Another Project Veritas Video About Voter Fraud
In this video, James O’Keefe’s pranksters set out to register Tim Tebow and Tom Brady to vote:
The gag is that the undercover tricksters just come in and grab handfuls of voter registration forms (20 in one case), and then register the two famous quarterbacks to vote. Time and time again, they ask if any kind of ID is required to register Tebow and Brady to vote. The dialogue is peppered with funny references to the reasons Tebow and Brady can’t get the forms themselves — Tebow was in a car accident recently, while Brady happened to be assaulted in Minnesota and is going through a lot of depression. None of the middle-aged women catch the references.
It’s all very amusing, but as O’Keefe well knows, underneath the humor there is a very serious problem here. Any time human beings can commit fraud, human beings WILL commit fraud. Period. If you don’t agree with this statement, you are hopelessly naive and I have no interest in talking to you. What’s more, the easier you make the fraud, and the tougher it is to catch and punish, the more you will get. Again, this is beyond rational dispute.
When combined with Project Veritas’s last video, which showed undercover cameramen obtaining ballots using the names of dead people, the holes in our system are clear. Any fraudster need only go to a polling station, grab dozens of absentee ballots, turn them in with no verification of identity, and they are registered. Then, anyone can vote absentee by claiming they are sick — or, as in the previous video, they can simply go to the polling place and place their vote there. (Mediaite claims that there are checks that would prevent this. But the “no voter ID” crowd probably wants to remove those checks as well.)
If this can happen, it does happen. I know people who want to avoid any and all checks on voter fraud are fond of telling us that voter fraud is rare. They point to the relatively small number of convictions for voter fraud as their proof.
Bollocks. By that logic, Wall Street didn’t deceive anyone. There have been hardly any criminal convictions coming out of the subprime mortgage debacle. I guess nobody committed any fraud then.
If you care about election integrity, you should care about ensuring that there are checks on rampant fraud. Unfortunately, so many who claim to favor election integrity are really only interested in favoring their own side.
That’s why the certain reaction of the fringe left to this video will be to, once again, strain to find ways that O’Keefe is breaking the law. Don’t counter his message; attack the messenger. Smear him. Claim he committed crimes whether he did or not. Go after the man on a personal level. This is what the scumbags on the fringe left always do, and you can bet they will do it again with this video.
Kudos to O’Keefe’s crew. This is an important video that should be distributed far and wide.
UPDATE: I originally said the previous video “showed undercover cameramen obtaining ballots using the names of dead people.” I knew that they hadn’t voted but was sloppy in my wording. What they actually did was obtain ballots — but they didn’t vote. Thanks to daleyrocks for pointing this out.
O’Keefe is back on track.
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (4ccf3b) — 2/9/2012 @ 7:49 pmMan, I was TOTALLY going to vote for Ross Perot!
Tim Tebow (298188) — 2/9/2012 @ 7:53 pmRacists.
JD (fda94d) — 2/9/2012 @ 7:59 pmKrauthammer used to say that the left thinks the right is evil and the right thinks the left is stupid.
I think at least the segment of the left that Patterico refers to at the end of this post is quite evil and quite real.
As to O’Keefe’s video… the presentation is excellent. It’s a problem many of us have assumed, but never really saw so clearly. That the floodgates are wide open like this is difficult for me to explain as an accident.
Dustin (401f3a) — 2/9/2012 @ 8:00 pmBrad Friedman, what Kimberlin himself wasn’t available to vouch for these jokers
narciso (87e966) — 2/9/2012 @ 8:02 pmIt is Tommy Christopher, does he ever get tired of
narciso (87e966) — 2/9/2012 @ 8:24 pmfacepalming himself.
It’s interesting who he who has never felt remorse is willing to vouch for, though.
Dustin (401f3a) — 2/9/2012 @ 8:31 pmAmazing how zero tolerance doesn’t apply when inconvenient to statists.
Ed from SFV (75a38b) — 2/9/2012 @ 10:50 pmWould you let people withdraw money from a bank account they say is theirs without proving it?
Milhouse (9a4c23) — 2/9/2012 @ 11:56 pmMy problem with voter ID laws is that 1) they don’t prevent fraudulent absentee voting; and 2) they don’t prevent aliens from registering and voting. Unless proof of eligibility is required when registering to vote, there is nothing to prevent aliens from voting, and indeed they may not even realise that they shouldn’t be. Certainly on the rare occasions when they are caught, they often claim not to have understood that they’re ineligible, and that they had been told it didn’t matter. I doubt that all the people at the DMV who register voters know that aliens are ineligible, or that those who do know care. Remember, legal aliens have valid ID.
Milhouse (9a4c23) — 2/10/2012 @ 12:00 amI welcome O’Keefe’s investigations on overseas voting (not registration) fraud and absentee ballots, not to mention his exposé on politicians, ah, edging the rules.
