Here’s an article about ACORN which gives an alternative take.
The FBI has “leaked” the fact that it is beginning an investigation of ACORN. A politically motivated investigation? Former New Mexico attorney general David Igelsias, a Bush appointed Republican, thinks so. He calls it a “scare tactic” Iglesias “went on to say that the FBI’s investigation seemed designed to inappropriately create a “boogeyman” out of voter fraud.”
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/iglesias_im_astounded_by_dojs.php
Nah, they wouldn’t do that, would they?
Voter Fraud is Evil (unless your a leftist.)
Every effort should be made to eliminate it.
Showing a valid ID (Driver’s License or non-driver State ID) at registration AND the voting booth (or absentee ballot counter) should be required.
If the ID doesn’t match the valid registration perfectly, the ballot should be put in an envelope and only opened for close races.
Same day registration should be eliminated. If not, the ballot should be placed in a registration envelope, which when verified, would be counted only in close races.
If you’re not in line at the closing time, you don’t get in, enforced by the police, polling officers fined big time if not followed.
Universal poll closing times. We do it for NFL games, why not for voting?
Grass Roots wise, in states where ID’s at polling places not required or not enforced,
Plant or hold signs along the routes to the polling places saying:
“Stop Voter Fraud -
Show Your ID”
Show the people next to you in the voting line your ID and challenge them him to show their ID when checking in.
If they say they have no ID, ask them how they cash checks.
(Soap box put away.)
Sincerely,
Joe Satnik
Where do you get the idea that “leftists” like voter fraud?
it’s easy to submit bad voter registrations, and ACORN seems to have been guilty of hiring people who submitted bogus or multiple registrations–see the link I provided, it’s in there. They hired ordinary people, and gave them a daily quota of people to register in order to get paid. Some of them appear to have submitted fake names. But it doesn’t equal VOTE fraud. You could register Mickey Mouse to vote, but you could not cast a vote as mickey mouse. Nor does registering the same person multiple times allow that person multiple votes.
It’s actually pretty hard to commit vote fraud. I go up to a desk, I give my name and address, and they cross me off a list of registered voters in my county. Then I vote. If someone else tries to vote as me, BAM, fraud detected. Now I could I suppose hire a bunch of people to impersonate county voters, show up really early, and cast votes under some other voter’s name, but it would be detected immediately. I could, I suppose, invent a person named, let’s say, “Joe T. Plumber,” and make up an address for him, but the county assigns residents to a polling place based on their addresses. I could not use a fake address, I’d have to use a real address, and hope the real voter never shows.
I could try the famous dodge of voting the dead, except that the county removes you from the voting roles when you die
I actually participated recently in a long interview with a guy from the Smithsonian who is an expert on the history of voting and voting machines. Neither of us could come up with an actual verifiable instance of widespread voter fraud. we could come up with thousands of instances of CHARGES of voter fraud, from both parties, but very little hard proof.
Anyone in favor of vote fraud is a crook. The allegations of vote fraud being advanced by one party at the moment are a smokescreen
The problem with requiring ID to vote is it’s unconstitutional. The only requirement for voting in the US, according to the Constitution, is that you be a citizen and 18 or over. To make it mandatory to show an ID would require a constitutional amendment. Might be a good idea, might not. But right now a homeless person with no id whatsoever, wh has no checks to cash, is a citizen of the US and entitled to vote and to equal protection of the laws. If you were to demand, in line, that I show YOU an ID before I could vote I’d tell you in no uncertain terms where to go.
mike omalley said:So, according to Mike's interpretation of the Constitution, I do not need to be able to prove that I am a citizen, nor that I am over the age of 18, I only need to be able to state that I am. Hmmmmm.
The problem with requiring ID to vote is it's unconstitutional. The only requirement for voting in the US, according to the Constitution, is that you be a citizen and 18 or over. To make it mandatory to show an ID would require a constitutional amendment. Might be a good idea, might not. But right now a homeless person with no id whatsoever, wh has no checks to cash, is a citizen of the US and entitled to vote and to equal protection of the laws. If you were to demand, in line, that I show YOU an ID before I could vote I'd tell you in no uncertain terms where to go.
Now, the only constitutional requirement for the office of President of the United States is to be over the age of 35, and to have been born in the United States. Using Mike’s interpretation, all that John McCain needed to do was state that he is over the age of 35 and that he was born in the United States. So why was he compelled to produce his birth certificate to prove his citizenship?
Here is what the Constitution says:
Amendment XXVI
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Many states have provided appropriate legislation.
Mike
I was wondering if you could explain… in the case that someone cast a vote in your name early in the day and you later found your name had been used and fraud was discovered, would you then be able to vote as you wished. Would they then remove someones vote (abitrarily since there is no way of knowing which ballot had been cast), just interested. Seems to me fraud has the potential to cause more problems with error, confusion, distrust, legal issues and just a few fraudulent votes could cause many votes to be omiitted because of error. Any ideas?
mike omalley said:
Where do you get the idea that "leftists" like voter fraud?it’s easy to submit bad voter registrations, and ACORN seems to have been guilty of hiring people who submitted bogus or multiple registrations–see the link I provided, it’s in there. They hired ordinary people, and gave them a daily quota of people to register in order to get paid. Some of them appear to have submitted fake names. But it doesn’t equal VOTE fraud. You could register Mickey Mouse to vote, but you could not cast a vote as mickey mouse. Nor does registering the same person multiple times allow that person multiple votes.
