Lederman on the Real Scandal:
At Balkinization, Marty Lederman makes the case that the U.S. Attorney firing scandal is really a faux "voter fraud" scandal. Brian Tamanaha's post on the rule of law (as opposed to rule by law) is worth reading too.
Someone could probably think of relatively neutral terms for what each side is accusing the other of doing (Democrats helping the ineligible vote and Republicans keeping the eligible from voting), but the ones doing the accusing get to pick their indictments. Republicans chose "voter fraud" to describe their opponents' actions, Democrats did not, and in political discussions you should not be surprised when the terms are only applied by/to one side or the other.
Perhaps not on Moonbase Alpha.
Sure, there are plenty of cases of voting irregularities over the years, but little evidence that there is a large scale problem of an orchestrated attempt by large numbers (or even small numbers) of people to cast illegal ballots.
The right has a lot of chestnuts about when it happens but has provided precious little evidence of actual fraud. Almost all fraud indictments that the DOJ has brought in the last couple of years were probably honest mistakes that the USA's desperately turned into a conviction because they needed to produce numbers.
Kerry won Wisconsin by ~11,000 votes. This was Milwaukee alone, there is also major voter fraud in Dane County (Where Madison is located).
I lived in Milwaukee in 2004. The house I lived in I shared with two other roommates, all three of us were registered to vote prior to the 2004 election. On election day I went to the poll and showed them my ID, and was told to put it away. All they wanted to know was my name and street address. My name as a well as seven other people were registered to vote at my address. (Milwaukee housing law says no more than three unrelated people live at one residence!) Had I wanted, I could have just come back in later and said I was one of the other people registered at that address. No proof required, I could have just gone to a different poll worker, or waited until they changed shifts. The lists of who are registered at what addresses are also not a secret, in fact the rolls are given to campaign workers to 'get people to the polls'. Campaign workers can simply tell what name to give to the poll worker and fraudulently send in people to vote. Add to this that a very large percentage of the registrations are fake (i.e. dead people, non existence addresses, etc.), submitted by campaign workers, voter fraud is wide spread.
Now unless you get someone to confess to this, it is all very hard to prove. But doesn't mean there is no voter fraud.
The Wisconsin State Legislature passed a law requiring a photo ID at the poll, which would stop all this nonsese. The Democrat Governor vetoed it saying it was a poll tax, so the Legislature repassed it and set aside money for every person in the state to get a free State ID. The Governor vetoed it again.
Irrelevant. Even if there is no wide spread "conspiracy" to pull the wool over the voter's eyes and sneak in whatever candidate you want, the appearance of a fradulent system breeds mistrust. Mistrust breeds conflict.
Sure, there's always going to be sore losers who claim conspiracies, but let's not give them fuel for their flamaes, hmmm?
Elections should be as open and trustworthy as reasonably possible, and investigations into these matters should be welcome, whatever your political stance.
Congressional Research Service
RL33889 - February 22, 2007
"U.S. Attorneys Who Have Served Less than Full Four-year Terms, 1981-2006"
Open CRS download page
From the summary:
There is more then just illegal ballots that constitute voter fraud. Within the last few years, there has been a significant vote buying scandal in a couple of heavily Democratic counties in West Virginia and has been under investigation by the US Attorney. Several individuals, including a county sheriff, has already when to jail over this scandal. I also wouldn't put it pass some counties to still engage in ballet stuffing or the dead are still voting. Again, in a couple counties, there where more people registered to vote then there were legal residence based on census data.
I also see not-clever lawyering. An allegation is not "deep-sixed" because it shows up too late in the election cycle. It is merely set aside. Thus, claim the lawyers, there must be nothing to it.
That there are more registered voters than residents is not a problem because a judge said so. I imsgine that would satisfy when it's your own side losing.
There was a blog by a guy named Sharkansky who followed the Washington state elections assiduously. I believe that election was referred to and ignored by the USA. Sharkansky, if he is to be believed, had the goods.
To put it another way: Only lawyers can think that, because another lawyer said he couldn't get to it before the election the rest of us are supposed to believe there was no problem. Lederman's commenters seem to think they are arguing a weak case before a sleepy jury.
IMO, nothing beats the DNC sending several hundred lawyers to Florida with the specific instruction to disenfranchise military voters.
More thoughts on Balkin's assertion here. Shorter version: does Balkin's assertion hinge on what he considers a serious problem?
RE: Voter Fraud?
I've got a signed statement by a Democrat precinct chair in our county that says she was accosted, at her door, by people passing out absentee ballots requests AND absentee ballots.
And that they seemed to only be going to houses where Democrats lived, in her neighborhood.
No such thing as 'voter fraud', eh?
Regards,
Chuck Pelto
[Voter fraud. It's more than the dead folk voting.]
His book was published immediately prior to the 2004 general election, but I think is still quite valuable still. Most of the out-and-out voter fraud is conducted in cities. At present, cities are dominated by Democrats, and so they are the culprits. It seems clear that if the Republicans dominated the cities, similar results would transpire.
