Dr. King used non-violent protest, and an appeal to universal principles, to bring Americans together. His birthday should be a holiday that unites us.

Instead, Democrats are using it to divide Americans.

Consider the sermon offered by White House adviser Valerie Jarrett yesterday, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where Dr. King preached. She told the audience: “Teachers, and firefighters, and policemen, whose jobs are now in jeopardy because Congress–well let me be specific–because [of] the Republicans in Congress.”

Those in the audience laughed and applauded at Jarret’s brazen–and false–partisan attack.

Democrats have rewritten the history of the civil rights struggle to portray Republicans as the villains, when in fact most segregationists were Democrats. Republicans, in fact, voted for civil rights laws in greater proportions than Democrats. Moreover, Dr. King himself had been a Republican. Regardless, Dr. King was careful not to divide Americans along party lines in his struggle for justice–nor would he approve of it today.

Another Obama administration official who is exploiting Dr. King’s memory for political gain is Attorney General Eric Holder, who used the holiday to renew his attack on voter ID laws in South Carolina, falsely claiming they are racially discriminatory.

It is Holder, in fact, who practices racial discrimination by refusing to apply voting laws equally, notably in the New Black Panther Party case, an open-and-shut example of voter intimidation.

Holder appears to be coordinating his battle against voter ID laws with the (NAACP), which likewise exploited Martin Luther King, Jr. Day for political purposes. (The NAACP is not non-partisan when it comes to voting rights; it only cares about Democrats, as I learned firsthand last July.)

Dr. King cared passionately about voting rights, but never would have condoned voter fraud, which does occur and which voter ID laws–likewise passed by Democrats, whom the NAACP is not targeting–aim to prevent.

Perhaps most insidious of all is the effort by Democrats and their radical allies in the Occupy movement to turn Dr. King’s legacy into an opportunity to set the “99 percent” against the “1 percent.” That was the message at “Occupy the Dream” services in Chicago, where one incendiary pastor even encouraged people to seize homes.

It is true that Dr. King turned his attention to poverty, in Chicago and elsewhere, in the years before he was brutally cut down. He pushed for an end to residential segregation, and for the introduction of open-housing laws.

But Dr. King would never have advocated theft or violence to property. And though he favored economic redistribution, Dr. King opposed the violent tactics, bigotry and criminality often seen at Occupy demonstrators.

There is no doubt that Dr. King would have seen the election of America’s first black president as a partial fulfillment of his dream. But he would have rejected the divisive rhetoric of the Obama administration, which is stoking class resentment and playing up past racial divisions for political gain.

Attorney General Holder once called America a nation of racial “cowards.” On Dr. King’s birthday, let us celebrate his courage–and ours.

Obama election lawyer Samuel Issacharoff (left). Source: NYU Law School

The left is desperate to quash James O’Keefe’s exposé of potential voter fraud in New Hampshire–and to prevent voter ID laws from being passed and enforced in states across the nation.

On Tuesday, during the New Hampshire primary election, members of O’Keefe’s Project Veritas recorded poll workers from both parties providing ballots in the names of recently deceased voters at multiple polling places across the state.

New Hampshire does not require voters to present photo identification at polling places. The state’s Republican legislature passed a voter ID law last year, but Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, vetoed the measure, and the state senate failed to override his veto.

Left-wing groups and the Obama administration are targeting voter ID laws in advance of the 2012 election. Recently, for example, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder blocked South Carolina’s new voter ID law.

Ryan Reilly of Talking Points Memo (TPM) Muckracker has attacked the Project Veritas sting in an article alleging that “O’Keefe’s allies could face criminal charges on both the federal and state level for procuring ballots under false names.” Citing “election law experts,” Reilly concludes that the undercover video “doesn’t demonstrate a need for voter ID laws at all.”

The media has picked up Muckraker’s talking points (pun intended) and run with them. Salon.com, for example, smugly declares: “O’Keefe has pretty clearly violated the law and TPM reports that a federal prosecutor is reviewing his video. But at least he finally proved that voter fraud is a very real threat….As we all know, once you prove that something is hypothetically possible, it is a factual certainty that ACORN has done it.”

