Tag: voting

Commentary: Fundamentally Transforming America

Michigan Star Staff

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” 

That was the “composite character” David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, on the campaign back in 2008. By “we,” the composite character meant himself and running mate, Senator Joe Biden. In 2021, with the Delaware Democrat in the White House, an update on the transformation process is in order.

In 2008 the United States was already a democratic republic, in which the people had selected presidents as different as Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. After FDR’s New Deal and  LBJ’s Great Society, the United States was already a top-heavy welfare state. Any fundamental transformation, therefore, would have to come through different channels. 

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New Poll: In Head-to-Head 2024 Match up, Trump Beats Biden

Michigan Star Staff

A poll released Friday by Emerson College shows former President Trump beating President Biden in a 2024 hypothetical matchup.

Biden, dealing with a COVID resurgence a messy Afghanistan departure, still handily defeats such possible GOP challenges as including Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a direct matchup. However, the poll show Trump defeats Biden by one percentage point.

Forty-seven percent of respondents said they would vote for Trump, in rematch of 2020, compared to 46% saying they would stick with Biden.

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Texas’ Elections Bill Clears State House, Setting Stage to Become Law

Michigan Star Staff
Texas State Capitol building

Texas’ controversial elections bill cleared the state House Friday afternoon, clearing its way to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk after a months-long battle that drove Democrats to flee the state in an attempt to block its passage.

Senate Bill 1 was lauded by Republicans as a means to better secure future elections, but was chastised by Democrats as an effort to restrict voting access following former President Donald Trump’s discredited claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. It passed on an 80-41 vote that fell largely along party lines.

The Texas House considered dozens of amendments during a marathon session Thursday, and the bill now heads to the Senate for the provisions adopted to be approved before heading to the governor’s desk. Abbott, a Republican who has championed the issue, has vowed to sign it.

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Report: Wisconsin Lost Track of 82,000 Ballots in State Biden Won by 20,000

Michigan Star Staff

Wisconsin lost track of more than 82,000 mail-in ballots cast in the state in the November 2020 elections—more than four times the margin of difference separating the two presidential candidates in the state, according to a report by the nonprofit Public Interest Legal Foundation.  

The legal foundation, an election integrity watchdog group, released a research brief Friday looking at one of the most closely contested states in the 2020 presidential election. 

However, the Wisconsin Elections Commission disputes those findings, as the commission spokesman said the report “mischaracterizes election systems and cherry-picks data,” adding, it is “unreliable and frankly, it’s sloppy work.” 

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Commentary: Reject Federal Takeover of Elections – Again

Michigan Star Staff

Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

That is exactly how Americans must feel as they learn that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is trying to ram through another bill orchestrating a federal takeover of elections, despite the previous failed attempt in the Senate.

The bill, H.R. 4, is expected to come up in the House of Representatives this week, and it is stunning in its breadth. In short, Pelosi would give broad, sweeping powers to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to rewrite every state and local election law in the country.

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As Michigan Secretary of State Benson Calls for ‘Educating Voters,’ Questions Surround Zuckerberg-Funded Nonprofit She Founded

Bradley Vasoli

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, speaking remotely to the American Bar Association on Monday, called for “educating voters” about supposed GOP efforts underway to “undermine democracy,” but questions remain regarding her role with the “voter education” efforts of a Mark Zuckerberg-funded nonprofit she founded. 

Benson is a former president of the Michigan Center for Election Law and Administration (MCELA), an organization that received $12 million in grants from the D.C.-based Center for Election Innovation and Research.

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Majority of Independent Voters Says Federal Government Reporting on COVID Vaccines Is Biased

Michigan Star Staff
COVID Testing station

Anew poll conducted by the Trafalgar Group in association with Convention of States Action, finds that Americans are losing confidence in the ability of the federal government to present unbiased information about COVID-19 vaccine efficacy.

Just over half of U.S. voters are, at this point, not confident that the federal government is reporting unbiased information related to the Covid-19 vaccines; 44.5% remain confident in the government’s ability to do so.

Those figures are further broken down by political affiliation to reveal that among Independents, the feds are underwater. Among the politically unaffiliated or affiliated with a non-mainstream party, 53.4% of voters said they are not confident in the unbiased nature of government vaccine information – 40% of those polled specified they were “not confident at all.”

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U.S. Set to Hit Debt Ceiling Within Four Months, Congressional Budget Office Estimates

Michigan Star Staff

The federal government is on track to reach the statutory debt limit in the fall, which would trigger a government shutdown, according to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate.

