And the evidence that it’s a big deal is that one poll worker cast 5 extra absentee ballots? If that’s the best you’ve got, it basically proves that voter fraud is anything but a big deal.
Voter fraud exists, but there’s no evidence that it happens enough to affect election outcomes. In particular, there’s no evidence that in-person voter fraud, the sort targeted by voter id requirements, happens much at all (this case, like most, involves absentee ballots, and so wouldn’t be affected by voter id laws).
Roxanne Rubin, a Republican in Nevada, tried to show how easy it is to commit in-person voter fraud by voting in two different locations in November. She was arrested by the FBI. So that’s one kind of in-person voter fraud that exists: people trying to prove that there’s voter fraud.
Or Al Franken’s election to the senate; it too was decided by fraud. (Far more felons voted than the margin for victory, for just one reason).
So, it’s happened more than once; an election decided by fraud. And in the latter one, that had a ton of major impacts, like saddling us with Obamacare.
The Pennsylvania case is a perfect example. It wasn’t in-person fraud, it used absentee ballots (so voter id laws would not affect it). It was found out, not because of voter id laws, but because it was on a big enough scale to actually effect state legislative elections. That’s the paradox of vote fraud: you have to do it on a big scale to have any hope of having an effect, particularly in elections to Congress, the Senate, and the Presidency, but if you do it on a big scale you will be caught.
Franken’s election was not decided by fraud. The number of known fraudulent votes (24 by one count) was much smaller than the tiny margin of victory, and you can’t even assume that all those votes were for Franken. Again, the Franken race is a great example. No organized fraud was found, and out of millions of votes cast, they still couldn’t find enough cases of individual vote fraud to change the outcome of the closest Senate race in memory. And none — none — of the cases of vote fraud involved in-person voter impersonation, the sort addressed by voter id laws.
Jim, why is LOOKING for voter fraud such a problem?
Why is asking for the SAME types of ID to cast a vote, that it takes to get a hotel room, a bank acct, a apartment, FOOD STAMPS, AFDC, Medicade, Medicare, etc, etc, etc, SUCH a hard or bad thing?
And in this case, why should we believe this “… it was a lost ballot, I forgot that I’d already sent in a ballot, then I forgot again, then I voted on the first Tuesday in November, but I didn’t do ALL of this intentionally”, from a woman
And in this case, why should we believe this, … …ALL of this intentionally”, from a woman who was tasked with ensuring that this kind of thing DIDN’T happen?!
If she didn’t ‘catch’ herself making this gross a mistake, how the h3ll was she going to catch OTHERS doing so Jim? I’m just hoping that between elections she’s not an NRC Inspector or a USDA or FDA Accountability Auditor. Because if her level of ‘watchfulness’ includes not ‘noticing that she re-voted 5 or 6 times, what is her level of ability to Grade Meat, Inspect Nuclear Operation Procedures or make sure there aren’t too many rat turds in our fish sticks?
Now I realize some of that is absurd. But Jim, SO is getting caught with your hand in the voter cookie jar, and yelling, “..I didn’t do IT!”, like a damned 4 year old. More absurd IMHO is that half the people in the country seem to be able take her word for it, and ask the other half what’s wrong with US? It reminds me of a quote from a classic movie, from 1939.
“…pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
But if the curtain is covering a voting booth Jim, we should ALL care, regardless of political beliefs, because it might happen to US next time. In fact the (D)s still say it happened to THEM in 2000, with Bush & Gore.
[[[DETROIT — Four staff members of former GOP Rep. Thaddeus McCotter’s office will be charged with misdemeanor and felony election fraud violations, including forgery and conspiracy on ballot petitions, after an investigation that prompted the five-time incumbent congressman and one-time presidential candidate to resign in July.]]]
The good news is they are catching these criminals no matter which party they belong to so hopefully they will stamp it out.
No, because people looking at the evidence see it happening. The 200,000 lost votes in Florida in November — in just one state, and one election — dwarf the sum of every allegation of in-person vote fraud ever made. We should be putting much more effort into addressing the problem we know we have — long voting lines — than the one we know we don’t have (in person voter fraud).
