Article 2, Section 1: Just Words

In a 1995 Press Release is a statement by the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Deval Patrick (yes, that Deval Patrick -“just words”), on the Appellate Court Ruling upholding the Constitutionality of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (otherwise known as “Motor-Voter” Law), a bill signed into law by then President Clinton.

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“Today's favorable decision by the Court of Appeals follows similar victories in federal district courts in California and Pennsylvania. The decision sends a clear message that Congress was well within its authority to pass a law making it easier for all Americans to register to vote. Today's decision also reaffirms the lower court's opinion that the state had no legal basis for failing to comply with such a common sense law. Motor-voter is government made easy -- one stop shopping. Already the law is producing tremendous results across the country. Millions of Americans already are benefiting from this law -- now millions of citizens of Illinois can, as well.” [1] Why would the state of Illinois have fought against implementing the National Voter Registration Act of 1993? Shouldn’t we all be in favor of making it easier for all Americans to register to vote? Was this a state’s rights issue or was there something else at stake? In any event, Illinois was going to have to conform to NVRA. Here’s how it went down. “After undergoing a series of judicial proceedings, the Illinois program became operational in August of 1995 as a two-tiered system. This meant that those registering under the NVRA could vote only for federal offices. However, since October of 1996 when all litigation ceased, Illinois now operates under a unitary system of registration. This simply means that any registered voter is eligible to vote the full ballot.” [2] What a victory! All a potential Illinois voter needs to do to register to vote is present two forms of ID: one picture and one showing proof of your current address, such as a recent bill. [3] Wouldn’t one figure that a person registering to vote would have to provide proof of citizenship? Not under NVRA. States that register these voters when they apply for or renew their driver's licenses are not required to verify that potential voters are U.S. citizens. Illinois fought hard against this. However, the U.S. Department of Justice and Barack Obama represented ACORN in a successful lawsuit against the state of Illinois to force Illinois to comply with NVRA. [4] It’s too bad Illinois and other states throughout the nation lost in this battle. It would seem that easing the restrictions on voter registration may have had some unintended consequences. “Federal privacy laws prevent cross-checking voter registration rolls with immigration records. Nevertheless, a 1997 Congressional investigation found that "4,023 illegal voters possibly cast ballots in [a] disputed House election" in California. After 9/11, the Justice Department found that eight of the 19 hijackers were registered to vote.” [5] Still, for his work helping enforce the law, called “Motor Voter,” Barack Obama received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995. Fast forward to 2008...there have been some serious questions about whether or not Barack Obama is a citizen of the United States. Most Americans would assume that a candidate running for the highest office of the land would have to be properly vetted, or would he? It turns out that the Federal Election Commission does not require candidates running for the office of president of the United States to provide proof of citizenship. The Federal Election Commission is only charged with overseeing campaign finance. Yes, you read that right. [6] And it would seem that there is no proper vetting process in place. But I’m not sure why anyone would find this even remotely surprising. To assume that our federal government has everything under control, well, that is almost laughable from a conservative perspective. To quote Mark Steyn, in America Alone,

“September 11 vindicated perfectly a decentralized, federalist, conservative view of the state: what worked that day was municipal government, small government, core government –the firemen, the NYPD cops, rescue workers. What flopped- big-time, as the vice president would say – was the federal government, the FBI, CIA, INS, FAA, and all the other hotshot, money-no-object, fancypants acronyms. Under the system operating on that day, if one of the many Algerian terrorists living on welfare in Montreal attempted to cross the U.S. border at Derby Line, Vermont, and got refused entry by an alert official, he would be able to drive a few miles east, attempt to cross at Beecher Falls, Vermont, and they had not way of knowing that he’d been refused entry just half an hour earlier. No compatible computers. Yet, if that same Algerian terrorist went to order a book online, Amazon.com would know that he’d bought The A-Z of Infidel Slaying two years earlier and their “We have some suggestions for you!” box would be proffering a 30 percent discount on Suicide bombing for Dummies. Amazon is a more efficient data miner than U.S. Immigration. Is it to do with their respective budgets? No. Amazon’s system is very cheap, but it’s in the nature of government to do things worse, and slower.”

And from the looks of things right now, the American people have no standing to take issue with this little known problem in the way our current electoral process is functioning. Most recently, Philip Berg's lawsuit challenging Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility to serve as president of the United States was dismissed by the Hon. R. Barclay Surrick (a Clinton appointee and Obama supporter) on grounds that the Philadelphia attorney and former Deputy Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania lacked standing. The harm cited by Berg, Surrick wrote, “is too vague and its effects too attenuated to confer standing on any and all voters.” [7] This presents a problem. And while I should not be surprised, it seems almost surreal that in 2008, it’s only now coming to light that there is no proper vetting process to becoming the president of the United States. I must say that I take issue with Barack Obama refusing to produce a legitimate birth certificate proving that he is an American citizen. There is only one solution. There must be a grass roots movement that takes place in the next 10 days in which “We the People” (you and me) write the county and state board of elections, refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the ballot. We must insist that these boards put in place a process to verify the authenticity of Obama’s citizenship. This must be done right now. As “We the People,” we cannot abdicate our responsibility in this time of constitutional crisis. (1) US Department of Justice Press Release (2) National Voter Registration Act (3) DMV Voter Registration (4) ACORN, Bogus Voter Registrations and Barack Obama (5) 'This Will Make Voter Fraud Easier' (6) FEC Statement of Candidacy (7) Berg Lawsuit Against Obama Dismissed