The Monitor reports on a case that few outside Texas’ Rio Grande Valley likely will, perhaps because it goes against the narrative that voter fraud is “non-existent” or is not “widespread” enough to affect the outcome of elections.  But like the recent indictments of politiqueras in Hidalgo and Cameron counties, Lopez v. Rivera fits a pattern of persistent, widespread fraud and corruption that does influence the outcome of local elections – and disenfranchise legitimate voters – in overwhelmingly Democratic South Texas.

In the contested Weslaco City Commission election, just 16 votes separate challenger Leticia Lopez from incumbent Lupe Rivera, far fewer than the number of alleged illegal votes counted, and legal votes improperly rejected, due to mail ballot manipulation, vote buying, official misconduct, and illegal voter registrations – including one home where 23 people are registered to vote.

“The case has been working its way toward a court decision with a discovery process largely defined by Lopez’s side trying to collect depositions from dozens of voters and Rivera’s side filing motions to stop them from doing so.”  The attorney on ‘Rivera’s side’ attempting to block voter depositions is Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa.

“Lopez’s allegations essentially accuse the Rivera campaign of a concentrated effort to use politiqueras to register voters in the district — whether they were eligible to vote there or not — and of interfering with mail-in ballots. The lawsuit lists voters it is questioning, especially in small homes where large numbers of people voted.”

Lopez’s attorney Jerad Najvar says, “This case presents a critical opportunity to achieve justice in a case of apparent voter fraud, including allegations of non-resident voting and various illegalities with mail-in votes handled by the Rivera campaign.”

“Look, this is a civil rights case… If, as we have alleged, a campaign packs a district with people who don’t really live there and manipulates the mail-in ballots, it’s taking the election out of the hands of the voters.  I hope that what comes out of this is people see you don’t have to put up with this anymore.”

The Colorado Observer reports:

The state House gave final approval Thursday a bill to bring special district and non-partisan elections in line with the 2013 Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act, over the objections of Republicans who said the measure would expand the potential for voter fraud…

 
House Majority Leader Dickey Lee Hullinghorst (D-Boulder) scoffed at warnings that the bill would open the door for outside voters to cast ballots in local races… “Why in the world would you do this intentionally when you’re subject to a felony?”

Holbert countered that such voters would be able to argue they had not committed a felony as long as they repeat “the seven magic words: I intend to live in the district.”

Democrats were relying on a couple of Republicans for a veneer of bipartisanship, but Rep. Carole Murray has already removed herself as a co-sponsor, and Senate co-sponsor Ellen Roberts is expected to follow suit.

The bill now goes to the Senate, which two successful recalls reduced to a one-Democrat majority.  But however House Bill 14-1164 plays out, the serious defects in Colorado’s electoral process created by HB 13-1303 remain.

By Hans von Spakovsky

Barack Obama was much more diplomatic in this year’s State of the Union speech when it came to the Supreme Court and a discussion of campaign and election issues. It was only four years ago that he very directly criticized the Court for its decision in Citizens United, leading Justice Samuel Alito, who was sitting in the audience of senators and representatives, to shake his head at the misstatements the president made about the case. 

In 2014, President Obama simply claimed that “last year, part of the Voting Rights Act was weakened,” indirectly referring to the Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder. He solicited support for the effort by “conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats . . . working together to strengthen it.” This is a reference to the Voting Rights Act Amendment of 2014, which Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R., Wis.) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) recently introduced to overturn Shelby County. 

Of course, the Shelby County decision didn’t actually weaken the VRA. It simply recognized that it is 2013, not 1965, and that the South no longer needs to be in federal receivership. The Court did not touch any of the other provisions of the law that protect Americans from voting discrimination, including Section 2, which is a nationwide, permanent provision.

Obama also called for support for the recommendations of his Advisory Commission on Election Administration, which was chaired by Republican lawyer Ben Ginsburg and former White House counsel Bob Bauer.

NRO’s own John Fund analyzed their conclusions last week. The president referred specifically to the report’s recommendation that, as the president said in his speech, no one should have “to wait more than a half hour to vote.” But, as Fund pointed out, an MIT study of the 2012 election found that the average waiting time for voters was only 14 minutes anyway, so this recommendation is one that the vast majority of jurisdictions in the U.S. already meet.

As John also noted, that same report recommended expansion of early voting and absentee voting, which is not a good idea without the security measures needed to protect against fraud (like voter ID), something this president’s attorney general is dead set against. Of course, the president did not mention the best recommendation in the report: that voter-registration lists be cleaned up. Attorney General Eric Holder has refused to enforce federal requirements in the National Voter Registration Act mandating that states maintain the accuracy of their voter lists.

Finally, the president said that “it should be the power of our vote, not the size of our bank account, that drives our democracy.” This is, to say the least, an interesting statement coming from someone who raised more money as a candidate than any other presidential candidate ever and was the first presidential candidate to forgo public funding so he could keep raising private contributions.