Voter ID and vote-by-mail reform bills move to Pa. House – Pennsylvania Capital-Star Source Link Excerpt:
Pennsylvania lawmakers will consider a package of election reforms including a voter ID requirement and changes to the commonwealth’s vote-by-mail law after a House committee passed the long-debated measures.
Most Democrats have staunchly opposed proposals requiring voters to prove their identities every time they vote but leaders have recently expressed a willingness to negotiate in exchange for support on other measures to modernize Pennsylvania’s election system.
On Tuesday, House Bill 771, sponsored by Rep. Thomas Mehaffie (R-Dauphin) passed with a bipartisan 14-12 vote in the House State Government Committee. Democratic Reps John Inglis of Allegheny County and Nancy Guenst of Montgomery County voted in support.
The committee voted along party lines, however, to approve an omnibus bill that would eliminate ambiguity in Act 77, the law that gave Pennsylvanians the option to vote by mail without an excuse for the first time in 2020.
The vote-by-mail provision has been the subject of numerous lawsuits, including one now before the U.S. Supreme Court, as candidates and parties have argued over how election officials should handle irregularities, such as errors on completed ballots, that are not explicitly addressed.
The bill would make clear that county election officials are required to notify voters if their mail-in ballots have been rejected for the lack of a signature and give the voter an opportunity to “cure” the error.
Among other changes, House Bill 1396 would also give election workers up to a week before Election Day to prepare to count mail-in ballots, a process that has been a bottleneck for election results in parts of the state, providing fodder for election deniers.
Many states have adopted voter identification to bolster election security. But seven states which claim to check voter ID have loopholes, allowing residents to avoid the requirement by simply filling out paperwork.
In Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, South Dakota, and Virginia, officials “request” voter ID, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. If someone lacks ID while voting in person, however, they must simply sign forms claiming to be the voter, and officials will let them cast a ballot.
In recent months, noncitizen voting has drawn increasing scrutiny nationwide. The Department of Justice is investigating numerous cases of noncitizen voting, as The Federalist previously reported. In Oregon — which has no ID requirement — officials found more than 1,700 noncitizens on the rolls and registered more than 54,000 of “unknown citizenship.” Hypothetically, in the seven states mentioned above, bad actors could falsely claim others’ identity to vote on their behalf.
Arizona will be combing its voter registration rolls with an eye to removing non-citizens, which could impact up to 50,000 people now eligible to vote in federal elections.
The state went for President Donald Trump in 2024 after narrowly backing former President Joe Biden in 2020 amid claims of voting irregularities.
After a lawsuit launched by America First Legal, the state has agreed that it will partner with the Department of Homeland Security to review voting rolls to verify that all residents on the rolls are American citizens, documents related to the suit said, according to Newsweek.
The lawsuit was filed last year.
The lawsuit was dismissed on Wednesday after a settlement was reached when the 15 counties being sued agreed “to ask DHS to begin responding to requests … to verify the citizenship of each county’s federal-only voters.”
Kinda crazy that Arizona Democrats needed a lawsuit to force them to remove 50,000 noncitizens from voter rolls
But this is who we’re up against
Democrats will cheat any way they can, whether it’s with illegal aliens voting or shutting down half the election machines on… https://t.co/pEoao8mGxc
The North Carolina Supreme Court decided to allow about 60,000 ballots to count in a race for a seat on its own bench, despite those voters never having provided proper identification upon registering.
A unanimous court Friday decided that over 60,000 votes challenged by Republican candidate and appellate judge Jefferson Griffin should remain in the count for the vote total. In a 4-2 split, the court also decided that another roughly 5,500 overseas voters who did not provide identification would be allowed 30 days to fix their ballots, while another 267 voters who have never resided in North Carolina would have their votes removed.
“This Court is aware of the valid competing interests in this case the need
If anyone isn’t sure whether Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar is thwarting efforts to clean up Nevada’s dirty voter rolls, his new bill, AB 534, removes all doubt.
There are two ways for citizens to challenge the eligibility of a voter who has moved from the residence where they are registered to vote — known as “Section 535” and “Section 547.”
Last year, our group, the Pigpen Project, filed thousands of challenges using both sections. In response, Aguilar’s office claimed challenges like ours lacked “personal knowledge” that the voter had moved.
If the post office’s National Change of Address (NCOA) database shows that a voter has permanently moved, Aguilar has declared that such information gleaned from this official government database doesn’t equate to “personal knowledge.” But “personal knowledge” is not defined in the Nevada Revised Statutes (NRS), only in the secretary of state’s implementing regulations. It’s only his opinion. Besides, Section 535 only requires challengers to attest “that he or she has personal knowledge of the facts set forth in the affidavit” (emphasis added).