Wait, that takes evidence, rather than pounding the table.
Jamie (ee4a20) — 2/10/2012 @ 1:00 amWho will intimidate you, the black panther punks or white rinos that wish they were black?
sickofrinos (44de53) — 2/10/2012 @ 2:15 amWe must fix this election.
But…but…you want to disenfranchise The Poor(tm)!
Those who trot out this line every time this subject comes up are willful liars. Unfortunately, that’s what they do for a living, and they’re reprehensible. They’re fooling nobody.
bobdog (166386) — 2/10/2012 @ 3:06 amJamie is a clown. Look, over there! BUNNIES!
JD (fda94d) — 2/10/2012 @ 5:57 amThose are not problems with voter ID. Those are just problems.
I agree both those other issues need to be solved too. But let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Voter ID is a bigass step in the right direction.
Dustin (401f3a) — 2/10/2012 @ 6:19 amThat should be the motto for the upcoming campaign, Dustin. Good call.
The trouble is, on this topic and on others, how folks who say that continue to peck and pick and split hairs…allowing the opponents to win.
Simon Jester (a9dcc5) — 2/10/2012 @ 6:32 amThere’s nothing wrong with having standards.
It’s not “the perfect is the enemy of extremely bad”.
Dustin (401f3a) — 2/10/2012 @ 7:06 amI also think you need to define “the opponents”.
It’s not “the democrats”. It’s the people who won’t to reform entitlements and spending while still supporting the ind. mandate after it’s a proven and instrusive failure.
Those are “the opponents”.
Dustin (401f3a) — 2/10/2012 @ 7:09 amSorry for the typos.
But it’s very annoying seeing someone take a clear logical point, such as voter ID being a good improvement, and apply that to something that is, to be charitable, not anything like that. It begs the question.
No one honestly thinks Romney is merely a nit pick from being conservative or merely an unsplit hair from reforming the things that must be reformed.
Is politics just a sport? Is the only point getting Team R to beat “the opponents”? If Barack Obama switches parties tomorrow, should I support him despite a liberal record?
“the most conservative guy who can win” needs to be conservative.
Newt, Santorum, and Mitt… none of them are merely a split hair from being acceptable. All of them deserve plenty of criticism. And I seriously doubt sticking out heads in the sand will help us beat “the opponents”. In fact, it might wind up duping people into support their own opponent on accident.
Dustin (401f3a) — 2/10/2012 @ 7:30 amSomeone should ask Tommy Christopher and Brad Friedman if they actually SUPPORT the wonderful restrictions that they claim ensure the integrity of the ballot in Minnesota.
Given all his ranting against voter ID laws, I don’t see how Friedman could. So he’s in the position of saying, essentially: “O’Keefe is full of it because he ignores all the protections that are in place . . . that I, um, oppose.”
Patterico (13e9ba) — 2/10/2012 @ 7:54 am“There have been hardly any criminal convictions coming out of the subprime mortgage debacle. I guess nobody committed any fraud then.”
Actually, the people who committed the fraud are those that did not honor the payment figure at the bottom of the document they signed: their monthly mortgage payment.
One questions their intelligence — or honesty: if they knew they couldn’t afford it, they shouldn’t have signed. And if they were too stupid to know they couldn’t afford it, one wonders if they signed the document with an “X”.
john b (1fce17) — 2/10/2012 @ 7:54 am“Any time human beings can commit fraud, human beings WILL commit fraud. Period.”
But doesn’t that usually apply to situations in which the person involved will get some sort of benefit, usually directly financial? Unless you are suggesting that politicians or parties are systematically paying or otherwise giving some sort of benefit to otherwise ineligible voters to register, or paying or otherwise inducing eligible voters to register more than once (once under their real names and then again under other names), and there is no evidence of that whatsoever, then what is the inducement to fraud? What benefit do individual ineglible persons (as opposed to campaingns) have for faking it? Do ineligible voters really care that much that they would risk prosecution and jail? Are legal aliens willing to risk their status? Are illegal alines willing to face exposure and deportation? Are convicted felons really so interested in exercizing the franchise that they are not legally entitled to that would they risk committing another crime and potentially being sent back to prison? Are real voters so interested in the outcome of elections that they would risk prosecution and jail to vote more than once. It seems hard to get many, if not most, folks to vote at all, even when they are eligible.
Near where I live there is a National Wildlife Refuge. To go there and look around for birds and other animals, you are supposed to get a “permit.” The permit requirement is not usually enforced anyway, but leave that out. Cuz the permit is free and virtually no proof of ID is required to get it. For that reason I could, if I wanted to, go around to the various NWRs and apply for permits under various pseudonyms. Or even apply for more than one permit in my “home” NWR, as there are different workers there on different days. In other words, there is an opportunity for me to commit fraud. But I don’t. Nor does anyone else, as far as I know. Why? Because there is no benefit in doing so.
