The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports on the investigation into fraudulent and duplicate voter registrations submitted by ACORN, and notes that neither Democrats nor Republicans on the county's election board believes the bad registrations will compromise the election's results.
Even as Cuyahoga County digs deeper into possible fraud by a voter-registration group, election board members from both political parties maintain that any problems uncovered will not compromise the presidential election.
Board members say proof of voter-registration fraud does not mean illegal ballots will be cast on Nov. 4.
They said computer databases flag people who try to register multiple times, and Ohio voter identification laws exclude people from casting regular ballots when the board has not verified residency.
Still, the board is investigating suspicious registration cards submitted by ACORN, a national group that tries to register low- and moderate-income voters. . . .
The Cuyahoga County Republican Party has posted a news story about the local investigation of ACORN. But even Chairman Rob Frost, the second Republican member on the county's election board, said the potentially fraudulent registration cards do not jeopardize the fairness of the election.
"No, I don't have fear because we have a handle on problems caused by ACORN," he said.
All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:
- Recusal Row in Ohio Republican Party v. Brunner:
- Thoughts on Brunner v. Ohio Republican Party:
- Ohio SoS Seeks Emergency Stay from Justice Stevens:...
- Will Sixth Circuit Ohio Election Decision Be Overturned En Banc?
- Fraudulent Registrations No Threat:
- Sixth Circuit Sides with Ohio SoS; Vacates Injunction:
- Is Voter Registration Fraud Unavoidable?
Instead of nibbling around the edges of this problem, why don't we just institute a significant poll tax which would make it too expensive for these so-called poor people to vote?
Fer crying out loud.
I show an ID card when I go to the polling place every time. They don't require it, they don't ask for it. They don't like it. In fact, amazingly, they try to wave it away.
But I shove it in their faces, and I tell them if they don't like it, they can goddam lump it.
You would have to repeal an amendment to the constitution.
But my belief is we should require ID's at every stage, photo ID's, and we should keep picture on file of everyone who does.
Oh, and paying people to register others should be absolutely banned.
They better not -- any voting system that can't handle such a trivial problem as removing duplicate/unverified registrations is a joke. I had always assumed that such simple things were easily taken care of on the back end.
It's ACORN getting screwed paying their workers $1 (or whatever, I don't know) per registration only to have the computer spit most of them back out.
Except the Amish, of course. Religious freedom and all that.
1. I respect the GOP members of the county election board for treating this as the non-issue that it is, instead of trying to score cheap political points. Well played.
2. There is a difference between probelms with voter-registration and voter fraud. To give you two examples:
If TFHG (Tin Foil Hat Group) registers Daf E. Duck and Mr. Duck never votes, there is no voter fraud.
If TFHG register John Q. Public 500 times because their members kept recanvassing and they submitted his name multiple times, and JQP votes once, there is no fraud.
And finally, the last two things to keep in mind:
1. Despite making 'voter fraud' a huge DOJ priority for the entirety of their administration, it just doesn't really exist (not to say it doesn't ever happen, but it's neither major nor systemic).
2. The majority of voter fraud that does occur happens through absentee ballots, but that is never investigated by the current administration as those ballots trends GOP.
Anyway, I recommend looking at this.
Okay, the crazies can commence.
uh, things being the way they are, I'm pretty sure that would push away actual poor people as well.
From what I've read, they're some commie outfit that thinks that democracy works best when more citizens vote.
Although I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusions, I think what is factual is that no one really knows the extent of fraudulent voting - as opposed to fraudulent registration. There are no studies showing significant fraudulent voting, because there are no credible studies at all.
I also don't know if even small numbers of voting fraud should be considered insignificant. If public confidence in the election process is shaky, then the fraud is significant. It may not influence elections via enough bogus ballots to change the results, but the lack of confidence is significant in and of itself. I'm sure everyone has heard the apocryphal stories of JFK carrying Illinois in 1960 via voter fraud in Chicago. We certainly don't need this kind of thing repeating itself.
So far, it seems that any attempt to require some form of identification or verification is automatically equated to, per se, bias against the poor and/or minorities. I'm always suspicious of attempts to cloak something in "bigotry" instead of engaging in some useful dialogue to settle things.
People generally need some form of identification to buy cigarettes or alcohol, guns, dog licenses, etc. Is it unreasonable that people who wish to vote shouldn't have to meet some similar and innocuous standards of proof of identity?
I don't see why this has to be a partisan issue. If several hundred investment bankers all showed up and registered as "J P Morgan" with bogus addresses, I would suggest disallowing their registrations too.
You're being too subtle...
From what I've read, they're some commie outfit that thinks that democracy works best when more citizens vote.
I suppose your answer means you are incapable of an honest answer but I am asking about the reports of getting people to register multiple times. If these all get filtered out at the actual voting then I don't understand why they would do this unless there was some other benefit that I'm not seeing.
In at least one case, a woman was getting paid for how many voters she registered, so she made some up. In other words, it was an individual sinning, not the organization.
That's part of the problem, or at least the perception...do they really get filtered out or not.
