Progressives Sound Alarm on Voter Fraud

[chijohnaok]

http://freebeacon.com/politics/progressives-sound-alarm-voter-fraud/

Progressives Sound Alarm on Voter Fraud
Leftwing candidates in Alabama, Minnesota claim local elections impacted by fraud

BY: Joe Schoffstall
December 3, 2017 5:00 am

Progressive candidates for local office in Alabama and Minnesota have claimed in recent weeks that they are the victims of voter fraud, despite liberal protestations that the idea voter fraud could impact elections is little more than a rightwing myth.

A local Alabama chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is alleging voter fraud in a nonpartisan city council race despite the organization's national president claiming that voter fraud is a "myth." Meanwhile, a progressive candidate in Minneapolis, Minn., who was endorsed by the local chapter of a national group linked to the Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) movement, is also accusing a fellow progressive opponent of voter fraud.

Article continued at above link.

Republicans have for years raised concerns about voter fraud.
Their efforts to have voter registration rolls checked, and have questionable registrations purged were roundly criticized.
Efforts to have questionable voter registrations investigated and removed too close to an election were also criticized.

Now it appears that the shoe is on the other foot.

Are those is the article now raising this as a new concern (that didn't exist before)?
Are these new claims of questionable voter registration(or actual ballots cast) valid when similar concerns in the past were condemned as voter suppression?

Or is this simply an example of "its valid when my side raises the issue"?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

This could be chalked up to OP positing false equivalency.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

This could be chalked up to OP positing false equivalency.

Indeed. The OP has a track record of posting threads meant to be controversial and based on similarly weak premises.

 

[Berzerker]

The local NAACP chapter claims that a substantial amount of registered voters who cast ballots came from outside of the district and that those individuals used a commercial address as their residential, or voting, address.

If I have a business in town I should be able to vote, but that doesn't translate to a natl election for Prez - so I can see the difference between voter fraud and the 'myth' of voter fraud. Trump's claiming ~3 million people voted illegally, but how many people actually showed up to vote as someone else? I imagine there's more people voting in different districts than using someone else's identity and I doubt there's many of them.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If I have a business in town I should be able to vote, but that doesn't translate to a natl election for Prez - so I can see the difference between voter fraud and the 'myth' of voter fraud. Trump's claiming ~3 million people voted illegally, but how many people actually showed up to vote as someone else? I imagine there's more people voting in different districts than using someone else's identity and I doubt there's many of them.

D'ump's claim about illegal voters is based on a fake news story that has circulated in the right wing echo chamber for years. In California you don't have to prove citizenship to get a driver's license...that is clearly marked as a driver's license only and cannot be used to register to vote. You also can register to vote at the DMV where you get your driver's license...if you are getting a regular driver's license, and that requires proof of citizenship. Some right wing pundit put together "register to vote at DMV" and "get a license without proof of citizenship," disregarding the fact that there are two different licenses involved, and declared that California was registering people to vote without proof of citizenship.

As is often the case with right wing echo chamber nonsense, the facts were readily available and the story was immediately debunked. As is also usually the case the followers of the right wing echo chambers, including D'ump, continue to believe, spread, and enlarge the story. Now it isn't just California (where it wasn't true in the first place), it's "liberal states." It also got promoted from "something California did" (for what Californians agree were good reasons and that has produced the intended result) into a massive voter fraud plot fomented by Obama. Since these progressions started from a story that was either erroneous or an outright lie to begin with they are obviously flawed from the gate, and the progressions themselves have absolutely no basis at all, but of course D'ump and the other right wing echo chamber followers believe them unshakably and dismiss any facts to the contrary as "fake news."

On another issue, I'm interested in "If I have a business in town I should be able to vote." Why? You are certainly eligible to vote where you live. We already have enough problems in local politics because of the challenges inherent in defining "primary residence."* Throwing absentee business owners into the mix doesn't seem to be beneficial. My opinion is, if you have a business in the city then live in the city, or don't vote there.



*The next city up the road from me has, since the fall of Bell, the most corrupt city government in California. The architect of this cesspool is the mayor, who has a house in the city that is listed as his primary residence, but flies in for city council meetings from his "vacation home." He travels from the airport to city hall and back in a motorcade, because he cannot appear on a city street without a high probability of being physically assaulted. His house in the city is protected by a security service, but they are just protecting the house. No one lives there.

 

[Gori the Grey]

D'ump's claim about illegal voters is based on a fake news story that has circulated in the right wing echo chamber for years.