The prosecutions for voter fraud that have been successful have, to my knowledge, mostly been of individual people who thought, erroneously, that they were eligible to vote. Convicted felons, legal aliens, and the like. As far as I know, there have been not only no successful prosecutions but no evidence at all that any campaign, party, or candidate is going around paying or otherwise inducing real voters to vote more than once or non voters to vote. Politicians, campaigns, and parties DO have an incentive to commit this kind of fraud, but they don’t seem to be doing so, perhaps because the damage to them would be catastrophic, if exposed. As for the individual misfits who are registering even though inelgible, it seems to be a minuscule issue.
Basically, this a solution in search of a problem.
But, even if that were not so, even if there was a real problem with voter fraud, better enforcement would still have to be balanced against the cost of such a program, namely, that eligible voters might be prevented from voting. Moreover, we have statements from certain GOP operatives that that bad side effect, which should be deplored even by those actually concerned about preventing voter fraud, is, in fact, their actual intended outcome. They simply, and probably correctly, figure that almost all of the lawful voters prevented from voting by having photo ID requirements, and the like, will be Democrat voters. And that is disgusting and deplorable.
I don’t care about the prankster, I’m not going to “smear” him. I just don’t think his stunt proves anything. Very, very few, if any, non eligible voters have any real incentive for faking their registrations, there is no evidence that the folks who do have an incentive to encourage them to do so are providing that incentive, and there is no evidence that unauthorized voting is anything but random and sporadic. Whereas, on the other hand, the “cure”f or this non existent “disease” would have a clear and bad effect. But that is precisely the point to it partisan supporters….
freemansfarm (fc8f53) — 2/10/2012 @ 12:18 pmfreemansfarm:
I think this is wishful thinking on your part.
After the 2004 Presidential election, former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker co-chaired the Commission on Federal Election Reform that investigated contemporary election-related fraud. Here is a link to the section of the Carter-Baker Commission’s September 2005 Report on Ballot Integrity that concluded:
There’s much more at the link and I encourage you to read it all.
Of course, one of the most notorious examples of vote fraud was LBJ’s first Senate race in 1948, which illustrates this is not a recent problem:
Modern vote fraud may be more sophisticated (or it may not) but there’s clear evidence it exists.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/10/2012 @ 1:14 pmVery, very few, if any, non eligible voters have any real incentive for faking their registrations, there is no evidence that the folks who do have an incentive to encourage them to do so are providing that incentive, and there is no evidence that unauthorized voting is anything but random and sporadic.
Unless things change, we’ll never know, as the Democrats don’t want anyone to 1) acknowledge that it’s a serious issue and 2) institute the safeguards that would help to eliminate it.
Colonel Haiku (5c7e24) — 2/10/2012 @ 1:32 pmPure hogwash, farmer.
JD (fda94d) — 2/10/2012 @ 1:51 pmFreemansfarm, perhaps you ought to update your body of knowledge. These are by no means exhaustive but just two recent examples of party officials or “community activists” convicted in falsifying other people’s names on absentee ballot registration forms and then voting in their stead:
Mississippi NAACP leader sent to prison for 10 counts of voter fraud
Voter fraud ‘a normal political tactic’ in upstate NY city Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/17/voter-fraud-normal-political-tactic-in-upstate-ny-city/#ixzz1m19xV5tG
You are misstating the nature of the actual problem. “Community activists” such as the Working Family Party (nee ACORN) and the Democratic party officials they conspired with do not want the ineligible voter or non-voter to vote, or the eligible voter to vote more than once.
They may not vote the right way.
It is much more effective to vote in their place.
I certainly hope the latter story, in which the officials involved protested their innocence by pointing out this sort of voter fraud is a common and accepted political tactic points out your extreme naivete when you claim:
As one of the Democratic committeemen who plead guilty in the case put it, such fraud is:
It may have appeared to be a huge conspiracy because it was a large conspiracy. And certainly calling it a normal political tactic in no way disputes the size of the conspiracy.
Are you under the impression that falsifying absentee ballots is only a normal political tactic in upstate New York or Mississippi?
Steve (20a23f) — 2/10/2012 @ 2:10 pm“and then register the two famous quarterbacks to vote. ”
So they actually committed fraud? Wow.
snaps (5cb04e) — 2/10/2012 @ 2:26 pm“The U.S. Department of Justice has launched more than 180 investigations into election fraud since 2002. These investigations have resulted in charges for multiple voting, providing false information on their felon status, and other offenses against 89 individuals and in convictions of 52 individuals.”
Doesn’t sound like a whole lot to me. Fifty two convictions over five years of elections at the involving literally hundreds of millions of votes. And I see nothing to suggest that any of the convictions involved widescale, conspiratorial, election changing fraud.
