The purpose of a census is for a nation to count and survey its population, as prescribed in the U.S. Constitution. It would seem obvious then that asking whether an individual is a citizen of said country would be an appropriate and necessary question. However, most Democrats and the left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) do not value an accurate census. Prof. John Baker wrote in The Hill:
This past week the American Civil Liberties Union filed yet another desperate lawsuit challenging the secretary of Commerce’s decision to reinstate a citizenship question on the 2020 decennial census. The ACLU filed suit two months after the sanctuary state of California first asked the federal courts to prevent the 2020 census from asking who is and is not a citizen.
Many elected officials in California and other Democrat-led states, assisted by left-wing, legal groups, seem more concerned about advancing the interests of illegal aliens than those of U.S. citizens.
It has become abundantly clear the ACLU and other liberal politicians and organizations have little concern with protecting American citizens or ensuring fair, open, and honest elections. In fact, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s recent lawsuit proves the left’s opposition to a citizenship question in the census is primarily an attempt to undermine the value of American citizenship, by granting illegal immigrants equal status. Pew Research points out:
A lawsuit by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra contends that if the census undercounted immigrants, it would be an incomplete population count that violates its constitutional purpose, which is to divide up seats in the U.S. House of Representatives based on the total U.S. population. (Census numbers also are used to allocate billions of dollars in federal funds.)
A proper census is critical in establishing fair, open, and honest elections. Without it, the already difficult job of election officials to conduct a legitimate election that includes only legal citizens participating becomes next to impossible. The Federation for American Immigration Reform reports:
There is evidence that both foreign nationals who are lawfully present in the United States and illegal aliens have voted in recent elections. During this election cycle, non-citizens have been discovered on voter registration rolls in both Virginia and Pennsylvania. And the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York recently announced that it charged a Canadian woman with making a false claim to citizenship after she registered and voted in more than 20 elections.
With non-citizens routinely voting illegally, this is becoming a critical issue for our nation; it is important that our states have the necessary information to ensure an honest election. For this reason, a number of states requested a citizenship question on the 2020 census. As Prof. Baker described in The Hill:
States including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas have requested that the Census Bureau include a question regarding citizenship on the 2020 Census questionnaire.
A reliable calculation of the citizen, voting-age population is needed in order for states to meet their obligations. The decennial census questionnaire is the constitutional vehicle for collecting that information.
One of the RNLA’s principal missions is to stand for fair, open, and honest elections. We will continue to highlight those issues that can and would corrupt our election process.
The RNLA’s National Election Law Seminar in St. Louis, Missouri on August 3rd and 4th is an annual, nationwide event where our members can learn more about the citizenship census question, election law and administration, and recent developments in this field, all while earning CLE credits. For more information, visit the event page here.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is focusing on district attorney races this year:
The ACLU is among a variety of organizations working to elect prosecutors willing to jumpstart a laundry list of criminal justice reforms, including an overhaul of the pretrial bail bond system. It received a $50 million grant from Soros’ Open Society Foundations in 2014. . . .
The group hasn’t determined which local races will be targeted, but it will focus on contests in big cities with large jail populations that feed the state prison system, said Taylor Pendergrass, senior campaign strategist for the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice. More than 1,000 local prosecutors are up for election in November, according to the group. . . .
As the article points out, many on both the right and the left, Republicans and Democrats, are calling for criminal justice reform, but there is a great deal of debate over the proper changes, the economic considerations, and what the practical effects of any legal changes will be. Many law enforcement organizations warn that ill-considered changes could drastically increase crime rates and decrease public safety. The number and murkiness of the considerations in this area make it important that a vibrant public debate is held over law enforcement and criminal justice issues and that the people's elected legislators collectively make the hard decisions about policy matters.
The Color of Change Political Action Committee, which has also received Soros funding, is urging black voters to support Democratic candidate Elizabeth Frizell for Dallas County District Attorney in Texas. A former state district judge, Frizell has called for special prosecutors to investigate shootings by police. She also supports replacing cash bail bonds with a pretrial release system based on factors such as the type of offense, the facts of the case and the defendants’ likelihood to re-offend and return to court. . . .
With great discretion about whether to charge and how severely to punish defendants, district attorneys hold immense power over the way justice is dispensed, advocates for similar reforms agree. . . .
While prosecutors exercise immense discretion as an important facet of our adversarial system, we have seen all too often how politically motivated prosecutors will selectively enforce the law to serve their progressive political goals, not to serve the greater public interest. Unfortunately with the ACLU's track record in selectively supporting free speech rights (anarchists - yes, religious groups - no), we are not optimistic that the candidates supported by the ACLU will be ones who will use their discretion with respect for the rule of law instead of using it to politicize justice on the local level. And when justice is politicized, it is the most vulnerable of our citizens who suffer the greatest consequences.
Under President Trump, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has taken steps to respect Americans' rights of religious liberty and conscience, which are protected under the First Amendment. This is refreshing after, under President Obama, HHS was focused on advancing and defending regulations under Obamacare that infringed on Americans' important rights, including litigating several losing cases all the way to the Supreme Court.
