Huh?!?
Chicago, 1960, the Daley machine?
got anything that happened less than a half a century ago? No, you don’t.
Please follow the line of argument:
Yes, there has: Chicago, Daley. That’s certainly enough to make me “lock my doors” because I can see it was done before, and the means to stop it are at hand, legal, and easy.
But the locks are already on the doors and then some.
Laws and regulations and whatnot have improved. IIRC I posted in this thread awhile back that voter fraud in Federal Elections from 2002-2005 amounted to less than 100 cases with 70 successful prosecutions. Even that was counting any kind of illegal election fraud (not just voter fraud). Not even remotely enough to sway any federal election…not even Florida in 2000.
Certainly we should keep (most) of the system in place which prevents election fraud we have today so the likes of what we saw with Daley do not occur again. Yet we can also say, provably, election fraud of the sort you are worried about is near enough to non-existent as makes no matter (IIRC much of the election fraud in those cases above were people unaware of election laws and they inadvertently goofed as opposed to trying to perpetrate fraud for some gain).
Wrong. The harm is not minimal.
That Wikipedia article makes that claim by citing, in turn, one report. The phrase is worded very carefully: “Studies of the use of provisional ballots in the 2006 general election in the United States show that around 21% of provisional ballots were rejected, where the majority of rejected ballots were cast by registered voters and the majority of rejections were for reasons that were preventable.”
Now, an ordinarily myopic reader reacts with horror: 21% rejected! That’s awful.
But delving into the report itself reveals one of their recommendtions: get rid of the “wrong precinct” rule. Ah ha! Now we see what their careful wording means; the rejected ballots were indeed cast by registered voters, just in the wrong precinct. According to the report, we should just let that tiny little mistake go.
Garbage. We draw voting area lines for a reason, and you vote in a particular area because that’s the way the precincts are created. You can’t vote for the Congressman in my area; that invites people crossing lines to help a contentious race and not worrying about their “safe” district.
So, yes – merely because a registered voter cast a provisional ballot is not sufficient – the voter needs to be voting in the precinct where he lives. And if he’s not, I have no heartburn with not counting his attempt to illegally vote.
That’s not the right metric. In your very next link, you talk about the number of provisional ballots rejected - a shocking 21%! Why weren’t all those added to the prosecution numbers?
A prosecutor who believes a person made an honest mistake should most certainly not initiate a criminal proscution. There’s no criminal intent.
But at the same time, it’s a wrong vote.
And of course, other criminal prosecutions may not go forward simply because even though the prosecutor believes there WAS criminal intent, there is insufficient proof – that is, he can’t make proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
So no – you can’t point to the number of criminal prosecutions and conclude that this is the total number of improper votes.
I agree no one should be able to cast a ballot in the wrong precinct for local politicians. But why should their vote for President or other things (say propositions) not hold? Why toss the baby out with the bath water?
I seriously doubt the people who did the above were intent on swaying a local election and likely goofed (in Chicago polling places are all over the place and your closest polling place may not be your polling place…not at all intuitive and not unreasonable for people to make mistakes…of course this is Chicago so one never knows ;)).
Not only that, but in many cases, people go to the right polling place, but that polling place has multiple precincts, with workers sending people to the wrong table (and hence precinct).
And if you’re not on the rolls, the fact that you’re name’s not on the list will be no tipoff that it isn’t your precinct.
Some people have work schedules that don’t give them a whole lot of time to resolve things like this.
What it comes down to is that you are fine with any trivial error trumping a legitimate voter’s right to vote.
I have to say that I find that to be a reprehensible position.
Are we talking about fraudulent voting or simple errors in voting? I was responding to your claim of rampant vote fraud in Chicago and the need to have laws in place to prevent that.
You are correct 90+ prosecutions does not necessarily mean there were only 90+ cases where they thought something looked fishy. Still, and you would know this better than I would, is it reasonable to suppose there is rampant vote fraud but the prosecutors can only bring those 90+ cases in three years? I think it is reasonable to suppose the suspected cases would not be dramatically higher than the cases they brought to trial. Even if it is 5x as many suspected cases we are still at a mere drop in the bucket when it comes to swaying a Federal election.
As for ballots that were cast in error certainly they should not be counted. But do you have any basis to suppose vast numbers, sufficient to alter a Federal election, are slipping through the cracks? If you are proposing the need for solutions to a problem seems to me you need to show there is a problem in the first place (a real problem…not a handful of ballots that are improperly counted such that they cannot possibly make a difference in the election as there will always be a few goofs no matter what system you propose). Show that the current checks are not sufficient.
That’s a fair point. Right now, it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. I would support some method whereby the wrong precinct disallows your local votes, but as long as you’re in the right state, your Presidential vote counts… but we’d have to work through problems. For example, one indicia of fraud during the 2004 campaign came from a precinct that reported more votes than it had registered voters (although IIRC the problem turned out to be an error in reporting). But the solution we discuss would have to somehow account for the fact that we’re taking a voter from Precinct 12 and counting him in Precinct 65.
Still, in this age of information, I can’t imagine that’s an impossible task, and I would absolutely support that change.
Re-asking this question as gonzomax evidently missed it.
Voter suppression is real. Voter fraud is not. You know it, Bricker.
There’s this I just saw as well:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10350246&postcount=66
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10350499&postcount=68.
Dang it! :smack:
Thread is so long I forgot.
My bad…carry on…
ETA: Wait…that is a different thread! No fair!
Sorry, I was in a hurry and should have stated it was a different thread, but since the topics are similar I thought I’d save you some time (and heartache). 
Update: ACORN is fighting back, with an ad denouncing Pub voter suppression and several lawsuits.