Tag: Ballots

Push to Reverse Arizona Election Reform Laws Fails to Make Ballot

Ohio Star Staff
Arizona Capitol

An effort to reverse three recently enacted election integrity laws has failed.

Petitioners couldn’t collect the required signatures to put three questions on the 2022 general election ballot regarding whether to reverse three laws passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Doug Ducey over the summer.

“We did not collect enough signatures to submit to the Secretary of State to stop SB1485, HB 2569 and SB 1819 by the deadline today, so the fight to protect voting rights will go on,” Arizona Deserves Better, who spearheaded the drive, said Tuesday.

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Commentary: Fundamentally Transforming America

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

Ohio 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

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

Ohio 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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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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‘Horrendous’: Georgia Audit Lawyer Demands Full Investigation into Fulton County’s Ballot Irregularities

Ohio Star Staff

Alawyer spearheading a major ballot audit inside Georgia’s largest county is warning the irregularities apparent in that county’s election management are “horrendous” and cut against “the basic principle of our democracy.”

Atlanta-based attorney Bob Cheeley made those claims while talking to Just the News editor-in-chief John Solomon on Tuesday night’s “Securing our Elections: Protecting Your Vote” special on Real America’s Voice.

Cheeley is among the investigators approved by a Georgia court to audit the 2020 absentee ballots of Fulton County, Ga., a county critical to Joe Biden’s historic 2020 win of Georgia that helped propel him to the White House.

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Commentary: Georgia Conducting Secret 2020 Ballot Review –– Keeping Plaintiffs in the Dark

RealClearWire

After several Fulton County, Ga., poll monitors testified last year that boxes of mail-in ballots for Joe Biden looked liked they’d been run through a photocopy machine, state investigators quietly broke the seal on one suspicious box and inspected the hundreds of votes it contained for signs of fraud, RealClearInvestigations has learned exclusively.

At the same time, a key whistleblower told RCI that state investigators pressured her to recant her story about what she and other poll monitors had observed — what they called unusually “pristine” mail-in ballots while sorting through them during last November’s hand recount.

“I felt I was under investigation,” said Suzi Voyles, a longtime Fulton County poll manager whose sworn affidavits have been used by election watchdogs to sue the county for access to the ballots in question.

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Arizona Senate on the Verge of Beginning Major Audit of Maricopa County Ballots

Ohio Star Staff
Karen Fann

The Arizona Senate is poised to begin a major audit of over two million ballots cast in the 2020 election in the state’s largest county, a process the state Senate president claims has been stymied by county officials and which the county claims rests on legally uncertain ground.

Senate subpoenas to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for information and equipment needed to perform the audit have been pending since Dec. 15, 2020 and were upheld by a judge on Feb. 25. In mid-March, the state Senate announced that Republicans in that chamber would be conducting a “broad and detailed” review of Maricopa’s ballots, one that would involve “testing the machines, scanning the ballots, performing a full hand count and checking for any IT breaches,” among other approaches.

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Investigation Finds Georgia Officials Decline to Prosecute or Correct the Double Voters They Catch

RealClearWire

More than 1,700 Georgians were singled out for illegally casting two ballots in 2020 elections – including last month’s hotly contested presidential race – but their fraudulent votes weren’t canceled out, according to state election officials. And so far, none of the cheaters has been prosecuted, raising concerns about continued fraud as Georgia prepares to vote again in twin U.S. Senate runoff elections next month.

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Georgia’s Cobb County BOE Denies Ballot Shredding-After Videos Produce Evidence of Ballot Shredding

Jason M. Reynolds

The Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration is defending itself after being accused of shredding election documents during Georgia’s controversial recount.

President Donald Trump’s attorney Lin Wood tweeted videos shot by a witness who identified herself as Susan Knox and said she was outside the Jim R. Miller Event Center, where ballots were stored, on Friday. She documented a mobile shredder company destroying documents, which she called ballots.

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In Sworn Statement, Prominent Mathematician Flags up to 100,000 Pennsylvania Ballots

Ohio Star Staff

In a sworn declaration, a respected mathematician says his analysis of election data and phone interviews with Pennsylvania voters raises questions about as many as 100,000 absentee ballots requested in the key battleground state where President Trump and Joe Biden are separated by just about 82,000 votes.

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RNC Chairwoman Confirms 12K Incident Reports and Over 400 Affidavits Filed for Voter Fraud

Corinne Murdock

According to a press release, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has confirmed about 12,000 incident reports and over 400 affidavits filed concerning potential voter fraud.

McDaniel appeared on Fox Business to provide the brief update. The chairwoman shared that the campaign has issued nine lawsuits currently nationwide. 

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Georgia Whistleblower: Officials Used Ballot Machines Missing Security Seals in Gwinnett County

Corinne Murdock

A GOP poll watcher reported that officials allowed workers to use ballot machines that were missing security seals in Gwinnett County, Georgia. Beth Sexton first called into The Tennessee Star tipline to report the incident on Monday.

According to the report Sexton gave the tipline, a group of concerned-looking poll workers were gathered around a ballot machine. When Sexton approached them, she overheard them discussing missing security seals.

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Glitch-Prone Dominion Voting Software Used in Georgia Counties

Corinne Murdock

A glitch-prone voting software called Dominion Voting Systems (Dominion) was used in all 159 of Georgia counties. Dominion classified their presence in Georgia as a “statewide voting system rollout.”

