There is no more crooked place than Ohio at the state level, mainly because of Republican Sec. of State Blackwell. As for voter ID, it isn't the concept itself that bothers Democrats but potential abuse of it by others like Blackwell. It is no secret that Republicans have targeted black voters to keep them from voting. The idea of national ID isn't racist, but it could be used disproportionately against black people. Here is a WaPo story on black voter suppression. Here is a story showing how black soldiers were scrubbed from Florida voter rolls. Why would we trust the GOP to properly administer and use voter ID?
First, I did not suggest a national ID - that is an entirely separate issue. Voting is a statewide issue, as even federal elections are administered by state and local officials.
Second, one thing that needs to happen is a computer redundancy that checks for this on the back end as well. As for why a voter ID system could be used disproportionately against black people (as opposed to some other method), I just can't see it.
"Our concern for human life must not be confined to the guilty." (Coker v. Georgia, Burger, C.J., dissenting.
Voting fraud has long been a "bipartison" problem, and even more a Democrat problem in metropolitan areas that traditionally vote Democrat. What strikes me the last several voting cycles is the degree of coordination on the national level to the states, i.e., New Hampshire, Ohio, Florida.
I can't recall voter suppression being handled out of the WH in multiple states in past administrations, Greg Palast exposing only the latest and possibly most onerous situation where Republicans purposely target minority votes of vets serving in a war zone.
Perhaps in Memphis some of the charges of racism are false. But the problem with using voter ID to vote, whether state or national, is the same as the one issued above. It is dishonest of you to just completely ignore the blatant racism of your party and to claim that Democrats are the worst of the worst with voter fraud. What you mention in Memphis pales in comparison to what Ken Blackwell has done in Ohio and what Katherine Harris has done in FL. I am not justifying the problems in Memphis. Those need to be fixed. But they are not the worst of the worst.
I hope you are doing well. It is good to see you posting over here.
Re: Your article
I don't understand how showing an ID is going to stop two poll workers from committing fraud. I have been following the voter ID debate for the last couple of years and there is just no evidence that showing a picture ID in order to vote would have prevented any documented voter fraud from happening.
Form a political point of view a voter ID bill sound like real election reform but it just doesn't do anything except make it harder for legitimate voters to cast their votes. As the Gun Lobby is fond of saying, "why don't we enforce the laws we already have before we write new ones"?
I'm trying to engage in productive dialogue, here, and that doesn't include making statements like this one:
It is dishonest of you to just completely ignore the blatant racism of your party
I'm not exactly surprised to find you making it, given that I believe you used to post at MyDD and they're big on this theory, but as I demonstrated in this post , anyone can dig up examples of racism and heuristically apply them to an entire party. That doesn't make it right, but what it does do is lead to a situation in which people just end up shouting at each other.
"Our concern for human life must not be confined to the guilty." (Coker v. Georgia, Burger, C.J., dissenting.
Oh, and before you respond to the story I linked at RedState, please be sure to read the last two paragraphs. They're the most important. I found in the responses to it that most people didn't get that far, and thus missed the whole point.
"Our concern for human life must not be confined to the guilty." (Coker v. Georgia, Burger, C.J., dissenting.
Now at least we're getting somewhere. Let me start by stating that if any member of the Ford family engaged in or condoned voting fraud, they should go to jail.
ID cards may help to prevent fraudulent votes, and that's a good thing. But it's not a simple solution. There would have to be guarantees to voters that the ID could never be used for law enforcement or any other governement avtivities (even counterterrorism). It also requires an efficient and completely unbiased bureaucracy that gets the cards to everyone on time and treats everyone exactly the same. The track record does not exactly inspire confidence that this will be done. Still, ID should be necessary one way or another, so I support the idea.
Matching IDs to electronic vote records is better than nothing, but it's not nearly good enough for those of us who don't trust the machines. At a minimum, a paper receipt of the recorded vote should be required so that the voter has confidence the vote is recorded correctly.
I would prefer to throw out all voting machines and stick with optical scans or plain paper ballots. And have a nationwide standard, of course
I recall hearing and interview with Jimmy Carter about how he got started in politics. Apparently there was a conflict in Georgia involving dead voters. Votes were being accepted from people who had been dead for up to three years! The reform position was that dead people should only have their votes counted for one year.
I'd be happy to engage in a discussion of voter registration and counting problems, but only with people who don't make absurd statements like
And for the very worst of the worst, you?ve got to go to someplace that?s been controlled by Democrat political machines for time immemorial
not only because the writer is evidently unaware of the adjectival form of the word "Democrat" but also because it is so obviously an attempt to fix the blame on one party -- in this case, probably not the party with the most egregious recent history.
That said, there are so many logical flaws in this post that I will just point out:
1. The proposal to require voting cards would have absolutely no effect on the type of behavior alledged in this quoted article -- malfeasance by election workers, not voters.
2. Although the poster states that electoral corruption is worse on the local level (not an obvious fact, by the way, given phone record evidence that voter suppression was coordinated with the Bush Administration in 2004) his solution is to have voter cards issued by State governments, not the Federal government. This despite the fact (which he must well know) that in the past it was exactly those State governments which worked hard to deny minorities the right to vote.
3. Any solution that involves voter ID does not address issues of voter suppression -- tricks or pressure to convince voters not so show up to vote.
4. If voters are going to be turned away at the polls, they could equally well be turned away at the time of ID issuance. To the extent that people can vote falsely now, presumabely they would be able to falsely obtain IDs. This would give the people responsible for the production of IDs an opportunity to create large numbers of false voters themselves, as well as to "lose" applications disproportionately by zip code.
5. The courts have repeatedly decided in favor of giving voters every possible chance to vote and might well decide that an alternative method of ID (similar to what's done now) would have to be allowed to people who had lost, forgotten, or failed to obtain a voting card.
Leon, voter fraud and voter hijinks isn't a partisan issue. We are all against anything that doesn't accurately count registered voters. So, trying to portray it as only a "democrats are for voter fraud" or "democrats are the ones pulling voting fraud" isn't true by anyones standards here.
