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Voter ID Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 02, 2020 18 Comments
While the legal challenges to the 2020 presidential election count in several states are not over, one thing is clear. To prevent future election mischief and theft, Republicans are going to have to fight as hard to tighten election security laws in 2021 and beyond as Democrats fought to weaken election security laws in 2020.

Posted by Stacey Matthews on February 27, 2019 29 Comments
A Wake County Superior Court judge in North Carolina has written a ruling so outlandish that state Democrats and Republicans, who are normally at each other's throats, have found themselves in rare agreement. The Raleigh News and Observer reports:
A judge has just thrown out two amendments to the North Carolina Constitution that voters approved in November.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 10, 2018 35 Comments
The California Motor Voter program was promoted as a way to make registering to vote at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) more convenient. Eligible applicants would completing a driver license, identification (ID) card or change of address transaction with the DMV, and then would be automatically registered to vote by the California Secretary of State (unless they choose to opt out), The new rule is as successful as I anticipated. The only law that really works in California is the one involving unintended consequences.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 27, 2018 54 Comments
Friday, the Fifth Circuit gave the hotly contested Texas voter ID law the go-ahead. After several rewrites, the latest version of the law passed legal muster.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on January 25, 2018 26 Comments
A California law, which goes into effect on April 1, automatically registers people to vote when they apply for a new driver's license or new state identification card. The Golden State permits anyone who claims to be in the country legally, even without proof, to obtain a license. So, logically, I anticipate that California could be getting a whole, new crop of illegal immigrant voters.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 24, 2017 55 Comments
A federal judge has once again struck down the Texas voter ID law, stating that the changes the lawmakers made over the summer did not eliminate the discriminatory language. From The Hill:
U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ruled that the law was enacted with the deliberate intent to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters. Ramos said that it violates the Voting Rights Act and the 14th and 15th Amendments of the Constitution.

Posted by Mary Chastain on April 11, 2017 41 Comments
A federal judge has again rejected the 2011 Texas voter ID law, stating that the legislators meant to discriminate against minority voters. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos made this same ruling in 2014, which forced an appeal. The Fifth Circuit issued a stay against the order. The Supreme Court stepped in and allowed Texas to use the voter ID law. But last July the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans asked the judge "to re-examine the decision" since the judges found that "some of the evidence used by the judge wasn't relevant." The two sides reached a deal for the 2016 election, which allowed a voter to "sign a declaration swearing that he or she has had a reasonable difficulty that prevented obtaining one of the accepted forms of photo identification."

Posted by Mary Chastain on February 15, 2017 28 Comments
Oh, Democrats. Why can't you look in the mirror and just admit your problem? The Democrats suffered a massive blow when President Donald Trump crushed Hillary Clinton in the presidential Electoral College race. But Democrats also suffered in Congress and at the state level. To fix that, the party wants to fight over the next round of redistricting and loosen the voting laws. Guess who will guide the push? Former President Barack Obama and his former Attorney General Eric Holder!

Posted by Mary Chastain on September 01, 2016 50 Comments
North Carolina wanted to reinstate its voter ID law in time for the elections, but a deadlocked Supreme Court denied them this opportunity. From The Wall Street Journal:
The high court, in a brief written order, declined to stay an appeals court ruling from July that struck down North Carolina’s Republican-backed voting rules. The appeals court found state lawmakers enacted the rules with the intent to discriminate against black voters.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 10, 2016 42 Comments
A federal judge has weakened the Texas voter ID law while the U.S. Court of Appeals suspended a ruling that eliminated parts of Wisconsin's law. Activists have gone after voter laws recently as the presidential election nears. They insist the poor and minority voters somehow cannot obtain an ID.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 27, 2016 18 Comments
For the first time ever, primary voters will be required to furnish identification before voting in New Hampshire's primary elections February 9. First implemented in New Hampshire's 2012 general election cycle, the goal is to crack down on voter fraud.

Posted by Amy Miller on November 03, 2014 11 Comments
The battle over voter ID has been thrust into the forefront of this election cycle's news coverage, and advocates on both sides of the issue have been working hard to win the hearts and minds of voters, even as most politicos are focused on getting whatever votes they can to win on Tuesday. North Carolina is one of many states in the U.S. where no documentation is required to vote; and in this last ambush video from James O'Keefe, a series of encounters with North Carolina election officials shows just how easy it can be for an imposter to cast multiple votes. Project Veritas Action released the video exclusively to MailOnline:
By this time in 2016, the state government hopes, naysayers who see the voter ID law as a barrier to minorities and the poor will see hundreds of thousands of new, zero-cost IDs coming out of voters' wallets and purses. For now, though, O'Keefe is using North Carolina as a proxy for the other 42 states – and the District of Columbia – which don't require voters to show a photo ID. His crew used publicly available election rolls to identify 'inactive' voters and then chose 30-year-old men for him to impersonate. The final footage shows election officials, over and over, accepting O'Keefe's claim that he was one of those people. 'With almost three-quarters-of-a-million inactive voters and no voter ID law in place, we could have turned the election results for most major candidates in the state,' he claimed Monday. 'What we uncovered in this video illustrates how easy it would be for a well-orchestrated campaign with no regard for the law to change the outcome of a major election. Voter laws across the country need to be changed immediately to prevent this sort of potential voter fraud.'
Watch:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 18, 2014 48 Comments
AP reports via HuffPo:
The Supreme Court said Saturday that Texas can use its controversial new voter identification law for the November election. A majority of the justices rejected an emergency request from the Justice Department and civil rights groups to prohibit the state from requiring voters to produce certain forms of photo identification in order to cast ballots. Three justices dissented. The law was struck down by a federal judge last week, but a federal appeals court had put that ruling on hold. The judge found that roughly 600,000 voters, many of them black or Latino, could be turned away at the polls because they lack acceptable identification. Early voting in Texas begins Monday. The Supreme Court's order was unsigned, as it typically is in these situations. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented, saying they would have left the district court decision in place. "The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters," Ginsburg wrote in dissent. Texas' law sets out seven forms of approved ID — a list that includes concealed handgun licenses but not college student IDs, which are accepted in other states with similar measures.
The Supreme Court Order is here. It denies a request to vacate the stay issued by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals putting on hold the trial court ruling invalidating the law.

Posted by Amy Miller on October 14, 2014 12 Comments
An en banc ruling of the Fifth Circuit has issued a stay against last Friday's order striking down Texas voter identification laws. The Court looked at four key factors when deciding whether or not to grant a stay pending appeal: (1) whether the stay applicant has made a strong showing that he is likely to succeed on the merits; (2) whether the applicant will be irreparably injured absent a stay; (3) whether issuance of the stay will substantially injure the other parties interested in the proceeding; and (4) where the public interest lies. The first two factors are the most important, and the court focused on them when deciding to issue the stay. First, the court looked to the Supreme Court's tendency to preserve the status quo on the eve of an election in order to protect the process from confusion and misapplication of the rules.
Here, the district court’s decision on October 11, 2014 presents similar logistical problems because it will “be extremely difficult, if not impossible,” for the State to adequately train its 25,000 polling workers at 8,000 polling places about the injunction’s new requirements in time for the start of early voting on October 20 or even election day on November 4. The State represents that it began training poll workers in mid-September, and at least some of them have already completed their training. The State also represents that it will be unable to reprint the “election manuals that poll workers use for guidance,” and so the election laws “will be conveyed by word of mouth alone.”
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