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Voter Fraud? No, Voter Suppression
Both issues have been studied. Only one is an actual problem, but it's not getting the attention.
Why are we hearing so much about voter fraud and so little about election fraud? After all, the odds of someone voting fraudulently are about the same as those of an American being struck and killed by lightning.
A microscopic evaluation of election data in the 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington state revealed that voter fraud occurred approximately 0.0009 percent of the time. An analysis of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio revealed a voter fraud rate of 0.00004 percent.
In 1998, Allan J. Lichtman, a consultant on voting rights, was asked by the state of Maryland to investigate charges that the Republican candidate for governor lost because of some 6,000 fraudulent votes. He writes that he found "not a single fraudulent vote [among] the 1.4 million ballots cast in the election."
A 2007 experts' report to the federal Election Assistance Commission concluded that "false registration forms have not resulted in polling place fraud." The Department of Justice, which according to the attorney general has "made enforcement of election fraud and corruption offenses a top priority," convicted only 24 people between 2002 and 2005 for voting fraud, an average of eight people a year. And these convictions were of individuals guilty of themselves casting illegal votes, not of instigating widespread voting fraud.
On the other hand, evidence of what I will somewhat imprecisely call election fraud -- voter suppression by election officials and state governments -- is widespread and validated. "Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law," the New York Times recently concluded after its own investigation. The Times' numbers don't include efforts by state officials and private parties to discourage, intimidate or challenge eligible voters.
This is the type of voter fraud we should be hearing about. Why aren't we? The principal reason may be explained in the title of one of the best reports on the subject, "The Politics of Voter Fraud" by Barnard Professor Lorraine C. Minnite.
Expanded voter rolls tend to favor Democrats. One reason is that voter-registration drives are usually conducted in minority and low-income neighborhoods and on campuses, areas that are likely to vote Democratic. Voter-suppression efforts, on the other hand, tend to favor Republicans because minorities, poor families and students will be least likely to overcome the new obstacles put in place.
Is this why in the third presidential debate, John McCain accused ACORN of being involved in voter fraud so massive that it "may be destroying the fabric of democracy" while not saying anything during his entire campaign about the far greater threat from widespread voter purging and voter-suppression initiatives?
Is this why the Department of Justice has rapidly launched a national investigation of ACORN, the nation's largest grass-roots organization advocating for low- and moderate-income families, but has not begun to investigate the illegal activities by states and private parties to reduce voting turnout?
Raising the fear of individual voter fraud brings a short-term and a long-term advantage to those who would reduce the turnout of the disadvantaged and dispossessed. In the short term, it hobbles registration and turnout efforts. In the longer term, it helps to persuade state legislatures to pass laws that make it more difficult to vote.
Such was the case in Florida. In 2004, Florida Republicans accused ACORN of massive voter fraud. The publicity given that charge and the ensuing investigation was as ubiquitous as the publicity now being given to attacks on ACORN. A Florida court found ACORN innocent of all charges. But in the meantime, the Florida legislature passed a law imposing stiff penalties for organizations that fail to turn in voter-registration applications later than 10 days after they were collected. The law's reporting requirements were so draconian the League of Women Voters ended 77 years of voter-registration activity in the state because it feared it could not comply and would be bankrupted if there were problems. (A federal judge later blocked the implementation of the law as unconstitutional.)
The fear of voter fraud has resulted in states enacting burdensome and unnecessary photo ID laws for voting and in a federal law that allows voters to be challenged when their registration data deviates in even a small way from federal databanks (for example, one set of data including a middle initial when the other doesn't).
Republicans have seeded, then inflamed our fears of bottom-up voter fraud, even though voter fraud is a trivial problem and has never had an impact on the outcome of elections. And that fear has tragically diverted our attention from the real enemy: top-down voter suppression initiatives that have indeed determined elections and are truly a threat to the fabric of democracy.
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Show AllHow about a mention of how 12 Pennsylvania Democrats are facing criminal charges for illegal use of public funds in removing Nader from the '04 ballot? It's not as if the GOP has a stranglehold on vote suppression!
Whenever folks don't want to talk about a big problem, they bring up "what about...?"
