Tag: voting

Idaho Lawmakers Approve Measure To Block Voters From Being Able To Legalize Marijuana

The Idaho House passed a resolution on Wednesday seeking voter approval to amend the state constitution and give the Legislature exclusive authority to regulate marijuana.

House Joint Resolution 4 aims to eliminate voters’ ability to legalize marijuana through a ballot initiative. As a resolution, the legislation does not hold the force of law. Instead, it would place a question on Idahoans’ ballot about whether to amend Idaho’s Constitution to allow only the Legislature to have a say in legalizing “psychoactive substances.” A majority of voters would need to vote yes in order for the constitution to be amended.

Currently, a “Decriminalize Cannabis Now” ballot initiative is in the signature gathering process, according to VoteIdaho.gov. If it qualifies, and if the Senate approves House Joint Resolution 4, then both questions would appear on the 2026 ballot, sponsor Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa said.

Skaug said the resolution comes from a place of concern for the “virtue and sobriety” of Idahoans.

“It’s time for Idahoans to proactively decide the state’s fate relative to marijuana, psychoactive substances and narcotics,” Skaug said. “I’m asking that we let our state go on the offense.”

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Marijuana Consumers Are Under Attack In Multiple States, And It’s Time To Fight Back

Seventy percent of Americans, including majorities of Democratic and Republican voters, say that marijuana should be legal for adults. Yet this legislative session, lawmakers from both parties are placing cannabis consumers in their crosshairs.

In Republican-led states like Montana, Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota, lawmakers are seeking to either repeal or significantly roll back voter-approved legalization laws. In Democrat-led states like California, Maryland, Michigan and New Jersey, lawmakers are seeking to undermine existing legalization markets by drastically hiking marijuana-related taxes.

In all cases, elected officials are treating cannabis consumers as targets, not constituents.

These concerted attacks on state-legal marijuana markets are an explicit reminder that the war on cannabis and its consumers remains ongoing and, in some cases, is escalating. Our opponents haven’t gone away; in many cases they’ve simply regrouped and tweaked their strategies–such as by advocating for arbitrary THC potency caps or calling for new criminal penalties for consumers who don’t obtain their cannabis from state-licensed dispensaries.

Those who oppose legalization have also become bolder and more cynical in their tactics. No longer convinced that they can win the hearts and minds of voters, they are now frequently seeking to remove them from the equation altogether.

Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers in South Dakota sought to repeal the state’s voter-initiated medical cannabis access law, despite 70 percent of voters having approved it. The effort failed, but only by a single vote.

In Nebraska, lawmakers are also considering legislation to roll back that state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law and the state’s Republican attorney general has urged lawmakers to ignore the election results altogether.

In Ohio, GOP lawmakers in the Senate recently approved legislation to rescind many of the legalization provisions approved by voters in 2023. Changes advanced by lawmakers include limiting home-cultivation rights, imposing THC potency limits and creating new crimes for adults who share cannabis with one another or who purchase cannabis products from out of state.

In Texas, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued several cities, including Dallas, for implementing voter-approved ordinances decriminalizing marijuana possession. As a result, local lawmakers in various municipalities–including Lockhart and Bastrop–are ignoring voters’ decisions to rethink their marijuana policies rather than face potential litigation.

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Rep. Pete Sessions to Introduce Make Elections Secure Act – Would Eliminate Voting Machines and Ensure Hand-Marked Paper Ballots – Severely Restrict Mail-in Voting

The Gateway Pundit has obtained a draft copy of the Make Elections Secure Act (MESA), authored by Representative Pete Sessions (TX-17), which would repeal the outdated Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.

Among other things, it would also almost entirely eliminate electronic voting machines and ensure each voter casts their ballot on a hand-marked paper ballot with a manual hand-count.  Exceptions for machine use would be permitted for voters requiring accessibility accommodations due to disabilities.

The bill, which would also apply to primary elections, also “restrict[s] mailed ballots to specific eligible voters with stringent verification process.”  As of now, those are outlined as active-duty military stationed outside their voting jurisdiction and those with a physician-certified medical condition that would prevent in-person voting.

MESA would also provide accountability to the public by ensuring “maximum transparency by providing public access to all election processes and comprehensive Election Data, including unscrambled ballot images and cast vote records, with at least five days for officials to upload data.”

During the 2020 election and those ensuing, election officials often denied access to certain public records or quoted exorbitant prices for public records requests.  Garland Favorito and VoterGa have been engaged in a years-long battle to simply examine the physical paper ballots in the state of Georgia for the 2020 Election, despite a Supreme Court ruling that VoterGa did, in fact, have standing to bring their case.  That decision was made in December of 2022, sending the case back to the lower courts where it’s been waiting for an assignment ever since.

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Ohio GOP Leaders Claim Bill To Roll Back Marijuana Legalization Law Doesn’t Disrespect Voters

Ohio’s Senate president is pushing back against criticism of a bill that would scale back parts of a voter-approved marijuana legalization law, claiming that the legislation does not disrespect the will of the electorate and would have little impact on products available in stores.

