"Democrats Dismiss Voter-Fraud Worries, but Reality Intrudes"

NR:  Three federal courts have thrown out voter-ID laws in North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin in recent days. Left-wing judges accepted spurious evidence that such laws were racially discriminatory, and they also insisted there is little voter fraud to worry about. Last April, United States District Judge Lynn Adelman of Wisconsin claimed that “virtually no voter impersonation occurs” in Wisconsin and that “no evidence suggests that voter-impersonation fraud will become a problem at any time in the foreseeable future.”

Despite such sweeping statements, polls show that the general public is worried about fraud and bureaucratic incompetence in voting. According to a Pew Research Center survey, only 31 percent of Americans were confident that “the votes across the country were accurately counted” in the 2012 election. Small wonder. A separate Pew survey in 2012 found that one out of eight voter registrations is inaccurate, out-of-date, or a duplicate. Some 2.8 million people are registered in two or more states, and 1.8 million registered voters are dead.

A really thoughtful restaurant. (Link to source)

restaurant labels their brownies based on what part of the pan it was baked on.

center, edge or corner

Appeals court holds that it was “passed with racially discriminatory intent.”

"Court strikes down North Carolina voter ID law"

The ruling also invalidated limits the same state law placed in 2013 on early voting, same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting, and preregistration

The three judges assigned to the case — all Democratic appointees — were unanimous that the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature violated the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act three years ago by enacting the measure requiring voters to show certain types of photo ID at the polls.

"The record makes clear that the historical origin of the challenged provisions in this statute is not the innocuous back-and-forth of routine partisan struggle that the State suggests and that the district court accepted," Judge DIana Motz wrote on behalf of Judges James Wynn and Henry Floyd. "Rather, the General Assembly enacted them in the immediate aftermath of unprecedented African American voter participation in a state with a troubled racial history and racially polarized voting. The district court clearly erred in ignoring or dismissing this historical background evidence, all of which supports a finding of discriminatory intent."

The court's opinion bluntly described the legislation as a clear effort to suppress the black vote.

I think it's racist to assume blacks can't or wont get an ID.

"The Mysterious Number of American Citizens"

"Supreme Court justices assume we know how many Americans can vote. But we have no idea."

Many Americans believe that someone, somewhere in Washington, must be in charge of tracking who is and who isn’t a citizen of the United States. Apparently, so does the U.S. Supreme Court, which just accepted a voting rights case that turns on the government’s ability to count the number of citizens in each voting district. But despite all the talk these days about government and Big Data, the justices, like the rest of us, might be surprised to learn that the most basic information as to who is an American citizen cannot actually be found in any publicly available government data set — anywhere...

“What about the U.S. Census?” you might be wondering. It’s true that the census releases a data set that provides the building blocks of redistricting plans for Congress, state legislatures, city councils and school boards. But that data set counts just two things: the total number of people, and the number of people over the age of 18, in every community in the country. The data file has no information about which of those people are citizens and which are not. (read more)

Not even the much maligned, all knowing, intrusive NSA knows who is a citizen and who is not?

Instapundit: "Should the electorate have to pass a patriotism test?"

"In a country like ours, where voters reign supreme, it seems as if concern about the patriotism of rulers ought to also apply to voters."

Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, in his famous novel Starship Troopers, envisioned a society where voters, too, had to demonstrate their patriotism before being allowed to vote. In his fictional society, the right to vote came only after some kind of dangerous public service — in the military, as a volunteer in dangerous medical experiments, or in other ways that demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice personally for the common good. The thought was that such voters would be more careful, and less selfish, in their voting.

So when the five-day wonder of questioning Barack Obama's patriotism is over, perhaps we should address another question: How patriotic is the electorate?

Maybe those Colorado voters, Chip referred to in the last post, would think more carefully about who they vote for, if they had some skin in the game... wait. I didn't mean to inject race in this post. "Skin in the game" is just a common phrase devoid of any racial overtones.

In the phrase, "skin" is a synecdoche for the person involved, and "game" is the metaphor for the actions on whatever field of play is at reference. The aphorism is particularly common in business, finance, and gambling, and is also used in politics.

Maybe it should be extended to voting.

Voter Turned Away After Illegal Voter Pretended to be Him

An impostor illegally used a New Mexico’s man vote three days before the actual person came in to vote. The incident occurred in Rio Arriba County. When the real person came to cast his ballot, he was at first turned away, being told that he had already voted.

Only when the real person contested, saying he had not in fact voted, did election officials review their files and compare the signatures they had on record with the one signed by whoever voted three days earlier.

The signatures did not match. Why the officials did not check this in the first place has not been stated, and required voter ID laws were not in place. (read more)

"Could non-citizens decide the November election?"

"Could control of the Senate in 2014 be decided by illegal votes cast by non-citizens? Some argue that incidents of voting by non-citizens are so rare as to be inconsequential, with efforts to block fraud a screen for an agenda to prevent poor and minority voters from exercising the franchise, while others define such incidents as a threat to democracy itself. Both sides depend more heavily on anecdotes than data."

Our data comes from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). Its large number of observations (32,800 in 2008 and 55,400 in 2010) provide sufficient samples of the non-immigrant sub-population, with 339 non-citizen respondents in 2008 and 489 in 2010. For the 2008 CCES, we also attempted to match respondents to voter files so that we could verify whether they actually voted.  

How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010. (read the whole thing)

NYT: Rand Paul Diverges From His Party Over Voter ID

"Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky broke Friday with fellow Republicans who have pushed for stricter voting laws as a way to crack down on fraud at the polls, saying that the focus on such measures alienates and insults African-Americans and hurts the party."

“Everybody’s gone completely crazy on this voter ID thing,” Mr. Paul said in an interview. “I think it’s wrong for Republicans to go too crazy on this issue because it’s offending people.” (read more)

AP: "Federal judge rejects Wisconsin voter ID law"

BREAKING: Federal judge rejects Wisconsin voter ID law, says it unfairly burdens poor and minorities.
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 29, 2014