Monthly Archives: October 2014

No Voter Fraud

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Voting machines that switch Republican votes to Democrats are being reported in Maryland. One voter reported

When I first selected my candidate on the electronic machine, it would not put the “x’ on the candidate I chose—a Republican—but it would put the “x” on the Democrat candidate above it.

This happened multiple times with multiple selections. Every time my choice flipped from Republican to Democrat. Sometimes it required four or five tries to get the “x” to stay on my real selection

And

Queen Anne County Sheriff Gary Hofmann said he encountered the problem, too, personally[.] … It occurred on two candidates on my machine. I am glad I checked. Many voters have reported this here as well[.]

And in Illinois, to Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan:

I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent. You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.

And in North Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Utah. So far.

It’s never in the other direction, either. There’s never any accidental switch of a Democrat’s vote to the Republican candidate. This isn’t random error. It’ll be…instructive…to see who wins in the toss-up states and by what margin.

Review your votes, as you cast them and at the final review before you push the CAST or ENTER button that finalizes your choices, to be sure that it’s really your choices that are being registered.

But, there’s no voter fraud. Mm, mm.

Why the Left is so Anxious to Govern

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Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer have a book out describing how the Left got control of the State of Colorado as recently as 2008, titled The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado.

Early in this book, Rob Stein, who is among other things the founder of the Democracy Alliance, laid out why the Left wanted control of Colorado and why especially they want control of our Federal government.

The reason it is so important to control government is because government is the source of enormous power,” Stein continued. “One president in this country, when he or she takes office, appoints…5,000 people to run a bureaucracy, nonmilitary nonpostal service of 2 million people, who hire 10 million outside outsource contractors—a workforce of 12 million people—that spends $3 trillion a year. That number is larger than the gross domestic product of all but four countries on the face of the earth.”

So the reason we’re doing what we’re doing…and the way we get progressive change, is to control government,” Stein said. “That’s what this is about.”

Get out and vote.

 

h/t Power Line

Regulation of Speech

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The Democrats on the Federal Election Commission want to extend it.

The top Democrat [Vice Chairwoman Ann Ravel] on the Federal Election Commission strongly suggested Friday that regulators look at extending their authority to election-themed Internet videos—an area that for years has been largely hands-off for the government.

This woman, in line to become the FEC Chair, is beefing among other things that the FEC ignores the Internet’s influence on politics. Meanwhile, she seems to be ignoring the print, broadcast, and cable media’s influence on politics.

Oh, wait—speech already is regulated there. Those media and the ad generators on them are required to report, among other things, the cost of their political advertisements and to include in the ads “disclaimers” identifying who’s “responsible” for “the content of this ad.”

Ravel has insisted that rules applicable to these ads should apply to Internet ads, also.

That last is a fair beef. Here’s a proposal, then: how about deregulating speech in the other venues?

Nah. No Democrat is willing to do that.

In Which the IRS Gets Away with It

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Judge Reggie Walton, of the DC District Court, dismissed all counts brought by the conservative non-profit, True the Vote, against the IRS for the IRS’ harassment of the organization when it tried to register as a 501(c)(3). The IRS had, on receiving that application

IRS was subjecting [True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht] to multiple rounds of abusive inquiries, with requests to provide every Facebook and Twitter entry I’d every posted, questions about my political aspirations, and demands to know the names of every group I’d ever made presentations to, the content of what I’d said, and where I intended to speak for the coming year.

Under the law defining a c3 organization, none of this information is relevant to the IRS’ application investigation. Indeed, Walton’s ruling explicitly makes no reference to the legitimacy of Engelbrecht’s charges.

Walton dismissed the counts because the IRS—eventually, but before this lawsuit was resolved—registered True the Vote as the c3 for which it had applied.

Unless an actual, ongoing controversy exists in this case, this Court is without power to decide it….

Because

The defendants’ grant of tax-exempt status to the plaintiff, and the defendants’ suspension of the alleged IRS targeting scheme during the tax-exempt application process, including remedial steps to address the alleged conduct, coupled with the reduced “concern about the recurrence of objectionable behavior” government actors….

Never mind that this is a purely voluntary “suspension,” subject to removal at IRS whim, conservative speech remains chilled, other attacks against other conservative entities remain (think Wisconsin), and so on. The present assault has stopped, so there’s nothing for a good judge to decide.

Let me see if my understanding of this is correct. If I stop beating my wife, wholly voluntarily and on my own initiative, I’m home free? My wife has no recourse? Never mind that I’ve only voluntarily suspended the beatings, never mind that my wife remains intimidated and vulnerable, I’ve got nothing to worry about from any court?

Walton’s ruling can be seen here.

A School District Apologizing

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…for expecting a child to show respect for our country and its symbols of patriotism.

A Southern California school district will apologize to an 11-year-old atheist who says his teacher questioned him because he didn’t stand during the Pledge of Allegiance.

[The student] says he kept his seat during the morning pledge at Monte Vista Middle School in San Jacinto earlier this month because the words “under God” in it violate his beliefs.

He could have stood with his hand over his heart and remained silent. He could have stood and recited the pledge, remaining silent while the phrase was being spoken by his fellows.

The binding nature of the pledge is questionable with children of this age; they’re unable to make decisions on their own, both legally and nearly always from a practical/maturation perspective. But that’s why they’re in school—to learn. Besides, the simple rehearsal of the pledge would have had its own value.

The Pledge of Allegiance, after all, is about much more than just a phrase about God, a phrase whose role in the Pledge merely is an acknowledgment of our national heritage. The Pledge is all about patriotism and fidelity to our country and the liberty for all which our country defends. A liberty which includes the freedom to worship, or not to worship, as each of us pleases.

Here was an opportunity to teach the child something about respect, something about our country, something about patriotism.

Instead, San Jacinto’s school district is going to teach a lesson of an entirely different sort.

This is shameful.