Another Record Traffic Month at Election Law Center

Thanks to everyone who has bookmarked Election Law Center or makes it a regular part of your day.  August was another record month for traffic to the site.  Traffic has more than tripled since the release of Injustice in October 2011.  Alexa rankings continue to rise, and now has the site at #134,000 among all internet sites in the United States.  That might not seem so high but consider another well known election law related site that has been around a lot longer is ranked #128,326.  Between the content at Election Law Center and the links to PJ Media, the content you read here is some of the most read election law related content on the internet.  That doesn’t happen without your clicks.  Thanks.

And thanks also to Tabella and Lex, two folks who know more about elections and voter fraud than just about anyone.  They keep the site alive when I am out and about traveling and speaking or otherwise unable to post updates.  The spike in traffic here not only correlated with the release of my book but with the addition of these two experts as regular contributors. 

The other reason I think traffic has increased so dramatically is that other sources of election related information have an extraordinary bias.  One can take only so many links to TPM Muckraker or ThinkProgress before you start to wonder what isn’t being told.  (Eg. this).

The landscape has dramatically changed from five years ago.  Discussion and litigation about election law issues is no longer monopolized by one side of the political spectrum.  And the soaring traffic numbers confirm there was an audience for a new source of information. Thanks.

Guilty: Non-citizen voting in Florida



Orlando Sentinel: “A Plantation man pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges he illegally voted in the 2008 general election and also pretended he was a U.S. citizen when he bought firearms.


Josef Sever, 52, admitted in federal court in Miami that he illegally voted in a federal election and falsely claimed he was a citizen in order to buy guns from a licensed dealer, renew a state concealed weapon license and register to vote, prosecutors said.”

Texas Voter ID Ruling: In-Person Voter Fraud Not Required

No surprise that some of the election law “experts” aren’t saying much about this part of the Texas Voter ID opinion:


Contrary to the position taken by the United States, however, Crawford informs our analysis of SB 14 in two important ways. The first goes to purpose. It is crucial, we think, that the Court held in Crawford that Indiana could act to prevent in-person voter fraud despite the fact that “[t]he record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history.” Id. at 194 (emphasis added). Indeed, the Court emphatically held that “[t]here is no question about the legitimacy or importance of” this interest. Id. at 202-03 21  (emphasis added). After all, “the ‘electoral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters.’ ” Id. at 197 (quoting Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker III, Building Confidence in U.S. Elections § 2.5 (Sept. 2005)). Given this, we reject the argument, urged by the United States at trial, that the absence of documented voter fraud in Texas somehow suggests that Texas’s interests in protecting its ballot box and safeguarding voter confidence were “pretext.” A state interest that is unquestionably legitimate for Indiana—without any concrete evidence of a problem—is unquestionably legitimate for Texas as well.

True the Vote/Judicial Watch NVRA Lawsuit Against Ohio


TRUE THE VOTE AND JUDICIAL WATCH SUE OHIO ELECTION OFFICIALS TO FORCE CLEAN UP OF VOTING ROLLS



Ohio Election Officials Have Failed to Maintain Clean Voter Registration Lists



Voter Registration Rolls in 3 Ohio Counties Exceed 100% of Total Voting Population – Lawsuit Alleges State in Violation of National Voter Registration Act



HOUSTON, TX. August 30, 2012― Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a lawsuit in partnership with True the Vote against election officials in the State of Ohio, alleging violations of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted and Ohio election officials have failed to take reasonable steps to maintain clean voter registration lists as required by Section 8 of the NVRA (Judicial Watch and True the Vote v. Jon Husted in his official capacity as Secretary of State of the State of Ohio, Civil Action (No. 2:12-cv-00792)).



On February 6, 2012, Judicial Watch sent a letter to Ohio Secretary Jon Husted notifying him that the State of Ohio was in violation of Section 8 of the NVRA and that, as the chief State election official in the State of Ohio, he is responsible for Ohio’s compliance with Section 8 of the NVRA. Based upon an analysis of U.S. Census and other data, Judicial Watch found that the number of persons listed on voter registration rolls in three counties in the State of Ohio exceeded 100% of the total voting age population. (Judicial Watch also noted that 31 other Ohio counties contained registration rolls that contain between 90% and 100% of total voting age population. Typically, only 71% of eligible voters register to vote.)



On March 2, 2012, the Secretary, through his Chief Legal Counsel, responded to Judicial Watch’s February 6, 2012, letter indicating that Secretary Husted and his office “share your concerns about the accuracy of our voting lists.” The letter pointed to a directive issued on April 18, 2011, to remove ineligible voters from the list due to change of address, but failed to mention a single initiative undertaken to comply with the directive. Moreover, the response failed to reference a single initiative by the State of Ohio to removed deceased or otherwise ineligible voters from voting lists. 


In the March 2, 2012, response, the Secretary asserted that the State of Ohio’s efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls “have been hampered… by the restrictions and seemingly inconsistent provisions of the NVRA” and noted that he had written a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder “to discuss possible solutions,” but had not received a response.


