Category Archives: voting

In Which the Vermont Supreme Court is Wrong

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Vermont’s State government enacted a law allowing non-citizens to vote in certain local elections. In particular, the law allows Montpelier and Winooski to change their charters so that non-citizens can vote in those municipalities’ elections. Suits ensued, and the matter wound up before Vermont’s Supreme Court.

That court then proceeded to rule in favor of the law, arguing in part

[W]e conclude that the statute allowing noncitizens to vote in local Montpelier elections does not violate Chapter II, § 42 because that constitutional provision does not apply to local elections.

The court, right after that claim, actually quoted that chapter and verse:

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Courts and State-Controlled Federal Elections

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In Moore v Harper, the Supreme Court is being called on to decide whether State courts can rearrange State elections laws—in particular, write their own Congressional district maps—as these pertain to how a State runs Federal-level elections.

It shouldn’t even be a question. Our Constitution is quite clear on the matter of who is responsible for setting the rules for Federal elections. Here’s Article I, Section 4:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof….

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Voting as a Teaching Tool

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The Boston City Council has approved a petition to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in city elections. The city council’s next move is to submit its petition to the Massachusetts legislature for enactment. It’s the council’s rationalization for the move that’s instructive.

Progressive members of the City Council argued that lowering the voting age would help young people build a habit of voting and make them more likely to continue being politically engaged later in life.

And this:

When it comes to making a decision as to who’s going to represent them [16- and 17-year-olds], that has been denied to them.

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A Deliberate Move by the Progressive-Democratic Party

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…against American citizenship and American citizens.

The Progressive-Democratic Party-backed Washington, DC, city council voted 12-1 (!) to allow anyone resident in the city for at least 30 days to vote in city elections. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) didn’t have the courage to take an open position, one way or the other, on the bill; she allowed it to become the law of the city by simply not signing it. The new city law is so broadly written that illegal aliens and foreign college students would be able to vote, and

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Some Corporate Values

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Recall Major League Baseball’s, Coca Cola’s, and Delta Airlines’ reactions to Georgia’s voter integrity protection law, SB202, passed last year. That law, after all, created such nasty things as

  • signature matching
  • voter ID
  • restrictions on drop boxes
  • ban on the mass mailing of absentee ballot request forms to those who did not ask for them,
  • mandatory citizenship checks

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said baseball’s decision to pull the All Star Game out of Atlanta that year, causing the loss of upwards of $70 million of revenue to Atlanta’s small and medium businesses, was the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport.

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Two Things

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Former President Donald Trump’s candidates won their primaries—and they lost in the general election. The Republican Party needs to move on from Trump: he was an effective President, and for the most part, his policies were sound. However, his post-2020 election behavior and rhetoric have been nakedly divisive, and his attacks have been directed more at Republicans than at Progressive-Democrats. Trump has made himself counterproductive to Republican and to national interests, and the Republican Party needs to render him irrelevant.

The other thing is that the Progressive-Democratic Party heavily influenced the Republican Party’s primary nominees, getting Progressive-Democrat-favored Republicans nominated on seven occasions. The Progressive-Democratic Party’s general election candidates then defeated all seven.

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Ranked Choice Voting

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In a Sunday letter in The Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section, a correspondent had this, in part, in supporting Alaska’s ranked choice voting system:

In Alaska’s old system, like the current one in Pennsylvania, the general-election candidates are decided in partisan primaries by a small number of extreme voters.

This is a disingenuous rationale for RCV. No one kept the rest of the partisan primary voters from coming out to vote, in Alaska, Pennsylvania, or any other State. In actuality, those stay-at-homes cast their votes by abstention. The outcomes are their choice as much as they are the choice of those who cared enough to come out and vote.

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Vote

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Go vote.  Speak your piece at the ballot box.

Double check your ballot, too, before you hit the CAST BALLOT button; electronic machines are capable of glitches.

Don’t make excuses; take the time.  Have your say.

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Voter Suppression

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Early voting is under way, and Georgia’s Jim Crow 2.0 Law® is in full swing.

Georgia has seen 539,297 people cast ballots as of Tuesday, far outpacing the 182,684 by this point in the 2018 midterm primary elections, according to data compiled by Georgia Votes.
The numbers have even outpaced those posted during the 2020 presidential election by 156%….

Tuesday was Day Two for those Leftists and Progressive-Democratic Party members keeping score at home.

These numbers are for a mid-term election, which typically has a much lower voter turnout than during a Presidential election year.

But wait….

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Election Cheating

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Pennsylvania’s legislature has made clear that undated mail-in ballots are invalid ballots and cannot be counted.

Even so, Pennsylvania’s Progressive-Democratic Party governor Tom Wolf has ordered counties to continue counting undated ballots.

His move comes even after a ruling in a related Pennsylvania case:

Last week the US Supreme Court sided with another Republican politician in the state and invalidated hundreds of mail-in ballots that the state had previously counted even though they lacked a date along with the voter signature.

As the Progressive-Democrat Wolf knows full well, he has no such authority. Here’s our Constitution’s Article I, Section 4:

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