True the Vote, a nonpartisan voters’ rights and election integrity organization, declared a “decisive triumph” in its legal battle against Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group founded by Democrat Stacy Abrams.
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A new law in Michigan means that inmates leaving prison will be registered automatically to vote, among other election-related measures signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.
Michigan is one of 23 states that already allow those with felony convictions to reclaim their voting rights, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
However, under the new law inmates will be preregistered while still incarcerated, so that they will be on the state’s voter registration rolls upon release.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a bill package expanding voting rights approved by Michigan voters in November of 2022.
The changes include installing dropboxes for voting, nine days of early voting, pre-paid postage for absentee voter applications and a website to track ballots.
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Incarcerated Pennsylvanias regain their right to vote after release, but Democratic state representatives worry they don’t vote enough, so they advanced legislation on Monday addressing the issue.
Voting 12-9 along party lines, Pennsylvania’s House State Government Committee approved Representative Carol Kazeem’s (D-Chester) resolution to study ex-prisoner election participation. After the Joint State Government Commission completes its research, officials would use the the information gathered to develop policies to aid former inmates’ resumption of voting.
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Everything was rolling along smoothly at a press conference in St. Paul on Thursday morning where Secretary of State Steve Simon gathered with felon voting rights restoration activists and a handful of legislators to celebrate the June 1 enactment of a new law that restores voting rights to an estimated 55,000-plus Minnesotans serving probation or parole for a felony crime.
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Several Democratic lawmakers this week proposed legislation allowing all imprisoned Pennsylvania citizens to vote by absentee ballot.
State Representatives Rick Krajewski (D-Philadelphia), Christopher Rabb (D-Philadelphia), Donna Bullock (D-Philadelphia), Jason Dawkins (D-Philadelphia) and Aerion Abney (D-Pittsburgh) announced they will cosponsor the bills.
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Two state legislators from Wisconsin are urging colleagues to back their bill to strengthen crime victims’ rights to restitution in their state.
The bill authored by State Representatives Shae Sortwell (R-Gibson) and Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville) would halt the restoration of felons’ voting rights until after the perpetrators pay all fines, court fees, and victim restitution. In the Badger State, a convict loses his or her right to vote until he or she serves all prison time and completes any parole or probation that a court imposes. But that person may again vote before meeting his or her legal monetary obligations.
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Minnesota Democrats want to join just a handful of states where felons never lose their right to vote.
This was revealed during a House floor debate Thursday night, which saw the passage of State Rep. Cedrick Frazier’s, DFL-New Hope, bill to restore voting rights to felons once they are released from incarceration. Under current law, felons are not allowed to vote until they complete their entire sentence, including probation and parole.
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There’s now a lawsuit over Wisconsin’s bail reform amendment and welfare-to-work ballot question.
Two groups that represent former prison inmates, WISDOM – a statewide faith-based organization –and Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing, filed the suit in Dane County Court on Tuesday.
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The Connecticut Republican Party is criticizing the Democrat-led state House for a proposal this legislative session to consider voting rights for illegal immigrants, saying Democrats in the state in considering such as idea have “lost their minds.”
“It’s official. @CTDems have lost their minds,” the Connecticut GOP tweeted Thursday. “Now they are proposing voting rights for ILLEGAL ALIENS. Elections are for U.S. citizens only. We will fight this tooth and nail to preserve the integrity of our democratic system.”
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In a follow-up tweet that expounded on his letter penned in January on election reform, Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, reiterated his call for a federal Constitutional amendment on U.S. citizenship and election integrity.
“A citizenship amendment is a necessary security measure that will ensure that only American citizens are voting in our elections. We need an amendment now,” Raffensperger said.
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Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
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Joe Biden went down to Georgia recently and once again peddled lies as he desperately tries to salvage his stalled agenda. In a divisive speech in Atlanta, Biden painted an apocalyptic picture of the state of elections in America. Biden claimed voting laws were under assault. He said democracy itself was under attack. In other words, Biden showed just how far he and Democrats are willing to go in their relentless pursuit for raw power.
Let’s be clear – almost everything Biden said in Atlanta was a lie. Nothing about Americans’ right to vote is in jeopardy. The only thing in jeopardy is Biden’s political agenda. That’s why Biden wants to upend longstanding Senate procedure and force a federal takeover of state and local elections. Biden knows Americans are rejecting his failed policies, and so he wants change the rules so he can ram his radical agenda through anyway. It’s sadly predictable that Biden is so obsessed with seizing power for himself. Just as bad is that he is willing to lie and manufacture fake hysteria to do it.