The U.S. is projected to reach the debt ceiling of $28.5 trillion by October or November, a CBO report released Wednesday stated. If Capitol Hill lawmakers don’t reach an agreement on raising the limit higher, the government could undergo its third shutdown in less than four years.

“If the debt limit remained unchanged, the ability to borrow using those measures would ultimately be exhausted, and the Treasury would probably run out of cash sometime in the first quarter of the next fiscal year (which begins on October 1, 2021), most likely in October or November,” the CBO report said.

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Mom Says School Board Threatened to Sue Her for Seeking Public Information on Critical Race Theory in Curriculum

Michigan Star Staff

Nicole Solas was surprised to find her name listed on the meeting agenda of her local school board, especially since it said the board was considering taking legal action against her in response to her many requests for public records.

The Rhode Island mother of two began filing records requests with the South Kingstown School District several months ago, when she learned that teachers were incorporating critical race theory and gender ideology in the curriculum.

But she didn’t expect the school board to talk about suing her.

“I was shocked,” Solas, 37, told The Daily Signal in a recent phone interview. The school board, she said, “did not tell me that [the requests were] a problem.”

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Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano Initiates Forensic Investigation of 2020 Election

Michigan Star Staff
Doug Mastriano

The Pennsylvania state senator who led a hearing on election fraud in Gettysburg, PA, last November, has initiated a “full forensic investigation” into 2020 election results in several counties.

Republican State Sen. Doug Mastriano said in a statement that as chair of the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee, that he has issued letters to several counties representing “different geographical regions of Pennsylvania and differing political makeups,” requesting “information and materials needed to conduct a forensic investigation of the 2020 General Election and the 2021 Primary.”

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Toyota Says It Will Stop Donating to Republicans Who Objected to the 2020 Election

Michigan Star Staff

Toyota announced Thursday that it will stop donating to Republicans who objected to certifying President Joe Biden’s victory in January.

The company said in a statement, first reported by The Detroit News, that its previous donations to Republican election objectors “troubled some stakeholders.”

The statement comes two weeks after an Axios report revealed that the Japanese automaker’s corporate PAC donated more to Republicans who contested Biden’s victory than any other company, doing so by a significant amount. It donated $55,000 to 37 objectors, over $25,000 more than any other corporation.

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Commentary: What Americans Lost When We Abandoned the Secret Ballot

RealClearWire
Person putting mail-in ballot in ballot return box

My father likes to say that the secret ballot means that he doesn’t have to listen when I tell him how I voted. This joke conceals a serious point: Ballot secrecy is not just a right of the individual but also a guarantee to all that my vote was not wrung from me by bribery or intimidation.

Out of a desire to make voting “easier” and perhaps exaggerated fears of public gatherings during the pandemic, most U.S. jurisdictions permitted unrestricted mail-in balloting in 2020. What did Americans lose when ballot secrecy was attenuated or vanished altogether?

Make no mistake, ballot secrecy is incompatible with secure mail-in balloting. At the polls, we each go into a little booth and make our choices in private. By contrast, no one knows where a mail-in ballot was filled out, or if a party or union activist hovered over the voter or even filled in the circles. Nobody knows what inducements, whether cash or threats, were offered to ensure that the person voted “correctly.” And if the ballot was “harvested” – turned in to the vote-counters by activists instead of by voters themselves – our suspicions deepen.

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Commentary: One Voting Group Could Hold the Key to Republican Victories in the Mid-Terms, If GOP Can Keep Them

Michigan Star Staff
Mail in ballot with U.S. flag

In 2016 the unprecedented turnout of non-college whites played a crucial role in former President Trump’s election. Since then, left-leaning research organizations have dedicated substantial effort to reinforcing the narrative that non-college whites are a shrinking demographic and will soon be outnumbered, paving the way for an unchecked left-wing agenda.

Not so fast. New analysis from Market Research Foundation (MRF) shows while whites without a college degree have declined as a share of eligible voters, their turnout rates are rising. This is particularly relevant in rust belt states, where non-college whites turned out substantially higher in 2020 than they did in 2016.

According to the latest Market Research Foundation Memo on Voter Turnout:  

“Nationwide the U.S. Census shows the share of white non-college Americans has declined as a share of eligible voters from 45% in 2016 to 41% in 2020. However, the white non-college turnout rate in 2020 was the highest observed in at least 20 years. Nationwide the white non-college vote rose six points from 58% in 2016 to 64% in 2020 according to new analysis from Brookings.