If democrats get caught doing things they shouldn't, they should be punished within the full context of the law. The same should be said and carried out to ANYONE who knowingly purges 50,000 registered voters off voter registration lists or anyone who knowingly leaves polling stations without voting machines, or anyone who tries to interfere with a registered voter trying to cast a ballot.
And for the very worst of the worst, you?ve got to go to someplace that?s been controlled by Democrat political machines for time immemorial
If you're going to start out with the premise that voting fraud is mostly one parties fault rather than another, then it'sfair for someone to ask why you're not including the skeletons in your own party's closet.
Had you instead said, voting fraud can be seen on both sides of the divide - and been a littl emore forthright about stating without any attempt at minimizing the fact that the Republican party does have a pattern of voter suppression of minorities, then you wouldnt have gotten that response.
You cant go on the partisan atttack from the outset and then be surprised that you get partisan attack in response. This isnt RedState where the message is filtered to favor one side. You seem to approach posting here as "I'll just cross post at RS" without recognizing that your tone is going to have to be different if youre going to make an attempt at dialog here, rather than the echo-chamber of a site devoted to one party or another.
And yeah- if you write a post tailored for SC and cross post at RS, rather than the other way around (which is what you did here), youre going to get hostile reactions at RS. I suggest not trying to recycle but rather to craft the message based on milieu. Aftre all, RS has a legitimate mission - aa partisan one - that is *different* from SC. Why try to fit square pegs in round holes?
Actually, Aziz, my point was not that voting fraud was primarily contained within one party or the other - but rather that the most serious and pervasive corruption generally is found at the local level, particularly in places like Memphis, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc. (which are controlled by the Democrat political machines). Voting fraud is certainly a subset of corruption, but I did not use corruption as a synonym for voting fraud.
Second, while this is a site for dialogue, pretty much the point of what we do is to begin each post from a partisan viewpoint. In fact, Armando had a whole post about this once.
"Our concern for human life must not be confined to the guilty." (Coker v. Georgia, Burger, C.J., dissenting.
The problem with ID cards is similar to the problem with ballots and pooling places in some of these southern states that don't want minorities and Democrats to vote.
This legislation is passed with a thousand addendums requiring background checks, red tape, and other shinanigins. Billy Bob Republican can get his voter ID inside a week, but Sally Joe Democrat gets a letter in the mail saying her ID has been lost/delayed/flagged/what-have-you for any one of numerous reasons.
This is the same scam that sets a dozen polling places in a Republican precinct, but only sets up one understaffed polling point with an insufficent number of ballots at in a Democratic precinct.
I've got no problem with IDs in principle. I just don't like the people who are passing them out.
Republicans are happy to crack down on voter fraud, so long as it is Democratic voter fraud.
Big surprise.
They also have an absolute allergy to paper ballots and voting receipts and are quick to point out that exit polling is inherently flawed, but only when Democrats aren't winning the actual vote.
Another big surprise.
Voter IDs aren't ment to address any of these concerns.
You can make ID mandatory, funded by the Federal Govt, and created and handed out through the local authorities - DMV for example. You do have to check for prior felony convictions in the states that prohibit felon voting. The only other check would be for the citizenship and residency status. Simple stuff but necessary.
I am not sure if DMV can handle this in a satisfactory manner so you might have to create a new small state level agency that only deals with issuing these cards. That new agency employees would not be appointed and the information on those cards would not specify party or anything like that. Only the state and county of residence...
What's wrong with something simple like that? Like I said fully federally funded and mandated without providing any information back to the Federal government.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Leon, so you admit that the Republican Party has engaged in racially-oriented vote suppression? If so that is a start. And it is that record which your party has to address meaningfully before Democrats will trust you enough to cooperate with any sort of ID. I always get the sense that you want to cry foul about Democrats and ignore what Republicans are doing. If you want me to listen to you on improving our voting system, then you have to start by denouncing Blackwell and Harris and those who cooperated with them -- and the NH phone jamming that practically bankrupted the NH GOP with legal fees so that Karl Rove went up there recently to raise money for them. Address these far more serious problems first please.
I guess I fail to see why you draw a distinction between voting fraud and corruption - especially since the latter is a vague term and the former a very specific issue. If anything the focus should be on the former, not the latter, unless you are trying to circumvent critique like Mike's via a semantic manuever.
As analogy, an anticrime/urban public safety initiative shouldnt focus exclusively on murder and ignore rape.
Look I am coming across as harsh but really my intention here is to keep you on your ties, because I think your point is an important one. I am concerned with all obstacles to the machinery of democracy, corruption and fraud and all the others too. But you came out swinging with the assertion that Democrats are the problem; you totally omitted how Republicans are also a problem (an arguably worse one - thats another debate); therefore you are left with an implication that only Democrtats are a problem. QED. No wonder Mike came out swinging, so cashtising him for being partisan, and then replying to me that being partisan is ok, is really rather inconsistent.
Leon, I am interested in suppressing all forms of voter fraud and electoral corruption. I will support measures to achieve either or both of these objectives.
Do you only share concern for corruption and are not bothered about voter fraud?
The problem I see with your solution is that it doesn't address the actual fraud being committed. No one is stealing elections by pretending to be someone else at the voting booth. The people stealing the elections are the government officials who are responsible for running the elections, not the voters. If you required everyone who voted to have their retinas scanned before they got to vote it wouldn't stop election officials from adding or subracting to the tallies through the use absentee ballots or registration fraud.
I would rather spend our limited election resources on the actual problems instead of the problems that poll well for one party or the other.
I'd say this is a classic Type I vs Type II error problem. Democrats have historically had more of a problem with too many voters (The dead, for example) while the Republicans have a problem with too many disqualifications (Same name as a felon, intentional disenfranchising of demographics likely to vote D etc)
It is easy to lower one type of error at the expense of raising the other, and each side tends to focus on the error that affects them. In a zero-sum situation like this, it is even worse as lowering BOTH types of errors hurts somebody unless you manage to lower them both by the same.
Find a way to accurately measure and report how many illegal votes were cast and how many people were disenfranchised and you might make progress. But until you can measure the problem, it is almost impossible to solve it.
