The COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased discussion over mail-in ballots for the 2020 presidential election in November. With the possibility of a “second wave” of the virus in the fall, some politicians and media figures have shown support for expanding mail-in accessibility for the general American public.
Politicians and commentators who oppose such efforts have also offered their opinions.
The Daily Wire previously interviewed Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote on the topic, which you can read <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/true-the-vote-founder-talks-fraud-and-frighteningly-lax-security-amid-the-push-for-mail-in-voting">here</a>.
On Thursday, we spoke with Tom Ridge, co-chair of <a href="https://votesafe.us/about/">VoteSafe</a>, “a cross-partisan coalition of election administrators and organizations that endorse the simple principle that every American has the right to vote safely amidst the pandemic,” according to the official VoteSafe website.
The organization’s website adds that VoteSafe is “committed to ensuring voters have options: expanded access to absentee ballots as well as safe, sanitary, and accessible in-person voting locations.”
Tom Ridge, former Pennsylvania governor and former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, spoke with The Daily Wire about the current state of mail-in voting, as well as its benefits, the perception of large pitfalls, and what states can do to prepare for the possibility of dramatically expanded mail-in voting.
If you would rather listen to the interview, it can be played via the SoundCloud embed. The written version is below.
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<blockquote>DW: What are the benefits of mail-in voting?
RIDGE: I think there are multiple benefits with mail-in voting that this country&#8217;s probably recognized since the Civil War. They certainly recognize their importance when people chose in 2016, had to go to the polls, and one out of four, 25%, liked the option of absentee ballots. Now, particularly in light of the COVID-19 challenge and the possible reoccurrence in the fall, and just the overall anxiety and the cautious nature that some people may take to any kind of gathering, making sure that voters have a safe and secure option to in-person balloting I think is a good thing.
The exclamation point I would put on that is, I personally think it is not a privilege to vote in America, I happen to think it&#8217;s a responsibility of citizenship. Likewise, I think it&#8217;s up to those who set policy to create safe and secure options for us to exercise that responsibility in a safe and secure way.
DW: On the flip side, what are the potential downsides for mail-in voting?
RIDGE: Well, it is clear that there&#8217;s much public discussion about potential fraud, and I&#8217;ve done a little research in that regard as well. You can&#8217;t say that there hasn&#8217;t been fraud, but I noted one particular study from the Heritage Foundation that reported there were slightly over 1,200 cases of voter fraud in the past 20 years where nearly a quarter of a billion votes had been cast, and resulted in over a thousand convictions. In that group only about, I think, 200-plus involved absentee ballots.
I also think it&#8217;s important and can be emphasized, particularly in November when I think the majority of Republicans and Democrats and Independents, at least now in June, want to make sure that this option is preserved for them on November 3rd, is that when they sign that absentee ballot, they are reminded that there&#8217;ll be some signature matching and there&#8217;ll be other ways to check it. But more importantly, there are both significant financial and potential imprisonment penalties for fraud. So it is nearly perfect, but one has to admit that there are some problems with it.
My friend, my co-chairman of this, is Governor Jennifer Granholm, and her state data showed that between the last ten years – from 2008 to 2018 – there were slightly under 300 election law offenses and a couple of dozen arrests. So again, is it absolutely, positively 100% fail safe perfect? No. But the record is that it&#8217;s minimal at worst, and neither party has historically been advantaged one way or the other by absentee ballots.
The Republican president won a race, by the way, where a quarter of the votes were absentee, but he&#8217;s now the incumbent president. He&#8217;s got a lot of smart people on his campaign staff already. He&#8217;s got this massive war chest and he has millions that follow him electronically. It&#8217;s almost counterintuitive, since he won an election where one out of four ballots were cast by absentee, with all the resources he has at his disposal, not to be encouraging those who can&#8217;t get to the polls by saying, &#8220;Look, you don&#8217;t have to choose between health and your civic responsibility. We&#8217;ll provide safe and secure options. So vote for me absentee if you&#8217;re not going to the polls.&#8221; It&#8217;s almost counterintuitive.
And I suspect when they get around to it, they probably will because they&#8217;ve gotta believe that a lot of Republican and Democrat incumbents and challengers are going to use this opportunity to encourage more absentee ballots rather than fewer.
DW: Could you take me through the process of what the most secure mail-in ballot operations are, from sending it out to the return, and what procedures are in place to maintain security? What are the most common security provisions for mail-in ballots?
RIDGE: Well, there are a couple of things that I understand. I think, again, I don&#8217;t know with granular detail exactly how it works, but I am familiar that some states do signature tracking. Some well-designed absentees systems have [that] the vote can be tracked through the postal service. Signatures in many states are verified against the voter file.
And I guess your question raises a very legitimate question. There are systems in place to track ballots and verify signatures, but they have five more months to embed other systems. In spite of the minimal fraud that&#8217;s existed historically, they now have five months, if they&#8217;re that concerned at the [state level], they have five months to correct it.
DW: On that, there&#8217;s a quote from Pew that did a study that found, &#8220;Approximately 24 million—one of every eight—voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate, more than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters, [and] approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.” Is this the type of concern when it comes to mail-in security that should be addressed in these upcoming five months?
RIDGE: I think certainly they can, and I think it&#8217;s incumbent upon the individual states. I mean, I know Nancy Pelosi would like to see nationalized elections, and I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s a good thing. It&#8217;s up to the individual governors in the states where we have elected and appointed officials taking care of this. But those numbers would call on anything. Some states have done a better job than others in trying to reduce the potential for fraud.
And I guess even though those statistics are very significant in numbers, the reality is, is that when states have gone in to investigate voter fraud and the abuse of the system, the cases are minimal. They exist, but they&#8217;re minimal.
The concern about widespread fraud has never materialized, and I think, over the years, [states] &#8230; become more and more concerned about its abuse because most policymakers, Republicans or Democrats, want to see more people participate in elections rather than fewer, and one of the best ways of doing that is to further reduce the potential for misuse and abuse, but expand the use of absenteeism.
I voted absentee in the June 2 primary in Pennsylvania, and I want the option in November, and I expect my governor to make sure that the system is not abused.
DW: Advocates against mail-in voting will cite several cases, one of the most prominent being the North Carolina ballot harvesting case from 2018, as a reason that mail-in is susceptible to fraud versus in-person voting, and that there needs to be more security for this type of system. Can you speak about ballot harvesting?
RIDGE: Any time there&#8217;s an abuse, as it was pointed out in North Carolina, it&#8217;s up to the policymakers who recognize the abuse, who&#8217;ve seen the adverse impact on their particular systems, to effectively change it so it doesn&#8217;t happen again. But you don&#8217;t limit the options that other people have. I chair the National Organization on Disability. There&#8217;s a lot of men and women, disabled Americans, who voting by absentee is a very important opportunity for them to exercise their civic responsibility. The military does it. So I&#8217;m not going to quarrel with the fact that there have been instances – and they found it in North Carolina where they&#8217;re harvesting. It&#8217;s an abuse. I condemn the abuse. Then it&#8217;s up to the public officials not to eliminate the option, but to take the appropriate steps, remedial steps, to make sure that it can&#8217;t be abused in that fashion in the future, period.
DW: Going back to the Nancy Pelosi remark, you had said that she would like to see a federalized election system. Can you talk about what a federalized election system would look like and why that might not be a good idea?
RIDGE: You&#8217;re talking to a governor, a Republican governor. The federal system of government, it&#8217;s come into play and sometimes there&#8217;s a conflict in recent days where the President has thought about deploying of active duty troops in the streets to deal with the violence and unrest, and a lot of the governors have said, &#8220;Oh, wait a minute. We don&#8217;t think you’ve got the authority to do it because we didn&#8217;t ask you.&#8221;
So you always have this conflict between the states and the federal government. Across the board, there&#8217;s a lot of issues involved in that, and it&#8217;s not political. It&#8217;s just that there&#8217;s a built-in tension here [between] historically the elected officials and the appointed officials who run local, countywide, and statewide elections, and the federal government. It’s the responsibility of the governors in there to keep it that way. Pure and simple.
I think I know her perspective. It&#8217;s consistent with the broader philosophy she has about government being bigger and broader, and being more involved and potentially invasive, a lot of other things. But in our federal system of government, historically the system of the states overseeing statewide elections has proven, in my judgment, to be preferable than any kind of nationalized system, period.
DW: And what would be the dangers of a nationalized system for voting?
RIDGE: We&#8217;re talking about absentee ballots. If the federal government would like to set some guidelines around absentee ballots, but then again, the danger is disrupting a system that I think has worked pretty well, particularly since we&#8217;ve been using absentee ballots since the Civil War. And so I&#8217;m just, again, as a Republican governor, conservative Republican governor, we can take care of it in Pennsylvania. We don&#8217;t need the feds telling us how to run our election system.
DW: We have five months approximately. Do you think the states, broadly, have the will and ability to get to where they need to be if mail-in is to be expanded because of COVID-19?
RIDGE: Excellent question. One of the first outreach efforts that Governor Granholm and I made was to send letters to the Secretaries of State overseeing the elections in the states and the territories to talk specifically about providing safe and secure options, and encouraging them if they need additional support, and particularly financial support, to reach out to Congress. I mean, there&#8217;s a federal role here, and there&#8217;s a federal role here in a federal system to help states provide safe and secure options for voting. And one of it may just be dollars that can be expended if they&#8217;re needed in the individual states.
Now I happen to think there&#8217;s also a shared responsibility to absorb some of that cost because not every election on November 3 has to do with the federal government. There are a lot of local and county elections, and federal elections. So there&#8217;s a shared responsibility financially for that. We’ve had a couple of responses back from Republicans and Democrats who we think have responded very positively to it. So we&#8217;ve got five months. If you&#8217;ve identified potential abuses, and if you need more people, whatever it is, I&#8217;m not going to tell the governors and the Secretaries of States, but if you feel you need additional help, I think you ought to be calling on Congress to provide it.
And by the way, it&#8217;s not only that voter fraud in this regard that you’ve got to be worried about, [you’ve got to be worried about] cyber influence in the elections as well. Cyber security is a big issue. So put all of these issues together, if you need additional resources, that&#8217;s one area where I do think the federal government has a responsibility to help absorb some of the cost.
DW: My last question is an open-ended one. Is there anything that we haven&#8217;t touched on in this interview, on this topic, that you would want our readership, which is mostly conservative, to know about this topic?
RIDGE: I appreciate the open end question. I would say to the leadership, as we think in terms of our own political philosophy, it&#8217;s this whole notion of individual responsibility and individual accountability, I think is pretty much embedded in our approach toward government and the relationship between government and the individual. And I&#8217;d like to think, based on that philosophy, we would see the federal government potentially as a partner in supporting the financial needs of the states in the federal system of elections.
I&#8217;d also like to think that if you took a look at recent elections, there was a vote driven mostly by absentee ballot in California a couple of weeks ago, and that was won by a Republican who was smart enough in his campaign committee, who was thoughtful enough to maximize their ability to get voters out in support of their candidate. I think we saw the Republican governor in Nebraska, I believe maximized, he had the highest turnout in the primaries ever because he provided a way for additional safe and secure absentee ballots.
So I&#8217;d say if we believe in individual accountability and responsibility, and we also accept the norm that – maybe conservatives would disagree with me, I hope not – but I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s a privilege. I think it&#8217;s a responsibility [once every two years] to cast a vote, and I think whether Republican or Democrat alike.
And by the way, in recent polling, Republicans and Democrats and Independents by a vast majority want this option, want the absentee option. I would think we would do everything we can as a group, not only to encourage maximum use, but to encourage the states to do it correctly and to minimize the potential for abuse.</blockquote>
The Daily Wire would like to thank Tom Ridge for taking the time to speak with us about this issue. For more information, you can visit the official VoteSafe website <a href="https://votesafe.us/">here</a>.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/true-the-vote-founder-talks-fraud-and-frighteningly-lax-security-amid-the-push-for-mail-in-voting">True The Vote Founder Talks Fraud And Frighteningly Lax Security Amid The Push For Mail-In Voting</a>
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Mail-in ballot