Voter fraud exists, but there’s no evidence that it happens enough to affect election outcomes.
Wow. That would have to be the case for it to continue, wouldn’t it? No matter what the question, the answer is, “but it’s ok, because such and such could be the case although there’s no evidence either way.”
How about it’s wrong and we fix it? Why isn’t that the answer?
This lady only got caught cause she was bragging. There are no effective mechanisims for investigating the validity of ballots.
A couple election cycles back the race for governor in WA was decided by voter fraud and the Democrats very very happy about it. They looked at it as revenge for 2000. And speaking of crazy birther theories, how many Democrats still think Gore won the election? On so many issues, it is like Democrats hit the reset button on their mind and blacked out eight years of dastardly behavior by their party.
I’ve also wondered about those votes (IIRC, in Philly) where thousands went for Obama and not a single person voted for Romney. While not impossible, it seems statistically implausable to believe that not a single vote was cast for Romney, even in error.
We get reports from Republican observers that a whole lot of ballot box stuffing is going on. They observe all manner of suspicious behavior and suspicious events but are not permitted to inquire further because any kind of examination constitutes voter supression. No one pays attention.
Not only does the press ignore this, the Republican party ignores it. Being an observer in a Democratic controlled district is a complete waste of time. You have to take complaints about ballot box stuffing to Democrat judges, and they are the ones organizing the ballot box stuffing. Preventing ballot box stuffing would require a purge of government employees.
My initial idea is to put hidden cameras in polling places to observe what’s happening. Combine the video feed with facial recognition software to see if the same person shows up to vote more than once.
No doubt this would be against the law because RACIST!
We can’t even manage to have enough ballots at polling places, or enough polling places to avoid having people spending hours in line, and you want to run a system of tens of thousands of hidden cameras doing facial recognition? To address a problem — in-person voter fraud — that virtually never happens? You think that ballot clerks and election judges in Democratic precincts are corrupt, but you trust them to run this hidden camera network?
I’m not going to read the Orlando story, because I heard the story in Houston. The NAACP showed up at a polling place and said “this line is long”. They then began reshuffling people in line based on their own opinion of a person’s frailty. As this is neither legal nor appropriate in normal social behaviour, it caused lots of confusion and impromptu arguments, which held up the process. As the situation further declined, poll watchers got poll workers involved in policing the situation, thus limiting the workers actually processing voter rolls. In short order, the line actually was long by the time the press arrived. Had the NAACP obeyed voting laws, rather than arbitrarily decide who got priority in the voting lines; the flow of voters would have been fine. Of course, since the poll watchers did their job of reporting to the poll workers; the poll watchers were blamed as the trouble makers, which was the narrative intended.
Preventing ballot box stuffing would require a purge of government employees.
So why the fixation on voter id laws, which have to be implemented by those same government employees? Voter ID laws do nothing to prevent systematic corruption. It’s almost as if vote fraud is just a smokescreen for laws that are actually aimed at reducing Democratic turnout….
If you want to go after systematic corruption, then put more money into investigation and law enforcement. Don’t make it harder for individuals to vote.
It’s odd how the voter id debate is a mirror image of the gun control debate. Isolated cases of illegal activity lead to calls for sweeping laws that affect every voter/gun owner, even when the laws in question would have no effect on the illegal activity that triggered the concern. In both cases the proponents of new laws ask what the harm would be in having voters/gun owners jump through a few new hoops. Opponents point out that most voters/gun owners are law-abiding, and aren’t the current laws enough?
The difference is that we know that illegal gun use kills tens of thousands of people every year. We don’t know that illegal vote fraud affects any major elections.
It is beyond reasonable doubt that we had fraud last November, with Republican poll watchers excluded from some precincts for a time. While they eventually returned, I expect the damage was already done.
Why? There were pre-election polls in which Romney got 0% black support. If you can call hundreds of black voters and not turn up a Romney supporter, is it so hard to believe that there are black neighborhoods with no Romney voters? I’m guessing there were also neighborhoods in the country with no Obama voters.
