Court Permanently Enjoins Texas Voter ID Law in "Outrageous" Decision

Today, Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas permanently enjoined Texas' voter ID law, both the original law and the remedial amendment passed this term to comply with the 5th Circuit's en banc opinion last year.  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton promised to appeal:

“Today’s ruling is outrageous. Senate Bill 5 was passed by the people’s representatives and includes all the changes to the Texas voter ID law requested by the 5th Circuit,” Attorney General Paxton said. “The U.S. Department of Justice is satisfied that the amended voter ID law has no discriminatory purpose or effect. Safeguarding the integrity of elections in Texas is essential to preserving our democracy. The 5th Circuit should reverse the entirety of the district court’s ruling.” 

In a court filing earlier this month, the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked Judge Ramos to end efforts to overturn Senate Bill 5, noting that the law “eradicates any discriminatory effect or intent” and expands voter identification options when it takes effect January 1. Texas’ voter ID law “both guarantees to Texas voters the opportunity to cast an in-person ballot and protects the integrity of Texas’ elections,” the DOJ told Judge Ramos. 

Last year, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case to Judge Ramos to assess the impact of any future legislative action, like Senate Bill 5.

Judge Ramos, an Obama appointee, found both discriminatory effect and discriminatory purpose in the law.  This case will undoubtedly return to the en banc 5th Circuit, and quite likely the Supreme Court, which may not review the decision too favorably.  A finding of discriminatory purpose is a very high bar that has not been met in this case.  As Christian Adams of the Public Interest Legal Foundation said in response:

"The court has yet again proven all too willing to hand down rulings which beg to be overturned on appeal,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said. “Texas’ voter identification law takes squarely into account the safety net system which the Fifth Circuit recommended be installed last year.”

But in the meantime, this unfortunate decision seriously threatens the ability of states to enact common-sense voter ID laws to protect the integrity of their elections. 

Christian Adams an Excellent Choice for Election Integrity Commission

President Trump announced additional members for his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity yesterday: Christian Adams and Alan King, a Democrat from Alabama. These experts will greatly aid the commission in its work and bring a wealth of real-world experience and expertise to the commission.  

Christian Adams has experience in election administration at the state and federal levels.  Adams served as General Counsel to the South Carolina Secretary of State, advising on election law and administration, and served in the Voting Section at the U.S. Department of Justice.  He has litigated election cases all over the country.

Currently, Adams is doing the important work of enforcing liberals’ favorite voting law, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA or “motor voter”). The NVRA requires local election officials to take steps to ensure their voter registration rolls are accurate, including removing dead and ineligible persons. Many local election officials have not been following the law’s requirements, some from fear of litigation from liberal groups who oppose such efforts to keep the voter registration records accurate. Adams and his organization, Public Interest Legal Foundation, have been requesting information about the voter registration records from local officials, publicizing the errors in them and lack of efforts to keep them accurate, and in certain cases, filing suit to require the local official to follow the law.

Adams has something his critics sorely lack, experience with elections from both a federal and state government perspective. The importance of this cannot be overstated and is a key component for any federal commission in our state-based election system. This is in strong contrast to some of the harshest critics of the Commission on Election Integrity who base their views on biased partisan studies or spend their time in academia far removed from the nuts and bolts of elections. 

New Report: Thousands of Non-Citizens Voting in Virginia

Today, the Public Interest Legal Foundation released a disturbing report about non-citizens registered to vote and actually voting in Virginia:

After three lawsuits, scores of record requests, and reviews voter history files across 133 Virginia jurisdictions, the Public Interest Legal Foundation has uncovered the following:

• Virginia election officials quietly removed 5,556 voters for non-citizenship between 2011 and May 2017;

• 1,852 of those removed as noncitizens cast ballots;

• A total of 7,474 illegal ballots were cast from the pool of removed noncitizens;

• Some records of illegal voting date back to the 1980s before their respective removals;

• Virginia election officials routinely fail to alert law enforcement about these illegal votes or registrations.

“At the instruction of Governor McAuliffe’s political appointees, local election officials spent countless resources to prevent this information from spilling into the open,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said. “Virginia hid critical information that would have improved election integrity while a political operative-turned-governor vetoed numerous proposals that would’ve prevented alien registration and voting. From NoVa to Norfolk and all urban and rural points in between, alien voters are casting ballots with practically no legal consequences in response. 