It’s actually pretty hard to commit vote fraud. I go up to a desk, I give my name and address, and they cross me off a list of registered voters in my county. Then I vote. If someone else tries to vote as me, BAM, fraud detected. Now I could I suppose hire a bunch of people to impersonate county voters, show up really early, and cast votes under some other voter’s name, but it would be detected immediately. I could, I suppose, invent a person named, let’s say, “Joe T. Plumber,” and make up an address for him, but the county assigns residents to a polling place based on their addresses. I could not use a fake address, I’d have to use a real address, and hope the real voter never shows.
I could try the famous dodge of voting the dead, except that the county removes you from the voting roles when you die
I actually participated recently in a long interview with a guy from the Smithsonian who is an expert on the history of voting and voting machines. Neither of us could come up with an actual verifiable instance of widespread voter fraud. we could come up with thousands of instances of CHARGES of voter fraud, from both parties, but very little hard proof.
Anyone in favor of vote fraud is a crook. The allegations of vote fraud being advanced by one party at the moment are a smokescreen
The problem with requiring ID to vote is it’s unconstitutional. The only requirement for voting in the US, according to the Constitution, is that you be a citizen and 18 or over. To make it mandatory to show an ID would require a constitutional amendment. Might be a good idea, might not. But right now a homeless person with no id whatsoever, wh has no checks to cash, is a citizen of the US and entitled to vote and to equal protection of the laws. If you were to demand, in line, that I show YOU an ID before I could vote I’d tell you in no uncertain terms where to go.
I don’t know for sure what would happen if someone showed up claiming to be Mike O’Malley when Mike O’Malley had already voted.
I assume it varies from state to state, just as the procedure for voting varies from state to state. There’s surprisingly little federal oversight of or uniformity in voting, because voting was initially at the founding of the US imagined as related to your state citizenship. Each state set the qualifications for voting for its citizens, including property restrictions and race restrictions and sex restrictions. It’s not till Reconstruction, and the 13th 14th and 15th amendments, that voting comes to be understood as a Federal right. So we have a remarkably loose set of rules and procedures for voting
There would be no way to know who the fake voter had voted for, so what would they do? If it’s only one person, it doesn’t matter much, but if it’s found to be widespread, then you’d have to invalidate the election.
My initial point was simply that it’s surprisingly hard to do this, and it rarely if ever happens–otherwise we’d hear about it more.
And also that the hype coming from the McCain campaign about voter fraud is just hype–it’s not a big problem
Although again, you can find thousands of instances of charges of voter fraud, almost always coming for the losing side. I was actually very surprised that i couldn’t find verifiable instances of large scale voter fraud
In our little community, we all know the poll workers and they know us. Whether Republican or Democrat, we sit next to each other at Church, football games and at the local restuarants. If a person is not known, I guarentee you they will be throughly checked out by the locals before they cast a ballot, blow their nose or by a beer. No chance of voting around here if you are dead, because everybody in town went to your funeral. We all know about Chicago. It is 5 hours north of here and takes most of our tax money.
“And also that the hype coming from the McCain campaign about voter fraud is just hype–it’s not a big problem”
Yes I agree, could be similar to that hype from the democrats in the 2000 election.
We’ve got people still in jail in Missouri and Illinois for impersonating campaign hype.
Maybe Gore would be willing to state their case for them 
I guess voter intimidation is allowed?
Jeb Bush set up Police driver’s license checkpoints in poor neighborhoods on election day in Florida. Where was the FBI then?
Ralph
I saw this thread and thought the USA was being threatened by some warmongering squirrels.
Then I read it through and saw it was just some more hot air.
Let me make this clear, in case there’s any doubt–I am not in favor of registration fraud, voter fraud, voter intimidation, voter bribery, or any other attempt to rig elections.
I’m just arguing that the problem is not as dire as it is being made out to be.
mike omalley said:
Let me make this clear, in case there's any doubt--I am not in favor of registration fraud, voter fraud, voter intimidation, voter bribery, or any other attempt to rig elections.I’m just arguing that the problem is not as dire as it is being made out to be.
Mike, are you in favor of allowing conservatives to vote?
mike omalley said:
Let me make this clear, in case there's any doubt--I am not in favor of registration fraud, voter fraud, voter intimidation, voter bribery, or any other attempt to rig elections.I’m just arguing that the problem is not as dire as it is being made out to be.
Except that you are still exercised about the supposed voter fraud in Florida in 2000, aren’t you?
Ric Golding said:mike omalley said:
Let me make this clear, in case there's any doubt--I am not in favor of registration fraud, voter fraud, voter intimidation, voter bribery, or any other attempt to rig elections.I’m just arguing that the problem is not as dire as it is being made out to be.
Mike, are you in favor of allowing conservatives to vote?
We can vote? I was told that here in Washington State we couldn’t do that…
Steve Featherkile said:No, not at all. it's like the Hayes/Tilden election to my mind--disputed in a way that will never be resolved. I'm not mad about Hayes/Tilden either
Except that you are still exercised about the supposed voter fraud in Florida in 2000, aren't you?
Mike,
You are so easy. Dam shame you aren’t a girl. 
Have a beer, I’ll buy.
I think it was a Democrat Secretary of State who asked the Fibbies to investigate ACORN’s actions within his state. I’d have to look up which state and it is too late for that now. Perhaps mike can do that for me. He is so good at that.
Still waiting for Mike’s report on Taffey 3.