Why the Pence Commission Failed and How the Left Blew It

January 4, 2018

Happy New Year! You’re Fired!

That’s the long and short of Vice-President Pence’s Election Integrity Commission.

The so-called “Progressive” side of our nation immediately spiked the football to celebrate how their lawfare euthanized the already doomed election integrity commission. The Left’s standard tactic–to destroy anybody who challenges their vote fraud denials–seems to have worked again… or not.

Why the Election Integrity Commission Failed

The Commission’s failure was certain after Democrats challenged the limitations of the Commission’s power. It was over when the Commission “requested” personally identifying information (PII) from all 50 states and “at least 27 states” gave them the middle finger.

The Left knows that PII is the key to exposing massive vote fraud, so they blocked the Commission’s access. Without such information, it’s very hard to arrest anybody for voting twice.

While our organization proved that voters voting in two (or more) states, we do not have subpoena power. All we could do was prove the vulnerability…which we did…and we even sent a man to jail for vote fraud! 

But sadly, the Pence-Kobach Commission lacked both subpoena authority and prosecutoral authority. This made their entire effort nothing more than window dressing that could have taken the issue off the table. All they had to do was admit only “a minimal amount” of vote fraud and then pat themselves on the back. Since they lacked the tools to “see” the evidence, that was their foregone conclusion. Whew!

As our Virginia counterpart, Reagan George once predicted to a well-connected (and very peeved) DC salon audience, “the Commission will wind up publishing a 3,000-page book that nobody will read.” (Note: Stating this unpleasant truth helped uninvite Reagan and me from subsequent salons, but oh darn!)

How the Left Blew It this Time

Honest elections are supposed to be above partisanship, but for some reason, the Democrats disagree. Consider Co-Chairman Kris Kobach’s brilliant observation:

The Democrats, both on and off the commission, made very clear that they were not interested in determining the scope and extent of voter fraud and, indeed, they were trying to stop the commission in its tracks,” Kobach said. “The Democrats lost their opportunity, lost their seat at the table, by stonewalling.”

Next, the terse White House’s statement on the decision to kill the Commission spells doom for vote fraud deniers. In part, it said that President Trump…

…has asked the Department of Homeland Security to review its initial findings and determine next courses of action” 

Well! Lookie loo! Guess who DOES have subpoena authority? And guess who has the very best data base on the planet when it comes to US citizenship?!

America’s investigation into vote fraud just shifted gears. What once was polite conversations among genteel politicians has now become a weaponized vote fraud investigation. Unless the Left managed to embed some deep-state types within DHS (as they have at DOJ), they may have won the battle but lost the war.

The bottom line: None of these investigations will matter unless our weak-kneed DC politicians hear voter demands for the DHS to investigate and for the DOJ to prosecute vote fraud.

Now Go!

~ jd

 

Hot Mess in Hot ‘Lanta’s Mayoral Election

December 20, 2017

Anonymous donor offers “up to $25,000” for evidence of illegal votes in the Dec 5 Mayoral Election

Dec 19, 2017 (Raleigh) — We keep getting updates from the other election held December 5: Atlanta’s mayoral contest where the term limited incumbent Mayor, Kasim Reed, lent what appears to be a see-no-evil election machine to his hand-picked successor, Keisha Lance Bottoms.

Our sources are telling us about vast numbers of voters whose addresses come from housing developments that have long been torn down. We’re also hearing of colleges and universities whose mailbox facility is within the city limits, but the campus (and their dormitories) sprawl far beyond the jurisdiction of the mayoral election. In short, hundreds… or even thousands… of votes may have been cast from illegal addresses.

Lest we forget, just last October, Atlanta area Congressman Hank Johnson, from the party that usually denies vote fraud, told a WXIP-TV Atlanta station, “I think it’s quite possible that Jon Ossoff won that election and [it] was stolen from him.”

Atlanta’s Machine Mayor, Kasim Reed’s approach to electioneering, may lead to a costly do-over election with federal monitors at every Atlanta polling site.

That accusation along with lingering questions about the security of Georgia’s election systems after a server hosting voter information was wiped clean have never been fully answered even though lawsuits have been filed.

