Tag: elections

Federal Appeals Court Rules Texas Can Enforce Law Requiring ID For Mail-In Ballots

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ruled Texas can enforce a law requiring ID numbers for mail-in ballots.

A three-judge panel unanimously overturned a lower court’s block on the state’s mail-in ballot requirements.

The three judges included: Judge James Ho (Trump), Judge Don Willett (Trump), and Judge Patrick Higginbotham (Reagan).

“We have no difficulty concluding that this ID number requirement fully complies with a provision of federal law known by the parties as the materiality provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” the judges ruled.

“The ID number requirement is obviously designed to confirm that each mail-in ballot voter is precisely who he claims he is. And that is plainly “material” to “determining whether such individual is qualified under State law to vote,”” the judges worote.

“The district court reached the opposite conclusion. So we reverse and render judgment for Defendants,” they said.

Politico reported:

A federal appeals court has ruled that Texas may enforce a state law that invalidates mail-in ballots submitted without a voter’s state identification number or partial Social Security number.

A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the requirement the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021 as part of an election-integrity bill known as SB1 did not violate a federal law preventing states from imposing voting requirements “not material” to the validity of ballots.

In a brusque, nine-page opinion, Judge James Ho twice said the appeals panel had “little difficulty” concluding that Texas’ law was valid.

“The number-matching requirements are obviously designed to confirm that every mail-in voter is who he claims he is,” Ho wrote for the panel. “And that is plainly material to determining whether an individual is qualified to vote.”

Keep reading

Prosecutors accuse Smartmatic executive of bribing Venezuelan election official with luxury home

Federal prosecutors have accused Smartmatic co-founder Roger Piñate of bribing the top Venezuelan election official with a luxury residence in Caracas in exchange for political favors.

Piñate, who was charged with multiple counts of money laundering and bribery related to contracts in the Philippines, according to the Miami Herald, has been accused of transferring the home to election chief Tibisay Lucena Ramírez in order to secure her help in resolving a commercial dispute with the Venezuelan government.

The alleged dispute comes after Smartmatic claimed in 2017 that Nicolás Maduro’s administration committed fraud in the National Constituent Assembly election, which led the company to conclude its business in the country later that year. 

The new revelations occurred in a court filing related to the Philippines’ case on Friday, where prosecutors attempted to show a pattern of allegedly criminal behavior and alleged intent to commit bribery.

Pinate-VenezuelaBribeAllegationDocument.pdf

Piñate was charged in a $1 million bribery scheme in the Philippines for allegedly inflating the prices of voting machines and diverting the excess funds into secret accounts used to pay off Philippine election official Juan Andrés Donato Bautista.

Prosecutors claimed the home was allegedly transferred to Lucena Ramírez through a foreign shell company with the help of an unnamed co-conspirator. The transfer was allegedly completed between April and July 2019, after the company supposedly ended its business in Venezeula. 

Smartmatic denied the accusations in a statement to the Miami Herald, claiming the filing was riddled with “misrepresentations,” including with the timeline. 

“As an example, the government’s citation of an alleged bribe in Venezuela in 2019 is untethered from reality. Smartmatic ceased all operations in Venezuela in August 2017 after blowing the whistle on the government and has never sought to secure business there again,” the company said in an email. “We have always operated lawfully, ethically, and transparently. We stand by our two-decade track record of integrity.”

Keep reading

Democrats Plan to Spend Tens of Millions of Dollars to Fund Hundreds of Content Creators

Democrats are planning to spend tens of millions of dollars to spin narratives on social media as part of a $110.5 million fundraising effort, according to images of slides from a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) donor event obtained by Breitbart News.

Under a heading “Urgent Off-Year Funding Needs” on one slide, it states the DCCC looks to raise $10 million for social media and content creation, $20 million for “Accountability work,” $15 million for “Voter Registration,” $5 million for “Recruitment” and “Primary Engagement,” and $2 million for “Research” and a “Rapid Response Infrastructure.”