As for FL in 2000: Was there even one case verified where a qualified voter was turned away from the polls? That is something that should be easy to verify: somebody says they were turned away, they are registered and meet all requirements, and it's likely someone will remember them being turned away, but AFAIK, not one single case has checked out. There was the great butterfly ballot foul-up, but that was a foul-up, not a deliberate fraud - and it was perpetrated by a Democratic-dominated local elections board. The one thing I did find scandalous was that quite clearly neither Bush nor Gore wanted a complete recount!
Miami mayoral race in 1998. Mayor-elect had to concede the race because there had been voter fraud.
Certainly, persons without a photo ID should be able to cast a provisional ballot, and in the event an automatic challenge is survived, that ballot should be counted.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Is it "vote fraud" when immigrants are hurried through to citizenship in violation of federal law just before an election? I suppose not - it is citizenship fraud, but there would be nothing people at the polls could do to prevent it. But it is again, a clear attempt to illegally influence who votes in an election.
Jacob's point is well taken. Neutral terms would serve us better and make things clearer, alas.
There is also a confusion between the premises "is there evidence of fraud" and "do we have enough to prosecute an identified person." If a person is murdered but no one is identified who can be prosecuted, none of us would say "oh well, no murder took place, then."
Inquiry finds evidence of fraud in election
... but omits to note the December 6, 2005 article in that same paper:
No vote fraud plot found; Inquiry leads to isolated cases
In general, the following are not proof that there is a serious "voter fraud" problem:
1) Announcements of inquiries into voter fraud
2) Observations that voter fraud might be possible if someone were motivated to commit it
3) Stories about get-out-the-vote organizations who are defrauded by the workers that they pay to register new voters, unless there is some reason to think that someone actually will vote based on the fraudulent registration
4) Small and unsystematic anomalies in election records that can readily be explained by errors in recordkeeping
5) Stories about ballot box tampering and similar wrongdoing by election officials, which is a separate problem that cannot be addressed by imposing ballot access restrictions
State employees at the DMV were responsible for ensuring that when one renewed their license or obtained their license for the first time, they would be registered to vote in Federal elections. I can't excuse my own submission to trust the DMV with my voter registration, but I was pretty young and naive when it came to political corruption. But anyone that's anyone knows that the DMV is a dumpster for political employment.
Doncha remember? There was that case where the Sheriff's Dept. parked a cruiser a couple of blocks from the polling site? It has been alleged that prospective voters were force to walk right past it. Damned chilling if you ask me.
It seems like there isn't anything they aren't willing to spin as a noble move. And blame Bush.
These U.S. Attorneys shouldn't be bravely marching up to the Hill to tell congressman how mean those Republicans were to ask why they were deliberately withholding indictments. They should be facing ethics charges.
Oh well, it's a small town, and we have long memories.
(BTW, as I recall, I was working the 2000 election in Philly, and some local Dem candidate got caught walking out the back door with boxes of blank absentee ballots. I think he actually did time. Not really an outlier, just stands out in my mind because he actually got caught. It's hard to believe, I know, but local machine politicians are usually of the D-flavor and have their own, unique ethics. I blame Bush.)
And, of course, any attempt to improve the recordkeeping resulting in cries of discrimination, all of which are the real fraud here.
Remember: these are all Republican appointees. They have no incentive to "deep six" valid allegations of voter fraud. Nor do they have incentive to lie about their motivations in not bringing certain cases, or about the (highly questionable) circumstances of their respective terminations. So the idea that a few hundred felons in WI voted, or that a Miami mayoral race was stolen, or that pieces of a ballot box were found in San Francisco Bay is, ultimately, irrelevant to the question of malfeasance in the White House and DOJ relative to the removal of these US Attys -- and the unprecedented and possibly illegal politicization of federal law enforcement.
Commenters on this website, of all places, should appreciate the seriousness of this issue.
Is this justification for the politicization of the DOJ?
If there was/is prosecutable evidence of voter fraud I believe it should be pursued in fair manner according to existing DOJ rules. That said; if this was so obvious to Rove and the political arm of the WH, why wasn't this done in the open? Why can't anyone remember who submitted names for the removal list? The insertion and subsequent choice not to use the vacancy appointment provision in the Patriot Act reauthorization.
As stated below for the opposite reason:
There is also a confusion between the premises "is there evidence of WH complicity in the USA replacement scandal" and "do we have enough to prosecute an identified person from the WH or the DOJ."
Assistant Village Idiot said:
"There is also a confusion between the premises "is there evidence of fraud" and "do we have enough to prosecute an identified person." If a person is murdered but no one is identified who can be prosecuted, none of us would say "oh well, no murder took place, then."
This strikes me is being more than a little disingenuous. Why don't you begin by describing exactly what it is you would consider voter fraud? It looks like it would be "an orchestrated attempt by large numbers (or even small numbers) of people to cast illegal ballots". But nobody is alleging that the people in question are orchestrating their actions. And its odd to make this a requirement for voter fraud. It seems that if 50% of the votes cast in a district election were fraudulently cast, you would not conisder it a problem unless all those people were coordinating their actions. That is a novel definition of voter fraud, and one not found in law.
More chestnuts for you.
