I am particularly pleased with the timing of this study, because it addresses the crazy extremist nut jobs who have made unfounded claims about 200 convictions for voter fraud in Minnesota elections, saving me from having to fact check them AGAIN. They have not ever delivered on their fraud claims; this proves that their failure record remains unbroken. (The claim by Minnesota Majority/Election Integrity of 200 convictions for voter fraud in Minnesota is a giant load of dung.)
The report below comes on top of the state of Pennsylvania, going into court over Voter ID stipulating there was no voter fraud, there is no voter fraud, and there is no expected voter fraud. Wherever voter ID has been enacted, a Republican campaign claiming voter fraud or the dangerous potential for voter fraud, has been used to justify the change to Voter ID - the EXPENSIVE change that disenfranchises voters and makes voting less efficient by adding an additional step and requirement.
It is not just Pennsylvania; it is EVERY state that does that bait and switch, EVERY state where conservatives have used that propaganda to lie, to cause fear, and pretty much to justify the UnAmerican action of denying legal voters the right to vote in ways which are racist in their effects. In every case Voter ID is used to prevent voters from minorities from voting as a group because they tend to vote Democratic. There is NO justification for taking, in the case of Minnesota, an estimated 20 million dollars away from better use, like repairing falling down bridges.
This was true under the Bush administration where the distinctly right wing Ashcroft tried to find voter fraud - but didn't. This has been true of the Brennan Law Center which has done exemplary studies on voter fraud over many years. NO ONE finds any voter fraud; the only groups making those claims from crazy incompetent fringies who can't back up their claims, and the GOP and Tea Party ONLY during their campaigns to enact disenfranchising voter ID, to try to win elections through voter suppression. No one finds voter fraud, not conservative attempts to do so, not bipartisan attempts to do so, not NON-partisan attempts to do so (including academic research), and not investigation by more liberal entities. Only crazy amateur extreme fringies claim to find it, and they can't produce any credible proof when held to account, (certainly our Minnesota version of the nutjobs can't).
News21 appears to fall squarely into the non-partisan academic category of research. If anything, the University of Arizona can be considered a conservative leaning academic institution.
News21 is a program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that is helping to change the way journalism is taught in the U.S. and train a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry. It is headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Since 2006, nearly 500 top journalism students in the U.S. have participated in the landmark national initiativeI would point out that this study precedes and includes our contested Minnesota 2008 elections. I couldn't help but notice that they make note of yet one more in-person-with-ID case of REPUBLICAN voter fraud, in addition to our 2008 case of a Coleman/McCain voter, and the Secretary of State of Indiana. Now we have this one as well, which suggests a certain projection by Republicans of voter fraud onto others.
The News21 database shows one of the rare instances of voter-impersonation fraud occurred in Londonderry, N. H., in 2004 when 17-year-old Mark Lacasse used his father’s name to vote for George W. Bush in the Republican presidential primary. The case was dismissed after Lacasse performed community service.And that there are some interesting questions about the GOP presidential candidate's voting integrity. Somehow I just don't see Mittens as the unfinished basement living kind of guy.... do you?
The crazy fringe groups are notorious for just plain making stuff up. The far right wing media and blogosphere claim it, regularly and often, but they can't show it they just know it in their gut. In other words, these are the same conspiracy crazies who like to embrace the birthers, truthers, tenthers, deathers and secessionists, and a lot of the other right wing hate groups. This is really just a thinly disguised hate bias for trying to legalize discrimination. Hate movements always claim patriotism and saving the country, as we have seen from the white supremacist rhetoric connected to the Sikh temple domestic terrorist attack. The uglier the position or the act, the more often you can expect to see claims of nobility and high mindedness used to try to disguise the reality. Protecting elections from non-existent voter fraud is a classic example of fake claims of patriotism to undermine the premise of we the people representative government and one person / one vote.
It is singularly ugly, UnAmerican and profoundly dishonest. It is deliberate and calculated, and it is profoundly conservative in its racist intent to only allow people to participate who are perceived to be 'us' and not 'them'.The study was done from all 50 states, and the elections officials responding included those REPUBLICAN election officials in the 37 states which enacted voter ID claiming voter fraud when they knew it did not exist. This is further proof the GOP and Tea party LIED to constituents about voter fraud to sell voter ID, and knew all along there was no voter fraud.
Here is the latest evidence that there is absolutely no need whatsoever for voter ID.
From News21:
New database of US voter fraud finds no evidence that photo ID laws are needed
By Natasha Khan and Corbin Carson, News21
A new nationwide analysis of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases since 2000 shows that while fraud has occurred, the rate is infinitesimal, and in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tough voter ID laws, is virtually non-existent.
In an exhaustive public records search, reporters from the investigative reporting projecdt News21 sent thousands of requests to elections officers in all 50 states, asking for every case of fraudulent activity including registration fraud, absentee ballot fraud, vote buying, false election counts, campaign fraud, casting an ineligible vote, voting twice, voter impersonation fraud and intimidation.
Analysis of the resulting comprehensive News21 election fraud database turned up 10 cases of voter impersonation. With 146 million registered voters in the United States during that time, those 10 cases represent one out of about every 15 million prospective voters.
“Voter fraud at the polls is an insignificant aspect of American elections,” said elections expert David Schultz, professor of public policy at Hamline University School of Business in St. Paul, Minn.
“There is absolutely no evidence," Schultz said, that voter impersonation fraud "has affected the outcome of any election in the United States, at least any recent election in the United States."
- In-person voter-impersonation fraud is rare. The database shows 207 cases of other types of fraud for every case of voter impersonation. “The fraud that matters is the fraud that is organized. That's why voter impersonation is practically non-existent because it is difficult to do and it is difficult to pull people into conspiracies to do it,” said Lorraine Minnite, professor of public policy and administration at Rutgers University.
- There is more fraud in absentee ballots and voter registration than any other categories. The analysis shows 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud and 400 cases of registration fraud. A required photo ID at the polls would not have prevented these cases. “The one issue I think is potentially important, though more or less ignored, is the overuse of absentee balloting, which provides far more opportunity for fraud and intimidation than on-site voter fraud,” said Daniel Lowenstein, a UCLA School of Law professor.
- Of reported election-fraud allegations in the database whose resolution could be determined, 46 percent resulted in acquittals, dropped charges or decisions not to bring charges. Minnite says prosecutions are rare. “You have to be able to show that people knew what they were doing and they knew it was wrong and they did it anyway,” she said. “It may be in the end" that prosecutors "can't really show that the people who have cast technically illegal ballots did it on purpose.”
- Felons or noncitizens sometimes register to vote or cast votes because they are confused about their eligibility. The database shows 74 cases of felons voting and 56 cases of noncitizens voting.
- Voters make a lot of mistakes, from accidentally voting twice to voting in the wrong precinct.
- Election officials make a lot mistakes, from clerical errors — giving voters ballots when they’ve already voted — to election workers confused about voters’ eligibility requirements.
