners—to help them win elections,” J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity group, told The Daily Signal. As I noted in my book “The Myth of Voter Suppression,” Democrats long have sought to change election laws to gain a political advantage. The nation’s capital, the District of Columbia, adopted noncitizen voting this year for local elections such as mayor and city council. Oregon lawmakers are pushing prisoner voting, while blue states on the West and East coasts are considering mandatory voting. “The Left talks big about ‘helping everyone vote,’ but for at least the past decade, they’ve focused all their efforts on only helping their preferred voters cast a ballot,” Hayden Ludwig, director of policy research at Restoration of America, a conservative group, told The Daily Signal in an email. “Everything from lowering the voting age to vote-by-mail and felon voting rights is geared to drive turnout among the ‘New American Majority,’ their term for the demographic groups Democrats are…

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Kari Lake Responds to Arizona Supreme Court’s Decision Remanding Part and Rejecting Part of Her Appeal

Rachel Alexander

After deliberating on whether to accept Kari Lake’s appeal of the dismissal of her election challenge in Arizona’s gubernatorial race, the Arizona Supreme Court issued an order on Wednesday that remanded the part of the case regarding Maricopa County’s signature verification process back to the trial court judge, and dismissed the other parts.

Lake issued a statement after the ruling. “I am thrilled that the Supreme Court has agreed to give our signature verification evidence the appropriate forum for the evaluation it deserves.” She said, “The violation of procedure allowed for tens of thousands of illegal ballots to be approved and counted. Aside from all other issues, including nearly 60% of polling locations being inoperable on Election Day, this issue alone casts the veracity of Katie Hobbs’ victory in serious doubt.”

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Legal Experts Weigh In on the Merits of Kari Lake’s Election Lawsuit

Rachel Alexander

As the second day of Kari Lake’s trial contesting Arizona’s gubernatorial election wrapped up Thursday, various election law attorneys provided their analysis on social media and videos. Some were optimistic that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson would grant Lake relief, declaring her the winner or calling for a new election, but some were not as optimistic.

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Kari Lake, Dennis Prager, Josh Hawley, and More Headline TPUSA’s AmericaFest 2022 on Sunday

Rachel Alexander

Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest continued its second day in Phoenix on Sunday, featuring a long lineup of well-known conservatives. Some of the standouts Sunday included Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who is currently fighting the results of a botched election in Arizona which resulted in Democrat Katie Hobbs being named the winner, co-founder of PragerU and talk show host Dennis Prager, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). 

The theme of many of the speakers was to stay positive and avoid the negativity and self-centeredness of the left, see the good in the country, and the values and institutions like marriage and children which formed it. Lake’s speech focused on voter disenfranchisement that occurred in her race, declaring, “My pronouns are ‘I won’” and “election integrity is the single most important issue of our lifetime.” 

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Election Integrity Network Releases Extensive List of Discrepancies Reported in Maricopa County Midterm Election, Slams Officials for ‘Misinformation’

Rachel Alexander

The Election Integrity Network (EIN) has compiled a list of reports from election workers, poll watchers, and volunteer attorneys about questionable things they observed during Maricopa County’s midterm election, which experienced rampant tabulation machine and printer problems. EIN Chairman and election integrity attorney Cleta Mitchell denounced Maricopa County officials for “misinformation” regarding how bad the problems really were.

Cleta said, “Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates, Director of Elections Scott Jarrett, and County Recorder Steven Richer presided over a wholly mismanaged and disgraceful election on November 8 that has robbed countless voters of their political voices. Since the polls opened on Election Day, they have misled and misinformed the public about what really happened. But thanks to engaged citizens, we know the truth.”

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Supreme Court Upholds Arizona’s Voting Restrictions, ‘Not Racially Discriminatory’

Corinne Murdock

Thursday, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) upheld Arizona law prohibiting ballot harvesting and out-of-precinct voting. The three dissents in the case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (DNC), came from Justices Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor. The DNC had argued that the state’s bans on ballot harvesting and out-of-precinct voting discriminated against minorities, thereby violating the Voting Rights Act. SCOTUS rejected that assessment.

Arizona law prohibits individuals from casting provisional ballots in person on Election Day outside of their designated precinct. It also prohibits ballot harvesting, meaning that only family and household members, caregivers, mail carriers, and election officials can handle individual’s ballots.

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Commentary: Voter Photo IDs Are the Rule in Europe and Elsewhere

RealClearWire

Democrats and much of the media are pushing to make permanent the extraordinary, pandemic-driven measures to relax voting rules during the 2020 elections – warning anew of racist voter “suppression” otherwise. Yet democracies in Europe and elsewhere tell a different story – of the benefits of stricter voter ID requirements after hard lessons learned. 

A database on voting rules worldwide compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I run, shows that election integrity measures are widely accepted globally, and have often been adopted by countries after they’ve experienced fraud under looser voting regimes.

Britain is Europe’s outlier in generally not requiring voter IDs, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson aims to change that. He went to the polls in May with wife-to-be Carrie Symonds.