“In this election year, aliens must not cast illegal ballots, and if they do they must be prosecuted. Let’s pray that Gov. McAuliffe’s veto pen did not invite a close election tainted by fraud,” Adams added. 

In the absence of regular data-sharing arrangements between federal officials and the Commonwealth, the ability of election officials to identify aliens on the voter rolls is almost nonexistent. The most that happens in Virginia is that an alien on the voter rolls will sometimes tell the state DMV they are not a citizen. Without those leads, counties and municipalities must accept false claims of citizenship on their face.

This report gives lie to those who claim that there is no problem with ineligible voters voting and determining the outcomes of elections.  In addition to other close races detailed in the full report (page 12), the winner of the 2013 attorney general election was determined by just 907 votes statewide.  As PILF noted, the methods for removing non-citizens from the voter registration rolls are far from effective or complete and the existing methods are rarely followed.  So there are likely far more non-citizens registered to vote and additional votes by non-citizens that PILF was unable to identify through their data review.  

This problem is duplicated in nearly every state across the country but has largely not been studied because it requires a tremendous amount of time and resources.  Sadly, PILF had to litigate against local election officials who refused to disclose voter registration data as required by the NVRA.  We can only hope that President Trump's Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity can conduct or prompt similar studies in a number of states and that state and local officials will cooperate, as required by law, in efforts to improve the accuracy of voter registration rolls.

ICYMI, Study Showing Voter ID Suppressed Minority Turnout Was "Fake News"

In January, liberals and the media were rejoicing that an academic study had proven their favorite narrative - that voter ID laws disproportionately affect minority voters, suppress minority turnout, and are just a cover for racist voter suppression.  The problem with that study was that it had questionable methodology and conclusions and evidenced bias, as reported by a new study from Yale, Stanford, and University of Pennsylvania professors:

The new study finds “no definitive relationship” between tough laws requiring voters to present identification and a dropoff in Hispanic, black, and other minority turnout. . . .  

The study released March 10 questions the numbers of the January report . . . . Citing inaccuracies and errors in the previous study, it says:

Here, we show that the results of this paper are a product of large data inaccuracies, that the evidence does not support the stated conclusion, and that model specifications produce highly variable results. When errors in the analysis are corrected, one can recover positive, negative, or null estimates of the effect of voter ID laws on turnout. Our findings underscore that no definitive relationship between strict voter ID laws and turnout can be established from the validated CCES data. . . . These measurement errors in turnout raise the potential of both inefficiency and bias. 

. . . “Many federal courts have been asked to do the same: Find a causal link between voter ID and intentional decreases in minority turnout,” [Logan Churchwell, spokesman for the Public Interest Legal Foundation] said. “All eventually failed. Despite this, too many in the media are willing to report an initial study as gospel before peer reviewers can weigh in. It should have struck many news editors weeks ago that it took until 2017 to provide proof to a belief that could have been confirmed a decade ago, if true.”

Of course, the second study was largely ignored by the media that touted the results of the first study.  The results of the second study comport with public opinion polling showing that 77% of minority Americans support a requirement to show photo ID prior to voting.  If voter ID laws were designed to, or did in practice, suppress minority voters, minority voters would not support them in such large numbers.  Instead, voter ID laws are a common sense, fair protection of election integrity supported by Americans on both sides of the aisle, a fact that, for all their efforts, liberal academics and pundits have yet to disprove.

Reactions by Conservative Organizations and Leaders to President Trump's Supreme Court Nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch

Reactions from some conservative organizations and leaders around the country concerning President Trump’s nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch from the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to the United States Supreme Court:

John Malcolm, Elizabeth Slattery, and Tiffany Bates of The Heritage Foundation: Gorsuch is an eminently qualified and well-respected judge with a record that demonstrates he cares about religious liberty, the separation of powers, and the original public meaning of the Constitution and the laws he interprets. He would be a fine successor to Scalia. 

Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute: Gorsuch is an originalist, always looking to the original meaning of the Constitution and its structural protections for liberty. 

He’s also a textualist, with a strong command of how to interpret statutes according to their plain meaning — in particular construing them narrowly when they involve criminal penalties, like Scalia did. Also like Scalia, Gorsuch isn’t a fan of legislative history, noting “the difficulties of trying to say anything definitive about the intent of 535 legislators and the executive.” 