I think, in this case, it is more of a rebellion against CD's increasingly narrow "issue spectrum" -especially in the "editorials".
The good news here is that the MSM is widely covering these issues BEFORE the Election. That, and Obama's wide -and widely publicized- "lead" should prevent GOP shennanigans from altering the likely outcome this year.
The bad news is that even though folks should be reassured by this coverage, they seem MORE worried than in the past. This effectively demonstrates how completely in the thrall of TVed information many have become.
Of course, the much more subtle and effective manipulation that has lead to this "likely outcome" seems to go entirely unnoticed.
But that's not "news" at all anymore, is it?
Correct, sir. Voter suppression is apparently a problem when Democrat votes are suppressed, but when the majority of the commenters on this board have serious struggles accessing their candidates of choice..? Nary a peep.
So true NYCartist. And in response to quizmasterchris - While keeping third party candidates out of debates and off ballots is bad, and needs to be changed, causing millions of Americans to be purged from voter rolls is criminal. Just ask yourself how you'd feel if you suddenly learned you'd been purged.
Actually in 2004 the Democrats' actions WERE criminal and I WAS disenfranchized. I don't have to "imagine" anything.
You know, you could try running a local Independent similar to Nader for a change. That would be the first step towards overcoming disenfranchisement. Nader's trying to run an individualist campaign and it's failing. It takes long term planning and infrastructure to win regardless of party. The conservatives started in the mid 1960s and by 1968, Nixon came out on top. Maybe Ralph Nader could have tried putting some team work together for the past 8 years and he wouldn't be in nowhere land today. Too bad he's pissed off his potential supporters.
What should be amazing to people is the failure of Democrats to make this an issue. There was Gore in 2000, who asked for a partial recount in Florida. But the FULL recount by the NY Times showed that Gore won. Yet he rolled over and played dead. Then there's Ohio in 2004. Again, massive eleciton fraud, a Republican Sec of State who promised to "deliver Ohio" to Bush and the president of Diebold, one of the main voting machine companies, who promised to "deliver votes" to Bush. Yet Kerry rolls over an plays dead. Now there are stories of voter purges around the country.
My conclusion is that the Democrats, at least the leadership, doesn't represent a separate party at all. Their primary goal isn't to win, certainly not to make any changes to the status quo, but to give the APPEARANCE that voters actually have schoice when, in fact, they don't.
A while ago I found some rotten wood under the deck in my house. On the outside, it looked fine. But if you poked it, it just crumbled. That's how I see the Democratic Party -- rotten to the core.
Absolutely.
I have said for some time that the useless and worthless Bush-accomplice DEAD Democratic Party is quite comfortable where they are. They are quite comfortable serving as Bush-accomplices and they will do the same for McCain or Obama when one of them is selected by these vote-flipping fraudulent electronic voting machines. The article below talks about what faux Dem "leaders" are saying. The status quo will continue:
One week until the US elections
28 October 2008
With only one week remaining before Election Day, the opinion polls indicate that Barack Obama and the Democratic Party will likely register a substantial victory. In addition to gaining control of the White House, the Democrats stand to increase their majorities in both houses of Congress, possibly obtaining the 60-40 margin in the Senate required to end filibusters and force a floor vote on legislative proposals.
Predictably, Democratic leaders are already issuing excuses as to why a lopsided Democratic victory should not be interpreted as a mandate for a significant change of policy in an Obama administration, and why no such change will be forthcoming.
As the New York Times observed in a front-page article Sunday on the implications of a sizeable Democratic victory, popular expectations of immediate action on health care, home foreclosures, jobs and other social issues “could be difficult to meet even with enhanced numbers in the Senate as well as the House.”
The Times noted: “The nature of the Democratic majority, expanded partly through the election of centrists and even conservatives, would also temper Democratic zeal to pursue an overly ideological agenda, Democrats said.”
The newspaper quoted a series of Democratic Party leaders warning against “overreaching” and urging a cautious legislative agenda. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland told the Times, “We are going to get new members with a clear understanding that the reason they won is appealing to independents and disaffected Republicans, and they are going to want to continue to do that.”
