Your site claims that 300 registrations were fraudulent, out of 80,000 they collected, but your thread title suggests voter registration fraud was completed “en masse”. Why would you deliberately attempt to inflate the importance of this story? And you’re accusing US of being overly partisan?
Also, according to your site, the fraud was committed by employees trying to avoid work. We’re not talking about guys in dark rooms twisting mustaches and committing crimes like voter intimidation or altering the counts of actual ballots, here. This is a story worthy of exactly how much non-coverage it gets. Some people committed minor crimes (apparently not even worth getting charged with anything) and got caught.
Thanks for the oversight of the “left” though. Sometimes you’re a decent watchdog, but this isn’t one of those times. The “look at how victimized my political party is” tone of your post suggests that you realize just how silly it is to make a big deal out of this.
It seems to me that it was ACORN that got defrauded by some employees who pretended to register voters but instead just filled in random information.
It would only be a scandal for ACORN if we imagine the next step was that ACORN members were going to show up at the polls and attempt to submit ballots using those fraudulent registrations.
And 300 false registrations out of 80,000 doesn’t seem like “en masse” fraud. More like a small amount of fraud.
Waitaminnit – what exactly would be the point of swamping the system with registration cards, etc.? No registration makes a political difference unless someone actually tries to vote under it. And it’s certainly not in ACORN’s or any Democratic campaign’s interest to “swamp the system”; they want the voter-registration system to tick along smoothly.
To be fair, I think the author of the story is being a little short here. Presumably they have only noticed 300 out of the 80,000 submitted, but that’s enough to raise some eyebrows, requiring them to go back and check harder. At least, that’s my interpretation, and I’m sticking to it.
Hypothetically, if somebody had two voter registration cards under different names, assuming Nevada doesn’t require photo IDs, they could vote twice, using a different registration card each time.
Well, on more sober reflection, I think this is a tempest in a teapot, primarily because there doesn’t seem to be any reasonable way that the fake voters could actually vote. That is, if the phony Dallas Cowboy registration actually went in, there would still have to be someone to show up and present ID.
Of course… on even FURTHER reflection, it seems to lend a certain weight to the various calls for voter ID confirmation at the polls, a measure which has been decried in these parts. So – I think the actual fraud is untentional on ACORN’s part, and is most likely the work of an otherwise unhireable temp worker who thinks it’s too hot to actually go outside and work – nothing more.
But I would say it rather sharply points out the value of a system which double-checks this sort of fraud by asking voters for government-issued photo ID when they vote.
It’s reasonable if the government issues it completely free of charge to the user and denies it to no one for any reason, e.g., lack of a fixed address.
Well, as I understand it, they’re saying 300 have been found so far, not that 300 total exist.
And as I remember it, the opposition to voter ID in earlier threads on this board included many indignant claims that there weren’t any documented cases of voter fraud, so it wasn’t a problem to be fixed. By that standard, 300 is rather a high number.
And I predict this isn’t the last we’ll hear of phony voter registrations this month.
Right. There’s a big difference between submitting phony registrations and casting fraudulent votes at the polls. In order to cast thousands of fraudulent votes you have to recruit thousands of people to be in on the conspiracy.
But a partisan state official can disenfranchise thousands of voters with a stroke of a pen.
Not only can they, they did steal a presidential election–possibly two–in this manner.
I don’t object to a sliding scale. It’s not unreasonable to ask me to pay for my ID – or, I suspect, to ask you. But I’d agree that the IDs should be available free below a certain reasonable income level.
Now, the no fixed address thing. I agree in principle, since every person must live somewhere, and every person is generally entitled to vote. But by the same token, a person can’t simply choose a precinct in which to vote. There has to be some rationale for selecting a voting district for a person of no fixed address. I am open to reasonable solutions to solve the tension between those principles.
That’s really the best option. This is a non-story used only to cast aspersions on some members. We should be afforded the opportunity to give it the response it deserves and not be limited by the constraints imposed by GD rules. It is clearly not intended to be a Great Debate but rather a not so thinly veiled Pit like attack, lame uninformed hyper partisan unfounded not grounded in reality attack but attack never the less. Bricker has repeatedly demonstrated that when it comes to politics he absolutely does not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Any signs of voter fraud, yet? Registration fraud is not the same thing as voter fraud. Someone needs to actually attempt to vote (or be denied the right to vote) for it to be voter fraud.
I’m fine with it, as long as it costs nothing to get, and government provides transportation to and from the site where you have to get your ID, and you don’t have to have an address (because homeless people should have the right to vote).
The reason a voter ID is decried in these parts is because it is the same as a voting tax if it costs anything at all. Well, that and that it’s too much leverage over the vote in the hands of too few. Voter fraud is a much smaller problem than voter intimidation or challenging legitimate voters. A voter ID is just another way to make sure only the right types of people can conveniently vote.
There’s been no voter fraud yet - registering voters doesn’t put votes on the ballot. Voting does. It looks like some of their employees were putting in false registrations to improve their numbers and defraud ACORN. There’s no indication that there were plans to have people go in with false voter registrations and vote. The falsifications were caught, employees who did this are being fired, the end. This would have been an issue if people were voting with false voter registration cards, but that didn’t happen, and even if this was not caught, it wouldn’t have happened because these people falsifying records were not actually getting people registered who would vote - they were making up people and imaginary people don’t go to polls on election day and vote.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more blatant falsifications (i.e. Dallas Cowboy names) were done by people trying to hurt ACORN. As pointed out, they’d hire anyone. I’m sure there’s plenty of McCain supporters who would go to work for ACORN and submit false voter registrations to hurt the reputation of their opposition and get paid to do so.
there’s billions of tax-payers’ dollars being given to US companies that have done badly
Pakistani Government troops have fired on US helicopters
In the midst of this Governor Palin, who has said little, but appeared nervous and ill-informed, has stated that Obama is ‘pally with terrorists’.
Did she find this out herself?
Is she just a mouthpiece for Republican smears? :rolleyes:
Is this woman running for VP? :smack:
Waitaminnit – what exactly would be the point of swamping the system with registration cards, etc.? No registration makes a political difference unless someone actually tries to vote under it. And it’s certainly not in ACORN’s or any Democratic campaign’s interest to “swamp the system”; they want the voter-registration system to tick along smoothly.