771 search results for ""voter fraud""

Proving Vote Suppression

by digby

I see that Nate Silver has published a reassuring piece on Voter ID laws indicating that we needn’t worry too much about it affecting the outcome. I’m sure this will make all the serious people feel much better about the voting issues. It’s a tough problems to solve and it would be nice if we didn’t have to.

But Ed Kilgore reminds us that it isn’t just a matter of demanding photo IDs:

But before expressing any relief, it’s important to remember that what we are all calling (in a term mostly popularized by Ari Berman in his reporting on the subject in The Rolling Stone and The Nation) “the war on voting” has many, many elements, some of which won’t be apparent until just before or even on and after Election Day. There are ex-felon disenfranchisement initiatives, which have already gone into effect in Florida and Iowa. For one thing, voter ID requirements already in place before the 2008-2012 window that Nate is looking at may have a much greater impact under Republican administration. There are restrictions on various forms of “convenience voting,” such as early voting opportunities. As we get closer to Election Day, we will almost certainly see, in jurisdictions controlled by Republicans, shadowy purges of voting rolls to get rid of people whose addresses have changed, and late and poorly advertised alterations in (or restrictions of) traditional polling places. And on Election Day itself, we always see voter intimidation efforts, and my personal favorite, poorly staffed and incompetent balloting administration producing long lines and discouraged voters, with all this chicanery concentrated on areas likely to produce large Democratic votes (i.e., minority neighborhood and college towns). And then there are the vote-counting irregularities Florida made famous in 2000.

And even where these maneuverings don’t affect the presidential contest, they could well change the outcome of down-ballot contests, and also create precedents affecting future elections. On top of everything else, conservative activists will spend Election Day in some locales trying to generate “voter fraud” and pro-Democratic “voter intimidation” stories that will serve as the justification for future assaults on voting rights.

I would just add that when people think they are being targeted by hostile Republicans, many just figure it’s the better part of valor to avoid the confrontation. This would apply to someone who’s had brushes with the law (not convicted felons) and don’t want to call attention to themselves. But also citizens of foreign birth who might just figure it’s not worth it to endure the hostility and suspicion they’d have to go through. I realize they should all tough it out for the good of God and country, but you can’t really blame them for not thinking it’s worth it.

I’ve been writing about this since I started blogging and it’s not a new phenomenon, by a long shot. We all know about the Jim Crow laws that spurred the Voting Rights Act in the first place. I hope people also remember that these laws didn’t just outright deny the vote to African Americans. It just made it impossible for them to exercise their right to do it, through onerous tests and taxes. And once the Act was passed, the people who wanted to deny them their rights didn’t just stop doing it. They came up with subtler methods of getting the job done.

They have been particularly worried about voter registration, which started in the wake of the Jesse Jackson campaign in the 80s:

Democratic activist Donna Brazile, a Jackson worker and Albert Gore’s campaign manager in 2000, said “There were all sorts of groups out there doing voter registration. Some time after the ’86 election, massive purging started taking place. It was a wicked practice that took place all over the country, especially in the deep South. Democrats retook the Senate in 1986, and [Republican] groups went on a rampage on the premise they were cleaning up the rolls. The campaign then was targeted toward African-Americans.” As in the past, Republicans justified the purges in the name of preventing the unregistered from voting. But Democrats charged vote suppression.

It didn’t end in the 80s. The most recent victory in that regard was the destruction of ACORN (with the inexplicable help of the Democrats!)

It will be hard to muster the empirical evidence that vote suppression turned an election so very serious political observers will dismiss it as being an hysterical overreaction on the part of the losers. And in a big sweep election it obviously would be. However, we are living in a polarized political world in which some elections are going to be very close. When that happens, these vague (and not so vague) pressures on the franchise could very well make the difference. But we won’t be able to prove it. And that’s the beauty of it.

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Liars and frauds: America’s Republican election officials

by digby

I wish I knew why more people weren’t incensed by this, but I guess they figure it won’t make any difference in the outcome so let them have their fun. I think it’s appalling:

“Some 1,500 people voted under dead people’s and prisoners’ names from 2008-11, according to Michigan’s auditor general. Many might be clerical errors, but this illustrates the need to ensure accurate voter rolls.”

Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson wrote this in a July 2 Times-Herald column, and she lied.