Read more here about how the survey of states was conducted.
Voter-impersonation fraud has attracted intense attention in recent years as conservatives and Republicans argue that strict voter ID laws are needed to prevent widespread fraud.
The case has been made repeatedly by the Republican National Lawyers Association, one of whose missions is to advance “open, fair and honest elections.” It has compiled a list of 375 election fraud cases, based mostly on news reports of alleged fraud.
(I would point out here that just because a case is reported or claimed, it does not follow that an investigation into that claim results in a prosecution or that the claim turns out to be legitimate. This was a problem not only for the RNLA claims but is an even larger problem found in the less professional and even fringier group claims. The larger the claims of voter fraud, the fringier and less professional the group, and a concomitant lack of valid instances. Crazy and extreme seems to be the consistent multiplier. - DG)
News21 examined the RNLA cases in the database and found only 77 were alleged fraud by voters. Of those, News21 could verify convictions or guilty pleas in only 33 cases. The database shows no RNLA cases of voter-impersonation fraud.
Civil-rights and voting-rights activists condemn the ID laws as a way of disenfranchising minorities,
students, senior citizens and the disabled.
In a video that went viral in June, Republican Mike Turzai, Pennsylvania’s House majority leader, spoke approvingly at a Republican State Committee meeting of the state’s new voter ID law "which is going to allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania — done."
His spokesman said Turzai meant that Pennsylvania’s election would be fair and free of fraud because of the new ID law. Democrats, however, said Turzai meant the law, signed in March, would suppress Democratic votes.
According to Pennsylvania’s Department of State and the Department of Transportation, as many as 758,000 people, about 9 percent of the state’s 8.2 million registered voters currently don’t have the identification that now will be required at the polling place.
Even if 90 percent of those voters got the correct identification by Nov. 6, that still could leave 75,800 voters disenfranchised.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether the ID law violates the 1965 federal Voting Rights Act by discriminating against minorities, according to a July 23 letter to Pennsylvania Secretary of State Carol Aichele.
A coalition of civil-rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union has sued Pennsylvania in state court, arguing the voter ID law would deprive citizens of their right to vote. The trial began July 25.
In a pretrial document released by the ACLU, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, represented by the state Attorney General’s Office, could not identify any cases of voter impersonation at the polls.
The state said it would offer no evidence that “in-person voter fraud has in fact occurred in Pennsylvania or elsewhere” or that “in-person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of a photo ID law.”
Pennsylvania officials, who responded to the News21 public record requests, also reported no cases of Election Day voter-impersonation fraud since 2000.
“This law is a solution solving a problem that does not exist,” Democratic state Sen. Vincent Hughes told an Aug. 1 teleconference hosted by New America Media, a group representing the ethnic media. Hughes called the law partisan and, echoing Turzai, said its purpose is “to elect Mitt Romney.”
The News21 database shows one of the rare instances of voter-impersonation fraud occurred in Londonderry, N. H., in 2004 when 17-year-old Mark Lacasse used his father’s name to vote for George W. Bush in the Republican presidential primary. The case was dismissed after Lacasse performed community service.
The database shows the nine other voter impersonation cases were in Alabama, California, Colorado, Kansas and Texas. All were isolated and showed no coordinated efforts to change election results.
Republican-dominated legislatures — with the exception of Rhode Island where Democrats passed a photo ID law — have considered 62 ID bills since 2010.
Nine states — South Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Mississippi and Alabama — passed strict voter ID laws.
Only the Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Kansas measures are likely to be in effect in November. The Pennsylvania law has been challenged in state court.
Rhode Island’s more lenient law will take effect in 2014. Indiana and Georgia were the first states to pass strict voter-ID laws, enacted in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Few laws regulate absentee ballots, although the News21 analysis shows this is one of the most frequent instances of fraud.
“It makes much more sense if you are trying to steal an election by either manipulating results on the back end through election official misconduct or to use absentee ballots which are easier to control and to maintain,” said Hasen, the UC, Irvine, professor of political science.
The News21 analysis shows 185 election fraud cases linked to campaign officials or politicians involving absentee or mail-in ballots.
In 2003, the Indiana Supreme Court invalidated East Chicago Democratic Mayor Rob Pastrick’s primary victory because of massive fraud. Pastrick, an eight-term incumbent, lost in a 2004 repeat election.
Forty-six people, mainly city workers, were found guilty in a wide-ranging conspiracy to purchase votes through the use of absentee ballots.
John Fortier, a political scientist at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said there are “more direct problems” with absentee ballots because the person casting the ballot can be pressured or coerced.
Keesha Gaskins, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, a public policy group that opposed many of the voting-law changes nationally, recognizes that absentee-ballot fraud occurs more than other election fraud, but still doesn’t consider it a threat.
“There are more concerns in terms of absentee fraud but, again, it is easier to catch,” she said.Minnite, the Rutgers University professor who researched election fraud from 2006-2010 for her book, “The Myth of Voter Fraud,” agrees with Gaskins.
"Corruption works when it’s organized. If we see more cases of absentee-ballot fraud than, say, voter-impersonation fraud, it still doesn't mean that voters individually are motivated to do it,” she explains. “It just means that absentee balloting might present some greater opportunities for people who are organizing conspiracies to corrupt elections."
The News21 analysis shows 34 states had at least one case of registration fraud — many were associated with third-party voter registration groups.
The most noteworthy involved the voter registration group, Association for Community Organization and Reform Now (ACORN).
The group, which endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, became the target of conservative activist James O’Keefe, who produced deceptively edited videos that suggested ACORN employees were encouraging criminal behavior.
Voter-ID supporters often cite ACORN as evidence that voter fraud is a problem. The scandal resulted in at least 22 convictions in seven states and the collapse of the organization in 2010 after Congress and private donors pulled their funding.
This type of fraud is a concern because third-party voter-registration groups generally pay for each signature. Critics argue that is an incentive to write in false names and break the law.
Both sides of the debate agree voter-registration rolls are outdated and should be cleaned up. They disagree on whether problems with the rolls lead to fraudulent votes being cast.
“Mickey Mouse has been registered hundreds of times, but Mickey has never turned up on Election Day to vote,” Hasen said. The News21 database shows 393 cases involving ineligible voters, typically felons, noncitizens or people voting in the wrong jurisdictions. There were guilty verdicts in 159 cases.
Sometimes, felons and non-citizens were not aware that they didn’t have voting rights, as in the case of Derek Little in Wisconsin, as The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. The database shows the case was dismissed because prosecutors learned that Little identified himself at the polls with his prison ID.
Double voting occurs in isolated instances and often involves absentee ballots. However, few cases in the database reveal any coordinated effort to change election results. Often, the double vote was a mistake.
Claudel Gilbert, who had changed his address in Ohio in 2007, received two registration cards in the mail and said he believed he had to vote in both places for his vote to count. In four other cases, people were accused of double voting for filling out their ballot and their spouse’s.