And, for all those who are demanding that I answer for Blackwell or Harris or whoever, I may as well demand that you answer for what happened to Dino Rossi, etc etc ad nauseam. This is, as the post pointed out, a bunch of pointless "gotcha," and I think one of the commenters here nailed it better than I did - my point was that Democrats are systematically unconcerned with the very real problem of overvotes, and hyperconcerned with a perception of undervotes, and if the WA Gubernatorial race was any indication, actually concerned only with counting votes in a manner that ensures a Democrat win, then slamming the door behind them.
My point is, Mike and Ender and I can throw rocks at each other over this all day long and solve nothing - why can't we agree on a system that would realistically address the problems of over/under voting?
"Our concern for human life must not be confined to the guilty." (Coker v. Georgia, Burger, C.J., dissenting.
What a shockingly astute and perceptive comment. You've forced me to admit - though I tried mightily to avoid it - that RedState is a partisan Republican site. Well played.
"Our concern for human life must not be confined to the guilty." (Coker v. Georgia, Burger, C.J., dissenting.
The left clearly has a reading comprehension problem. The superiority of Leon's vast deductive intellect as he looks down his elitist nose, is hardly what I would call the seed of the humble and the devout solution. He must be reading the old testament.
That aside, there as been corruption on both sides of the aisle.
To pretend to want to solve this problem by attacking one side or the other does nothing to offer a solution. The title in and of itself is disengenious. This post is not about "election reform" or finding solutions. It is about a partisan attack....
...... and for the very worst of the worst you've got to back to someplace that's been controlled by
Democratic political machines for time immemorial
So I say if you want real election reform, Leon, getting rid of the partisan attacks would be a start. Then maybe we could effect real change. And that goes for both sides.
There seems to be no interest in working together to seek a practical solution.
Isn't it obvious that both issues need to be addressed? The reason you hear noise from the Democrats about voter supression and undercounting is because those tactics have been used against them. It is exactly the same on the other side -- Republicans make far more noise about ballot-box stuffing, because that is a tactic that has been used against them.
We all have a vested interest in ensuring that our elections aren't rigged. Cleaning up the mess means the whole mess. Why have we not adopted any of the suggestions in the Carter/Ford proposal?
A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man -- e e cummings
C'mon people. We get Leon over here & you are all getting all over him.
Actually Leon, we WANT your partisan input here. We expect you to give us your unvarnished viewpoint, as that is what you do so well.
Me, I did take issue with the idea that this is a partisan issue. Certainly there are elements in all camps that only want to see the other side caught and punished for doing this kind of thing. I don't think that includes you, however. You will highlight the instances you know of that Democrats have done the wrong thing. Nothing wrong with pulling for your own team.
However, on a related note...do you think the Voting Rights Act should languish as it seems it's going to do? How do you expect this may hurt/hinder your candidates at the polls come November.
I amy not agree with you, but I'm glad your contributing.
We all have a vested interest in ensuring that our elections aren?t rigged
The problem is that everyone who is elected (and therefore has the most power to deal with systemic problems) has a vested interest in maintaining at least part of the status quo. As I mentioned above, I don't think the paralysis in dealing with the issue about wanting to increase fraud or disenfranchisement, it is about making sure that the other side's issue doesn't get more of a fix than yours.
I believe the point might have been that a post written for partisan Republican web site with a mission to elect more conservative Republicans should not be mistaken for a post intended on discussing ways to fix problems in our electoral system.
Or rather, that such fixes are going to focus on those problems that stand in the way of getting Republicans elected and not the principle of 1 live, qualified citizen = 1 cast and accurately counted vote.
That pretty much whacks the nail squarely on the head, Knociencz.
This really should be easy to agree on. But I suppose it's more fun when these issues can be turned into smirking insults and hurled at the opposition.
A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man -- e e cummings
Yah, well, I try to cut Leon some slack. There are periodic vent-at-the-conservative comments here (Understandable, but not very productive) and I can understand he might see the comments through such a lense.
While I'd prefer that he start by assuming the comment is not intended as an insult when that is believable, I've noticed that if I don't take the bait and don't escalate, he gets back into calm discussion mode. (As opposed to some, who take politeness as weakness to be exploited)
Voter suppression is an enormous problem in the US, which-- according to experts I've read & interviewed for stories I wrote in 2004--is overwhelmingly more significant than voter fraud. I have no doubt that voter fraud exists. In fact, I've seen evidence of it myself, and been frustrated in attempting to expose it. But the numbers we're talking about are orders of magnitude less than the amount of voter suppression.
One report, from People for the American Way and the NAACP, ?The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America Today,? provides a survey of recent voter-suppression incidents, explaining the rationale for plans to put 3,000 observers into precincts in 17 states this November. One example cited in the report involved the organizing of a fleet of 300 cars cruising minority precincts during Philadelphia?s mayoral race in 2003. The cars, driven by men with clipboards, had insignias similar to those of federal law enforcement agencies. The American Prospect magazine called it a ?test run? for 2004. ?There is an increasing pattern of similar voter suppression and voter intimidation tactics over the last several years,? said Steve Carbo, Director of Demos? Democracy Project, which is just finishing work on its own report. Harvard historian Alexander Keyssar provides a larger historical perspective. He is the author of The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, which identified four distinct eras with differing dynamics surrounding voting rights. The electorate expanded throughout the first period of loosening property restrictions, which lasted until around 1850, when mass immigration and the specter of a European-style working class brought on a climate of upper- and middle-class hostility toward mass participation. Measures like registration laws and residency requirements contracted the electorate until World War I, when a third, relatively static period of minor tinkering set in, lasting until the Civil Rights Movement tore down the majority of remaining obstacles to the individual right to vote. This historical framework helps explain how the enfranchisement of blacks after the Civil War confronted a broader anti-democratic backlash, which made it easier for their rights to be abolished again?along with those of millions of poor whites, particularly in the South. Poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests and felony disenfranchisement were also used. All but felony disenfranchisement have since been rejected as racist. Supression efforts since the 2000 election leave it an open question whether we?re seeing the beginnings of a new more repressive period, Keyssar told Random Lengths. ?I can?t say it?s unprecedented. It is something that is new, and it is semi-organized. It may be fully organized,? he said. ?What we?re seeing is characteristic of this fourth period,? since no one openly advocates rolling back rights. But there are ?patterns of intimidation or fighting over procedural rules of access,? reminiscent of the second period, from 1850 to World War I. ?When it happened in Florida in 2000, it was clearly not an accident,? Keyssar continued. ?That it?s recurring now over ID requirements and other procedural things, really suggests it is becoming a tactic. In many areas it coincides with race, less because of racial hostility, but because black neighborhoods are the most easily identifiable bastions of Democratic voting.? Carbo concurred. ?These kinds of tactics have become institutionalized as part of the electioneering game. These tactics have been used by operatives of both parties, but much more often by operatives of the Republican Party. They typically take place in the context of a close election, and more often than not take place in communities of color, principally African American communities.?