Now we hear  talk of voter intimidation and suppression that has entered the 2017 Atlanta Mayoral race where challenger Mary Norwood has refused to concede a race which she narrowly lost to the Keisha Lance Bottoms, the hand picked candidate of term limited Mayor Kasim Reed.

 

Norwood cancelled all public appearances and has not complained about vote fraud during this year’s election; but a secret recording conveniently leaked out, in which she discuss lessons learned (about vote fraud) from her 2009 mayoral race against Reed, which she lost by 714 votes.

Every state has its own fraud-friendly election laws and the Atlanta Mayoral race has taught us to look for vote fraud, but the key ingredient missing in order to overturn that election… is witnesses. That’s why we’re intrigued by a “prominent Georgia citizen” who circulated an email offering a $25,000 bounty for information and tips on how votes were illegally cast in the Atlanta Mayor’s race.

Late yesterday, we were forwarded part of an email offering a reward and asking people who “know anything” to send their anonymous tips to atlantatruth@protonmail.com.

We attempted to contact the donor and someone at that email address wrote, “I would like to say that many have contacted me about some issues of voting improprieties  they saw or heard during the recent Mayors race. Now I want to find out of they are true. I’m willing to pay 25K if someone can tell me how votes were stolen. No identity needed. We are just looking for the information on how it was done.”

We at Voter Integrity Project have no way of knowing whether or not the offer is authentic, but would love to see if anybody can school the public on how they harvested a couple of hundred illegal votes in an election won by less than 850…with more than 90,000 votes cast.

– jd

 

VIP Petitions Meck Court to Prosecute Vote Fraud

October 9, 2017

Cites NC law designed to work around unresponsive District Attorneys

[Story update: The Senate voted to confirm Murray as US attorney and Sen. Thom Tillis, ignoring any concerns about vote fraud prosecutions and issued this press release on the matter.]

Oct 9, 2017 — Charlotte, NC — Today, the Voter Integrity Project called on the Trump Administration to withdraw one of their nominations for US Attorney as the group cited NCGS § 163A-1446 in petitioning the Mecklenburg County Superior Court to appoint a special prosecutor for two confirmed cases of vote fraud that District Attorney, Andrew Murray, has refused to prosecute.

WBTVs Dedrick Russell interviews VIPs Bob Diamond about his petition to appoint a Special Prosecutor in Mecklenburg County, because their DA refuses to prosecute confirmed cases of interstate double voting.

“We took this action because Mr. Murray refused to prosecute interstate double voters that we investigated and that the State Board of Elections referred to him for criminal prosecution,” said Jay DeLancy, Director of the Voter Integrity Project, “but he said he was too busy to bother with such low-level crimes.”

As a Class I felony, stealing elections in North Carolina falls below the Class H felony of stealing pine straw (as VIP  explained, on April 1, 2016). The maximum penalty for a first-time vote fraud offender does not include active jail time. Pasco Parker, VIP’s first convicted case, received a two-year probation after voting in three states (Florida, Tennessee and North Carolina) for the 2016 general election.

If President Trump is serious about fighting vote fraud, then he should withdraw Andrew Murray’s nomination for US Attorney,” said DeLancy. “Murray didn’t prosecute interstate double voting as the DA, so his being US Attorney would be a disaster.”

DeLancy and Bob Diamond, a Charlotte resident and former District 37 NC Senate candidate, first met with Murray on Feb. 23, 2015, after learning from state election officials that Murray had declined to prosecute one of VIP’s criminal referrals. After the meeting, Diamond decided to pursue this action. He is listed as the plaintiff in today’s court filing, which identified the alleged perpetrators as Jenell R. Jenkins (registered as a Democrat) and Sammy K. Nichols (registered as a Republican), both of Mecklenburg County.

“By refusing to prosecute these cases, District Attorneys promote the myth that no one commits voter fraud,” said Diamond. “This is why I’m asking the Mecklenburg County Superior Court to appoint a special prosecutor, who will do the job Murray refuses to do.”

According to an email message from NCSBE Chief Investigator, Joan Fleming, the cases of both Jenkins and Nichols were initially declined in 2015 and were later updated and re-submitted for consideration by letter dated March 8, 2016. Murray again declined “due to lack of evidence of intent, lack of prosecutorial resources for low level felony matters, and because the SBE investigations had the overall positive net effect of causing both voters to cancel their duplicate registrations.”

