Last time we bothered to read a NYT op-ed, they were cheering the illegal activities of Jennifer Brunner. Today, they opine that the real problem isn’t fraud, but voter suppression–meaning that voters are required to meet certain perfunctory identification standards. Republicans challenging the activities of organizations such as ACORN, who state that their job isn’t in any case to ensure the accuracy or even non-fictionality of their registrations, you see, is part of an evil plot to deprive people of the right to vote. Never mind that certain Secretaries of State don’t think it’s their job to make sure that they are exercising any kind of quality control at all, and never mind the numerous cases of documented voter fraud that have emerged already this campaign season.
Acorn needs to provide more precise figures about problem forms and needs to do a better job of choosing its canvassers.
But for all of the McCain campaign’s manufactured fury about vote theft (and similar claims from the Republican Party over the years) there is virtually no evidence  anywhere in the country, going back many elections  of people showing up at the polls and voting when they are not entitled to.
Meanwhile, Republicans aren’t saying anything about another more serious voter-registration scandal: the fact that about one-third of eligible voters are not registered. The racial gaps are significant and particularly disturbing. According to a study by Project Vote, a voting-rights group, in 2006, 71 percent of eligible whites were registered, compared with 61 percent of blacks, 54 percent of Latinos and 49 percent of Asian-Americans.
Much of the blame for this lies with overly restrictive registration rules. Earlier this year, the League of Women Voters halted its registration drive in Florida after the state imposed onerous new requirements.
The answer is for government to a better job of registering people to vote. That way there would be less need to rely on private registration drives, largely being conducted by well-meaning private organizations that use low-paid workers. Federal and state governments should do their own large-scale registration drives staffed by experienced election officials. Even better, Congress and the states should adopt election-day registration, which would make such drives unnecessary.
The real threats to the fabric of democracy are the unreasonable barriers that stand in the way of eligible voters casting ballots.
Let’s look at the claims of the article. First, it reproduces the ACORN line that they’re the ones who have flagged the iffy ballots. In the majority of cases, this is not true. As far as virtually no evidence of vote theft, the NYT is clearly behind the curve of this story.
And on the other hand, they’ve got no interest at all at the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice being utilized to quash citizens’ rights to actually enunciate election law, because apparently that kind of intimidation opens one up to being visited by men in dark suits. On the more local level, of course, Obama is utilizing off-duty law officers as part of his Truth Squads, and threatening to snatch away the broadcasting licenses of TV stations that air third-party commercials that he finds unpalatable.
If voter registration is such an important thing, and I’m inclined to believe it is, then why is it so onerous to provide proof of identity in order to vote? Is it less important than, say, writing a check at the grocery store? By all means, let’s get everybody signed up. Let’s commit the resources, let’s have some oversight, let’s have a little regulation, and while we’re at it, let’s see to it that government funded operations such as this one are non-partisan. How about that?
No, you see, the thing is that these hypocrites don’t bother to write about the activities of ACORN until they’re likely to become a political liability. They’ve done a crap job, now and in the past, and the NYT really hasn’t given a rat’s ass about that. They have committed and suborned fraud. Twenty-one hundred of twenty-one hundred registration forms invalid? In 2006, all but 6 of 1800 in Washington state in 2006 fraudulent? People urged to register multiple times and counseled that it was legal?
These people don’t care about the truth on the most fundamental level, they don’t care about honesty, they don’t care about standards, they don’t care about accountability. It’s no wonder their name is bullshit.
I’ll tell you what, NYT: drivers licenses are a barrier to some people driving, and we give them to 16 year olds who demonstrate a basic proficiency. F*ck off.
UPDATE: Supreme Court refuses to hear arguments on the merits, stating that they doubt that a private party, such as the GOP, has standing to bring suit.  Apparently, the only person who has standing to compel the Secretary of State to comply with the law is the Attorney General. This seems to us a little strange, insofar as Barack Obama was able to bring suit on behalf of ACORN to compel motor-voter registration in IL.
As Ace points out, the DOJ could get involved, if it wanted to, but it’s too busy investigating people who recommend other people observe the law.
MORE: Dahlia Lithwick at Slate opines that belief in vote fraud may undermine democratic institutions. Well, Dahlia, where were you during the hanging chads fiasco? And you ought to know that you can’t hire volunteers: Obama makes that very clear in the change to his website about his seminars for ACORN.
I’ll tell you what’s dangerous to democracy, lady: suborning fraud, as ACORN clearly has in the incidents that you so lightly excuse. For Christ sake, people are required by law to fill out a census form. Is requiring them to register with identification more burdensome? If so, why?
Comment by thor on 10/17 @ 4:26 pm #
The legal precedent is and always has been to err and the side of a voter’s right to vote. I’m surprised you don’t remember that from the 2000 Pres. election.
It is what it is, this America.
Comment by thor on 10/17 @ 4:28 pm #
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D93SBC3O0&show_article=1
Comment by Jake on 10/17 @ 4:31 pm #
It is a testament to Democrat discipline and strength of will that they can actually mouth the argument against the requirement that one produce some valid form of ID before voting and all the while keep a straight face…
The pitchmasters of Glengarry-Glenn Ross got nothing on these guys..
Blake: You know what it takes to sell bullshit? Brass Balls.. That’s what it takes.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 10/17 @ 5:12 pm #
If they want, I’ll willingly trade more enforcement and stiffer penalties for vote suppression for ID requirements.
I get the feeling they’d never take the offer, though.
Pingback by “New York Times Shills for Vote Fraud” on 10/17 @ 6:19 pm #
[...] Dan over at the Pub: If voter registration is such an important thing, and I’m inclined to believe it is, then why is [...]
Comment by Darleen Click on 10/17 @ 6:51 pm #
always has been to err and the side of a voter’s right to vote
Unless the voter is a member of the military
Comment by dicentra on 10/17 @ 6:56 pm #
These people don’t care about the truth on the most fundamental level, they don’t care about honesty, they don’t care about standards, they don’t care about accountability.
