Protecting the Franchise

Democrats love screaming that there is no voter fraud, until you link to verified cases, then they scream that it is insignificant, and go back to calling you racist.

In a little-noted ruling at the end of June, a federal judge sided with Florida in its efforts to purge the voter rolls of non-citizens and felons:

MIAMI — A federal judge on Wednesday rebuffed the Department of Justice’s emergency request to stop Florida’s attempt to remove people who are not American citizens from its voter registration rolls

Judge Robert L. Hinkle of United States District Court in Tallahassee said federal laws did not bar the state from identifying and removing ineligible voters from its rolls, though the Aug. 14 primary is less than 90 days away. The laws, Judge Hinkle said, are to block the removal of legitimate voters: people lawfully registered to vote before being eligible for removal, like felons or the deceased. They do not apply to people, like noncitizens, who never should have been on the rolls. (NY Times)

In response to the judge's ruling, the Obama Administration has temporarily ceased abetting criminal activity and is now expanding access to its data. 

Here in Colorado, Secretary of State Scott Gessler, with the backing of Attorney General John Suthers, is trying to clean up our voter rolls, but he’s being met with the same loony left protests…

Opponents of Gessler's efforts say they amount to voter intimidation and could keep eligible voters — particularly Latinos, who are expected to play a big role in deciding the election in states such as Colorado — from going to the polls. Those voters lean heavily Democratic. (Denver Post)

If you are a US citizen and you are not sure that you are allowed to vote, you are too stupid to vote and you never should have gotten your citizenship because you should not have passed the citizenship test. This is a red herring, like most liberal arguments.

If they wanted to combat voter intimidation, they could post poll watchers and act as advocates to keep mean republicans from telling the little brown people that they can’t vote. You can’t swing a cat in Denver without hitting a liberal lawyer or some kind of social agitator, so there are surely enough people to do this.

Gessler’s office has already been going through registration records and finding questionable voters:

Gessler asked DHS to verify the status of roughly 4,500 people who provided a noncitizen document such as an alien-registration card, or "green card" when they applied for a Colorado driver's license and who also are registered to vote. Suthers' letter sent Monday notes that number has now grown to more than 5,000.

About 2,000 of those people have cast ballots in recent elections, spokesman Rich Coolidge said.

[…]

Suthers and Gessler acknowledge those 5,000 could include people who have since become citizens. (Denver Post)

The Voter Registration System is Broken

Gessler acknowledges he doesn't have a stack of confirmed cases of voter fraud, but he points to 430 cases where non-citizens self-identified their presence on the voting rolls and asked to be removed.

Letters provided by Gessler's office and reviewed by 9NEWS show non-citizens apologizing, often in broken English, for mistakenly ending up on the voting rolls when they registered for a driver's license as a resident alien.

"What it shows is that we don't have a system in place to properly screen people to make sure only eligible voters are voting," Gessler said. (9 News Colorado)

How to do voter registration

Voter registration should be a deliberate act initiated by the voter. No SEIU crooks with clipboards filling out bogus registration forms, no signing up pot smoking out-of-state college students at rap concerts, no mailing pre-filled voter registration forms to people's houses, no motor voter that allows eager Democrat public union employees to fraudulently register non-citizens.

You present yourself at the county office with proper documentation and you register yourself. Deputized county officials could go register people in old folks homes as well as the shut-ins. After the election, the rolls are zero'd out and you start all over. A simple face-to-face confirmation that you are still alive and still live where you did two years ago would suffice for those who had previously proven their citizenship status and address. Any government employee caught improperly registering someone should be fired and prosecuted.

This is not discrimination because it applies to all citizens equally. It is not a poll tax, as inJustice Minister Heinrich Holder ridiculously claimed, but then again he could probably get Chief Justice Roberts to agree with him...

Putting such laws in place would go a long way towards ending the destructive cycle of one side or the other attempting to delegitimize someone's election with charges of voter fraud or voter intimidation.