Some advocates of voter-ID laws say voter fraud is used to “steal” federal elections. But the only so-called theft case in the News21 database involved four Indiana Democratic party officials accused in 2008 of forging signatures on petitions to get Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the state primary ballot. No one was convicted.
Many experts agree the elections system is inefficient and that this leads to mistakes and clerical errors that are lumped under “voter fraud.”
The News21 database showed that election-fraud cases often were the result of mistakes by confused voters or elections officials.
For example, Leland Duane Lewis, an 89-year-old from Raleigh, N.C., in 2011, requested — and got — a second ballot after mistakenly turning in his first one and realizing it was only half-completed.
Tom Brett, an election worker from Georgia, was accused in 2009 of not being on duty during early and absentee voting.
Schultz, the Hamline University professor who has written extensively about election fraud, said voting rules could be clarified for voters and there should be better training for election officials.
“If somebody is ineligible to vote because they are a felon, for example, or an ex-felon, making that clear to them, in terms of they can't vote until such and such a time,” Schultz said. “And the same thing with election officials ... making it clear to them regarding what the rules are regarding who is eligible and who is not eligible.”
Many voter-ID supporters continue to argue that the measures are needed to prevent voter-impersonation fraud to ensure the integrity of elections, although fewer than five tenths of one percent of the total cases in the News21 analysis are voter impersonation.
Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based policy center, is a staunch supporter of voter-ID laws. He said “there’s no way to detect” voter-impersonation fraud unless states have voter-ID laws.
Bill Denny, a Mississippi Republican state representative elected in 1987, sponsored that state’s voter-ID bill — awaiting preclearance by the Justice Department — because he said voter impersonation is a problem even if there have been few prosecutions.
“Whether you have proof of it or not,” he added, “what in the heavens is wrong with showing an ID at polls?”
Minnite, the Rutgers professor, says she is worried that lawmakers could disenfranchise voters who don’t obtain the correct IDs and are prohibited from voting in November based on a problem that barely exists.
“Voter fraud is not a problem" so "the solution should not be to address voter fraud,” Minnite said.
She said it could be especially burdensome for poor people to obtain the correct documents to get an ID — even for a free ID that some states with new ID laws are providing.
Minnite asked whether voting rights for "thousands of people should be sacrificed ... where there is absolutely no basis" for voter ID "in the first place.”
Civil-rights groups compare the voter-ID laws to Jim Crow laws, poll taxes and literacy tests designed to keep blacks from voting in the past.
“It's simply a new big burden on the backs of people who just want to have their voices heard during elections,” said Eddie Hailes, managing director and general counsel of the Advancement Project, a civil-rights group challenging voter-ID laws in Texas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The Justice Department denied the Texas voter-ID law — which U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder likened to a poll tax— on the ground that it would disproportionately affect minorities and the poor.
The state pre-emptively sued the Justice Department for the right to implement the law and arguments were heard by a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C., in July. A verdict is expected within the next month.
Not all supporters of the laws say voter-impersonation fraud is a major problem. Not all opponents say the laws will suppress millions of votes.
Trey Grayson, the former Republican Kentucky secretary of state who is director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, supports voter ID but also says election reform should “make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”
He suggests voter-identification laws could be paired with Election Day registration. “People who don’t get registered 30 days out could still come in and register on the day of the election,” he said. “And a voter ID, that could give you the confidence that this person really is who she says she is and allow her to vote.”
Grayson criticizes many opponents of voter-identification laws, suggesting that their focus on voter suppression may have an adverse effect on turnout.
"One of the criticisms I would have of the attorney general," Eric Holder, "and others who have made this a big deal,” he said, “is, by raising the issue and the way they are raising it, rather than trying to go around and get people IDs, sort of raising the specter of all this, they may also be suppressing the vote with their reaction to it." Grayson said there is potential to have comprehensive election reform without partisan politics.
“You could take ideas from the left and the right,” he said. “You could have a better system.”
Alex Remington of News21 contributed to this article. Natasha Khan was an Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation fellow this summer at News21.
Hello Dog Gone,
ReplyDeleteI have always said and posted that this current “Voter Fraud” scare and accusation the Republicans is whipping up is nothing more than a fabricated reason to purge the voting rolls of the segment demographics that would NOT be voting for Republican Candidates.
Just as what was done in Florida back in 2000 when 54,000 legal voters were purged from the voting rolls and W. Bush won that state by only just over 500+ votes. Yes an election stolen.
It is today considered one of the most innovated political moves in recent history. For this current election year, the Governor of Florida through the “Correcting Voter Fraud” was once again making the attempt to purge non-conducive voter rolls to once again reduce those who would vote against the Republican Candidates in that state. One particular example was a 91 year old man, who has voted consistently for 70 years and served in World War II, was told he could not vote. I did a posting on this exact same subject.
http://engineerofknowledge.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/the-justice-department-throws-down-the-gauntlet-to-florida-governor-rick-scott-stop-illegal-purging-of-voter-rolls/
This is not only happening in Florida but in many states across the country where the Republicans are in control of such matters.
Yet another election stolen attempt.
I keep asking myself why the right seems to beg to be lied to, thrives on it, and clearly wants it so badly.
ReplyDeleteThat didn't used to define conservaties, but it has since their politics started going increasingly more extreme.
The list of fools is huge - birthers, tenthers, secessionists, deathers (death panel believers), and the lot who believe the moon landing was staged, and that area 51 has aliens, and the climate change and evolution deniers. Add in the paramilitary right wing militias, the 2nd Amendment crazies and other gunners, the state currency seekers/ Gold standarders like our GOP U.S. Senate candidate, the birchers and other bigots, the white supremacists and anti-diversity crowd, the islamophobes and homophobes, the oathers and promise keepers (who are the biggest attendance segment at strip clubs during GOP conventions and the biggest porn consumers at the hotels, as well as consistently the biggest porn users online) and you have a bunch of crazy, and not very bright hypocrites.
The number of tin foil hat wearers is extraordinary; if people didn't WANT to be lied to, Fox news and Rush Limbaugh would be out of business, and the right wing blogosphere would be a empty.
Instead the righties pretty much nod and drool and mumble angrily. What they do not do is fact check or give themselves a functional reality check before embracing their beliefs so intransigently.
Clearly a significant number of the actual politicians KNOW the truth, but choose to subvert it anyway. That is propaganda, the worst kind of propaganda.
It has not always been the case that conservatives were low-effort voters.
Growing up -- I can remember events meeting political figures going back to when I was 4 --- I met conservatives ranging from city council people, planning commissioners, school board members, etc. on up to sitting Governors, state legislators, sitting members of Congress and U.S. Senators who were conservative. NONE of them were like our current conservatives, NONE. They were intelligent, well informed, and operated in factual ojbective reality --- not like the loonies who go in for this crap.
Hello Dog Gone,
ReplyDeleteWhen you ask, “why the right seems to beg to be lied to, thrives on it, and clearly wants it so badly” I am currently in the process of writing a piece titled, “The Mirage Of Seductions” trying to answer this exact same question. I will let you know when it is done.