“We’re glad that these two people are now afraid to commit vote fraud,” said Diamond, “but others will never be deterred unless cases like these are tried in open court.”

###

See Murray-Fleming email that confirms NCSBE criminal referrals to Mecklenburg DA Andrew Murray. These two cases were for interstate double voting, but Murray declined to prosecute either case.

UPDATE TO STORY: DA Murray excuses double voters after they claimed ignorance of the law they broke (by voting in two states). Would a jury have excused them too? We will never know, since Murray refused to try cases. See Charlotte-Observer story by clicking here.

 

Stop Andrew Murray!

September 27, 2017

This Man Should NOT Be Confirmed for US Attorney

Sep 27, 2017 Raleigh — Given the track record of Mecklenburg County, District Attorney, Andrew Murray, a public servant who declined to prosecute two of the Voter Integrity Project’s fully vetted criminal referrals for interstate double voting, it sickened us to learn of his nomination for the Western District of NC position of US Attorney.

Our battle with DA Murray began after we completed a project called FLANC (Florida and NC). This involved analyzing voter records between the two states to identify any voters with a matching first & last name and who listed common addresses in their file. If any of them voted in both states for the same general election, we turned them over to both Florida and NC election officials.

That first iteration, resulted in five criminal referrals from the NC State BOE to various District Attorneys. After some legal arm twisting, NC’s State Board Of Elections revealed the District Attorneys who had received our criminal referrals, but had declined to prosecute the cases, Andrew Murray among them.

Later, on a third iteration of our FLANC research, we discovered a way to identify a much larger population of potential double voters. This resulted in another 147 cases of suspected interstate double voting that we turned over to the NC SBOE. (Eventually, VIP Research Director, John Pizzo, published a Kindle product explaining our methodology which can be purchased by clicking here).

Frustrated by our lack of prosecutions, we arranged to meet with DA Murray (see DA Invite) in February of 2015. We had frank and honest discussions about our first criminal referral and also gave him a hard copy of a briefing which contained our supporting documentation for six other suspected double voters cases we had identified to election fraud investigators.

In the meeting, we pressed him to prosecute Ms. Jenkins and any of our other cases; but he refused, citing his inability to prove intent, which is required under NCGS § 163-275. We then argued (unsuccessfully) that proof of the crime would be enough to convince any reasonable jury that the voter intended to commit the crime. He declined again.

Next, we argued that, win or lose, the publicity surrounding the prosecution would be helpful both for deterring similar fraud opportunities and for spurring legislative corrections to the law. This time, he refused in a most annoying way. He talked about the potential for bad media coverage he might get and weighed it against that same statute’s extremely low low priority of vote fraud. It’s a Class I (as in “below H”) felony with a guaranteed of no jail time for first offenders. (Remember: Stealing pine straw in NC is a Class H Felony.)

Next, DA Murray claimed he would be unable to obtain the necessary evidence from Florida. This was an assertion we openly challenged, but he still refused to prosecute. Among our delegation was a retired sworn officer in the SBI with more than 30 years’ experience and a retired pharmacist who was very active in local politics. We left the hour-long meeting wrung out and dissatisfied, but decided to hold off (for the time being) the filing of a petition to appoint a Special Prosecutor for these cases, as is our right under NCGS §163-278(28).

After recently learning of DA Murray’s nomination to become the US Attorney for NC’s Western District, we sought SBOE confirmation on the status of all FLANC cases in his jurisdiction. On Sept 21, 2017 the SBOE confirmed that a total of two cases had been referred to DA Murray, but he again declined to prosecute either of them. Over the phone, the SBOE PIO Patrick Gannon said that “one of them even confessed to the crime, but didn’t know it was against the law,” so Murray let him off.

The bottom line is that DA Murray declined to prosecute two solid cases of interstate double voting, even though they had been fully vetted by SBOE investigators, working under the leadership of retired FBI Agent, Chuck Stuber.

Interstate double voting is a felony under both state and federal law. Since “District Attorney Andrew Murray” refuses to prosecute such proven cases in his state job, we have every reason to believe that “US Attorney Andrew Murray” would similar cavalier attitude toward this serious crime at the federal level.

