Unsealed Documents Reveal Scheme to Stop Aliens from Voting

In Court Documents Unsealed Thursday from a Deposition taken last year, Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, Revealed that he had every Intention of changing Federal Election Law to encourage Proof of U.S. Citizenship Requirements to Vote at the State Level.

Kobach was forced to Release a Document he had Distributed last year during a Meeting about Immigration with the Newly Elected Trump and his Top Aides Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, Stephen Miller, and Jared Kushner. The Photographed Document Kobach took into his Meeting with Trump was titled “Department of Homeland Security Kobach Strategic Plan for First 365 Days.” It included the Header “Stop aliens from voting.”

At the Deposition, Kobach said that he gave Copies of the Document to everyone at that Meeting, and that the Issue of Non-Citizen Voting was Discussed. During this Deposition, Kobach Acknowledged he has Talked about Documentary Proof of Citizenship for Voter Registration with the Members and Staff of the Trump's Election Fraud Commission.

Kobach also testified that Rep. Steve King (R-IA-4th District) has agreed to introduce Legislation Amending U.S. Election Law to allow States to Impose Proof-of-Citizenship Requirements if Kansas Loses a Federal Lawsuit brought by the ACLU in Kansas.

In the Unsealed Document, Kobach recommended changing the National Voter Registration Act so that instead of Stipulating that States can Require "only the minimum amount of information" needed to Assess someone's Voting Eligibility, it would be up to States to Require "any information" they deem Necessary. Kobach's Amendment would also Add that Nothing in the Law should be viewed as Prohibiting a State from "requiring documentary proof of citizenship from any applicant." This would make the Law Proactive instead of being Reactive.

Currently Federal Registration Form says:

The information I have provided is true to the best of my knowledge under penalty of perjury. If I have provided false information, I may be fined, imprisoned, or (if not a U.S. citizen) deported from or refused entry to the United States.

“To me, they really confirmed what we always suspected: that there is this ready-made plan to gut the core voting rights protections of federal law and Kobach has been lobbying Trump and his top team from day one to execute that scheme,” said ACLU Lawyer Orion Danjuma.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker

Obama's Administration Making Sure Non-Citizen Vote in Upcoming Elections

Several well-funded organizations, including the League of Women Voters and the NAACP, are fighting efforts to prevent non-citizens from voting illegally in the upcoming presidential election. And the United States Department of Justice, under the direction of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, is helping them.

On February 12, these groups filed a lawsuit in D.C. Federal court seeking to reverse a recent decision by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The Commission’s decision allows Kansas and other states, including Arizona and Georgia, to enforce state laws ensuring that only citizens register to vote when they use a federally designed registration form.

An initial hearing in the case is set for today. Under Federal law, the EAC is responsible for designing the Federal voter-registration form required by the National Voter Registration Act, or Motor Voter Act, as it is commonly called. While states must register voters who use the Federal form, states can ask the EAC to include instructions with the Federal form about additional state registration requirements. Some states are now requiring satisfactory proof of citizenship to ensure that only citizens register to vote.

Under Article I, Secion 2 and the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, states have the power to set the “Qualification requisite for electors.” As with many issues, many disdains the balance the Framers adopted in the Constitution and objects to this delegation of power to the states. They prefer to see power over elector eligibility centralized in Washington, D.C.

So when Arizona sought to include citizenship-verification requirements with voter-registration forms, groups including the League of Women Voters, People for the American Way, Common Cause, Project Vote, and Chicanos for La Causa, brought a lawsuit claiming that the EAC hadn’t approved such requirements. Incredibly, this fight over whether states can ensure that only citizens are voting went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2013 in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, a divided Court said that Arizona could not implement such a requirement unless and until the EAC agreed to change the instructions for use of the Federal form to include the Arizona requirements.