Yes, they do (see: the 2000 Pat Buchanan vote in Florida). I’ll wager that they make mistakes much more often than they commit felony voter fraud. So if your concern is the legitimacy and accuracy of election results, why spend so much effort on voter id, and so little on reducing voting errors?
“Why? There were pre-election polls in which Romney got 0% black support. ”
I’m sure you realize (actually I’m not but I’m trying to be nicer) that a poll is not 100% accurate; that it can easily miss a Romney voter in a liberal district; that it all depends upon which poll you choose – how the questions were asked and whether or not it was a poll of likely voters or adults.
In the past you’ve used polls as “proof” and those polls were virtually worthless as they were polls of adults; not likely voters.
There were pre-election polls in which Romney got 0% black support. If you can call hundreds of black voters and not turn up a Romney supporter, is it so hard to believe that there are black neighborhoods with no Romney voters?
I see. Because you can call people in a black neighborhood that is predominantly for Obama. When you receive an answer of, “I’m undecided” or “I’m for Romney”; then you know who to immidate into not voting. It’s a great way to get 100% of the results you want. It’s why Card Check is important.
Put it another way: would you be shocked to find predominantly Mormon towns in rural Utah where there were no Obama voters? I wouldn’t. A number of the frequent commenters here asserted before the election that they didn’t know anyone who was going to vote for Obama. Is it so hard to believe that there might be similar clumps of non-Romney voters?
Assume for the moment that there is a scheme whereby it is possible to accurately determine if the person trying to vote is eligible and the scheme did not apply undue cost burdens to anyone:
“The Civitas Institute has documented how SBE [State Board of Elections] bureaucrats conspired with a private company, working for the Obama campaign to facilitate a form of online voter registration for the 2012 General Election – in violation of state law.
………..
Yet the SBE staff set in motion a scheme that in the last two months of the election resulted in more than 11,000 people being allowed to register online. Civitas has confirmed this by a public records request to all 100 counties and is still compiling the total number of registrations as counties comply with the request. Thus far, 68 percent of the registrations we have received were Democratic voters, 10 percent were Republican voters and 21 percent from unaffiliated voters.
……
Don Wright, SBE General Counsel, played word games when answering inquires about the Obama campaign’s own re-election site Gottaregister.com, which utilized the technology that SBE staff approved. Wright repeatedly denied that the SBE allowed online voter registration, insisting that it was “web-based voter registration” instead, as if there could be a “web-based” process that wasn’t online.”
11,000 illegally registered voters. No longer just one-sies and two-sies.
And the evidence that it’s a big deal is that one poll worker cast 5 extra absentee ballots? If that’s the best you’ve got, it basically proves that voter fraud is anything but a big deal.
Voter fraud exists, but there’s no evidence that it happens enough to affect election outcomes. In particular, there’s no evidence that in-person voter fraud, the sort targeted by voter id requirements, happens much at all (this case, like most, involves absentee ballots, and so wouldn’t be affected by voter id laws).
Roxanne Rubin, a Republican in Nevada, tried to show how easy it is to commit in-person voter fraud by voting in two different locations in November. She was arrested by the FBI. So that’s one kind of in-person voter fraud that exists: people trying to prove that there’s voter fraud.
Jim, how about organized vote fraud deciding not just a state senate race, but control of a state senate itself?
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/19/us/vote-fraud-ruling-shifts-pennsylvania-senate.html
Or Al Franken’s election to the senate; it too was decided by fraud. (Far more felons voted than the margin for victory, for just one reason).
So, it’s happened more than once; an election decided by fraud. And in the latter one, that had a ton of major impacts, like saddling us with Obamacare.
The Pennsylvania case is a perfect example. It wasn’t in-person fraud, it used absentee ballots (so voter id laws would not affect it). It was found out, not because of voter id laws, but because it was on a big enough scale to actually effect state legislative elections. That’s the paradox of vote fraud: you have to do it on a big scale to have any hope of having an effect, particularly in elections to Congress, the Senate, and the Presidency, but if you do it on a big scale you will be caught.
