Voter fraud is a myth

I'm going to make two claims, and offer proof of each:

1. Voter fraud does not occur in large enough numbers to affect presidential elections, and, as such, Voter ID laws are a fix in search of a problem.

2 Republican voter suppression methods do in fact result in more than enough votes suppressed to affect outcomes far more than fraud occurs

There are instances of fraud. But, the thing is, it's rare. It just doesn't happen, in study after study, in court cases after court cases where proponents of Voter ID legislation were sued, that the courts found for the plaintiffs, that the state failed to demonstrate there was sufficient fraud to justify the law.

As for voter fraud, it's really a myth, because in study after study, in court opinion after court opinion, no evidence voter fraud any where near a scale which would be required to affect the outcome of a election, has ever been found.

Republicans argue about 'integrity of elections', but let us be clear, when it comes to integrity, with republicans, integrity is in short supply.

So, as the studies show ( scroll down ) there is little fraud, but there is a lot of voter suppression

In the film "Rigged, the Voter Suppression Playbook" several voter suppression techniques are exposed, with evidence, with testimonies of Republican operatives shamelessly admitting their techniques, all of which were implemented to counter the rising demographic of non-white voters in America.

This film provides incontrovertible evidence that republicans are implementing voter suppression methods on a massive scale which affects the outcomes of elections. The operative word here is 'incontrovertible'. If something is true, one cannot claim bias, facts are facts, truth is truth.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07P76KK1S/ref=atv_dl_rdr?autoplay=1

caveat, the film has advertisements, but no more than your average movie on cable.

If you can't watch the film, some salient segments, which are allowed per copyright law ( for educational purposes ) are provided below

The plays or techniques revealed (the following steps do not list every playbook method in the film, and numbers loosely correspond ).

1. Project Redmap. This was the flooding on hitherto unseen amounts of cash, a consortium of 400 super rich folks, headed by the Koch Brothers, to smear democratic candidates and flip state legislatures. For example, in North Carolina in the 2010 race, Margaret Dickson ran against a republican and the Koch Brother's flooded airwaves implying Dickson was a prostitute, a complete fabrication, and she lost by a narrow margin. This was typical of the kinds of tactics republicans and the rich folks were doing, largely because the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights act.

2. Gerrymandering. 'Pack and Crack' the districts.

Cracking means to split a minority sector into red dominated districts such that their votes will not be in the majority.

Packing means that to concentrate as much of minority sectors into as few districts as possible, such that, in the House, there will be more republicans in represented than democrats for the same number of persons in the electorate.

The result of the Koch Brothers and their cronies pumping a few billion bucks in the 2010 state races employing dubious unethical methods, resulted in republicans controlling state legislatures. From there, they were able to gerrymander those districts such that in order for a democrat to win, they would need something like 10% or more votes than a republican.
Republicans love to tout their win as the 'will of the people' but the simple fact is that more people cast ballots for democrats than republicans in the last decade or so, and the only way republicans can win is if they cheat, and cheat, they do.

3, Voter restriction laws. State legislatures imposing Voter ID laws, putting as mny hurdles in the path of voters as possible, which republicans know will have a greater impact on minorities than on whites. But, as demonstrated above, voter fraud, the rationale for the ID requirement, is to prevent voter fraud. But, in point of fact, it results in far fewer democrats being allowed to vote than any fraudulent activity it was allegedly designed to prevent.
In Wisconsin, for example, there are about *300,000 potential voters who lack ID.

Of those, how many are fraudulent? Maybe one, two, tops. so, what republicans do is hope that if they put enough hurdles in front of these voters who lack ID, that they will give up and not bother with voting, and the are right.

but the number of votes they suppressed vastly outnumbers the potential case for fraud, of which, and again, there is little evidence for.

There are Snopes and Politifact statements that, while some are claiming Wisconsin 'turned away 300,000 voters' as unproven and/or false, that is not the point I'm making. If that many people didn't have voter ID ( and that's what the *estimates are we can presume a good number of them were unable to acquire their state approved voter ID, which is corroborated by this statement from Milwaukee Elections Commission Director, Neil Albrecht, says the city had almost 41,000 fewer people vote this week compared to 2012. Trump won Wisconsin by the narrow margin of 22,748 votes. Had there been no voter suppression in Wisconsin, Hillary would have won this state. This begs the question, what about the 2 other swing states that decided the election?

Here we have republican politicians shamelessly admitting the real reason for Voter ID, not for 'voter integrity' but to 'help republicans' ( because if fewer people vote, they have a better chance at winning ).