For this reason, we respectfully ask President Trump to withdraw the US Attorney nomination of Andrew Murray.

 

DeLancy Statement to the Pence Commission

September 11, 2017

Sept 12, 2017 RALEIGH — Today, Vice-President Pence’s Election Integrity Commission convenes in New

Jay DeLancy addressed the NC House Committee on Election Oversight in 2013.

Hampshire to accept public comments. While VIP constituents were unable to attend the hearing, a Commissioner urged us to submit written statements. The following is the message Jay DeLancy sent to that Commissioner:

In early 2012, I joined forces with a quality engineer named John Pizzo and we began analyzing North Carolina’s voter rolls. One of our first research projects was in Wake County (NC’s 2nd largest county), where we obtained jury records from the Clerk of Courts and determine which prospective jurors disqualified themselves by telling the court they were not US citizens. It was only a three-year snapshot, but we found around 6,000 non-citizen jury disqualifications. We then matched those names against the voter rolls and found 532 registered voters who had told officers of the courts that they were not US citizens. Of that group, 130 had voted at least once BEFORE their jury disqualification, meaning they either committed perjury or they committed vote fraud.

Does anybody care?

We then decided to file voter challenges on the 532 voters and we explained our methodology at the preliminary hearing on the matter. Expecting a spirit of cooperation, we did not have legal counsel. To our surprise, the Board treated our actions as hostile and bent the law to reject our challenges.

For example, our state’s DMV had only begun requiring proof of citizenship in 2004 (less than eight years before our challenges) and they issued 10-year licenses. Even so, unless the DMV had affirmative proof that the voter was not a citizen, they deemed all were citizens.

Adding to the problem, the DMV’s witness did not testify at the hearings. Instead an SBOE employee, Veronica DeGraffenreid, testified with no knowledge of when the voters were issued their licenses. We could not cross examine her hearsay evidence, but the Board viewed it as 100% accurate and they rejected 514 of our challenges. The remaining 18 non-citizen voters were advanced to a full hearing because even the DMV agreed they were not citizens.

At the full hearing on the final 18 voters, the Board even stipulated that two government agencies agreed they were not US citizens, but they still demanded we provide more evidence. We had none, so they voted 2-0 to reject all of our challenges. The lone Republican on the board, Josh Howard, was not present, but a week later, upon his return, he chided the Board Chairman, Aida Doss Havel, into reversing her vote on the 11 challenged voters who never responded to multiple mail notifications and they voted to remove them and refer them over to ICE for criminal prosecution. (Ironically, the lone dissent in that vote was Board Secretary, Tina Tally, who after the election, accepted a position with Eric Holder’s Justice Department.)

Moving forward, we had learned how our challenges were rejected on procedural grounds, so we started the work all over again, this time seeking a much larger batch of jury disqualification data. But we soon learned that our state’s Administrative Office of the Courts had crafted a new interpretation of the jury list maintenance laws, such that even voters disqualified under NCGS § 9-3 were allowed the same privacy rights as the qualified jurors, on the “jury list,” under NCGS § 9-4. Thus, they blocked our access to the same public information they had allowed before we had embarrassed them. Realizing how difficult it would be to find an attorney and a judge who would fight the same agency that disciplines lawyers and judges, we decided not to sue and instead opted for a legislative remedy.

Off to the Politicians

In 2013, we asked State Representative George Cleveland to sponsor a bill that would maintain the public’s access to jury disqualification information, much the same as is legal in Florida. Rep Cleveland’s bill sailed through the House with overwhelming bi-partisan support, but was killed in the Senate Judiciary II Committee. In the 2015 General Assembly, Rep Cleveland tried again and this time we made it through the Judiciary II; but the Senate Rules Committee Chairman, Tom Apodaca, refused to allow a vote, so it died again. Now, in the 2017 legislative session, we have again gotten it through the House and this time, Sen Apodaca has retired, but the Senate Pro Tem, Phil Berger, has not allowed the matter to proceed.

It’s been a long battle.

