Nope, Voter Fraud Doesn't Exist...

[Rommey]

The State Board of Elections has alerted the Office of the State Prosecutor to a report that 164 people voted in both Maryland and Virginia in the November 2012 presidential election, in violation of the law.
Election officials confirmed Thursday that the referral included 17 cases in which the Fairfax County, Va., elections board investigated the report by outside advocacy groups and said they found that ballots had been cast in that county and in Maryland in the same voters' names. Fairfax officials have referred that finding to four federal and Virginia criminal investigation agencies.
A spokesman for the District of Columbia elections board said his agency is working with the Maryland state prosecutor to look into an unspecified number of cases in which voters might have cast votes in both Washington and Maryland.

Authorities in Maryland an Virginia are acting on information generated by two conservative advocacy groups, Election Integrity Maryland and the Virginia Voters Alliance. With the Virginia group taking the lead, the groups used a computer program to comb the voter rolls in both states. They say they have identified about 44,000 people registered in both states, and 164 who cast ballots in both in 2012.
"We are concerned that these voters are going to be able to continue to do this until they are prosecuted," said Cathy Kelleher, president of the Maryland group.

link

Now before some of you give me the knee-jerk reaction how it wouldn't have changed the outcome, let me state that I firmly believe that 1 fraudulent vote is 1 too many. And how do you know that it didn't affect ANY of the races/questions on the ballot? Local races can sometimes be quite close.

 

[tommyjo]

Now before some of you give me the knee-jerk reaction how it wouldn't have changed the outcome, let me state that I firmly believe that 1 fraudulent vote is 1 too many. And how do you know that it didn't affect ANY of the races/questions on the ballot? Local races can sometimes be quite close.

You quite obviously live in fantasy land if you believe that every election for every position in every district CAN be 100% pure.

Your commentary is silly. The failure in your position is that you automatically assume all 164 fraudulent votes would/could be cast in the same local prescient. You suggest that 164 votes could have turned an election. Ok...show one that could have been. Then show one that actually was.

Until you can prove that an election outcome was decided by fraudulent votes your comments and expectations are ridiculous.

Voter fraud is and should be a crime, but it is not the epidemic that the far right claims it to be.

 

[Gilligan]

You quite obviously live in fantasy land if you believe that every election for every position in every district CAN be 100% pure.

Your commentary is silly. The failure in your position is that you automatically assume all 164 fraudulent votes would/could be cast in the same local prescient. You suggest that 164 votes could have turned an election. Ok...show one that could have been. Then show one that actually was.

Until you can prove that an election outcome was decided by fraudulent votes your comments and expectations are ridiculous.

Voter fraud is and should be a crime, but it is not the epidemic that the far right claims it to be.

And we'll always be left to wonder....what you might have been like if your parents could have afforded that therapy you've always so desperately needed. *big sigh*

 

[Ken King]

PEW did a study a few years ago and they identified 1.8 million dead voters still on the roles and another 24 million inaccurate or invalid voter registrations. Given that number of "issues" the potential for fraud is alive and well. I think that such potential cannot be tolerated at all. Something as simple as a fingerprint reader to validate an eligible voter (that has their prints taken upon registration) should be a no-brainer, even the poor can afford fingerprints.

 

[Rommey]

You quite obviously live in fantasy land if you believe that every election for every position in every district CAN be 100% pure.

Your commentary is silly. The failure in your position is that you automatically assume all 164 fraudulent votes would/could be cast in the same local prescient.

I'm gonna respond to you even though I know you are too much of a chicken #### to have any type of meaningful conversation...

I never said that every election is going to be 100% pure. I said that it should be the objective to make every election free from fraud. In other words, 1 fraudulent vote whether or not it makes a difference in the outcome is 1 too many. You might be OK with a fraudulent vote negating your vote...I'm not.

I never said or implied that the 164 votes were from the same precinct. If fact if you had put two synapses together and actually read the article you would see they were talking about people voting in Virginia AND Maryland. Maybe that concept eludes you, but I thought everyone understood that would be two different precincts.

You suggest that 164 votes could have turned an election. Ok...show one that could have been. Then show one that actually was

Well, check out this from Wikipedia...although not all are in the US, there are plenty of examples of US elections that are under your 164 vote threshold.

Until you can prove that an election outcome was decided by fraudulent votes your comments and expectations are ridiculous.

That's part of the problem...you see I don't think there are sufficient safeguards to catch or prevent voter fraud. So tell me since my expectations are ridiculous, what is the threshold for an acceptable amount of allowable fraudulent votes?

Let's look at Florida 2000 and consider the small amount of voter fraud that could have decided that election. 537 votes decided the Presidency. There are 67 counties in Florida. So if there were only 9 fraudulent votes in each county for Gore, that would have changed the result. Of course, this scenario would have required a concerted effort and realization that the margin was going to be paper thin, but what if there was small effort in place? By luck their efforts would have succeeded...and I doubt there wold have been enough checks and balances to catch/detect fraudulent votes. Heck they couldn't even agree what was a valid vote in a lot of cases during that debacle.

Voter fraud is and should be a crime, but it is not the epidemic that the far right claims it to be

It is a crime when they catch it. I don't think it is an epidemic, but being proactive instead of reactive when it comes to voting should be something we strive for to ensure elections are fair and as close to 100% legitimate as possible.