Here are the facts. Far from being difficult, voting in America has never been easier. The 2020 elections saw the highest voter turnout in more than a century. And more Americans cast ballots in 2020 than ever before, period, full stop. Additionally, polling shows Americans overwhelmingly support basic ballot security safeguards that Biden wants to eviscerate with his federal power grabs. For example, 75% of Americans – including 69% of Black voters and 60% of Democrats – support voter ID. Even more say they support getting rid of ballot harvesting. Joe Biden doesn’t care.
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The Arizona Democratic Party executive committee approved a resolution on Saturday to censure Senator Krysten Sinema (D-AZ) because of her stance on the filibuster in the U.S. Senate.
Because of the long-standing rule that requires a 60 vote-threshold to advance certain pieces of legislation, Democrats were unable to advance “voting rights” bills.
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Senate Republicans blocked the voting rights legislation, likely triggering Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to move forward with changing Senate filibuster rules.
The motion to move forward with ending debate and taking a vote on the bill, Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, failed in the Senate by 51-49. Sen. Schumer joined Republicans “in order to enter a motion to reconsider the vote,” according to the Senate Press Gallery.
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Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) mocked President Joe Biden’s inability to advance key priorities of his administration, awarding him the “lame-duck” title often given to presidents in the final year of their term.
In an interview with “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News, Blackburn pointed out that Biden has watched over multiple domestic and foreign policy failures.
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I almost feel sorry for Joe Biden.
The emphasis, I hasten to add, is on the adverb. Perhaps, if he didn’t make me feel thoroughly sorry for the United States of America, my sympathy for him would be unalloyed. But even many in Biden’s own party are aghast at his performance as president.
It’s almost a matter of smell, of that sixth sense that alerts sensitive souls to impending disaster. Animals somehow know when an earthquake is coming, even before the ground begins to tremble. The far-left activist Stacey Abrams is well endowed with those antennae, which is why she invented “scheduling issues” and gave the president’s speech in Atlanta a miss last week. The aroma of events like that have a way of clinging to someone, and Abrams had the good sense to know that Joe Biden on “voting rights” and the run-up to Martin Luther King Day was likely to be a redolent affair.
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While President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visited Georgia to rally for voting rights, one politician was notably absent.
Gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, known for her efforts to implement far-left voting policies, was not in attendance for the event according to several reports.
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Tea Party Patriots Action and Action Honorary Chairman Jenny Beth Martin slammed President Joe Biden’s speech in Georgia on “voting rights.”
In the speech, Biden suggested that he supports the effort of far-left Democrats to alter the rules of the U.S. Senate, eliminating the filibuster.
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Former Republican senator and declared Georgia gubernatorial candidate David Perdue said last weekend that incumbent Governor Brian Kemp cannot defeat Stacey Abrams in 2022 and that an Abrams win will have ramifications nationwide. If Abrams wins, Perdue told Breitbart News Saturday, then the GOP will not recapture the White House in 2024.
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It is now less than a year to the 2022 elections, with this, more stories about the midterms are developing. Below are the latest updates.
State
In California, Progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin will face a recall. Conservatives have tapped into anger over his decisions not to prosecute certain cases. Meanwhile, CA Governor Gavin Newsom is facing controversy over his lack of public appearances.
In Wisconsin, Republicans are continuing their 2020 election audit, even amidst criticism that the audit is too partisan and unruly. Republican Senator Ron Johnson is set to decide in the next few weeks over whether he will seek re-election
In New Jersey, Powerful Democratic State Senate President Stephen Sweeney has conceded in his race for re-election. Sweeney’s race caused national headlines because it was so shocking.
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Even as the 2021 elections and President Joe Biden’s approval ratings make Democrats’ hope of keeping Senate control after next year seem less likely, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) has doubled down on his thoroughly leftist agenda.
In a tweet the day after Republicans swept statewide contests in the previously “blue” state of Virginia and nearly unseated Gov. Phil Murphy (D) in the even more Democratic state of New Jersey, Warnock is accusing Republicans of having “stood in the way of” voting rights.
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The University of Florida (UF) has modified their previous position prohibiting faculty and staff participating in activities in a professional capacity deemed against the interests of, or in conflict with, the state of Florida.
The Ocala Star Banner reported late Sunday that UF would allow three professors to serve as expert witnesses in a case that challenges a new state law restricting voting access if they are not paid and don’t use university time or resources.
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Wisconsin lost track of more than 82,000 mail-in ballots cast in the state in the November 2020 elections—more than four times the margin of difference separating the two presidential candidates in the state, according to a report by the nonprofit Public Interest Legal Foundation.
The legal foundation, an election integrity watchdog group, released a research brief Friday looking at one of the most closely contested states in the 2020 presidential election.
However, the Wisconsin Elections Commission disputes those findings, as the commission spokesman said the report “mischaracterizes election systems and cherry-picks data,” adding, it is “unreliable and frankly, it’s sloppy work.”
