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June 2021

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

America the Outlier: Voter Photo IDs Are the Rule in Europe and Elsewhere By John R. Lott Jr.,

By on June 3rd, 2021

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/06/01/the_us_is_a_voter_photo_id_outlier_theyre_the_rule_in_europe_and_elsewhere_778714.html

Democrats and much of the media are pushing to make permanent the extraordinary, pandemic-driven measures to relax voting rules during the 2020 elections – warning anew of racist voter “suppression” otherwise. Yet democracies in Europe and elsewhere tell a different story – of the benefits of stricter voter ID requirements after hard lessons learned. 

A database on voting rules worldwide compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I run, shows that election integrity measures are widely accepted globally, and have often been adopted by countries after they’ve experienced fraud under looser voting regimes.

Britain is Europe’s outlier in generally not requiring voter IDs, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson aims to change that. He went to the polls in May with wife-to-be Carrie Symonds.
AP Photo/Matt Dunham

Of 47 nations surveyed in Europe — a place where, on other matters, American progressives often look to with envy — all but one country requires a government-issued photo voter ID to vote. The exception is the U.K., and even there voter IDs are mandatory in Northern Ireland for all elections and in parts of England for local elections. Moreover, Boris Johnson’s government recently introduced legislation to have the rest of the country follow suit. 

Criticisms of the British leader’s voter ID push are similar to those heard in the U.S. The Scottish National Party claims his voter ID push targets “lower income, ethnic minority and younger people” who are less likely to vote for Johnson’s conservatives and therefore represents “Trump-like voter suppression.” 

Yet despite such pushback, Britain looks set to follow countries in Europe and elsewhere with stricter voting regimes, few of which temporarily relaxed any of their voting rules during the pandemic.

Seventy-four percent of European countries entirely ban absentee voting for citizens who reside domestically. Another 6% limit it to those hospitalized or in the military, and they require third-party verification and a photo voter ID. Another 15% require a photo ID for absentee voting.

Similarly, government-issued photo IDs are required to vote by 33 nations in the 37-member Organistion for Economic Co-operation and Development (which has considerable European overlap). Only the UK, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia currently do not require IDs.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The New Domestic War on Terror Has Already Begun — Even Without the New Laws Biden Wants Glenn Greenwald

By on June 3rd, 2021

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-new-domestic-war-on-terror-has

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday issued a new warning bulletin, alerting Americans that domestic extremists may well use violence on the 100th Anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. This was at least the fourth such bulletin issued this year by Homeland Security (DHS) warning of the same danger and, thus far, none of the fears it is trying to instill into the American population has materialized.

The first was a January 14 warning, from numerous federal agencies including DHS, about violence in Washington, DC and all fifty state capitols that was likely to explode in protest of Inauguration Day (a threat which did not materialize). Then came a January 27 bulletin warning of “a heightened threat environment across the United States that is likely to persist over the coming weeks” from “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority” (that warning also was not realized). Then there was a May 14 bulletin warning of right-wing violence “to attack higher-capacity targets,” exacerbated by the lifting of COVID lockdowns (which also never happened). And now we are treated to this new DHS warning about domestic extremists preparing violent attacks over Tulsa (it remains to be seen if a DHS fear is finally realized).

Just like the first War on Terror, these threats are issued with virtually no specificity. They are just generalized warnings designed to put people in fear about their fellow citizens and to justify aggressive deployment of military and law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. and throughout the country. A CNN article which wildly hyped the latest danger bulletin about domestic extremists at Tulsa had to be edited with what the cable network, in an “update,” called “the additional information from the Department of Homeland Security that there is no specific or credible threats at this time.” And the supposed dangers from domestic extremists on Inauguration Day was such a flop that even The Washington Post — one of the outlets most vocal about lurking national security dangers in general and this one in particular — had to explicitly acknowledge the failure:

Thousands [of National Guard troops] had been deployed to capitals across the country late last week, ahead of a weekend in which potentially violent demonstrations were predicted by the FBI — but never materialized.

Once again on Wednesday, security officials’ worst fears weren’t borne out: In some states, it was close to business as usual. In others, demonstrations were small and peaceful, with only occasional tense moments.

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EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

DIVERSITY IS GREAT, BUT IT DOESN’T MAKE STUDENTS LEARN BETTER. We have always known this, and if the Supremes take up racial preferences again soon, we need to start admitting it. John McWhorter

By on June 3rd, 2021

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/diversity-is-great-but-it-doesnt

As the Supremes are about to consider taking up yet another racial preferences case – the one about whether Asian applicants are being discriminated against at Harvard in favor of black and brown ones — we are in for the usual round of endless euphemism.

Wise heads will opine as if what we are talking about is administrators working with a pool of applicants of various races with dossiers of equal grades and test scores, hoping to assemble a class reflecting a rainbow of “diversity” from among them. The rub is supposedly that some doodooheads just think it’s plain “racist” to ever make such decisions with race in mind at all.

We will be led to think – or told to pretend to think – that somebody is opposed to there being too many black kids in a class, that they want whites to retain their “privilege” in admissions, that, well … it’s not always easy to glean just what people are trying to get across. But basically, doodooheads think we should just be color-blind, out of some principle hovering somewhere between naivete and bigotry.

We are to take from this that questioning how racial preferences work renders black applicants “unwelcome.”

Just why anyone would have a problem with racial preferences other than this coded bigotry is left gingerly unstated.

If it is acknowledged that racial preference policies entail admitting black students with a lowered cutoff of grades and test scores (italics deliberate – we will return to this) …

.. then it is implied that the lowering is slight, that admitting black students is a mere matter of putting a “thumb on the scale.”

That’s a lie of long standing. I wonder if there is room for an honest discussion of the issue.

* * *

I do not oppose Affirmative Action. I simply think it should be based on disadvantage, not melanin. It made sense – logical as well as moral – to adjust standards in the wake of the implacable oppression of black people until the mid-1960s.

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