It may just be that the individuals creating the multiple or patently false ( e.g., sports team rosters, Jed Clampett, etc) are paid per registration, so all they care about is volume. But the cynic would argue that Acorn should be making some minimal effort to discourage the fraudulent registrations, especially the ones that are so obviously bogus. Sine there appears to be, at the least, an institutional tolerance for some poetic license in new registrations by Acorn, I guess you asked a to-the-point question. Who benefits?
Maybe some of Acorn's funding is predicated on registration numbers. That, I don't know.
ACORN is required by law to turn in all of the voter registration forms they receive, whether they're obviously fraudulent or not. Otherwise groups could get people to fill out registration forms and only hand in those of people likely to vote the way they want, resulting in lots of people who thought they were registered showing up at the polls and being told they can't vote. I believe ACORN actually goes over the forms and bundles the suspicious ones separately to make things easier for the people processing the registrations, because they want all their registrations processed.
Why?
ACORN pays people to do registration work, and they pay them on the basis of the number of reg cards they return. The people who fill out fraudulent cards are bilking ACORN, not seeking to influence the election.
What makes you think they don't? They do act against the fraudulent registration forms, but they can't just throw them in the trash at their own discretion. You don't want a voter-reg organization deciding which registrations to put through and which ones to toss out, do you?
In any case I don't see why we should not require identification before someone votes. And no I don't believe that crap about this being a burden on a large number of people. I can't exercise my Second Amendment right in CA without proper identification can I?
If one could make a reasonable argument that Sen Obama is the nominee because of fraud and systematic abuse of the caucus process, it is not too great a leap worry about the general election as well.
"I believe ACORN actually goes over the forms and bundles the suspicious ones separately to make things easier for the people processing the registrations, because they want all their registrations processed."
I didn't know this. If you're right, it would change my perception of Acorn's practices. I would still suspect that Acorn, as an organization, somehow receives funding tied to new voter registrations as a number.
Indeed. Something just doesn't smell right here. I don't see how Americans could vote for Barack HUSSEIN Obama!!!
Have you ever seen or used a voterfile? They are generally a mess with individual people registered multiple times at different addresses or incorrect or nonexistent addresses, often with other missing or incorrect data. In my experience 30%+ of the the records on a voterfile are not real people who currently live at the given address. (Though this varies greatly county by county - some are good about keeping theirs clean and up to date, most are not.) They are among the lowest quality databases of individuals out there.
Keep in mind that the people who maintain them have virtually no incentive to keep them in good shape (other than pride). Purging the rolls irritates infrequent voters and costs money and time.
"I don't see how Americans could vote for Barack HUSSEIN Obama!!!"
No, you're missing the point. it's not that Americans couldn't vote for Sen Obama, it's the opposite, that they voted again and again...
It is worse than that. Apparently Barack HUSSEIN Obama has also corrupted all of the pollsters. Does his evil know no bounds?
Considering the McCain team's management of their own campaign, rightly so I think.
This is probably right, but there are still good reasons to doubt that voter fraud is widespread. Individual ineligble voters have too much to lose and very little to gain by intentionally voting illegally. If voting is deeply irrational, imagine just how irrational it becomes if you could go to jail or be deported for doing it.
Candidates themselves would probably be more interested in orchestrating voter fraud, but rounding up ineligible voters to pad your total is the least efficient way of tilting an election. It would take many hundreds or thousands of people who, despite being ineligible to vote, are organized and disciplined enough to carryout instructions without telling anyone outside of the grand conspiracy of its existence. Is this really likely when you could corrupt a handful of pollworkers and accomplish much more? Targeting the vote count itself is certainly very risky, but it gives you much more control and involves many fewer people. I suspect this is why all election fraud orchestrated by politicians has centered on controlling the count and not on convincing bums to vote eight times for the right guy.
Once you vote black, you never go back.
I would think though that if the burden of sorting the fraudulent from the accurate registrations falls on the state there would be some kind of regulation that tries to make ACORN (and others who do this sort of thing) maintain some degree of control over the quality of the voter registrations. Is there something like this? I would imagine something like if X percentage of voter registrations coming from your group exceed Y percentage of allowable fraudulent registrations you suffer a penalty. If there isn’t any sort of incentive to validate the registrations then I completely understand why this is happening.
Though I guess I also would wonder why ACORN wouldn’t maintain their own internal quality control since they are paying these people. Maybe they are getting paid by someone for total registered voters and it’s that payee’s waste of money? Individuals registering voters scamming ACORN and ACORN scamming their funders?
Well hrmmm. Back to why they do it then.
I saw one news article which reported that ACORN submitted separate piles to the registrars, one of which was specifically identified as containing likely improper registrations. The registrars confirmed that.
Thanks for the info, although I doubt Acorn would malign itself on this issue. For instance, the memo says "there is virtually no chance anyone would be able to vote fraudulently..."
I would refer one to the previously cited WSJ story on Washington state. In that closely matched election, 1,200 more votes were counted than people voted. Pretty good trick. Or from the same story..."the fact that in Precinct 1823 in downtown Seattle, 527, or 70%, of the 763 registered voters used 500 Fourth Avenue--the King County administration building--as their residential address. A full 61% of the precinct's voters only registered in the last year, and nearly all of them "live" at 500 Fourth Avenue."
