In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud

[ProfJohn]

I would say this is one topic that we should all see as good news.

Either there is really not much fraud going on, or the people doing it are just not getting caught. Eitherway I would say our system is in great shape even with all the reported problems from 2000 and 2004.
NY Times

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 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.

A federal panel, the Election Assistance Commission, reported last year that the pervasiveness of fraud was debatable. That conclusion played down findings of the consultants who said there was little evidence of it across the country, according to a review of the original report, according to a review obtained by The New York Times and reported on Wednesday.

Mistakes and lapses in enforcing voting and registration rules routinely occur in elections, allowing thousands of ineligible voters to go to the polls. But the federal cases provide little evidence of widespread, organized fraud, prosecutors and election law experts said.

?There was nothing that we uncovered that suggested some sort of concerted effort to tilt the election,? Richard G. Frohling, an assistant United States attorney in Milwaukee, said.

Richard L. Hasen, an expert in election law at the Loyola Law School, agreed, saying: ?If they found a single case of a conspiracy to affect the outcome of a Congressional election or a statewide election, that would be significant. But what we see is isolated, small-scale activities that often have not shown any kind of criminal intent.?

Click link to read whole story.

 

[Arcex]

After all the issues with electronic voting machines and all the links that have been found between senior Republican officials and the 2 biggest electronic voting machine manufacturers, yeah, I'm gonna have to go with "the people doing it are just not getting caught."

 

[ntdz]

I hope fraud isn't going on on either side, because it's totally unacceptable. Anyone shown to be involved in it should be thrown in jail for a very long time, democracy is what makes our country so great.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

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.

It's clear the Dems suck at it while Republicans are masters of deception.

Hell they just lie in your face and get away with it.

Mission accomplished, last throes, got that WMD yet?

 

[GroundedSailor]

Originally posted by: Arcex
After all the issues with electronic voting machines and all the links that have been found between senior Republican officials and the 2 biggest electronic voting machine manufacturers, yeah, I'm gonna have to go with "the people doing it are just not getting caught."

Couldn't agree with you more. They're most likely too powerful to get nabbed and can cover their tracks well.

 

[Rainsford]

Look, I'm not saying voter fraud is going on, but this article really doesn't prove much. After all, the alleged voter fraud is mostly about the 2000 and 2004 elections, both of which Bush won. If he was willing to stoop to fraud in the first place, it wouldn't really be surprising that his own justice department didn't find any evidence of voter fraud. Any way you look at it, they wouldn't find anything...the only way this report would contain anything at all useful would be if Bush was corrupt and/or stupid enough to engage in voter fraud in the first place, but not abuse his power once elected to actually cover it up intelligently.

 

[WHAMPOM]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

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.

It's clear the Dems suck at it while Republicans are masters of deception.

Hell they just lie in your face and get away with it.

Mission accomplished, last throes, got that WMD yet?

Oh yes! The attorneys Gonsales did not fire (all the good boys) prosecuted or investigated seven Democrates for each Republican. This had nothing to do with the number of cases considered which were about 50/50 D/R.

 

[ntdz]

Originally posted by: WHAMPOM

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

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.

It's clear the Dems suck at it while Republicans are masters of deception.

Hell they just lie in your face and get away with it.

Mission accomplished, last throes, got that WMD yet?

Oh yes! The attorneys Gonsales did not fire (all the good boys) prosecuted or investigated seven Democrates for each Republican. This had nothing to do with the number of cases considered which were about 50/50 D/R.

Have any proof of that ratio?

 

[bctbct]

Bush could be re elected in the next election and some people would still not believe there is voter fraud.

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: Rainsford
Look, I'm not saying voter fraud is going on, but this article really doesn't prove much. After all, the alleged voter fraud is mostly about the 2000 and 2004 elections, both of which Bush won. If he was willing to stoop to fraud in the first place, it wouldn't really be surprising that his own justice department didn't find any evidence of voter fraud. Any way you look at it, they wouldn't find anything...the only way this report would contain anything at all useful would be if Bush was corrupt and/or stupid enough to engage in voter fraud in the first place, but not abuse his power once elected to actually cover it up intelligently.

And when the Democrats won last November all the allegations of voter fraud magicly went away... wow imagine that...

 

[Arcex]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: Rainsford
Look, I'm not saying voter fraud is going on, but this article really doesn't prove much. After all, the alleged voter fraud is mostly about the 2000 and 2004 elections, both of which Bush won. If he was willing to stoop to fraud in the first place, it wouldn't really be surprising that his own justice department didn't find any evidence of voter fraud. Any way you look at it, they wouldn't find anything...the only way this report would contain anything at all useful would be if Bush was corrupt and/or stupid enough to engage in voter fraud in the first place, but not abuse his power once elected to actually cover it up intelligently.