As I have said my family has 150 legicy of being Republican but I know that my Father and Mother would be ashamed of what the Party has morphed into today.
My family also, including having served in various level offices as Republicans.
ReplyDeleteNone of my family will support or vote GOP any longer; we didn't leave the party - they left us when they took up extreme and crazy, fact averse.
I used to think having to sit through discussions of things like mil rates was about the most tedious thing in the world -- I swear it could make my ears bleed.
But at least even if they were boring, conservtives then were objective and fact based, and realists -- and they had genuine ethics, not the lipservice abominations of the right today.
I can't find your email - would you mind if I cross post that excellent piece of yours on radical cameras here as a guest author posting? It is excellent - you were right, I did love it.
A survey of Minnesota County Attorneys verified 1,531 people voted in 2008 but shouldn't have, because they were not legally entitled to vote.
ReplyDeleteReport is here:
http://www.ceimn.org/files/Facts%20about%20Ineligible%20Voting%20and%20Voter%20Fraud%20in%20Minnesota_with%20appendix.pdf
In an election where the margin of victory was only 321 votes, 1,531 illegal votes could tip the balance. That doesn't concern you?
This is data crunched BY Election Integrity which differs from the actual conclusion of the Minnesota County Attorneys OWN survey.
ReplyDeleteIt claims 93% response. The Minnesota County Attorneys had 100% response --- and they don't come to the same conclusion whatsoever in their own report.
The Arizona study had the same information and arrives at the same conclusion as the Minnesota County Attorneys do - which is, emphatically NOT that there were 1,531 ILLEGAL votes.
This is a Citizens for Election Integrity study, which clearly comes up with very different informtion, a group which has been faulted over and over and over for sloppy work and failed methodology and wrong -- pay attention to this part, WRONG conclusions in their projects.
So NO, this doesn't concern me, and it shouldn't concern YOU either. It is NOT a good reason to disenfrachise far MORE people who are LEGAL voters with a measure that will cost $20 million dollars to implement, and more to defend in court, with voter ID when voter ID will not...READ THIS SLOWLY AGAIN...WILL NOT PREVENT ANY VOTER FRAUD.
Again, you have yet to show there is more voter fraud than 1 in 15 million. This does NOT do that. You have yet to show there was more than one or two cases of a person intentionally voting more than once - which is what voter fraud is intended to prevent - in recent elections.
You are giving far too much importance to a discredited organization that is a bunch of ignorant amateurs, NOT County Attorneys, who were determined to promote this idea BEFORE they got their survey.
I can find NO election judges in the entire state of Minnesota who claim to have personally observed election fraud, much less on the scale you claim.
NO court case - as in Coleman versus Franken - is claiming it. Given a six month court challenge which included a recount, and where they were specifically ASKED if either side wished to challenge the outcome of the election, doesn't that seem MORE significant to you?
Go BE an election judge Joe, and get back to me on the topic of what is and is not happening. Go become one of the academic experts who study this, or become one of the lawyers on this.
Even the Republican Lawyers group claims of voter fraud - which they admitted they didn't investigate themselves - didn't produce these kinds of number for Minnesota.
ONLY - underline ONLY - this extremist crack pot group comes to this conclusion.
This is like Monty Jensen in Crow Wing County who posited an entire union organized and executed disabled voter conspiracy --- EXCEPT he wasn't present when the disabled voters he claimed to have seen actually voted, so he didn't see anything. AND -- note this is AND -- the individuals who did assist disabled voters were not union members and had never been union members. A sheriff's investigation followed by a grand jury did not find that Jensen's story held up. It was not credible - except to people like you, who only bothered with Jensen's side of it, because fellow right wingers WANTED to believe it. THAT is not credible. But like the investigation done by the MN Cty Attorneys, and like voter ID, it IS expensive without resulting in safer, more reliable, more honest elections.
This study is CRAP. Total, utter GARBAGE.
Get yourself a shovel and bury it or burn it.
Better yet, burn it and then bury the ashes.
In garden lime.
ooops - mistake in one sentence.
ReplyDeleteThe phrase which is what voter fraud is intended to prevent should have read which is the voter fraud voter ID is intended to prevent. Typed it in a hurry.
Joe - go do what I just did. Take the training to be an election judge, and then go do it. Go watch over the election process yourself. Ask lots and lots and lots of questions about how the voter roles are maintained.
THEN come back and tell me this bullshit from Minnesota Majority (remember THEIR claims in the past which haven't held up about felons voting that turned out to be people with the same names, former felons voting legally, etc.?) or any conclusion or study by these Election Integrity nut jobs is reliable.
I spent a good part of Tuesday with the slow turnout speaking with election judges of 20 and 30 years of experience, including REPUBLICAN ones. The first two voters who voted in my precinct were from the county auditors office, and had worked there through many elections (again, not both partisan democrats either).
People who actually DO the work of elections come up with the same information - no voter fraud, no problem with voters who should not be voting either. People who are scholars and attorneys, including the 'W' Bush administration tried very hard to find instances of voter fraud.
Came up with the same conclusions - and this study double checked THEM. When QUALIFIED people who know the law and know what they are looking at do THEIR studies, NO ONE - I repeat NO ONE comes up with this conclusion.
That the Minnesota County Attorneys did not come up with the same conclusion should make you wonder WHY NOT--- NOT believe amateur extremist right wing nut jobs.
I repeat, NO ONE, NOT ONE SINGLE STATE that has gone to court over Voter ID has claimed voter fraud as the justification for it. No one has claimed it in the 2008 OR 2010 recount court challenges either.
How do you explain that, if this was reliable data properly interpreted, or accurate info?
Simple - this is NOT accurate, reliable or correctly interpreted conclusions.
The County Attorneys did no study. The Minnesota Association of County Attorneys did no study. The study I linked to IS the study you keep talking about.
ReplyDeleteI talked to the Association offices Tuesday. Their executive director confirmed he commented on the above study, not their own. Read this news account from 2010:
"The Minnesota County Attorneys Association’s (MCAA) executive director John Kingrey says Minnesota Majority’s reports of massive voter fraud in the 2008 election were “widely overstated” and “frivolous,” adding that the conservative group’s demands of those investigating suspected voter fraud were draining county public safety resources.
MCAA was at a press conference last week where a report was released that showed voter fraud in Minnesota is extremely rare. The report’s authors, Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota and the Minnesota Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Alliance (MUUSJA), said the report demonstrates that government-issued voter identification is unnecessary."
You just debunked your own study.
I'm glad you're now an election judge. Congrats.
ReplyDeleteI was an election judge in Corinna Township for every election during the years I lived there. I watched the sun come up after a presidential election where voting was heavy and the count didn't tally (we hand-counted paper ballots in small outstate townships) so we had to stay until it did. Even though my guy lost that election, it was still a valuable experience.
This year's presidential election should be just as exciting, great memories for you to share.