One goal is to enlist at least 667 content creators, with the aim of reaching 83 million Americans and drawing 6.6 million engagements, per another slide that focuses on content creation. The program aims to engage at least 167 “Non-Political Creators” and 8 “Vetted Creators for ads in every target state.”

Keep reading

New York City’s Ranked Choice Voting System Favors Socialist Mamdani

New York City’s mayoral race uses a unique system called ranked choice voting, which fundamentally alters how winners are determined. Unlike traditional elections where voters select a single candidate, New York voters can rank up to five candidates in order of preference on their ballot.

If no candidate receives more than 50% of the first-choice votes, a computerized elimination process begins. The candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and those votes are redistributed to each voter’s next-ranked choice. This process continues through multiple rounds—potentially factoring in third, fourth, and even fifth choice, until only two candidates remain. The final winner is the one with majority support among the remaining ballots, though that may not be the candidate most voters originally preferred.

In the June 2025 Democratic primary, the ranked choice system significantly altered the initial results. Zohran Mamdani led on election night with 43.5% of first-choice votes, but after several rounds of eliminations and redistributions, he was declared the winner with 56%, while Andrew Cuomo finished with 44%.

This system creates a far more unpredictable election environment. Candidates who appear to hold solid leads on election night can end up losing, or winning, once all voter preferences are fully counted and redistributed.

Ranked choice voting can appear unfair because a candidate with fewer first-choice votes may ultimately win the election. A key technical flaw is “ballot exhaustion,” which happens when voters rank too few candidates to remain in the final rounds. If all of a voter’s selected candidates are eliminated before the last round, their ballot is no longer counted in the final outcome.

A 2015 study of 600,000 votes cast in four local elections in Washington State and California found that winners in all four elections received less than a majority of total votes cast. Studies have found exhaustion rates ranging from 9.6 percent to over 27 percent in some elections, meaning the winner may only represent a majority of remaining votes, not all votes cast.

The increased complexity of ranked choice voting is another major issue. It’s absurd that Democrats, who argue voter ID is too confusing for many people, somehow believe voters can understand and navigate ranked choice voting, and remember to rank enough candidates just to avoid having their ballot disqualified early in the process.

Keep reading

Trump’s DOJ Launches NATIONWIDE Voter Roll Investigation Ahead of Midterms

President Trump’s Department of Justice has officially launched a sweeping nationwide investigation into bloated and corrupted voter rolls across the United States.

According to Fox News’ Aishah Hasnie, the effort comes directly from a March executive order signed by President Trump, tasking Attorney General Pam Bondi and the DOJ with coordinating with state attorneys general to investigate and prosecute illegal voter registrations — including felons, dead voters, and foreign nationals.

On March 25, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14248, titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.”

The order directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to coordinate with state attorneys general and election officials to identify and investigate “suspected election crimes” (e.g. voter fraud or illegal registrations).

It instructed the DOJ to enter information-sharing agreements with states so that any evidence of ineligible voting or registration discovered at the state level would be reported to federal authorities.

A major focus was placed on purging ineligible names from voter rolls and prosecuting unlawful registrations.

The DOJ was ordered to review voter lists for individuals who are not eligible to vote, including people with felony convictions, deceased individuals, and non-citizens, and to assist states in prosecuting such cases where appropriate.

 In fact, the text of the order directs the Attorney General to “coordinate with State attorneys general” to pursue foreign nationals unlawfully registered or voting in U.S. elections and to enforce federal laws barring non-citizen voting.

It also mandates enforcement of existing list-maintenance laws (like the National Voter Registration Act and Help America Vote Act) that require removal of deceased or otherwise ineligible voters from the rolls.

To compel cooperation, the executive order empowered the Attorney General to withhold certain federal grants or funds from states that refused to comply with voter roll investigations or information-sharing.

In other words, if a state did not cooperate in rooting out illegal registrations or election fraud, the DOJ could pull related federal funding as leverage.