Johnson is a member of a fifteen-state consortium of right-wing elections officials that’s hellbent on purging voters. And her dishonest jousting in Michigan this week offers a window into how that consortium works—playing fast and loose with facts in order to create the impression of a problem that would justify their hardline solutions, and flouting the law themselves when necessary…

Despite Johnson’s constant refrain on dead people voting, her own Bureau of Elections has already established that there was no actual voter fraud in the auditor general’s report she referenced in her July 2 column.

While it’s true that the auditor general initially found close to 1,500 cases in which a dead or imprisoned person appeared to vote, the Department of State’s Bureau of Elections (BOE) said the auditor general was mistaken on all 1,500 counts (pdf; page 17). The auditor general reports that BOE informed investigators “that in every instance where it appears a deceased person or incarcerated person voted and local records were available, a clerical error was established as the reason for the situation. In addition, the Department [BOE] informed [the auditor general] that in some cases, voters submitted absent voter ballots shortly before they died. The Department informed us that the examples provided did not result in a single verified case that an ineligible person voted.” (My emphasis.)

Despite this, Johnson is determined to press forward with her original intentions. And regardless of Governor Snyder’s veto of the citizenship reaffirmation bill, Johnson said she will require that ballot application forms have a citizenship checkbox anyway.

Johnson will also continue this work through membership in the Interstate Cross Check Project. The architect of that consortium is Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who gained notoriety when he led a national movement to copycat Arizona’s immigrant profiling law. The consortium allows member states to share voter registration information in a database to find ineligible voters.

Kansas has the most restrictive, active voter ID law in the nation. That law, which is also called the Secure and Fair Elections (SAFE) Act, is the model for what Kobach would like to see happen around the country, where state cabinet officials are sent on missions looking for dead people, dogs and “illegals” attempting to vote. The project claims it has discovered people who are registered in multiple states, and who may have even voted in multiple states during one election.

If there is nothing else that can convince thinking people that the Republicans are a malevolent, anti-democratic Party, this should. There is no evidence, none, that there is any ,election voter fraud, much less a systemic enough problem to turn elections, but there is ample evidence that if you make people go through ridiculous hoops to vote, a lot of them will give up. That’s the point, that’s what they’re trying to do, everyone knows it.

Now maybe it’s true that vote suppression doesn’t amount to anything and we needn’t worry. But we can prove that “vote fraud” doesn’t — the evidence is clear — so there’s no reason to take that chance.

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A Republican lets the cat out of the bag on voter ID

by digby

Not that it wasn’t obvious, but still …

House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R-Allegheny) suggested that the House’s end game in passing the Voter ID law was to benefit the GOP politically.

“We are focused on making sure that we meet our obligations that we’ve talked about for years,” said Turzai in a speech to committee members Saturday. He mentioned the law among a laundry list of accomplishments made by the GOP-run legislature.

“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

The statement drew a loud round of applause from the audience. It also struck a nerve among critics, who called it an admission that they passed the bill to make it harder for Democrats to vote — and not to prevent voter fraud as the legislators claimed.

Well, since there is no systemic voter fraud that’s been denying GOP victories, we know that the only reason was vote suppression. Nice to see them admit it for once.

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QOTD: Grover

And proudly retweeted by the man himself:

This was Grover at the Faith and Family Conference, by the way, expressing his Religious Freedom.

Update: John Fund also spoke and said that the Democrats stole the Senate. Just a guess, but I’d expect to hear more of this sort of thing. All this voter fraud work not only suppresses the vote but delegitimizes the outcomes they don’t like. It’s very useful.

You all remember this, right?

Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

In Miami, an assistant United States attorney said many cases there involved what were apparently mistakes by immigrants, not fraud.

In Wisconsin, where prosecutors have lost almost twice as many cases as they won, charges were brought against voters who filled out more than one registration form and felons seemingly unaware that they were barred from voting.

One ex-convict was so unfamiliar with the rules that he provided his prison-issued identification card, stamped “Offender,” when he registered just before voting.

A handful of convictions involved people who voted twice. More than 30 were linked to small vote-buying schemes in which candidates generally in sheriff’s or judge’s races paid voters for their support.

That didn’t stop the “voter fraud” fraudsters. Indeed, they have doubled their efforts and are now in the process of defrauding the voter rolls themselves:

Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) has ordered the state to purge all “non-citizens” from the voting rolls prior to November’s election. But that list compiled by the Scott administration is so riddled with errors that, in Miami-Dade County alone, hundreds of U.S. citizens are being told they are ineligible to vote, ThinkProgress has learned exlusively.

