johnrlott
Dr. John Lott has a brand new op-ed at the Washington Times responding to Democrats’ claims about Republicans being anti-democratic and totalitarian due to their assist for voter IDs and different anti-fraud provisions.
President Joe Biden’s excessive rhetoric in his Georgia speech last week on voting rights retains producing consideration. A lot of the main focus is on him evaluating individuals who assist voter IDs or oppose everlasting mail-in ballots for all as siding with George Wallace, Bull Connor, and Jefferson Davis. However what folks ignore is that if Biden and different Democrats imagine their rhetoric, there are not any democratic international locations in Europe or the remainder of the developed world.
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Biden scolded Georgia for requiring that absentee voters write the final 4 digits of their Social Safety quantity on their ballots. In fact, all People and plenty of non-citizens have Social Safety numbers, however Biden known as this voter ID rule “undemocratic” and that it supposedly proved Republicans imagine “democracy is an issue.” He in contrast Republicans to rulers in “totalitarian states, not democracies.” The enemies should not simply Republicans however even Democrats who oppose eliminating the filibuster. On Monday, Pelosi repeated these claims saying “nothing much less is at stake than our democracy.”
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The U.S. is already an outlier among the many world’s democracies in missing vote fraud safeguards. In research done by the Crime Prevention Research Center, we discovered that of the 47 international locations in Europe as we speak, 46 of them at the moment require government-issued picture IDs to vote. The odd man out is the UK, wherein Northern Eire and plenty of localities already require voter IDs, however the requirement isn’t nationwide. The British Parliament, nonetheless, is rapidly moving to a nationwide requirement, so very quickly all 47 European international locations will doubtless have adopted this coverage.
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For absentee voting, 35 of the 47 European international locations—together with France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—utterly ban absentee voting for residents residing within the nation. One other ten European international locations—together with England, Eire, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain—enable absentee voting, however they require voters to indicate up in individual and current a photograph ID to choose up their ballots. It isn’t like within the U.S., the place an individual can say they are going to be out of city and have a poll mailed to them.
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England used to have absentee voting guidelines just like ours. However in 2004, within the metropolis of Birmingham, officers uncovered an enormous vote fraud scheme within the metropolis council races. The six profitable Labor candidates had fraudulently acquired about 40,000 absentee votes, primarily from Muslim areas of the town. Consequently, England began requiring voters decide up their ballots in individual with a photograph ID.
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Up till 1975, France additionally had free absentee voting guidelines. However after discovering huge vote fraud on the island of Corsica—with lots of of 1000’s of votes by useless folks and even larger-scale vote-buying operations — France banned absentee voting altogether.
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How about our neighbors Canada and Mexico? Canada requires a photograph ID to vote. If a voter reveals up on the polls with out an ID, he’s allowed to vote provided that he declares who he’s in writing and somebody is working on the polling station who can personally confirm his id.
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In 1992, Mexico instituted strict reforms, partly as a result of its leaders had been involved a couple of drop in overseas funding if it wasn’t perceived to be a authentic democracy. Voters should current a biometric ID—an ID with a photograph and a thumbprint. Voters even have indelible ink utilized to their thumbs, stopping them from voting greater than as soon as. And so they utterly prohibited absentee voting.
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Those that oppose election integrity reform right here within the U.S. typically condemn it as “voter suppression.” However in Mexico, the p.c of individuals voting rose from 59 p.c throughout the three presidential elections earlier than the reforms to 68 p.c after. It turned out that Mexicans had been extra, not much less, more likely to vote after they had confidence that their votes mattered.
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The Washington Post defends the present voting guidelines by stating some European international locations enable “proxy voting,” whereby one individual can designate one other to vote for him instead of absentee voting. And whereas it’s true that eight of the 47 European international locations enable proxy voting—which means that 39 don’t—there are strict necessities. In Poland, it additionally requires the approval of the native mayor, and in Monaco, the approval of the final secretariat. In France and the Netherlands, a notary public proxy should witness the approval course of. In 5 of the eight international locations—Belgium, England, Monaco, Poland, and Sweden—proxy voting is restricted to those that certify that they’ve a incapacity, an sickness, or who’re overseas. Switzerland is the one nation in Europe with a comparatively liberal proxy voting coverage, requiring solely a signature match.
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If banning voter IDs and mechanically mailing everybody mail-in ballots are the hallmarks of democracy, will Biden begin castigating Canada, France, Sweden, the UK, and others as anti-democratic, totalitarian international locations?
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