VoteSafe’s Tom Ridge Talks Mail-In Voting, Popularity Of Absentee Ballots, And The November Election

2020 Election

Donald Trump

mail-in voting

Tom Ridge

Voting Rights

Alyssa Milano is a walking series of contradictions.
After leading the charge to vilify Brett Kavanaugh with unfounded claims while proclaiming that every woman’s claim of sexual assault be believed without question, suddenly, she’s quiet and very concerned “giving men their due process” when Tara Reade accuses her presidential candidate Joe Biden of sexual assault.
And she strongly believes in social distancing … That is until she realized that suspending all elective medical procedures includes abortion. Now, she suddenly wants people to have freedom to visit the doctor &#8230; But only if you’re having an abortion, of course.
Now, she’s waded into the controversy over the Democrats’ push to do a nationwide vote-by-mail in the November election. And of course, her latest round of mental gymnastics did not fail to disappoint.
First, she argues that we absolutely must have nationwide vote-by-mail because it’s just too dangerous to go outside with COVID-19 lurking around every corner. (Unless, of course, you want to have an abortion, then you should absolutely put COVID-19 concerns aside.)
Oh, and Alyssa says you can also go outside to vote early. Because in the very same article where she says the only safe approach is casting mail-in ballots, she proposes that the government also spend more money to increase sanitization efforts at early voting locations. One would assume that Alyssa would only deem early voting locations in Democrat neighborhoods as clean and safe. With her latest cause celebre, Milano is not unlike her fellow Democrats who were also breathlessly advocating for mail-in balloting over serious health concerns … That is until their candidate was losing badly in a recent CA congressional election. Suddenly, the health concerns were over and in-person polling places began to pop up.
Of course, Alyssa doesn’t make any mention of the fact that hundreds of people crowd into Walmart and Costco every day, and yet somehow manage to still follow social distancing guidelines – not to mention the food-to-go at McDonalds or Chick-fil-A isn’t overwhelming hospitals with new COVID patients.
But trust Alyssa that going out to vote is too dangerous &#8230; Unless you are voting early and stopping by Walmart on the way home. Then, you’re in the clear.
And Alyssa wants to assure you, with her never wavering or changing convictions, that mail-in voting carries no risk of fraud or abuse. Out of charity, let us assume that she was simply ignorant of the fact that last year <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746800630/north-carolina-gop-operative-faces-new-felony-charges-that-allege-ballot-fraud" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746800630/north-carolina-gop-operative-faces-new-felony-charges-that-allege-ballot-fraud&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1589822895921000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFip1neAaO6jv9htDw8ycKvcVZJLw">a political operative in North Carolina</a> (a Republican, mind you) was charged with fraud when he ordered people to request and fill out absentee ballots for other people.
And if the concern from fraudulent people on the voter rolls isn’t already high enough, Alyssa proposes we start letting people register to vote online, ensuring that someone’s name can be registered to an address that will then have a ballot mailed to it, all without ever having to be verified as a real person, let alone an actual resident.
Oh, and Alyssa thinks we should get started right away, even though the states that do use mail-in balloting invested a lot of time and money before they could implement it. Also, with all the staffing issues and limitations on workplace gatherings right now, are we to assume that state government workers are all of the sudden supposed to throw together mail-in voting procedures that other states took years to get in place?
All of those concerns and procedures should be thrown aside, because Alyssa says COVID is just too dangerous (unless you’re getting an abortion, voting early or going to Starbucks &amp; Costco.) But maybe I’m just being cynical about Alyssa and other Democrats’ latest election schemes, maybe I’ll be a little more receptive to their ideas for voting when they finally figure out who really won their Iowa Caucus.
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.  
Zachery Bryan is an actor, movie/tv producer and entrepreneur. He began his entertainment career early as a series regular on the ABC hit sitcom, “Home Improvement.” He currently produces film and television via his production company, <a href="http://www.lostlane.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.lostlane.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1588614472030000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF42S8DvvAFt5PzfjHgRkMOrnbuOQ">Lost Lane Entertainment</a>.

Sean Penn, Bryan Lourd And Vivi Nevo Host 10th Anniversary Gala Benefiting CORE &#8211; Arrivals

BRYAN: The Hypocrisy Of Alyssa Milano Returns

Alyssa Milano

Coronavirus

Joe Biden

Unless the United States Supreme Court intervenes sometime before midnight, the Wisconsin Democratic primary will take place Tuesday, despite a statewide shelter-in-place order largely preventing Wisconsin residents from leaving their homes amid the threat of coronavirus.
The Wisconsin National Guard will staff the polls rather than the typical volunteers and only one person will be allowed into each polling place at a time, but otherwise, the Wisconsin state primary will go on as normal, according to the <a href="https://www.syracuse.com/politics/2020/04/wisconsin-primary-still-on-with-in-person-voting-but-supreme-court-may-intervene.html">Associated Press</a>.
The state&#8217;s Democratic governor tried, at the last minute, to stall the primary, asking the Republican legislature to extend the vote-by-mail deadline until mid-May but the GOP legislature, concerned that the effort would result in widespread vote irregularities &#8212; and could delay special election results by weeks, leaving the legislature hamstrung &#8212;  resisted, leaving the decision up to the courts.
&#8220;[Wisconsin governor Tony] Evers and Republicans initially agreed that it was imperative for the election to proceed because thousands of local offices are on the ballot Tuesday for terms that begin in two weeks,&#8221; the AP noted. &#8220;There is also a state Supreme Court election putting the conservative incumbent against a liberal challenger.&#8221;
Wisconsin is currently the only state on the primary schedule to move ahead with their primary, even though several key states are scheduled to hold contests in April, May, and early June. Those states claim even something as important as voting should not supercede coronavirus-related shelter-in-place orders and that people should not have to risk a COVID-19 infection in order to cast a ballot.
&#8220;Your choice is to go and vote in person and take a chance on contracting COVID-19 or stay home,&#8221; one Democratic Wisconsin state senator told the Associated Press. &#8220;What do you think people are going to do?”
<a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-preview-yes-wisconsin-is-still-holding-its-primary-on-tuesday/">FiveThirtyEight, though, says</a> that Wisconsin&#8217;s unique situation &#8212; empty legislative seats and a hotly contested court battle &#8212; made it more difficult for the state to reschedule its primary.
Wisconsin, the polling outfit reported, is &#8220;also holding general elections for several local offices — judges, mayors, county executives — including some whose terms begin on April 20 (so the election had to take place before then). In addition, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers probably did not have the power to alter the election without the consent of the Republican legislature, and that was always unlikely given the bad blood between the two.&#8221;
There&#8217;s another problem: Wisconsin isn&#8217;t set up to handle a massive vote-by-mail effort. So far, voters have requested more than 1.2 million absentee ballots, and the state has only ever processed around 800,000 &#8212; and that was in a presidential election, with a full staff of election officials.
Former Vice President Joe Biden may reap the only reward of Tuesday&#8217;s contest in Wisconsin: according to the latest polls, Biden is expected to chalk up a runaway victory against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), even though the Vermont socialist won the state against Hillary Clinton back in 2016. That puts Biden at least a few dozen delegates further ahead of Sanders &#8212; an important leap forward, given that so few states are holding primaries that he may not be able to secure the 1,991 delegates necessary to lock down the Democratic presidential nomination before its August convention.

ballot box

Wisconsin Primary WILL Go On Despite State Shelter-In-Place Orders, Court Says

Wisconsin

Actress Jennifer Lawrence pledged, a little over a year ago, to take a temporary hiatus from the entertainment business in order to &#8220;save the world&#8221; through political action and she&#8217;s finally found her crusade: voting from home.
The &#8220;Silver Linings Playbook&#8221; actress is a board member and spokesperson for the &#8220;anti-corruption&#8221; group, Represent.Us, a left-of-center mega-group backed by some of the most notorious names in political fundraising, including the Rockefeller Foundation and the George Soros-funded TIDES foundation, and, in partnership with Represent.Us, has launched a &#8220;vote-from-home pledge aimed at Millennial and Gen Z voters.
A video, starring Lawrence, debuted on social media Thursday.
“First and foremost, I want to give my heartfelt sympathies to everyone who’s been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and my deepest gratitude to the emergency responders and healthcare workers who are risking their health every day,” the actress says, clearly from somewhere in her home. “The best thing that we can do to slow the spread of this virus is to stay at home.”
She quickly connects the coronavirus pandemic, though, to the November election.
But there’s still an election coming up with millions of Americans who have yet to cast their ballot in the 2020 primaries, which is why you should go to represent.us/voteathome so that you can cast your ballot from the safety of your own home,” she says. “Some states won&#8217;t allow you to turn in an absentee ballot without an excuse, but a bill in congress and your secretary of state can fix this right now.”
&#8220;This is extremely important. It’s our elections we’re talking about, so please help spread the word by posting on your social media with the hashtag #VoteAtHome. Stay safe and healthy everybody,&#8221; she concludes, noting that she plans to &#8220;tag&#8221; comedian Amy Schumer to keep the pressure on.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
From RepUs Board Member Jennifer Lawrence: We need to be able to vote without getting sick. I’m calling on <a href="https://twitter.com/amyschumer?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@amyschumer</a> to go to <a href="https://t.co/Yalw4id4hv">https://t.co/Yalw4id4hv</a>, request your mail-in ballot, call your senator to support Vote at Home, and tag 3 friends to call and share with <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/VoteAtHome?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#VoteAtHome</a>. <a href="https://t.co/9kzXdkLa6P">pic.twitter.com/9kzXdkLa6P</a>
&mdash; RepresentUs (@representus) <a href="https://twitter.com/representus/status/1245375768420646913?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Voting from home is a new Democrat priority; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) tried to sneak a complete overhaul of the electoral process, including a national vote-from-home provision into the third coronavirus relief package passed last week, and former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, has been echoing calls for the program in media appearances, telling MSNBC that  “this is about making sure that we’re able to conduct our democracy while we’re dealing with a pandemic.&#8221;
Republicans have been largely skeptical of Democratic efforts to move to a national vote from home program, suggesting that Democrats would use the system to tinker with the election. Absentee ballots can be vulnerable to fraud, and a national vote-from-home program would bring those problems to a much larger stage &#8212; with much more at stake.
Lawrence&#8217;s plea, too, probably isn&#8217;t just about the health and safety of Americans during a coronavirus pandemic. As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/phew-actress-jennifer-lawrence-announces-she-has-emily-zanotti">The Daily Wire reported</a> last year, Represent.Us is an unabashedly progressive organization that seeks to end gerrymandering, end &#8220;corporate involvement&#8221; in elections, and eliminate &#8220;dark money.&#8221; The group shares in a fund of money that&#8217;s largely split between &#8220;Black Lives Matter, Media Matters, Demos, Planned Parenthood, and other like minded organizations.&#8221;

