771 search results for ""voter fraud""

Suckers born every minute

by digby

My piece for Salon today takes a look at the latest iteration of the Wingnut Welfare racket. It’s looking good for Mississippi Tea Party Icon Chris McDaniel:

Nothing fires up the Tea Party faithful like accusations of illegal voting, especially of the African-American kind. McDaniel has a built-in cause should he decide to accept it. But that’s not the only avenue for his comeback. Chris Chocola is a former congressman who left the government in frustration and now heads the Club for Growth, which not only backs economic extremists for office but is also spearheading some of the main legal challenges to the tattered remains of this nation’s campaign finance laws. Perhaps McDaniel could take over the leadership of the Tea Party “voter fraud” group True the Vote and in a Palin-like jujitsu move star in a reality TV series featuring God-fearing Real Americans traveling all over the country rooting out voter fraud in “urban” areas.

And one cannot overlook the Tea Party’s most audacious leader, former congressman Allen West who has collected millions doing absolutely nothing but sending out fundraising letters for his “Allen West Guardian Fund” (which is evidently tasked with guarding Allen West’s wallet). McDaniel is showing some flair for this sort of wingnut welfare scam already — his “reward” gambit is sure to end up gathering a fair amount of money from angry Tea Partyers without having a snowball’s chance in Mississippi of adding up to anything but profits for McDaniel.

He’s pretty good. And he’s got Cruz on the case now too. Undoubtedly the big bucks will really start rolling in.

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Can you see what’s wrong with this picture?

by digby

This is clipped from the Memeorandum site:

Yes, it is a bit disconcerting to see a picture of staunch segregationist Strom Thurmond next to a story about about Congressman John Conyers. In fact it’s downright startling.

However, as weird it looks there at the aggregation site, on the original story it comes up in a slide show about write-in candidates, which is probably how John Conyers will end up running in the election if this ruling holds up. So it’s actually quite a clever juxtaposition — the right wingers are going to scream about voter fraud and what have you, so it’s nice that someone thought to bring up a little history:

In September 1954, incumbent U.S. Senator Burnet R. Maybank died while running unopposed for re-election. A replacement candidate from a rival faction of the Democratic Party was selected by party leaders so Thurmond, the former governor and 1948 States Rights Party presidential candidate, ran as a write-in and served in the Senate until 2003.

If write in candidacies are good enough for long time white supremacist office holders, they’re good enough for long time African American office holders as well.

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So, fraudulent voters are busy during the week?

by digby

Can someone explain to me what this has to do with “voter fraud”?

Pivotal swing states under Republican control are embracing significant new electoral restrictions on registering and voting that go beyond the voter identification requirements that have caused fierce partisan brawls.

The bills, laws and administrative rules — some of them tried before — shake up fundamental components of state election systems, including the days and times polls are open and the locations where people vote.

Republicans in Ohio and Wisconsin this winter pushed through measures limiting the time polls are open, in particular cutting into weekend voting favored by low-income voters and blacks, who sometimes caravan from churches to polls on the Sunday before election.

Are they saying that more potential fraud happens on the week-end? That there is some correlation between voter fraud and having more available days to vote? I haven’t seen any evidence that this is the case but seeing as there’s no evidence of any kind of systematic voter fraud of any kind, I think it’s unlikely it exists. This is clearly just straight up vote suppression.

I wonder if there are any other legitimate democracies in the world that are actively trying to make voting more difficult?

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Exceptional!

by digby

A study of election integrity around the world found:

Experts were critical about flawed elections in several long-established democracies, such as Italy and Japan. Most strikingly, according to the PEI index, the United States ranked 26th out of 73 elections under comparison worldwide, the lowest score among Western nations. Experts highlighted concern over American practices of district boundaries, voter registration and campaign finance.

What with all the cracking down on non-existent voter fraud and runaway campaign contributions from billionaires, we can get down in the 50s in no time.

And hey, our vaunted electoral college guarantees that from time to time we will elect someone who fails to get a majority, and when there is a dispute in the electoral college we turn to outright banana republic tactics and allow the political machines to install someone who didn’t actually get the most votes. I’m thinking that if they took those practices into account we’d be down there with Malaysia and Indonesia.

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Foreign .001 percenters are people too

by digby

It stands to reason that the .001% would band together to influence elections. There are so few of them, it also stands to reason they’d recruit foreign members of their class. And why not? The policies that help the American mega-rich will very likely help the foreign mega-rich as well. And that’s what counts:

In a first of its kind case, federal prosecutors say a Mexican businessman funnelled more than $500,000 into U.S. political races through Super PACs and various shell companies. The alleged financial scheme is the first known instance of a foreign national exploiting the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in order to influence U.S. elections. If proven, the campaign finance scandal could reshape the public debate over the high court’s landmark decision.

Until now, allegations surrounding Jose Susumo Azano Matsura, the owner of multiple construction companies in Mexico, have not spread beyond local news outlets in San Diego, where he’s accused of bankrolling a handful of southern California candidates. But the scandal is beginning to attract national interest as it ensnares a U.S. congressman, a Washington, D.C.-based campaign firm and the legacy of one of the most important Supreme Court decisions in a generation.

