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  • Here’s Why Republicans Are Concentrating On Ballot by Noncitizens

    Here’s Why Republicans Are Concentrating On Ballot by Noncitizens

    WASHINGTON — Home Republicans are pressing legislation to punish ballot by noncitizens, part of an effort to plant doubts about the election result and take objective at immigrants who they state have no service taking part in elections in the United States.

    They are intending on Wednesday to press through a costs that would roll back a Washington, D.C., law permitting noncitizen locals of the country’s capital to enact regional elections. And they are pressing legislation that would need states to acquire evidence of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, personally when signing up a private to vote and need states to eliminate noncitizens from citizen rolls.

    Neither is most likely to pass the Democratic-led Senate or be signed by President Joe Biden, however both are methods for Republican politicians to call attention to their incorrect claims of extensive prohibited ballot by noncitizens.

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    Former President Donald Trump has actually long declared in the face of proof to the contrary that governmental and congressional elections are vulnerable to extensive citizen scams and prohibited ballot by immigrants who do not have irreversible legal status that has actually altered the results in favor of Democrats — a charge that Home Republicans have actually echoed.

    Here are the realities about noncitizen ballot and the incorrect claims that foreign nationals swing close elections in one celebration’s favor.

    More than a lots cities and towns throughout the nation permit noncitizens to enact regional elections.

    There has actually long been a policy argument in the United States about whether ballot rights must be paid for at the community level to foreign nationals no matter migration status, as the majority of them pay taxes similar to U.S. residents, add to their regional economies and send their kids to regional schools.

    Homeowners with foreign passports can cast tallies for prospects for mayor, school board, city board and commissioner in a minimum of 14 towns whose state constitutions do not clearly prohibit noncitizens from enacting regional contests. Almost all of the towns remain in the deep-blue states of Maryland, Vermont and California.

    The majority of regional steps providing tally access to noncitizens deal with court difficulties. One such law in San Francisco that endured a legal obstacle permits moms and dads who remain in the nation unlawfully to choose the members of their public school board. However in 2022, a New york city state Supreme Court overruled a New york city City law that provided partial ballot rights to more than 800,000 noncitizens.

    Noncitizens seldom cast tallies in regional elections even when they are permitted to do so. In Washington, D.C., where approximately 15% of the 700,000 locals are foreign-born, just around 500 noncitizens had actually signed up to vote since Monday, according to information offered by the District of Columbia Board of Elections. The District has more than 400,000 signed up citizens.

    It’s prohibited — and exceptionally uncommon — for noncitizens to enact federal elections.

    Although noncitizens can enact some regional elections, they are disallowed by law from ballot in federal elections for president or Congress, and research study reveals it nearly never ever occurs.

    A research study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New york city University took a look at 23.5 million votes cast in the 2016 governmental election in more than 40 jurisdictions and discovered just 30 occurrences of prospective noncitizen ballot — or 0.0001% of the votes cast.

    An audit by the state of Georgia carried out in 2022 reached a comparable conclusion after discovering less than 1,700 cases of noncitizens trying to sign up to enact the previous 25 years. None were permitted to vote.

    David Becker, the director for the Center for Election Development and Research study, a nonpartisan not-for-profit company, stated states had actually been “really efficient” in making sure that only U.S. residents stay on the citizen rolls for federal elections. That’s mainly due to the fact that of the Genuine ID act, which has actually needed states to validate locals’ migration or citizenship status before releasing a main recognition card.

    “There’s never ever been more openness around these elections, which’s proven,” Becker stated. “There are really, really couple of individuals for whom citizenship status cannot be verified.”

    Noncitizens have significant disincentives to enact federal elections.

    Signing up to vote draws the greatest level of examination from state authorities and police, something that immigrants who got in the U.S. unlawfully or those whose legal status in the United States is unclear are extremely not likely to desire.

    Those who have actually studied the subject state that immigrants have every factor to prevent calling attention to themselves because method. Ballot unlawfully is a felony that might require prison time, a fine and deportation.

    If a noncitizen “was captured signing up to vote, or ballot — this is really a concern on the citizenship examination — they will be deported,” Becker stated.

    Republicans and election deniers have actually mentioned defective figures to recommend prohibited noncitizen ballot is extensive.

    A witness at a Home hearing recently on election stability mentioned a malfunctioning report from 2020 recommending that around 15% of noncitizens regularly enact federal elections. The price quote, to which election deniers typically refer, is based upon an earlier research study whose study information appeared to suggest that a considerable portion of foreign nationals enacted 2008.

    However those numbers are an outcome of unscientific cherry-picking from a study of simply 20,000 individuals developed for a various function, stated Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank. A close take a look at the study results programs that the majority of the participants who stated they were foreign nationals and had actually enacted the past remained in truth American residents who had actually wrongly selected the incorrect response to the citizenship concern.

