Last night’s nail-biter in Iowa marked the beginning of election year 2012. And with Americans heading to the polls — next in New Hampshire, then South Carolina and beyond — they will hope to rely on the integrity of the election system to ensure that every legitimate vote counts and that fraud is not the deciding factor on the local, state or national level. Unfortunately, despite all the technological advances in our modern democracy, voter fraud still occurs, and yet there is still resistance to one very simple tool that … More

Think that you ought to be required to show photo identification before being able to vote? If so, count yourself among the majority of Americans — 70 percent — who support the requirement. Rasmussen reports on their findings in a new poll: Seventy percent (70%) of Likely U.S. Voters believe voters should be required to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to cast their ballot. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 22% oppose this kind of requirement. Notwithstanding the overwhelming support, … More

The Heritage Foundation and the State Government Leadership Foundation are hosting an exciting event on December 7 at Heritage on the Electoral College and the proposed “National Popular Vote” (NPV) plan. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) and the chief election officials of five states, Secretaries of State Beth Chapman (Alabama), Tre Hargett (Tennessee), Delbert Hosemann (Mississippi), Kris Kobach (Kansas), and Matt Schultz (Iowa), will discuss the advantages of the Electoral College and the political, practical, and constitutional problems with the NPV. As our Heritage Legal Memorandum explains, the NPV … More

Last Friday, Moroccans headed to the polls to vote in the latest parliamentary elections since the constitution was reformed in July. The Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) made major gains with 107 out of 395 seats, but fell considerably short of winning an absolute majority. While the PJD has the right to form a new government, it will need to form a coalition. Prime Minister Abbas Al Fassi has reached out to the PJD, saying that his nationalist Istiqlal party is ready to work with the PJD in a … More

Garry Kasparov mastered the game of chess to become a world-famous champion. These days he’s facing a much tougher opponent: the corrupt leadership of Russia. Kasparov, a leader of the Russia opposition, spoke at Heritage about why Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is immune to the Obama administration’s reset strategy. In an interview at Heritage before his speech, Kasparov said Obama’s approach was misguided. Putin, of course, is poised to reclaim the Russian presidency following Dmitry Medvedev’s announcement last month that he would not seek a second term. In response to … More

Former President Bill Clinton recently compared voter identification laws to Jim Crow-era statutes that suppressed the black vote after the Civil War. “There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,” Clinton told liberal activists in July. Not so, says John Fund, author of “Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy.” Speaking at Heritage this week, Fund said voter ID laws have won the … More

In August, three voters in Wake County, North Carolina, were charged with voting twice in the 2008 presidential election, apparently for President Barack Obama. In April, a member of the executive committee of the NAACP in Tunica County, Mississippi, was convicted on 10 counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots and sentenced to five years in prison. She voted in the names of six other voters, as well as in the names of four dead voters. There are pending indictments of city council members and an ongoing grand jury investigation of … More

“We might be a healthier democracy if we were a slightly less democratic one.” Really? Writing for the New Republic, Peter Orszag, Obama’s former head of the Office of Management and Budget, suggested that Americans need to transfer much of the operation of government out of the hands of Congress and into the hands of unelected bureaucrats. As a remedy to supposedly systemic gridlock, Orzsag proposes creating automatic boards of unelected administrators and “trigger” mechanisms that automatically set policy unless Congress specifically proposes an alternative. Orszag is not alone in … More

Last month’s employment report from the Department of Labor offered more dismal news about the U.S. economy. And while many areas of the country continue to struggle, there are a few bright spots. Gov. Scott Walker happens to be presiding over one in Wisconsin, which added a net of 9,500 new jobs in June — more than half the 18,000 created nationwide. Wisconsin’s resurgence comes after three years of job losses — more than 150,000 jobs were lost in the three years before Walker became governor. Since he took office … More

A former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board on Thursday blasted a proposed rule that would expedite elections for workplace unionization, insisting the proposed rule represents a “radical manipulation of the board’s election process” and an attempt to “tilt the process in favor of organized labor.” “The proposed rule demonstrates once again,” claimed Peter Schaumber in his prepared testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee, “that the current board majority feels unconstrained by the limits of the law and its role under the [National Labor Relations] Act to … More