Even the Wall Street Journal fell into step, citing Reilly’s article: “Election law experts say James O’Keefe’s affiliates who got the ballots under false names could face criminal charges, as federal law bans not only the casting of such ballots, but their procurement as well, according to TPM.” Few of the media outlets repeating Reilly’s claims appear to have consulted “election law experts” with different opinions.

Curiously, one of the experts Reilly spoke to is Samuel Issacharoff of NYU Law School.

Issacharoff happened to be on Barack Obama’s legal team during the 2008 election, and assisted John Kerry’s campaign in 2004.

Obama used Issacharoff’s textbook, The Law of Democracy, while teaching at University of Chicago Law School–and Issacharoff thanked Obama on page x of the introduction for his help with the manuscript.

In 2009, Issacharoff regaled an admiring NYU audience with tales from Election Day in Chicago.

Reilly does not provide those highly relevant facts en route to smearing O’Keefe.

Indeed, Reilly may have deliberately sought opinions that would support his evidently predetermined conclusion that O’Keefe’s associates had committed a crime. He sent an email to an election law listserv in which he opined that the sting was “the largest coordinated attempt at in-person voter impersonation fraud,” and asked for comment.

It is unclear whether the experts Reilly interviewed knew more about the Project Veritas sting than he told them. He argues that O’Keefe’s colleagues violated a federal law prohibiting the “procurement” of ballots, even though they left each polling station without voting. However, that law applies to those who attempt to “deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process.” O’Keefe and Project Veritas were trying to defend the freedom and impartiality of that process.

Reilly also quotes UC-Irvine School of Law Professor Rick Hansen, who jokes that O’Keefe should “next show how easy it is to rob a bank with a plastic gun.” The more appropriate analogy is the undercover DEA agent who buys cocaine from a drug dealer to bust an entire smuggling ring, or perhaps the “white hat” computer hacker who highlights the security flaws of a computer system in the hope that they will be fixed.

Reilly quotes another professor, Henry Brady, who serves as Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC-Berkeley: “Yes, this shows it’s possible to do what they did but you have to ask yourself… how many illegal immigrants would risk a jail term to vote illegally?” In fact, in one recent example in Illinois, two Iranian non-citizens were prosecuted after having voted fraudulently for years, and now face possible deportation.

The enthusiasm with which left-wing media have rushed to accuse O’Keefe of voter fraud–while denying that voter fraud is a problem–is laughable. Reilly even admitted, in an interview with Current TV’s David Shuster, that “New Hampshire doesn’t have, like many other states, make you actually sign a piece of paper when you accept your ballot, so that’s something that could potentially have prevented this as well. They do have some lax rules…” (5:51 to 6:05 below).

Al Sharpton of MSNBC devoted an entire segment to accusing O’Keefe of committing fraud–”He actually increased fraud in the state by 1200 percent to try to prove there was a problem that didn’t exist”–deliberately obscuring the point of the Project Veritas sting, which was to show the potential for voter fraud in the absence of photo ID requirements.

Last night, a furious Gov. Lynch called for the investigators to be “prosecuted to the full extent of the law, if in fact they are found guilty of some criminal act.” (Normally, people are prosecuted before being found guilty.) Last July, in explaining his veto of the voter ID law, Gov. Lynch had claimed: “There is no voter fraud problem in New Hampshire. We already have strong elections laws that are effective in regulating our elections.”

O’Keefe’s real “crime” is blowing the whistle on the weaknesses in an election system that does not require voters to prove their identity. Though Project Veritas showed that it was as easy for Republicans to cheat as Democrats, the left knows which party benefits most from the status quo. That why they’ve made O’Keefe–not voter ID–the issue.

On January 3, Media Matters for America (MMfA) linked, among others, a Big Government item by J. Christian Adams to support its mischaracterization of a Fox News segment on South Carolina’s contested voter ID law.

MMfA cherry-picked a small portion of Adams’s post, while ignoring the bulk of Adams’s argument solidly refuting MMfA’s own weak defense of Attorney General Eric Holder, thereby obscuring his criticism from their readers.

Emphasis via MMfA:

In a January 3 segment on Fox News’ Fox & Friends, correspondent Jim Angle promoted a number of falsehoods and misleading claims about voter ID laws and the Department of Justice’s action preventing one such law from being implemented in South Carolina.

