Election law

The Dems’ lies of Texas

Featured image Rich Lowry notes this inconsistency in the Democrats’ position on filibusters: In Washington, D.C., where Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress, the Senate filibuster is portrayed as a Jim Crow relic that is profoundly undemocratic. In Austin, Texas, where Republicans control the governor’s mansion and both chambers of the legislature, House Democrats’ walking out to prevent the passage of a bill with majority support is portrayed »

Trump Wins In Michigan

Featured image I have said several times that I don’t know whether the Democrats stole the 2020 election, but I do know that they tried hard to steal it. Their efforts included relaxation of voting standards, especially relating to mail-in voting, wherever they had Democratic Secretaries of State. Typically these changes to voting procedures, not enacted by state legislatures–likely in violation of the Constitution–involved waiving a statutory requirement of witness signatures to »

Georgia Smear Blowing Up In Biden’s Face

Featured image The Democrats, in their seemingly endless quest to profit from race hatred, have lied repeatedly about Georgia’s election reform law. Their lies were too bald-faced even for their own captive press, earning Joe Biden the maximum Four Pinocchios from the Washington Post. Now the push-back is under way in earnest. It turns out that Joe Biden’s own state, Delaware, has voting laws that are more restrictive (i.e., do a better »

CRB: The Electoral College by dawn’s early light

Featured image This morning we conclude our preview of the new (Winter) issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Taking a rounded look at the presidential election and its aftermath, we have featured four essays directed at those with an open mind who seek to understand what happened. The posts featuring the essays earlier this week are here (Charles Kesler, “After January 6th”), here (Andrew Bush, “Why Trump lost”), here (William Voegeli, »

Voting By Mail: How Other Countries Do It

Featured image On the podcast this week we discussed John Lott’s statistical analysis of voting anomalies in several key swing states, in which he concluded there were likely around 290,000 fraudulent votes. The difficulty is that the analysis depends on sophisticated regression techniques that are beyond the grasp of most laypeople, and indeed there is a serious critique of Lott’s paper that argues that Lott’s result is largely an artifact of the »

Supreme Court to Rule on Faithless Electors

Featured image The U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari in two cases that could have important impact on the functioning of the Electoral College. The issue presented in both cases, one from Colorado and one from Washington, is whether a state can, by law, require its electors to vote according to their pledges or the state’s majority vote. The issue, previously obscure, came into focus in 2016 when ten electors refused to »

Justin Trudeau—Illegitimate PM?

Featured image A few days ago I was on a panel disputing the subject of replacing the current electoral college method of selecting the president with the “national popular vote compact,” in which states adding up to more than 270 electoral votes would pledge to cast their electoral votes for the national popular vote winner, regardless of how any particular state’s voters may have come out. This effectively abolishes the electoral college. »

The Left’s Most Serious Attack on Federalism [Updated]

Featured image Much of the Left’s current wish list–the Green New Deal, reparations–is fantasy. Those proposals are purely for political effect, and aren’t going anywhere. But there is an important exception: there is a serious risk that the Left will succeed in effectively abolishing the Electoral College. That will never be done via constitutional amendment, of course. The small states, a majority, won’t vote for it. But liberals are promoting an Agreement »

How Many Non-Citizens Vote in U.S. Elections?

Featured image Liberals and the media (but I repeat . . .) dismiss the idea that non-citizens vote in meaningful numbers in our elections. What is the empirical evidence? This 2014 article from Electoral Studies ought to be a wake-up call:   Do non-citizens vote in U.S. elections? Jesse T. Richman, Gulshan A. Chattha, and David C.Earnest Abstract In spite of substantial public controversy, very little reliable data exists concerning the frequency with which non-citizen immigrants participate »

The first gerrymander

Featured image The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, dominated by Democrats, has redrawn the map for congressional districts in that state. It was assisted by a liberal law professor from Stanford. According to Sean Trende, the new map follows reasonable principles — compactness, contiguity, and minimal jurisdictional splits — but within those confines repeatedly makes choices that increase the Democrats odds of winning districts. What a surprise! The bottom line is that instead »

No Vote Fraud, Eh?

Featured image Democrats hotly deny there is any vote fraud taking place in American elections. Funny that only Democrats seem sensitive about this charge. The asymmetry of outrage suggests something, I think. Once upon a time, Chicago Democrats justified their shenanigans by charging that downstate Illinois Republicans stole votes, too. And maybe they did. Consider this note from our friend Roger Beckett, executive director of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University in »

Team Clinton plotted to circumvent election laws

Featured image Hillary Clinton has relentlessly attacked the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. That decision is more permissive than leftists would like when it comes to political speech activities by nonprofit committees. Even so, it remains illegal for campaigns to directly coordinate with these nonprofit committees, known as super PACs, to advocate for the election or defeat of specific candidates. This restriction didn’t suit the Clinton campaign. WikiLeaks documents show that »