Double Voting:
This report out of Atlanta is scary. They find thousands of people who are registered to vote in both Georgia and another state. And several people who have actually voted in more than one state.
One really key concern that this story suggests is the potential for fraud among college students. Because there is no law that requires you to unregister in one state if you register in another, it is very easy to register in a new state and still vote in your old state (leaving aside the ethics of college students voting in a state where they have no plan to establish permanent residency). I really hope that this is not a big problem, but I fear that this hope may be somewhat naive.
Why is that?
several=three; and those people should be prosecuted. you are given the impression this is some kind of massive voter fraud, when it's just three cases out of 112,00. i too am registered in two states, because i just moved. the secretary of state should have been looking at this in advance, as opposed to releasing this the day before the election; unnecessary hysteria.
Seen from outside the US, attempts to disfranchise voters and the lack of paper trails in electronic voting, would appear to be a much greater issue to voter confidence. E.g. these things appears to be much bigger threats to democracy. Especially in those cases where the authorities have been involved - as we saw in the now in-famous fiasco with the purging of Florida voters at the last US Presidential election.
It's not entirely in jest that I sometimes suggest that the EU and the UN sends observers to US elections.
What about me? I just checked Wisconsin's database and I'm still registered at an old address in Milwaukee as well as in my current city. I work and go to school in Milwaukee, so it would be incredibly easy for me to vote twice.
Several = three = three CAUGHT in just a couple hours of looking. How many do you think can be found after a thorough search? Also, it's no proof necessarily that the same actual person voted under that name both times - somebody else could have been voting under their names (which is just as bad of course, but makes prosecution all but impossible)
Actually, it was an entire month of looking, and they examined the entire list of registered voters in GA, FL, and OH.
Am I the only one who finds it telling that Steagles automatically assumes that these double-voters are democrats? There's nothing in the video or in Todd's post indicating a party affiliation...
In fact, the only person in the segment who was caught voting twice was a white male senior citizen with residences in GA and FL. Demographically, the high likelihood is that he is a Republican voter.
Except, of course, that when an individual registers to vote in a new area, that area's registrar is required to send notice to the individual's past domicile informing them to remove that individual from the old domicile's voter rolls. So this may or may not be a problem on the part of, for example, youth college voters with double addresses, but registrars.
Oh for fncks sake. I'm guessing most college students have no idea where they're planning on establishing permanent residency until sometime during their senior year. In the meantime, they spend most of their year in the state where they go to school.
The problem is not fraud but inadequate resources and a lack of coordination between States. Why should this surprise anyone?
When States lack the funds to develop proper voting systems and there is no central data base to check against and the paranoid right and left fight against national ID cards, this is what results
Because we do not allow people to move their vote to wherever they think they'd have the most impact, they must instead vote inside their residency. What defines their residency is open for debate - what should not be open for debate is weather they can "move" their vote to a battleground state.
This wouldn't matter if we didn't use the electoral college, but we do - so gaming the system should be prevented.
You are apparently criticizing the imaginary republicans hiding under your bed, given that none of them in this thread even remotely suggested anything like that.
and why do you ignore voter fraud and focus on voter suppression? you are guilty of the same thing you are implicitly accusing zywicki of. start your own blog and point out the voter suppression.
only 24 more hours until people like you disappear for 3 years. thank god.
perhaps young professors should refrain for the same reason. Bring back the land ownership requirements?
Because there has been a huge outcry about voter fraud, which appears to be a minimal problem, and not much outcry about voter suppression, which appears to be a much larger problem. The point is not that voter fraud should be ignored but rather that attention should be concentrated on the big problem, which is voter suppression.
Actually, the BIG problem is outright counting fraud. When more votes show up than ballots cast, somebody is cheating. When a machine shows 2,000 votes for a candidate at the moment voting starts, somebody is cheating.
Unfortunately, no such mindset seems to apply to our voting system.
Already having 3 persons discovered who may have double voted and gamed the system, with no indication that there is any control to prevent others, indicates a system ripe for exploitation. Whether exploitation has actually occurred is almost beside the point, the fact that the door is open should be the real concern. That the "fraud" was not detected by the systems in place indicate no/poor controls. Detection was dependent on an outside "auditor" (the TV station), and even though detected, the votes have already been recorded and are irretrievable.
Even when voter A has moved and their old registration is still valid in the old polling location there is a problem in that any person aware that voter A moved 6 months ago could cast a vote using voter A's registration, at least in states like Minnesota that require no identification for registered voters. The only chance of detection is that the election judge at the registration book personally knew voter A before he moved.
Minnesota has "motor voter" instant same-day registration. So anyone could cast an absentee ballot at your old location and then register and vote at you new polling place on the day of the election. If you are moving interstate, chances of detection are nil. For that matter, even within the state, I am unaware of any procedure to detect a double vote in a motor vote situation. And even if detected after the fact, both votes will be counted, since the ballot is anonymous.
Either side could exploit these weaknesses. So everyone, on either side, should be interested in closing these internal control holes. That someone might not be interested in closing the hole, only makes me suspect that they are aware of and/or desirous of exploiting the weakness in the control.
I think Congress would have a cow over a corporation with financial controls as poor as we have over our voting franchise.
Gotta reform this state-by state.]
"This report out of Atlanta is scary."
Pull yourself together, son. It'll be ok. Really it will.
That way, when total clowns like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank are sodomizing the economy and whatever else, I get a chance to vote against them. That whole taxation with representation thing.
Plus, if everyone votes everywhere, the multiple voting problem is obviated.
What's not to like?
There are state standards, but if we are going to have local control of voter registration, it is not going to get better.
I--as apparently Michael Hertzberg supra--am gravely concerned that they current system has no controls to actually stop voter fraud. I am not at all convinced that false registrations equate to no false votes. Tens and hundreds of thousands of false registrations cannot be discounted as 'doesn't mean anything'.
The scale of the fraud is immaterial when the very basis of one-person/one-vote is challenged, even in perception.
I think all current voter registrations should be invalidated on Nov. 5, 2008. All citizens who want to vote would have to re-register, providing positive ID. That positive ID (after accounting for the fact that people do move) should be required when a voter goes to actually vote or when requesting an absentee ballot. These IDs should be in a single, national database that can be checked by election officials in all voting precincts in in the US for every national election. Its use in state or local elections is optioned to the states.
I'm certainly willing to take the time to get rid of whoremongers like Dodd and turds like Waxman and Pelosi.
Based on what? What methods do we have for measuring voter fraud or voter suppression?
Tim Robbins Faces Mix-Up at Polling Place
And this is just one of several such stories I've seen.
In general, the current US system seems extremely flawed, and need some kind of overhaul. Unfortunately, fixing the problems (both with double votes and with voter purges) would require some kind of centralized register, which it appears never will go through in the US.
As these three people will probably find out, double dipping on a system that is explicitly indexed on your personal identifying criteria is a really bad idea.
You probably don't deserve to have a real congressman like Waxman.