Author Archives: J Christian Adams

“Military voting bill to be Kentucky Senate’s first in session”

The Courier-Journal reports on bipartisan legislation pushed to the front burner.

A bill to make it easier for military personnel and other overseas
voters to cast absentee ballots will be Senate Bill 1 in the legislative
session that starts Tuesday.Republican
Sen. Robert Stivers, who will be elected Senate president on Tuesday,
said during a news conference with Democratic Secretary of State Alison
Lundergan Grimes Monday that the military voting bill will get the
priority designation.

In voter fraud case, man sentenced to 5 years, permanently barred from public employment

Tough sentence for a crime that to some does not exist.  The ObserverOnline reports


A Belleville man, one of the final defendants in a long-running Essex
County voter fraud case, has been sentenced to five years in state
prison for submitting fraudulent absentee ballots while working for the
2007 campaign of Teresa Ruiz for the New Jersey Senate in the 29th
District.

John Fernandez, 61, learned his fate Dec. 20 while appearing before
Superior Court Judge Robert C. Billmeier in Mercer County, N.J. Attorney
General Jeffrey S. Chiesa announced.

Fernandez, found guilty after a jury trial in Mercer County this past
September, worked for the Essex County Department of Economic
Development. He was ordered to forfeit his job and has been permanently
barred from public employment in New Jersey.

Will Matt Colangelo and Tom Perez Be Accountable for SC Voter ID Folly?



From PJ Media:  “Congress might get answers if they haul DOJ Voting Section Chief Christopher Herren before the House Judiciary Committee for answers. The Democrats could hardly object. After all, they dragged Bush-era Voting Section Chief John Tanner before the Democrat-run House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about Georgia Voter ID. There is precedent. Democrats could hardly object when the Voting Section Chief during the Bush administration was made to dance the dance before the Committee.”

“SC Voter ID Costs: Seeing Triple”

The burden of preclearance for a non-discriminatory South Carolina photo ID law:  $3.5 million. 

The article opines that the costs were high because DOJ (and the intervenors) tried to make the Section 5 preclearance process as lengthy and costly as possible.  That strategy may come back to haunt them as it shows the lack of proportionality of Section 5.  The cost of Rhode Island photo ID section 5 preclearance:  $0.  Cost of South Carolina photo ID section 5 preclearance  $3.5 million.  The cost of Tennessee photo ID section 5 preclearance: $ 0.  Kansas….yep, you guessed it: $0.

Why were the costs associated with defending this law so high? That’s a good question … Obviously the costs associated with defending this legislation fall most squarely on the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ) – which went out of its way to make political hay at South Carolina’s expense (even after its non-political staff recommended approving the legislation).

“Damn liberal bureaucrats in D.C. are responsible for this bill,” one source familiar with the case tells FITS.

More to the point, the fact that South Carolina is one of a handful of states which has to “pre-clear” election laws with Washington is ridiculous. Our state has a black U.S. Senator and an Indian-American governor – and while neither of them is the fiscal conservative champion they claim to be – their presence in such high offices would seem to indicate the Palmetto State’s history of disenfranchising minorities is a thing of the past.