Yes, sorry- you are correct about the study on voter fraud, which I read. I shouldn't write when I'm up, but sleepy, in the middle of the night; a problem with housebreaking puppies who sometimes demand to go out in, pardont he pun, the wee hours.
ReplyDeleteHowever there were individual county attorney investigations - from the same article you quoted.
The report found that county attorneys investigated seven cases of potential voter impersonation, and no one was convicted of the crime
and this refernce to COUNTY ATTORNEYS doing the investigations, not Election integrity
But according to Minnesota’s county attorneys, there were 165 investigations of double voting in 2008 and no convictions. In Anoka County, for instance, the names investigated were actually voters who had the same name and birth date.
“They were different people,” said Bonnifield. “Double voting never occurred.”
Only nine voters were investigated for voting as a non-citizen; no one was convicted. Only one voter was investigated for voting as an under-age voter; that person was not convicted. Fifty-six voters were investigated for voting outside their jurisdiction; no one was convicted.
Felon voters were the entirety of those convicted of voter fraud, and a number of felons who did vote were not convicted because they were not notified that they had their civil rights revoked. That happens when a felon is released from incarceration but is still on probation and votes.
The report’s authors said that county attorneys identified that as a problem and a bill to provide more education to felons so that they don’t inadvertently break the law passed the Minnesota Legislature last year.
Above and beyond reading the integrity report, I contacted the Sec State for information on voter fraud and improper voting. I made inquiries of my own county auditor, who made helpful suggestions for reliable information. I checked with my own county attorney about these claims of voter fraud and improper voting.
Every study I have read - which includes the seven studies incorrectly claiming felon voters are voting democratic to steal elections - but which also dealt with disenfranchised voters and those who vote but should not came up with the same statement made by every other official with whom I spoke, and which is consistent with the study above.
Improper voting is not a significant problem; if it were, those people would be prosecuted for voter fraud. The reason they would be prosecuted for voter fraud is the oath you sign when you vote which states that you are of age, a citizen, not a felon prohibited from voting, that you are a resident for a minimum of 20 days etc. So if you vote improperly, you are committing a crime.
Are there occasional errors? Yes. So long as voters are human and polls are conducted by people who are human, there will be some small measure of erors. Do YOU think you and your fellow election judges allowed improper voters to cast ballots in the election?
The reason for the required training of even the most experienced election judges is that the system is continually being upgraded to better catch names which should be purged from voter rolls, to catch duplicates, etc.
Claims of improper voters were also NOT a basis for any of the challenges by either Coleman or Franken in 2008. I believe that if they could document that this was a problem, they would have done so.
regarding improper voting:
ReplyDeleteI described some of those cases that came up for us in the post I wrote last night/early this morning when I couldn't get back to sleep.
The claim by Republicans is VOTER FRAUD. The clamis by Republicans, notably the Minnesota Majority and other groups, is duplicate voting and felon voting. Some claim illegal immigrant voting. They are all inaccurate and false claims.
There is not a problem with voter fraud, and it should concern people that when the right goes into court, they suddenly and drastically change the claim of voter fraud for their justification for Voter ID.
From the study:
"Legally, there is a vast difference between ineligible voting and fraudulent voting, even though the action could be exactly the same. Intent determines whether the action is fraudulent or not. For example, if someone who has voted at the same precinct for 50 years moved down the street — to a location that is in another precinct — and, on Election Day goes to the same precinct he voted at for 50 years and voted there without knowing that he should have gone to another precinct, he did not commit fraud. But, if he went to the same precinct he voted at for 50 years knowing it was the wrong precinct, he committed fraud. This example applies to all voter qualifications, which also includes but is not limited to, age, citizenship, and criminal status. The difference between ineligible voting and fraud is intentionality."
Here is where we get to the meat of the study about those 1531 suppoed 'illegal' votes. They weren't; those were the votes investigated that didn't turn out to be illegal.
From the report:
County Attorneys reported a total of 1,581 investigations of ineligible voting. But, when asked to break down the investigations based on the reasons we provided them in the survey, they report a total of 1,531. For that reason, we use 1,531 when focusing on the reasons for investigations. (See table 1, below.) The most common investigations (77%) focused on possible voting by people rendered ineligible because of a felony conviction, followed by possible double voting (11%). To put those figures into context, 0.0404% of 2008 voters were investigated based on voting with a possible felony conviction while 0.0056% of 2008 voters were investigated for possibly double voting.
1531 is the number of instances where the county attorneys investigated, NOT the number found to have voted illegally.
An investigation is NOT the same as the determination of an illegal vote.
From the very first page:
An investigation does not indicate guilt. In fact, some County Attorneys independently reported that they had false positives.
There were 1531 INVESTIGATIONS, not 1531 determinations of improper or illegal voting. That is where you are wrong in your conclusion.
There was nothing remotely like 1531 instances of improper or illegal voting. That is you misreading the study, the way you misread the James Holmes hunting vest article.
Read the whole document, including looking at the tables, all the way to the end.
from page 11, regarding the disposition /outcome of those 1531 INVESTIGATIONS:
Seventy-six percent of the completed investigations were not chargeable so the cases were dropped. The remaining 24% of the completed investigations‟ outcomes were nearly evenly distributed in the following categories: dismissed due to lack of evidence; heard in court; found guilty; and found to commit election fraud.
READ the report Joe; read it CAREFULLY. It doesn't say what you think it says.
Minnesota Majority and a couple of other fringe groups are the ones who are crackpots and tin foil hat wearers.
ReplyDeleteI incorrectly - my bad - lumped Election Integrity in with them. I shouldn't write when I'm too tired.
Thanks for calling it to my attention, and thanks for giving me the opportunity to correct your misreading.
So.....why don't you go volunteer to be an election judge again Joe? They do it in shifts now, and the equipment upgrades make that counting go a lot faster (mostly) when necessary.
And I hope that we here at Penigma may have finally persuaded you (and the lurkers, like Mitch) that voter fraud / improper or illegal voting is an evil myth.
There were a couple of things noted in the Election Integrity study though
"There is a great racial disparity in disenfranchisement of the voting-age population in Minnesota. One out of 10 voting-age black Minnesotans cannot vote because of a felony conviction while 1 out of 100 voting-age white Minnesotans cannot vote for the same reason"
and
Since 1974, the disenfranchisement rate for felons has increased over 700%.
Now add to that disproportionate distribution of felony disenfranchisement (which some scholars believe is intentional, dating back to the Nixon 'southern solution' of Pat Buchanan and continuing through under Reagan, to keep people of color from voting as a way to circumvent the civil rights and voting acts of the '60s) the additional disproportionate effect racially of voter ID. Racism is determined by effect, not only by intent or expressed animus.
Still think it is a good idea? At a cost of $20 million we could spend elsewhere?
Yes, there were 1,531 cases investigated and 66% were "not chargeable." But read what "not chargeable" means as defined in the study on page 11:
ReplyDelete" . . . the primary reason ineligible voters were not charged was because they did not knowingly and intentionally break the law."