then you have to start by denouncing Blackwell and Harris and those who cooperated with them ? and the NH phone jamming that practically bankrupted the NH GOP with legal fees so that Karl Rove went up there recently to raise money for them. Address these far more serious problems first please.
Actually, Aziz, my point was not that voting fraud was primarily contained within one party or the other - but rather that the most serious and pervasive corruption generally is found at the local level,
I didn't ask for you to answer for them. I asked for you to denounce their practices. And you seemed to admit that Republicans have their own problems, which came after I mentioned the specific instances of racially oriented voter suppression. If you want to talk, you have to start differently please. Others have pointed out the potential abuses of voter ID, and I have explained why Democrats are afraid Republicans will abuse the voter ID and use it as a voter suppression tool. So how do we get past that distrust?
Therefore your post is not directed at reform as your title suggests. It is directed at highlighting hideous, mind boggling, deep seated provincial and democratic corruption in the Tennessee. (It's a conspiracy I say.)
As a scholarly southern elitist, do you have trouble seeing the ground with your nose so far up in the air?
What exactly happened to Dino Rossi? Last I heard BOTH parties had votes that were deemed invalid. Yep that's right there were overvotes for the GOP.
You might get more luck with over/undervoting if you were willing to admit there is a transparency problem with these machines and there have been more than one instance of calculated voter surpression.
In other words, don't expect the Democrats to help you rig the system in YOUR parties favor. The effort should be a bipartisan effort to fix the WHOLE thing, not just a posted attempt to slam the party you don't particularly care for and a bid to fix the problems that would work to your parties advantage.
Here's a link to my substantiate my claim that BOTH sides had fraudulent votes. You'll note that it worked out that a net loss of four for ROSSI occurred when it appeared before the courts (them thar darn activist judges).
Nice try. Just because you don't like that the ballots that were found by King County changed the election results doesn't make them fraudulent. By the way, there was a statewide hand recount, it wasn't cherry picked to allow the Dems the win. Sour grapes much? If I can't get a revote because irregularities occurred during the presidential election what makes Dino Rossi think he's so special to rate a do over? Oh that's right, he has an R after his name.
The Republican state auditor of Alabama, Beth Chapman, who is running for secretary of state, spent primary day in Hale County, a black-majority county in west Alabama that has attracted federal election observers from the Justice Department at least 20 times over the years. If someone in Hale County is still getting away with vote fraud with Justice breathing down their necks, he's a lot smarter than any Diebold executive.
But that didn't stop Chapman. She offered a $5,000 bounty from her campaign fund to anyone who produced evidence of voter fraud.
As evidence of shenanigans in Hale County she cited Hale's slightly higher percentage of requests for absentee ballots than her own county, which happens to be the wealthiest county in the state. While absentee ballots can certainly be abused, it is also true that people in poor rural counties have less access to transportation to get to the polls and are less able to take time off from work to vote than folks in Chapman's wealthy county.
It used to be that when you wanted to suppress the black vote you would have police cars drive slowly through black neighborhoods on election day and set up roadblocks to check licenses. Now they send a state official and a checkbook.
It solves the "dead people voting" scam to some degree, because you can just run the ID against a computer and check to see if someone is declared "dead" or not.
However, it doesn't prevent voter tampering at the ballot box, Diebold machines flipping responses, hanging chads, butterfly ballots, or a host of other worries.
However, as a top-down heavily regulated, entirely transparent piece of a full election reform bill, there's nothing wrong with voter IDs. I agree with Ender completely on that much.
This is a first for me..commenting on another person's views online, but after reading the previous comments I am compelled to answer. It is true that we have a real problem with voter fraud in this country, probably in every state if the truth were known, be it Democrats or Republicans. Every body wants their own 'party" to win. Therein lies the problem! We have people that we Americans have voted into office that are suppose to be public servants of you and me, Mr. And Ms .American Citizen. Unfortunately, just in case no one has noticed, our "servants" are in their ivory towers bickering over stupid things and warring with one another while we the citizens have to sit by and hope that someone with a little bit of insight to our nation's problems, and a little bit of compassion for the people they are suppose to represent will get into office and make a change for the better. I haven't seen this happen since the 1960's, and that is when everything really started going to h---. You young ones before that time would not know what I am talking about but the 'baby-boomer' bunch does. If someone has to lie, cheat, steal or commit some other kind of fraud to get their man or woman elected into office, shouldn't that say something??? It really sickens me to watch what is going on in this country! After all do we not show a legal ID to cash a check? Or even to buy alcohol or cigarettes? How in the name of sanity could it be a racial issue to have to show a valid ID to vote??? Those who make this assertion know better. It is simply a means of preventing the concerned citizens of this country from having a fair and HONEST vote. I guess that thanks to the prior administrations things like honesty and moral character were redefined, therefore the upcoming generations will never know what it means to have the peace of mind derived from knowing that the elected officials have the moral values, honesty, and a sense of justice for everyone. Even for those who would denigh these tenants to the rest of us. That means you and me. Morals, justice, and honesty are just a few of the things that keep our country free, and this is where we are loosing the battle...not abroad.Wake up America! Call these people to task!
I haven't read about any documented cases of fraud involving people showing up to the polls and claiming to be dead people in order to vote. It just isn't a problem so why should we disinfranchise legitimate voters in order to stop a fraud that isn't actually occuring?