How could this happen? Well, there’s one big change in campaign finance law that made it possible:

“Before Citizens United, in order for a foreign national to try and do this, they’d have to set up a pretty complex system of shell corporations,” said Brett Kappel, a campaign finance expert at the law firm Arent Fox. “And even then, there were dollar limits in place. After Citizens United, there are no limits on independent expenditures.”

Read on. It’s quite a story.

But remember that the real problem with our elections is non-existent voter fraud.

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Conservatives can’t have it both ways on ID requirements

by David Atkins

Republicans don’t just want poor people to have to show an ID to vote. They also want them to have to show an ID to feed themselves:

A dozen House Republicans say people who use federal food stamps should be required to show a photo ID when they use their electronic benefit cards (EBCs) to buy groceries.

Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) introduced the SNAP Verify Act, which is aimed at reducing the amount of fraud that he said is leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted food aid each year. Salmon said the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), informally called the food stamp program, is aimed at helping people in need, and that Congress must ensure those benefits are not being diverted.

“It is the duty of our elected officials to protect the integrity of this program and discourage abuse from those who seek to game the system,” he said. “My bill simply requires the photo identification of authorized users of SNAP electronic benefit cards at the point of transaction.”

Salmon said a recent Government Accountability Office report found that $2.2 billion in food stamp benefits were improperly handed out in 2009. He said current law requires efforts to ensure food stamps are only given to eligible people, but said there is no requirement that recipients show their ID when buying food.

There is something to be said for this idea in theory. Unlike with voting where there is essentially no voter fraud, SNAP fraud does exist. It’s frankly not even close to the top of the priority list given the mindboggling amounts of money being stolen and wasted through Wall Street and the Pentagon, but the idea that waste and abuse should be curtailed wherever it exists is a bedrock principle of good government.

The problem, of course, is that many people in the United States cannot easily get a government ID, largely due to disability, or the need to hold multiple jobs, or cuts to hours and locations of government services in poor comunities, or transportation problems, or language barriers, or some combination of all of the above. And, of course, the people likeliest to have trouble obtaining an ID are also the people likeliest to need the SNAP program. Which functionally means that forcing people to show an ID to receive SNAP benefits means that many people and their children will be forced into starvation.

It’s true that most other major democracies around the globe do require an ID card to vote and to receive benefits. But those countries also make sure that those IDs are automatically provided to every citizen and very easy to obtain.

But the deeply paranoid black helicopter crowd on the Right is terrified that if everyone is provided a national ID card, then the government will round everyone up and put them into FEMA internment camps or something. So they strongly oppose the federal, easily provided national ID card system that most other sane countries implement.

They don’t get to have it both ways. If they want people to have to provide ID, they need to make sure that everyone is able to get an ID, and they need to make it a federal program in order to prevent tampering by the states. In other words, they need to put up or shut up.

Or they could admit that they simply despise poor people, and want to starve and disenfranchise them. Either one works.

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Oh come on ladies. Why are you trying to vote anyway?

by digby

Hey if women want the right to vote, they should learn how to follow the rules:

“What I have used for voter registration and for identification for the last 52 years was not sufficient yesterday when I went to vote,” 117th District Court Judge Sandra Watts said.

Watts has voted in every election for the last forty-nine years. The name on her driver’s license has remained the same for fifty-two years, and the address on her voter registration card or driver’s license hasn’t changed in more than two decades. So imagine her surprise when she was told by voting officials that she would have to sign a “voters affidavit” affirming she was who she said she was.

“Someone looked at that and said, ‘Well, they’re not the same,'” Watts said.

The difference? On the driver’s license, Judge Watts’s maiden name is her middle name. On her voter registration, it’s her actual middle name. That was enough under the new, more strict voter fraud law, to send up a red flag.

“This is the first time I have ever had a problem voting,” Watts said.

Just because there’s zero evidence for voter fraud doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, amirite? Can’t be too careful.

And how hard can it be to zip down to the DMV and get a proper ID? According to Ari Berman, it’s pretty damned hard:

Getting a valid photo ID in Texas can be far more difficult than one assumes. To obtain one of the government-issued IDs now needed to vote, voters must first pay for underlying documents to confirm their identity, the cheapest option being a birth certificate for $22 (otherwise known as a “poll tax”); there are no DMV offices in 81 of 254 counties in the state, with some voters needing to travel up to 250 miles to the closet location. Counties with a significant Hispanic population are less likely to have a DMV office, while Hispanic residents in such counties are twice as likely as whites to not have the new voter ID (Hispanics in Texas are also twice as likely as whites to not have a car). “A law that forces poorer citizens to choose between their wages and their franchise unquestionably denies or abridges their right to vote,” a federal court wrote last year when it blocked the law.

Of course. Suppressing the votes of the young, the poor, racial and ethnic minorities and women would be the point. We know who they tend to vote for don’t we?

Luckily there is one group that won’t have to worry:

Texas has the distinction of being one of the few states that allows you to vote with a concealed weapons permit, but not a student ID.

Hey, I don’t see why they should have to show a permit. They should be able to just hold a gun to the poll workers head and demand a ballot. That ought to be enough to prove they’re a Real American, right there.