And when the Democrats won last November all the allegations of voter fraud magicly went away... wow imagine that...

Yeah, except for all these:

Election irregularities
There were scattered reports of problems at polling places across the country as new electronic voting systems were introduced in many states. The problems ranged from voter and election official confusion about how to use new voting machines to apparent political dirty tricks designed to keep certain voters from casting their votes to inclement weather suppressing turnout.

Some reported irregularities:

Millions of allegedly harassing and deceptive "robo-calls" were reported or placed in at least 53 house districts. The vast majority of the calls were reported to begin with the message "Hello, I?m calling with information about (Democratic candidate)" and continue with a negative message concerning the candidate. Regulatory statements concerning the sponsor of the message (usually the NRCC) allegedly did not come until after the message, instead of before, as the FCC mandates. Citizens reported receiving calls several times an hour and as late as 2:30 AM, and many held the mistaken belief that the calls were from Democratic campaigns.[22]

Massive undervoting in several Florida counties, suspected to be caused either by malfunctioning electronic voting machines or bad ballot design. Recount is impossible because of missing paper trail.[23][24] An analysis from the Orlando Sentinel claims the undervoting swung an election to the GOP in Florida's 13th congressional district.[25]

Democratic candidate Christine Jennings brings a lawsuit to court.[26]

In Gateway, Arkansas, a town of 122 people, 199 votes were cast in an uncontested mayoral race. In nearby Pea Ridge, Arkansas, 3,997 votes were cast in a contested mayor's race for the city of 3,344 people.[27]

Waldenberg, Arkansas mayoral candidate, Randy Wooten, gets no votes despite voting for himself.[28][29]

Report of a "straight vote" for Democrats including non-Democrats in York County, Pennsylvania.[30]

In the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, officials could not verify that voting machines were secure and did not already have votes in them.[31]

Voting-machine problems kept polls open until nine o'clock pm, an hour later than scheduled, in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.[32]

A man in Allentown, PA smashed an electronic voting machine with a paperweight. The votes were recovered.[33]

Poll workers struggled with e-ballots in several states.[34]

In a small town in Oklahoma, a power outage in a polling station was caused by a squirrel gnawing on a power cable.[35]

Officials and experts reported electronic voting machine malfunctions in Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, Colorado and Florida.[36]

A bomb threat at East High School caused a voting shutdown in Madison, Wisconsin.[37]

A Kentucky poll worker was charged with choking a voter.[38]

Programming errors and inexperience dealing with electronic voting machines caused delays in Indiana, Ohio and Florida. About 175 of 914 precincts turned to paper ballots in Indiana's Marion County.[39]

Vandals chained the main door and broke keys into the locks of New Jersey Republican candidate for Senate Tom Kean Jr.'s headquarters. Accusations have been made towards Democratic incumbent Bob Menendez, but they deny any involvement in the situation.[40]

Disabled voters were asked by election officials in Bonneville County, Idaho to use punch card ballots.[41]

Irregularities with Diebold and other voting machines have been reported in the early elections.[42][43]

The Chicago Board of Elections has been running a Web site that has allowed, by a simple programming hack, the exposure of personal information of a million registered voters. (Fixed on 21 October 2006)[44]

Reports from Virginia:[45]
FBI looking into possible Va. voter intimidation.[46]
Calls that voting will lead to arrest.
Telling voters that their polling location has changed.
Fliers in Buckingham county say ?Skip the election?
Voting machine problems.
Vote flipping of voting machines in several states.[47][48][49][50]

Demonstration of crackable Diebold voting machine in HBO's documentary Hacking Democracy.[51][52]

On Election day November 7, talk show host Laura Ingraham prompted listeners (audio) to jam the Democratic Voter Protection hotline where voting problems were to be reported,[53] reminiscent of the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal.

In Maryland, some voters were given sample ballots by Republican supporters that incorrectly listed Republicans Robert Ehrlich and Michael Steele as Democrats.[54]

In Sarasota County, Florida, a large number of undervotes for the close 13th congressional district race, coupled with reports of voting machine problems on that part of the ballot, led Florida's Secretary of State to send a team to audit the result and possible recount.[55]

Electronic voting machine problems in Kane County, Illinois kept the polls open until 8:30pm CST, one and a half hours later than scheduled.[56]

In western Washington, flooding from heavy rainfall interfered with the elections.[57]

In Denver, Colorado, the computer system containing the voter registration rolls slowed down and crashed on several ocasions during the day causing lines that were over two hours long at some vote centers.[58] Some vote centers ran out of provisional ballots, and sample ballots had to be used instead.[59]

Also in Denver, 44,000 absentee ballots were misprinted with the "yes" and "no" positions on a ballot issue reversed. Also, the bar code designating the ballot style was misprinted, requiring the ballots to be hand sorted which delayed results by over a week. The problem is blamed on ballot misprints by Sequoia Voting Systems. Some ballots had to be hand-copied onto other ballots before they could be counted. [60]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_elections%2C_2006

 

[jpeyton]

The Republican chairman of the embattled Cuyahoga County elections board resigned Wednesday, days before he was to face a removal hearing.