In general I don't have a problem with requiring an ID in order to vote. The problem I do have is with requring a picture ID that is neither free of charge nor incredibly easily obtained in order to vote.
Comments :
There is no more cro
There is no more crooked place than Ohio at the state level, mainly because of Republican Sec. of State Blackwell. As for voter ID, it isn't the concept itself that bothers Democrats but potential abuse of it by others like Blackwell. It is no secret that Republicans have targeted black voters to keep them from voting. The idea of national ID isn't racist, but it could be used disproportionately against black people. Here
is a WaPo story on black voter suppression. Here 
is a story showing how black soldiers were scrubbed from Florida voter rolls. Why would we trust the GOP to properly administer and use voter ID?
First, I did not sug
First, I did not suggest a national ID - that is an entirely separate issue. Voting is a statewide issue, as even federal elections are administered by state and local officials.
Second, one thing that needs to happen is a computer redundancy that checks for this on the back end as well. As for why a voter ID system could be used disproportionately against black people (as opposed to some other method), I just can't see it.
"Our concern for human life must not be confined to the guilty." (Coker v. Georgia, Burger, C.J., dissenting.
You mean--like Anne
You mean--like Anne Coulter voting twice....
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002612877
Here's ol' Jerry Kil
Here's ol' Jerry Kilgore's mom who helped to rig an election for the GOP
http://www3.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/18863.html
Voting fraud has lon
Voting fraud has long been a "bipartison" problem, and even more a Democrat problem in metropolitan areas that traditionally vote Democrat. What strikes me the last several voting cycles is the degree of coordination on the national level to the states, i.e., New Hampshire, Ohio, Florida.
I can't recall voter suppression being handled out of the WH in multiple states in past administrations, Greg Palast exposing only the latest and possibly most onerous situation where Republicans purposely target minority votes of vets serving in a war zone.
Perhaps in Memphis s
Perhaps in Memphis some of the charges of racism are false. But the problem with using voter ID to vote, whether state or national, is the same as the one issued above. It is dishonest of you to just completely ignore the blatant racism of your party and to claim that Democrats are the worst of the worst with voter fraud. What you mention in Memphis pales in comparison to what Ken Blackwell has done in Ohio and what Katherine Harris has done in FL. I am not justifying the problems in Memphis. Those need to be fixed. But they are not the worst of the worst.
Hi Leon, I hope y
Hi Leon,
I hope you are doing well. It is good to see you posting over here.
Re: Your article
I don't understand how showing an ID is going to stop two poll workers from committing fraud. I have been following the voter ID debate for the last couple of years and there is just no evidence that showing a picture ID in order to vote would have prevented any documented voter fraud from happening.
Form a political point of view a voter ID bill sound like real election reform but it just doesn't do anything except make it harder for legitimate voters to cast their votes. As the Gun Lobby is fond of saying, "why don't we enforce the laws we already have before we write new ones"?
Mike - I'm trying
Mike -
I'm trying to engage in productive dialogue, here, and that doesn't include making statements like this one:
It is dishonest of you to just completely ignore the blatant racism of your party
I'm not exactly surprised to find you making it, given that I believe you used to post at MyDD and they're big on this theory, but as I demonstrated in this post
, anyone can dig up examples of racism and heuristically apply them to an entire party. That doesn't make it right, but what it does do is lead to a situation in which people just end up shouting at each other.
"Our concern for human life must not be confined to the guilty." (Coker v. Georgia, Burger, C.J., dissenting.
Oh, and before you r
Oh, and before you respond to the story I linked at RedState, please be sure to read the last two paragraphs. They're the most important. I found in the responses to it that most people didn't get that far, and thus missed the whole point.
"Our concern for human life must not be confined to the guilty." (Coker v. Georgia, Burger, C.J., dissenting.
Now at least we're g
Now at least we're getting somewhere. Let me start by stating that if any member of the Ford family engaged in or condoned voting fraud, they should go to jail.
ID cards may help to prevent fraudulent votes, and that's a good thing. But it's not a simple solution. There would have to be guarantees to voters that the ID could never be used for law enforcement or any other governement avtivities (even counterterrorism). It also requires an efficient and completely unbiased bureaucracy that gets the cards to everyone on time and treats everyone exactly the same. The track record does not exactly inspire confidence that this will be done. Still, ID should be necessary one way or another, so I support the idea.
Matching IDs to electronic vote records is better than nothing, but it's not nearly good enough for those of us who don't trust the machines. At a minimum, a paper receipt of the recorded vote should be required so that the voter has confidence the vote is recorded correctly.
I would prefer to throw out all voting machines and stick with optical scans or plain paper ballots. And have a nationwide standard, of course
I recall hearing and
I recall hearing and interview with Jimmy Carter about how he got started in politics. Apparently there was a conflict in Georgia involving dead voters. Votes were being accepted from people who had been dead for up to three years! The reform position was that dead people should only have their votes counted for one year.
I'd be happy to engage in a discussion of voter registration and counting problems, but only with people who don't make absurd statements like
not only because the writer is evidently unaware of the adjectival form of the word "Democrat" but also because it is so obviously an attempt to fix the blame on one party -- in this case, probably not the party with the most egregious recent history.
That said, there are so many logical flaws in this post that I will just point out:
1. The proposal to require voting cards would have absolutely no effect on the type of behavior alledged in this quoted article -- malfeasance by election workers, not voters.
2. Although the poster states that electoral corruption is worse on the local level (not an obvious fact, by the way, given phone record evidence that voter suppression was coordinated with the Bush Administration in 2004) his solution is to have voter cards issued by State governments, not the Federal government. This despite the fact (which he must well know) that in the past it was exactly those State governments which worked hard to deny minorities the right to vote.
3. Any solution that involves voter ID does not address issues of voter suppression -- tricks or pressure to convince voters not so show up to vote.
4. If voters are going to be turned away at the polls, they could equally well be turned away at the time of ID issuance. To the extent that people can vote falsely now, presumabely they would be able to falsely obtain IDs. This would give the people responsible for the production of IDs an opportunity to create large numbers of false voters themselves, as well as to "lose" applications disproportionately by zip code.
