Voter Fraud

Glenn Beck and Penn Jillette discuss the Rally for the Republic, Moonbattery, Candidates, and the Elections

John McCain is the candidate that Conservatives love to hate. The grassroots either despises McCain or at best say they wish McCain could inspire more enthusiasm.

Look around.  There aren't any McCain signs.  No McCain bumper stickers except Anti-McCain bumper stickers.  No McCain buttons except a few that have been vandalized to say "Non-McCain" or "Not McCain".  

Sure, there are a few die-hards out there who say that John McCain is a true war hero or some such notsense.  There are many of his comrades, some of them men known to be honourable, such as Tom McKenney, who has stated that McCain is anything but a hero, and the worst possible candidate.  Of course we feel sorry for what ever suffering he endured in 'Nam, but that makes him one of thousands, and we arent about to suggest any of the others as a Presidential candidate.

What must be the most troubling to the GOP, is that while voters continue to learn how unreliable and vacuous, and hence vulnerable, Mr. Obama is, McCain still continues to drop in the polls.  Particularly the recent FISA vote by BHO, and BHO's waffling on the war has got some of his potential supporters upset. Some of us have long wondered if McCain isn't simply a cats' paw placed to ensure that Obama gets elected, much as was done in Illinois in the Senate race where Alan Keyes served a similar function.  The amazing poll results for lackluster quasi-libertarian Bob Barr (even despite his appalling  neocon running mate WARoot) indicates the seriousness of the displeasure with the "presumptive GOP nominee".

Even though some of the people can indeed be fooled all of time, it is hard to imagine how the best the GOP can offer us is an irresponsible Navy-brat flyboy who graduated 894th in a class of 899, and particularly at a time when we are entering in to a potentially devastating economic & monetary crisis, and escalation of interventionist wars.

Steve Lendman suggests that maybe the Republicans really don't want to lose in November, and discusses several aspects about McCain including his health condition in this interesting piece. 

Study: News media bias can net mistakes at the ballot box

A recently released news article from the UIUC shows that our news media bias does have an impact at the ballot box.  Some interesting quotes are below.

     "...even though voters typically take the spin into account rather than following blindly and that the media only slant news rather than falsifying it, selective reporting can still factor into mistakes at the polls...

     "One of the authors is quoted as saying "Biased media suppresses information that is unfavorable to ‘their’ candidate, and even smart voters cannot completely recover the truth from their reports"

     "Media bias could play an even bigger role in this year’s presidential race because Obama is still a relative unknown whose positions and past will be selectively reported as they surface during the campaign"

     "The problem is to avoid making mistakes you’re asking voters to work harder, and it’s not necessarily in their self-interest to do that,” Bernhardt said. “So there’s this paradox. Becoming better informed could potentially help everybody else because we would vote better and wouldn’t make mistakes. But people don’t internalize the consequences for everybody else, they only internalize their own. So they under invest in information. Most do.”

Not that we have any hope of seeing such reasonable legislation in Illinois any time soon:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights, validating Republican-inspired voter ID laws.

In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana's strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to deter fraud.

It was the most important voting rights case since the Bush v. Gore dispute that sealed the 2000 election for George W. Bush.

The law "is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting 'the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,'" Justice John Paul Stevens said in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy.

I think, given the number of things for which ID is now required by law, the state shouldn't be charging for them anyway.  And obtaining them (and other services) should be a lot more convenient and efficient, but those are concepts with which the Illinois Secretary of State's office is unfamiliar.

UPDATE:  Thoughts from our County Clerk:

This is a difficult issue.  I have a lot of sympathy for the views of those who find these laws to be burdensome.  And I’d hate to have people lose their right to vote because they happened to leave home without an ID.

However, on balance, with the overwhelming concern from the public about election fraud, I see voter ID laws as being a good idea.  We need to do more to give the public confidence that every vote is being counted and that only those people who are eligible to vote are able to vote.  Of course, any voter ID law should be accompanied by appropriate provisional voting provisions that ensure that people who inadvertently forget their identification are still allowed to vote and given a chance after the election to give their ID.

Seems reasonable to me.

California Councilwoman Faces Deportation for Voting When Not a U.S. Citizen

To me this is voter and vote fraud, this person knew she was not an American citizen and she voted anyway. If she wanted to vote she could have always went though the process to become a citizen. My question is who checks these voter records, will our votes matter, will they count or can just anyone become a voter? How did she become a Councilwoman? In her defense she said she didn't know how many people don't know?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,286453,00.html

I received two calls this week regarding new voting equipment and paper trails.  I addressed these on my blog a couple of months ago.  But the callers were also concerned because Sequoia, a company that supplies voting machines to Cook County and Chicago as well as much of America, has been purchased by a group of investors from Venezuela with close ties to Socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

I think it highly unlikely that Chavez's hand is reaching down to steal elections in the United States.  But it is just one more indicator of the wisdom of having a paper ballot and open procedures to verify the accuracy of the vote counting equipment.

Kudos to the Milwaukee judge who recognized that this crime went beyond mere vandalism and was an attack on Democracy.  You may recall hearing about other voter shenanigans in East St. Louis.

I couldn't find any information on whether the folks who shot at the Republican Headquarters in Huntington, WV were ever caught.