Even Vote Fraudster J. Christian Adams Calls The Analogy “Silly And Constitutionally Incorrect”

Adams: Arguments “Flimsy” Since “The 15^th Amendment Is In Play When It Comes To Voting.”In a BigGovernment.com piece attacking the DOJ’s letter, J. Christian Adams wrote:

What Adams did was provide several solid arguments as to why Holder’s DOJ appears to be contesting the South Carolina law based largely upon misperceptions and fuzzy math for political reasons. Media Matters neglects to point out that Holder’s DOJ used out-dated data, grossly inflating any potential problem in South Carolina. They also repeatedly highlighted a 20% number already exposed as a math gimmick aimed at making the issue appear to be far more significant than it may actually be.

Likewise, the DOJ also turned its nose up at the late breaking development that the data were wrong. The state of South Carolina discovered that the election commission had provided data that probably included tens of thousands of people on the voter rolls who moved out of state. That explains why they had no driver’s licenses but were still on the voter rolls. Instead of waiting to review the new data, DOJ rushed its objection out the door. A credible operation, not interested in scoring political points, would have waited to review the correct data.

More on that issue here:

Apparently South Carolina thought that the numbers seemed off, too. According to this eye-opening interview with South Carolina’s Attorney General Wilson, the state did an audit and found that that group of 239,000 included 37,000 people who were deceased, 96,000 who had moved to other states, and other discrepancies.

Wilson claims that the actual number of people without DMV-issued ID is actually about 27,000.  (It should be mentioned here as an aside that South Carolina has made extensive provisions for those people who don’t have ID, including being able to obtain the ID free and even offering free rides to the offices issuing ID).

Even with exaggerated, out-dated data, the reported differences between minority (10%) and non-minority (8.6%) voters without photo ID are miniscule: a 1.4% difference. (Another way of putting it would have been to say that 90% of minority voters have the required ID, and 91.4% of non-minority voters do.) By manipulating these proportions, DOJ, with the help of the media and MMfA, spun that into a 20% difference.

DOJ: South Carolina’s Data Indicate Minority Registered Voters “Nearly 20% More Likely To Lack DMV-Issued ID Than White Registered Voters.”

In other words, according to the state’s data, which compare the available data in the state’s voter registration database with the available data in the state’s DMV database, minority registered voters were nearly 20% more likely to lack DMV-issued ID than white registered voters, and thus to be effectively disenfranchised by Act R54’s new requirements.

The Media Matters attack on Fox is based upon little more than data manipulation, selective quotation, and incomplete facts deployed in defense of the hapless Eric Holder and his politicized DOJ.

AP Photo

The Obama DOJ Ignores South Carolina’s Correct Data

First, let’s look at the data that the DOJ knows is incorrect.

The figures that the DOJ using were based on an initial report from South Carolina that 239,000 people were a) registered voters and b) didn’t have DMV-issued ID. The breakdown is that 10% of black registered voters and 8.4% of white voters don’t have that type of ID. Even at a cursory glance, those numbers seem high. That’s the ID you use to open a bank account, buy a beer, board an airplane or 100 other things.

Apparently South Carolina thought that the numbers seemed off, too. According to this eye-opening interview with South Carolina’s Attorney General Wilson, the state did an audit and found that that group of 239,000 included 37,000 people who were deceased, 96,000 who had moved to other states, and other discrepancies.

Wilson claims that the actual number of people without DMV-issued ID is actually about 27,000.  (It should be mentioned here as an aside that South Carolina has made extensive provisions for those people who don’t have ID, including being able to obtain the ID free and even offering free rides to the offices issuing ID). The Obama DOJ was informed about that other data and intentionally rushed through a decision based on the faulty data–another indication of the administration’s political agenda.

So the real number of people who are registered to vote and don’t have a DMV-issued ID is actually a fraction of the number that the DOJ used. The DOJ was well aware of this, so they have a Holder Math ace in their sleeve;:the smaller numbers will actually allow them to distort reality even further.

How The Holder Math Trap Works

We don’t know what the final tally will be, so I want to emphasize that I’m making up the following numbers to illustrate the ruse here. Actually, almost any lower numbers you use would show the same result due to the effect of the Holder Math trick; lower numbers yield a higher “faux disparity,” like the 20% number that the DOJ and its allies in the press toss around. I’ll mention again that this is explained in Part 1 of this series–much of what you’re about about to read won’t make sense if you haven’t read that first.

