Author Archives: J Christian Adams

Mississippi political observers predict Obama DOJ will stop the new state Photo ID law

Expect the Justice Department to reject voter ID laws in all the Southern “covered jurisdiction” states.

Why? Because the law empowers them to do so, and it’s politically advantageous to the party in power.


Those who fail to accept that the U.S. Justice Department is a
political animal as much as a legal one are either naive in the extreme,
or simply disingenuous.

full opinion piece.

Dennis Prager on the NAACP’s absurd plea to the freedom-resistant United Nations

Classic Dennis Prager enters the Voter ID debate: 

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the
NAACP, has gone to the United Nations — specifically the U.N. Human
Rights Council — for, in the words of USA Today, “help battling what
the organization views as forces attempting to push back voting rights.”  Those “forces” are laws being passed by various states that require a photo ID for voting.

The NAACP move is so absurd and so self-destructive that one has to
wonder why the organization has done this. According to the Freedom
House 2011 assessment of freedom in the world, of the 41 members of the
U.N. Human Rights Council, fewer than half are free countries. Ten are
ranked “Not Free,” and 12 “Partly Free.” Among the “Not Free” members
are Angola, China, Congo, Cuba, Jordan, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Those
countries’ elections, if they have them, are rigged, and prominent
opponents are jailed, tortured and killed.

and this analysis of those equating Jim Crow era with… what?… 

According to NAACP President Ben Jealous, the reason is that “We are
here today because in the past 12 months, more U.S. states have passed
more laws pushing more U.S. citizens out of the ballot box than in any
year in the past century.”

One can only say that if in the past 100 years, fewer blacks were
disenfranchised than in the past 12 months, all the claims about Jim
Crow laws disenfranchising blacks must have been wildly exaggerated.
But, of course, this, too, is absurd.

full opinion here.

Minnesota photo ID amendment goes to state senate floor for vote

The Minnesota Senate is set to vote on a measure that would ask voters
to change the state constitution to require people to show photo
identification to vote.


…The Senate Rules Committee hearing
was less contentious than a nine-hour debate that took place Tuesday in
the House. But those making the arguments were just as divided over the
issue.


Republican supporters like state
Sen. Geoff Michel of Edina say people should have to prove who they are
before they can vote. Michel argued during the Rules Committee meeting
that requiring photo identification would improve the state’s election
system.

link here for more information.

DOJ on Florida Early Voting Change – discriminatory

 The Justice Department is going to argue that Florida’s change in early voting should not be approved under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act because Florida has not carried the burden that the change did not have a racially discriminatory intent.   This validates Florida’s decision to go to Federal Court or else an objection would have been entered by now.  The submitted change alters early voting dates but keeps the same aggregate number of early voting hours.  It also requires that third party voting registration forms be turned in on time. 

In 2006 when Republicans reauthorized Section 5, and added new, harder to meet, review standards, they thought they would extract more legislative seats.  So far in redistricting, they have gained a single seat.  On the other side of the ledger, Holder’s DOJ is interfering with election integrity measures in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Texas.

Thielen at Brietbart on Rick Hasen: “Left’s Internal Battle Against Voter ID”

 Thielen: “Why did Democrat politicians and minorities in Rhode Island want Voter ID? Simple: to stop vote fraud. Sponsor Senator Harold Metts stated: ‘I sponsored the Voter I.D. legislation in the Senate on behalf of Black and Latino constituents concerned about voter fraud. . . . For decades many of us have heard complaints about voter fraud. . . . I cannot accept the logic of those who dismiss this by saying that ‘there have been no formal complaints filed.’ The old system was not set up to readily weed out fraud; and it would be very hard to prove.”

Wait, it gets even better:

“That is why liberals like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews all but laughed in the face of the Advancement Project director on his show when she denied vote fraud existed in Philadelphia. But think of it this way. In Philadelphia, you don’t even get prosecuted for waiving a bully club and threatening people as the New Black Panthers did; do you really think anything is going to happen with the busses of people illegally voting for others multiple times as Matthews described?”

Voter ID: Bringing Poor Into Mainstream American Life

A Philadelphia Inquirer story every voter ID opponent should read.

Without [identification], you feel cut off, paralyzed,” Tucker tells me after waiting for two hours on the Ben Franklin Parkway Monday to see a mysterious Good Samaritan who covers the bureaucratic fees for IDs.


“Having an ID,” she says eagerly, “makes you feel whole again.” . . .


“HIV clinics can’t serve dying people without an ID. Methadone centers say the same thing,” explains Adam Bruckner, 36, of the homeless outreach Philly Restart.

“How the Attorney General Attempts to Justify Aggressive Attacks on Voter ID”

 RNLA Blog.  “He is making a characterization about the policy objective of the laws that is exceedingly narrow. What about multiple voting? What about noncitizen voting? What about voting outside of one’s precinct? These are all types of fraud that do not fit the neat description of pretending to be another voter, but are still types of fraud combated by laws like the Texas voter ID law.”