If they did care, they wouldn’t be ACORN or NYT.
Unless the voter is a member of the military
Or living in the Florida panhandle.
Comment by smrstrauss on 10/17 @ 9:26 pm #
I like to think that the ideal voter would be someone who holds two jobs and has children at home whom they have to get home to as soon as possible.
Now let us consider that voter on line waiting to vote. If it is a very long line, the ideal voter gets discouraged. He or she has to rush home to see the kids, cook dinner, Etc. So, that voter might not vote.
What does this have to do with vote fraud? Let us suppose that we are in a state that checks the identity of every voter to discourage vote fraud.
Let’s suppose that it takes 20 seconds per voter to check an ID card, check the signature, and check that the person is on the list. (And it might take a lot more. How many people can check a new signature against a recorded signature to see if there is a difference?)
Twenty seconds times 100 people waiting on line. That’s 2,000 seconds, which of course is 33 minutes. But now let us think that we are in an urban area. There are 300 people on line: more than an hour wait added to the normal wait of 300 people voting.
If you had to face a wait of 30 minutes or an hour, it would depend on your status as to whether you wanted to wait that long. If you are retired, no problem. If you have only one job and no children at home, no problem. If you are in a rural area, with only 10-20 people on line, no problem. But if you are in an urban area and have children, maybe a BIG problem.
So, let us suppose we add 20 seconds to each of a few million voters. How many cases of fraud are we going to stop. One in a hundred voters? No way. One in a thousand? Probably not. More like one in ten thousand or one in one-hundred thousand.
There are a number of reasons. Vote fraud requires someone both to have registered fraudulently AND to have voted fraudulently. And, of course, it is a crime. Some criminals are willing to go to jail for a few years for having robbed a bank, but how many are willing to go to jail for casting an illegal vote?
Vote fraud in the sense of someone manipulating software to change hundreds of votes is something else.
Comment by Jake on 10/17 @ 9:37 pm #
There’s no reason that checking identy should be anymore more difficult, time consuming or complex than presenting a picture ID to the voting attendant much as I did when I used my debit card at McDonald’s last night.. Didn’t take twenty seconds.. took maybe.. two.
Knowing you’re going to be asked to verify your identity with a picture ID wont stop a determined crook but it would disuade the casual a casual scammer doing it for cigarettes or change.
Would adding 200 seconds (a little over 3 minutes) be worth it to verify that the last 100 people to vote were who they claimed to be?
Comment by bigbooner on 10/17 @ 10:06 pm #
Holy shit. Don’t people vote by mail around here? We do in Washington. And the funny thing is when I voted at a precinct I was NEVER asked for identification. Not once. The Dems have really done their homework and are going to get as many people to the polls as many times as it takes.
Comment by The Amorphous Gas Cloud from Star Trek on 10/17 @ 10:20 pm #
Yeah.. I’m out of Seattle… catch the KIRO report? Mail ballots going out to 24,000 convicted felons. Great system we have up here.
Comment by Jake on 10/17 @ 10:22 pm #
Oops.. Sorry.. That wasnt an Amorphous Gas Cloud.. That was just Jake wearing an Amorphous Gas Cloud sockpuppet on the internet…
Comment by dicentra on 10/17 @ 10:49 pm #
Jake:
Liked the other handle better.
Comment by Jake on 10/18 @ 12:48 am #
Hahhahaa.. It is kinda catchy, huh? =)
Comment by smrstrauss on 10/18 @ 8:05 am #
Re: There’s no reason that checking identy should be anymore more difficult, time consuming or complex than presenting a picture ID to the voting attendant much as I did when I used my debit card at McDonald’s last night.. Didn’t take twenty seconds.. took maybe.. two.
Three things are wrong with that. First is that if it only took two seconds maybe the guy who was checking wasn’t doing the job thoroughly enough. And, of course, if the object is to slow down the line, they would do the job thoroughly.
Second is, well, you may have heard the expression “they all look the same to me,” which of course means that in racially mixed areas the time for checking a photo id is likely to be longer than in suburbs and rural areas. This is where the lines are the longest.
Third is that the time spent checking the ID has to include the time of any challenges. If there are people who are determined to slow down the line, they will challenge frequently, in particular in areas where “they all look the same to me,” or in other words in urban areas.
By the way, two seconds is the time it took to look at the photo id. You didn’t count the time that it took to take it out of your wallet or purse, and the line slows down a bit more if an elderly person has difficulty finding the id. Of course, you can reduce this delay by having someone go along the line reminding people to have their ids out, but that costs money in the sense of an extra worker to tell people.
Now as to the incidence of voter fraud. To have an actual case of vote fraud you must have two things: first a false registration, and two a person willing to commit a crime who has a false registration.
Now, there have been a lot of false registrations, but many of them consist of people who have registered already who forgot and registered a second time. (This is possible among the elderly.) And others are pranks, like the many many cases of people registering as Batman or Micky Mouse. These are indeed false, but they are useless if you want to vote with them.
Others are false because the guys doing the registering get paid for every registration that is made, so they make up names or take them off of gravestones, but there is no actual mechanism for taking the false registrations and using them in an election.
I can say that there is no mechanism for use of the false registration because so many people have worked for ACORN and if even one of them knew of a mechanism to take the false registrations and use them, there would be plenty of talk and stories about that. Although ACORN has been investigated in the past, it was about the false registrations, not any allegation that the false registrations were used to ACTUALLY vote. If someone had done that, people would have gone to jail.
So, ask yourself, what percent of the voter registrations are false and then what percent of those false registrations are likely to actually be used.
I think it is likely to be one-tenth of one percent of registrations are false, and maybe at worst one or two percent of those would be used in a tight election to switch the result. IF this were done, of course, it would be a crime, and the people involved would face years in jail, so they wouldn’t be likely to organize such a crime merely because they loved one candidate and hated another.