5. The courts have repeatedly decided in favor of giving voters every possible chance to vote and might well decide that an alternative method of ID (similar to what's done now) would have to be allowed to people who had lost, forgotten, or failed to obtain a voting card.
Leon, voter fraud an
Leon, voter fraud and voter hijinks isn't a partisan issue. We are all against anything that doesn't accurately count registered voters. So, trying to portray it as only a "democrats are for voter fraud" or "democrats are the ones pulling voting fraud" isn't true by anyones standards here.
If democrats get caught doing things they shouldn't, they should be punished within the full context of the law. The same should be said and carried out to ANYONE who knowingly purges 50,000 registered voters off voter registration lists or anyone who knowingly leaves polling stations without voting machines, or anyone who tries to interfere with a registered voter trying to cast a ballot.
Notice how I said ANYONE?
Leon, you wrote,
Leon, you wrote,
If you're going to start out with the premise that voting fraud is mostly one parties fault rather than another, then it'sfair for someone to ask why you're not including the skeletons in your own party's closet.
Had you instead said, voting fraud can be seen on both sides of the divide - and been a littl emore forthright about stating without any attempt at minimizing the fact that the Republican party does have a pattern of voter suppression of minorities, then you wouldnt have gotten that response.
You cant go on the partisan atttack from the outset and then be surprised that you get partisan attack in response. This isnt RedState where the message is filtered to favor one side. You seem to approach posting here as "I'll just cross post at RS" without recognizing that your tone is going to have to be different if youre going to make an attempt at dialog here, rather than the echo-chamber of a site devoted to one party or another.
And yeah- if you write a post tailored for SC and cross post at RS, rather than the other way around (which is what you did here), youre going to get hostile reactions at RS. I suggest not trying to recycle but rather to craft the message based on milieu. Aftre all, RS has a legitimate mission - aa partisan one - that is *different* from SC. Why try to fit square pegs in round holes?
Actually, Aziz, my p
Actually, Aziz, my point was not that voting fraud was primarily contained within one party or the other - but rather that the most serious and pervasive corruption generally is found at the local level, particularly in places like Memphis, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc. (which are controlled by the Democrat political machines). Voting fraud is certainly a subset of corruption, but I did not use corruption as a synonym for voting fraud.
Second, while this is a site for dialogue, pretty much the point of what we do is to begin each post from a partisan viewpoint. In fact, Armando had a whole post about this once.
"Our concern for human life must not be confined to the guilty." (Coker v. Georgia, Burger, C.J., dissenting.
The problem with ID
The problem with ID cards is similar to the problem with ballots and pooling places in some of these southern states that don't want minorities and Democrats to vote.
This legislation is passed with a thousand addendums requiring background checks, red tape, and other shinanigins. Billy Bob Republican can get his voter ID inside a week, but Sally Joe Democrat gets a letter in the mail saying her ID has been lost/delayed/flagged/what-have-you for any one of numerous reasons.
This is the same scam that sets a dozen polling places in a Republican precinct, but only sets up one understaffed polling point with an insufficent number of ballots at in a Democratic precinct.
I've got no problem with IDs in principle. I just don't like the people who are passing them out.
Republicans are happ
Republicans are happy to crack down on voter fraud, so long as it is Democratic voter fraud.
Big surprise.
They also have an absolute allergy to paper ballots and voting receipts and are quick to point out that exit polling is inherently flawed, but only when Democrats aren't winning the actual vote.
Another big surprise.
Voter IDs aren't ment to address any of these concerns.
You can make ID mand
You can make ID mandatory, funded by the Federal Govt, and created and handed out through the local authorities - DMV for example. You do have to check for prior felony convictions in the states that prohibit felon voting. The only other check would be for the citizenship and residency status. Simple stuff but necessary.
I am not sure if DMV can handle this in a satisfactory manner so you might have to create a new small state level agency that only deals with issuing these cards. That new agency employees would not be appointed and the information on those cards would not specify party or anything like that. Only the state and county of residence...
What's wrong with something simple like that? Like I said fully federally funded and mandated without providing any information back to the Federal government.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Leon, so you admit t
Leon, so you admit that the Republican Party has engaged in racially-oriented vote suppression? If so that is a start. And it is that record which your party has to address meaningfully before Democrats will trust you enough to cooperate with any sort of ID. I always get the sense that you want to cry foul about Democrats and ignore what Republicans are doing. If you want me to listen to you on improving our voting system, then you have to start by denouncing Blackwell and Harris and those who cooperated with them -- and the NH phone jamming that practically bankrupted the NH GOP with legal fees so that Karl Rove went up there recently to raise money for them. Address these far more serious problems first please.
I guess I fail to se
I guess I fail to see why you draw a distinction between voting fraud and corruption - especially since the latter is a vague term and the former a very specific issue. If anything the focus should be on the former, not the latter, unless you are trying to circumvent critique like Mike's via a semantic manuever.
As analogy, an anticrime/urban public safety initiative shouldnt focus exclusively on murder and ignore rape.
Look I am coming across as harsh but really my intention here is to keep you on your ties, because I think your point is an important one. I am concerned with all obstacles to the machinery of democracy, corruption and fraud and all the others too. But you came out swinging with the assertion that Democrats are the problem; you totally omitted how Republicans are also a problem (an arguably worse one - thats another debate); therefore you are left with an implication that only Democrtats are a problem. QED. No wonder Mike came out swinging, so cashtising him for being partisan, and then replying to me that being partisan is ok, is really rather inconsistent.
Leon, I am intereste
Leon, I am interested in suppressing all forms of voter fraud and electoral corruption. I will support measures to achieve either or both of these objectives.
Do you only share concern for corruption and are not bothered about voter fraud?
The problem I see wi
The problem I see with your solution is that it doesn't address the actual fraud being committed. No one is stealing elections by pretending to be someone else at the voting booth. The people stealing the elections are the government officials who are responsible for running the elections, not the voters. If you required everyone who voted to have their retinas scanned before they got to vote it wouldn't stop election officials from adding or subracting to the tallies through the use absentee ballots or registration fraud.
I would rather spend our limited election resources on the actual problems instead of the problems that poll well for one party or the other.