“…LBJ…”
Why not bring up Boss Tweed, while you’re at it? Ancient history. And unusual even for its time…hence “Landslide Johnson.” Try something a little more recent than 65 years ago.
“Mississippi NAACP leader…”
She was not the Mississippi NAACP leader, she was the leader of a small town branch. And the vote she engaged in, using absantee ballots of real voters, would not be effected by photo ID requirements at the polling place.
“…ACORN…”
ACORN has never been convicted of voter fraud. Individual workers for ACORN fraudulently filled out registration forms, not for the purpose of any illegal votes actually being cast, but for the purpose of financial fraud. These workers were reimbursed by ACORN based on the amount of voters they registered. They filled out forms with fake names, etc, to increase their pay, at ACORN’s expense. ACORN has never been convicted of engaging in actual vote fraud of any kind. Indeed, ACORN was ripped off by these actions.
As for the Troy case, again, it involved absantee ballots, not something that is amenable to photo ID at the polling place requirements.
All in all, the Times had it right:
“Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.
“Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.
“Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.”
Eighty six convictions, with most of those involves simple mistakes. And none of them involving large scale conspiracies.
“In Miami, an assistant United States attorney said many cases there involved what were apparently mistakes by immigrants, not fraud.
“In Wisconsin, where prosecutors have lost almost twice as many cases as they won, charges were brought against voters who filled out more than one registration form and felons seemingly unaware that they were barred from voting.
“One ex-convict was so unfamiliar with the rules that he provided his prison-issued identification card, stamped ‘Offender,’ when he registered just before voting.
“A handful of convictions involved people who voted twice. More than 30 were linked to small vote-buying schemes in which candidates generally in sheriff’s or judge’s races paid voters for their support…
“A federal panel, the Election Assistance Commission, reported last year that the pervasiveness of fraud was debatable. That conclusion played down findings of the consultants who said there was little evidence of it across the country, according to a review of the original report by The New York Times that was reported on Wednesday.
“Mistakes and lapses in enforcing voting and registration rules routinely occur in elections, allowing thousands of ineligible voters to go to the polls. But the federal cases provide little evidence of widespread, organized fraud, prosecutors and election law experts said…
“Richard L. Hasen, an expert in election law at the Loyola Law School, agreed, saying: ‘If they found a single case of a conspiracy to affect the outcome of a Congressional election or a statewide election, that would be significant. But what we see is isolated, small-scale activities that often have not shown any kind of criminal intent.’….
And that’s what the highly touted Mississippi and Troy cases appear to be. Some local corruption in local elections. NOT a nationwide problem. And not something being co ordinated at any high level.
And, of course, not even mentioned in any of the replies are the folks who would be disenfranchised by photo ID requirements. Nor any even attempted refutation of the motive of the GOP in demanding these laws, namely to keep Democratic voters from voting.
freemansfarm (fc8f53) — 2/10/2012 @ 4:20 pmhttp://factcheck.org/2008/10/acorn-accusations/
corolianus (87e966) — 2/10/2012 @ 4:33 pmfreemansfarm:
Your argument seems to be that if an illegal activity doesn’t happen very often, whether through malice or ignorance, then we shouldn’t really worry about it at all.
So, why do we have laws? I mean, what is the precise point that people breaking the law should be investigated or prosecuted?
The first murder or the second?
Ag80 (b0b671) — 2/10/2012 @ 4:40 pmFarmer is nothing if not predictable.
JD (318f81) — 2/10/2012 @ 4:41 pmfew hundred votes here
Colonel Haiku (a44b1d) — 2/10/2012 @ 4:44 pmand a few thousand votes there
soon we have problem
There were just a couple rogue contract employees at ACORN that were overzealous in their attempts to help pimps and ho’s and register fake peole for crack.
JD (318f81) — 2/10/2012 @ 4:44 pmJD-
Any idea where all the ACORN people are, other than “getting signatures” for Walker’s attempted recall in Wisconsin??
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/10/2012 @ 4:49 pmBreitbart tells CPAC: I have videos of Obama in college and they’ll come out during the election
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/02/10/breitbart-tells-cpac-i-have-videos-of-obama-in-college-and-theyll-come-out-during-the-election/
Colonel Haiku (a44b1d) — 2/10/2012 @ 4:55 pmThose peaceful law abiding misunderstood people are likely part of the paid Occupiers now, MD.
