Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
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smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for
your support. Before I get to my next topic, just
a couple of messages here about the previous hours topic
about the woman who had her car stolen. Her dog
was in the car. Dog's name is Julio. Police found
the car, arrested the juveniles that stole it, but she
still doesn't ever dog back, and the juveniles are being
protected by the quote justice system. They were immediately released,
and they've been taunting her on text messaging and such,
trying to extort her for the return of her dog.
And I don't understand why this isn't probable cause to
go hit their house and get the dog back. Like
to me, that's probable cause they had the car, they
stole the car. You caught them with the car. You've
charged them with that, and now they've got messages that
they've got the dog. So anyway, so some of the
messaging on this, Dennis said, I wish the lady with
the stolen dog would find a way to make public
the judge's name that refuses to prosecute the kids and
or their parents to return her dog and cease with
the harassment. I for one, would like to know the
jerk's name that wears the black robe. Yeah. Same, Yeah,
maybe your cell phone number was on the dog's collar.
Jay says, that's how they're taunting her. But yeah, I
don't know. They probably got her number off of the
police report, right, because she, as an adult, is the victim,
and as an adult, her information is public record, and
they fill in all that stuff, her address, her phone number,
all of it. It's on the police report, and their information
is all blacked out. It's all redacted because they're juveniles.
And so now they have free reign to torment her,
to further victimize her. Got a message from Russ I
have some ideas on how to address this situation with
the woman's dog. Unfortunately, they aren't very due processing. John
Wick did nothing wrong. We've missed the balance between rights
and empathy and justice and correcting unwonted behavior. An officer
friend told me he encounters the same juveniles all the time.
One he personally arrested five times in one week. Another
twelve year old was breaking into cars at an apartment complex,
talked trash the whole way to the police station, calling
him a weak bleep. Nothing you can do to me.
You're wasting both our time taking me in, et cetera,
et cetera. I have no doubt they know the system.
They know the system better than a lot of people
that work in the system, and they know where all
the pressure points are. They know where the loopholes are.
It is not a coincidence that the massive spike in
juvenile crime has occurred in the wake of quote reforms
that made it virtually impossible to incarcerate or to punish juveniles.
If you want to live like a criminal, then society
needs to treat you like a criminal. But Pete, they're
just children. They are criminals. If there is no risk
to doing the behavior, they will continue doing the behavior,
and you will lose the city, you will lose the society.
We will not live in a society where we are
prey to these predators. Let me shift gears down. The
Justice Department announced today that it has filed a lawsuit
against the State of North Carolina and the North Carolina
State Board of Elections. So the federal DOJ suing us
for failure to maintain an accurate voter list in violation
of the Help America Vote Act. Finally, finally, turns out
we just needed a new president, right. We didn't need
new laws. We needed somebody to enforce the laws. You
can pass all the laws in the world, and it's
not going to matter if you do not enforce them.
There's no reason. This classic example of this was Charlotte's
ordinance on the bathroom access for transgenders that prompted HB two,
And I was working up in Ashville at the time,
but I was covering the story up there, and I
read through the reports and the minutes from the council
meetings and such, and we literally had the city attorney,
Bob Hageman, advising council that, yes, this city ordinance does
call for daily fines against businesses that do not provide
this kind of bathroom access, but we wouldn't enforce it,
and that is not the way law works, and shame
on Bob for making that kind of a statement. You
do not pass laws with the intent of not enforcing them.
There's no reason to have the law. Then, the lawsuit
alleges that the state of North Carolina, in violation of
the Help America Vote Acts mandate and clear Congressional intent,
used a state voter registration form that did not require
a voter to provide identifying information like a driver's license
or the last four digits of a social Security number.
This is from the Department of Justice press release. So
when you sign up, you get the voter registration form
and it does not require the driver's license number or
the last four of your social Voters were then added
to the state's voter registration role without that required information,
and many of these voters remain on the roles without it.
If any of this issue sounds familiar, it's because prior
to the twenty twenty four election, there were complaints filed
against North Carolina for this very thing, and after the
Supreme Court race that got all tied up because it
was so close, when we had the recounts and everything
between Alison Riggs and Jefferson Griffin. This was one of
the things they cited. On March twenty fifth, President Donald J.
Trump signed Executive Order two four eight. It's entitled Preserving
and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections to ensure that
elections are being held in compliance with federal laws that
guard against illegal voting, unlawful discrimination, and other forms of fraud, error,
or suspicion. The election integrity issues raised in this action
are a core component of the federal election laws that
Congress has statutorily charged the Attorney General to enforce through
the Civil Rights Division. That's from the DOJ press release.