Jennifer LAwrence

Actress Jennifer Lawrence Spearheading National Vote-From-Home Effort

With the Illinois primary less than two months away, a spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections has admitted that some non-citizens of the United States may have illegally voted in the 2018 election because of the new automatic voter registration process implemented in the state.
Spokesman Matt Dietrich told <a href="https://www.wcia.com/illinois-capitol-news/state-board-of-elections-admits-non-u-s-citizens-may-have-voted-illegally-in-2018/">WCIA</a> on Monday that 574 non-U.S. citizens were inadvertently registered to vote in Illinois, adding, “We do know that some of them voted in 2018.” He surmised that some may have been legal citizens who incorrectly filled out the state form to vote, although it appears much if not all of the problem was that Illinois permits non-citizens to obtain driver’s licenses.
Democrat Secretary of State Jesse White’s office acknowledged the mistake in a letter to the State Board of Elections on December 18. Spokesman Henry Haupt of White’s office stated, “For whatever reason that technological programming error did not properly remove the individuals. The individuals who are applying for driver’s license were inadvertently pooled into the automatic voter registration.” He added, “This was an isolated case that impacted less than one-tenth of one percent of the people registered through automatic voter registration. As soon as the program error was discovered, it was fixed, and the individuals were notified, including the State Board of Elections and the local election authorities.”
The Macon County Sheriff’s race was decided by one vote. The <a href="https://www.news-gazette.com/news/runner-up-in-one-vote-macon-county-sheriff-s-race/article_22d76307-be83-5bde-9634-a96470551691.html">News-Gazette</a> reported in December 2018:
<blockquote>A Decatur man who was told he lost his bid to become Macon County sheriff by one vote is asking a judge to review the election results in hopes he&#8217;ll be declared the winner. Republican Jim Root filed suit Wednesday in Macon County Circuit Court against Democrat Tony &#8220;Chubby&#8221; Brown, the current sheriff, seeking to overturn Brown&#8217;s victory …The request for judicial relief comes on the heels of a discovery recount that Root&#8217;s local attorney, Jerrold Stocks, believes actually puts Root five votes ahead of Brown instead of one vote behind.</blockquote>
WCIA noted, “Illinois law allows immigrants who are not citizens to get a driver’s license or state identification. Both state and federal law prohibits non-citizens from participating in American elections …  Non-citizens who vote in American elections can face swift consequences, including immediate deportation.”
State Representative Tim Butler (R-Springfield) explained, “Non-citizens can have driver’s licenses in the state of Illinois. A driver’s license is a key tool in registering someone to vote. Oftentimes it’s your driver’s license that is one of the two documents that we use to verify that you’re a registered citizen … If that person voted, that’s a huge problem when it comes to the federal government. That’s a deportable offense for this person. And if that’s the case, that’s something that’s on the Secretary of State’s office for allowing that offense to happen.”
Because of Martin Luther King Day on Monday, no state employees were available to ascertain exactly how many non-citizens actually voted; a more detailed answer is expected to be given on Tuesday.
Five Illinois House Republicans have requested White and the State Board of Elections to testify before investigative hearings; Butler explained, “We have to have complete confidence that our offices are doing the right thing. And that goes for the Secretary of State. He may or may not have known about this. I have no idea. But he needs to be held responsible for it. It’s his operation that allowed this to happen.”
The Illinois primary election is held March 17, with early voting starting on February 6.
&nbsp;

Springfield, Illinois Cityscapes And City Views

Illinois Dems Admit Mistake Allowed Non-Citizens To Vote In 2018

Illinois

Hillary Clinton has a new excuse for her 2016 loss to now-President Donald Trump: voters in places like Wisconsin, which she notoriously did not visit, were disenfranchised by voter identification laws and prevented from casting ballots in her favor.
Clinton told an audience at George Washington University that she&#8217;s been counseling 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/news/461723-hillary-clinton-voter-suppression-has-led-to-crisis-in-democracy-in-the-us">according to The Hill</a>, and among her pearls of wisdom is a warning to watch out for Republican &#8220;voter suppression,&#8221; which she believes comes in the form of laws requiring a photo ID to vote.
Clinton specifically blames Republican voter suppression for Stacey Abrams losing the election for Georgia governor, but, for the first time, extrapolated the problem to the 2016 presidential election, claiming that around 200,000 voters in Wisconsin were turned away from the polls because of that state&#8217;s voter ID requirement (Clinton, of course, lost Wisconsin in a brutal swing state defeat, despite what she claims were internal polls showing her far ahead of Trump)
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Hillary Clinton: &#8220;You can run the best campaign. You can have the best plans. You can get the nomination. You can win the popular vote. And you can lose the Electoral College and therefore the election for these 4 reasons. Number One: Voter suppression.&#8221; 
Via The Hill <a href="https://t.co/Ks4S6tDdfI">pic.twitter.com/Ks4S6tDdfI</a>
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) <a href="https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1174055558019764225?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 17, 2019</a></blockquote>
&#8220;You can run the best campaign, you can have the best plans, you can get the nomination, you can win the popular vote. And you can lose the Electoral College and therefore the election for these four reasons. Number one, voter suppression,&#8221; Clinton told the crowd of around 300.
&#8220;We saw what happened in Georgia where Stacey Abrams should be governor of that state,&#8221; Clinton continued.
&#8220;Registered voters were kept off the rolls. Their registrations just piled up in some back office with no intention to ever enroll them so that they could actually vote. We also saw what happened in 2016. Experts estimate that anywhere from 27,000 to 200,000 Wisconsin citizen voters, predominantly in Milwaukee, were turned away from the polls. That’s a lot of potential voters.&#8221;
Abrams lost by more than 50,000 votes, and early claims of &#8220;voter suppression&#8221; turned out to be largely false. Brian Kemp, who defeated Abrams, did purge thousands of voters from the rolls over the course of his tenure — under a massive database cleanup project — but <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/2018-midterms-whats-the-truth-about-the-53-000-pending-voters-in-georgia">subsequent investigations</a> showed those voter profiles featured information mismatches or had long gone dormant.
But Stacey Abrams&#8217; claim of voter suppression in Georgia is far more solid than Clinton&#8217;s claim of voter suppression in Wisconsin. Clinton&#8217;s &#8220;200,000&#8221; number actually appears to be a misquote of a &#8220;300,000&#8221; number that originated in a tweet shortly following Clinton&#8217;s Wisconsin loss. The tweet claimed &#8220;300,000 voters were turned away by the states strict Voter ID law,&#8221; thereby offering proof that the election had been &#8220;rigged&#8221; for Donald Trump, ostensibly by the Russians. The number also, it seems, appeared in a New York Times article post-election.
<a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/300000-wisconsin-voters-turned-away-due-to-voter-id-laws/">Even Snopes</a>, which is undeniably a left-leaning &#8220;fact checker&#8221; organization, didn&#8217;t buy the claim. Upon a cursory investigation, Snopes discovered that the &#8220;300,000&#8221; number originated with a court finding striking down a Wisconsin voter ID law that the court claimed may have disenfranchised 300,000 voters — but that the exact number of people prevented from voting by the law was unknown.
By the time Clinton ran for President in 2016, the legislature had already changed the law, so even if 300,000 people were actively prevented from voting by the law as it existed in 2014, when the court analyzed it — something even the court itself doubts &#8212; the number was certainly outdated by November of 2016.
But, as Clinton has proven time and again in the wake of her loss, the facts matter little. Clinton lost Wisconsin not because voters were kept from the polls, but because she failed to overcome Donald Trump&#8217;s message of economic populism in a purple state, where moderate Democrats — and particularly union workers — don&#8217;t find themselves beholden to their party leadership. Clinton never made her case to Wisconsin voters, so they voted for the other guy.
That would mean, of course, that certain Trump voters aren&#8217;t racist, and that&#8217;s a reality Clinton can&#8217;t accept.
“We are witnessing a deliberate and ongoing effort to undermine the integrity of our elections and silence millions of Americans &#8230; particularly women, the elderly and people of color,” Clinton said at the end of her speech. “It’s no accident. It’s in service to their larger goals of obtaining and keeping power.”

hillary_clinton_gi.jpg

WATCH: Hillary Clinton Now Claims ‘Voter Suppression’ Caused Her To Lose The 2016 Election

