The Facts behind Florida’s effort to ID and remove non-US citizens from the list of registered voters:

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  • Approximately 182,000 potential non-citizens have been identified in a matching process between Florida’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicle (DHSMV) database and the Florida voter rolls.
  • Of these 182,000 potential non-citizens, 2,600 names have been reviewed by Florida’s Department of State and referred for further investigation to the appropriate county supervisor of elections.  The vast majority of the remaining 179,000+ potential non-citizens are still under review of the Department of State and may yet be referred for further investigation.
  • The department is not aware of any eligible voters being wrongly removed from the voter rolls. Meanwhile, several ineligible voters in multiple counties have responded to this initiative by actually contacting supervisors of elections and requesting to be removed from the rolls.
  • More than 1,100 registered voters in Miami-Dade County alone haven’t even bothered to respond to supervisors of elections asking questions about their citizenship status.
  • A person who willfully submits false voter registration information, including false information regarding citizenship status, commits a third degree felony.
  • Claims by some county supervisors that the “data is flawed” are either intentionally clouding the issue or are missing the obvious.  The data provided to elections supervisors should only be considered a tool to assist in removing ineligible voters from the database.  Under no circumstances should the DHSMV data be the sole consideration before removing a voter from the system.
  • It is the county supervisor’s job to protect the integrity of the voter registration database and to prevent non-US citizens from casting an illegal ballot. The Florida Department of State and Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles are working collaboratively to provide elections supervisors with the most accurate data available at the state level, and county elections supervisors should carefully consider the information and take appropriate steps to prevent vote fraud.
  • The State of Florida has asked the Obama Administration to grant access to the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, which is the most reliable database available for identifying ineligible voters and removing them from the system.  To date, the Obama Administration has refused to grant access to the database.
  • After waiting for nearly 9 months for access to the highly reliable SAVE database, with no response from the Obama Administration, the State of has developed a process designed to carefully review the available data, proceed with cases warranting further investigation, and remove voters who are proven to be ineligible.  That careful process is explained below.

 

PROCESS:

  1. Compare  databases between the Department of State and the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to identify people listed as non-citizens in DHSMV’s database that were also included on Florida’s voter rolls.
  2. Upon matching information from DHSMV indicating that a registered voter may not be a United States citizen, DOS conducts an investigation using its available resources to determine whether the information identifying a voter as potentially ineligible is credible and reliable.
  3. DOS then refers that information to a county supervisor of elections for additional review and investigation as needed.
  4. When a supervisor of elections receives information from DOS that a registered voter is a potential non-citizen, the supervisor must initiate the statutory notice and removal process. Potential non-citizens are provided an explanation of the basis for the review of potential ineligibility and an opportunity to furnish additional data to dispute the determination of potential ineligibility.
  5. Ineligible voters are removed from the database only after all of these steps have been completed.  To date, exactly ZERO legitimate US citizens have been reported to the Department of State as having been wrongly removed from the voter rolls.  In short, the process works.

 

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT FLORIDA’S REQUEST FOR ACCESS TO THE HOMELAND SECURITY “SAVE” DATABASE:

  • The most comprehensive database to validate non-citizenship status belongs to the Department of Homeland Security, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. We have requested access to this database since September 2011, but have been denied access by the Obama Administration. Secretary of State Ken Detzner has even personally written DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano for access to the SAVE database.
  • DHS’s SAVE database has up-to-date information that would allow us to confirm many non-citizens, and give supervisors of elections additional evidence they can use to remove ineligible voters.
  • Federal law expressly requires DHS to respond to state inquiries seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual within its jurisdiction for any purpose authorized by law. (8 U.S.C. s. 1373(c)).
  • Additionally, DHS has recently stated that the SAVE database could be used for voter registration purposes. See, e.g., 76 Fed. Reg. 58525, 58527 (September 21, 2011).
  • Yet after nine months of requests, we have not been granted access to that information or any other available DHS database.