But still, say two percent of one-tenth of one percent.
One percent is 0.01. One tenth of one percent is 0.001. Two percent of that is 0.00002. Multiply that times three million people and you get 60 votes. Okay, say I’m wrong by a factor of ten. Multiply 60 by 10 and you get 600 votes. That could affect a very tight election, but adding 10 seconds or 20 seconds to the time that each voter waits in line affects it too, maybe by MORE that 600 votes.
We KNOW that people get discouraged waiting in line and go home without voting.
That happens very frequently, maybe as much as one in 20 or one in ten. The lowest of these, one in twenty, is 5%, and 5% of a three million is 150,000. Okay, say I am wrong by a factor of ten, that still would be 15,000 votes!!
Is it worth losing 15,000-150,000 votes (or more), to make sure that 60-600 or so are not fraudulent????
Comment by Dan Collins on 10/18 @ 5:53 pm #
It is and should be a crime to knowingly file a false registration. Period.
There should be identification requirements. There are identification requirements to board a plane. Have your identification out.
Surely in the US we should be able to manage our elections in such a way that there are no long lines.
I don’t care about your representation of the likelihood of voter fraud. Why could it not be seen as a patriotic obligation to arrive at the polls prepared? It’s funny that you impute to poll volunteers the very kinds of motives that you minimize among vote-casters.
Comment by maggie katzen on 10/18 @ 9:08 pm #
wow, could smrstrauss possibly be any more racist or ageist? fun question… who is most likely to be running the polling places in those areas? hmmmm?
It will be highly entertaining to watch him argues it’s Republicans. har har. like in Palm Beach County back in 2000. Ican’t help it if Democratics are incompetent.
Comment by smrstrauss on 10/19 @ 2:40 am #
Re: It’s funny that you impute to poll volunteers the very kinds of motives that you minimize among vote-casters.
I am referring to the poll-watchers from the various political parties, who sit in the polling places. Usually they are lawyers, and they have in the past been instructed to challenge frequently.
Re: Surely in the US we should be able to manage our elections in such a way that there are no long lines.
I fervently agree with you. If you were to agree to a law that required states to provide the same number of working election machines PER CAPITA of registered voters in each district and the same number of election workers, meaning that the lines would never be longer in urban areas than in rural areas, I would be delighted to agree to a law requiring photo IDs.
As you say, in the USA we really should not have long lines, or at least the chance of lines should be even across a state, not imposed upon districts by either the party in charge of the state or the poverty of that area. But let us be realistic. It is not that way.
Until then, representatives of political parties will be trying to slow down the lines in certain areas. Frequent challenges is one way of doing that.
Re: There should be identification requirements. There are identification requirements to board a plane. Have your identification out.
Some states require ID, others do not. Can you show me that any elections have been stolen in NY or CA or PA or MA.
You are required to present photo ID when you board a plane because hijackers can kill a significant number of people. A person who commits a vote fraud has committed a crime and can go to jail, but after all it only represents one in say three million or five million votes in the state. THE ONES WHO SHOULD BE PUT IN JAIL FOR 30 OR 40 YEARS ARE THE ONES WHO ORGANIZED ANY SUCH FRAUD and enabled a group of people to commit frauds.
Re: wow, could smrstrauss possibly be any more racist or ageist? fun question… who is most likely to be running the polling places in those areas? hmmmm?
As for my age. I am 65–what of it???
Here are the facts. I know that I am no longer as fast doing things as I used to be, and I have noticed that others of my age and somewhat older are in the same condition. Big deal, it is life, it will happen to all of us.
As you say, poll workers – volunteer or professional – tend to be older persons. That doesn’t necessarily make them slow. However, frankly, sometimes our eyesight is no longer as good as it used to be. Photo IDs are, what, 2 inches by 2 inches?
Re: who is most likely to be running the polling places in those areas? hmmmm?
I have always found poll workers to be completely fair. However, as I have said, in close elections there often are lawyers from the two political parties stationed at polling places, and their job is to challenge the vote in some cases, or to ensure that the most people in the district do vote in other cases.
It should be obvious that in a district that leans Democrat, the poll watchers from the Republican party will want to slow down the vote, and vice versa, and conversely in a district that leans Democrat, the poll watchers from the Democrat party will want to record as many votes as possible and vice versa.
Now, the strange thing is, that although it is illegal to cast a fraudulent vote, it is not illegal to challenge the vote of a perfectly valid voter. This encourages multiple challenges, sometimes many many challenges.
There ought to be some kind of a fine for every challenge that turns out to have been mistaken. Something along the lines of you get three free challenges per district, and subsequently you do not have to pay for any challenge that turns out to be right (meaning that you challenged a voter who was trying to commit a fraud). But after the third voter you have to pay a fee of $10 to the state for every incorrect challenge in each voting area, and the fee accelerates. For the fifth challenge to someone who turns out to be a valid voter, you start to pay $50 each incorrect challenge. With the 10th, you pay $100 an incorrect challenge. With the 20th, you pay $500 an incorrect challenge, and so on into the thousands of dollars.
That ought to keep down challenges aimed merely at slowing down the line.
Comment by maggie katzen on 10/19 @ 2:55 am #
where did I say that?
Comment by maggie katzen on 10/19 @ 2:59 am #
what I was implying (particularly with the follow up about Palm Beach county) is that the party in power is usually in charge of elections and in urban areas that would most likely be Democratics (again, as in PBC in 2000)
If some poor schlub doesn’t want to take the time to perform their civic duty by planning ahead and making arrangements, then tough cookies. I’m not buying your crap about long lines.
Comment by RTO Trainer on 10/19 @ 3:20 am #
You have some funny ideas.
