California Dems Rig the Game Against Voter ID
Gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra is leading the charge against Proposition 39, but Attorney General Rob Bonta took the cake by deceptively rewording it.
Nearly everyone knows that men shouldn’t compete in women’s sports. Similarly, nearly everyone supports requiring photo ID and citizenship to vote in American elections. These are 80-20 issues, and most elected Democrats are on the wrong side.
The SAVE America Act is still stalled in the Senate because zero Democrats support it, and a couple of Republicans are antagonistic. It’s not that the legislation is perfect or will SAVE us from every election problem. In fact, the bill should be simplified (read: improved) to require a government-issued photo ID to vote in a federal election. Pass that (without nuking the filibuster, by the way), and move to the next thing.
Congress doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. Which is why Congress doesn’t work.
Anyway, back in June, Michigan Democrat Senator Elissa Slotkin complained that, if SAVE becomes law, “It would be hard for any Democrat in any state to win any election.” In one sentence, she gave away the game. Democrats know what they need to win, and election integrity ain’t it.
With that setup, consider the one-party Democrat stronghold of California, where they already mail every registered voter a ballot and take weeks after elections to count them.
It’s astonishing to remember that Ronald Reagan governed the Golden State from 1967-1975. That might as well be two centuries ago.
The man most likely to become the state’s next governor is former congressman, California attorney general, and Biden administration official Xavier Becerra. (Apologies to Republican Steve Hilton, but you’re not gonna win.) Becerra is pushing hard against a voter ID initiative called Proposition 39, which would require government-issued identification for voters. His problem is that 56% of California voters support it. Some 71% of Californians support requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. California’s constitution lays this out as the eligibility standard but does nothing to require proof, and Prop 39 doesn’t either.
Becerra and Democrat Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas oppose voter ID and plan to convince a decisive number of Californians that they’re wrong to support it.
How? By invoking the Bad Orange Man, of course.
“Donald Trump’s election rigging has no place in California,” Becerra said in a statement. “As Attorney General, I took Trump to court — and won — when he tried to intimidate voters and suppress the vote.”
Rivas joined him. “Donald Trump and his MAGA cronies like Carl Demaio want to make it harder for California citizens — especially communities of color — to exercise their right to vote,” Rivas said in his own statement. “Trump can’t handle the fact that he lost California by 20 points. He’s trying to rig the system and make it harder for you to exercise your constitutional rights.”
Baloney. The only people Trump wants to “disenfranchise” are the cheaters and fraudsters.
Demaio, by the way, is the Republican state assemblyman from San Diego who launched what once seemed like a long-shot bid to get the voter ID initiative on the ballot in the first place. He succeeded because, as even pickled Louisianan James Carville admitted, “We are not going to win the war against some kind of ID.”
Becerra complained about “rigging,” but the person guilty of that is Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat. On Prop 39, he “changed the title and description that will appear on the November ballot,” Politico reports. “The new language emphasizes how citizens would be ‘prohibited’ from voting without government-sanctioned ID and would invalidate ballots that do not comply with identification requirements.”
That’s a rather saccharine description of Bonta’s rigging.
Original title: “Establishes additional voter identification and citizenship verification requirements.”
Bonta’s new title: “Prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.”
He changed the wording of the initiative, too: “Invalidates mail ballots that do not have last four digits of designated government-issued identification number written on envelope. Prohibits in-person voting without presenting government-issued identification.”
Using Bonta’s deceptive language, Democrats are gleefully making it sound like the last four digits of a voter’s Social Security number must be written on the outside of the envelope. That is false, but many voters will believe them.
Language matters a lot on ballot initiatives, and Bonta ensured it’s preposterously and dishonestly slanted toward the Democrat position so as to manipulate voters. Demaio is suing to stop him.
Democrats scream an awful lot about “democracy,” but they do whatever they can to undermine it at the ballot box, even in a state like California where they no longer fear losing.
In closing, I’ll reiterate what I believe is an ideal election: With rare exceptions for legitimate absentees, voting should be in person, with a photo ID, on Election Day.