4. Gut the voting rights act. The Voting Rights Act, LBJ's bill that he got passed, insured that all the shenanigans states were doing to unethically affect election outcomes would now be illegal. Now then, it was assumed that most states would abide by the law and not try any longer to do such things, but given that the shenanigans were especially prevalent in the South, the VRA specifically required southerns states that if they were going ot pass voting legislation, he had to be cleared with Congress first. Republicans brought a suit, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby_County_v._Holder Shelby County v Holder, which accomplished this.

Now, the southerns states were free to enact all sorts of discriminatory legislation, which, before the ink on the law dried, is precisely what they did, and this is why there are, all of the sudden, so many Voter ID laws happening across america in red states.



5 Voter Fraud, as the studies show, this is clearly a myth. The strategy is to gin up fraud allegations to justify Voter ID laws. (These are not in the film, I've added them here )

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...le-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/
https://votingrights.news21.com/article/election-fraud/
https://votingwars.news21.com/voter-fraud-is-not-a-persistent-problem/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ts-cast-in-the-2016-election-were-fraudulent/
http://www.projectvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/Politics_of_Voter_Fraud_Final.pdf
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/elj.2013.0231
https://www.gao.gov/assets/670/665966.pdf
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/29/the-voter-fraud-myth
https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/facpubs/2165/
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/analysis-noncitizen-voting-vanishingly-rare

Court opinion: “only two convictions for in-person voter impersonation fraud out of 20
million votes cast in the decade” before Texas passed its law.
https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legal-work/2016.07.20_En Banc Opinion.pdf

Court opinion: “failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing inperson voter fraud in North Carolina.”
http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/nc-4th.pdf

Court opinion: “that impersonation fraud — the type of fraud that voter ID is designed to prevent — is extremely rare” and “a truly isolated phenomenon that has not posed a significant threat to the integrity of Wisconsin’s elections.”
https://www.aclu.org/legal-document...=legal-document/frank-v-walker-motion-granted

Supreme Court opinion: “contains no evidence of any [in-person voter impersonation] fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history.” They upheld, but later, after the ruling, they stated they regretted their ruling.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-21.ZO.html

6. Voter roll purges. The film has it's own revelations about purging, which is a many faceted thing done by Republicans which supplement the additional items I'm providing here:

"Interstate Crossheck" purged 1.1 million voters from the registration rolls, which as a program designed by Kris Kobach, the former Secretary of State for Kansas, AKA "The Voter Supression King'.

https://www.gregpalast.com/election-stolen-heres/

The "Interstate Crosscheck," program, was flawed to purge minorities disporportionally, from voter registrations rolls, is suspended
https://www.usnews.com/news/politic...oter-database-suspended-in-lawsuit-settlement

The complete and detail research about Interstate Crosscheck is illuminated in the film 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" by Greg Palast ( The Guardian, Rolling Stone ) which is free on Amazon Prime. which clearly explains what it did, how insidious it was, but the film has a lot more about the Koch Bros, and their sinister shenanigans.

Now that IC is no longer allowed, republicans are relying more and more on voter caging:
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/guide-voter-caging

In an Aug. 13 memo the court made public today, Kris Wolfe, the RNC Midwest political director, wrote Lanny Griffith, RNC southern political director, and said of the Louisiana campaigning:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...culated/ed2bcf92-b3ee-4b6c-96ce-cd18ea471727/

More info:
http://www.projectvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Caging_Democracy_Report.pdf

7 Voter intimidation. (reference see the film "Rigged" ) Billboards about 'voter fraud is illegal results in fine and imprisonment throughout the state. The idea here is that voters, minorities, where the local sheriff might have one person in jail for 'fraud' ( which happened in Edwards Country Texas, where the sheriff put a fellow in jail because he impersonated his father, who was born in 1915. The evidence shows that he asked the clerk if he could vote, and the clerk didn't catch the date discrepancy on the registration list, and allowed him to vote. But, since he asked if he could vote or not, and the clerk didn't catch it, I fail to see how this adds up to 'fraud'. )

Below is the footnote to where the 300,000 estimated number of Wisconsin persons who lack ID -- I tracked it down to this:
*According to an amicus brief filed by One Wisconsin Now

The Big Lie, and a nice closing clip

 

President Trump will be re-elected. But props to you for your copy/paste efforts.

 

The only thing that is cutted and pasted are links, copying in quotes, and copy in green.

 

Trump commissioned a voter fraud Commission...headed by "Vote Fraud Guru" Chris Kobach...that was disbanded because they couldn't FIND enough to study

 

Voter fraud can affect local elections. And all the voting is done at the same time.

And even a presidential election could be close. Just because it has not happened before does not mean it could not happen.

 

Because the states refused to cooperate, did you forget that part?