I’m speaking form the perspective of a trained Precinct Judge in Dallas County Texas. Poll watchers are simply volunteers. The only requirement sought is that they be reasonably faithful to the party they claim to represent and attend an hour or so of training. Before you get any ideas about other election officials, a Precinct Judge, despite having the authority of a state Distric Jusge within the polling place, the requiremetns aren’t much more stringent, a couple of hours of training. For myself, I’m an IT professional, a National Guard Soldier, and I have a BA in history. There aren’t enough lawyers to cover a federal election as you imagine it.
Such a law would be unconstitutional without an amendment, but let’s play your silly game anyway.
Do you really imagine that there’s only one kind of “voting machine” out there? One machine (given it’s the right kind) can service many dozens of ballots an hour.
Not with sufficiently trained and knowledgable elections officials on hand.
You (unsurprisingly) missed Maggie’s point. The officials aren’t likely to be very different, demographically, from the other people in the precinct. Which renders your characerizations, ignorant or bigoted (or both) cannards.
If they are allowed to impede the process in other states, those states have problems with their elction laws. In Texas, the poll watchers bring their concerns to the Precinct Judge who mkaes a ruling, which will often be to simply make a note of the exception to be reported to the County Election Commission and possibly to the State. In an exterme case, rhater tha allowing the individual in question to cast a regular ballot, they may require them to cast a provisional ballot, which means somewhat more time to process that one voter, but holds up no one else.
(many strange ideas prceeding from the original faulty understanding of the process snipped.
Comment by smrstrauss on 10/19 @ 5:50 pm #
Re: You (unsurprisingly) missed Maggie’s point. The officials aren’t likely to be very different, demographically, from the other people in the precinct. Which renders your characerizations, ignorant or bigoted (or both) cannards.
This is simply not true. Election workers tend to be older people.
However, I have a solution. Instead of eysight, which is in all cases fallible (even among the young), let’s make it something that cannot fail. Let’s make it fingerprints. However, you have to agree that the federal government will pay the full cost of all fingerprint reading technology installed, and the fingerprint reading technology has to be able to recognize the fingerprint against a database and return an answer to the election site within 1 second.
Moreover, since the requirement for fingerprints is going to cause literally millions of people to have to get themselves fingerprinted. I propose that the federal government pay each one of us one-half day’s salary to get fingerprinted. And, of course, we have to install fingerprinting stations conveniently all over the place.
However, I assume that you will not want to incur the expense of a perfect solution.
Barring that, I must ask you whether anyone, even a person with perfect eyesight will be right in determining that a voter is the same as the person photographed 100% of the time. Women have the color of their hair changed. Men go bald. Photographs taken when we are suntanned look different from when we are not suntanned. Photos taken when we are smiling sometimes look very different from when we are not smiling.
And, as I said, to some people “they all look alike.”
For the latter case, I suppose you could give the people who check IDs courses in how to spot differences, but remember that costs money.
So, the question is, do you think that an election worker will get it right 100% of the time. If it is only 1% wrong, then you will have people who are valid voters taken out of line — and they will naturally object. They will object strongly, and slow down the line.
However, as I said, I’d be perfectly willing to agree to a national photo ID card, so long as there is a national policy on providing enough voting machines in all districts so that there is no unusually long lines.
Some small points would have to be handled carefully in doing this. First, you would have to make it damned easy for people who do not have photo IDs to get them. Something along the lines of providing them in the same election places as where the vote will be held a month before the election, and people who certify that they cannot get off from work should actually have election officials visit them at their place of work to issue the cards.
One saving on this would be that people who plan to vote by absentee ballot would not need cards at all. The protection against fraud on absentee ballots uses different methods than photo ID of course.
Then there should be very severe penalties for anyone who obtains a voter ID card fraudulently, and even stiffer penalties for those who actually vote fraudulently, and even stiffer penalties for anyone who organizes mass vote fraud.
However, there should also be stiff penalties for anyone who is proven to have stolen any votes by use of software or hacking, or blocking people from getting to the polls, or deliberately slowing down the lines.
If you will agree to that: national payment for adequate numbers of voting machines in ALL districts, voter ID, easy to get voter ID, stiff penalties for vote fraud, stiff penalties for vote suppression – then we have a compromise, and let us write our congressmen to that effect.
Re: Such a law would be unconstitutional without an amendment, but let’s play your silly game anyway.
No it wouldn’t be unconstitutional. What article or amendment would it contravene? Surely you are not talking about states’ rights? If we can say “the minimum wage” will be no lower than X in all states, we can say “all states will have at least one working voting machine per x number of registered voters in each election district.”
You are right about the different types of voting machines, but that does not change the fact that in certain districts there are long lines and others never have long lines. Eliminate the long lines, even in working class districts where people have limited time to vote, and you eliminate any objection to photo IDs.
By the way, someone has commented that people should plan ahead and expect long lines and that is part of their civic duty.
To some extent I agree with this. But there is no question that in some cases there have been lines that have forced people to wait in the rain for an hour or more. In such cases, I project that photo IDs would add to that wait another half hour or even another hour. There should be no reason for that, other than that people who live in districts where there are few lines are delighted to see the vote reduced in districts where there are big lines.
And how many people have you actually FOUND to have committed vote fraud anyway?
You are a district court judge in Texas. You must have some statistics. Other than the people who are being investigated for having submitted fraudulent registrations, how many people have actually been arrested for having used fraudulent registrations to vote?? (or even tried to use them to vote)
Now take that number and divide it by the total number of people who voted in the last election, and I’ll bet it isn’t even one tenth of one percent.
But, let us say that it is one percent. If it is one percent of all the voters, then I will agree that it is worthwhile to force 100 million people (or more) to wait an extra half hour, possibly in the rain.
Comment by maggie katzen on 10/19 @ 6:05 pm #
I think we are. which would be amendment X. Your example of minimum wage is silly as I’m guessing that’s covered by the commerce clause, but whatevs. Each state has it’s own election laws and often in those states it’s further farmed out to counties. let’s remember elections are not held only for national office.
but you keep up with your sob stories about incompetent poll workers and people having to *gasp* wait in line to vote.