As a reminder, the incorrect data the DOJ used was 239,000 voters without DMV-issued ID. 10% of black voters, 8.4% of white voters. That’s a real disparity of 1.6% but the DOJ called it 20%. Why? Because in Holder Math, 10 is 20% larger than 8.4–numbers that are mathematically accurate but totally misleading.

(10 / 8.4 ) – 1 = .19 – or 20% faux disparity

(Note : the DOJ rounded 19 up to 20 because why not?)

What would happen if the real numbers were that 3% of black voters don’t have DMV-issued IDs and 2% of white voters don’t have DMV-issued IDs? These numbers would clearly indicate LESS real disparity. Instead of the (already small) 1.6% difference based on the larger and incorrect data, there’s an even smaller 1% difference. And the number of people without currently issued IDs is smaller, too–indicating that fewer people would have to get IDs. So, in every way that would seem to argue against the DOJ’s case. Fewer people, less real disparity.

But if we use Holder Math, this scenario shows a 50% faux disparity.

(3 / 2) – 1 = .5 – or a staggering 50% faux disparity!

What if the numbers of voters with no DMV-issued ID was REALLY small? Let’s say we discovered that the number of blacks with no DMV-issued ID was 1.4% but the number of whites with no DMV-issued ID was 1%. Now we’re down to a .4% difference and only dealing with a very small slice of the population. It doesn’t matter, thanks to the miracle of Holder Math!

(1.4 / 1 ) – 1 = .4 – a stunning 40% faux disparity!

This demonstrates the complete fraud that the DOJ has perpetrated with its “20%” figure by using the total irrelevant ratio of two numbers. The numbers are going to get lower, the Department of Justice knows it, and they’ve set up a formula that will allow them to spin the lower numbers in an even more misleading way.

This is exactly the sort of semi-complex issue that citizens need the press to help them sort out. When the government perpetrates a sneaky fraud like this on the public, the people rely on the news media to expose it. As we’ll see in the next part of this series, the media is providing cover for the Obama administration instead.

This entire scam – there’s no better word for it – is based an interesting but totally irrelevant math quirk; when numbers are small, the difference between them is larger.

An Easy Math Trick

To understand the math behind this, let’s start simply and look at two very small numbers – 1 and 2.

If you had one dollar and I had two dollars, I have one dollar more than you. However, if I wanted to try to impress someone, just telling them that I was a dollar wealthier probably wouldn’t work. In an effort to sound more impressive, I could find a way to pump myself up by claiming that I had twice as much money as you. It’s true, of course – 2 is twice as much as 1 — but just knowing that I had twice as much money as someone else doesn’t really paint the whole picture.

If I want to get extra-fancy, I could also say “I have 100% more money than that person.” This is saying the same (misleading) thing as “I have twice as much” in a slightly different way. There’s a simple equation for determining this percentage difference for any two numbers.

(X / Y) – 1

So in this case, ( 2 / 1 ) – 1 = 1.

To get the ‘percent’ we just move the decimal point to the right two times and we get 100%.

Here’s the quirky part — as numbers get bigger, this difference decreases. Now imagine that you have $100 and I have $101. I still only have one dollar more than you but because the numbers are larger, I can’t pull my ‘twice as much money’ claim trick. In fact, I only have 1% more money than you.

(101 / 100 ) – 1 = .01.

Move the decimal and you’ll see that 101 is 1% more than 100. And of course, saying ‘I have 1% more money‘ doesn’t sound that impressive.

In both cases, I only had one more dollar but the lower the numbers, the more impressive I can make the difference sound.

Now, in both of these examples, the simpler way to express our financial differences is to say “I have a dollar more than you” or by spelling it all out, such as “I have two dollars and you have one dollar.” The whole bit about ‘twice as much money’ or ‘100% more’ is just a way to obfuscate the truth that I only have one more dollar and it works only when the numbers are low.

Thus ends the math lesson.

This intentional obfuscation is exactly what the Federal Government and the Holder Justice Department did to the people of South Carolina. They used this same mathematical quirk to hide the truth about the actual statistics and the media dutifully repeated the ‘Holder Math’.  Unfortunately, the state of South Carolina was also bamboozeled by this simple math game and failed to expose what the Obama DOJ was up to.