Note well the prosecutor is NOT saying the voters didn't break the law. The prosecutor is saying the prosecutor didn't think she could prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt the felons KNEW they were casting illegal votes and INTENTIONALLY cast illegal votes. If the voter said "I didn't know," the case was dropped.
You keep wanting to count only convictions. By that reasoning, OJ's ex Nicole isn't dead because nobody was convicted. But she IS dead, and a large chunk of these votes WERE illegally cast, whether or not anybody was convicted of casting them.
66% of 1,531 is over 1,000 ballots included in the final totals, plus another 175 from the remaining 24% who were convicted or plead guilty. Franken only won by 312 votes.
Illegally cast votes may indeed have been a factor in Franken's win. And since Franken was the 60th senator, Obamacare could not be filibustered so it passed on party lines. Illegal voting need not be widespread to change the course of the nation. That's why it matters.
.
Actually, there appear to be a lot of so-called false positives.
ReplyDeleteThose are triggered investigations where nothing turns out to be wrong with the voting. So when you write and a large chunk of these votes WERE illegally cast, whether or not anybody was convicted of casting them you are incorrect.
There is NO evidence that a large chunk were illegally cast at all. There is ONLY evidence that there were 1,531 investigation, and that they did not turn up more than a very few cases that were improper voting, and only a smaller subset of those that were ILLEGAL.
You don't get to come up with your own definition of illegal. The County Attorneys DO get to make that determination. There is no reason to believe they have ever failed to prosecute a valid case of illegal voting.
Anything that is not clealry an illegal case you don't get to claim, because you have no clue what the criteria was and you have not reviewed the investigations.
The study did review them, and it does not support your assertions. The other studies, every last one of them by a credible source, has also reviewed those claims, and has NOT found it credible that those votes and voters investigated were ILLEGAL. That is the finding of THIS study (news21), that is the finding of the Election Integrity study, that is the finding of all of the Uggin studies, that is the finding of the Brennan center studies (plural), that is the finding of the Ashcroft investigation under George Bush.
You have NOTHING to support your claim. You DO have a habit of not reading well for comprehension, but instead reading for what you want to find.
There were not all that many felons voting, certainly not 1,531 of the investigations. Many of those felons who triggered an investigation were in fact - as the study noted - LEGALLY able to vote, not illegal voters. Many of the rest were the kind of precinct glitches, but not necessarily ILLEGAL or IMPROPER voters.
What we don't have a problem with are people voting multiple times -- which is a lie circulated by the Republicans, especially the Minnesota Moron Majority. And we don't have people voting on someone else's identity either - another instance of the Moron Majority and the GOP making a false claim.
Now the reality of our justice system is that lots of people are released slightly early from probation, etc. because of corrections dept case loads. Many of these felons fell under that criteria - they were told they were done, which made them eligible to vote again.
More than that, the fact there were some investigated votes is a very LONG way from saying that illegal votes gave the election to Franken. You don't know how any of those people voted. I would remind you that we have CONVICTIONS of illegal voters for GOP candidates.
Given the number of individuals from the right, like ex-sec state White of Indiana, you should be careful making the claim that there were enough to shift the election to Franken.
There were less than 50 improper or illegal votes cast, as determined by investigations.
That is the ONLY number you can fairly claim as wrong, and it is not close to enough to shift an election.
More than that, Obamacare is a success. People who know what is actually in it like it.
ReplyDelete"Obamacare is more popular than ever among independent voters, jumping a huge 11 points in the days after the Supreme Court ruled the Affordable Care Act is constitutional.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll, taken June 28 – 30 of 991 Americans, finds 38% approval with independents, up from only 27% just days prior to the ruling. Overall, 48% of registered voters now approve of Obamacare, and opposition among those who do not favor the health care law dropped by five percentage points, to 52%.
Hidden in these numbers, however, is the percent of Americans who oppose Obamacare because it did not go far enough. Historically, that averages around 25%, which in theory would push support for universal healthcare, a single-payer system, Medicare for all, or the current plan, aka Obamacare, to a majority of Americans.
I think it is fair to posit that trend will continue, not go the other way. People like no pre-existing condition problems with coverage, no lifetime caps, being able to keep kids on policies to 26, the provisions for women's health care including contraception, cancer screening, and paying the same rates as men.
And in the brief period that Obamacare provisions have been in effect, there have been significant savings, and the rate of increases in health care and insurance costs has slowed dramatically.
It is working; it is headed in the right direction to reduce deficits, and it is going to go a long way to reduce if not eliminate the people who are having to declare bankruptcy or lose their homes because of catastrophic health costs.
If you read the information about the Health Care plan as badly as you read the information on voter fraud and illegal votes versus merely investigated votes, I doubt you actually know much about it.
I read the damned thing - the WHOLE thing. It is not perfect, but it is an improvement.
Btw, Joe - did it ever occur to you that disenfranchised people, had they been allowed to exercise their legal vote, might have made the difference FOR Coleman?
ReplyDeleteYou wrote: "There is no reason to believe they have ever failed to prosecute a valid case of illegal voting."
ReplyDeleteYour study said (page 11): "Anoka County: Details regarding “not chargeable” 82% of the cases were determined not to involve knowing violations of the election law."
The study further explained: " . . . the primary reason ineligible voters were not charged was because they did not knowingly and intentionally break the law."
In other words, they did break the law, just not knowingly or intentionally.
Okay, but a vote from an ineligible person is still one vote that should not have been cast and should not have been counted.
If Felon A voted but told the cops "I didn't know I couldn't vote," that vote was counted in the total but the prosecution was dropped along with the other 80% of Anoka cases.
IF Felon B voted and said "Yeah, I knew damned well," he was prosecuted and convicted. And his vote was STILL included in the totals.
Both groups of ineligible voters cast votes that never should have been counted, but were.
You're worried about the 26 votes from the Felon B group but ignoring the Felon A group. I'm worried about both.
Why don't the much more numerous Felon A group votes bother you?
If you read the study, the whole study, and if you read all of the OTHER studies, and IF you speak with election officials, including both county attorneys and auditors -- and I've spoken with a number of them -- the majority of the uncharged voters who voted are not felons.
ReplyDeleteThey are people who are directed to the wrong precinct, and similar problems.
Your assumption that large numbers of felons are voting for democrats, and thereby electing Franken are WRONG.
In many of the cases that did involve felons, there were errors that included discrepancies. The felons who were not prosecuted had effectively completed their sentences. If someone was allowed to vote because of an error by their corrections officer concluding their case file a week or two early of a few days early ---- which is the kind of result we are talking about here -- that is not a terrible outcome, or a theft of any kind of election. It was not fraud; it was a minor clerical error, like someone voting once, but accidentally in the wrong precinct, acting in good faith.
There is a huge difference in voter fraud - deliberately voting dishonestly -- and honest clerical error. THAT latter was what those felon voters were doing.
