Tag: voting

New York City’s non-citizen voting law struck down as unconstitutional

A New York City initiative that would have allowed the city’s approximately 800,000 legal non-citizens the right to vote in local elections was struck down by a state appeals court as unconstitutional.

The proposal, passed as a city law in 2022, would have allowed green card holders and non-citizens living in New York City with federal work authorizations the right to vote in local elections for mayor, public advocate, comptroller, borough president and members of the New York City Council. This would have created some 800,000 new eligible voters in the city of 8.5 million.

The law was championed by progressive Democrats in the city who claimed that the “Our City, Our Vote” bill would make politics more representative and turn New York City into a more inclusive place for immigrants. Opponents of the bill warned that it would turn into a logistical nightmare leading to voter fraud and that Democrats only wanted to grant legal non-citizens voting rights to shore up their support. (Related: America’s 2024 election may be decided by 23 million ILLEGAL ALIENS.)

The bill was easily passed by the city’s Democratic supermajority in December 2021, but Republicans immediately sued as soon as the bill became law in January 2022. A lower court judge on conservative-leaning Staten Island struck it down months later.

The administration of Mayor Eric Adams has also come to the law’s defense and appealed the lower court’s ruling against it.

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Oregon House Passes Bill To Reverse Voter-Approved Drug Decriminalization Law

The Oregon House on Thursday passed a proposal to reshape the state’s response to the fentanyl addiction and overdose crisis and put more power in the hands of police and prosecutors to rein in drug users.

The bipartisan vote of 51-7 kicks House Bill 4002 to the Senate, the last step in a long legislative process that started last fall. The bill would unwind voter-passed Measure 110 by putting in place a new misdemeanor charge for drug possession, a move intended to encourage people to enter treatment programs rather than face charges and go to jail. Potential jail time for misdemeanor drug possession would only kick in if a defendant violates their probation.

The bill represents a bipartisan compromise between Democrats and Republicans that was hashed out over hours-long meetings dating to September, with dozens of witnesses from advocacy groups, law enforcement, family members of overdose victims and behavioral health providers giving testimony. Oregon’s district attorneys, police and sheriffs support it, as do cities and business groups like the Portland Metro Chamber of Commerce and Washington County Chamber of Commerce.

“We are in the midst of a profound public health crisis and we must meet it with compassion and courage,” said Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Portland. “These are humans.”

The bill would undo a key provision of the voter-passed Measure 110, which decriminalized possession of small amounts of hard drugs and enacted a system of $100 citations that a person could avoid if they obtained a health assessment. Police have said the citation system lacked the teeth necessary to encourage people to enter treatment, and a majority of Oregonians in surveys have voiced support for repealing Measure 110 or parts of it.

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Report: South Carolina Voters Unable to Vote Due to Internet Outage – Voters Told to Put Ballots in ‘Another Slot’

South Carolina primary voters are reportedly unable to vote due to ballot tabulators being unable to connect to the internet.

Real America’s Voice reported Saturday that poll workers are claiming that because the internet is not working, they’ve had to take primary ballots and put them into a separate bin.

Even more unbelievably, vote tabulators are not even supposed to be connected to the internet in the first place, and the media since the 2020 election have denounced claims that they were connected to the internet as baseless conspiracy theories.

According to one voter, a poll worker said “they didn’t have internet” and that he would have to take his paper ballot and “fold it and slide it into another slot. It looked kind of like a trash can.”

“So I walked out scratching my head, and there were a number of other voters that were just as confused as I was,” he told RAV reporter Michelle Backus.

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San Francisco Appoints 1st Noncitizen to Election Commission

The San Francisco Elections Commission has, for what is believed to be the first time in history, appointed someone who isn’t a U.S. citizen—who isn’t legally allowed to vote—to serve as an official.

The officer, Kelly Wong, was sworn in on Feb. 14, local news outlet KQED reported. It said that Ms. Wong, an immigrant rights advocate, is a native of Hong Kong who arrived in the United States in 2019 for graduate studies.

She was sworn in by Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin during a ceremony at San Francisco City Hall after winning unanimous support from the board.

“This appointment is a milestone for all immigrant and marginalized communities throughout SF,” Ms. Wong wrote in a LinkedIn post on Feb. 15. “Representation matters: thousands of immigrants living in the city hold stakes in politics and there’s no better way to have us be represented than to serve in leadership positions.

“I am deeply committed to ensuring that everyone, regardless of immigration status, has a seat at the table in shaping the future of our city.”

The appointment of a noncitizen to city boards, commissions, and advisory bodies was made possible in 2020 when voters passed a proposal by lawmakers to remove the standing requirement that candidates seeking office hold U.S. citizenship.

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‘Extremely Alarming’ Election Threats Trigger Warning From FBI

An FBI official warned that state election systems are being targeted as the 2024 election approaches, describing them as “extremely alarming.”

“The threat environment, unfortunately, is very high,” said Tim Langan, executive assistant director for the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch of the FBI during a Washington conference with secretaries of state, according to Stateline. “It is extremely alarming.”

Officials said that voter databases could be hacked via phishing or ransomware attacks. They also warned about the rising use of artificial intelligence (AI) that could be used to potentially trick voters, according to the report.

Eric Goldstein, the executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told the news outlet that there have been significant advancements that could allow China, North Korea, and Russia to target election systems.

“We are in a really difficult cybersecurity environment right now,” he said. “Every single location is at risk regardless of size, regardless of sector,” he added

Neither official provided any concrete examples in the report. But during the event, Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams said last month that a bomb threat was called into the state capitol in Frankfort, saying that explosives would “make sure you all end up dead.” No bombs were found, and eight other state capitols received threats.