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Over 7,000 Affidavits Delivered to Michigan Lawmakers Claim Election Fraud

The Center Square
voters polling place

Hundreds of people concerned about the integrity of the Nov. 2020 election gathered outside the Michigan Capitol Thursday to protest and deliver roughly 7,000 affidavits claiming fraud and demanding a forensic audit.

Michigan Conservation Coalition spokesperson Matt Seely said thousands of Michigan voters have questioned the integrity of the 2020 election.

“If we do a deep-dive forensic audit similar to Arizona, it will do either one of two things. It will prove that all of the politicians who say there’s nothing to see there, that they were right. Or it will prove that there’s a big problem with the integrity of our elections and that we need to address it in a major way,” he told The Center Square in a phone interview.

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Commentary: Georgia’s Election Reform Makes It Easy to Vote and Hard to Cheat

RealClearWire

Regardless of one’s political affiliation, it’s not difficult to find voters in Georgia who were discouraged by the messiness of the 2020 election process.

It’s one thing to be disappointed by the outcome. It’s entirely another to feel disenfranchised and frustrated by questions and uncertainties surrounding absentee ballot handling, unsecured drop boxes, and questionable third-party funding of local elections.

In evaluating federal, state, and local voting safeguards, these and other serious complications — glitches, missing votes, even water pipe breakages at polling locations or ballot drop boxes — raised legitimate concerns and weakened voter confidence in Georgia’s election integrity.

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Voter I.D. Constitutional Amendment Proposed in Pennsylvania

The Center Square
People in line, waiting to vote

A pair of Pennsylvania lawmakers said Friday that state residents themselves should decide the stringency of the state’s voter identification law.

The push comes after Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf said he’d never support strengthening existing voter I.D. law – one of the top priorities for Republicans in their election reform proposal unveiled Thursday. 

Sen. Judy Ward, R-Hollidaysburg, and Rep. Jeff Wheeland, R-Williamsport, both support their party’s proposal to require identification each and every time a resident casts a ballot in-person. Current law stipulates identification only for first time voters in a precinct. 

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Commentary: ‘Pristine’ Biden Ballots That Looked Xeroxed and Why a Judge Has Georgia Vote Fraud on His Mind

RealClearWire

When Fulton County, Ga., poll manager Suzi Voyles sorted through a large stack of mail-in ballots last November, she noticed an alarmingly odd pattern of uniformity in the markings for Joseph R. Biden. One after another, the absentee votes contained perfectly filled-in ovals for Biden — except that each of the darkened bubbles featured an identical white void inside them in the shape of a tiny crescent, indicating they’d been marked with toner ink instead of a pen or pencil.

Adding to suspicions, she noticed that all of the ballots were printed on different stock paper than the others she handled as part of a statewide hand recount of the razor-thin Nov. 3 presidential election. And none was folded or creased, as she typically observed in mail-in ballots that had been removed from envelopes.

In short, the Biden votes looked like they’d been duplicated by a copying machine.

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Manchin to Vote Against Bill Federalizing Elections, Dealing Major Blow to Democrats

Michigan Star Staff
Joe Manchin

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., declared Sunday he will oppose his party’s legislation to federalize how elections are conducted, dealing a severe blow to Democratic passage in the evenly divided Senate.

The For The People Act would among other things ban voter ID requirements, mandate mail-in voting options and begin registering voters at age 16. It has faced uniform Republican opposition.

In an op-ed published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Manchin declared the bill as too partisan and divisive.

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Commentary: Voter Photo IDs Are the Rule in Europe and Elsewhere

RealClearWire

Democrats and much of the media are pushing to make permanent the extraordinary, pandemic-driven measures to relax voting rules during the 2020 elections – warning anew of racist voter “suppression” otherwise. Yet democracies in Europe and elsewhere tell a different story – of the benefits of stricter voter ID requirements after hard lessons learned. 

A database on voting rules worldwide compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I run, shows that election integrity measures are widely accepted globally, and have often been adopted by countries after they’ve experienced fraud under looser voting regimes.

Britain is Europe’s outlier in generally not requiring voter IDs, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson aims to change that. He went to the polls in May with wife-to-be Carrie Symonds.

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Commentary: Conservatives and Republicans Must Reclaim Memorial Day

Michigan Star Staff
Veteran cemetery with table set for lives lost who served America

In the face of the Far Left’s attempts to rewrite American history through the now-discredited 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory, Republicans and conservatives must reclaim the key dates and events in American history and there is no better place to start than Memorial Day 2021.