The bottom line is this: By our looking at just one county, over a three-year period, we proved that there were hundreds of non-US citizens voting in our elections. If given proper access to information that state agencies refuse to share, I’m certain we could easily find at least 10,000 non-citizen voters in North Carolina. The key agencies hiding this information are our Court system, our Department of Corrections and our Department of Health and Human Services. They know the names of hundreds of thousands of non-US citizens living in North Carolina, but they refuse to share the data for voter-list maintenance purposes. And sadly, our state’s political leadership approves of this cover-up.

As a reminder, two statewide North Carolina elections in 2016 were won by less than 5,000 votes, our Governor’s race was decided by around 10,000 votes; and finally, in 2008, our Presidential election was determined by only 14,000 votes. The public has a need to know and a right to know the truth about non-citizen voters in North Carolina, but our state’s corrupt two-party system is fighting to keep us all in the dark.

We could use a little help!!

 

 

Why is NCGOP Protecting Non-Citizen Voters?

August 27, 2017

Click image to see details on the 2014-15 version, HB 100.

Aug 27, 2017 (RALEIGH) While finishing my paper for this week’s presentation in San Francisco, at the national convention of the American Political Science Association, I came across the news that one particular Florida Supervisor of Elections is already doing what North Carolina’s state Senate seems hesitant to require our election officials to do: Get non-citizen voters off the rolls.

Three times… in 2013, 2015 and 2017, Voter Integrity Project has advocated for a corrective legislative measure in this area, but certain bi-partisan forces have constantly fought the bill in the NC Senate, where it has died twice. for the third session in a row, the bill passed the NC House. This year’s version, House Bill 29, passed the lower chamber with bi-partisan support, but it languishes under the watchful eye of Senator Phil Berger. He has let it die for five years and counting.

Meanwhile Florida leads in this common-sense reform. According to the July 31, 2017 (Florida) Sun Sentinel…

The [Broward County] elections office began receiving jury recusal information this year from the Broward clerk of courts about residents who filed forms saying they could not serve on a jury because they were either a non-citizen or a convicted felon, [County Supervisor of Elections, Brenda] Snipes said. The elections office can cross-reference that information against its voter rolls to see if any are voters that should be removed for the same reasons.”

To be clear, Snipes is NO friend of election integrity. For reasons far beyond the scope of this post, our Florida counterparts have fought long (and losing) battles with her over purging the voter rolls of people living (and voting) from mail box kiosks, business addresses, and vacant lots. She refuses to comply with these peasants at Florida Voter Integrity Project.

In fact, our side has had so much trouble with her cavalier attitude that the American Civil Rights Union has her in federal court. So, in order to mitigate a bad loss in that lawsuit, she has suddenly seen the light and is taking pro-active common-sense measures to clean up her act… and the Broward County voter rolls.

Okay… I’ve got a paper to finish, so I leave you with one simple question:

Why is the NCGOP using State Senator, Phil Berger, to block HB 100, a bill that helps election officials get non-US citizens off North Carolina’s voter rolls?

~ jd

More Mischief in Durham as Election Official is Indicted

August 22, 2017

Aug 21, 2017 DURHAM, NC — According to the State Board of Elections & Ethics Enforcement press release, their investigation…

…determined that [Durham County election official, Richard Robert] Rawling ran or ordered subordinates to run provisional ballots through tabulators more than once and made manual changes to the ballot count so the results of the provisional canvass would match the number of approved provisional ballots. That was done, the investigation found, to avoid having to report to the Durham County Board of Elections a discrepancy in the number of provisional ballots in possession of the Board of Elections and the number counted on canvass day.”

Our election laws are only as effective as the people administering the elections. As we proved during that same primary in 2016, when I filmed a Wake County election official intentionally misleading unaffiliated voters (including yours truly) about which ballot we could choose. We also received multiple reports of election employees refusing to check some voters’ ID cards, even though it was the law (during that primary), so Mr. Rawling’s alleged conduct should not surprise anybody familiar with the chaotic numbers that came out of Durham County after that election.

Richard Robert Rawling’s indictment yesterday drives home the point that trained observers need to monitor the electoral process from beginning to end. This is the reason we have been pushing for House Bill 697, The Observer Bill of Rights, sponsored by house member Michael Speciale during the recent long session. Without trained observers positioned so they can actually see and hear the election officials doing their jobs, we do not have honest elections in North Carolina.

