“We’re used to Democrats’ trotting out the Republicans-are-racists trope
whenever they want to score a political point. But even we can’t believe
they’re doing it to block reasonable protections against election
fraud.

This week, Maryland’s Rep. Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the
House, claimed that “we are witnessing a concerted effort to place new
obstacles in front of minorities, low-income families and young people
who seek to exercise their right to vote.” Earlier in the month, NAACP president Benjamin Jealous declared that
“this is the greatest assault on voting rights, happening right now,
that we have seen since the dawn of Jim Crow.”

It all sounds so menacing. Except that these liberals are excoriating
Republicans for supporting what the vast majority of Americans agree is
a perfectly reasonable requirement for voters — that they show a photo
ID before casting a ballot.

This year, three states enacted photo ID laws, and three others
toughened their existing laws, according to the National Conference of
State Legislatures. In all, 31 states now require voters to show some
sort of ID, with 15 requiring a photo ID.

The requirement is hugely popular with the public — a Rasmussen
survey this June found that 75% of likely voters back photo ID laws,
including 63% of Democrats — which is hardly surprising given that
citizens routinely have to produce a picture ID to board a plane, buy
alcohol and any number of other mundane tasks.

Plus, the states offer free photo IDs to those who can’t afford them
and let people cast provisional ballots if they don’t bring their IDs on
Election Day.

Does this strike anyone as unreasonable?

Well, to liberals intent on politicizing everything under the sun these
days, voter ID laws are merely a Republican ploy to suppress turnout
among those most likely to vote Democratic — namely blacks, Hispanics
and the poor.”

Read the whole thing at the link

Some crack investigative reporting by Lee Zurik who reveals multiple examples of law enforcement in St. Tammany parish registered to vote in St. Bernard where they illegally cast  a vote.  This could be a huge scandal and election officials are not happy.  In most states, that would be a felony.  I recommend a read of the full article.

That is absolutely blatant on the surface,” says Secretary of State Tom Schedler.

A story on the recent FedSoc panel on voter fraud. Excerpts below:

Moderated by U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Judge Thomas Griffith, the four panelists sparred over whether requiring photo identification would help or hurt the election process. Griffith said that allegations of election fraud have been part of the political conversation for centuries in the United States, but that advances in technology – the rise of electronic voting systems, for instance – and shifts in policy mean “these issues are not only a matter of history.”

and: Hans Von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow and manager at the Heritage Foundation, said requiring IDs at the polls would not only stop duplicate voting, but would also make it harder for undocumented immigrants to vote as well. Spakovsky noted that in Rhode Island, which recently adopted a photo ID requirement, the measure was supported by a Democratic state legislature.

George Washington University Law School Professor Spencer Overton said requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls is inevitable, but the debate should be over what type of identification and, if photo IDs are required, whether there are ways to allow eligible voters without a photo ID to vote. Overton drew groans from a disapproving crowd when he proposed a hypothetical compromise to Fund – require photo IDs but allow same-day voter registration.

 Opponents of Voter ID in Mississippi (which passed overwhelmingly on Tuesday) say they will hold off on any lawsuits until they see how it is implemented.  Smart move.  And even smarter would be for the state to submit the law to United States District Court instead of to DOJ to avoid the statistical shake down that South Carolina and Texas is experiencing en route to a likely DOJ objection.

While the media focuses on short-term success stories for Democrats in Ohio and Kentucky, the fundamentals in two more states shifted significantly toward Republicans.  The big story is that Republicans were finally able to overcome signficant firewalls in redistricting established by long term Democratic legislatures.  As a result, the GOP will gain control of the legislative and redistricting process in those states.  “Long term” is adequately defined as being held by the Democratic Party since Reconstruction.

The entire story here:  excerpt below,

Mississippi Republicans capped off a noticeable political shift in the South, defeating the Democrats previous 68 to 54 majority in the lower chamber. This victory is more poignant because it gives Mississippi Republicans control over the redistricting process. Republicans are quick to celebrate control for the first time in 140 years.

 Not even close, voters approve Voter ID.

The United States District Court for D.C. just entered an order denying Texas summary judgment. The court concluded Texas “used an improper standard or methodology to determine which districts afford minority voters the ability to elect their preferred candidates of choice” and that material issue of fact prevent the couty from entering declaratory judgment.

Not a big surprise.  But it demonstrates why Texas made the right decision going to Federal Court. On these facts, DOJ would have objected.

Fox Video:  Tea Party offers $5,000 award.  Debate over election fraud in Erie County, Buffalo, New York.

The City Journal has this story on a petard hoist.  A portion:

“On an abnormally chilly morning this past summer, a group of black leaders gathered in front of the California African-American Museum in Los Angeles to oppose what they called an ‘effort to turn back the clock’ and ‘declare the premature death of black political power.’ The purported death sentence was issued one day before, with the release of prospective statewide redistricting maps, which consolidated African-American voters in Los Angeles County into one congressional district. Racial gerrymandering has been a common method of disenfranchising black Americans since the days of Reconstruction. But this time, the law that protesters were opposing was one identified with racial progress: the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

‘The Voting Rights Act is being used to disadvantage black people in Los Angeles,’explained Jackie Dupont-Walker, the influential leader of the Ward Economic Development Corp., in the Los Angeles Sentinel, one of L.A.’s leading African-American community newspapers. Dupont-Walker wasn’t alone in making the explosive claim. The City of Angels’ most prominent black leaders have taken a united stand against the landmark civil rights legislation. Representative Karen Bass, the first black woman in the United States to serve as speaker of a state legislature, added, ‘We should not accept the Voting Rights Act.’ An African-American member of the state’s redistricting commission lamented at a July hearing: ‘The Voting Rights Act is now . . . an instrument to be used against the African-American population.'”

Following the Washington Examiner’s explosive article on the alleged “Cooking of the Military Voting Books,” we find this independent analysis of the DOD-FVAP survey conducted by the Military Voting Protection Project (MVPP), a non-partisan military voting rights organization.  The analysis starts to deconstruct and reverse-engineer the slanted numbers crunching.  Due to its length, I have only posted Part I of this analysis. 

The MVPP update ends with the conclusion: “At the end of the day, there is simply no tangible evidence from the states supporting FVAP’s conclusions and it raises serious questions about the accuracy of the survey.”

Part I:  More importantly, the 2010 data (which is drastically improved) does not support the absentee military voting rates claimed by FVAP.  According to FVAP, 29% of 1.4 million active duty military members voted in 2010 and 67% (that is, 272,000 military members) voted by absentee ballot.  FVAP also claims that 34% of 1.1 million military spouses voted in 2010 and that 40% of those spouses (approximately 150,000) voted by absentee ballot.  Taken together, these totals suggest that 425,000 military members and their spouses voted by absentee ballot in 2010.  Of course, if this were true, it would mean that the EAC state data, which reported about 108,000 returned absentee ballots from military voters in 2010, misses the mark by more than 300,000 absentee military ballots.  That is simply unbelievable.

Nor can the disparity between FVAP’s and the EAC’s data be overcome by the reasons provided by FVAP.  FVAP argues that state officials make two errors that impact the total reported to the EAC: (1) some local jurisdictions do not respond to the EAC’s survey; and (2) local election officials only count military voters as UOCAVA voters when they submit a Federal Post Card Application (FPCA).

With respect to the first point, it is true that some jurisdictions fail to report data.  However, as noted above, the instances of non-reporting have decreased dramatically since 2008.  The amount of non-reporting in 2010 appears to be relatively small and, at best, would only move the needle by a few percentage points.  It certainly wouldn’t account for 300,000 missing ballots.