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GALVESTON, Texas — A man who voted absentee in Texas and Minnesota during the 2012 general election then touted his bogus balloting on Facebook has pleaded guilty. A judge in Galveston on Tuesday fined Richard Alan Collier $4,000 after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of Texas election law. Collier, who pleaded guilty to attempt to commit illegal voting, claimed residence in both states when seeking absentee ballots for the November 2012 election. Authorities say Collier then voted in Anoka (uh-NOH'-kuh) County, Minnesota, and in Galveston County. Prosecutors in Galveston say a tip that Collier posted a Facebook message...

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Seattle man pleaded guilty on Thursday to identity fraud and voter intimidation for forged letters he sent to 200 Republican donors in Florida that told them they were ineligible to vote in the 2012 presidential election. Angered by what he believed was an attempt to suppress Hispanic voter turnout for Democratic Party candidates, James Baker Jr. in 2012 created false voter eligibility letters purporting to be from elections authorities, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release. Baker, 58, entered his plea in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida and faces...

MADISON, Wis. -- State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen on Monday appealed a two-week-old decision striking down Wisconsin's voter ID law. Van Hollen had promised an appeal as soon as U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman in Milwaukee blocked the voter ID law for violating the U.S. Constitution and federal Voting Rights Act. Monday's filing puts the case before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. Van Hollen also asked Adelman to suspend his ruling while the appeal proceeds, saying his decision was too broad. In his ruling, Adelman expressed skepticism that any voter ID law could pass court muster...

If the state provides free IDs, is there really an “unjustified burden” on poor voters?To better understand the contrast between an activist, liberal judge who refuses to follow the law and a judge who understands that his job is to follow precedent and the Constitution, consider two recent federal cases on voter-ID laws. On Tuesday, federal-district-court judge Lynn Adelman — a Clinton appointee, former Democratic state senator, and former Legal Aid Society lawyer — held that Wisconsin’s voter-ID requirement violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment, because it places “an unjustified burden on...

Critics of tough voter ID laws are running out of time and options in their efforts to knock down those barriers ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Opponents got good news last week, when a state judge struck down Arkansas’s law, and another jolt Tuesday, when a federal judge ruled Wisconsin’s law, which wasn’t yet in effect, was unconstitutional. But their enthusiasm could be short-lived. At least eight states are still slated to have strict photo ID requirements in place in November, leading voting rights advocates to send dire warnings about potential disenfranchisement at the polls this year. Yet on...

Have the Republicans become the white man's party? Are the depth and bitterness of Republicans' opposition to Barack Obama and his administration the product of racism? Those are questions you hear in the clash of political argument, and you will hear plenty of answers in the affirmative if you click onto MSNBC or salon.com with any regularity. You can find a more nuanced and thoughtful analysis in Jonathan Chait's recent New York magazine article, "The Color of His Presidency." Chait, a liberal, starts off by noting that the post-racial America that Obama seemed to promise in his 2004 national convention...

On April 1, 2014, President Barack Obama triumphantly announced that 7.1 million Americans had selected a health insurance plan through Obamacare. In doing so, he nastily labeled his political opposition uncaring and unfeeling. "Why are folks working so hard for people not to have health insurance?" Obama asked. "Why are they so mad about the idea of people having health insurance?" That night, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert sat behind his desk at "The Colbert Report," playing his version of a conservative: vicious, mean and cruel. "I wish I could come to you with some good news, but the worst...

A plan, now stealthily making its way through state legislatures with astonishing speed, would junk the Electoral College and award the presidency to the winner of the popular vote. The plan involves an Interstate Compact where states would commit to select electors pledged to vote for the national popular vote winner regardless of how their own state voted. When enough states pass this law, sufficient to cast 270 votes which is the majority of the Electoral College, it will take effect. So far, nine states and the District of Columbia, casting 136 electoral votes, have joined. This is halfway to...

It’s an article of the faith of the Democrats that voter fraud is nothing to worry about because it never happens. Kim Strach, the North Carolina director of elections, has living proof — and some dead proof — otherwise. She has identified 35,750 persons who voted in North Carolina sharing a name, birth date and Social Security number with someone who voted in another state in 2012. Another 81 North Carolinians voted after they died. Ghosts have no constitutional rights, not yet, but Barack Obama and the Democrats think rigor mortis need not keep voters from practicing good citizenship. President...

