
New Poll and Stealing Democracy
New Judicial Watch-Harris Interactive Poll Sends Warning to Washington Politicians
On Thursday, Judicial Watch released the results of a new nationwide survey of registered voters conducted in partnership with Harris Interactive. It concerns the American people’s attitudes on a variety of subjects, including government corruption, Obamacare, congressional insider trading, transparency, illegal immigration, and the Republican primary campaign. This is something we do on an annual basis and every year we get some very interesting results. This year was no different. Here are some quick takeaways: Registered voters consider corruption to be a major problem, support illegal alien law enforcement, and believe President Obama has failed to keep his campaign promise to make government more transparent to the American people. Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, meanwhile, has significant national Republican support, nearly doubling the total of his closest rival, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Registered voters are evenly split on whether the Supreme Court should uphold Obamacare. |
The Judicial Watch survey was conducted by Harris Interactive January 12-15, 2012. (Full survey results, including crosstabs, are available here.) The following are the highlights:
Let the results of this poll be a lesson for all politicians. Voters want to clean up corruption in Washington. The survey also represents a clear warning for Barack Obama who has fallen short on his campaign promise to make government more open and transparent in the minds of the majority of voters. And Republicans should be worried that few Americans trust them to combat government corruption. While the public is evenly split on key issues such as Obamacare, they remain unified in support for more and better law enforcement in the area of illegal immigration. I would expect in the coming months that both parties, recognizing the importance of corruption as a political issue, will pay lip service to the crisis. But what matters is what happens after the elections are over. Unfortunately, there is a mile wide gap between campaign rhetoric on corruption and the on-the-ground reality inside the halls of Congress and the White House. I thought it interesting that the first official commercial of the Obama campaign highlights the President’s supposed ethics record. Without getting into a debate about the accuracy of the ad, this shows that at least the Obama campaign has the instinct to highlight the issue of government corruption as important to the American people. (A note on the survey’s methodology: This study was conducted January 12-15, 2012, by Harris Interactive via telephone landline and cell phone on behalf of Judicial Watch. The survey was conducted among a nationwide cross-section of 871 Registered Voters; 686 interviews were from the landline sample and 185 interviews from the cell phone sample. The sampling error is +/-3.5 percent.) |
JW Exposes White House/Department of Justice Working Relationship with ACORN Group Implicated in Massive Voter Registration Fraud
With the 2012 elections just months away, the ACORN-connected group Project Vote (and Obama campaign ally) is redoubling its efforts to undermine the integrity of the 2012 elections – and they are evidently doing it with the participation of the Obama White House and the Department of Justice (DOJ). In January, Judicial Watch obtained additional documents about meetings held between Estelle Rogers, Director of Advocacy for the ACORN organization Project Vote, and officials from the Obama White House and the DOJ. Judicial Watch is investigating the extent to which Project Vote, which once employed Barack Obama, has been working with the Obama administration to use voter registration laws to register greater numbers of low-income voters, widely considered to be an important voting demographic for the Obama presidential campaign. Judicial Watch was already well aware that the DOJ was heavily involved in this scheme based on documents previously obtained, but the latest batch of records implicates the Obama White House directly! According to the records, obtained by Judicial Watch in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed on August 19, 2011:
These documents raise fundamental questions about the politicization of the DOJ under Eric Holder and demonstrate that the ACORN-connected Project Vote is throwing its weight around the DOJ and driving the agency’s voting rights agenda. And, evidently the Obama White House is now directly implicated in this growing scandal. It is now clear that Project Vote and the Obama/Holder DOJ are conspiring to file DOJ lawsuits to help re-elect Barack Obama. This collusion between Project Vote and the Obama administration is a significant threat to the integrity of the 2012 elections. To have Project Vote involved in DOJ voting rights enforcement is like having the Mafia run the FBI! And Estelle Rogers is one of Project Vote’s key “bosses.” As Director of Advocacy for Project Vote, Estelle Rogers ā a former attorney for ACORN, which was besieged with charges of corruption before declaring bankruptcy in November 2010 ā is a primary contact person on policy matters at Project Vote at both the state and federal levels and has been actively involved in voter registration issues. Using the threat of a lawsuit under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), Project Vote has aggressively sought to manipulate voter registration laws in various states in an effort to increase the registration of people receiving public assistance. On August 4, 2011, Judicial Watch released documents obtained from the Colorado Department of State showing that ACORN and Project Vote