Karen Handel, the Georgia Secretary of State, will be running for Governor of Georgia next year. She has been a leader in pushing for voter identification and proof of citizenship in elections, with tremendous success.

Her presentation at the Redstate Gathering was wide ranging, discussing the role of Secretaries of State, the recent push by Democrats to target these offices in swing states, and the challenges Georgia has in dealing with the Voting Rights Act.

Erick was proud to announce Redstate’s endorsement of her candidacy.

Karen Handel from David Thompson on Vimeo.

Sigh. It’s always either the people who back the candidates who can’t win or the people backing the charlatans who send these emails.

From: “Jack McNey” airbus653@gmail.com
Subject: Re: RedState Endorses Karen Handel for Georgia Governor
Date: August 4, 2009 5:55:39 PM EDT
To: contact@redstate.com

Your an idiot for supporting Handel !!!! As I say in my Holiday Carols to poor people, get a job you bum, bum, bum, bum!!! Money don’t grow on trees you bum, bum, bum, bum!!! You’re arrogance has destroyed RedState. I suggest you get a real job to pay off your overdue Preschool tuition fees, maybe as a Gas Station Bagboy!!!

Had it with you Faux Conservatives,

Jack

Joining our long list of conservative candidate endorsements like Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, Marco Rubio, Mitch Daniels, and Bobby Jindal, RedState is pleased to add Karen Handel, our choice for Republican gubernatorial candidate in Georgia.

Five years ago, RedState decided we wanted to push a project — pick a state and get voter photo identification passed as a law.

Given the number of us from Georgia, it was a natural fit to work there. We worked with the state legislature and encouraged activists to push the law. It passed. Unfortunately, Georgia had a Democrat Secretary of State who was intent on opposing the law.

Four years ago, we stood behind Karen Handel as she ran for Georgia’s Secretary of State. She stood with RedState on voter ID laws. She fought for the laws and implemented the laws. But she did not stop there.

Karen Handel has also been a leader among this nation’s Secretaries of State in pushing for citizenship verification. She knows what’s at stake.

During George H. W. Bush’s tenure in office, there was one staunch and vocal conservative in the White House — Vice President Dan Quayle. And the only person further to the right than Dan was Marilyn Quayle. Karen Handel served as a Deputy Chief of Staff in the White House, working for Mrs. Quayle.

Before becoming Secretary of State, Karen Handel was Chairman of the Fulton County Commission. Fulton County is the most heavily populated county in Georgia — it is Atlanta. And it was broke. Under Handel’s tough leadership, Fulton County prospered with a balanced budget.

Throughout her tenure, Karen Handel has been an unapologetic budget slasher. She is pro-life, pro-family, and pro-business. Refreshingly, she’s also not a wild-eyed populist, but believes in conservative reforms to effect not just smaller government, but more efficient and less intrusive government.

During her time in the Secretary of State’s office, she has not just been a champion of voter identification reforms, but also business reforms to make it easier to set up businesses in Georgia. She has worked to cut out ridiculous regulations and worked to streamline government filings. She has also worked hard to foster greater transparency and access to government documents online.

Georgia is considered one of the reddest of the red states. But it has yet to elect a governor who has always been a Republican. Even Georgia’s present governor, Sonny Perdue, did not become a Republican until a couple of years before running for governor. It shows. His instincts remain largely those of a conservative southern Democrat.

Unlike several of her opponents in the Republican Primary, Karen Handel is a life long Republican and conservative — not part of the good ol’ boy Republican establishment, but a Republican we can stand behind without being embarrassed by and innately, intrinsically conservative.

When RedState needed a champion, Karen Handel was there for us. RedState will now stand behind her as she seeks the Republican nomination for Georgia Governor. We encourage you to give what you can to her campaign.

As you can tell, we’ve been away and busy at the RedState Gathering.

Liz Cheney spoke. She was amazing.

“America needs a commander in chief,” she said, ” not a global community organizer.”

Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley, Michael Williams, Ken Cuccinelli, Karen Handel, Tom Price, Pat Toomey, Roy Blunt, Jim DeMint, and Rick Perry all joined us in person or via video.

It was an amazing time. Stand by for lots of video and pictures.

Stu Rothenberg, a paragon of Inside the Beltway Conventional Wisdom, really screwed up some very basic facts in his story on Georgia.

First of all, in a Republican primary where the clear front runner in the most recent polling is the Insurance Commissioner, John Oxendine, Rothenberg calls Ox and the President Pro Tempore of the Georgia Senate, Eric Johnson, “long shots.”

Who does Stu think is the front runner? Why the Congressman, of course. Only in Washington, D.C. would a Beltway Pundit survey the landscape in Georgia and conclude that the guy who lives closest to him is the guy most likely to win.

But more egregious, Stu uses Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel’s opponents’ talking points to dismiss her. When he finds out the talking points aren’t true, he does not correct them.

This passes for credible political journalism in Washington.

Read More →

You will probably recall that the Obama Department of Justice has decided not to pre-clear Georgia’s verification process for voting. Under the process, Georgia’s Secretary of State cross referenced voter registration information to drivers license and social security data to make sure what a person claimed was verifiable to ensure only citizens voted in Georgia.

When Georgia ran the test, which the Department of Justice helped design, 2,100 people were called into question for legitimate reason. Undeterred, the DOJ is now saying the verification discriminates against minorities — even though there was no way to tell from the process or reports it generate what the race of any person is.

Georgia’s Secretary of State is asking people to lend their voice via petition to let the DOJ know we should be allowed to stop non-citizens from voting.

Go here and sign the petition. Let your voice be heard.

Last year, two federal courts ordered the State of Georgia to implement a system to verify the citizenship of registered voters. This arose after Karen Handel, Georgia’s Secretary of State, sent letters to 4,771 voter registration applicants whose records at the Georgia Department of Driver Services indicated they were not U.S. citizens.

Federal law requires the Secretary of State to make sure the information is accurate. Nonetheless, several groups filed a lawsuit over the letters, but two separate federal courts ordered the Secretary of State to continue verifying citizenship. The procedure the Secretary of State established was put together with the help of the U.S. Department of Justice.

In the November General Election, 230 voters had their ballots rejected because there was no proof they were U.S. citizens.

Here’s where it gets tricky.

Though the U.S. Department of Justice helped craft the verification procedure, the procedure had to be pre-cleared by the DOJ pursuant to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

As the pre-clearance review was going forward, the Presidential administrations changed. And now Barack Obama has denied pre-clearance. In other words, if the Georgia Secretary of State wishes to make sure people voting are citizens of the United States, she is going to have to sue the federal government.

Georgia’s Inspector General is presently investigation 30 different cases of non-citizens casting ballots in 2008’s federal elections in Georgia.

The verification process has raised flags on the attempts of 2,100 different people trying to register to vote in Georgia.

Secretary of State Karen Handel, in a statement released by her office, noted:

“DOJ has thrown open the door for activist organizations such as ACORN to register non-citizens to vote in Georgia’s elections, and the state has no ability to verify an applicant’s citizenship status or whether the individual even exists. DOJ completely disregarded Georgia’s obvious and direct interest in preventing non-citizens from voting, instead siding with the ACLU and MALDEF. Clearly, politics took priority over common sense and good public policy.”

Secretary Handel will talk about this and related matters at RedState’s August 1st gathering in Atlanta.