Hillary Clinton

Failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams stated on Sunday that the American voting system is rigged against African American citizens and has only become more &#8220;insidious&#8221; since the 1960s.
&#8220;We have always struggled with voter suppression, but what&#8217;s happened in the last 20 years is that it&#8217;s gone underground,&#8221; Abrams told ABC news correspondent Linsey Davis. &#8220;It&#8217;s no longer hoses and laws that say you cannot vote.&#8221;
&#8220;It is this insidious nature that says it&#8217;s race-neutral, that we&#8217;re just putting these laws into place for everyone,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;But we know that it has a disproportionate effect on the communities that have long been marginalized.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">&#8220;We have always struggled with voter suppression but what&#8217;s happened in the last 20 years is that it&#8217;s gone underground,&#8221; Stacey Abrams tells <a href="https://twitter.com/LinseyDavis?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@LinseyDavis</a>.
&#8220;&#8230;we know that it has a disproportionate effect on communities that have long been marginalized&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/Q7P3zsDSV2">https://t.co/Q7P3zsDSV2</a> <a href="https://t.co/kyB0kEITyo">pic.twitter.com/kyB0kEITyo</a>
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1163209729080012806?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 18, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Abrams and her 2018 gubernatorial campaign have been routinely accusing both the state of Georgia and her Republican challenger, now-Gov. Brian Kemp of racist voter suppression going back even prior to election day. Kemp, however, handily won the statewide election by more than 55,000 votes and there has been no evidence to corroborate her claims.
&#8220;We have a right to vote in the United States that is afforded to eligible American citizens, but we have seen over the last 20 years a constriction on who has the right to use that right,&#8221; Abrams replied when asked if she believes the voting system is &#8220;rigged.&#8221;
&#8220;We have seen it through voter ID laws – you can&#8217;t get on the rolls and if you get on the rolls you can&#8217;t stay – you may not be able to cast your ballot because they close your precinct or they change the rules,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;That&#8217;s rigging the game.&#8221;
Interestingly, Abrams and her fellow Democrats have continued to <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2018/08/23/democrats-gop-racist-voter-suppression-georgia/">tout the proposal to close</a> off a handful of voting precincts in a predominately black county as an example of Republican-led voter suppression. If enacted, the closure could have led to possible disenfranchisement. However, the decision to do so rested solely in Democrats&#8217; hands.
Regardless, Abrams has insisted that since Kemp was serving as Georgia Secretary of State at the time, the blame ultimately rests with him. Kemp and the Georgia GOP both publicly opposed the closure, but Abrams continues to refer to it as &#8220;suppression tactics.&#8221;
&#8220;In America, we can choose to vote or not vote. Good candidates give you a reason to vote, but good government makes certain you can cast that vote,&#8221; Abrams told Davis. &#8220;What I take exception to is that we do not have people in government who are living up to their obligations. In fact, they are thwarting the will of the people by denying them access and that&#8217;s just wrong.&#8221;
The former Georgia lawmaker revealed a week earlier that she would forgo running for president in favor of focusing her efforts on preventing voter suppression in the upcoming 2020 election, both in Georgia and around the country.
Accordingly, Abrams launched a new initiative called Fair Fight 2020 to establish &#8220;free, fair, and secure elections.&#8221; Despite how it presents itself, its focus appears to be to elect Democratic lawmakers rather than a non-partisan effort to ensure universal voting rights. The organization will only be working with Democratic state parties and local allies, according to the <a href="https://fairfight.com/fair-fight-2020/">Fair Fight 2020</a> website.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Stacey Abrams on her efforts to combat voter suppression: &#8220;For me, the decision not to run for president was one of saying, &#8216;where could I do my best work?&#8217; and that&#8217;s making certain that we set up voter protection teams across the county&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/ROVDDgW44b">https://t.co/ROVDDgW44b</a> <a href="https://t.co/7RkuUmz93U">pic.twitter.com/7RkuUmz93U</a>
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1163110568259141632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 18, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
&#8220;When I looked at this current crop of candidates running for the Democratic nomination, I think they&#8217;re extraordinary and I think voter suppression is an intrinsic problem that is bigger than just Georgia,&#8221; Abrams said. &#8220;Georgia was emblematic of it and certainly was a singularity in terms of how grotesque the process was, but we&#8217;re not alone.&#8221;
&#8220;For me, the decision not to run for president was one of saying &#8216;where can I do my best work&#8217; and that&#8217;s making certain that we set up protection teams across the country,&#8221; she added.

Stacey Abrams

WATCH: Stacey Abrams: Voter Suppression More ‘Insidious’ Today Than It Was In The 1960s

On Thursday, while hosting former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who has complained that she was cheated out of victory in 2018 against Georgia governor Brian Kemp because of voter suppression and is now heading a PAC titled Fairfight2020, CNN host Alysin Camerota eschewed any attempt at non-partisanship and helped Abrams sell the PAC by telling voters where they could find it online.
Camerota started by asking why Abrams decided not to run for president. Abrams answered that she was an “expert on fighting back against voter suppression”:
<blockquote>We ran the scenarios and there certainly is a pathway, but my responsibility is to run for office when I think I’m the person who can do the best job and also when it’s the right time. And what I really wanted to access what was the best value that I could add to this primary season. We have an extraordinary crop of candidates who are running, but what we’re missing is a plan for the general election. We cannot wait until the general happens to take action.
And when I thought about the work that I’ve been doing since 2018, I know that I’m an expert on fighting back against voter suppression, that I have lessons learned from 2018, but also new information that we’ve gathered. And my best value, my best contribution is using this primary to make sure we can win the general election and take back the House, White House, and take back the Senate.</blockquote>
Camerota asked if Abrams worried the 2020 election would be “marred by voter suppression.”
Abrams replied, “Every election that we’ve had in the last twenty years has faced some vestige of voter suppression,” arguing that it “accelerated in the wake of the Shelby decision, when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act.” She added, “We’ve seen stricter and stricter laws that make it harder to vote.”
Asked whether she would be interested in a vice-presidential slot in 2020, Abrams answered, “I would certainly be open to that.” When Camerota asked if any candidate had asked her, Abrams said they had not, then segued to saying, “What I do know is that voter suppression is real, that we saw just this year in Texas, Tennessee, in Arizona and Florida steps taken by Republicans to further restrict the vote. And if you go to FairFight 2020.org, you can find out more about our initiative.”
After Abrams repeated her intentions with her PAC, Camerota wanted to make sure viewers knew exactly where to go to help Abrams, saying, “And one more time, people who want to know more should go to fairfight2020.org?”
Abrams repeated, “So, yes. Fairfight2020.org, that’s our 20-state strategy. We launched it in Nevada just yesterday, and we’re going to have a launch in Georgia coming up this Saturday because Georgia is a battleground state …”
Camerota interjected, “Yeah.”
Abrams concluded, “We’re the state that has the largest percentage of African-American voters of any battleground in the presidential and we want people to know that Georgia is not just a place where voter suppression happens, it’s a place where we’re going to fight it back and we’re going to win.”
Video below:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vEJPhoI314M?start=356" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>
H/T <a href="https://grabien.com/story.php?id=247431&amp;utm_source=cliplist20190816&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=cliplist&amp;utm_content=story247431">Grabien</a>

Camerota

WATCH: CNN Host Helps Promote Dem Stacey Abrams’ PAC

Alisyn Camerota

Presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) promulgated the unfounded claim that failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams would have won her election had it not been for racist voter suppression.
“The truth is, we have Republican legislatures across this country that are trying to deny black people the right to vote,” Gillibrand said at a National Urban League conference on Thursday. “Just look at what happened in Georgia. Look what happened to Stacey Abrams.&#8221;
&#8220;But for voter disenfranchisement, Stacey Abrams would be the governor of Georgia,&#8221; she continued.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">&#8220;But for voter disenfranchisement, Stacey Abrams would be the governor of Georgia.&#8221;
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand speaks at the National Urban League Conference in Indianapolis. <a href="https://t.co/UQFr2oxiOy">pic.twitter.com/UQFr2oxiOy</a>
— The Hill (@thehill) <a href="https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1154787209494425601?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 26, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Now-Gov. Brian Kemp handily won the 2018 statewide election by more than 55,000 votes, however, Abrams and her campaign have routinely accused Kemp of racist voter suppression going back even prior to election day.
Following Abrams’ loss, she appeared regularly on cable news shows and delivered speeches repeating those assertions, but there has been no evidence to corroborate Abrams’ claims of voter suppression.
She has refused to refer to Kemp as the “legitimate” governor and has repeatedly declined to concede the election because, she stated, a concession implies the race was “right and true and proper.”
“We had this little election back in 2018 and despite the final tally and the inauguration and the situation we find ourselves in, I do have one very affirmative statement to make: we won,” Abrams said in April. “I am not the governor of Georgia — remember I told you about my opponent? You see not only was he the secretary of state, he was also the architect of suppression.”
Following the election, Abrams and her voter initiative Fair Fight Action <a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5331615/Fair-Fight-Action-v-Crittenden-Complaint.pdf">sued the state of Georgia</a> over alleged widespread voter suppression. Interestingly, the lawsuit condemns legislation that Abrams herself <a href="https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/the-jolt-blue-democratic-debate-for-governor-takes-vouchers-early-voting/vWMKIkWj3DfX7YlwmcgBPO/">helped pass</a> as a member of the Georgia General Assembly.
Gillibrand referenced Abrams when she was asked if she would commit to expanding voting rights legislation if she won the presidency in 2020.
“Yes, very hard yes,” the New York senator responded. &#8220;And this reason is this: I’ve been working with [Rep.] John Lewis (D-GA) in the U.S. Senate for the last five or six years on a comprehensive approach to fixing the voting rights in this country.&#8221;
Gillibrand asserted that the legislation she has been crafting with Lewis goes beyond merely ending voter suppression, vote dilution, and vote discrimination — claiming that it also restores the Voting Rights Act preclearance provision that was invalidated in the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court case of Shelby County v. Holder.
“Our plan has those things that you just mentioned specifically,” Gillibrand said. “But also things like make election day a federal holiday, guarantee early voting in all states, guaranteeing vote by mail in all states, making sure that we have the resources in every state to have a paper receipt so the next time the Russians try to hack our election and try to undermine our democracy, we can fight back with real paper receipts and paper ballots.”
“So I have a very comprehensive approach about how to restore our voting rights,” she added.