 

MORE FROM FLORIDA’S DEPARTMENT OF STATE:

  • The Department of State has a duty under both state and federal laws to ensure that the voter registration rolls are current and accurate.
  • If we receive credible and reliable information, we must act on it.
  • Race or party never factor into the process. The only criteria we are concerned about is someone’s ineligibility.
  • Our focus is on identifying and removing ineligible voters from the rolls because that’s our job and that’s a crucial part to having successful elections.
  • Nobody should be okay with ineligible voters being able to cast a ballot.
  • There is a high probability that non-citizens are on Florida’s voter rolls, but we do not have the ability to know conclusively without contacting every potential non-citizen. While some eligible voters may be asked to provide proof of citizenship, we know ineligible voters will be identified for removal in the process, and this is the only method we currently have to identify these non-citizens on the voter rolls.
  • What if someone is wrongly removed from the rolls?—If at any point someone realizes they have been wrongly removed from the voter rolls, that person can contact their supervisor of elections and be retroactively reinstated and eligible to vote in any upcoming elections. Also, if on the day of an election someone realizes they were wrongly removed, that person would be able to vote a provisional ballot which would absolutely count once they provide proof of citizenship to their supervisors of elections.  TO DATE, NO VOTER HAS REPORTED BEING WRONGLY REMOVED FROM THE ROLLS AS A RESULT OF THIS PROCESS.
  • Why not begin the removal process last year? — Before contacting supervisors, we wanted to know whether the match process was indeed viable and yielding credible information that the Supervisors of Elections could comfortably rely upon.  We determined it was both viable and credible.
  • Why is removing ineligible voters important? –Our year-round commitment to having ineligible voters removed from the voter rolls ensures the integrity of our elections, and specifically prevents the vote of an eligible voter from being diminished by an ineligible voter. Nobody should be okay with ineligible voters being able to cast a ballot.

Information provided by Chris Cate Florida Department of State.  www.dos.state.fl.us

Taming the Beast: Government Laws and Regulations that Usurp Rights

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Back in the 1980’s, some saw the Reagan presidency as being a fulfillment of Orwell’s “prophecy” of government control over the individual: art predicting life.

As it turned out, the opposite was true. President Reagan worked to free the individual as well as business, which opened up one of the longest runs of economic prosperity in American history.

Since the Reagan era we have witnessed a massive expansion of government power and size, with ever- increasing control over the individual.

Big-government statists took advantage of our preoccupation with our everyday lives to usurp individual rights and diminish our liberties.

Under the Clinton administration, we witnessed an attempt to control of the individual in the push to nationalize health care.

The administration claimed that national health care would be good for all Americans, but it was another effort to usurp freedom in the name of personal health care security.

Hillary Care was stopped dead by a handful of doctors, the insurance lobby, and a small number of informed citizens, who exposed the chilling details of government-run health care.  This led to large Republican gains in the 1994 mid-term elections, helped by Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America.

By the late 1990’s, Americans were largely becoming apathetic regarding their rights, but there appeared to be no imminent danger.  Fat and happy, many of us slept.  We slept as the HIPAA law was enacted and regulations regarding our medical information privacy began taking shape.  It was controversial even at that time in that it would set the stage for greater controls over your information.

This law massively increased costs to health providers, with no improvement in access to care or in confidentiality of patient information.

Under President Obama, we’ve seen the federal government engage in wholesale trampling of the Constitution to the point of violating the entire Bill of Rights.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) was written in record time behind closed doors and rushed to passage through Congress with representatives and senators admitting that they had not read the bill.  No Republicans in either house supported the measure.  This law allows government to control all aspects of our individual health care in the name of cost containment and includes:

  • Government ownership of our health records
  • Bureaucratic management of our health (the “death panels”).
  • Diminished ability to select your own physician.
  • Likely physician and hospital shortages
  • Mandatory purchase of government-defined insurance product

In 2012, we saw the National Defense Authorization Act take on a more ominous tone.  This allows the president to imprison any American without due process and effectively suspends Habeas Corpus.  Congress and the president again showed their disdain for the American people by pushing this through behind closed doors.

On March 16, 2012 President Obama signed the National Defense Resources Preparedness Order which effectively gives the president control over all resources of the nation including food, livestock, water and transportation.  All resources can be seized and placed under federal control in the event of a “national emergency!”

Another recent executive order will make any protest in the vicinity of a Secret Service controlled operation or activity  illegal, including when a protected person is attending or participating in an event.  This can be used to stop protests when President Obama is in town campaigning for reelection.

With the passage of the aforementioned laws and the issuance of executive orders diminishing the impact of the first 10 Constitutional Amendments, the government is saying “Your rights are gone, we are in control”.

President Washington said it best when he stated “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

Ronald Reagan added “Government is not the solution; government is the problem.”

With every government “solution,” our rights shrink and government control over individuals increases.

We have a choice.    We can work to elect Constitutional Representatives, Senators and a President to bring the federal government back into line with the Constitution and restore our liberties and unalienable rights.  Returning power to state and local governments is part of this solution.