JD (318f81) — 2/10/2012 @ 4:58 pm“Unless you are suggesting that politicians or parties are systematically paying or otherwise giving some sort of benefit to otherwise ineligible voters to register, or paying or otherwise inducing eligible voters to register more than once”
freemansfarm – The post did not allege a systematic effort on the part of parties or politicians to solicit fraudulent votes. The examples provided by Steve in comment #26 provide enough context to show that elections are tainted by fraudulent votes numerous places in the country to be of concern to people interested in the integrity of elections. Adding the strawman that it voter fraud not been a proven factor (that we know of) as you did in comment #28 is irrelevant to the discussion. I’m sure you are also aware that in the Indiana Voter ID case, the plaintiff’s could not find anyone potentially injured by the proposed statute, which was why the court approved it.
Bring a better game next time.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/10/2012 @ 5:05 pm“When combined with Project Veritas’s last video, which showed undercover cameramen voting using the names of dead people”
Patterico – You are mistaken in your description. In the last video, Project Veritas undercover workers obtained ballots or chits to get ballots to vote in the New Hampshire presidential primary by mentioning the names of recently deceased people, but they did not actually vote. They returned the ballots before casting any votes.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/10/2012 @ 5:12 pmUPDATE: I originally said the previous video “showed undercover cameramen obtaining ballots using the names of dead people.” I knew that they hadn’t voted but was sloppy in my wording. What they actually did was obtain ballots — but they didn’t vote. Thanks to daleyrocks for pointing this out.
Patterico (13e9ba) — 2/10/2012 @ 5:17 pmPatterico – No need for O’Keefe and his people to get additional abuse from people too lazy to watch the videos.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/10/2012 @ 5:25 pmAbsolutely. Sloppy mistake. Probably tired when I wrote that.
Patterico (13e9ba) — 2/10/2012 @ 5:27 pmfreemansfarm,
Had you read my links you would know the Federal Election Reform Commission excerpt I included dealt with federal election investigations, not investigations into state and local elections — although there were other paragraphs that discussed evidence of fraud at those levels.
In addition, thank you for raising Boss Tweed and thereby reiterating my point in raising the LBJ election that vote fraud is nothing new. This obviously undermines your earlier comment in which you disagreed with Patterico’s claim that “Any time human beings can commit fraud, human beings WILL commit fraud. Period.” Vote fraud is an historical and a contemporary fact.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/10/2012 @ 5:41 pmOf course, once again you are wrong:
Nevada Judge Calls ACORN ‘Reprehensible,’ Slaps Group With Maximum Fine for Voter Fraud
And yes, it was the group that was convicted of felony voter fraud:
ACORN has never been ripped-off when it’s workers respond to the financial incentives the group has always put in place; those workers were doing exactly what the group wanted them to do. In Nevada they were finally caught.
You have an issue, then, to take up with whoever wrote the headline of the article that I linked to.
If the voting rights section of the DoJ was the same politicized crowd then that it is today, and there’s no reason to think it’s not, then it’s small wonder they didn’t find any evidence of widespread fraud, intimidation, or fraud they don’t wish to discover.
The justice department had known for years of widespread discrimination in Noxubee County, MS, for years. But many of the career attorneys in the voting section of the civil rights division wanted nothing to do with the case and even refused to work on the case when the Bush administration pressured them to do so. The chief of the voting section even deleted the recommendation to file suit against the local election officials who were blatantly disenfranchising voters.
That’s because the election officials and 80% of the voters in that Mississippi county are black; the disenfranchised voters were white.
The fact that the chief of the voting rights section tried to suppress information about the case to keep it from reaching political appointees shows their attitude toward certain voting rights violations. They are not crimes.
This federal lawsuit, for instance, was not brought by the DoJ. It was brought by private groups representing 2/3 of the voters who will be disenfranchised.
Federal Lawsuit Challenges Race-Exclusive Vote in Guam
So the fact that the DoJ can’t find evidence of crimes it would rather overlook is meaningless. Every one of the cases I’ve mentioned that resulted in convictions (except the Noxubee County case that the DoJ would not have filed if left to its own inclinations) was filed in state or county courts.
These do a far better job of charging and convicting people of violating voting laws than the feds, and the fact you ignored these convictions in order to give the illusion that these cases are rare I find very telling.
Once again, wrong. States that have instituted the requirement that a copy of the photo ID of the person requesting the absentee ballot have found it goes a long way to ensuring the person signing the application is who they say they are. Even requiring just the driver’s license or state ID number helps to identify the individual.
But I really wasn’t talking about photo ID laws when I responded to your indefensible statements in your earlier post. Such as:
You made quite a few over-generalizations about voter fraud convictions that fly in the face of the facts.
Finally, there’s this:
If you’re saying that Democrats are so disconnected from society that they don’t have the documentation needed to buy a beer, open a bank account, get a job, get on a plane, or even receive sandbags in Washington D.C. I’ll have to take your word for it.
But right now we are witnessing the ridiculous situation of the DoJ suing South Carolina for “discriminatory” ID requirements in order to vote when the South Carolina law is less stringent than the ID or combination of documents the federal government requires in order to apply for MediCaid. So when people make the case that this will primarily disenfranchise the poor it doesn’t fly. It’s simply a canard.