This past week, Dominion has caused delayed voting and reporting results in Gwinnett County, Morgan County, and Spalding County. Gwinnett County is the same location a whistleblower claimed had ballot machines used that were missing security seals.

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Democrats Invite Voters to Exploit Georgia’s Weak Residency Rules to Stuff Ballot Boxes in Runoff Elections

Corinne Murdock

Democrats are advocating for blue voters to become Georgia residents for the upcoming runoff elections. Georgia doesn’t have a minimum residency requirement, which poses a legal loophole for both parties. Democrats could drum up enough voters to match general election turnouts and flip the state, and Republicans could ensure their hold on two Senate seats.

Additionally, the state’s voter I.D. laws allow individuals to use an out-of-state driver’s license to vote. However, the law defines residency as “without any present intuition of removing therefrom [the fixed habitation].”

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County in Georgia Re-Scans Ballots After Coming Up Short, Cites ‘System Error’

Corinne Murdock

On Saturday, Fulton County officials discovered that the number of scanned ballots didn’t reflect the totals received. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced the news of a rescan that afternoon.

Raffensperger dispatched a monitor, investigators, and Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs to moderate the process at State Farm Arena.

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Justices Deny Fast, New Look at Pennsylvania Ballot Deadline

The Associated Press

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it would not grant a quick, pre-election review to a new Republican appeal to exclude absentee ballots received after Election Day in the presidential battleground state of Pennsylvania, although it remained unclear whether those ballots will ultimately be counted.

The court’s order left open the possibility that the justices could take up and decide after the election whether a three-day extension to receive and count absentee ballots ordered by Pennsylvania’s high court was proper.

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Judge Again Blocks Restrictions on Ballot Drop Boxes in Ohio

The Associated Press

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked an order by Ohio’s elections chief that limits the number of ballot drop boxes available in next month’s election, calling the move “essential to vindicate a vital constitutional right.”

Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose moved immediately to appeal.

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Secrecy Requirement Could See 100,000 Pennsylvania Ballots Disqualified, Dem Official Says

Ohio Star Staff

As many as 100,000 Pennsylvania voters could have their ballots discarded in November due to a state law that requires absentee ballots to be returned inside a secrecy sleeve, according to a Democratic official on the Philadelphia city commission.

Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ordered election officials to discard “naked ballots” in a decision issued last week, a move that could result in tens of thousands of ballots disqualified in a critical battleground state, City Commissioner Lisa Deeley wrote in a letter to Republican state legislators.

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In Battlegrounds, Absentee Ballot Rejections Could Triple

The Associated Press

Thousands of absentee ballots get rejected in every presidential election. This year, that problem could be much worse and potentially pivotal in hotly contested battleground states.

With the coronavirus creating a surge in mail-in balloting and postal delays reported across the country, the number of rejected ballots in November is projected to be significantly higher than previous elections.

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Commentary: We Know Why Donald Trump Wins Re-Election

Ohio Star Staff

Donald Trump wins reelection because his supporters enjoy but one means of political expression: the ballot box. Donald Trump loses reelection because his supporters enjoy but one means of political expression: the ballot box.
We do not know who claims victory for another two months but we already know why it happened.

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Dems Again Blast Secretary of State LaRose Over Postage for Ballots

Ohio Star Staff

State Democrats are again blasting Secretary of State Frank LaRose after the state Controlling Board did not hear his request for authority to pay return postage for absentee ballots.

Last week, LaRose said he wanted to use up to $3 million to pay for postage for absentee ballots cast in November’s election.

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Puerto Ricans Demand Answers Over Primary Ballot Shortage and Election Delay

The Associated Press

The future of Puerto Rico’s botched primaries rested in the hands of the island’s Supreme Court as answers trickled out Monday on why voting centers lacked ballots and forced officials to reschedule part of the primaries in a blow to the U.S. territory’s democracy.

A plan to hold another primary on Aug. 16 for centers that could not open on Sunday could change depending on the ruling of a lawsuit filed by Pedro Pierluisi, who is running against Gov. Wanda Vázquez to become the potential nominee of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party. Joining the lawsuit was Puerto Rico Sen. Eduardo Bhatia, of the main opposition Popular Democratic Party.

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Governor DeWine Vetoes Transparency Language for Property Tax Levies

Maggie Leigh Thurber

  State Rep. Derek Merrin (R-47) got a surprise this week when his bill to update the requirements for ballot language on property tax levies was added to the state’s budget bill. But his excitement was short-lived when Gov. Mike DeWine used his line-item veto authority to nix the idea.…

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Commentary: California’s Rigged Election Process Is Coming To America

Admin

by Edward Ring   The conventional wisdom among experts who monitor elections in America is unvarying: Voter fraud is statistically insignificant. These sanguine claims are made despite the fact that internal controls are often so poor, or even nonexistent on election integrity, that it is nearly impossible to know if…

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Florida’s Recount Begins Amid Allegations Officials Tampered With Ballots

Ohio Star Staff

by Chris White   Florida’s secretary of state announced Saturday afternoon that the races for governor and senator would will be reviewed through a recount as Republicans allege officials tinkered with the results. Republican Gov. Rick Scott leads incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by more than 12,500 votes. Former Republican…

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Rubio Warns: Dems Are Actively Trying to Steal the Florida Election

Ohio Star Staff

by Luke Rosiak   Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is warning that the fate of his state’s governorship could hang in the hands of Florida’s Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes, whom he’s called incompetent for violating state and federal laws. A liberal candidate similarly painted her as incompetent and…

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