Author Archives: J Christian Adams

Vote fraud scandal in Miami expands … upward

The voter fraud case in Hialeah expanded Friday to include the uncle of former Hialeah mayor Julio Robaina. Sergio Robaina, 74, turned himself into authorities Friday afternoon. He has been charged with two felony counts of voter fraud and two misdemeanor counts of violating a county ordinance that prohibits having more than two absentee ballots.


He is accused of filling out absentee ballots for a woman and her son.  The investigation originated with the U.S. Postal Service, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said. “Postal Service finds 160 some odd ballots arrived overnight, they call the Elections Department, the Elections Department calls the police and our prosecutors,” she said.


Robaina is being held on $12,000 bond, according to online Miami-Dade Corrections records. It was not immediately known whether he has an attorney.

More here and here.

“President Obama is Failing Military Voters”

Attorney Joel Arends, Chairman of Veterans for a Strong America pens the following opinion piece.

President Obama is the first and only Commander-in-Chief in the history of the Republic to petition a federal court claiming that allowing the men and women who serve under his command three extra days to vote in-person by absentee ballot is a violation of the United States Constitution.  The former constitutional law professor’s campaign has brought suit and filed a formal legal complaint with a federal judge in the key swing-state of Ohio which asserts that his campaign cannot “discern[]” any “legitimate justification” for giving members of the military extra time to participate in early voting. In that same complaint, the President’s campaign argues at least twenty times that the Ohio legislature had no good reason to extend reasonable voting accommodations to military voters and that the law is unconstitutional

Widespread Voter ID Disenfranchisement Fails to Materialize in Tennessee



“Statewide, 277 people cast provisional ballots for photo ID reasons, with 115 of them being counted after voters went to election offices in the required time and showed a proper photo ID, the state Division of Elections reported.  That left 162 without a vote counted across the state.”


 


Or about .026% of over 617,000 votes cast.  More here.

“Why should we beg anyone to vote”

Jeff Jacoby with the Boston Globe

Senator Scott Brown is right: For the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be mailing voter-registration forms to nearly 480,000 welfare recipients — at a cost to taxpayers of more than $275,000 — is indeed “outrageous.” as the Republican incumbent declared last week. The vast get-out-the-welfare-vote campaign “smells wrong,” he says. So it does, but not for the reason he claims.

…Higher voter turnout is no proof of civic health. Voting is only a means, not the end, of democratic self-government. Of course every citizen has the right to vote, including those who are ignorant, apathetic, or indifferent. But why should Americans who take their vote seriously want to increase electoral participation by those who don’t?

Registering to vote isn’t complicated. By and large, Americans who don’t vote don’t want to vote. In 2008 the Census Bureau found that by far the largest share of unregistered voters (46 percent) reported that they were “not interested in the election [or] not interested in politics.”  Their nonparticipation is rational, and we should respect it.

Dems Falsely Accuse States Complying with NVRA of Voter Suppression


While Dems are busily suing several states for supposedly not registering enough low-income voters under Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act, they are simultaneously attempting to bully others into ignoring Section 8 of the NVRA and maintaining inaccurate, out-of-date voter rolls, as witnessed in Florida and now in New Mexico:


 


Democrats in New Mexico have accused Secretary of State Dianna Duran of trying to suppress voter turnout after her office sent out nearly 178,000 postcards to voters tagged as potentially “inactive” but Duran says her office is simply following federal guidelines the US Department of Justice instructed it to do…


Duran points to a letter dated from last September from a deputy chief at the Department of Justice reporting that the state is not in compliance with the National Voting Rights Act because of the failed efforts in 2007 and 2009 and is obligated to “remove persons from the voter rolls who have become ineligible” though a “general program of list maintenance.”


 


Despite the specific requirements of NVRA Section 8, the DOJ directive to remove ineligible voters, and the fact that no voters will be removed from the list until 2015, New Mexico state Rep. Gail Chasey (D-Albuquerque) hysterically claims that “steps are being taken to purge our voter file — a likely illegal act that is now disenfranchising legitimate, long-time voters in our state.”

“U.S. military overseas deserve to have every vote counted”

Democrats and Republicans likely won’t agree on much this election
year. But here is one thing on which they should agree and take action:
ending the single largest legal disenfranchisement of voters in America. 
Those disenfranchised voters are the brave Americans serving overseas
in the U.S. military. Under the rules of both parties, they are unable
to vote in the selection process for presidential delegates in the many
states that hold caucuses to pick those delegates.

There are now more than 200,000 military personnel serving overseas,
and more than 1.4 million in the armed forces, who could potentially be
required to serve overseas. 
Yet, those Americans serving overseas, and, in many cases, risking
their lives, were unable to vote in party caucuses in 18 states that
held caucuses instead of primaries in 2012, including Arizona, Hawaii,
Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, Nevada, Maine, Utah, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska,
North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Washington, Florida, Missouri and
Michigan.

These Americans, if they are Democrats or Republicans and are serving
in uniform, can be denied the ability to cast a ballot to select their
own party’s nominee for commander in chief. How has this been
overlooked?

Link.

New Poll Finds Broad Support for Voter ID


Almost three-quarters of all Americans support the idea that people should have to show photo identification to vote, according to a new Washington Post poll


 


Highlights:



  • Overall, there is high, strong and cross-party support for such laws.


  • About half of those polled see voter fraud as a “major problem” in presidential elections.


  • Slightly more Americans are concerned with fraud than with voter suppression.


  • 57 percent see a genuine interest in fair elections as a big motivator.


  • Big majorities of those whom critics see as bearing the brunt of the laws are supportive of them, including about three-quarters of seniors and those with household incomes under $50,000 and two-thirds of non-whites.

“ID please”

Battles continues over voter law – Pennsylvania.

“I feel the public in general understands the reason for this law is to provide a common-sense, easy way to ID a voter at the polls, which we don’t have right now,” [Pennsylvania Department of State Press Secretary Ron] Ruman said.