But the greater reason I'm not more upset over felon voting is that I WANT FORMER felons to vote, felons who have completed their sentences, or who have been led honestly to believe they have completed their sentences, BECAUSE of this on the first page of the report:
Studies have shown that there may be a correlation between recidivism rates and disenfranchisement. In a 2009 policy paper, it was reported that “probationers and parolees who exercise their right to vote have significantly lower recidivism rates than those who do not.”3
Having read all of these reports, including a lot on the aspects of felons who have completed their sentences voting -- it is one of the BEST things they can do as part of becoming involved and invested in their community so they make better choices not to continue as criminals. They are far more likely to vote as part of getting honest jobs, staying away from drugs and alcohol, and establishing successful families.
These aren't felons who are voting in between stealing cars, smoking dope, and breaking into houses. Our corrections system is TRYING to get more felons rehabilitated, and involved and invested in their community, INCLUDING VOTING.
These are felons who have reached the end of their sentencing and rehabilitation who are trying very hard to become better citizens and move on with honest lives. We shouldn't be trying to criminalize that effort when it takes place in good faith, we should reward the effort and encourage them in their new, better pattern of being a citizen.
In some states, and in some countries, that correlation to not re-offending is SO STRONG, they have gone to allowing felons still in prison to vote. That is becoming the trend in the U.S. btw, except in places where ultra-conservatives are in authority -- where former felons for example had their right to vote rescinded in Florida. But in other states, it has been successful as part of getting the revolving door to prisons shut.
THAT is why I'm not more upset.
The illegal part of the voting was not the fault of the voter in the felon voting. THAT is the reason that more felons were not prosecuted. It is WRONG to prosecute someone for something that was not their fault, and it is inherently unjust.
And THAT was the message I've gotten from looking into the felon voter problems in 2008.
You are improperly hung up on this word felon, without adequately looking at where the glitches were in the process -- a process btw, that our Sec. of State Ritchie has significantly improved, and which he had previously tried to improve in cooperation with the legislature prior to 2008, but Tim Pawlenty REFUSED to sign the BIPARTISAN legislation doing so.
So the whole Democrats are stealing elections, and felons are trying to steal elections by being criminals premise is just wrong. You distort the numbers, it misrepresents the facts, and it puts a completely false interpretation of what happened on the reports.
ReplyDeleteWhy do YOU support a $20 million effort that would disenfranchise voters, without doing a damned thing to make elections more accurate? That $20 million would harm the elderly voters, student voters who should be encouraged to vote for the first time, serving members of the armed forces, and minorities.
WHY would you want to interfere with those groups voting? WHY? Voter ID is NOT about voter fraud.
Why doesn't disenfranchsing thousands of legal voters bother YOU?
Joe, if you take away nothing else from this discussion about fake claims of voter fraud, I hope you will take away that the claims about felons voting are not just a little wrong, but hugely wrong.
ReplyDeleteOur corrections system, as part of trying to get felons to improve their literacy skills and other educational deficiencies, and to change bad habits or recover from addictions, and to get job skills, and in some cases even promoting religious life in prison, includes encouraging civic involvement -- a sense that they should contribute to their community to make it a better place including both voting and paying taxes and volunteering, and have a sense that they are part of it instead of trying to rip it off. One of the things I took away from my research on this was that voting had a tremendous ability to motivate and empower these people to be better individuals, to be more responsible and less selfish, and to look at longer range goals. These people were not only enocuraged to register to vote but to do so responsibly, to take an interest in their community at ALL levels as part of turning their lives around.
So why does it bother you so much that these people did that? Keep in mind, in those cases that were not prosecuted, these people were given a reasonable understanding that they WERE allowed to vote in that election by someone who had the authority to do so. So.......explain to me how that is any different than an election official directing someone to vote in the wrong precinct, who then votes in good faith? How is that THEFT of an election?
I think this is the point where we agree to disagree. What made it clear was this line:
ReplyDelete" . . .I'm not more upset over felon voting is that I WANT FORMER felons to vote . . . ."
Thanks for the discussion. It's been enjoyable and enlightening, as always.
Every source I can find, U.S. and foreign, shows a strong upside to voting, when we can get people to do it.
ReplyDeleteA tiny number of former felon voters actually vote. The Election Integrity recommended specifically making it EASIER for former felons to vote. There are NO instances found of former felons using their votes in an illegal way.
The voters we are talking about here are doing the things we want them to do to get out of criminal life styles - they're getting GEDs and/or going on to better additional education, they're getting employed and paying taxes and doing volunteer work and getting clean of drug or alcohol abuse. During their probations they are encouraged to work towards that goal, including voting as something to strive for as a valuable experience.
Voting, especially in a presidential year general election, involves standing in line, it involves inconvenience. If you do it right, it takes more effort to know the issues and candidates. There is no cash reward, there is no tangible benefit, other than the sense that a person has done something that is important after voting. THAT is one of the kinds of rewards we want people to work towards rather than the more negative kinds or destructive pleasure varieties.
It seems profoundly unfair, to be encouraging these people to do those things, and then to create technicalities that frustrate and discourage them when they are doing everything that corrections officers have asked of them. They aren't the ones who screwed up where there was an issue or investigation; someone else did
That puts it on a par of blaming someone who is directed to vote in the wrong precinct, which is another kind of so-called voter fraud, but did what they were told, voted just once, as a legal voter, where they were told -- and ended up technically accused of voter fraud. It isn't what we really MEAN by voter fraud or a wrongful vote, one we want to discourage or prevent. It's just a technical glitch in our record keeping regarding people who SHOULD be able to vote.
Rather than just agree to disagree over interpreting the study, I'm willing to go further Joe. I'm willing to contact Election Integrity for a list of counties that did investigations, and to ask Election Integrity for a statement clarifying if these are or are not people who should have voted. I'm willing then to contact the counties, and/or auditor or attorney (whoever I can get to talk to me - both if possible) who did those investigations, and get a clarification from them.
ReplyDeleteWhat I ask of you in return, is that you give me credit for going that extra distance to get the facts, and that you share those results on SitD, or anywhere else you've commented on my posts on this topic.
That goes equally for my being right or my being wrong.
I've always maintained FACTS are the best option to find common ground between differing ideologies. I want to put that into action here.
Deal?
You make a generous offer, one that is slightly different from the one you made on SITD. Let's be sure we're talking about the same thing.
ReplyDeleteWe know Minnesota Majority gave 1,500+ names to county attorneys to investigate. Those were names of people who signed the election register meaning they actually did cast a ballot, and who MM identified as felons. Call them Suspect Voters.
We know those 1,500+ were investigated and some unknown number were deemed to have been eligible to vote. Call them False Positives.
We know that a very few people were convicted of voting - 26 in your count, 175+ in other versions, but no more than a couple of hundred. Call those Illegal Votes.
I don't care about any of them. I want to know the number of persons who signed the election register, cast ballots, were investigated and found to be ineligible to have voted, but were not prosecuted. Call those Felon Voters.
Please report the number of Felon Voters and how I can verify your number. In return, I will give your research full consideration and will report it to Mitch along with my comments. Whether he publishes it is up to him - it's his blog.