"People working the polls don't ask for ID," says Jimmy Tayoun, a former city councilman who went to prison in the 1990s for corruption. "You can flood a lot of phony names on phony addresses, and there's no way they're going to check." In 1993, a federal judge had to overturn a special state Senate election in which Democratic precinct workers had gone door to door with absentee ballot forms and "helped" voters fill them out. Gov. Ed Rendell, then Philadelphia's mayor, explained away the irregularities by saying, "I don't think it's anything that's immoral or grievous, but it clearly violates the election code."
That would seem to sum up the Democratic attitude to voter fraud. It may technically violate the election code, but its not immoral or anything.
There are probably 30-40 million people in this country not eligible to vote. (Illegal aliens, green card holders, people on student visas.) How many of them vote? It is impossible to say, because no mechanism for detecting it even exists. Since all that is needed to vote in most areas is a utility check, there is no impediment at all to them voting, other than whatever sense of honesty they feel. In the case of the illegals, that would not seem to be much.
Or the folks who routinely vote twice.
Or the vote-buying convictions in East St. Louis. Hell, vote fraud is a way of life (er, death, er..)in Missouri, where in 2000 the Democrats had a dead man file suit alleging he was not allowed to vote. The dead regularly re-register to vote in St. Louis.
And St Louis is likely not the worst spot.
Does vote fraud occur? You bet. And voter registration fraud is even more widespread. Nice report here in PDF.
I also suspect that voter fraud would be even easier in areas that are thoroughly dominated by a specific political party...assuming that party benefits from the fraud.
Back in 2004, the international election monitors made the following observations:
It definitely sounds like the international monitors were concerned about voter fraud in the U.S.
Like the Wisconsin resident who says he could have voted more often without any showing of ID by saying he was one of the other residents in the house he shared. Of course he didn't. But because he could have, that's why we have CONCLUSIVE PROOF of voter fraud by Democrat[] voters.
And that's why we need Govt-issued Photo ID laws. To keep the people from voting once about whom we have no evidence they voted at all let alone more than once.
I love Republicans. They're so, umm, ahead of the curve on committing fraud.
Democrats are so gutless in comparison. Can you imagine the next Democrat[] president gutting the DOJ of all the Goodling selectees by assigning them to go out into the field and prosecute criminal violations on federal land . . . such as drunk-driving cases at Hoover Dam.
Don't be absurd. The US Attornys are political appointees. They can be fired and replaced at any time for political reasons, as Bill Clinton did.
"irrelevant to the question of malfeasance in the White House"'
Translation - "Lets not talk about the bad things Democrats have unquestionably done, lets change the subject to what some theorize the White House may have done, and suggest that if done, it was illegal, even though it was not and could not be".
Their are multiple instances of more ballots being cast than voters are registered, and more voters being registered than live in a district. What would constitute evidence to you of vote fraud, if this does not?
Many of these cases, upon examination, turn out to have the numbers wrong on things like, well, number of residents or the registrations. Again, cases where there is claimed smoke, but upon examination, no actual smoke, let alone a fire.
"They can be fired and replaced at any time for political reasons, as Bill Clinton did."
I guess you didn't get the memo: the wingnut brigade abandoned this bizarre dodge a month ago when it failed to fool anyone. Yes: Presidents can and often do replace the USAtts with their own slate of people. What's unprecedented in this case, however, was a President doing it in the second half of his second term. But that itself isn't the scandal: that's just the very odd thing that make people look up and go "hunh?" The scandal came out of that: looking at the reasons for the firings, many of which now appear to be obstructions of justice and partisan meddling in the actual selection of cases for partisan purposes, which is a HUGE corruption of the system. Patronage is one thing, but after you reward your pals with sweet DOJ jobs, they aren't then supposed to reciprocate by generating stories to order to help you win elections, or nixing investigations of your buddies.
I do have a question, though.
How would requiring a voter to prove their identity, citizenship, and eligibility to vote suppress only Democratic voters? Indeed, why would such requirements suppress any legal voter's ability to cast a ballot?
Which is utterly irrelevant.
Clinton fired all the US Attorneys for purely political reasons: because he wanted Democrats, not Republicans, in those positions.
There is zero difference between what Clinton did and what Bush did. Only the far left would claim the bogus distinction that the beginning of the term or the middle of the term makes a difference.
For all articles you can find about some guy who saw a ballot box under the golden gate bridge or some stoner whose buddy thinks he could have used his fake id to get a second shot at the lever, there have been under 5 successful prosecutions of voter fraud (and I think only 2, actually). 5. That should be the end of the discussion. 5. The response to that is not "sloppy record keeping," because the tactic to address that problem would be to, ya know, keep better records - not pull AGs off of other prosecutions to prosecute the cases with the shitty records. 5.
I don't know about "only" Democrats. But obviously the reason the Democrats are up in arms about it is that they believe (with good reason, I'd bet) that most people who vote while being ineligible are Democrats.
I'd say an organized (no matter how small) attempt to swing the election for political purposes rises to the level where I want all the USAs to spend their time looking for these conspiracies instead of going after terrorists, etc.
In 2006, after spending likely tens of millions of dollars, the most the USAs managed to find were a couple of cases of an individual committing fraud and a handful of likely honest mistakes - registering in the wrong place because of confusion, etc.