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And here I thought women got the right to vote almost a century ago


by digby

Wow, these numbers are huge:

And as you can see, it affects far more women than men. And these are women without photo ID, not the ones who will be barred from voting for having to common issue of different married, divorced and/or maiden names on their IDs. That’s a lot of people committing non existent voter fraud.

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Vote Suppression magnum opus


by digby

I’m sure these throwbacks think they’re just suppressing the white vote, but this is so bad I’m afraid they’re going to be suppressing their own vote as well.  But as usual, I think they probably don’t care. These folks are happy to “sacrifice” anything if it means that African Americans and other racial minorities are denied:

The highly-conservative North Carolina legislature just released a new voter suppression bill that would enact not just voter ID, but a host of other new initiatives designed to make it more difficult to vote. A significant roadblock to the legislation was removed last month when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, making it easier for states with a history of racial discrimination like North Carolina to enact new voter suppression laws. 

The Senate will consider substituted language for HB 589 on Tuesday afternoon. Among the dozens of changes, these are the most onerous for North Carolina voters:

• Implementing a strict voter ID requirement that bars citizens who don’t have a proper photo ID from casting a ballot.

• Eliminating same-day voter registration, which allowed residents to register at the polls.

• Cutting early voting by a full week.

• Increasing the influence of money in elections by raising the maximum campaign contribution to $5,000 and increasing the limit every two years.

• Making it easier for voter suppression groups like True The Vote to challenge any voter who they think may be ineligible by requiring that challengers simply be registered in the same county, rather than precinct, of those they challenge.

• Vastly increasing the number of “poll observers” and increasing what they’re permitted to do. In 2012, ThinkProgress caught the Romney campaign training such poll observers using highly misleading information.

• Only permitting citizens to vote in their specific precinct, rather than casting a ballot in any nearby ward or election district. This can lead to widespread confusion, particularly in urban areas where many precincts can often be housed in the same building.

• Barring young adults from pre-registering as 16- and 17-year-olds, which is permitted by current law, and repealing a state directive that high schools conduct voter registration drives in order to boost turnout among young voters.

• Prohibiting paid voter registration drives, which tend to register poor and minority citizens.

• Dismantling three state public financing programs, including the landmark program that funded judicial elections.

• Weakening disclosure requirements for outside spending groups.

• Preventing counties from extending polling hours in the event of long lines or other extraordinary circumstances and making it more difficult for them to accommodate elderly or disabled voters with satellite polling sites at nursing homes, for instance.

Each of these changes, on their own, would be a significant step away from increasing voting rights. Taken together, this is the voter suppression magnum opus.

As Scalia famously said in Bush vs Gore: there is no constitutional right to vote. And he and his comrades on the court obviously also obviously believe that there’s no reason every citizen should vote. I will be looking forward to their explanation as to how weakening disclosure requirements and raising the contribution limits will prevent “voter fraud.”

In case you were wondering, 40 of North Carolina’s 100 counties were under the jurisdiction of Section of 5 of the Voting Rights Act.  It’s so lucky that the Supreme Court recognized that nobody is trying to suppress the vote anymore so there’s no need for any of that.

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The Confederates push forward to re-enact as much of Jim Crow as possible

by David Atkins

Ah, the laboratory of the states, Old Confederacy edition:

State officials across the South are aggressively moving ahead with new laws requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls after the Supreme Court decision striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act.

The Republicans who control state legislatures throughout the region say such laws are needed to prevent voter fraud. But such fraud is extremely rare, and Democrats are concerned that the proposed changes will make it harder for many poor voters and members of minorities — who tend to vote Democratic — to cast their ballots in states that once discriminated against black voters with poll taxes and literacy tests.

The Supreme Court ruling last month freed a number of states with a history of discrimination, mostly in the South, of the requirement to get advance federal permission in order to make changes to their election laws.

Within hours, Texas officials said that they would begin enforcing a strict photo identification requirement for voters, which had been blocked by a federal court on the ground that it would disproportionately affect black and Hispanic voters. In Mississippi and Alabama, which had passed their own voter identification laws but had not received federal approval for them, state officials said that they were moving to begin enforcing the laws.

The next flash point over voting laws will most likely be in North Carolina, where several voting bills had languished there this year as the Republicans who control the Legislature awaited the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had covered many counties in the state. After the ruling, some Republican lawmakers said that they would move as soon as next week to pass a bill requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. And some Republicans there are considering cutting back on the number of early voting days in the state, which were especially popular among Democrats and black voters during the 2012 presidential election.

On and around July 4th, I like to celebrate the destruction of the Old Confederacy as much as the founding of the nation. I take great schadenfreude over the pain of Southern nationalists on Yankee Independence Day. And I’ll continue to do so as long as the scoundrels continue to kick against pricks of justice, attempting to reclaim and preserve the glories of their unearned privilege. The Lost Cause still lives, no doubt. But it will be a glorious day when a hundred million feet of all ages and races finally stomp its last bitter embers into the Southern sands, its vile spirit forever to be extinguished and driven from the land.

Demographic winter is coming for them, and not soon enough.

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