Now that you’re armed with the knowledge that the difference between low numbers is exaggerated, let’s set the record straight.

The 20% Pufferfish

For a wider overview of the problems with the Department of Justice’s objection, you’ll want to read J. Christian Adams’ summary piece published on the tail of the DOJ’s pre-Christmas announcement.  Adams says…

In the objection letter, DOJ said that South Carolina did not meet its burden to prove that photo identification laws did not have any discriminatory effect.  Notice the word “any,” more on that later.  The data show, according to DOJ, that 1.6 percentage points more voting blacks don’t have a driver’s license than whites.  Roughly 10 percent of blacks registered to vote don’t have a photo ID, and 8.4 percent of whites don’t.  That represents a “discriminatory effect” under the statute.

And later in the same article…

The letter (from the DOJ) says “minority registered voters were nearly 20% more likely to . . .  be effectively disenfranchised.”  A difference of 1.6 percent between black and white is now 20%.  This statistical sleight of hand was necessary because the actual difference of 1.6 percent (10% vs 8.4%) was laughable to the public.  Like a puffer fish that bloats its size to scare predators, the DOJ did the same thing with a 1.6% point difference to scare off critics.

Looking at the letter sent by the DOJ to South Carolina, you’ll see that they brought this 20% figure out twice. First they claim…

When disaggregated by race, the state’s data show that 8.4% of white registered voters lack any form of DMV-issued ID, as compared to 10.0% of non-white registered voters. In other words, according to the state’s data, which compare the available data in the state’s voter registration database with the available data in the states DMV database, minority registered voters were nearly 20% more likely to lack DMV issued ID than white registered voters, and thus to be effectively disenfranchised by act R 54’s new requirements.

Later, the Department of Justice reemphasizes the 20% figure…

Moreover, the state did not provide any data whatsoever refuting the fact, demonstrated by the states earlier data, that minority registered voters are about 20% more likely than white registered voters to lack DMV issued identification.

Once the DOJ had decided on this Holder Math ruse, they simply counted on the media to not even question the 20% number but to repeat it. Here are just a few examples of the media playing up the 20% figure…

Here’s Charles Savage in the New York Times – the article makes no mention of the actual numbers of 10% versus 8.4%, just the 20% difference…

In a letter to the South Carolina government, Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney for civil rights, said that allowing the new requirement to go into effect would have “significant racial disparities.”

He cited data supplied by the state as showing that there were “81,938 minority citizens who are already registered to vote and who lack” such identification, and that these voters are nearly 20 percent more likely be “disenfranchised” by the change than white voters.

Here’s ABC News….

“Minority registered voters were nearly 20 percent more likely to lack DMV-issued ID than white registered voters, and thus to be effectively disenfranchised,” Perez wrote, noting that the numbers could be even higher since the data submitted by the state doesn’t include inactive voter.

Here’s Ryan Reilly at Talking Points Memo…again, no mention of actual 1.6 percentage difference but instead playing up the intentionally misleading ‘20%’ figure.

Officials in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division found a significant racial disparity in the data provided by South Carolina, which must have changes to its election laws precleared under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, because of past history of discrimination. The data demonstrated that registered non-white voters were 20 percent more likely than white voters to lack the specific type of photo identification required to exercise their constitutional rights, according to a letter sent to South Carolina and obtained by TPM.

So, since the raw data shows only a 1.6% difference between black and white voters where did Department of Justice poll their 20% figure from?

They relied on the fact that the number 10 is 20% larger than the number 8.4. This is that quirk about small numbers that we discussed at the very beginning of the article. It’s true mathematically that 10 is 20% larger than 8.4 ( 10 / 8.4 – 1) but it’s completely irrelevant

(Actually, the correct amount is 19% but rounding the number up is the least scammy thing here)

In order to really understand just how misleading this is, let’s take the exact same data from South Carolina and express it in a slightly different way. Rather than look at the (low numbers of) people who don’t have ID, let’s look at the larger numbers of people who do . If it’s true that 10% of black voters do not have DMV-issued photo ID, then it’s true that 90% of them do. With white voters, it’s 91.4% who have the ID.

