Progressive Activists, Officials Work to Extend Voting to Prisoners, Noncitizens to Expand Base

by Fred Lucas   Inmate voting, noncitizen voting, and even mandatory voting have been among the initiatives pushed in Democrat-led jurisdictions this year to expand their voting base. “The Left wants to normalize voter classes that nobody took seriously a generation ago—criminals, foreigners—to help them win elections,” J. Christian Adams, president of the…

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Commentary: Voter Photo IDs Are the Rule in Europe and Elsewhere

Democrats and much of the media are pushing to make permanent the extraordinary, pandemic-driven measures to relax voting rules during the 2020 elections – warning anew of racist voter “suppression” otherwise. Yet democracies in Europe and elsewhere tell a different story – of the benefits of stricter voter ID requirements after hard lessons learned. 

A database on voting rules worldwide compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I run, shows that election integrity measures are widely accepted globally, and have often been adopted by countries after they’ve experienced fraud under looser voting regimes.

Britain is Europe’s outlier in generally not requiring voter IDs, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson aims to change that. He went to the polls in May with wife-to-be Carrie Symonds.

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House Democrats Push Comprehensive Bill on Alleged ‘Voter Suppression,’ ‘Dark Money,’ and ‘Gerrymandering’

Leading Democrats in the House of Representatives are bringing back a previously-introduced bill that aims to fight such as issues as “dark money” and alleged “voter suppression” and “gerrymandering,” as reported by Fox News.

The bill, labeled the “For The People Act,” is sponsored by Representative John Sarbanes (D-Md.), and is cosponsored by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

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Gwinnett County Elections Chair Pushes for Election Law Changes; Civil Rights Groups Call for Her Resignation

Activists and legislators are calling for Gwinnett County Board of Registrations and Elections Chair Alice O’Lenick to resign for supporting election law changes. O’Lenick wanted to limit no-excuse absentee voting to the elderly and infirm, ban absentee ballot drop boxes, and expand early voting to last 21 days and be open on the weekends.

O’Lenick’s proposals incited negative responses from a variety of civil rights and activist groups, as well as a coalition of Democratic state legislators. Amongst the groups were The Lincoln Project, Fair Fight Action, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta, Georgia American Federation of Labor and Congress of Individual Organizations (AFL-CIO), Georgia Equality, and Voto Latino.

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Judge Abrams Gardner Now Says Provisional Ballots Allowed, but Change of Address Isn’t Proof of Ineligibility to Vote

Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner reversed part of her ruling late Wednesday night, allowing Muscogee County to impose provisional ballots for challenged voters. However, Gardner maintained that the challenge of eligibility can’t be made solely on the basis of National Change of Address (NCOA) registry data. Gardner’s updated order followed shortly after an original ruling prohibited two counties from imposing provisional ballots for over 4,100 challenged voters. 

Gardner is the sister of Stacey Abrams, the Democratic activist leading several organizations and a political action committee dedicated to voters rights. Despite the pair’s connection and Abrams’ interest in the case, Gardner refused to recuse herself. She published an explanation on Thursday, several days after her first order.

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