    “These numbers merely aren’t credible,” Olson stated. “They aren’t constant with what we understand from the different other sources.”

    Still, Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., chair of the Committee on Home Administration, cautioned that the practice might spread out. He indicated a shows problem in Pennsylvania that permitted noncitizens to sign up to vote and an evaluation that discovered more than 100 noncitizens on Ohio citizen rolls.

    “American elections are for American residents, and we mean to keep it that method,” Steil stated.

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  • Minnesota Supreme Court to hear felon voting rights case

    Minnesota Supreme Court to hear felon voting rights case

    Minnesota’s Supreme Court is set to decide the fate of voting rights for felons on supervised release, with oral arguments scheduled Monday in a conservative group’s challenge to the new law.

    Last year Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill restoring the vote to around 55,000 Minnesotans with felony convictions who had been released but are still on probation. The change came after decades of effort at the Capitol and an unsuccessful American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit to challenge the previous restriction.

    Lawmakers moved quickly last spring to restore voting rights after the Supreme Court ruled against the ACLU challenge, and said the issue was up to the state Legislature. But soon after the bill became law, a conservative legal group filed a challenge in Anoka County.

    The Minnesota Voters Alliance argued the law couldn’t stand because the state Constitution says people can vote once their civil rights are restored, meaning they need to complete their entire sentence, including probation.

    An Anoka County judge dismissed the conservative group’s challenge in December 2023, ruling the Minnesota Voters Alliance didn’t have standing to intervene. The group appealed the case directly to the Supreme Court, and in January justices said they’d grant the case accelerated review.

    Twenty-three states restore voting rights upon release from incarceration, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Maine, Vermont and Washington, D.C. allow incarcerated people to vote.

    Minnesota was one of 16 states, including South Dakota and Wisconsin, that only allowed people with felony convictions to vote after completing their entire sentence, including probation.

    The Minnesota Voters Alliance lawsuit was one of two challenges to the felon voting rights law since it went into effect last year.

    In October, a Mille Lacs County judge told people convicted of felonies in his court that they could not vote as part of their sentencing.

    The Mille Lacs County judge said the law was unconstitutional, but the Minnesota Court of Appeals said he did not have the authority to make that ruling.

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  • Navajo Community Gains Equal Opportunity at the Polls

    Navajo Community Gains Equal Opportunity at the Polls

    (Photo/File photo)

    Native Vote 2024. The San Juan County in New Mexico has settled a lawsuit that challenged the county’s 2021 redistricting map, which aimed to dilute the voting power of Navajo voters.

    The map packed Navajo citizens into District 1, which had an 83% Native American Voting Age Population (VAP), while reducing the Native American VAP in District 2 below the level necessary to provide Navajo voters with an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, as required by Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act. This meant Navajo voters had an equal ability to elect preferred candidates in just one out of five districts, despite Navajo citizens making up roughly 40% of the county’s total population.

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    The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the UCLA Voting Rights Project (UCLA VRP), the ACLU of New Mexico, the law firm DLA Piper, and the Navajo Nation Department of Justice on Monday announced the voting rights victory. The groups brought the lawsuit on behalf of the Navajo Nation, the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission, and individual Navajo voters in San Juan County.

    The suppression of the voting power of the Navajo residents has made it harder to achieve important policy priorities, such as providing and maintaining critical infrastructure on Navajo Nation land.

    The county agreed to settle the lawsuit by enacting a new map negotiated by the plaintiffs which ensures a more equitable distribution of the Navajo population, with 74% Native American VAP in District 1 and 70% in District 2. The new map will remain in place through the 2030 Census, with the two new Navajo opportunity districts first up for election in 2026. The voting rights victory is a testament to the tireless efforts of the Navajo Nation and its allies in standing up against injustice and on behalf of the rights of the Navajo people.

    “The settlement we reached with San Juan County, NM, is a victory for the Navajo Nation and the Navajo People,” said Ethel Branch, Attorney General of the Navajo Nation Department of Justice. “In exercising our sovereign right, we secured justice for Navajo voters in San Juan County. For decades, and despite being the majority, our people were only able to elect one Navajo Commissioner in San Juan County. Now we have an opportunity to change that through more equal treatment of Navajo votes in the County redistricting process.”

    About the Author: “Native News Online is one of the most-read publications covering Indian Country and the news that matters to American Indians, Alaska Natives and other Indigenous people. Reach out to us at editor@nativenewsonline.net. ”

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  • Walking toward justice on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama

    Walking toward justice on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama

    This column appears every other week in Foster’s Daily Democrat and the Tuskegee News. This week Guy Trammell, an African American man from Tuskegee, Ala., and Amy Miller, a white woman from South Berwick, Maine, write about the recent visit of 10 South Berwick residents to Tuskegee to march together across the historic bridge in Selma.

