Author Archives: J Christian Adams

DOJ lawyers threaten to monitor and preempt state elections across the country

Interesting way to ask for more money.  What happened to all the money set aside for Section 5 review that has been freed up?

The Justice Department, no longer responsible for vetting election procedures in states with a history of racial discrimination, instead plans to proactively search the entire country for voting rights violations.   Its new focus is the result of a June 2013 Supreme Court decision dismantling a Voting Rights Act provision that had required all or part of 15 states to get “pre-clearance” from Justice officials or a federal court before making any changes to their election procedures.  Now, the department says, it will be more proactive in protecting minority voters.

“The voting section’s work will shift to greater affirmative efforts to detect and investigate voting practices that violate federal law, to more affirmative litigation to enjoin such practices, and to additional monitoring of elections throughout the country each year,” according to the agency’s fiscal 2015 budget documents sent to Congress last week.

“Report finds states cutting wait times for voters”

USA Today reports on the recent Pew Report on state performance in election administration:


Voters across the country waited less time in line to cast their ballots in 2012 than in 2008, a sign that states were doing a better job at running elections, says a report released Tuesday by the Pew Charitable Trust’s Election Initiatives.

…Average wait time at polls inched down about three minutes, from more than 14 minutes in 2008 to just over 11 minutes in 2012, according to Pew’s Elections Performance Index. South Carolina, which had waits of more than an hour in 2008, cut its time to about 25 minutes. Florida’s waiting time was the worst, and at 45 minutes it was far longer than the 29 minutes voters waited in 2008.

“Breyer’s dangerous dissent in McCutcheon”

David Bernstein provides a warning to America of Justice Breyer’s dangerous thinking.



Not surprisingly, then, Breyer is the Justice who is least inclined to protect freedom of speech in a variety of contexts.   And it’s troubling that his three liberal colleagues joined his opinion today. Josh Blackman and I wrote three years ago, “Breyer’s apparent ascendance as doyen of the Court’s liberal wing threatens to roll back decades of pro-liberty precedents, and to destroy the consensus on the Court that freedom of speech and other essential rights must not be sacrificed to the shifting whims of legislative majorities.”  I hope to be a failed prophet.

“The John Roberts Project”: The Deregulation of Campaign Finance Law

Ok, it is the New Yorker but they are right about one thing: The Deregulation of Campaign Finance is a movement on the march.
So why is the case important? Because the language of Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion suggests that the Court remains committed to the project announced most prominently in the Citizens United case, four years ago: the deregulation of American political campaigns.

The court, and Roberts in particular, has been very clear that regulation of campaign contributions is allowed under a single rationale. As he wrote in McCutcheon, “It is not an acceptable governmental objective to ‘level the playing field,’ or to ‘level electoral opportunities,’ or to ‘equalize the financial resources of candidates.’” Rather, Roberts wrote, “Congress may target only a specific type of corruption—‘quid pro quo’ corruption.”

Caution on NC Voter Numbers

I’ve not covered the North Carolina numbers for a variety of reasons.  One is that I suspect this story has a downward trajectory.  The usual suspects at Brennan and MSNBC are pushing the trajectory downward as they are always expected to do anytime possible election crimes are revealed.  Wouldn’t it be nice if once in a while they spoke up when it became obvious crimes actually occurred.  But that’s not why they play the game.  Objectivity isn’t their calling.

What is a concern is the voter history file in the North Carolina numbers.  Who compiled the voter history file from the other states, because that isn’t the easiest or cleanest task.  So far, no article I have found has revealed the sourcing of the voter history file.  Did someone in NC get them from the individual states?  If so, name the states of overlap.  Name the entity that got it.  No story I have read does.

Is the voter history from a national database, such that the Database Whose Name We Dare not Speak?  Doubtful it is Catalyst.  So who’s national database is it?  Who is doing the data crunching?  Who is doing the controls for name variations?  How rigorous are they?

All of these are questions I want to see answered before any significance is attached to the NC numbers. Otherwise, they will keep on their downward trajectory.

UPDATE: I’ve been told the voter history data comes from each individual state as captured by the cross state check program. Thus, I am told it is not from private databases.  The question then becomes how accurate is the voter history field.  Most places still use paper poll books.  The accuracy of the voter history files will drive how many of these folks voted twice in the 2012 election.  That error could cut both ways: false negatives in voter history as well as false positives.  Depending on the rate of turnout, the error probably comes on average more from one direction.  Despite these uncertainties, we can most likely count on two things.  First, ongoing dismissal or downplaying of criminal activity in American elections from the usual suspects cited in the MSNBC story.  Second, a total lack of prosecutions from the Public Integrity unit at DOJ for double voting. 

North Carolina NAACP Leader: “North Carolina is today’s Selma”

Dr. Barber of the North Carolina NAACP quoted:

“We welcome you here to Rocky Mount where the Voting Rights Act that was signed in 1965 created this area as a covered district – one of the 40 counties in North Carolina that was covered by the preclearance requirement of Section IV,” Dr. Barber said. “Now no NC counties are covered by the full federal voter protections, and look what happened: extremists passed the worst voter suppression law we have seen since Jim Crow. North Carolina is the testing ground. This is today’s Selma.”