Pacific Legal Foundation: “Judge Gorsuch is superbly well qualified to serve on the Supreme Court and his prior opinions demonstrate a careful effort to enforce the text of the Constitution and laws as they are written,” said Todd Gaziano, Executive Director of PLF’s DC Center and Senior Fellow in Constitutional Law. “Federal judges, especially justices of the Supreme Court, play an essential role in protecting individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution, including property rights, economic liberty, freedom of speech, and other limits on the power of government regulators." 

National Rifle Association: During his tenure on the Tenth Circuit, Gorsuch has demonstrated his belief that the Constitution should be applied as the framers intended.  To that end, he has supported the individual right to self-defense.  Specifically, he wrote in an opinion that "the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own firearms and may not be infringed lightly." 

Americans for Prosperity: A qualified, experienced choice for the Supreme Court, Judge Gorsuch’s long record illustrates his respect for the rule of law. He does not legislate from the bench, but instead believes that judges should follow the law as it is written. Throughout his career he’s shown his commitment to protecting the Constitution and defending our freedoms. At Americans for Prosperity, we believe these values will serve him well as a member of the Supreme Court and as a replacement for the late Justice Scalia. 

Public Interest Legal Foundation: “This selection should hearten any believer that the role of the judiciary is to consider what the law says—not what it should say,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said. “Former colleagues speak of Judge Gorsuch’s tested adherence to the honorable tradition of strict constructionism just like the late Justice Antonin Scalia before him. The Rule of Law is on firmer ground tonight, and we will have Judge Gorsuch to thank for that." 

Concerned Women for America: “Judge Neil Gorsuch is a superb choice. President Trump has kept his word and nominated someone who, by all indications, is “in the mold of Justice Scalia,” something the president repeated over and over during his campaign. 

Judicial Watch: President Trump’s nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court is a victory for Americans who are fed up with corrupt judicial activism.  The judicial branch needs as much draining as the rest of the federal government swamp. President Trump avoided the temptation to nominate yet another politician to the Supreme Court.  It is good we have a nominee who has a demonstrated record of applying the rule of law rather than legislating from the bench.  The U.S. Senate should swiftly confirm him. 

Ramesh Ponnuru of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI): President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court will be Neil Gorsuch, a well-respected conservative whose legal philosophy is remarkably similar to that of Antonin Scalia, the justice he will replace if the Senate confirms him. He is, like Scalia, a textualist and an originalist: someone who interprets legal provisions as their words were originally understood. 

The Buckeye Institute: The Buckeye Institute's President Robert Alt said the following: "Judge Neil Gorsuch's approach to the law is, well, judicious. Gorsuch has said that judges ought to declare what the law is, not what 'they might wish it to be in light of their own political views.' The commonsense of Gorsuch's judicial philosophy is refreshing in the overly politicized climate of Washington these days." 

Jim Daly of Focus on the Family: I am greatly encouraged by the President’s nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court created by the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia last year. President Trump included Judge Gorsuch on his list of potential justices during his campaign, and he kept his promise to choose a candidate from the list.

RNLA joins with these fine organizations and thought leaders in praising President Trump for his nomination of Judge Gorsuch to Justice Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court and calling for his swift confirmation without partisan bickering.

Sessions' "Racist" Vote Fraud Prosecution Was to Protect Black Voters' Voting Rights

Liberals, particularly the NAACP, in the past few weeks have repeated the claim that Sen. Jeff Sessions is a racist based on his 1985 prosecution of civil rights activists for absentee ballot vote fraud.  

What are the facts and legal history of that case?  Then-U.S. Attorney Sessions was acting pursuant to a complaint brought by African-American candidates who believed that their African-American supporters' votes were being stolen or altered to steal the election away from them.  He prosecuted after a grand jury indictment, with the assistance and oversight of the Department of Justice, and evidence of the stealing of African-Americans' votes was presented at trial. He was upholding his duty as a federal prosecutor to prosecute violations of the law for which there is sufficient evidence to believe a conviction may be achieved; it was not a malicious prosecution on racist grounds:

“No federal prosecutor faced with the evidence seen by the grand jury would have failed to take the case and go forward with the prosecution,” [former head of the Election Crimes Unit inside the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section Craig] Donsanto told me. “The evidence in the case was overwhelming. I was there with the other assistant U.S. attorneys and not one dissented — everyone thought it was a solid case. I told Jeff Sessions to go forward with the case.” . . . 