The majority opinion in that case, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, stipulated that if the EAC refused Arizona’s request to accommodate the proof-of-citizenship requirement, the state could sue the EAC and establish in court that “a mere oath will not suffice to effectuate its citizenship requirement and that the EAC is therefore under a non-discretionary duty to include Arizona’s concrete evidence requirement on the Federal Form.” The Court went so far as to say that Arizona could also claim that a refusal by the EAC would be “arbitrary,” since the agency “has accepted a similar instruction requested by Louisiana.” Indeed, the Court noted, the EAC had ”recently approved a state-specific instruction for Louisiana requiring applicants who lack a Louisiana driver’s license, ID card, or Social Security number to attach additional documentation” to the Federal voter-registration form.

Arizona asked, and a single bureaucrat at the EAC named Alice Miller, who was not an EAC Commissioner, but only the acting Executive Director, denied the request. It’s not even clear that Miller had the right to make this, or any other, decision. At the time, a quorum did not exist on the bipartisan, four-member independent commission. And that decision is starting to look even more suspect. It seems that Miller may not have been the one who actually made the decision after all. Sources inside the Justice Department say it was partisan, left-wing lawyers in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department who actually drafted the denial letter.

This is significant for several reasons. First, the EAC is supposed to be an independent Federal agency. While the President is empowered to nominate Commissioners for the two Democratic and two Republican commission slots, in practice the President consults with the Majority leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, as well as the leaders of the minority party in both houses, to pick the nominees. Because the EAC deals with Federal Election Administration, the legislation establishing the agency, the 2002 Help America Vote Act, was designed so as to provide the EAC with political balance and to be outside the President’s control. Allowing lawyers for the Voting Section to write agency policy obliterates all semblance of independence and bipartisan balance.

Once the EAC regained a quorum of commissioners and hired a new Executive Director, the agency reversed the previously announced policy and allowed Kansas and Arizona to include citizenship-verification requirements with the Federal voter-registration form. In other words, the EAC wound up doing the right thing, in accordance with the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision.

Which brings us to the League of Women Voters lawsuit filed on February 12. Kansas has asked to intervene in the case. Its pleadings make the allegations that partisan lawyers in the Voting Section wrote EAC policies that should have been written by the EAC, not an agency under the control of the President. It charges that: in the previous case concerning Kansas’s 2013 requested language, Kobach v. Election Assistance Commission, the United States Department of Justice drafted the response to Kansas’s 2013 request and presented that response to the States as if it were coming from the EAC itself. In effect, the Department of Justice commandeered the vacant ship that was the EAC and used that vessel to fight against the interests of the State of Kansas. If these allegations are true, and based on the history of the Voting Rights Section during this administration, they may well be, then the Eric Holder–run Justice Department was actively engaged in blocking an independent bipartisan Federal agency from allowing a state to verify that only citizens are registering to vote.

Like most Federal agencies, it is the Justice Department that is supposed to defend the EAC when it is sued. This current case has a potential conflict of interest, especially because those lawyers, if they were acting in a policy-making capacity instead of a legal capacity when they implemented the EAC’s prior position, may be potential witnesses in the case. It is a potential conflict of interest that District Court Judge Richard J. Leon should delve into deeply. He should ask Justice Department lawyers about it at the hearing on Monday, particularly if there are any signs that lawyers for the Federal government appear to be taking a dive instead of defending the EAC’s sound decision. And there is no question that Judge Leon should allow Kansas to intervene in this lawsuit to defend the EAC’s decision. All signs point to this Justice Department not conducting the type of high-quality, vigorous, professional defense it is obligated to provide.











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker

Enforcing Motor Voter Law in California

Citing clear evidence that the State of California is violating its federally-mandated responsibility to offer California drivers and ID card holders the opportunity to register to vote, attorneys from Demos, Project Vote, ACLU Foundation of San Diego and Imperial Counties, and the global law firm Morrison & Foerster sent a pre-litigation notice letter to the California Secretary of State on behalf of the League of Women Voters of California, ACCE Institute, California Common Cause, the National Council of La Raza, and several individual California citizens.

“It’s time for the Department of Motor Vehicles to stop dragging its feet and make voter registration easy and accessible for the millions of Californians who apply for or renew their driver’s licenses or ID cards every year,” said Helen Hutchison, President of the League of Women Voters of California.