Another win for election integrity is unfolding in Arizona, where state officials are partnering with DHS to verify voter rolls. Make no mistake about it —this is exactly the kind of action we need to protect our elections from fraud and abuse.
As many as 50,000 non-citizens are expected to be removed from Arizona’s voter rolls following a successful lawsuit by America First Legal (AFL) against all 15 Arizona counties.
“This settlement is a great result for all Arizonans,” (AFL) senior counsel James Rogers told Fox News Digital.
As a result of the lawsuit, the 15 counties have now begun working with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to verify the citizenship status of all registered voters in the state who failed to provide proof of citizenship.
While a 2013 Supreme Court ruling prohibits states from imposing voter registration requirements beyond the federal requirement that registrants must check a box affirming their U.S. citizenship, Arizona residents are still required to provide proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections.
The Arizona law also requires that county recorders perform a monthly list maintenance to confirm the U.S. citizenship of so-called “federal-only voters,” a list of nearly 50,000 individuals who failed to provide proof of U.S. citizenship and were not allowed to vote in state or local elections.
Of those, DOGE has already identified 1.3 million who are collecting Medicaid, a $567 billion a year program to about 79.3 million people at about $7,100 per person collecting, an apparent waste of about $8 billion a year.
According to DOGE’s Antonio Gracias, “We’ve gone through on every benefit program… We found groups from this particular group of people, this 5.5 million people, in those benefit programs.”
More than 40 left-wing organizations (and/or some of their affiliates) opposing Republican efforts to prevent noncitizen voting in U.S. elections have collectively received more than $150 million from groups funded by leftist billionaire George Soros, a new analysis reveals.
On March 28, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR) released a letter directed at members of Congress, asking them to oppose the GOP-sponsored SAVE Act, which aims to close existing loopholes in federal law that foreign nationals could exploit to register and cast ballots in U.S. elections. As described by InfluenceWatch, LCCHR “serves as an umbrella organization for over 200 mostly left-wing organizations which lobby and advocate before Congress and other federal agencies on legislation and Presidential appointments to the executive departments and judiciary.”
The 112 left-wing organizations that signed onto the aforementioned letter “strongly” urged congressional representatives to “oppose” the SAVE Act, which they falsely claimed, “represents a shameful, divisive attempt to prevent millions of eligible U.S. citizens — disproportionately Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and other voters of color — from registering to vote.” The groups specifically parroted faux Democrat talking points that basic voting safeguards such as documentary proof of citizenship requirements are “onerous,” “harmful,” and “designed to restrict participation by lawfully registered voters.”
Federal Judge Dale Ho has issued a written order dismissing all federal charges against Eric Adams, “with prejudice,” meaning the charges cannot be filed again.
Judge Ho wrote on his decision to dismiss with prejudice, that to allow DOJ to later refile charges “would create the unavoidable perception that the Mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration. (Adams) might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents.”
Judge Permanently Dismisses Eric Adams’s Corruption Case– freebeacon.com Source Link Excerpt:
A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed the corruption case against New York City mayor Eric Adams (D.) and barred the Department of Justice from refiling the charges against him.
Judge Dale Ho in a written order tossed the criminal case “with prejudice,” permanently blocking the DOJ from recharging Adams based on the same evidence. Federal prosecutors had sought a dismissal “without prejudice,” which would have allowed them to refile the case later.
Allowing the Justice Department to refile charges, Ho wrote, “would create the unavoidable perception that the Mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration.”
Adams, who is running for reelection this year, also “might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents” in that situation, according to Ho.
The DOJ in February directed prosecutors to drop the case against Adams, who had been set to face trial this month on charges of bribery, wire fraud, and soliciting illegal campaign contributions.
Five Ways Non-Citizens With Social Security Numbers Scam US– thefederalist.com Source Link Excerpt:
When Elon Musk and his DOGE colleague Antonio Gracias showed a Wisconsin audience how non-citizens get Social Security Numbers (SSNs), their presentation painted the clearest picture yet of the long-term damage former President Joe Biden’s open border policy will have on the United States.
Standing in front of a huge chart, they showed how the number of SSNs issued to new non-citizens spiked in 2024.
The total SSNs issued in 2021 was roughly 270,000; in 2022 it climbed to 590,000, and in 2023, there were 964,000 SSNs issued to new non-citizens. But in 2024 it more than doubled to over 2 million. This counts only non-citizens who got their SSNs through the Enumeration Beyond Entry program, a system where the Social Security Administration automatically issues SSNs and cards to certain foreign nationals in the U.S., as part of an agreement with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Your data is apples to oranges. The data you show for the 2016 to 2020 period is enumeration for all immigrants in ALL forms. The data we showed in our slide last night in Wisconsin was just Enumeration Beyond Entry (“EBE”) immigrants. The difference is Enumerations at Field… https://t.co/iDaFPbcL0upic.twitter.com/XNNFQb51Di
Jason Galanis thanks Trump for commuting sentence– www.washingtonexaminer.com Source Link Excerpt:
Jason Galanis, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, praised President Donald Trump for understanding “the law better than any lawyer” in commuting his sentence.