 

[Jhhnn]

So, uhh, the much ballyhooed repub battle cry of "Voter Fraud!" turns out to be a variation of Iraqi WMD's, right?

 

[smashp]

Voter fraud and election fraud are 2 separate issues

 

[ayabe]

Wrong, the only reason they haven't found anything is because more than 60% of the professionals have been purged and replaced by cronies.

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April 12, 2007 | On Jan. 26, J. Scott Jennings, the White House deputy political director working for Karl Rove, delivered a PowerPoint presentation to least 40 political appointees, many participating through teleconferencing, at the General Services Administration, which oversees a $60 billion budget to manage federal properties and procure office equipment. Jennings' lecture featured maps of Republican "targets" for the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 2008 election. His talk was one of perhaps dozens given since 2001 to political appointees in departments and agencies throughout the federal government by him, Rove and Ken Mehlman, the former White House political director and Republican National Committee chairman. Rove and Co. drilled polling data into the government employees and lashed them on the necessity of using federal resources for Republican victory. "Such intense regular communication from the political office had never occurred before," Los Angeles Times reporters Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten wrote in their book, "One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century."

At the GSA presentation, the agency's chief, Lurita Alexis Doan, according to a witness, demanded of her employees, "How can we use GSA to help our candidates in the next election?" But when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on March 28, Doan's short-term memory loss grew progressively worse as she spoke. "There were cookies on the table," she said. "I remember coming in late -- honestly, I don't even remember that." At a break, she ordered an assistant to remove her water glass, unaware that the microphone in front of her was still on. "I don't want them to have my fingerprints," she said. "They've got me totally paranoid!"

The Oversight Committee is investigating multiple charges against Doan -- her attempt to grant a no-bid contract to a friend; her effort to thwart contract audits and to cut funds of the GSA Office of the Inspector General, which she called "terrorists" after it began a probe into her conduct; and her potential violation of the Hatch Act, which forbids the use of government offices for partisan activity. A major Republican contributor who made a fortune as a military and homeland security contractor, Doan had held no previous government posts before being appointed last year to head the GSA. Like the fabled ("heck of a job, Brownie") Michael Brown, the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Doan is another stellar example of the culture of cronyism that has permeated the federal government under George W. Bush.

But Doan's instant incompetence and wackiness under pressure disclose more than the price of patronage. "To the victor belong the spoils" has been the rule since Andrew Jackson. And every administration has displayed cases of abuse. But the Bush administration's practices are more than the common and predictable problems with patronage. Bush has not simply filled jobs with favorites, oblivious to their underhanded dealings, as though he were a blithering latter-day version of Warren Harding. Bush has been determined to turn the entire federal government, every department and agency, into an instrument of a one-party state. From the GSA scandal to the purging of U.S. attorneys, Bush has engaged in a conscious, planned and systematic assault on the professional standards of career staff, either subordinating them or replacing them with ideologues.

Doan and Brown are on a continuum of officialdom that runs to Monica Goodling -- until recently the No. 3 official in the Department of Justice, an evangelical graduate of Messiah College and Pat Robertson's Regent Law School, and a true believer in Bush as political messiah. Doan and Brown are cronies, but Goodling is a cadre. Within the Bush administration, there are hundreds of Monica Goodlings, and she was their ideal. A zealot for the cause, she apparently divides the world into good and evil, sacred and profane. She interprets criticism and debate as a mortal threat to all that is good and holy. She sees any institution of American life that is not devoted to the flag and cross to which she pledges and worships as twisted, biased and infernal. (To Goodling, CNN is "a force of the left.") She cannot distinguish between her absolute beliefs and their political instrumentality. She considers objective and professional analysis a ruse, an ideology in itself, a false faith. She sees those who adhere to standards of professionalism as agents of deception, hiding their real agendas. She was enthusiastic in weeding out Justice Department employees and replacing them with true believers like herself. Goodling's refusal to testify before the Senate investigation into the firing of U.S. attorneys and her assertion of the Fifth Amendment because the Senate operates in "bad faith" casts her as martyr and saint, warrior and crusader.

While Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld installed neoconservative ideologues throughout the national security apparatus, sidelining the senior military, diplomatic corps and intelligence community, and creating parallel operations to avoid assessment by professionals, Rove was handed the rest of the executive branch to arrogate for political purposes.