“My definitive message is: If you want to go purchase marijuana products from a licensed dispensary, that is going to be unchanged by Senate Bill 56,” Senate President Rob McColley (R) said on a podcast posted on Friday. “The only difference you’ll notice is the packaging may not look as appealing to children, but you’ll still be able to buy the same products.”

McColley was speaking on a The President’s Podcast, produced and published by Ohio Senate Republicans. He and host John Fortney, the communications director for the Senate GOP caucus, spent the first half of the podcast defending SB 56, which would amend the cannabis law passed by voters in November 2023.

Among other changes, the bill would halve the number of plants that adults could grow, add new criminal penalties around cannabis conduct and remove select social equity provisions in the law.

The Senate approved the proposal on a 23–9 vote last week.

Critics, such as Sen. Bill DeMora (D), who spoke against the measures on the Senate floor, contend that the plan “goes against the will of the voters and will kill the adult industry in Ohio.”

Fortney began the podcast by acknowledging “a lot of controversy around Senate Bill 56,” asserting that “all it did was preserve access to what the voters approved in November of 2023, the initiated marijuana statute, and put some safety and security parameters around it for—of all things, Mr. President—children.”

“The far left, the Democrat narrative, the narrative of the legacy media, has been, ‘Republicans are trying to take away what the voters approved,’ which is patently false,” Fortney continued. “What a lie.”

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Oregon Resumes Automatic Voter Registrations After Errors Registered Noncitizens

The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) resumed automatic voter registrations on Feb. 27, saying it had strengthened the system to prevent the registration of noncitizens.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek in October 2024 ordered a pause of the process after an audit discovered some individuals were automatically registered to vote despite not providing proof of U.S. citizenship. Officials later disclosed they’d identified additional individuals, taking the total to about 1,600.

The DMV said it has strengthened its system to minimize the risk of more noncitizens and others who have not provided proof of citizenship being registered. This includes hiring a voter registration integrity analyst and modifying the internal interface, which the agency says will reduce the likelihood of DMV staff selecting the wrong option.

Since the pause was imposed, the DMV has sampled new records and manually compared them with information collected from customers. The DMV said that no new mistaken registrations have been found so far.

“We believe these enhanced processes and permanent system changes, along with DMV’s observations and measurements regarding their effectiveness, provide adequate confidence that data integrity … is sufficient to reinstitute the process,” Deloitte, which the governor hired to review the system, said in a report.

“As a partner to Oregon’s Secretary of State, Oregon DMV is proud of the role it plays in helping U.S. citizens engage in our elections,” Oregon DMV Administrator Amy Joyce said in a statement. “We will continue our work to ensure the Oregon Motor Voter process is more secure and reliable than ever.”

The Oregon Secretary of State’s Office is also trying to prevent noncitizen voter registration.

The office said it has added more steps, including a daily confirmation step.

“The new protections we are adding today will help us catch and fix government data entry errors faster. These are first steps, focused on getting the fundamentals right. I will continue to dig into the system and take action whenever I can to strengthen our voter rolls and prevent future mistakes. Our highest priority is – and must always be – protecting the integrity of Oregonians’ fair, secure, and accessible elections,” Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read said in a statement.

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Texas Judge Rejects Attorney General’s Attempt To Reverse Dallas Marijuana Decriminalization Law Approved By Voters

A Texas judge has shot down the Republican state attorney general’s attempt to block a local marijuana decriminalization law that voters approved at the ballot last November.

On Friday, 134th Civil District Court Judge Dale Tillery denied a motion for temporary injunction from Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) that sought to undermine the local law by allowing continued enforcement of cannabis criminalization in the state’s third most populous city.

The one-page order from the judge states: “Upon consideration of the pleadings, the application, responses, evidence, and oral arguments presented, if any, the Court finds that the application is hereby DENIED.”

This comes about a month after the Dallas Police Department instructed officers to stop arresting or citing people for possession of up to four ounces of marijuana, in accordance with the voter-approved ballot initiative.

Paxton had filed a lawsuit with the intent to invalidate the law just weeks after the November vote. It’s one of several examples of the state official attempting to leverage the court system to reverse local cannabis reform efforts.

Numerous Texas cities have enacted local decriminalization laws in recent years, and, last January, the attorney general similarly sought to block the reform in Austin, San Marcos, Killeen, Elgin and Denton.

State district judges dismissed two of the lawsuits—which argue that state law prohibiting marijuana preempts the local policies—in Austin and San Marcos. The city of Elgin reached a settlement, with the local government pointing out that decriminalization was never implemented there despite voter approval of the initiative.

Dallas lawmakers formally put the marijuana decriminalization initiative on the ballot in August after activists turned in sufficient petitions for the reform. Cannabis icon and music legend Willie Nelson had urged Dallas voters to pass the marijuana measure.

Prior to last August’s vote on ballot placement, some members of the Dallas City Council had expressed interest in streamlining the process of decriminalizing cannabis by acting legislatively, but plans to introduce the proposal at a hearing in June did not materialize, leaving the matter to voters.

