Category Archives: voting

Jim Eagle and Joe Biden

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Georgia has just enacted a law reforming and improving its voting processes. The reforms include such things as expanding weekend before Election Day voting from one Saturday and Sunday to two Saturdays and a county-level option to add a second Sunday. Instead of a hazy, subjective signature-matching bit of guesswork on absentee ballots, the State now requires a State-issued (for free) ID. It makes drop boxes mandatory, but they’re available only in in-person voting areas, they’re kept locked after hours, and they’re always under surveillance. The State now allows no-excuse absentee ballot voting.

This expansion of voter access and increased protection of the sanctity of an eligible voter’s vote is what President Joe Biden (D), in his…something…has termed “un-American,” “sick,” “pernicious.” He says, “This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.”

It would be sad, were it not so insulting and racist. This is, after all, Biden (along with his Progressive-Democrats, who with their silence if not their own hue and cry, agree with him) playing the race card (and thereby demonstrating their own racism), which they do because they can’t make a rationale argument for any of their policies.

And: for those keeping score at home, Jim Crow was a creation of the Democratic Party, as was the KKK, which Biden’s partner in the administration said was the equivalent of today’s ICE.

For those keeping further score at home, Georgia’s voter law compares with Biden’s home State of Delaware, which requires a shorter in-person voting period than does Georgia’s reformed law, to the point that Delaware does not allow in-person early voting at all. Delaware doesn’t allow no-excuse absentee ballot voting.

Another Model for Election Integrity Legislation

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A short time ago, I posted a model out of Georgia that that State was enacting to protect the integrity of its election process, including its role in Federal elections. Here’s another model, this one from Arizona. This one, a collection of separate bills (what an innovation: small bills covering a single subject, instead of one huge, unreadable “omnibus” bill):

  • HB2792, which will prohibit the mass mailing of ballots to voters who have not requested one—and enforce the provision by making it a class five felony to violate it
  • HB2569, aims to prohibit the private funding of election activities. … Zuckerberg-funded nonprofits in turn “influenced the process for how elections go,” [State Representative Jake (R), who led the legislation’s passage,] Hoffman said. “And that is a bridge too far … that is something that we absolutely do not want.”
  • Other measures prohibit same-day voter registration, require hand count audits to be statistically significant with a 99% confidence level, and prevent government officials from modifying statutorily prescribed election deadlines—as was seen in many states ahead of last November’s election. [And which was a plain violation of our Federal Constitution.] The bill adds a class 6 felony for any violation of the latter provision.

The legislation now is in front of the Arizona Senate.

Imagine that—States in our federal governance structure moving to protect the sanctity of a citizen’s vote.

The Left’s Assault on the Sanctity of Each American’s Vote

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That assault is embodied in the Progressive-Democratic Party’s HR-1 bill that the House passed on cynical Party lines and sent along to the Senate. The extent of the assault was laid out by Hans von Spakovsky, one-time Federal Election Commission Commissioner ande former counsel to DoJ’s Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, in a Sunday Fox News editorial.

  1. It would eviscerate state voter ID laws that require a voter to authenticate his identity. Indeed, it would force states to allow anyone to vote who simply signs a form saying that they are who they claim they are.
  2. It would make absentee ballots even more insecure than they already are. Not only could states not apply any ID requirement to absentee ballots, they could not enforce any witness signature or notarization requirement.
  3. It would worsen the problem of inaccurate registration rolls. HR 1 severely restricts the ability of states to take the basic steps necessary to maintain the accuracy of their voter rolls, such as comparing their lists with those of other states or using the US Postal Service’s National Change of Address System to find individuals who have moved.
  4. It would take away your ability to decide whether you want to register to vote. Instead, it requires states to automatically register individuals who interact with state agencies.
  5. It would force states to allow online registration, opening up the voter registration system to massive fraud by hackers and cybercriminals.
  6. It imposes onerous new regulatory restrictions on political speech and activity, including online and policy-related speech, by candidates, citizens, civic groups, unions, corporations and nonprofit organizations.
  7. It would authorize the IRS to investigate and consider the political and policy positions of nonprofit organizations when they apply for tax-exempt status. (Sort of like ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) IRS did.)
  8. It would set up a public funding program for candidates running for Congress. This would force taxpayers to subsidize (by a 6 to 1 ratio of taxpayer dollars per individual dollar) the political campaigns of individuals they may vehemently disagree with and wouldn’t vote for in a million years.

And don’t count on Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) to stand in the way of eliminating the filibuster so the Senate Progressive-Democrats also can pass this on a Party-line vote. We’ve seen the value of his word regarding Republican input.

An Early Model

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The Georgia Senate has passed, and sent to the Georgia House, election reform legislation that could be a model for other States to follow—while, say I, encouraging—requiring, really—the Federal government to butt out.

Some highlights:

  • eliminate no-excuse absentee voting and
  • limit mail-in ballots to individuals who qualify based on specific criteria
    • people who are physically disabled
    • are over 65 years old
    • are eligible as a military or overseas voter
    • have a religious holiday around election day
    • work in elections
    • somehow need to be outside their voting precinct during the early voting period and election day
  • eliminate no-excuse absentee voting
  • require voter identification to request an absentee ballot
  • require Georgia to participate in a nongovernmental multi-state voter registration system to cross-check the eligibility of voters
  • allow mobile voting units to be used only to replace current brick-and-mortar voting facilities, not supplement them
  • set up a telephone hotline to receive complaints and reports regarding voter intimidation and election fraud, and require the State’s Attorney General to review them within three days

Discovery

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…can be fun. I’ve often said that in a variety of other venues. Here’s an example of the fun that can be afforded by discovery. Of course, what I’m talking about is the legal process that kicks off most any legal proceeding, a stage during which all parties to a litigation are required to show to all the other parties, voluntarily or under subpoena, everything they have that bears on the matter being litigated.

Dominion Voting Systems has filed, in the DC District, a $1.3 billion lawsuit against lawyer Rudy Giuliani over the latter’s claims regarding Dominion’s varied failures to perform during the just concluded national elections. (Aside: the amount being demanded by Dominion should be a clue to the degree of irrationality of the company’s case.)

The existence of Dominion’s suit now allows Giuliani and his team to investigate the company’s history, finances and practices fully. Here’s Giuliani re the suit:

We get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. So, let’s have a trial by combat.

Critically related to that is the fact that Giuliani and his team will have access to all of Dominion’s machines and software that were used in the elections, and those machines and that software must be intact, including all election-related matters as they existed on those machines during the elections and during the ballot-counting on Election Day and the ensuing days.  [T]he actual machines used on 11/3 AND they have to be unwiped — still containing the results from that day, as radio talk show host Joe Pagliarulo put it.