Few Voters Scrubbed Nationwide
OPINION – MERTON BARTELS (Macedon, NY)
We have all heard this phrase: “If I only had more energy, then I would do such and such.” Is energy static or dynamic? Is mind energy humanly measurable, and , if so, how? I am only partially qualified to attempt to label what energy is terms of human potential. Personal activities use my physical energy while other things exasperate my mental energy level.
Most Americans hope that any election at state or national level occurs with voter districts not skewing the results from a small to a large degree. If one looks at the 1993 National Voters Registration Act, congressional intent was good, but the act had its own Achilles’ heel. The NVRA purpose was to “encourage” cleanup of state roles to assure the existence of legitimate voters by removing thousands of unpurged registrants. By enlarge, these role cleanings rarely occurred. As I am telling you this, it burns my mental energy.
By now you are asking yourself this: what is the purpose of a suggestive but not mandatory enforceable act? Historically, this means usually no action taken. Federal law mandates that states report to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) the status of their voter removal programs. Every few years the EAC publishes and provides this report to Congress. Non-compliant states did not clean their roles until pressure was applied by a threat of or an actual lawsuits. A western county in Pennsylvania complied by removing 69,000 names after receipt of a 2020 notice letter from a prominent watchdog group.
These ten states, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, found that a public, American nonpartisan watchdog, called Judicial Watch, is bearing down on outdated poll registrations. JW purses legal action by issuing lawsuits to have unqualified registrants scrubbed from the respective state roles. In October 2020, Judicial Watch found 353 counties of 3142 nationwide often had more voter registrations than citizens old enough to vote. These 353 counties had registrants that exceeded 100 percent of the “old enough” voters.
As of November 2020, New York, California, and Oregon have rolls totaling 11,848,651 with only thirty-three voters removed. More regionally speaking, six downstate counties in New York listed 6,310,107 voter registrations with only three scrubbed, thus less than a handful removed. Disgusting facts that burn my mental energy. These observations should upset you too.
Do you know why purging the state roles to determine accurate voter registration is important? We are a nation on the move we have heard stated. Annually, 10 percent of the people move each year. Like it or not, in the last presidential election, the national registration polls were inaccurate and overall have been for three decades minimum. Thus, poll cleansing is a necessity if the result is a truer representation of the electorate when it again becomes election time.
Our supreme court recently issued important rulings for election integrity and First Amendment rights in Arizona and California cases. There are dual positive outcomes.
First, in Mark Brnovich, Atty General of AZ, vs Democratic National Committee (19-257 & 19-258) case, the supreme court upheld Arizona’s right to restrict ballot harvesting and “out-of-precinct” voting. This decision is a Superbowl win for cleaner elections. It gives states the right to exercise action to reduce voter fraud. Second, in the Americans for Prosperity Foundation v Bonta (19-251) case, the same court successfully resisted the leftist California politicians to abuse IRS information to collect data and intimidate donors to charitable organizations.
To further clarify this point in writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito reasoned “A state indisputably has a compelling interest in preserving the Integrity of its election process. Limiting the classes of persons who may handle early ballots to those less likely to have ulterior motives deters potential fraud and improves voter confidence.”
In my mind with these decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court did not waste its energy.
The most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new.
William Makepeace Thackeray, 19th century novelist
Few Voters Scrubbed Nationwide
We have all heard this phrase: “If I only had more energy, then I would do such and such.” Is energy static or dynamic? Is mind energy humanly measurable, and , if so, how? I am only partially qualified to attempt to label what energy is terms of human potential. Personal activities use my physical energy while other things exasperate my mental energy level.
Most Americans hope that any election at state or national level occurs with voter districts not skewing the results from a small to a large degree. If one looks at the 1993 National Voters Registration Act, congressional intent was good, but the act had its own Achilles’ heel. The NVRA purpose was to “encourage” cleanup of state roles to assure the existence of legitimate voters by removing thousands of unpurged registrants. By enlarge, these role cleanings rarely occurred. As I am telling you this, it burns my mental energy.
By now you are asking yourself this: what is the purpose of a suggestive but not mandatory enforceable act? Historically, this means usually no action taken. Federal law mandates that states report to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) the status of their voter removal programs. Every few years the EAC publishes and provides this report to Congress. Non-compliant states did not clean their roles until pressure was applied by a threat of or an actual lawsuits. A western county in Pennsylvania complied by removing 69,000 names after receipt of a 2020 notice letter from a prominent watchdog group.
These ten states, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, found that a public, American nonpartisan watchdog, called Judicial Watch, is bearing down on outdated poll registrations. JW purses legal action by issuing lawsuits to have unqualified registrants scrubbed from the respective state roles. In October 2020, Judicial Watch found 353 counties of 3142 nationwide often had more voter registrations than citizens old enough to vote. These 353 counties had registrants that exceeded 100 percent of the “old enough” voters.
As of November 2020, New York, California, and Oregon have rolls totaling 11,848,651 with only thirty-three voters removed. More regionally speaking, six downstate counties in New York listed 6,310,107 voter registrations with only three scrubbed, thus less than a handful removed. Disgusting facts that burn my mental energy. These observations should upset you too.
Do you know why purging the state roles to determine accurate voter registration is important? We are a nation on the move we have heard stated. Annually, 10 percent of the people move each year. Like it or not, in the last presidential election, the national registration polls were inaccurate and overall have been for three decades minimum. Thus, poll cleansing is a necessity if the result is a truer representation of the electorate when it again becomes election time.
Our supreme court recently issued important rulings for election integrity and First Amendment rights in Arizona and California cases. There are dual positive outcomes.
First, in Mark Brnovich, Atty General of AZ, vs Democratic National Committee (19-257 & 19-258) case, the supreme court upheld Arizona’s right to restrict ballot harvesting and “out-of-precinct” voting. This decision is a Superbowl win for cleaner elections. It gives states the right to exercise action to reduce voter fraud. Second, in the Americans for Prosperity Foundation v Bonta (19-251) case, the same court successfully resisted the leftist California politicians to abuse IRS information to collect data and intimidate donors to charitable organizations.
To further clarify this point in writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito reasoned “A state indisputably has a compelling interest in preserving the Integrity of its election process. Limiting the classes of persons who may handle early ballots to those less likely to have ulterior motives deters potential fraud and improves voter confidence.”
In my mind with these decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court did not waste its energy.
The most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new.
William Makepeace Thackeray, 19th century novelist