The fact is most 'voter fraud' cases that Fund mentions are actually due to poor record keeping by county officials. Especially in big cities, voter rolls are rarely purged; requests from other counties to transfer voters once they move are processed at glacial speed. Believe me, if you've ever moved from big city to big city within the same state and try to get them to transfer your voter registration information, it's a huge pain. I wouldn't blame people in that situation for registering twice (although, obviously, they should only vote once). Probably many more people in big cities are denied the right to vote because of said poor record keeping than there would be the opportunity to exploit this if you even knew how it worked.
So, yes, this is a sign that city and county governments are poorly run and terrible at keeping up-to-date information. What a shocker.
And yes, historically there have been plenty of fixed elections. But that's historically. I see Fund has cited one election in 2000 where there is any real 'evidence' of fraud (although it isn't clear at all that these people voted for democrats or what their motivations were exactly; in any case any election worker thinking that 50 or so votes will swing the elections is pretty stupid). The other case he mentions in your article is that an election took place in Philadelphia and that it would be theoretically possible to have voter fraud there.
By way of contrast, The USA in Wisconsin investigated all the tips he received in 2004 elections for voter fraud. He found that claims of a dead person voting were false (turned out in several cases the son had the same name as the dad; only one of the two voted), claims of people with multiple registrations were false (one county had failed to transfer voter records in a timely manner but requests were pending), and that non-U
I expect that this is how most claims of voter fraud break down, with a handful here and there that may actually be illegal but are probably mistakes in determining eligibility (i.e. no intent to commit fraud). This is a far cry from organized voter fraud to swing an election, which is what most Republicans seem to impute as a motive to Democrats. There just isn't any evidence of this because it isn't happening.
But obviously the reason the Democrats are up in arms about it is that they believe (with good reason, I'd bet) that most people who vote while being ineligible are Democrats.
Along with the "these firings are totally normal" talking point, this is exhibit A in the "if we just say it enough times it will become true" category. Either you have not read about the reason Democrats are up in arms, which indicts your familiarity with the subject matter, or you have chosen to ignore it, which indicts your honesty.
If by "state's expense" you mean 4-12 hours of a paralegal's time hunting down a wayward birth certificate and/or social security card. Granted, not every case will require that much work but a few certainly will - not all folks are as organized as VC posters apparently are and, last I checked, the constitution does not specify attention to personal affairs as a qualification to vote.
A quick question for the majority of posters - if you had to come up with a sort of "Blackstone's formulation" for voting qualification, what would it be? Fill in the blank (or start from scratch)
Better that ____ illegitimate ballots are cast than ___ eligible voters are turned away
God, are Republicans still trotting out this bull? Did Clinton remove everyone in the cabinet for "purely political" reasons too? Presidents who return their party to power always remove virtually all political appointees and replace them with candidates more to their liking who can implement their policies. Reagan did it and GWB did it when he first came into power and I'd challenge anyone to come up with an example of one prominent who objected to the move.
Difference 1: Clinton removed prosecutors at the beginning of his first term; GWB removed them in the middle of his second.
Difference 2: Clinton removed all USAs, regardless of who they were investigating or their independence; GWB fired a select group of USAs, selected by still unknown persons by still unknown criteria.
Difference 3: Clinton removed USAs appointed by Reagan or GHWB; GWB removed USAs appointed by himself.
Difference 4: Clinton's move was precedented by Reagan's removal of Carter's USAs. GWB's move was completely unprecedented.
It's okay that you want to keep lying to yourself A.S., but quit lying to us.
The difficult part is, of course, in the real world all decision-making systems are subject to the rule that decreasing one failure mode tends to increase the others - especially when you have agents actively trying to corrupt the system. We cannot, however, make any decisions about fixing the system until we answer the normative question about what the system is about - hence Blackstone's formulation and my attempted equivalent here.
Marty also appears to assume that the apparent absence of evidence of widespread voter fraud is a good enough reason to support "enfranchisement" reforms. I don't get it. People oppose registration liberalization because of the risk that it will increase fraud--not because of any ongoing "systemic" fraud.
I expect better of Marty Lederman.
For my part, I support ID requirements, especially if the states make ID's available cheaply.
But then somebody voted my absentee ballot in 2000 - it was mailed but never got to me, yet showed up as a cast ballot. So I guess you can count me as one of the people who got disenfranchised by one of those 'isolated incidents.' I am the gored ox, as far as I'm concerned. Moooo.
Correct me if I am wrong but you seem to be saying it is better to have a very high level of illegitimate ballots cast than one voter turned away.
In addition, the Constitution does not specify that people that pay no attention to personal affairs must be allowed to vote. If it did, consider the implication: An individual can be sent to prison for inattention to persional affairs (e.g., not paying taxes). However, such a person must never be denied the right to vote.
Clinton didn't have to wait until mid-term to fire USAs in order to obstruct ongoing investigations: He was the subject of investigations before he ever took office.
Here's more from Professor Overton.
As far as I know, Professor Overton is the legal point man on opposing voter ID laws.
Yes, he did.
Presidents who return their party to power always remove virtually all political appointees and replace them with candidates more to their liking who can implement their policies.
Correct. Reagan did it. GHWBush did it. Clinton did it. And what GWBush did was the same: remove political appointees and replace them with candidates more to his liking who can implement his policies. This applies both at the beginning of the term and the middle.