Franken’s election was not decided by fraud. The number of known fraudulent votes (24 by one count) was much smaller than the tiny margin of victory, and you can’t even assume that all those votes were for Franken. Again, the Franken race is a great example. No organized fraud was found, and out of millions of votes cast, they still couldn’t find enough cases of individual vote fraud to change the outcome of the closest Senate race in memory. And none — none — of the cases of vote fraud involved in-person voter impersonation, the sort addressed by voter id laws.
Jim, why is LOOKING for voter fraud such a problem?
Why is asking for the SAME types of ID to cast a vote, that it takes to get a hotel room, a bank acct, a apartment, FOOD STAMPS, AFDC, Medicade, Medicare, etc, etc, etc, SUCH a hard or bad thing?
And in this case, why should we believe this “… it was a lost ballot, I forgot that I’d already sent in a ballot, then I forgot again, then I voted on the first Tuesday in November, but I didn’t do ALL of this intentionally”, from a woman
[wrong button alert, I'll continue my thoughts]
And in this case, why should we believe this, … …ALL of this intentionally”, from a woman who was tasked with ensuring that this kind of thing DIDN’T happen?!
If she didn’t ‘catch’ herself making this gross a mistake, how the h3ll was she going to catch OTHERS doing so Jim? I’m just hoping that between elections she’s not an NRC Inspector or a USDA or FDA Accountability Auditor. Because if her level of ‘watchfulness’ includes not ‘noticing that she re-voted 5 or 6 times, what is her level of ability to Grade Meat, Inspect Nuclear Operation Procedures or make sure there aren’t too many rat turds in our fish sticks?
Now I realize some of that is absurd. But Jim, SO is getting caught with your hand in the voter cookie jar, and yelling, “..I didn’t do IT!”, like a damned 4 year old. More absurd IMHO is that half the people in the country seem to be able take her word for it, and ask the other half what’s wrong with US? It reminds me of a quote from a classic movie, from 1939.
“…pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
But if the curtain is covering a voting booth Jim, we should ALL care, regardless of political beliefs, because it might happen to US next time. In fact the (D)s still say it happened to THEM in 2000, with Bush & Gore.
Even before I clicked into the thread I knew our predictable friend Jim would be FIRST! with his usual nothing-to-see-here Chief Wiggum impersonation.
I am not sure, given that even House staffers are getting arrested for voter fraud.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/9/mccotter-staffers-charged-michigan-election-fraud/
[[[DETROIT — Four staff members of former GOP Rep. Thaddeus McCotter’s office will be charged with misdemeanor and felony election fraud violations, including forgery and conspiracy on ballot petitions, after an investigation that prompted the five-time incumbent congressman and one-time presidential candidate to resign in July.]]]
The good news is they are catching these criminals no matter which party they belong to so hopefully they will stamp it out.
And of course, voter *suppression* does exist because……
….Democrats say it does.
No, because people looking at the evidence see it happening. The 200,000 lost votes in Florida in November — in just one state, and one election — dwarf the sum of every allegation of in-person vote fraud ever made. We should be putting much more effort into addressing the problem we know we have — long voting lines — than the one we know we don’t have (in person voter fraud).
I seem to recall a Presidential election that came down to 500 votes in Florida……
..I’m sure that just a few cases of voter fraud was of no concern to you.
We have solid evidence it’s occurring. We do not know the upper limit of the numbers. We do know elections have been decided upon razor thin margins.
We also know you love voter fraud…..until your Gore is Gored.
500 votes in Florida
Yes, some elections are very close. But long voter lines, confusing ballots, and faulty vote-counting matter much more than in-person voter fraud.
We do not know the upper limit of the numbers.
And ignorance is a reason for action?
We also know you love voter fraud…..until your Gore is Gored.
What does that even mean?
Long lines? Many of the states Democrats were complaining about allow people to early vote for weeks and also have the option of an absentee ballot.