And if, as you say, Democrats are too lazy to head down to the DMV and get the free IDs that the states offer to people when they institute these ID requirements, then I say such people shouldn’t vote. Justice Stevens who wrote the majority opinion in the Crawford v. Marion County Election Board Case seems to agree with me. It’s not a substantial burden. And people without ID can cast a provisional ballot and prove their identity later.
So your argument that Republicans just seek these laws to disenfranchise Democrats can only be true if Democrats are unwilling to meet a minimal standard of citizenship. And frankly, I can believe that.
[note: released from moderation. –Stashiu]
Steve (20a23f) — 2/10/2012 @ 6:44 pmSteve – Didn’t ACORN also agree to close its operations and leave the state of Ohio as a settlement with that state in lieu of sanctions and penalties?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/11/2012 @ 7:37 amTrue. They settled out of court to avoid a conviction on racketeering charge(s). I don’t recall how many counts the organization was charged with.
I felt the Nevada case was more pertinent to freemansfarm silly and disengenuous assertions about ACORN specifically and the completely false statement that “there is no evidence that unauthorized voting is anything but random and sporadic.”
The stated purpose of the Nevada law outlawing the practice of offering financial incentives to workers for signing up more and more voters is to prevent registrars from being flooded with false voter registrations. ACORN offered its workers bonuses depending on how many voters they signed up and turned around and did exactly that.
In other words, Nevada prohibited the practice because they thought flooding county registrars with false voter registration applications was a bad thing. ACORN established the financial incentive program because they thought flooding county registrars with false applications was a good thing. As a matter of fact, one ACORN official who was individually convicted may challenge the law because there should be nothing wrong with paying workers extra for “exemplary work.”
The corporate culture of ACORN said that the results they achieved in Nevada represented “exemplary work.”
It strains credulity that any sentient being could imagine ACORN didn’t know exactly what it was doing, and instead was being “ripped off.” Yet, that’s freemansfarm’s argument. I say, freemansfarm, go with it.
But you are correct. The Ohio case, which involved racketeering charges, also indicates the bankrupted and now defunct ACORN’s activities represented organized and systemic attempts at massive voter fraud.
To pretend otherwise simply discredits the pretender.
One other point I might add. My stress has been on state prosecutions against party officials and activist groups. But these cases (not all, but some if not most) involved federal elections. These elections are governed by a combination of federal and state law. As a matter of fact, according to my understanding it is predominantly state law that governs the conduct of elections.
The fact that we had to discuss state voter photo ID laws at all (although the subject of the thread is voter fraud in general) ought to make that obvious.
Given that case, one would expect the majority of convictions for voter fraud to be brought at the state level for violating state electoral law.
The Nevada case, by the way, involved the 2008 election.
Steve (20a23f) — 2/11/2012 @ 1:33 pm“In other words, Nevada prohibited the practice because they thought flooding county registrars with false voter registration applications was a bad thing. ACORN established the financial incentive program because they thought flooding county registrars with false applications was a good thing.”
Steve – But the standard defense parroted by various ACORN slimespokespersons and defenders is that the organization flags all the dubious registrations for the various registrars. No proof of the assertion is ever offered.
We know, however, from documents FOIA’d by Judicial Watch from FBI investigations of ACORN that the assertion is complete BS. The vaunted ACORN quality control did not exist, with perhaps one in four registrations being reviewed before submission to the applicable government authority. Just more lies in the service of the ACORN narrative.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/11/2012 @ 4:47 pmDaleyrocks, plenty of evidence exists to the contrary. In 2007 ACORN agreed to a settlement in Washington state because it wasn’t providing oversight of its employees or providing quality control. As a matter of fact, ACORN was threatening its employees in Tacoma, where the fraud occurred, that the office there would be closed if they didn’t improve their numbers.
When you cut through the BS comments about how ACORN had been victimized by people out for financial gain or how ACORN needs to do all it can to make sure no one is pulling a fast one so it can continue its vital voter registration work, you’re left with one fact.
ACORN’s oversight of its employees was virtually non-existent. To the extent that civil charges could have been filed. Not only was ACORN not doing all it could to make sure no one was “pulling a fast one,” it was doing absolutely nothing to see if that was the case.
ACORN and its subsequent progeny operated and still operate like the mafia. They insulate the capos so they have plausible deniability and let the foot soldiers take the fall.
Steve (20a23f) — 2/11/2012 @ 8:37 pmWell, that is a fair argument. There are all sorts of crimes that it’s possible for people to commit, and if they were happening we would do something about it, but since they’re so rare that the cost of attempting to stop them would exceed the benefit we don’t bother.