Comment by maggie katzen on 10/19 @ 6:06 pm #
also, I love how you are okay with a little voter fraud. If enforcement can’t be perfect then it shouldn’t be bothered with. great.
Comment by RTO Trainer on 10/19 @ 7:26 pm #
Measured how? Election workers must be of voting age, so the bottom 0-18 year olds have to be factored out. An honest assessment will show a fairly even distribution by democraphic with most deviations being affected by the locak demographic makeup. Ergo–if you live in an area that’s disproportionately older, you’ll see more older folks.
Technically doable, but why? RealId already has a card readable strip–swipe the drivers licennce/state ID and get back a result just as fast. But it would still be unconstitutional.
(balance of unconstitutional blatehring snipped)
Hacking? Hacking how? You aren’t onto that BlackBox voting paranoia are you?
Re: Such a law would be unconstitutional without an amendment, but let’s play your silly game anyway.
No it wouldn’t be unconstitutional. What article or amendment would it contravene? Surely you are not talking about states’ rights? If we can say “the minimum wage†will be no lower than X in all states, we can say “all states will have at least one working voting machine per x number of registered voters in each election district.â€Â
The consitution makes “interstate commerce” a matter of federal jurisdiction. I may not personally agree that minimum wage laws should pertain under that, but I can understand the argument. The consitution leaves the “how” of elections (selecting of electors) solely to the states–to the extent that there is no federal right to vote for President. Any state could declare tomorrow that they will not have a populare election for President, instead the state’s electores will be the X number of citizens withteh longest earlobes. And barring a (flimsy) challenge on the grounds of the Consitutional guarantee of republican government, it’s perfectly Constitutional. The federal government has no jurisdiction to specify voting machines, ID requirements, registration methods…..
If you don’t like the machines or the lines in yoru state take it up with your state legislature. Unless you live in a state that has further delegated that down to the County level–in which case take it up with your County Elections Board. Get an early voting law passed so people have the ability to plan their voting out over a couple of weeks and the lines are shorter on election day. Of course none of that prevents the fact that 5pm to 7pm on election day will still be the heaviest turnout period, because people always wait til the last minute. But that’s not the government’s fault eihter.
Project what you like, you’re still wrong.
I am a precinct judge which, within the polling place, has the authority of a district court judge–not the same thing. Our job is not to detect or prevent fraud (though where it is detected it will be prevented and Sheriff’s deputies may be called in) but to protect the voting rights of all who come to vote–to the extend that even ineleigible voters will be allowed to cast a ballot–likely a provisional ballot which is unlikely to be found valid, but the ballot will be cast.
I don’t have figures–it’s not my job. Come visit me in Rowlett, TX to see how a precinct should be run–or get someone form your County Election Board to come observe.
Comment by RTO Trainer on 10/19 @ 7:30 pm #
Nope. Article II as amended by Amendment 12.
Not that there’s anything wrong with States Rights.
Comment by maggie katzen on 10/19 @ 7:42 pm #
*sigh* and this is why I’m not the one that worked for a lawyer. ;D
Comment by smrstrauss on 10/20 @ 8:04 pm #
Okay. Here’s what we got. We got thousands of people who were registered illegally. How many thousand? A few thousand is all we know so far. We also know that ACORN knew about the illegal registrations and actually flagged them so that election officials could remove them from the rolls. The law in various states requires all registrations to be turned in.
We have never had a recorded example of anyone using past illegal registrations to actually cast a ballot. It turns out that there are Republicans turning in illegal registrations as well as ACORN for the Democrats.
See: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-me-fraud18-2008oct18,0,6338789.story
What we do not know is whether there is an effort to take the thousands of false registrations and turn them into illegal votes.
It would, of course, be difficult for ACORN to do that, since they are being watched by the FBI etc, and of course, if anyone did vote illegally, even ONE person, and the FBI found out about it, they could make that person testify against ACORN or any organization that had organized the massive illegal voting.
So, massive illegal voting is unlikely. And another reason why it is unlikely is that in states that used to be close, it no longer is close at all. A recent poll shows that in Ohio, which went for Bush in the past two elections and is normally fairly close, Obama is up by NINE percentage points.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/obama-leads-9-ohio-mccain/story.aspx?guid=%7B76F97875-B3C5-4693-B30E-AB7E440C2BC1%7D&dist=hppr
So, what the h would be the point of adding a few hundred or a few thousand illegal votes – when you can go to jail for it, the election becomes suspect, and you are likely to win anyway????
So, let’s get back to standing on line. The chance of a illegal voting is perhaps one-tenth of one percent. To do it, someone has to register many thousands of illegal vote registrations, and then mobilize hundreds or thousands of people to use the illegal registrations to cast ballots.
This is extremely unlikely, and yet one political party does not mind that every one waiting in line should wait longer for people to look at voter IDs, with the certainty that the people looking at the voter IDs will make mistakes (say 1%?).
Re the comment about the tenth amendment barring national rules for voting, meaning in this discussion, the requirement that there be enough voting machines in each district so that there are no lines.
That amendment reads:
Amendment 10 – Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
However, in 2006 a bill requiring a national voter ID card passed the House of Representatives (then under Republican rule). It did not pass the Senate, since the Democrats could have blocked it, and it IS NOT likely to pass the House of Representatives with Democrats in charge.
The point with regard to the passing of that bill and the constitutionality of regulations over voting machines is that obviously the Federal Government can pass laws affecting federal elections (Voter ID or adequate numbers of voting machines). That is not unconstitutional, any more than the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional.
So regulations forcing adequate numbers of voting machines is certainly constitutional.
But is it POLITICALLY advisable?
Well, if you want a national voter ID, you WILL NOT GET IT unless you put into the same legislation requirements that there be adequate numbers of voting machines and other provisions so that there cannot be lines that the IDs will slow down.
