RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/566044-democrats-election-bills-ignore-the-founders-principles

As the fight over election reform heats up in Congress, the White House is ramping up the rhetoric, declaring that President Biden and Vice President Harris are “incensed by the anti-voter laws that are trampling on our constitutional principles.” It is a mantra repeated on an array of liberal news sites, but the coverage tends to be selective in what constitutional principles are being abridged. “Our constitutional principles” include state power over elections.

While the president decries an “unprecedented attack on democracy,” the federalization of elections being pursued by Democrats actually would contravene what the Framers considered a core protection of democracy. By ignoring those countervailing principles, the Democrats are creating a dangerous blind spot in these proposed laws. The resulting litigation could leave core election rules in doubt heading into the next round of elections.

When the Constitution was written, the Framers expressly warned of the need to keep the federal government at bay in elections. South Carolina constitutional convention delegate Charles Pinckney noted that “great care was used to provide for the election of the president of the United States independently of Congress; to take the business as far as possible out of their hands.” It was done, he explained, because Congress “had no right to meddle with it at all.” Many Framers feared the power of the central government and wanted to prevent the abuses of Great Britain in the use of executive powers.

This view was reflected in the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, which confines the power of Congress to determining “the day on which [electors] give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.” Where Congress is left with the timing of such elections, states are left the manner in which those elections are held.

Not only did this state control over elections advance the purpose of decentralization of authority, it reflected the strong federalism principles in the Constitution. States were viewed as “laboratories of democracy,” with each pursuing different approaches to governmental functions, including elections. They also were closest to the voters, who could more readily change laws and policies on the state level.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/07/12/ignoring-georgia-illegal-voting-proves-democrats-dont-care-about-election-integrity-at-all/

On Friday, when The Federalist broke news that recently obtained evidence indicates more than 10,300 Georgia voters—a number that continues to grow—voted illegally in the 2020 general election, the corrupt press ignored the story.

Instead, corporate and government media focused that day on Democrats’ calls to ditch the filibuster to push through H.R. 1, the so-called For the People Act, and the White House’s announcement that “Biden would travel to Philadelphia on Tuesday to discuss ‘actions to protect the sacred, constitutional right to vote.’”

In covering these stories, the press continues to parrot Democrats’ spin that H.R. 1 is necessary to protect the right to vote which, the left claims, is under attack by GOP-controlled states “after Republicans seized on former President Donald Trump’s false claim of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election as a pretext for passing new legislation curtailing ballot access.”

Democrats persist in their claims that these state laws “disenfranchise large numbers of voters, particularly voters of color,” with President Joe Biden calling them an “ongoing assault of voter suppression that represents a Jim Crow era in the 21st Century.”

While Democrats and their partners in the press push the Jim Crow canard, they ignore the real disenfranchisement that took place in the mess of the 2020 election, a minor fraction of which I detailed last week in reporting on new evidence that indicates more than 10,300 Georgia residents voted illegally.

Illegal voting might not be glamourous and it definitely doesn’t garner the headlines, but every illegal vote counted cancels out a lawfully cast ballot, thereby disenfranchising the latter voter. And a voter holds a right both “to cast his or her vote, and the corresponding right of each of those legally registered voters to be protected from having that vote diluted by illegally or fraudulently cast votes.”

But in Georgia it now appears near-certain that tens of thousands of residents voted illegally in the 2020 general election. Yet there is a collective yawn by the same politicians and press corps desperate to sell the tale of impending disenfranchisement in red states.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/pennsylvania-senate-chairman-initiates-forensic-probe-of-2020-2021-elections_3890927.html

A Pennsylvania senator announced on July 7 that he has triggered a forensic investigation of the 2020 and 2021 elections.

State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Republican, issued letters to several counties requesting information and materials that he said would enable an investigation.

“It’s distinct from an audit or forensic audit. It’s a big deep dive, like we saw in Arizona, but even deeper,” Mastriano told The Epoch Times.

“It takes a hard look at software, machine, scanners, in addition to looking at all the ballots themselves to see if they were hand-filled-in or copied by a machine. So a scientific approach to get to the bottom of what happened, what went right, what went wrong in an election. It takes out all bias.”

Philadelphia County received a letter, as did two that lean Republican: York and Tioga counties.

They were asked to send over hard copies of ballots and other election materials. Mastriano expects a court battle to play out and is ready to go to his committee and request subpoena power if the counties don’t comply or indicate their willingness to comply by July 31.

