Author Archives: ELECTIONLAWCENTER.COM

Slow blogging – True the Vote in Houston

In case you haven’t noticed, a slow week around here with me in Colorado and Houston.  Lex and Tabella are in the bullpen but also busy it would seem.  The True the Vote Summit is this weekend.  I am speaking, as well as Arturs Davis, John Fund, James O’Keefe, Hans von Spakovsky, Anita Moncrief and Breitbart head Steve Bannon.  It promises to be a comic weekend with voter fraud denier activists threatening to circle the hotel holding hands and singing.  No word on whether they will try to levitate the Sheraton.

Another Mob Attack, This Time in Mobile (AL)

“This is crazy. These sorts of blanket-level blame games are outrageous. Yes, Sharpton has instigated violence before, and yes he has been wholly irresponsible with respect to the Trayvon Martin case. Yes, Attorney General Eric Holder was morally depraved when lauding Sharpton, just days after Sharpton’s latest outrages regarding Trayvon Martin, while lifting not a finger to punish New Black Panthers for putting a bounty on Zimmerman’s head.”

- Quin Hillyer at American Spectator.

If the Civil Rights Division at the DOJ doesn’t start to open investigations into these mob assaults, expect this to be a campaign issue before long, an easy to deflate one.

First Lady: “A Few Thousand Votes”

“I just want you to remember that in the end, this all could come down to those last few thousand people that we register to vote. It could all come down to those few thousand folks we need to help to get to the polls in November,” the first lady told the crowd of volunteers at a community center in Windsor Heights, a Des Moines suburb.”

The First Lady delivered these remarks in Iowa, a state that has 10 counties with more registered voters than citizens eligible to vote according to the latest EAC survey. To learn what the Eric Holder Justice Department is doing about inflated voter rolls, click here.  Be forewarned, it is a Gomer Pyle moment.



Hat tip to John Fund.

“No Reports of Problems with Rhode Island’s New Voter ID Law”


In Rhode Island’s primary elections Tuesday,
During what amounts to a practice round for the state’s contested voter ID law, poll workers are requesting to see voters’ photo ID at check-in, but the ID isn’t mandatory until the general election in the fall. 


 




Fewer than 25 voters lacked the necessary identification and were allowed to cast provisional ballots, according to a survey of polling places in 25 cities and towns conducted by Secretary of State Ralph Mollis, a Democrat.  “The rollout of voter identification went as smoothly as we could have hoped,” Mollis spokesman Chris Barnett said.


 


Maria Bell, a worker at a polling place in Pawtucket, said voters told her they like the new law… “People don’t mind at all. This should have been done years ago.”


 


In the weeks before Tuesday’s primary, Mollis’ office handed out hundreds of free voter IDs at senior centers, homeless shelters and community centers around the state. Barnett said the effort will continue through the fall election.


 


Full story here.

“Miniscule” Number of Voters Come to Polls without ID in Pennsylvania’s Successful Voter ID “Soft Rollout”


The Times Herald reports, Voter ID Gets “Soft Rollout” Amid Light Turnout:


On a primary election day when voter turnout was judged to be lighter-than-light on Tuesday, the number of voters coming to the polls without voter identification was miniscule.


At three Norristown precincts picked at random by The Times Herald, 10 people did not have the proper voter identification among 272 people casting ballots, according to the poll workers.


In the Norristown Precinct 3-3, six voters did not have voter identification among the 98 voters between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m., said an election inspector working at Eisenhower Middle School.

“Most people have been coming in with the driver’s license in their hands. Most people are aware of the law,” said Andrew Ely, a machine operator at Norristown Precinct 3-1 at Eisenhower Middle School. “It is funny seeing the different reactions. It ranges from ‘it’s funny they’re doing this’ to ‘they should have done this years ago.’”


 



A few “irregularities”:


 


There were reports that not all poll workers asking voters for ID:



Election workers are supposed to ask for your photo identification for a dry run for when it’s mandatory in the November general election.  At a polling place in Taylor when Newswatch 16 was there, some were asked, some were not. . . At the polling place inside the Keyser Valley Community Center in Scranton, they weren’t asking for ID, but still a lot of voters were showing up with drivers licenses in hand.  None of the voters who were asked saw the new law as a big deal.




Also one reported attempt at Democrat-organized “protest”:



Voters in a Philadelphia ward were instructed by some Democratic committee members to refuse to show their identification before voting in Tuesday’s primary, according to a nonprofit.  PA Independent obtained a copy of the letter from The Committee of Seventy, a nonprofit that works to ensure open and fair elections in Philadelphia. The group called the letter “irresponsible and troubling.”


“We advise you to decline to present a photo ID for this election if requested,” reads a part of the letter, which also informs voters about candidates endorsed by the local Democratic committee.


 



And one voter reported “Shots Fired – A Lot of Them – Near Chester Polling Place”:


Poll workers in Chester worry that the state’s new voter ID bill could suppress turnout. You know what else suppresses turnout? Gunshots.


I just returned from a polling place on Johnson Street in Sun Village, a watch-your-back neighborhood in Chester’s East Side, where more than a dozen shots rang out after the polls opened this morning.  “We have a lot of people who walk here to vote. We want to protect them but how can we?” asked Ashaki-Imani Prince, a judge of elections. “They’ll be afraid they might be shot.”



Only 33 people had voted at the garage as of 1:06 p.m. All of them had their ID, by the way.


 


More reports of successful Voter ID rollouts across PA:


 


PA Election Chief: Voter ID Rollout Going Well 


Voter ID Test Run Goes Smoothly in Northampton County 


Polls Officially Closed


 

Vote Fraud Denier Tova Wang Goes All In



She’s back, and wackier than ever.  Vote fraud denier Tova Wang goes all in at the once relevant U.S. News and World Report, denying vote fraud.

“If you’re asking me if there is fraud at the polling place, then I would say no, we do not have a serious problem with fraud in this country. . . . Those cases are always very easily caught, very frequently by the very organization that’s overseeing the work. And there’s absolutely zero evidence that anyone who has put any false information on a voter registration form has actually voted using that information.”

Wang is hawking her August book release The Politics of Voter Suppression: Defending and Expanding Americans’ Right to Vote. 

Some encouraging news – the voter fraud deniers always have to turn to academic publishing houses for their books, houses willing to accept enormous losses when the books sell 600 copies.  Wang’s forthcoming book, naturally, will be published at Cornell University Press where a 600 copy run will be deemed a grand success. 

Election Law Center will be tracking the sales figures of various voter fraud denier books and providing regular updates compared with sales of the forthcoming book by John Fund.

The Return of Toby Moore to the Justice Department

From our sources:

Please welcome Dr. Toby Moore to the Section as our new social science analyst.  Toby started this week, and is sitting in Room 7148.   As many of you know, Toby served as a political geographer in the Section from 2000-2006.   Most recently, he was working on a contract research project related to UOCAVA at the Defense Department’s Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP).  In the last several years, he worked on election administration research projects under contract for the United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC), among other research-related projects.  He also worked for the Carter-Baker Commission at American University.  Toby will be assisting us with the Section’s litigation and Section 5 administrative review work.  We are pleased to have him join Peyton and Sarah on our team of in-house experts.  We will be bringing him around to meet people soon, but feel free to stop by and welcome him.