In other words, if you really want a national voter ID, you can get it, if you compromise. Democrats are opposed to the national voter ID, but they would vote for it if they get what they want, which is no long lines.
Well?
Comment by smrstrauss on 10/20 @ 8:49 pm #
Further to that:
Here is the extent of voter fraud in terms of discovered frauds that have been prosecuted:
“The statistics bear me out. From 2002 to 2005 only one person was found guilty of registration fraud. Twenty people were found guilty of voting while ineligible and five people were found guilty of voting more than once. That’s 26 criminal voters — voters who vote twice, impersonate other people, vote without being a resident — the voters that Republicans warn about. Meanwhile thousands of people are getting turned away at the polls.”
This is from the long article (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/15/voter_suppression/)
Comment by RTO Trainer on 10/20 @ 9:02 pm #
Cherrypicking the argument now, are we? Not the 10th Amendment. Article II and the 12th Amendment.
How elction results can be alterd by only a relative few votes (or “Massive fraud is not a requirement”):
Scenario – a change of 18,776 votes (0.015% of national total) in three states between Bush and Kerry results in no electoral majority. The election would have been decided by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Iowa – 5,030 votes (0.33% from Bush to Kerry); New Mexico – 2,995 votes (0.40% from Bush to Kerry); and Nevada – 10,751 votes (1.30% from Bush to Kerry).
Or:
Scenario – A change of 59,300 votes (0.048% of national total) from Bush to Kerry in one state results in a victory for Kerry. Ohio – 59,300 votes (1.05%).
Ohio–where have we been hearing about that recently? Please note that the frauds required in these scenarios are fractions of your “one tenth of one percent.”
Voting Rights Act–Without the 15th Amendment the Voting Rigths Atc would be unconstitutional. You are conflating general voting rights (who has the right to vote) with the process for electing a President and it’s not the same thing. Presidential elections are different than any other election in the Unted States. You really ought to read the Constitution sometime.
Not even remotely. Please go read Article II. It’s so much easier to debate someone who is already educated.
Free Clue: Look for this phrase. “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct”
In fact, if you read this and understand it properly, you may realize that under the US Constitution no one has any Federally recognized right to vote for President at all.
I am not asking for a National Voter ID–that would be unconstitutional.
Comment by RTO Trainer on 10/20 @ 9:17 pm #
Thousands of people are turned away only by states with poor voting procedures.
In Texas thousands of ballots are cast that are determined to be ineligible. The voters, however are NOT turned away.
If you come to my precinct and you are not registered in my precinct, my clerks will help you figure out where you should be. We’ll even provide driving directions from our poll.
As one example: If you, as the voter, decide you will not go to the correct polling place and insist to vote in my precinct, we will let you cast a provisional ballot. It will be looked into and if determined that you did indeed cast a ballot at the incorrect polling place the ballot will be disqualified. (On the other hnd if the precinct book was in error or we made some other kind of mistake it will be counted.)
In reality, what you are railing against is poor rules and regulations in your state. I suggest you get your legislature to clean it up.
Comment by smrstrauss on 10/22 @ 1:07 am #
Re: I’m not buying your crap about long lines.
Read this please:
“In this past election, Kenyon College students and the residents of Gambier, Ohio, had to endure some of the most extenuating voting circumstances in the entire country. As many of you may already know, because they had it on national media attention, Kenyon students and the residents of Gambier had to stand in line up to 10 to 12 hours in the rain, through a hot gym, and crowded narrow lines, making it extremely uncomfortable. As a result of this, voters were disenfranchised, having class to attend to, sports commitments, and midterms for the next day, which they had to study for. Obviously, it is a disgrace that kids who are being perpetually told the importance of voting, could not vote because they had other commitments and had to be put up with a 12-hour line.â€Â
Source: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1118-30.htm
and this:
http://usliberals.about.com/od/electionreform/a/votingrights1.htm
(Which includes this: At Mt. Vernon Nazarene University, considered a conservative campus, there were ample voting machines and no lines. In contrast, at Kenyon College, only five miles away, the sole polling place had two machines for 1,300 registered voters.)
and this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64737-2004Dec14?language=printer
And finally, with regard to the potential for this year’s election:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/national/stories/091808dnpolvoting.87b4646d.html
Comment by smrstrauss on 10/22 @ 6:56 pm #
Further to that:
There appears to be organized (in the sense of computer software) voter fraud in West Virginia, and it is not by Democrats.
See:
http://leisureguy.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/electronic-voting-machines-still-switching-votes/
Which reads in part:
Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week.
This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for “Barack Obama†kept flipping to “John McCainâ€Â.
In both counties, Republicans are responsible for overseeing elections. Both county clerks said the problem is isolated.
They also blamed voters for not being more careful.
“People make mistakes more than machines,†said Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright.
Shelba Ketchum, a 69-year-old nurse retired from Thomas Memorial Hospital, described what happened Friday at the Putnam County Courthouse in Winfield.
“I pushed buttons and they all came up Republican,†she said. “I hit Obama and it switched to McCain. I am really concerned about that. If McCain wins, there was something wrong with the machines.
“I asked them for a printout of my votes,†Ketchum said. “But they said it was in the machine and I could not get it. I did not feel right when I left the courthouse. My son felt the same way.
End quote:
And then there is the desire to reduce the vote by heckling the supporters of one of the candidates.
See:
http://washingtontimes.com/weblogs/bellantoni/2008/Oct/20/mccain-supporters-call-early-voters-ch/
Which reads in part:
PRINCETON, W.Va.  Over the last few days I’ve been through Southwest Virginia, down in North Carolina and now back up into the mountains on the West Virginia side near Bluefield for some stories about the political climate in red states.
Sen. Barack Obama has set up a massive organization across the country, and especially in North Carolina.
The campaign has given supporters lists with hours and locations of early voting sites, and collected the names, e-mail address and cell phone number of each attendee at the Fayetteville rally Sunday afternoon. (There were a few thousand who had to listen to his speech from the parking lot after the coliseum hit about 10,000 capacity.)
