Earlier this month, the New York Times broke the story that the Election Assistance Commission’s December 2006 [on a study of voter fraud and voter intimidation had been altered by the EAC prior to publication, without the authors’ consent, to state that the pervasiveness of “voter fraud” (i.e., individual persons voting illegally) is “open to debate,” when in fact the study found very little evidence of voter fraud around the nation.
Now the EAC has issued a gag order (where did they get the authority?!) barring the study’s co-author, Tova Andrea Wang, from discussing it publicly. Wang is fighting back. See [url=http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4464]here](]report[/url) and here. See here (pdf file) for the original draft of the study report.
Issues for debate:
Legally, can Wang overcome the gag order?
Has she already violated it, by posting a pdf file of the original draft? What consequences might she suffer?
Why (and on what authority) was the gag order imposed in the first place?
Why was the report altered in the first place?
Is the EAC (created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002) supposed to be politically independent of the Administration, or not? Who gets to appoint its chair and commissioners, anyway? The Wikipedia article doesn’t say. Neither does the EAC website, so far as I can find.
Isn’t it kewl when we can use the word “Wang” in a serious political debate?
People who wander around after the fact of an election trying to figure out whether it was done properly (and then being muzzled if their conclusions are not politically correct) need Seante confirmation, but Federal District Attorney’s do not.
When they say 9/11 changed everything, they aren’t kidding.
Thanks to friend Brain for starting this thread, which I was intending to, but am too lazy and easily…ooh! shiny!
Yoiu want a vast right wing conspiracy? What better than to trump up a smoke screen and boogeyman like “voter fraud”? What a slick piece of machinery it is, how deniable, how neatly it avoids tell-tale fingerprints. After all, who can be opposed to rooting out “voter fraud”?
The purpose of the excercise is to justify restrictions at the polling place. To make it more difficult to vote, to erect barriers, hoops to jump through. The breakdown is nakedly and brazenly political: the more people vote, the more the right loses. They’ve already maxed out on energizing their base, there is no more juice to be squeezed. What they need to do is minimize voting amongst targeted groups. I don’t have to tell you who they are, you already know who they are.
Hence, the desperate need to cleanse voter rolls of criminal felons who seek to undermine our nation by voting! Better to err on the side of caution, better to refuse voting to the innocent than to permit voting for the guilty. If you are falsely denied the right to vote because your name is similar to a criminals name, why, all you have to do is come down to the polling place with three forms of picture ID, character references, and an affidavit from God Almighty. And, of course, get back in the line you’ve already spent four hours in.
And if also permits a “loyal Bushie”" US Attorney to bring a bogus case against the Dems in a swing state at a crucial moment, icing on the cake!
I say it baldly, because I believe it: the “voter fraud” prevention program in Florida elected George W. Bush, may God have mercy on us all.
I recall running a couple of GD threads on “voter fraud” in the past – I’d link to them but the search function appears to have disappeared, for the moment. As I recall, however, no Doper was able to provide a single credible cite showing “voter fraud” is a real problem.
I’ve pretty much lost interest in trying to sway the crowd here, or even trying to correct the record. The people that are genuinely interested in legitimate and honest debate are fewer; the assholes are in ascendancy.
However, for a moment of quixotic adventure:
(a)
Cleverly written. But since this is not a strict liability crime, any honest “mistakes” by immigrants and felons are, by definition, not crimes, and shouldn’t ever have been charged. The sentence invites us to conflate the honets mistakes and the criminal actions, by saying that 120 people have been charged with the crime. The honest mistakes shoul be pursued to prevent them from voting, to be sure, because those confused immigrants and felons, however many there may be, should not vote – but if they were honest confused, neither should they be charged with a crime. In short, the fact that only 120 people have been criminally charged is utterly irrevelant in determining how many attempts to vote have been made by confused immigrants and confused felons.
(b)
Don’t care. It’s absolutely appropriate to require documentation of identity before voting. Ifthat loses 2.7%, then we need to work on fixing whtever underlying fears or problems cause that. In short: not giving much of a fuck here. Documenation of identity is perfectly valid for voting. That 2.7% can suck it up.
Getting the well-poisoning out of the way up front for a change, are we?
And that is exactly the point. Welcome to the Ascendant Assholes Association. They should indeed not have been charged. Yet they were anyway. How come, d’ya s’pose?
