One party rule in both St. Louis city and county has atrophied the heartland of America. That one party, the Democrat Party, has built a machine lubricated with crony capitalism that bends justice to further its own political ends. We’ve witnessed the effects of this machine on the national stage a couple of times. In one instance we watched as justice was delayed for Kenneth Gladney only to eventually be denied as the Rev. Elston McCowan and Perry Molens were exonerated of assaulting Gladney. In another instance, the University of Missouri St. Louis’s (UMSL) course in Labor Studies seemed to advocate violence as a tactic in union negotiations yet no charges are brought when one of the professors is alleged to have assault someone. Those two cases are emblematic of the crony politics that reaches from St. Louis to Missouri’s capitol in Jefferson City and even to Washington, DC.

St. Louis has a long history of voting irregularities including dead people and pets casting ballots. While the situation has improved, there are still concerns about vote fraud. More worrisome is the collusion between Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s (D-MO) office and ACORN:

A staffmember of the Missouri Secretary of State was directly contacted by ACORN to secretly coordinate a press strategy for the suing of the state of Missouri.

This email thread is the clearest proof that Robin Carnahan was not only aware of, but her staff colluded with Project Vote to sue the state of Missouri, without harming Robin Carnahan.

That suit would provide $500,000 to the left-wing lawyers at ACORN and Project Vote (sister organizations) from the state of Missouri.

Robin’s brother, Tom, does not hold public office, but he did receive $107 million dollars from the stimulus bill to build wind farms:

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If you love the Constitution, Robin Carnahan thinks you are sheep to be led to political slaughter. If you listen to Glenn Beck, she believes she can use that against you to get herself elected.

In this leaked tape made at a fancy, high dollar campaign fundraiser in Santa Fe (a real woman of the people in Missouri, huh?), she explains her cynical election strategy. She espouses an elitist notion that there are enough rubes in Missouri who will vote for anything that says the word “Constitution” such as a Constitution Party candidate.

Another embarassing revelation is the notion that she can help leverage Glenn Beck followers to go along and be part of the 6% she needs. She is clever enough to know that getting 50% of the popular vote is nearly impossible for a hard leftist, especially in a red or swing state heartland state like Missouri. So her path to victory actually relies on 6% of Missourians from Beck supporters to strict Constitutional adherents to vote third party, for her, or not at all so that she can sneak away with the anti-Constitutional remainder of the vote. She elaborates in the tapes that her strategy is to invite debates with the third party candidates to build momentum for their followers to vote for them and chip away at Roy Blunt’s wide margins.

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The latest attack perpetrated by progressive-statists strikes at the republican nature of our constitutional system through the destruction of the electoral college.

No doubt Project Vote, the ACORN spawn and the Secretary of State Project are behind this tyrranical endeavor.  We already know how these groups sought to dilute the vote throught the NVRA and HAVA.  Opposition to Voter ID and a push for Election-Day Registration furthers the agendas of these groups by hijacking the popular vote, especially when the voter-rolls are not purged of fraudulent voters.

We can see the connection between all of these endeavors through the actions of Missouri’s own Secretary of State, Robin Carnahan.  While the current Missouri legislature would never pass the electoral college law being pushed by these groups, Carnahan’s meddling with the state elective process aims at diminishing the conservative vote within the state.  And the DOJ appears complicit in this attack through its failure to prosecute Carnahan for failing to clean the voter rolls, the same rolls she will rely on for her Senate run. (more…)

The 17th Amendment is stupid:

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years….

But let me start at the beginning.  Article I § 3 cl. 1 of the Constitution originally established the election of Senators through the state legislatures.  The Federalist #62 laid out numerous arguments for the Constitutional framework of the Senate and its method of selection.

The senatorial trust, which, requiring greater extent of information and stability of character, requires at the same time that the senator should have reached a period of life most likely to supply these advantages….

Years later, Alexis de Tocqueville made some observations about the Senate in “Democracy in America.”

The Senate is composed of eloquent advocates, distinguished generals, wise magistrates, and statesmen of note, whose arguments would do honor to the most remarkable parliamentary debates of Europe.

We went from great statesmen like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John Calhoun prior to the 17th Amendment, to that of Al Franken.

This man would never have been elected to the Senate prior to the 17th Amendment.  (more…)

In July 2005, the United States Justice Department began investigating Missouri for non-compliance under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).  Justice was not investigating for failure to register voters; rather the problem was too many voters.  About 1/3 of Missouri’s counties had registered voters that exceeded the number of eligible voters.  One county’s ratio was upwards of 150%.  Justice found that the Missouri Secretary of State (SoS) failed to conduct a general program that made reasonable efforts to clean the voter rolls, and filed a lawsuit.

We would presume that Project Vote conducted a study, found that a nefarious plan to dilute the vote of low-income voters was taking place, and filed an amicus brief in support of the government’s lawsuit.  We would be wrong.  Government suits do not generate attorney’s fees under NVRA, but more importantly, SoS Robin Carnahan (D) has close ties to the legions of progressive groups.  And the government did not stand a chance with Judge Nanette Laughrey (appointed during the governorship of Robin’s father, Mel Carnahan, and a former Carnahan aide-de-camp), who, despite her left-leaning tendencies, managed to deliver a summary judgment that would make any strict constructionist proud.  Judge Laughrey writes that Carnahan had no responsibility to actually do anything, other than “coordinate,” which is left up to Carnahan.

Despite the amusement of a liberal judge mimicking a Scalia or Thomas, the district court ruling went too far; even for a panel of judges on the 8th Circuit, composed entirely of W appointees.  There are definitely flaws in the NVRA.  Former Ohio SoS J. Kenneth Blackwell pointed them out rather deftly, and Project Vote has utilized these flaws to further a progressive agenda with ACORN.  The problem with district court ruling is that it clearly was meant to provide cover for Secretary Carnahan.  Even after the 8th Circuit found that SoS Carnahan was still responsible for conducting “reasonable efforts” to comply with the various NVRA provisions, Judge Laughrey white-washed the efforts of Carnahan, belittled the government’s minimal expectations regarding compliance under NVRA, and established a target for Project Vote and ACORN that would be easy prey in later suits.

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Do you remember Katherine Harris?   It is an article of faith for those on the Far Left that in the 2000 presidential campaign, a relatively minor state official “ruined” the hopes and dreams of the progressive movement and ushered in the “worst decade ever.”  The Secretary of State Project ostensibly was started to address the issue of a future Katherine Harris.  Their website states its goal is “to provide an easy-to-use, low-cost vehicle for online donations to reform-minded Secretary of State candidates and incumbents in key battleground states.”  They’re pretending to be a funding vehicle, but this is only one piece of the puzzle.  Only when we examine the broader picture, a combination of the Secretary of State Project, Project Vote, ACORN, The Brennan Institute, etc., do we begin to understand the underlying goals of the progressive movement: a fundamental change in the electoral process to establish the dominance of progressive politics.

It is easy to miss the forest for the trees.  SOS Project’s website is cluttered with information on donations and the various state candidates for secretary of state endorsed by the group.  But when you look at the details of what the project actually does, you begin to see that the group is only one cog of the progressive plan to alter elections prior to the vote.  Whether it be the stated goal “to establish state political committees that will conduct innovative independent expenditure campaigns,” the fact that SoSP’s endorsed candidates have carried the progressive banner across state-lines, the criteria for endorsement by SoSP, or the actual personalities involved, we begin to see the interconnected web of progressive politics.  Don’t be fooled that this is some funding group to put Democrats in position to watch close elections.  This is a broader plan to alter the very nature of our elections.

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