Under the National Voter Registration Act (“NVRA”), California and most other U.S. states are required to treat a driver’s license application or renewal as a voter registration application if the applicant chooses to register to vote.  If the applicant is already a registered voter, the State must update the existing voter registration with any new information supplied on a driver’s license application, renewal, or change of address form.  Such new information might be a name change, address change, or new political party affiliation.

According to a report issued today by Dēmos, one of the groups that signed the letter to California, the NVRA violations in California are part of a national problem.  The report finds that these “Motor Voter” requirements are widely ignored in states all across the county, with the result, in many states, that only a small number of voters are registering through motor vehicles departments (DMVs).  According to the report, California has one of the lowest levels of DMV voter registration in the country.

Today’s letter details violations of the “Motor Voter” provisions of the NVRA by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and other state agencies and demands that the Secretary act immediately to bring the state into full compliance with the law or face litigation.  Among other problems, the letter describes how DMV procedures unlawfully require applicants to complete an entirely separate voter registration application and provide the same information required on the driver’s license and ID card forms.  These violations, and additional problems with how change-of-address, mail, and online transactions are processed, impede rather than facilitate the ability of applicants to register to vote or update their registrations.

As Secretary of State, Secretary Alex Padilla is responsible for making sure the state meets its obligations under the NVRA.  As a state senator, Padilla sponsored a bill, never enacted into law, addressing this very problem by requiring the state to develop a paperless voter registration system that would easily allow voters to register to vote or update their voter registrations through the response to a single question followed by automatic transfer of voter registration information from the DMV to elections officials.

“California's recent fiscal difficulties cannot excuse its failure to provide seamless, NVRA-compliant voter registration opportunities at DMV,” said Lori Shellenberger, Voting Rights Director at the ACLU of San Diego, “For 13 years, California has been sitting on over 130 million in unspent federal dollars received under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) while other states have used these same funds to ensure their DMV offices are transmitting secure and accurate voter registration information to elections officials.”

In the letter, the voting rights groups advised that they are ready to work with California officials to modify the State’s procedures to afford the voter registration opportunities required by federal law.  If the State fails to respond or take steps to comply with the law within 90 days of receiving the letter, the groups and the individual citizens have said they will bring a lawsuit to make sure the State fulfills its obligations.











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us

The Perfect Storm: Motor Voter Act, Voter ID, and Deportation

This story begins with the plans that would allow people who are in the U.S. illegally or are legal but not citizens, to get driver’s licenses.

The most recent state, Connecticut, is still working on the wording of their bill. If enacted today, about 54,000 immigrants are old enough to apply. Advocates say it would ensure undocumented immigrants are given proper driving tests and allow them to get car insurance and provide additional state revenue from registration fees and car taxes.

The states that allow undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses: Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.

The next chapter in our story is The Motor Voter Act.

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), popularly known as The Motor Voter Act, compliance did not become mandatory until 1995, is a legislation that required state governments to allow registration when a qualifying voter applied for or renewed their drivers license or applied for social services. This legislation forced state governments to make the voter registration process easier by providing uniform registration services through drivers' license registration centers, disability centers, schools, libraries, and mail-in registration.

The NVRA allows the Department of Justice to bring civil actions in federal court to enforce its requirements. These sections deal with voter registration:

• States should provide individuals with the opportunity to register to vote at the same time that they apply for a driver's license or seek to renew a driver's license, and requires the State to forward the completed application to the appropriate state of local election official. [Section 5]

• States should offer voter registration opportunities at all offices that provide public assistance and all offices that provide state-funded programs primarily engaged in providing services to persons with disabilities. Each applicant for any of these services, renewal of services, or address changes must be provided with a voter registration form of a declination form as well as assistance in completing the form and forwarding the completed application to the appropriate state or local election official. [Section 7 ]

• The Act also creates requirements as to how States should maintain voter registration lists for federal elections.[ Section 8]

The Act applies to 44 states and the District of Columbia. Those states which did not have voter registration requirements or had election-day registration at polling places were exempted from the purview of the Act.