WATCH: Gillibrand Amplifies Unsubstantiated Claim: ‘Stacey Abrams Would Be Governor’ If Not For Voter Suppression

Democratic Party

Kirsten Gillibrand

On Tuesday&#8217;s episode of &#8220;The Andrew Klavan Show,&#8221; Klavan discusses where the Never-Trump movement has gone wrong in its criticism of President Donald Trump and why Trump is winning in the culture. Video and partial transcript below:
Sometimes I look at Never-Trumpers. The guys who were Never-Trumpers. You know, I understand this is their conscience. But sometimes I think that a lot of them were that kid in school who would get punched or something and they&#8217;d say, &#8220;Well just because you punched me doesn&#8217;t make you right.&#8221; You know, because sometimes when kids are kind of like, little weedy intellectuals they&#8217;d like to tell themselves, &#8220;Well yeah, you&#8217;re bigger than me and you get all the girls and you&#8217;re on the football team and maybe you beat me up. But you know I&#8217;m a smarter, better person than you.&#8221;
A lot of times that&#8217;s true. They are smarter, better people than the bullies and all that. I think they look at Donald Trump and they think here is that guy, that bully in the office doing more than I could ever do.
I&#8217;m not, you know, mentioning Bill Kristol or anything like that but I just say, I look at that guy and I think he&#8217;s the guy who thought like, &#8220;Oh yeah, well I&#8217;m a lot smarter than you are.&#8221; And there&#8217;s Donald Trump doing all the stuff that Bill Kristol couldn&#8217;t get done and doing it better and he hates him for it. The reason that Donald &#8230; somebody wrote in the Claremont Review the other day. &#8230; Oh, it was Nathan Podhoretz. He was giving an interview and he said &#8220;Donald Trump may not be a man for all seasons. He may not be a man for every hundred years. He is the man for this season.&#8221; The reason he is the man for this season is because all of our institutions have been eaten away inside by leftism. Our most important institutions have been eaten away by this censorious small minded pinch-hearted philosophy of leftism, this anti-freedom philosophy of leftism and they&#8217;re walking around like the guy in &#8220;Men In Black.&#8221;
They still look like the New York Times. You know, kind of misshapen version of The New York Times. Still looks like this misshapen version of Harvard, still looks like this misshapen version of Yale. But inside it is just this small, mean, anti-freedom philosophy that does nothing for anybody, that destroys our cities and would destroy our country. It has destroyed the culture of Europe. Utterly gutted Europe. I mean Europe is just a shell of its former self walking around. Europe is a good example. Europe is walking around, and people go, &#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s Europe.&#8221;
But it&#8217;s not Europe anymore. It&#8217;s not the Europe of Michelangelo or Shakespeare or Mozart. It&#8217;s the Europe of nothing. It&#8217;s the Europe of &#8220;Oh you know I don&#8217;t want to work &#8212; I&#8217;m going to riot because you made me work more than 38 hours a week.&#8221; That is the Europe that&#8217;s left. Walking around looking like the Europe of its great culture. Let&#8217;s see if they can rebuild Notre Dame and then I&#8217;ll tell you if there&#8217;s anything left of Europe.
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y-I0VPq4uNk?start=429" width="560"></iframe>
George Will made this comment recently. I have time for George Will. He&#8217;s just like kind of an old fashion guy. Andrew Breitbart always used to say &#8220;yeah George Will is great. He&#8217;s from the time when the Republicans were in the minority and they figured they always would be, and they didn&#8217;t want to win&#8221;. But he made this comment the other day about all this anti-elite nationalism populism that&#8217;s rising up throughout the West.
<blockquote>
George Will: What Mr. Trump represents is a pandemic, indiscriminate revolt against elites ignoring the following fact. The question is never, &#8220;will elites&#8217; rule?&#8221; Of course, they will, by definition. The question is which elites. The problem of democracy is to get public consent to worthy elites. And the kind of constant harping about elites, again the crybaby conservatism, people are picking on us, people are manipulating us. We don&#8217;t have real moral agency, we&#8217;re just passive. It&#8217;s victimology, now embraced by conservatives.
</blockquote>
Nonsense. That&#8217;s nonsense. It doesn&#8217;t even make any sense, right? He just said that people are throwing out the elites. That&#8217;s not victimology. These elites deserved it. They lost this fight. They lost it on the Right by ceding the ground to these leftists by being afraid to speak out. By being afraid to be called racist. By being silenced like the people in A Quiet Place. You know, they walk around not saying anything because they&#8217;re afraid that the leftist, racist monster is going to come and eat them up. You know, you&#8217;re a racist!
&#8220;No, no please, please don&#8217;t call me racist I&#8217;ll do anything.&#8221; That&#8217;s why they&#8217;ve been rejected. They gave away the country. They gave away the culture and now they&#8217;re saying, &#8220;Why did you kick us out?&#8221; We kicked you out because you failed. Donald Trump may be a bully. He may be obstreperous. He may be a loud mouth and a bore. But at least he stands up for the country and for what it should be and what it is and what it has been all these years.
<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/andrew-klavan-show&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1560605948520000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE5xfts6bdjLZPmerJuGVPsE693Lg" href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Watch more of The Andrew Klavan Show here</a>.
<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt%3D2&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1560605948520000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFUJZTLGaQI92TQrrpZ8TvlSQbzAw" href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt=2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Listen to more of The Andrew Klavan Show on iTunes here.</a>

KLAVAN: What The Never-Trump Crowd Gets Wrong About Trump

Andrew Klavan

Conservatism

New York

New York Times

Trump Administration

Just as in 2016, Democrats and their media supporters are suggesting President Donald Trump may not accept the results of the 2020 election. At the same time, these same people are ignoring that it is actually Democrats who are refusing to accept election results.
In early April, Rolling Stone published <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-2020-election-817074/">an article</a> asking, &#8220;Will Trump Accept the Results of the 2020 Election?&#8221; On Saturday, The New York Times published <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/us/politics/nancy-pelosi.html">an interview</a> with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) where she warned Democrats they needed to win decisively in 2020 so Trump couldn&#8217;t challenge the results.
But as Democrats and the media suggest Trump will not accept the results of an election he loses, politicians on the Left actually aren&#8217;t accepting the results of elections they lose.
During her speech to the Detroit, Michigan, chapter of the NAACP, 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) claimed that voter suppression led to Democrat losses in Florida and Georgia in 2018, echoing the claims of the two candidates who lost those races.
&#8220;Let&#8217;s say this loud and clear &#8211; without voter suppression, Stacey Abrams would be the governor of Georgia, Andrew Gillum is the governor of Florida. So, the truth is, we need a new Voting Rights Act.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Sen. <a href="https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KamalaHarris</a> speaks to Detroit <a href="https://twitter.com/NAACP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NAACP</a>: &#8220;Let&#8217;s say this loud and clear &#8212; without voter suppression, <a href="https://twitter.com/staceyabrams?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@StaceyAbrams</a> would be the governor of Georgia, <a href="https://twitter.com/AndrewGillum?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AndrewGillum</a> is the governor of Florida. So the truth is we need a new Voting Rights Act.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/j37Rjkhcmb">pic.twitter.com/j37Rjkhcmb</a>
&#8212; The Hill (@thehill) <a href="https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1125232431995473920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Each of these candidates have refused to concede their elections. Abrams is on a countrywide tour claiming she actually won. Just <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46551/election-denier-democrat-stacey-abrams-still-ryan-saavedra">last week</a> she told an audience that she refuses to concede. In that same speech, she also bragged about increasing Democrat turnout, so it&#8217;s hard to see how she still gets away with the absurd claim that voters were suppressed.
&#8220;I won because we transformed the electorate, we turned out people who had never voted, we outmatched every Democrat in Georgia history,&#8221; Abrams said.
She did not win but she did transform the electorate. The number of people who voted in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race was double the number who voted in the same race in 2014.
Abrams lost and simply refuses to accept it.
Gillum hasn&#8217;t been on a U.S. whining tour like Abrams, but he did tell HBO &#8220;Real Time&#8221; host Bill Maher <a href="%22I%20won%20because%20we%20transformed%20the%20electorate,%20we%20turned%20out%20people%20who%20had%20never%20voted,%20we%20outmatched%20every%20Democrat%20in%20Georgia%20history.%22">back in March</a> that votes weren&#8217;t counted in Florida.
&#8220;Had we been able to legally count every one of those votes not just in Florida but in Georgia, I wonder what the outcome may be,&#8221; he claimed.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, Democrats aren&#8217;t calling the Florida election illegitimate, even if Gillum does.
And we can&#8217;t forget that Hillary Clinton still refuses to accept she lost the 2016 presidential race because she was a bad candidate. She has blamed everyone and everything from racism, sexism, Russians, former FBI Director James Comey, and more for why Trump won over her. She simply can&#8217;t accept that she ran a bad campaign that assumed she&#8217;d win all the states that voted for President Barack Obama and ignored activists on the ground warning her they needed more resources.
Clinton set the tone for the Democrat Party in 2016, and others have just been following suit since then. Maybe Trump will refuse to accept a loss in 2020, but we can pretty much guarantee that Democrats will refuse to accept the results if and when they lose next year.

Kamala Harris Refuses To Accept Election Results In Florida, Georgia

Kamala Harris

Americans really don&#8217;t want the voting age lowered to 17, and they really, really don&#8217;t want it lowered to 16, a blow to a recent proposal by many Democrats.
A Hill-HarrisX poll released Thursday found a clear majority, 75%, of registered voters were against lowering the voting age to 17, and a whopping 84% opposed lowering it to 16. As The Hill reported, &#8220;Every age group in the poll was against lowering the voting age to 16 or 17, though younger respondents were more supportive than older participants.&#8221;
That&#8217;s not good for Democrats <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44345/grabbing-more-votes-far-left-dem-congresswoman-hank-berrien">who have been</a> <a href="https://insider.foxnews.com/2019/03/15/nancy-pelosi-supports-lowering-voting-age-16-fox-friends-guests-debate">recently calling for</a> the voting age to be lowered to 16.
Of the younger participants who were more open to the idea, 39% favored the idea of lowering the voting age to 17 and 27% favored lowering it to 16. This &#8220;younger&#8221; group included respondents who were between the ages of 18 and 34. Conversely, older Americans were even less favorable to the idea than the average. Just 13% of respondents aged 65 and older were open to the voting age being lowered to 17 and a miniscule 5% supported lowering it to 16.
The poll also found, predictably, that Democrats were less opposed to the idea than Republicans, but an overwhelming majority still opposed the plan.
&#8220;Eighty-eight percent of GOP respondents said that 17-year-olds should be allowed to vote, and 89 percent opposed letting 16-year-olds vote,&#8221; The Hill reported. &#8220;Among Democrats, 65 percent said 17-year-olds should not be allowed to vote, with 78 percent saying the same about 16-year-olds.&#8221;
So far only one Democrat 2020 hopeful has suggested lowering the minimum voting age to 16: Andrew Yang. This is the same candidate who has proposed giving almost everyone $1,000 a month, so it&#8217;s not all that surprising he would suggest such a crazy idea.
In March, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) introduced an amendment to a House resolution that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44345/grabbing-more-votes-far-left-dem-congresswoman-hank-berrien">would lower the voting age</a> to 16 ahead of the 2020 election. As The Daily Wire previously reported, the move was seen as a way to bolster Democrat support, since younger voters tend to lean Democrat when they don&#8217;t have &#8220;the attendant responsibilities contingent on reaching adulthood.&#8221; It&#8217;s easy to be a Democrat when it&#8217;s not your money being spent by the federal government.
Pressley, however, tried to claim her amendment wasn&#8217;t a power grab but about the youth:
<blockquote>
Our young people are at the forefront of some of the most existential crises facing our communities and our society at large. I believe that those who will inherit the nation we design here in Congress by virtue of our policies and authority should have a say in who represents them.
</blockquote>
Pressley&#8217;s amendment failed to secure enough votes, but still managed to get the support of 126 representatives &#8212; which should frighten anyone concerned about democracy.
Rather than standing up for sanity, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) agreed with the idea of lowering the voting age, saying she thought it was &#8220;really important to capture kids when they&#8217;re in high school, when they&#8217;re interested in all of this, when they&#8217;re learning about the government, to be able to vote.&#8221;
Can we expect Democrats to reverse course after this poll? Probably not.

