Unpacking SB2: Voter ID

Main Highlights

• Voter ID legislation has been introduced with Senate Bill 2. This Voter ID will be REAL ID compliant. However, it still allows for credit cards or other forms of ID the State Board of Elections currently allows.

• Senate Bill 2 allows for provisional ballots if a voter does not have preferred ID to cast a vote. The voter can return by the end of the week to the County Clerks office and provide the any ID to have their vote counted.

• Its unclear in the bill as there is contradictory language as to whether or not these Voter ID cards will be issued for free or not, avoiding the poll tax issue. One section says they are free, but they still have a chart with the cost associated with the ID. Poll taxes are illegal per the 19th Amendment.

• The U.S. Supreme Court will strike down any law that requires a citizen to turn over their origination documents, if they have any, as a requirement to exercise a right. The United States does not operate under a Papers Please system. All rights are God Given not Government Granted.

• REAL ID is a machine readable, biometrically enhanced, form of identification that complies with international standards and administered by international entities affiliated with the UN.

• There are two ways to become a citizen, either through Birthright or Naturalization. However, there is an AND portion to that section of the 14th Amendment that refers to Jurisdiction. Jurisdiction has less to do with being subject to our laws, and more about allegiance to the United States.

• Congress needs to address the confusion surrounding the Jurisdiction meaning in the 14th Amendment. Clarifying Jurisdiction would go a long way toward solving our illegal immigration problems and thus alleviate many concerns of illegal aliens participating in our elections.

• The establishment in both the Republican and Democrat parties don't really want to fix the voter roll issues as dirty data lends itself to manipulation they can take advantage of. Former Secretary of State Grimes made a mess of the SOS office and current SOS Adams did not attempt to address the problems when a whistleblower came to him when he was a member of the State Board of Elections.

• Solution: Clean up voter rolls, have the SOS/County Clerks issue basic non-REAL ID compliant Voter ID's when someone registers for free This would also avoid the Papers Please system as the Voter ID is a result of the Registration Affidavit submitted by the voter, not a requirement to prove oneself to exercise the right of voting.

One of the Senate’s top priorities is the requirement to have a Voter ID in elections. We already have some of this in our current law, but it doesn’t go far enough in some people’s opinion, and SB 2 was introduced to alleviate those concerns. The bill is about 160 pages long, most of it is not new language though, but you have to have all sections the law is going to affect included and reflect the changes. Voting issues and citizenship issues in United States is a complicated subject matter, so we are going to just address where we stand now and not go over the complete history.

With the 14th Amendment the federal government determined who was a citizen. The 15th Amendment determined who had the right to vote. In practice of these amendment’s there has still been some issues arise. Basically where we are now is, If you are born in the United States or a naturalized you are a citizen of the United States, and voting is a right of anyone over the age of 18 that is a citizen, and you cannot have your ability to vote be limited by your race or gender or really any other immutable characteristic per various civil rights acts. The 19th Amendment made poll taxes illegal as well because it is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause in the Constitution.

In order to vote you must register, and that registration is affidavit based, meaning you affirm the statements you are making are true and correct under perjury of law. When we go to vote your name is verified at your local precinct. Currently that is determined in various ways, a picture ID of some sort issued by the state or some other government agency, a credit card with your name on it, or whatever else the State Board of Elections currently determines to be allowable, which could be a utility bill with your name on it for example. The Board determination is current law and will not change when and if SB 2 becomes law.

What SB 2 does is requires someone to show a picture ID in order to vote (kinda, but we will get to that) the picture ID will be based upon what the requirements are to get a Drivers License which is REAL ID compliant. What does it mean to be REAL ID compliant? In short, a REAL ID compliant DL is a machine-readable biometric enhanced (facial recognition) form of identification that adheres to international standards put for by the ICAO a UN affiliated entity. REAL ID compliant DL’s participate in an international program, any country participating in the program would have access to it (Iran, China, Russia, England, France Canada, Mexico etc.). The information required to get a REAL ID DL or other form of ID is to provide to the county circuit clerk (or Transportation Cabinet, and wherever the 12 regional offices will be, because the clerks are having a hard time implementing the program) your social security card and birth certificate, not for verification but also for record retention. With all this information (if the citizen even has or can obtain the information) all in one spot makes it ripe for data breaches by hackers, other governments, or nefarious characters willing to commit identity theft that find themselves employed at government locations that would handle this information (its already happened in other states like New Jersey). Now what makes REAL ID real dangerous is the Secretary of DHS can at anytime determine what other biometric or personal information they want added to the card, either for display or on the machine-readable portion of the card. Two final flaws with REAL ID is that it is administered by a international organization called AAMVA, which went down earlier this month causing DL’s not to be issued for that day. The final flaw is that the vendor that issues the DL’s is Advent International which is partially owned by the French Government, so the French have access to our DL’s and all the information behind them. All information is now available for hacking within these organizations, whereas before each state would have to be hacked, now it’s a one stop shop for identity thieves with multiple access points. While this seems like a long explanation, it truly is the shortest one probably ever given. We were told we need it to fly, because the Feds said so, it costs us more money, it is ID Theft waiting to happen, and all we can do with it is drive and fly domestically, exactly what we did before. One would figure for all these hoops we would at least be able to fly to Canada and Mexico without the use of a passport.