 

Perhaps in very small elections, but the issue here is presidential and state level elections. "Could" is not a sound basis to create voter ID laws, when we have over a century of history revealing that it's rare, especially when the cure is far more damaging to a fair and just democracy that it's supposed to fix.

 

Provide evidence. Heritage foundation, out of billions of votes cast over a long period of time, found a couple of thousand. If you can do better than them, please enlighten this forum.

 

It does not make any difference whether is a state or presidential election issue, it still affects local elections. In many ways they local elections affect me more than the state and federal elections.

 

Voter fraud is real. Between graveyards and illegal aliens the democrat base is increased. Democrats notoriously cheat in elections and the OP is their propaganda.

 

44 states refused to cooperate with Kobach, for 2 reasons. 1. He's a known 'voter suppression king' ( not trustworthy ) 2. Privacy concerns because Kobach wanted very private data.

 

You haven't even studied my presentation one iota, nor have you even bothered to do any work sufficient to refute any claim.

I've offered proof.

Now it's time for you to do the same.

Prove it.

And don't be lazy.

 

How do you find election fraud? If I go on vacation and someone knows about and then goes in an votes in my place, how will they find that out? Even, if they find out later, they can't do anything about it, because once the vote goes into the machine it becomes anonymous.

 

You'll need to provide evidence of this, and a very nuts and bolts data presentation to back this up, because, all you've provided, is a narrative.

 

Wow! That OP is some research. Congratulations.

How unfortunate that any Trump supporter who responds here will, more than likely, have read only the title.

 

I've provided numerous studies that reveal there is no fraud on any scale required to affect a national election.

Why don't you take a look at them?

Gadzooks, folks, I've given a ton of data, now do your homework, as I have done. Don't be lazy.

Please.

 

So true

 

What evidence? I go in to vote. I vote from everything from county assessor to president. As far as I know, it is done like that everywhere. It could easily affect a local election where there may only be a few hundred votes at most.

I have been in this argument before. Just because it has never occurred in a presidential election, does not mean it cannot occur. All you need is a close election and enough fraudulent votes. There is nothing impossible about that scenario.

 

When all the democrats are for mail in voting now, you know it's a bad plan. Here 'ya go:

 

There's a serious flaw in your argument

You don't make it difficult for millions of americans to vote because there is only proof of a couple of thousand instances of fraud

Do we toss 2a because a small percentage of the population commit crimes with guns?

Do we repeal 1a because a few people shouted 'fire' in a theatre'?

More could commit crimes with guns, millions more 'could'.

Millions 'could' shout fire in a theatre.

Capiche? "Could" isn't a reason for policy when that policy will do far more harm than the alleged 'fix'.

See, in your 'close' election, hundreds of thousands of voters were needlessly purged because some republicans were hunting a negligent amount of fraudsters.

Seems to me your 'logic' supports my contention, not yours.

 

Why do you not want voter ID if fraud isn't so rampant as you claim?

 

If you need ID to buy a gun, alcohol, open a bank account, get a mortgage or a loan, rent a car or equipment, take metal to the scrap yard and a plethora of other daily task, why not to vote? And please dont insult minorities by claiming they are particularly challenged in obtaining ID, like every one else, seems to manage to do.

 

Title of the thread:

"Voter fraud is a myth"

First post:

"Voter fraud does not occur in large enough numbers"

Which is it? Where did this come from? Donna Brazille?

 

Uhhh yes we do. Otherwise why are automatic rifles illegal? We absolutely punish the whole for the actions of the few. Hence why yelling fire in a theatre is illegal, for everyone.

And no one is talking about taking away the right to vote lol. Not ONE policy you named deprives someone of voting. Many of these ID programs for voting provide FREE identification. If your name has been purged because you don’t live at that address. Go register your new address. If it was done in error, rectify the error by reregistering and then vote.

How is it ANY more discriminatory to require one to provide ID to purchase a firearm than it is to vote? Both are constitutional rights. But yet your side argues requiring ID to vote is racist and discriminatory but yet you argue ID is a necessity for purchasing guns. Which apparently means either requiring ID isn’t racist and discriminatory or it’s okay to be racist and discriminatory when someone is purchasing a firearm.

So which is it?

 

And where is that written?
We don't make fraud easier for millions of Americans just because it makes it inconvenient for a few voters.

All of the proposals I have seen for voter ID have included provisions to make it easier to get the ID even to the extent of driving them around to get it. We use photo IDs for virtually every thing we do, but for the most important thing, we don't require it. We can hardly live without it. How does that make sense?

We have had voter ID in our state for a couple of years with virtually no complaints. Most actually appreciate it.