Daily Archives: 17 July 2012

There’s No Voter Fraud

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Nosirree.  But there is this AP story carried by Fox News with incidents like this reported.

The voter registration form arrived in the mail last month with some key information already filled in: Rosie Charlston’s name was complete, as was her Seattle address.

Problem is, Rosie was a black lab who died in 1998.

And this

A Virginia man said similar documents arrived for his dead dog, Mozart, while a woman in the state got forms for her cat, Scampers.

The AP story notes that residents and election administrators around the country have encountered a number of questionable mailings like this addressed to animals, dead people, noncitizens and people already registered to vote.  Voter Participation Center brags about having distributed 5 million forms in the last few months, intended to get “unmarried women, blacks, Latinos, young adults,” and so on registered.

The problem with such ad hoc systems is that there is no accountability attached.  VPC itself says it relies on the recipients to toss the bad forms; it doesn’t try not to send them in the first place.  Except that Rosie isn’t around to toss her bad form, and Scampers can’t read.  VPC, though, says it’s all someone else’s fault: they use “commercially collected information.”

More seriously, as New Mexico officials note, ineligible voters who complete the documents can make it onto the rolls.  In New Mexico, for instance, noncitizens can qualify for a driver’s license by simply proving residency—not even necessarily legal residency—and state elections officials have no way of verifying the voting eligibility status of those who file registration documents.  Further, the registration forms often arrive with information already filled in and with a pre-addressed (to appropriate local elections officials) envelope enclosed.

There really are a small number of fraudulent registrations compared to the overall legitimately voting population.  But keep in mind that Senator Al Franken (D, MN) was elected in 2008 by 300 votes out of nearly 3 million cast, and President George W Bush won Florida’s Electoral College votes in 2000 by 500 votes out of some 6 million cast.

Also keep in mind that Attorney General Eric Holder opposes voter ID laws, which would protect the sanctity of Americans votes by reducing the opportunity for election stealing through voter fraud even further.

DoJ and…Racism

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Speaking to the NAACP in Houston last Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder had this to say about Texas’ attempt to protect Americans’ voting rights by implementing a voter ID law that would help ensure that only eligible voters got to vote:

Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them—and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them.  We call those poll taxes.

The racism in Holder’s remarks is apparent.  As the WSJ pointed out

The Texas law stipulates that voters can use several kinds of ID to vote, including a driver’s license, passport, a US military ID, and (this being Texas) a handgun permit.  As for the “poll tax” canard, the law says the Texas Department of Public Safety will issue a free Election Identification Card if requested.

When was the last time Holder’s Jim Crow had a poll tax of $0.00?

But this is the new Jim Crow, Eric Holder style: anyone who votes Democratic (as opposed to democratic) should be allowed to vote, regardless of eligibility.  Never mind that the Supreme Court upheld a substantially identical voter ID law in Indiana just three years ago.  But Holder can’t attack Indiana; that state isn’t under his personal thumb, courtesy of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Texas is.

This is also the same Attorney General that, shortly after he assumed the position, threw out a case of New Black Panther voter intimidation of white voters that the Federal government already had won—at the end of the previous administration—and concerning which it was, literally, all over but the sentencing.  That case eventually led to the resignation of career Federal Prosecutor J Christian Adams.  This case also led to then-active Federal Prosecutor Christopher Coates’ testimony in front of the US Civil Rights Commission about the new DoJ’s policy of not seeking enforcement of voter laws when the victims weren’t people of color or when the suspected perpetrators were.

It would be interesting to hear Holder give the same speech to a more balanced audience.