    By Amy Miller

    The power, the richness of the day was not in the walk or on the Edmund Pettus Bridge or even hearing Kamala Harris speak. The power was in the moments before and after.

    It was there when 17 of us sang together Sunday morning in Selma’s Ebenezer Missionary Church, once the home to the Rev. Frederick Reese, who first invited MLK to join the march over the Selma bridge. It was in sharing dinner at the Bonefish restaurant in Montgomery after the walk. The power came from sweating together under the noonday sun and in buying Bloody Sunday Jubilee T-shirts from the local vendors.

    Guy Trammell Jr. and Amy Miller
    Guy Trammell Jr. and Amy Miller

    The idea was to walk together for voting rights, for racial justice, for a better America. And walk we did, with thousands of other Americans. Ten South Berwick residents walked with seven residents of Tuskegee across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in honor of the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

    When you are marching beside someone – someone who has become a friend – who was not allowed to swim in the same pool as the white children who lived down the road, when you are walking over the bridge with someone whose mother was stopped from voting or whose friend was killed trying to register voters, this country’s racism touches you in a new way. When the person you are marching with, your host, is the same person you say good night to in your PJs, have coffee with in the morning, and trust to navigate for you on the road to Selma, the pain of our country’s racism is in your home.

    When South Berwick asked Tuskegee to be our sister city we believed a small step toward progress might come from more talk, more listening and less fear. We thought this relationship could lead to better understanding in our mostly white town of what it means to be Black in America.

    We believed, and still believe, as Lyndon B. Johnson said, “Their cause must be our cause too.”

    As Johnson said in his speech in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attacks on people walking simply for the right to vote in our Democracy, “It is not just negroes, but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

    The speech in 1965 was well-received. The White House reportedly received 1,436 telegrams supporting Johnson and 82 against him. A poll found 76% of Americans in favor of the proposed Voting Rights Act, and 16% against it.

    Fifty-nine years later we are still marching and stubbornly hopeful. We are still fighting efforts to strip down voting rights.  Together we will continue to walk forward. And together we will vote.

    By Guy Trammell Jr.

    In 1901, President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt caused national controversy by having Booker T. Washington to dinner. The Biloxi Daily Herald stated: “The most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States was committed by the president when he invited a negro to dine with him at the white house.”

    During that period, any time Tuskegee Institute hosted white philanthropists, white Tuskegee Board of Trustees members or other white friends and associates, they were watched. Local racially prejudiced whites would “just happen to visit” the campus. These curious (purely nosy) inspectors would peer through dining hall windows to see if whites were eating next to Blacks. At one point, plans were made to construct a below ground, no windows dining room to address this problem, though the plans were cancelled.

    Recently Tuskegee hosted an incredible group of 10 from our Common Ground-Sister City, South Berwick family. We, both white and Black, fellowshipped together, conversed together, toured together, attended church together, marched in the 2024 Selma bridge crossing together, and yes, we “broke bread” together many times. I’m sure the early Tuskegee white “inspectors” would have had heart attacks viewing our disgraceful actions!

    We had an excellent training for local youth workers at the TEARS Youth Home by David, the first person I met from Maine, who has an extensive background in youth programs. This was followed by walking and driving tours of Tuskegee.

    This was a great time for sharing our history. Mike, a South Berwick engineer and architect, was thrilled to examine the Tuskegee University Chapel designed by Paul Rudolph in 1969.  Mike shared his college memories of Rudolph as a teacher.

    In Selma’s crowd, we enjoyed talking with people about our Sister City relationship. Encouraged by Selma’s large attendance of high school and college youth, Amy, Mike and I were excited to join Tuskegee WUBZ Radio’s D.J. Booty Rush, encouraging people to vote in the Super Tuesday election as an extension of our 2020 “Together We Vote!” project.

    Common Ground grows as we talk and get to know each other because together we are stronger.

    Concerning Booker T. Washington dining at the White House, the Broad Axe newspaper in St. Paul, Minn., on October 24, 1901, read: “It is a pity that the South should presume to take exceptions to the fact that President Roosevelt invited a man of brains to his table, and that the objections rest solely on the fact that he is black.

    “It is not Washington who is black – it is his skin. His brains are not black. His work is not black. His morals are not black. His reputation is not black. His manhood is of the highest type and if he was not fit to dine at the table of the President, then there are very few white men who would be fit.”

    Amy and Guy can be reached at colorusconnected@gmail.com

    This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Commentary: Walking toward justice on Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma

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