We are talking about the same figure -- the number of persons who signed the roster, cast ballots, were investigated ad found to be ineligible to vote, but were not prosecuted.
ReplyDeleteI agree we should call those felon voters. I will be reporting as I proceed on the investigations, regardless of your agreement; however, for purposes of this agreement, since I was disparaged by both you and Mitch ON SITD, I want agreement to this follow up. You can consult with Mitch to see if he agrees or not in advance, and copy me here on the results. He posts a lot of your work, so clearly, he is treating you as a defacto author, whether that is a formal agreement or not.
My plan at this point is to verify the results of the investigations with each county attorney that had any voters to investigate.
The report I mentioned yesterday debunks the 175 voters claims as do other sources.
I can give you this much that I've found so far; that many of the people claimed to be felons were not in fact felons, they were convicted of some form of misdemeanor.
The impression I'm getting, and trying to clarify, is that names popped up on lists as felons possibly based on one of two things - they were originally charged as felons, but the charges were reduced to a lesser charge, or for some reason, the selecting criteria for felonies may have been based not on the category of conviction but on the duration of the sentence.
It appears to be erroneous as well to presume that the only investigations were from Minnesota Majority; nearly all of those names appear to have been erroneous claims of felon voters.
What does appear to be the more substantial basis for investigation were the so-called 'internal' prompts. That appears to involve the data supplied in paper form in 2008 from the Dept. of Corrections that was two months out of date.
More in next comment
What was clarified to me yesterday in the initial comment from EI is that NO, there were NOT hundreds, or 170+ of what we are agreeing belong under the term "felon voters", voters who were felons at the time, voted improperly and were not prosecuted.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, some of the names that were included for investigation didn't vote AT ALL. They were registered to vote, but did not attempt to vote. In those registrations, it is not clear as to actual illegality, or simply some other problem but not an ILLEGAL problem of any kind; duplications are overhwelmingly the largest problem with voter registration.
The next thing I learned was the issue of same name felons and voters. What came under the heading of 'same name' involved same or similar last names (think larson o-n, or e-n versions)with same or similar first names, or just the same first initial. Felon and voter last names could be matched up with same first names, or just same initial, same middle name, same initial, or entirely different first or middle name. In some cases ONLY the last name was the same.
It is not at all clear that the individuals involved as 'matches' were even the same gender.
Supposedly these were people who matched up both name and birthday. Yeah, that was as not same as the names were not the same.
Turns out the only date that matched up was the birth YEAR, not necessarily the identical month or date for date of birth.
That starts whittling down so-called felon voter matches pretty quickly as being different people.
I remember reading as news came out about these prosecutions, particularly in Ramsey County, that there were lots of misfiled, and just plain missing documentation in the corrections department files. That particularly included as was specifically mentioned, the sheet that was supposed to be signed indicating that the felon under supervision was informed they did not have the right to vote. Apparently a number of those were either missing or blank. In the absence of that piece of paper, a person was considered to reasonably believe they could legally vote when given permission to do so on the basis of their sentence being concluded.
Here is the guideline for felons to legally regain their right to vote, from the ACLU site:
http://www.aclu-mn.org/issues/votingrights/yourvotingrights/
People convicted of a misdemeanor are eligible to vote. They can vote by absentee ballot if still in jail. People convicted of a felony can also still vote if not currently incarcerated or are on supervised release, conditional release, probation or parole.
I have the same questions you have; I want the same answers you want. What I do know so far is that you did not correctly read the report - and that came from the person who put their name on the front of it, which is who I contacted.
Look at it this way Joe. YOU made the mistake in assumptions. I'm perfectly willing to put in the work (which you could do yourself) and to present the results. My preference is to get those through email which I can cut and paste here, showing the address the information came from with it, as verification.
BUT, I think it is fair that to do that, I am promised that information will ALSO be as public as the false accusations of voter fraud, and specifically as the criticism of my factual accuracy.
My facts are not based on the numbers of convictions; they are based on the findings of all the many investigations of voter fraud that arrived at that conclusion -- inclduing Norm Coleman and his attorneys themselves.
This is more like the voter fraud clais resembling Saskwatch sightings, including photos and videos which are proven to be fakes on investigation.
So, if you REALLY want the answers, I'll get them. But I want to be vindicated when I do.
Why don't you work this out with Mitch and get back to me. I'm asking much less of you than you are getting from me.
Joe,
ReplyDeleteI want to follow-up here though, but first a point.
Someone who was ineligible to vote, but voted, is not a felon. We can call them anything, but I'm not keen on that phraseology for a reason. I'd simply say ineligible votes. It's not fraud unless they a. knowingly voted when or where they should not(as fraud requires Mens Rea) b. overcast (cast more than one vote). They aren't felons unless charged AND convicted. Presumption of innocence means we don't call them such unless they are such.
However, my follow-up is this. IF there were 175 cases of ineligible votes cast (or even 1500), what price do you want to pay to stop it? I think the number is FAR lower than 1500, and am nearly certain it's less than even 175, but you're a supposedly small government person. How many ineligible votes are few enough that you no longer want to disenfranchise 50,000 or more voters? You've got a big government solution here is search of an actual problem. 175 ineligible votes isn't enough to, on balance, warrant this kind of VAST overreaction. Further, Republican after Republican litigator has said without question that vote fraud is simply NOT the motive for voter ID. Instead, as the most recent ruling in Pennsylvania said - as penned by a Republican judge - the fundamental legal finding supporting this movement is that HE (the judge) and the plaintiff's counsel both said that this is NOT an undue or unfair burden and was within the perview of the legislature to request.
We can argue that point (and I would), but the point is that NONE, not one, litigant has attempted to argue vote fraud is impactful or important. If the evidence were so obvious and easily gathered, undoubtedly it would be presented as at least another factor in support of the law. It hasn't been. It hasn't been because study after study, independent study at least, has found CLEARLY this isn't a issue. The issue is then simply this, while you and I can argue whether it's a reasonable burden (and I'd NEVER argue that it's reasonable for someone who is mobile and has the means to GET such ID), the bottom line is that it's NOT necessary.
You (conservatives) argue constantly for doing away with unnecessary regulation. This is unnecessary. It is solving a problem that isn't meaningful, isn't impactful.
The larger and even more important point is this, in this greatest country in the world (as conservatives often shout) we place great value in free and open elections. We seek to promote the greatest participation in this grand experiment and we therefore and meaningfully seek to remove barriers to voting, not add them. Doing so is reminiscent of totalitarian governments seeking to limit the voting of those citizens who might dissent from their chosen course. Such action should be an anathema to you, not something you embrace. Throwing 50,000 (which is an extremely low/conservative estimate for the impact in Minnesota - it was estimated to be at the low end 75,000 in Pennsylvania) votes out to prevent 47 or 175 or even 1500 people from voting is a poor course at best. It is a solution in search of a problem and it moves directly against the greatest ideals of our nation.
that should be mens rea - not capitalized
ReplyDelete