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I Thought Voter Fraud Didn’t Exist

Some on the political left have been rambling about how voter fraud isn’t an issue for months.  They say it’s a new poll tax.  It’ll disenfranchise voting, especially amongst those in the minority community who cannot obtain a government issued ID. Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post opined that “what did happen in 2008 was that African Americans, Hispanics and poor people — traditional Democratic Party constituencies — voted in unusually large numbers. And what happened in 2010 was that Republicans took control of more statehouses and set out to reshape the electorate and make it GOP-friendly.”  His column, which was published on September 24, claimed that:

Not coincidentally, this voter ID campaign has been particularly intense in swing states such as FloridaOhio and Pennsylvania. Invariably, advocates cloak the restrictive new measures in pious-sounding rhetoric about “the integrity of the voting process.” This sounds uncontroversial — who’s against integrity? — until you weigh the laws’ unconscionable costs against their undetectable benefits.

‘But you need an ID to do a lot of things, like board a plane,’ advocates say. Unlike commercial air travel, however, voting is a constitutionally protected right. To infringe or abridge that right — for no demonstrable reason — should be considered a crime against democracy.

[…]

Minorities, poor people and seniors are less likely than other Americans to have government-issued identification such as a driver’s license — and more likely, for various reasons, to have difficulty obtaining an acceptable ID. They might live far from the nearest motor vehicles department office, for example, and lack transportation. In the case of some older African Americans born in the South under Jim Crow segregation, they might not even have a proper birth certificate of the kind needed to obtain a driver’s license or state ID card.

For Hispanics, perhaps more important than voter ID laws are purges of the voter rolls — which are being conducted in some states, allegedly to make sure that non-citizens do not vote — and proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration.

What could be more innocent, right? But proponents of these measures know that some naturalized citizens, who have every right to vote, will see such challenges as intimidating. The Advancement Project claims that up to 10 million Hispanics could be deterred from registering or voting, and while this is a very high estimate — the assumption appears to be that Hispanics, absent the intimidation, would be much more likely to vote than other groups — it seems clear that there will be some impact on participation.

Oooo spooky – those damn Republicans are out to suppress voter turnout – or maintain the legitimacy and integrity of our elections.  However, that hasn’t stopped some members in the liberal media from trying to use this issue to slam the GOP as racist.

David G. Savage of the LA Times wrote back in July about an elderly Philadelphia woman:

 Viviette Applewhite, who cast “her first vote [was] for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.”*  and [sued] the Commonwealth over its new voter ID law.  At no point in his story, however, did he mention Ms. Applewhite may be eligible to vote by absentee ballot.”

“[T]he outcome of the lawsuit could affect not just the voting rights of several hundred thousand Pennsylvanians but also who wins the presidential election,” Savage melodramatically insists. Applewhite’s “ record of faithfully voting for Democrats will be more difficult to maintain, thanks to a strict voter identification law adopted this year by Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled Legislature,” he added.

Applewhite is among more than 186,000 registered voters who lack a valid driver’s license in this heavily Democratic city. Many of them are minorities. And to vote in Pennsylvania in November, they will need to produce a government-issued ID or driver’s license. That could have national implications. Obama almost certainly needs to win in Pennsylvania to be reelected, and political analysts say the Democrat cannot win the state without piling up large margins in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the two cities where the new voter ID rule would hit the hardest.

However, according to Gateway Pundit, 9,000 dead people are still on the rolls in Dallas County.  Missouri has become a center of attention since the Todd Akin fiasco and to add to the controversy – the elections boafrd cannot purge those dead people less than 60 days before an election.

Dallas County could have as many as more than 9,000 dead people registered as voters, but the county’s election supervisor says they cannot be removed until after the November election.

Federal law forbids changing the voter roll within 60 days of a federal election, a deadline that has already passed, said Election Supervisor Toni Pippins-Poole.

Pippins-Poole said the Texas secretary of state did not provide the list of possible deceased voters from Social Security records until late August.

The election office must send a letter to each name on the list to be sure person is not alive. Pippins-Poole said the state did not allow her office enough time to complete the process.

Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Wade Emmert said it creates an opportunity for voter fraud.

If you think 9,000 dead people on the rolls is insignificant enough to influence an election, just look at Florida’s results from 2000.  Furthermore, James O’ Keefe has been exceptional in exposing how easy it is to commit voter fraud.  Erika Johnsen posted on Hot Air’s main blog September 10 about Wendy Rosen – who withdrew as the Democratic candidate in Maryland’s 1st congressional district due to voter fraud.

Wendy Rosen, a small-business owner running as a Democrat for Maryland’s 1st Congressional district, quit the race today after her party reported to state officials that she is currently registered for, and has recently participated in, the elections of both Maryland and Florida. WaPo reports:

“Personal issues have made this the hardest decision that I have had to make,” Rosen said [in a statement.]

Rosen’s announcement came the same day the state Democratic party released a letter to state Attorney General Douglas Gansler and state prosecutors reporting the allegations against Rosen.

“The Maryland Democratic Party has discovered that Ms. Rosen has been registered to vote in both Florida and Maryland since at least 2006; that she in fact voted in the 2006 general election both in Florida and Maryland; and that she voted in the presidential preference primaries held in both Florida and Maryland in 2008,” wrote Yvette Lewis, the state party chair. “This information is based on an examination of the voter files from both states. We believe that this is a clear violation of Maryland law and urge the appropriate office to conduct a full investigation.”

Someone voting in two places at the same time – not a problem at all.

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Matt Vespa

I'm a staunch Republican and a politics junkie who was recently the Executive Director for the Dauphin County Republican Committee in Harrisburg. Before that, I interned with the Republican Party of Pennsylvania in the summer of 2011 and Mary Pat Christie, First Lady of NJ, within the Office of the Governor of NJ in 2010. I was responsible for updating his personal contact list. My first political internship was with Tom Kean Jr's. U.S. Senate campaign in 2006.

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2 Comments

  1. First of all, no one with a lot of blood getting to their brain would call little Jimmy O’Keef exceptional at anything. He is, however, a criminal who has to notify authorities if he intends to leave the state. What O’Keef did was do something that is A)difficult to replicate, B) heavily penalized, and C) can only be done once.

    Bringing up Wendy Rosen is interesting since it was the Democratic party that turned her in. Also, her type of voter fraud would not be covered by any ID law, since in order to vote in both Maryland and Florida she would have to vote using absentee ballot.

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