The margin of victory in the governor's race in that election was 129 votes. So fraud could make a difference. Ask a Democrat who won Florida in 2000.
The truth probably lies between the poles. But it's informative to read Acorn's take on the issue. Hard to believe but I don't think I'd see that on Fox News.
Since you seem to be interested in reasoned discourse, I recommend first looking at the link I provided for a quick overview.
The issue that a person like me sees is not with voter fraud. It is with 'voter fraud'. There's a difference in my mind.
Voter fraud is a voter fraudulently voting, for example, voting more than once, or voting in a state you do not reside.
'Voter fraud' is a largely GOP-created myth which is destroying public confidence in our political system, and it really p1sses me off. As someone who has been working at poll monitoring within my state (given my legal experience) I am *ANGRY* at the voter suppression that is being done by one party. I think that a party that relies on voter suppression and divisiveness is bad for our country; for our country to succeed, we need two healthy strong parties that encourage people to participate and drive voter turnout by appealing to people with distinct and different visions of what is best for America.
IOW, there is no real attempt to deal with voter fraud. If there was, the first place to crack down would be absentee ballots. Instead, 'voter fraud' is used as a justification for laws that allow for voter suppression. I would have no problem with some sort of identity check, provided that the government would provide identification for free for those that did not have drivers' license, and with a provision for provisional ballots for the inevitable screwups that occur on election day.
We have enough trouble getting people to vote. I think it is truly shameful that we erect barriers for the *lawful* exercise of any citizen's right to vote.
Those are homeless people, registering as state law mandates they do. Here's the relevant section of the code:
WAC 434-208-100 Registering to vote -- Nontraditional address. No person registering to vote, who meets all the qualifications of a registered voter in the state of Washington, shall be disqualified because of a nontraditional physical address being used as a residence address. Nontraditional addresses may include shelters, parks or other identifiable locations which the voter deems to be his/her residence. Voters using such an address will be registered and precincted based on the location provided. Voters without a traditional address will be registered at the county courthouse, city hall or other public building near the area that the voter considers his/her residence. Registering at a nontraditional address will not disqualify a voter from requesting ongoing absentee voter status provided the voter designates a valid mailing address.
We know that now, but before each election the only thing we knew was that the election would be close. Based on that alone, it does not seem sensible or likely that someone risked a prison sentence to increase his preferred candidates chance of winning by a miniscule factor--even more so when you consider just how inefficient convincing the homeless or day laborers to vote illegally actually is.
"Not all of the voters at the county building are homeless or hard to find. A noted local judge and her husband have been registered at the county building for years. When I called her to ask why, she became flustered and said it was because of security concerns, specifically because 'the Mexican mafia are out to get me.' When I pointed out that her home address and phone number were easily found on the Internet and in property records, she ended the conversation by refusing to answer a question about whether she had improperly voted for state legislative candidates who would represent the county building but not her residence."
That's not the same as double voting, but it appears that even a "noted local judge" is voting illegally in the wrong district. And the linked article had a lot of other examples of hanky-panky, most of it in heavily-Democratic King County.
The fact that absentee ballots trend Republican does not in any way show that fraudulent absentee ballots trend Republican. In 1982 I was urged to vote in two different states in the same election by a Democratic canvasser who was quite offended when I told him that would be illegal and he ought to be ashamed of himself. Full story (not very long) here.
As for absentee ballots, much of the current spitting match in Ohio derives from the Republican party trying to limit same-day registration and absentee voting. For either party to wrap themselves in the Constitution on this issue seems somewhat disingenuous.
"a largely GOP-created myth which is destroying public confidence in our political system..." I would again ask what exactly many Democrats believe about Florida in 2000. Or is that not a myth, so it doesn't count?
And I'll repeat myself. Why is it "voter suppression" to ask for some means of identifying or verifying voter eligibility? I was under the impression that in Ohio (for instance), the fees for photo ID had been removed, so there is no financial burden imposed. Yet, some still oppose any attempts to qualify or verify. Why is that? The latest arguments I saw is that requiring poor people to travel to some government office for a photograph is an imposition, and that poor people don't have birth certificates or other proof of identify. Both the Slate author and you say that requiring proof of identity is no problem. How would you respond to the assertions above about why the poor can't get a free government ID card?
Again, referring to Ohio, a large (double digit) percentage of newly registered voters could not be found at the address they provided. Should we believe that something like 25% (or 15% or what ever it was) of newly registered voters also moved within 2 weeks of registering? And left no forwarding address? Or maybe that the same portion were actually homeless, and apparently made up addresses?
If you think that Republicans are using this issue to bludgeon the Dems, then maybe illuminating the truth or falsity of people voting fraudulently would be a good thing. So far, all I see is polemics - well, actually I suppose I can't see polemics. But you know what I mean.
Name one. I'm calling baloney on this. I've seen arguments that Clinton lost due to fraud, but none of them were at all credible.
(P.S. I hope you're not thinking of New Hampshire. The early claims of vote fraud in New Hampshire have been thoroughly debunked; those claims were irresponsible, in my opinion, and they turned out to have no grounding in fact.)