According to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit: “The March 2, 2012, response, the lack of any further response, and the failure to produce any additional documents regarding any other voter list maintenance programs or activities undertaken by the State of Ohio confirms that the State of Ohio has failed to satisfy its voter list maintenance obligations under Section 8 of the NVRA.”


Judicial Watch is asking the court to force the State of Ohio to manage its lists in a manner consistent with the NRVA.


“To date, we have been given no signal that voter rolls are being properly maintained across the state, which only further inhibits our ability to research more flagrant forms of fraud. If we can’t assure the public that even the most basic principles of federal election law are being upheld, faith in our voting system can become irrevocably shaken,” said True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht.


“Election officials in the State of Ohio are shirking their responsibility to maintain clean voter registration lists. Dirty election rolls can lead to voter and election fraud. Ohio’s voting rolls are a mess and we hope a court will require that they be cleaned up prior to Election Day,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.


The new lawsuit details how poorly maintained voter registration lists are a nationwide problem: “According to research conducted by the Center for the States of the non-partisan Pew Charitable Trusts (Pew) inaccurate voter registrations are rampant. Pew’s independent research published in February 2012 indicates that approximately 24 million active voter registrations throughout the United States — or one out of every eight registrations — are either no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.”


According to a Judicial Watch investigation voter rolls in the following states appear to contain the names of individuals who are ineligible to vote: Mississippi, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Florida, Alabama, California, and Colorado. As part of its 2012 Election Integrity Project, Judicial Watch has put these states on notice that they must clean up their voter registration lists or face Judicial Watch lawsuits.  Judicial Watch filed a separate lawsuit against the State of Indiana related to its dirty voter registration lists as well.


True The Vote separately gave legal notice to 160 counties in 19 states regarding similar potential violations of federal law requiring maintenance of voter rolls. Each county was warned that current data demonstrated more people registered to vote than total voting age population. Efforts to encourage enforcement of maintenance laws are ongoing. 


Judicial Watch is partnering with True the Vote and the Election Law Center’s J. Christian Adams, who previously served in the voting rights section of the Department of Justice (DOJ), on a nationwide campaign to ensure the integrity of the 2012 elections. The groups are also represented in Ohio by the law firm Langdon Law LLC.


Judicial Watch has also uncovered documents showing that the Obama DOJ has also been partnering with the ACORN-connected Project Vote, President Obama’s former employer, to use the NVRA to increase voter registrations for those on public assistance, which is a key Obama voter demographic, while ignoring a stipulation in the NVRA that requires states to keep voter registration lists clean. The Justice Department has also filed lawsuits against states that attempt to Voter ID laws and other measures intended to foster election integrity.


Visit http://truethevote.org/  to access True The Vote and Judicial Watch’s lawsuit against Ohio.



Voter ID Opponents: Assuming Facts Not In Evidence



Regardless of where one stands on the merits of voter ID laws, I hope all would agree that the issue is too important, the stakes too high to merit more than shoddy arguments. Opponents of voter ID laws often start their arguments with a problematic and hidden presumption: they assume the very worst about proponents of the laws.  They presume a sinister partisan motive to make it more difficult for legitimate voters aligned with the Democrats to cast legitimate votes for Democratic candidates.




Judge Evans in his dissent in Crawford provides a great example of these fundamental assumptions.   




“Let’s not beat around the bush, . . . The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.”  Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 472 F.3d 949, 954 (2007) (Evans, J., dissenting).




So does Tova Wang in her new book:




“Over the last fifty years however, Republicans have most frequently and deftly employed election law and procedures to help their party win elections…. Contemporary Republicans have made it a central part of the their election strategy to enact laws that call for practices that will reduce turnout among those who tend to vote Democratic, at least at the margins—where elections can often be won or lost.”  Tova Wang The Politics of Voter Suppression, Preface xiv. 




Do not get me wrong.  Republicans have partisan motives for passing the laws (Rhode Island notwithstanding). Republicans do believe that these laws will help them win elections. But those ideas do not discord with genuine belief that voter fraud occurs in many forms, and when it does occur, it benefits Democrats.   What I challenge is any automatic translation of that legitimate partisan motive as one to suppress legitimate votes.




Despite the fact that experts uniformly agree that our election system is broken, and that a significant majority of Americans are convinced that voter fraud and other voter shenanigans exist, ID opponents cannot wrap their minds around the possibility that Republican lawmakers were acting in good faith. Politicians are bad at many things; failing to embrace popular opinion is usually not one of them.




What about the supposed lack of evidence of voter-impersonation fraud? Doesn’t that prove that proponents could not possibly have good reasons to support the laws? We can debate the evidence issues another day. But even a total absence of evidence does not excuse the opponent’s assumptions. If the vast majority of people believe something to be true, why would lawmakers be any different? On the flip-side, I have no doubt that many opponents truly believe that voter ID laws suppress votes despite the total lack of credible evidence to sustain those convictions.




DOES IT MATTER?




If voter ID laws suppress legitimate votes, though, does it matter whether the critics simply assume that lawmakers acted in bad faith? Yes. A tainted analysis is a poor analysis. 