A deputy for Philadelphia Commissioner Omar Sabir, a Democrat, told The Epoch Times that Sabir believes the elections were run freely and secure. He said that the commissioners are consulting with the city’s law department on the request from the state Senate. Nick Custodio, a deputy for Philadelphia Commissioner Lisa Deeley, a Democrat, said that her office is reviewing the requests.

“We do want to be clear, however, that Senator Mastriano’s letter reiterates claims about the November 2020 election that have been resoundingly rejected by courts. The repetition of baseless claims by elected officials poses a real challenge to our democratic processes. We are committed to continuing the hard work of ensuring that Philadelphians are able to exercise their right to vote,” he said in an email.

A York County official acknowledged receipt of Mastriano’s requests but declined to comment. Tioga County did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

In an op-ed sent to news outlets, Mastriano charged that there’s a strong case for an investigation, noting that 2.7 million mail-in ballots were counted in the 2020 election, compared to just 263,000 in the prior presidential election. He also noted that many of the ballots were counted without signature verification.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ranked-choice-voting-is-bad-for-everyone-11625674248?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

When it comes to counting votes, America’s political parties want to keep or gain their own advantage. The public interest, however, demands a nonpartisan method. No neutral method has yet been devised that merely elicits the people’s will without twisting it one way or another. Ranked-choice voting is an attempt that has its own twist and will make elections worse for both parties.

The idea isn’t new but it has gained favor, mostly from the left. It can be dismissed as too complicated and, coming as it does from professors, too demanding for most voters outside New York City. But I would like to present three deeper faults in it that concern how voters think, for ranked-choice voting is intended to make them think in a certain way.

First, by ranking choices a voter is required to divide his vote between a favorite candidate and some merely acceptable ones. The first choice is what the voter privately wills—the representative who suits him best. This choice is not directed at the common good, which requires that voters consider what others want. In a free country voters should desire a common good superior to the wishes of private individuals to prevail.

Ranked-choice voting makes the common good inferior to each person’s private first choice. The common good of the country typically gets ranked second choice or below for each citizen.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/good-news-criminals-manhattans-next-d-a-has-your-back/

Promoting social decay in the name of social justice, Alvin Bragg threatens to be a disaster for New York City.

R eeling psychologically and economically from the pandemic, New York City could use a boost. Unfortunately its central borough’s choice for district attorney is a guy whose big selling point is telling us about all of the criminals he won’t be prosecuting.

Alvin Bragg has won the Democratic primary for D.A. of New York County (Manhattan) by promising not to prosecute minor crimes such as trespassing, resisting arrest, turnstile jumping, and traffic offenses. In a debate, Bragg (who previously prosecuted state crimes in the attorney general’s office and federal ones in the Southern District of New York) boasted that he had only ever prosecuted one misdemeanor, when he charged some men for blocking access to a Planned Parenthood office.

“Non-incarcerations are the outcome,” read his campaign materials, “for every case except those with charges of homicide or the death of a victim, a class B violent felony in which a deadly weapon causes serious physical injury, or felony sex offenses.” In an overwhelmingly Democratic city, Bragg is almost certain to win the general election against a Republican opponent in the fall. His proposals threaten to be yet another catastrophe for Manhattan — the economic heart of the region — by bringing San Francisco’s laissez-faire prosecution philosophy to New York City and promoting social decay in the name of social justice.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dncs-dishonest-voting-case-against-arizona-11625608666?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Protecting the right to vote while maintaining public confidence in the integrity of the results is every public servant’s sacred duty. With that in mind, I defended Arizona’s election safeguards before the Supreme Court in March. Last week, in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the justices ruled 6-3 in our favor, reaffirming the ability of states to administer secure elections with outcomes every voter can trust.

The Democratic National Committee asked the court in 2016 to strike down Arizona’s statutes on in-precinct voting and ballot harvesting as violations of the Voting Rights Act. The DNC didn’t have a sound or compelling argument, so it lapsed into calling Arizona “racist” for passing the law. I am thankful the justices saw through this partisan attack and upheld our common-sense measures. The court’s ruling is a win for election integrity at a time when the far left conducts propaganda campaigns to trick people into believing any election law that protects against voter fraud is “Jim Crow 2.0.”