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Florida Voting Law Implements Grand Jury Recommendations

Grant Holcomb
Ron DeSantis

Last week, Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 90 into law. The bill, addressing elections, has been derided as a “Jim Crow” tactic and characterized as voter suppression by political opponents. However, in 2012, a grand jury taking part in an election fraud case in Miami-Dade County provided a list of recommendations to lawmakers to crack down on absentee ballot-related voter fraud. A number of those grand jury recommendations were included in SB 90.

DeSantis has praised the bill saying Florida has some of the “strongest election integrity measures” in the country.

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Election Reform Law Faces Immediate Lawsuits

Grant Holcomb

Governor Ron DeSantis signed an elections reform bill into law Thursday and opposition groups have already filed lawsuits against it. The new law, known as SB90, sets in place limits on access to ballot drop boxes and well as requiring those same ballot drop boxes to be monitored by an employee of the supervisor of elections’ office.

Additionally, voters who wish to request an absentee ballot will have to do so each general election cycle.

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Governor DeSantis Signs Florida Elections Reform Bill

Grant Holcomb
Ron DeSantis

On Thursday, Governor Ron DeSantis signed an elections reform bill into law, causing much debate over the new law’s contents.

The bill, SB 90, designed to ensure election integrity, has been the subject of debate for weeks since the Florida Legislature was passing the bill through committees. The bill will install new requirements for ballot drop boxes as well as mail-in voting, specifically voters who wish to vote absentee will have to ask for a ballot each general election cycle. Also, the drop boxes will need to be staffed by an employee from the supervisor of elections’ office whenever the box is receiving ballots, and times to access the drop boxes will be limited.

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Florida Legislature Hearing Elections Reform Bills

Grant Holcomb
Dennis Baxley

The Florida House is hearing an elections reform package and the Florida Senate is hearing a bill amending Florida’s election law related to ballot drop-boxes and absentee ballot signature verification.

Sen. Dennis Baxley’s (R-12) SB 90 passed the Senate Rules Committee by a 10-7 vote, and Baxley said the bill is well-intentioned designed to protect Florida’s voters and the integrity of Florida’s elections.

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Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act: Attorney Jim Roberts Talks Metro Legal’s Creation of Suppression and Fear as Referendum Seeks Ballot

Julie Carr

Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act Attorney Jim Roberts to the newsmakers line to give updates on where he stands in the fight against Metro Legal to get the proper number or petitions solidified to move forward with his referendum.

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House Democrats Push Comprehensive Bill on Alleged ‘Voter Suppression,’ ‘Dark Money,’ and ‘Gerrymandering’

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Leading Democrats in the House of Representatives are bringing back a previously-introduced bill that aims to fight such as issues as “dark money” and alleged “voter suppression” and “gerrymandering,” as reported by Fox News.

The bill, labeled the “For The People Act,” is sponsored by Representative John Sarbanes (D-Md.), and is cosponsored by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

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Gwinnett County Elections Chair Pushes for Election Law Changes; Civil Rights Groups Call for Her Resignation

Corinne Murdock

Activists and legislators are calling for Gwinnett County Board of Registrations and Elections Chair Alice O’Lenick to resign for supporting election law changes. O’Lenick wanted to limit no-excuse absentee voting to the elderly and infirm, ban absentee ballot drop boxes, and expand early voting to last 21 days and be open on the weekends.

O’Lenick’s proposals incited negative responses from a variety of civil rights and activist groups, as well as a coalition of Democratic state legislators. Amongst the groups were The Lincoln Project, Fair Fight Action, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta, Georgia American Federation of Labor and Congress of Individual Organizations (AFL-CIO), Georgia Equality, and Voto Latino.

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Judge Abrams Gardner Now Says Provisional Ballots Allowed, but Change of Address Isn’t Proof of Ineligibility to Vote

Corinne Murdock

Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner reversed part of her ruling late Wednesday night, allowing Muscogee County to impose provisional ballots for challenged voters. However, Gardner maintained that the challenge of eligibility can’t be made solely on the basis of National Change of Address (NCOA) registry data. Gardner’s updated order followed shortly after an original ruling prohibited two counties from imposing provisional ballots for over 4,100 challenged voters. 

Gardner is the sister of Stacey Abrams, the Democratic activist leading several organizations and a political action committee dedicated to voters rights. Despite the pair’s connection and Abrams’ interest in the case, Gardner refused to recuse herself. She published an explanation on Thursday, several days after her first order.

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Stacey Abrams Claims Voter Suppression Is Legal in the US

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by Jason Hopkins   Failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams claimed that voter suppression is legal throughout the country during her speech at the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting. “Here’s the thing about voter suppression: Voter suppression is legal in the United States right now,” Abrams said Friday to a crowd of Democrats in Washington, D.C. “We’re used to fighting against enemies that are supposed to be unlawful, but the problem with a lot of what they do is they take legal actions and bastardize them and manipulate them until the rights they are supposed to protect are no longer visible.” The comments followed a consistent complaint Abrams has made since losing her gubernatorial bid to then-Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp in November. Kemp, a Republican, defeated Abrams by a margin of over 54,700 votes on Election Day, but Abrams maintains he was only able to do so by suppressing black and Democratic voters. During her speech to DNC members, Abrams backed up her claims by citing four black people in the state who waited a long time to vote. “What we do know is that in the state of Georgia, four black men and women stood in line…

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