So now that we know what REAL ID is, we can see why they want it as the Voter ID of choice. Not all voters are drivers; however, they do have an ID not for driving that is REAL ID compliant they can issue. Using this ID will make sure that you can maximize those enrolled in the REAL ID program either through a DL or a Voter ID. The other reason they want to use it is supposedly the voter will have to provide their Social Security Card and Birth Certificate, origination documents that can help prove citizenship for a good portion of US citizens. So we would know if someone were able to obtain one of these ID’s it’s a good chance they are a citizen (we will explain later why this is a currently a problem for those that want voter ID, it goes back to the 14th Amendment).

The SSN verification system works based on first and last name cross checking; however, birth certificates are another animal all together. Some people do not have birth certificates, or they are recorded in family bibles, yet they are still US Citizens. Further the birth certificates we do have are not being verified for REAL ID through the Electronic Verification of Vital Events (EVVE), there is no official reason this system is not being used, but one can only assume that it is not being used for several reasons, it is not Federal like SSN’s, it can actually be used to verify if a birth certificate is fake as it hooks up state systems containing birth certificates, and it does not adhere to UN guidelines.

To recap thus far, we are trying to use a REAL ID compliant ID’s as the go to form of Voter ID, an international document, that is vulnerable against identity theft, that has a half-baked way of verifying citizenship. What could go wrong? We don’t really think relying upon a REAL ID form of ID is going to solve all our voter fraud issues, and could actually contribute to them in the long run.

Now we are going to move on to some legal issues. Currently trying to use a REAL ID as Voter ID is a problem. As understood now and implemented by the Federal government, specifically the State Department, has misapplied a Supreme Court ruling regarding Birthright Citizenship. The 14th Amendment states that there are two ways in which someone is a citizen, by birth or naturalization, birth may or may not have a state issued birth certificate, but naturalization will have a document that was generated as a result. In United States vs Wong Kim Ark (1898) a Chinese man was able to have it determined by the Supreme Court that he was in fact a citizen as a result of his birth in the US. However, many who have relied upon this case including our own government has forgotten the AND portion of the 14th Amendment and the Supreme Court’s ruling regarding jurisdiction. Jurisdiction does not mean you are subject to our laws as anyone within our borders are subject to our laws, what Jurisdiction is referring to here is allegiance to the United States over other countries. Wong Kim Ark was born from parents who were legally allowed to be in the United States at the time and who had resided here legally for quite some time.

Now Stay With Us, Its Going to Get a Little Hairy

Remember everyone that seems to be capable of making decisions on this has determined that birthright citizenship doesn’t require documentation and so any Voter ID law cannot require proof of citizenship to be provided in order to exercise the right of voting. We also would have to concur, in many cases, especially for a good portion of our history people have not had these documents. The US is based on God given rights, not government granted rights, and so a government document acknowledging your right to vote would be inconsistent with our founding because you are born with that right. You do not need permit to exercise any other right, or at least you shouldn’t (in many places the 2nd Amendment is seeing some of this and its wrong), so why the right to vote? OK we know that was a lot to take in and contrary to what a lot of people think and feel because of the issue of illegal immigration and other election fraud concerns, but we are going somewhere so hang with us.

The point we are getting at is the US Congress needs to revisit this issue of Jurisdiction when it comes to citizenship. They have clarified it before with Native Americans, and they should do it again. This would put a stop to this concept that an illegal immigrant can cross the border, have a baby, and they get to stay here, and count that child as a US Citizen. The child is not a US Citizen per the Jurisdiction portion of the 14th Amendment, the child cannot have allegiance to any country, it’s a child, their parent’s jurisdiction/allegiance is in question, and a child does not have full legal rights until the age of 18 anyway. The parents of this anchor baby did not migrant to this country in any legal fashion whatsoever that could lead to their child having citizenship, even if they themselves resided here but never became full-fledged citizens. We believe Congress acting to clarify Jurisdiction as intended by the creators of the 14th Amendment this would eliminate the concern of illegals getting involved in our elections because elections should be about what citizens want for this country, not what people that may or may not have US interest at heart want.