Nice to see the poll tax mentioned; the literacy test will not be far behind. No wonder McCain spoke highly of John Lewis' wisdom. Lewis appears to have a good understanding of the historical antecedents of the current McCain campaign: The Alaska Independence Party following in the footsteps of the American Independent Party.
I'd only suggest this. Until we adopt something like the Iraqi system of putting a thumb print on the ballot, the possibility of actually identifying a person who casts a vote using a fraudulent or fictitious name is probably near zero. We may arrest the canvasser who turned in multiple patently false applications, but trying to determine who walked into a voting precinct and cast a vote, and who provided no form of identification...well, that would be tough. So, probably not much chance of getting caught if you're being paid a few bucks for every vote you managed to consummate.
There may be easier or less risky ways to unlawfully influence elections (voting machines? staff at the elections office?) but that doesn't mean somewhere, someone is trying to do just that by getting people to vote more than once.
Here you go, links straight from a heavily Dem web site.
HERE and HERE
The author "Peniel Cronin is the President &CEO of Global Basics and eNameWiz.com. Cronin holds a B.S. in Accounting from Arizona State University and has 16 years experience as an accountant and Director of Marketing for several SMEs."
there's actually a second report with nearly identical conclusions, written by a mathematician. I'm looking for that one now, but so far, can't find it.
I read them pre-convention and thought them fleshed out and reasonable. You may not agree, especially since the author is a HRC proponent, but I'm not sure you can fault her methodology. Even if the conclusion can be debated, it's certainly not rubbish.
This is specific that the fault is not only the caucus system itself, but systematic abuse by the Obama campaign.
There was a lot of back-and-forth in the blog archives that these come from. See them for more info, and some claimed 1st person verification of what went on inside the caucuses.
No. You don't understand me, clearly. I think the 'voter fraud' (as opposed to voter fraud) people are just the same as the Diebolt people. Bunch of tinfoil nutjobs. Doesn't matter if you're on the left or the right, when your response to losing elections is to throw doubt on the process in the absence of evidence, not only do you drive up the cost of aluminum wrap for the rest of us, but you actually hurt our country by casting doubt on the integrity of the vote for partisan gain.
As you may have missed, I would have no problem with a sensible identification requirement coupled with provisional ballots. Having actually seen how the process works, I know that 'voter fraud' is a label used to push through laws that end up disenfranchising voters. I think that's wrong; not in the "I'd rather 10 bad votes go in that one voter gets disenfranchised" way; but rather in the, "I want both parties to sell their ideas to the American people and get people to vote for them so we have a robust exchange of ideas, a true popular mandate for the winner, and less creepy conspiracy crud from the loony left / reedonkulous right looney tune brigades."
some more re: caucuses and fraud
HERE
and here's the mathematician I remembered.
HERE
If anything, it may be better written than the first link I posted at 12:26.
JC
I know! It's like for some craaazy reason, they believe the quality of democracy is improved when more people vote, resulting in a more representative government! They must be making mad cash off of it, otherwise why would they do it, am I right guys?
Sorry. Didn't mean to jump all over you.
"but you actually hurt our country by casting doubt on the integrity of the vote for partisan gain."
I agree completely. Maybe I'm channeling 2000 again, worrying about wild herds of litigators heading for courthouses left and right, before the polling places even close.
Also, the reason I didn't bother with the John Fund WSJ opinion piece is that, like many readers of the Journal, I have a strict policy:
1. News articles are considered presumptively credible and very informative.
2. Opinion pieces are best used for my friend's bird cage.
As for the slate article, it lays out many opinions I happen to agree with (including a possible ID requirement) along with helpful links.
In voting we face the exact same dilemma. Is it better for 10 fraudulant votes to be cast so as to prevent one legitimate voter from being disenfranchised? Or is it better to prevent voter fraud in casting ballots at the possible cost of denying a legitimate voter.
Here, as in the Indiana voter ID case, the two undesirable but mandatory positions are under discussion. Since frequently the disenfranchised tend to be poor and the illegal voters are the same it seems apparent the political implications overcome dispassionate discussion.
The problem I see is those who strongly support massive ACORN-type voter registration and see very little actual problem of voter fraud defend their case by saying we want every vote to count and every American to have the right to vote. But strangely, these exact same people were in the forefront of trying to block the counting of overseas military votes in 2000 and fought to prevent voter registration by Republicans in Ohio where one box was not checked.
Bottom line. 100% politics and 0% principle.
If you're a conservative, you get the forwarded conservative emails, go to conservative blogs, listen to talk radio, and watch Fox News.
If you're a liberal, you get the forwarded liberal emails, go to liberal blogs, listen to NPR, and watch anything but Fox News (that Keith guy on MSNBC, maybe)?
Anyway, the effect of this echo chamber is to reinforce your belief that you, and your side, is completely right and there can't be anyone (or, at least, not that many people) who disagree with you, and those that do are wrong and couldn't possibly convince the majority of voters to their side. Because of this, you are eternally surprised whenever 'your side' loses, and are more prone to believe that somehow 'the other' stole the election.
We are moving to an age where we are all Pauline Kael.
I suggest it as interesting reading.
link is HERE.
Speak for yourself. id' rather be Bulwer-Lytton
That Cronin document does not allege fraud -- let alone provide evidence of fraud in the 2008 primaries of such magnitude as to deny Clinton a rightful victory.