The most significant feature of the elections is that the entire campaign has been overtaken by an economic crisis which neither party anticipated. The response of both candidates, apart from some campaign theatrics, has been identical. For all the mud-slinging, once issues critical to the class interests of the American ruling elite emerged, Obama and his Republican opponent John McCain joined in endorsing, over popular opposition, a multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks.
What will an Obama victory mean? It will not be long before the campaign platitudes about “hope” and “change” and the “fierce urgency of now” will be exposed for what they are. The American people will confront an administration committed to relentlessly pursuing the interests of American imperialism at home and abroad. It will become apparent that the chief difference between Obama and Bush is not the right-wing character of their policies, but the skill with which these policies are carried out.
Even as the final stretch of the campaign unfolds, and in the midst of an economic crisis widely acknowledged to be the deepest since the Great Depression, American imperialism continues its bloody rampage, with missile strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan and incursions into Syria. The entire election is an expression of the bankruptcy of the existing political set-up and the failure of American democracy.
Once again, as in 2002, 2004 and 2006, the massive popular opposition to the militaristic and anti-democratic policies of the Bush administration can find no genuine expression within the framework of the two-party system, and the basic policies of war and social reaction will continue regardless of the outcome of an election.
For all of Obama’s demagogy about “bringing the country together” and uniting rich and poor, it will rapidly be shown that he, no less than Bush, is a political representative of the financial aristocracy.
The fundamental lesson that must be drawn is this: The American working class confronts the necessity of breaking free of the Democratic Party and the entire framework of capitalist politics. The only alternative to growing social misery and ever more violent eruptions of militarism is the development of an independent political movement of the working class in opposition to the existing economic and political order and based on a program for genuine democracy and social equality—that is, a socialist program.
The Socialist Equality Party has intervened in the elections, running Jerry White for president and Bill Van Auken for vice president, for one essential purpose: to clarify the fundamental class issues and lay the basis for the political struggles of the working class that will develop in the aftermath of the vote.
Barry Grey
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/pers-o28.shtml
[Ed. Notice, no word in this article here about stolen "elections" or fraudulent voting machines. It's rarely, if ever, talked about...anywhere.]
I just can't resist repeating the story told by Henry Drummond, the character based on Clarence Darrow, in "Inherit the Wind":
__________________________________________________
That was the name of my first long shot. Golden Dancer. She was in the big side window of the general store in Wakeman, Ohio. I used to stand out in the street and say to myself, "If I had Golden Dancer I'd have everything in the world that I wanted."
I was seven years old, and a very fine judge of rocking horses.
Golden Dancer had a bright red mane, blue eyes, and she was gold all over, with purple spots. When the sun hit her stirrups, she was a dazzling sight to see.
But she was a week's wages for my father. So Golden Dancer and I always had a plate glass window between us.
But-- let's see, it wasn't Christmas; must've been my birthday-- I woke up in the morning and there was Golden Dancer at the foot of my bed! Ma had skimped on the groceries, and my father'd worked nights for a month.
I jumped into the saddle and started to rock-- And it BROKE! It split in two! The wood was rotten, the whole thing was put together with spit and sealing wax! All shine, and no substance!
Bert, whenever you see something bright, shining, perfect-seeming-- all gold, with purple spots-- look behind the paint!
And if it's a lie-- show it up for what it really is!
That's some awesome memory you've got, LB. (my favorite movie, btw).
I liked the Menken character the best, but his comments would be more appropriate over on the "dumb white male" thread.
From my experience on many so-called "progressive" websites, consistently when the topic of stolen "election," or voting machines or election fraud is raised, there is little or no interest in any of these topics whatsoever from most so-called "progressives." Silence is the response. I have noticed this consistently. Most so-called "progressives" seem to want to live under the illusion that we have fair, honest and legitimate elections. Their Denial makes them more comfortable and "hopeful" when they think that. Even most people who write articles never mention anything about these vote-flipping, easily-hackable, riggable Repug-owned and controlled electronic voting machines. They write articles as if our election system is completely honest and legit. Bull shit.