Voter fraud exists, but there’s no evidence that it happens enough to affect election outcomes.
Wow. That would have to be the case for it to continue, wouldn’t it? No matter what the question, the answer is, “but it’s ok, because such and such could be the case although there’s no evidence either way.”
How about it’s wrong and we fix it? Why isn’t that the answer?
That would have to be the case for it to continue, wouldn’t it?
That’s a joke, right?
How about it’s wrong and we fix it? Why isn’t that the answer?
Because attention and resources are finite, the problem is minuscule, and the fix is worse than the disease.
The fix is simpler than issuing licenses to carry firearms.
Do tell us about this simple fix that would prevent any possibility of voter fraud. While you’re at it could you prevent shoplifting as well?
Record your vote on the equivalent of a bank atm, or perhaps actually at a bank atm.
That’s a joke, right?
No, but it is telling that you think it might be.
This lady only got caught cause she was bragging. There are no effective mechanisims for investigating the validity of ballots.
A couple election cycles back the race for governor in WA was decided by voter fraud and the Democrats very very happy about it. They looked at it as revenge for 2000. And speaking of crazy birther theories, how many Democrats still think Gore won the election? On so many issues, it is like Democrats hit the reset button on their mind and blacked out eight years of dastardly behavior by their party.
I’ve also wondered about those votes (IIRC, in Philly) where thousands went for Obama and not a single person voted for Romney. While not impossible, it seems statistically implausable to believe that not a single vote was cast for Romney, even in error.
We get reports from Republican observers that a whole lot of ballot box stuffing is going on. They observe all manner of suspicious behavior and suspicious events but are not permitted to inquire further because any kind of examination constitutes voter supression. No one pays attention.
Not only does the press ignore this, the Republican party ignores it. Being an observer in a Democratic controlled district is a complete waste of time. You have to take complaints about ballot box stuffing to Democrat judges, and they are the ones organizing the ballot box stuffing. Preventing ballot box stuffing would require a purge of government employees.
My initial idea is to put hidden cameras in polling places to observe what’s happening. Combine the video feed with facial recognition software to see if the same person shows up to vote more than once.
No doubt this would be against the law because RACIST!
We can’t even manage to have enough ballots at polling places, or enough polling places to avoid having people spending hours in line, and you want to run a system of tens of thousands of hidden cameras doing facial recognition? To address a problem — in-person voter fraud — that virtually never happens? You think that ballot clerks and election judges in Democratic precincts are corrupt, but you trust them to run this hidden camera network?
1) Prove that it virtually never happens (hint: you can’t)
2) The long lines are another Obama lie you’ve fallen for.
The long lines are another Obama lie you’ve fallen for
Here’s a report on that “Obama lie”:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-12-29/news/os-discouraged-voters-20121229_1_long-lines-higher-turnout-election-day
I’m not going to read the Orlando story, because I heard the story in Houston. The NAACP showed up at a polling place and said “this line is long”. They then began reshuffling people in line based on their own opinion of a person’s frailty. As this is neither legal nor appropriate in normal social behaviour, it caused lots of confusion and impromptu arguments, which held up the process. As the situation further declined, poll watchers got poll workers involved in policing the situation, thus limiting the workers actually processing voter rolls. In short order, the line actually was long by the time the press arrived. Had the NAACP obeyed voting laws, rather than arbitrarily decide who got priority in the voting lines; the flow of voters would have been fine. Of course, since the poll watchers did their job of reporting to the poll workers; the poll watchers were blamed as the trouble makers, which was the narrative intended.
Preventing ballot box stuffing would require a purge of government employees.
So why the fixation on voter id laws, which have to be implemented by those same government employees? Voter ID laws do nothing to prevent systematic corruption. It’s almost as if vote fraud is just a smokescreen for laws that are actually aimed at reducing Democratic turnout….
If you want to go after systematic corruption, then put more money into investigation and law enforcement. Don’t make it harder for individuals to vote.