But that’s not the case here. Farmer’s claim comes back to the idea that the actual level of fraud is indicated by the number of cases detected and the number of convictions. But that’s absurd. This fraud is so easy to commit, and so hard to detect, let alone to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that there’s really no reason why an unscrupulous person would not commit it. Therefore the rate at which it’s committed must be many many times the rate at which people are convicted for it.
Milhouse (862bfe) — 2/12/2012 @ 2:13 pmTake the Washington multiple recounts in 2004. We know the election was stolen, and how. It’s impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt, but it’s by far the most likely explanation. To believe that things happened the way they did by pure coincidence, one would practically have to be lobotomised. And yet nobody was charged with anything, let alone convicted, because that would involve a lot of work on prosecutors’ part, and even with that they’d be hard pressed to prove in any specific case that it wasn’t just a coincidence.
Milhouse (862bfe) — 2/12/2012 @ 2:17 pmNice point. I’ll have to remember that one.
Smock Puppet, 10 Dan Snark Master (8e2a3d) — 2/12/2012 @ 4:53 pmComment by DRJ — 2/10/2012 @ 1:14 pm
Look at what you quoted:
Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.
In the 1948 Texas case, the people perpetrating the fraud controlled the voting machinery, and the fraud was, in fact, obvious. It consisted of votes counted that were never cast by individual voters.
There seems to have been some fraud in the Israeli Likud party primaries this month. It was not perpetrated at the polls.
Organized in-person voter fraud can only take place if three things ALL are true:
1) The people committing the fraud do not control the voting machinery at any key point – or else they would simply announce wrong counts, stuff the ballot box by casting votes of people who didn’t vote, voting the dead, etc.
2) There is no no-excuses absentee voting – or else they’d concentrate on absentee ballots where they know exactly how the votes are going to be cast. No excuses absentee voting is a recent innovation by the way.
3) There is no, or very limited, political competition and therefore there is no one around to protest OR the election in that location doesn’t matter enough to anyone else in politics OR there are no consequences for doing this because there are not strong laws against this or potential prosecuting authorities are friendly, and the vote fraud is a notorious fact.
Prior registration, well in advance of the election, even without any kind of proof, really out a stop to voting by ringers in the 19th century.
Sammy Finkelman (39761f) — 2/12/2012 @ 5:34 pmDemocrats act like there are no people ineligible to vote, Republicans act like all legal residents are eligible voters.
Sammy Finkelman (39761f) — 2/12/2012 @ 5:36 pmNot quite, Sammy. There are certainly legal residents who aren’t eligible to vote. My business partner is a permanent legal resident of the US. He can’t vote. Some might say that’s unfair, but he could become a citizen if he wanted to vote.
Convicted felons are both legal residents and citizens (given that a citizen can legally reside in the US) and they can’t vote depending upon the state.
I qualified that because some states automatically restore voting rights at a certain point in time following completion of sentence or have a means to petition to do so. Which is fine with me. If the saying “paid your debt to society” has any meaning, then if one has done so then I don’t have a problem with restoring rights.
But at least for a period of time in all states felons can’t vote.
Have you ever heard a Republican say that legal residents and felons can vote? Because the second half of your statement is a new one to me.
Steve (20a23f) — 2/12/2012 @ 6:04 pmSF: Democrats act like there are no people ineligible to vote, Republicans act like all legal residents are eligible voters.
Comment by Steve — 2/12/2012 @ 6:04 pm
Have you ever heard a Republican say that legal residents and felons can vote? Because the second half of your statement is a new one to me.
I didn’t say they say that – I said they act that way.
They act as if proof of legal residency would be all that was required to prevent ineligible or non-existent people from registering to vote was a state ID.
Years ago, the documents requested to register were related to the requirements – either a birth certificate or citizenship papers. And then somebody got a simple voting card.
Sammy Finkelman (39761f) — 2/12/2012 @ 6:53 pmPatterico:
Any fraudster need only go to a polling station, grab dozens of absentee ballots, turn them in with no verification of identity, and they are registered. Then, anyone can vote absentee by claiming they are sick…
And just where are the ballots going to be mailed to?? A yahoo or hotmail address?
That doesn’t mean you couldn’t involve the United States Postal Service in such a fraud – but it’s a bit more complicated than that.
Somebody is going to have pick up that mail. The Post Office has got to know where to put it. Or otherwise it will be returned to sender.
Maybe the ballots could be picked up in person?
Maybe in some cases, but that’s a lot of work to do even 20 times and noticeable in that case if anyone cares to notice.
Also, under the help America Vote Act, some additional information is needed to make that registration valid – like the last 4 digits of the voter’s Social Security number or driver’s license/state ID – without that ID is needed the first time voting.
Sammy Finkelman (39761f) — 2/12/2012 @ 7:05 pmMotel addresses will work if you’re going to be in the state long enough. Although they work better for same-day voting as this case and a similar SEIU case seem to indicate.