The Tip of The Iceburg: A commentary

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The Tip of The Iceberg 

President Obama’s accusation of Supreme Court activism has been stunningly and effectively countered.  A three-member panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to “answer by Thursday whether the Obama Administration believes that the courts have the right to strike down a federal law.”  The president has commented on the Trayvon Martin case without facts, inflaming racial distrust and hatred.  He told the outgoing Russian president he will have “more flexibility” after “my re-election.” These incidents are the tip of the iceberg.

What’s happening here? 

The President, a self-described Constitutional scholar (though definitely not a Professor, as the media erroneously report), is fundamentally wrong.   The Supreme Court has asserted, since Marbury vs. Madison, the role of judicial review, that is to judge the constitutionality of a law.  Judicial activism describes the act of a Judge or Justice making law and going outside the limits of the Constitution.

In the Obamacare case, the Supreme Court is well within its scope of responsibility in deciding the constitutionality of a federal law.

In the Trayvon Martin case, the president commented on the death of this 17 year old with no facts to support his position. He injected racism and inflamed a segment of the population.  Rather than leading peacefully and demanding a calm, full investigation, he fuels the very vigilante mentality that he supposedly meant to vilify.

In his now-infamous “open-mike gaffe,” he reveals himself as working to further the agenda of a foreign, hostile power, rather than the interests of the United States.

All of these incidents exemplify the President’s hard left philosophy and community organizer methods.  Divide the country and diminish their trust in the institutions and the Constitution.

President Obama has executed much of his agenda through this type of divisiveness with impunity.  He is also skirting the Constitution with its division of power and system of checks and balances.

He is blatantly trying to divert attention from our horrendous economy (largely due to his failed economic policies), our deteriorating national security, nagging eligibility issues, and the popular resentment against government-run health care.

What does this mean for the coming election? 

This was always the plan: a second term with a pliable Congress and Judiciary to fundamentally transform the government from a republic to a dictatorship.  We’ve been traveling down that “Road to Serfdom” faster over the past three years, though for about 70 years the federal government has steadily extended its reach and control over the individual and the states.

The federal government’s contempt for individualism and liberty hit a crescendo during the Obama administration. Freedoms of speech, association, religion, and private property rights, have all been attacked and the mechanisms put into place to destroy them and subjugate the citizens to the federal government.  Attacks of racism, sexism, and elitism are tools for fomenting discord and dividing the American people.  As the election approaches, Americans of different races, sexual orientations, and income are more disjointed than ever before.

What can we expect should the president win a second term? 

If Obamacare is not overturned, we can and should expect that we will see the death panels formed along with greater access to voluntary and non-voluntary “assisted suicide”.  We can also expect to have the federal government take more aggressive control of our choices in the marketplace.

We can expect an ever greater acceleration of affirmative action and reverse discrimination as evidence by Attorney General Holder’s own statements last week that the affirmative action has only just begun.

We can expect a direct frontal assault on religious freedom in America focused on the Christian and Jewish faiths.

We can expect the ills that go along with moral relativism including more abortion, post birth abortion, and further acceptance of pedophilia and other sexual aberrations.

We can expect a foreign policy that weakens or undermines our allies (Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Eastern Europe) while strengthening our adversaries (Syria, Iran, and mainly Russia).

We’ve seen the administration create a crippling energy policy that is restricting access to Canadian oil (and increasing the price) by impeding the Keystone pipeline effort, restricting drilling on federal lands and offshore. In the latest development, the administration is giving a chain of Alaskan islands to the Russians.  These islands are oil rich and greater in size than RI and Delaware combined.  We can expect ever higher oil prices (also hugely beneficial to Russia and other adversaries) due to this president’s agenda and we may even cede more territory.

We can expect a diminished military capability and erosion of our superpower status due to budgetary cuts, severe reductions in our nuclear arsenal, and overly restrictive rules of engagement that leave our military unable to adequately defend themselves.

We can expect further usurpation of citizen’s basic rights and of our national sovereignty due to treaties such as the law of the Sea and Agenda 21, the UN rights of the Child, and others that subjugate the Constitution. Under a recent executive order, the President has given himself the ability to completely take over the economy, internet and media in case of “national emergency.”

With numerous federal judgeships and two or three likely Supreme Court appointments, the President will be able to profoundly transform the Judiciary and promote the left wing agenda through the courts.

We can expect further consolidation of power within the executive as the Obama names more Czars that have no accountability to Congress or the people.

We need only see what has happened in these three short years to understand that America is beginning to scrape the iceberg.  If we can’t change course on November second, America may sink as quickly as Titanic did.

God Bless America
Lori Hendry
Host “The Red, White and Lori Show”
WWPR 1490AM
http://RedWhiteandLori.com/
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