Galanis was serving a 189-month prison sentence for securities fraud until yesterday when Trump announced he had commuted the sentence. Galanis pled guilty to fraud charges in 2020. While serving his sentence, Galanis testified against Hunter Biden and his father, then-President Joe Biden, to the House Oversight Committee.
“I’m delighted to be able to be here to thank him,” Galanis said of Trump on Fox News‘s Hannity Tuesday. “I think that big law is on notice, and the president’s onto them. And so be warned, the president is onto them, and I’ve never seen a lawyer smarter than President Trump who knows the law better than any lawyer.”
Judge Admits ‘Concerns’ About ‘Security’ Of GA Voting System– thefederalist.com Source Link Excerpt:
U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia Amy Totenberg admitted in a late Monday ruling that there are “substantial concerns” about Georgia’s voting system but refused to address them, instead dismissing a years-long case that sought to move the state to hand-marked paper ballots for alleged lack of standing.
The case, Curling v. Raffensperger, was brought back in 2017 and has since evolved. Plaintiffs, which include the Coalition for Good Governance and several Georgia voters, asked the court — according to Totenberg’s ruling — “to stop Georgia’s use of its electronic in-person voting system so that it can be replaced with a hand-marked paper ballot system.”
Plaintiffs argued, in part, that the current voting system “makes it impossible for these voters to verify that the QR codes on their printed ballots, which are used to tabulate their votes, accurately reflect the ballot selections they made on the voting machines,” according to the ruling.
Totenberg ruled that “Plaintiffs lack standing to pursue their claims because neither of these asserted injuries constitute an invasion of a legally protected interest under governing precedent.” But Totenberg also ruled that plaintiffs “identified substantial concerns about the administration, maintenance, and security of Georgia’s electronic in-person voting system …”
Voter ID Constitutional Amendment Passes by Eye-Popping Margin in Major Defeat to Democrats– www.westernjournal.com Source Link Excerpt:
Wisconsin voters decisively approved a measure to enshrine voter identification requirements in the state constitution on Tuesday.
Wisconsin Question 1 asked voters whether a new section should be added to the state constitution “to require that voters present valid photographic identification verifying their identity in order to vote in any election,” according to text of the amendment from Ballotpedia.
As of Wednesday morning, roughly 62.7 percent of voters cast their ballots in the affirmative, while 37.3 percent voted against the measure, according to vote tallies from The New York Times.
Wisconsin already requires voter ID, but the constitutional amendment prevents the law from being overturned.
Democrats Sue Trump for Mandating Proof of Citizenship to Vote in Federal Elections– slaynews.com Source Link Excerpt:
Top Democrats have filed a lawsuit to block President Donald Trump’s executive order mandating that voters must provide proof of citizenship to cast ballots in federal elections.
The lawsuit alleges that Trump’s order will “impose radical changes on how Americans register to vote.”
Trump signed the executive order last week seeking to overhaul the nation’s elections.
However, the order now faces two legal challenges, one of them by top Democrats.
The first lawsuit was filed on Monday afternoon by two leftist groups – the Campaign Legal Center and the State Democracy Defenders Fund.
Shortly after, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, and Senate and House Democratic leaders filed a complaint of their own.
Both lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ask the court to block Trump’s order and declare it illegal.
Detroit-Area Clerk Blows Whistle On ‘Years’ Of Ballot Trafficking– thefederalist.com Source Link Excerpt:
Voter fraud has been taking place in the Detroit-area suburb of Hamtramck “for years,” potentially affecting “hundreds of ballots,” the city clerk told The Federalist. She wrote Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel weeks ago imploring action, but heard “nothing” in response.
“That’s the only thing I can do, since there’s nobody else that helps me put a stop to them breaking the law,” Hamtramck City Clerk Rana Faraj told The Federalist. “It’s been ongoing for years, and nobody does anything about it.”
Meanwhile, Nessel was pictured meeting with Hamtramck Councilman Mohammed Hassan — who is accused of election fraud — at an event in Detroit on March 29, according to Facebook. The two discussed “local security issues,” according to an account of the event posted online.
The Detroit suburb of Hamtramck, once a Polish enclave, is now the only Muslim-majority city in America. The area elected an “all-Muslim government” in 2021. The city’s population is just more than 27,000, so Faraj said only a few thousand voters turn out for city elections. The clerk said she is “aware” of her surroundings, so she knows “exactly what’s going on in the community.”