I bring this topic up as often as I can. Most people who comment choose to live in Denial about electronic voting machines and election fraud, so the threads on those topics are usually rather bare with comments.
It's as if most people don't want to think about it. They want so hard to believe that the "election" will run legitimately. Yeah. Yet we saw the last two presidential selections of 2000 and 2004 stolen, so why on Earth would anyone think that 2008 (if there is one) would be any different when our voting system is unchanged? And it doesn't matter what polls show. Polls will just be dismissed as "wrong" regardless of which candidate the poll showed would "win" after one of these pieces of pro-war corporate trash is selected by the vote-flipping electronic voting machines next Tuesday...or thereafter.
Has anyone polled Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia, Hart Intercivic or the central tabulator? They are the ONLY polls that matter.
THESE DAMNABLE MACHINES BELONG IN THE GARBAGE! WE SHOULD BE VOTING WITH PAPER AND PEN WITH THE VOTES COUNTED IN FULL PUBLIC VIEW. PERIOD.
WVA Vote Flipping Caught on Tape!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q9NSVUu8nk
Here's a video of a man speaking about his vote being flipped in West Virginia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NJO8RhRl2E
Early Voting Sees Reports of Voter Intimidation, Machine Malfunctions
(Interview with Mark Crispin Miller begins after newscast)
"Early voting has begun, and problems are already emerging at the polls. In West Virginia, voters using touchscreen machines have claimed their votes were switched from Democrat to Republican. In North Carolina, a group of McCain supporters heckled a group of mostly black supporters of Barack Obama. In Ohio, Republicans are being accused of trying to scare newly registered voters by filing lawsuits that question their eligibility. We speak to NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller, author of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy."
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/22/votes
Thanks for the links.
You're welcome.
Check out Wikipedia's page on Voter Registration - don't miss the links to Election Day Registration (Same Day Registration.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_registration
Same day registration is also known as Election Day Registration. Seven states in the US do not require advance registration, instead allowing voters to register when they arrive at the polls or, in the case of North Dakota, eliminating the registration step altogether. Five of these seven rank highest in the nation in voter turnout.
If an Obama administration and a Democrat controlled congress were to fail to make progress on this issue in the near term it would be an unmistakable sign of a lack of commitment to reform and "change."
Isn't this a perfect time for the movie "Stealing America" to be shown?
If the movie "Stealing America" was shown on the TV movie channels in this last week of the election campaign, it would get a lot of viewers, raising the TV channel's ratings.
That is only one reason to show it now, other than it being utterly topical!! But, on my movie channels at least, they are not showing it, and we might assume that there are higher powers at work in that decision. The movie was certainly a damning portrayal of how the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen.
Also, as was pointed out, the mistakes are almost allways favoring the Republicans ; the law of averages isn't in play. Sounds guilty.
I think that Obama is trying to beat the GOP at this game by encouraging people to vote early, and that early voting is going to help reduce voter suppression.
"Democracy Now" is broadcast locally at 6:00PM, so I've just been listening to Amy interviewing Harvey Wasserman of Free Press and Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog about various grievous deficiencies in the voting process. They both sharply questioned the Democratic Party's failure to embrace the issue of the security and reliability of the voting process.
It's interesting that, while they criticized the Democrats' apparent apathy or complacency, they were unable to come up with a rationale for this curious inertia-- apart from the suggestion that the Democrats are so confident that Obama will win in a landslide that there's no PRACTICAL reason for devoting resources to "quibbles" over voting irregularities.
This is the worst time to be blathering on about this cursed duopoly; when Amerika is approaching Amok Time, deep in the presidential-election rut, the competition-lust becomes overwhelming. It's like the final act of "Rhinoceros". But in a calmer, less disturbed season, one might consider that this peculiar and seemingly inexplicable attitude by the Democrats is perfectly consistent with the view that in a duopoly, the parties are superficially adversarial, but on a deeper level are symbionts-- a pair of interdependent organisms who must work together to maintain a balance favorable for both.
Gee, holding still for all of these shenanigans... you don't think that it's because the folks in the smoke-free back room have reason to believe that political power is not necessarily created and controlled by votes?
And that they have already agreed what the outcome will be?
