Unhinged Democrat Legislator Unhinges Further

 LA Times.  District 17, Nevada State House.



“The arrest followed a high-speed chase that ended when police used spike strips to disable the runaway vehicle in which the driver was throwing metal objects at police, including a handgun, according to the Victorville Daily Press.

Earlier this year, Brooks was arrested on suspicion of threatening a fellow Democrat, Assembly Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick. Within days after Brooks’ reported threats against the speaker, he was accused of grabbing for an officer’s gun during an arrest in Las Vegas on suspicion of domestic battery.


In February, troubles also arose: Law enforcement officers said investigators shadowing Brooks from North Las Vegas say he unsuccessfully tried to purchase an unspecified type of gun at a northern Nevada sporting goods store.


Investigators say Brooks had a gun and dozens of rounds of ammunition in his car after the first arrest.”

DOJ Amicus in Montana Voting Case

DOJ files an amicus in the 9th Circuit: “Civil rights attorneys from the U.S. Justice Department say a federal judge wrongly denied a request to establish satellite election offices for American Indians on three Montana reservations.


Plaintiffs from the Crow, Northern Cheyenne and Fort Belknap Reservations say in a lawsuit before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals they must drive long distances to county courthouses for early voting and late registration.

They say that leaves them disadvantaged compared to white voters.

But in the run-up to last fall’s election, U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull ruled there was no evidence Indians couldn’t vote for the candidate of their choice.

Justice Department attorneys say in a friend-of-the-court brief filed this week that Cebull overlooked discrimination suffered by Indians who lack the resources to travel far.”

The Justice Department filed an amicus brief in the 9th Circuit.  If the DOJ believes not having satellite election offices is discriminatory, it certainly could have filed a lawsuit last fall when the private plaintiffs filed the case. Or, it might have filed a motion to intervene and undertaken genuine Section 2 litigation.  Instead, the Department seems to prefer to pontificate through amicus briefs.  Fine, but recognize that the claim that the Bush administration didn’t vigorously enforce federal voting laws looks more absurd with each passed opportunity for the Obama administration to actually litigate a case.  It also makes Pam Karlan’s false scholarship about the Bush Section 2 enforcement record look even more dishonest.

“How Obamacare Could Increase Voter Intimidation”

 Breitbart:  “Voter intimidation can take many forms, all of which are felonies,” Engelbrecht said. “This navigator system brings with it the unabated risk that community organizers will attach strings between the public benefit and the recipient’s vote – especially in the minds of the most economically vulnerable among us.”

The election watchdog said it would be expanding efforts in emergent communities to expose such coercive activity in election cycles to come.

New Paper: Mandatory Voter Registration: How Universal Registration Threatens Electoral Integrity

The Heritage Foundation has this new policy paper which wrecks the arguements for mandatory voter registration.  A portion:



Abstract
There is no question that the U.S. voter registration system could be improved. However, the answer to America’s voter registration problems is not federal mandates or federal interference in election administration. Indeed, the federal government has almost no experience administering elections; states administer elections in the laboratories of democracy. As a result of this exercise in federalism, states are implementing numerous improvements to the voter registration system—and they are doing it at less cost to our treasury, our Constitution, and the integrity of our elections than mandatory universal registration.

It has been said that for every complex problem there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong. Washington soon may seek a complex solution—preemption of states’ responsibility; federal micromanagement of elections; eventual coercion of lackadaisical citizens—to the nonproblem of people choosing not to vote.

—George F. Will [1]


Mandatory voter registration (MVR), previously termed “universal” registration, could significantly damage the integrity of America’s voter registration system. The “voter registration modernization”[2] concept of automatically registering individuals through information contained in various existing government databases would throw the current system into chaos.


Specifically, voter registration modernization could result in the registration of large numbers of ineligible voters as well as multiple or duplicate registrations of the same individuals. When combined with the accompanying proposal that states allow any individuals who are not automatically registered to register and vote on Election Day, MVR presents a sure formula for registration and voter fraud that could damage the integrity of elections.


Automatically registering individuals to vote without their permission would also violate their basic right to choose whether they wish to participate in the U.S. political process. Indeed, this new scheme threatens one of American’s most cherished liberties: the freedom to be left alone by the government.


A “Solution” in Search of a Problem


Lack of registration is not the reason people do not vote. Ideological organizations such as FairVote and the Brennan Center for Justice are proposing that states automatically register all individuals to vote using existing government databases. Such proposals are based on the false premise that large numbers of Americans do not vote “for no other reason than they are not registered to vote.”[3] Yet after every federal election, the U.S. Census Bureau publishes reports on the levels of registration and voting, including surveys of individuals who do not vote, that disprove the claims that the major reason individuals do not vote is a lack of registration opportunities