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Reverend Jesse Jackson and 38 others were arrested during a protest of Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-AZ) stance on the filibuster rule outside of her Phoenix office on Monday.
The arrested protestors were charged with trespassing, according to Phoenix Police Public Information Officer Mercedes Fortune. The protestors were voicing opposition to Sinema’s lack of support for the proposed filibuster reform. Without reform or abolition of the 60-vote filibuster rule, Senate Democrats can’t pass massive election reform in the For the People Act.
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Alfredo Ortiz, president and CEO of the Job Creators Network (JCN), released a statement on Tuesday criticizing President Joe Biden for his recent speech on “voting rights” in Philadelphia.
“Biden’s fear-mongering that Republicans are trying to take over state elections in defiance of the will of the voters is ridiculous slander. What he calls voter ‘suppression’ and ‘subversion’ is really just commonsense voting integrity measures,” Ortiz said of the speech.
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Several laws from the Virginia legislature’s session will take effect Thursday, including one groundbreaking law abolishing the death penalty in the state.
Virginia will be the first southern state to take such a measure.
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Gubernatorial candidate and current U.S. Representative Charlie Crist created a Voting Rights Tour of the state of Florida to advocate against GOP leadership in Florida and their efforts to establish stricter voting provisions for Floridians.
Crist began his tour on Tuesday and will visit seven cities in Florida before wrapping it up on Friday. The selected cities include: Tallahassee, Tampa, West Palm Beach, Broward County, Miami, Orlando, and Gainesville.
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An attempt to allow certain felons with out-of-state convictions permission to participate in Tennessee’s upcoming August 6 primary election came to a halt Friday.
Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle denied a temporary injunction request that would have allowed out-of-state felons to vote in the primary as long as they had their voting rights restored in the state of their convictions.
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New Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear isn’t wasting time enacting liberal agendas, having signed an executive order Thursday restoring the right to vote and the right to run for public office to hundreds of thousands of felons convicted of nonviolent crimes, according to a story by Jurist.
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Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose stated on Thursday that he was against Ohio redrawing its district lines before the 2020 presidential election. It was a statement that surprised many, considering he made it at a voting rights forum, hosted by the Ohio League of Women Voters who are currently suing Ohio in the hope of having the state lines redrawn. As reported earlier, in May of 2018, several groups, led by the Ohio League of Women Voters formally filed suit against the Buckeye State, specifically noting; an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander that violates the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and Article I of the United States Constitution….the most egregious gerrymanders in recent history. In his last days as Attorney General, Mike DeWine, who is currently serving as Ohio’s Governor, attempted to have the suit thrown out. The current Attorney General, Dave Yost, is now arguing to have the case delayed. The most effective argument made for the delay has been the United States Supreme Court’s January 4th announcement that it will hear two gerrymandering cases jointly, one from North Carolina and the other from Maryland. Any ruling made in this case would take precedence over the Ohio court’s decision. Last week, a similar gerrymandering case in…
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This week, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted has triggered one of the most consequential and controversial “voter integrity” measures in the country. 275,000 inactive voters, registered in Ohio, have been sent “last chance” letters, informing them that if they do not confirm their current address and voting status, they will be purged from the voter rolls. Voters are considered inactive if they have not participated in two consecutive elections. They are then sent a series of letters, requesting that they up update their addresses. Should they fail to respond, they are then ruled inactive. In effect, an individual would have to not vote and ignore every letter sent over the course of almost half a decade to be ruled inactive. Eighteen other states use a similar practice. However, the process was challenged in the United States Supreme Court by the A. Philip Randolph Institute (Husted v. Randolph Institute). They alleged that the real purpose of these measures is to deny voting rights to racial minorities and the poor who are disproportionately affected by the measure. In a 5-4 decision on June 11, 2018, the court upheld the practice. In spite of this, progressives still alleged the mechanism is a violation of civil rights…
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The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted freed former male slaves and any adult male citizen the right to vote, was ratified by the requisite three-fourths of all states and added to the Constitution in 1870. At the time there were 37 states, and when the 28th state ratified the amendment in February, 1870, the three-fourths standard was met. Tennessee was not among those 28 states. In fact, Tennessee did not get around to ratifying the 15th Amendment until more than 100 years later, in 1997. Here is that story: During the Reconstruction period in the American South, in the aftermath of the Civil War, three individual amendments were incorporated into the U.S. Constitution – each separated in succession by only a few years – pursuant to that document’s Article V. This trifecta ended a dry spell of more than 60 years of no amendments at all finding their way into the federal Constitution. The 13th Amendment, ending slavery, was adopted in 1865. The 14th Amendment, defining citizenship status, came along in 1868 (although there is some question as to whether its ratification process was 100 percent strictly by-the-book). And the 15th Amendment, granting to former male slaves –…
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