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FIGHTING ELECTION FRAUD – BIG UPDATE: 20 Ohio Counties Launch Investigations into Suspicious Progressive Group that Allegedly Turned In Piles of Phony Voter Registrations

In August 2024, The Gateway Pundit’s Patty McMurray first reported on a Democrat-funded voter registration group accused of turning in hundreds of suspected fraudulent voter registrations—this time in Ohio!

** You can read the full TGP August report here.**

The Gateway Pundit discovered that a group called Black Fork Strategies, which operates across the state of Ohio, was being investigated by the Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose over another alleged fraudulent voter registration campaign.

On their website, Black Fork Strategies brags about registering a stunning 125,000+ voters in Ohio since 2018.

The Hamilton County Board of Elections has turned over several suspicious voter registration applications Ohio Secretary of State’s Public Integrity Division.

According to Hamilton County Board of Elections members, the voter registrations in question were recently turned in by the self-described “progressive” voter registration organization Black Fork Strategies.

In the video below, Hamilton County Director of Elections Sherry Poland discusses three issues she identified with voter registrations tied to Black Fork Strategies, which she claims is running voter registration drives throughout the state of Ohio.

In one example, Ms. Poland explained how they received a voter registration from Black Fork Strategies, and  the name of the registrant was ‘Henry Kissinger.’

“We did do a match, the voter registration database as compared to the DMV database, and it was a mismatch on every item listed, any identifying information listed on this registration form. So we again asked Black Fork Strategies for the canvasser who submitted this registration form, and that is on your summary sheet.”

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Breaking BIG… President Trump Tells US Governors: ‘For Safety and Security and for the Good of Our Nation – You Should Move to Paper Ballots’

President Donald Trump delivered remarks to the National Governor’s Association on Friday night in Washington DC.

According to The Hill, the assembled governors included Democratic Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Wes Moore of Maryland, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Jared Polis of Colorado, and Kathy Hochul of New York, as well as Republican Govs. Brian Kemp of Georgia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Mike Braun of Indiana and DeSantis.

During his speech to the governors President Trump told the gathered leaders that they must switch to paper ballots and same-day voting.

President Donald Trump: One other thing, just before we leave, I think you should do this. For safety and security and for the good of our nation, you should do it anyway, regardless, even if it costs 10 times more, but it actually costs you just a tiny fraction.

If you went to paper ballots in you’re voting, and I would hope that every Republican would. So it costs exactly 8% of what the machines cost. These machines, they got something going. They They get business. It’s amazing. So paper ballots, and paper is very sophisticated today. Paper, it’s called watermark. It’s impossible to copy, impossible to cheat. It’s actually hard to believe that a piece of paper is highly sophisticated, but it’s watermark, and it’s amazing, actually, when you see it. You can’t cheat.

But if you went to paper ballots and same-day voting, and if you went to voter ID, and also one other thing, you want a proof of citizenship. Those four things, proof of citizenship, voter ID, paper ballots, one-day voting. And if you went to two-day voting or three-day voting. But some of these states, you had 64 days. California just finished up just a short while ago.

They were voting a week and a half ago. They’re trying to finish them up. And other states, too. They were weeks after the election. I mean, if that were a close election, you’d have to wait for weeks and weeks and weeks. You got to finish fast, Brian. Thank you for your help. We did very well in Georgia. It was very nice. But some of these states, if you had a close election, you wouldn’t know who won. And then once that happens, then you really never know who won.

But you would save tens of millions of dollars, forgetting about right, wrong, and security, safety, our country, our Constitution, and all of this. Number one, you’d have a much safer election. Number two everybody. You know the results of your election by 10: 00. Everybody. It’s a beautiful system. It’s boxes of 5,000. Boom, boom. And you can go and examine each box. It’s so simple and so good.

I did ask Elon because he knows more about computers than anybody. And I said, What do you think of the voting system? He said, Computers are not meant for voting. It’s just not a good… It’s too many transactions taking place too quickly.

It’s just not… He said, Honestly… And I’ve gone to the best people, the smartest computer minds from MIT from others. My uncle was a professor for 41 years at MIT and a brilliant guy. And I got to know a lot of the people up there, and they will tell you that the most secure way that you can secure the election, and probably the fastest way, because there can be very little hanky panky, is paper ballots. Can you believe So I hope, Sarah, that certainly the Republican governors. But if you want to save a lot of money, you go to paper ballots. It’ll cost you 8% of what the costs are now. And that’s based on a good deal for machines.

And then when you go through the days and weeks and months of waiting,

France had mail-in ballots. Any time you have mail-in ballots, you’re going to have fraud without question. And France had it, and they went back to paper ballots. And I saw their election, and their election was over at nine o’clock, and their numbers came in at 10: 05. There were no complaints. They had a winner, they had a loser.

39 million votes, and it was done. We’re one of the only people that has now mail-in voting, one of the only countries that has mail-in voting.

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