Voter Integrity – Sharon and Mike Arata 

Photo IDs, Vigilant Signature Check Needed for Reliable Elections
by Sharon Arata

Liberal columnist Leonard Pitts worries about would-be South Carolina voters who “have no bank account,” who “get paid under the table, a wad of cash sliding from hand to hand” — and who thereby lack photo IDs that were to be required by a new state election law (Jan. 9).

I’m concerned about the January 11 report that South Carolina’s DMV director has discovered evidence of more than 900 dead people voting in the state’s recent elections.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder’s “Department of Justice” has suspended South Carolina’s new photo ID requirement for voters.  “The law would have disproportionately affected the poor,” explains Pitts.   But the supposed disproportion began with a faulty report of 239,333 voting registrants without photo IDs — of which approximately 133,000 turn out to be deceased or relocated to other states.

The distortion didn’t stop there.  DOJ alleged a 20% difference in numbers of minority and white voting registrants who lack photo IDs. The disparity is in fact 10.0% vs. 8.4%.  The difference — 1.6% (of the wrongly cited 239,333) divided by the 8.4% — equals 0.19, which DOJ rounded to the misleading 20% figure. 

Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez signed the December 23 letter overruling South Carolina’s law.   Former DOJ Voting Section attorney Christian Adams reports in his book Injustice that Perez previously led Casa de Maryland, “a radical open borders advocacy organization,” and that Perez was instrumental in halting voter-intimidation prosecution in Philadelphia’s infamous 2008 New Black Panther case. 

For Adams, DOJ’s lawless dismissal of the case was “the last straw” in a series of Holder/Perez/DOJ outrages, and he resigned.

DOJ’s South Carolina action implements a Democrat Party Platform proclamation that Democrats “oppose laws that require identification in order to vote or register to vote.”   Democrat orthodoxy still tolerates ID requirements for boarding airplanes, cashing checks, or buying beer — but not for guaranteeing the legitimacy of a process which elects our leaders and determines the rules and expenses of governance. 

In contrast, and as US News and World Report observed last June:  75% of American citizens, including 63% of Democrats, agree that reliable voter I.D. is needed.  

In 2005, the Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III, reported that voter fraud does occur, potentially altering election outcomes and diminishing citizen confidence in the process.  And “Voting is equally important,” says the analysis, as other activities requiring photo IDs. 

Several authorities identify absentee ballots as the vehicle of choice for voter fraud.  In California, household members, urged on by unscrupulous campaign agents, can and do illegally mark, sign, and deliver absentee ballots for out-of-town spouses or students away at school.  They can expect cursory or overly lenient envelope-signature checks, with a minuscule rejection rate.

Nevertheless, California registrars are recklessly pushing permanent-absentee ballot status as a step toward universal vote-by-mail elections. 

So (the George Soros-funded, NYU lawyer-operated “Brennan Center for Justice” notwithstanding) we can either hand over all the effective decision-making to deceitful schemers willing to flood the zone with illegal votes — or we can show up, vote in person, and demand (via initiative) reliable photo identification to register and vote, along with stricter standards for absentee and provisional voter signature verification.

Sharon Arata’s Voter Integrity Project findings generated a 1995 recount and subsequent 18-month election contest which overturned a school-bond election result.                                                                                                                                   

Cato article from 2006 by Randall O'Toole and having to do with the huge amounts of tax money wasted on public transit schemes and the bureaucracies behind them -- waste that is closely linked to the "One Bay Area" manipulators and their false-consensus Delphi meetings.  Pull-out quote from "A Desire Named Streetcar" ( http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa559.pdf  ): 
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"In the 1991 transportation act, Congress required urban areas requesting federal transportation dollars to submit lengthy regional transportation plans. Once written, the plans are to be updated every five years, which essentially puts the regional planning agencies in a perpetual planning mode.   The law requires that the public be involved in those plans. But because the plans are complicated and the process is tedious, no one other than professional lobbyists has an incentive to get involved. That places most of the power to write the plans in the hands of urban planners who tend to believe that automobiles are bad and transit is good.  As urban planner Douglas Porter has noted, there is a 'gap between the daily mode of living desired by most Americans and the mode that most city planners believe is most appropriate.'

"The problem, as Porter and other planners see it, is that local elected officials tend to give people what they want rather than what planners think they should have. Porter’s way of closing the gap is to create regional planning agencies that are insulated from public pressure and have 'powers to require local plans to conform to regional or state goals.' "