Liberals insist that a) there is no voter fraud in America, and b) anti-fraud measures are really intended to suppress the votes of the poor, the elderly, and the more vulnerable members of our society. Well, tell that to the voters of Troy, N.Y.
A Democratic county elections commissioner and former city councilman are on trial for absentee-ballot fraud. Four other Democrats have already pleaded guilty in the case. The ongoing ballot-fraud trial shows that the real victims of voter fraud are all too often the poor, the elderly and the more vulnerable members of our society.
The trial is now in its third week. So far, prosecutors have presented 46 witnesses who have testified that their ballots were stolen. Who are these victims? According to the Times Union, they “have included public housing residents, college students, the semi-literate, a deaf man, the chronically ill and non-English speakers.”
Sounds a lot like vulnerable members of society, no?
All of them had ballots cast in their names in the 2009 Working Families party primary.
But pay no attention to this story. According to the New York Times, there is no such thing as voter fraud in the United States. After all, Troy is at least 150 miles outside of Midtown.
Oh, but how could those voters be victims? After all, their votes were cast the correct way, weren't they? Saved them time and effort, and avoided the possibility of mistakes.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSurely it's worth asking, however, how much any cure costs versus the disease's costs? It's not disputed that restrictions and governmental red tape (heck, any government action) which slows voting should be monitored for impact. If we raise barriers to voting such that we prevent 10 false ballots but bar 10000 legitimate ones, that wouldn't be acceptable, so it's still a fair question to look at each such proposal and analyze what the true costs will be. Costs matters as much as benefit, right? In these times of governmental spending, isn't that the lesson we have to apply to everything?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's not that voter fraud never happens. It's a big country, *everything* happens, at least occasionally. But conservatives are introducing voter ID laws under the ruse that voter fraud is a big problem, when actually it's exceedingly rare. The real purpose of voter ID laws is to suppress legitimate voter turnout among people without ID, who tend to vote Democratic.
I actually think voter ID is a good idea. Maybe we should make ID easier to get and less associated with driving. But intentionally suppressing legitimate voters is vile.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJason, the same poor who do not need an id to buy liquor, cigarettes, cold medicine, fly on a plane, or do any of a thousand other things id cards are required for. This claim that the poor and disadvantaged do not have id cards and thus would be discriminated against when trying to vote is pathetic.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere's a couple of significant problems with your assertion Jason; there's absolutely no proof that a) voter id laws have "suppressed" voter turnout much less that you can prove b) the "real" purpose of is to suppress the votes of those who tend to vote Democratic.
I don't want ANYONE to vote that is so freaking lazy as to not be able to a) REGISTER in a timely manner (like an ADULT) or b) who can't be BOTHERED with helping to maximize the integrity of the voting process. I don't care what their politics are, if you're too disinterested in bothering to get yourself in a position to responsibly exercise the most important duty as a free citizen then you SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO VOTE.
Do you belong to a club or an organization which invites totally disinterested parties to vote on your rules, representatives, board of directors or plans? That would be cosmically stupid, wouldn't it? To invite the utterly uninvolved to participate in an election involving an organization important to you is the height of folly, is it not?
Somehow the reasonable idea that "everybody should vote" has morphed into "everybody not only must vote but they have to be given every conceivable accommodation regardless of their lack of taking any personal responsibility in the matter". The former is a worthy goal, the later is a stupid effort.
In fact, you'll likely get more (if not better) participation by raising the standards of voting and registration. Why? Because that will make the process "special". As it is now, liberals want to be able to drag anyone they can into any voting area, no questions asked, and allow them to vote. Heck, even if they were eligible voters is this any sensible way to elect people? Dragging the massively disinterested, least informed and most easily swayed by cheap election stunts and last minute demagoguery? That's insane.....even for liberals.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseVoting is a right. Even people who can't figure out a simple commenting system should be able to vote.
Voter registration isn't a test of someone's aptitude or fortitude, it's a necessary evil. If it can made simpler it should be. There's nothing inherently wrong with same day registration.
And if you look at the history of elections in this country, "dragging the massively disinterested, least informed and most easily swayed by cheap election stunts and last minute demagoguery" is not new. George Washington bought alcohol for every voter in his House of Burgesses district.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere's nothing inherently wrong with same day registration.
Other than the fact that there's absolutely no way to check whether the person is already registered in three other nearby locations, no, there isn't.
You want to buy a gun today? Sorry - three-day waiting period while a background check is done. You want to buy a house today? Sorry, you need a credit check - we'll get back to you. You want a job today? Sorry, your employer (in many cases) has to do an e-verify check to make sure you're a citizen.
You want to register to vote today so you can participate in making decisions that will affect the entire country, the entire world, and generations yet unborn? No problem! No ID? No problem! Here, let us fill out that absentee ballot for you!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is possible to check whether someone is registered somewhere else. Computers exist now. The registration process is cumbersome because it was designed before networked computers became ubiquitous. That's fine, but let's not pretend it was designed to be cumbersome on purpose to discourage lazy people from voting, because that's not true. That's like claiming DMV lines are long to discourage lazy people from driving.
The task of managing a list of people registered to vote is not as challenging as it used to be. Voter registration should be getting easier and less burdensome on the people government serves.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo Jason you are suggesting that poll workers--who are almost always volunteers who do this every 2-4 years as a sort of neighborhood social club and have limited training and are, since they have to be there all day, usually elderly or unemployed themselves are supposed to magically learn some super-computerized system and then, under the pressure of the situation with ZERO badge-or-gun authority, tell a voter who, of course, KNOWS they are breaking the law and registered elsewhere already, to please take a hike?
