About Nancy Salvato
Nancy Salvato is the President and Director of Education and the
Constitutional Literacy Program for
BasicsProject.org, a
non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)(3) research and educational
project whose mission is to re-introduce the American public to
the basic elements of our constitutional heritage while
providing non-partisan, fact-based information on relevant
socio-political issues important to our country, specifically
the threats of aggressive Islamofascism and the American Fifth
Column. She serves as a Senior Editor for The New Media Journal.
She received her BA in history from Loyola University and her
M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education from National-Louis
University. She is certified to teach in grades K-9 and 6-12
and as a teacher has worked with students in preschool, 1st,
5th, 6th, 7th, 8th,
9th, 11th, and 12th grades. She
has also worked as an adjunct instructor at the graduate school
level. She continues to augment her education and areas of
expertise by taking college courses and participating in a
variety of workshops.
Nancy Salvato, Senior Editor
Article II, Section 1: "Just Words" October 27, 2008
In a 1995 Press Release is a statement by
the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Deval Patrick (yes,
that Deval Patrick -“just words”), on the Appellate Court Ruling
upholding the Constitutionality of the National Voter Registration Act
of 1993 (otherwise known as “Motor-Voter” Law), a bill signed into law
by then President Clinton.
“Today's favorable decision by the Court of Appeals follows similar
victories in federal district courts in California and Pennsylvania. The
decision sends a clear message that Congress was well within its
authority to pass a law making it easier for all Americans to register
to vote. Today's decision also reaffirms the lower court's opinion that
the state had no legal basis for failing to comply with such a common
sense law.
Motor-voter is government made easy -- one stop shopping. Already the
law is producing tremendous results across the country. Millions of
Americans already are benefiting from this law -- now millions of
citizens of Illinois can, as well.”
[1]
Why would the state of Illinois have fought against implementing the
National Voter Registration Act of 1993? Shouldn’t we all be in favor of
making it easier for all Americans to register to vote? Was this a
state’s rights issue or was there something else at stake? In any event,
Illinois was going to have to conform to NVRA. Here’s how it went down.
“After undergoing a series of judicial proceedings, the Illinois program
became operational in August of 1995 as a two-tiered system. This meant
that those registering under the NVRA could vote only for federal
offices. However, since October of 1996 when all litigation ceased,
Illinois now operates under a unitary system of registration. This
simply means that any registered voter is eligible to vote the full
ballot.”
[2]
What a victory! All a potential Illinois voter needs to do to register
to vote is present two forms of ID: one picture and one showing proof of
your current address, such as a recent bill.
[3]Wouldn’t one
figure thata person registering to vote would have to provide
proof of citizenship? Not under NVRA. States that register these voters
when they apply for or renew their driver's licenses are not required to
verify that potential voters are U.S. citizens. Illinois fought hard
against this. However, the U.S. Department of Justice and Barack Obama
represented ACORN in a successful lawsuit against the state of Illinois
to force Illinois to comply with NVRA.
[4]
It’s too bad Illinois and other states throughout the nation lost in
this battle. It would seem that easing the restrictions on voter
registration may have had some unintended consequences.
“Federal privacy laws prevent cross-checking voter registration rolls
with immigration records. Nevertheless, a 1997 Congressional
investigation found that "4,023 illegal voters possibly cast ballots in
[a] disputed House election" in California. After 9/11, the Justice
Department found that eight of the 19 hijackers were registered to
vote.”
[5]
Still, for his work helping enforce the law, called “Motor Voter,”
Barack Obama received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995.
Fast forward to 2008...there have been some serious questions about
whether or not Barack Obama is a citizen of the United States. Most
Americans would assume that a candidate running for the highest office
of the land would have to be properly vetted, or would he? It turns out
that the Federal Election Commission does not require candidates running
for the office of president of the United States to provide proof of
citizenship. The Federal Election Commission is only charged with
overseeing campaign finance. Yes, you read that right.
[6]And it would
seem that there is no proper vetting process in place. But I’m not sure
why anyone would find this even remotely surprising. To assume that our
federal government has everything under control, well, that is almost
laughable from a conservative perspective. To quote Mark Steyn, in
America Alone,
“September 11 vindicated perfectly a decentralized, federalist,
conservative view of the state: what worked that day was municipal
government, small government, core government –the firemen, the NYPD
cops, rescue workers. What flopped- big-time, as the vice president
would say – was the federal government, the FBI, CIA, INS, FAA, and all
the other hotshot, money-no-object, fancypants acronyms. Under the
system operating on that day, if one of the many Algerian terrorists
living on welfare in Montreal attempted to cross the U.S. border at
Derby Line, Vermont, and got refused entry by an alert official, he
would be able to drive a few miles east, attempt to cross at Beecher
Falls, Vermont, and they had not way of knowing that he’d been refused
entry just half an hour earlier. No compatible computers. Yet, if that
same Algerian terrorist went to order a book online, Amazon.com would
know that he’d bought The A-Z of Infidel Slaying two years earlier and
their “We have some suggestions for you!” box would be proffering a 30
percent discount on Suicide bombing for Dummies. Amazon is a more
efficient data miner than U.S. Immigration. Is it to do with their
respective budgets? No. Amazon’s system is very cheap, but it’s in the
nature of government to do things worse, and slower.”
And from the looks of things right now, the American people have no
standing to take issue with this little known problem in the way our
current electoral process is functioning.
Most recently, Philip Berg's lawsuit challenging Illinois Sen. Barack
Obama's constitutional eligibility to serve as president of the United
States was dismissed by the Hon. R. Barclay Surrick (a Clinton appointee
and Obama supporter) on grounds that the Philadelphia attorney and
former Deputy Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
lacked standing. The harm cited by Berg, Surrick wrote, “is too vague
and its effects too attenuated to confer standing on any and all
voters.”
[7]
This presents a problem. And while I should not be surprised, it
seems almost surreal that in 2008, it’s only now coming to light that
there is no proper vetting process to becoming the president of the
United States. I must say that I take issue with Barack Obama refusing
to produce a legitimate birth certificate proving that he is an American
citizen.
There is only one solution. There must be a grass roots movement that
takes place in the next 10 days in which “We the People” (you and me)
write the county and state board of elections, refusing to recognize the
legitimacy of the ballot. We must insist that these boards put in place
a process to verify the authenticity of Obama’s citizenship. This must
be done right now. As “We the People,” we cannot abdicate our
responsibility in this time of constitutional crisis.