What exactly is the likely outcome of all these REPORTS of early voting problems?
A huge and unprecedented and in the open theft for McCain?
Or a big -fear based- push for Obama in the 'burbs where these sorts of issues are less of a problem?
I'm much more concerned about votes being hacked or flipped from deliberately defective Diebold voting machines than votes being suppressed.
Rather than talking about individuals being disenfranchised by dirty politics, to me the real issue are righteous political hackers rendering the whole idea of 'free' elections moot. I want my vote to count, not be hijacked by a computer savvy person with a political agenda. Why doesn't the USA follow the rules for basic voter oversight required by the UN for even third world regimes? One of those rules is a required paper trail, so fraud is harder to commit.
History shows your concerns to be exactly inverted.
But rest assured, Obama is the selected choice.
History shows me right on the money. Every time votes are counted behind smoke and mirrors, they result in what the person counting them wants.
Computer voting is merely a new spin on the age old trick of turning black pebbles into white ones with sleight of mind and fast talking.
How about a ballot with instructions that first say,
"C. The Outer Return Envelope. 1. Write your name and address in the space provided at the upper left. 2. Insert Inner Return Envelope B. containing your completed ballot, into Outer Return Envelope C; seal Envelope C. USE ONLY YOUR OWN OUTER RETURN ENVELOPE C OR YOUR BALLOT WILL BE INVALIDATED."
So seal the ballot in before you go on to tell me in small print 2 pages later that, "ADDITIONAL IDENTIFICATION If you were registered to vote the first time by mail on or after January 1, 2004 and did not provide identification with your voter registration application and your are voting for the first time by using this absentee ballot, you will need to provide identification with this ballot when you return it to your town. You may provide a photo copy of your current and valid ... driver's license, a copy of a utility bill, bank statement, pay check, government check or other government document that shows your name and address."
Hmm, I sealed that ballot according to instructions 2 pages ago, and now you tell me I have to insert a copy of my license and I am not sure, a piece of mail or is it "or" a piece of mail. And why tell me to seal it, then explain a lot of information about how to handle the ballot and then tell me, hey, you shouldn't have sealed that. I sent my ballot in , no license, but it was my only ballot and I voted, I have no interest in voting more than once, I am feeling a little disenfranchised though.
Here's a suggestion:
When someone is caught attempting to suppress voters, that individual's candidate loses a number of votes equal to the number that he attempted to suppress. (The Supreme Court ruled that citizens have no right to have their votes counted, so there should be no legal obstacle to this moderate reform.)
--
Dan Clore
Smygo: News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Eyrie of the Arch-Anarch:
http://www.nolanchart.com/author341.html
Seeing as we are all told to join the military to fight and kill to get and keep the vote, killing a person who prevents your vote from being counted should be justifiable homicide.
All we need is one juror to think that way and this vote suppression idea would lose it's charm.
One of the eternal struggles of any republic is the determination of who is eligible to cast a ballot (the first half of Roman history was consumed by this). Thus it is automatic that any group where morals are at a premium will do almost anything they can get away with to tilt the election in their favor. This goes back to one of Plato's central points: in order for a republic to function properly, there has to be an involved and informed citizenry.
As for those on this board who bemoan what has happened to third party candidates: work to change the electoral system in this country so that it is no longer a first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system. Complaining here is easy, doing something about in the real world is hard, so I have serious doubts anyone here will do anything.
Hey that's good idea! Now I will try to change the system. Until you typed that it hadn't occurred to me, I was just going to complain on CommonDreams.org and I thought maybe that would set things right.
Voter fraud has also been committed by ACORN. ACORN is a slightly nutty organization. ACORN, a community organization group, founded by Wade Rathke, has started an empire of community activism that do things like pressure banks to make risky subprime loans and make them through its Self-Help bank partner, commit voter fraud, bully unions and get money from them, and they also commit acts that makes them guilty of rank hypocrisy. They’ve actually tried every method possible to pay their employees less than minimum wage, if at all. It doesn’t sound odd that an organization that wants higher wages for poor people to not pay their employees, does it? This ACORN fell a long way from the common sense tree.