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3 comments
September 28, 2012 at 8:32 am
VR Kaine
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with steps to prevent voter ID fraud, especially in this day and age when special interests have hundreds of millions to lose and therefore hundreds of millions of reasons to take every advantage they can of any voter loopholes.
My personal belief is that everyone should have official government photo ID to simply help prevent government fraud in any area, period, whether that’s medicare/medicaid, disability checks, EI/UI, etc..
As for voter fraud specifically, I think the “Republicans hate students, old people, black people, poor people”, etc. is not only false, but playing that card from the left the way it’s being played to leave things status quo will still allow someone to go in and vote under Eric Holder’s name if they want to. Not wanting it one way shouldn’t mean we should still let things go so far to the other.
If what Silverman is saying about an NRA card being OK but other “regular” forms of ID not being OK, then that to me is b.s. and shouldn’t be allowed. However, with that I still think we can find a balance between effective fraud prevention and still make it easy enough for people to vote.
While on the one hand one can ask why Republicans seem so for voter fraud protection, we have to ask why on the other Democrats seem SO against it to the point where they’re not suggesting anything half way. That, to me, is just as suspect – especially when they hide behind the bigot/race card.
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September 28, 2012 at 8:15 pm
Rob F
Voter and electoral fraud are not problems in the US. And I can prove it:
The Bush administration went like hell to look for voter fraud. The end result? 120 charges and 86 convictions, out of more millions of voters. Most of those were due to vote-buying (namely, outright bribery) in local races, or people who are ineligible to vote (like convicted criminals) voting or attempting to register. No evidence of any widespread conspiracy was found. Since the only form of voter fraud that ID laws actually would have an affect on is voter impersonation, the proposed ID laws would not have actually prevented the vast majority of actual incidents.
Similarly, a study from the Brennan Institute found that voter impersonation is less common than being struck by lightning. Indeed, the majority of supposed examples of “voter fraud” were due to clerical errors, mismatches between different lists (such as including a middle initial on one list and a middle name in the other), or someone moving from one address to another and their address being updated on one list but not the other.
Additionally, looking at individual states also reveals little to no evidence of voter fraud. In Pennsylvania, the state admitted in court (over a challenge to it’s ID law) that they knew of no cases of in-person voting fraud. You would think that they would gladly trumpet any examples of voter impersonation in order to defend the ID law, but instead had no examples of it. In Texas, out of 13 million votes, there were 5 complaints (which are not convictions). That’s less than the number of reported Bigfoot or UFO sightings! In New Mexico, only 19 possibly fraudulent votes were found, none of which involved impersonation. In Virginia, out of about 400 complaints (not convictions), none of them would have been affected by voter ID as none involved impersonation.
In other words, looking at the states bears out exactly what the Republicans themselves found: there is virtually no voter fraud, and the tiny insignificant amount there is is mostly ineligible people (like criminals) voting, not impersonation, and therefore voter ID would not actually make any difference.
Indeed, from here (emphasis in original):
Hence, where’s the evidence of something like the above actually happening. Hundreds (at a minimum), in most cases probably more like thousands would have to do this in order to swing a national election. I’m waiting for the evidence of this….
I know that such evidence doesn’t actually exist. It’s much easier and far less risky to simply engage in voter suppression.
And that’s why voter ID laws aren’t really about fighting voter fraud. They’re rather about making it more difficult for Democratic-leaning demographics to vote.
But it’s not just me who’s saying this. The Republicans just can’y shut up. Here’s PA state representative Mike Turzai admitting that “Voter ID – which is going to allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania – done”:
Notice that he didn’t claim to run a clean election, which is what someone fighting real electoral/voter fraud would actually say.
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September 29, 2012 at 8:53 am
The Arbourist
@Rob F
Wow, fantastic comment and good reading. Apologies for my spam filter, anymore than 4 links makes it all twitchy.
It seems like this is just a distraction from the real game being played, voter suppression is what needs to be front and centre rather than tucked away in the shadow of the largely inconsequential argument of voter fraud.
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