According to data from the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections obtained by ThinkProgress:

– 1638 people in Miami-Dade County were flagged by the state as “non-citizens” and sent letters informing them that they were ineligible to vote.
– Of that group, 359 people have subsquently provided the county with proof of citizenship.
– Another 26 people were identified as U.S. citizens directly by the county.
– The bulk of the remaining 1200 people have simply not responded yet to a letter sent to them by the Supervisor of Elections.

So, as Think Progress points out, at least 20% of the voters flagged in this purge are actually eligible.

Now keep in mind that the rest may have just not responded with proof yet. There is zero evidence that even if those people are all ineligible that they planned to vote. Certainly, there is no indication that this represents a conspiracy to steal the election — at least not by these people. What is clear is that the state of Florida is kicking eligible voters off its rolls on orders of its Republican Governor who is clearly targeting Democratic voters.

And keep in mind that this is one of the oldest tricks in the books. Here’s Rick Perlstein on the vote suppression effort in 1964, called “Operation Eagle Eye” in which Chief justice John Roberts’ predecessor, William Rehnquist, participated as a young man:

The “vote fraud” fantasies are tinged by deeply right-wing racial and anti-urban panics. I’ve talked to many conservative who seem to consider the idea of mass non-white participation in the duties of citizenship is inherently suspicious. It’s an idea all decent Americans should consider abhorrent. It is also, however, a very old conservative obsession–one that goes back to the beginnings of the right-wing takeover of the Republican Party itself.

Let me show you. Read this report from 1964, running down all the ways how Barry Goldwater’s Republican Party was working overtime to keep minorities from voting. The document can be found in the LBJ Library, where I researched my book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

John M Baley, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, charged today that “under the guise of setting up an apparatus to protect the sanctity of the ballot, the Republicans are actually creating the machinery for a carefully organized campaign to intimidate voters and to frighten members of minority groups from casing their ballots on November 3rd.”‘Let’s get this straight,’ Bailey added, ‘the Democratic Party is just as much opposed to vote frauds as is the Republican party. We will settle for giving all legally registered voters an opportunity to make their choice on November 3rd. We have enough faith in our Party to be confident that the outcome will be a vote of confience in President Johnson and a mandate for the President and his running mate, Hubert Humphrey, to continue the programs of the Johnson-Kennedy Administration.”‘But we have evidence that the Republican program is not really what it purports to be. It is an organized effort to prevent the foreign born, to prevent Negroes, to prevent members of ethnic minorities from casting their votes by frightening and intimidating them at the polling place.”‘We intend to see to it that the rights of these people are protected. We will have our people at the polling places–not to frighten or threaten anyone–but to protect the right of any eligible voter to cast a secret ballot without threats or intimidation.’

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Confirmation bias for dummies

by digby

When is someone going to shut this ridiculous operation down?

Conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe released a new video today supposedly exposing voter fraud in North Carolina by highlighting non-citizens like Zbigniew Gorzkowski who have voted in recent elections.

The problem: Gorzkowski is an American citizen.

In fact, if O’Keefe had done a simple Nexis search for “Zbigniew Gorzkowski”, he would have found a single article from the News & Observer in 2008 noting that Gorzkowski and his wife are naturalized citizens:

Customers flock through the red door of Zbigniew “Ziggy” and wife Halina Gorzkowski’s European grocery and flower shop to buy one of the 12 varieties they sell. The pierogis and 400 eastern European food items and flowers are also punching the naturalized citizen couple’s ticket for their version of the American Dream.

ThinkProgress spoke with Gorzkowski this morning. He verified that this information was indeed correct and he had been an American citizen since the late 1980s. Therefore, his votes in the 2008 and 2010 elections were not only perfectly legal, but encouraged as a civic duty.

We already knew he was a liar, so no big surprise there. But this is just sloppy, even for him.

On the other hand, “motivated reasoning” will almost certainly make the right wing true believers either discard this proof of O’Keefe’s mendacity or construct an elaborate conspiracy theory to explain it. O’Keefe has been shown over and over again to be duplicitous and frankly, dumb. But he keeps on doing what he does and they keep on believing him.