Nursing homes are ideal. You can send a lot of absentee ballots there. And people suffering from Alzheimer’s aren’t likely to complain.
And I’m not kidding.
Steve (20a23f) — 2/12/2012 @ 8:09 pmI think Republicans act that way because people like fff squeal like stuck pigs when conservatives suggest that voters provide a voter ID simply to identify themselves.
As an employer I don’t think it’d be too much to ask that voters provide whatever documents they used to establish employment eligibility. But of course the Democratic party and its affiliates would scream bloody murder. (Obviously, one can work in this country without being a citizen but if a voter registrant supplies a green card you can be sure he or she isn’t eligible.)
I think it’s a case of settling for the best you can get. It’s not perfect, but it gets a majority on the SCOTUS because, as Justice Stevens wrote for the majority, it “does not qualify as a substantial burden on most voters’ right to vote, or represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.”
Steve (20a23f) — 2/12/2012 @ 8:27 pmI wish we still lived in an America where it was possible to get through life without possessing ID; in such an America I would oppose requiring people to get ID just to vote, unless it could be demonstrated that this would prevent a significant fraud problem. But that America died a long time ago. There just aren’t significant numbers of people without ID. And it’s absurd that it’s easier to vote than to rent a video. Requiring ID imposes almost no cost at all on the general public, and not much cost on the government, so why not require it, even if it doesn’t solve the fraud problem? The only reason I can think of is that when fraud continues the left will claim that we’re just complaining for its own sake, because after all we got our way on ID so what do we want now?
Milhouse (9a4c23) — 2/12/2012 @ 9:57 pmAS with Raw Story, BradBlog et al;
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/02/media-matters-malevolent-machine-exposed-madness-white-house-collusion-media-coordination-and-cooper.html
narciso (87e966) — 2/12/2012 @ 10:20 pmHey, Milhouse.
ID can have many meanings.
Small town, everybody knows who you are.
Traveling, you need papers.
In Illinois, no papers needed. Just your name and date of birth. Police officer calls it in on his dashboard computer to the Secretary of State’s database. Issue was litigated in 1980-81 when the Chicago police stripsearched a couple of North Shore (read “rich, influential, vocal”) ladies for not having their driver’s license with them. The State found a solution to the problem.
I think I like the third one the least.
nk (3d837f) — 2/12/2012 @ 10:20 pm20. Comment by Patterico — 2/10/2012 @ 7:54 am
Someone should ask Tommy Christopher and Brad Friedman if they actually SUPPORT the wonderful restrictions that they claim ensure the integrity of the ballot in Minnesota.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a bad argument.
Their basic argument is that 1) this doesn’t occur very much 2) that when it does, it is not organized, which means the errors mostly cancel out, [but maybe there is a partisan imbalance] 3) that, with these, and other kinds of ID requirements and restrictions, many more people would be prevented or discouraged from voting who are entitled to vote than people who are not eligible to vote would be prevented or discouraged from voting, and 4) Furthermore, there’s a partisan imbalance here that favors the Republican Party, and the Republican Party knows it, and that’s why they want it and not for any other reason.
Sammy Finkelman (39761f) — 2/13/2012 @ 7:09 amExcept it was in part the votes of ineligible voters
and the disqualification of military ballots, that led to the Florida debacle;
http://weaselzippers.us/2012/02/12/scientists-on-second-thought-humans-started-causing-global-warming-3500-years-ago/
narciso (87e966) — 2/13/2012 @ 7:20 am“That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a bad argument.”
Sammy – If they can’t present any evidence to support the underlying assertions of their argument, I would claim it is the same magical thinking behind anti-election integrity measures used by Democrat operatives everywhere, which indeed makes it a bad argument.
The basic question is are you in favor of fair elections? If measures can be taken to ensure that people not legally qualified to vote can be screened from the rolls without disenfranchising people legally entitled to vote, why would someone claiming to support the integrity of elections oppose such measures?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/13/2012 @ 7:31 am“does not qualify as a substantial burden on most voters’ right to vote, or represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.”
Only because most people in most parts of the United States between the ages of about 18 and 65 or 70, or who still have jobs, have driver’s licenses and carry them around with them whereever they go – and if they get lost or stolen, the Department of Motor Vehicles mails a replacement to them very quickly. (This is not true of state ID’s by the way, but only of actual driver’s licenses, something the Justice probably did not know.)
The people most affected, something that the Democratic Party doesn’t want to say too much, are college students, who have state IDs or Drivers licenses from other states but are eligible to vote where they reside. Elderly people, well a political machine can take care of that, and maybe fill out their absentee ballots and cast their votes for them as well.
Sammy Finkelman (d3daeb) — 2/14/2012 @ 12:40 pm