Ohio’s 2004 election was the scene of number of well documented charges of election fraud. These included the old standby voter suppression and the new variation, vote switching. One recent analysis demonstrated exactly how this new scheme works by studying precincts with over 160 thousand punch card ballots. In addition to direct examination of ballots, high level statistical analysis shows the wholesale shift of votes to Bush. As a result, he took the presidency again since Ohio was the deciding state.
The Voter Fraud Fantasy – 24 Convictions Nationwide from 2002 through 2005
Voter fraud is hardly a crime wave. In fact with just 24 convictions in 3 years, it’s barely a crime let alone an issue worthy of national focus. Yet considerable time and effort is devoted to this microscopic phenomenon. The McClatchy Newspapers describe Rove’s attention to this non issue in a speech given to a Republican attorneys association.
Rove thanked the audience for "all that you are doing in those hot spots around the country to ensure that the integrity of the ballot is protected." He added, "A lot in American politics is up for grabs." McClatchy Newspapers 23 March 2007
Bush chimed in claiming that “he's heard complaints from Republicans about some U.S. attorneys' "lack of vigorous prosecution of election fraud cases.”
Are these people delusional? We’re able to find just 24 convictions between 2002 and 2005. The Republicans controlled all three branches of government during that period.
Is a national effort producing twenty four convictions the best they could do? There were over 120 million citizens voted in 2004. Did the Department of Justice need more targets? The lack of convictions when uniform national pressure is applied demonstrates that there is hardly any voter fraud occurring in the United States.
Why the Effort to Attack a Problem that Doesn’t Exist? It’s All About Suppressing the Vote
Why? It’s simple. The payoff in suppressed votes from hostile voting groups is the real goal. Voter fraud initiatives result in solutions to problems that don’t exist. However, those solutions provide a rationale to create the type of problems that are desirable by those who choose to suppress the vote. Which voters am I talking about? The poor, black and Latino citizens in particular, and, to a lesser degree, college and university students strongly favor Democrats. Any process which subtracts voters from these groups adds vote margins to right wing candidates, typically but not always Republicans.
Here’s how it works. You speak repeatedly of the non existent problem of voter fraud, over and over. At the Federal level, you start something called the Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative. It suggests that there are hoards of voters out there who want to vote illegally on their own or, even worse, at the behest of nefarious individuals who might organize these hoards. You hint broadly that these voters are minorities and maybe even illegal aliens.
If there’s an initiative to solve a problem, you assume some people will believe that the problem actually exists. Those who actually know better, state legislators, sponsor and pass legislation like restrictive voter identification requirements for both the registration and voting processes. The net result is a series of laws at the state level that make it harder to vote for the previously mentioned target groups. Missouri’s most recent attempt at a restrictive voter identification law was judged to be unconstitutional before it was ever enacted.
When you are accused of suppressing the minority and poor vote, you engage in the false argument about tradeoffs. You assert that restrictive voter identification requirements are necessary to prevent voter fraud (all eight cases a year!). You say you want people to vote but opponents of voter ID requirements are really promoting voter fraud. It’s all quite brilliant, symmetrical, and self perpetuating.
Former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes simplified the analysis last week when he said
"Georgia's had a long history of being a state where we only want a certain number of people, a certain color of people, to vote," argued former Gov. Roy Barnes, now a private attorney.
Georgia is not alone.
The Fired Federal Prosecutors and Voter Fraud
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