POLL: Americans Do NOT Want Voting Age Lowered To 16

Poll

So Soviet Union-<a href="https://nypost.com/2016/01/16/dont-be-fooled-by-bernie-sanders-hes-a-diehard-communist/">honeymooning</a>, Fidel Castro-<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bernie-sanders-unearthed-video-recalling-excitement-castro-revolution-cuba">kowtowing</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43796/hammer-bernie-sanders-entire-worldview-grotesquely-josh-hammer">socialist</a> Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wants to let the Boston Marathon jihadist <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46295/bernie-sanders-let-terrorists-sex-predators-ryan-saavedra">vote</a> from his high-security prison while he awaits his already-overdue death sentence. Specifically, as The Daily Wire&#8217;s Ryan Saavedra <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46295/bernie-sanders-let-terrorists-sex-predators-ryan-saavedra">reported</a>, Sanders said: &#8220;I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy. Yes, even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away&#8230;you&#8217;re running down a slippery slope&#8230;I believe even if they are in jail, they&#8217;re paying the price to society, that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy.&#8221;
But there is one major problem for the near-octogenarian Vermont loonbag: The franchise, in our system of governance, is not properly construed as a &#8220;right&#8221; that is &#8220;inherent to our democracy.&#8221; Rather, going back to the Founding generation and continuing through the Reconstruction Amendments well into the 20th century, the franchise in our constitutional order has long been generally understood as a privilege for which the states have something closely akin to plenary power to regulate &#8212; and, indeed, limit &#8212; as they see fit.
The extensive congressional debates over the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, held in the tumultuous years immediately following Lee&#8217;s surrender to Grant at Appomattox, are telling. Congressman John Bingham (R-OH), the single principal draftsman of the Fourteenth Amendment, <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/everything-leftists-declare-constitutional-right-results-democrat-votes/">declared</a> at the time that &#8220;we all agree, and the great body of the people of this country agree, and the committee thus far in reporting measures of reconstruction agree, that the exercise of the elective franchise, though it be one of the privileges of a citizen of the Republic, is exclusively under the control of the States.&#8221; In the Senate, the influential Sen. Jacob Howard (R-MI) was perhaps even more <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/everything-leftists-declare-constitutional-right-results-democrat-votes/">explicit</a>: &#8220;the right of suffrage is not, in law, one of the privileges or immunities thus secured by the Constitution. It is merely the creature of law. It has always been regarded in this country as the result of positive local law, not regarded as one of those fundamental rights lying at the basis of all society and without which a people cannot exist except as slaves, subject to a despotism.&#8221;
In Sanders&#8217; limited defense, James Madison does refer, in <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed52.asp">The Federalist No. 52</a>, to &#8220;the right of suffrage&#8221; as a &#8220;fundamental article of republican government.&#8221; But this is lofty natural rights language delinked from the very Constitution that The Federalist Papers sought to help ratify. Indeed, in the very same paragraph, Madison expressly concedes that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 left the general regulation of the franchise to the states as a compromise measure: &#8220;To have reduced the different qualifications in the different States to one uniform rule, would probably have been as dissatisfactory to some of the States as it would have been difficult to the convention. The provision made by the convention appears, therefore, to be the best that lay within their option.&#8221; It is this compromise by the men of the Constitutional Convention &#8212; to generally leave the regulation of the franchise to the states &#8212; that Bingham and Howard referenced decades later during the Fourteenth Amendment ratification debate. Madison&#8217;s possible personal lamentations to the contrary do not countermand constitutional text or rudimentary constitutional structure.
Finally, consider how emphatic the leading originalist Supreme Court justice of the past half-century (and likely of all-time), Clarence Thomas, has been on this issue. &#8220;States have the exclusive authority to set voter qualifications and to determine whether those qualifications are satisfied,&#8221; Thomas wrote in his 2013 <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-71_7l48.pdf">Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Ariz., Inc.</a> dissent. &#8220;States&#8230;retain the authority to decide the qualifications to vote in federal elections, limited only by the requirement that they not establish special requirements for congressional elections that do not apply in elections for the state legislature,&#8221; he continued (internal citations omitted). Furthermore, in his 2018 <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-980_f2q3.pdf">Husted v. Philip Randolph Institute</a> concurrence, Thomas emphasized that the states have the &#8220;constitutional authority to set and enforce voter qualifications.&#8221; Finally, in his 2016 <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-940_ed9g.PDF">Evenwel v. Abbott</a> concurrence, Thomas noted that Congress has proper regulatory authority &#8220;only over the when, where, and how of holding congressional elections, not over the question of who can vote&#8221; (internal citations omitted).
In short, then, Bernie Sanders is wrong here &#8212; as he is in so many other areas of life.

HAMMER: Bernie Sanders Is Wrong. Voting Is a Privilege That Can Be Forfeited.

Bernie Sanders

Constitution

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) might be backing off her promise to let felons vote while still incarcerated, but Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) appears to have no intention of walking back statements made in a Monday night town hall event, where he pledged to restore voting rights to felons across the board, including those convicted of terrorism.
Sanders drew sharp criticism for an answer given Monday night in response to an audience question about whether he would, as president, work to restore voting rights to convicted felons, even those who remain behind bars. The audience member followed up by asking Sanders whether he believed voting rights should extend to those convicted of truly heinous crimes, like Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
&#8220;Yes, even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, &#8216;Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote. Well, that person did that. Not going to let that person vote,&#8217; you&#8217;re running down a slippery slope,&#8221; <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2019/04/23/bernie-sanders-voting-rights-boston-marathon-bomber-buttigieg-harris/3548232002/">Sanders responded</a>. &#8220;Even if they are in jail, they&#8217;re paying their price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our Democracy.&#8221;
A handful of progressive-leaning 2020 Democratic presidential candidates quickly boarded that bandwagon, but by Tuesday afternoon, both Harris and surprise upstart candidate, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, had disavowed Sanders&#8217; idea, admitting that &#8220;voting rights for convicted terrorists&#8221; was not a hill they&#8217;d prefer to die on.
Sanders, however, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2019/04/23/bernie-sanders-voting-rights-boston-marathon-bomber-buttigieg-harris/3548232002/">The Washington Free Beacon reports</a>, is intent on doubling down on his commitment to &#8220;voter rights,&#8221; and his campaign plans to &#8220;lean in&#8221; on the idea as they move into early primary states.
&#8220;Yes, I did get to speak to some voters, but I do want to say Bernie Sanders just wrapped up an event and he is not backing down from the issue at all,&#8221; NBC reporter Shaquille Brewster told MSNBC Tuesday during an interview. &#8220;I spoke to a senior campaign official who told me this is something the campaign plans to lean directly into. They see this as an opportunity to educate people on the Reconstruction era of restrictions on felons&#8217; ability to vote.&#8221;
&#8220;This is something that this official told me that really is going to expand on with hard substantive policy as they go to South Carolina,&#8221; Brewster added.
All but truly dedicated progressives are backing away from what they see as a losing proposal at the ballot box, so why is Sanders doubling down? <a href="https://hotair.com/archives/2019/04/23/report-bernies-campaign-planning-lean-directly-message-letting-prisoners-vote/">Allahpundit at Hot Air</a> has a theory that seems to make sense: Sanders has routinely lagged behind with African-American voters, and he seems to believe that allowing felons to vote will resonate with the same minorities who completely avoided his campaign in 2012. South Carolina, in particular, is a tough state for Sanders &#8212; he lost it to Hillary Clinton by a 4 to 1 margin.
This time around, Sanders isn&#8217;t just dealing with the same gap in popularity among minority voters, he&#8217;s actively campaigning against minority candidates, putting him at a deeper disadvantage.
But Sanders is walking a fine line &#8212; a problem Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham pointed out on Twitter. Although restoring voting rights to incarcerated felons may be a somewhat popular idea among some voters, in South Carolina, it means restoring the right to vote to a particularly notorious racist murderer.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
I look forward to hearing his explanation &#8212; in South Carolina &#8212; why Dylan Roof should be allowed to vote in the upcoming elections.
&#8212; Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) <a href="https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1120694758047911937?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 23, 2019</a></blockquote>
The good news for Sanders, though, is that he&#8217;s got Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s (D-NY) backing on the idea &#8212; or, at least the backing of her Chief of Staff.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
What&#8217;s the reason NOT to let incarcerated people vote? Shouldn&#8217;t the people most affected by unjust laws have some say in electing people to change them?
&#8212; Saikat Chakrabarti (@saikatc) <a href="https://twitter.com/saikatc/status/1121029236607864832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 24, 2019</a></blockquote>
The bad news is, that&#8217;s probably not a line most Americans are going to swallow.

Bernie Won’t Take It Back! Sanders Campaign Says They’ll ‘Lean In’ On Voting Rights For Incarcerated Felons

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

When music icon Cher becomes the Democratic Party&#8217;s voice of reason, we are a long, long way from Kansas. Now, after blasting the idea of flooding sanctuary cities with illegal immigrants, the &#8220;Moonstruck&#8221; star has dared to question socialist Bernie Sanders&#8217; radical proposal of allowing incarcerated felons to vote in elections.
In a now-deleted tweet, Cher openly pondered: &#8220;Does Bernie Sanders Really Believe Ppl In Prison Who Are Murders!? Rapists!? Child Molesters!? BOSTON BOMBERS &#8230; STILL DESERVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE!?&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Cher deleted this tweet. <a href="https://t.co/cZtWD4C87Y">pic.twitter.com/cZtWD4C87Y</a>
&#8212; #ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) <a href="https://twitter.com/ScottPresler/status/1120835902689902592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 23, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Cher did not explain why she deleted her tweet; the second of its kind this month in which she allowed herself to publicly express the inner-stirrings of some non-radical thoughts. Just last week, she blasted the idea of sending illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities by tweeting: &#8220;I Understand Helping struggling Immigrants, but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE 50,000+Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY LINE HUNGRY? If My State Can&#8217;t Take Care of Its Own How Can it Take Care Of More.&#8221;
Speaking at a CNN town hall on Monday, Sen. Sanders (D-VT), the current 2020 front-runner, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46295/bernie-sanders-let-terrorists-sex-predators-ryan-saavedra">actually said that voting rights should be extended</a> not just to convicted felons who have already served time (a <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/jail-survey-7-in-10-felons-register-as-democrats">Democratic Party constituency</a>, BTW) but to men and women currently sitting behind bars, which would include: murderers, kidnappers, rapists, child molesters, thieves, and terrorists, like the Boston Marathon bomber.
&#8220;Would [you] support enfranchising people like the Boston Marathon bomber, a convicted terrorist and murderer?&#8221; an audience member asked Sanders on Monday night. &#8220;Do you think those convicted of sexual assault should have the opportunity to vote for politicians who could have a direct impact on women&#8217;s rights?&#8221;
&#8220;Thank you for the question, and let me just say this: What our campaign is about and what I believe is creating a vibrant democracy,&#8221; Sanders responded. &#8220;If somebody commits a serious crime, sexual assault, murder, they&#8217;re going to be punished. They may be in jail 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, their whole life. That&#8217;s what happens when you commit a serious crime.&#8221;
&#8220;But I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;Yes, even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away &#8230; you&#8217;re running down a slippery slope &#8230; I believe even if they are in jail, they&#8217;re paying the price to society, that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy.&#8221;
When CNN moderator Chris Cuomo asked Sanders to clarify if he actually meant to extend voting rights to people who have committed some of the vilest crimes on the books, the socialist from Vermont doubled-down.
&#8220;Look, this is what I believe. Do you believe in Democracy?&#8221; Sanders continued. &#8220;Do you believe that every single American 18 years of age or older who is an American citizen has the right to vote? Once you start chipping away at that, believe me that&#8217;s what our Republican governors all over this country are doing. I believe every single person does have the right to vote.&#8221;

