The Justice Department’s lawsuit against South Carolina has rekindled political war over state voter identification laws. While the merits of the suit will surely be hashed out in the political arena, the Supreme Court has in fact weighed in on the constitutional arguments offered by opponents of voter ID laws, and found them wanting. In light of the issue’s prevalence, it’s worth revisiting that decision to see what the nation’s highest court had to say about voter ID laws. Opponents of those laws usually make a pair of arguments against them: they claim …
Former President Bill Clinton recently compared voter identification laws to Jim Crow-era statutes that suppressed the black vote after the Civil War. “There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,” Clinton told liberal activists in July. Not so, says John Fund, author of “Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy.” Speaking at Heritage this week, Fund said voter ID laws have won the …
As Matt Mayer vividly describes in a new Heritage Web Memo, the Obama administration is implementing a de facto amnesty that will allow the vast majority of illegal aliens to remain in the United States without being disturbed by the Department of Homeland Security or any attempts to deport them. We can now add one more general amnesty that the administration is apparently extending – no prosecution of illegal voting by noncitizens and a green light to becoming a citizen even if you have violated federal law. FOX News is …
In a decision that was virtually unnoticed in the media (imagine the stories if the holding had been different), the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of Georgia’s voter ID law on January 14 in Common Cause v. Handel. A three-judge panel compared the requirement for a voter to show a photo ID to the modern “burden of air travel in contemporary society.” Before you can board an airplane, you have to present to a federal official an identification card with a photograph. As the Court said, the …
Looking ahead to today’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Attorney General nominee Eric Holder, ranking member Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) says he is worried about Holder’s “ability to maintain his independence from the president.” This is the wrong question. The proper question is one of judgment: Does the nominee demonstrate the kind of judgment necessary to advise the President in a responsible and constitutionally appropriate way? There are at least five issues which raise serious questions about Holder’s judgment: Pardoning Terrorists: As deputy attorney general, Holder played an active …
On Wednesday morning it was 725; on Wednesday night it was 477; on Thursday night it was down to 336; by Friday it was 239; Sunday it was 221; and by today it was down to only 204. Are we talking about the Dow Jones falling on Wall Street? No, we are talking about the incredible shrinking margin of Sen. Norm Coleman’s victory over Al Franken. There is no question that there are usually some slight changes in the vote totals in counties throughout a state as election officials check …
The Volokh Conspiracy‘s Todd Zywicki flags this video from an ABC affiliate in Atlanta, Georgia. This one television station identified more than 100,000 people who were registered to vote in both Georgia and also either Ohio or Florida. Despite the fact that this report aired before election day and involved only three cities, the station already identified three people that appear to have voted twice, and another 11 that could have. Zywicki comments: One really key concern that this story suggests is the potential for fraud among college students. Because …
According to federal election law, any presidential campaign that participates in public financing is automatically audited after an election. When Barack Obama broke his promise to the American people by forgoing the public financing system, his campaign became the first since public financing became law to have a chance of not being audited. Federal law does still allow the Federal Election Commission to audit a presidential campaign that doesn’t participate in public financing, but at least four of the six FEC commissioners must first vote to pursue an investigation “for …
It must really be tough to be a public affairs guy at the Department of Justice who has to explain why the Civil Rights Division is not carrying out its enforcement responsibilities. I have posted previously about the failure of the Civil Rights Division to enforce the Help America Vote Act against Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who has refused to forward information about mismatches between the information contained on new voter registration forms and other state records to county election officials (they have also failed to sue the …
Great editorial by the Wall Street Journal today noting the Department of Justice’s suspiciously selective criteria when it comes to investigating voting issues: Justice has also failed to enter the fray in Ohio. As many as 200,000 new voter registrations in that state are suspect, yet Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is refusing to follow the 2002 Help America Vote Act that requires her to verify these registrations. The Ohio Republican Party sued Mrs. Brunner, but the Supreme Court said the GOP lacked standing. Justice does have standing — …