This is particularly pernicious in the so-called voter fraud area, where the fact that there is no known case of voter fraud that could possibly sway an election didn’t stop even the US Supreme Court from deciding that making voting more difficult was required simply because cheating was theoretically possible. This, in the face of common sense that argues any widespread cheating by individual voters was nearly impossible in practice.

O’Keefe may be a clown, but every time he puts one of these dishonest videos out purporting to “prove” voter fraud, it just confirms the bias of millions of people and there’s just no way of talking them out of it, short of their own validators (Republicans) repudiating him for his dishonesty. And I don’t see that happening. Why should it? They benefit from it. Indeed, they are behind it.

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They have lots and lots of back-up

by digby

ALEC may have abandoned its “voter fraud” project, but never fear, there are dozens of right wing organizations already working on vote suppression that can step into the breach. The “National Center for Public Policy Research” is particularly unsavory, with its history of funneling money to corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and sending scare letters to senior citizens. It is run by a longtime conservative hit woman associated with Norquist and Rove from old days named Amy Ridenour. Here’s what they had to say in their announcement that’s they’d be taking up where ALEC left off:

“Unlike the Center for American Progress, the National Center for Public Policy Research eschews the use of violent references such as ‘War Room.’ We are, however, inspired by a particular passage in the 1987 movie The Untouchables: ‘They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way.’ Indeed.”

Nice folks, huh?

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The most idiotic thing you’ll read all day

by digby

Of course, it’s still early. But this is going to be hard to beat:

Filmmaker James O’Keefe demonstrated just how easy it is [to steal elections]on Tuesday when he dispatched an assistant to the Nebraska Avenue polling place in Washington where Attorney General Holder has been registered for the last 29 years. O’Keefe specializes in the same use of hidden cameras that was pioneered by the recently deceased Mike Wallace, who used the technique to devastating effect in exposing fraud in Medicare claims and consumer products on 60 Minutes.

O’Keefe’s efforts helped expose the fraud-prone voter-registration group ACORN with his video stings, and has had great success demonstrating this year in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Minnesota just how easy it is to obtain a ballot by giving the name of a dead person who is still on the rolls. Indeed, a new study by the Pew Research Center found at least 1.8 million dead people are still registered to vote. They aren’t likely to complain if someone votes in their place.

That article is by “voter fraud” crusader John Fund, who has yet to uncover the mass conspiracy of Democratic partisans who have been coordinating to steal elections by actually impersonating dead people at the polls. But maybe he can enlist the crack journalist James O’Keefe to help him. I’m sure nobody will be bothered if he uses outtakes from The Walking Dead. His reputation is sterling. He’s the new Mike Wallace.

Well, except for the open political agenda, the dishonest editing, the rap sheet and the bizarre public sexual obsessions. (And you’d think John Fund, of all people, would know better.

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Flexing their thieving muscles

by digby

Democrats had better hope that the coming elections are not too close because the GOP is honing its vote stealing skills in its own primaries:

GOP state party snafus all have benefited Romney:

As we wrote yesterday, the Michigan Republican Party voted Wednesday night to award its two at-large delegates to the statewide winner instead of dividing up proportionally, as we (and even the Michigan GOP chairman at one time) had assumed. That move gave Romney a 16-14 delegate edge in the state instead of a 15-15 tie, and it has produced a firestorm of controversy. What’s more, it’s the latest GOP state party snafu this primary season that’s benefited Romney.

Consider: The Iowa Republican Party originally declared Romney the winner there (and even once the vote count had changed, it was hesitant to declare Santorum the new winner). In addition, the Maine GOP badly mishandled its caucuses (one county wasn’t counted due to snow, other results got lost in a spam folder), and Romney narrowly won that contest. And now you have the delegate drama in Michigan, which now allows Romney to claim a win there in both the popular vote and delegate count.

It’s important to remember that they have two main methods of stealing elections. The first is vote suppression, in which they make it difficult for their opponents to cast votes. This is nothing new historically and it’s not been confined to one party. But the modern Republicans have put their very special stamp on the practice by using reverse psychology and whining about non-existent voter fraud to claim they have been the victims of the terrible ACORN conspiracy to cancel out their decent Real American vote. (This was one of the bogus arguments used in Bush vs Gore, which serves as a sort of template for their various legal arguments.)