Donsanto is highly offended by any claims that the prosecution was racist. The federal prosecutors were “trying to protect black voters who were having their votes stolen,” he notes. Moreover, the investigation was initiated only after local black voters and candidates complained to the Justice Department. When asked about the fact that a jury found the defendants not guilty, Donsanto says that as a former federal prosecutor, he respects the jury system. . . .  

In Perry County, Jeff Sessions and the other Justice Department lawyers were trying to protect black voters from having their right to vote stolen — a precious right that those voters had fought very hard to obtain during the civil rights battles of the 1950s and 1960s. Unfortunately, a jury let the defendants off despite the evidence in the case, including testimony from black residents of the county about how their ballots had been altered and changed without their permission. And that is the real tragedy of this case. 

As Craig Donsanto says, this was a prosecution intended to preserve and protect the right to vote, something to which he dedicated his entire professional career. Anyone who claims this was a racist prosecution by Jeff Sessions is, according to Donsanto, “a liar and a political opportunist of the worst kind.”

Similarly, the Public Interest Legal Foundation pointed out five important ways in which former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick had distorted the facts and history of the case in his opposition letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Mr. Patrick misleads readers to believe the ‘Perry County Three’ in Alabama were prosecuted by Mr. Sessions for ‘assisting’ voters. They weren’t. 

Prosecuting voter fraud is not itself an act of voter intimidation. 

Mr. Sessions was not a rogue prosecutor – he acted with oversight from multiple DOJ offices. 

If Sessions’ advancement of the case was as faulty as Patrick alludes, why did the Court refuse to acquit the defendants from the outset? 

Patrick fails to remind Congress that the defendants offered to enter guilty pleas for the misdemeanor election crimes.

Unfortunately, the facts of the case will not prevent liberals from using it as a basis to call Sen. Sessions a racist, despite all evidence to the contrary.  We can only hope that the American people will see through this name-calling and learn about the actual history of the Perry County absentee ballot fraud prosecution. 

Lawsuit Finds Non-citizen Voters in VA; Democrats Try to Cover Up

The Public Interest Legal Foundation has discovered that hundreds of non-citizens were removed from the voter registration rolls in Alexandria, Virginia.  The city refuses to disclose whether any of those non-citizens voted in any elections and it is unclear whether the city has forwarded the names to law enforcement authorities:

[T]he Virginia Voters Alliance and a Virginia voter (David Norcross) filed a lawsuit against the city of Alexandria, Va., claiming that the general registrar, Anna Leider, was violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).  The lawsuit charged that Leider failed to make her records related to the city’s voter-list maintenance procedures available for public inspection, which would obviously include all information about the removal of ineligible voters. . . . As a result of the lawsuit, the Alliance was finally able to get into Leider’s office and inspect the voter registration records. Among the items they discovered was a list containing several hundred registrants who had been removed from the voter rolls because they were not U.S. citizens. . . . 

The Alliance was not able to determine exactly how many of those non-citizens had illegally voted before being dropped from the voter list. In a letter to the Public Interest Legal Foundation, the city’s attorney subsequently claimed that the voter history of non-citizens who are removed from the voter rolls is not subject to the public records inspection provision of the NVRA. In other words, they are trying to hide whether non-citizens illegally voted. 

Whether Alexandria notified law-enforcement officials is unclear. The city’s attorney says there were some “communications to and from the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office,” but no records concerning those communications have been released. That response indicates that the city did not turn over any records to federal authorities.

This is a problem throughout Virginia, but perhaps the most disturbing part of this story is that Virginia's election officials seem not to care that hundreds of non-citizens are registered to vote and may have voted:

Numerous other Virginia counties have refused to provide this information to the Public Interest Legal Foundation, apparently based on instructions from the State Board of Elections and individuals working for the state Department of Elections, which the Board supervises. This is what a cover-up directed by state election officials looks like. They are trying to hide hundreds, if not thousands, of instances of voter fraud that occurred on their watch. . . . 