Difference 1: Clinton removed prosecutors at the beginning of his first term; GWB removed them in the middle of his second.
As I pointed out above, this is a distinction without a difference. Presidents can fire political appointees at the beginning of the term, in the middle, or the end. No difference. You might as well be saying that the crucial difference is that Clinton fired the US Attorneys on a Friday whereas Bush fired them on a Tuesday.
Difference 2: Clinton removed all USAs, regardless of who they were investigating or their independence; GWB fired a select group of USAs, selected by still unknown persons by still unknown criteria.
This is misleading on two fronts. One of the reasons Clinton got rid of the US Attorney in Arkansas was because the guy was investigating Clinton's cronies. Secondly, the criteria in Bush's case is known - performance.
Difference 3: Clinton removed USAs appointed by Reagan or GHWB; GWB removed USAs appointed by himself.
Again, this is a distinction without a difference. Presidents are entitled to fire political appointees whether they were appointed by himself or any other President.
Difference 4: Clinton's move was precedented by Reagan's removal of Carter's USAs. GWB's move was completely unprecedented.
As I pointed out above, GWBush's firings are "precedented" by Clinton's firings, Reagan's firings, and every other firing of a US Attorney.
There is no requirement in the world that would solve the problem of intercepted absentee ballots as long as we mail them.
I should add that the state does not have to check every person who shows up with insufficient documentation. Rather, they could randomly audit those who do not have full documentation. Any cheaters would be prosecuted. Prosecution would be easier than prosecuting voter fraud because there would be signed documents and photographs to prove that the person was trying to cheat.
Hilarious.
So you're saying no, zero, USA's were removed after this during the Clinton Admin?
Further, you do realize USA's have 4 year terms in office, right?
GWB removed them in the middle of his second.
Wait, you obviously didn't get the memo, they put one of them on the "fired list" on election day, don't you know!?
Stop right there. In both IT and financial accounting, if a potential security vulnerability is discovered, nobody in their right mind waits for the vulnerability to be exploited before taking action to close the hole. (That is, unless they want their system to be cracked and/or large quantities of cash to go missing, and then have to deal with the auditors, insurance investigators, and certain very anal-retentive government agencies.) Why is voting any less important? Why should voting systems, both technological and human, not be held to the same stringent security and accounting standards that are regularly imposed by such laws as HIPAA, FERPA, Sarbanes-Oxley, etc. etc. ad nauseum?
A lot of people seem to assume that the health of a country's democracy and civil society can be increased by having as many people as possible registered to vote, and that any such increase in the number of potential voters is automatically good, or even an end in itself. It's not. The good achieved ultimately depends on the processes used to achieve it. If a lax process is used for ideological reasons, and government resists changing it in the face of public opposition, confidence in the system is ultimately destroyed. If there is no confidence, people won't vote, or they'll move and vote only in jurisdictions controlled by people of the same ideology or party or faction because they believe it's the only way their votes will count, or they'll demand increasingly extreme action to change the process. (I see the same assumption and dynamic at work in the immigration debate.)
Apply the Rumsfeld dictum: “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
Obviously there's got to be some balance. I only meant to say that reforms that will decrease voter fraud are also going to suppress some legitimate voters and that care should be taken to balance these competing (and both manifestly worthy) goals. The tone of a lot of comments on the board seem to suggest that we need to eradicate voter fraud and to hell with the consequences for disenfranchised (poor) voters.
Most working class folk have all their taxes withheld from their paychecks - it's much easier for everyone involved to do it this way. At any rate, your example is disingenuous - the worst the IRS will do is levy a fine + back interest.
Whoa! Democrats like Charlie Rangel are always claiming that minorities are over represented in the military, and that the econonomically underpriviledged are way over represented. Neither is true, but absence of truth never stopped CR from saying anything. So now Democrats are OK with supressing the votes of minorities and the poor, based on the merest technicality?
Memo to DNC:
It has come to our attention that the precinct captains are finding it increasingly difficult to keep the various logical falacies organized. We recommend that you dispense with arguing issues on the merits and stick to the old-reliable appeals to emotion and accusations of (Republican) racism.
Sincerely,
Cheatham, Cummin &Goeing Inc. Political Consultants
Send them by registered mail only, make postal employees check ID when you sign for them, vigorously follow up any discrepancies and prosecute those responsible. Of course, require this and you'll soon find out the real value that the people who are supposed to serve us place on honest elections - a few dollars per absentee voter will suddenly turn out to be way too costly, even though the people elected through these procedures proceed to extract thousands of dollars from each of us.
It was retail vote fraud that tipped the 2004 Washington Governors election to the Democratic candidate. Just because it isn't a large widespread conspiracy doesn't mean it should be tolerated.
I will take your word about the IRS (but I do note the fine). However, my example applies more generally than the IRS. What about jury duty? A person can be fined and even thrown in jail if they don't pay attention to the summons, or they can be thrown into jail if they don't show up to court proceedings in which they are involved.
If given time, I can list off several examples in which personal inattention can cost an individual their property and/or their freedom. Now, I am no expert on the Constitution, but I think that the Constitution places the right to property and liberty as more fundamental than the right to vote.
