Posted on 02/12/2016 3:10:57 PM PST by wtd
Recognizing that voter identification is not sufficient, the government agency created by Congress to oversee the administration of elections has quietly reversed itself to allow states to verify U.S. citizenship before permitting voters to register.
It's a crucial issue that's left the voter ID argument in the dust considering it's been proven that identification measures aren't enough to keep illegal immigrants from voting in U.S. elections. Regardless, liberals and Democrats in Congress assert that requiring voters to provide a government-issued ID to vote discriminates against minorities because they are either too poor or too ignorant to get one. The powerful chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, calls voter ID laws a "full-scale assault" on minority voters designed to "rig" elections.
Nevertheless, election officials in some states have confirmed that requiring ID is not enough to prevent fraud. American citizenship, mandatory to vote in U.S. elections at every level, must also be verified. But first states must get approval from the feds, specifically the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The bipartisan commission is tasked with assuring that elections are administered in accordance with federal laws. This includes accrediting voting system test labs, certifying voting equipment and keeping a national mail voter registration form.
For years the EAC has rejected requests from several states to allow the citizenship verification of its registered voters. Judicial Watch has been involved in several of the cases and years ago filed documents with the EAC in support of efforts by Arizona, Kansas and Georgia to require voter registration applicants to provide proof of citizenship. In its filing with the EAC Judicial Watch writes that under Section 8 of the National Voter Registration ACT (NVRA), states are under a federal obligation to assure that non-citizens neither register nor vote. A failure to allow states to require such information would undermine Americans' confidence that their elections are being conducted fairly and honestly, and would thwart states’ ability to comply with the election integrity obligations imposed by federal law.
Regardless, the EAC has repeatedly rejected the appeal to let states require proof of citizenship from voters. In 2006 it slammed Arizona's request to add a citizenship documentation requirement to the state-specific instructions. Several years later the commission responded to the same petition from Arizona, Kansas and Georgia in one lengthy rejection document that cites claims by leftist groups that providing proof of citizenship would adversely impact vulnerable and marginalized communities, specifically low-income and people of color. "The requested proof~of~citizenship instructions are inconsistent with the EAC’s prior determinations," the 2014 ruling states. "In addition, the EAC, both by the staff and duly~constituted quorum of commissioners, has already denied the very same substantive request that is at issue here," it further states.
In the last few weeks, however, the EAC has quietly reversed itself by approving the petition of three states~Kansas, Georgia and Alabama~to add a citizenship requirement to their voter registration forms. The letters, signed by the EAC's new executive director, Brian D. Newby, were issued on January 29, 2016. They can be viewed here. The about~face opens the door for other states seeking to preserve the integrity of elections by requiring evidence of voter eligibility before ballots are cast.
Is there anywhere to start a new country with sane people???
Obama ain’t gonna like this.
Excellent!
But is it?
The Constitution originally required only that the qualification to vote for Congress be the same as the individual state set for its own lower house.
That has since been amended for racial, gender, poll tax, and age.
But otherwise, as long as a state let noncitizens vote for its lower house, seems like it could let them vote for Congress.
Not just Obama, but the NAACP is gonna go ballistic!!!!
Wow...I’m shocked...
I somehow think this is tied in with the behind the scenes push to surpress the Clinton voter fraud machine
Voting Procedures in Honduras, a Banana Republic!
(a re-write of excellent post by Gideon300)
I had the opportunity to go watch my wife, a citizen of Honduras, vote in last years presidential election in Tegucigalpa. It was a real eye-opener, and I can only wish the US had such a strict voting process.
Everyone in Honduras is required to vote only in the precinct as indicated on their government issued (free) photo ID card. Every citizen over 18 is required to have an national ID, and everyone with an ID can vote. No one else, and no one is registered as a member of a certain party, merely a citizen. My wifes precinct is Barrio El Bosque, so she was required to go to the Escuela de 14 de Julio (local elementary school) if she wanted to vote.
When we arrived at the voting place there were hundreds of people milling around the street and a long line was waiting to enter. The entire scene was closely watched over by Army and PolicÃa Nacionál to make sure order was kept. For the most part everything was quite orderly, and people were polite to each other even with the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. After showing ID, passing the guard and entering the school we went to the main table in the courtyard where they ran her ID through a computer and she was given a little slip of paper that indicated her name, her precinct, her ^mesa^ (voting area) and ^linea^ number (her number on the voter registration list). Every citizen is automatically registered to vote, and their name, Id photo and precinct number is on a list posted in that precinct.