So the next time someone tells you that we shouldn’t be concerned about voter fraud, think about the hundreds of non-citizens who have apparently illegally registered and who may have even voted in elections in the Commonwealth of Virginia. They may have been removed from the voter rolls but so far none of them has been prosecuted for violating the law. Worse, these aliens were only detected because they sought to renew their driver’s licenses and told the truth the second time when they admitted to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles that they were not citizens. 

We have no idea how many other non-citizens remain undetected in the voter rolls of Virginia, a purple state where the outcome of the November election is still in doubt, and where the state takes no steps of any kind to verify the citizenship status of voter registrants. It is a state where the controlling members of the State Board of Elections obviously see nothing wrong with violating federal public records law, attempting to conceal illegal registration and voting, and seem to have no interest in taking any steps to prosecute those who have violated some of our most fundamental protections intended to preserve the integrity of our election process.

We applaud the Virginia Voters Alliance and the Public Interest Legal Foundation for endeavoring to protect the integrity of Virginia's elections and ensure that election officials follow the law.

Lawsuit Filed to Allow Inspection of Philadelphia Voter Rolls; Possible Ineligible Voters

The American Civil Rights Union, represented by the Public Interest Legal Foundation and RNLA Advisory Council Member Linda Kerns, has filed a lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia for failure to allow public inspecting of its voter registration rolls as required by the NVRA.  For years, the number of registered voters in Philadelphia has far exceeded the percentage of eligible voters that could reasonably be expected to be registered:

For years in Philadelphia, the numbers of registered voters has nearly exceeded the number of citizen residents eligible to vote, among the highest in Pennsylvania. In response to these unusual circumstances, the plaintiff utilized protections in the National Voter Registration Act that require Philadelphia to allow physical inspection of election records related to voter registration and list maintenance programs. The plaintiff requested information from Philadelphia about tools used to ensure that non-citizens are not registering to vote, as well as other records.  

Philadelphia failed even to respond to the request, and thus the lawsuit followed.

The plaintiff in the case is the American Civil Rights Union. The plaintiff originally sent the defendant a notice letter in January 2016 describing potential violations of federal election law, asking to review election records, and seeking to discuss a cure. Philadelphia never replied.  

“Corrupted voter rolls provide the perfect environment for voter fraud. Failure to clean the rolls aggravates longstanding problems of voter fraud in Philadelphia,” said J. Christian Adams, President and General Counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. “Philadelphia may not be using all the available tools to prevent non-citizens from registering and voting. Concealing list maintenance records from the public isn’t good government, and it violates Federal election law.”

Local election officials have an important duty to ensure that federal and state election laws are followed, including the laws regarding voter eligibility.  If a locality is refusing to follow federal law regarding inspection of its voter records, it may be failing to follow other important laws.  Ensuring that only eligible voters are registered to vote is key to the integrity of elections and public confidence in the electoral process.

Voter ID Victory in Wisconsin

Noel Johnson, an attorney at the Public Interest Legal Foundation, recently wrote a piece outlining the numerous failures of the ACLU and other anti-voter ID parties in Wisconsin. Beginning with the 7th Circuit's determination that Wisconsin's voter ID law violates neither the constitution nor the Federal Voting Rights Act, voter ID opponents in Wisconsin have continued to "strike out."

The most recent blow came as Judge Adelman, a Clinton appointee and the judge who originally invalidated Wisconsin's voter ID law, refused to expand the law on remand from the 7th Circuit. The ACLU brought in a number of witnesses and attempted to argue that Wisconsin's refusal to allow the use of some student IDs, VA veteran ID cards, and various other forms of ID violated the equal protection clause.

Judge Adelman ruled that to expand the law would create the unreasonable burden of "requir[ing] the state to update the existing voter ID law every time a new ID is found to be an acceptable form." A few of the ACLU's witnesses argued that certain IDs in their possession should be deemed acceptable for voting despite the fact that they were already in possession of U.S. passports which satisfy the law's requirements. As a result of the ACLU's weak arguments, Judge Adelman ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to convince him that there was a large number of people who did not possess qualifying IDs and could not obtain one.

In spite of their loss, the ACLU claims that they will try again. However given their record, it doesn't appear voter ID proponents in Wisconsin have much cause for concern.


The RNLA sends out a weekly Voter ID update for its members.  To sign up for these email updates, click here.