High Court Slaps Down GOP Voting Case

"Budget Cuts!" Image from JunkerToons

If you don't already know, there's something you need to learn about claims of "voter fraud." The term means different things to different people. To many, it means anything used to monkey around with actual votes and actual voters. That's a good definition, but it isn't the primary one in today's politics.

"Voter fraud" today is usually applied to Democrats and groups like ACORN, at least when it is used by Republicans. They claim that Democrats try to load up the voter rosters with illegal aliens, fictional people, and dead people. Actual confirmed cases of this nature are as rare as Sarah Palin's concise sentences, but right-wingers (particularly on radio and blogs) rail about them endlessly.

What really happens is, people paid to gather voter registrations are sometimes dishonest and/or lazy. They put down phony names, or urge others to do so. This is a proven fact, and is what you're seeing on the news when "voter fraud" is discussed. What has not been shown to be true, is that any of this actually leads to fraudulent votes. Mickey Mouse has so far not shown up at the polls, at tried to pull the lever (or punch the chad, whatever).

Ultimately, the right is trying to muddy the waters, to try and pin "voter fraud" on Democrats only. The truth is, election rigging is the province of Republicans, with voter purges and caging lists. Absentee and provincial ballots go uncounted, people who have changed their address (or have been foreclosed upon) are barred from voting. Democrats, if guilty of anything, are guilty of trying to get more people to vote. Republicans are very clearly trying to prevent more people from voting. And the evidence shows that Republicans stop far more eligible voters from voting than Democrats cause ineligible voters to vote. Got that?

So, stories like this one warm my heart. The courts actually doing the right thing? Have we actually started to turn the corner?

[Excerpt]

High court rejects GOP bid in Ohio voting dispute

The Supreme Court is siding with Ohio's top elections official in a dispute with the state Republican Party over voter registrations.

The justices on Friday overruled a federal appeals court that had ordered Ohio's top elections official to do more to help counties verify voter eligibility. . .

Read more at: Breitbart

Latest Far-Right Bogeyman: ACORN

Photo from source, Fight the Smears

ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is the latest "association" of Barack Obama's that the far-right is trying to weigh Obama down with. ACORN is a get-out-the-vote organization, and it is true that they've had a few issues with counterfeit names on their voter registration forms.

What I'd like to know is, do other such organizations have the same sorts of problems? I'm guessing that they do, since you're sending out an army of people with clipboards--your sure to get some untrustworthy types on one side of the clipboard or the other. But tell me, if ACORN registered the entire Disney roster from Mickey Mouse to Goofy, what are the odds that those "people" are going to show up to vote?

So what is the issue here? I believe that it is a smokescreen by the right to distract from the very real, and very enormous voter suppression movement by Republicans. Particularly vote caging. In any event, it would seem that Barack Obama is not affiliated with ACORN in the first place.

[Excerpt]

Barack Obama Never Organized with ACORN

Discredited Republican voter-suppression guru Ken Blackwell is attacking Barack Obama with naked lies about his supposed connection to ACORN.

• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.
• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.
• Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

Read more at: Fight the Smears

Vote Fraud: A Matter of Perspective

Photo from Slate.com

Nearly everything in our country seems to have taken on a partisan bent. Gas prices? Conservatives say, "drill here, drill now!" even though refining is at near capacity. Liberals say, let's conserve, and change our ways. Never the twain shall meet.

But when it comes to voter fraud, the two sides are even further apart. Liberals (like me) are concerned about vote caging (confirmed by Greg Palast, BradBlog and others), voter intimidation, electronic voting machines without paper trails, and many other kinds of fraud. Conservatives? They're interested in votes by illegal aliens and dead people. Offenses which number far, far less than those stated before.

FOX "News", ever mindful of their conservative masters, are of course more concerned with the last--and least problematic--example.

[Excerpt]

On FOX voter registration fraud most newsworthy of election rigging techniques

FOX News is breaking out the quadrennial scare topic of "voter fraud," bundling isolated incidents and turning it into a coordinated election-theft meme. They do this without ever mentioning election fraud and voter suppression tactics perfected by Republicans like vote caging and voter roll purges that disenfranchise tens of thousands, mostly African-Americans, or manipulation of electronic touch screen tallies. Unlike FOX News, BradBlog follows election tampering year-round and is a treasure trove of articles and facts. . .

Read more at: Newshounds.us

Supreme Court Upholds Voter ID

Image from source, TPM Muckraker

I know that a lot of Democrats are up in arms about this. They say that requiring a state I.D. card to vote will disenfranchise the poor and elderly, people who don't have any form of I.D. I suppose it's possible that some such people exist, but I'd really like to see some sort of study on this to see just how many people without I.D.s actually try to vote. I mean, how do they get by with the rest of their lives without an I.D.?

I suspect the actual number of people without valid I.D. is about as low as the number of people committing voter fraud by voting without an I.D. It's just a guess, but it feels right. You see, Voter I.D.s are the Republican's white knight for stamping out voter fraud, as they see it. They see dozens, maybe tens of dozens of people voting that have no right to--the horror!

But, fellow Democrats, let's just let them have this one. With this ridiculous argument out of the way, maybe we can have a substantive discussion on actual voter fraud, committed with caging lists, and hackable computerized voting machines. Thousands, tens of thousands, possibly more votes are being lost in actual voter fraud. It'd be nice to fix that next.

[Excerpt]

Court Upholds Voter ID Law

Finally, the country will be rescued from its long nightmare struggle with voter fraud! And if certain voters find it harder to get their ballot cast, then so be it. . .

Read more at: TPM Muckraker