I do.
But that proves the point. Whether committed by Republicans, whether committed by Democrats… voter fraud exists.
You can dispute how much there is. But by citing an article showing a Republican committing voter fraud, you’re proving that it exists.
That’s the first real study I’ve come across suggesting that this is a real issue. I’m honestly surprised, given the weakness of the anecdotal data.
Here’s the paper:
This type of thing is typically a felony. The authors report that Voter ID is ineffective in curbing this behavior: “Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted.” Of course the point of Voter ID isn’t to curb fraud: otherwise they would crack down on absentee ballots. The point is to reshape the electorate.
The authors suggest this method for curbing voter fraud: [INDENT]An alternative approach to reducing non-citizen turnout might emphasize public information. Unlike other populations, including naturalized citizens, education is not associated with higher participation among non-citizens. In 2008, non-citizens with less than a college degree were significantly more likely to cast a validated vote, and no non-citizens with a college degree or higher cast a validated vote. This hints at a link between non-citizen voting and lack of awareness about legal barriers.[/INDENT]
ETA
One problem I have is with imputation from respondents comprising 1% of the sample. I fear this may reflect incidence of jokesters in the sample. I’d like to see better cross-validation than the authors reported.
There’s something odd about these numbers. 339/32800 = 1.03% of the 2008 sample were allegedly noncitizens, along with 489/55400= 0.88% of the 2010 sample. This compares with a legal non-citizen population share of 13.07/310.5 4.2% in 2011. Include illegal immigrants and the share jumps to 7.9%.
The idea that one out of eight of all non-citizens vote in the US seems high. The authors report that 14% of non-citizens had registered to vote and that 6.4% actually voted in 2008 and 2.2% in 2010. Maybe those figures differ due to reweighting, as 2.2%, 6.4% < 1%/8%.
At any rate the data are puzzling.
Liberals are worried about voting machines being hacked even though there is no evidence that voter machines have ever been hacked. But they COULD be, and it threatens the integrity of the system. Same goes for non-citizens being registered to vote, or 128 people using the same address to register. Strangely though, liberals point to that as just registration fraud, which would never, ever, actually result in votes being cast. And if dead people voted, that’s just paperwork errors. But if errors are so endemic to the system, how can we rely on vote counts in close elections? We can’t.
Another bogus argument used by liberals is that no one would risk a felony charge to cast a single vote. The Monkey Cage blew that one away. Non-citizens do vote, as do felons, a) because the likelihood of getting caught is negligible, and b) because they may not know they are doing wrong.
The system needs to be tightened up. Voter ID is low hanging fruit, but I’d gladly trade that one away in exchange for requiring proof of citizenship and residence to register, plus keeping current database that are regularly purged of voters who have died or moved.
South Dakota is looking secure for the GOP now thanks to Larry Pressler going and telling the truth: he’s now pretty liberal and is an ally of Obama. So now he’s taking votes from Weiland instead of Rounds.
http://www3.blogs.rollcall.com/rothenblog/elecions-2014-south-dakota-senate-race-returning-to-form/
Oh, and for those who want to blame current Democratic problems on “the map” and expect to win back the Senate in 2016 should they lose it next week… Nope. Republicans have a “map” problem with their governors, defending eight more seats than Democrats and nine seats in states Obama won in 2012. While a lot of races are close and Democrats could pick up as many as five seats, the current polling says only Dems +1. And that map is a LOT more favorable than the 2016 Senate map.
I don’t think this is as rock solid as you would like it to be. From the article in YOUR link:
Best guess? Extrapolations? I call bullshit. Guessing is now fact?
Yeah, I know statistics, blah blah blah. It still doesn’t constitute proof.
I think the paper was worth writing, but frankly it looks like measurement error to me. Generally speaking the number of cases of in-person voter fraud is in the low double digits over the past decade. This study finds 10 since 2000, in many cases mistakes. From a signal/noise point of view, disenfranchising millions for the sake of cracking down a 30 or 40 - never mind 10 - makes no sense.
Here’s a case of false positives during a voter fraud investigation: “…a review by a Boulder County prosecutor found that of the 17 names from his county that were forwarded by the “election fraud” crusader, every single one of them was a verifiable U.S. citizen.” Every. Single. One.
Well, then shouldn’t we want to find out? Have there been any systematic investigations into non-citizen voting? And while their exact number probably has a large margin of error, I think they’ve established beyond a doubt that non-citizens vote in large enough numbers to be worth doing something about. I’m not calling for mass arrests here, because it’s hard to prove that people intentionally broke the law and most of them probably didn’t intentionally vote illegally. But it still needs to be stopped and it’s not hard to stop.
Two nitpicks:
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You’re counting convictions only. We already “cracked down” on those 30-40. Now we have to crack down on the rest of them. Or, put in place systems that prevent them from casting illegal votes in the first place. As Bricker has pointed out, courts have to prove intent, which is hard. And I believe that intent to commit voter fraud is very, very rare. What I do not believe is rare is illegally voting in good faith because the system is so loose a person can vote twice and have pretty much no chance of getting caught, and might not even know it’s illegal. That has to stop.