So we have the exact same data represented here but because the numbers are higher, look at the difference. 90 is only 1.8% LOWER than 91.4 because (91.4/90) – 1 = about 1.8%. This is crucial to grasp; it’s equally true to say that 10 is 20% higher than 8.4 OR to say that that 90 is 1.8% lower than 91.4. BOTH are true mathematically but neither one matters.

The difference between the two numbers is completely misleading. Why didn’t the Holder DOJ say that the number of black voters with ID is only 1.8% lower than the number of whites with ID? Obviously, because it didn’t suit their purpose.

The number that matters is that there’s a 1.6% real difference, based on the data used – or to spell it out, 10% of black voters without DMV-ID versus 8.4% of white voters. The 20% figure had to be manufactured for some reason and the obvious assumption is that the DOJ is trying to hide the fact that the real difference is so small. They know public opinion is against them so they used a semi-clever trick to fool the state of South Carolina.

This intentional gaming of the statistics by a legal branch of the Federal government should be deeply troubling.  The fact that ‘respected’ media like Charles Savage in The New York Times, ABC News and Talking Points Memo went along for the ride is very disturbing. And the fact that this ruse was done in order to protect the Obama administration is downright frightening.

Think about three seemingly unconnected news stories, all examples of costly or dangerously indictable fraud machines…

• The economic collapse of 2008 was caused in part by relaxed mortgage rules that allowed borrowers to get a home loan without a down payment or even proof of income in some cases.
• In the Pigford settlement, claimants were able to get $50,000 checks by asserting without proof that they had “attempted to farm.”
• In a move strongly supported by the NAACP and other liberal advocacy groups, the Obama Department of Justice just stopped South Carolina’s plan to put in place some minimal ID requirements for voting. Currently voters in a number of states don’t need to show any photo ID or other identity checks in order to cast a ballot.

All three stories are examples of systems that have been intentionally set up with such low standards that they invite fraud. But ingeniously, they have also been set up in a such a way that makes them almost critic-proof because the lack of standards makes detection of fraud nearly impossible. When the system is questioned, the defenders, creators and beneficiaries then point to the lack of “proof” of fraud as a reason to keep the status. Thus, a self-perpetuating fraud scheme is kept alive as long as possible.

Make no mistake, these scams are costly….

• In the mortgage crisis, politicians got to claim they were helping the poor become homeowners, thus helping to shore up their voter base. Meanwhile the politicians made insider trading profits and eventually bailed out the too-big-to-fail financial institutions. The cost of this one is almost too large to calculate; it helped trash the entire economy.
• In Pigford, politicians (mostly Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus but some Republicans as well) got to claim they were helping black farmers in order to help them win elections. The USDA was able to claim victory without ever solving the underlying problems of racism. Attorneys made tens of millions of dollars.  Taxpayers shelled out billions in fraudulent claims
• In the voter ID clashes, both sides seem to agree that having lax voter ID laws favors the Democrats. Ironically, though, the law that allows the Obama Department of Justice to stop South Carolina voter ID law was forced through by a Republican who wanted to keep gerrymandering to protect GOP seats.

I first recognized the existence of the fraud machine while working on the Pigford story. Defenders of the Pigford settlement would sometimes ask for proof of the fraud, as though I were going to pull out a long list of names with red circles around them and say, “See! Bill Johnson committed fraud! Here’s right here on the list!”

No such proof exists, and I quickly realized the scam; it can’t exist. The system is set up so that almost nobody gets caught. The whole purpose is for nobody to get caught. In the case of Pigford, $50,000 checks were given out to people who claimed that they went to USDA and were sent home with no paperwork. There’s no possible way to prove or disprove such a claim but in Pigford, that’s enough to get you a nice fat check and to get your lawyer a nice fat cut of that check. Who set up the system? The lawyers and politicians who benefit the most from it, that’s who.

Defenders of the system weasel out of arguments by claiming “there is no proof” while ignoring the fact that the very nature of the systems don’t allow for any proof. Sometimes, the proof comes later after the entire system has collapsed (as in the mortgage crisis) or when large disparities are shown in collected data (such as the fact that there are three times more Pigford claimants than there were black farmers) that are impossible to for rational people ignore.

