Played by the Left

[Note: This post was revised to clarify the remarks made by of Joanne Empie, in her email on the proposed rules for the SBE to use the SAVE Database in their list maintenance.]

Another darling of the Progressive/Media/Deep State triad, Election Law Blog’s Rebecca Greene crowed about the impact a Leftist astroturf effort on neutering the NC State Board of Election’s (SBE) proposed agency rules governing the investigation and removal of noncitizen voters flagged through the beefed-up SAVE Database.

The Left must have issued a fatwa, because they managed to generate most of the 15,000 comments that were sent to SBE officials, attacking their proposed agency rules, which will soon have the force of law.

The SBE’s meeting agenda did not include a public comment period, but for unknown reasons, they granted an exception to allow one person, named Deborah Oronzio, to speak for up to one minute.

She must have powerful friends to get such a privilege, but Ms. Oronzio made the best of her time by publicly scolding the Board for not obeying the bot-like messages that flooded the agency’s comment portal.

“I am disappointed that we heard nothing about the analysis that was done. I have done my own analysis of those 15,000 votes. Rule #1: total comments submitted for the rule, 8500. 8300 against, 200 for. Rule #2: total comments for this rule 12,000. Against 11,750 and 250 for. I can go on with those other numbers, but I don’t really believe I have to. There is nothing said or changed in the rules that indicate what kind of databases we are using. It simply says government databases and other information. That is not good enough for this type of responsibility that you are placing upon a person who probably is a citizen, but we’re gonna label them as non-citizens.”

Thus, I stuck “review those comments” on my to-do list.1

First off, the email comments were the highest quality. Most of them were thoughtfully written by people with constructive and well reasoned objections and/or suggestions. But there was a fair amount of common terms in the email criticisms.

Opposition from multiple individuals, cited:

• High potential costs and administrative burden.

• Low historical incidence of non-citizen voting (referencing the 2016 NCSBE audit)2.

• Risk of false positives and disenfranchisement.

• Due process concerns (e.g., 5-day response windows).

• Arguments that it could function like a “poll tax” due to costs of obtaining citizenship documents.

Among the supportive emails, an NC Election Integrity Team member, Joanne Empie, suggested the SBE list out at a minimum five government databases that future SBEs should be required to use.

Here are the five sites specifically recommended by Mrs. Empie:

(a) The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Verification Division administers the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program.

(b) Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) system for real-time interface using driver’s license number to verify full legal name and date of birth

(c) Social Security Administration Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) information system to verify full legal name, last four digits of the Social security number and date of birth.

(d) Electronic Verification of Vital Events (EVVE), the National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems to verify full legal name and date of birth.

(e) NC Jury Excusal List of those voters that indicated they were not citizens when they were called to jury duty.

I agree 100% with Mrs. Empie’s remarks, but would add to them because of what something that keeps futurists awake at night.

Past is prelude and I can guarantee that future election agency employees will view any suggested databases as “the only” sites they may access. To mitigate this proven behavior trait, the rule makers need to include some language about encouraging the use of other government databases that may emerge out of the AI revolution.

One example, unrelated to elections, is the DOGE initiative that mashed up date between the Social Security Agency and persons receiving SNAP benefits. As a result, more fraud prosecutions started popping up in just the past few weeks.

Another guarantee that I can make with full certainty is that numerous unknown government databases are either being used or are under development as you read this post.

Unless the current rules package includes language to allow the use of such future databases, the only way to get them included would be to go back through the entire process and re-write the rules. This would take months of drafting, public comments, and mandatory waiting periods, so why not prevent it up-front by including permissive language right now?

But enough riffing on this topic.

We now move the mac daddy of the public comment tranche.

This was where the left-wing activists lit up the skies.

Thanks to the magic of AI, we see a staggering number of message with “big templates submitted multiple times,” meaning they had the exact or near exact language. This group totaled 4,800 to 5,500.

A little more subtle but still obvious group of commenters were the surrogates who copied a few meaty paragraphs from either the League of Women Voters or the Brennan Center and then customized their messages with a short intro or closing. This group totaled around 6,400 to 6,600.

For my math-phobic UNC readers, this means 11,200 to 12,100 of the opposition comments were generated through just two “non-profit” organizations.

One common theme among the SAVE Database opponents involved the age of the data and a reportedly large percentage of flagged individuals whose naturalization had not been updated in their system.

Of course, those scare tactics jump straight past the facts to reach the faulty conclusion that everybody identified in the SAVE Database will be removed. This is not the case at all, since the SBE rules—and state law and federal law—require each person to be allowed due process.

But why let the facts ruin a good story?!

In reality, the “list maintenance” section of NC law already gives presumed felons and noncitizens the chance to appear and bring any evidence of their status.

Could the Left’s comment army have caused the SBE to create a feckless process for handling the SAVE-identified voters? As explained in a previous post on this Substack, all the presumed noncitizen has to do is throw away the letter the SBE sends them and their case will be deferred indefinitely. Unless the rules are corrected, such actors will remain eligible to vote a regular ballot.

I don’t intend to bang that drum again, so you can check my receipts, shown on this earlier post.

As for this week, let’s cut to the Bottom Line: 75 to 80 percent of those much-ballyhooed 15,000 public comments, came from only a tiny amount of left-wing “nonprofit” organizations who make a lot of money, fighting to destroy America by enhancing the opportunities for voter fraud . . . all in the name of “democracy.”

Now, if you scroll back up to review Ms. Oronzio’s reported numbers, virtually all of the negative comments originated through a small handful of shady Soros-funded organizations.

Additional bonus: Anybody who disagrees with them is a racist!

Next stop for the proposed rules will be the NC Rules Review Commission, so stay engaged!

~ jd