I'd say this is a cl
I'd say this is a classic Type I vs Type II error problem. Democrats have historically had more of a problem with too many voters (The dead, for example) while the Republicans have a problem with too many disqualifications (Same name as a felon, intentional disenfranchising of demographics likely to vote D etc)
It is easy to lower one type of error at the expense of raising the other, and each side tends to focus on the error that affects them. In a zero-sum situation like this, it is even worse as lowering BOTH types of errors hurts somebody unless you manage to lower them both by the same.
Find a way to accurately measure and report how many illegal votes were cast and how many people were disenfranchised and you might make progress. But until you can measure the problem, it is almost impossible to solve it.
It would appear that
It would appear that Leon's posting of this article over at Redstate
is being recieved much more warmly than here.
Hmmm. Go figure.
Nice, Leon. I fin
Nice, Leon.
I find it deliciously ironic that such a prominent 'RedStater' has managed to load this post with 'known-facts' and 'pointy sticks'.
You want to talk about eliminating election fraud? Then stop throwing darts, and pose an honest question.
A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man -- e e cummings
<i>Leon, so you admi
Leon, so you admit that the Republican Party has engaged in racially-oriented vote suppression?
Wow, Mike. Where did you see that?
"Our concern for human life must not be confined to the guilty." (Coker v. Georgia, Burger, C.J., dissenting.
And, for all those w
And, for all those who are demanding that I answer for Blackwell or Harris or whoever, I may as well demand that you answer for what happened to Dino Rossi, etc etc ad nauseam. This is, as the post pointed out, a bunch of pointless "gotcha," and I think one of the commenters here nailed it better than I did - my point was that Democrats are systematically unconcerned with the very real problem of overvotes, and hyperconcerned with a perception of undervotes, and if the WA Gubernatorial race was any indication, actually concerned only with counting votes in a manner that ensures a Democrat win, then slamming the door behind them.
My point is, Mike and Ender and I can throw rocks at each other over this all day long and solve nothing - why can't we agree on a system that would realistically address the problems of over/under voting?
"Our concern for human life must not be confined to the guilty." (Coker v. Georgia, Burger, C.J., dissenting.
What a shockingly as
What a shockingly astute and perceptive comment. You've forced me to admit - though I tried mightily to avoid it - that RedState is a partisan Republican site. Well played.
"Our concern for human life must not be confined to the guilty." (Coker v. Georgia, Burger, C.J., dissenting.
The left clearly has
The left clearly has a reading comprehension problem. The superiority of Leon's vast deductive intellect as he looks down his elitist nose, is hardly what I would call the seed of the humble and the devout solution. He must be reading the old testament.
That aside, there as been corruption on both sides of the aisle.
To pretend to want to solve this problem by attacking one side or the other does nothing to offer a solution. The title in and of itself is disengenious. This post is not about "election reform" or finding solutions. It is about a partisan attack....
So I say if you want real election reform, Leon, getting rid of the partisan attacks would be a start. Then maybe we could effect real change. And that goes for both sides.
There seems to be no interest in working together to seek a practical solution.
It is the economy, stupid.
Ah, the amount of no
Ah, the amount of non-responsive responses to this post is delicious.
Isn't it obvious tha
Isn't it obvious that both issues need to be addressed? The reason you hear noise from the Democrats about voter supression and undercounting is because those tactics have been used against them. It is exactly the same on the other side -- Republicans make far more noise about ballot-box stuffing, because that is a tactic that has been used against them.
We all have a vested interest in ensuring that our elections aren't rigged. Cleaning up the mess means the whole mess. Why have we not adopted any of the suggestions in the Carter/Ford proposal?
A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man -- e e cummings
C'mon people. We ge
C'mon people. We get Leon over here & you are all getting all over him.
Actually Leon, we WANT your partisan input here. We expect you to give us your unvarnished viewpoint, as that is what you do so well.
Me, I did take issue with the idea that this is a partisan issue. Certainly there are elements in all camps that only want to see the other side caught and punished for doing this kind of thing. I don't think that includes you, however. You will highlight the instances you know of that Democrats have done the wrong thing. Nothing wrong with pulling for your own team.
However, on a related note...do you think the Voting Rights Act should languish as it seems it's going to do? How do you expect this may hurt/hinder your candidates at the polls come November.
I amy not agree with you, but I'm glad your contributing.
One day I'll learn t
One day I'll learn to either type slower or spellcheck.
<i>We all have a ves
We all have a vested interest in ensuring that our elections aren?t rigged
The problem is that everyone who is elected (and therefore has the most power to deal with systemic problems) has a vested interest in maintaining at least part of the status quo. As I mentioned above, I don't think the paralysis in dealing with the issue about wanting to increase fraud or disenfranchisement, it is about making sure that the other side's issue doesn't get more of a fix than yours.
I believe the point
I believe the point might have been that a post written for partisan Republican web site with a mission to elect more conservative Republicans should not be mistaken for a post intended on discussing ways to fix problems in our electoral system.
Or rather, that such fixes are going to focus on those problems that stand in the way of getting Republicans elected and not the principle of 1 live, qualified citizen = 1 cast and accurately counted vote.
That pretty much wha
That pretty much whacks the nail squarely on the head, Knociencz.
This really should be easy to agree on. But I suppose it's more fun when these issues can be turned into smirking insults and hurled at the opposition.
A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man -- e e cummings
Yah, well, I try to
Yah, well, I try to cut Leon some slack. There are periodic vent-at-the-conservative comments here (Understandable, but not very productive) and I can understand he might see the comments through such a lense.
While I'd prefer that he start by assuming the comment is not intended as an insult when that is believable, I've noticed that if I don't take the bait and don't escalate, he gets back into calm discussion mode. (As opposed to some, who take politeness as weakness to be exploited)
Huh? Care to explain
Huh? Care to explain that?
<b>Voter Suppression
Voter Suppression v. Voter Fraud
Voter suppression is an enormous problem in the US, which-- according to experts I've read & interviewed for stories I wrote in 2004--is overwhelmingly more significant than voter fraud. I have no doubt that voter fraud exists. In fact, I've seen evidence of it myself, and been frustrated in attempting to expose it. But the numbers we're talking about are orders of magnitude less than the amount of voter suppression.