The irony is that the DNC chose to attack Arizona, a state that offers some of the most convenient ways to vote. You can vote early in-person, vote on Election Day, or request a no-excuse absentee ballot. Don’t want to get out of the car? We also have drive-through ballot drop-off sites. Contrast that with other jurisdictions such as Delaware, Connecticut and New York, which require bureaucrats to approve your reason for absentee voting. Why are those requirements not being challenged? It’s clear that the DNC prefers to pursue its partisan power plays in what it deems to be battleground states.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/559574-eric-adams-wins-new-york-city-mayoral-primary

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has won the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, setting himself up as the overwhelming favorite to win the general election in November.

The Associated Press called the race for Adams shortly after the latest batch of results in the ranked-choice primary were released on Tuesday afternoon. 

Adams, a former police captain who entered primary voting as the front-runner, bested a crowded field of Democrats, including former New York City Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley.

Adams will face off against GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels.

Just before the race was called, Adams said in a statement that “while there are still some very small amounts of votes to be counted, the results are clear: an historic, diverse, five-borough coalition led by working-class New Yorkers has led us to victory in the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City.” 

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/05/why-trump-haters-have-set-their-sights-on-j-d-vance/

The Progressive Left has a bullseye on J. D. Vance. Ever since he announced his run for the U.S. Senate in Middletown, Ohio last week to replace retiring Republican Rob Portman, the media has been bashing him. The Daily Beast claims he’s “an avatar of GOP corruption” and is upset that he mentioned Jeffrey Epstein and John Weaver as sex predators (the author says that’s a QAnon conspiracy!), while New York magazine says Vance’s campaign “feels doomed” less than 24 hours after he made his announcement speech in front of a pumped-up crowd of around 500.  

The liberal press is joined in its opposition to Vance by the anti-Trump ex-Republicans at the Lincoln Project, which spent close to $100 million against Trump last year. Bill Kristol and a list of other D.C.-based Trump haters have spent the days since his announcement calling Vance a “dirtbag” and a racist for using horrible terms like “nation-state.”

These same people have said almost nothing about Vance’s opponents in the Republican primary. Josh Mandel doesn’t seem to interest them, despite some warning signs about his candidacy—including the fact that much of his fundraising team resigned—or questions about his electability since he was trounced in his 2012 Senate race against far-left Sherrod Brown. 

Likewise, they haven’t had much to say about his other competitor Jane Timken, the former chairman of the state GOP. She, too, has some serious political problems, including defending her protégé, Ohio Representative Anthony Gonzalez’s vote to impeach Donald Trump and the fact that her family’s steel company outsources Ohio jobs to China.

So why are they so focused on J. D. Vance? Fox News host Tucker Carlson seems to like him, which probably only adds fuel to the fire. He said last week, “I’m really glad you’re doing it. J. D. Vance, I admire you and I wish you luck.”

Still, there’s a political angle that probably makes the anti-Trump contingent’s silence strategic: they realize the other candidates’ flaws make them weaker in the general election against Representative Tim Ryan, the likely Democratic nominee, and they would like to see the Democrats pick up what should be a safe Republican seat in the Senate.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/07/05/james-clyburn-yeah-im-open-to-voter-id-n2592029

Was it a dream? Is it our imagination? What happened? Voter ID requirements were long considered facets of white supremacy and of Republicans wanting to suppress to vote. This was Jim Crow 2.0, remember? For years, voter ID requirements were popular. Across geographic, political, and racial lines, the act of showing a photo ID to vote was met with overwhelming approval. So, are Democrats listening now? This was an interesting admission from top Democrat Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) (via CNN):

James Clyburn, a member of House Democratic leadership, said Sunday he was “absolutely” open to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s proposed changes to election law reform that include a voter ID requirement — as long as it’s equitable.

“We are always for voter ID. We are never for disproportionate voter ID. When you tell me that you got to have a photo ID and a photo for a student activity card is not good but for a hunting license it is good,” Clyburn, the House majority whip, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” I don’t know of a single person who is against ID’ing themselves when they go to vote. But we don’t want you to tell me my ID is no good because I don’t own a gun and I don’t go hunting.”

The comments from the South Carolina Democrat, who has previously criticized voter ID requirements as a form of voter suppression, comes days after the Supreme Court ruled two provisions of an Arizona voting law that restrict how ballots can be cast do not violate the Voting Rights Act. After Senate Republicans blocked a path forward on an elections reform bill and as GOP-led state legislatures move to enact restrictive voting laws, Democrat lawmakers are also calling for action, including ending the filibuster.