I do not know but I seriously doubt there is a conservative organization trying to sign up voters in low income areas. Those are the LAST people Republicans want voting and indeed the Republicans do their level best to keep those folks from voting.
Presumably Republicans try to make sure their base is registered and get them to the polls but historically those folks are reliable in getting to the polls and voting anyway. The Reps have nowhere near the amount of work to do that the Dems do on this count.
It seems to me that if so many of the voter registrations are obviously phony such as the names of the Dallas Cowboys etc. then the problem is with unreliable workers rather than any real intent to corrupt the election. According to your first link ACORN has taken steps to sift the wheat from the chaff but evidently they aren’t doing a good job of that in some areas.
The GOP is more likely to try and stop or challenge voter registration in low income areas since they tend to vote Democrat.
Nothing to see here. It is not about voting fraud. Made up people do not exist and can not vote. It is a registration trick, fraud would require actually being able to vote. Somebody pads registration rolls with made up names. Then they have to find someone to get ID under a made up name. Then he has to go to the polls and actually vote. That has not happened and can not happen.
Given the above (total votes and percent votes cast) I calculate there were 212,158 voters eligible in Lake County. Note that of those who voted nearly 92% voted for Democrats.
So, if we assume 5,000 bogus voter registrations that is 2.36% of all voters. Hardly a whomping big pile.
Further, Lake County in Indiana is probably the most decisively strong single county in the US to vote democratic. So, it seems perverse in the extreme to risk jail on a conspiracy to add more voters to the Democratic side. And more perverse still that they did it so ham-handedly by turning in names like “Jimmy Johns” (a restaurant).
But hey, compare that to what the Republicans pulled off prior to the primaries:
By all means if those guys committed fraud they should get busted. Just keep in mind the numbers above when evaluating the extent of the crime and what it all really means.
I wish people would stop calling it “voter fraud.” There isn’t any evidence of voter fraud. Registration fraud is not voter fraud.
Fox News is going wall to wall with the (patently racist) ACORN demonization this week. The more clear it becomes that they’re going to lose, the more frantic the right wing media is getting.
Just a hypothetical: Can you register and request an absentee ballot the same day? I seem to remember reading something to the effect that a person could register to vote and request an absentee ballot at the same time. That would mean that a deceitful person could register as John Smith, Jimmy Johns and Generalissimo Franco and request absentee ballots for all names. If no one catches the fraud then one person could vote multiple times.
IIRC you can vote on election day even if you are not registered. However, you need to prove your residence. So both a photo ID and a current utility bill in your name (to prove you currently live in that district) are necessary. In Illinois at least an Absentee Ballot needs to be postmarked on Nov. 3 (this year) which is a day before the election so you cannot pick one up at the polling place (and the request for one must be received Oct. 30). Don’t know if that is the same for all states though.
So, you could vote as Generalissimo Franco if you have an ID with your picture and that name and a current utility bill in his name. If you can do that with multiple names then you are a professional criminal and wasting your efforts on vote fraud…just IMHO on that one though.
How should voter registration groups handle registrations they suspect are fraudulent when they are legally required to turn them in?
Yes, they could and should do a better job of screening the individuals gathering the votes, but once the registration is gathered, ACORN doesn’t have a choice in Nevada. The circumstances may be different in other states, but I know Nevada requires the registrations to be turned in.
Not necessarily. Wherever you go to register you can, at that point, request an absentee ballot. Hell, I just got a candidate’s flyer in the mail and it had a return postcard included that you can send in if you need an absentee ballot. So If I registered fraudulently they can mail me the absentee ballots. Since the ACORN people obviously didn’t give a rodent’s rectum when they accepted the registrations, do you think they’d be any more scrupulous about absentee ballots? I’ll fill them out and mail them back with no further proof of my existence except for what I had already registered. Bingo! Plus with early voting (which I think is really asinine) these votes will be in place long before the rest of the shenanigans begin. But that’s the Chicago way. Vote early, vote often. Richard J. Daley would be proud.
And since it’s so easy to do, and is so rampant, I’m sure you’ll have no problem in succeeding where others have failed, and provide us with a single example of anyone ever doing this.
The absentee ballots are still vetted I believe. They just do not accept anything that comes in and assume all is well.
Also, you may have missed earlier that in Nevada, at least, people registering others to vote MUST submit EVERY registration. If you stand before a person registering you and you write in “Mickey Mouse, Magic Castle, Disneyland” they simply MUST submit that to the state. The reason for this is to prevent shenanigans in the other direction. Say you are a republican and run around signing people up in a poor district then throw out all their registrations. Those people would be screwed come election day.
So this is why ACORN, at least in Nevada, told the state registrar that they felt certain names were bogus. It would not surprise me to find many other states operated in the same fashion.
To me this really looks like lazy workers filling out registration cards on their own thinking it was funny or no big deal. It looked then like they were working when in reality they were just at home watching TV or something. As a conspiracy this is ludicrous. Tons of risk for no discernible gain.
Gee, you really think I should try to violate voting laws? Sounds like fun! :rolleyes: I’ve got better things to do than spend time at Club Fed.
Fraud happens. Always has, always will. Whether it’s registering the Dallas Cowboys offensive line or changing absentee ballots (that happened at retirement homes in 2000 I believe) or having reps from political parties volunteer to collect absentee ballots you cannot get away from it. People will always try to find a way to scam the system to help their cause.
And do you really think that the registration fraud was going to be the last step? “Gee, Bob. We just created 2000 fake voter names. What do we do now?”
“Nothin’. We’re done for the year.”
Bull. They wouldn’t just create the names so they could brag about more registered Dems in some state. They would use that as the first step on their way to fraudulent votes. Then they take over the White House. And then, the world! Bwa-ha-ha. <cough> Sorry.
So I guess you missed the posts, with links, that said it was lazy workers for ACORN who made up and submitted those names, not the organization, and that it was ACORN who flagged those forms when they turned them in, because they were required by law to do so (turn in all submitted registrations). Your post seems to indicate you still think this was some grand conspiracy on the part of ACORN to register those “people” and vote, taking a chance on multiple law violations you yourself just said you wouldn’t chance once.
CNN is not helping they are reporting that this is clearly voter fraud. They give the example that one of the forms provided by acorn was for “Jimmy Johns” a local business. They fail to mention that since it was not a real person it could not possibly actually cast a vote. This is clearly a bunch of people trying to make it look like they are working harder than they really are. Some of them are probably getting their load on and filling out registration forms in some dive bar and turning them to ACORN to get paid. WHAT POSSIBLE BENEFIT TO ACORN FOR REGISTERING FAKE VOTERS?
I do not think you were being asked to go out and commit fraud to prove your point. I think you were being asked to dig up references for other reports where someone was mailing out absentee ballots in an effort to defraud the election process.
I would assume that they can go to their donors and say, “Look how many people we registered! Your money was not wasted; give us some more.”
There’s definitely some kind of institutional problem that prevents them from doing anything (or that prevents them from being willing to do anything) to stop fradulent registration from happening. They’ve been in the spotlight for this for some time.
Who, apart from ACORN itself, could? But since it is the law that they have to do so and everything, and with you being man of the law, doesn’t it kind of make sense that that’s more likely what happened? Especially with all those potential criminal penalties and all.
My guess is the problem they face are the workers they have access to.
Undoubtedly it is a low paying job to canvas neighborhoods to register voters. Then consider the neighborhoods they are working in…very low income, possibly dangerous neighborhoods. Who is going to go pound the pavement there? Answer: People who already live in those neighborhoods most likely.
Given that pool of workers and low pay are you surprised by the results?