April 11, 2014, 04:52 pm Obama decries ‘bogus’ voter fraud complaints By Justin Sink President Obama labeled complaints about voter fraud “bogus” and accused Republicans of cynically trying to prevent Americans from accessing the polls in a fiery speech Friday at a civil rights forum hosted by Al Sharpton. Obama argued that attempts in some states to impose new voter identification restrictions were actually efforts by Republicans to make “it harder, not easier to vote.” And the president said that while voter fraud should be prevented, it rarely occurred. “So let's be clear, the real voter fraud is the people...

An audit of voter registration rolls in North Carolina uncovered tens of thousands of duplicate voter registrations in which the first and last names as well as last four digits of Social Security numbers matched for voters registered in both North Carolina and elsewhere. The odds of randomly producing a single match using these three variables is infinitesimal. Nevertheless, the audit found more than 150,000 matches. In 35,000 cases, votes were cast both in North Carolina and in other states for the November 2012 election. US Attorney General Eric Holder rejected calls for a more comprehensive investigation, calling the findings...

Actor Rob Lowe identified himself as an “independent moderate” this weekend in an interview with the New York Times. Lowe, a former Democrat, spoke about his views on government, saying: “My thing is personal freedoms, freedoms for the individual to love whom they want, do with what they want. In fact, I want the government out of almost everything.” The former teen heartthrob and current Parks and Recreation actor spoke negatively of political party loyalty as well: “Belonging to one party is acceptable. But my days of just ticking the party box are long over. I judge the candidates for...

North Carolina’s Board of Elections found that tens of thousands of registered voters from the state have personal information matching that of registered voters in other states, and appear to have voted in states other than North Carolina in 2012. In some cases, votes were cast under names of individuals who had passed away before Election Day.

As state Sen. Leland Yee aggressively campaigned in the 2011 San Francisco mayor's race, he blasted interim Mayor Ed Lee as beholden to City Hall power brokers with "selfish interests" and vowed to "throw them out" if elected. At the same time, Yee was allegedly soliciting $10,000 from an undercover FBI agent posing as a real estate developer who had already illegally funneled $11,000 to Yee's campaign, telling the agent to "cover your tracks," and boasting that "there's tremendous opportunity in local levels ... because whoever's gonna be the mayor controls everything." **SNIP** Instead, it's of a man driven by...

Excerpted: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 A federal judge last week upheld the right of states to require proof of citizenship before allowing someone to register to vote. Voters continue to overwhelmingly support such a requirement. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 78% of Likely U.S. Voters believe everyone should be required to prove his or her citizenship before being allowed to register to vote. That’s up from 71% a year ago. Just 19% oppose that requirement. (

Does the United States Election Assistance Commission (“EAC”) have the statutory and constitutional authority to deny a state’s request to include its proof-of-citizenship requirement in the state-specific instructions on the federal mail voter registration form? The Plaintiffs— Arizona and Kansas and their secretaries of state—say it does not, and have asked this Court to order the EAC to add the requested language immediately.

by John Urban | Top Right NewsIn a victory for fair elections, a Federal judge ruled Wednesday that Arizona and Kansas may require residents to prove they are U.S. citizens in order to register to vote -- a clear rebuke to the Obama Administration, which had strongly fought the move.The ruling by U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren, which applies to the federal voter registration form, imposes the same requirements as Arizona's and Kansas' state registration forms. Arizona voters passed such a requirement as part of the landmark Proposition 200, way back in 2004. But liberal justices had blocked the rule...

Under the oh so august leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder, the Obama administration has been doing their very best to thwart various states in their individual endeavors to implement voter ID laws. In this latest iteration of that ongoing battle, the Federal Election Assistance Commission has so far refused to help state officials in Kansas and Arizona change federal election registration forms to include proof of citizenship. Both states have new voter-ID measures measures that require new voters to provide a birth certificate, passport, or other documentation to prove their citizenship, while the federal registration form only requires that...

Pennsylvania Democrats reportedly were caught on tape accepting cash bribes, including one lawmaker who was paid to vote against a state voter identification law, but Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Kane shut down the investigation. "Before Kane ended the investigation, sources familiar with the inquiry said, prosecutors amassed 400 hours of audio and videotape that documented at least four city Democrats taking payments in cash or money orders, and in one case a $2,000 Tiffany bracelet," the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. "Typically, the payments made at any one time were relatively modest -- ranging from $500 to $2,000 -- but most of...

A ballot measure in Montana that would require an equal number of men and women to serve in the state Legislature is a step closer to getting on the November ballot.