Even this case, though it seems to be vaster than ACORN, isn’t a case of influencing votes–just registrations. With today’s IT, it’s not very practical to try to swing a vote “on the front end”–from the bottom up. You have to do it from the top down. That is, you have to have some kind of collusion at the registrar’s office or with the Secretary of State, where the database is controlled. In Florida 2000 they turned away voters because of database purges that were highly questionable.
The days of Daily’s Chicago political machine voter fraud are long overtaken by computer technology–if the registrar or Secretary of State wants to prevent it, he or she can. If there’s really a “huge potential” for some person standing in front of a supermarket handing out registration forms to influence the outcome of an election, then I’d like to know exactly how he or she does it. Go ahead, tell me how I can do it.
A friend of mine is in a high position of the L.A. County registrar of voters, and he tells me that they just laugh at this whole thing.
The low number of voter fraud cases and convictions does not mean that it is a crime that “practically does not exist”. I’ve read statements from prosecutors that said that these cases are rarely investigated or prosecuted. It’s too difficult and expensive to investigate, politically dangerous, and they would rather be prosecuting “real” criminals.
What the states could do, if they really wanted to know, would be to follow the example of the IRS and run spot checks on the voter roles and voting places to get a statistically valid measurement of error rates and fraud.
Has anyone thought about what would happen when people claiming to be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy turned up to vote on election day? Poll workers have full authority to question such blatant fraud. Or is it suspected that they would be in on it too?
This ACORN “scandal” smells of having Karl Rove’s fingerprints all over it. Have a few operatives go to work for ACORN, phony up some registrations, then turn around and blow the whistle while trying to pin it on the other party.
Glad to see massive, coordinated, flagrant interference in the electoral process doesn’t overly bother you either, especially if it’s the Republican doing the interference.
Tweet! I’m cautioning rowrrbazzle and samclem to cool it with the partisan slams. This is still General Questions. Although, I’m not sure if this thread can survive here.
The liberal-leaning newspaper in my city cited similar figures to poo-poo fraud concerns. This is sophistry. In this county, very few drivers use turn signals. But, based on the number of prosecutions for failure to use turn signals (none), one might infer that failure to use turn signals is not a problem here. The same applies to vote fraud. It is rampant in large cities, but is not prosecuted, as it is not in the interest of the local authorities, who share the same party affiliation as the fraud perpetrators, to deter fraud. Watch the returns from Philadelphia, for example: the number of votes cast for Obama will exceed the number of registered voters in the city.
ACORN is well aware of fraud, and will wring its hands in public over supposed rogue employees, but every fraudulent vote that is cast for Obama will be fine with it and fine with Obama.
I don’t know if it’s an issue in other states, but New Mexico has a law that any voter-registration groups are required to hand over any and all completed voter registration forms to the county or state officials within 48 hours of receiving the completed form. From here:
So in New Mexico - where ACORN has been at least somewhat active, I registered through them myself - if someone fills out a form and hands it back to an ACORN volunteer, they are required by law to turn that form over to the government essentially ASAP. If someone fills out a form saying their name is Daffy Duck, then the form still needs to be turned in within 48 hours.