successfully pressured Colorado officials into implementing new policies for increasing the registration of public assistance recipients during the 2008 and 2010 election seasons. Following the policy changes, the percentage of invalid voter registration forms from Colorado public assistance agencies was four times the national average. Project Vote also sought a “legislative fix” to allow people without a driver’s license or state identification to register to vote online. In addition to pursuing public agency registration cases in Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia and New Mexico, Project Vote and the NAACP filed a lawsuit on April 19, 2011, against the State of Louisiana alleging violations of the NVRA. Less than three months later, on July 12, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division/Voting Section sued Louisiana on the same grounds, claiming that “Louisiana officials have not routinely offered voter registration forms, assistance and services to the state’s eligible citizens who apply, recertify or provide a change address for public assistance or disability services.” The DOJ’s March 11, 2011, lawsuit against Rhode Island led to policy changes intended to increase the number of voter registration applications processed by “public assistance and disability service officers.” These two lawsuits, filed within five months of each other, are the first such lawsuits filed by the DOJ since 2007. Project Vote and ACORN have both been linked to massive voter registration fraud. A total of 70 ACORN employees in 12 states have been convicted of voter registration fraud. And as documented in a July 2009 report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, of the 1.3 million registrations Project Vote/ACORN submitted in the 2008 election cycle, more than one-third were invalid. (And don’t believe the line that ACORN is dead. As we documented in our special report “The Rebranding of ACORN,” the corrupt organization is alive and well and ready to wreak havoc in the 2012 elections.) A storm is fast approaching in 2012. The integrity of our elections is under attack by ACORN and Project Vote. And it now appears that the Obama administration is complicit in a plot by these community organizations to steal the elections. Trust Judicial Watch to do what it can to uphold the rule of law against this very real challenge to our election system. JW Files Amicus Curiae Brief with Supreme Court Challenging U.S. Census Policy of Counting Illegal Aliens When Apportioning Seats in Congress This next topic goes beyond the integrity of elections – it goes to the integrity of our entire system of government. Are you aware that the U.S. Census Bureau counts illegal aliens when determining how many seats in Congress a state should receive? That means states with large illegal alien populations are now receiving a disproportionate amount of seats in Congress and therefore more power in establishing national policy. Judicial Watch is now involved in a high-stakes legal campaign to put a stop to this unconstitutional policy. Last Friday, we filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the State of Louisiana challenging the current federal policy in which “unlawfully present aliens” were counted in the 2010 Census (Louisiana v. Bryson). The government used these census numbers to reapportion seats in the House of Representatives and, as a result, the State of Louisiana lost a House seat to which it was entitled. Louisiana is asking that the Supreme Court order the federal government to recalculate the 2010 apportionment of House seats based upon legal residents as the U.S. Constitution requires. Judicial Watch, in partnership with the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF), filed the brief on January 13, 2012, in a lawsuit filed by the State of Louisiana against John Bryson, U.S. Secretary of Commerce; Robert Groves, Director of the U.S. Census Bureau; and Karen Lehman Hass, Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. Here’s a brief excerpt from our amicus:
Judicial Watch argues that, due to this Census Bureau policy, at least five states will lose House seats to which they are entitled. For example, based upon the Census Bureau’s calculation, Louisiana is being allocated only six House seats, as opposed to the seven that it would have been apportioned, were it not for the inclusion of illegal aliens and “non-immigrant foreign nationals,” which encompasses holders of student visas and guest workers. The brief also notes that the “apportionment, in turn, determines the apportionment of electors in the Electoral College for the next three presidential elections.” It is the contention of the State of Louisiana, Judicial Watch, and AEF that “the policy of counting unlawfully present aliens in the nation’s decennial census is unconstitutional and undermines both our federal system of government and our democratic institutions,” and is the “direct result of the failure to enforce our nation’s immigration laws.” In other words, the U.S. Census is distorting the democratic process. And the problem is only going to get worse considering the Obama administration’s hostility to enforcing illegal immigration laws, which is causing greater numbers of illegal aliens to flood into the country. You can see how that this failure to enforce immigration law undermines a foundational aspect of our democracy. We are pleased to join with the Allied Educational Foundation to file this amicus curiae brief in support of the State of Louisiana and the rule of law. And we hope the Supreme Court takes up this historic case and vindicates the right of American citizens to have full representation in Washington. Until next week,
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