Yeah, election day 2006. Christ Ace, if you're going to nitpick, at least have the courtesy to be right about it.
As I recall, Clinton removed one or two USAs for gross misconduct while in office (one of them got arrested after making a scene at a strip club, or something). These sort of firings are routine. Firing 8 or 9 at once, for reasons that change from week-to-week is not.
In both IT and financial accounting, if a potential security vulnerability is discovered, nobody in their right mind waits for the vulnerability to be exploited before taking action to close the hole. (That is, unless they want their system to be cracked and/or large quantities of cash to go missing, and then have to deal with the auditors, insurance investigators, and certain very anal-retentive government agencies.) Why is voting any less important? Why should voting systems, both technological and human, not be held to the same stringent security and accounting standards that are regularly imposed by such laws as HIPAA, FERPA, Sarbanes-Oxley, etc. etc. ad nauseum?
In accounting and auditing we have (i) the concept of "materiality" and (ii) the notion that financial statements may be "fairly presented" even if they may contain material errors. Those are relative standards, often expressed in rules of thumb as single-digit percentage point errors. If Sarbanes Oxley required the CEO of GE to certify that every single dollar of GE's assets and liabilities were accounted for correctly, it wouldn't be workable. (Indeed, I have no idea what the materiality threshold is at GE but I would guess that it's significantly in excess of a million dollars.)
You cannot import those kinds of standards into the realm of voting unless you are willing to admit some concept of materality. Which is to say, I cannot imagine a workable system of voting that would entirely exclude the possibilities (i) that the occasional person would manage to vote in the wrong precinct (or even the wrong state), (ii) that a person ineligible to vote for whatever reason would cast a ballot, or (iii) that some demented person would find a way to vote more than once. The question is whether our current system actually falls meaningfully short of what can be realistically expected.
the issue is an evidentiary one - what does the fact that these are the first mass mid-term removals (whether "precedented" by prior administrations or not) say about the likely motivation for them.
You can stop reading right there, because the rest of the argument hinges on what Lederman believes constitutes a "serious" problem. And I get the feeling that no amount of demonstrated voter fraud would ever rise to Lederman's definition of "serious."
Democrat operatives decided that Democrat political prospects would be immeasurably improved if they would only repeat, as often as possible, the unsupported claim that Voter ID legislation has the effect of suppressing [Democrat] votes. The usual suspects (NYT et cetera) are all doing their part.
All of which has the side benefit of allowing voter fraud to continue... which also tends to support Democrats... and the continuing absurd debate over the issue makes it quite clear to anyone, not drinking the cool aid, that committing voter fraud is easy. While we debate whether someone should need a serious ID... well, we are in fact advertising you don't need much of an ID...
The the faux "U.S. Attorney Scandal" is a continuation of the Democrats plan to play up that there is not voter fraud and that valid Voter ID laws are not needed... by claiming the Republicans are pushing the false meme.... they intend to push their own.
Oh, I don't know about that.
"Serious" voter fraud would be any fraud that would cause an election to go to a Republican. Any voter fraud that would cause an election to go to a Democrat, like that in Washington, can safely be classified as "Non-Serious".
Similarly, with measures that might cause "disenfranchisement". And such measure that might cause elections to go to Republicans is a problem. Otherwise, no problem!
Um, no, try again.
The allegation is that U.S. Attorneys withheld prosecutions of Democratic politicians until after a vital election for the express purpose of benefitting their party.
When those prosecutors were later fired for...cough...ethical creativity, they went crying to the new majority on the Hill that had benefitted from their wrongdoing. The press dutifully picked up the DNC releases and now Dems are heartily spinning these prosecutor's complete lack of ethics as somehow the fault of BOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSHHHHHHH. Like I said, spin it all you want, you are defending U.S. Attorneys' decisions to forego prosecution for political purposes.
That door swings both ways, and every spin move the Dems make now will come back to haunt them. Of course, that's assuming a party that is so ethically challenged as to defend this sort of prosecutorial misconduct will ever be trusted by the American people to staff the Executive, again.
They could still be voting today. Who's going to take their hispanic name off the list? To even inquire would be "racism", no?
As someone noted above, in Boston you don't have to provide an id, just state your address and name. Someone with access to a database, with a little effort, could likely find a way to vote a dozen times using hispanic "voters" on various lists. Who'd question them? Who'd ask for an id? Who wants to be charged with a federal civil rights violation?
Massive opportunity for fraud.
There is also little, if any, reliable evidence that requiring voters to show photo identification before voting creates a serious problem of voter intimidation, but that doesn't stop the Democrats from insisting that it does.
"The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age,"
establishes a couple of things; voting is a right afforded U. S. citizens who are 18 years of age or older; and, that right shall not be denied or abridged on account of age. Since it specifies age, isn't it presumptive there are other conditions under which this right could be denied or abridged?
Also, why would it be unreasonable to require a person, wanting to cast a ballot, to prove they meet the eligibility criteria set out in this amendment of being a U. S. Citizen and age 18 or older?
Now, let's wind our way back to the 19th amendment:
"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."