The Cronin document does not allege that Obama manipulated election results to steal an election from Clinton. At most it suggests that the results of caucuses are not representative -- but not that there was an active attempt by Obama to wrongfully manipulate the caucuses.
Moreover the evidence for even this weak claim is unpersuasive: it makes elementary errors of analysis. For instance, it notes that since Obama's vote share in caucuses was significantly higher than his vote share in primaries, and from this concludes that this means that caucuses have distorted the result. This does not follow, because it fails to account for the possible existence of confounding factors. (e.g., maybe states that use caucuses tend to be more urban, and urban voters tended to lean towards Obama; perhaps caucus-states tended to have later election dates, and perhaps Obama did better later in the year as voters came to know more about him; or you can imagine many other possible hypotheses. The point is not that I am proposing these specific hypotheses -- rather, the point is that the burden is on the author to identify possible confounding factors and determine whether they could provide an alternate explanation for the observed data. The author fails to do so, which makes his analysis thoroughly unpersuasive.)
The early claims of election fraud in New Hampshire made the same mistake of overlooking the possibility of confounding factors, and in fact, the actual results were explained by a confounding factor effect rather than by fraud.
"I have a strict policy"
Again with the anti-trickster-God behavior. Did Odin offer you senior partner?
C'mon, Lok, what's the harm in a little Kim Strassel here and there? I mean they let Thomas Frank in, after all...
(Very) Nice Kael line, but I'm unconvinced that the applicable bubble is necessarily a partisan one.
Thanks for the latter two links (to Pacific John's claims and Lynette Long's web pages). I haven't had time to read through them in great detail, but my impression is that they contain a combination of personal anecdotes and statistical analysis. Unfortunately, I don't have the political knowledge that would be needed to evaluate the personal anecdotes or most of their other arguments, so I'm afraid I'm not able to respond substantively. My apologies.
However Long's statistical claims seem to contain the same flaw of ignoring the possibility of confounding factors. For instance, Long writes: "I was stunned by the fact that Obama won thirteen out of fourteen caucuses when he only won eighteen out of thirty-nine primaries, another statistical improbability." This is faulty reasoning, because it ignores the possibility of confounding factors. Moreover, the use of the phrase "statistical impossibility" is inappropriate and leaves me less than impressed with Long's description of the statistics.
I guess the credibility of these allegations is something each person will need to judge for themselves.
If everything I do is a trick, then I perform no tricks. Put another way, all Norse Gods of Deception are Cretans.
That is my treat, and I bid you a good night. The Red Sox just lost; I have not the heart to continue this evening. Friggin' Orange Juice Dome. They should just throw all the Tampa players into that aquarium they have in center field so they can get Steve Irwined....
*ahem* okay. I feel better now. On the plus side, Geaux Gators!
Adding this last note since I saw the thread after my previous post. Th above poster is right; the people are making a basic error; if caucuses were the same as primaries, then it would be easier to a statistical analysis. However, the process of a caucus is different than a primary- while it varies from state to state (from the Iowa arduous night to the Texas 'two-step') as a general rule a caucus victory is helped by a good ground organization and better peer-to-peer networking to encourage others. Obama focused on this. To give you an analogy; the recent US men's decathalon hero was notoriously bad at the last event (400m?). But he racked up so many points in the other events it made up for his poor performance in that event. Someone not understanding how the different events in the decathalon works would make a silly statement like, "Well, clearly he wasn't trying in the 400m because his performance in that event was so much worse every time he competed than the other events." which is an incorrect assertion.
All the statistics can tell you is that Obama performed better during caucuses. Those of us who followed the democratic campaign closely know it was because of a campaign choice to invest in caucus states, and because of the way the campaign operation was run. It would be a similar mistake to attribute Rudy's crash and burn in the GOP campaign to voter fraud because he performed poorly in early states compared to his national average when the truth is well known (he made the choice to put his eggs in one basket- starts with an F, ends with a LORIDA).
So, Ohio has a load of ballots completed by these people, one of whom has admitted to registering 72 times.
This voter fraud does compromise the the election.
and I think that ALL of these early ballots should be tossed out.
This would also prevent a democrat/republican voter registration movement from throwing away registrations from the opposite party.
I'm sure this is sort of thing happens all the time. There are a number of documented cases where the fraudster is related to Joe Smith. It only ever gets detected when Joe Smith dies before election day.
BTW, will people please realize that jbn's "poll tax" post was a moby troll effort. Do lefties really think Republicans are that backwards?
Great reporting.
[/sarc]
I really do believe the problem with ACORN is the payment to sign up registrants. It motivates people to fake it by making up names or opening a telephone book.
But the problems are rampant-they aren't isolated to just a couple of areas, but in state after state after state where ACORN operates. They know they have a problem-perhaps they should take steps to fix things on their end. Maybe not paying workers is a good place to start, or perhaps better supervision of the workers or better training. Either way in the end this looks to be a problem that is deeply rooted in the organization.
However, taking the road of "well it they don't mean to actually vote that way, and we shouldn't worry about registration fraud" is wrong.