Associated Press has a story on it, and doctor Andy
Jackson over at the John Locke Foundation has a rundown
of how to fix the problems that the Jefferson Griffin race,
Griffin Rigs race, and the lawsuits all around that, the
problems that that lawsuit exposed. Again, these are choices, right.
It's one thing when you don't know about something and
it presents itself and you're like, oh my gosh, I
had no idea that you know, chickens couldn't fly whatever,
like or turkeys. I think it was, yeah, turkeys, but
turkeys can kind of fly and chickens can too, just
not really long distances, especially if you're like dropping him
out of a helicopter or something for a radio stunt.
It's not advisable. But once you are aware that the
loophole exists, the oversight exists, Oh, we made a mistake
in that legislation. Whatever. Once you know the problem exists,
then it's a choice. It's a choice whether to continue
along the path you are on and allow this problem
to exist and fester and get worse, or you can
try to address it. You can roll back whatever stupid
thing you did. You can plug the loophole with a fix,
with some tighter language or something. And in this case,
the North Carolina State Board of Elections made choices at
every step along the way to not clean up the
voter registration rules to make it comply. They were told
about this, and they didn't fix it. And now the
DOJ is coming in and saying, yeah, you're going to
fix it. And now that the Board of Elections is
run by a Republican majority, it's going to get fixed.
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a lifetime. The Department of Justice alleges that North Carolina
and the North Carolina Board of Elections are not complying
with the two thousand and two Help America Vote Act
or have a after board officials provided a statewide voter
registration form that did not make it clear that an
applicant has to provide must provide a driver's license number
or the last four digits of a Social Security number,
and if an applicant lacks either of those numbers, then
the state has to assign the person another unique voter number.
Republicans are now in control as of like two weeks
ago of the State Board of Elections. You'll recall because
the legislature moved the Board of Election appointment power from
the governor to the state Auditor. The state auditor is
Dave Bullock. He is a Republican and the problems that
have been going on at the Board of Elections the
State Board of Elections have persisted for years four years.
So the previous board, where Democrats held the majority, acknowledged
the problem in late twenty twenty three. According to the
Associated Press report by Gary Robertson, they acknowledged the problem
only after a voter complained. The board then updated the form,
but they declined or refused to contact people who had
registered to vote since two thousand and four, So for
twenty years people have been voting without an assigned to them.
They did not want to contact these people before the
twenty twenty four elections so they could fill in the
missing numbers. Why why would you not do that? According
to the lawsuit, the board indicated that such information would
be accumulated on an ad hoc basis as voters appeared
at polling places. See, we're gonna save money, how about this,
and administrative time and resources. So we're just going to
ask people when they show up at the poll, and
we'll say, oh, they don't have their numbers, so then
we'll ask them for one right then and there. It's
unclear exactly how many voters records still lack identifying numbers, though,
because apparently that wasn't really happening. Lawyers from the department's
Civil Rights Division say that the board must act more aggressively.
They want a judge to give the state thirty days
to develop a plan to contact the voters with records
that do not comply with federal law. You do not
comply with federal law. If you don't care about the
law and compliance is voluntary, then there's no reason for
the law. But it is the law, so follow the
freaking law. Board of Elections well prior Board of Elections.
The litigation follows similar efforts by the Republican Party and
a state GOP candidate to address the registration records for
the twenty twenty four election. Again, I point this out,
as I did weeks ago or maybe months ago at
this point, that this issue was raised prior to the
twenty twenty four election and the state Board of Elections
did not fix it. This month, the board's composition changed,
as I mentioned, to reflect the appointment power being shifted
away from the governor and over to the auditor. The
new iteration of the board sounds open to embrace the
DOJ's wishes. The executive director, Sam Hayes, who is also
newly appointed replacing Karen Brinson Bell awful. Sam Hayes said
that the lawsuit was being reviewed quote, but the failure
to collect the information required by HAVA has been well documented.
Rest assured I am committed to bringing North Carolina into
compliance with federal law. Local elections, by the way start
in September. The state and National GOP last year sued
over the lack of identifying numbers, which they estimated could
have effected about a quarter of a million registrants, but
federal judges declined to make changes because it was too
close to the general election. I mean, we can blow
up the rules during COVID voting, right, we can do that,
so you know, people can harvest votes and do all
sorts of crazy stuff during that twenty twenty cycle because COVID,
you know, obviously, But if there's an election around the corner,
we can't possibly ask people to give us the driver's
license which they have to present when they vote. The
issue was also litigated after election day as part of
formal protests filed by the Republican candidate for the State
Supreme Court, Jefferson Griffin. He challenged about sixty thousand ballots
that he said were cast by registrants whose records failed
to contain one of the two identifying numbers. So we
know of at least sixty thousand ballots then, right, that
didn't have the numbers that weren't corrected by the county
workers at the polling places as they were supposed to
have been. But apparently we're not, the election board said
earlier this year. At least half of those voters actually
did provide an identifying number, probably on a driver's license.