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Elon Musk Is Right and The NY Times Is Wrong About Illegal Voting by Non-Citizens

In a recent trio of posts to X, Elon Musk wrote that (1) illegal immigrants “are not prevented from voting in federal elections,” (2) “you don’t need government issued ID to vote,” and (3) Democrats “are importing voters.”

To rebut those statements, The New York Times (NYT) published an article by Jim Rutenberg and Kate Conger claiming that Mr. Musk is “spreading election misinformation” about “illegal voting by noncitizens” and echoing a “conspiracy theory” spread by former President Donald Trump.

Although Mr. Musk’s words are imprecise, the gist of what he wrote is correct, and The NYT is categorically wrong.

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Ohio Lawmaker Warns Colleagues They Risk Losing Reelection For Undermining Voter-Approved Marijuana Legalization Law

An Ohio lawmaker is warning colleagues that passing legislation to undermine voters’ decision to legalize marijuana in the state will jeopardize their reelection prospects—specifically cautioning against proposals to redirect tax revenue to law enforcement.

Rep. Juanita Brent (D)—who has previously emphasized the need to involve people who’ve been disproportionately impacted by cannabis criminalization in the legalization implementation process—spoke about the politics of marijuana policy in the legislature during a panel organized by the Ohio State University Drug Enforcement and Policy Center last week.

With a primary election in Ohio coming up next month, Brent said that “if we go against the people in the state of Ohio, I don’t expect any of us to get reelected because we are not going for what the people want.”

“I know sometimes people feel like they know best when it comes to people, but the people who know best is the people who got me here elected and the people who who voted” for legalization, she said.

Fifty-seven percent of Ohio voters passed a legalization measure at the ballot in November, but the Republican governor and GOP leadership has insisted that further changes to the law are needed, particularly as it concerns the timeline for legal sales.

Other proposed changes have proved more controversial, including a push from Gov. Mike DeWine (R) to use cannabis tax dollars to support law enforcement.

Brent said that “what we can do is we allocate this money and make sure that people have access to it, instead of giving all this money to police training.”

“It blows my mind—particularly how much money they want to put towards police training within the state—but particularly for hospital agencies which came out of the Senate. It to me is ridiculous,” she said. “People have told us time and time again when Issue 2 was passed what they want. All we’re doing right now is going against the people’s will.”

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Tennessee Says Residents Can’t Vote If They Have Lost Their Gun Rights

Tennessee, which imposes notoriously demanding requirements on residents with felony records seeking restoration of their voting rights, recently added a new wrinkle: Before supplicants who have not managed to obtain a pardon are allowed to vote again, they have to successfully seek restoration of their gun rights, a task that is complicated by the interaction between state and federal law. Given the difficulty of obtaining relief from the federal gun ban for people convicted of crimes punishable by more than a year of incarceration, this requirement would be prohibitive in practice.

If it is upheld by Tennessee courts, the new policy would essentially mean “there’s no way to vote” for people who were disenfranchised based on their criminal records, says Adam Ginsburg, a spokesman for the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), which has challenged Tennessee’s voting requirements in federal court. Even without the problem created by federal gun laws, CLC attorney Blair Bowie says, people convicted of drug felonies or violent crimes “will not be able to restore their gun rights” under Tennessee law. “It’s beyond the pale,” she says. But she adds that “it’s still an open question, because the Elections Division, which governs who can register to vote in Tennessee, clearly hasn’t really thought that through.”

The new requirement would further complicate a process that is already hard to navigate. “Tennessee has the most convoluted, harsh and poorly managed rights restoration process of any state in the country,” the CLC reported in 2022. Among other things, “Tennessee is one of only a handful of states that conditions the right to vote on payment of legal debt and the only state that requires a person to be current on child support to restore their voting rights.”

Tennessee’s obstacles to re-enfranchisement have had the sort of impact you might expect. “Over 450,000 citizens—accounting for more than 9% of the voting age population—are denied the right to vote because of past felony convictions,” the CLC noted. “Since 2016, less than 1% of post-sentence Tennesseans have gotten their voting rights back due to modern-day poll taxes and issues with obtaining a Certificate of Restoration,” which requires a court order.

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Bridgeport Democrat Mayor Wins Race After His Associate Is Caught Stuffing the Local Ballot Drop Boxes with Bags of Ballots

Mayor Joe Ganim won another victory on Tuesday in the Bridgeport, Connecticut special election for the Democratic primary for mayor. Ganim quickly claimed victory after winning the in-person tally by 274 votes.

In November a local judge overturned the initial primary election after Wanda Geter-Pataky, the Vice Chairwoman of the Democratic Town Clerk and a vocal supporter of incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim,  was caught on video stuffing the ballot drop boxes with dozens if not hundreds of absentee ballots.

So Mayor Ganim won again on Tuesday against John Gomes in the Democrat primary.

Superior Court Judge William Clark ordered a new election to be held, citing bombshell video evidence of election fraud as the basis for his decision. The ruling has far-reaching implications, not just for Bridgeport but for the entire country, as it sets a precedent for ongoing and future cases involving mail-in ballot fraud.

The Gateway Pundit reported in September that mayoral candidate John Gomes’ campaign released a damning video showing evidence of election fraud in the Bridgeport Democratic primary. The video has prompted an investigation by the Bridgeport Police Department for “possible misconduct.”

The video on the Gomes campaign’s Facebook page shows a woman dropping stacks of ‘illegal’ ballots into an absentee ballot box outside the Bridgeport government center, where the city’s Registrar of Voters office is located.

The Gomes campaign was able to identify the woman in the footage as Wanda Geter-Pataky, the Vice Chairwoman of the Democratic Town Clerk and a vocal supporter of incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim, who is seeking reelection. Gomes’ campaign claims that the video shows Geter-Pataky dropping off stacks of absentee ballots ahead of the September 12th primary.

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