Wrong on two parts-when you take the fraud at the registration level lightly, you are going to encourage it. And those with sneakier minds will take advantage of it by actually figuring out ways to engage in actual fraud.
I agree that it is probably more the area of absentee balloting that is the problem-but either way it eventually wouldn't take too much to get criminally creative and engage in voter fraud.
I think the problem with voter fraud itself is that it is difficult to catch much less prosecute. Once Suzie Q. Public has cast her fraudulent ballot and no flags were raised in the process, there is simply no way to investigate or prosecute it, even if you have reason to suspect the ballot was cast fraudulently-no ID is taken, and if the address is fake, you have no way of figuring out who was voting for Suzie much less prosecuting her.
When you turn a blind eye and blow off the fake registrations you essentially give the people who would like to vote fraudulently a way to use the ambivalence about the registration fraud to help their cause.
Everybody understands that the best position if you want to rob a bank is a job with the bank. Why is it so seldom noted that the best position if you want to steal an election is to be an election official?
Sure, it's important to structure the system so that John Doe, random guy off the street, can't steal a vote. But it's far more important to structure it so that the guys running the elections can't do that. They're the ones in a position to steal votes wholesale, and then cover up the tracks, after all.
And if you're providing them with fraudulent registrations, and relying on them to do something about it, you're making it too easy for them.
Perjury generally
"in any declaration, certificate, verification, or statement under penalty of perjury as permitted under section 1746 of title 28, United States Code, willfully subscribes as true any material matter which he does not believe to be true;
is guilty of perjury and shall, except as otherwise expressly provided by law, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. This section is applicable whether the statement or subscription is made within or without the United States."
BK
Most of the comments here are a joke, as they implicitly address ACORN as some kind of unbiased voter-friendly bunch just doing their part for democracy and being unfairly maligned. That depiction is pure crap.
There are reasons why Democrats consistently oppose a nationwide requirement to require valid voter identification, a principal one being they benefit from the efforts of ACORN; and that benefit would immediately be reduced by the number of fictitional characters, druggies, street people, illegal immigrants and other flotsam including their paid handlers who have no concept of or belief in an "informed citizenry".
This is a well-worn type of complaint. Except you usually don't hear it over three weeks before the game is actually played.
But they lost with grace and style.
Now that Joseph mentions it, can I protest the Southern Cal game now?
Are any of those voters registered at city hall voting by mail?
Many counties in in Washington have switched or will soon switch to entirely vote-by-mail (i.e., no polling places). I take it that those ballots would be delivered to city hall, and then, it is up to the workers at city hall to "find" the voters, correct?
Boy, corrupt politicians never had it so good. They can steal an election without even leaving the office!
I'll say it now, the Republicans own this. Hate, bigotry and ignorance is what they are selling and they will own the results.
Absolutely. Yesterday (Sat.) on Fox, they had a big story on ACORN and followed it up requests to respond to a new e-mail poll question: "Do you think the election will be fair and honest?"
Although I'm not sure if the Fox line now is "the polls are all wrong because closet racists are lying to pollsters," or, at least implicitly, "OK, we're going to lose, but that's only because the other guy cheated."
Good lord. I'll just hope that anger and denial are steps on the road to acceptance.
So far all I have heard is lies (the registers are paid by the number of people they register), idiotic non-sequiturs (they are champions of democracy trying to get more people to vote), tu quoque misdirection (it’s the Republicans who are committing real voter fraud by purges), and finally a red herring (ACORN is just a convenient foil).
I would have to assume a couple things from this. A) They are indeed committing fraud and B) defenders on this thread of ACORN are so blinded by partisanship that they are unable or unwilling to approach this (and possibly other) partisan issues with anything remotely resembling honesty.
Even where people doing registration work are being paid by the hour, they have to have something to show for their work at the end of a shift. (I've seen it reported that ACORN workers are given numerical targets to meet in some states.) This seems like the Occam's Razor explanation to me.
btw, my point about Republicans using ACORN as a foil is not meant to distract from any malfeasance on ACORN's part. If ACORN is doing something wrong they should be held accountable.
So far all I've seen is a constant hype from Fox News about ACORN stealing the election, yet there is no proof being offered that ACORN is doing anything wrong. ACORN has internal safeguards, they notify the election boards which registrations look fraudulent, they turn in anyone they find producing fraudulent registrations, etc.
This is a blatant attempt to preemptively delegitimize the election.
What appears to be going on with this ACORN thing is new. I've already spelled it out, and if you don't see it, then I guess we can agree to disagree.
But the Republicans own this.
Registration fraud is meaningless if it doesn't result in actual voter fraud.
Do you mean the charges against ACORN are new or that the behavior is new? Define new?
ACORN was an issue in 2004 and there were convicitions of some ACORN workers for fraudulent voter registration forms.
I think the problem here is that this is rampant throughout the organization. Now the organization may not be condoning the behavior in malice, but there is certainly something about their methods that lead to the fraudulent registrations. There have been several charges that voters were pressured to fill out mulitple forms-perhaps telling workers to accept "I already registered" is a good place to start, but better yet I think the pay is the big problem. Maybe the organization should just seek volunteers instead of workers for pay.
Yes, I can write out some unsubstantiated claims as well. There is not a single attributed quote by someone in a position to observe malfeasance, only vague "officials" and the shocking revelation that a few hundred homeless people used the same address to register.