~ Jay DeLancy, Director, Voter Integrity Project – NC

 

SBOE Takes Shot at Election Observers

July 28, 2017

July 28, 2017 Raleigh — North Carolina’s State Board of Election is attempting to roll back the rights of election observers to a pre-2010 era  that will enable election officials to eject poll observers with little or no justification, but they will accept public comment through either email (at elections.sboe@ncsbe.gov), an on-line portal, or in-person speeches, noon Monday, July 31, at their offices at 441 N. Harrington St., Raleigh, 27603.

The proposed code (which has the force of law) says, “an observer who leaves the voting place for any reason may be prohibited by the chief judge from returning if the observer’s return would cause a disruption in the voting enclosure.”

Click image to see video on this subject.

So which is it?

The first clause suggests that observers who leave “for any reason may be prohibited” from reentering the voting enclosure. Does “any reason” include going outside to observe a curbside voting transaction? How about if the observer needs to take a bathroom break?

The last clause stipulates the application of this rule, “if the observer’s return would cause a disruption in the voting enclosure.” Aside from the contradiction with the first clause, who gets to decide if the observer’s return would cause a disruption! And by the way, what is the appeals process for this ejection? Will observers now need access to attorneys who must parachute in to restore our legal rights?

Rolling Back the Bartlett-Era Rights

While elections are a highly partisan affair, we at VIP view election integrity as a non-partisan issue; but we must point out the partisan irony of this edict. First, it comes from the Republican appointed Executive Director, Kim Strach. Her predecessor, Gary Bartlett, who had who had very few fans among the NCGOP, actually granted far more permissive rights, but the Republican, Strach is rescinding them!

Mr. Bartlett’s October 18, 2010, memo allowed observers to exit the voting enclosure at any time, for any reason, and they could return, as long as that observer was still scheduled to attend. Such freedom allowed me to observe curbside voting, to make phone calls and even to scam a free hot dog from a candidate who was bending the rules! But all of that changes with this new, poorly conceived idea.

Wrong Direction

VIP is shocked because we have been pushing in the opposite direction for five years and a tone-deaf SBOE staff either doesn’t realize the nationwide trend or they do realize it…and want to subvert it.

Since we have no voter ID and no photography inside the voting enclosure, the only…make that ONLY safeguard we have against wholesale vote fraud is the observers. Election employees are powerless to stop any double or triple voters unless they want to get fired, so observers are our one and only hope.

In that spirit, we support HB 697, a bill that will perform the exact opposite effect of the current SBOE measure. It was primarily sponsored by Rep Speciale, but was quickly joined by Reps Boswell;  Clampitt; and Cleveland.

Help Wanted

First, if you have been an election observer in the past and feel that you were abused, bullied or ejected without warrant, the SBOE needs to hear from you NOW!!! You can use their on-line portal, send an email message (at elections.sboe@ncsbe.gov), or come to Monday’s hearing and speak you mind.

Second, your lawmakers need to hear from you, regarding a statute that grants observers some explicit rights to operate around the polling place without molestation by suspicious election officials. You can locate your NC General Assembly delegation at this site.

A Short History of Election Observer Rights in NC

Voter Integrity Project first proposed the idea of specified observer rights in 2013. Rep Blust liked the idea and included it in his bill, called, Voter Integrity, of all things! The same verbiage was sponsored into a proposed bill by Senators Cook, Sanderson and Rabin (SB 666) which died after the language was ingested into the first Senate version of the omnibus voter ID law (HB 589). Eventually, it was stripped out of the omnibus bill, after conservative groups lobbied against the provision, saying it would discourage recruitment of polling officials.

Days before the 2016 crossover deadline, Rep Speciale 2016, HB 697 sponsored HB 697 and it is eligible for consideration in the short session or in any special sessions, during the 2017 period.

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References for this post:

NC SBOE Public hearing Notice

SBE Rules: Notice of Publication and Public Comment May 26, 2017 (please see last page)

Bartlett Memorandum_-_Observers_-_Oct_2010

Proposed current Observer Rights law, HB 697 – Obs_Rights Bill

Proposed original Observer Rights law, House version, HB 913, 2013-2014 session (please see bottom of page 4)

Proposed original Observer Rights law, Senate version, within SB 666, 2013-2014 session (please see pages 2-3)