Now, while Bill Clinton fans may take this the totally wrong way, it actually refers to the sex of the voter -- not their sexuality. But, more importantly, it establishes there can be no discrimination at the poll based on a person's sex -- thus, eliminating the uncomfortable confirmatory strip searches of those Joan-of-Arc/Mulan-type voters who would pretend to be men so they could vote. Beyond that, it really doesn't address any more than does the 26th amendment.
It certainly doesn't prohibit the federal government or the States from verifying voter eligibility. In fact, both amendments have identical language that would tend to encourage Congressional insinuation into voter qualification:
"Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
Yeah, I know, there are a bunch of lawyers and constitutional experts that read this blog and will be quick to point out "him v. them" or "this v. that," wherein case law prohibits things such as poll taxes, literacy tests, and other such superfluous, racist, or unnecessarily discriminatory voter qualification but, are there any prohibitions against confirming a person meets the Constitutional eligibility requirements?
I don't think so.
Uh, election day 2006 isn't "half way through" the 2nd term. Clown.
Further, since you're wallowing in ignornance, let me clear it up for you:
Firing 8 or 9 at once, for reasons that change from week-to-week is not.
And then what?
That makes it "bad" because you say so, right?
The allegation is that U.S. Attorneys withheld prosecutions of Democratic politicians until after a vital election for the express purpose of benefitting their party.
The rest of your post indicates that you believe "their party" = Democratic Party (and as an aside, didn't some of you other posters get the memo? -- even Bush is trying not to say "Democrat Party" anymore)
As to the substance, the fired U.S. Attorneys were Republicans, appointed by Bush in the first place. So the idea that they made decisions about prosecutions expressly to benefit Democrats is a bit hard to take seriously.
What is funny is that like most ideas from the Democrats, reality is exactly the opposite from what they're claiming.
All of them?
Every single one?
Can you show some proof of this, please?
In the spirit of close cooperation across party lines, they then engaged in prosecutorial misconduct by withholding prosecutions of Democrat politicians in order to boost the DEMOCRAT Party.
Bush's second term began January, 2005, the 2006 midterm elections occurred November, 2006. The election occurred more than 20 months into Bush's 48-month second term, nearly in the middle of the term. That's why they call it a midterm election.
7. Some U.S. Attorneys -- loyal Republicans all -- after concluding that there was, after all, no basis in fact for bringing such prosecutions, especially not so close to elections, when such prosecutions could have an unwarranted impact on election outcomes, understandably declined to prosecute.
So he's wrong about the fired folks being Republicans?
Link?
Some Guy: you have been misinformed. Here, for example, is the whitehouse.gov page noting the nomination of Mr. Iglesias as US Attorney for New Mexico. I believe that similar pages for the other fired US Attorneys and all other Bush administration nominees can be found here.
For some reason I can't figure out how to embed links (if someone could explain to me what I'm doing wrong, I would be grateful). But the bit I quoted is in the Marty Lederman piece which JA links in his original post above. So just click on that.
Anyway, unless somebody shows me that Lederman (and others) are wrong that the fired folks were Republicans appointed by Bush, the idea that they would would be "expressly" trying to aid the Democratic Party seems like nonsense. Indeed, even if you could show that that the US Att'ys were nominally Democrats, the accusation that they were acting in a partisan matter to help Democrats would still need significant additional support.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you, acehole!
do you see a "link" button on your screen just above this comments box?
I use that rather than trying to hard code them in.
Otherwise, Bush nominating them and them being "Republicans" are two different things.
Which isn't too terribly complicated.
Just ask George Tenent and Norm Mineta.
And a list of USA's to be fired in March 2005 was being put together right after the 2004 elections.
That's irrelevant. You were trying to nitpick me for saying that the USAs were fired midway through GWB's second term. That was when they were removed or asked to resign. When they were first put on Kyle Sampson's mystical list is not relevant to what I said.
Thanks for the suggestion. Sadly, that link button doesn't seem to work for me. Maybe it's because I use Netscape. Or maybe I'm still doing something wrong.
On the merits, sure it's POSSIBLE that Bush appointed Democrats, but do you have any proof that these particular folks actually were Democrats, or any evidence that suggests that Lederman was wrong in calling them Republicans?
And remember, the original assertion to which I objected went beyond even claiming they were Democrats: the original assertion was that these U.S. Atty's were expressly trying to help the Democratic Party by improperly refusing to bring ostensibly valid prosecutions. Do you have any proof or even plausible evidence of such improper motivations?
Don't waste your time arguing with trolls. Unfortunately, they seem to have flocked to this thread.
a) it was more than 10 years ago
b) Lopez was never prosecuted (the District Attorney investigating the case gave Lopez immunity and put him before the grand jury, even though he was clearly the logical target)
c) Sanchez's margin of victory was a couple hundred votes greater than the proven illegal votes
d) some other reason
e) it actually does count
Meanwhile, there are plenty of dead people on the voter rolls, as well as people who have moved and not been taken off the rolls. If you don't believe that, walk a precinct sometime and ask to speak to each registered voter on the rolls for the precinct. Most elections officials are happy if only 10% of the voter rolls are deadwood.