Homeless people have the right to vote. They even have the right to not have a legitimate personal address and still vote. Why is that so hard to swallow?
"There is not a single attributed quote by someone in a position to observe malfeasance, only vague 'officials' and the shocking revelation that a few hundred homeless people used the same address to register."
Here are 5th and 6th paragraphs from the linked story:
"Most disturbing is the revelation last week by King County officials that at least 348 unverified provisional ballots were fed directly into vote-counting machines. 'Did it happen? Yes. Unfortunately, that's part of the process in King County,' elections superintendent Bill Huennekens told the Seattle Times. 'It's a very human process, and in some cases that did happen.'
"King County elections director Dean Logan, Mr. Huennekens' boss, also concedes the discrepancy between the number of ballots cast and the list of people who are recorded as voting. Even though the gap is 1,200 votes, he says, 'that does not clearly indicate that the election would have turned out differently.' Are voters supposed to trust an election merely because it can't 'clearly' be shown to be hopelessly tainted? Mr. Logan is certainly singing a different tune now than he was on Nov. 18, when he responded to charges of voting irregularities in an e-mail to colleagues, which read in part: 'Unfortunately, I have come to expect this kind of unsubstantiated crap. It's all too convenient, if not now fashionable, to stoop to this level when there is a close race.'"
Oren's statement that "There is not a single attributed quote by someone in a position to observe malfeasance" is simply false. Unless, of course, he meant that there are three pertinent quotations from two different people, which I suppose is technically "not a single" one.
RE: Heh
"...neither Democrats nor Republicans on the county's election board believes the bad registrations will compromise the election's results." -- Jonathan Adler
Why am I suddenly reminded of the way my own county Republican Party organization has behaved over the last few years.
Something tells me thinks have been 'compromised'.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Every people get the governance they deserve.]
"They said computer databases flag people who try to register multiple times, and Ohio voter identification laws exclude people from casting regular ballots when the board has not verified residency." -- Some report
I seem to recall how some people I know were reporting the odd presence of the computer database programmer from Denver in the immediate vicinity of the voting machines, after the election, when there seemed to be some 'confusion' over how thet tally of ballots was going.
That was in 2006.
Regards.....
...there've been Democrats holding the County Clerk office for quite some time. Including the 2006 election.
...it seems that during the course of the ballot counting in November 2006, the County Clerk/Recorder refused to allow Election Judges of the Republican persuasion into the counting area.
That is until the official representative of the Colorado Secretary of State came down and personally demanded they be admitted to the area where the Democratic Party reps were allowed.
Not saying you're wrong about the likely outcome next month, but ACORN/fraud allegations have been around since long before this election cycle. It is improper to dismiss complaints of criminal activity as merely partisan without discovering whether they have any merit. If ACORN is involved in voter fraud, it needs to be slapped.
2006
2004
The idea that "merely registering" fraudulent voters is not a problem is also a lie. ACORN appears to have been systematically submitting fraudulent registrations. Why would they do that? Well if you make up names and remember the address, you wait a few weeks and the government sends a "voter registration card" that looks less official than the "library card" they gave us in elementary school. No photo, just a name and an address. You know why we don't catch people engaged in actual voter fraud? Because once you have the card with a name and an address, no one can stop you from voting.
What we need to do is go back and look at all registrations submitted by ACORN over the years. I am sure we will find many questionable registrations that ended up actually voting.
Because they are required by law to submit every registration they collect.
Main Entry:
mal·fea·sance Listen to the pronunciation of malfeasance
Pronunciation:
\ˌmal-ˈfē-zən(t)s\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
mal- + obsolete feasance doing, execution
Date:
1696
: wrongdoing or misconduct especially by a public official
Neither of those two people said anything that could be construed as wrongdoing or misconduct. They admitted to discrepancies which they attributed to error which is explicitly not malfeasance.
I suggest you try actually reading the comments to which you are responding -- sometimes the English language can be a bit tricky.
In any case, Oren did not write that no malfeasance was observed, he wrote "There is not a single attributed quote by someone in a position to observe malfeasance, only vague 'officials' and the shocking revelation that a few hundred homeless people used the same address to register". Were Huennekens and Logan not in a position to observe malfeasance? They were in fact quoted by name, along with several other people, including a couple of defenders of Gregoire. And it was not just homeless people who listed the county building as their home address, but a judge and his wife, the latter of whom the author of the WSJ story claims to have spoken to.
Oren is trying to wriggle out of taking responsibility for his own misstatements (to put it politely). Looks like malfeasance to me.
However registration fraud is often the first part of a fraudulent voting scheme. First nonexistent persons John Smith, John Jones, John Brown and John Robinson are registered with an address of 123 Oak Street in Precinct One. On election day, four individuals are driven to the Precinct One polling place and handed their voter registration cards. They go in and vote. They then drive to Precinct Two where they are each handed a new voter registration card for another nonexistent but registered voter and they go in and vote. Then on to Precinct Three and so on for the rest of election day.
Since this method can get expensive and time consuming, they are tending to go more towards requesting absentee ballots for the nonexistent voters.