 

[BOP]

Voter fraud comes in various forms.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...quinn-illinois-edit-0829-20140828-story.html#

The Sun-Times has reported that armed investigators who work for Palos Township GOP Committeeman Sean Morrison's security firm visited the homes of people who had signed or circulated Libertarian petitions. The newspaper cited two examples of security company employees, with holstered weapons visible, allegedly telling the people that the petitions were fraudulent — a lie — and urging them to retract their signatures.

If true, this was a last-ditch effort to invalidate Libertarian signatures after a two-month fight at the State Board of Elections. Allies of the Republican Party had challenged the Libertarians' signatures line by line — then dragged petition circulators before the board to testify about their signature-gathering. The elections board found the circulators to be credible and enough of their signatures to be valid. So the Libertarian Party's statewide slate will appear on the ballot.

But now it's late August. The Libertarian Party — which needed 25,000 valid signatures to get on the ballot while the two major parties needed only 5,000 — is now months behind and resourced out.

 

[Lurk]

These are the same tactics that got Obongo elected the first time. Someone must be reading the books of the early Obama-truthers (finally).

 

[rdytogo]

Now before some of you give me the knee-jerk reaction how it wouldn't have changed the outcome, let me state that I firmly believe that 1 fraudulent vote is 1 too many. And how do you know that it didn't affect ANY of the races/questions on the ballot? Local races can sometimes be quite close.

Other than you, who is saying voter fraud doesn't exist?

 

[Lurk]

Other than you, who is saying voter fraud doesn't exist?

Rommey is saying that ANY voter fraud is too much. Not that NO voter fraud is evident.

 

[rdytogo]

Rommey is saying that ANY voter fraud is too much. Not that NO voter fraud is evident.

Hmpf. I thought this meant he was saying no voter fraud exists....

Nope, Voter Fraud Doesn't Exist...

After all, that was HIS headline. You do seem to be

 

[Lurk]

You need to change the batteries in your sarcasm meter. It's dead.

 

[Rommey]

Hmpf. I thought this meant he was saying no voter fraud exists....

Nope, Voter Fraud Doesn't Exist...

After all, that was HIS headline. You do seem to be

I'm saying that every time there is a discussion about voter fraud, someone comes out and says that vetoer fraud doesn't exist. The forum doesn't allow me to put in the headline...

You need to change the batteries in your sarcasm meter. It's dead.

 

[kom526]

I fear that some of us are going to need these whenever we post ...

 

[mamatutu]

I fear that some of us are going to need these whenever we post ...

View attachment 104412

Admin should adopt your attachment to preface every thread like movie warnings/description. It would help a lot of members here; including me.

 

[Midnightrider]

I'm saying that every time there is a discussion about voter fraud, someone comes out and says that vetoer fraud doesn't exist. The forum doesn't allow me to put in the headline...

your report doesn;t say that actual voter fraud was found, only that people with the same names voted in both MD and VA or MD and DC. More than likely that 164 fraudulent votes will be a lot less once the "investigation" is completed.

 

[SamSpade]

Other than you, who is saying voter fraud doesn't exist?

Pretty much every time the subject is brought up, there will be someone to dispute it. The arguments are usually :

1. They're insignificant in number.
2. It doesn't happen because no one's gone to jail over it.
3. No one's proven anything yet (absolutely not true - recently a candidate was removed from a race - Wendy Rosen - because she did just that).
4. It doesn't involve parties or major organizations and shows no evidence of large scale action - so it's just a crime by one person.
5. And so on.

And I don't understand why people keep fighting it, because the moment there's a hint of racism in fraud, all bets are off.

WHY would anyone want to argue along these lines? Because they believe that arguing otherwise grants carte blanche to those who want to periodically either scuttle voter rolls or have them scrutinized, cancelling dubious registrations.
The same people who say they'd rather twenty guilty men go free than have one innocent person executed will also rather have 20 fraudulent votes cast rather than one innocent person have the vote taken.
They'd rather have a graveyard of frauds than Granny miss her chance.

It sounds fair but voting *IS* a numbers game, and letting 20 people get away with it ALREADY takes away the vote of the law abiding. Fake votes DO nullify those who obey the law.
Allowing it IS disenfranchisement. It ought to horrify anyone that fraudulent votes are cast.

There is only ONE sensible reason not to pursue voter fraud - and that is to protect those doing it and those who benefit from it.

 

[Rommey]

your report doesn;t say that actual voter fraud was found, only that people with the same names voted in both MD and VA or MD and DC. More than likely that 164 fraudulent votes will be a lot less once the "investigation" is completed.

...

He said the board matched up names, dates of birth and the last four digits of Social Security numbers and found matches indicating double votes in each case.
Ten of the 17 voters were found to have cast double votes in more than one election, Schoeneman said. He said two voters apparently cast double votes in four elections and one in five. He said most of the cases involved votes cast in Prince George's and Montgomery counties, but at least five were from the Baltimore area.
In 14 of the cases, Schoeneman said, the voters apparently went to polling places in both states. In three cases, the voter cast a ballot in person in one state and submitted an absentee ballot in the other, he said.

 

[cwo_ghwebb]

You really didn't expect Midnightslider to read the article, did you?