Bernie Burned: Even Cher Thinks Prisoners Voting Goes Too Far

Cher

There&#8217;s a push to change laws to permit both criminals serving time and ex-criminals the right to vote. Guess which party is pushing the most for these legal changes. If you guessed that it was the Democrats, go to the head of the class. Bernie Sanders says states should allow felons to vote from behind bars. Elizabeth Warren doesn&#8217;t go that far but believes felons should have the right to vote. Democrats want the criminal class to have voting rights restored because they could become a significant part of the Democratic base.
These are America&#8217;s murderers, rapists, burglars, child molesters and drug dealers. Over two million of these people are in prison. If we add in the number of people on probation and parole, there are 6.7 million people currently under correctional control. If cons and ex-cons get the right to vote, it&#8217;s almost a guarantee that most of these people will cast their vote for a Democratic candidate.
Democrats don&#8217;t stop with wanting cons and ex-cons to vote. It turns out that more than 50 percent of Democrats surveyed want illegal immigrants to have the right to vote, as they already do in some Democratic-controlled cities.
America&#8217;s gun control advocates have the belief that outlawing guns would drastically reduce crime. Almost all handguns have been outlawed from private citizen use in the U.K. since 1996. Nonetheless, violent crime in the U.K. has risen almost every year since the ban. Criminals love the idea of a disarmed populace. While there are few gun crimes in the U.K., there&#8217;s a recent report that in 2018 there were over 40,000 knife crimes committed. It&#8217;s gotten so bad that some stores have stopped selling kitchen knives.
America&#8217;s gun control advocates might have some solutions for the citizens of the U.K. They might advocate a thorough MI5 (U.K.&#8217;s secret service) background check for anyone wishing to purchase any kind of knife, including kitchen knives. They might advocate knife registration. There might be lengthy prison sentences for anyone caught with an illegal unregistered knife. With London&#8217;s murder rate higher than New York City&#8217;s, Mayor Sadiq Khan has implemented knife control policies as violent crime surges. Khan deployed over 300 additional London police officers to stop and search anyone they suspect is carrying a knife.
Here&#8217;s something else to ponder: Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential elections are calling for reparations for slavery or for the study of reparations. Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren are leading the charge. Slavery was a gross violation of human rights. Justice would demand that slave owners make compensatory payments to slaves. Since both slaves and slave owners are no longer with us, such punishment and compensation is beyond our reach.
So which white Americans owe which black Americans how much? Reparations advocates don&#8217;t want that question asked, but let&#8217;s you and I ask it. Are the millions of European, Asian and Latin Americans who immigrated to the U.S. in the 20th century responsible for slavery? What about descendants of Northern whites who fought and died in the War of 1861 in the name of freeing slaves? Should they cough up money for black Americans? What about non-slave-owning Southern whites, who were a majority of Southern whites &#8212; should their descendants be made to pay reparations?
On black people&#8217;s side of the ledger, thorny questions arise. Some blacks purchased other blacks as a means to free family members. But other blacks owned slaves for the same reason whites owned slaves &#8212; to work farms or plantations. Would descendants of these blacks be eligible for reparations?
The bottom line is because blacks are doing well in the economic arena under the Trump administration, Democrats fear losing a significant portion of the black vote. Their call for reparations is another attempt to use the promise of handouts to insure that the black vote remains in their pocket. Reparations talk is simply another insulting Democratic rope-a-dope strategy.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

WILLIAMS: Some Things To Ponder

Illegal Immigration

Progressivism

On Sunday, Hillary Clinton attended the annual &#8220;Bloody Sunday&#8221; commemorative service in Selma, AL. While speaking to the crowd, she claimed that voter ID laws kept her from winning Wisconsin &#8212; a state she didn&#8217;t even bother to visit while running for president in 2016. She was the <a href="http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/hillary-clinton-hoping-to-win-wisconsin-without-setting-foot-in/article_b39afbf6-c85c-5cba-becd-addfa03f841a.html">first candidate since 1972 to ignore the Badger State</a>.
&#8220;I was the first person who ran for president without the protection of the Voting Rights Act, and I will tell you, it makes a really big difference. And it doesn&#8217;t just make a difference in Alabama and Georgia; it made a difference in Wisconsin, where the best studies that have been done said somewhere between 40 [thousand] and 80,000 people were turned away from the polls because of the color of their skin, because of their age, because of whatever excuse could be made up to stop a fellow American citizen from voting,&#8221; she said.
&#8220;Just think about it: Between 2012, the prior presidential election where we still had the Voting Rights Act, and 2016, when my name was on the ballot, there were fewer voters registered in Georgia than there had been those prior four years,&#8221; she added.
Though The Washington Post acknowledged some studies claim voter ID laws disenfranchise minority voters (even though getting a proper ID is not difficult for any U.S. citizen of legal voting age), <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/06/hillary-clintons-claims-about-voter-suppression-georgia-wisconsin/?noredirect=on&amp;utm_term=.33294c2cac16">it noted that Clinton</a> &#8220;made several factual errors, offered questionable claims about a couple of studies, and ended up giving a misleading assessment of her loss.&#8221;
For starters, the part of the Voting Rights Act that was struck down only applied to nine states and a few counties &#8212; none of which were in Wisconsin. Georgia, which was covered by the VRA, saw voter registration increase between 2012 and 2016, counter to Clinton&#8217;s claims.
The Wisconsin voter ID law gave people plenty of options for what ID could allow them to vote. The Post reported that it required &#8220;voters to show a U.S. passport or a photo ID issued by Wisconsin state agencies, the military, Veterans Affairs, a university or college, or a federally recognized Indian tribe.&#8221;
The author of one of the studies, Clinton&#8217;s spokesperson Nick Merrill, pointed to surveyed people in two counties and said the results could not be extrapolated to the whole state. He even suggested some people who said they didn&#8217;t vote because of the voter ID &#8220;might not have voted even if the law were not in effect.&#8221;
Merrill also pointed to other evidence &#8212; a memo from a Democrat super PAC which made the absurd claim that more than 200,000 additional people would have voted in Wisconsin were it not for the voter ID laws. As for the 80,000, it looks like Clinton&#8217;s people just made it up.
&#8220;The 40,000 number comes from the more conservative estimate,&#8221; Merrill told the Post. &#8220;The 80,000 number is also a conservative estimate well within the range of the two studies.&#8221;
But the Post also spoke to Rick Hasen of the University of California-Irvine. He&#8217;s an &#8220;elections expert&#8221; and told the media outlet that black voters didn&#8217;t come out for Clinton like they did for Obama &#8212; and this happened in states with and without voter ID laws. Further, Hasen told the Post that Clinton&#8217;s 40,000 to 80,000 estimate was &#8220;ludicrous&#8221; because Wisconsin wasn&#8217;t affected by the Voting Rights Act (he still managed to claim that voter ID laws deter voters).
The Post&#8217;s Salvador Rizzo concludes:
<blockquote>
The Supreme Court&#8217;s ruling in 2013 had no bearing on Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin-Madison study she relied on for her 40,000 estimate says its findings from two counties should not be extrapolated to form statewide conclusions. Her spokesman did not cite any study for the 80,000 estimate. Voter registration in Georgia did not decline from 2012 to 2016.
</blockquote>
&#8220;Wrong on multiple levels, seriously misleading, and worth a cumulative Four Pinocchios,&#8221; he added.
<a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/hillary-clintons-latest-excuse-for-losing-the-2016-presidential-election/">h/t Jim Geraghty of NRO</a>

Washington Post Fact Checks Hillary Clinton’s Absurd Claim That Voter ID Laws Cost Her The Election

On Friday, the historically leftist &#8212; but often quirky &#8212; American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) surprised many when it came out in <a href="https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-letter-house-rules-committee-hr-1">opposition</a> to House Democrats&#8217; omnibus <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1/text">H.R. 1</a> bill, dubbed the &#8220;For The People Act Of 2019.&#8221;
As the name signifies, H.R. 1 is the bill label often given to a new House leadership&#8217;s most <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/01/05/682286587/house-democrats-introduce-anti-corruption-bill-as-symbolic-first-act">symbolic</a> or highly pressing legislative priority. In January, NPR <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/01/05/682286587/house-democrats-introduce-anti-corruption-bill-as-symbolic-first-act">described</a> the For The People Act Of 2019 as &#8220;a 571-page compendium of existing problems and proposed solutions in four political hot zones: voting, political money, redistricting and ethics.&#8221;
Among other things, H.R. 1 provides for automatic voter registration, makes election day a national holiday, restores many felons&#8217; voting rights, cuts back further on states&#8217; ability to control their own voter rolls, revives the previously gutted <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/42334/federalism-restored-trump-administration-reverses-josh-hammer">coverage formula</a> of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, mandates the disclosure of donors to politically active 501(c)(4) organizations, mandates that presidential inaugural committees disclose expenditures in addition to donors, and mandates that presidents and vice presidents must release their tax returns.
Some institutional free speech advocates have opposed H.R. 1 since its incipience. &#8220;This is obviously a pretty radical expansion of the regulation of political speech,&#8221; said David Keating in January, president of the conservative Institute for Free Speech, according to NPR.
The ACLU now publicly similarly opposes H.R. 1, which is <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/4/hr-1-democrats-election-reform-bill-unconstitution">due for a vote</a> on the House floor later this week. Here is an excerpt of the ACLU&#8217;s Friday <a href="https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-letter-house-rules-committee-hr-1">letter</a> to House Rules Committee Chairman Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Ranking Member Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK):
<blockquote>
The American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of its 3 million members, supporters and activists, opposes H.R. 1, the For the People Act of 2019 as it was reported out of the House Administration Committee. We strongly urge the Rules Committee to allow floor amendments that would mitigate our concerns with the provisions that unconstitutionally infringe the freedoms of speech and association. &#8230;
[T]here are&#8230;provisions that unconstitutionally impinge on the free speech rights of American citizens and public interest organizations. They will have the effect of harming our public discourse by silencing necessary voices that would otherwise speak out about the public issues of the day.
</blockquote>
&#8220;While there are many aspects of H.R. 1 that we strongly support, the provisions outlined above must be changed to avoid unconstitutionally burdening political speech,&#8221; the letter concluded.
Although H.R. 1 is due for a House floor vote later this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has <a href="https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/aclu-democrats-election-reform/2019/03/05/id/905566/">said</a> that he will not even bring the measure for a full vote in the senior legislative chamber.
Conservatives have not been reluctant to glom onto the ACLU&#8217;s opposition as a means of arguing for H.R. 1&#8217;s heavy-handed, extremist mandates. &#8220;When groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, who have traditionally supported the Democratic party, echo my concerns with H.R. 1, it underscores why election reform legislation should not be developed in a partisan manner,&#8221; said Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), the Ranking Member on the House Administration Committee, according to <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/4/hr-1-democrats-election-reform-bill-unconstitution">The Washington Times</a>.