It’s odd how the voter id debate is a mirror image of the gun control debate. Isolated cases of illegal activity lead to calls for sweeping laws that affect every voter/gun owner, even when the laws in question would have no effect on the illegal activity that triggered the concern. In both cases the proponents of new laws ask what the harm would be in having voters/gun owners jump through a few new hoops. Opponents point out that most voters/gun owners are law-abiding, and aren’t the current laws enough?
The difference is that we know that illegal gun use kills tens of thousands of people every year. We don’t know that illegal vote fraud affects any major elections.
A purge of corrupt government by force of arms.
It is beyond reasonable doubt that we had fraud last November, with Republican poll watchers excluded from some precincts for a time. While they eventually returned, I expect the damage was already done.
it seems statistically implausable
Why? There were pre-election polls in which Romney got 0% black support. If you can call hundreds of black voters and not turn up a Romney supporter, is it so hard to believe that there are black neighborhoods with no Romney voters? I’m guessing there were also neighborhoods in the country with no Obama voters.
It seems implausable that not a single vote was cast for Romney, even in error. Humans make mistakes.
Humans make mistakes.
Yes, they do (see: the 2000 Pat Buchanan vote in Florida). I’ll wager that they make mistakes much more often than they commit felony voter fraud. So if your concern is the legitimacy and accuracy of election results, why spend so much effort on voter id, and so little on reducing voting errors?
Again, another red herring from Jim.
“Why? There were pre-election polls in which Romney got 0% black support. ”
I’m sure you realize (actually I’m not but I’m trying to be nicer) that a poll is not 100% accurate; that it can easily miss a Romney voter in a liberal district; that it all depends upon which poll you choose – how the questions were asked and whether or not it was a poll of likely voters or adults.
In the past you’ve used polls as “proof” and those polls were virtually worthless as they were polls of adults; not likely voters.
There were pre-election polls in which Romney got 0% black support. If you can call hundreds of black voters and not turn up a Romney supporter, is it so hard to believe that there are black neighborhoods with no Romney voters?
I see. Because you can call people in a black neighborhood that is predominantly for Obama. When you receive an answer of, “I’m undecided” or “I’m for Romney”; then you know who to immidate into not voting. It’s a great way to get 100% of the results you want. It’s why Card Check is important.
Put it another way: would you be shocked to find predominantly Mormon towns in rural Utah where there were no Obama voters? I wouldn’t. A number of the frequent commenters here asserted before the election that they didn’t know anyone who was going to vote for Obama. Is it so hard to believe that there might be similar clumps of non-Romney voters?
Utah is a right to work state.
To vote by atm would require two things. The installation of some software and a sticker that says, “You may vote here.”
It would be as secure as your money.
It would also require a way to get ATM cards and PIN numbers to every registered voter.
Perhaps we could transfer the budget from Obamaphones.
Banks seem to handle it without a problem, but you’re probably right; Completely undoable.
Jim:
Assume for the moment that there is a scheme whereby it is possible to accurately determine if the person trying to vote is eligible and the scheme did not apply undue cost burdens to anyone:
Would you be against implementing the scheme?
And of course we now have this:
“The Civitas Institute has documented how SBE [State Board of Elections] bureaucrats conspired with a private company, working for the Obama campaign to facilitate a form of online voter registration for the 2012 General Election – in violation of state law.
………..
Yet the SBE staff set in motion a scheme that in the last two months of the election resulted in more than 11,000 people being allowed to register online. Civitas has confirmed this by a public records request to all 100 counties and is still compiling the total number of registrations as counties comply with the request. Thus far, 68 percent of the registrations we have received were Democratic voters, 10 percent were Republican voters and 21 percent from unaffiliated voters.
……
Don Wright, SBE General Counsel, played word games when answering inquires about the Obama campaign’s own re-election site Gottaregister.com, which utilized the technology that SBE staff approved. Wright repeatedly denied that the SBE allowed online voter registration, insisting that it was “web-based voter registration” instead, as if there could be a “web-based” process that wasn’t online.”
11,000 illegally registered voters. No longer just one-sies and two-sies.
Those are just messy details for after the election. As Hillary said, “What does it matter?”