Here's an excerpt from one story
:
<blockquote>then you
I didn't ask for you to answer for them. I asked for you to denounce their practices. And you seemed to admit that Republicans have their own problems, which came after I mentioned the specific instances of racially oriented voter suppression. If you want to talk, you have to start differently please. Others have pointed out the potential abuses of voter ID, and I have explained why Democrats are afraid Republicans will abuse the voter ID and use it as a voter suppression tool. So how do we get past that distrust?
Therefore your post
Therefore your post is not directed at reform as your title suggests. It is directed at highlighting hideous, mind boggling, deep seated provincial and democratic corruption in the Tennessee. (It's a conspiracy I say.)
As a scholarly southern elitist, do you have trouble seeing the ground with your nose so far up in the air?
It is the economy, stupid.
What exactly happene
What exactly happened to Dino Rossi? Last I heard BOTH parties had votes that were deemed invalid. Yep that's right there were overvotes for the GOP.
You might get more luck with over/undervoting if you were willing to admit there is a transparency problem with these machines and there have been more than one instance of calculated voter surpression.
In other words, don't expect the Democrats to help you rig the system in YOUR parties favor. The effort should be a bipartisan effort to fix the WHOLE thing, not just a posted attempt to slam the party you don't particularly care for and a bid to fix the problems that would work to your parties advantage.
http://www.acmecoali
http://www.acmecoalition.org/blog/direct_link.cfm?bid=5D7A086F-50BA-1A28-52A1E26F8756583A
Here's a link to my substantiate my claim that BOTH sides had fraudulent votes. You'll note that it worked out that a net loss of four for ROSSI occurred when it appeared before the courts (them thar darn activist judges).
http://www.acmecoalition.org/blog/direct_link.cfm?bid=5D7A086F-50BA-1A28-52A1E26F8756583A
Nice try. Just becau
Nice try. Just because you don't like that the ballots that were found by King County changed the election results doesn't make them fraudulent. By the way, there was a statewide hand recount, it wasn't cherry picked to allow the Dems the win. Sour grapes much? If I can't get a revote because irregularities occurred during the presidential election what makes Dino Rossi think he's so special to rate a do over? Oh that's right, he has an R after his name.
I enjoy Leon contrib
I enjoy Leon contributing too.
I just think he was pretty one sided in this particular post. ;)
If he only gives us half the picture, you shouldn't be surprised to see us complete the picture for him. :)
The Republican state
The Republican state auditor of Alabama, Beth Chapman, who is running for secretary of state, spent primary day in Hale County, a black-majority county in west Alabama that has attracted federal election observers from the Justice Department at least 20 times over the years. If someone in Hale County is still getting away with vote fraud with Justice breathing down their necks, he's a lot smarter than any Diebold executive.
But that didn't stop Chapman. She offered a $5,000 bounty from her campaign fund to anyone who produced evidence of voter fraud.
As evidence of shenanigans in Hale County she cited Hale's slightly higher percentage of requests for absentee ballots than her own county, which happens to be the wealthiest county in the state. While absentee ballots can certainly be abused, it is also true that people in poor rural counties have less access to transportation to get to the polls and are less able to take time off from work to vote than folks in Chapman's wealthy county.
It used to be that when you wanted to suppress the black vote you would have police cars drive slowly through black neighborhoods on election day and set up roadblocks to check licenses. Now they send a state official and a checkbook.
qui tacet consentire
It's rather funny to
It's rather funny to here a GOP member hollering about absentee ballot fraud when you hear stories like these
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096409748
Pot meet kettle.
It solves the "dead
It solves the "dead people voting" scam to some degree, because you can just run the ID against a computer and check to see if someone is declared "dead" or not.
However, it doesn't prevent voter tampering at the ballot box, Diebold machines flipping responses, hanging chads, butterfly ballots, or a host of other worries.
However, as a top-down heavily regulated, entirely transparent piece of a full election reform bill, there's nothing wrong with voter IDs. I agree with Ender completely on that much.
This is a first for
This is a first for me..commenting on another person's views online, but after reading the previous comments I am compelled to answer. It is true that we have a real problem with voter fraud in this country, probably in every state if the truth were known, be it Democrats or Republicans. Every body wants their own 'party" to win. Therein lies the problem! We have people that we Americans have voted into office that are suppose to be public servants of you and me, Mr. And Ms .American Citizen. Unfortunately, just in case no one has noticed, our "servants" are in their ivory towers bickering over stupid things and warring with one another while we the citizens have to sit by and hope that someone with a little bit of insight to our nation's problems, and a little bit of compassion for the people they are suppose to represent will get into office and make a change for the better. I haven't seen this happen since the 1960's, and that is when everything really started going to h---. You young ones before that time would not know what I am talking about but the 'baby-boomer' bunch does. If someone has to lie, cheat, steal or commit some other kind of fraud to get their man or woman elected into office, shouldn't that say something??? It really sickens me to watch what is going on in this country! After all do we not show a legal ID to cash a check? Or even to buy alcohol or cigarettes? How in the name of sanity could it be a racial issue to have to show a valid ID to vote??? Those who make this assertion know better. It is simply a means of preventing the concerned citizens of this country from having a fair and HONEST vote. I guess that thanks to the prior administrations things like honesty and moral character were redefined, therefore the upcoming generations will never know what it means to have the peace of mind derived from knowing that the elected officials have the moral values, honesty, and a sense of justice for everyone. Even for those who would denigh these tenants to the rest of us. That means you and me. Morals, justice, and honesty are just a few of the things that keep our country free, and this is where we are loosing the battle...not abroad.Wake up America! Call these people to task!
I haven't read about
I haven't read about any documented cases of fraud involving people showing up to the polls and claiming to be dead people in order to vote. It just isn't a problem so why should we disinfranchise legitimate voters in order to stop a fraud that isn't actually occuring?
In general I don't have a problem with requiring an ID in order to vote. The problem I do have is with requring a picture ID that is neither free of charge nor incredibly easily obtained in order to vote.