Why isn't it in the database? The list maintenance matters people.
State appeals courts criticized the board's handling of the registration records,
but ruled that the challenged ballots had to remain in
the final election tally because those people came and voted,
and you can't throw their votes out because of the
administrative mistake. Oh isn't that convenient? All right? So spring
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the details that create a video dot com. Andy Jackson
works over at the John Locke Foundation. He had to
write up a couple of weeks ago actually about the
election problems, the list management issues that the State Board
of Elections has had for years and that were at
least part of the lawsuits that were filed in the
wake of the Supreme Court seat race between Alison Riggs,
who eventually was named the winner, and Jefferson Griffin, who
lost by like seven hundred and thirty five votes. So
the new board, Jackson says, is well positioned to correct
these problems. Number one, fix the problems of registrations missing
the have A numbers. The Help America Vote Act of
two thousand and two social security last four of your
social security or driver's license number. The have A law
prioritizes driver's license numbers to help election officials comply with
another part of the law that requires them to match
voter records with DMV records. And by the way, they
have a Help America Vote Act of two thousand and
two for people who weren't alive, weren't paying attention. You
know where that came from, right, It came from the
two thousand election Bush v. Gore where Al gore the
results out of Florida, and they have kept recounting and
recounting and recounting, and the paper ballots were disintegrating, and
the little you know, chads, the little pieces of paper
that you punch out when you mark a ballot, and
you would punch out a hole in the ballot, and
sometimes it would be hanging. It didn't detach all the way.
So now you got these guys that are looking at
the chads and oh, it's still hanging. It's a hanging chad.
And what is the voter's intent and all of this stupidity,
and it was. It was such a farce. The election
system in Florida, now, Florida runs one of the best
election systems in the country. They get their returns in,
they're done before like almost every other state, and they've
got multiple time zones. So in cases where applicants do
not have a driver's license, elections officials can use their
last four of the social or a state issued ID number.
North Carolina state law has the same requirement for collecting
a driver's license number or a social Security number. Following
a series of citizen complaints which revealed that hundreds of
thousands of voter registration records lacked these have A numbers,
the state Board of Elections agreed to change voter registration
forms to indicate that HAVEN numbers are actually required, because
if you don't tell people that you have to put
your driver's license number on the form, they won't that
people do not offer that information up unless it's absolutely required.
But they also the board also declined to ask county
boards of Elections to make any effort, much less a
diligent one, to complete the registration records with missing HAVEN numbers,
and that's where you would seek to correct the problem. Right,
somebody shows up at the polling station, they don't have
the number. Hey, can you correct this? Or even better yet,
before the election, reach out to all of these people
on your roles that don't have numbers to make matters worse.
The State Board of Elections lawyer Paul Cox reported that quote.
Some spot checking of registration records found that county election
officials had some of the have A numbers, So they
did have some, but they were not put into the
statewide computerized database. The new spe leadership should instruct county
boards to add the have of numbers that they have,
put them into the system as quickly as possible, and
then to contact those people that don't have the numbers
and put them in the records. This is a choice,
you can do this. Another option would be for the
General Assembly to make provisional the ballots from voters whose
records don't have the have of numbers, and then you'll
have you'll get them to sign an attestation. You say,
I attest I don't have either number. That should be
an easy fix in most cases. Since North Carolina requires
voter ID, the most common form of voter ID is
the driver's license, and then you can collect that information
as people come vote. So that's a fixable solution. Number two,
require IDs for military and overseas ballots. The former executive
director of the State Board of Elections, Karen Brinson Bell.
She claimed in August of twenty twenty four that when
a military or overseas citizen voter submits their ballot, neither
federal nor state law requires them to provide ID when
returning their ballot. But the state Supreme Court affirmed the
voter ID requirement for military and overseas ballots in a
ruling back in April. So the new board must require
voter ID for all absentee ballots, including military and overseas,
and they have to develop a means a way to
attach voter IDs to electronically submitted military and overseas ballots.