The ^mesas^ in this case are rooms in the school, numbered in order to handle the hundreds of people waiting to vote. Her mesa was number 8586, so after finding the room, there was a list of all registered voters beside the door. She checked her line number with photo, 235, to make sure she is at the right door, the man watching the door checked her ID against the list, and let her in. She went to the table inside the room
for a ballot, was checked again for ID and compared it to the info and photo in the registry, was given two ballots, one for president and one for congress, and this time they held her ID while she voted. I was allowed in as a foreign observer, but was not on school tables for privacy, so after voting she deposited her ballots in the appropriate boxes, was given her ID back and we left.
I wanted to take photos but no cameras were allowed anywhere but in the street. No alcohol is sold anywhere in Honduras from Saturday through Monday, the day before and the day after election.
They take voter ID, and potential vote fraud, VERY seriously. All ballots are paper, and all have the candidate’s info and photo. There are eight official parties in Honduras, and the one with the most votes wins. The police and the army watch the voting very closely. One woman was caught with an extra ballot, and was immediately arrested. The Honduras news media, which is quite politically unbiased, indicated that both local and official foreign observers found only three cases of vote fraud in the entire country.
It was certainly an eye-opener for me! If this is the difference between a the US and a Banana Republic, then I will take a banana republic election anytime.
Screw the damn communists Democrats. It is time to wipe them out once and for all. When Trump becomes President he must insist the House and Senate set new guidelines for all States for General Elections.
A step in the right direction. Now for the absentee ballots.
It doesn’t add up. Obama’s people wouldn’t allow for something like this.
There must be other circumstances in the background that compelled the EAC to reverse.
For the idiots here a General Election is for President and Vice President.
General Elections occur every two years.
I would like to see the backstory on this major ‘about face.’ My thought is that it is highly unlikely that a new executive director could pull this off on his own.
DH and I voted absentee today at the Courthouse, as we will be out of state for the primary. They took our DL, we signed an affidavit re: our absence, gave us the ballot and an envelope to seal, and then we signed the outside of the envelope and that was notarized, too. And this is in backward MS. Don’t know how mail ins are handled, though.
Good system
The author seems like a troll. Vote fraud is a big problem. It is overwhelmingly committed by citizens who have political jobs/contracts as navigators, etc and need to produce the vote to keep their money coming.
They register people to vote without the awareness of the alleged voter. They vote on behalf of that person who isn’t aware.
They themselves register from multiple addresses, from their mom’s address, their girlfriend’s address, their sister’s address, their inlaw’s address, etc.
They identify voters who moved and vote on their behalf. They identify voters who never show up and vote on their behalf.
Then there are the Occupy Wallstreet type college student trust fund kids who think it is a lark, a rush, to mess with the corrupt system. They send vans of students from precinct to precinct that has student housing and vote on behalf of the students who no longer live there. Of course, student housing has extremely high turnover so there is no way for anyone to verify who actually lives there and who doesn’t.
But the big disservice of the author is to emphasize illegals. The reality is that most immigrants are legal; not illegal. So the low education immigrant hears the attacks against illegals and concludes that he can register to vote because he is legal and the idiots like the author give legals a pass.
Does anyone think through what is really happening and how they enable what they deplore?
You make some good points. Perhaps there is a better way, but one might be a national voting database which shows if someone has voted in a state or precinct. That doesn’t help those voting for folks in nursing homes, etc. But it’s a start. More states need to insist on IDs when voting and record the Driver license. Voter fraud laws need to be stronger and those abusing them need to be punished more severely. Voting in the US is a privilege and anyone abusing it should be punished.
OR is all mail vote and WA state went to it a few years ago. I hate it! I liked going in, checking my name off and voting in person. Plus, I think mail-in allows for more fraud.
I remember the last election - some state back east had busloads of people coming in to vote with interpreters (I’m sure there are a lot more where this happens, but this one comes to mind), and IIRC they were all Somalis. I thought to get US citizenship you had to speak English. IMHO if you need an interpreter, you should not be voting in a US election.
What about the motor voter law where anyone that gets a drivers license can register to vote (IIRC that was under Clinton). There are many states that don’t require one to show an ID and if they do, a DL suffices, and at least some states allow illegals to get DLs - I suspect that there has been (and will continue to be) a lot of that going on, especially in states like CA.
HAVA-Help America Vote Act is probably the worst of all elections of our life time. After the Bush-Gore election, Sen Chris Dodd-D-CT wrote HAVA to shift control of the election process from local government (Mostly county clerks) to close friends of Chris Dodd.
They control many billions of dollars that are used to bribe state and local election officials to hire them to push through both Hi-tech hardware and software. The software is skewed to open the door to fraud.
FREE MONEY (from the taxpayers via Sen Chis Dodd’s friends) is dangled in front of the Republican Secretarys of State and election officials. The Republican office holders are eager to grab that FREE MONEY for which they do not need to beg the legislature.
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