You are utterly ignoring the context - that the Feds were *looking * for people to charge, to prove that this massive voter fraud problem they wanted to exist did exist.
There too, that is exactly the point. The “underlying problems” include such things as Georgia’ requirement, recently imposed by a GOP legislature, to have a driver’s license or state ID card, oh, and there’s a fee involved. Look up “poll tax” for some of the history of that problem - you’ll find the word “unconstitutional” there too. But, if you don’t want to give a fuck, nobody can make you.
.
Wherein the point is evaded as gracefully as a matador avoids the horns in a perfect veronica. What we are invited to appreciate is that 120 arrests, charges, tickets, whatsoever… is a piddling matter. Certainly, it isn’t worthy of bringing the vast, clanking machinery of the Federales to bear. Hence, we are invited to contemplate why it is done, whose interests are served in inflating a Japanese condom into a dirigible.
Do you think I’m wrong in presuming that the greater portion of that 2.7 is poor, perhaps homeless? And that population is predominantly Democratic? Thus, this sort of thing favors one party over another. Is it not clear whose interests are served here? Is it not clear who would gain by presenting a pious concern for “voter fraud” as a screen for making it more difficult for the lower classes to exercise their inconvenient civic rights?
Look around the country, look at grass roots movements to make voter registration easier and more convenient. Who opposes such movements? Who benefits if polling places in the inner city take hours to process the voter? Who benefits when they don’t vote? (Hint: starts with an “R”)
The clear possibility exists, and demands clarification, that this whole “voter fraud” hooha is nothing more than a partisan political maneuver, with intent to thwart voters likely to favor a political party.
I would never suggest that a person making $100,000 a year or more should not be permitted to vote, that is anathema to democratic egalitarians like you and I. But I further assert that the ease and convenience of voting for a upper class person should be precisely the same as a fellow citizen less advantaged.
I would insist on it. I would expect you to join me.
Yes, it does. And forbidding felons the vote also favors one party over another for some of the same reasons. What of it? It’s a very legitimate thing to do, regardless.
There seem to me to be two possibilities:
I support these measures only because they benefit the GOP, or…
…I support these measures because they are consistent with my general philosophy of governance, and that because I generally hold opinions along these lines in all areas I usually support the GOP.
I’d say the second is true. I can’t imagine that I’d be in favor of unfettered, never verified voting no matter which party it served. By the same token, I favor accountability in voting like paper-backups, which (according to some) will hurt the Republicans.
True enough. But my point is that regardless of their motives, we should examine the proposal on its merits.
For example, suppose I were to show that Joe favors abortion rights because he knows that minority women avail themselves of abortions more often, and he wishes to stem the expansion of minority numbers.
We would both agree that this is a reprehensible motive. And we would both agree that the issue of abortion policy should not be decided based on the reprehensible motives held by some of its proponents, any more than it should be decided based on the benign motives held by other of its proponents. Instead, it should be decided on the merits.
Yes but no. There is the question of merit, of course, persons who fraudulently gain the voting booth should be discouraged. But, really, how big an issue is this? Certainly not important enough to compel USA’s to ferocious zeal, not important enough to justify the time and expense expended for such results. Predictably puny results, more to the point.
It would appear, then, that the merits of the issue are important only to the pure of heart, like you and I. The central thrust is to ensure that certain segments of the electorate are discouraged, a concept repulsive to us both.
This leads me to believe that she, like many other government contractors and employees, has a confidentiality agreement with the federal government. Such agreements were upheld in Snepp v. United States, 444 U.S. 507 (1980): http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=444&invol=507 ; and see, http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20001115.html The Snepp case is different, of course; it involved an ex-CIA agent who was in a position of trust and had access to classified information. Nevertheless, confidentiality agreements seem to make first amendment analysis a bit easier for the courts in cases like these.
Here’s a profile of Wang, BTW. Some might argue her background suggests an ideological bias – but they knew that (or should have) before they hired her.
From TPM Muckraker, may the Good Lord bless them and keep them always…
Controversial USA Delivered “Voter Fraud” Indictments Right on Time
You may have heard at some point the grand and cunning conspiracy by the ultra-radical group ACORN to “fraudulently” register voters. The whole story is far too long and too specific to lend itself to excerpt, your correspondent urges you to read the whole thing (not *that * long!) Links and documentation are provided within the article, in the standard *TPM * style.
Fact based refutation is solicited, if you have such.