That's doable. Number three produce ballots that are only for
the presidential race and that can only be used for
the quote never residents. The never residents. These are people
that have never lived in North Carolina but are registered
to vote here. Usually it's because they grew up in
a foreign country because their parents are stationed there. Or
they work there or whatever, and so they just register
to vote at their parents' North Carolina address, but they've
never lived here. Like that's one example. Somebody who has
never set foot in North Carolina has not satisfied the
residency requirement of a thirty day requirement that North Carolina has.
You have to have lived here for thirty days, and
the federal courts have upheld that. So you have to
figure something out here. The state Supreme Court ruled that
allowing never residents to vote in state elections violated the
plain language of Article six, Section two, Dash one of
the North Carolina Constitution. So State Board of Elections should
quickly issue guidance to county boards of Elections to comply
with that ruling as well. See so these are fixes
offered up by Andy Jackson. Very helpful. We're all about
solutions here, all right. If you're listening to this show,
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Real quick, a couple of things to be on your
radar as we roll into June. The Supreme Court is
wrapping up its session and there's a couple of cases
that are going to be coming down the pike. The pike,
the pipe, I mean, I guess it could be the
pike as in the turnpike, which is a weird word
on the pipe. Well, anyway. Supreme Court watchers are most
eagerly awaiting the Justice's decision on whether a state can
ban medical treatment for transgender uths. They say it is
the top case of the current term, but other key cases.
According to Alex Swawyer at the Washington Times, other key
cases include a dispute over books featuring LGBTQ themes in
public schools for young students, and a question over age
verification requirements for accessing adult websites porn Okay, Most legal
experts have their eyes fixed on the one case US
versus Scremetti, a case on transgender medical treatments for youths,
as the High Court prepares to release its rulings for
the current term, which is set to end next month.
The Scremetti case involves a Tennessee law that was passed
and enacted in twenty three and that bans puberty blockers
hormone therapy gender transition for procedures for miners looking to
change their birth gender. Scremetti refers to Tennessee Attorney General
Jonathan Scrimetti. He's the ag there, or was. I don't
know if he still is. The Biden administration and the
ACLU argued that the ban amounted to sex discrimination. See
because if I'm a male and I want testosterone, I
get it. But if I'm a female and I want testosterone,
You're not letting me have it. So that's sex discrimination.
That's their argument. Officials representing the state of Tennessee said
the law is aimed not at sex but at the
use of drugs. They argue that states should be able
to regulate the drugs. A federal appellate court rejected the
sex discrimination claims and allowed the Tennessee law to take effect,
and that prompted the appeal to the US Supreme Court.
That's the Scremetti decision. You've got the birthright citizenship. We've
covered that in depth as well. The justices are weighing
the issue. Also as part of that case, the issue
of lower courts nationwide injunctions that block the executive order
from taking effect, and whether you know that's appropriate. Kurt Levy,
president of the Committee for Justice, said that the transgender
case and the birthright citizen issue, over the nationwide injunctions,
these are major disputes. They're producing headlines, sure, but he
pointed to two other courts cases rather one involves Montgomery County,
Maryland Public School System, which has required pre K through
elementary school students to attend story time involving LGBTQ themed books. Parents,
parents of various faiths, and the ACLU have challenged the
school system's receive of the opt out policies for books.
In twenty twenty two, the Board of ed in Montgomery
County allowed the curriculum to include storybooks that celebrate pronouns,
pride parades, and gender transitioning. This is pre K through
elementary school. Parents were notified about the new curriculum and
told that they could totally opt out your kiddies. The
school board removed the notice and the opt out policy
the following year, so now you must attend. Parents then
sued in federal court over First Amendment concerns and have
asked the court to at least require the option. They
lost in a lower court, but the Supreme Court now
took up their appeal. That case is tamer Machmood versus
Thomas W. Taylor. Thomas Taylor is the superintendent of the
schools and the fourth case a dispute out of Texes
over access to porn sites. A twenty twenty three Texas
law requires online adult content providers to implement age verification
for accessing their sites. North Carolina did the same thing.
When the state enacted the measure, Texas was trying to
deter the flow of adult images and materials to anybody
under the age of eighteen. A violation of the law
could cost a company more than ten grand. Challengers to
the law say the age verification requirements such as entering
personal information that violates the First Amendment. That case is
called the Free Speech Coalition versus Paxton, who was the governor?
Free Speech Coalition versus Paxton. And so they are wrapping
up their session. It's a twenty twenty four through twenty
twenty five session and the justices are expected to announce
their decisions by the end of June. All right, that'll
do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.
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