And the alternative? A full-time paid-with-pension-and-benefit elections staff on the public payroll with such training and the authority to enforce, potentially under threat of violence, this registration system you envision? Are you ready to pay for that? We already have sicko teachers sitting in offices getting paid for managing their portfolios--do you want thousands upon thousands of such "workers" instead of simply suggesting that people who choose to exercise their right to vote follow a simple, free procedure and register once and in advance?
Try again. And keep on coming up with excuses to avoid sensible procedures to limit fraud and abuse that go further than the failed ones being used now, please? "It is rare" won't work. "It can be done with computers" won't work. I'm expecting a Clintonian "everybody does it" next, shortly to be followed by an "Its Bush's fault."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is possible to check whether someone is registered somewhere else.
But it is not impossible to check whether someone is registered everywhere else. How many voter precincts are there in the city where you live? And how many cities in that state? You're going to check every single precinct in the state on election day, to make sure the person trying to register isn't registered somewhere else? Good luck with that. And that's not getting into the time, effort, and expense of dealing with thousands of "provisional" ballots after election day. All because some feckless, lazy, apathetic wastes of oxygen can't be bothered to go to the minimal trouble of proving their identities.
A statewide voter photo registration card would go a long way toward reducing the problem. Election day registration is an invitation to rampant fraud - which is how Democrats somehow win so many close elections, and is why they so strongly oppose voter ID laws.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNote to self: Proofread before posting. First sentence above should read, "But it is not possible to check whether someone is registered everywhere else.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI won't dispute that a same day registration system is possible and possibly good.
Will you in turn acknowledge that such a system will require decent proof of identity and address as well as a validation period prior to accepting the ballot to reduce the possibility of fraud? (Otherwise, I just get register repeatedly as a multiple new residents to multiple addresses in different wards/precincts).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseVoting illegally is not a right.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd your evidence of these claims is what exactly? Since when is it hard or expensive to get an ID?
The only actual attempts to surpress votes is the democrats doing everything possible to get military ballots delayed or excluded each election cycle.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere's a couple of significant problems with your assertion Jason; there's absolutely no proof that a) voter id laws have "suppressed" voter turnout much less that you can prove b) the "real" purpose of is to suppress the votes of those who tend to vote Democratic.
I don't want ANYONE to vote that is so freaking lazy as to not be able to a) REGISTER in a timely manner (like an ADULT) or b) who can't be BOTHERED with helping to maximize the integrity of the voting process. I don't care what their politics are, if you're too disinterested in bothering to get yourself in a position to responsibly exercise the most important duty as a free citizen then you SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO VOTE.
Do you belong to a club or an organization which invites totally disinterested parties to vote on your rules, representatives, board of directors or plans? That would be cosmically stupid, wouldn't it? To invite the utterly uninvolved to participate in an election involving an organization important to you is the height of folly, is it not?
Somehow the reasonable idea that "everybody should vote" has morphed into "everybody not only must vote but they have to be given every conceivable accommodation regardless of their lack of taking any personal responsibility in the matter". The former is a worthy goal, the later is a stupid effort.
In fact, you'll likely get more (if not better) participation by raising the standards of voting and registration. Why? Because that will make the process "special". As it is now, liberals want to be able to drag anyone they can into any voting area, no questions asked, and allow them to vote. Heck, even if they were eligible voters is this any sensible way to elect people? Dragging the massively disinterested, least informed and most easily swayed by cheap election stunts and last minute demagoguery? That's insane.....even for liberals.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn every state that I'm aware that requires a state-issued ID to vote, that same state provides ID's at no cost (well at taxpayer expense) at the DMV or some other similar institution.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs compared to the total population, MURDER Is "rare" too. Do you want to get rid of the laws and protections against it because it isn't statistically relevant to your level of interest?
My thought, even if it is as rare as you assert (which I dispute--without laws and codified means of tracking it, how can we know that and how can we trust those monitors that do exist that say it is rare?) then I have a simple goal for us all: Make it even RARER. What's wrong with that?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn absence of voter ID laws, we do have no way of knowing the extent of fraud. It would be like asking police to wear blindfolds and then saying there's no problem with crime because the cops never see any.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseConsidering how hard the crime is to prove, how do you know it's rare?
There have been many studies that actually prove that voter ID laws do not suppress turnout.
I suspect the main reason why liberals are so upset about voter ID laws is that they are lying when they say that fraud is rare.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAh, but don't you know? The Pew research people, who just released a study (I had to put it on a wire page last night), say that most such discrepancies (and they count in the many millions across the country) are mostly because of outdated equipment, etc. One of these discrepancies is that an estimated 1.8 million dead people are still on the voter rolls. It doesn't take a genius to grab a name of a recently departed from the newspaper and go vote in that person's name. The AP story pretty much implied that it was not a big deal and not evidence of rampant voter fraud. I'm sure the timing of this story is no coincidence either. How long does it take a clerk in an office (at government salary) to once a week (even in the biggest cities) go through the voter rolls and take the dead off? They've been getting away with this for decades. Outdated voter rolls are convenient for the folks who count on them to get elected. I grew up in the city famous for it (Chicago). What these stories do not say is this: For every tainted vote that's cast (whether a mere "discrepancy" or because of deliberate fraud), it negates a legitimate vote. My vote, your vote, your neighbor's vote.
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