Now comes along more voter ID laws that require people who do not drive go to their motor vehicle office to get a picture ID.

So here is the perfect storm.

Imagine having just arrived as a legal or undocumented immigrant to the United States. With foreign passport and visa in hand, or in some states no documents, you go to your local department of motor vehicles office to obtain a state ID or driver’s licence. To your surprise, a DMV official offers you the opportunity to become an organ donor and to register to vote.

As a result, you walk out of your local DMV, a proud new potential organ donor with state ID in hand. Within a few weeks you receive your voter-registration card in the mail, which you regard as official confirmation of your eligibility to vote. During the next election you happily go to your local polling place to vote, fulfilling what you see as your civic duty in your new homeland.

What you don't know is that your voter-registration card and your participation in a federal congressional election amount to an immigration kiss of death. You soon receive notice from the Department of Homeland Security of your impending deportation.

Sounds like an immigrant's worst nightmare. Unfortunately, thanks to the 1993 NVRA, it's a reality for many immigrants who arrive in the U.S. eager to start a new life.

Motor Voter effectively does away with document requirements and incorporates a convenient voter-registration solicitation as part of the process of issuing a driver's license or state ID. Unfortunately, these immigrants who mistakenly register to vote, then those that vote, risk deportation.

So we have created this perfect storm.

Let me know how you would fix this.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Justice Tells FL to Stop the Voter Purge Project

Florida has begun a purge of “non-citizens” from the voting rolls and reports are saying that hundreds of eligible voters have already been struck from the rolls.

Florida has already put out an initial list of more than 2,600 people identified as non-U.S. citizens and has indicated it could aim to purge up to 180,000 supposed non-citizens from the rolls, but from all the inaccuracies, that could mean a staggering number of eligible voters being wrongfully purged and denied their right to vote.

This process is going forward with no oversight, and is all too reminiscent of the scrub orchestrated in 2000 by Secretary of State Katherine Harris under then Gov. Jeb Bush. Under Gov. Rick Scott and Sec. of State Ken Detzner, Florida has already erected barriers to voter registration that hurt minority and low-income voters.

The Department of Justice has sent a letter to the Florida Secretary of State telling him to stop the voter purge. In addition to being wrong, it appears that it is also probably illegal. It demands a response by 6/6/2012.

Not only did Florida fail to clear the purge under the Voting Rights Act, which it was required to do, but it seems to be in clear violation of the National Voter Registration Act.

According to the NVRA, voter roll maintenance should have been concluded 90 days before an election. Florida’s primary is on August 14, so that means any purge or other voter roll adjustments should have ceased on May 16.

A spokesman for Florida Secretary of State, Ken Detzner, said the state must make certain that only eligible voters cast ballots.

"We have a year-round obligation to ensure the integrity of Florida's elections. We will be responding to (the Justice Department's) concerns next week," Chris Cate said in an email message.

UPDATE
Saying the state would not stop trying to scrub the rolls of ineligible voters, Florida’s election chief told the Department of Justice on Wednesday that Florida was not violating any laws.

The official, Ken Detzner, Florida’s secretary of state, accused the federal government of sullying the integrity of the election process by trying to thwart Florida’s efforts to remove voters who are not American citizens.

Mr. Detzner went on to say that it was the Department of Homeland Security that appeared to be violating the law by depriving Florida of access to a federal immigration database. A Homeland Security privacy-impact statement dated August 2011 states that the database can be used for “any legal purpose such as background investigations and voter registrations.”

Florida requested access to the database last year to help verify its voter list but has not received it. The agency has said the request poses legal and technical challenges. Considering the delay, Mr. Detzner said the federal government could not now accuse the state of trying to remove voters too close to an election.

“This hardly seems like an approach earnestly designed to protect the integrity of elections and to ensure that eligible voters have their votes counted,” Mr. Detzner wrote in a letter on Wednesday to T. Christian Herren Jr., the chief of the Justice Department’s voting section.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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