Eight States Poised To Decide On Citizens-Only Voting Amendments
'Three-fourths of the cities that have allowed noncitizens to vote have allowed noncitizens in the country illegally to also vote,' Jacob said.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) provided "Blaze News Tonight" Thursday with some damning insights into the state of play in Washington, D.C., and into how his Democratic peers are handling President Joe Biden's decrepitude and political collapse. Lee indicated the situation across the aisle has devolved into a truly pitiable state.
Biden has provided ample evidence in recent years that he is not immune to the ravages of time. The 81-year-old Democrat has manifested various signs of cognitive decline in public — confusing countries and family members; speaking to the dead; falling; repeating himself; slurring his words; forgetting critical life events; and relying upon large-printed instructions to execute basic tasks.
As recently as last month, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media were still dutifully painting Biden as mentally fit and competent, deriding critics as conspiracy theorists, partisans, and cranks, and even suggesting that raw footage evidencing Biden's decline were "deepfakes."
However, Biden's presidential debate with President Donald Trump forced a paradigm shift in the mainstream — or at the very least left the American public asking enough questions that the political establishment had to begin seriously considering answers. Biden has not made his defense any easier in recent days by mistaking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for Russian President Vladimir Putin at Thursday's NATO press conference, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris as "Vice President Trump," or relying upon Jill Biden and former President Barack Obama to lead him around.
When pressed by "Blaze News Tonight" co-host Jill Savage about what his Democratic colleagues were saying about Joe Biden, Lee said, "They are referring behind closed doors to this situation and to conversations that they've apparently had to have as a conference within the last hour or two as the 'Weekend at Bernie's' chat."
'A whole lot of them and a whole lot of people in the media should not pretend to be surprised here.'
In the 1989 comedy movie "Weekend at Bernie's," a pair of lowly insurance company employees are invited to their CEO's beach home under false pretenses. Rather than a warm reception, they are greeted instead by the cold, dead body of their boss, Bernie Lomax. For fear of being tied to Bernie Lomax's demise and desiring to live it up in the beach house at the dead man's expense, the duo do their best to make it seem as though Lomax is still alive, manipulating and lugging around his body. The deception is made easier by the fact that many others are blinded by their own desires to similarly exploit the dead man's affluence and amenities.
"This is the reality in which they're swimming," said Lee. "I don't envy them. And yet we do have to remember that — I don't want to say all of them — but a whole lot of them and a whole lot of people in the media should not pretend to be surprised here."
"I think most of us, even those of us who are not Democrats, have seen this for a long time," continued the senator from Utah. "We've seen the president of the United States shaking hands with people who are not there or at least we can't see them. We've seen him getting lost between the helicopter and the residence at the White House. We've seen all sorts of things that don't make sense."
'They're looking for an off-ramp.'
Lee emphasized that there have long been far too many signs of Biden's decline for Democrats now to convincingly express shock.
"I think they have finally started to accept the fact that they've pushed it so far they can't take it any further," said Lee. "They're looking for an off-ramp. What I don't know is where it's going to go and whether that off-ramp is going to be any better or any worse for their chances."
Even if Biden ultimately caves to the demands of Democratic donors and lawmakers to exit the race, his most-discussed potential replacement appears similarly fated to lose.
A YouGov poll conducted days after the Trump-Biden debate suggested that two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would approve of Kamala Harris becoming the presidential nominee. However, a post-debate Reuters/Ipsos poll indicated that Harris, whose approval rating is south of 38% and disapproval rating sits around 50%, still trailed Trump by one percentage point. Five Thirty Eight indicated that when factoring in economic and political issues, Biden still stands a better chance against Trump in terms of picking up swing states and winning the Electoral College than Harris by a 17-point margin.
While the broader conversation about Biden has largely dealt with the man himself, Lee steered it back to the issues with his policies.
"Bottom line is all of this ultimately focuses on the fact that Joe Biden's policies have been an unmitigated disaster. They have inflicted torture on the American people. They have made everything more expensive. The average family has to shell out at a minimum $1,300 a month every single month just to live, just to buy groceries and gas, and to pay for their housing," said Lee. "That's not fair, but this is the predictable, foreseeable, and in fact foreseen result of his failed policies."
"So no matter where they run, they cannot hide from the failed progressive Democrat policies that have put us in this position," added Lee. "And that's really what's on trial, more than Joe Biden's dementia."
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Several witnesses who spoke at a recent congressional hearing refused to say whether voting in federal elections ought to be limited to U.S. citizens only.
On Tuesday, a panel of five witnesses — three brought by Democrats and two by Republicans — appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. If passed, the bill would require federal approval before some changes to local and state election laws could be implemented. Proponents of the bill claim such onerous federal oversight of election practices is necessary to prevent discriminatory voter suppression efforts.
During his designated time, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) asked the panelists to give a "yes or no" response to two questions about federal elections vis-a-vis U.S. citizenship. The first question he posed was: "Do you believe that only citizens of the United States should be able to vote in federal elections?"
Despite Lee's directive that the panelists reply either yes or no, the three Democrat witnesses, representing various left-wing activist groups, refused to give a straight answer.
"We don’t have a position about non-citizens voting in federal elections," said Damon Hewitt, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a "racial justice" legal organization. "We believe that’s what the current laws are, and so we’re certainly fighting for everyone who is eligible under current law to vote."
Lydia Camarillo — president of Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, which seeks to "empower Latinos and Latinas through their vote" — first attempted to sidestep the issue by claiming that "state law" makes those decisions. When Lee pressed her to clarify whether the federal government had any right to determine who votes in federal elections, she replied, "I don’t have a position on that."
Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, similarly weaseled out of answering the question directly: "Federal law prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections, and our focus is on enabling all eligible voters to be able to vote and cast their ballot."
Lee then followed up that question by asking whether people ought to prove that they are U.S. citizens when registering to vote. Again, he received a string of obfuscations.
"I think your first question kind of answers the second," said Hewitt. "Based upon the applicable rules, federal or state elections, what have you, we know we have to follow those rules. The question is what is the impact of those rules?"
Camarillo then tried to deflect by briefly rambling about voter registration affidavits, but when Lee redirected her back to the question at hand, she said with obvious disdain, "It's already redundant in many states, and it's already been asked."
For her part, Lakin asserted that laws requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote are "discriminatory."
The two Republican witnesses — Maureen Riordan of the Public Interest Legal Foundation and Hans von Spakovsky of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation — both affirmed that only U.S. citizens should be allowed to vote and that they should be required to provide documentary evidence of their citizenship when registering to vote.
Von Spakovsky later added that voter ID laws increase voter participation in all racial groups, including blacks and Hispanics. "That's not my opinion," he said. "That's based on turnout data that we now have for more than 15 years."
At the conclusion of his time, Lee lamented that the Democrat witnesses could not agree with the "overwhelming majority of Americans" who want only documented U.S. citizens voting in federal elections. "You have to show identification to board an airplane ... to go to the doctor ... to pick up prescriptions," he said. "Why not voting?"
The entire hearing can be seen here. Lee's time begins just before the 1:19:00 mark.
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