An organizer at the rally rattled off the addresses of early vote sites nearby that would be open after the event.
Photographer Joe Eddins and I headed over to the closest one and found a steady line of voters hoping to cast ballots early. Most seemed to be Obama supporters and several had come from the rally.
Nearly all the voters were black.
Also at the polling site was a group of loud and angry protesters who shouted and mocked the voters as they walked in. Nearly all were white.
As you can see from these videos, no one held anything back. People were shouting about Obama’s acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word “terrorist.” They also were complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.
End quote:
And then there is this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/opinion/21herbert.html?_r=5&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=login
Which reads in part:
“…when it comes to voting, the real threat to democracy is the nonstop campaign by the G.O.P. and its supporters to disenfranchise American citizens who have every right to cast a ballot. We saw this in 2000. We saw it in 2004. And we’re seeing it again now.
In Montana, the Republican Party challenged the registrations of thousands of legitimate voters based on change-of-address information available from the Post Office. These specious challenges were made  surprise, surprise  in Democratic districts. Answering the challenges would have been a wholly unnecessary hardship for the voters, many of whom were students or members of the armed forces.
In the face of widespread public criticism (even the Republican lieutenant governor weighed in), the party backed off.
That sort of thing is widespread. In one politically crucial state after another  in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, you name it  the G.O.P. has unleashed foot soldiers whose insidious mission is to make the voting process as difficult as possible  or, better yet, impossible  for citizens who are believed to favor Democrats.”
End quote
And then, there’s this:
Making Sure Every Vote Isn’t Counted (Joe Rothstein’s Commentary)
October 22, 2008
Despite all of the public interest in and enthusiasm for the 2008 campaign, despite all the new voter registrations, on November 4 the number of votes cast may be considerably fewer than 120 million votes counted for Bush and Kerry in 2004. Maybe as much as 10% fewer.
Why?
Start with the fact that 39 states already have purged 13 million voters off the voters’ rolls since 2004.
Yes, you heard that right. At least 13 million voters have been purged from the rolls since 2004. That’s 10% of the 120 million votes cast in 2004 and twice as many voters than have just been added through massive registration drives.
In many states, the number of names dropped from the voters’ lists has been breathtaking: 17% in Colorado, 15% in Washington State, 14% in New York, 13% in Nevada, 10% in Missouri.
These purges are the cynical byproduct of 2000’s voting debacle. After 2000 the public demanded election reform. What the Republican Congress enacted in response was legalized vote suppression. Their idea of election reform was to set up a system that required states to match voter registrations against other computerized files such as drivers’ license and to disenfranchise those whose files don’t match—even if the mismatch is the result of a simple clerical recording error, or because of a missing middle initial or the absence of a Jr. or Sr.
Wisconsin refused to play along with this game when a test run showed one in four voters would have been eliminated because of typos and other minor problems.
In Ohio, 200,000 newly registered voters fell into the mismatch trap, and the Republicans are waging a ferocious legal battle to get their hands on those names so they can challenge them when they vote. Even a unanimous rejection by the U.S. Supreme Court hasn’t stopped the Republicans from continuing this fight. They know that the state’s electoral votes may hang in the balance.
In the first few days of early voting in Florida this week, 5,000 voters already had been rejected, mostly because of typos and variations in the spelling of peoples’ names.
The “matching†requirement is a highly effective legacy of Republican voter “reform.†Voter ID is another.
In 7 states, voters won’t be permitted to vote without valid picture ID cards. This requirement alone may change the outcome of elections in Indiana, Florida and Michigan by essentially disenfranchising those without driver’s licenses or employment ID cards.
In 17 other states some form of ID will be required to get a ballot. Just having your name on the official voter roll will not be enough.
The Republicans are also mounting their most ambitious effort ever to challenge ballots in predominantly Democratic voting precincts over any pretext. More than 1.5 million votes were thrown out in 2004 after they were classified as “spoiled” because of such minor errors as blank spaces, stray marks or tears. The losses hit hardest among minorities in low-income precincts, who are often forced to vote on antiquated machines. In 2004, the number of spoiled ballots in New Mexico—19,000—was three times George Bush’s margin of victory there.
Reporter Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. have an article in the current Rolling Stone magazine that outlines many of ways Republicans are trying to suppress the 2008 vote. Ever heard of “vote caging?” Here’s how Palast and Kennedy say it works:
“Many voters are given provisional ballots under an insidious tactic known as “vote caging,” which uses targeted mailings to disenfranchise black voters whose addresses have changed. In 2004, despite a federal consent order forbidding Republicans from engaging in the practice, the GOP sent out tens of thousands of letters to “confirm” the addresses of voters in minority precincts. If a letter was returned (unopened) for any reason–because the voter was away at school or serving in the military–the GOP challenged the voter for giving a false address.â€Â
Bill Moyers interviewed professor Mark Crispin Miller about all this on last week’s Bill Moyers Journal and got an earful about vote suppression tactics. Crispin details them in his new book, Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy 2000-2008. For anyone who wants more detail, check out Moyers’ web site http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/, or read Miller’s book.
….Or, just pay attention to all of the mischief occurring in these last days before November 4. It’s hard to find, since the mainstream media seems to have an aversion to touching vote suppression as a real and important factor in this election.
But many bloggers are paying attention to the mysterious absentee ballots that are showing up in Democrats’ mailboxes in Nevada, trying to lure Democratic voters into sending their absentee votes to an erroneous address. Others have pointed toward the anonymous pamphlets in Philadelphia’s black precincts, warning people that police will be watching the polls to catch those delinquent in paying parking tickets. And so on.
According to the public opinion surveys, if the usual 55-60% of registered voters turn out November 4, Barack Obama will be elected President and Democrats will claim a sweeping victory in both houses of Congress. But given how close some contests are, a change of just a few percentage points can make a world a difference.
