Voter Fraud

Today's New York Times digs deeper into the GOP red herring:

Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

In Miami, an assistant United States attorney said many cases there involved what were apparently mistakes by immigrants, not fraud.

In Wisconsin, where prosecutors have lost almost twice as many cases as they won, charges were brought against voters who filled out more than one registration form and felons seemingly unaware that they were barred from voting.

One ex-convict was so unfamiliar with the rules that he provided his prison-issued identification card, stamped “Offender,” when he registered just before voting.

Just remember - this is the reason some of the U.S.As were fired. And it is funny how much they are going after Democrats on this. How about Ann Coulter? Why hasn't the Justice Department taken up her case of voting in the wrong district? Oh - because she is a GOP darling.

Any wrong doing in our election system deserves to be punished. The problem is that the Bush controlled Justice Department appears to be going only after people who would not vote Republican, so that makes being a Democrat illegal. This also sounds like the most severe case of voter intimidation, and the intimidators sit in the White House. It sounds like it is time for a special prosecutor and congressional hearings into this. These are crimes against our country and constitution and must be pursued as such.

Today's New York Times has a look at a newly released report on voter fraud that is very interesting. It appears that a lot of politics may have gone into this report to change the outcome, and the final report was approved by the 2 Republicans and 1 Democrat on the commission.

A federal panel responsible for conducting election research played down the findings of experts who concluded last year that there was little voter fraud around the nation, according to a review of the original report obtained by The New York Times.

Instead, the panel, the Election Assistance Commission, issued a report that said the pervasiveness of fraud was open to debate.

The revised version echoes complaints made by Republican politicians, who have long suggested that voter fraud is widespread and justifies the voter identification laws that have been passed in at least two dozen states.

So there wasn't fraud before there was. This is the Republican's red herring - that the evil Democrats have colluded to keep Republicans from the polls. Remember - the attorneys were purged for not going after "voter fraud" cases, even though they couldn't even get indictments on them.

Read the entire article. It shows you the great risk our democracy is at. Not because of this "voter fraud" stuff, but because the Republicans are trying to criminalize democracy to their benefit.

Last week, two election workers in Ohio got sentenced to 18 months in prison for rigging a recount in the 2004 presidential election. Now our new Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner has asked the election board members to resign or be fired:

All four election board members for Cuyahoga County, troubled by recount rigging charges and voting machine problems, have been told to resign or face being fired, a state official said Monday.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said she called the four board members of Ohio's most populous count late Sunday, asking them to leave by the close of business Wednesday.

The county, which includes all of Cleveland, has had difficulty adjusting to electronic voting. Last May's primary, the first attempt at electronic voting in the county, was marred by absent or poorly trained poll workers, lost vote-holding computer cards and a polling place that opened hours late

If these convictions would have come down 6 months ago, nothing would have happened on the state level. This is what happens when you got a proactive Secretary of State, as compared to Ken Blackwell, who did nothing.

We ended up giving Bush his return to the White House in 2004. By we, I mean Ohio. The people on our side knew something was not quiet right about it, but our complaints went largely unheard. In January we finally saw a conviction in one of Ohio's counties for rigging a recount. Today they get sentenced to 18 months in prison for it and the judge thinks the problems go a lot higher:

Two county election workers were sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in prison for rigging a recount of 2004 presidential election ballots so they could avoid a longer, detailed review.

Jacqueline Maiden, 60, a Cuyahoga County election coordinator who was the board's third-highest ranking employee, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer, 40, each were convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct of an elections employee.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Peter Corrigan allowed the women to remain free on bail pending appeal, but indicated he thought there was a more widespread conspiracy among election officials.

``I can't help but feel there's more to this story,'' Corrigan said.

(emphasis mine)

This same article also gives a decent run down of how this conviction came to being:

Ohio law says that during a recount each county is supposed to randomly count at least 3 percent of its ballots by hand and by machine. If there are no discrepancies, the rest of the votes can be recounted by machine. A full hand count is ordered if two random samples result in differences.

Special prosecutor Kevin Baxter said in the defendants' January trial that they worked behind closed doors three days before the public recount on Dec. 16, 2004, to pick ballots they knew would not cause discrepancies when checked by hand, thereby avoiding a full hand recount.

18 months does not seem that much for trying to steal a democracy. If these people did not resort to such illegal acts we might have a different person in the White House today.

The judge says he believes it goes higher and so do a lot of us. In Ohio we had a Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, who was the state's chief election official. Blackwell also served as Bush's state chair for his re-election. He vowed to do whatever he could to return Bush to the White House. It is also worth reminding people that Blackwell was the deciding factor in Ohio's move to Diebold machines, a company he held stock in.

It is more than just pure coincidence that both elections Bush won was decided by states who had campaign chairs overseeing the states election process. In the wake of this we need to seriously look at that obvious conflict. The chief election officer for any state, county, city, etc. should be nonpartisan. Making it such a partisan job leads to corruption as we seen here.

Of course to make the changes nationally we would have to look at amending the Constitution, something I am seriously for. This amendment should come as part of a larger package, including a recall system for federal officials, public funding of campaigns, a national date certain to hold federal primaries, removing the electoral college, and a run-off system on our ballots.

The authors of our Constitution were way ahead of their time. They came up with a great system of three separate, but equal branches of government. The problem is that they trusted people too much. In those days people with power were more out to use that power for the good. In today's climate such people are hard to find. Our Constitution needs a serious look to repair a lot of these problems as a whole. The first must be to fix the corruption that has surrounded our electoral system for decades.

Brad has much more on this