Yesterday, HHS announced the formation of the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division in the HHS Office for Civil Rights:
The Conscience and Religious Freedom Division has been established to restore federal enforcement of our nation’s laws that protect the fundamental and unalienable rights of conscience and religious freedom. OCR is the law enforcement agency within HHS that enforces federal laws protecting civil rights and conscience in health and human services, and the security and privacy of people’s health information. The creation of the new division will provide HHS with the focus it needs to more vigorously and effectively enforce existing laws protecting the rights of conscience and religious freedom, the first freedom protected in the Bill of Rights. . . .
OCR Director [Roger] Severino said, “Laws protecting religious freedom and conscience rights are just empty words on paper if they aren’t enforced. No one should be forced to choose between helping sick people and living by one’s deepest moral or religious convictions, and the new division will help guarantee that victims of unlawful discrimination find justice. For too long, governments big and small have treated conscience claims with hostility instead of protection, but change is coming and it begins here and now.”
Acting HHS Secretary [Eric] Hargan said, “President Trump promised the American people that his administration would vigorously uphold the rights of conscience and religious freedom. That promise is being kept today. The Founding Fathers knew that a nation that respects conscience rights is more diverse and more free, and OCR’s new division will help make that vision a reality.”
Underlying [ACLU's lawsuits against religious accommodations] is a common thread — and one that threatens the future of religious liberty in this country. . . . The ACLU is wrong: While the Supreme Court has long noted that accommodations can go too far, transforming the government from a protector of religious liberty to an enforcer of religious dogma, the sweeping assertion that accommodations that burden third parties violate the establishment clause simply does not hold true. . . .
Since the government created the onus on religion in the first place, eliminating that burden does not favor religion but rather represents, in the words of the Supreme Court, “benevolent neutrality” — something entirely consistent with the establishment clause. . . .
Throughout its history, the United States has long offered a variety of accommodations to protect citizens’ rights of conscience from the burdens imposed by otherwise just laws. Respect for the diverse tapestry of religious and non-religious beliefs and practices our country so richly enjoys is best achieved when the legislative branch crafts a compromise to protect both sincerely held religious beliefs and the compelling governmental interests at stake — something not possible if the establishment clause is stretched as the ACLU and others suggest.
We thank the Trump Administration for taking Americans' rights of religious liberty seriously and restoring the rule of law and respect for the Constitution in this important area.
Tomorrow at 11:00 AM, the Committee on House Administration is holding an important hearing on "State Voter Registration List Maintenance." RNLA sent a letter in support of accurate voter registration lists to the Committee today:
While many issues divide along party lines, the need for accurate voter registration lists enjoys bipartisan support . . . . President Barack Obama’s Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA) strongly endorsed state voter registration list maintenance as a way to both help election officials and make the process smoother for voters. In our response to the PCEA’s report, we agreed, pointing out that accurate voter registration lists are essential to ensuring the integrity of election processes and results.
While there is bipartisan support for the concept of accurate voter registration lists, much work remains to be done in the states. As election administration expert and former state election official Don Palmer testified last month before the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity:
A series of national level commissions have pointed out the wide scope of the problem concerning the inaccuracies of the voting rolls, and the negative impact on election administration and voter confidence. They have also pointed out the vulnerability of our system to voter fraud and irregularities that result from the inability to maintain accurate voter rolls.
Maintaining accurate voter registration lists requires resources and consistent effort by local election officials and any assistance or insight that House Administration could provide would be indispensible. Again, thank you for using the Committee’s valuable time and expertise to examine state voter registration list maintenance . . . .
The witnesses are Indiana Secretary of State and current National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) President Connie Lawson and Dale Ho, Director of the Voting Rights Project at the ACLU. RNLA will be live-tweeting the hearing tomorrow, which will be live-streamed on the Committee website.
In the latest episode of liberals turning to the courts due to opposition to election integrity protections and impatience with the legislative process, the ACLU has sued California over its signature matching requirement for mail ballots:
According to the ACLU, California’s election code requires election officials to reject vote-by-mail ballots if they believe a signature on the ballot does not match the signature on file.
The problem lies in the lack of handwriting-analysis training for election officials, according to the petition – a problem compounded by the fact that voters whose ballots are rejected aren’t told, meaning thousands of voters are discounted without their knowledge. . . .
[Secretary of State Alex] Padilla’s office pushed back against many of the claims made in the petition, saying that California has one of the lowest vote-by-mail rejection rates in the nation. . . .
The petitioners want a judge to declare the specific elections statute unconstitutional while declaring that a ballot may be discarded on the basis of a signature mismatch only if the voter is notified first.
Signature verification is a vital protection for the integrity of mail ballots, particularly in a state like California with no accompanying voter ID requirement, extremely messy voter rolls, problems with deceased persons voting, and problems with mailing a large number of ballots to one address. California needs reform of its mail ballot process.
Providing notice to voters whose ballots are disqualified due to mismatched signatures is a good policy -- both to provide notice to voters that someone has fraudulently voted in their names and to allow voters whose ballots were incorrectly disqualified the opportunity for their votes to be counted -- but it is a policy decision that should be made by the people's elected representatives, not by unelected judges prodded by liberal activists not willing to go through the deliberative process to enact a new law. It should be considered with other reforms as California's mail-in ballot system is a mess and the legislature should work together in a bipartisan process to fix it.
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.