But there’s always been a second piece to the puzzle and that is the local and state GOP institutions responsible for counting votes and interpreting the voting laws being trained to use that power for partisan purpose. There are many aspects to this (here’s one example) but one of the most useful is the idea that being declared the winner can be more important than actually being the winner. Rick Santorum certainly is getting a big lesson in how that one works.

Karl Rove pioneered these close vote thefts many years ago as a political consultant. He and various others throughout the party have been building an infrastructure devoted to keeping Democratic election victories narrow through suppression and then taking advantage in states where they control the election machinery to tip the balance to the GOP. This isn’t a conspiracy theory — it’s part of their long term strategy to stay competitive in a country in which their main constituency is becoming smaller and more intolerant.

It’s fun to watch Rick Santorum squirm as this machine is unleashed against him but don’t think it’s confined to their party apparatus. They’re just flexing their muscles in anticipation of the general election. If the party “establishment” exists at all, it’s for this purpose.

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Going back to the 50s

by digby

I just can’t say how relieved I am that racism is dead in this country. Now we can relax and carry on as if it never happened:

An intensifying conservative legal assault on the Voting Rights Act could precipitate what many civil rights advocates regard as the nuclear option: a court ruling striking down one of the core elements of the landmark 1965 law guaranteeing African Americans and other minorities access to the ballot box.

At the same time, the view that states should have free rein to change their election laws even in places with a history of Jim Crow seems to be gaining traction within the Republican Party.

“There certainly has been a major change,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of election law at the University of California at Irvine. “Now, you have a whole bunch of credible mainstream state attorneys general and governors taking this view. … That would have been unheard of even five years ago. You would have been accused of being a racist.”

Some of the shift appears to be driven by resentment of what tea party members and others perceive as an overgrown, out-of-control federal government, as well as by widespread concern among Republicans about claims of voter fraud at the polls. Part of the change could also stem from more vigorous enforcement of voting rights laws by President Barack Obama’s Justice Department.

The issue has surfaced in the Republican presidential contest, including at one of the televised debates, and could move to the front burner within weeks as a federal appeals court in Washington prepares to rule on the leading lawsuit against the Voting Rights Act. That case, brought by Shelby County, Ala., is backed by the attorneys general of Alabama, Arizona and Georgia. At least three similar constitutional challenges are pending.

[…]

“There are obviously more elected officials today than there were who are willing to question the wisdom of keeping this provision” of the law, said the American Enterprise Institute’s Edward Blum, a longtime critic. “In 2006, it was very lonely being a voice against reauthorization.”

President George W. Bush didn’t just support renewal of the law — he held a Rose Garden celebration for the bill signing that included the entire Congressional Black Caucus and bipartisan supporters from the Senate and House. “Civil rights leaders from around the country were invited,” Blum said. “It was a big deal.”

A key indication that political consensus is crumbling came during a GOP presidential debate last month in South Carolina.

Fox commentator Juan Williams asked then-candidate Gov. Rick Perry of Texas about the federal role in guaranteeing voting rights. Perry drew raucous cheers from the crowd for promising that he would not allow the federal government to take actions “against the will of the people.”

“Are you suggesting on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day that the federal government has no business scrutinizing the voting laws of states where minorities were once denied the right to vote?” Williams asked.

“I’m saying that the state of Texas is under assault by the federal government,” Perry replied. “I’m saying also that South Carolina is at war with this federal government and with this administration. If you look at what this Justice Department has done, not only have they taken [South Carolina] to task on voter ID, they’ve also taken them to task on their immigration law. When I’m the president of the United States, the states are going to have substantially more right to take care of their business. And not be forced by the EPA, or by the Justice Department for that matter, to do things that are against the will of the people.”

Readers of this blog are well aware of the GOP assault on voters’ rights over the past 20 years. The whole voter fraud trope is a rightwing construct developed in the wake of Jesse Jackson’s successful voter registration efforts in the late 1980s to suppress the African American vote. We all know what happened to ACORN. But the idea that the federal courts are possibly going to overturn parts of the Voting Rights Act is news to me.

As you can see from the above article this has all happened very, very quickly, picking up tremendous speed in just the last three years or so. There have been a number of events which may have precipitated it, but it’s happening.

It’s pretty hard to believe that the fruits of social progress like voting rights and legal contraception could be rolled back. But clearly they can be. And the funny thing is that it will be done in the name of freedom. But then it will be freeing for the people who will no longer have to accommodate these uppity women and minorities demanding their rights. You know, like it was in the good old days.

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