Other than asking people to show ID at the polls, how would you prevent people from voting using someone else's name? And when it happens, how would you catch who was responsible? There are no cameras allowed in polling places to see who cast what vote, and expecting polling workers, many days later, to remember and be able to accurately describe a particular one of the hundreds of people they saw on election day is not realistic. If the cheating voter is not stopped at the time he announces who he is and asks for a ballot (which normally means the poll workers either know him or knew the person he's pretending to be), he's getting away with it.
Yes, you can prove afterward that a certain number of votes were illegally cast. In some states (e.g., WA) unless you can prove who the unknown criminal(s) voted for or that he was affiliated with a particular campaign), that's not sufficient to overturn an election, no matter its magnitude. In the states where it's sufficient to vacate the election result and order a new election, the criminal(s) have still gotten away with their crimes.
I think the poll tax amendment requires that at least one acceptable form of the photo ID required be free - and for everyone, not just the poor. And it should also be readily available (I don't think GA's version qualified, for example). Once those conditions are met, I don't believe it can seriously be maintained that eligible voters will be precluded from voting.
Absentee ballot fraud is a separate group of problems. Different problems will require different responses. But when a version that's already illegal (and fairly repulsive) yields only minor or no punishment when caught (see, e.g., Hardeman v. Thomas, 208 Cal. App. 3d 153 (1989) - Ed Vincent, found by the courts to have been personally involved in coercing absentee votes and voting other people's absentee ballots while Inglewood mayor, is now a State Senator and will be a frontrunning candidate for Congress if Diane Watson retires soon), there's not much risk in trying to commit fraud.
Nick
Right.
Which isn't true.
Nor is this:
Yeah, election day 2006. Christ Ace, if you're going to nitpick, at least have the courtesy to be right about it.
I enjoyed watching you skip over that.
That's irrelevant.
Actually, this is an example of irrelevance:
Clinton removed prosecutors at the beginning of his first term
I love watching you leftists move goal posts.
It's fun.
Especially after calling for the firing of Rumsfeld for 3 straight years.
As compared to this great contribution to the topic at hand.
It helps if you highlight the text before clicking on the "link" button...otherwise it puts in a nonclickable link unless you manually edit the html code. if that doesn't work, get firefox.
I'm not a leftist, but you are a koolaid-drinking crackpot.
Thanks for the advice, I'll try it. Others, apologies for getting off topic with my technological incompetence.
As long as no ID's are required, there will always be insufficient evidence to prove voter fraud and the Democrats can retain their only defense to the serial voter fraud they have committed from Tammany Hall through the most recent Washington State gubanatorial race (i.e. "Even if there were irregularites, there was insufficient evidence to prosecute anyone so it never really happened in the first place.")
That argument is rank idiocy and wouldn't be available to Democrats but for their success in obstructing voting reforms.
Clinton scuttled the investigation in January 1993 and took advantage of the interim to allow evidence to be destroyed. He also scuttled the investigation of Dan Rostenkowski who was being investigated by the US Atty in Washington DC. Rostinkowski was eventually convicted, but Clinton managed to buy him a year and half in which Clinton attempted to use him to push his agenda through Congress.
Clinton fired US Atty's because they were investigating and prosecuting Democrat corruption. Bush fired US Attys because they were not investigating and prosecuting Democrat corruption. Democrats apparently lack the intellectual capacity to understand this distinction. (And don't tell me there was no evidence of voter fraud. As an example, there was ample evidence of illegality in Washington State, but the US Atty refused to indict. He was also a Democrat and and another example of Bush thinking that he could "reach across the aisle")
I have never understood why Bush thought he could reach across the aisle. After the first time--or say, Kennedy on education--he ought to have noticed what he got back was a bloody stump.
Reaching across the aisle presumed the dems would operate in good faith.
If Bush has blind spots, this is one of them.
Going into my story, it is important to note that my state has a law on the books requiring ID in order to vote, but every year that measure is blocked by the courts or federal civil rights, and people are allowed to vote if they give the name of a person registered in the precinct.
The area I was assigned to was a series of precincts that are overwhelmingly black and democratic. In one of the precincts, located in a school, the principal was playing continuous democratic voting directions on the PA system for the people waiting in line. That was at 8am.
Many precincts had pastors, who are very politically powerful locally, walking up and down the line of people waiting to vote with NAACP poll watcher credentials, instructing voters how to vote.
In another precinct, the poll workers, were all city employees, literally couldn’t read. Our poll challenger had been challenging every single voter because no one was being marked off in the poll book as having voted. We suspected some kind of massive fraud to allow people to vote twice, but it turned out that none of the city employees could read well enough to mark off the names. The city manager ended up going to the Kerry phone bank at the SEIU union hall, had to turn their Kerry tee shirts inside out, and swore them in as poll workers because they could read.
My personal favorite was another one of the precincts, where two of the city councilwomen were standing between the booths and the vote scanner machine, and inspecting ballots. If the voter failed to vote correctly, they spoiled the ballot with a pen and sent them back to the booth with a Democratic poll watcher to vote under supervision.
There were a number of other minor problems, like vote totals registering on the machine being well in excess of the number of votes marked off in the poll books, but compared to the overt fraud they were relatively minor.
The reports were all submitted to the Bush/GOP folks on the state level, who decided to not say anything.