Memorial Day was created not as a “holiday” or an excuse for corporate merchants to advertise sales, but as a solemn commemoration of the dead of both sides in the American Civil War.

In that context Memorial Day commemorates a number of constitutional conservative values, not the least of which is the inviolability of the Constitution itself.

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Yale Study Claims That Democrats’ ‘Anti-Racism’ Rhetoric Alienates Voters

Michigan Star Staff
Micah English and Joshua Kalla of Yale University

A recent study by Yale University indicates that if the Democratic Party continues overtly promoting “anti-racism” rhetoric, it could lead to a mass alienation of their own base in upcoming elections, as reported by the New York Post.

The study was conducted by Yale’s Micah English and Joshua Kalla, whose goals with the survey were to find out “how racial attitudes shape policy preferences in the era of Black Lives Matter and increasing liberal views on racial issues.” But, utilizing an online survey method, they soon found that issues based explicitly on race where less likely to galvanize the party’s base than issues based more on economics.

To determine this, the study asked voters about various issues such as student debt cancellation, the Green New Deal, universal healthcare, and legalizing marijuana, amongst others. These issues were presented in three different ways to various respondents: They were either framed around “racial justice,” framed as “economic justice,” or explained completely neutrally. Actual rhetoric from Democratic politicians was incorporated into each method of questioning, and the issues were all emphasized as being part of the Democratic Party’s platform.

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Commentary: How Mail-In Voting Affected the 2020 Election

Michigan Star Staff

What factors propelled Joe Biden to victory in the November 2020 election? Did voters abandon Donald Trump in droves? Are liberals, socialists, and statists gaining ground in the United States of America?

I don’t think so, but I don’t have a definitive answer for you. Neither, so far as I know, does anyone else. After diligently examining the numbers and reviewing news reports from each state east of the Mississippi River, all I can say with confidence is that mail-in voting had something to do with why Biden prevailed. If some pundit or politician claims it was due to this or that cohort of “swing voter,” or to some malfeasance on the part of Donald Trump, or because voters wanted a return to “decency” under “nice guy” Joe, well … be skeptical.

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Glitchy Dominion Voting Machines in Georgia Were Used in Response to Previous Voting Concerns

Jason M. Reynolds

Dominion voting machines, which have drawn scrutiny over security concerns during the November 3 elections, ironically made their entrance into use in Georgia this year after concerns were raised about the sanctity of past elections.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in an undated press release that he had selected Dominion Voting Systems’ new verified paper ballot system to be in operation for the March 24, 2020 presidential primary.

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Commentary: The Secret Ballot Is Trump’s Secret Weapon

Michigan Star Staff

Americans take for granted that, when we step into the voting booth and cast our ballots, the choices we make will remain secret unless we voluntarily reveal them. Moreover, regardless of ideological bent, very few voters would approve of any attempt to lift that veil of privacy from the process. Yet the secret ballot was essentially unheard of in the United States until the mid-19th century, and it wasn’t adopted throughout the country until the 1890s. Before then, elections were conducted by voice or by color-coded tickets. The “shy Trump voter” could never survive in such an electoral environment. Thus, it’s unlikely that Trump could have been elected in 2016.

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Poll: 80 Percent of Democrats Think Making Voting Easier Is More Important Than Ensuring Voter Eligibility

Michigan Star Staff

Roughly 80% of Democratic think that getting as many people as possible into the voting booth is more important than making sure each voter is eligible to cast a ballot, a new Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen shows.

About 70% of Republican voters, meanwhile, think the opposite, believing that election authorities should work harder to verify each voter’s eligibility.

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All-Mail Voting Threatens Election Security, Study Finds

Michigan Star Staff

Mandatory voting by mail would undermine election security and endanger Americans’ right to have their votes counted, according to a report released Tuesday by the Honest Elections Project, a voter integrity group.

The report comes on the heels of a vote-by-mail scandal in Paterson, New Jersey, where 1 in 5 votes were disqualified.

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Lawsuit Filed Against Michigan for Inaccurate Voter Rolls

Jordyn Pair

A voter filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, the Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater and other officials, claiming that voter rolls in at least 16 counties have not been properly maintained.

According to a report by Fox News, Republican Tony Daunt said that the Michigan voter registration rates are “suspiciously high” as old voter records have not been cleared of ineligible voters.

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