Keep reading

‘Riddled With Errors,’ Dirty Voter Rolls Pose Growing Threat To Election Integrity

Battleground Pennsylvania appears to have thousands of “shady” voter registrations on its rolls, according to a review by an election integrity watchdog. And Pennsylvania’s problems speak to a wider issue of dirty voter files, the reluctance of state elections officials to clean them up, and what that all means for the principle of free and fair elections.  

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) on Thursday said it sent a formal letter to Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt detailing “alarming findings” from its review of the Keystone State’s voter files. 

PILF Research Director Logan Churchwell said the examination found more than 19,000 potential interstate duplicate registrations, thousands of same-address duplicates, and hundreds of records with placeholder and fake dates of birth. 

“The Pennsylvania voter roll is riddled with errors that undermine the integrity of the election process,” said PILF President J. Christian Adams in a press release. “Our findings in Pennsylvania are consistent with patterns we have exposed in other states like Maine and New Jersey.”

As of this summer, Pennsylvania’s voter rolls contained 19,489 registrants with matched voter registration files in second states, according to the watchdog’s review. Nearly 10,000 of those duplicates came from Florida, another 5,700 were from New York, and 2,400-plus in California. The review also included matches in New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio and Maine.  

“The Foundation’s relational database was designed to house voter registration rolls from every state to run comparative analytics,” Churchwell wrote in the letter to Schmidt. Copied on the letter are Harmeet Dhillon, U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, and Maureen Riordan, acting voting section chief at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Churchwell said the tracking process uses secondary or mailing address data stored by the state of Pennsylvania to follow the registrant to a second address to check for a matching registration. The process is then reversed by “checking other states’ mailing address data, which lead to addresses in Pennsylvania. A registrant is flagged if names and birthdates perfectly match. “

The foundation’s review found 3,170 instances of duplicate registrants where variations in name spelling or nicknames have uncovered duplications at the same residential addresses. PILF’s review also captured a sample of 79 intercounty duplicates. 

And the foundation’s latest tally finds at least 321 registrants flagged for having placeholder or false dates of birth.  

Keep reading

VICTORY FOR VOTER INTEGRITY: Federal Judge Tosses Leftist Lawsuit — Delivers Knockout Win in Wyoming’s on Proof of Citizenship Requirement

In a crushing blow to radical left-wing lawyer Marc Elias and his progressive allies, a federal judge has tossed out a lawsuit that sought to gut Wyoming’s new election integrity law.

United States District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl ruled in favor of Secretary of State Chuck Gray and dismissed outright the lawsuit filed by the Equality State Policy Center, which had enlisted notorious Democrat operative Marc Elias in a blatant attempt to strike down House Bill 156—Wyoming’s common-sense requirement that all voter registrants provide proof of U.S. citizenship and state residency.

In his 17-page ruling, Judge Skavdahl SLAMMED the plaintiffs for lacking any standing whatsoever, exposing the entire case as a baseless political attack dressed up as a legal complaint.

“Plaintiff has not adequately demonstrated its standing to sue on its own behalf or on behalf of others in this action,” Skavdahl wrote. “The Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over this lawsuit, and consequently it must be dismissed.”

The court wrote:

To establish Article III standing to sue, the law requires the plaintiff to show three requirements:
(1) it has suffered an “injury in fact” that is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant; and (3) it is likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.

Assuming Plaintiffs assertions to be true, they do not establish its standing to bring this lawsuit in its own capacity. Plaintiff has not shown a concrete injury in fact that is fairly traceable to HB 156.

Plaintiffs alleged diversion-of-resources injury is the same type of injury claimed in AllianceforHippocraticMedicine,but the U.S. Supreme Court determined this type of alleged injury was not a concrete injury in fact traceable to the challenged governmental conduct sufficient to satisfy Article III standing.

Keep reading

Japan Votes Against Globalism And Multiculturalism In Latest National Election

It sounds like a repeat of the US elections in 2016 and 2024; Japan’s long ruling coalition party has suffered a crippling defeat in last week’s national elections, defeated by the rise of the MAGA-inspired “Japanese First” party.   The populist party took enough seats in the House of Councillors to bring the coalition into question and possibly unseat the current globalist-friendly Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.