Below the surface of the daily photo ops, the TV spots and the regular news coverage, there’s a subterranean campaign in progress to discourage voting in Democratic areas, to challenge Democratic voters and ballots, and to reduce the Democratic vote count. If it works, even by a little, its impact could be literally world changing.
Joe Rothstein is a veteran national political strategist and media producer and editor of USPoliticstoday.com. He can be contacted at joe@ipdgroup.com.
Comment by smrstrauss on 10/22 @ 7:59 pm #
And add this one:
From (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23638322/block_the_vote/1)
Quote:
Since 2004, the Bush administration and more than a dozen states have taken steps to impede voter registration. Among the worst offenders is Florida, where the Republican-dominated legislature created hefty fines  up to $5,000 per violation  for groups that fail to meet deadlines for turning in voter-application forms. Facing potentially huge penalties for trivial administrative errors, the League of Women Voters abandoned its voter-registration drives in Florida. A court order eventually forced the legislature to reduce the maximum penalty to $1,000. But even so, said former League president Dianne Wheatley-Giliotti, the reduced fines “create an unfair tax on democracy.” The state has also failed to uphold a federal law requiring that low-income voters be offered an opportunity to register when they apply for food stamps or other public assistance. As a result, the annual number of such registrations has plummeted from more than 120,000 in the Clinton years to barely 10,000 today.
2. Demanding “Perfect Matches”
Under the Help America Vote Act, some states now reject first-time registrants whose data does not correspond to information in other government databases. Spurred by HAVA, almost every state must now attempt to make some kind of match  and four states, including the swing states of Iowa and Florida, require what is known as a “perfect match.” Under this rigid framework, new registrants can lose the right to vote if the information on their voter-registration forms  Social Security number, street address and precisely spelled name, right down to a hyphen  fails to exactly match data listed in other government records.
There are many legitimate reasons, of course, why a voter’s information might vary. Indeed, a recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that as many as 20 percent of discrepancies between voter records and driver’s licenses in New York City are simply typing mistakes made by government clerks when they transcribe data. But under the new rules, those mistakes are costing citizens the right to vote. In California, a Republican secretary of state blocked 43 percent of all new voters in Los Angeles from registering in early 2006  many because of the state’s failure to produce a tight match. In Florida, GOP officials created “match” rules that rejected more than 15,000 new registrants in 2006 and 2007  nearly three-fourths of them Hispanic and black voters. Given the big registration drives this year, the number could be five times higher by November.
end quote
Comment by smrstrauss on 10/22 @ 8:17 pm #
And this one
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/why-do-republicans-hate-democracy
Which reads in part
“…everywhere that ACORN has been seriously examined — from Indiana to Seattle, whenever issues have arisen they have been the result of individual canvassers trying to cheat ACORN, not with the organization itself.
And let’s be clear: there is no evidence whatsoever that an actual voting fraud problem exists. Just in regards to ACORN, the bogus registrations have largely been flagged and caught. Moreover, there simply is no evidence that people actually register to vote illegally on anything more than an infinitesimal scale.
As Deborah Hastings at the AP reports:
Voter fraud is rare in the United States, according to a 2007 report by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. Based on reviews of voter fraud claims at the federal and state level, the center’s report asserted most problems were caused by things like technological glitches, clerical errors or mistakes made by voters and by election officials.
“It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than he will impersonate another voter at the polls,” the report said. (I like this analogy, so I will repeat it. MORE LIKELY TO BE STRUCK BY LIGHTNING)
Alex Keyssar, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, calls the current controversy “chapter 22 in a drama that’s been going on awhile. The pattern is that nothing much ever comes from this. There have been no known cases of people voting fraudulently.”
“What we’ve seen,” Keyssar said, “is sloppiness and someone’s idea of a stupid joke, like registering as Donald Duck.”
No, what’s been happening instead is that Republican-sponsored “voter purges” have been stripping people of their legitimate voting rights. They show up expecting to vote on Election Day and are turned away, and nothing is rectified for months, if ever.
The Brennan Center for Justice conducted an in-depth study of these purges and found:
Purges rely on error-ridden lists. States regularly attempt to purge voter lists of ineligible voters or duplicate registration records, but the lists that states use as the basis for purging are often riddled with errors. … Voters who are eligible to vote are wrongly stricken from the rolls because of problems with underlying source lists.â€Â
End Quote
Comment by smrstrauss on 10/23 @ 8:10 pm #
Here’s something amusing
“John McCain himself was a keynote speaker at a 2006 Acorn rally in Florida, where he declared the group’s volunteers to be “what makes America special”.â€Â
Comment by smrstrauss on 10/23 @ 8:13 pm #
Here’s a recent post that I found:
Quote:
So the Cinncinnati Enquirer has a story on voter fraud in the 2002 and 2004 elections. They asked every Ohio precinct if there was any fraudulent votes. AND THERE WAS.
How much you ask?
10% no
5% no
1% no
.05% no
.005% no
.0005% nope
The actual percent? 0.0000444%
In all of Ohio, with over 9,000,000 votes they found 4 voters voting that should not have been allowed to vote. Yep, lots of voter fraud out there. The story is here http://news.cincinnati.c…81013/NEWS0106/310130049
Take a look at my site http://www.republicantricks.com
And:
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/13/election-acorn-voter-fraud
“Here are the facts. Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can’t authenticate the registration, or it’s incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic (“fraudulent”, “incompleteâ€Â, et cetera).
They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you’ve heard about fraud by Acorn, it’s because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that’s been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers.
Most officials who run to the media screaming “Acorn is committing fraud†know all of the above but don’t bother to share those facts with the media they’ve run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it’s voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.
You’ll hear that Donald Duck, Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse and (new this year) the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team have all had fraudulent registrations submitted in their names. That’s true.
And we know this, why? Because Acorn told officials about it when they followed the law and turned in those registrations, flagged as fraudulent.â€Â