Consider the reports surfacing only within the past month: that scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency have again been forbidden to discuss climate change; that nine newly appointed U.S. attorneys are political cadres; that the new U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Rachel Paulose, cites Bible verses in the office, harshly orders underlings around and, according to one of four assistant U.S. attorneys in her office who voluntarily demoted themselves, treats disagreement as "disloyalty"; that the Election Assistance Commission last year, giving credence to Republican talking points of widespread voter fraud, ignored experts' testimony to the contrary; that between 2001 and 2006, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department has purged 60 percent of its professional staff and not filed a single voting discrimination case on behalf of African-American or Native American voters; and that after the state Republican Party complained to Rove that the U.S. attorney in Wisconsin, Steven Biskupic, was not attacking voter fraud, Biskupic kept his job by filing corruption charges against an aide to the incumbent Democratic governor on the eve of the 2006 elections. (The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled the aide was "wrongly convicted" on evidence that was "beyond thin.")

On the one hand, Rove has sought to forge a permanent Republican majority. On the other hand, that project might not be completed in just two Bush terms. In either case, Rove's strategy has depended on subjecting the federal government to political objectives. He is not trying to achieve any abstract goal, such as reaching the conservative nirvana of limited government. The endless scandals revealed are not a random compendium of corruption and incompetence, though they are that, too. They are evidence of Rove's -- and Bush's -- larger strategy of hollowing out the federal government in the interest of building a political state.

In 2002, a University of Pennsylvania professor and earnest conservative named John DiIulio, who had been appointed a White House domestic policy advisor to Bush's faith-based initiative, the essence of his claim to being a "compassionate conservative," resigned, becoming the first person to quit the administration in disgust. As DiIulio told reporter Ron Suskind, writing in Esquire magazine, the tone was set from the top. He overheard Rove shouting about some poor object of his anger, "We will ****** him. Do you hear me? We will ****** him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever ****** him." DiIulio was shocked to discover not only that Rove was placed in charge of domestic policy but also that Bush had no interest in it except as a political tool. "On social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking," DiIulio said.

Possessed with a sense of history, the disillusioned professor's remarks of five years ago have proved prophetic: "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything -- and I mean everything -- being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

In all his machinations Rove did not calculate that he would ever create an opposing force that might stop him. The Republican Congress had long shielded the administration from oversight and investigation, protecting Rove's handiwork. Now the Democratic Congress has begun to uncover seemingly endless series of abuses. In this respect, the clash of the legislative and executive branches is not over a difference in policy, as in the conflict over the Iraq war. Rather, Congress' effort is even more fundamental: to salvage the executive branch -- its capability of functioning in the public interest in the future -- from Rove's radical experiment to transform it forever.
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Link


Seriously Prof, get a clue.

 

[Double Trouble]

Dispite cries from dems and repubs to the contrary, I simply don't believe there is massive voter fraud taking place. Sure, there might be isolated instances, but on the whole I don't believe it's a major issue.

When you start using electronic voting with no paper trail or proper audit controls -- now THAT has the potential to lead to some serious election rigging in the future.

 

[piasabird]

It is kind of hard to prove fraud when people vote anonymously. There is no way to track the voting. We have so many people that live in this country that do not have a legal status that it is impossible to track them.

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

Originally posted by: Rainsford
Look, I'm not saying voter fraud is going on, but this article really doesn't prove much. After all, the alleged voter fraud is mostly about the 2000 and 2004 elections, both of which Bush won. If he was willing to stoop to fraud in the first place, it wouldn't really be surprising that his own justice department didn't find any evidence of voter fraud. Any way you look at it, they wouldn't find anything...the only way this report would contain anything at all useful would be if Bush was corrupt and/or stupid enough to engage in voter fraud in the first place, but not abuse his power once elected to actually cover it up intelligently.

The Bush Junta went on a crusade to prove voter fraud against Democrats. Curiously, what they've de-emphasized is voter intimidation . . . a favorite tactic of the GOP.

VA 2006

MD 2006

Hmm, competitive races . . . I wonder what possessed the GOP to target them?:roll:

CA 2006 House race

 

[Arcex]

Originally posted by: tagej
Dispite cries from dems and repubs to the contrary, I simply don't believe there is massive voter fraud taking place. Sure, there might be isolated instances, but on the whole I don't believe it's a major issue.

When you start using electronic voting with no paper trail or proper audit controls -- now THAT has the potential to lead to some serious election rigging in the future.

Potential? It already is.

 

[shadow9d9]

There is no way to track fraud with electronic voting without paper trails, period.

 

[manowar821]

I'm one of those "dirty liberals", but I was never really sure if the election was stolen. I like to believe people are already brainwashed enough to vote for people like the bush admin on their own.