If you remember we said that SB 2 kinda requires a Voter ID to vote, and that’s because that’s not the only thing that allows someone to cast a vote. Remember someone can vote using a credit card or whatever else the State Board of Elections requires. SB 2 would allow for this still as well as a college ID, which can have variable methods of citizenship verification, if any. So how on earth does this bill help if it does exactly what the previous law did. What makes this bill actually worse than the current law is it allows someone to cast a provisional ballot if they do not have the preferred ID and then return later in the week to the County Clerk with a any form of ID. How can you even be sure the person that voted and the person showing the ID is the same person? What is different, and good is that they will provide the ID free, thus preventing the Poll tax that would be illegal. However, at the same time the law retains the cost for the ID making the language of the law contradictory to itself, regardless of anything else that needs to be fixed. Here’s the secret the only thing this bill does is provide a REAL ID complaint Voter ID for free in hopes of bolstering the Voter ID Law, but keeps the door open for other avenues, because they know the interpretation is you can’t ask for someone’s papers in order to exercise a right and any law that does so will be in violation of the law and get struck down as we do not operate a Papers Please system in the U.S

So, what solution would we propose, simple, based on the voter registration affidavit we would have the Secretary of State issue a basic photo Voter ID that is not REAL ID compliant like the concealed carry licenses for example. We would also stop the circuit clerk’s office from automatically trying to register everyone who tries to get a Driver’s License, only people that want to participate in the process should register to vote. Automating it at the clerk’s office encourages the possibility of those that should not be voting to get signed up. Nothing excludes within reason the ability to have a voter registration challenged in court under threat of perjury, and the use of the origination documents can then be used to prove citizenship, they just can’t be required to practice your citizenship rights like the right to vote. I know the next item may sound controversial to some, but, all naturalized citizens coming to this country have to swear allegiance to the US, and while the allegiance of a birthright citizen is by default assumed, we see no reason why in the affidavit that you cannot be required to assert that you are under the jurisdiction of the United States Constitution, see we are about being loyal to our country, not our government and who runs it. We see no actual harm in this as you are already required to make several declarations on the voter registration form.

The main concern we have with voter fraud is not from the outside really, but the inside. Democrat Alison Grimes left the Secretary of State (SOS) office a mess. The data is bad and the establishment wants it that way. The current SOS Republican Michael Adams was on the State Board of Elections when all of Grime’s shenanigans went down and when whistleblower came to him, he did nothing, and we do not have confidence he will really do anything to clean up the rolls. Dirty rolls make it easier to manipulate an election and the powers that be like that. Then of course you have local corruption right at the ballot not just massaging of the data. We are not accusing every poll worker everywhere of this, but not every precinct can have observers from each party, and so in some instances the poll workers themselves know the community and know who will and who will not be showing up, dead or alive and vote for them. Also have you noticed that we now have paper ballots but with a REAL ID system we have some precincts using (and more will be soon) tablets to scan your ID/DL at check-in. What is the point of a paper ballot if the check in is digital, putting it in an electronic system allows it to be manipulated? As you can see, we have many problems with our election system that Voter ID won’t even touch.

We know we have laid a lot out here, but this is not a simple black and white issue, we know that people may feel it is, but legally based on a history of a nation it is not. Currently as the bill stands, we cannot support it and we don’t believe it will accomplish what the proponents of it claim it will do. SB 2 needs to have credit cards and other forms of ID removed. Yes it will have legal issues, but we don't need to allow loopholes in our election law, we need to face it head on and take this all the way to the US Supreme Court. However a better solution is there should be no REAL ID compliant ID’s but instead have a free basic Voter ID issued by the SOS/County Clerks upon a voter registration affidavit as this would meet Constitutional muster. An SOS/CC issued ID based on regristration affidavit will not violate a persons right to vote as it is not requiring them to provide origination documents to prove themselves a citizen, but instead is being issued based on the registration affidavit the voter submitted. To further clean up this mess, we need to get the Jurisdiction question answered at the Federal level and we need someone in the SOS office that is not beholding to the powers that be in either party and clean up the voter rolls.

We would like to add one final point. Everyone that is for Voter ID needs to stop saying you need an ID to do this thing or that thing, it’s flawed logic. Those things you are showing an ID for are privileges and voluntary exchanges upon which the parties set the conditions. Voting is not a privilege it is a right, and should be treated as such.

#VoterID #Vote #Elections #REALID #14thAmedment #15thAmendment #19thAmendment #PollTaxes #Jurisdiction #Citizenship #BirthrightCitizenshio #Naturalization #IllegalImmigration #VoterFraud #ElectionFraud #2020LegislativeSession