Trump's claim is also simply based on his having lost the popular vote by 3 million people. Because he doesn't like being a loser, he had to assert that there were 3 million false votes cast. I believe he would have done so even if this story about California didn't already have currency.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Trump's claim is also simply based on his having lost the popular vote by 3 million people. Because he doesn't like being a loser, he had to assert that there were 3 million false votes cast. I believe he would have done so even if this story about California didn't already have currency.

Well, yeah, probably so.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

As stated elsewhere, my local House Rep does not live in the district but apparently that's not a problem. Fake news illegal voters that don't exist is the real problem. /s

 

[Cutlass]

http://freebeacon.com/politics/progressives-sound-alarm-voter-fraud/



Article continued at above link.

Republicans have for years raised concerns about voter fraud.
Their efforts to have voter registration rolls checked, and have questionable registrations purged were roundly criticized.
Efforts to have questionable voter registrations investigated and removed too close to an election were also criticized.

Now it appears that the shoe is on the other foot.

Are those is the article now raising this as a new concern (that didn't exist before)?
Are these new claims of questionable voter registration(or actual ballots cast) valid when similar concerns in the past were condemned as voter suppression?

Or is this simply an example of "its valid when my side raises the issue"?

The GOP doesn't care a flying frak about voter fraud. What they care about is election fraud! They know that the more election fraud which takes place, the more Republicans will get elected. And the less election fraud which takes place, the less Republicans get elected. So they are always harping on fake voter fraud in order to use it an en excuse to institute real election fraud.

 

[Bootstoots]

It's not voter fraud in general that is the issue, it's specific type of fraud that Republicans claim is widespread: namely, in-person voter fraud where noncitizens or other ineligible people show up to vote. This just doesn't happen in any numbers worth worrying about. Attempts to purge the voter rolls invariably purge far more eligible voters who happened to have the same names as, say, convicted felons where felons get stripped of voting rights, or dead people, or people who moved away, than it does remove people committing in-person voter fraud. The felon purging in Florida in 2000 certainly cost Gore the election - far more nonfelons with the same names as felons were purged and were denied ballots than Gore's margin of victory, with a racial distribution that was of course heavily skewed black.

This isn't to say that rolls shouldn't be examined and cross-checked for later registrations in other locations, or against death certificates and obituaries matching the address as well as the name, or for people over 100 who can't be verified as still alive. In general everywhere should be requiring SSNs for any voter who has one, which would make the checking process easier. But any non-routine voter roll purge is likely to have significant collateral damage, and in cases like felon removals, it is likely that the collateral damage is intentional to some degree.

Whenever Republicans talk about in-person voter fraud, it's transparently an attempt to remove a not-insignificant fraction (much more than ever commit in-person fraud) of the eligible electorate from voting along racial and age lines, in order to deny Democratic-leaning demographics voting rights, or at least make it a little bit more difficult so that some of the low-information types might not know about new ID rules or something. That's why states tightening voter ID laws often accept gun permits but not student IDs: the former group votes mostly Republican, the latter Democrat.

Now there are other types of fraud that actually could pose significant problems, ranging from carousel voting to ballot-stuffing to throwing out ballots to deliberate vote miscounting. I doubt that this happened enough to cost the left-wing candidates here their elections, but cities with substantial political machines (which are of course overwhelmingly Democratic machines, usually of the mainstream variety who try to shut out left-wing challengers in the city as well as Republicans in the rest of the state) do need to be watched closely to make sure larger types of fraud aren't happening.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The case in the recent election in South Carolina is possibly a portent of things to come.

There were questions about the security of the voting machines so they were subpoena'd by the FBI. The records of the election were then accidentally destroyed while they were in custody. The backups were also mysteriously deleted at the same time and they were in a separate location.

 

[Berzerker]

that happened in georgia too

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Oh it may have been Georgia and not South Carolina. I didn't Google it again just went off memory

 

[Perfection]

The article citing Minneapolis Ward 6 (I used to live in Ward 6) election as an example is pretty rediculous. Everything in Minneapolis is run by progressive democrats. And Ward 6 is heavy urban (just off downtown with mostly multiple unit housing) with large low-income and immigrant populations. The person lost to a Somali Refugee.

 

[Berzerker]

"It's fascinating to see the NAACP come out in favor of bulk voter list removals, especially under a fast-approaching deadline in the form of an election," Logan Churchwell, spokesman for the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a group that litigates to protect election integrity, told the Washington Free Beacon. "Apparently, deeply-ingrained opposition to voter list maintenance efforts can be shelved if a favored candidate is on the line."

Looks like the same complaint in Minnesota, but that guy wont win... He lost by 239 and he's only claiming 100 outside voters.