Japanese First, also known as “Sanseito”, was launched at the height of the draconian pandemic lockdowns by Sohei Kamiya using web-based organization and a message of anti-globalism and fighting back against forced multiculturalism.  Sanseito now controls 15 seats in the Upper House, and 3 seats in the lower house, making them impossible to ignore in future legislation decisions.

The western media has attacked the movement, demonizing it as dangerous.  Reuters describes the party as “fringe far right:, noting that it: 

“…Gained support with warnings of a “silent invasion” of immigrants, and pledges for tax cuts and welfare spending. Birthed on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic spreading conspiracy theories about vaccinations and a cabal of global elites, the party broke into mainstream politics with its “Japanese First” campaign.”

Japan has been targeted by leftists in the west for years as being “fascist” due to their previous refusals to accommodate progressive ideology.  The media also acts as if the globalist agenda and lies about covid lockdowns, mandates and vaccines are not proven realities, but it would seem that the general public in Japan is growing wise to the propaganda. 

Keep reading

Why Do Republican Lawmakers Keep Trying To Overturn Marijuana Laws Approved By Voters?

Elections have consequences. Or so we’re told. But when it comes to respecting the outcomes of marijuana-related votes, Republican lawmakers are increasingly saying, “Not so fast.”

A case in point: Following Nebraskans’ decision to legalize medical cannabis access this past fall, Republican state Attorney General Mike Hilgers urged lawmakers to ignore the voter-approved law. Months later, a regulatory commission appointed by Republican Gov. Jim Pillen enacted “emergency rules” largely gutting the nascent program, despite over two-thirds of Nebraskans having voted for it.

Nebraska’s situation is hardly unique. In Texas, Republican AG Ken Paxton single-handedly pushed litigation striking down voter-approved marijuana depenalization ordinances in Austin, Dallas, San Marcos and other cities. All of the ordinances, which sought to limit local police from making low-level marijuana possession arrests, had been overwhelmingly approved by municipal voters.

In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation this spring that makes it harder for advocates to place policy questions on the ballot. He did so after last year’s marijuana legalization initiative gained 56 percent of the vote, just shy of the state’s mandatory 60 percent threshold.

Lawmakers in the Republican-dominated legislature further turned their backs on voters by rejecting numerous pieces of cannabis reform legislation this spring. In fact, the only marijuana-related bill approved by Florida lawmakers this year was legislation denying medical cannabis access to those with certain marijuana or other drug-related convictions on their record.

In Ohio, GOP leaders have spent the better part of the past two years seeking to repeal elements of the state’s 2023 voter-approved adult-use legalization law. These efforts include bills to recriminalize marijuana possession, rescind adults’ home cultivation rights and arbitrarily cap the total number of cannabis retail outlets permitted statewide. Thus far, none of this legislation has been successful, but at least two separate roll-back bills remain pending and are anticipated to be revisited by lawmakers this fall. (Separately, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine sought to double the special sales tax on cannabis products. While that effort also failed, lawmakers did approve a budget bill restructuring the way cannabis-related taxes are spent.)

Keep reading

ELECTION CORRUPTION 101: WHAT IS OFFICIAL MISCONDUCT?

Today, more revelations of “Election Fraud” and “Official Misconduct” have surfaced in Palm Beach County, Florida further implicating Wendy Link and her direct reports playing active roles in concealing, delaying and denying public records requests/official election records and altering official election records to prevent the communication of felonies being committed by persons within her very office.

We had previously caught the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections in 2023 altering election records. It was first reported in the Miami-Independent.

These fraudulently altered reports were linked to the widespread disenfranchisement of voters via an election fraud scheme tied to the voting machines.

The scheme involves deleting the votes and ballots that people cast, truly disenfranchising both voters and candidates at such scale that it is mathematically impossible to be anything other than fraudulent activity.

In order to conceal the fraud within the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office, an insider altered the “Official Election Records” backdating the system date to September 13, 1984. This is also known as a “Time Stamped Date”.

Keep reading