Imagine the law’s backers beginning their inquiry of the opposition’s arguments by assuming that opponents really just want to keep vote fraud alive. Surely some people do believe that, but not in respectable circles. Even voter ID’s strongest and most vocal proponents don’t think so little of their ideological adversaries.  




Some Republicans also believe that efforts to restrict military voting are attempts by Democrats to suppress Republican votes.  But I don’t think it sound to begin any analysis of military-voting issues by assuming nefarious, partisan voter suppression.




Consider another unrelated example: some people think that the President Obama and Democrats in Congress pushed the Affordable Care Act to destroy health care as we know it, so they could then usher in a single-payer national health system. Yet it would be silly for serious critics or judges to begin any serious critique of the law with that premise as a foundation.




Nevertheless, voter ID opponents make similar rhetorical errors.  They assume the worst about the motives behind voter ID and allow such assumptions to drive their conclusions. Furthermore, these arguments have become legal arguments too; they lie at the heart of the claim that lawmakers engaged in intentional discrimination when passing ID laws. Fortunately, the DC Circuit just rejected this argument in the Texas ID case.




I agree with Professor Hasen’s observation: “Objectivity is a [constant struggle] when analyz[ing] disputes in the voting wars.” Voting Wars, page 109. True enough. And the current critiques of voter ID provide a good example of subjective and loaded analysis. 

Alabama Voter Fraud Press Release

Armistead: Voter Fraud Alive and Well in Alabama


“Democrats Refuse to Acknowledge the Clear Facts”



TAMPA, Fla. – Dana Beyerle reported on Wednesday in the Tuscaloosa News that Uniontown in Perry County has 130 percent of their population registered to vote. In the municipal elections held on Tuesday, 1,431 ballots were cast, representing 125 percent of the population in Uniontown that is 18 or older. Beyerle also reported that 45 percent of the ballots cast were absentee ballots, compared to the 3 to 5 percent average for the state.



“Something is fishy in Perry County and it amazes me that Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Mark Kennedy refuses to acknowledge the evidence placed before him concerning voter fraud in Alabama,” stated Bill Armistead, Chairman of the Alabama Republican Party. “It is completely obvious to anyone who looks at the facts with an open mind that voter fraud is alive and well in Alabama.




“Unfortunately, Kennedy is so busy trying to cloud the issue by hysterically screaming ‘racism’ everywhere he goes, he can’t see that African American voters are being disenfranchised by the criminal activities such as what’s happening in Uniontown,” Armistead continued. “As former Alabama Democratic Congressman Artur Davis told the Montgomery Advertiser earlier this year, ‘The truth is that the most aggressive contemporary voter suppression in the African American community, at least in Alabama, is the wholesale manufacture of ballots, at the polls and absentee, in parts of the Black Belt.’




“Fortunately, Artur decided to put principle above partisanship and has joined the Republican Party in our efforts to expose and combat voter fraud in Alabama. It is my hope that Chairman Kennedy will put aside politics and posturing long enough to realize he needs to investigate these claims for himself and do everything he can to promote fair and transparent elections at every ballot box in the state. Alabama voters, both Republican and Democrat, deserve that much,” concluded Armistead.

What Crawford Does and Does Not Do

Until today, folks thought that Crawford either would control the outcome of voter ID in a Section 5 context, or thought that it had nothing to do with it.  I took the position that Crawford does not provide a blanket safe harbor in a Section 5 context, and provides some help in frustrating efforts to establish discriminatory intent by a lack of in-person voter fraud.   Some mischaracterize Crawford entirely, claiming it upholds voter ID per se.  That’s flat wrong.

The court’s opinion today was largely consistent with mine.  First, it rejected the DOJ’s attempt to establish discriminatory intent by the lack on in-person voter fraud.  This is significant because DOJ is doing the same thing to South Carolina.  No more.  The DCDC isn’t going to look at the lack of in-person voter fraud to establish a racist conspiracy to enact voter ID.  Kiss that argument goodbye.

Second, the court made clear that the posture of the Indiana case (a 14th Amendment attack) bears no resemblance to a Section 5 case.  The burdens are reversed, etc.  So Crawford does not provide a safe harbor to voter ID laws in a Section 5 context, a position I’ve advocated against sometime mighty headwinds.

Third – and here is the new part pointed out to me by a contributor to this blog – the court also rejected evidence like that presented by Victoria Rose Rodriguez.  Rodriguez was a student who couldn’t get a ride to get voter ID, or so she said.  A preposterous part of the Texas trial featured Rodriguez griping that she didn’t have time to get ID, but managed to fly to Washington D.C. to testify.  The court squarely rejected such nonsense using Crawford. 

Point #3 makes it clear the folly of submitting plans to DOJ for preclearance.  It took a federal court to reject the nonsense being served up by Holder’s lawyers.  In an administrative submission – the saga of Victoria Rodriguez would have played a weighty role.

But these are small victories.  Point #2 above remains the most significant one.  Crawford does not entitle voter ID to preclearance, but only limits some of the more outlandish evidentiary fables by creative DOJ lawyers.