But we’re not dealing with disinterested rational people. We’re dealing with multi-billion dollar scams that keep the establishment firmly in place.

Any system with no reasonable checks is indefensible on its face. The actual incidents of fraud aren’t what need to be proven in order for the system to be criticized.  A system that clearly invites lying, cheating and stealing will probably prove to have plenty once they are exposed but the regular folks falling prey to the temptations of a corrupt systems shouldn’t be the main focus of inquiry. It’s the people who built the indefectible fraud machines who need to be exposed and prosecuted. The small time fraudsters are the grease that keeps the Political Class’s money engine pumping. It’s time for citizens to throw wrenches in these scam systems once and for all.

In the past several years states have increasingly focused on measures to protect the vote. After years of the federal government loosening voting regulations, such as through the Motor Voter Act and HAVA (Help America Vote Act), the pendulum started swinging back at the state level.

The clearest example of this trend is through voter-ID laws. In 2008 the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s landmark law requiring citizens to show that they are the person they claim to be by showing government-issued ID before casting a ballot. But to ensure that those without driver’s licenses or passports are not disenfranchised, Indiana provides free ID’s to everyone who applies for one. The Court upheld this law, with the primary opinion written by no one less than liberal lion Justice John Paul Stevens.

Such laws combat voter fraud that we see on Election Day, especially in certain parts of the nation. In Washington State, King County suddenly “discovered” enough previously “unnoticed” votes for Democrat Christine Gregoire to edge out Republican Dino Rossi for Washington’s governorship in 2004. There are also examples from Wisconsin, Missouri, and other states.

Yet Holder has blocked South Carolina’s voter-ID law. DOJ argues that this law is different from Indiana’s because South Carolina is subject to additional federal oversight under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. (This is especially important because there are several federal cases challenging the constitutionality of Section 5.)

But the reality is that DOJ’s actions are not focused on protecting voting rights. They are instead intended to make sure that Barack Obama wins reelection.

It’s not cynical to say this. The twelve or so battleground states that will decide the 2012 presidential election suggest Obama’s reelection strategy. These states include Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Missouri. All these states have large African-American populations.

The African-American community has a staggeringly-high unemployment rate under President Obama. So Black Americans will not vote for this president because of any prosperity he’s brought to that community. Instead, he has to gin up their votes by painting a picture of racial conflict in which he—and the governmental agency dealing with such things, DOJ—is their champion.

This is also seen in Holder’s incessant playing of the race card. First he says we’re a nation of cowards about race. Now that he’s on the ropes for DOJ’s scandalous Operation Fast and Furious gun-running scandal into Mexico, he has the audacity to say that he and President Obama are being attacked in part because they’re both African-Americans.

Voting is a fundamental right. It is the means by which “We the People” consent to be governed for a fixed period of time by certain individuals, by electing them as stewards of governmental power. They wield this power to secure our rights as set forth in the U.S. Constitution and (for state officials) the constitutions of the fifty states.

But there is another voting right. It is the right not to have your legal vote diluted by fraudulent votes. As we explain in our Yale Law & Policy Review article “The Other Voting Right,” every invalid vote cancels out one valid vote. Each such cancellation undermines our democratic republic and reduces the legitimacy of election results.

Voting is also unique in that it might be the only right that is also a duty. It’s not too much to ask for citizens to exert a minimal amount of effort to fulfill reasonable regulations to protect the integrity of the electoral process.

Every eligible citizen has a duty to vote. But as we explain in our book Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America, it is a duty to cast an informed vote. Although there are only so many hours in the day, we each need to make an effort to gather enough information to understand the major issues facing our nation, state, and community, and to carefully vote for candidates who offer the best solutions for our long-term safety and prosperity.

Because voting is a duty, and also because every voter has the right to ensure their valid vote is not diluted by fraudulent votes, citizens can be expected to fulfill certain requirements that would not be justified when exercising other rights, such as free speech or the free exercise of religion. Measures such as showing up at the correct place on the correct day to cast a ballot under the watchful eyes of trained precinct personnel are examples of fulfilling our duty, as is showing valid ID to prove that you are the person listed on that precinct’s voter rolls.

These measures are essential to our self-governing republic. As examples the world over show, losing the integrity of the electoral process is a mistake a free people often gets to make only once.