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While using an extremely tight definition of voter fraud, you are using the broadest possible definition of disenfranchisement. Sure, millions do not have ID. Nearly all of them can get it with only the tiniest bit of inconvenience. The only reason they haven’t is because they don’t take care of themselves, something which cannot be done without ID, since you can’t work, open a bank account, drive, use anything but local mass transit, or rent an apartment. we don’t disenfranchise millions when we pass ID laws and there is no evidence that ID laws significantly reduce turnout. People without ID who want to vote just get ID. Like voter fraud, it’s a vanishingly small problem, and in at least one case opposing voter ID law, the plaintiffs couldn’t even locate someone who would have actually been disenfranchised under the law.
On the other hand, Minnesota got 113 convictions in the 2008 election. And not because the authorities were looking, but because MInnesota had an evil right wing organization that referred such things and did not get 100% false positives, obviously. Unless Minnesota is unusually corrupt(very, very doubtful), then at the very least we can extrapolate that the nation could jail about 6000 people in an average Presidential election for voter fraud. And that’s barely trying, relying on outside groups to refer potential violations. By contrast, the IRS, which pursues tax fraud VERY aggressively, only finds about 3000 cases of tax fraud per year:
http://www.irs.gov/uac/Statistical-Data-for-Three-Fiscal-Years-Criminal-Investigation-(CI)
If tax fraud is worth pursuing, so is voter fraud.
Back to 2014 news, two races that Democrats had consistent leads in are trending away from them: NH and NC.
In NH, Shaheen’s average lead is now 2.2. The last three polls were Shaheen +2, Shaheen +1, Brown +1. The last poll showing her lead by more than 2 was two weeks ago.
In NC, Hagan’s average lead is now +1. The last two polls showed her tied, and with an LP candidate taking 5-7% of the vote. Polls usually overstate third party support, and guess where most of those LP voters are going to go next week?
Shaheen I’d still favor to pull this one out, but Hagan I think might be toast.
Many have questioned whether the Republicans would be serious about governing. McConnell and McCarthy at least seem to be:
Of course, the New Republic says they can’t get anything done due to the far right. But I think that’s just typical liberal inability to understand the enemy.
This article doesn’t give me any hope that the Republicans are serious about governing – it doesn’t sound any different from their rhetoric of the past few years.
They say that a lot of the problem has been Harry Reid, and I think there’s merit to that. He doesn’t allow amendments, and he won’t bring bills to the floor with majority support because they might make life difficult for his vulnerable incumbents. Those problems will be eliminated should McConnell be in charge of the Senate. McConnell has pledged to allow an open amendment process, plus he’ll have a better working relationship with House Republicans. They will have no problems getting bills to the President’s desk.
And what might those bills be? A few dozen more to repeal Obamacare, certainly, but anything else? Maybe the long-awaited replacement bill?
Seriously, in what way do you think the country would be better off? Have you yet given that any actual thought, beyond your trademark frivolous cheerleading?
Immigration reform. Tell me the President won’t sign a bill to improve border security and fix our broken system. Who would oppose that? Would he really hold up necessary reforms because he wants more?
Tax reform is another issue that can get done now. The President supports tax reform.
TNR is pessimistic because anything that passes a Republican Congress will be, well, Republican. But that doesn’t mean that everything they send to his desk will be veto-worthy. So we’ll see what happens. If they screw up again, then you have nothing to worry about, Democrats will control everything in 2016, including the House.
Tell me there will be a bill and what’s in it. Note that actually passing one would deprive your team of its most reliable voter-scarer, nativism, so the prospects of anything but more brownskin-bashing are dubious.
“Fix our broken system”, you say it would be. Didn’t Hannity give you anything but the topmost bullet point?
What’s in that? Or was that simply the second bullet point on the graphic you saw once?
Now there’s something to inspire us all. :rolleyes:
You mean find out what’s in it after they pass it? :rolleyes: We have no need, or even reason, to vote blindly against the accomplishers and hope the obstructionists don’t screw up as badly as they routinely do anymore. But that’s all you can offer as a basis to vote for your team.
Frivolous cheerleading, that’s all you’ve got. Sad.
Cue the theme from “Jaws” in Democrats’ minds:
One week, Democrats! One week, liberals!
MUAHAHAHAHA.
One week, until what most of us believe will probably happen actually happens! The horror!
Was 2012 really so horrible for you that you’re just desperate to feel the tiniest shred of schadenfreude that many of us got to feel then? Even if we were as deluded as many Doper conservatives were in the lead up to 2012, and from what I can tell most of us still trust Nate Silver and company, a mid-term loss is not nearly as demoralizing as a presidential loss.