If you haven’t read Injustice yet (free chapter here) there is a good review by Academy Award nominated screenwriter (so fun to say) Roger Simon here.  He calls Injustice “Maybe the most important American publication this year.”  A snippet:

That out of the way, let me turn to why I believe Injustice may be the most important American publication this year. Simply, the book details quite specifically how the U.S. DOJ has been corrupted, hijacked might be a more appropriate term, by so-called “progressive” ideology to the extent that it no longer functions remotely as a genuine Department of Justice, but as something out of Orwell’s Animal Farm or Ugo Betti’s Corruption in the Palace of Justice. Just as in Orwell, justice is selectively and unequally applied and, as in Betti, the fish rots from the top.

Philly.com.

On with Jesse Lee Peterson right now in the 10:00 am hour, right now.  Affiliate map here.

Washington Times here:

Opponents should look no further than D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray, who recently learned a textbook lesson on how not to look stupid.

I appeared, along with Herman Cain, on the Tea Party Power Hour.

The Nebraska News reports that Nebraska’s Republican-dominated Legislature succeeded in making it a lot tougher for President Obama to compete for one of Nebraska’s five electoral votes in 2012, according to new poll data. 

Redistricting is such a science that it usually does work.

According to the New York Times, parents voting for a student child away at college, signatures on absentee ballots that don’t match the signature on file, ineligible voters that register to vote and voting are examples of “honest mistakes” and do not qualify as voter fraud.  Tell that to the candidate that loses by 10 votes because 20 non-eligible felons, non-citizens, and dead people vote in an election.  Not a lot until you are on the losing end and the will of the people is thwarted.  Voting illegally for another person disenfranchises legitimate votes and is a felony, punishable by prison.  Of course, prosecutors need to understand the importance of such disenfranchisement.  However, if the New York Times had its way, such impersonation voting would be a common practice explainable by “honest mistakes.”

Of course, the New York Times also believes that the verification of the citizenship of voters is a suppression tool of the Republicans.  It is a current requirement that only citizens vote, but the left apparently doesn’t want to actually check databases to see if that the voter is a citizen because it might suppress those not qualified to vote from voting.  You see if there are a lot of “honest mistakes,” it could turn a close election in a fraudulent victory.  And we wonder why election law litigation has mushroomed since 2000.  The myth of voter fraud becomes the myth of fair elections.      

I will be on KCMO in Kansas City Monday morning in the 8am hour to talk about Injustice with Greg Knapp.

In a previous post, we discussed the merits of Colorado counties sending absentee ballots to inactive voters.  Inactive voters were placed on the inactive list for a very good reason: because they failed to vote in a number of election cycles, failed to respond to mailings, or there were mailings (even ballots) returned to the elections office as undeliverable. In some cases, the post office notifies election officials that the individual has moved to another jurisdiction with a forwarding address where the voter may be entitled to vote.

So, it is interesting how very wrong the ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, Elections
Subcommittee can get an elections-related
issue involving absentee ballots to overseas military voters, and then demagogue the issue ~ alleging *gasp* voter suppression.  In a nutshell, the press release states:  “Gonzalez Condemns Move to Deny Ballots to Military Voters.”  It is ironic that a Texas Congressman would condemn a Colorado Secretary of State Gessler considering the former actually participated in hearings and presumably voted for the MOVE Act that essentially did the same thing for which he now condemns Gessler, except on a national level.  Just as he failed to read the health care bill, he apparently didn’t read or understand the MOVE Act.     

The voting reforms of the MOVE Act removed the senseless previous requirement to send absentee ballots to overseas military voters for up to two federal cycles, regardless if a past ballot sent to the voter has been previously returned as undeliverable or some other reason the voter would not ordinarily receive a ballot (i.e. registration made inactive, or some other state requirement for an updated absentee ballot request.)  As a member on the Committee on House Administration itself, Gonzalez should have been aware that election officials actually requested that this section of the military voting law be modified for the overall good of the voter and efficient election administration.  The Congress agreed. 

I am sure the goal of the Congressman Gonzalez is not to suppress the vote of military voters by sending useless ballots to the last known undeliverable (but wrong) address of an military voter with little to no chance of return, thereby disenfranchising the voter.  Instead, the mutual goal (we hope) is to correctly update the outdated address of the overseas military voter which allows him or her to fully participate in the election.  In the end, Congress listened to the experts and made this prudent change in the MOVE Act. 

While some unfairly guess at Gessler’s motive to bring uniformity to Colorado, the facts and the fundamentals favors Secretary of State Gessler in his decision to stand by the plain reading of the Colorado law requiring the mailing of absentee ballots only to active voters.  Mailing ballots to inactive voters is unnecessarily expensive and a waste of resources, as very few are ever returned.  The practice of sending a ballot to an inactive voter also provides an heightened opportunity for absentee ballot fraud where there is already an indication that the person has moved to another jurisdiction and may not be entitled to vote.  To allow the sending of ballots to addresses that are undeliverable or to inactive voters is setting the system up for abuse and, unfortunately, the next headline that undermines voter confidence.  All experts agree that the absentee ballot mailing system is already more susceptible to fraud than other
methods of voting so why would anyone want to increase the possibility of problems.  As they say an “ounce of prevention”….

Individuals are placed on inactive lists because they have not participated in elections for a lengthy period of time or have had mailings sent to them and returned as
undeliverable or with a forwarding address.  Sometimes the postal service notifies the election office that the person has moved to another jurisdiction, but the individual has not personally requested to be removed from the rolls, thus delaying any prompt list maintenance process.  These are all indications that the voter
has moved and not entitled to vote in the election.  However, their presence remains
on the voter rolls for years as dead weight, artificially inflating the true number of registered voters in
the jurisdiction.  While federal law requires inactive voters to stay dormant on the rolls for years, the high number of inactive voters on the Colorado voter rolls is a unfortunate failure of counties and the state to conduct systematic list maintenance activities.

In Colorado, it is apparent that most counties agree with Gessler’s interpretation of the statute; however, there are always one or two counties that just have to do things different by sending ballots to inactive registrants ~ they are convinced they care more, but the truth is that they are hurting more voters.  The lack of uniformity between counties is the issue that reared its head in Florida 2000.  When each county goes its own way with such issues, its always ends badly.