It's amazing that any Illinois Senator can introduce legislation "to protect Americans from using tactics that intimidate voters" (I copied that directly from his website, so blame the odd phrasing on his staff.  "To protect Americans from using tactics?") without uttering a peep about the numerous convictions of Illinois Democratic Party workers who have been convicted of actual election fraud over the past few years.

I realize that Illinois Democrats have to look the other way about voter fraud because the illegal votes help them and their allies.  But to somehow use legislation like this to pretend to be concerned about voter fraud while benefitting from the thousands of illegals votes purchased by the Democratic Party in Chicago, East St. Louis and elsewhere is the height of hypocrisy.  And to pretend that any of the stuff outlawed by his proposed legislation is the equivalent of the traditional voter fraud activities of Illinois Democrats is just laughable.

(Hat tip: Archpundit and Running From The Thought Police)

The News-Gazette had a nice article yesterday detailing the new voting system that will debut in the March 21, 2006 Primary Election.

Champaign County voters have used the stylus and punch card for the last time.

Champaign County is about to buy a $1.1 million optical-scan system that will let voters know when they have voted for too many candidates – and also will allow for much quicker and highly accurate counting of ballots.

Champaign County Clerk Mark Shelden predicts election nights in Champaign County could be over by 10 or 11 p.m. in the future and that "over votes," where a person votes for two candidates for a single office, will become a thing of the past.

The new equipment will be provided by Election Systems and Software (and not Diebold, but there's a connection, so the paranoid can keep wearing your tinfoil hats...)  Of the election systems sold by ESS, I think the County is purchasing counting machines and handicap-accessible polling stations, with (I think) the ballots actually being comprised of regular paper on which a voter darkens circles (#2 pencils only?) to indicate votes.  Once completed, the ballot/sheet is fed, by an election judge, into the counting machine at the polling place. The ballot is checked for certain problems (like overvotes), which can be caught early enough to allow a voter to corret them.  If there are no problems, the ballot is counted and secured by the counting machine.  After the polls close, at each polling place, the machine tabulates the ballots cast throughout the day and stores the results on a memory stick.  I think, if I'm reading this correctly, that the machine can also print out precinct-level results at the polling place (for verification by pollwatchers?).  The memory stick, however is taken to the County Clerks office, results are uploaded, and everything should move much more quickly.  This should also eliminate having to wait until 2 AM for final election results in Champaign County.

I'm excited, and can't wait to see the new equipment in action. 

Abelog, run by Springfield's liberal radio talk show host Jim Leach, discussed the move towards requiring photo identification to vote:

Maybe I'm missing something here -- and this probably explains why I only finished as runner-up in the Best of Springfield's "Best Liberal" category -- but is there a good reason in this day and age why any adult of voting age would not have a photo ID? And maybe I'm betraying my sheltered white middle-class able-bodied not-old-yet existence, but how the hell does anyone function in society without a photo ID?

Interesting comments, too, with some of the most cogent arguments against requiring an ID that I've seen.

Champaign County Clerk Mark Shelden has written another very informative post on his blog (and they've finally gotten an RSS feed!), this time covering why some voter registrations are rejected.

Using methods like those I have listed above, we have been able to prevent thousands of registrations from being rejected by going the extra mile to obtain or confirm information that should have been provided in the original registration application.

Nevertheless, despite our best efforts, last fall, 717 registrations were rejected for a variety of reasons.

194 rejections were rejected because the registrations were for addresses out of Champaign County. Those registrations are forwarded to the correct county.

57 were rejected because the person did not sign the registration form. This is mandated by state law.

149 were because the person did not check the box on the form indicating that the voter is a U.S. Citizen. This is required under the Help America Vote Act. HAVA specifically required that registration forms contain the citizenship question and that forms returned without that information must be rejected.

230 were rejected because the applicant failed to provide a valid ID number with the registration. This is mandated by state and federal law.

33 were rejected because the registrants submitted a change of address but were not previously registered.

The remainder were rejected for assorted other reasons such as failure to provide a birth date or failure to provide an address, or for providing a non-residential address.

Of the 717 registrants that were rejected, 281 re-registered with a new registration form.

Whenever we reject a registrant's application, we mail them a card informing them that their registration has been rejected. They are told the specific reason for the rejection and what they must do in order to correct the problem and to be registered.

It's a long article, but interesting, and you should go check it out.

Last month's verdict was guilty on all counts - but now one of the covicted Democrats is starting to talk about the rich white patrons who supplied the money that bought the votes:

Sheila Thomas said she is innocent, but added that if her vote fraud convictions were justified, then high-ranking county Democrats should also have faced a jury.

Thomas is the first of five defendants convicted of vote fraud in federal court last month to make a public statement after the verdict.

"We got into this because they gave us money," Thomas, 31, said about $73,000 passed out in East St. Louis two days before the Nov. 2 election. St. Clair County Democratic Central Committee Chairman Robert Sprague distributed the funds by giving checks to city Democratic precinct committeemen.

County Democrats have said the money, which is passed out in the city for every election, was intended to get people to the polls, not
to pay them to vote.

Good. Follow the money.

From Daly Thoughts, a national blog that does an excellent job of tracking races and polls around the country, comes this take on Blagojevich's re-election efforts:

The cynic in me thinks to the recent convictions in East St. Louis, and wonders if the Governor knows that some votes he could count on in the past might not be so readily available.

Read the whole thing.