The Voter Fraud Fraud

[Dinner]

For years now people on the right have been claiming that voter fraud is a massive problem in the US which is so big it may very well have swong elections. The problem is it's all just retoric and a new study has concluded that the claims about voter fraud are all just hot air.

Que the Bush administration, who goes ahead and orders a supposedly bi-partisan effort to determine the quantity and quality of voter fraud in American elections. The panal doesn't turn up much and certainly nothing notable however Republicans have now hijacked this supposedly bipartisan panal and are now stuffing the report full of bogus partisan claims for which they have no evidence and what little they do have they refuse to have academics, the public, or even half the panal see. It's all just empty claims but it does show a window into one of the more shameful and hallow claims which have become central to the ideology of the Republican Party.

This article from slate is to long to repost so I'll just leave a link for those who are interested in the debunking of another right wing myth or who would like to hear about how Bush's political appointees have hijacked yet another panal report for partisanship.

http://www.slate.com/id/2166287/entry/0/

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Didn't you post this before?

[Dinner]

No, new article on the same topic.



I'm posting it because I recall a few people claimed the right wing didn't make voter fraud a big talking point in their claims.

[khines]

Where do you get this ****? It's not the Right that always comes up with "voter fraud must be why we lost the election..." It's the Left (Democrats) who cry about it.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Sorry get them all confused.

Carry on with your crusade.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by khines
Where do you get this ****? It's not the Right that always comes up with "voter fraud must be why we lost the election..." It's the Left (Democrats) who cry about it.

It's two sides of the same coin. Democrats speak out against voter supression saying that minorities are unfairly striped of their right to vote. Republicans like to claim that millions of illegal aliens, felons, and double voters are out there swinging elections.

The reality is neither is as pervasive as their proponents claim but there most certainly is more varifiable voter supression then voter fraud. Most illegals won't register to vote because they're afraid if the government knows where they are the INS might come looking for them. In 2004 there were indeed tens of thousands of black men in Florida who had their names removed from voter rolls because the RNC claimed they were felons who legally couldn't vote. Of course, only a very small percentage of them were actually felons and those people were not allowed to vote until their names were cleared which didn't happen until months after the election.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by khines
Where do you get this ****? It's not the Right that always comes up with "voter fraud must be why we lost the election..." It's the Left (Democrats) who cry about it.

CHICAAAAAGO CHICAAAAAAAGO!

[Zkribbler]

That was 47 years ago. Get over it.

[MRT144]

Thats Los Angeles Talk!

[rah]

If I have to still listen about florida, I reserve the right to continue to bring up Chicago.

[Dauphin]

And I reserve the right to complain about rotten boroughs.

[Ming]

Considering that all the group did was review already published material, and did no new investigations on their own beyond interviewing an unreported number of people, their "report" is kind of a waste of time and really proves nothing.

[Dauphin]

Sounds like politics in action to me.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Dauphin
Sounds like politics inaction to me.

Fixed

[chequita guevara]

Well, the lack of verifiable evidence of ineligible voters for Democrats by the GOP does tend to speak volumes. In Florida, there is verifiable evidence that tens of thousands of people, mostly Black and Hispanic, were wrongly barred from voting on the grounds that they were felons, when they were not (not even debating whether or not the slave era felon law is legit or not). On top of that, voting machines in Black districts weren't maintained by the government.

There was, apparently, a big problem with illegitimate voters voting for Democrats in Miami in the 90s, which is why the state decided to hire ChoicePoint to create the infamous felon list, but they illegally cast too wide a net.

In 2004, the state admitted this had happened, but didn't admit wrong doing, even though documentary evidence of their wrongdoing had been published by the BBC.

I am well aware of vote fraud in Chicago, as well. One of my close buddies was attacked by some of Mayor Daley's goons, when he was out campaigning for someone running against Daley's crony.

Still, as Oerdin rightfully points out, verified voter suppression against groups likely to vote Democratic is much more prevalent than verified illegal votes being cast to help Democrats.

I don't care whether the Dems win or lose, but I care greatly about people's right to vote being abused.