In 22 years as RNLA Executive Director, I have never seen a poll measuring support for Voter ID with less than 75 percent in favor of the policy. Historically, polls show approximately eight out of 10 Americans support requiring identification to vote. Such a poll was released again today by Gallup, America's oldest polling firm:

Requiring all voters to provide photo identification at their voting place in order to vote Favor 79 % , Oppose 21%

A coalition of national and local Republican parties represented by attorney Phil Strach has successfully blocked one of the North Carolina State Board of Elections' ("NCSBE") latest attempts at unlawful rulemaking. (The complaint in Deas v. NCSBE can be found here). NCSBE had interpreted its rules to restrict the coming and going of at-large election observers, stating that, if an at-large observer stayed less than four hours at a particular site, their political party could not send another person to replace them. On Thursday, Wake County Superior Court Judge Vince Rozier decided that the rules governing election place observers should be relaxed. 

There are two kinds of election observers in North Carolina: those who must stay at one polling place and at large-observers who can move among polling places. Political parties have long been allowed to send observers to watch voters and election administrators at polling locations to ensure that the electoral process is followed appropriately. NCSBE's guidance would have unfairly impacted election integrity operations since it would have prevented the substitution of regular observers with party lawyers, who could then investigate any irregularities witnessed by non-lawyer observers. As Strach observed: "We wouldn't be able to replace the layperson observer with the lawyer observer .... We would just be screwed." 

Yet another Democrat secretary of state has “accidently” encouraged non-citizens to illegal register to vote. This time it is Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold:

Around 30,000 non-U.S. citizens living in Colorado were mistakenly sent postcards late last month encouraging them to register to vote. . . .

That Department of Revenue driver's license list includes residents issued special licenses for people who are not U.S. citizens. But it didn't include formatting information that normally would have allowed the Department of State to eliminate those names before the mailers went out, Griswold's office said.

The Colorado postcards, in English and Spanish, specify that residents must be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years old to register. They tell recipients how to register but are not a registration form.

Straight from the Democrat playbook: if you can’t beat ‘em, just ignore the fact that you lost.

Today, the Supreme Court vacated the Third Circuit’s horrible ruling in Ritter v. Migliori and along with it took the air out of the sails of Democrats who continue to cry wolf over commonsense election procedures.  But after the loss, of course, Democrat consigliere Marc Elias and other Democrats attempted to soften the blow.

The liberal mainstream media is using the opening of the Supreme Court’s term this year as an excuse to attack its conservative members in an attempt to undermine its legitimacy.  As Mark Paoletta writes in the Wall Street Journal:

The ascendant originalist approach at the court is more faithful to the Constitution, but it is less welcoming to the liberal policy-making many have come to expect from the court since the Warren era. Expect to see many more baseless attacks on the court’s conservative members in the future.

As Peter Roff points out this effort has been somewhat successful in swaying surface level public opinion polls of the Court.

The undermining of the court’s legitimacy is part of the political process, not the legal and certainly not the democratic one. Everything from the references to its poll numbers to the way the current majority is described – conservative, far-right, hard right – rather than originalist, constitutionalist or even as justices favoring a narrow interpretation of the Constitution’s meaning rather than an expansive one – are all notes in the same song. Progressives want to restore the court’s position as the final word on liberal causes it’s been since FDR and are not especially concerned about how they do it. They reject the idea it should function as the referee in disputes between the branches of the federal government, the states and, on occasion, the people.

The Supreme Court has officially wrapped up its first week of oral arguments for the 2022-2023 term. Two cases cases that especially stand out are Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency and Merrill v. Milligan. The Sackett oral arguments seemed to suggest that the Court may be heading towards changing the standard used for determining whether the federal government has regulatory jurisdiction over an issue:

If oral argument was any indication, the justices recognize the need for greater regulatory certainty, but also recognize the difficulty in drawing a clear line to demarcate where "waters of the United States" end and non-federal waters or lands begin. Much of the argument focused on precisely this question, causing the justices to explore the meaning of the word "adjacent," as the Court previously upheld the EPA and Army Corps' authority over wetlands adjacent to navigable waters in United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, perhaps the high-water mark of Court acquiescence to broad assertions of federal regulatory power under the CWA. Accordingly, the justices considered whether "adjacent wetlands" must be physically connected to navigable waters, must be neighboring to such waters, or must merely be nearby, and most seemed unconvinced with the answers they received from the advocates.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has filed multiple lawsuits this week in Michigan and Arizona seeking to defend the integrity of our elections. In Michigan, the RNC joined the Michigan Republican Party in suing Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Director of Elections Jonathan Brater for issuing "a new set of rules" regarding election challengers without following the proper procedure:

Those new rules, however, are directly inconsistent with the plain language of the Michigan Election Law, prior guidance issued by the Secretary of State, and current common practice. And despite the fact that this Court has held on at least two recent occasions that Secretary Benson issued rules in violation of Michigan’s Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”), see Davis v Benson, No. 20-000207-MZ, 2020 WL 7033534 (Mich. Ct. Cl. Oct. 27, 2020); Genetski v Benson, No. 20-000216-MM, 2021 WL 1624452 (Mich. Ct. Cl. Mar. 09, 2021), none of the new rules set forth in the 2022 Election Challenger Instructions were promulgated in accordance with the APA.

A new FBI report indicates that murder rates increased during 2021, while violent crime decreased overall. However, the agency is facing criticism over the credibility of its data, which relies heavily on estimation due to a lack of participation by law enforcement agencies—including those in crime hubs like Los Angeles and New York City:

“The overwhelming lack of law enforcement participation presents a challenge when assessing the true state of nationwide crime in America,” said Jillian Snider, the policy director for the R Street Institute’s criminal justice and civil liberties team.

Snider, a retired NYPD cop, said everyone should “proceed with caution” in using this data for new criminal justice policy.

The FBI’s latest statistics show violent crime dropped last year — but the data fails to account for thousands of places, including big cities like NYC and LA.

Experts say the data has glaring holes due to an “overwhelming” lack of participation by police.https://t.co/zfd9BfjHNq

— Craig McCarthy (@createcraig) October 5, 2022

On Monday, the United States Supreme Court kicked off its 2022-2023 term by hearing oral arguments for two cases. The first case before the Court was Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, which considers:

Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit set forth the proper test for determining whether wetlands are "waters of the United States" under the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. § 1362(7).

Prolific election results denier Stacey Abrams was dealt a blow in court on Friday when her organization lost a lawsuit challenging Georgia voting laws. The suit was originally filed after her loss in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported: