Truing the vote: Maryland bills of interest

By Cathy Keim.

I received a mass email from Delegate Neil Parrott a couple of days ago and he mentioned a Voter ID bill that he was introducing this session. I decided to check out what voter integrity bills were listed so far. There were three that were particularly interesting to me.

The first one concerns Voter ID (HB1017) and is sponsored by Delegate Neil Parrott. Among the co-sponsors are our own local delegates, Mary Beth Carozza and Charles Otto. Its summary reads:

Requiring an election judge to establish a voter’s identity and verify the voter’s address if the voter seeks to vote a regular ballot; requiring an election judge to qualify a voter by requesting the voter to present a current government-issued photo identification; requiring an election judge to authorize an individual to vote a regular ballot; allowing a voter who is unable to present a specified form of identification to vote by provisional ballot under specified circumstances; etc.

It is just common sense that we should know that the person voting is who he says he is. While this is less of a problem in Wicomico County where the election judges are likely to know you by name, it still encourages the citizens’ confidence in the system when they know that IDs are checked. The bill includes a provision for the citizen that forgets their ID to still vote provisionally. They can provide the ID after the election.

HB1076 concerns proof of citizenship to vote and is also sponsored by Delegate Parrott. The summary reads:

Requiring individuals who apply to register to vote after June 30, 2015, to submit proof of United States citizenship; providing that individuals who are not citizens of the United States are not qualified to be registered voters; requiring an applicant for voter registration to submit specified documents or information to prove United States citizenship; etc.

Currently, when a person registers to vote in Maryland, the Voter Registration Form has a two-part question:

Are you at least 16 years old?  Yes No
Are you a U.S. citizen?  Yes No

IF you answer NO to either question, do not complete this form.

It clearly states in bold letters to not proceed if you are not old enough or are not a citizen. That is the only thing that keeps a non-citizen from registering. The local board of elections cannot check an applicant for citizenship and now the Washington Times reports:

President Obama’s temporary deportation amnesty will make it easier for illegal immigrants to improperly register and vote in elections, state elections officials testified to Congress on Thursday, saying that the driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers they will be granted create a major voting loophole.

But don’t worry:

Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Democrat, said he doubted illegal immigrants would risk running afoul of the law — which could get them deported — just to be an insignificant part of an election. (Emphasis mine.)

Never mind that we have an elected public official denigrating the responsibility of each citizen to vote. How can he be sure that it is an insignificant number? It could certainly be enough to swing close elections, especially on the local level. Every illegal vote cancels out a legitimate vote.

The final bill of interest is HB253, sponsored by Delegate Pat McDonough. The summary reads:

Requiring the State Board of Elections to execute a memorandum of agreement to participate in the Interstate Crosscheck Program for purposes of identifying possible duplicate voter registration records and instances of individuals who voted more than once in the same election; requiring the State Board to utilize the data obtained through the Interstate Crosscheck Program for specified purposes; etc.

This bill makes great sense. We have our own local evidence that some citizens break the voter laws. Wendy Rosen was the Democrat candidate for Congress in Maryland’s 1st Congressional District in 2012. She had to withdraw when it was discovered that she had voted in both Florida and Maryland in the 2006 and 2010 elections. She pleaded guilty and reached a plea agreement for five years of probation and a $5,000 fine for her illegal voting. It is unlikely that this would have been discovered had she not been a high profile candidate.

No matter how valid the concerns of the citizens of Maryland that their elections are not being protected by reasonable precautions, the Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee are likely to agree with another Democrat quoted in the same Washington Times news article:

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting member of Congress, accused Republicans of an effort at voter suppression.

“The president’s executive order gives immigrants the right to stay — immigrants who have been here for years, immigrants who have been working hard and whose labor we have needed,” Ms. Norton said. “The Republicans may want to go down in history as the party who tried once again 100 years later to nullify the right to vote. Well, I am here to say they shall not succeed.”

This is the usual method that is used to avoid addressing the real concerns of voter integrity. First, Ms. Norton says that the immigrants have been here for years and that they have been working hard – neither of which are necessarily true, then tops those with the winning claim about needing their labor. We have millions of Americans out of work and yet we need illegal immigrants to do those jobs? Then she switches gears to decry the Republicans as the party who wants to nullify the right to vote. Excuse me, but wasn’t it the Democrats that were in charge when black citizens were being excluded from voting by Jim Crow laws?

Since the voter fraud deniers cannot come up with valid reasons not to secure our voter integrity, they just lie about our history.

It is unlikely that these voter integrity bills will pass because there are too many people in power that are committed to blocking any and all reasonable measures.  That alone should make you wonder why?

Make the case for the First Amendment

by Cathy Keim

Last Sunday I was flying home from the west coast and happened to sit by a professor from a major university whose specialty was First Amendment Studies. I usually immerse myself in an exciting book to make the time pass, but this trip the book was not so compelling and he ran out of LA Times crossword puzzles that he had apparently collected for the trip. When we got around to owning up to what we did, he demurred from being quoted on a blog, but was happy to discuss issues off the record.

Since he teaches courses on the First Amendment, I had to inquire about the Charlie Hebdo massacre in France. He assured me that we are very different in America and would not back down over cartoons, adding that he had shown them to his classes. I pointed out that many American media outlets refused to show the cartoons, saying that they were offensive. I also brought up the previous Danish cartoon riots in 2006. Despite his assurance that things were different in America, I had to mention that Yale University Press published a book in 2012 about the Danish cartoons, but would not include the cartoons in the book! That doesn’t come off as a profile in courage.

So, how are we to handle speech or art that is offensive to others? As a Christian, I would prefer that we all love our neighbor as ourselves and refrain from antagonizing them. That sounds like self-censorship – and it is – but it is done out of respect, not fear.

Political correctness is the opposite of self-restraint due to respect for others. Political correctness is bending to a powerful coercion that will punish you if you resist. We have seen this take place when people lost their jobs for not having the politically correct view on marriage.

Once decisions are being made to restrain our speech or art due to fear of reprisal, then the only way to combat this is to increase free speech. The professor was adamant that when ideas are pushed underground due to fear, then they only bubble up later.

If all the media stood shoulder to shoulder and ran stories showing a picture of Mohammed, then the point would stand that in the West, pictures can be published. The media did not have to all publish the same picture. It could be a tasteful portrait instead of the cartoon if you did not find satirical cartoons your style.

At the same time that we were flying across the US having our discussion, thousands of Muslims were protesting in London over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

A leaflet issued by the Muslim Action forum (MAF), who organised the rally, said recent republishing of cartoons, caricatures and depictions of Muhammad by satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and other publishers is a “stark reminder” that freedom of speech is “regularly utilized to insult personalities that others consider sacred.”

We need to have an open discussion of this idea. This is not a time for self-censorship, but rather it is time for each of us to publically speak up. Political correctness has brought us to the point of not being able to accurately address the situation. The only cure is to let free speech increase.

The professor encouraged people to consider the political cartoons that have been present in America from it very beginnings. They were not timid, nor respectful of their targets. We have a long history of making points with satire and humor.

The First Amendment is under attack on many fronts. The LGBT movement, the Muslims, feminists, and the IRS are among a few of the groups trying to stifle free speech. When the IRS refused to grant 501 (c)(4) status to conservative groups, they effectively throttled their ability to speak out in the public forum by intimidating these groups and reducing their fund raising efforts which were to be used to advance their political ideas.

How many conservative activists have been called racists, bigots, haters, and homophobes for pointing out that our federal government is a bloated monster that exceeds its constitutional restraints repeatedly?

Rather than replying in anger, or getting defensive, instead go on the offense by presenting Judeo-Christian based Western Civilization in an appealing way. Know your narrative. Remember that if you cannot change the liberal dominating the conversation, then you may well present some new ideas to the other people in the social setting. Fight bad ideas with good ideas. We have the advantage of telling the truth. Make the case for liberty.

Common Core: where it is and what can be done

By Cathy Keim

Hello to the monoblogue readers! I am happy that Michael has agreed to have me join him on monoblogue from time to time. My interests are varied, as are Michael’s, but I can assure you that I will not be stepping on his toes by writing about baseball or the local music scene! I do hope to bring up topics for discussion and perhaps share ideas of ways to improve the situation or to take action.

My core interests are life and family, as I believe that we each are created in the image of God. We have unalienable rights from our Creator of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The family is the best way to equip our citizens to function in our republic.

To that end, I spent over twenty years homeschooling my five children until they went away to college. I took their education, both academic and moral, as a serious endeavor. Now that they are launched, I have time to work on my interests in other ways, such as writing about policies that affect our community and families both nationally and locally.

Last week I was at the 26th annual Educational Policy Conference presented by the Constitutional Coalition in St. Louis, Missouri, a forum where many issues were addressed, including Common Core. The speakers pointed out serious problems with Common Core, from the data mining concerns to the unbalanced history standards and the frustrating math.

I hope to cover some of the different areas over my first few posts, but first I wanted to mention Brion McClanahan, PhD, who took us on an historical romp to explain one reason why our representatives in DC do not listen to us. (As a small world note: Dr. McClanahan graduated from Salisbury University in 1997 with a B.A. degree in History.)

When our Founding Fathers were working on the design of our government, they originally decreed there be 40,000 people per each representative in Congress. George Washington intervened and got the number reduced to 30,000 to 1 because he felt that 40,000 was just too many.  As the country grew, new representatives were added until the Congress capped it at 435 representatives. Because of that cap, here in the First Congressional district in Maryland we have 662,000 citizens for one congressman. No wonder it is hard to get your voice heard!

Our Federal government was designed to handle a limited amount of responsibilities such as national defense, but with the wildly expanded government overreach not only do we have Congressmen representing on average 735,000 citizens, but they are also legislating in a myriad of areas that they should not be touching.

If, for example, we returned education to the states and preferably to the county level, then we would have a greater opportunity for community oversight. In every organization there comes a point when it becomes so large that it can no longer function effectively. It is extremely difficult to make one size fit all when you become a country as immense as ours. Hence, my lack of enthusiasm for Common Core stems from my skepticism that we will be well served by anything that unwieldy, as much as my innate repugnance to the many egregious problems embedded in the standards.

One of the more disturbing topics was “Data-mining Your Child: Building and Using the Psychological Dossier.” Jane Robbins, an attorney and senior fellow with the American Principles Project in Washington, D.C., explained how Common Core is about attitudes, mindsets, and dispositions, and not about educating your child. The goal is to track each child from pre-school until they enter the workforce so they will know how their minds work. The Federal government is prohibited from having a national student database so they are doing an end run around that by having each state build an identical system. The system is designed to track social and emotional learning rather than academics because that is more important for creating a good worker.

As one parent noted, the schools are now teaching what used to be taught at home and we now teach our children what the school taught. Teachers are assessing students’ attitudes towards learning, cooperation on the many group projects, whether the student is frustrated while learning, and many more subjective measurements which result in hundreds of data points for each child each year. Teachers are not trained social workers or psychologists and are not prepared to assess subjective opinions on each student that can then potentially be used inappropriately. The data is not protected for privacy by HIPAA-style laws. And although we are told that the data is stripped of identifying markers, we also know that it is impossible to collect thousands of data points on each student over many years without being able to track it to assure that it goes into the correct student’s file.

So, here we have one more blog post about the horrors of Common Core. What can you do about it?

You can make your complaints known loudly and clearly to every person you meet. Explain the problems and concerns that you have. Let’s educate those around us so that they can understand what is at stake for their children and grandchildren. At the federal level, inform your Congressman and Senators that they need to remove themselves from the education business. Since this is the beginning of the Presidential primary season, we need to be pushing the candidates to take a stand on Common Core. For example, Jeb Bush is a big mover behind Common Core. Make that stick! There are plenty of parents that are upset about Common Core – let’s use that anxiety to mobilize parents to demand that the federal government get out of education.

Governor Hogan said during his campaign that he wanted to put a pause on Common Core. However, Maryland State Superintendent of Schools Lillian Lowery is a supporter of Common Core. To opt out of Common Core, Hogan would have to replace enough state school board members to vote Lowery out of the superintendent position. Additionally, Maryland is a member in the Partnership for the Assessment of the Readiness for College and Career (PARCC), one of the two consortiums created to make tests for Common Core. He has to state within five months of taking office if he plans to continue his predecessor’s commitments, so the clock is running. If we want to stop Common Core in Maryland then the citizens are going to have to push very hard to make certain the governor takes on all this heavy lifting. No politician is going to exert themselves unless they have huge pressure forcing them into action, especially when the money and power is on the Common Core side.

The best chance we have to stop Common Core on a federal level is to make it a huge issue in the presidential primaries and on the state level we must give Governor Hogan the cover he needs to take on a behemoth that has already entrenched itself in our school system over the past two to three years.