The Republicans then asked the US Attorney to prosecute those witnesses who had testified under oath to committing voter fraud. The US Attorney refused, contending that such a prosecution would be "political" and was thereafter removed. This was deemed a scandalous misuse of power by the Bush Administration. What is wrong with this picture?
Sure, a lot of fraud is going to be hard to catch. But if we can't even start with prosecuting people who admit to committing fraud under oath, because it would be too "political," there really is no hope left.
My question to those who think this is all just some wierd paranoid Republican fantasy - would it be OK for elections officials who receive "suspect" registrations to try to track down their source and gently explain the civil and criminal penalties attaching to voting fraud? Or would this be "suppressing" voting?
Well, damn! I guess that settles it, doesn't it? Because no citizen of this great nation has ever broken a law!
The questions still stand:
* If ACORN supposedly is expending so much effort checking and re-checking the validity of the registrations it collects, then why doesn't the organization change its own procedures to better ensure their validity at signup and thereby save ACORN's time, money, and reputation?
(trad and anon's response: "To this, I say: never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity." So then ACORN and those who support it with time and money -- such as a certain presidential candidate -- are simply stupid?)
* If, as MarkField claims, ACORN performs "validity checking" of the registrations before submitting them to the local elections officials -- e.g., by sorting them into "probably good" and "probably fraudulent" piles -- just to save the officials from wasting too much effort on their own independent checking (of course), then what prevents ACORN from preferentially sorting Democratic registrations into the "probably good" pile and Republican registrations into the "probably fraudulent" pile?
* Does ACORN (or some allied party) derive some other benefit from having fictitious voters on the rolls?
Mike G in Corvallis,
why doesn't the organization change its own procedures to better ensure their validity at signup
Do you know what ACORN's procedures are? I don't, so maybe they could be better. So far it looks like a case of laziness on the part of ACORN canvassers rather than some grand conspiracy.
what prevents ACORN from preferentially sorting Democratic registrations into the "probably good" pile and Republican registrations into the "probably fraudulent" pile
Nothing, other than the having to know who is a Republican and who is a Democrat. You would also have to have a lot of people involved in this conspiracy (nationwide) for it to be effective.
Does ACORN (or some allied party) derive some other benefit from having fictitious voters on the rolls?
Perhaps their masters in the New World Order have told ACORN that whoever register the most fake voters wins an extra hour of exercise time in the FEMA camps.
This ACORN conspiracy stuff is rapidly approaching 9/11 truther territory.
The most you can make out of those sour grapes in sour wine.
In Washington, Gregoire was declared the winner by 129 votes when 1500+ votes had been illegally cast in heavily-Democratic King County. A revote was the only ethical option, but it was not done. It is very unlikely that Gregoire received more legitimate votes than Rossi, and (as I've already said) that doesn't seem to bother most of the commenters here.
Depends on whose ox. There is no principle visible here, except for what it takes.
Were the results favoring republicans, we'd sure see some concern.
Not too many depending on how it was done.
The problem right now is because we appear to be taking the fraudulent registrations lightly, we open the door for voter fraud. Fraudulent registrations are easier to catch than actual fraud.
The use of the absentee ballot is a great way to use these registrations. Fill out fake registrations with fake (for the voter), but real addresses, and get your absentee ballot and start voting.
As for multiple registrations by the same person-this could work if they registered in different precincts with different addresses. It could especially work, if you had a registrar willing to overlook them-which takes only one person. Once you are on the roles, and nothing more is required than maybe showing a voter ID card, you can vote away.
The real question is whether this kind of fraud, or if any fraud can change elections. It can, but more likely on a local level than something like the presidential race, but why not try it, if you thought you could get away with it, and even if it didn't change the outcome, should we condone it, since in most cases it wouldn't change anything?
In the end, tolerating or excusing an level of fraud in the registration and voting process is wrong, not so much because candidates will always win when fraud is used, but because it cheapens the process itself and calls into the doubt the legitimacy of the vote.
Better yet, were they all terminated immediately from employment with ACORN upon an internal finding that they had probably submitted bad registrations?
Nick
Our library cards actually have our picture on them. They are actually more secure than our voter registration cards, which are paper and could easily be counter fitted. Shoot the voter registration card doesn't look any different than a business card printed with an official seal on it.
I agree with you as well-that once you have the card in hand, there is very little that is going to keep you from voting and getting caught, and even if your vote became suspect at some point after the voting, it would be next to impossible to actually find you for prosecution. This is one reason why the registration process should be filled with integrity.
ACORN seems to lack the integrity part. The accusations have been rampant for years and it actually seems worse this year than in previous years, which makes me wonder why they haven't changed how they do business if integrity is important.
I don't like defending ACORN because I don't know much about them. They could be an incredibly corrupt organization that is trying to steal the election so there will be an Islamic takeover of the US. But there's nothing I've seen that proves what they are doing is malicious.
On the other hand, the right wing narrative being developed around the election is pretty easy to figure out.
A 7 year old girl is actually registered to vote, because a person that used her name raised her age. Now this little girls is honest and so is her family, and they brought this to the media's attention. However, if her mother was less than honest, she could take a friend from a different precinct along and have her vote with her daughter's card.
Th