ACLU Blasts House Democrats’ Big ‘Election Reform’ Bill As Unconstitutional

ACLU

Leftism

U.S. House of Representatives

Pennsylvania has finally released the results of an investigation of its voter registration rolls which was concluded last summer.
As Jazz Shaw at Hot Air notes, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf had <a href="https://hotair.com/archives/2019/01/31/pennsylvania-admits-thousands-registered-non-citizen-voters/">blocked the release of the results</a> using legal maneuvers, but the information is finally out. More than 11,000 non-citizens are on the Keystone State&#8217;s voter rolls, <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/30/pennsylvania-11000-non-citizens-registered-vote/">according to the Washington Times</a>. This is far less than the estimated 100,000 &#8211; a number that could have changed the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
&#8220;Pennsylvania officials have admitted to finding names of 11,198 non-citizens registered to vote on the state&#8217;s rolls &#8212; though top lawmakers suspect the number could still be higher,&#8221; the Times reported.
&#8220;I believe that we need to take action and have those people removed immediately from the tolls. They were never eligible to vote,&#8221; Republican state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe told the Times.
President Donald Trump won the state of Pennsylvania in 2016 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/pennsylvania-president-clinton-trump">by 44,292 votes</a>, according to The New York Times. If every non-citizen on Pennsylvania&#8217;s voter rolls had voted, Trump still would have won (obviously). But as Shaw points out, the real issue here is how hard the governor fought to keep this information from the public until after the midterm election in 2018:
<blockquote>
Making this problem worse isn&#8217;t the fact that there are that many non-citizens registered to vote, but that the Governor fought tooth and nail to prevent this information from going public until after the election. The original investigation took place in plenty of time for the news to be released last year, but the Governor dragged his feet until a hearing was scheduled for December. Once the election was safely out of the way, the Governor withdrew his objections.
</blockquote>
Shaw reports that the reason so many states have thousands of non-citizens on their voter rolls is that they are tied to motor vehicle registration. For some reason, the DMV lets people register to vote when they renew their license or register a vehicle. And many states allow illegal aliens to obtain driver&#8217;s licenses.
In Texas, a state investigation found <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/42716/texas-finds-58000-people-who-identified-non-hank-berrien">95,000 non-citizens on the voter rolls</a>, 58,000 of whom had voted in at least one election since 1996.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said of the results of the 11-month investigation:
<blockquote>
Every single instance of illegal voting threatens democracy in our state and deprives individual Texans of their voice. Nothing is more vital to preserving our Constitution than the integrity of our voting process, and my office will do everything within its abilities to solidify trust in every election in the state of Texas.
</blockquote>
These numbers don&#8217;t add up to an amount that could change an election &#8211; at least not yet &#8211; but it does speak to a bureaucratic error that could become a problem at some point in the future, especially if Democrats continue to oppose the need for voters to verify who they are and if they are citizens when they go to the polls.

Pennsylvania Finds Thousands Of ‘Non-Citizens’ On Voter Rolls

On Friday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/us/noncitizens-voting-texas.html">after an 11-month investigation</a> by the Texas Department of Public Safety perusing state records going back to 1996, 95,000 people who identified themselves as non-citizens were discovered listed on the voter rolls and an astonishing 58,000 had voted in at least one Texas election.
Paxton stated, &#8220;Every single instance of illegal voting threatens democracy in our state and deprives individual Texans of their voice. Nothing is more vital to preserving our Constitution than the integrity of our voting process, and my office will do everything within its abilities to solidify trust in every election in the state of Texas.&#8221;
Paxton was echoed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who tweeted, &#8220;I support prosecution where appropriate. The State will work on legislation to safeguard against these illegal practices.&#8221;
Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the secretary of state, noted that the voters who identified themselves as non-citizens would be contacted by local officials asking them to offer proof that they were indeed citizens. He pointed out that if non-citizens vote in Texas, that&#8217;s a felony; if they register to vote, that&#8217;s a misdemeanor.
The process discovering the voters identifying as non-citizens was an arduous one, utilizing names, birth dates and full or partial Social Security numbers as the investigation examined voter rolls and public safety records.
As <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-says-it-has-discovered-95000-non-citizens-on-voter-rolls-58000-have-voted">Fox News</a> noted, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-dismantles-voter-fraud-commission-heres-what-the-controversial-group-did">&#8220;President Trump created a commission</a> in 2017 to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the 2016 election. But it was eventually dismantled by Trump after the group faced lawsuits, opposition from states and in-fighting among its members. Trump said at the time that Democrats refused to hand over data &#8216;because they know that many people are voting illegally.&#8217;&#8221;
Texas <a href="https://www.votetexas.gov/register-to-vote/need-id.html">voter ID laws</a> offer a list of acceptable forms of photo ID for voting. These include: a Texas Driver License issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS); a Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS; a Texas Personal Identification Card issued by DPS; a Texas Handgun License issued by DPS; a United States Military Identification Card containing the person&#8217;s photograph; a United States Citizenship Certificate containing the person&#8217;s photograph, or a United States Passport (book or card.)
If a voter does not possess one of the foregoing methods of identification and cannot obtain one, here is a list of the supporting forms of ID that can be presented: a copy or original of a government document that shows the voter&#8217;s name and an address, including the voter&#8217;s voter registration certificate; copy of or original current utility bill; a copy of or original bank statement; a copy of or original government check; a copy of or original paycheck; or a copy of or original of (a) a certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes the voter&#8217;s identity (which may include a foreign birth document).
Last April, a federal appeals court <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/us/texas-voter-id.html">upheld</a> Texas&#8217; voter identification law, which had been challenged by those who felt it was discriminatory against black and Hispanic voters. The federal appeals court overturned a lower-court ruling <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/23/us/federal-judge-rejects-a-revised-voter-id-law-in-texas.html?module=inline">striking down</a> the law in 2017.

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Voting Rights

VoteSafe’s Tom Ridge Talks Mail-In Voting, Popularity Of Absentee Ballots, And The November Election

BRYAN: The Hypocrisy Of Alyssa Milano Returns

Wisconsin Primary WILL Go On Despite State Shelter-In-Place Orders, Court Says

Actress Jennifer Lawrence Spearheading National Vote-From-Home Effort

Illinois Dems Admit Mistake Allowed Non-Citizens To Vote In 2018

WATCH: Hillary Clinton Now Claims ‘Voter Suppression’ Caused Her To Lose The 2016 Election

WATCH: Stacey Abrams: Voter Suppression More ‘Insidious’ Today Than It Was In The 1960s

WATCH: CNN Host Helps Promote Dem Stacey Abrams’ PAC

WATCH: Gillibrand Amplifies Unsubstantiated Claim: ‘Stacey Abrams Would Be Governor’ If Not For Voter Suppression

KLAVAN: What The Never-Trump Crowd Gets Wrong About Trump

Kamala Harris Refuses To Accept Election Results In Florida, Georgia

POLL: Americans Do NOT Want Voting Age Lowered To 16

HAMMER: Bernie Sanders Is Wrong. Voting Is a Privilege That Can Be Forfeited.

Bernie Won’t Take It Back! Sanders Campaign Says They’ll ‘Lean In’ On Voting Rights For Incarcerated Felons

Bernie Burned: Even Cher Thinks Prisoners Voting Goes Too Far

WILLIAMS: Some Things To Ponder

Washington Post Fact Checks Hillary Clinton’s Absurd Claim That Voter ID Laws Cost Her The Election

ACLU Blasts House Democrats’ Big ‘Election Reform’ Bill As Unconstitutional

Pennsylvania Finds Thousands Of ‘Non-Citizens’ On Voter Rolls

Texas Finds 58,000 People Who Identified As Non-Citizens Have Voted Since 1996

Menu

Voting Rights

VoteSafe’s Tom Ridge Talks Mail-In Voting, Popularity Of Absentee Ballots, And The November Election

BRYAN: The Hypocrisy Of Alyssa Milano Returns

Wisconsin Primary WILL Go On Despite State Shelter-In-Place Orders, Court Says

Actress Jennifer Lawrence Spearheading National Vote-From-Home Effort

Illinois Dems Admit Mistake Allowed Non-Citizens To Vote In 2018

WATCH: Hillary Clinton Now Claims ‘Voter Suppression’ Caused Her To Lose The 2016 Election

WATCH: Stacey Abrams: Voter Suppression More ‘Insidious’ Today Than It Was In The 1960s

WATCH: CNN Host Helps Promote Dem Stacey Abrams’ PAC

WATCH: Gillibrand Amplifies Unsubstantiated Claim: ‘Stacey Abrams Would Be Governor’ If Not For Voter Suppression

KLAVAN: What The Never-Trump Crowd Gets Wrong About Trump

Kamala Harris Refuses To Accept Election Results In Florida, Georgia

POLL: Americans Do NOT Want Voting Age Lowered To 16

HAMMER: Bernie Sanders Is Wrong. Voting Is a Privilege That Can Be Forfeited.

Bernie Won’t Take It Back! Sanders Campaign Says They’ll ‘Lean In’ On Voting Rights For Incarcerated Felons

Bernie Burned: Even Cher Thinks Prisoners Voting Goes Too Far

WILLIAMS: Some Things To Ponder

Washington Post Fact Checks Hillary Clinton’s Absurd Claim That Voter ID Laws Cost Her The Election

ACLU Blasts House Democrats’ Big ‘Election Reform’ Bill As Unconstitutional

Pennsylvania Finds Thousands Of ‘Non-Citizens’ On Voter Rolls

Texas Finds 58,000 People Who Identified As Non-Citizens Have Voted Since 1996

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